by Megan Bannen
“Saint Lanya, the first Sacrist of the Convent of Saint Vinnica and the first soulswift, isn’t important?” I protest, but Tavik waves away my comment and continues.
“The Kantari nearly have the Northmen pushed back to the Koz when Ovin gets drawn into the faith of the enemy. He comes to believe that he’s better and more powerful than the Prima because, as a man, he can take her life more easily than she can take his. He ends up converting and leading the armies of the north. Under his command they shred the southern armies. As you can imagine, his betrayal really tears Ludo up.”
“And the Prima. And Vinnica. And Lanya, the sister who is apparently not important in this story?”
“Yeah, them, too. Eventually, there’s a giant battle in the forest surrounding Mount Djall between the northern forces led by Ovin, and the southern Two-Swords led by Ludo, but this one is different, because Vinnica has come to beg Ovin to stop. And not only does Ovin ignore her pleas, he actually tries to slay his own daughter with his sword.”
“Is his sword the Hand of the Father?”
“This is a Kantari story. We don’t care about Ovin’s stupid sword.” At this point, Tavik’s flair for all things dramatic inspires him to act out The Ludoïd’s finale with an imaginary sword in each hand.
“Ludo gets there in the nick of time and blocks Ovin’s blow, but he’s so enraged by Ovin’s betrayal that he casts aside the Sword of Mercy to fight Ovin with the Sword of Wrath alone. Huge mistake, Gelya. Huge! Can you feel the tragic ending breathing down our necks?”
“Um, yes?” I answer, a bit overwhelmed by his theatrics, but I want to hear the end.
“An incredible fight ensues, skill against skill, two warriors, equally matched, one sword to one sword. But then Ludo, lunging at Ovin, accidentally runs his sword through Vinnica, who has stepped between the two men she loves most in the world. Ludo’s own true love goes down! Oh, the tragedy!” Tavik falls to his knees in mock despair. “Then Ovin plunges the same sword into Ludo’s broken heart, and the hero falls. When the Kantari bring his body back to Nogarra, the Grace Tree of Kantar, whose seedpods choose Two-Swords, grows from his grave.”
His story complete, Tavik drops into the chair opposite me.
“So it’s a cautionary tale about not putting one’s own feelings before faith and country,” I surmise.
Tavik raises a thick eyebrow, perplexed. “Not at all. The point is that you should never throw away the Sword of Mercy. No one should kill out of hate. Hate is an imbalance of two souls, and death thrives in imbalance. If the greatest Two Swords in history is susceptible to such weakness, we must all guard against it.”
I huff in disbelief.
“What?”
“How many men have you killed?”
His mouth forms a thin line before he answers, “I don’t know.”
“So many that you cannot count them? And you tell me that you killed none of them out of hate?”
His jaw tightens and his eyes go steely. “I kill out of necessity. I don’t relish it.”
“I imagine your victims do not relish it either.”
“I’m not the monster you think I am.” He leans closer to me, his elbows resting on either side of the rubbing. “Every life has worth, even the life of my enemy. And I’ll tell you something else we Elathians believe, Miss High and Mighty: love is the only thing worth dying for, because in love there is balance between souls, and in that balance life flourishes.”
“So, by that logic, it is better to die for the love of one person than to sacrifice what you most love for the benefit of many?”
“Yeah, that sounds right.”
“Really?” I’m certain he must be kidding again, but he looks at me quizzically, as if I’ve suddenly sprouted a mustache. “You think entire nations should fall for the sake of the love between one man and one woman?”
“Or a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, or a parent and a child, or whatever. We’re talking about a soul and a soul here. A life and a life.” He leans in, resting his forearms on the table. “Love trumps hate. Every time. Even in the face of world destruction, love is the better choice. Vinnica tried to stop Ovin and Ludo out of love, so even though she was killed by Ludo’s hate, she lives on as the true hero of the story, the example to which all humanity should aspire. The Father gave men the gift of death, but we Two-Swords fight with the understanding that each life has value and power, because life is the gift of the Mother.”
I’m supposed to be the Kantari expert of Saint Vinnica, but these are concepts I’ve never learned. I was taught that the Kantari are mindless killers, yet here is a Two-Swords telling me how much he values life. My ignorance is beginning to feel like a gaping sinkhole beneath my feet. I had hoped I would find answers in Zofia’s notes, but now I’m stuck with more questions. Stumped, I ask Tavik, “Do you mind if I sing the end?”
“All right. But can you go light on the magic? I’m afraid you’re going to make me bawl when the Mother cradles Her dead son in the Grace Tree, and a Kantari never wastes his water.”
“Meaning you are not supposed to cry?”
“Yep.”
“Because a display of emotion is considered unmanly?”
“No, because there’s so little potable water left in Kantar, it’s considered an insult to the Mother to waste the water of the body. That’s why you never, ever spit at someone.”
“I would not spit at someone anyway.”
“Except me, possibly?”
I raise an eyebrow at him, and he laughs. It must be nice to laugh so easily, I think as I place my fingertips toward the end of the passage and sing softly:
From within Ludo’s shattered heart came the seed,
Planted in his Mother’s creation
And watered with his blood.
I sweat from the effort of holding back the grief buried deep within the words, trying to protect Tavik from the gut-wrenching emotion of the verse.
But Ovin could not see the life
That Ludo’s heart would become.
His beautiful boy dead, his daughter broken,
Ovin—
My voice trails off, and I pull my fingers from the parchment.
“What in the name of the Mother was that?” asks Tavik. “Is there more?”
“I think so.”
“Well, keep going.”
“I can’t. The text ends there.”
We stare at each other across the table, Tavik’s face a mirror of my own confusion. Then I hear the memory of Zofia’s voice in my mind: Don’t tell anyone what you found. No one. I snatch up the other rubbing—my rubbing—and compare it to Zofia’s. My pulse ratchets up in excitement, and I turn to Tavik. “If we can assume Zofia was your spy at the convent, when did she write to your Prima?”
“I got my assignment a month ago, so shortly before that, I guess? Why?”
“I took this rubbing of the base of the statue of Saint Vinnica nearly two months ago. Zofia seemed to think it was important. And right after that, she must have sent a message to the Prima of Kantar saying that Elath was imprisoned at the convent.”
Tavik’s eyes meet mine, and I know we’re both thinking the same thing. He hustles to my side of the table and watches as I push the first rubbing back to make room for the second, careful to keep my fingers away from the Sanctus symbols. The pieces aren’t touching yet, but it’s clear they fit together perfectly. I don’t know how it’s possible, but the statue of Saint Vinnica sat on the end of the story Tavik just told me, separated for centuries from the piece that resided at the library in Grama until Brother Miklos’s invasion.
“Are you ready?” I ask Tavik.
“No,” he answers, both joking and starkly honest at the same time.
I give him an apologetic grimace, then slowly, carefully, I slide the bottom half up to meet the top.
Nineteen
The second the two pieces connect, my body goes rigid, every muscle locked tight. My hands, planted on either side of the completed text
, latch hard to the parchment. I couldn’t move if I tried. The ringing of my body thrums in my ears and swells into a deafening clamor.
“Gelya?” Tavik calls to me, but he sounds so far away I can hardly hear him. He tries to take my hands off the text, but his grip tightens around my wrists as he’s drawn into the force of the words, too. I’m fully conscious, but the Sanctus takes over my body like a cramp that squeezes every muscle at once, relentless and entirely out of my control. The pale figures against the charcoal’s sooty darkness burn my eyes.
I picture the window over my desk in the stuffy scriptorium. In my mind, I open that window, and Elath’s life force slips in, soaring through me, joyous, like a bird taking flight. I sing the song from beginning to end with music so bright and searing that my throat feels like it will burst from the beauty and pain of it.
Call down the Mother’s voice,
The song of the soulswift,
To sing the tale of Ludo,
Breaker and Broken.
The story is just as Tavik told it. The war is brutal, the love consuming. Tragedy approaches like a stampede nearing a cliff. A great tree towers over the forest. Beneath its canopy, the final battle between Ludo and Ovin plays out.
Vinnica is there, too, but Ovin doesn’t try to kill her. Instead, he aims a blow at the tree’s massive trunk. His daughter flings herself against the tree, protecting it with her body, as Ludo parries. Livid, Ludo casts aside the Sword of Mercy, and the two men fight, sword against sword and rage against rage, until, at last, Ludo disarms Ovin and draws back his blade to finish the fight. His eyes, like his hand, hold nothing but wrath.
There is a bump in the narrative, a wobbling of the tale as my singing steps over the place where the two pieces meet.
Ovin dives as Ludo lunges. The Sword of Wrath misses its target and sinks into Vinnica’s stomach, and because she stands before the tree, Ludo buries his blade into bark and sap and wood as well.
The Mother.
The tree is Her body, and the sword pierces Her soul.
The blow rings deep inside me, a pain so exquisite I can’t even cry out. There is no sound for this. The whole world trembles violently as the Sword of Wrath cleaves life in two and separates the body from the soul. As Ludo withdraws his blade, he drags out his Mother’s spirit with it, pulling Her soul through his beloved’s body as if threading a needle.
Ovin watches with helpless eyes as his daughter becomes the Vessel of the spirit he hates. He turns on Ludo, wrenches the sword from the younger man’s grief-slackened grip, and runs him through with it.
The Hand of the Father.
The tree withers and dies as Ludo’s blood drenches Her roots. A wave of death washes over the forest in a hot wind, blackening the trees in one giant exhalation.
When Ovin’s men arrive, they tear his still-living daughter from his arms. Afraid of what she is, they send her down a well and cover it tight, but in the night, Ovin takes his precious girl from the well and covers it once more so that no one will know what he has done.
Poor little Vinnica. Come. I shall carry you now.
North and north they travel, all the way to the prison where his daughter Lanya lives with the other women who refuse to kneel before the Father. Vinnica holds her father’s and her sister’s hands to breathe her last breath, yet Elath’s soul remains trapped within her, alive in death.
From the Vessel’s heart grows a tree, a twin to the one that will grow from Ludo’s grave, for what the Mother joins in life cannot be separated in death.
The day Ovin dies, the tree flowers, and the flower bears fruit. When nothing is left but the dried husk, Lanya dares to pluck it, and it opens in her hand.
She felt like a song trapped in a cave,
Like the newly lit wick of a lamp,
Brightly burning in the darkness.
Elath’s soul remains imprisoned, but Lanya holds the seed of Her body in her hand. The sorrow and the beauty are too much. She becomes a bird of the Father’s grief. 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. She takes flight, singing a song so lovely that it hurts to hear it, as she carries away the seed to plant Elath’s body anew.
And the Father said,
The sons of Ovin have aligned themselves with death,
So they will live and live until the Sword cuts them down.
Only the Vessel and the Sword may set Her free,
beginning and end,
body and soul.
Until then, the Father bars the gates of heaven to you.
The text releases its hold on me, and my gift releases its hold on Tavik. I fall face first onto the table as Tavik stumbles to the floor. I try to sit up, but my head weighs a ton.
“Gelya?” Tavik’s hand is on my back, warm and trembling. Then he pulls me upright by the shoulders. My head lolls to the side, and I watch his eyes widen when he sees my face. “Father of death.”
He darts away. I hear a ripping sound, and he returns a moment later with a strip of red cloth, which he presses beneath my nose.
“What’s happening?” I whisper.
“Your nose is bleeding. Are you all right?”
The truth I thought I wanted comes crashing over me. Saint Ovin, the founder of the Holy Ovinist Church, was not the one who slew Elath. It was Ludo, the first Two-Swords and the hero of Kantar, who did it, and the Sword of Wrath became the Hand of the Father, passed down from Goodson to Goodson for centuries. It was Saint Ovin who took Elath out of Her prison at Mount Djall, Ovin who brought Vinnica to the convent.
Then again, who’s to say the text Tavik and I put together is any more the truth than The Songs of the Saints is? It was right about Elath’s whereabouts, but that doesn’t mean it’s right about everything, does it? If I accept that one thing I was taught to believe is wrong, do I have to question everything? Or does the whole system collapse like a house of cards the moment you remove even one bastion?
“I’m farther from the truth than I have ever been,” I tell myself more than Tavik. His eyebrows pull together, a tragic line across his forehead. He’s having to grapple with hard truths, too, like the fact that his hero, Ludo, is the one who slew Elath, while Saint Ovin, the man his faith reviles, is the one who saved Elath from the Vault of Mount Djall. It’s a bitter irony that Ovin’s rescuing Vinnica manages to turn not one but two faiths on their heads at once.
Finally, Tavik says, “The Mother is true. Our goal is true. Nothing’s changed, not really.”
I glare at him, frustrated by the obstinacy of his faith when my own faith is cracked and breaking. “Everything has changed.”
He holds my gaze, but I can see in his eyes that my words strike deep, hitting a dissonant chord.
“Elath’s body is a tree,” I harangue him. “How many trees are there in the world, Tavik? And if we happen to find the right tree, what exactly are we supposed to do with the Vessel and the Sword? What are we supposed to do with me?”
He pulls the cloth away from my nose to examine his work, and I realize that he’s using a piece of my Daughter’s sash to stanch the bleeding. He speaks, his words calm when mine are fiery. “One thing at a time, remember? We have the Vessel. We need the Sword. And now we know what that Sword is and who has it.” He stops dabbing my face and meets my gaze again, his face made soft and lovely with a new sadness. “Let’s get the Sword. Then we’ll worry about finding the Mother’s body, all right?”
“So in addition to becoming the Vessel of the demon that the Goodson loathes, I must steal the Hand of the Father from him?”
“Elath is not a demon. Please tell me you understand that now.”
“The only thing I understand is that I understand nothing. I never have, and maybe I never will.” I stare down at the text that has just shaken my belief—my life—to the core, and Tavik’s as well, the bottom corner stained with my blood. Somehow, Brother Miklos must have found out what Zofia discovered, and he killed
her for it. If he figures out we have it, he’ll have another reason to hunt us down.
I wish I knew where the Goodson stands in all this. In my mind, I see him kissing my hand the day I was chosen. I see him slaying the telleg to keep me safe. The triptych, his gift to me, rests against my breastbone, a reminder of his steady and unwavering presence in my life when the only other person I loved and trusted was lying to me all along. Even if the faith the Goodson gave me turns to dust, at least he believed he was telling me the truth, and the only reason I’m alive today is because he saved my life in the Dead Forest. I can’t imagine he would want to harm me, no matter what I know or what I’ve become. So I resolve to find him, not to take the Hand of the Father from him but to beg him to save me, just as Ovin saved Vinnica. He may be the only person in the world who can.
“You’re right,” I tell Tavik at last. “One thing at a time. We need to find the Goodson.”
“Thank you,” he breathes as he blots away the remaining blood under my nose with a gentleness that makes my heart hurt.
Twenty
There’s a tap at the door, and Tavik barely has time to stuff the parchment pieces down his shirt before Ambrus pokes his head in. “Thought you might want some tea and toast.” The apothecary crosses the room to set a tray down on the table. “Also, er, I’m not sure what it is you’re doing up here, but could you do it more quietly? I can hear you two floors below, and the shop is open, you know.”
“I am sorry,” Tavik tells Ambrus in Rosvanian without the need for a translation, and it occurs to me that I’m not the only one who sounds like an epic poem when speaking a second language.
“Contractions,” I murmur. “Two can play that game.”
Tavik wrinkles his nose in annoyance. “Can you ask him if he has any news of the war or the Order or where the Goodson might be?”
“I don’t know where the Goodson is, but I might be able to find out,” Ambrus answers after I’ve translated. “As for the rest, you’ll have to wait until I close up. Hopefully, the messenger will have come back by then.” With that, he returns to his shop downstairs.