by Jayne Faith
Much of the text seemed fairly straightforward, but there were also many cryptic passages.
I turned a few pages ahead, to one of the last steps in the Sequence that was called “The Reversal.” Every time I read its description, my heart tripped.
When the last of the chosen people steps upon the soil of the homeland, the final sacrifice will be offered to seal the chosen people to the land of their ancestors.
I read it a second time and a third. Some of the phrases were obvious: Calistans were “the chosen people,” and Earthenfell was “the homeland.” But the brief description that accompanied this step did not explain why it was called “The Reversal,” who or what would be sacrificed, or how the sacrificial offering should take place.
For some reason I could not pinpoint, the term “seal” troubled me most of all. Every time I read this passage, that one word seemed to pull at my eyes. I glanced at my tablet, where I’d been making notes about items in need of further research. I moved “seal” to the top of the list.
Three short beeps sounded in my earpiece, and my hands reflexively spread over the pages of the text in a protective gesture, even though I knew no one could see it. My brow furrowed in a flash of irritation at the interruption. Who could be calling for me at this early hour?
“What is it, Celestia?” I asked.
“I deeply apologize for interrupting your private study, Your Holiness. You know I would only do so in instances of utmost importance, so I hope you will forgive my—”
I broke into her verbal prostration. “What is the emergency?” Celestia was a devout priestess of the Temple and an excellent assistant, but she tended to be a bit long-winded.
“It’s the Oracle, Your Holiness. She’s here.”
My mouth fell open, and I inhaled a sharp breath. The Oracle rarely left the isolation of her quarters, and there were only a few reasons she would make an unbidden visit to the office of the High Priestess. My midsection tightened at the thought of the most rare of the possible reasons for her to come: a prophetic vision.
“One moment, Celestia, and I will be out to see her in,” I said.
With quick but careful movements I closed the secret volume, returned it to the wall safe, and then opened the door to my office. The Oracle stood in the small private reception chamber that also housed Celestia’s desk. The Oracle’s personal servant—a woman around seventeen years of age wearing the teal blue robes of a Temple initiate—stood with her hand curved around the Oracle’s elbow.
Celestia scrambled to her feet, the backs of her legs knocking into the edge of her chair. “Your Holiness,” she greeted me. “The Oracle wishes a private audience with you.”
“Of course,” I said, my voice warm with a smile. I went to the Oracle and grasped both of her hands in mine. “Terrina, it is always a joy to see you. You should have told me you were coming, and we could have taken our morning meal together. You know I love an excuse to keep your company.”
What I said was the truth—I truly liked Terrina—but my entire being tensed with the knowledge that whatever news she delivered could affect the future of all Calistans.
“Ah well, you know how I feel about coming out of my hidey hole,” Terrina said. “But of course it is always a pleasure to visit with Your Holiness.” Terrina’s assistant let go of the Oracle’s elbow. The initiate stepped back a respectful distance and rested her folded hands at her middle.
I couldn’t read Terrina’s eyes, which were obscured behind a thin strip of white fabric tied around her head as a blindfold, but the corners of her mouth widened in a smile that deepened some of the soft creases of her skin. She gathered the folds of her jet-black robes in one hand, lifting them an inch or two from the ground so she wouldn’t trip, and clutched my upper arm with the other.
Inside my office, I led Terrina to the divan rather than the guest chair in front of my desk. Once she was settled, I sat near her, perched on the edge of the cushion. My pulse tripped with anticipation.
She reached up to untie the blindfold. She was required to wear it when passing through public spaces, but in private it was not necessary.
She sighed. “Ah, always a relief to take that blasted thing off.”
Even though I’d known her since I was a Temple initiate, and I’d seen her several times without a blindfold, I was always taken aback by the sight of her black eyes—no white sclera or hint of iris, just pure black orbs in her eye sockets.
“I know you want me to get straight to the point, Your Holiness.” She always used the formal salutation in a way that felt friendly and decidedly informal—as if “Your Holiness” was an affectionate nickname rather than my title—and it was one of the things that instilled a certain ease in our relationship that I deeply appreciated.
I allowed a tense smile. “I have to admit I am quite intrigued about what drew you out.”
Her last prophetic vision had come before I became High Priestess. She’d prophesized the return of then-Prince Toric, who’d been held captive for nearly four years by one of Calisto’s minor but brutal enemies.
Her demeanor turned grave. “I’ve had a vision. This vision, unfortunately, is not quite as literal as that one was.” Her eyelids lowered halfway, her face went slack, and her voice became hushed and flat. “This is what I see. The seal of the royal family morphs into the shape of a person and stabs itself in the chest. Blood flows from the wound and down to the floor where it dissolves an image painted there—a book with the number ten printed on its cover. Then the blood spreads to the symbol of Earthenfell and dissolves that, too. This is what I see.”
My breath died in my throat, and a chill swept through me.
Terrina turned to me, seeming to come back to herself and become once again alert. “The first part of the vision seems quite obvious.”
I nodded weakly. “A traitor in the royal family.”
“Yes. And the traitor’s blood dissolving the image of Earthenfell can only mean that the actions of the traitor, if not stopped, will take Earthenfell from us.”
“So this is not a vision of certainty, but a vision of possibility?”
“Yes, fortunately for the future of our people, this vision wavers. As I have not yet seen any alternate versions, right now it is the most likely path. But the wavering means that we have the power to affect it. We can change it.”
“Have you theorized on the meaning of the remainder of the vision?”
She shook her head once. “I am unable to offer any interpretation for the book labeled with the number ten.”
I flicked a glance at the wall where the secret volume was stored away in the safe. Biting my lips, I sent up a quick silent prayer that I was making the correct decision. “I think I know what it is. Perhaps not exactly what it means, but . . .” I paused. I had not intended to reveal the existence of the secret volume to anyone but Lord Toric, but perhaps Terrina’s vision was also a message for me, letting me know it would be wise to tell her, too. “I recently came into possession of another volume of the sacred text.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “A tenth volume? Where did you find it? And whatever does it contain?”
“It arrived as any normal shipment of my supplies would and with no explanation. I have no idea from where or from whom it came.” Though it felt right to tell her about the volume, I did not think it judicious to give her the details of its contents, and I trusted that my omission was signal enough that I did not intend to tell her more.
“This is most surprising.” She paused, and I could tell she was trying to absorb what I’d revealed. “I believe your insight is the correct one. This tenth volume is certainly the object in my vision.” Her lids lowered halfway, and she became distant again. “I believe one of the latent messages of my vision is that you are the one who must discover the traitor, High Priestess Lunaria. Our Return to Earthenfell hangs in the balance.”
I nodded slowly, my mouth too dry to respond.
*
I’d sent for Lord Toric imme
diately after Terrina departed, and he arrived slightly out of breath. My summons had caught him as he was on his way from the media station to meet with the Master of War, and he was still dressed in the formal garb he wore for public appearances.
His two guards halted in the reception room with Celestia, and Lord Toric followed me into my office.
“I would have come to you, but I wanted to meet here in case we needed to consult the tenth volume,” I said, going to the wall safe to retrieve the book. I glanced at him over my shoulder. “The Oracle just paid me a visit.”
His brows shot up, and he stared at me a moment before lowering himself onto the chair in front of my desk.
I sat down across from him with the slim leather-bound volume on the desk under my folded hands. I quickly repeated Terrina’s vision and its interpretation.
His lips hardened into a line for a few silent seconds.
“Is that it?” he asked, eyeing the volume. “The secret text?”
“Yes,” I said. “I keep it in a safe that only I can open. But if something happens to me, you will be able to access it. You’ll need a priestess to read it for you, of course, but I’ve chosen someone I trust completely. If it comes to pass, both you and she will receive instructions for contacting each other. I would not normally allow anyone outside the Temple direct access to any sacred text, but . . . I felt I should take precautions.”
He reached up to run his fingers through his hair, but his hand bumped into his metal crown. He absently lifted it from his head and set it on my desk as if it were an ordinary thing. I knew he was still working to grasp what I’d revealed, still formulating how to address it.
At his best, Lord Toric was a deeply thoughtful, spiritual man. I’d never been completely sure whether the captivity and torture he’d experienced during his formative years had made him so, or perhaps the qualities had been in him all along and his experiences had merely deepened them. I suspected that it was the latter. I believed his ordeal was also responsible for the other side of his character—the dark fury that lurked behind his pain and could erupt without warning—but perhaps that aspect of his nature had always been part of him, too.
Either way, he had my admiration, but I did not envy him. Every one of us had battles raging within—it was simply a condition, perhaps a byproduct, of this life—but there was no one on Calisto whose trials and deepest wounds were so publicly known.
“I feel as if the gears of a great machine are turning, clicking into position . . .” He trailed off, staring at a point on the wall above my head. His focus lowered, and his gaze sharpened as it centered on my eyes.
I nearly smiled. “I know exactly the sensation you describe.”
“You may not have heard that Jeric and Akantha announced their engagement this morning. They seem to want to proceed quickly,” he said. “She will soon be part of the royal family. Could she be the one in the vision?”
I tilted my head. “Perhaps.”
“You don’t think so?”
“Well, the vision showed only a single figure. The gender of the figure was not identifiable, but my instincts tell me that it is someone acting alone. Do you think she would take actions independent of Jeric?”
“My first assumption would have been that they were plotting together.” His brows drew down, his nose wrinkling as if he smelled something unpleasant. “But I could be wrong. They are both schemers, but perhaps they do some of their scheming independently.” He shook his head, heaved a heavy sigh, and pulled his hands down his handsome face. “Or perhaps one of them will back out, get cold feet, and only the other will be left to carry through with the plan.”
Silence filled the room as we both contemplated our suspicions.
It was Lord Toric who finally spoke. “But why would either of them want to kill our chance at Earthenfell?”
I shook my head. “We can only postulate, but without anything else to go on, it is an exercise we must do. It is clear that Akantha deeply relishes her power as Mistress of Tournament. In the event of the Return, there would be no more Tournaments, and she would lose that power. She would just be the wife of the Lord’s brother.”
“True.” His face hardened. “If something happened to me, Jeric would be Lord of Calisto and Earth. Perhaps he still sees that as his rightful position, and perhaps Akantha likes the idea too. If I hadn’t survived my captivity and returned to Calisto, he would be Lord now. He’s never made any secret of his feelings about my reinstatement as Lord heir all those years ago.”
“There is another possibility, my Lord,” I said quietly. I shifted on my seat and clasped my folded hands tightly. “The vision may indicate someone in the royal family taking an action that has unexpected and unintended consequences. Whomever the person is in the vision may not intend to affect the Return at all. It might be just an unfortunate side effect of something else entirely.”
He sat back in his chair, his face drawn. “If that’s the case, then it could be anyone in the royal family. It could be me.”
We locked eyes and the room seemed to become a vacuum, void of air and sound.
How would we unravel the Oracle’s vision? And could we do it in time? The gravity of what we faced settled onto my back and shoulders like a lead cloak.
5
Akantha
ONE OF MY best informants, a voluptuous servant girl with brick-red hair—dyed, of course—came to me the afternoon that my engagement to Prince Jeric was announced.
“He went to her room,” Gena said, pushing her fingers through her red curls, her cool grey eyes slipping around my apartment, quickly taking in every detail.
I stood and moved closer to her until her gaze snapped to me. “Jeric went to the room of that Offered girl. You’re absolutely sure.”
Gena’s eyes widened slightly, and she leaned back a hair. But she remained impressively composed as I bore down on her. Her ability to stay unruffled under pressure was one of the reasons she was so useful as a spy.
“As sure as I can be, ma’am, having not seen it with my own eyes.”
Hot anger flashed through me at the thought of Jeric going to the raven-haired Earthen girl’s room, but I folded my arms and bit down hard on the inside of my cheek. “Tell me how you came to know this.”
Gena lacked sentimentality, another reason she was good at spying. It was a quality I recognized all too well, and I’d always felt a certain rapport with her because of it. She understood that actions were taken, decisions were made, as a means to an end. The actions themselves—and the people they involved—were inconsequential. She and I might have been friends, if I’d ever cared to form such attachments.
“I’ve had an ongoing liaison with one of the servants. He’s friends with Prince Jeric’s man, who went to the girl’s room right after the Prince’s visit.” She smirked. “The servant wouldn’t lie to me. He’s smitten, believes he and I are going to get married or some nonsense. If I told him to jump off a palace spire, he’d like as not do it. Men are all idiots, from the servants clear to the royal family.”
Her gaze finally cut away from mine, and she swallowed but didn’t attempt an apology for a remark that I could have taken as an insult—I’d just announced publicly that I’d be marrying one of those royal idiots. I let it go. After all, if her report was accurate, it only helped prove what she said about men.
“Any information about what took place while Jeric was with the Offered girl?”
“No, ma’am. But he was in there for only a moment. Probably not enough time to . . .”
I reached into the pouch at my waist, pulled out a hand-held tablet, and then made a quick transaction. I handed the tablet to Gena so she could verify that I’d deposited a sum of money into her account.
After she was satisfied, she nodded once. “I’ll keep on with the servant and see if I can find out anything more.”
“Your services are appreciated,” I said curtly.
She nodded again and left.
I waited until the
door closed before I whirled around and grabbed the closest breakable object—a glass tumbler—and hurled it at the wall.
The shattering sound gave me a split second’s worth of satisfaction, but my anger boiled again as I paced.
After Jeric had made a fool of himself hovering over the Earthen girl in the ballroom after the first Tournament challenge, he’d sworn up and down he was not pursuing her, that he had no interest in her and wouldn’t do such a thing again. But he’d seemed distracted ever since.
And with Gena’s report I had proof—he’d lied.
Why would he go to her room and only stay a very brief time? What could that Earthen girl possibly offer him, besides the obvious, in which he apparently hadn’t partaken?
I went to my desk, sat, and pulled out a message tablet. I composed a note to one of my other spies—a woman who was retired from the harem and serving as a Tournament guide to one of the Offered—asking her to meet with me in two hours. I turned and dropped it into the mailing slot in the wall.
Activating the communication array in the surface of my desk, I placed an urgent call to the Tournament challenge site coordinator.
He answered at once, his round tan face filling the communication window.
“Ready the challenge site immediately,” I said. “The game of survival will begin first thing tomorrow morning.”
His mouth dropped open in a little O of surprise. “But Mistress, I thought we were going to postpone the next—”
I cut him off. “Plans have changed.”
6
Maya
I AWOKE TO the sound of a heavy fist pounding on my door and my heart answering by banging in my chest.
Adrenaline spiked through me as I threw back the covers. I glanced at the small clock on my bedside table only long enough to see that it was early in the morning before I stumbled to the peephole to see who it was.
Iris, my Tournament guide, stood there with one of my regular guards.