As Jude watched the flickering Godfire cast jagged shadows over the Hierophant’s mask, a deep hatred swelled like a storm inside him. This man believed he knew better than the Prophets, that he had a right to determine the fates of others. He may have convinced his followers he was a simple man speaking simple truth, but Jude saw his arrogance lurking beneath.
“Today, at last, that purification can begin.” The Hierophant closed his eyes and breathed in, as if the thought brought him deep peace. In the same measured tone, he commanded, “Bring forth the others.”
The doors of the lighthouse opened again. Robed Witnesses dragged forth five familiar figures bound in a single line by Godfire chains. A fresh wave of guilt wracked Jude as Penrose, Petrossian, Osei, Annuka, and Yarik stumbled forward.
His eyes sought Penrose’s. Betrayal flashed across her face, then grief. She turned away.
Jude had failed them. He had failed them all.
The Hierophant spoke again, “The Order of the Last Light. Servants of the Prophets. Keepers of the final prophecy.”
Horror thundered through Jude. The final prophecy. He knew. How could that be? The Order had kept the prophecy a secret for a century. No one else was supposed to know the prophecy even existed.
But the Hierophant had known about the Age of Darkness all along. Had known about the harbingers.
And he knew about the Last Prophet.
“You thought you were meant to protect the Last Prophet.” His cold blue gaze settled on Jude as another figure advanced from the edge of the atrium. “But instead, you’ve delivered him right into our hands.”
54
HASSAN
The atrium was dark and full of flickering shadows as Lethia led Hassan inside the lighthouse. He looked up and saw with sinking dread that the bright torch at the top had been replaced with pale Godfire flame.
This was the flame they would use to eradicate the Graced. They’d put it here, at the top of the lighthouse that symbolized Nazirah’s legacy and the wisdom of the Prophets.
In the center of the atrium, five members of the Paladin Guard stood chained before the tall, pale figure of the Hierophant. There was another prisoner beside them, bound with chains from neck to ankles. It took Hassan a moment to recognize that it was Jude Weatherbourne. The Keeper of the Word. Hassan had not seen him since the night he’d had the dream.
Above, more prisoners were lined up on the tiered balconies. His army. He scanned the rows, searching for one soldier in particular. But it was too dim to make out anyone’s face.
At last he let his gaze fall on the man illuminated in the center of the room. The mask on his face glinted in the light of the Godfire, and Hassan felt a wave of fury roll through him. This man, standing placidly in the center of a ring of chained prisoners, was the cause of every fear and horror Hassan had endured in the last four weeks. This man caused pain and fomented violence everywhere he went, and dared to call it salvation. Hassan’s fury lashed like a creature inside him, longing to be set free.
“It’s time now you knew the truth,” the Hierophant said, looking out at all the prisoners.
“The truth?” Penrose cried out. “You hide your face behind a mask and then presume to speak of truth? We know what you really are. You are the Deceiver.”
The Hierophant turned to her slowly. She flinched but didn’t look away. Hassan felt a surge of pride in her as she stared down the Hierophant.
“Ah, yes, the Deceiver. The first harbinger of our new age, according to the prophecy. You believe it is I?” the Hierophant asked mockingly. “What falsehood have I spoken?”
“You’ve told your followers lies about the Graced, convincing them to hate us,” Penrose spat. “You claim you were once an acolyte, but there’s no trace of you at any of the temples. You have slandered the names of the Prophets and led these people all astray.”
“My followers are not the ones who have been led astray,” the Hierophant said calmly. “And I have preached no lies. But there is someone here who has. Someone whose deception led you all here.”
Hassan’s whole body went tense. The Hierophant’s eyes were on him now.
“Tell them, Prince Hassan.”
Hassan’s mouth was bone-dry. He didn’t think he could draw breath, let alone speak.
“Or perhaps … you cannot admit it, even now. Perhaps you’d rather these people face the Reckoning without knowing the true reason they are here.”
A breath punched out of Hassan. “No. I’ll tell them.”
All eyes in the tower were on him now. He knew what he needed to do. It was what he should have done days ago, when they were back in Pallas Athos, standing before Emir’s grave. What he’d intended to do, before fury and grief had changed his mind.
He took a breath and turned toward the six members of the Guard, the people who’d fought for him and believed in him. He faced them and did not look away.
“The truth,” he said, “is that I am not the Prophet.”
Penrose looked stricken, her mouth a half-moon of surprise. “I—You’re lying.”
“I thought that I was the Prophet,” Hassan went on slowly. “I believed it—for much longer than I should have. But my vision was nothing more than a dream. And even when I realized the truth, I let the lie continue. For that, I—I have no excuse.”
Osei moved toward him, straining at his chains. “The day you were born, the sky lit up—”
“A coincidence,” Hassan said firmly.
“But the prophecy of Nazirah,” Petrossian said. “It was undone when the Witnesses took the city.”
“Wrong,” Lethia said from beside Hassan. “The lighthouse stands, and the Seif line still rules this kingdom. I am the heir of my mother. I am the Queen of Herat.”
Penrose looked at Hassan, her eyes pleading. “But—the vision. The vision that showed us how to stop the Age of Darkness.”
“It was a dream,” he said as steadily as he could manage. “Nothing more.”
Disbelief faded from Penrose’s face as she took in the truth. Accepted it. Beside her, Jude Weatherbourne’s expression was inscrutable, his eyes wide but focused, his mouth set in a tight line.
“You’re not the Last Prophet,” he said slowly, as though turning the thought carefully over in his mind. “It was never you.”
“He is but a false Prophet,” the Hierophant said. “A Deceiver.”
All the breath left Hassan’s chest. The words of the prophecy echoed in the back of his head. The deceiver ensnares the world with lies.
“Prince Hassan is the first harbinger of the Age of Darkness.”
55
ANTON
Illya was careful. He let the guards push Anton’s head below the water to drown and drown and drown, but just before Anton felt his lungs would burst, they pulled him back and let him cough and choke and gasp for breath.
And then they began again. On and on it went. Drowning. Gasping. Retching. Crying.
Anton didn’t even try to stop the tears now. Sobbing and gasping and gagging all seemed to bleed together, all obstacles to the only thing in the world that mattered.
Breath.
The guards wrenched his head back yet again, and Anton collapsed onto the marble platform. He could barely hold himself up on shaking hands and knees as he emptied his stomach of bile and tried to gasp in a tiny sip of air.
“Please.” His voice was wrecked. “Please, no more.”
He didn’t know how long he sat there, head bowed, counting every breath a victory.
A shadow fell over him.
“You want this to stop?” Illya said.
Anton closed his eyes, shaking. Stop me, Anton, Illya’s voice taunted in his head. If you’re so powerful, then you can stop me.
“Tell me what you saw.”
“You’re going to kill me,” Anton croaked. He did not want to die. Oh, he did not want to die. But he could not keep drowning. “I always knew you would.”
“Tell me what you saw, and this will all
be over.”
A low whimper escaped Anton’s throat. “I can’t. I don’t know what I saw, why I tried to—” He couldn’t say it, even now. “Why are you doing this?” he whispered, his voice so low he was sure only Illya could hear him. “Why do you need to know what I saw?”
Illya knelt, his face grim in the low shadows of the chamber as he placed his hand on his brother’s shoulder, as if comforting him. “Before you begged me to let you drown, you said something else. You said, ‘It’s coming. The darkness.’”
Anton shivered. His brother’s words gripped him like cadaverous hands pulling him below the surface of the lake.
“I didn’t know what it meant, then,” Illya said. “But after I joined the Witnesses, the Hierophant shared with me his most closely kept secret. A secret that few others know. But he trusted me with it.”
Illya’s voice dripped with pride. For once, Illya had been deemed special. For once, he had been chosen. Anton knew there was nothing Illya could have wanted more.
“Before the Prophets disappeared, they made a final prophecy,” Illya told him. “A prophecy that predicted the end to those who stand against the natural order of the world. A Reckoning that would restore the world to the way it was before the Prophets. They called it the Age of Darkness. The Prophets didn’t know how this new age would come about. But you do. You saw what they could not. You saw the Reckoning, Anton. You saw it all.”
Anton’s lungs flooded with ice.
“No.” Gasping in a burning breath, he choked, “I don’t—I don’t know about a reckoning. I don’t know anything—”
An image flashed through his mind, like lightning silhouetted against dark clouds.
“No!”
His voice reverberated through the cavern. This is what he’d tried to protect himself from. This was the vision his mind had drowned beneath the nightmare of the frozen lake.
He looked up at his brother and saw a small, satisfied smile on his face.
“We’re getting closer,” he said. He seemed to be speaking not to Anton, but to the guards behind him. “Keep going.”
Anton struggled against the guards’ hold, thrashing. The vision hovered at the edges of his consciousness, and if he didn’t keep his mind here, in the dark, cavernous chamber with his sadistic brother and his loyal mercenaries, he would be lost to it.
His struggle was futile. The guards’ grip on him barely buckled as they forced Anton to the edge of the platform. With one hand gripping him by the hair, another locked around his neck, the guard plunged him below the water again.
Anton had spent so much of his life building up walls between himself and his Grace. It was the only way he knew to stave off the darkness that waited for him in his dreams.
As he breached the surface of the water, the walls crumbled.
The thrum of his Grace, that pulse that swelled like a tide within him, the one he had pushed back again and again, burst through him like a torrent.
Now, in the dark underbelly of the cistern, Anton let go. He sank into the fold of his Sight, into the shivering fabric of the world. His Grace unfurled within him, spooling out in all directions like ripples from a cast stone.
Scrying was seeking, using one’s Grace to find the esha that vibrated at a particular frequency.
This was not scrying. Anton’s Grace reverberated through the currents of esha, disrupting their patterns with an echo of itself.
He wasn’t seeking. He was calling out.
Help, he cried into the black, shivering world. Help me.
56
JUDE
White light flared at the top of the tower. Jude raised his eyes to see lines of Witnesses marching down the curved staircases, torches alight with Godfire.
“Retribution is here,” the Hierophant said, his voice echoing against the tower walls. “Our Godfire will end the corruption of the Graced and cleanse the world of the Prophets’ sins. Once you have been purged of the powers that corrupt you, you will begin to see the truth, too. Some of you will not be able to face it. That is the price of the Reckoning.”
The Hierophant’s tone was somber, as if he truly grieved the thought.
“But the rest of you will be remade as part of a new and pure world,” he went on. “A world much like the one that existed long ago, before the Prophets warped it. The sacred esha of the world will flow in harmony once more, without the Graced to manipulate it for their own selfish ends. And we will witness a true and lasting peace.”
The torches floated ghostlike along the spiral stairs, until they reached the atrium, forming a ring around the Paladin Guard in the center.
The Hierophant spread his arms, raising his voice. “Let the Reckoning begin.”
Shadows flickered at the edge of Jude’s vision. He willed himself not to tremble, not to show the slightest indication of his fear, as the Hierophant stepped toward him.
“Jude Weatherbourne. Keeper of the Word. Most loyal of the Prophets’ followers.”
Guilt sank through Jude. The Hierophant’s words taunted him. He was not the most loyal of the Prophets’ followers. He had failed them, and never had that been clearer than in this moment.
He stiffened as the Hierophant took his chin between two cold, delicate fingers. The touch was gentle, but it crackled against Jude’s skin. The sharp scent of anise and ash surrounded him.
The Hierophant waved a hand, and one of the Witnesses brought him a torch burning with Godfire.
“You will be the first to face the Reckoning.”
Jude couldn’t take his eyes off the pale flame as it drew closer. The light swallowed his gaze.
Pain tore through him, sudden and fierce. He doubled over, his vision fading out, a shout of agony bursting unbidden from his chest. It felt exactly the same as when he’d tried to use his Grace while wearing the Godfire chains.
For a moment, he thought the fire had burned him. But when his vision cleared, he saw that the Hierophant had drawn the torch back.
The pain lessened but lingered. Jude focused on the Hierophant’s face in front of his, illuminated by the Godfire torch. He was frozen, his blue eyes wide behind the mask.
Another burst of fiery pain wracked through Jude. It radiated out from his chest and against his skin, like he was burning from the inside out. It faded again, faster this time, and in its stead, he felt a slow and gentle pulse, expanding and contracting like a blinking star.
It surged through him like his Grace, but it was not. It was something else, something that thrummed inside his chest, as sure as his own heart, growing from a gentle tug into an undeniable pull, the way a koah pulled esha through him, the way the pole of the Earth pulled the needle of a compass north.
He closed his eyes, and as another warm pulse rippled over him, he realized what it was. The echo of another Grace that was not his own. He had felt this before, though he had been too young to know what it was. In the shadow of a monolith, beneath a radiant sky, Jude had felt a thrum tremble through the earth. A cry ringing through him, calling out to its keeper.
Now, sixteen years later, the Last Prophet’s Grace called out again.
57
JUDE
The Hierophant waved the torch, the flame blazing toward Jude. On instinct, Jude leapt back, forgetting that his wrists and ankles were still bound.
The chains jerked, and he fell to his knees. He closed his eyes and let out a breath. He could still recall the intensity of the pain he’d felt from the Godfire chains, a deep burning that pitted his bones.
But that was before everything had narrowed to a single purpose. Pain seemed like such an irrelevant thing now. The Grace of the Last Prophet—the true Last Prophet, not the Prince of Herat—had called to him. Nothing would stop him from answering it.
Jude breathed in and focused on the call of the Prophet. His Grace surged within him, and with it, the heat of the Godfire chains. He leaned into the pain, into its scorching heat. It lapped at him like a tide, but it didn’t swallow him. He could withstand
it.
He performed a koah for strength, letting the fire of pain fuel him, drawing his esha more powerfully through him. With a burst of strength, he snapped the chains at his wrists, ankles, and throat. The Hierophant stood with the torch held in front of him, his mouth round with disbelief.
“Get him!” he barked to the Witnesses. Two of them closed in on Jude, their torches held aloft.
But Jude was unshackled now, and he was ready for them. With Graced speed, he ducked beneath the flame and caught the Godfire torch in both hands. Shoving hard, he shook off the Witness who wielded it and then spun. If Jude closed his eyes and ignored the heat of the flame, he could pretend the torch was just like the bowstaves the Paladin used to train at Kerameikos Fort.
He expected to find the other torch-bearing Witness behind him, but was surprised to find instead that the Prince of Herat had leapt onto that Witness, arms locked around his neck.
“The Guard!” the prince cried.
Jude understood at once. Pivoting, he swung the torch. Another Witness scrambled out of its path. But Jude hadn’t been aiming at him—instead, the flame found its target on the chains that bound the five members of the Paladin Guard together. He met Penrose’s wide-eyed gaze for a moment, and then both of them focused on the point where metal met flame. She gave a slight nod.
“Stop them!” the Hierophant cried.
Movement flurried around them. Without looking, Jude could tell that the guards that had entered the lighthouse with the prince and Lady Lethia had charged into the fray.
Jude tossed the torch into his left hand and, without missing a beat, reached behind himself to grab the hilt of a charging guard’s sword and draw it from its sheath. Penrose raised her arms, pulling the Paladin Guards’ chains taut, and Jude brought the blade down on the weakened metal.
There Will Come a Darkness Page 34