“Irkalla is divided into regions for each of the dark races,” Nyx said. “Valva, do you want to explain?”
“After I show you the secret shortcut to Irkalla through the Liminal, the real tests will begin.” The golden demon sounded surprisingly businesslike.
“Hold on,” Adam interrupted. “Is there a reason why Sabina can’t just have Giguhl, or you, for that matter, flash her in and skip all the tests?”
“There are impenetrable wards set into the borders of the Infernal Lands. They’re there to keep the living out.”
“And the dead in?” I asked.
She nodded. “Anyway, pretty much the only way in—in the case of the living—or out—in the case of the dead—is through guarded access points. If I tried to take Sabina through with me, she’d hit the barriers and be locked out.”
“So why can demons move between realms?” I asked. “You guys are alive.”
“Because Irkalla is our home,” she said simply. “Plus most demons—except for the Lilitu, like me—can’t leave Irkalla without magical intervention.”
She was telling the truth. Only mages could summon demons from the underworld, and once they reached the mortal realm, they could only stay if they were under the control of that mage or if he or she transferred control to another mage. I guess it was some sort of preternatural checks and balances to ensure demons didn’t flood out of Irkalla and take over Earth.
“But Giguhl took Clovis to Irkalla,” Adam pointed out.
Giguhl spoke up. “Clovis is half demon, so he can pass through the wards, and Sabina—a mage—sent him there magically using me.”
“So the gates are something any alive being would have to go through to get to the palace, right?” Adam asked.
Nyx stepped up. “Yes and no. Because Sabina will be trying to prove that she’s the Chosen, the tests were specially devised by Lilith to help weed out pretenders. Only someone who could actually be the Chosen will pass through all the gates.”
“So, for example, if Tristan had managed to find the secret entrance all those years ago, he wouldn’t have faced the same tests to get through the gates?”
Valva nodded. “Right. He would have just had to pay special tolls in the forms of magical items, but that’s why we make the secret entrances so hard to find. Mom and Dad don’t want to be bothered by every yokel with a hard-on to prove himself with a quest to Irkalla.”
Tristan grimaced. “Thanks, V.”
“No offense, Tristy.” She cringed. “The truth is that if Mom hadn’t sent me to stop you, you would have eventually found your way in.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Really?”
She nodded. “But if you had, it would have set off a chain reaction that would have led to Lavinia Kane wiping out the entire mage and faery races. If that had happened, Mom would have had to destroy all her earthbound kids.”
“Which means if I’d found that doorway, we’d all be dead right now,” Tristan said, connecting the dots.
The room fell silent as we all absorbed that information. Her reminder that fate had plans for us that we couldn’t begin to understand was sobering.
“Okay,” Adam said, finally changing the subject. “To summarize: Getting through the gates is really just the first part of Lilith’s overall test. If Sabina fails at any of them, it will prove she isn’t the Chosen.”
“Right,” Nyx said.
“As I was saying,” the demoness continued, “in order to get to my mother, you’ve got to get through gates located in the dark races realms.” She pointed a metallic fingernail at the second level of the map. “After you get through the Adamantine Gate—the main entrance—the next one is here in the Hekatian Fields.”
“That’s where mages are punished?” I asked.
Tristan shook his head. “Unlike the mortal hell, Irkalla isn’t concerned with punishing the sinful. Instead, it’s an afterlife residence for all the dark races. There’s certain areas devoted to punishment, but they mainly exist in the demon realms.”
Nyx picked up the explanation. “The mage realm is first because it’s sacred to Hekate and it’s closest to the Adamantine Gate and Cerberus, both of which she also rules.”
I nodded. “I guess that makes sense. She’s the goddess of Liminal spaces and dogs.”
“Right. Moving on,” Valva said. “After the mage area is the Fae Realm. It’s home to the Unseelie Court.” At my questioning look, she explained. “They’re the exiled dark faeries who tried to wrest control of the fae from Queen Maeve in the early days of the race. But don’t worry about them. They’re all terrified of Queen Maeve.”
I’d met Queen Maeve on several occasions, and while she could be a first-class ballbuster, I found it hard to believe the Unseelie Court would be scared of her. “Why is that?”
Nyx looked up and shrugged. “She’s a demigod. None of the Unseelies can compete with her powers.”
My jaw dropped. “Maeve is a goddess?”
“Demigoddess,” she corrected. “But yeah, a deity.”
That certainly explained how she escaped being poisoned by my sister when she took out Orpheus and Tanith at the treaty signing. It also explained how she went through four stages of woman each year—child, maiden, mother, crone. I tucked that in my back pocket for examination later.
“What’s this here?” Within the region marked for the fae, there was a small section labeled Lupercalium.
Nyx took that one. “The werewolves aren’t numerous or powerful enough to get their own level, so the fae allow the were dead to live in a small area in their lands.” Nyx moved her finger lower. “Vamps are next. They live in the Bloodlands.”
Of course they did. While the other races all had somewhat poetic names for their final resting places, the vampires had picked a forbidding name. Typical. “Is there a reason for the order of the realms?” I asked.
Nyx looked at me with a speculative glance. “Very astute of you. Much like on the earthly plain, the fae and weres act as a buffer between the mages and vamps.”
Considering the mage and vampire races had been mortal—or immortal in the case of the vampires—enemies since Hekate created the mages, it made sense to keep them separate.
“The Bloodlands are relatively small compared to the others since vampires don’t die so easily,” Valva explained. “Which, of course, you know all about.”