To the left of Emeraliss stood Hastal, the Goddess of Protection, in armoured plates over a thick bodice and hide dress. Like her open cloak, the layered strips of her knee-length skirt were trimmed with jagged rows of teeth and sharpened claws. Over her short hair, Hastal wore an elaborate headpiece made from four curved antlers and dangling shards of bone with feathered edges. In her left hand stood a staff; in her right, She carried a shield, the ancient script on its face a match to that engraved on Hastal's breastplate. Named Talean the Unbreakable, the shield had been forged from time itself in the fires of a dozen suns and polished with the angry breaths of a thousand storms. Even when Talean had tumbled into the molten abyss at the centre of their world, striking every rock and scathing jewel on the way to the roiling core, Talean remained intact. It was only after Talean had drifted on the liquid earth to the Caves of the Found inside the southern mountains did Hastal find the shield gleamed like the stars, blinding all who dared attack.
Navara, Goddess of Justice, stood to the right of Laytia, dressed in a patchwork gown of chain mail and silk, finely threaded with veins and sinew. The petal-shaped scales and circular links in her girdle fell in tiers, tied around the middle with a belt woven from locks of hair taken from every living creature. A circlet of frozen embers adorned her forehead, the rest of the band lost in the tight curls of her short hair. While Navara gripped a staff in her right hand, her left hand held up the Onamarre, the balanced scales of fate. The plate on the left represented the weight of falsehood, paired with the plate of truth on the right. Crafted from a world's worth of lost souls, their essences captured in the voids of ethereal dust, the Onamarre balanced on a frame of bone fragments taken from the spines of the most just and the least kind. Every judgment was weighed on the backs of the cruelest spirits and the most selfless hearts, allowing fate to tip in whichever direction it desired.
With all the luck in the world, my fate tipped the right way. Tash looked away. He would always kneel to Emeraliss without hesitation, but Navara would never cease to frighten him.
"Welcome to the library proper," Felensa announced, his arms spread. He pointed to the closed gold doors on either side of the corridor. "To your right is the Library of Descent, where we keep ancestral records and everything to do with lineage, including documents of births, deaths, and marriages. Family banners, crests, shields, weapons, and tools. Each room in that library is dedicated to the descendants of one particular Goddess." Felensa lowered his arms and turned left. "We'll start here, in the Library of Memory," he said, pushing open the doors and sweeping into the room.
Close to stepping on Felensa's heels, Adren followed and whistled low. "Then there was a library. My tutors would cry if they saw this."
Ress snorted a laugh as he hobbled inside. "All I see is a lot of tinder."
"Ress," Tash warned, following them over the threshold and across the room. The vastness of the library hit him like it always did, as if it were an endless world. The air smelled of leather and paper, thousands of years at the ready. Black marble shelves with blood red veins spanned the room from end to end, all the way to the ceiling. On every shelf, stories about the Goddess-touched and the Goddesses that birthed them. There were volumes of every sort, from history and legend to myths and treatises, the world of an entire race contained between the pages. Tash had read less than a dozen volumes of the hundreds available.
"What?" Ress peered over his shoulder. "Relax. I'm not going to do anything. I'm not that mean."
"Which will help you immensely," Felensa said, claiming his spot beside a white marble table beneath one of the wide, circular windows. The table had nothing on it save the candelabrum in the centre, and there was ample space for their group to gather around it. The closest bookshelves were ten paces away on both sides. "Try to set fire to these and you'll roast in eternal flames."
Ress stopped short and leaned on his cane. "As in…?"
"Magic will not be your friend," Tash replied, sidling up to the side of the table. Armamae shuffled beside him, as silent as he had been at breakfast. Crossing his arms, Tash cast Ress a wry glance. "As in 'Ow, ow, ow, my soul is burning. Help me, save me. Oh, bollocks, I'm dead.'"
Adren and Pellon laughed in unison. Ress rolled his eyes and draped his arm around Adren's shoulders.
"Yes, something like that, though I've never tested it." Felensa smirked. "In any event, I suggest being kind to the books." He snickered and turned to Adren. "If it's all right by you, Descendant, I'll keep this first foray into your lineage on the lighter side. There are plenty of books we could go through, but I would prefer to narrow things down."
"Yeah, sure." Adren glimpsed at the shelves to cir left. "I wouldn't even know where to start."
"Why don't we start with the basics?" Felensa suggested. "I know you've told Brother Halataldris, but I'd like to hear the details myself in case something comes to mind."
"There's not much, except for the magic." Adren shrugged as ce pulled into cirself, hands jammed into cir coat pockets. "All my life I thought my parents were my parents. I've never known any different. I don't look like them, but I was told it didn't matter. It wasn't until I talked to Tash that suddenly it did matter. When he said everyone in my bloodline would have magic like me, it kind of busted things wide open."
"Sorry," Tash mumbled. He remembered their first meeting well—its intensity and how the energy sparked in their first touches had nearly burned him. Adren had been afraid of everything and everyone. Calming Adren down and telling cir what ce was had sapped his strength, his body wearied by the touch of cir magic. That night, he had staggered around as if drunk and collapsed onto his bed before midnight, only to lie unconscious until noon the next day.
Adren protested with a strangled noise. "Stop apologizing. You told me what nobody else would."
"So you have no clues?" Felensa asked. "None?"
"Except for what I look like and what I can do." Adren folded cir arms. "My parents aren't exactly up for sharing."
"Something about prison," Ress muttered.
Felensa's head snapped to the side. "Prison? Your Goddess-touched family—?"
"No," Tash answered softly, "Adren's Shar-denn family. They raised cir."
"Shar-denn," Felensa repeated.
"Yeah, Father's a faction boss and all." Lips pursed, Adren glanced at Tash. "So he looks surprised. Mind sharing?"
Tash breathed out. To shield them all from unnecessary complications, he had kept particular details about Adren's life in the Shar-denn from Felensa. The fewer people who knew cir exact connection, the better. "I may have held back a little."
"I see. Playing guardian, indeed." Felensa's lips twisted. "Is there anything else?" He faced Ress, his gaze on Ress's arm. "Perhaps your affiliation, companion?"
Ress stepped back. "Me? I've got nothing to do with this."
"Except sharing my bed," Adren noted dryly.
"Fine, if that's how we're playing it." Ress leaned his cane against the table and folded his arms. "So you saw my tattoo, and yes, I was in the Shar. Not anymore. I'm under amnesty with Priestess Kee, so let's keep this friendly or you'll be hearing from her." He motioned to Adren. "That goes for both of us. Him too," Ress added, flicking his finger towards Tash. "Kee's pretty fond of him."
"Yes, I'm aware. You needn't worry—I'm not accusing you." Felensa's brow furrowed. "It's just…"
"What?" Adren moved closer. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong, merely… odd," Felensa answered, rubbing his throat. "Then again, perhaps it's a matter of fate, because wouldn't that be the way of things." Lost in thought, he stared across the room and tapped the largest red diamond in his choker.
No one spoke. Tash's attention remained on Felensa's pinched, twisted expression.
"Keeper," Armamae said, "perhaps this would be a good time to share your wisdom?"
Felensa blinked. "Yes, I suppose so. Wait here."
Quick on his feet, Felensa disappeared among the sea of shelves. On his return
, he cradled a black leather-bound volume to his chest.
"I'm sorry if I fade in and out. It's not every day a resurrection happens," Felensa said, laying the thick book on the table. Green and black ribbons stuck out from between the pages, some of them faded while others were frayed. "It's funny you should have fallen into the roles you've assumed. Brother Halataldris and Ress; one is a guardian and the other a companion. Both protectors. Allies." Head tilted, Felensa laughed quietly. "Here you are, fulfilling the role of the Shar-denn and you don't even realize it."
The hairs on Tash's neck stood on end. An icy shudder coursed through him, rippling under his skin. It took everything he had not to run.
Felensa motioned to Ress's forearm. "Why did you get that mark?"
The puckered scar on Ress's right cheek flexed with his jaws. "Because it's the Shar's symbol."
"No, why did you get that particular mark?" Felensa flipped through the book, muttering under his breath. "Show me your wrist."
Annoyed, Ress jerked back his sleeve and thrust out his forearm. The closed-mouthed skull perched on a fist had once been whole. A scar now clove it in two, only one of his lasting injuries from the attack in Araveena Ford.
"Cover the fist," Felensa commanded. As Ress complied, Felensa turned the book around and pushed it forward. "Does it look familiar?"
The left page was covered in words scribbled with brown ink. At the centre of the right page…
Tash's memories plummeted into darkness. Hope crashed. A sickening chill blasted down his spine, numbing his limbs.
The Shar-denn skull stared up from the spotted brown parchment. The same skull they had been trained to fear, to serve, to bleed for. The same curves around the same sockets with the same menacing depth. The same cracks in the same jaw bones. The same ugly mouth with the same crooked teeth.
If not for the table edge digging into his thighs, Tash would have needed to sit. Ress and Adren appeared no less confused.
"The Shar-denn you know added the fist," Felensa said, "but the skull wasn't theirs. It belonged to the original Shar-denn—those chosen by the Four to protect the children of the divine. They were shields for the Goddess-touched, sacred in their own right. In the language of the gods, 'Shar-denn' means 'Blood guard.'"
At the other end of the table, Pellon cursed softly.
"I don't… This doesn't make any…" Adren jammed the heels of cir palms against cir eyelids and shook cir head. "If that's true, how do you even get from one to the other? How?"
"Greed, anger, bitterness. People who wanted control over the High Council and saw a way to get it." Felensa smiled sadly. "The Volarsaa War was not kind to anyone. Although it was meant to liberate our nation from the larger whole of Arminloa, it shifted the lines of social imprisonment and split more than countries. Our republic gained autonomy from Arminloa's abuse and neglect, but at a high price. Kattal earned its name during the War, and in doing so, fragmented its people." He tapped the book. "The Goddess-touched families absorbed much of the harm it took to become a free nation. Once they realized the War Council and High Council had taken advantage of them, playing their magic and divine lineage against innocent people and hurting families in Arminloa, they made their mutual agreement to hide from the rest of the world."
"But where does the Shar-denn come in?" Ress asked. "If they were guards, they would've gone with their charges."
"Yes—if the world was perfect and terror not so effective." Felensa frowned. "The Goddess-touched left everyone behind, Shar-denn and priests included. They trusted no one. The guards were left with no one to protect. Those same guards rallied and demanded restoration from the High Council, but received nothing." His fingers traveled over the pages in thoughtful caress. "To make matters worse, the Goddess-touched had already started wiping memories, erasing their existence from the minds of the War Council and other parties important to Kattal. While the guards fought to get their charges back, the Goddess-touched put increasing distance between them and everyone else. The guards couldn't recover what people didn't remember."
Adren stared at cir palms, cir expression dark. "They never had a chance," ce mumbled, clenching cir hands and tucking them into the crooks of cir arms.
"No, they didn't," Felensa agreed. "To make amends, the Shar-denn tried to take justice with the sharp claws of revolution. Along the way, they made new friends: people with influence who claimed they believed in the cause." He sighed. "Those same people abused the plight of the guards, twisting it into a gross perversion that spread like wildfire. They never cared for the Goddess-touched, only power and monetary gain. They warped the name of the Shar-denn, focusing on violence and control instead of duty," Felensa said angrily, his age showing with his scowl. "By the time the true Shar-denn realized their mistake, the damage could not be reversed. Those who tried to fix it were killed for not playing along. Without help to right the wrongs, the Shar-denn's purpose withered into what we face now."
Tash licked his lips, willing his voice to work. "Who else knows about this?"
"I'm one of the precious few," Felensa admitted. "The Shar-denn was meant to be a secret guard. They were trained to rush through shadows and move light on their feet. When they stood in the light, no one really knew who they were except their charges. The priests gave the Goddess-touched guidance, but the Shar-denn kept them alive."
Armamae nodded and rocked on his heels. "I see why you are fascinated with this, Keeper."
"Indeed. Halataldris and Ress in this Descendant's life, in this capacity… it's astounding." Felensa shook his head. "Maybe there's more than a pinch of fate involved—a different issue for another day, unfortunately. Since time is limited, perhaps we should resume the discussion of Descendant Adren's bloodline? While I haven't met a Goddess-touched in decades, I'm not at liberty to waste your time." He bowed low. "I apologize, Descendant. I will defer everything to your familial needs."
"All… right…?" Adren took a shaky breath. "Though I wouldn't mind talking about the other thing, honest."
"Perhaps I can answer some of your questions at dinner?" Felensa suggested. "If you're open to indulging my curiosity, I'd like to start on your lineage before I go away, since I'll be visiting certain repositories of knowledge that might lead us in the right direction. But once I come back, we can sit down and talk about everything for as long as you'd like, if you'd do us the honour?"
"I guess, if you say so," Adren said, though Tash recognized the disappointment in cir tone before ce cleared cir throat. "What else do you need?"
"We could spend time teasing apart the details of your magic," Felensa replied. "I'm told you experience a change in time. Manipulations, reversals, cessation. You also feel variations in temperature and discomfort?"
Adren's laugh was halfhearted. "To put it nicely."
"It's a good start," Felensa argued. "Temporal distortion usually runs in families, just as the sense of temperature does. They already narrow the list of possible bloodlines."
"What about my theory?" Tash asked, grimacing at the crack in his voice. Shock clung to his insides and pulled his skin taut. "About Adren's relation to Navara or Emeraliss, I mean. The reason why Adren can't kill, the fact we were Araveena at precisely the same time—I don't think that was coincidence."
Felensa appeared thoughtful. "A possibility, yes, but all options are possible, especially since the families marry into each other." With another quick smile, Felensa patted Tash's arm. "Patience, brother. These things take time, and sometimes they're not what they seem. If we work together, we'll find Descendant Adren's family. Perhaps you'll even learn enough to replace me one day. Who knows what the future will hold?"
If only Tash could have known. Maybe then the knots in his stomach would have stopped tying over each other.
*~*~*
After half a day of rummaging through dusty volumes and inhaling the scent of old, tattered bindings, Tash was more than ready for the break Felensa suggested. A headache destroyed his clarity, brought on by lack of
sleep and too much reading, particularly after scripts that were difficult to decipher. Had someone thrown him a pillow, he would have curled up in the closest corner.
Even then a pillow is unnecessary. Tash shook his head. He could not shirk his duty, even if he still could not stomach the concept of being Shar-denn once more, despite leaving them behind—or how he would tell Mayr without setting off another verbal explosion.
There was also the matter of how he would get any sleep without considering every implication of every detail in every part of his life.
He was drowning in murky thoughts, a slew of half-formed ideas sinking in fully formed emotions. I need to make sense of all this before I let anyone down. I have to sort… clear… deal… Wish we could go back to how everything used to be, but the wedding's so close, and we were safer before, and it used to be less complicated. Now there's too many people, too many things, and Mayr's keeping secrets, I'm still Shar, Arieve's too perfect for us, and I'm a selfish bastard for traipsing around like this, and… And. So much and.
Fingers clasped Tash's shoulder. Jumping back, Tash all but tripped over Armamae.
"You look weary, Halataldris." Armamae gestured to the open door of the library. The rest of the group was already leaving to join the Sanctum's priests for a light meal. "Come, let us walk and ease some of your burdens."
Tash nodded and followed Armamae. Of all the priests in their temple, Armamae was the one he had naturally drifted towards as a mentor and confidant. More than three decades separated their ages, and Armamae was nothing like him in past, personality, or even in their servitude. Since his youth, Armamae had known the Temple was where he belonged, following in the steps of his aunts. He served all four Goddesses equally and resembled a walking library with what he knew. Above all, Tash trusted Armamae's unflappable patience and understanding.
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