by Megan Bannen
I refuse to accept this. Tavik’s father may have turned on him, but I’m certain my own has not. He knows what I am, and he’s not taking any risks. He’s keeping me safe.
Or is he keeping the faithful safe from me?
I pull back the curtains of the single window to let in more light and find that I’m too high up to jump.
I look around the room and locate my knight’s uniform bunched up into a ball in the corner, cast aside, as if someone crumpled up a part of me and threw it away like garbage.
Brother Elgar, Kicker of Ass.
I clutch the sword belt with its now-empty scabbard, breathing hard through my nose. I will not cry. I will not grieve. I will not fall apart right now, for Tavik’s sake if not my own. Let’s worry about one thing at a time, the memory of his voice reminds me.
I take off the clean shift and step into my filthy knight’s uniform, trying to formulate a plan.
The sound of a key sliding into the lock makes my heart stutter. The tumblers turn, and the door opens, revealing the last person I expected to see at the Monastery of Saint Helios.
Thirty-Six
“Daughter Ina?” I breathe.
“It’s Sacrist Ina now,” she corrects me with thin-lipped disapproval. “Come on. We don’t have much time.”
She disappears into the hallway, but I’m so stunned I remain frozen to the spot. A moment later, she pokes her head around the jamb. “Don’t stand there. I need to get you out of here before someone notices I took the key. Let’s go.”
I have no idea what to make of this, but it’s a better option than staying locked in my room, so I follow Ina down the unlit hallway.
“What are you doing here?” I whisper.
“I’ve been sworn to secrecy, but I assume you already know that the Vault of Mount Djall is empty?” she whispers back. I don’t trust her enough to give her a response one way or the other. She waves her hand impatiently and carries on. “I assume you also know that twelve years ago, Knights of the Order raided the Kantari library at Grama and brought its collection to the Monastery of Saint Helios. They hoped to uncover information that would lead to the Great Demon’s whereabouts. Zofia found evidence that Elath was imprisoned at the Convent of Saint Vinnica. Since she died at the summit, the Goodson brought me here to piece together her research, but it looks like you got your hands on it first.”
She comes to a halt at the top of the servants’ stairwell, where she reaches into her pocket, pulls out the rubbings, and hands them to me. “I found them when the Goodson had me change your clothes. You were out cold.”
Dread grips me like talons as I stuff the papers into my own pocket. “Did you put them together?”
She nods. Oh, my Father, this is very bad.
“Did you sing it for the Goodson?”
“Of course I did. I thought I was doing the right thing,” she snaps as my soul crumples under the weight of guilt. I can still feel Zofia’s fingers growing cold over mine as she begged me not to let the Goodson get the text.
Ina starts the descent down the stairs, and I have no choice but to follow. “You know every listener brings his own faith to a song,” she whispers as she takes each step with grim efficiency. “The Goodson only heard what he wanted to hear, that Ovin brought the Great Demon to a better prison than the one he took Her out of. He never wavered, even with such proof pouring into his ears. He still doesn’t believe that Elath is the M—”
She stops on the stairs and levels me with a brown-eyed glare, as if the collapse of her entire worldview is my fault. “I think you are something more than the Vessel of the Father’s Word now, Daughter. Is that right?”
I don’t answer, but I guess I don’t have to, because Ina shakes her head and mutters, “You always were trouble.” Then, to my amazement, this curt woman, who never had a kind word for me a day in her life, takes two steps up to match my height and wraps her sturdy arms around me. Equally amazing is the fact that I hug her back fiercely, seeking and giving comfort in the last place either of us ever thought to find it. She understands my loss as I understand hers, and there are so few people in the world who know what it means to have one’s belief crumble to ash.
She pulls away, wiping her face. “Well, I, for one, do not intend to find out what the Goodson has in store for you.”
“The one thing he is absolutely not going to do is help me,” I quote Tavik under my breath, choking on the urge to start weeping and never stop. The pang of grief is so sharp, I’d swear Elath has taken hold of my lungs and is strangling me from the inside. Tavik was right about the Goodson. He was right about everything.
At least you have the luxury of forgetting, he told me.
As Ina and I wind our way down the stairs, I cast my memory back and back, landing not on the beginning but on the end, the moment when I stood on a windswept cliff outside my village, when Goodson Anskar placed the seedpod in my hand and it burst open. Smoke filled the air.
Because my village was burning.
Because the Goodson and his knights had set fire to it.
And the tangy scent of iron in my nose was the smell of blood, because the Goodson and his men had killed as many Hedenski as they could, just as they killed Tavik’s family—his entire town—all to hunt down the Mother. The only difference is that Tavik remembered, whereas I let myself forget.
I think of the young knights Goodson Anskar assigned to protect us at the summit, lambs sent to the slaughter, just as Tavik was.
How could I have ever believed the Goodson would help me get to the Mother’s body?
Ina presses her finger to her lips when we arrive on the main floor. As we tiptoe past the central corridor, I hear men’s voices drifting toward us from a room at the end of the hallway.
“. . . never should have killed the spy.” The words are barely audible through the crack between the door and the jamb.
“The Goodson’s orders that night were to silence anyone who found out the Great Demon wasn’t in the Vault of Mount Djall. That included her, and if you ask me, she deserved worse than she got,” argues a second voice.
My stomach drops to my knees.
Holy Father, the Goodson ordered the massacre on the night of the summit. He might as well have thrown that knife into Zofia’s heart with his own hand. The truth is obvious, but that doesn’t lessen the shock or the hurt that follows right behind it.
“Then why is the girl still breathing? We wouldn’t be in this situation if she were dead.”
This time, it’s Goodson Anskar who answers, his voice as familiar to me as my own. “Because the girl was innocent. Sacrist Zofia most certainly was not. There’s no point arguing over it. What’s done is done, and at least now we’ve pieced together what Zofia knew.”
Each word from that mouth is a bludgeon, hitting me hard and forcing me to remember one terrible and inescapable fact.
I still need the Hand of the Father.
My stomach drops lower. How am I supposed to take the Sword from the Goodson when, for the first time since I was a little girl standing on the cliffs of Hedenskia, I’m scared of him?
“What are you doing?” Ina hisses at me as I move toward his voice rather than away from it. I take her hand in mine, wishing I could explain and knowing I can’t. “I’m sorry,” I tell her before slinking down the hall with her mincing footsteps close behind.
“Daughter Zofia knew too much. A smart woman is a dangerous woman. Just look at the damage she’s done.”
I approach the door, trying to peer through the crack without being seen from the outside, but it’s hard to make out details.
“We can’t change that now. We can only play the hand we’ve been dealt, and if you ask me, of all the players in this game, we are holding the best cards right now.” Whoever this man is, he speaks excellent Rosvanian, but with a slight accent.
“There’s only one card worth having, and it’s finally in our possession, thank the Father,” says the Goodson.
“The question
is, how do we play it?”
I inch forward, ignoring Ina’s frantic gesturing until I can get a good look into the room. Goodson Anskar stands at a table, peering down at Ambrus’s map with two other men. One of them is DeRopa, the man who betrayed Tavik.
The other is Brother Miklos.
The blood drains from my face. I throw myself back against the wall of the corridor with my heart thundering in my chest.
“Let’s review the bidding,” the Goodson suggests, ever calm and rational when I am a seething ball of emotion on the other side of the wall. “Thanks to Sacrist Ina, we now know that the Great Demon’s spirit was separated from Her body. She cannot return unless body and soul are reunited. One must have the Vessel and the Sword to accomplish this, and thankfully, we have both. The only piece of the puzzle we’re missing is the location of the body.”
“It doesn’t matter where the body is,” Brother Miklos interjects. “All we have to do is bury the Vessel in the Vault of Mount Djall. We already have the security in place at the Monastery of Saint Ovin, and the world can go on as it did before with no one being the wiser.”
“Except your security failed twelve years ago,” says DeRopa.
“And whose fault was that?”
“Enough, Brother,” the Goodson cuts in. “Rusik has been a faithful servant of the Father since his conversion. We wouldn’t know about the traitor’s message to the Prima if it weren’t for him, and we might never have found the Vessel either. We owe him our thanks, not our scorn.”
Ina tugs on my sleeve, but my feet refuse to move as the Goodson continues.
“And it does matter where the body is, Miklos, because as long as it exists, the threat remains that Elath’s body and soul may be reunited. We know that the body can die, even if the soul cannot, and that means we must find it and destroy it once and for all.”
“How? There must be a million trees in the world.”
The Goodson heaves the deep sigh of a man who carries a great burden. “I don’t think we were wrong about Hedenskia. They believe trees are the souls of the dead, and their goddess is symbolized by a tree. It makes sense.”
“You were the only one who came back, Anskar,” says the knight. “I doubt the Holy Ovinist Church will fund another ‘missionary trip’ after that disaster.”
“All I know is that the Hedenski were willing to give their lives to protect something in that forest. We’ll find a way to get back. In the meantime, there’s a more pressing matter to attend to: we need to secure Elath’s immortal spirit immediately and permanently. Since we have the Vessel in our possession, I propose that we move her to the Great Wall of Saint Balzos.”
The Vessel.
A card to be played.
Me.
“Saint Balzos? Shouldn’t we take her to the Vault of Mount Djall where she belongs?” Brother Miklos argues.
“Balzos is closer, and we’ve wasted enough time already. We will build a new vault in the north. We will guard it with our very souls, and we will see to it that Elath the Great Demon never again escapes Her earthly prison.”
Fury brews inside me. The Goodson didn’t save me. He stole me. I clung to him for protection in the Dead Forest, and I clung to his truth and his beliefs as well. Now he’s going to lock me away, just as he believes Ovin buried Vinnica to keep Elath out of the world.
“I’ll see to it myself. What the Father asks of me, I must do.” I hear in the Goodson’s voice the same anguish welling up inside me. Because what he believes he must do is bury me alive. I am Vinnica, but he is no Ovin.
Ina grasps me by the arm, but I wrench myself free. I’m not going anywhere without the Goodson’s sword. I owe it to Tavik to finish what we began.
I can hear a shudder in DeRopa’s voice when he says, “I feel like we’re sitting under a powder keg with the Vessel in a room just over our heads.”
“It’s only temporary, and the Vessel is easily managed,” the Goodson assures him.
He can’t bring himself to call me by name. I’m only the Vessel now. And because I am the Vessel, it doesn’t matter what I believe or think or want. I’m nothing but a shell, a hollow space that contains a spirit that is not my own.
“She burned two men in the entry hall before you arrived, Anskar,” Brother Miklos points out. “I doubt they’d say she was easily managed.”
He’s right. The Vessel will not be managed.
I pull back the softening membrane between me and the immortal life I carry. Elath’s burning light fills my eyes and builds at the back of my throat like a dragon’s mouth just before it breathes fire. When I look back at Ina, terror overtakes her face.
“Cover your ears,” I tell her, a million female voices blending into one. She cowers before me, pressing her hands to the sides of her head as she turns to scurry away from what I’m about to do. I wish I could help her, but all I can do is hope, for her sake, that she finds a way to escape this place, to free herself of the cloistered existence that was thrust upon her, just as it was thrust upon me.
I step forward and push the door open slowly, deliberately. I want to be seen as I approach a table full of men who think my life is theirs to discuss, to plan, to end.
Brother Miklos is the first to see me. He cries out and bumps into a stool, knocking it over.
“Daughter Gelya,” the Goodson says, poised as ever on the outside, but I can smell his fear, a terror that is nothing to the rage building inside me. I am Mount Djall. I am the fiery pit. My eruption is inevitable.
I tap directly into the source at my center, drinking deeply. The Mother’s light pours out of me as I sing, and I swim in its exquisite glory.
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.
By the time I finish the verse, the men are writhing on the floor, my voice filling them with agony even after the song is over. I don’t feel weak or used up. I am the goddess, immortal and immutable and unstoppable. My gift, merged with Elath’s power, crackles in my veins like lightning. If it is a sin to use it, then may the Father condemn me to the Dead Forest. I refuse to live my life by His rules anymore, and I will not die for Him.
I step over DeRopa to glare into the Goodson’s face with my eyes on fire.
“Daughter,” he rasps at me, pleading.
I rip the triptych from around my neck and fling it onto his chest. My sacred blood snakes from my nose and pools on my upper lip, sprinkling red droplets all over Goodson Anskar’s white tunic as I speak the last words I ever intend to say to the man who was my father: “I am not your daughter.”
I take the Hand of the Father from the sheath at his waist and put it in my own empty scabbard with the satisfying ring of metal against metal. Then I leave the men on the floor to wallow in my wake as I exit the room and leave the Monastery of Saint Helios the same way I came: by the front door.
Thirty-Seven
I stand in the yard, facing east. The sky churns with storm clouds, the spitting rain made icy by winter winds that approach too soon. I see the world now with the Mother’s eyes as well as my own. Death surrounds me in the shriveling of ivy on the monastery walls, in the drowning of crops in the fields, in the last gasping breaths of the cypress trees, in the beetles curling up to die in the bark. And yet there is so much life here, too, exquisite in its tenacity. Creation clings to the living world, taking my breath away and filling me with hope. I’m still alive, and as long as my heart beats, as long as I can draw breath, I can think and act and be.
“Gelya?”
The sound of my name from that mouth is more beautiful than any song, more stunning than the call of the soulswift. I turn toward it, toward him, even though the world had me convinced that he was dead.
He steps out of the long shadow o
n the north side of the stable. In the gray light, he is blurry and insubstantial, a ghost. But with every step he takes toward me, he comes into focus, each detail revealing itself, inch by exquisite inch. He wears the evidence of a skirmish—an eye swollen shut, a cut seeping blood into the fabric of his sleeve—but he is just as alive as everything and everyone else clinging to life against all probability.
“Tavik?” I whisper as he comes to stand before me, his living body lit by the Mother’s flames still burning in my eyes.
He made me a promise, and he keeps his promises.
“I was just on my way to . . . um . . . rescue you?” He looks past me into the open front door, his confusion plastered all over his battered, beautiful face. Someone within moans in pain, but I’m disconnected from that world now. The only world that matters is the one in front of me.
He was dead, and now he isn’t, and my heart can’t seem to come to terms with either. The only thing I can think to say is “I rescued myself.”
His forehead wrinkles in bewilderment. “I see that.”
I know he fears the way the Mother’s life burns bright inside me, my eyes ablaze with Her fire, but I tackle him anyway, wrapping my arms around his waist and squeezing for all I’m worth.
“Okay,” he says, his voice strained and high-pitched. He holds a sword in each hand and stiffens awkwardly in my arms. I don’t care. I hug him harder.
“Bruised ribs! Bruised ribs!” he grunts, and I release him. Fiery tears streak down my cheek as he puts his swords back in their sheaths. I must look like a volcanic eruption oozing lava, because as he stares at me with his nonswollen eye, it’s clear he doesn’t like what he sees.
“Can you stop . . . with the . . . I just want Gelya back, all right?”
Not the Vessel. Not a card to be played. Me. So despite the fact that I’m probably going to drop like a brick the second I let go of Elath’s power, I pull the cover back over Her burning life. And then I do, in fact, drop like a brick, but Tavik is there, catching me under my arms so I don’t fall over. He glances at the open doorway once more.