Gathering of the Chosen

by Timothy L. Cerepaka

  Chapter Five

  Princess Raya Mana stared at the letter in her hand, the one with the unfamiliar handwriting upon it. She read the single paragraph over and over again, at first unable to believe what she was reading, but the more and more she read the invitation to participate in the Tournament, the more she believed it, until soon all of her doubt and disbelief was gone, replaced instead by a sense of rightness and fulfillment.

  Of course I was chosen to participate in the Tournament, Raya thought with a smile. I'm the Princess of Carnag. I deserve a shot at becoming the Goddess of Martir. I always knew that I was destined for greatness. I just never knew just how great that was.

  Father stood next to her, patting her on the back, saying, “Wonderful, Raya. I am so proud of you. I know you will do better in that Tournament than anyone else. I know you will win.”

  “Thank you, Father,” said Raya, hugging Father tightly for a moment before letting go and looking at the letter again, which she clutched as tightly as if it was the most valuable diamond in the world. “I cannot believe it. I didn't think I'd ever get chosen to participate in such a prodigious event.”

  “Why does that surprise you?” said Mother, who looked even more excited than Raya at this possibility. “It didn't shock me at all to learn that you will have a chance at becoming a goddess. In fact, it makes perfect sense to me, seeing as you are a very special girl. I will have to send a message back to Carnag informing everyone of this amazing event. We should make this day into an official Carnagian holiday that will be celebrated for generations to come.”

  Raya smiled again, but then frowned when she read her letter again. “But it doesn't say whether you two are going to get to stay and watch the Tournament or not.”

  “I imagine the gods will send us home,” said Father. “After all, neither of us were invited to enter the Tournament and the gods do not exactly like me very much, anyway.”

  Raya looked at Father curiously. “They don't? Why?”

  “Let's just say that, when I was a youth, I crossed the paths of the gods a few too many times and survived,” said Father. He rubbed his disfigured face, a common habit of his that Raya hadn't paid much attention to until now. “Indeed, I am surprised they even invited me back to World's End at all, considering how unpopular I am with most of the gods.”

  “Even if we have to return to Carnag, rest assured that we will pray every day to Grinf to aid you,” said Mother. “And we will send you gray ghosts every day to keep you up to date on recent happenings around Carnag and to find out how you are doing, so it will be like we are still with you even when we aren't.”

  “You don't need to do that,” said Raya. “I will contact you two every day myself. You can just worry about making sure that the Carnagian people are supporting me at all times.”

  “Of course we will,” said Father. “In fact, I doubt that the people will need much persuasion to support you, considering how much the people love you already.”

  “We need to celebrate tonight,” said Mother. “We need to do something special to celebrate this big event.”

  Raya shrugged and looked out the nearby window at the darkness of the night, which was broken up by the lights from the city. “Oh, Mother, we don't need to throw any major celebrations right away. You two need to rest after your very long day. Father looks like he is just about to fall asleep standing.”

  “I suppose you are right, Raya,” said Father with a yawn. “I am rather tired. But we will make sure to celebrate this momentous occasion first thing in the morning.”

  “Yes,” said Mother. She then rubbed together her hands in a rather diabolical way. “But I need to contact Jenur and tell her about your success. I doubt that her son was chosen to participate in the Tournament. I think a little gloating is in order.”

  Father frowned and yawned again. “Hana, perhaps that can wait until morning as well. I doubt Jenur is even awake right now, as it is rather late.”

  Mother looked disappointed at having to put off her gloating, but then she nodded and said, “All right. But first thing in the morning, I will send her a gray ghost. Or maybe I'll just make a special trip to the inn that she is staying at and personally deliver the news to her myself.”

  “Not everything in life is a competition, you know,” said Father.

  “Who said I was competing with Jenur?” said Mother. “And anyway, if I was competing, I clearly won, seeing as Raya was chosen to participate and Darek wasn't.”

  Father sighed, but then said to Raya, “This is good night, Raya. I wish nothing but the sweetest of dreams for my little girl.”

  “I wish the same to you, my daughter,” said Mother.

  Then Father and Mother returned to their room, closing the door behind them as they did so. They left Raya sitting alone on the sofa in the living room of the apartment that the gods had given them. Raya did not hear anymore noise from their room, which told her that they must have fallen asleep rather quickly.

  Raya herself was tired, but she was also too excited at the prospect of entering the Tournament to even think about going to sleep anytime soon. She just read the letter over and over again, taking in the words as if she was breathing in the freshest and cleanest air.

  This is the happiest day of my whole life, Raya thought, at least until I actually win the Tournament, which will most definitely be the happiest day of my life for sure.

  That was when Raya's stomach growled. It almost took her by surprise until she remembered that she had not eaten in several hours. She had had a good dinner at that restaurant earlier in the evening, but Raya's body burned through food quickly, so she usually got hungry faster than her parents did even if she had just recently eaten.

  Unfortunately, to Raya's knowledge, the apartment they stayed in had no food, and there was no room service, either. That would have meant that she would have to wait until morning to have breakfast, but the idea of having to wait even that short a time was pure torture to her.

  So Raya stood up, clutching her letter in one hand, and returned to her room, which was located opposite her parents' room. She slipped inside and closed the door carefully, then listened to make sure that neither of her parents had gotten up and left their room.

  When Raya heard nothing, she relaxed and walked over to the dresser on the left side of the room and pulled open the top drawer. There she found a large piece of rainbow fish—one of the dishes they had had at that restaurant earlier in the evening—wrapped in a paper towel. She picked up the fish, unwrapped it, and started eating, her hunger becoming more and more satisfied with each bite.

  The reason for Raya's secrecy was because neither of her parents knew that Raya had taken this fish from the restaurant. She hadn't exactly stolen it. At least, she didn't think of it as theft. She had simply not finished her food and had decided to take some of it with her without first asking the restaurant's owner—a tall, rather handsome male katabans who was excellent with cutting knives—if she could.

  Raya knew that most people would see this as theft, but honestly it was just one fish and it wasn't even the biggest rainbow fish served that night, anyway. In fact, Raya saw herself performing an important duty to the restaurant owner. By taking what food she hadn't been able to finish, she saved the owner the time he would have spent in throwing it out.

  This was not the first time that Raya had taken something that she technically was not supposed to take. When she had been six, Raya had stolen a paper doll toy from the daughter of one of the male servants who served the Carnagian Royal Family. Of course, Raya had been sure to avoid being caught. She managed to frame one of the other servant girls for her actions, which had resulted in a rather memorable feud between the two servant families that, to her knowledge, was still going on today.

  Raya justified this by telling herself that the male servant's daughter—whose name she no longer remembered, as that particular servant had been fired about a year after the incident—already had plenty of paper dolls of her ow
n and didn't need any more. At the time, Raya herself had had about a hundred such dolls, all of them infinitely better than the one she took, but she didn't really want any of them as much as she had wanted that one (which she had then lost in the Royal Garden about a week later).

  Then, when Raya was ten, she had taken the pretty diamond necklace of a Shikan noble's teenage daughter. At the time, Raya had been very jealous of the teenaged girl for her beauty, especially the praise and attention the teenaged girl had received from the boys. The diamond necklace had been a particularly praised object that Raya believed to be the source of the girl's beauty. Unfortunately, when Raya stole the necklace, the teenaged girl was still popular with the boys and was married off not long after to the son of a Carnagian nobleman who Raya had had her eyes on at the time. The two were still married today, a thought which made Raya feel sick to her stomach every time she thought about it. She didn't even have the necklace anymore. She had thrown it down the gutter of the streets outside Carnag Hall after taking it, purely out of spite.

  And when Raya was thirteen, she had taken the painting of the daughter of a Carnagian nobleman that had been praised by her art tutor for its originality and greatness. By contrast, Raya's own painting had been rather bland and unoriginal.

  So Raya had taken the painting and smeared it with paint, messing up the beautifully-done colors and shading that had been the source of the original paint's popularity. It had felt good at the time to see the other girl's hard work ruined and even better to see that girl cry. Unfortunately, the girl had still gone on to become a great painter respected throughout the entire Northern Isles.

  But despite her takings not always working out the way Raya wanted them to, she had never been caught. In fact, no one had even suspected her of stealing from anyone. She had managed to deflect all suspicion from everyone by pretending to be as disturbed by these takings as anyone. She sometimes felt a little guilty for deceiving everyone, including her parents, into thinking that she was innocent, but she always banished that feeling by telling herself that she only took things from the people who deserved it.

  I'm sure that Grinf would approve, Raya thought. It's not an orthodox form of justice, but justice comes in many shapes and sizes. There is no reason to believe that any of what I did was unjust. And there is certainly no reason for me to believe that taking this fish will get me in trouble, either.

  That was when Raya heard something behind her. It sounded like someone's foot scuffing the carpet. The sound made her freeze mid-bite, because she knew that there was no one else in this room aside from herself.

  Or there shouldn't be anyone else here, Raya thought.

  To say that Raya felt dread was like saying that the sky was blue. As Princess of Carnag, Raya was well aware that there were many, many people who would like to kill her or her parents for tons of reasons. Just the other day, the Justice Enforcers foiled a plot by a lone assassin who had intended to blow up Carnag Hall with her and her parents still inside it.

  The only reason someone would sneak into my room at this time of night without me knowing is to kill me, Raya thought. He must think that I didn't hear him. Too bad for him.

  Raya whirled around and threw her half-eaten fish across the room. But much to her shock, there was no one else in here with her. Her fish flew over her bed and landed on the floor on the other side, just outside of her view.

  Then Raya noticed a green envelope on her bed. It was sitting neatly on top of the blue covers, but Raya was almost certain that the envelope had not been there even ten seconds ago, when she returned to her room to get her snack. The envelope was blank, which meant that it could have had anything in it and she couldn't even tell who left it there.

  Raya went over the rather extensive list of assassination techniques that Teacher had taught her last year, as part of her training as royalty. She could not think of any that involved placing an unassuming, blank envelope on the bed of the target and hoping they open it.

  Of course, this is World's End, the Throne of the Gods, Raya thought. The assassins here, if there are any, probably know all sorts of deadly assassination techniques that the assassins up north can only dream of.

  Still, Raya doubted that this envelope was supposed to kill her. If there was an assassin after her, then why didn't he kill her while she was eating her fish and thinking about her past? She was completely unarmed, after all, and not much of a fighter. She had some combat and self-defense training, but Raya knew she wasn't as good at fighting as she was at other things. Any assassin worth his knives would be able to kill her if he tried hard enough.

  But if an assassin didn't put that there, then who did? Raya thought. And why didn't they tell me? Maybe it's another letter from Alira.

  Yes, that made sense. As one of the participants in the Tournament, it made sense for Raya to get another letter, this one probably containing further information and instructions regarding the Tournament. It seemed a little odd, mostly because Raya had not expected to get additional information so soon, but she wasn't complaining. The sooner she knew more about the Tournament, the more time she had to plan and prepare for it.

  So Raya walked over to the bed and picked the envelope off the covers. She turned it over once, hoping to find some kind of identifying symbol or seal, but even the seal was a blank red square. She held the envelope up to the magical light glowing from the ceiling and saw that its contents was a single folded-up letter. She saw no dust or poison in it that could harm her.

  With all of her fears now abated, Raya opened the envelope and carefully extracted the folded-up letter. Unlike the envelope, this paper was a clean white. When she unfolded it, she saw that the ink was a deep black color that was easy to read.

  The letter's handwriting was neat, but generic. Raya had never seen this particular handwriting before, so she had no idea who might have wrote it. She then began reading the letter, which read like this:

  Dear Godling,

  Do not think that the gods are unaware of your treachery and wickedness. The eyes of the gods are all-seeing and they do not tolerate injustice for long. You are spared only because you have been chosen to enter the Tournament of the Gods. Otherwise, your wickedness would be justly punished as it deserves.

  And do not think that you can avoid the fate you deserve for very long. Though justice's journey is long and often tortuous, it always arrives at its destination.

  The letter ended there as abruptly as if someone had interrupted the letter writer before he could finish. Or perhaps the letter writer had intentionally chosen to end on such an ambiguous note.

  In any case, Raya wanted to laugh at the letter. She had received letters like this before, anonymously sent by her enemies or enemies of the Royal Family making vague threats to her and her parents. Ninety-nine percent of the time, these 'threats' could be safely ignored, especially if they were filled with typos and grammatical errors. In fact, Raya usually saved the most ridiculous ones to read to her friends, who often found them just as amusing as she did.

  But it was hard to laugh at this letter. Its mysterious appearance in her room, its lack of a signature, its constant talk of 'justice,' the letter writer's insinuation that it knew all of her darkest secrets … that was different from most threats that she'd received. Most letters typically threatened to kill her or her parents, often in gruesome and nonsensical ways (such as one letter writer who threatened to inflate Raya like a balloon and pop her).

  This one, however, made no mention whatsoever of killing her or her parents. It sounded more like the angry words of someone who was pursuing justice. It almost sounded like some of the writings of the old Grinfian monks that she had read about. Once, a long time ago before Father was born, the Carnagian government had been horribly corrupt and completely inefficient at capturing criminals and bringing them to justice. In fact, Teacher had told Raya that at the time many criminals were friends or family members of government officials, who often turned a blind eye to their criminal acti
vities as a personal favor to them.

  As a result, injustice ran rampant all over the island until a group of Grinfian Monks, tired of the crime and their inefficient government, formed their own group dedicated to bringing justice called the Judges of Justice. Their modus operandi was to send vague, yet threatening, letters to various well-known and minor criminals alike, written to sound like they had been dictated by Grinf himself, telling the criminals to give up their evil ways, lest they invite the wrath of Grinf himself upon them.

  When—inevitably—the criminals would disregard the letters' warning, then the Judges struck. They used a combination of magic and trickery, first to scare the unrepentant criminals, and then to kill them. Often, the Judges wouldn't even bother to hand the criminals over to the authorities, mostly because of their distrust of the government's ability to properly punish lawbreakers.

  Eventually, most criminals would cease whatever they were doing as soon as they received a letter from the Judges of Justice, even though the letters were always unsigned and delivered anonymously. The fierce reputation of the Judges themselves caused the crime rate to fall year after year, until a religious reform united the entire Carnagian people under the principles of Grinf, which led to the government taking the matter of arresting and punishing lawbreakers more seriously. The Judges then disbanded, though many of their letters were in the Carnagian Vault and had been reprinted as Scripture that was still read by many Carnagians today.

  That was what this letter reminded Raya of. It was almost like the Judges of old had sent her a letter from beyond the grave. Only, Raya was pretty sure that this letter wasn't written by a bunch of ghosts.

  Unless Braim wrote it, but he doesn't seem like the kind of guy to do that, Raya thought.

  She considered telling her parents about this letter, but then Raya decided that they didn't need to know. It was probably just a very strange prank. Maybe it was the work of the God of Jokes and Pranks. Or maybe one of the katabans who lived in the city had sent it to her as a bizarre joke that only a katabans would understand.

  So Raya walked over to the trash bin near the writing desk on the other side of the room and held the letter above it. She then drew a match from her dress pockets—she always carried a few around—lit it in one stroke and then held it under the corner of the letter.

  The flame rapidly ate away at the letter, until soon it was nothing more than a pile of ash in the trash. She did the same to the envelope, thus eliminating all traces of the mysterious letter.

  And now it's time for bed, Raya thought as she picked up her thrown fish, which was still wrapped in the paper towel. After I finish my snack, of course.

  ***