An unreadable expression flashed over his face. Was he annoyed to be caught out? Was he calculating what his next move should be, now that Ephyra had thwarted this one?
“But I want you to know that no matter what you do, no matter how much you seem like you’ve changed, I will never let my guard down. Not an inch. Because I know who you really are.”
He swallowed, shadows and light dancing on his face. “Fine,” he said, a smile slowly curling his lips. “You’re right. You have me figured out. I thought saving you would win you over, but I should have realized that will never work on someone like you.”
“Someone like me?” Ephyra said, and immediately regretted asking. He was trying to manipulate her again.
“You really don’t trust anyone, do you?”
One person. Ephyra trusted one person, and had only trusted one person her entire life.
“Do you?” she asked.
He looked off into the blackness. “I trust that people will act how I expect them to act. I trust that they will do whatever they need in order to continue believing the story they’ve told themselves about who they are.”
“What story do you tell about yourself?” Ephyra asked.
He grinned. The expression looked lethal in the dark. “One you don’t want to hear.”
Ephyra bit down on the inside of her cheek. Despite herself, she did want to hear it. Every single time he spoke to her he wove another thread in a twisted web and dared her to untangle it. And Tarseis take her, it was working. She wanted to get to the bottom of all his lies, to peel back the layers of his deceit and see what slithered out.
Illya’s light suddenly dimmed and then went out.
“What just happened?” Ephyra asked. “Why did you turn it off?”
“I didn’t,” Illya said. She could hear him smacking the light, but could see nothing.
She reached out and brushed her fingers against the rock wall. She was trapped here. Trapped in the dark with only a snake for company.
26
BERU
THREE OF THE DAUGHTERS TOOK BERU AND HECTOR INTO THE DESERT. THEY walked, their hands bound, beneath the light of a crescent moon, the lonely desert spreading out around them.
Fury howled in Beru’s chest. “You could save him,” she pleaded. The Daughters ignored her, marching on. Beru’s anger curdled and festered, and she knew that Hector must feel it, too.
He was silent at her side. They walked for hours, the passing time marked only by the moon that slowly rose in the sky. The dry desert air, so hot in the afternoon, now chilled her to her bones. She felt the weight of every life she’d cost, like their spirits were following her steps, waiting for the justice they’d been denied. Beru’s strength faltered with every step. Death reached for her.
She closed her eyes.
“Move,” one of the Daughters said, and Beru realized she had stopped walking and was listing to the side like she might collapse.
They continued on. The desert landscape shifted—gone were the rocky crags and low brush that surrounded Behezda. Here it was just sand—empty and desolate. There was nothing living in this land.
The moon was high in the sky when they finally came to a stop. Two of the Daughters pushed them down into the sand to bind their ankles.
When they were done, the Daughters stood facing Beru and Hector.
“The desert will take you,” they crooned in unison. “And the desert will release you.”
Without another word, they turned and walked away. Beru could almost imagine that the desert stretched on endlessly. That she and Hector were the last two people left in the world.
The wind whipped at their cheeks, tossing sand around them. Beru ducked to shield her face. A storm was coming. She could see its shadow looming on the horizon like a great beast.
When she looked back at Hector, he was tugging himself free of his bonds. “What are you doing?” she said, the words heavy in her mouth.
His ankles free, Hector crawled over to start undoing Beru’s. “We can get out of here.”
Beru shook her head. “Hector, I—I can’t. I’m too weak. I don’t even know if I can stand. Just leave me here. You can still find a way to cure yourself.”
The wind howled around them, so loud that Beru couldn’t hear what Hector said next. He looked at her, breathing hard. Before she knew what was happening, he leaned forward, his arms going around her.
“I told you in Medea,” he said softly. His breath was warm on her ear, and as close as they were, she could hear him clearly over the wind. “I’m staying with you. Until the end.”
Beru squeezed her eyes shut. The sand whipped fiercely around them, swirling like a vortex, tearing mercilessly at their skin. The whole world was in pieces. She felt Hector’s breaths and the beat of his heart as her mind ebbed in and out of consciousness.
“I wanted to save you,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
He held her and said nothing as the storm swallowed them.
27
ANTON
JUDE HAD NOT SAID A WORD SINCE JOINING THEM IN THE BOAT. SOMETHING had shaken him thoroughly during his fight with the masked Witness, though Anton knew that he hadn’t been injured.
They were miles from the center of the city when the boat pulled over to one of the canal docks.
“Out you go,” the Nameless Woman said. Jude rose, but she shook her head and pointed at Evander. “Just him.”
Evander got to his feet unsurely.
“Take that boat,” the Nameless Woman said, gesturing to an empty canal boat tied up at the dock. “It will take you back to your estate.”
“I’m not leaving Anton,” he said, with a ferocity that surprised Anton.
“This doesn’t involve you,” the Nameless Woman told him. “Best you stay safe.”
Without warning, Evander pulled Anton into a fierce hug. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Anton didn’t know what to say.
“I’ll be all right,” he assured Evander, patting him awkwardly on the back. Then suddenly Evander was untangling himself from Anton and lunging toward Jude. Anton watched Jude’s eyes go wide and shocked as Evander embraced him.
When he pulled back, Evander said, “Keep him safe, all right? Whatever it takes.”
Jude hesitated, and then gave him a short nod. Evander climbed out of the boat.
“Anton,” Jude said, his gaze on the Nameless Woman. “Maybe we should get out, too.”
“You can,” she said. “But then you won’t hear what I have to say.”
Jude glanced at Anton, and he understood that Jude was letting him take the lead. If Anton trusted the Nameless Woman, then so would Jude. It was a surprising amount of faith to place in him, much more than Anton was willing to place in the Nameless Woman.
But this was a rare offer from her, to give him answers. Even if they were filtered through her usual combination of ambiguity and equivocation.
“We’ll hear you out,” Anton said, and Jude sat back down beside him. “But you’re going to tell us everything. You know who I am. You know who Jude is. If you’re really trying to help us, you need to tell us who you are.”
“All right, then.”
They pulled away from the dock, continuing along the canal.
“Where are you taking us?” Jude asked.
“Somewhere safe.”
Anton crossed his arms in front of him. “Start talking.”
“Why don’t we play for it?” the Nameless Woman asked. “A rematch, of sorts, from the night we met.”
She withdrew a deck of cards from a pocket in her sleeve. The backs of the cards were decorated with gold foil and shone in the moonlight.
“I’m serious,” Anton warned.
“So am I.” The Nameless Woman began to deal out the cards.
Jude watched them both warily.
“You get first play,” the Nameless Woman said.
Anton gritted his teeth and snatched up his hand. For once, he didn’t
want to play canbarra. He drew a card anyway. A five. He pulled out the five already in his hand and played them both to the center.
“Very good,” she commended. “Now you may ask me your question.”
“Who are you? Really.”
“Have you ever heard of the Protectors of the Lost Rose?” she asked, drawing a card and tucking it into her hand.
“They’re a myth,” Jude said.
But Anton realized he had heard of them. The night before the attack on Kerameikos, when he’d dreamed about the Hierophant. He’d been . . . torturing someone. Someone with ties to the Lost Rose. It had been meaningless to Anton at the time but now—it couldn’t be a coincidence.
“The Lost Rose is very real. And I am its leader,” she replied. “Anton, what do you know about where the Four Bodily Graces came from?”
Anton laid down a six, seven, and eight of cups. “The Prophets gave them to their faithful subjects. Right?”
The Nameless Woman smiled. “Yes. But how did they do that? Where did they get these great powers?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” Anton admitted.
The woman looked at Jude. “The four sources of Grace,” Jude said slowly. “The Four Sacred Relics.”
“Yes. And the Lost Rose was formed to keep the Relics safe.” She laid down four aces, naming each suit as she played them. “The crown. The sword. The chalice. The stone.”
“The chalice,” Anton repeated, with another startling bolt of recognition. “Eleazar’s Chalice?”
“Yes,” she said, sweeping the aces to the side. “There were times when the Protectorate could not do what we had been formed to do. Times when one of the Relics fell into the wrong hands. The Necromancer Wars being the worst example.”
“So where are they now?” Jude asked.
The Nameless Woman set her piercing gaze on him. “You’re holding one in your hands.”
Anton and Jude both stared at the Pinnacle Blade. The reason they had come to Endarrion. Jude’s hands tightened around the hilt.
“That explains why you wanted the Pinnacle Blade,” Anton said. “But why are you telling us this?”
She nodded down at the cards. With an irritated huff, Anton snatched up the eight of cups, added it back to his hand, and discarded a ten at random. She picked up his ten, discarding a six.
“You are the Last Prophet,” she said. “You have received visions of destruction and ruin. The fall of the Prophetic Cities.”
“I thought only the Order knew about the prophecy. About me.”
Maybe the Nameless Woman had once been a member of the Order—an acolyte who’d broken her oaths. But that seemed unlikely. She was far too self-interested to join the Order.
“The Order believes that the Prophets entrusted them alone with their secret. But that isn’t quite true. There were others . . . a trusted few, who were given the secret, too. As a matter of insurance.”
“In case something happened to the Order?” Anton asked, drawing a card without prompting.
“In case the Order failed at finding you. In case they got the prophecy wrong.”
Jude bristled, but even he couldn’t deny that they had gotten the prophecy wrong—at first, anyway.
“So it’s you and who else?” Anton asked, playing his three eights to the center. He now had only three cards remaining. She still had six. Yet he didn’t feel at all like he was winning.
“It’s me and whomever I deem important enough to know,” she replied.
“And the Relics . . . what do they have to do with the prophecy?”
“Everything.” She drew her next card and immediately discarded it. “The Age of Darkness is here because of the Relics. Because of what the Prophets did to create them.”
Anton reached for a card and then froze, peering at her. “You’re saying the Prophets caused the Age of Darkness.”
“Something like that.”
“No,” Jude spoke. “No, that’s not possible. The Prophets were good. They were blessed with Sight because each of them demonstrated their pure virtue. Wisdom, faith, justice, beauty, charity, and mercy. The esha of the world filled them with divine power because they were worthy of it.”
“You’re right, of course,” the Nameless Woman said. “They were chosen by the world’s esha. But once, that esha had a name. A form. A will. Once, it was a god—a god who created all other beings. But he could not speak to his creations. His voice was too great and his words too powerful for mortal ears. And so he chose the Seven to be his Prophets. He gave them their ability to peer into the future so that they could communicate his bidding to the people. They were his servants. His voice. And later, his betrayers.”
Anton heard Jude’s sharp intake of breath and looked over to see his hand clenched on the edge of the boat.
“There was no god,” Jude said, his voice hard. “That’s just a myth the people of the Prophets’ time believed, until the Prophets showed them the truth.”
The Nameless Woman smiled over her cards. “The Prophets spent two millennia convincing their followers that the god of old was nothing but a lie. They did it well.”
“What happened to the god?” Anton asked, watching Jude’s expression harden with betrayal. He finished up his turn, playing a four to his existing run of cups.
“They killed him,” the Nameless Woman said, playing two poets. “And they did not stop there. They took pieces of their Creator, divided up his divine body and from it created the Four Sacred Relics. His heart was forged into the Pinnacle Blade, which bestowed the Grace of Heart. His blood became Eleazar’s Chalice, bestowing the Grace of Blood. His skull they crafted into the Crown of Herat, granting the Grace of Mind. And his eye became the Oracle Stone, imparting the Grace of Sight. With these Relics they proclaimed they would rule in the god’s stead, bestowing these Graces on those they judged worthy.”
“None of this is true,” Jude said, heated. “The Order of the Last Light—”
“Do you really think,” the Nameless Woman said, “that the Prophets would have told them the truth?”
Anton could see the fury and conflict on Jude’s face, the stiff line of tension that ran through his shoulders. He looked like he was a moment from pulling Anton out of the boat and swimming away.
“You can’t just tell us these lies and expect us to believe them,” he said. “Pull the boat over and let us out.”
Anton’s gaze drifted over the Nameless Woman, searching for signs of deception. He didn’t trust her to tell the truth, but at the same time he couldn’t see a reason why she would lie. He knew enough about her to know she wasn’t working with the Witnesses. And unlike Jude, Anton did not have any allegiance to the Order’s version of events.
When the Nameless Woman did not reply, Jude pushed himself to his feet and stalked to the other end of the boat.
Anton turned back to the Nameless Woman. “You still haven’t explained what the Relics have to do with the Age of Darkness. With my vision.”
“I’m getting there,” she replied, drawing a card. “The Relics spread some of the god’s esha in the form of Graces. A little bit of the god’s power spreading was acceptable. But to let it flow freely into the world was too dangerous. Too unpredictable. So, in secret, the Lost Rose locked the god’s esha away, using the only things powerful enough to do it—the only things imbued with the god’s power itself.”
She set down her remaining cards—one herald of each suit, and placed them around the rest of the deck.
“The Relics?” Anton asked.
“Yes,” the Nameless Woman replied. “They used the Relics and some of their own Graces—Heart, Mind, Blood, and Sight—to create a seal that kept the god’s esha contained. But at some point, the Four-Petal Seal began to break. Some of the god’s esha has been slowly seeping out. Spreading fear, disease, corruption. If the seal breaks completely . . .”
“The Age of Darkness,” Anton finished grimly, his nightmare about the Hierophant flashing back to him. He knew what it must me
an now. “That’s what the Hierophant wants. That’s what he’s trying to do. He wants to break the Four-Petal Seal.” He glanced back at the Nameless Woman. “You knew all this and yet you waited until now to tell me any of it?”
“You said yourself, you weren’t ready,” she replied. Anton’s own words echoed back in his head—not the ones he had said on the barge, but rather what he had said to her in his dream in Kerameikos. “When I met you, you were still running away from everything that could cause you harm, telling yourself that what you feared was your past—not your destiny. I tried to help you along, to guide you, and you refused me.”
“Because I don’t trust you,” Anton said. “I still don’t. You could be lying to us, like Jude said.”
“I could be,” she agreed. “But you think I’m telling the truth, don’t you?”
Anton could not deny it. What she was saying sounded too close to what he had heard in his dream for it to be a lie. “What am I supposed to do with this information? How do we stop this?”
“You must return the Four Relics to the place where the god was slain and use your Grace to repair the Four-Petal Seal. Only the Last Prophet can do it. The final piece of our prophecy revealed. In vision of Grace and fire. To bring the age of dark to yield.”
“Or break the world entire,” Anton finished.
“Well, we must endeavor to avoid that outcome. It won’t be easy. And you asked for none of it.” She almost sounded sad. “Yet, here you sit.”
“I’m the Prophet,” Anton answered, remembering the words Jude had hurled at him. “I don’t have a choice.”
28
As the Shadow Rises: Book Two of The Age of Darkness Page 23
