“I sure do like those Sunflower Girls,” an older woman said. “But I’m really not sure all that business was necessary.”
“Well, you know our Leonidas likes a show, Ma.”
I was burning inside. Our Leonidas. Likes a show. Forrest was right. Killing someone was just entertainment to these people. I guess I’d always known the capital had a dark underbelly. I remembered the uncertain feeling that snaked through me at those parties, seeing all the rich people without a care in the world, the free-flowing liquor and the women and the mysterious smoke in the air, the offers to Strawberry Girls to come back to their mansions. We refused those; we weren’t that dumb.
Now I saw, it was all part of a larger rot.
My mission felt heavier and more urgent than ever. But also more impossible than ever. I was just a girl. And the people loved Leonidas…
Forrest pulled up the hood of his cloak, which I’m not sure actually made him look less conspicuous. He glanced behind him, quickly.
“They’re following us,” he said. “Two guards, at least.”
“What should I do?” I asked, strangely calm for now.
“Keep walking.”
We stuck with the family. They turned down a boulevard, passing some grand houses. The crowd was thinning out. A couple of the young women at the back of the family group glanced back at us like they wondered why we were sticking so close. I didn’t know if there was anything we could do to hide. Despite the people and the trees lining the center of the street, I felt very exposed. I heard footsteps behind us, belonging to some substantial boots.
Forrest picked up his pace. He started trying to pass the family. “Excuse me…” They were strolling slowly, several people abreast, and seemed oblivious. He nudged a sideways meandering toddler out of the way, earning himself a nasty look from one of the adults.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m just—in a hurry.”
I heard the footsteps behind us moving faster too.
Forrest looked back again.
“That’s them! Get ‘em!” one of the guards yelled.
Forrest ran, darting down the next cross street. There was a fruit vendor there, and he grabbed a crate of oranges and pitched them into the street. It wasn’t a bad idea, but they mostly just rolled out of the way.
“Fuck,” he growled. He drew his sword. “Phoebe—go.”
I froze. It’s happening. I saw the guards coming as if in slow motion. They already had their swords drawn. There were three of them, in fact, not two. Three blades that could cut this man I loved, spill his blood on the packed earth, and he would never speak again. Never touch me again. Never hold me…
If I leave, I’ll never see him again.
I couldn’t bear the thought.
“They’ll all die if you die,” Forrest barked. “Go!”
A carriage was barreling down the lane from the other end. A door flung open. Gilbert put out a hand. “Phoebe!”
Niko hung out of the other door. He held a tube to his mouth and blew two darts out of it. That was not the attack I expected from him, but it was certainly effective. The darts hit their marks, two of the men struck right in the neck. Almost immediately, they turned a sickly dark purple and collapsed into spasms. That left one soldier on his feet, but with his comrades writhing in front of him, he hesitated.
I took Gilbert’s hand and let him pull me up, and then he grabbed Forrest.
“Shut the doors,” Niko said. “Drive!”
The Silver Scribe girl had the reins. She was completely composed, leading the horse to make a tight turn and go back the way they’d came from. I was crushed in the back between Gilbert and Forrest, with Rin by the window.
“That was close,” Niko said. “Far too close.”
“How did you find us?” I cried, still trying to catch my breath. “I thought we were done for!”
“I have my spies,” Niko said. “I knew there was some kind of incident in the square, and I wondered if you’d been caught in it. We can all sense you out when we try, and I would rather not take chances. I thought you were only going out for a short visit, Sir Forrest. I would have thought you were a man for keeping to a time table.”
“I usually am, but…it didn’t turn out like I expected. Leonidas and Abel just accused Elder Dion of treason and executed him. He was my personal contact in the Temple of Stones. That can’t be a coincidence. Leonidas knows we’re here.”
“Mm,” Niko said. “Meanwhile, I have pulled some strings and my long time colleague Sully the Moccasin is waiting for us to get in the Temple of Stones through the old sewer.”
“There is not one reassuring word in that entire sentence,” Sir Forrest said.
“That’s what I said,” Gilbert agreed. “But what choice do we have?”
“Moccasin the shoe, or Moccasin the snake?” I asked.
“The snake, obviously,” Niko said. “He thrives in water, and he kills people.”
“We can’t go to the Temple with ‘Sully the Moccasin’ or anyone else,” Sir Forrest said. “If they know about Phoebe, it’s too late. We’ve got to just cut out while we can. Take this carriage straight through the gates, and maybe we’ll beat the order to close them that is surely coming. If we stay off the road altogether and head into the forest, we might be able to find a passage to the north and conduct the ritual between the three of us.”
“Calm down,” Niko said. He was sitting in front of us, twisting back to look at us, one arm sprawled across the back of his seat. “You assume there is only one way out. They can close the gates all day and night for a month—although they won’t. People must go in and out. Even so, I know six ways out of this city. More than the Emperor himself. The book says the Elders must confirm the priestess. What if we went all that way and couldn’t conduct the ritual?”
“You are underestimating the Black Army,” Forrest said. “When I worked under Abel, he had an uncanny way of predicting his enemy’s next move. If you know six ways out of this city, he knows seven. He’s the commander of the army, with access to thousands of men and all the city records. You’re a two-bit smuggler.”
Niko’s nostrils flared ever so slightly.
I snapped my fingers. “No personal insults. Please. We’ve got to make a really good decision.”
“Catch,” Niko said, tossing his dice at me.
I clapped them between my hands, barely clamping one between the edges of my palms before it could fall to my lap.
“Open your hand,” he said.
“Four?”
“Hmm,” he said. “The number has changed. It won’t be as easy as it would have been this morning, but we should still succeed. We can trust Sully.”
“I don’t care if we can trust Sully. When we get to the Temple, the guards will be there. One of the Elders was just killed. They will all be under scrutiny, probably for months. There is no chance,” Forrest said.
Rin looked at me. “When you saw the emperor speak, did he say anything about Himika?”
“Oh.” I had almost forgotten about that. “Rin, we—we saw Himika.” Damn, I did not want to tell Rin what had happened. “She was there. She refused to pledge her allegiance to Leonidas. They didn’t hurt her, but—”
He clutched his forehead. “Damn it…why is she being brave? If she gets herself killed before I can rescue her… My lady…I am not your guardian, I know I have no place to ask anything of you, but—”
“We can’t do anything for Himika,” Sir Forrest snapped. “People are going to die. Elder Dion was killed. Some of us might be killed. You can stay, Rin, but we have to forge on and we have no time to mourn.” Of course, I knew he must be thinking about his great-grandmother, too.
Rin’s eyes steeled. “I understand. You have your duty, and I have mine. Our paths diverge here. They might cross again someday. Gilbert…”
“Wait,” I said, before this turned into even more of an emotional mess. “Niko…do you swear you really know how to get us in and out of the temple and the city?
”
“Of course,” he said, lifting his hand. “I am certainly in no hurry to be executed in the public square. When my number is up, I aim to leave a majestic corpse.”
“I trust him, too,” Gilbert said, in a muted tone. He didn’t want to reveal that he’d known Niko for years, but I had to take that into account.
It was hard to look at Forrest, so I avoided it. I was already doing enough hard things for one day. “I think we should try to go to the temple… They might catch us there, yes. But they might also catch us at the gate. Or on the road. Or in the north. If Niko hadn’t shown up, I would have already lost Sir Forrest. Niko, you are my guardian. I have no reason to doubt your word. If we’re going to do this, we have to try to do it right.”
Niko’s strange amber eyes almost seemed to gleam. He barely smiled. “Wise choice.”
Chapter Seventeen
The Temple of Stones used to be the most important building in Capamere, in prior centuries. Back then, people were very serious about the gods and the Elders had more say in people’s lives than the king. It was comprised of two shining towers rising out of a large hall. The hall was the public part of the building. I’d heard there was a magnificent room inside, bedecked with stones and crystals like some fantastic underground cave, but I’d never seen it. People just didn’t go there much anymore. And I really had no idea what went on in the towers, except that the Elders lived there and kept libraries. According to some accounts, they had crazy secrets, orgies, animal sacrifices, rituals…whatever weird rumor you could think of. A lot of the weirdest stuff was said to happen at the top of the highest tower, in a spot called the Sky Bowl. You could see the curved underside of the Sky Bowl from the ground.
Today, though, we didn’t get that close to the Temple at all. We took the carriage down an alley so narrow that at one point, the side of the carriage scraped against the bricks.
“Stop,” Niko said. He waved us down. It didn’t seem like anyone had followed us here, unless they were really good at disguising themselves as a poor person. The alley was quiet, although I heard some drunken, off-key singing in the distance.
One of the buildings had a basement door that was propped ajar with a brick. Niko opened it and waved us down the stairs. He nudged open a rusty iron gate and a ladder led down into the darkness. A lantern shone in the shadows. A lanky, grinning man was waiting for us.
“Hey, guys,” he said, in a serious smoker’s rasp. “Nice night, huh?”
“It’s mid-afternoon,” Niko said. “But, I imagine we’ll get there.”
“Aw, sorry, I guess I’ve been down here too long.”
“It smells down here,” Rin said. “I thought you said this was the old sewer.”
“Believe me, it would smell a lot worse if it was a working sewer,” Niko said. “This is just the aroma of rats, decay and perhaps…” He sniffed like he was actually considering it. “A mere hint of hobo. Lead on, Sully.”
We followed a narrow passageway made up of crumbling stones to walk past a dank river of sluggishly flowing water with trash in it. It smelled like something old and forgotten, the kind of stink that was almost interesting. I’d certainly encountered worse. I guess Rin, being a prince and all, had never put his royal ass on the seat of an outhouse in summer.
The air had a weird sound when we spoke, echoing down the tunnel and getting a wavy quality bouncing off the water. Even when we spoke softly, it seemed too loud. So we didn’t talk much. I was too busy looking at my feet, anyway. The stones were crumbling away in places, and my shoes were expensive. I didn’t want to put a single toe into that water.
Inside that tunnel, time seemed to stretch infinitely. I had no thoughts. I was afraid to have thoughts. I could feel this sense of impending potential death, but I wouldn’t look at it. I have to stay in this moment, I told myself. I have to stay here forever.
Of course, I couldn’t. At some point, the tunnel ended. We encountered another ladder, and Sully said, “This is the one. Y’go up there, and you’re in a room in the Temple basement.”
“One of the Elders is supposed to meet us there,” Niko said. “Thank you for your service, my friend.” He tossed a coin at Sully, who caught it like they did this regularly. Niko led the way, thank goodness.
“All clear currently,” he said, when he reached the top.
We followed him into a room that looked like it was carved out of stone. All it contained were some barrels but it had a number of doors. The guys were all looked around cautiously like they were trying to decide which one to choose, but then one of them creaked open. An older man in robes shuffled in.
“You’re here,” he said. “All five of you?”
“Rin isn’t a guardian,” Sir Forrest said. “It’s the three of us and Phoebe.”
“Then we’ll do the ritual quickly, down here in the basement, and you can leave the way you came.”
“I’m sorry about Elder Dion,” Sir Forrest said.
“We all are…but we know the risks. We are prepared to accept them.” He paused and looked at me. “Welcome, Phoebe. It’s been so long since I laid eyes on a priestess.”
“Thank you.” I was feeling better now. They were prepared. And I always was a sucker for special attention being paid to me.
“Why don’t you come with me?” he said.
I looked at the guardians, reluctant to be parted from them.
Forrest nodded.
The old man motioned me forward down a dark passage. “Honored priestess…”
I stumbled on the uneven ground. “Sorry, I’m—a little nervous…”
“I understand,” he said. “You have a great responsibility. There is no sense mincing words. We have hoped for a priestess to succeed for these many years. You know the dangers you face.”
“Uh…yeah…I definitely do. Can we not talk about that right now?”
He faced me, his eyes blue and kind, if rather watery and old. “You have a real chance,” he said. “The gods have chosen you, Phoebe. You must not think of those who have failed. All that matters is the present and the future. Few have made it this far, with three guardians, including one of the shadows…” His voice lowered.
“Yeah, what’s the deal with that? What are the shadow guardians?”
“They carry the blood of the underworld. The blood of monsters from past the gate. It’s their blood that helps the gate to seal. Ideally, you have two guardians born under the sky of our own world, and two guardians with the blood of shadows. In our golden age, we would have prepared you for all of this from a young age. We would have helped you find all the guardians, and made sure they could never hurt you…the ones with darker tendencies.”
“Okay…”
“I shouldn’t even tell you this,” he said. “It only makes the girls nervous. When we conduct the ceremony, we will seal the Blood of Kassu. We have these sacred stones, that we have used for a thousand years, to connect the Priestess and her guardians to the Temple of Stones. Some of them look quite heavy, but you will barely feel their weight.”
“Um…okay. What do they do?”
“The stones are conduits for our magic. You used a small stone to awaken your sigils, and that of your guardians, yes?”
“Yes.”
“You are ready now for these stones. They will open your sigils to the Temple and the wisdom of ages. Then you will be ready to go to the gate. We will dress you in the sacred ornaments, which you will wear when you perform your final ritual.”
The old man clutched my hands. “It can be hard to take on a life like this,” he said. “If you reach your destination and become our priestess for this age, you will bring peace and happiness to the land. You will usher in a new golden era. But…it will feel like a burden for you at times, especially at first. Pray to the gods, and they will always ease the rocks that weigh upon you.”
I was starting to feel really in over my head now. I felt like I could either start screaming, or just stare at him with my mouth slightly open like
a hick. So I did that for a minute. The staring. Not the screaming.
He smiled gently. “It’s all right, young one.” We reached a room where several other Elders were waiting for me.
“The Priestess of the Gate,” the Elder said.
They bowed to me. “You have come, honored one.”
One of the other elders held a box lined in silk with four pieces of gold jewelry, with four pendants marked with my sigils.
It’s like the one Sir Forrest found!
One of the pieces was, in fact, an exact copy of the piece of jewelry Forrest’s great-grandmother gave to him. Maybe in the old era, women wore replicas of the priestess’s jewelry, and his great-uncle came across one. That would make sense. Forrest would be disappointed, though.
“Thank you,” I said, trying to sound dignified.
They lifted up rocks of various sizes—some very heavy looking, and carried them out. We returned to the other room with my guardians.
“Honored priestess,” the elder said. “We will need you to remove your garments—” I mean, of course, I should have known this was going to involve getting naked in front of like, ten old religious guys… “and situate yourself upon the holy stone.”
“And…then what?” Forrestt asked. “We won’t perform the quintet—or quartet, in this case—until we get to the gate, right?”
“Correct. The guardians will not even touch the priestess now. We’re simply activating all of Lady Phoebe’s sigils simultaneously here in the temple. Once this ritual has been completed, you will all be tied to the power of the temple and can tap into it all the way from the gate. This power will allow you to truly hold back the monsters. Gentlemen, if you could all remove any garments covering your sigils?”
“I am far too respectable to mention that this is a pleasant development,” Rin said, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms.
“Far too respectable,” Gilbert agreed, winking at him. “The only one with their sigil hidden by their clothes is Sir Forrest.”
“Gods damn it.” Forrest yanked on a fastener of his doublet.
I slipped off my dress and shoes. I wasn’t thrilled about putting my naked body down on a cold slab of rock, but we were in a hurry, so I forced myself to get on with it. I got down to my panties and the Elder said, “You can actually leave those on.”
Priestess Awakened Page 17
