Despite that, Mitul had followed him all over Erythyr looking for answers. He’d watched over him and given him whatever information he could when Amar didn’t even know which questions to ask. Amar wouldn’t have made it here without him—without any of them. Mitul, Saya, Kesari, Lucian—each had played a part in getting him this far, and though they all had their own motivations for seeing this through, they’d also done it for him. Because they considered him a friend. All this time, they’d been reaching out to him, offering help and concern and companionship even as he hid behind his walls.
Maybe Mitul was right. Despite all his best efforts, trying to distance himself from others hadn’t exactly made his life any easier. There had still been devastating losses and more grief than any person should have to bear, but there had also been joy, colorful spots of good amongst all the bad. And maybe those things were worth pursuing, even if it meant making himself more vulnerable.
A few blue lights flickered to life in the fading gray of dusk. Amar raised the mirror to his face and frowned as he took in his prince’s attire once more. “Do you really think this will work?”
Mitul shrugged. “Lucian seems to believe it will, and he’s usually right about these sorts of magical things.”
Amar raised an eyebrow. “Fair point, but I’m not sure even Lucian was prepared for all we’ve found here.”
There was a sharp knock on the door, and it opened before either of them could answer. Kesari stuck her head inside, her brows drawn together. “Oh good, you’re finished. Come on. Lucian spotted a couple of guards coming our way. Maybe you can try to talk to them before they attack.”
Amar picked up his sword from where it leaned against the wall and exited the room. Hopefully he wouldn’t need the weapon, but he wasn’t about to confront the intimidating statues without it.
Four of them were already coming up the hall, their stiff, heavy footfalls echoing through the empty palace. A few of the blue lights floated in the air behind them. Saya stood with her bow at the ready, jaw set. Amar stepped past her, placing himself between his friends and the guards.
When they had drawn a little closer, he put one palm out in front of him and gave a command in a language he hadn’t spoken for centuries. “Halt.”
The guards drew their swords and kept coming.
“Amar…” Saya said, an anxious edge to her voice. Her feet shuffled into a new position behind him.
He tried again, drawing himself up a little taller and leveling his gaze at the guards. “I am Prince Darshak Kaur, son of King Kairav Kaur, and I command you to halt.”
The guards took one more step, then shifted into a rigid at-attention position, swords lowered at their sides and helmeted heads turned toward Amar. They seemed to be awaiting further instruction.
He took a few steps toward them. “I’ve been gone a long time,” he said, still speaking in Shavhallan. “I’m still not sure exactly what happened here, but I’m trying to find out. I’d like to break whatever curse has come over this place…over all of you.”
He approached the closest guard and stared up at its stone features. Its armor was exactly the same as what the palace guards had worn when he was a boy, and now that he was closer, he could see subtle differences between each statue. One was a little shorter than the rest while another was a bit wider around the chest. Another had a chiseled braid extending from beneath its helmet to drape over one shoulder. The fourth was missing a finger.
“You were all alive once, weren’t you?” he said quietly. “The curse must have turned you to stone.”
The guard he was looking at gave a subtle nod.
Amar backed away from them and gestured to the others behind him. “My friends and I mean no harm. You’ve done well protecting the palace all these years, but I need you to let us come and go in peace.”
The guard nodded again.
“What are you saying?” Saya asked.
He glanced back at her and held up a finger. “Thank you,” he said to the guard. “I’m afraid I have little memory of what happened here after I was cursed. Is there any way you could tell me?”
The guard pointed to where his mouth would have been beneath his helmet and shook his head.
“That’s all right. I was hoping to find a record of those events in the library, but it’s enormous and I don’t really know what I’m looking for. Is there still a scholar or a record-keeper around here who could help us?”
The guard stood motionless for so long that Amar almost repeated the question. Finally, it gave a nod, turned, and motioned for him to follow. He did, and the other three guards fell into stride on either side of him like a protective shield. Behind them, the others shuffled forward as well.
“Where are they taking us?” Mitul asked.
“To someone who can help, I think,” Amar replied.
“Who?”
No sooner had he spoken than a door opened up ahead of them, and a skeletal figure in a flowing green dress stepped out into the hallway. Saya drew in a sharp gasp and muttered something under her breath.
The skeleton turned toward Amar and gave a deep curtsy. He found himself responding with an automatic bow, and the woman turned and went on her way, accompanied by a few glowing blue lights that danced around her waist and in the empty spaces of her eye sockets.
“It’s like they can see us now,” Lucian said. “Or at least, they can see Amar. I was a little skeptical before, but this was good thinking, Kes.”
“It was only a hunch,” she replied.
They continued though the hall, back down the stone steps to the entryway and then to the underground level that housed the library and several other rooms Amar hadn’t bothered to check. They passed a few more skeletons on the way, some already going about their business while others were just rising from their daytime slumber. Most gave Amar some sort of acknowledgement, whether it was a bow or a curtsy or simply a respectful nod in his direction. He responded in kind but hurried his group along as quickly as he could.
The guard leading the procession stopped in front of a narrow door at the foot of the stairs. Amar wasn’t sure whether to knock or simply go in, but before he could decide, the door opened. A stooped skeleton with a missing jawbone stood in the doorway, the top of his head wrapped in a crimson turban ornamented with a silver pin in the shape of a lotus. His attire was white, a loose tunic and pants suitable for everyday wear by Shavhallan men. He did not bow. Empty eye sockets gaped at Amar, and after a few seconds, he tilted his head to one side as if posing a question.
“Um…hello,” Amar began in Kavoran, then remembered who he was speaking to and started over in Shavhallan. “Hello. I’m sorry to disturb you. I’m Prince Darshak Kaur…as you probably know already since everyone else here seems to.” He grimaced at the clumsiness of his speech. Who was this man? And why did he suddenly feel like a child again standing in front of him? He cleared his throat. “We’re looking for information. I was hoping you could help.”
The skeleton gave no sign of acknowledgement, but after a few seconds, he made a circular gesture with his hand as if prompting Amar to continue.
He glanced back at his friends, who waited expectantly, then continued. This was sheer foolishness, talking to a skeleton, but he had no better options. “I don’t remember much of my life here. I don’t know how Shavhalla was cursed, and I’d like to find out so I can set things right, if there’s a way to do that. Do you know of any records that might have been written about those events? We started searching but weren’t sure where to look.”
The skeleton regarded him in silence for a few more seconds, then stepped out into the hall. He headed for the library, waving a hand over his shoulder for the group to follow. They did, but before they reached the library doors, Amar stopped and spoke to the stone guards flanking him.
“You can wait here or return to your normal duties, if you’d like. I don’t think we’ll need any more protection.” He wasn’t entirely sure that last part was true, but he was
feeling more than a little self-conscious with the guards following him like…well, like a prince in need of protecting.
The shoulders of one of the guards slumped a little, but they all turned away and marched back up the stairs single file. Amar and the others quickened their pace to catch up with the jawless skeleton waiting patiently inside the library, and once they were all across the threshold, he closed the doors behind them.
He led them through the maze of bookshelves. They passed a few other skeletons on the way, all clad in simple white clothing. Eventually, they stopped in front of a set of shelves at the back of the room, near where Kesari had found the paintings and crowns earlier. Their guide reached for a pile of scrolls on the highest shelf, unrolled a few, and tossed them aside before looking through some others.
“How do you think he’s seeing what’s on those?” Kesari whispered behind Amar. “He has no eyes.”
“No idea,” Lucian answered.
The man tucked one of the scrolls under his arm and continued to rifle through others. When he’d collected a second scroll and a sheaf of loosely bound papers, he gestured to a set of chairs at a nearby table. Amar followed him, and as they sat down across from each other, a bony hand pushed one of the scrolls toward him.
He started to unroll it as his friends gathered around and had it halfway open when he paused and looked up them. His eyes found Saya’s. These scrolls could contain information that would fill the most critical gaps in his memory, and that knowledge gave him more hope than he’d had in a very long time. But he wouldn’t have made it here without the others, and regardless of what he thought of Saya’s haseph, he owed her something. She deserved answers, too. What she did with them afterward was not his choice to make.
“There’s one more thing,” he said to the skeletal man. “We need information about how exactly I was cursed with immortality. I’ve never heard of anyone else like me, so I take it the practice wasn’t common even when it happened to me?”
The skeleton shook his head.
“I’m not sure if you know this, but curses don’t exist anymore. The knowledge of how to create them has been lost for centuries. We need to know how it was done. Specifically, how to make someone immortal.” He cringed a little as he said the words, and his insides squirmed when the skeleton only stared back at him, head tilted questioningly. “It’s important,” he added. “It could save a lot of people. My friend—” he gestured to Saya. “She needs this.”
The skeleton turned his empty gaze to Saya as if seeing her for the first time. Then he raised two fingers to his teeth, as if he were trying to whistle, and lowered them again.
“What was that about?” Saya asked.
“Your haseph,” he replied. “I asked if he could show us anything about how to curse someone with immortality.”
Her eyes widened. “But you said—”
“I still don’t think it’s right. But that doesn’t mean you’re wrong. And it’s not my decision.”
The young woman’s eyes glistened, but she raised her chin and blinked rapidly before tears could form. “Thank you.”
A second skeleton approached, clad in a feminine white dress that reached to the floor. She and the other skeleton conversed for a few seconds, or at least, that was what they appeared to be doing. She gestured for Saya to follow her, and the two of them set off through the bookshelves together.
“Wait!” Kesari called. “I’ll come with you.”
She and Lucian hurried off to join them, leaving only Amar, Mitul, and the skeletal scholar at the table.
Amar returned his attention to the scroll in his hands. He opened it up. It wasn’t very long, and the words were written in a hasty, summarized format rather than complete sentences. He could read the Shavhallan letters easily enough, but it still took him a few seconds to realize what he was looking at.
“It’s a military report,” he said to Mitul, skimming over a list of troop positions and attack formations, the final tally of dead and wounded, and an inventory of the spoils the army had taken.
“What does it say?” Mitul asked, leaning in closer though he couldn’t read the words himself.
“Not much.” He raised his eyes to the skull across the table. “Why are you showing me this?”
The skeleton reached forward, and Amar lowered the scroll for him to look at—or feel, or sense, or whatever he was doing. A pale finger ran down the edge of the scroll, then stopped and tapped an area near the bottom. Amar took a closer look.
Estimated enemy casualties: 1,200
Enemy combatants taken prisoner: 0
Enemies captured for sale: 216
Amar’s eyes fixated on that single, horrific word at the end. Sale. Two hundred and sixteen human beings stripped of their freedom and dignity and sold like animals. And this was only from one attack, a single raid out of dozens or possibly hundreds his father had undertaken. His stomach churned, and he put a hand to his own neck as he remembered the metal collar locked around Mahati’s.
“She was one of these, wasn’t she?” he asked, tapping the number on the scroll.
The skeleton gave a slow, heavy nod.
Mitul looked between them. “What is it?”
“The girl who cursed me—this is a report of my father’s attack on her town. She and two hundred and fifteen others were captured and sold to slavers.”
“Skies above.” He shook his head. "How awful."
“It’s no wonder she came back for vengeance.” Amar selected the next scroll from the pile. This one was an account of the night Mahati had sneaked into the palace, found her way to his room, and inflicted the curse on him. It had been written by someone named Ranjan, as indicated by his name next to the title royal scribe at the top of the paper. It read like a report taken from Amar himself, or rather, from Prince Darshak. Most lines started with phrases like, Darshak reports, and Darshak stated that, but it didn’t contain much in the way of new information. Mahati had been arrested following their encounter, as he’d already guessed, but rather than being executed, she was imprisoned in Shavhalla’s dungeons.
As he recounted this information to Mitul, the skeleton reached forward again. This time, he tapped the name at the top of the scroll, then pointed to himself.
“You’re Ranjan?” Amar asked.
The skeleton nodded, and Amar studied him again, trying to conjure up a face from his past that belonged with that name. The white clothes, the red turban, the slightly stooped posture—recognition flickered in his mind at last. He could almost see the wrinkled, whiskered face of his old teacher settling over the skull in front of him.
A smile pulled at his lips, but he quickly schooled his expression into something more somber. The Ranjan he remembered had been a strict instructor who demanded respect and discipline from everyone, even the prince himself. “It’s very good to see you again, teacher.”
Ranjan gave a slight nod.
Amar rolled up the scroll and shifted his attention to the sheaf of papers. There were a lot of them, so he skimmed to pick out the most relevant parts and summarized them for Mitul as he went.
“These are from after Mahati was arrested. They locked her in a cell and interrogated her. She was forced to eat daravak every day to suppress her magic, and…” he paused, a sick feeling settling in his gut as he read over the bottom of one page again. “They tortured her. My father tortured her himself, trying to get her to break the curse.” His heart shuddered at the callous but detailed descriptions of violence the king had inflicted on the poor girl.
“Could she even have broken it if she wanted to?” Mitul asked quietly.
“I’m not sure. She claimed she couldn’t.” He flipped the page and read on. There were more descriptions of Mahati’s interrogation and torture, along with reports of similar fates shared by other prisoners. Were these all part of the wartime atrocities he was supposed to atone for?
He shook his head. His father had been a monster. So much time had passed since he’d seen the man
, and he barely felt any connection to him now, but he couldn’t shake off the truth of his heritage. The king had committed such terrible crimes that the stain of his actions had followed his son through centuries, leading right back here to the ruins of a city that had been cursed because of his continued cruelty.
Wait…how did he know that was the reason for Shavhalla’s curse? He sat back in the chair, rubbing at his temples as his brain struggled to dredge up another old memory.
“What is it?” Mitul asked.
“I think my father was responsible for what happened here,” he said. “To Shavhalla, I mean. He’s the reason the whole city was cursed.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure yet.” He picked up the next sheet of paper, hoping to find a clue that would give him more answers. After skimming through a few more pages, he found what he was looking for. “Yes—this is it! Here, it says Mahati threatened to destroy Shavhalla if the king didn’t release her and the other prisoners. No one took her seriously because they were giving her daravak. She shouldn’t have been able to use magic at all, but I think she found a way. I remember.”
Not everything. He could only remember that part of his history in fragments, and the pieces didn’t all quite fit together, but he remembered something. It had happened several years after his own curse. Five years, maybe, or ten—he wasn’t sure. He’d been away hunting with some friends when it happened.
“What do you remember?” Mitul prompted when Amar’s silence stretched on.
“I wasn’t here,” he said, still trying to sort through the pieces in his mind. “I was in the forest, near the river. There was a burst of light—the same red light from when I was cursed. It shot up into the sky, and I raced home as fast as I could, but I didn’t make it. The light spread through the forest, over me and my friends, and then everything darkened.” He shook his head. “I think that must have been the first time I died.”
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