The Last Prophecy

by Russell Loyola Sullivan

  Asrah did not skip a beat. “What do you know of the prophecies? More to the point, what do you know of the prophecy that brings you here?”

  Brenna wondered if Asrah was merely attempting to gather more information. “We know what we showed you.”

  The three sisters laughed that most unusual laugh. “Good answer,” Asrah said. “Okay then, it’s understandable that you might not trust our intentions, and we in the beginning did not necessarily trust yours. You may have noticed that the prophecy you’re trying to decipher was not in the same room as the others.”

  “How could you know that if you’ve never been there?” Brenna asked.

  “Because we do roam the outskirts of the city with Purta, and we know the flame hawk’s in motion. It is only then that the blue light room receives its inscriptions. The three sisters have been kin to the cats for as long as there has been a temple. We’re the sisters of the hawk. And so we are kin to the flame hawk. We know what the hawk knows; we know what the temple knows. The temple is as much a part of the hawk and the cats as it is the ground upon which it sits.”

  “If you are part of what they are, then you must know what is happening,” Devyn said.

  Asrah released a sigh. “Something has changed. The flame hawk never leaves the Desperate Lands, yet we have visions of it having traveled afar, even as far as where you come from. The flame hawk has no connection with the lands beyond the Desperate Lands. Its only purpose is to the temple.

  “Even the big cats search and search beyond what should be their territory. We cannot tell what they are searching for; their powerful energies bring on storm after storm, rain as torrential as a mighty waterfall, lightning that splits the skies and decimates the forest, where trees fall like leaves in a moonrest squall of wind, even this far away. The cats have an urgency we’re unable to comprehend.”

  Asrah got up and returned with the urn. “The chalice and this urn are connected. We know the urn and the cup must be used together if we’re to survive what Lord Wallace might bring. What’s inside is the key.” She turned the top slowly and lifted it from the urn. She reached inside and then turned the urn over to empty what it contained: nothing.

  “We didn’t open it, I swear,” Devyn was quick to say.

  “We have failed,” Asrah said. “There’s no black-jeweled dagger, we cannot reach the chalice.”

  Another hushed silence fell over the compound.

  Brenna could taste the weight of the loss upon the sisters. She fathomed that she was somehow the reason for the failure. Even Devyn looked dejected. “Black-jeweled dagger.” She let the words out slowly, and in a whisper. “You said black-jeweled dagger. I know where it is! I know.”

  “Tell me, dearie. What do you know? Where is it?” Asrah placed the urn on the floor.

  “Wallace, Lord Wallace. His dagger has black jewels, and—”

  “That’s it!” Devyn jumped to his feet. “The room in the temple. The one where I poked my dagger but nothing happened. It needed a special dagger… Wallace’s dagger.”

  Brenna joined him. “Yes, yes, the room we attempted to enter but could not. The chalice is in there. We need to go to that room. That’s what the prophecy is telling us.”

  Asrah spoke. “Yes, of course. It’s our duty to identify the crisis, and for someone else to avert it. We had assumed it was all on our shoulders.”

  “Oh, my,” Brenna said. “It’s so much worse than we’d assumed. There’s no way we’ll get the dagger from Lord Wallace. You must be our eyes. The prophecy is talking about the sisters. You have to go to the room in the temple.”

  “We’re forbidden entry into the temple,” Asrah said. “There has to be another way. But we have learned one thing: Lord Wallace is the great danger the prophecy is warning us about.”

  “No, no, listen, please.” Brenna closed her eyes. “Simon solved this piece of the puzzle, but neither he nor we understood that he had.”

  “Simon? Who—” Asrah began.

  “Simon is the cleric who used to lead all the clerics. Lord Wallace has lost all trust in Simon, blaming him somehow for what has happened to the chalice. Before we left, he mentioned a part of the ritual I was unfamiliar with. He said a drop of blood was placed on the forehead of each of the clerics who were there to transcribe the prophecy as the caretaker repeated it from their mind. He said it was to protect the clerics, though they never knew from what.”

  “Of course,” Devyn interjected.

  Brenna smiled and continued. “The last prophecy says, ‘The three who informed us of the urgency must take your blood; it is the only way.’ I had no idea what it meant, but Simon and the many before him had come to the conclusion it was for the clerics. Yet only two clerics witness the event and transcribe what is said. The last prophecy talks about the three. The three must refer to the sisters. That’s how you get into the temple: a drop of the caretaker’s blood on your forehead.”

  Chapter 22

  More Plans

  This time they were provided a place to sleep, a bed that allowed them to lie down. No door. It was not a bedroom in the formal sense. It seemed more an empty room where an old bed with no further use was being stored. Bottles and canisters of every size and sort adorned the walls. Even Purta passed by their door on an occasion or two.

  It would appear he was not an outside cat.

  It was a whole other matter attempting to get any sleep.

  Throughout the night the thunder roared somewhere in the distance, yet not a drop of rain hit the roof. Wind sighed in the trees, the cries of a thousand mourners for their lost loved ones; the grass rustled, the rattling dance of a skeleton troop atop their empty coffins; and somewhere far off, water cascaded, an entire ocean roaring down from the heavens.

  More perplexing, if that were possible, was the music—strange and ancient, a tune Brenna recognized as “A Whispering of the Woods,” a song whose words told of secrets exchanged. Exchanging secrets with the sisters; was that what they were doing?

  It left her conjuring all manner of possibilities, all of them in one way or another pitting Lord Wallace and his superior force against Devyn and his meager band, and none of it ending well.

  She and Devyn spoke in whispers, more questions than answers: Why would some divine power want to rid their world of Lord Wallace? Had the messengers, if they were not divine, decided Lord Wallace’s hold upon the chalice had to be released? Was it only now the messengers had found out that the old temple had been abandoned? Even as they raised these questions, they would go back to what they already knew for sure, but none of it gave them any clearer an understanding.

  Coupled with all of this, when the winds, the thunder, and whatever else had come to visit finally subsided, there came the silence—a silence so dense it begged for even the prelude of a whisper, or even the footfalls of a mouse. And steeped in that silence was the encompassing sigh of misery’s hush to an approaching doom.

  A message from the sisters?

  They shared a wish to be back in the lagoon.

  To add to the bewilderment, their own whisperings, clearly the only thing that could be real, seemed foreign somehow. Not that it mattered. All their utterings in the darkness only betrayed their inability to decipher any way forward or any practical understanding of what was happening.

  They agreed Lord Wallace was a menace and a force that could cripple their world, if not destroy any will among their people; that was a real possibility. But some divine power, or less-than-divine messenger, wanting to intercede made little sense. And how did the messengers learn of Lord Wallace’s intentions? Could they really read the minds of the sisters? Maybe they could read Lord Wallace’s mind because he held the jeweled dagger. Or perhaps the hubris of Lord Wallace’s warped mind had the ability to reach the messengers without the aid of anything but his long-time abuse of power.

  The light through the window gave them reprieve from their musings.

  They entered the kitchen, where the sisters were going about the
ir business.

  “That was a strange storm,” Brenna said.

  “What storm?” Asrah asked.

  Brenna thought it best to move forward. “We’ll be on our way. You have been gracious hosts, but it’s time we returned to our garrison.”

  “Oh, dearie. Let’s have some breakfast, and perhaps we’ll find a common expectation of what we must do next,” Asrah offered.

  Brenna looked at Devyn. His nod said they should stay awhile.

  She almost laughed. Devyn’s nod reminded her of how the sisters would nod to each other before one of them would continue speaking—a mannerism they shared, it would seem.

  “We’ve been thinking about your Lord Wallace. My sisters agree that the dagger you mention is indeed the one that belongs to the old temple. We also believe that no measure of stealth will allow anyone near Lord Wallace.”

  Asrah exchanged that familiar glance with her sisters.

  Yes, that was the way she got their permission for what she was about to say. Brenna pushed aside her thought that the sisters and the messengers had much in common.

  “Only his death will bring about the dagger,” Asrah said. “And maybe that’s the terror the last prophecy alludes to.”

  “We defeated a small troop of his men,” Devyn said. “It would be a whole other matter to fight his entire army. It would be suicide. Plus, I don’t see how he’s the menace that the last prophecy alludes to. And even if he is, how does getting the dagger change anything? If we have to kill him to get the dagger, then it’s obvious we no longer need the dagger once Wallace is dead, since—”

  “No, no, you’re missing what we’re attempting to convey. We believe the messengers, the prophecy givers, or the divine ones if you prefer the monikers of your clerics, are merely giving us a way to defeat Lord Wallace and a way to get the chalice back to your people.” Asrah looked at Brenna and continued. “Brenna gave us the answer when she mentioned that a drop of caretaker’s blood will protect us from the cats. The cats are a massive army that cannot be beaten. Their power is only present around the city that contains the old temple. There they are a match for Lord Wallace.”

  “But the prophecy says for the three to wear the blood,” Brenna said. “How will you three wearing a drop of our blood compel an entire army to go inside the city?”

  “It’s won’t, dearie. But what the three of us can wear, so can a clan of your followers.”

  Devyn bolted from his seat. “So we need to find reason enough for Wallace to want our demise at all costs, and his army to think themselves invincible, but better than ‘want,’ we need to create a compelling reason for him to carry out that mission.”

  Asrah and her sisters gave one of their haunting laughs. “That’s easy, dearie. There have been no prophecies since the chalice went missing. Lord Wallace relies on the prophecies for much of his riches, and he most certainly takes advantage of each prophecy before the masses do. He knows the chalice you stole was not real. He has no idea where the real chalice is. We’ll make sure he knows it’s in the old temple. That will surely raise his ire.”

  “Yes,” Devyn said. “He’ll have no choice but to insist upon our annihilation. His prowess as a leader, his reputation, his wealth, his ego, they all hinge on his being number one.”

  Brenna felt a shiver up her spine. That song of the woods, it’s playing now. I can hear it playing inside my head. There is more to this. I know it. My soul tells me it’s the right path, yet a path with some turns we have not envisioned.

  At the apex of the stone fireplace, a keystone sat in the middle of the opening, at the top, with three stones on either side that looked like the keystone’s protectors. Even as the fire crackled in the huge firebox, the keystone reached down just a slender inch below the others. In doing so it offered itself up to stand out beyond all the other stones. It would take the heat first, the price it paid for standing out.

  That was her Devyn. He was indeed a keystone. Every move he had made, every calculated risk he had taken, even if he knew not how much his world was on fire, he had reached down to take the heat first. She sincerely prayed the heat would not burn away his very soul.

  “The gods are laughing now,” Devyn intoned. “First, Devyn’s garrison, then Lord Gerrick, and now the army-builder who will take on Wallace. My goats would not approve, let alone the gods. Surely there has to be a better way. I wanted my wife to be safe. The pot I stirred was not a cauldron to boil the entire world. If I’m the one to hold the spoon, my hands will tell you they have not the ability to grasp what I must do next.”

  “Warrior, you came to us disbelieving much about yourself,” Asrah said. “Not an unusual trait, as people who scurry about to get done what must be done often have a low measure of what they have accomplished. Such is the irony of constant and focused achievement. You think yourself the warrior, and it is there you have resolved to punish yourself for your supposed failure—”

  “Wait, wha—?”

  “Let me finish. You’re all connected. The ocean hugs the shore. The tree spreads its roots, reaching out to touch other trees. You might not know, but trees protect and feed each other, they are as sentient as any creature, but that is a matter for some other time, perhaps. Rain pelts down from the clouds, taking whatever path it can to the rivers and lakes, rumbling and scurrying onward until it returns to its mother; all things obey the changing of the seasons, and all things have a soul that clings to the one—the grand and unknown universe that centers you all.

  “You fight that, warrior. That too is the nature of things: some are fighters, some are planters, some observe, and some know how to sustain the ways that are important.

  “Know this, warrior. You are the one who must take up the sword and defend your people. You’re not alone. What you have inside your soul is not for everyone. It’s for you alone. But they’ll follow you, to their death if need be. No one is asking or expecting you to carry this weight alone. They ask only that you lead the way. And for that they share their very soul with you.”

  Devyn lowered his head. “I—”

  Brenna hugged him close inside her mind as she spoke. “There are a million things to think about, but there’s nothing you can say that can change what must be. The seasons move from one to the other, and the last prophecy tells us the anointing of a great danger is at hand. This is so much more than what we’d envisioned. Let’s do what we have to do. Let’s do it together. For what we’ve lost, for those who might still be lost.”

  “I still want you safe, more than anything else,” Devyn said. “All the rest I accept then. I’ll accept that the draw from a chimney is at the mercy of the fire below. And so I’m at the mercy of what is to be. Let it be no less or no more than what is necessary.”

  Brenna could see the consternation in his eyes, and it had nothing to do with the danger he was putting himself in. He would shoulder the blame for all those who must surely die in any such incursion with Lord Wallace. No amount of discussion would make that go away.

  It would be best to leap into the tragic abyss with him. “We’ll bring Lord Wallace and his troops to Arapendia, to the cats, to his doom, and then we’ll see what the inner room of the temple has to offer,” Brenna said.

  Asrah nodded. “We’re essentially talking about the same thing. My sisters and I have noticed the proliferation of Lord Wallace’s army. We believe he’ll finally declare war on the entire lands until he has his precious chalice back. Whether Lord Wallace has brought this on because of his rise to ever more power, or the messengers moved the cup to the old temple to bring about his annihilation, we have no choice but to leave any speculation on that question to the ages.”

  Devyn stood to leave. “The dice are in play no matter which side precipitated the toss. And if we’re to survive, then we must play.”

  Chapter 23

  Rise to Power

  Devyn halted Fury and turned to look where they had come from.

  He was no fool to excessive introspection, but sometim
es a series of events called for examination. This was most certainly one of those occasions. From boy to lost soul, from vagabond to mercenary, from warrior to farmer and back, lay an unfolding world he had scarce thought existed: sisters, witches of a sort, cats of the ethereal realm, and if not the ethereal realm then some place where the impossible was commonplace, the old temple shrouded in mystery and incredible power, with floors that invented themselves, walls that wrote their own words, secret rooms that gave no clue to who had invented them or why they existed, and that was only a few of the anomalies they had encountered in such a short span.

  And now the sisters and Brenna wanted him to step into the shoes of a leader not unlike a Wallace, with newly trained soldiers, and better still, with the help of a city full of cats with lots of attitude and little likelihood of adopting him as their leader.