by Megan Bannen
Map
Dedication
For those who doubt,
whether you want to or not
Contents
Cover
Map
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue: The Dead Forest: Ten Years Ago
I. The Vessel
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
II. The Song
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
III. The Sword
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
IV. The Forest
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
V. The Soulswift
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Fifty
Fifty-One
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Megan Bannen
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Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue: The Dead Forest
Ten Years Ago
The trees grew at impossible angles from the limestone escarpment, and brittle rock crunched underfoot. The sound forcefully reminded Goodson Anskar of the day he half ran, half skidded across the broken floor tiles of the monastery’s chapel—the ominous crush and scattering of marble beneath his feet—before he peered down into the Vault of Mount Djall and found it empty.
That emptiness reached inside him now, two years later—two years of research and guesswork, convincing himself his hunch was right. He had arrived in Hedenskia with two thousand knights. Now only he and Brother Marton remained, trudging through the Dead Forest, taking turns carrying the precious child they had never expected to find among the heathens.
The Goodson’s back ached, so he set the girl down beside a gnarled tree to stretch. In that moment, a crack rent the air like a whip. The bark split down the middle, and from within the tree came two skeletal hands pushing apart the chasm. There was an answering crack in Anskar’s chest, a paternal feeling so ferocious it nearly brought him to his knees. He lunged, grasping the child by her cloak and yanking her behind him. Her body soared through the air like a bird as the monster oozed from the tree.
A telleg.
It attacked Brother Marton first, scraping a thick gash across the knight’s throat before biting into his shoulder with savage teeth. Anskar drew his sword as the creature sprang at him with unnatural speed, and he sliced it in half, exposing the spine within its bloodless gray flesh. When he was certain it was dead, he rushed to Marton, only to find his friend’s eyes staring blankly toward heaven.
Fighting the urge to weep, the Goodson glared down at the telleg that had killed the last of his men. On the monster’s chest was a mark that resembled the Hand of the Father, the same emblem stitched across his own tunic. This was surely a sign from the One True God, a symbol of Anskar’s failure and disgrace.
Silent as a fawn, the girl came to stand beside him, taking his big hand in her small one. She gazed up at him with innocent eyes, and his heart lurched. Her soft presence was like his favorite verse from The Song of Saint Ovin, the one that always brought him comfort:
When the berries of the gelya tree turn red,
Then you will know that I have called you home.
Squeezing the girl’s hand, Anskar reminded himself that his name meant spear in Aurian. Now, more than ever, the Father required that he be sharp to protect this child, the Vessel of the One True God.
Casting aside his despair, he crouched before her, and because he did not know her name, he gave her a new one. “Poor little Gelya. Come. I shall carry you now.” Then he scooped her into his strong arms and carried her through a forest full of monsters and night.
I.
The Vessel
One
As Daughter Andra plops a scoop of thick oatmeal into my bowl, I recall the last conversation I had with Zofia before she left for the Monastery of Saint Helios:
Have you met the new Daughter yet? There are three girls your age here now, and it might be nice for you to have friends other than a thirty-year-old woman and the Goodson.
Those girls look at me like I’m going to bite them.
Then be your lovely self, Gelya, and show them that you don’t bite.
Well, Zofia is about to get her wish. With the other Vessels treating me like a nuisance and the rest of the Daughters avoiding me like the plague, I’m lonely enough in her absence to follow her suggestion. Girding myself, I walk past the Vessels’ table and head straight for the only other teenage girls in the refectory.
Vessels are Daughters who were chosen by the Grace Tree of Saint Vinnica to sing the Father’s Word for the faithful, while the other Daughters of the convent are simply women who’ve chosen to dedicate their lives to the One True God. These girls may not be Vessels like I am, but they are young women, and I’m a young woman, and surely that counts for something, especially in a convent full of old ladies. Not that I have anything against old ladies. It’s just that I’m not one.
I try to remember the girls’ names as I cross the room. Lucia? Lucretia? Something like that. And Trudi. I think. And . . . and that other girl. Most Daughters, unlike Vessels, don’t enter the convent until they’re at least sixteen. That means each one of these girls has a home to remember, a wider world they’ve seen that I haven’t—at least not that I remember clearly. I was only five or six years old when the Father chose me. I watch them stiffen, then stiffen a bit more, then turn into a set of petrified wooden boards as I get closer. By the time I reach their table, I think I’d rather hide under it than pull up a chair, but there’s no going back now. I almost ask, “May I sit here?” but then it occurs to me that they could say no, and that would be mortifying. Instead, I opt for “Is this seat taken?” because it clearly isn’t, and lying is a sin.
“No?” Probably Trudi answers doubtfully, her blue eyes wide in her round pink face. Lucia or Lucretia and That Other Girl gape at her in panic.
My hands are shaking so badly that my teacup vibrates on its saucer, and my orange nearly rolls off the tray. “So,” I chirp as I sit, my voice two octaves higher than normal and five times louder than necessary. “What do you study at the convent?”
“Um,” gulps That Other Girl, her brown eyes darting between her friends. She has the fine bones of someone from southwest Rosvania or northwest Tovnia, the sort of person who makes me feel extra enormous. She stares at me like she might vomit from terror. Because I’m not just a Vessel. I’m also Hedenski, a girl from the most brutal and uncivilized place on earth, a land where people worship a tree goddess—a tree, for the love of the Father—and that makes me terrifying twice over. But honestly, I’ve lived at the convent so long that I don’t remember anything about Hedenskia. It’s not like I murder people, and to my knowle
dge, I’ve never carried a battle-axe. Can’t they see that?
“Well,” says Lucia or Lucretia, adding a third word to the girls’ collective lexicon, which is promising. With her dark hair and olive complexion, I’d guess she comes from south of the Koz Mountains, and I feel a pang of sympathy for her, living so far from a home she must miss. I may not remember where I came from, but I do remember mourning its loss.
Probably Trudi finally gives me a complete sentence. “I’m studying herbalism so that I may serve the Father by treating the sick.”
Her accent is thickly Degmari, and since my Degmari is pretty good, I figure that speaking to her in her native language would be a friendly thing to do. “That is interesting,” I say a little too enthusiastically. “I recently translated a book on medicinal herbs from Middle Tovnian to Rosvanian. I was surprised to learn how useful goldenseal is.” By now, I notice that Probably Trudi appears to be shrinking in on herself and on the verge of tears, yet my mouth runs on a few seconds longer as if it has a life of its own. “And . . . and . . . chamomile as well.”
“Um, yes,” she sniffs in Rosvanian, dabbing at her eyes with her napkin.
“Did I say something wrong?” I ask, feeling even more gigantic than usual. And then I realize my blunder. Many people on the continent think of the Degmari as backwater yokels, probably because of the archipelago’s proximity to Hedenskia, and here I am, a Hedenski, pointing out the girl’s embarrassing origins in front of her friends, who are now looking at me like I’ve sprouted fangs when I was trying to be kind. I wish the floor would open up beneath me, but since that’s not going to happen, I escape before I can make things any worse.
“Well, nice talking with you.” I lurch to my feet, and this time the orange rolls off my tray and bounces on the floor. I pick it up, clear my tray, and exit the refectory without having eaten a bite. I’ll be sure to tell Zofia “I told you so” when she returns, but the humiliating pang of my failure pulverizes whatever smug triumph I might have felt.
An hour later, at Ovinsday services, I rise from my kneeler at the front of the Cathedral of Saint Vinnica, ascend the steps of the dais, and stand at the lectern. Pilgrims from all over the world fill the wooden pews in hushed wonder, waiting for me to begin the sacrament as they stare at the huge mosaic behind me. Saint Ovin stands in the center, plunging his sword into the heart of Elath, the snakelike demon at his feet. His daughter, Vinnica, stands to his right, clutching a chalice to her heart, her mouth yawning wide as the Great Demon’s immortal spirit enters her body. To Ovin’s left stands his second daughter, Saint Lanya, writing down The Song of Saint Ovin with the blue soulswift feather in her hand.
The Daughters of the convent kneel below me, their faces turned up in expectation, their shorn heads reflecting light in shades of blue and red as the sun presses through the stained-glass windows. The sacristy behind the altar once housed hundreds of Vessels in prayer. Now only twenty-three of us fill in the kneelers at the front like teeth in a beggar’s gap-toothed smile, and almost all those who remain are old women. No girl has been chosen since me, ten years ago, which means the day might come when I look out over the Daughters to find myself the only Vessel left, really and truly alone in the world.
My stomach growls into the silence, as empty as I feel. I stare down at one of my least favorite passages from The Songs, the part where the Knights of the Order of Saint Ovin deliver the Father’s punishment upon the ancient Kantari, the heathens who insisted—and insist to this day—that Elath the Great Demon is their mother goddess.
I press my fingertips to the embossed Sanctus text, and the Father’s Word takes hold of me, cold and invasive. May the Father forgive me for loathing it, this sensation that something other than myself is pouring into me and using me for its own purpose—His own purpose—however divine it may be.
You’re saving souls, Gelya, I remind myself, and I dutifully sing the verse as it comes to me through the sensitive skin of my fingertips.
Set the city of Nogarra alight, and I shall be the bellows of the flame.
Let the flesh burn away into ash from the bone.
Let the bone wither into dust in the unforgiving fires of the Father.
I shall melt down my enemies and make them anew
in the love of the One True God.
I tamp down the effects of my gift as I sing, lessening the way my voice makes my listeners feel the searing heat of the flames and hear the shrieking of helpless children. The Father’s wrath always plants a seed of unease in my gut. It seems impossibly harsh that children should suffer simply because their parents followed the wrong faith. Aren’t they human, too? Aren’t they also the Father’s creation? As I slog my way through the verse, unbidden words string themselves together in my mind, forming a question of the unquestionable: How can a Father who punishes His children with such cruelty be considered good?
I tamp that down, too.
Once the fires have obliterated every Elath-worshiping man, woman, and child in Nogarra, once the city crumbles to a wasteland of ash, my body sags with fatigue, and a sheen of perspiration beads uncomfortably on my upper lip and forehead. I close the holy book, clomp gracelessly down the dais steps, and drop to my kneeler beside Daughter Ina, the intimidating Vessel Zofia left in charge in her absence. Whenever Ina sings, her gift lifts her listeners’ souls toward heaven, while the dark brown skin of her perfectly shorn head remains miraculously sweat-free, as if Sanctus were effortless for her. She inclines her head toward me and whispers, “That was weak.”
I glance over my shoulder at the girls from breakfast. That Other Girl whose name I don’t know and probably never will shudders when her brown eyes meet mine. I face forward again and mutter, “I’d say it was adequate.”
After services, I go to the scriptorium with the other Vessels and settle myself beside a window that looks out on the courtyard gardens. Beyond the latticework, daylight paints the fat pears in the orchard a honeyed gold. I allow myself one last, wistful glance before I get to work, pressing my fingers to the embossed pages of The Songs of the Saints. The Father’s Word fills me with a cold, thick pressure that heaves upward against the back of my throat and tightens my flesh. Pushing aside my discomfort, I grasp my pen and translate the Sanctus song into Kantari.
I’m the only Vessel at the convent who specializes in Kantari, and since there are more and more Kantari converts to the faith every day, it seems like all I do anymore is translate The Songs for them. Or, at least, for the ones who can read.
While the Kantari do worship the Father, most of them still cling to the old belief that Elath the Great Demon is a goddess. They even call Her their “Mother.” They’re the reason the Order of Saint Ovin exists, the knights who guard Elath’s prison against the Kantari who keep trying to set Her free. If Elath is ever released, the world will end, so the other Vessels can sneer at my translations with that I-just-sucked-on-a-lemon face all they like; my work is literally saving the world one soul at a time.
At least I think it is.
Today’s translation from The Song of Saint Lanya explains the central tenet of Ovinism: Hundreds of years ago, Saint Ovin slew Elath the Great Demon with the sword given him by the One True God, a weapon called the Hand of the Father. As the demon’s body died, Ovin trapped Her spirit inside his daughter, Vinnica, the only girl pure enough to contain such evil. He then sealed the demon inside the Vault of Mount Djall, thereby saving mankind’s immortal soul from earthly suffering.
As the Sanctus text wears out my body, my gaze drifts once more to the view beyond the window. I find little joy in being trapped indoors when the world outside is green and alive. The scriptorium walls press in on me, and the stuffy air makes it difficult to breathe. I feel as though I might burst. The next thing I know, I’m on my feet, bonking my head on a low-hanging lamp as I dash for the courtyard door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Daughter Ina calls at my back, but I shut the door against her protests and take a deep breath of f
resh air. I don’t know how I’ll get caught up on my work, but the scent of hay drying in the fields beyond the convent walls is enough reward to make me push away any misgivings. Can’t a Vessel of the One True God enjoy His creation from time to time?
The pea gravel between the raised beds of the potager garden crunches pleasingly beneath my feet as I make my way to the ancient statue of Saint Vinnica. It stands in the shade of the Grace Tree, whose seedpods open in the hands of the Vessels chosen by the One True God. The tree is dying, and has been dying since long before I came to the convent. No one knows why. It’s another reminder of my loneliness, of the possibility that the Vessels of the Father are dying out right alongside it. And who will sing the Father’s Word then?
The statue beneath the Grace Tree is a weathered version of Vinnica, less severe than the other icons of the convent, the idea of the saint rather than the painful reality of her. I tend to come here when I’m feeling rudderless or lonely or both, which is more and more often these days, especially with Zofia gone and no one to talk to in her absence. While the other Daughters and even the laity wax rhapsodic about the way the Father fills them with love and understanding, the sad truth is that the One True God is silent when I pray to Him.
My stomach aches with a terrible word that wriggles in my guts, making itself known whether I like it or not: doubt. I can’t unthink it, and I can’t pretend that I haven’t thought it before and won’t think it again. My doubt is why I stand before Saint Vinnica’s statue now. When I speak to her here in the garden, it feels as if someone is listening to me, so I send up a little prayer, a wish that the Father spoke to me rather than through me, some reassurance that he is the loving Father I have been taught to believe He is. I close my eyes and lift my face to the sun and listen to a swallow chirp in the Grace Tree. By the time I open my eyes once more, I feel calmer, comforted.
As I gaze at the statue, I wonder how anyone could identify it as Vinnica. She’s usually associated with either snakes, which represent Elath the Great Demon, or a chalice, a symbol of her body, which she sacrificed for the world, but if there were ever snakes or a chalice carved into the stone, they’ve long since faded with time and age.