There Will Come a Darkness

by Katy Rose Pool

  “Why would they return here after all this time?” he wondered.

  “No one seems to know, not even the priests. Which makes them furious, of course,” Lethia said with a small smile.

  “Lady Lethia,” a servant said from the doorway. “There’s a messenger waiting in the courtyard.”

  “Can’t you see I’m having tea with my nephew? Tell them to wait.”

  “They said it was quite urgent,” the servant said timidly.

  “Urgent to them, perhaps,” Lethia said with a little scoff, making a shooing motion with her hand.

  The servant didn’t move. “They said they’ve come on behalf of the Order of the Last Light.”

  Lethia’s eyebrows shot up.

  Hassan gaped at the servant. “The Order of the Last Light wants to talk to Aunt Lethia?”

  The servant shook his head. “Not Lady Lethia. They want to see you, Your Grace.”

  “Me?”

  “Do they really think they can just waltz back to this city after all this time, stirring up all this excitement, and then summon the Crown Prince of Herat whenever they like?” Lethia demanded. “The arrogance of the Graced astounds me sometimes, truly. How did they even know he was here?”

  It was a good question, but Hassan had plenty more of his own. And only one way to answer them.

  “Where are you going?” Lethia asked as he stood up from the table.

  “To find out what’s going on.”

  “They can’t just summon you like a commoner,” Lethia snapped. “They lost that right a hundred years ago, when they turned their backs on the world.”

  “I’m not exactly overwhelmed with important appointments,” Hassan replied. “If the Order of the Last Light has finally returned to Pallas Athos, it must be for an important reason. The timing is too coincidental—it must have something to do with the Witnesses and Nazirah.”

  Lethia frowned at him. “Oh, very well. It’s not as though I’ve been able to stop you from going where you like whenever you like. But you’re letting the Sentry escort you this time. I won’t take no for an answer.”

  Hassan considered. No doubt the Witnesses in Pallas Athos had learned of the Order’s arrival. Whether there would be another attack in reaction to them, he didn’t know. But it wasn’t worth the risk, especially since the temple was so close to the refugees.

  “All right,” he said to his aunt. “I’ll take two guards.”

  “Five,” she said, bargaining.

  “Three.”

  “Fine.”

  A half hour later found Hassan sweating beneath the midafternoon sun as the messenger and three Sentry escorted him through the limestone streets. A few curious stares followed them as they marched up the Sacred Road to the agora, but most quickly lost interest.

  The marketplace just below the agora was emptier than Hassan had ever seen it. As he passed through the Sacred Gate, he saw that the people usually found in the markets had come to the foot of the temple. The Order’s arrival had stirred everyone up, refugees and citizens alike.

  He kept his eyes on the messenger leading him through the crowd. The Sentry kept a wide perimeter around him—wide enough that hopefully no one would see him and recognize him as the curious and slightly awkward university student who’d been hanging around the camps the past few evenings.

  “Cirion!”

  Hassan flinched, closing his eyes briefly as Khepri’s voice cracked across the crowd. He kept his head down, hoping she would think she’d been mistaken.

  “Cirion!” she called out again, her voice nearer.

  “Miss, we need you to step back,” one of the Sentry said firmly.

  “I’m just trying to speak to my friend over there—”

  Hassan turned to where Khepri was being kept back. One of the Sentry glanced over his shoulder at him.

  “Do you know this woman?”

  Hassan watched Khepri’s expression slide from amusement to confusion. “Yes,” he answered the Sentry. “I know her. It’s all right—you can let her through.”

  The Sentry stepped aside, but Khepri didn’t move.

  Her brow creased in confusion. “Why are there armed Sentry with you?”

  Several different lies came to the tip of Hassan’s tongue, each of them believable enough. But he couldn’t bring himself to dispense them. He didn’t want to keep lying to her.

  “Your Grace,” the Order’s messenger said at his elbow. “We really mustn’t delay.”

  “Your Grace?” Khepri echoed. “Cirion, what’s going on?”

  “I’m so sorry,” Hassan said in a rush. “I didn’t mean to deceive you. I should have told you the truth from the start. My name isn’t Cirion.”

  He stepped toward her, but she stepped back.

  “You’re…” The words seemed to catch in her throat. “You’re the prince. Aren’t you?”

  Hassan swallowed. “I wanted to tell you.”

  Khepri let out a wild, choked-off laugh as she took a step back. “You—This whole time, you…” She shook her head in disbelief.

  “Khepri,” he said, drawing toward her.

  She looked up at him, her shoulders slumped and her mouth twisted. She wasn’t just angry. She was hurt. “I—I have to go.”

  “Wait, if I could just—”

  “I have to go,” she said again, steadier. She turned away, and Hassan moved to follow her, unsure what he could say to make things right but knowing he didn’t want her to leave like this.

  Two of the Sentry guards converged to block his path.

  “I have to speak to her,” Hassan said. “The Order of the Last Light can wait.”

  He felt a gentle touch on his elbow and turned to see the Order’s messenger beside him. “Your Grace,” she said. “I don’t think you’ll want to delay this meeting.”

  Hassan looked from Khepri’s retreating form to the Temple of Pallas, where the Order waited. The desire to chase after her warred with the need to know why the Order of the Last Light was here. If it had something to do with the Witnesses … with Herat … then even Khepri, in her confusion, would want him to find out.

  “All right,” he said at last to the messenger. “Take me to the Order.”

  The messenger led them to the temple. Anticipation churned in Hassan’s stomach as they ascended the marble steps. Two wide, flat bowls of chrism oil flanked the open doors. Between them stood the Herati acolyte Emir.

  “Your Grace,” he said, kneeling.

  “You recognized me that day in the agora, didn’t you?” Hassan asked him.

  Emir bowed his head. “Please, enter the house of Pallas.”

  Hassan wet the tips of his fingers to consecrate himself before entering, but when the Sentry guards with him moved to do the same, the acolyte stood and held up his hand.

  “The Order summoned only the prince,” Emir said in a clear, flat voice that brooked no argument.

  Hassan nodded at the Sentry to affirm the acolyte’s order, and then stepped through the threshold alone.

  Sunlight ribboned into the sanctum from the open roof, illuminating the seven Paladin who stood in the center. Two men with the darker skin of the Seti desert stood side by side with a man and a woman who shared the pale complexion and dark hair of the Inshuu steppe. In front of them, a woman with the freckled, copper-haired coloring common to Endarrion stood beside a man who was clearly island-born—Charisian, if Hassan were to guess. At the head of the group was a man—more of a boy, really—whose tawny skin and dark hair made him look like a native of Pallas Athos.

  For some reason, Hassan had expected everyone in the Order of the Last Light to look alike, but these people were as varied as the scholars who came from far and wide to Nazirah. What they had in common were the silver torcs around their necks, the dark blue cloaks draped over their shoulders, and the reverent expressions on their faces.

  Emir stepped forward between them. “Your Grace, I present to you the Paladin Guard of the Order of the Last Light, and their leader,
Captain Jude Weatherbourne, Keeper of the Word. Captain Weatherbourne, this is Prince Hassan Seif, heir to the throne of Herat.”

  The Paladin Guard knelt as one.

  With his head bowed toward the ground, the youngest-looking Paladin at the head of the group said, “Your Grace, I…” He cleared his throat. “I have been waiting to meet you for a very long time. Since the day you were born.”

  He lifted his gaze, and again Hassan was surprised by how much younger he was than most of the others. Yet he was the one who’d been introduced as their leader. The Keeper of the Word.

  “Why?” Hassan asked. “And what has made you return to this city?”

  The Paladin stood.

  “We came to tell you something,” Captain Weatherbourne said. “A secret the Order of the Last Light has protected for a century. And now that we’ve found you—”

  “You were looking for me?”

  “We didn’t know it was you we were looking for,” Captain Weatherbourne said. “Not until recently.”

  Hassan’s patience waned. He should have expected that talking to a hermetic group of swordsmen would be like talking to the most opaque philosophers of the Great Library. “What do you mean, you didn’t know it was me?”

  “Jude,” the copper-haired Paladin woman said urgently. “Perhaps it’s best if he hears it now.”

  Hassan bristled. “Hears what?”

  Captain Weatherbourne’s gaze was unwavering and bright as he answered. “The final prophecy of the Seven Prophets.”

  Hassan blinked. “The prophecy of King Vasili was fulfilled over a century ago. What relevance could that possibly have?”

  King Vasili, the last king of the Novogardian Empire. Afflicted with a strange madness, the king had waged a war against the Six Prophetic Cities when he’d learned that the Prophets had predicted he would be the last Graced heir of his line. But no one can defy their fate for long, and King Vasili’s war had ended the Novogardian Empire for good, fulfilling the Prophets’ final prophecy. The story had always haunted Hassan, a stark warning of what had happened the last time a powerful kingdom had failed to produce a Graced heir.

  “The prophecy of the Raving King was not the Prophets’ final prophecy,” Captain Weatherbourne said. “The rest of the world believes it was, but there was another prophecy they made before they disappeared. You will be the first person outside the covenant of the Order to hear it.”

  Hassan stared at him, his mind whirring to make sense of it all. A secret that had been kept. A promise that the Prophets had left to the world. And for some reason, they wanted him to hear it.

  “Does it involve the Witnesses? Nazirah?”

  Captain Weatherbourne didn’t answer, and instead took a silver filigreed box handed to him by one of the other Paladin. Nestled inside was a pale stone, cracked nearly in two, with intricate fractal designs etched over its surface.

  Captain Weatherbourne held the stone out to Emir, who plucked it from the box with careful hands.

  “What is that?” Hassan asked as Emir took the stone to the edge of the scrying pool.

  Captain Weatherbourne looked up at him. “An oracle stone.”

  “I’ve never seen one in person before,” Hassan said, his voice hushed. A real oracle stone, like in the stories of old.

  Captain Weatherbourne nodded to Emir, who raised the stone high and cast it into the scrying pool with a small splash. The water rippled out from the stone and began to swirl. A faint glow lit the pool from below, and a low hum filled the sanctum, echoing off the walls, growing steadily louder.

  The echoes began to sound like whispers. They coalesced into seven voices, speaking as one.

  “When the Age of Prophets wanes

  And the fate of the world lies in shadow,

  Only our final prophecy remains,

  Given to the guardian, the Keeper of the Word.

  “The deceiver ensnares the world with lies,

  To death’s pale hand the wicked fall,

  That which sleeps in the dust shall rise,

  And in their wake will come a darkness.

  “But born beneath a light-streaked sky,

  An heir with the blessed Sight,

  A promise of the past undone,

  The shadowed future made bright.

  “The final piece of our prophecy revealed

  In vision of Grace and fire

  To bring the age of dark to yield

  Or break the world entire.”

  The whispers echoed through the sanctum until they dissolved into a low hum. The glowing water faded, and the pool returned to stillness.

  Silence overtook the sanctum. Hassan knew that he was the only one present who was hearing the prophecy for the first time, but he could feel the effect of these words, kept secret for so long, in each of their carefully held breaths, in the reverence in their gazes.

  It was a moment before it struck Hassan that they were all staring at him.

  Captain Weatherbourne was the first to speak. “You were born on the summer solstice sixteen years ago. On that night, the sky glowed with celestial light.”

  Hassan watched the Paladin leader’s face, feeling as though he stood on the precipice of a vast truth that could unmake him.

  “Prince Hassan, you are the Last Prophet.”

  II

  OATH

  13

  JUDE

  Jude was nine years old when Penrose taught him his first koah. Every koah of the Grace of Heart, she’d told him, had three parts. Breath, which focused your Grace and drew esha from the earth. Movement, which channeled it into power. And intention—the one unwavering purpose beneath it, the true north that guided it all.

  For every koah, Jude’s intention was the same. It had not changed since the first time he’d felt his Grace humming within him. Always, his true north was this moment. He had sworn to himself that when it came, he would cast off whatever doubts, whatever fear, whatever longing had clouded his heart before. He would rise to meet his destiny full only of faith and unwavering devotion.

  “I’m a-a Prophet?” the prince said. “That doesn’t make any sense. The Prophets are gone. They’ve been gone for a century. How can there be—How can I be—?”

  “You heard the prophecy,” Jude said. “When the Prophets disappeared, they left it behind as a promise that a new Prophet would be born. And we believe that Prophet is you.”

  There was so much else he wanted to say. That his and the prince’s destinies were bound together. That he could still remember everything about the day the prince had come into the world, and the way the sky had lit up in a storm of light.

  But the words died in his throat, and Jude went silent. The moment was here now, the moment he had anticipated since he was born.

  And Jude felt no different than before.

  This is it, he realized. This is all you get.

  He had thought that finally looking into the face of the Prophet would fill him with all the things he had lacked. But those were the thoughts of a child. A child who had looked up at lights in the sky and thought that they were meant for him.

  He was a man grown now, and he knew the truth. His destiny was finally here, and it did not care whether or not he was ready for it.

  14

  HASSAN

  Hassan gaped in the silence of the temple. The words the Paladin leader had spoken rang in his head, over and over again until they ceased to sound like words, just a long dulcet buzz of nonsense.

  It was nonsense. Absurd. Hassan felt like laughing.

  “There must be some mistake,” he said at last, looking from Captain Weatherbourne to the acolyte and back again, as if one of them would suddenly come to their senses and realize that what they were saying was impossible.

  “There is no mistake,” Emir said. “You fit the signs.”

  “Signs?” Hassan said. “You mean the things in the prophecy? The lights in the sky?”

  Hassan knew the story of the auspicious lights that had illuminat
ed the sky when he was born. The Herati had interpreted it as a sign that he would grow into a wise and worthy ruler. They had celebrated for five days and five nights, and on every year thereafter, they lit the sky with firecrackers and flares to commemorate the occasion.

  No one had imagined that it was part of a secret prophecy.

  Hassan shook his head. “I can’t have been the only child born on that day.”

  “That certainly would have made our jobs easier,” Emir said with a small smile. “But you’re right. After that day, I had only suspicions. Enough to keep a close eye on the young Prince of Herat, waiting for another sign. And then, two and half weeks ago, it came.”

  Two and a half weeks ago. Hassan went cold. “You mean when the Witnesses took Nazirah.”

  “Yes,” Emir replied. “That is when I knew. The Witnesses broke the Seif line in Herat. Their coup went against one of the earliest prophecies made by the Seven Prophets—the prophecy of Nazirah.”

  As long as the lighthouse of Nazirah stands, the Seif line shall rule. Hassan touched the compass in his pocket lightly. These were the words he always came back to, the prophecy that secured his place as heir.

  “Prophecies can’t be undone,” Hassan said uncertainly. “Can they?”

  “It’s never happened before,” Captain Weatherbourne replied. “But the Prophets have never predicted it before, either. The Order’s scholars have scoured the records of every prophecy ever made, and they’ve failed to find a single one that did not unfold as the Prophets foretold. Your family’s prophecy is the first and only one that’s ever been broken. Which makes it the second sign that you are the Last Prophet. ‘A promise of the past undone.’”

  “But I didn’t undo it. The Hierophant did!”

  “But you—or rather, your family—were the subject of the prophecy of Nazirah,” Emir said. “Therefore, it was your destiny that was undone.”

  Hassan swallowed. “So that’s two signs. But what of the third? ‘An heir with the blessed Sight.’ The Prophet is supposed to have the Grace of Sight. I don’t have a Grace at all.”