The Hierophant had instructed him to contact one of the Witnesses who was stationed near the marketplace. The Witness told him to take the text to a temple on Ozmandith Road. They had gutted all the temples along the road and had turned them into their own twisted places of worship.
Hassan didn’t expect the Hierophant to actually be at the temple. He assumed he’d send his lackeys for this chore. So Hassan was surprised when he stepped inside and was greeted by that glinting gold mask.
“Do you have what I want?” the Hierophant asked.
Hassan withdrew the copied scroll and offered it freely. One of the Witnesses at the Hierophant’s side took it, examined it, and then handed it to the Hierophant.
He held it and gestured with his other hand. From the back of the sanctum another Witness appeared holding a torch.
The flame was white.
Hassan held back a gasp. He thought that they’d destroyed all the remaining Godfire when they took down the tower.
The Witness brought the torch to the Hierophant, and without fanfare the masked man held the scroll to it. The flame chewed the edge of the scroll until it was just ashes as Hassan looked on in shock.
“This is a fake,” the Hierophant said. He didn’t sound angry, but that only made Hassan more afraid.
“I—”
“You thought you could trick me?” the Hierophant asked. “Is that it?”
Hassan swallowed.
“I think,” the Hierophant said, “that the Prince of Herat needs to be taught a lesson.”
The door opened, and Hassan turned. There in the doorway, limned in soft light, stood two Witnesses. And between them, Khepri, her arms bound behind her back by Godfire chains.
Horror and disbelief churned in Hassan’s stomach. He caught Khepri’s gaze and saw a mess of emotions on her face—betrayal, confusion, fear. His jaw clenched and he looked away. He hadn’t wanted her involved in this, had hoped to leave her out of it. And part of him felt angered by her presence. She hadn’t trusted him. She had followed him. Maybe she hadn’t been trying to make things right between them at all—maybe she’d just been trying to spy on him.
“We found these two outside,” one of the Witnesses said. On their other side, two new Witnesses appeared, dragging another captive along—Arash.
Hassan stared in disbelief, the knife in his heart twisting deeper. What was he doing there? Had Khepri brought him along?
The Hierophant waved the Witness with the torch forward.
The Godfire flickered as it drew closer to Khepri. Her eyes flashed with terror. As she struggled against the chains that bound her, something inside Hassan snapped.
“Wait,” said Hassan, breathless. “Wait. I know where the Relic of Mind is. That’s what you want, right? The Crown? I can get it for you.”
The Hierophant held up a hand and the Witnesses stopped.
“You traitor!” Arash yelled. “You’re just like the rest of them. You’d sell your own country, your own people, to that monster!”
“Either you or the Witnesses are going to destroy this country if I don’t,” Hassan said. “This is the only path to peace.”
Arash opened his mouth to yell more, but one of the Witnesses covered it.
“Hassan,” Khepri said, eyes pleading. He couldn’t tell if she wanted him to go on or to stop. It didn’t matter. There was only one way to save her.
“Let her go, and I’ll get it for you,” Hassan said. “The Crown for the girl.”
“Very well, Prince Hassan,” the Hierophant said. “But you do not want to disappoint me again.”
The sky was gray and swollen with a summer storm as the Hierophant and ten of his Witnesses marched Khepri and Hassan to the site where the lighthouse had once stood.
“Hassan,” Khepri muttered. “Please tell me you have some kind of plan.”
He had one. But it had gone to shit.
He was cornered. The Witnesses had Khepri bound by Godfire chains. He had only one play, and no guarantee that the Hierophant would honor the exchange.
And Arash . . . he cast a glance at him, only to find his eyes burning back at Hassan. He was plainly furious, and for once Hassan could not fault him for it. What he was about to do was unthinkable. But if they had any hope of making it out of this alive, it was his only choice.
They reached the ruins of the lighthouse. The sea crashed against the lonely rock where the tower had once stood.
“The Crown is here?” the Hierophant asked. “But the lighthouse was destroyed.”
“It’s underneath,” Hassan said, trying to project confidence although he was going based only on his gut.
“Very well,” the Hierophant said. “Lead the way.”
Hassan nodded and they, along with two of the Witnesses, crossed to the ruins.
The Witness with the Godfire torch led them down a set of unbroken stairs, deep into the earth.
They descended into the darkness. Hassan took out his compass and used it to guide them through the dark chambers. Now that they were inside the lighthouse ruins, the needle had shifted, spinning slowly this way and that as they wound down the stairs.
“This way,” Hassan said.
They reached a circular room of dark stone, which Hassan guessed was about three hundred feet below the surface of the rock. The compass needle wavered and started spinning wildly.
“It’s here,” he said. There was a round stone pillar in the center of the room that was about waist-high. Hassan went to it. The compass grew warm in Hassan’s hand, the needle spinning faster. He put his other hand on the cold stone, and found a tiny circular indentation in the center of the pillar.
“Open it,” the Hierophant commanded.
Hassan shook his head. “I don’t know how.”
The Hierophant didn’t reply, but with a tilt of his head the Witness with the Godfire torch advanced on Khepri.
“Wait, wait!” Hassan cried. “Just give me a moment. Let me—”
The compass burned so hot that it scorched his skin and he dropped it. It fell to the stone ground, cracking open on impact. Hassan stared down in horror at the pieces of his father’s compass on the ground. It was the last thing he had to remember him by.
And then something glimmered and caught his eye. Hassan knelt. Amid broken gears and shattered glass lay a golden disk the size of a coin, imprinted with the compass rose symbol. He picked it up and gazed from it to the pillar. With shaking hands, he pressed the disk into the stone.
At first nothing happened. Then with a great noise, the pillar began to grow, shooting up into the chamber’s ceiling. As the pillar emerged from the ground, Hassan saw where part of it had been carved out, a stone platform upon which the Crown of Herat sat. The spiked points that arched above the twisted circlet looked almost like teeth, glimmering in the light of the Godfire.
“The Relic of Mind,” the Hierophant murmured. He approached slowly.
Arash strained against his captors, staring covetously at the Crown as the Hierophant wrapped his hands around it.
A startled grunt drew Hassan’s attention away from the Crown and to the chamber’s threshold, where Khepri had one of the Witnesses pinned up against the wall, her chains wrapped around his throat. She kneed him between the legs and grabbed the Godfire torch out of his hands before he hit the ground. The other Witnesses moved to charge at her.
“Don’t take another step,” Khepri said.
The Hierophant froze and turned to her.
“It’s not just the Crown you want,” Khepri said. “You want all the other Relics, too.”
She drew something from the folds of her shirt—the scroll. The real scroll. She must have found it in Hassan’s drawers. Which meant she had come after Hassan, knowing what he was trying to do.
“Well, you’re not going to get them,” Khepri said. “This is what you wanted Hassan to find, right? Make another move and it’ll be nothing but ashes.” She nodded at the Witness who was holding Arash. “Release him.”
&nb
sp; The Witness looked at the Hierophant.
“Let us walk out of here,” Khepri warned, moving the scroll closer to the flame.
“That won’t be happening,” the Hierophant said calmly.
Khepri lowered the scroll into the Godfire flame. It caught fire and she threw it to the ground.
Except the scroll didn’t turn to ashes. Pale flame rippled over it, scorching the paper black. But it did not burn. The flames died away and Hassan dove for the scroll.
There was a new line of text on it.
The final secret of the Lost Rose, the secret that will not be passed on, is this: the Four Relics we protect contain the esha of the ancient deity. It is from this that they derive their power. Together they formed the Four-Petal Seal, which has kept the esha of the ancient deity contained inside the Red Gate for over two millennia. All four Relics must be kept apart, for if they are reunited and used to unseal the Gate, the deity’s esha will sow untold destruction upon the world.
Hassan stared up from the scroll in shock. “This is . . .” he said. “This is what you want, isn’t it? To break the Four-Petal Seal. To unleash the god’s esha.”
Khepri’s gaze snapped to him. “What?”
“There have been many mistakes made by the mortals of this world,” the Hierophant said. “But the first and most costly was when they slew the ancient god. Everything since then has been a stain on the history of our world. The Prophets. The Graces. The kings and queens and heroes and villains. All of them existing in a world that never should have been. But we are going to remake it. To return the world to how it should be.”
“We?” Hassan repeated.
“Yes, Prince Hassan,” the Hierophant replied. “My most loyal Witnesses . . . and you.”
Hassan stared at him. He’d assumed that the Hierophant had gotten everything he wanted from him. Why would he still need him?
Khepri pushed herself in front of Hassan. “There is no way you’re taking him with you.”
“We made a deal,” Hassan said, looking at the Hierophant. “You said you’d be gone!”
“I will be,” the Hierophant replied. “And you, with me.”
“A deal?” Arash’s voice dripped with fury.
“He’s joking, right?” Khepri asked. “This was just part of your plan.”
Hassan looked away from her.
“How could you?”
Hassan closed his eyes. He didn’t have a way to explain to her that he’d been watching Nazirah slip through his fingers. Either he would lose it to Lethia, or to the chaos that Arash wanted to bring.
But he still needed her. He turned to her, facing the crushing disappointment and anger etched on her face. “Khepri, if what he’s planning comes to pass, I can’t keep Nazirah safe. No one can. The only way is to stop him. I need you to stay. Stay and protect this city while I’m gone.”
He moved to touch her shoulder, but she pushed him away.
“I don’t even recognize you right now,” she said in a brittle voice. “But you’re right—Nazirah doesn’t need you. And neither do I.”
Her words twisted in his gut like a knife. “I don’t expect you to understand but I—I was trying to protect my people.”
Khepri turned her face away. She wouldn’t even look at him.
Grief and guilt rose in his throat and Hassan swallowed it down. He turned to the Hierophant.
“Deceiver,” the Hierophant said, almost reverently. He reached a hand toward Hassan’s brow and let his cold fingers brush against it. “You will come with me to witness the beginning of this new era.”
Hassan stood there as two Witnesses flanked him, pinning his arms to his sides.
“Take him, too,” the Hierophant said, and out of the corner of his eye Hassan saw them dragging Arash toward the exit.
Unlike Hassan, Arash struggled against his captors. “Where are you taking us?”
The Hierophant’s fingers closed over Hassan’s shoulder. “To the place where this all began.”
44
ANTON
AFTER DAYS SPENT BANGING AROUND THE NAMELESS WOMAN’S SHIP, ANTON was glad to have his legs on solid ground again.
He sat across from Jude in the dining hall of a bustling taverna by the harbor, going over their plan one last time under the cover of the raucous chatter. They’d arrived in Tanais on the eve of their seventh day of journey. They would spend the night here, catch a train to Behezda in the morning, and arrive there the following day.
“Both the Chalice and the Crown are in Behezda,” Anton said. “Or at least, according to my vision, they will be. And the Gate—the Red Gate of Mercy, that’s where the Lost Rose sealed the rest of the god’s esha. So once we get to Behezda all we have to do is get the other Relics and bring them there.”
“And find someone to wield them,” Jude added.
“You can wield the Relic of Heart.”
“No, I can’t,” Jude said.
Anton looked at him in the low light. “You haven’t tried. Not since Endarrion.”
Jude looked away, off toward the crowd of other bored, hungry travelers, his expression pinched with displeasure. Something cold clenched in Anton’s gut.
All of their interactions since leaving the Guard behind in Lukivsk had felt heavy with unspoken words. When they’d first arrived at the Nameless Woman’s ship, Anton hadn’t been able to stop himself from glancing over at Jude every few steps, opening his mouth to speak before quickly cutting himself off. Jude had left the Order with him. For him. He didn’t know how to express what that meant to him. What he hoped it meant.
But on that first night, in the hallway between each of their rooms, they’d stopped and looked at each other for a long, stilted moment.
“Well,” Jude had said at last. “Good night.”
“Good night,” Anton had replied.
And that had been it. Maybe Jude had turned away from the Order, but that didn’t mean he’d changed his mind about anything else.
Now, sitting close in the taverna, Anton forced himself to speak. “It’s all right, Jude.”
“If Penrose were here, or the rest of the Guard—” Jude blew out a frustrated breath.
“You can tell me, you know,” Anton said haltingly. “If you’re upset about leaving the Guard.”
He knew that Jude felt guilty about taking the Nameless Woman’s ship, despite Anton’s futile assurances that they hadn’t stranded the others. Lukivsk was a small harbor, but ships passed through it every day. They’d find one to take them to Novogardia’s capital, Osgard. The Order had acolytes there. They’d be safe—much safer than Anton and Jude.
But Anton didn’t think that Jude’s concern was just about the Guard’s well-being.
He took a breath, meeting Jude’s gaze. “Or if you regret it.”
“I don’t,” Jude said, so easily it had to be the truth. “You were right. We weren’t going to convince them, not in time to stop the Hierophant. It’s just . . . I feel useless. You said you needed me but I can’t even wield the Pinnacle Blade. I can’t help you at all.”
Anton wanted to tell him that it was more than enough that Jude was with him. But he knew if he did, it would open up the box of everything they weren’t talking about. The box that had been shut tight since their fight on the Nameless Woman’s ship.
“Let’s play a hand of canbarra,” Anton said instead.
“What?”
“I can teach you,” Anton went on. “Look, it’s late. Just for tonight, let’s not talk about Behezda, or the Relics, or, you know, our impending doom. Let’s play cards instead.”
“But.” Jude frowned, looking stymied. “We’re supposed to be . . . lying low.”
“Which is exactly what we’ll be doing. Playing cards in the cardroom at a taverna? No one will look at us twice.”
Which is how Anton found himself, thirty minutes later, sitting across from Jude in the taverna’s noisy cardroom. As Anton had promised, no one came to bother them, or even seemed to notice them at al
l.
“See?” Anton said as Jude studied the cards in concentration. “I told you you’d pick it up.”
“Stop distracting me,” Jude replied.
Anton leaned his cheek into his palm. “Am I distracting you?”
He said it low and flirtatious, and watched the color rise in Jude’s cheeks. He knew it was a stupid thing to do, but he couldn’t stop himself.
Jude raised his eyes to meet Anton’s, a hint of humor in them. He took his turn. Anton went next. The game ended a few turns later. Anton, of course, won.
“Don’t worry,” Anton assured Jude. “We’ll keep practicing.”
He almost suggested a rematch. He didn’t want the night to end, not yet. Jude was light in a way he hadn’t been since they’d left Endarrion. Since Anton had made the monumentally stupid decision to kiss him. Here, in the cozy light and warm bustle of the taverna, Anton couldn’t keep his mind from wandering or his gaze from lingering.
They stumbled back to the room they’d rented and found it warmly lit by a fire in the hearth, with two beds canopied by cloth and laid out with furs.
“I am very glad to be off the ship,” Jude said, leaning back against the cushions by the fire.
Anton stretched out beside him. The hearth’s flame cast a golden glow on Jude’s face, making his eyes look like seaglass.
“What?” Jude asked, and Anton realized he’d been staring.
He looked toward the flickering fire. “I know we said we weren’t going to talk about it tonight, but I just wanted to say thank you, I guess.”
“For playing cards with you?” Jude asked. Anton was pretty sure it was a joke.
“For coming with me,” Anton replied, his voice steady even as his heart quickened. “If you weren’t here . . . I don’t know what I’d do.”
Jude didn’t answer for a moment. When Anton glanced back at him, he saw Jude’s eyes were on the fire as well. “I left the Guard because you asked me to,” he said finally. “But . . . I also wanted to. I think I’ve wanted to for a long time. Longer than I can admit. But I was afraid that without the Order . . . without their purpose and their rules I would . . .”
As the Shadow Rises: Book Two of The Age of Darkness Page 33
