Prophecy's Promise (Prophecy of the Edges Book 1)

by Lauren Amundson

  “A Foretelling!” Adara whispered in awe.

  After a few moments, Kirta collapsed to the ground. Rcanian scooped her up into his arms.

  “Your aunt,” Kirta said after several moments. “She was sent with one mission. To kill Sara. To kill your sister. Her reward was a heightened title.”

  “No, that can’t be true. I don’t have a sister, and Nazarie would never kill anyone.” But as I said it, I knew my words to be false. The nightmares the night after Merehan had tried to lift my memory block had a girl named Sara. She was the blonde girl that I’d seen in my dreams since I had left Gryshelm City. Her laugh haunted me.

  “She was told to kill the whole family, but she could not bring herself to kill her own brother, your father; nor could she bring herself to kill you. She changed the memories of everyone in your town, but now… now they all remember. I cannot see what caused them to remember and for you to not.”

  Bahlym nodded. “Adara’s fiancé tried to lift Hailey’s memories. He said that she was holding onto the block. Perhaps he managed to lift the memories of the people from Hailey’s town?”

  “Do you want to remember, child?” Kirta asked me.

  “If you do want to remember, push past the block,” Rcanian said.

  “Look at the Mist! It’s parting. Can’t you feel it stretching across this Edge? It’s beautiful,” Adara whispered in awe.

  Everything became fuzzy and seemed to slow down, and then a dozen years’ worth of memories flashed before my eyes faster than I could file them away. Most of the memories were inconsequential, but they were mine. They were who I was. I felt them as if I was reliving them, but through my own adult consciousness.

  I remembered my mother. She looked so much like me. She had my blue eyes. I remember her singing me lullabies. Bandaging up a scraped knee. Drying a tear. Teaching me to shoot a bow.

  I remembered my little sister, Sara. Sara. Three years younger than me. We were giggling, running around a tree. Dressing up in our mother’s clothes. Stomping around in her too-big shoes. Playing with our daggers. No wonder fighting had come so naturally to me and I had always preferred daggers over a sword. I’d been training with them since I was old enough to walk.

  I remembered Euan. Chasing each other through the muddy streets of River’s End. A stolen pre-pubescent kiss. Under the tree. As the memories shifted my understanding into a new perspective, I understood why he’d been so excited to see me and the sacrifice it had been to let me go. I understood that my own depth of feeling, my own love for him is what had preserved pieces of him in my memory, pieces too strong for the Mist Block to fully snuff out. I understood why he’d always expected me to come back for him. And I fully understood his pain when I did come back, but not for him. The loss hit me like the tearing open of an old wound.

  But then more memories flooded me, these clearer. Sara and I were cuddled back to back in our bed with Bandit, our dog, curled at our feet. From time to time, my parents would wake us for a midnight surprise, either a Mist lesson or a quick outing, some fun experience, so I wasn’t immediately worried when they roused me from my slumber. But then I saw the worry etched on my mother’s face and the fear on my father’s. I’d never seen them look frightened before. My father whispered that his sister was at the door and that Weavers were with her. Panic rose in his voice, but he fought to keep it level. My mother was going to hide us somewhere safe.

  Both Sara and I could use Mist, and these people were going to take us to Gryshelm City—to the Mist Weavers—just like they had stolen Aunt Nazarie thirty years ago. Sara began to cry, so I hugged her close and told her that I was her big sister and I would protect her.

  My father grabbed his sword and stood in front of the door. He drew the Mist to himself as my mother ushered us to the window in the back. Sara was scared, so my mother had me go through first. She lifted me up, and I slid my feet out the window. I smiled at Sara, and then dropped to the ground. Then the window slammed, shutting me away from my family. I turned around and was face-to-face with a man I had never met before, but I now recognized him as Kael. I drew the Mist to myself and threw a Lightning Ball crackling toward his head.

  He wasn’t expecting it and was thrown to the ground. I heard shouting. I heard my mother. I heard Sara. I had two options. I could run into the forest and hide like my father had wanted, or I could go back into the house for my family.

  I ran around the house to our front door. “Leave them alone!” I bellowed.

  “Hailey! Run!” My mother demanded.

  But I could not. I was a statue, paralyzed from the neck down, but able to stand. I struggled against the Mist that bound me.

  “Your Mist is very strong, especially for someone your age, but I’ve been charging this a very, very long time. And so have others for centuries. It’s meant to counter the Prophecy, and that’s why I’ve come. Not to take you away, but to protect The Edges.” As a child, I had not understood why she said Edges plural, but as an adult, I did. She knew about the other Slices. She knew that the world was round and that there was more than one Edge. And I was certain that all the Knights knew.

  She held up the large dagger that I had seen in her cabinet the day that Meena and I had rifled through her things. I had seen it before. But now—or then at this moment that I was reliving—it was at the height of its Fortifications. Mist swarmed around it like a million hornets. I’d never even heard about something being that Fortified; not as a child and not in my studies at the Keep.

  “We’ve been waiting a very long time to find the Promise and the Counter. You’ve all heard the story that a child would be born to end The Edges, the so called Prophecy’s Promise that the Guardian’s burned into our bloodline. But did you know that the gods made a Counter? The promise would have an older sibling. The Counter would be the hope of The Edges. The hope of the universe.”

  My father seemed surprised to hear that and looked at me with fear. But this time it was not fear for me, but fear of me.

  And I, as the adult re-watching the events, understood why.

  At that moment, I was not the Promise. Sara was. Sara was the Promise and I was the Counter. But how was that even possible? In my time, my present, I was the Promise.

  Nazarie shot a Lightning Ball at Sara. My mother ran to protect her, but Nazarie struck down both of them. I gaged against the smell of sweet sulfur and barbeque beef.

  “That was a bit anti-climactic.” One of the Weavers remarked as he looked at the charred remains of my mother and sister. My father shouted and struggled against the Mist that bound him. I was too stunned to move or even cry. I just stared at Nazarie. She had murdered my mother. She had murdered my sister.

  “You must kill them all. Every last one. There is too much risk,” Kael demanded as he entered the house; clothes disheveled from being knocked on the ground. Nazarie hesitated, but Kael stepped closer to her. “You must or the Knights will not petition you to be the Lead Initiate.”

  “I don’t need to kill them. I have the dagger,” said Nazarie as she flipped the point of the Fortified dagger towards me. I saw a flash of golden Mist and everything went blank.

  That had been my last memory.

  My amnesia had definitely not been from an accident.

  And then I was back in Kirta’s home. For a moment, I lay on the ground and struggled to piece all these new images with what I already knew. The rest were my own memories. Nazarie had always told me that she had fetched me from something bad, but she never went into the details. Was saving my life what cost her becoming Lead Initiate?

  I now understood. That’s what Kael and Jorias were talking about outside my cell that first night. They had wanted Nazarie to kill all of us, but she saved me. She took pity on me. But that didn’t take away what she had done. She killed my sister and my mother. She left my father worse than dead.

  Nazarie saved me and raised me as her own, but why? Was Nazarie the one that Jaysen had warned me about? Had I been blind to other things that mig
ht have tipped me off?

  “I saw it all,” Rcanian breathed.

  “It was a joint seeing of the past,” Kirta confirmed. “As the block moved aside, Rcanian witnessed everything that you did.”

  I wiped my tear-streaked face and took in a deep breath. “But I don’t understand. Sara was the Promise?”

  “She would have been,” Rcanian explained. “Sara was Hailey’s sister, the original Promise. Hailey had been the Counter. Sara had not yet taken on the Prophecy and the Promise had come to fruition when Nazarie killed her. Nazarie unknowingly turned Hailey into the Promise and herself into the Counter.”

  “That makes no sense,” I bristled.

  Kirta shrugged. “The Prophecy had to be fulfilled by your bloodline. You could still be the Counter if you wish. Your daughter will then be the Promise. And it will continue. Hopping through your line until someone takes a stand.”

  “Daughter?” I breathed.

  “It’s what I have Foretold,” Kirta responded.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe or not, those are your choices,” Kirta shrugged. “There is no fate. You choose it. But the Guardians do their best to tip the future in the way they see fit.”

  “But you are saying that if life had turned out differently, I’d be trying to save the Edges rather than destroy them. I’d be working with Nazarie and the Knights?”

  “Yes,” Kirta nodded. “I know it’s quite a lot to absorb.”

  “A dozen years’ worth of memories? Yeah, you could say that is a lot. And you are telling me that if events had happened differently my convictions would be exactly the opposite?”

  “We are all creatures formed by our experiences,” Bahlym said.

  While I was not convinced in their version of fate or not-fate or whatever this all meant, the book held the answers, or at least clues to the answers. “Adara needs to finish teaching me how to read this book.”

  “My husband, Yammin, is a priest and is very learned in the ancient text,” Desha said. “He would be honored to help teach the Promise. You should stay with us.”

  “The Promise who could have been the Counter,” I said.

  “We brought gold with us. We are happy to stay in an inn,” Bahlym offered.

  “No. I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Desha said, her tone cautious.

  “And I think being around the girls will be good for you, young one,” Kirta smiled, deflecting the obvious insinuation that, while we were welcome in the city, our liberties only went so far.

  “Yes, my daughters, Embe and Namje, will adore having such interesting visitors,” Desha declared as she began collecting the dishes we’d dirtied during our lunch. Adara and Bahlym hung back, watching us tidy. I knew the type; we got them at the Keep from time to time. Neither of them had been without a valet or lady’s maid since they outgrew their nanny. I wondered if either of them had dressed by themselves before. I grabbed my dish, stacking Adara’s and Bahlym’s on top. Catching Adara’s gaze, I tilted my head and motioned to the cups. Her eyes widened in shock and confusion. In the Mitanni, Adara and Bahlym were not the affluent heirs to a fortune. There would be no army of servants to attend to their every whim.

  This is going to be a rude awakening.

  “You two are not accustomed to the daily tasks of life,” Rcanian said bluntly, his nose curled up in disgust. “Desha, are you sure you want them in your household? These two are tremendously spoiled. This is going to be a rude awakening.”

  In anger, I spun around. “What did you say? Did you read my thoughts? Is that something you can do?”

  “You think I’m spoiled?” Adara gasped.

  “No,” I said without looking away from Rcanian and his mind reading. “I thought that it’s going to be a rude awakening and then he said those exact words.”

  “I think you’re spoiled,” Rcanian reiterated.

  “I don’t care what you think.” Adara glared at him.

  “He didn’t read your thoughts, child,” Kirta told me gently, responding to my accusation. “He experienced half your life. He’s liable to have picked up a few of your idioms and perhaps mannerisms.”

  “What?” Rcanian and I said in unison and then recoiled equally in horror, unwittingly mirroring each other’s actions. “Stop it!” We both spoke at once, identical amounts of anger in our voices. Rcanian knew every memory, every childhood hope and dream. I’d been robbed of them my whole life, and now he had full access to them.

  Kirta chuckled at us. “Don’t worry. It won’t stay as fresh for him. You both are who you were, but also somewhat more.”

  Desha’s house was only a few doors down from Kirta’s, and Rcanian said that his was nearby, too. Apparently, this was the part of town where the members of the upper castes lived, but it didn’t look much different from the other areas we’d seen earlier.

  Yammin, Desha’s husband, greeted us when we came through the door. He was taller than I’d expected for a priest. He wore his pale blond hair in dozens of tiny braids, in a similar fashion to Desha’s hair. “I was hoping that you’d come to our home,” he told us, bowing slightly.

  Like everything I’d encountered thus far in the Mitanni, Desha’s home was alight with bright colors. The walls were painted alternating stripes of turquoise and fuchsia. Even the furniture was brightly painted, no two pieces the same color.

  “Girls, come meet our guests,” Desha called out. One child, about nine, peeked at us from around the corner. A multitude of frizzy copper braids draped down the side of her face, curtaining her light green eyes.

  “Namje, come over here and say hello,” Desha urged. “Where’s your sister?”

  “Embe is hiding upstairs in the loft. She won’t come out.”

  Desha raked a hand through her braids and sighed. “Why not?”

  The girl emerged, still eyeing me suspiciously. She was tall like her father. “She’s afraid that the Empirites will eat her,” Namje announced.

  “Eat her?” Adara asked in shock. At her words, Namje squealed and disappeared behind the corner again.

  Bahlym smiled wryly. “We have a similar story about the Mitanni.”

  “Are you sure it’s okay if we stay here?” I asked Desha. “I don’t want to scare your children.”

  Desha’s face betrayed her concern, but short of dragging the child into the room, which would only exacerbate her fear, there was nothing to be done. “This is the only place,” Desha said, glancing apprehensively to the ceiling as if she was trying to see through it and to the loft above. She shook her head, but then set to work, clearing off a space at the light green table. Yammin, Adara, and I gathered around it to begin the task of teaching me a new language.

  We studied for hours. Guardians! I’d missed this. Feeling my mind expand as new thoughts took root. Feeling my tongue stumble over new words, then repeating them over and over until they became part of me. Part of who I am. Yammin decided to save the more in-depth vocabulary for later, suggesting that we start with verbs. The language held over a dozen conjugations of past tense, which I found ironic for an ancient language.

  Bahlym disappeared, following Desha and trying to help as best he could, presumably attempting to counteract Rcanian’s accusation that he would be a poor houseguest. They brought us dinner and lit candles once the sun disappeared. Namje came and joined us for a while, scribbling on a piece of paper with paint. Upon occasion Namje, not even looking up from her drawing would correct a conjugation or pronunciation. So, it seemed I had three teachers for the night.

  “I like your hair. Do you think I could braid my hair like that?” I asked the girl as her father and Adara reviewed my written conjugations for half a dozen action verbs.

  She looked up at me with far too much derision on her face than she had a right to at her young age. “You are not a priest. You may not wear prayers upon your head.”

  “Ah, yes, I am not a priest,” I confirmed. “I’m a Warrior and a Scholar.”

  “That’
s not very impressive. All Mitanni are warriors,” Namje informed me, returning to her coloring.

  Chuckling indulgently at his oldest child, Yammin showed me a new set of root verbs and the studying continued. Embe never emerged from her loft fortress.

  Chapter 29

  I awoke the next morning with the realization that yesterday had been the first day since I fell through Gryshelm’s Edge, that I did not watch Altis through my locket. For a moment, I thought about opening it, seeing where Altis, the father of my baby, was. But instead, I left the room, locket still in my pack.

  Adara was already awake, but she was lying on her cot, staring blankly up at the stone ceiling. The three of us had slept in the girls’ room. Since Embe refused to leave the loft, Desha had Namje join her sister, thus freeing up their room for us. When I’d first seen the bed the night before, it struck me how much it resembled the one that I had shared with my sister. It was large enough for Adara and me to share. Bahlym slept on the floor.

  “What do you think of Rcanian?” Adara asked, turning on her side to look at me.

  I stretched, feeling exceedingly languid. “I’m not particularly impressed that he knows everything about my childhood.”

  “I think he’s amazing,” Adara sighed. “It’s so romantic that he is sacrificing his rightful rule. Instead he selflessly serves his people through Foretelling.”

  Bahlym threw a pillow at his sister. Apparently, he was awake, too. “You are already betrothed,” he reminded her.

  “I’m never going back there,” Adara declared, throwing the blankets over her face as if hiding from the Empire. “Drahwan can find some other bride half his age.” She threw the blankets back and, ignoring her brother’s glare, asked again. “So, what do you think?”

  I could hear the cautious sounds of our hosts outside the door as if they were trying to get along with their daily life as quietly as possible. “I think it’s well past time to be awake.” I shooed Bahlym and Adara out of the room then straightened the bedding and folded up the blankets that Bahlym had slept on, trying to return the room to some semblance of organization.