by Megan Bannen
I crouch down to push aside the tall sorrel leaves that obscure the saint’s legs and feet and find that the statue rests on a limestone block with faint Sanctus symbols carved into the stone. When I press my fingertips to the inscription, one word—one distinct feeling—jumps out at me: hand. But there’s more to it than that. Wrapped within the word are other ideas, other meanings. This hand is warm to the touch. It reaches for mine, but it also holds away things that would harm me. It feels oddly personal, and makes me long for something I don’t have the words or understanding to name.
It’s not surprising to find Sanctus carved into a statue’s base, but I’ve never felt a text as strong as this one. My fingertips drift across the stone, hungry for more. It’s mostly gibberish until I come across a few lines that are crystal clear:
Sing, faithful, of beloved Vinnica,
Prison and prisoner,
And pity her,
The eternal Vessel,
The heart of the Father’s sorrow.
I take my hand away, puzzled. Why would the Father be sorrowful when Vinnica’s sacrifice allowed Ovin to imprison Elath the Great Demon? My curiosity piqued, I sneak back into the scriptorium to fetch a sheet of parchment and a piece of charcoal. Then I stop by the garden shed to scrounge up one of the wire brushes we use to scour terra-cotta pots before replanting. I work up a sweat, scraping off the moss and lichen encrusting the statue’s base until I have enough cleared off to take a decent rubbing.
After all that, the results are disappointing. Sanctus is a slippery language on a good day, but I’ve never encountered a text this incomprehensible. I can’t even find the one passage I was able to read moments ago. Growling with irritation, I fold the parchment into fourths and stuff it into my pocket. I’m about to go back inside when a series of high-pitched notes dances through the air. A bird circles above me before it comes to perch on the statue’s shoulder.
Blue wings. Gold breast. A black band on each side of her face delineated by a white stripe above and below. Long wings and scissored tail tapering out of sight behind the statue. She’s a soulswift, a Vessel who has transcended her body to become a bird who carries the souls of the faithful to heaven. She cocks her head and releases a trilling more beautiful than any other sound on earth, proof of eternal life beside the Father in heaven.
This is what I will become when I die. Has the Father answered my doubt with this reminder of my duty on earth? Cowed, I grope for some sense of His presence in my heart, but a hollow ache is my only answer.
At last the soulswift takes flight, circles twice, then soars off beyond the convent walls, taking her heartbreakingly beautiful call with her.
Two
Well after dinner and twenty bells, the scriptorium is empty except for me, the lone Vessel who is staggeringly behind in her work.
I wonder what normal girls are doing in Varos da Vinnica, the town outside the convent. Knitting and gossiping with other women beside a fire? Telling stories that have nothing to do with burning cities or the end of the world? Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s more fun than translating Saint Wenslas’s apocalyptic visions into Kantari. It would be nice to find out what being normal feels like, if only for a day or two.
I rub my bleary eyes with ink-stained knuckles and get back to work, copying out verses that detail what will happen should the faithful fail to contain Elath the Great Demon in her earthly prison at Mount Djall.
Your forests shall become deserts.
Your seas shall become salt and sand.
Your fields shall drown in the punishing floods of the Father.
Your winters shall yawn across months, then years,
Until there is nothing left but death and death.
Most scholars believe Saint Wenslas’s visions are metaphorical rather than literal, but most scholars have never set foot in the Dead Forest, the place where the souls of the sinful go when they die, where they are transformed into telleg, the monsters that haunt the earth for eternity.
Sweat glazes my shorn head and slicks my armpits. As I shift my leg to unstick the back of my thigh from my stool, I hear the rustling of parchment in my pocket. Welcoming a distraction from my troubling thoughts, I let my hand find its way to my pocket and pull out the rubbing of the strange inscription. I spread it out on the table and touch a random spot. This time the power of the Sanctus text is much stronger, grabbing hold of me, gluing me firmly to the page, filling me with one distinct word: mother.
Not just any mother. My mother.
I can’t see her face, but I sense her in the room, close by. She hums a tune as I doze off in a bed of furs, the comforting scent of woodsmoke and burned sage surrounding me like a blanket. The physicality of her—the realness of her body—sends a pang of longing shooting through my chest, as fresh as the day the Goodson first brought me to the convent. I rip my hand away so fast I nearly topple over.
“Gelya?”
I let out a bleat of surprise and leap to my feet, smacking my head against the lamp for the second time today, and I find Zofia standing before me. I’m so relieved to see her that I wrap her up in a fierce hug, her steady presence calming the turbulence of my thoughts.
“I’ve missed you, too,” she laughs as she untangles herself. The flicker of the lamp’s light dances across her face, and I can’t help but think—not for the first time—that someone as lovely and smart as Zofia shouldn’t be hidden from the world behind stone walls. She’s from Auria, like the Goodson, and with her graceful height and gray eyes, she could be his niece. When she sings The Songs of the Saints for the pilgrims who come to the cathedral, her gift permeates the Sanctus text with excruciating beauty, piercing her listeners’ hearts with the glory of the One True God. She’s everything I wish I could be.
“I think you’ve grown another inch since I’ve been gone,” she tells me.
“Holy Father, I hope not. I’m going to start knocking into the ceiling beams soon.”
But Zofia’s eyes have already found the rubbing on my desk, and she frowns. “What are you working on?”
I touch the new sore spot on my head, suddenly nervous. “It’s nothing.”
Zofia crosses her arms over her chest and levels me with a no-nonsense stare. She may be my best friend, but she’s also my older sister and mother and mentor, all rolled into one imposing package. “That’s funny. Your ‘nothing’ looks remarkably like something that is completely unrelated to The Songs of the Saints.”
I hate it when she does this. She’s been Sacrist—the director of the convent—for about a year now, ever since Sacrist Larka died. Now I never know whether she’s going to be Zofia, my one and only friend, or Zofia, my boss.
“Come on. I didn’t do anything wrong, and I promise I’ll get my translation finished by tomorrow.”
As the words tumble out of my mouth, Zofia picks up the parchment, brushes it with her fingertips, and gasps. “Gelya, what is this?”
“I don’t know.”
Her eyes flash. “Where did you get it?”
“I found it,” I tell her, wondering just how much trouble I’m in. “It’s the inscription on the base of the statue of Saint Vinnica in the garden. Did you know it was there?”
She turns her attention back to the parchment, and her voice is hushed when she answers, “No, I didn’t.”
“Really? So I found something— Ow!”
She grabs me by the arm and drags me into the dark library stacks, casing the room like a thief to make sure we’re alone. “Have you shown this to anyone?” she whispers, flapping the parchment at me. Anxiety thickens in my stomach as she stares me down with an intensity that sharpens her eyes to pinpoints.
“No.”
“For the Father’s sake, keep your voice down,” she hisses, looking over her shoulder as if someone might jump out from behind a bookshelf at any moment. “I need you to think. Did anyone else see this? Anyone at all?”
“I already told you, no,” I whisper.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Zofia, what’s wrong?”
“Good. That’s good.” She folds my rubbing and puts it in her own pocket.
“But—”
Zofia holds up one authoritative finger, silhouetted by what little light from the scriptorium lamp shines into the library. She is no longer Zofia-My-Friend. She is Sacrist-Zofia-of-the-Convent-of-Saint-Vinnica. “Don’t tell anyone what you found. No one. Not even Goodson Anskar. Especially not Goodson Anskar. Is that clear?”
The anxiety in my gut grows heavier. “Why?”
“Is that clear, Daughter Gelya?”
Daughter Gelya. As if she hadn’t held my hand and told me Aurian bedtime stories when I was still a little girl scared of thunderstorms. My lips thin, but who am I to defy the Sacrist of Saint Vinnica? “Fine,” I agree tightly, but there’s a part of me that wants to snatch the parchment out of Zofia’s pocket. The urge to touch it, to feel its meaning again, burns inside me.
For the first time in years, I want my mother.
Two days pass before I get the chance to return to the convent garden, but when I pull back the sorrel leaves covering the statue’s base, I find that someone has chiseled the Sanctus symbols off the limestone block beneath Saint Vinnica’s feet. I gape at the grooves and gouges in the rock, certain that Zofia would never go to such lengths to hide anything from me, and equally certain that she must be responsible for this.
“What in the name of the Father did I find?” I wonder aloud, but no one answers me, not even Saint Vinnica’s steady presence in the garden. Before this moment, it didn’t occur to me that I should be afraid of what I discovered. But now, as I stare at the erasure of a song, my instinct tells me there are things in this world I may be better off not knowing.
Three
It’s been nearly a month since Zofia took the rubbing from me, but every time I try to get a private word with her, she finds an excuse to slip away. Which is why I’m shocked when she sits down beside me at dinner one night.
“Oh, did you decide to join us this evening?” I ask with a mouthful of broccoli and irony, and she gives me a weary sigh in response. After several minutes of eating in silence, I finally soften, leaning toward her to murmur, “You haven’t been yourself since you came back from Saint Helios. What’s wrong? Is it the . . . thing I found?”
Zofia eyes me sharply, but we’re interrupted by a serving girl, who races into the refectory, bobs a curtsy, and thrusts a letter into Zofia’s hand. “Knights of the Order of Saint Ovin delivered this not five minutes ago, Sacrist,” says the girl as she bobs another curtsy and scurries back the way she came. The missive is sealed with the emblem of the Holy See of the Ovinist Church pressed into violet wax. I don’t know if Zofia has ever received a direct message from His Holiness, but she certainly hasn’t received one in the middle of dinner. She breaks the heavy seal, and as her eyes dart back and forth across the looping script, her hold tightens, wrinkling the vellum.
“What is it?” I ask, worried by her reaction. In answer, she squeezes my hand, then rises to her feet, holding herself erect before the Daughters of the convent.
“I’ve just received a message from His Holiness, the See. The Kantari army has crossed north of the Koz Mountains. As of this report, they have made it to Debrochen in Tovnia.”
Cries of alarm fill the room, and my own heart freezes in my chest. The Kantari have never brought their war north of the Koz. Their focus has always been on defending their borders and, from time to time, trying to breach the walls of the Monastery of Saint Ovin to free Elath—their “Mother”—from the Vault of Mount Djall. The fact that an army of murderous Kantari soldiers is only a few hundred miles away makes my veins ice over. Could the Kantari make it all the way to Rosvania? To the convent, even?
Zofia holds up her hand, silencing the Daughters’ alarm before she continues. “The Tovnian army is holding them at bay, but Tovnia has requested a Grand Summit here at Saint Vinnica to discuss their concerns with the other Ovinist nations. The Holy See has granted the request. The date has been set for three weeks from today. I’m placing Daughter Ina in charge of arranging accommodations for the ambassadors. I will personally oversee preparations for the summit. I’ll keep you all informed as I learn more.”
With that, she sits, flapping her napkin onto her lap as if she hadn’t just delivered the most staggering news in decades or, possibly, centuries.
“There hasn’t been a summit at Saint Vinnica in years, and there hasn’t been a Grand Summit in my lifetime,” Daughter Ina sputters. “How many men are we expecting?”
“Ambassadors from every Ovinist kingdom—possibly princes—and their retinues, although they’ll need to be warned that space is limited within the parlertorium. I wouldn’t be surprised to see at least one representative from the Empire of Yil, as well. And the Holy See is sending the Archbishop of Rosvania to facilitate. So thirty men, give or take?” Zofia looks up from her dinner. “All kingdoms but Kantar and Hedenskia will be represented.”
“Of course the heathens won’t be there,” says Ina, spitting the word heathens the way you might say roach or louse.
“What exactly is a Grand Summit?” I ask Zofia. “Is it different from a regular summit?”
“Most summits deal with border disputes between kingdoms or provinces, tariffs, that kind of thing, and there are usually only a handful of men involved. A Grand Summit calls together representatives from all the kingdoms of our faith to make a decision regarding the best interests of the Ovinist Church as a whole. In this case, I imagine the ambassadors will want to decide as a group how to act against the Kantari threat to the north, but that’s not our concern. Our only purpose at a summit is to serve the Father by translating the words of men.” Zofia scans the entire table, making eye contact with each Vessel in turn as she speaks, lingering last and longest on me.
The next three weeks are a blur of scrubbing, polishing, mopping, and waxing as the ambassadors trickle in from all over the Ovinist world.
On the morning of the summit, as I walk the west wing to fill the lamps with oil, I find myself passing a narrow closet—one of my favorite hiding places when I was little. My memory stretches back to the Aurian folktales Zofia used to tell me. She’s the only Vessel who ever bothered to learn a bit of Hedenski, and she would whisper the stories to me in my native language. I remember the way I would act them out in all my hidden spaces, living in an imaginary world whenever I could escape from Sacrist Larka long enough to play.
Once there was a girl.
Every story began the same way.
Once there was a girl whose mother gave her the gift of life, and she woke the dead.
Back then, I slept on a cot in Zofia’s room. Many nights, I would wake screaming, my dreams haunted by the wraithlike telleg I faced in the Dead Forest.
Once there was a girl who slew the Snake of Umut.
During the day, I used to tuck myself into this closet and whisper the words to the little rag doll Zofia had sewn for me, before Sacrist Larka found it and took it.
Once there was a girl who flew like a bird, up and up, far above the earth.
I haven’t thought about that rag doll in ages, but suddenly its loss hurts my heart. I was only a child. Why couldn’t I have had one toy, one thing that belonged to me? I’m still lost in these gloomy thoughts when Zofia calls my name from the end of the hall. As I make my way toward her, the hard-set expression of her face warns me that I should be worried.
“What did I do?”
“Nothing.” She takes the pitcher from my greasy hands and sets it on a console next to a small sculpture of Saint Vinnica, leaving a shiny wet stain beside the saint. “Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“The parlertorium. There’s been a change to the summit proceedings. Your attendance is required tonight.”
All the blood drains out of my head and pools in my stomach. “Am I going to observe?”
“No. I need you on hand to tra
nslate.”
“Which language?” By now, my misgivings are stomping on my chest.
“The Tovnians have captured a Kantari soldier and want him questioned.”
I never dreamed I’d find myself face-to-face with a living, breathing, Elath-worshipping Kantari, and now, in a matter of hours, I will have to translate for one at a Grand Summit in front of a roomful of important men. My breakfast roils in my stomach.
Zofia stops and puts her hands on my arms. “I know this is sudden, but you’ll do fine. Better than fine. Your command of Kantari is excellent, well beyond my own grasp of the language, which is why I need you there tonight. You’re ready for this. Give yourself credit.”
I may not think myself capable, but the fact that Zofia does warms me to the core. So despite the fact that I’m worried half to death, I find myself nodding my agreement.
“Good.” She beams at me. “Now take a breath and come on.”
The parlertorium sits at the heart of the convent’s main building and has served as a neutral place where ambassadors, lords, bishops, and even princes have met for centuries to debate issues, resolve conflicts, and make peace. Vessels are the only women allowed to enter this room, mostly to polish the wood and to keep the Eternal Flame of Saint Ovin lit, but also, from time to time, to translate for the men. Zofia pulls up the key on a chain around her neck and slides it into the oiled lock of the gold-inlaid doors, turning the tumblers, which fall into place with a clank. She pushes open one of the doors and ushers me in.
There are no windows in the parlertorium. The only light comes from the Eternal Flame of Saint Ovin, whose statue stands at the front of the room. It’s an oval-shaped chamber, like a giant egg, with a high ceiling that arches toward heaven. Alcoves line the long sides of the room, each containing its own statue of a saint. I wander to the one dedicated to Saint Lanya, the first Sacrist of the convent and the first soulswift. Every time I see an image of her, I imagine what it will feel like the day I die, when I transcend my mortal body to become a soulswift, too, a bird who delivers the souls of the faithful to the Father in heaven.