by Hal Emerson
“Is there a prophecy of the Kindred that you will only reveal to the Prince of Ravens?”
“No,” Iliad whispered.
Raven and Tomaz relaxed, but Leah didn’t. She took a step forward, and Raven could almost see her mind working, gears twirling and whirling like clockwork pieces.
“Is there a prophecy you will only reveal to Aemon’s Heir?”
“Yessssss.”
The word came out as a sigh, and the huge head with the deep, bright eyes, turned, inch by inch, to stare at her.
To Leah’s credit she didn’t move or cry out, though her eyes grew huge, and her hands balled into fists.
“Where is he?” Asked Iliad, staring at her.
Shock crossed her face, and her mouth fell open. And then she pointed to Raven.
The head turned toward him, creaking inch by inch, almost as if it had been stuck so long in one position that it had become rusted with disuse.
Raven took a step back, suddenly fearful. Did he want to know this? Did he truly want to know a prophecy that he might not be able to change?
The ancient mouth opened, and a voice spoke then from beyond the grave, so old that it defied imagining. The man’s withered tongue worked back and forth, trying to form vowels, his lips cracked and smacked as he tried to break in consonants, and finally he spoke:
“Aemon told me that he, as Prince of the Veil, had to entrust me with what the Prophet had told him. He told me only to reveal these words to the man who could hold his sword – only to his Heir, someone who shared his blood and who was pure enough to touch Valerium.”
Raven’s heart was beating quickly, but with dread, not anticipation. He was not pure – he was the son of the Empress. He bore the Raven Talisman, the cursed Talisman that fed off death, the opposite of what Aemon had used it for. There as no one less pure than he.
“And out of the mists a Prince will come, bearing a sword of light. And he will stand, strong, true and tall, and clothed in boundless might. His eyes will see, his feet will run, his soul will know the truth; for in the knowledge of boundless years, he feels the joy of youth. A Veil he wears, and a burden he bears, both help him know their plight; and in the darkness of his soul, he learns to see the light. For when the Exiled know no more, when all their strength is lost, they must turn to him and he will stand and help them pay the cost. His blood will turn the darkness back, ‘twill turn the wrong to right; for in the end, the cursed and torn shall he once more show the light.”
Silence followed this ringing pronouncement, and Raven didn’t know what to say about it. A Prince … and a Veil.
You know another prophecy about that don’t you? A voiced asked him in the back of his mind. A prophecy you’ve been told since you were a Child.
Leah was the first to speak, breaking into the silence and his thoughts.
“A Prince … Raven, does it mean you?”
He turned to Leah, who was watching him with a carefully measured intensity. What was she thinking? How would she feel, knowing that he was supposed to be one of their Princes of the Veil?
“Raven,” she continued, still cautiously but with purpose, “I can’t help but think that this means you. Why else would it be for you alone to hear? Why else –?”
Raven held up a hand, and she stopped talking. He turned to Iliad, who was still watching him. Those great blue eyes were desperate, begging him to be someone that he just couldn’t be, and he felt a sneer curl across his face.
They have no idea who I really am. All they have in their head is this ideal, some vision of a redemptive hero. They have no idea what I’ve seen, no idea what I’ve done. And they have no idea of Mother’s might … no one can stand against Her. No Prince, not even all of the Children banded together, could stand a chance against Her. These Exiles all live in a world of fantasy.
“Do you know the Imperial version of that prophecy?” He said out loud.
“Yes,” Iliad said, his head nodding the barest fraction.
“Were you also told to keep this secret – also told it by Aemon?”
“Yes,” Iliad said, sorrow in his eyes, far away but no less intense through the fog of many years.
“Speak it,” he commanded.
“And out of the mists of time, seventh born of the Empress, shall come a Prince of the Veil. Dark will be his soul, and strong will be his body, and neither, in his need, shall fail. He goes to destroy the Exiled, the weakened and the sick; ravens ride his shoulders and his vengeance follows quick. For in his hands the Blood of Kings shall burn again so bright; and what was lost shall be regained, to seal the Empire’s might.”
Silence rang out as Iliad’s words faded. Both Leah and Tomaz were watching Raven with riveted attention, their looks unreadable.
“I take it you’ve heard that before?” Leah asked when he remained silent. “That’s why you were asking me questions about the Prince of the Veil at the Forum. That’s why you said it was an Imperial title. Isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Raven said quietly.
There was a knock at the door, and before they could respond it opened.
Tyla came in, accompanied by a slight, balding man, who, upon seeing them, turned bright red and lowered his gaze, looking embarrassed; apparently he hadn’t realized he’d be interrupting.
“Your time is up,” Tyla said, eyeing them sternly. “There are others waiting to see him now.”
“Well … I guess that’s all we needed to hear,” Tomaz said, looking at the other two.
“Yeah,” Leah said, still watching Raven with an unreadable expression, “I suppose so.”
Raven was silent, but he made no protest. His mind was a blank. They were all silent as they left the room, passing by the man who’d come in to take their place, and also silent as they left through the front door, passing a line of people that had begun to queue up outside.
The sun had just risen above the mountains, and they had a good view of the city as it began to stir, coming to life with quick efficiency that belied the season – men and women needed to make final preparations for winter, bringing in any last crops, storing food and firewood.
Raven thought about this all in a distant, distracted way, his thoughts slippery and untenable. They made it all the way back to Tomaz’s cabin without a word. When they arrived, they stopped at the door, and looked at each other.
“I wish we hadn’t gone,” Raven said. He couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice. He felt, once again, as if he was never meant to be here. He wasn’t the right person for this, obviously Aemon had been thinking of someone else. Raven’s father maybe, but not him – not after all he had done. He was the Prince of the Imperial prophecy, not the Kindred one.
“Why do you say that?” Tomaz rumbled, looking confused. “We learned that the Talismans can be changed back to Aspects – whatever they are – by using the Raven Talisman; we learned that Aemon was the first bearer of the Raven Talisman, that he stole it from the Empress when he fled south; we know now there are two versions of the same prophecy – the Kindred one says that a Prince of the Veil will save us and bring the Talismans back, and the Imperial one says that the Prince of the Veil will destroy the Kindred and bring about a new age of Empire. All of this is useful to us, all of it can help us move forward.”
“I don’t want to move forward,” Raven said. “I don’t want to choose a prophecy to believe in, I don’t want to be one Prince or another.”
“Well they can’t both be true,” Leah said.
“Obviously,” Tomaz agreed.
“So that means one of them is false,” she continued.
“The Imperial is the one that– ”
“The Kindred one must be – ”
Raven and Leah both stopped speaking and looked at each other.
“The Imperial prophecies are propaganda,” Leah said calmly, “everyone knows that. Even the Most High admit it.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, barely holding in his anger and frustra
tion. “True prophecies, those that come through the Eagle Talisman, those that are written down and recorded by the Visigony, they are different. They can’t be faked – that’s the nature of them. They must be true.”
“The Eagle lies,” she said harshly, “the prophecy must have been twisted. Geofred is a master of propaganda; you’ve admitted it yourself.”
“The Kindred prophecies are propaganda,” Raven retorted. “Everyone knows Exiles lie – you’re born with lies already between your teeth, and you spit them at anything you fear, if you don’t try to kill it first.”
He knew immediately he’d crossed a line. Her face went completely blank, and her green eyes blazed with fury. She took a step forward, and for a moment he thought she was going to strike him, but she didn’t. She stared at him, lips pulled back in a snarl of disgust and then, pulling herself back with visible effort, she turned and left, her midnight black hair swirling behind her.
For a long time, Tomaz and Raven stood there, watching where she’d disappeared down the dirt path and into the trees.
“I don’t think I need to tell you that was unnecessary,” Tomaz rumbled, and Raven cringed against his will. The big man was right; he wasn’t angry at the girl, he was angry at … he was angry at everything besides the girl.
“I know,” he mumbled. “I know.”
Tomaz didn’t say anything else for a time, until he turned and opened the door to the cabin.
“Come inside and eat,” he rumbled. “And think twice about speaking to me like that – I’m not above dunking you in another barrel of water until you relearn those lessons about manners.”
Raven went inside, his heart heavy.
Chapter Nine: A Cabin in the Woods
The following weeks were full of many things, but notably absent of Leah. She and Raven seemed to have decided on a mutual no-talking agreement until they had both had time to cool off. So, for a few weeks Raven’s world consisted only of Tomaz and the forest that encompassed Vale.
At first Raven just lived. He stayed out of the city, away from any Kindred, and went day-to-day, moment-to-moment, trying not to think about what Iliad had told them, trying not to think about anything. That wasn’t his life anymore – he didn’t want to be a Prince. He’d renounced his claim to his Mother’s throne, he’d turned down Autmaran’s nomination, he felt entitled to a life without demands. He was just another person. Ordinary. No one of importance. He liked this life Tomaz lived. He would live it too.
What about the Children?
“What about them?” He retorted out loud.
“What?” Tomaz rumbled.
“Nothing.”
But the voice didn’t find this argument convincing.
They won’t be idle. I killed Ramael and they know it. Mother knows we have the Ox Talisman and She must want it back. There are still Seekers hidden in Veil, there is still the chance of an attack, there might even be some way –
He needed something to do to distract his mind.
“Tomaz,” he said, “it occurs to me that you probably don’t want me sleeping on your couch for the rest of my time here.”
“It’s only now occurring to you?” The giant rumbled, looking put-upon.
“All right,” Raven said, “if you’re so eager to get rid of me, then help me build my own cabin.”
Tomaz dropped his amused airs.
“You know I was joking?” He asked.
“Yes,” Raven confirmed.
“You can stay with me as long as you need to.”
“I know, and I thank you for that. But I remember we talked about it and I think I would like a cabin of my own. And I know we’re friends, but you can’t really want to spend all of your time with me. If you do, then we need to have a different kind of conversation.”
Tomaz laughed, causing Raven to smile. It was the first smile he’d had in a while, and he was grateful for it.
And so they set about building a cabin. Raven had already selected a spot, a place surrounded by white rocks and pine trees, up beyond the giant’s cabin on a ridge that overlooked the city, and Tomaz took the time to help him go about it properly.
A surprising amount of planning went into the project. Apparently they needed actual drawn out plans that detailed height and weight and quantity. Raven had just assumed you did it as you went; an assumption he kept to himself when they got underway and he saw how much meticulous detail actually went into such a project.
He also realized that this kind of thing was not something that normally went so fast. It was only due to Tomaz’s boundless strength and good humor that the project progressed so quickly. Wielding his huge woodsman’s ax and belt of tools – containing scrapers, hammers, and a variety of other implements that did everything from cut round pegs to drill square holes – Tomaz quickly showed himself to be a master carpenter. Raven realized by the end of it all that while he’d certainly never thought of Tomaz as stupid, he’d also never thought of him as smart; Leah was the brains of the outfit and Tomaz was the first to say it. But now, in the midst of all this, Raven felt incredibly guilty for judging him so. The big man may not know anything about trade ledgers or civil law, but he knew more than Raven ever could about all manner of craftsmanship and forestry. The ex-BladeMaster was practically built for this kind of work, and he attacked it with a skill that elevated it to an art form.
And so as the weeks progressed, Raven began to pay more attention to his friend, who he seemed to have started taking for granted. The first thing he noticed was Tomaz’s eating habits; he was astonished by what he saw. First, as Leah had pointed out, the big man ate no bread nor grain of any kind.
He did, however, eat everything else.
There was no animal, plant, nut, seed, insect, fruit, or furry woodland creature that he deemed either too disgusting or too sacred to eat. And not just that, Tomaz ate every part of the creature. The internal organs were boiled down into a soup-like substance that turned out to be gravy – at which point Raven realized he really had no idea where most of the food he’d eaten all of his life truly came from – and also preserved feet, bones, cartilage, knuckles, tendons, beaks, and so forth, cooking half of them into a thing he called “bone broth” and boiling the other half at a different temperature to make, of all things, glue.
In fact, the big man wielded a cooking knife with just as much dexterity as he did his greatsword, and while most of the process was disgusting, the end result was almost sinfully decadent. Tomaz used large pads of butter or animal fat to grease his pans, and more often then not ate a whole dozen eggs with three or four slices of bacon as a “light” breakfast, skipped lunch entirely, and then ate a few pounds of meat each evening with a huge helping of freshly cut greens, peppers shaped like bells, tomatoes the size of Raven’s fist, sweet multi-hued apples, walnuts, cheese and anything else he had managed to store away or else collect from the modest garden behind his house.
“Gotta use all of these up,” Tomaz would tell Raven about this or that herb. “By tomorrow they’ll all be gone.”
And true enough, the next day snow fell. Not heavy enough to stop them in their cabin building pursuits, but certainly enough to kill most of what was growing in the giant’s garden.
“Your powers of weather prediction may border on the occult,” Raven said to the big man, wonder in his voice.
“No powers necessary,” the big man replied, trying to hide a smug smile. “I may have extra strength from the Talisman, but I’ve been able to tell the weather for years now.”
“Can you teach me?” Asked Raven. The way he’d spoken must have shown he was doubtful of the proposition; after all, he had asked the same question many times before during the cabin-building and had failed to grasp many of the concepts.
“Actually,” Tomaz said, “I think you may end up being better at this than I am from what you’ve told me about your Talisman.”
“Interesting,” Raven said, genuinely curious. “How so?”
“I’ll tell you,” Tom
az said, “but before I do, you spend another hour teaching me to use the Ox Talisman.”
Raven hesitated for a moment, and then mentally kicked himself for doing so. Of course he would help – there was no down side to Tomaz learning how to better channel the powers of the Ox Talisman; it would help both build the cabin, and keep the big man safe once the snow thawed and the Pass was opened.
He quickly agreed and they went about it once again, sitting opposite one another and focusing in on their breathing. They hadn’t made much progress yet; for Raven the whole thing was second nature, and it had taken some time to boil it down to the necessary parts. It was like trying to teach someone how to breathe – it was something that came so naturally now that it was hard to explain. It was something he did every day, usually unconsciously when he was around people or passing through a crowd. Usually nothing life-shaking occurred as a result: it was difficult to touch most people’s lives, simply because they weren’t very important and so left little impact on the world. But every so often Raven would be looking at someone and suddenly the sound of a forge hammer was ringing in his ears, the smell of painted walls was wafting through his nose, and he’d realize he was reaching through the Talisman. More than that, the Talisman heightened what he saw and experienced – a thousand details were constantly pressing in on his eyes, his ears, his skin, his tongue, every second he was connected to the Raven.
