The Last Prophecy

by Russell Loyola Sullivan

  She seized his shoulder. “You have to put up a guard against that energy.”

  He screamed out a reply. “I don’t know how. I need to go back if it happens again.”

  She knew he was experiencing what she had. “No, you can do this. I blocked the pain with my magic; you can do the same.”

  “You’re a care—”

  “So are you. I cannot do this alone.”

  The hawk screeched one more time; the evening went silent.

  He looked at her and smiled. “It was only my hearing at stake.”

  They climbed the last set of steps and made for the doors at the center of the main complex. Devyn pulled on one of them, and it swung open. He took a torch from his knapsack, lit it, and moved inside, Brenna at his side. The big door closed behind them, and the night outside disappeared.

  He touched the wall next to the door; the wall was filled with writings. “I guess we’ve found the temple.”

  “I think we have found more than that,” Brenna added. “I’m still dealing with what happened outside.”

  Chapter 20

  Turn of the Season 2102 SB

  It was not entirely dark inside the temple. Light from the full moons filtered in through slits somewhere high above—not direct light, but enough to give something other than total darkness, perhaps also allowing sufficient air circulation for the temple to give off a pleasant scent of fresh air and flowers.

  Brenna swore it was frostbite roses with a dash of lavender.

  Devyn added he only knew it was not the fine smell of goats after a good rain drenching.

  The light from their torch gave up no walls other than the one behind them, and that wall disappeared into darkness as they moved forward. The place quickly proved to be the largest room either one of them had ever entered.

  “Are we sure we’re inside the building that we looked at when outside?” Brenna asked. “It looked so much smaller than what this appears to be.”

  “Maybe it’s the darkness that makes it seem bigger,” Devyn offered. “But you’re right; even looking up to where the bits of light filter in seems so much farther away than what the height of the temple appeared to be when we were outside.”

  Steps, echoes of their steps, then stopping again to listen, silence, a sensation of limitless darkness, no way to give preference to a particular direction, a dark desert of nothingness. The outside had been an ordeal that neither of them would wish to repeat. The idea of turning back and once again going outside offered them little solace. This enormity of space called upon the improbable, the impossible; they had not conceived of such a structure from the outside. Something was amiss. Was this place reality or some mind trick?

  They walked on, deliberately, cautiously, staying as best they could in a straight line. They shared on a number of occasions the impossible distance they were covering without finding another wall. Having come this far, going back was not an option.

  Finally the torchlight lit the outline of another wall, also filled with writings.

  “Okay, we’re in a room with at least two walls. One mystery solved,” Devyn said.

  They examined the wall.

  Brenna had recovered some of her composure, at least enough to recall what had happened outside. “Did you hear the wind… the moans?” she asked.

  “No,” Devyn said. “I was consumed by an incredible burning inside my ears. You saved me.”

  Brenna shook her head. “No, you saved yourself. And that hawk saved us both. There’s more to that hawk than we gave measure.”

  “Yes, he or she is more than a coincidence.”

  Brenna touched the writing on the wall in front of her. “These are the prophecies. See, it names a caretaker, what they said, and the date of the solstice.”

  “But the numbers don’t look like dates,” Devyn said. “OI, what does that mean?”

  “It means Order Index. It was the calendar in use before our current one. It ended with 54… 5490, or something near that date. I’m not sure, exactly, but it was a date before 5500 OI. It’s said the new calendar began with the new temple, but that’s not certain either.”

  “So our new temple was built some 2100 turns of the seasons ago. But why the switch from OI to SB?” he asked.

  “Solstice beginning. Whoever ordained the new system did so marking the beginning of each turn of the seasons to commence with the start of lightsgift—a time when all of life renews.”

  “You know too much.”

  “You know the sword. I spent my time with history. Come on, let’s check out some of this, see what we can unearth.”

  The time sped by while they attempted to read the profusion of words written on the blocks of stone that made up the walls. All writings where inscribed with the date when they were written. Some of the words were incomprehensible to them, and many references were to things and happenings they had no knowledge of.

  The large room they were in appeared to hold the original prophecies going back through the ages, or at least for the dates Brenna was able to decipher, but on a side wall the dates meant nothing to her, and on the last wall they examined none of the words had meaning, were mostly symbols totally beyond her understanding.

  Brenna leaned against the wall. “We’ve seen no writings later than 500 SB. That means some one thousand six hundred turns of the season prophecies are missing. Why would that be?”

  “Did something important happen a thousand six hundred turns ago?” Devyn asked. “Maybe that’s the real date when the new temple was built and this one abandoned.”

  “Yes, that would make sense. Wait. Yes, what was close to the date the book in the Antiquity Library stated the old temple was looted, Arapendia destroyed?”

  “It was five something-or-other. So maybe the new temple was built before the old one was looted. And they stopped writing prophecies on the walls after that,” Devyn said.

  “Maybe there was no one left to write them. Yet, that makes no sense. If the new dating system began with the new temple, then why are these prophecies here dated 500 SB?” Brenna asked. “And there’s certainly no urn in here. The sisters must have been mistaken.”

  Devyn placed his torch closer to the floor. “Or maybe there’s something we’re missing.”

  He moved along the back wall, searching up and down where the torch lit the way. “The sisters said there were other rooms; perhaps we need to find a way to open a door, a passageway. We’ve come too far to give up.”

  Brenna joined him, pushing and pulling at any part of the wall that might be an anomaly. They examined every stone on the back wall they could reach, without any success.

  “If we have to examine three more walls, we’ll be here forever. If we’re missing something, it greatly wants to be missed,” Brenna said.

  Devyn looked down at the stone floor. “If we can’t go up, then maybe we have to go down.” He began walking along the floor by one of the side walls, examining the floor stones as he walked. Brenna commenced doing the same.

  She stopped when she found an irregularity, one stone standing up from the other. And there on each corner, a jewel.

  “Could this be one of the black jewels referred to in the writings?” Brenna exclaimed. “Oh my, I’ve seen these before… Yes, when they took me to the temple, Lord Wallace came to visit. His dagger had two or three of those jewels. I thought they looked strange, but I was more concerned about my well-being at the time.” She pushed on the stones with her foot. A grinding sound and a portion of the floor in front of her slid under the wall, and a set of steps appeared.

  “The divination of dowsing has found a new application. You’re a genius.”

  “Not likely. There were few options left for us,” she said. “And it was your idea.”

  He lit another torch and carefully descended the steps, Brenna close behind. He stepped onto the floor below and continued forward until he came to a wall; as with the walls above, this also held writings. Inspecting all four walls, they found three such walls
marked with inscription, the dates now commencing to fill in the lost sixteen hundred turns of the seasons.

  “Well, it appears someone found a way to continue recording the prophecies,” Devyn said.

  Finding another raised stone in the room, they stopped reading in the interest of finding another source, a bottom. The black jewels appeared again and again, as well as more descending stairways, rooms with smooth stones empty of any prophecies, not a word written on them. Down and down they went, until they thought they had reached the bowels of the earth. Still the air stayed fresh, and another stone indicated a new level to descend into.

  “These rooms are empty. Does it make any sense to keep going down?” Brenna asked.

  “We’ve come this far.” Devyn found another floor stone and pushed it in place. They descended level after level, finding only an empty room. “Something’s not right.” Devyn took his dagger from its sheath and placed it on the stone floor.

  “What are you doing?” Brenna asked.

  “Come on.” He pressed on the stone, and they moved down the next set of steps. And there on the floor was his dagger. “Well then, a fine place for us to get lots of exercise, but little else.”

  Brenna laughed. “I won’t even try to understand how that works.”

  Devyn looked around, touching the blank stones as he moved along the wall. “It would appear we’re at the end of our journey downward in the temple.”

  One flight of stairs up brought them into the first room they had found beneath the main floor. “Let’s keep reading.” They moved along the wall. When she noted a prophecy she recognized, she informed Devyn. That became more and more prevalent as they moved to current dates within their lifetimes.

  “Look, look.” She could scarcely contain her bewilderment. “You know it’s impossible, don’t you?”

  “I know we’re in no ordinary place,” he said.

  Brenna pointed to where she’d been reading. “This is the prophecy before the last, the one for 2101. I know every word of it. But why is the last prophecy missing, the one you got from Simon?”

  Devyn read along with her as she perused the penultimate prophecy. “Why not the last? And better still, who has been recording all these prophecies? There’s no sign of habitation here, and those cats don’t look like they’re interested in engraving… or allowing anyone else to enter and do so.”

  “So much mystery here.” Brenna pointed. “These stairs are impossible to understand. How the writings got here is equally strange. My intuition tells me, complex as this might be, there’s something bigger. All of this to allow prophecies to be transcribed on a wall is meaningless. The clerics have the words of the prophecies, going back to at least the start of our calendar.”

  “Are you sure?” Devyn asked. “We assume as much only because they’ve always told us they’ve been the transcribers of prophecies since the beginning.”

  “Yes, there appears to be a greater story here. All of this to transcribe what has already been transcribed by the clerics… and those shadow cats, cougars, ghost cats, whatever they are. This place has more secrets to give up.”

  They returned to the main floor.

  “Let’s find out.” Devyn ran his hand along the wall. “Not even dust on the stones.”

  Brenna lit a torch of her own and commenced searching the other way along the wall. “Maybe the cats do housework… Ya, it makes no further sense to… Wait! I’ve found something. Come here.”

  Devyn joined her. She touched one of the stones. “Look. A symbol of a dagger or a sword of some kind. We missed this the first time.”

  She pushed; the stone slid inside the wall. She let go and it popped back out. They pushed and prodded the other nearby stones and found three more. She pointed to the two above. “You push those two, and I’ll push the two on the bottom.”

  A portion of the wall outlined by the four stones moved down into the floor to reveal an inner room that reflected back a dark-blue shimmer. This room appeared much smaller than the one they had just left. They examined the wall straight ahead and saw but few writings. No writings were on any of the other three walls.

  There was a large altar in the center of the space, carved from white marble in grand contrast to the rest of the room. It rose to the height of at least two men, one standing atop the other. They moved around the altar, and discovered on the other side a much lower marble table and a pattern of ten black jewels forming what looked to be a sword on the floor, a sword that led up to the table. On top of the stone sat an urn.

  Devyn took the urn and turned it about before passing it to Brenna.

  She placed it back on the altar. “Well, it appears we have accomplished a part of our task.”

  Devyn moved to the wall. “Not a lot of writings here, unlike outside… and none of it anything I can decipher.”

  Brenna extinguished her torch. “How many more of these do we have?”

  “One, plus the one I’m holding. We’ve used up five.”

  The OI inscription was contained in all postings where they could decipher a date, and in such writings only a few of the words held any meaning for them. The remainder was totally outside their knowledge base. She walked to where the last of the writings appeared. “Oh my.”

  “What is it?” Devyn asked.

  “The date, come look.”

  She touched the wall. “The date’s 2102 SB. It’s the prophecy you got from Simon. It’s the last prophecy, word for word. How can that be? And why is it in this room and not out with the others? And why are all the other inscriptions ones we cannot read?”

  They looked at the urn. “The sisters and their secrets.” She walked back to the altar. “Well we may have solved a piece of the prophecy. We found the room with the black jewels, but the chalice is another matter.”

  Devyn picked up the urn and gave it a light shake. No sound. “I wonder what’s inside. The sisters said not to open it, or its value to them would be lost. Can we trust they told us the truth?”

  “Can we not trust what they told us?” Brenna answered. “Everything they told us thus far has been accurate.”

  “Still, it bothers me why this one urn should be the only other object that we find in this vast complex.” Devyn looked around as he spoke. “It’s no coincidence that the urn is here.”

  “I agree,” Brenna said. “But they warned us not to open it. We shouldn’t easily set that aside. I wish they’d told us its purpose. But then again, that could have been a contrived answer. All we can do is hope their intentions are noble. A bargain’s a bargain.”

  “Look.” Devyn pointed. “See where the outline of the sword on the floor meets the altar? There on the upper slab of marble.”

  She moved closer. “An indentation.”

  Devyn took his dagger and slowly moved it into the recess. “It goes all the way in without touching anything.” He tried turning the indentation. A faint click and nothing more. “It must need a special key.” He walked around the altar. “I doubt if anything is inside. It appears solid, with no outlines where an opening might be.”

  “Come here. I think I’ve found something.” Brenna touched one of the stones on the wall. “Each of these stones has that sword mark, and there is an outline along the stone in the shape of a door. Plus, I feel cooler air coming from inside. It has to be another room.”

  No matter how hard they tried, the door would not give way.

  They were on their last torch.

  It was time to leave.

  “Maybe the sisters will tell us more,” Brenna said, defeated. “We need to come back here.”

  He gave her a look like she had just told him his bottle of whiskey was empty and there was no more to be had in all of Kielara. “We need to get out of here in one piece first.” Devyn lifted the urn from its table.

  “How long have we been in here?” Brenna asked.

  “Let’s just say I’m glad we gave the horses enough food and water for a day.”

  Brenna stopped at the ma
in doors and turned to Devyn. “Are you ready for that wind torture, farmer?

  “We’ll see.” He pushed open the door and stepped outside. They stood for a few moments, waiting for what was to come. The doors closed behind them.

  Nothing, not a sound.

  “Look.” She pointed at the hawk. It sat with its back to them, atop what appeared to be a flagpole, though no flag flew there now. It spread its wings and flew upward. It disappeared behind the tower on the right but in moments came out the other side, rising ever more as it did.