“Who plotted to kill me. Friends are not worth much to me. Enough of this talk. Let me ask the questions now. Do you know where the specter comes from?”
I hesitated; how much more did I dare reveal to him? I looked at Elenna, who inclined her head towards me. “He was the first king, who grew too powerful and was sealed away by the first of my kind,” I replied. I just need to draw out time until Johai gets here and the ceremony can begin.
“Yes. And do you know how you summon him to this realm?”
“I could not say since I have never done it.”
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t.” Adair paced around the edge of the room.
I followed him with my eyes. Elenna remained between us like a guard dog.
“A sacrifice opens the portal and unleashes his power. The more blood you spill, the greater the power. If you kill a close relative, for example, the closer the better, you can gain even more power from the specter. That’s what my uncle Garrison learned when he discovered the old text. But what he didn’t know was we are tied to the specter. He is our birthright; he is a part of House Raleban.”
“You’re insane. The specter would use your body and leave you as a shallow husk.”
He waggled his finger at me. “That’s where you’re wrong, Maea. I killed my uncle, as you may remember, and in doing so I made myself the rightful heir to my family’s legacy. Don’t you see? All of this—Sabine, the war—all of it has been leading me here to my destiny, even you. The first king loved a diviner; you were meant to be my true queen.”
“You’re mad. You do not know anything.”
“You only know what you have seen from Johai. He was weak and easily overcome. Once the specter and I become one, you will see what true power is.” His eyes gleamed. “Now it’s time for you to open the portal.”
“I won’t open the gate. I refuse.” I was biding my time. The apex of the eclipse was approaching. The power was coursing through me, and the edges of my vision were beginning to blur. I saw images of a hundred different pasts, presents, and futures all mashing together into a series of broken images. I saw Sabine’s son, Leonel, dark and brooding, sitting upon a dark throne. There was the golden woman beside him, her hand resting on his shoulder. I saw myself running after four children, among them was Sabine’s son as a small boy, and then finally I saw Johai with a crown of twisted silver and gold upon his brow, and his throne rested upon the bodies of thousands.
“Then I’ll kill you. Do not defy me again, Maea. I will not forgive you a second time.”
I glanced at Elenna. She was drawing closer to Adair, but he did not see her. His gaze was fixed on me. I saw the glitter of the blade in her hand.
“No!” I shouted, too late.
Elenna lunged at Adair. He spun around and caught her by the wrist. She was of a height with him, but Adair had better muscle strength, and he easily overpowered her. The dagger in her hand went skidding across the floor and thunked against the base of the basin. I squatted down to pick it up.
“Don’t you dare,” he snapped, “touch that blade or I will open up her gut.” Adair had a sword crossing Elenna’s abdomen.
Elenna nodded, and I stood up slowly.
Adair smiled and crept closer to me. “Good,” he said as he approached me with Elenna pinned against him. She did not fight nor struggle. Adair strolled over to the basin and stared at the midnight water. “How do we open the portal?”
I touched the hidden dagger inside a pocket in my gown. My hands trembled. I cannot do this. I am no murderer. My fingers closed around the handle, my palms were slippery. I have to do this or Johai will die.
I spoke while looking at the basin. “It requires blood. In order to unleash the specter fully, we have to open the gateway between the world of the living and dead. Someone has to die.”
Adair was leaning over Elenna, peering into the water. The blade was pressed against her gut. If he moved any more, he would cut into her. Now, I have to do it now before I lose my resolve.
Adair grunted, and I looked up to see that Elenna was no longer in Adair’s grip. She was behind him with the dagger in her hand. In a swift motion she drew the blade across Adair’s throat. His blood sprayed across the surface of the water in the basin, and light glimmered on the surface where his blood had fallen. Adair looked at me in wide-eyed surprise. How Elenna had managed to break free, I would never know. It had to be some magic the Biski had that I was not aware of.
“The time has come, Maea,” Elenna shouted. “But I am sorry it will not be you that opens the gateway.”
The water glowed a vibrant violet color, and from within the water, a hand reached out. Elenna clasped hands with it. She pulled out a woman glowing with white and violet light. The woman stood inside the basin and looked around the room, to Adair’s body, which was bleeding on the floor. The glowing woman stepped down from the basin and came to Elenna, who held her hands open to embrace her. The two melded into one.
“Why?” I croaked.
Elenna smiled. Power poured forth from her. Her eyes were a blazing violet. Her very skin seemed to light up the entire chamber. “I had to become the gateway for you. The gateway would have consumed you and your daughter; this is my sacrifice.”
High cold laughter filled the chamber. I slid my gaze from Elenna to Johai, who was standing in the doorway. “It seems you have begun without me.”
Chapter Twenty-two
JOHAI STRODE INTO THE chamber. Power rolled off him, filling the space between us. His cruel black eyes were trained on me. I held onto the basin for support. I was not sure I would be able to remain standing otherwise. Elenna stood beside me. The light from her was warm and illuminated the water’s surface. For once it was empty; there were no images to taunt me, no half-glimpsed futures. The water is silent. I could feel the eclipse reaching its zenith. Elenna had made the gateway; all that remained was to bring Johai beyond it. Does Elenna think to lead the specter to the underworld? I looked to Elenna. She did not move but stared at Johai. I cannot let her do this. Defeating the specter is my destiny. The stench of blood was thick in the air. I had never imagined the final moments would be like this, yet it seemed appropriate. Adair was dead as we had planned; all that remained was for me to defeat the specter and save Johai. It had all seemed so easy in my mind.
“So the time has come, Maea. How I have waited for this moment.” Johai came closer. He stepped around Adair’s body. His movements were languid. He was taking his time, drawing out the moment before we both knew I would be forced to act. Elenna was still as a statue beside me. I reached out for her hand. Her skin was aflame, but I felt the trickle of power entering my body, burning my veins and filling me with the power of all the diviners who had gone before me. I saw their faces flash in front of me, from my mother and my grandmother to the first of our line. She had a round face and round violet eyes. Her hair was curly and black, her skin like porcelain. It is time, she seemed to whisper to me. I took a step out from behind the basin and revealed the swell of my pregnant body.
The cocky smile Johai wore faltered. He had not been prepared for this. “Whose seed filled your belly, diviner? Do you think I will spare you because you are with child? You are wrong.”
“It is yours,” I said. The power was filling me, imbuing me with strength. Just a few more moments and I will be prepared.
He stared at me for a long moment. “That is not possible.”
“Yes. Elenna put a spell on you so that you would sleep within Johai, and it was then that I lay with Johai and conceived our daughter, a diviner.” I laid my hand on my stomach. My daughter was kicking, twisting in the womb as if she were fighting to break free. She feels the power. Maybe she is even sharing the visions with me.
He shook his head and took a step back from me. “No. This is not how it should be! Hundreds of times we have played this game, and always it ends the same.”
He was in a rage. He pulled a sword from his scabbard and swung it through the air, fighting an in
visible foe.
“This time is different.” I let go of Elenna’s hand and stepped forward.
Johai stared at me, eyes wide, his pupils dilated so I could not see the whites of his eyes but for a small white outline. He held his sword loosely in his hand. I took the sword from him and tossed it across the room. He did not fight me. His eyes were fixated upon me. I felt the power surging through me, guiding my steps. I reached up and placed my hands on his cheeks. I felt the stubble of his cheeks beneath my palms and looked into the eyes of the man I loved, possessed by an ancient spirit of unimaginable evil.
“I am going to save you. I am the circle unbroken.” I kissed him, and the energy Elenna had imparted unto me erupted from me and channeled into Johai.
He tried to pull away. He groaned and thrashed, but I held onto his face, letting the power mingle and flow between us. I felt as if we would both burst into flames. White light filled my vision, and for a few moments I felt nothing but fire and heard the pounding of drums.
Then the pain ended, and everything was silent. I blinked and opened my eyes on a cottage by the sea. A young woman sat outside the cottage door, with a net that she seemed to be mending. Her long fingers twisted in the cording of the net and made sense of the knots and tangles before her. There was a trail that led up to the cottage, and a horse clattered up the lane, upturning mud in its wake. A young man reined up a few feet from the woman. He looked down at her from horseback. He was well dressed in brocade, with a long cape over his shoulders. On his head he wore a cap with a long feather. The woman had not looked up at him once since he arrived.
“Woman, I am looking for the harbor,” the man said in a commanding tone.
She continued to untangle the net and did not look up from her work.
The young man huffed and said again, “You shall answer your betters when they speak to you.”
Again she ignored him, but there was a smile tugging the corner of her lips. He growled under his breath and climbed down from the horse. His shoes were splattered with dirt as he squelched in the mud. And he groaned to see it. He walked over to the woman, squatting down in front of her.
“Are you deaf and mute?”
She looked up at him with wide violet eyes. “No, just someone who believes she has some worth.”
He took a step back, perhaps taken aback by her words or maybe it was her beauty. Either way his next words were much kinder. “Pardon my rudeness. I am in a rush, you see. There is a man I must see about a ship.”
She stood up and brushed the dirt from her skirt. “Are you sailing away somewhere?” she asked with a wistful air.
“Not yet, I’m having a ship built, one that will sail farther than any other has before.” He smiled, and when he did, it made his sapphire-colored eyes sparkle.
“I’ve always wanted to sail across the sea,” she remarked. “The harbor is a few leagues north of here. Follow this road, and you shall reach it soon enough.” She turned to go inside without another word.
The man watched her walk away before shaking his head and returning to his mount. He rode away but not without a few more backwards glances in the cottage’s direction.
The day changed, and the man came again. He stopped by the cottage, making small talk. This happened several times over. At first the woman was cold to him, but he began to bring her violets and strings of pearls and other trinkets. She warmed to him when he bought fish and baskets from her—anything to talk to her, to see her smile. After buying his third bushel of fish from her, he began to ride away, but before the cottage was out of sight, he rode back and knocked on her door.
She answered with a perplexed expression. “Is there something else you needed?”
“Yes.” He hesitated and fiddled with his hat, which he gripped with both hands in front of him. “I am sailing on the morrow, and I wanted to know if you would come with me.”
She smiled. “You would take a simple fisherman’s daughter on your adventure?”
He blushed. “I would, if you will be patient with me. I know I can be rash and rude, but I think we might make a good pair.”
She laughed. “I suppose you will need me to teach you how to behave in polite company, then.”
They rode away together to the harbor, where a great ship awaited them. Settlers with chickens, cows, and all their worldly possessions filed onto the ship. The fisherman’s daughter stood on the prow of the ship, and the wind pulled its fingers through her hair. The young man stood beside her and reached for her hand. At first she looked down at the touch before bringing his fingers to her lips and kissing his knuckles. They rode across oceans, fared against storms, and finally landed on a sandy shore with high cliffs and gulls crying overhead.
The newcomers settled the land, and the young man and the fisherman’s daughter started a community there. A village sprouted up along the shore. Soon more and more settlers came and inhabited the land surrounding the village. The land was rich and fertile, and the settlers were content. There was trade with the natives, who were olive skinned with dark hair.
“I was too ambitious. We sailed south to find a new world together, a place where we would start our own lives, our own new kingdom. Fate is cruel, however, and our happiness was short-lived,” a man said to me. His voice seemed familiar, but I was not certain where I had heard it before. “We built our homes, and at first, we got along with the natives. Then when the population grew, we decided it was time to create a government. I was elected as king, and we decided to build our palace on the cliff side overlooking the sea that my wife loved so much. It was to our folly; we chose poorly in that hillside. There was nothing there but a burrow deep in the ground, a chamber at the center of the earth with a stone basin. It seemed unused and forgotten. We thought it would do no harm to build there. Then after the palace was built, the old woman came.”
A bent-over old woman with gray hair and nut-brown skin waddled up a slope to the doors of the newly made palace. It was crafted from white marble and boasted high walls and soldiers to guard it. The woman knocked on the palace gates and was escorted into the throne room of the palace. The king and queen sat on thrones side by side.
The old woman pointed a finger at the pair of them. “You have brought doom upon yourselves. You built your palace on a holy place. You shall both be cursed for the disrespect you have shown the Goddess!” she shouted. Her voice echoed off the columns of the audience hall. The king seemed amused while the queen seemed troubled by her words.
“Please tell us, what have we done wrong?” the queen asked.
“This place was a holy place, sacred to the Mother and her priestesses. Those who went into the Sea Chamber could look into the water and were granted visions of the future. But no longer, the chamber has been sealed and the Mother’s voice cut off from her children.”
“What if we were to open the chamber once again? Would that appease your Mother?” The king laughed.
The old woman scowled at him. “Nothing you do will please the Mother, but if you send a woman to look at the water, perhaps a path can be found to fix these atrocities,” the old woman declared.
“I took it upon myself to make right our wrong against the native people. We could not tear down our palace, but I could make sure they could reach their sacred chamber. We unearthed it, and a stairway was built to lead to it. I was among the first to look into the water’s surface, and therein I saw a future of great promise, one where our king, my husband, brought the natives and our settlers into a new age of harmony and peace. My false vision would be our undoing. It was a trap from the start,” a woman whispered to me as the image of the old woman faded away.
The king sat at a council table with a group of men. They had the olive skin and dark hair of the natives. One of the men jumped to his feet and pointed a sword at the king. The king stood and drew his sword and slew the man in one stroke. The others shouted and pointed, bringing out their own swords, but the king’s men slaughtered them all. The queen entered the chamber to f
ind the massacre left behind. Her eyes were wide with terror as she looked to her husband covered in blood. This was not the proud young man she had fallen in love with. It was as the old woman said; they were cursed. This place had corrupted them. It had made her husband into a deranged madman.
“I sought out the old woman. I begged her to help us. She refused. She only laughed and said I had reaped what I had sown.”
The young queen sat before the basin and watched the images dancing across the surface, each more terrible than the last. Her husband meanwhile led a battle against the natives. Blood was running like a river across the land. He had grown too ambitious, too powerful. The basin had warped him into a monster.
“I wanted to stop him, to reclaim the man I loved. I sought the water for advice. I did not know what else to do. What I saw there made my blood run cold, but I knew I had to do it. There was only one way to stop the destruction he was bringing.”
The woman stood in the Sea Chamber. It was the same circular room I now stood in, and water continued to drip into the basin. The water was dark, and the light coming from her torch seemed unable to penetrate the darkness of the water. The king came into the chamber. He wore armor and held a helmet under one arm.
“Why have you summoned me here,” he said to her.
“Because this war needs to end. Can you not see it is the curse of this basin? We must leave this place and never look back before we are lost,” she replied.
“You’re mad. I do this all for you! For the kingdom we built together,” he shouted in reply.
“I only want my husband back.”
He scowled at her. “I am right here. You have been blinded by your visions; you cannot see what is plainly before you. Perhaps I should leave you locked within here. Would that make you happy?” He did not wait for her reply and instead walked towards the steps.
She cried out as he tried to walk away. He ignored her pained cries. Before he could reach the door, she held aloft a dagger. She ran the blade across her palm, and into the water she let her blood drop.
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