The Last Prophecy

by Russell Loyola Sullivan

  “Is that the great dome that could not be built in the new temple?” Devyn asked.

  “Yes,” she answered. “It must be.” All the while she kept watching the flame hawk make its ascent. Around and around it went, circling higher and higher until it was but a speck of spark from a fire. Before it reached the very top of the tower, the hawk let out a screech that shook them even this far below, and next it seemed to collide with the dome of the tower and disappear inside.”

  “Did you see that? she asked.

  “I’m not sure what I saw. But it looks like there’s an opening somewhere high in the dome.” Devyn headed for the steps, adding, “And no sounds to rip my ears from my head.”

  He stopped abruptly and raised his hand, and Brenna stopped walking. “What is it?”

  “Damn black cats, a million of them.”

  “Oh my,” she said.

  “They could have attacked us while we watched the flame hawk,” Devyn said. “But they’re sitting there, paws—if you can call something that big a paw—outstretched. They’re acting like they had a great meal and need some rest time.”

  “They seem lined up. Look how there’s a path down the middle where we came in.”

  “Maybe it’s an invitation for dinner, and we’re the dinner. Let me go first,” Devyn said.

  “No, we go together, farmer.”

  They started down the steps, she holding the urn, he holding his sword… what little effect it would have on so many predators. Slowly they made their way back toward the horses.

  “Do you hear the humming?” Devyn asked.

  “That’s no hum. That’s the cats purring,” she answered. “Maybe they’re happy to see us leave.”

  They found the horses and the mule safe, all the hay gone but plenty of water. It was nearing midday, as best they could tell; they had been in the temple all night and the better part of the morning.

  Devyn mounted his horse. “I say we get out of here. Let’s get as far as we can from this temple and find a place to rest.”

  “I’m with you.” Brenna led the way, the horses pleased to be out, and probably even happier to be away from the temple. The road back was familiar, so their pace was much better. By late afternoon they reached the place where the road took them back to the ocean. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Devyn grinned before he spoke. “That both of us need another bath?”

  Brenna gave Starmaid a squeeze, and her horse went into a trot. Devyn followed. Even the mule seemed eager to stretch her legs.

  The light was still with them as they reached the lagoon. They made the horses and the mule safe with food, water, and well-deserved rubdowns, lit a fire, and took a long refreshing soak in the soothing, gurgling water. The air was warm even as the sun began to set. They took to washing their clothes.

  “If we’re attacked, I want my boots,” Devyn said.

  “If we’re attacked, we shall fight them naked.” Brenna stood tall, her face pointing toward the setting sun.

  Devyn took her in his arms. “I think it best we stick together and hide inside one of our bedrolls. Well, not hide exactly. Let’s test it and see if we both fit.”

  Even with the long period since their last sleep hanging over them, they were able to test the confines of their bed for some time, finally drifting off into a much-needed repose.

  They awoke somewhere near midnight, both famished. They sat in front of the fire and stared at the stars as they ate.

  “I feel so wonderful right now. I wish this night would last forever.” She snuggled closer.

  “I know what you mean. Maybe it takes incidents like this to tell us how important it is to have love above all else. That’s where the meaning of life finds it truest value.”

  “My poet. Yes, I’m lucky to have you. I don’t know what we have to do next, but I’m sure I want you there with me, and that’ll be enough, no matter what happens.”

  Devyn passed her another piece of dried fruit. “It seems like an eternity back to where we worked our small farm and celebrated with our friends and family. Will—”

  “It’s okay to talk about it. The grieving will go on for some time. No matter, I still want to talk of them. They’ll always be a part of us.” She leaned against his shoulder.

  He caressed her face. “So much hurt and pain. And we can never go back. Yet something tells me we must.”

  “Yes, you might be right. Maybe the sisters will shed some light on what’s to come next, after they get their urn.” She pulled him down to the bedroll and kissed his face. He pulled her close. This time when they found sleep, they stayed in each other’s arms until the first sun hit the treetops.

  Chapter 21

  New Plans

  The sisters stood at the entrance. To say they simply stood there would be an understatement. They shimmered with the permanence that all of time might fail to enshrine; they were encased in their surroundings, like trees claiming their place in the forest, or better still, a group of mighty boulders steadfast beside a riverbank.

  Brenna exchanged a glance with Devyn, who no doubt was also taking notice of the sisters in this new light. She had missed all this the first time they had encountered them, distracted as they had been.

  A light rain was falling, yet none of the clothes the sisters wore absorbed a drop. It seemed not to touch them. And even if the sisters were beings that might be passing through this most peculiar place, there was something else that revealed how little they belonged to the world at large: tiny stabs of light passing between the three, like lightning far off on an ocean horizon, elusive and ephemeral, whereby a blink of an eye might miss its intermittence.

  She was a long way from the lessons she had learned from the clerics: Ogmia, the divine prophecies, the way of the word against the sword. These three were none of that; they were very much of a different persuasion and purpose.

  Brenna felt prickles of apprehension stab at her soul. Yes, this was a most curious place—not evil, but there was a willful aura of potent magic and foreboding, an aura no doubt fashioned by the will of the sisters. It felt like the message a mountain might deliver to the silliness of rain as it attempted to smash the mountain to pebbles.

  The countenance of the sisters and their ownership of this sanctum were as evident as the scent upon a black oak would be to another wolf after an alpha gray had marked its territory.

  Yet even in the manifestation of all this power, Brenna felt a calm of sorts, a stillness, not quite serenity, something perhaps that had not been a part of their previous visit. Maybe that was why, when they had first encountered the sisters, she had observed none of this.

  Yes, she saw them more distinctly now. The sisters were all of what she had construed, and more. But for the moment they appeared at ease, even allowing a hint of a smile on each of their faces.

  Purta looked as relaxed as the sisters. He did not exactly greet them, but he too appeared less menacing. Did he know they had met his kin and had managed to walk away unscathed? Brenna knew the answer, even as she posed it to herself. This cat had no connection to the animals of her world; he and his kin came with the magic of the temple. Yes, and he recognized his purpose.

  But it was also obvious that the horses did not read it the way she did, that they would need some reassurance before allowing themselves to be led through the rock opening and inside the compound a second time. The mule had decided to ignore the entire encounter and stood nibbling on the grass. How or why a fanged cat hung its tail was of little concern to the horses. Their pinned-back ears said all they needed to know about the cat. It was surely an enemy.

  “We were expecting you sooner had your journey been a success,” Asrah said. “You must have stopped along the way.”

  Brenna exchanged another glance with Devyn. “It was a tiring expedition.”

  “I’m sure it was. Come inside. My sisters will care for your animals.”

  Devyn took the bedroll from the mule’s load. He handed the urn to Asrah
.

  Asrah’s eyes seemed to sparkle as she carefully accepted it. “You did not open it. That was wise. Come.”

  She placed the urn on the kitchen table. “How about some food, or perhaps a drink, after such a long journey?”

  Brenna answered. “No, thank you. But we do have a few questions.”

  “Yes, we need to talk… now that you have proven yourselves to be the ones.”

  “The ones?” Devyn all but choked as the words came out.

  “Sit and rest a little. We’ll wait for my sisters. I’ll get us some fresh berries to eat while we wait.”

  Brenna looked at the urn. She had not examined it closely before. They had been more concerned with the writings and finding their way around. Plus, in the added blue light of the temple room, the details had not stood out as they did here.

  The urn was a deep blue yet gave off the sheen of polished stone rather than pottery; how a piece of stone might be sculpted into such a shape eluded her and, she now recalled, it weighed so much less than stone would… or even metal, for that matter. There was a gold stripe around its lip, and below that were gold insets that reminded Brenna of stars and the heavens. The bottom had the same gold rim, thicker, and above that what appeared to be a picture of an ocean, with white birds flying above it; above that was a bright light, perhaps a drawing of a sun, and higher yet another light bigger and brighter than the one below.

  Asrah returned.

  “Why didn’t you get the urn yourselves?” Brenna asked.

  “Well, we’re not caretakers… like you two, dearie.”

  Brenna did not miss the slight pause before Asrah added the last part. “Caretakers like us?” she asked.

  “It’s forbidden that we go into the temple; that would cause the end of everything—”

  “Your Purta, he comes from there,” Devyn said. “How did he get to know you?”

  Asrah placed the tray of berries on the table, along with some small serving dishes. “Purta reminds us of our duty. He’s as much an emissary of the city as he is our pet. When he must move on, and that will be a long time hence, another will take his place. We can move about the outskirts of the city with his presence, but even he cannot get us into the temple.”

  “I don’t understand,” Devyn said.

  “Nor do I,” Brenna added.

  Asrah looked at her sisters as they entered the room, and then back at Devyn and Brenna. “There’s much that we know, and now you need to know. There are also things we don’t quite understand, where hopefully you might add enlightenment. Firstly, we three were conceived on the eve of the solstice of frostbite, many turns of the seasons prior to the ruin of Arapendia, and we know three more like us will replace us when it’s our time to leave.”

  Brenna did not miss the looks exchanged among the three. It was evident this was not a message they shared with everyone.

  Asrah continued. “You’re being told this because you have proven yourselves to be the chosen. Even that is odd; not because it should be one of you, but the unlikely possibility that it includes both. Perhaps because you two have joined and so your blood is one.”

  “It’s still difficult to accept that I’m a caretak—”

  “Wait, let me finish.” She held up her hand. “Allow me to go back a little.” She nodded; her sisters nodded in return. “We’ve known for some time that there’s an impending disaster facing our world. We knew this even before the last prophecy.”

  “How is that possible?” Brenna asked.

  Meinn answered this time. “All that has been passed down to us tells us that our thought processes are different, vastly stronger than those you live among. We’ve been told by the writings left us that our inner sensibilities are attuned to the order of things. When there’s a storm brewing, we feel its subtle beginnings. When there’s to be a battle, an uprising yet in the making, we feel the change in the pattern of consistency. It’s that feeling of some great annihilation to come that has triggered what we must do. This ability we live with is one of the reasons we remain far away, as being too close would result in the most subtle of the emotions of your kind to flood our minds, perhaps to the point where it would render us incapable of focusing on any important situation requiring our attention.”

  Sapta spoke next. “Before the arrival of the last prophecy, the three of us—at the same time, on the solstice of frostbite—were hit with a most perplexing fear, along with an urgency that we must go to the jeweled room inside the temple, the real temple.”

  “The cup has gone to that room,” Asrah added. “It was never stolen. We knew it would go there even before it happened. The cup that’s in the garrison’s temple now is a fake, perhaps added by Lord Wallace to cover what he considers his blunder.”

  “How do you know that?” Brenna asked.

  “After we had our vision of the disaster to come, we knew something important was about to happen. We waited, and we registered the change when the caretaker spoke the last prophecy. The three of us received a message from the cup as she finished; the message told us to perform the ritual.”

  “Ritual? What ritual? How is that possible, if you were not at the temple?” Brenna looked at Devyn, hoping she was the only one confused. His face told her that was not the case; he was as astounded as she was. “Do you get all the prophecies?”

  “No,” Asrah said. “We receive none of them, and we learn about them as you do. But not this one. The three of us discussed for some time what each of us had witnessed. We agreed the message we received was like someone was talking to us, someone not in the same room with us, but somehow able to communicate with us.”

  “Yes,” Sapta continued. “I remember hearing, or feeling, or being told, Thoughts travel instantly, faster even than light. When we talked afterward, we each remembered that message in slightly different words. We know the prophecies come from somewhere. Your clerics talk of the divine. We believe something different, merely beyond our understanding.”

  Brenna all but jumped out of her seat. “The prophecy… the last prophecy, it talks about distance and how they are unable to reach us. Only with thought is instant communication possible. Yes, yes, I understand. Well, I don’t understand, but I know what they’re attempting to tell us.”

  “And what is that?” Devyn asked.

  “They believe we’re in some danger. No way to reach us. No way to talk to us directly. The prophecies have always been through a caretaker sensing the words from somewhere, someone. That’s what they mean. We can only communicate with them through our minds.”

  “But why do you say that only a caretaker can enter the temple?” Devyn asked.

  “For that we have an answer. As we have told you, we three have our own purpose, and we have memories, not merely memories of our own, memories of ones who came before us, of times long before when the chalice did once again disappear, and the prophecy was placed in the room that held the altar of the black jewels. Those bits of our past selves tell us that at such a time the hawk chose the caretaker, and the hawk only permits that caretaker and whomever else it might decide to enter the temple, until the words of the prophecy had been fulfilled.”

  “But—” Brenna began.

  Asrah raised her hand. “Please, dearie, let me complete telling you what little we know or believe to be a fair recollection of our collective memory. We knew when this last prophecy was kept secret and the cup disappeared that it was a special prophecy.”

  Sapta and Meinn nodded as Asrah continued. “We have contact with the clerics, and a few among the scholars. What we did not know was who the special caretaker might be. Or even if such a person existed any more, as we believe the last such special prophecy to be before the time of the new temple.”

  “Do you know what happened to the last three caretakers?” Devyn asked.

  Asrah shook her head and went on talking. “We have powerful magic between the three of us. The cats control it. Even with Purta by our side, they would have killed us all, Purta included,
had we attempted to enter the temple; it is their duty. But they do protect us from all other predators. The magic we used on you is through them. We merely display our intention, and their magic carries it out. In return we offer the moans of the dead, a penetrating disabling puncture of the ears and mind, one that incapacitates anyone in earshot of the cats. When they bid it through Purta, we do as required, until the flame hawk tells us to cease. It’s a symbiotic situation that cannot be altered by either party.”

  Devyn scooped up a handful of berries. “So how did you know we would even get inside the temple?”

  “We didn’t, dearie. We never expected to ever see you again.”

  A deep silence fell upon the room. Brenna could not tell what Devyn might be thinking at this moment, but he stopped reaching for berries and all but coughed up the ones he had swallowed.