Chapter 16 #2
A guard stepped up next to me, holding a torch.
His uniform was unfamiliar to me, but the person I was in the dreamlike world was confident in his trustworthiness because there was no clear sigil on the right side of his chest. The flickering flames illuminated the prisoner: a Seeing One was strapped to a chair, head lolling.
Bruises and dried blood covered their face, and their arms and legs were emaciated. Every breath they exhaled was a wheeze.
“Yes,” they finally whispered. “I’ll tell it.”
My fingernails scraped along the metal, and excitement leapt like a living creature in my chest. Finally, I thought. After endless days of torture, they’ve finally broken.
I realized with a jolt whose body I inhabited. This was Arraya, Callum’s wife. I remembered what Valen had told me—that Arraya had taken Tam hostage and forced them to be her personal Seeing One. When she discovered Tam had a prophecy they did not share with her…
She had tortured Tam until they succumbed.
Dimly, I was aware of existing in my own body still, too. I swallowed.
Arraya gestured to the guard, who opened the cell door. Tam made no attempt to escape or even fight back. They were too weak for either. Arraya moved forward and knelt next to Tam. “Prophesy,” she commanded.
Tam exhaled a rattling breath. Their eyes lit with dim, glowing silver, and they began to speak.
Old gods will rise
To meet the new.
When the Weaver meets her end
By her own creation—
A guardian divided—
Her heirs shall rise.
Him, harbinger of forebearers’ doom.
She, born of brothers’ blood.
Hellbringer. Bloodsinger.
Dawn of new threads, with uncertain ends,
Stained souls awakened once more.
Beware: weaving is a careful art.
Those fragile threads
Care not for unwinding.
Tam fell silent once more. Arraya turned to the guard, who held a sheet of parchment, scribbling frantically on it with an inked quill. When he reached the end, he handed it to Arraya.
She studied it for a moment. I knew she was committing the words to memory. I was doing the same, after all.
There would be time to interpret it later, she knew. But for now, there was a promising amount of detail here. Tam had seen the future before, but never given a prophecy like this—one told in riddles.
“You don’t have anything else?” I asked them.
Tam shook their head. “Nothing.”
“And you don’t know what it means.”
“No.”
I stood once more. The ink on the paper was dry, and I folded it in half. “Best put you out of your misery, then.” I pulled a dagger from the belt at my waist and slit the Seeing One’s throat in one smooth motion.
Then I turned to the guard. “You did well these past weeks. What is your name, soldier?”
The man stared straight ahead. His jaw trembled. Perhaps he knew what was coming as well as I did. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, I buried the dagger in his throat, too.
I stepped out of the cell and surveyed the scene. No other witnesses. That had been the plan. The parchment had bloody fingerprints on it now, but it was still more than readable. The perfect text to study as I formulated my plan.
“Callum.” The name echoed in the prison hallway. A violent ache tore through me. He was gone. But the parchment I held brought me a bit of hope.
“I am coming for you, my love.”
On my next inhale, I was myself again. I stood in the room of nothingness, the Tapestry exactly as it had been before the vision.
My gaze went directly to my hands—clean.
I exhaled with relief. My stomach roiled at the memory of the tortured Seeing One.
At Arraya’s thoughts, so clear about it having been months since they were captured.
“What was that?” I demanded.
“A memory,” the Tapestry said smoothly. “You asked to see the prophecy, and so the prophecy you have seen.”
But an intuitive sense deep within me told me I didn’t yet know everything I needed to. There were still pieces of the puzzle missing. The prophecy had been almost illegibly vague. Even if the Queen of Kryllian had somehow gained access to it, how would she have known about my Lurae?
Suspicion took root. “How do I know you aren’t just showing me what you want me to see?
” I took a step back. The whole experience had been…
eerie. I didn’t appreciate feeling like a stranger in my own skin.
It reminded me too much of my nightmares, filled with imagined people and all-too-vivid emotion.
Maybe they aren’t imagined people, part of me whispered. Maybe the dreams you’re having are memories, too.
I shoved the thought aside. Impossible. “You could be lying to me about everything,” I accused. “All of it.”
“Perhaps,” it said. Despite the ordeal I’d just witnessed—one the Tapestry must have seen also, at some point—its layered voice remained neutral. “If it is proof you desire, then one of your own memories should serve well enough.”
The emptiness filled again, this time with a scene I knew intimately.
I was back in the prison, but now it was occupied by someone else’s belongings.
S?ren, dressed in full Hellbringer regalia, walked into the room.
I paused in my swordplay practice, sheathing Aloisa and pushing a damp lock of escaped hair off my forehead.
“You’re back early,” I said.
He pulled the mask off, set it on the table. The frown lines on his forehead were more pronounced than usual. “Long battle today,” he said by way of explanation.
Everything was the exact same as it had been when this moment truly happened.
Months ago. This was one of the last nights I spent in the prison with S?ren, when we had finally confessed our feelings for each other and decided being together was worth the pain that would come from being apart.
Distantly, I felt mounting dread in my gut, realizing what was coming next in the memory.
But when I tried to say Stop, my past self paid no mind.
Of course she doesn’t, I realized, nausea taking over. She doesn’t know I’m watching this.
In the memory, I wished his words didn’t send a twist of fear through me. A long battle for him meant Frode or Jac might have been injured or killed. And if not them, then certainly my people had experienced casualties.
But that was our lot in life—the risk I’d come to terms with when I kissed him for the first time. I strode over to him, winding my arms around his neck.
“Forget what’s out there,” I said softly. “You’re here now.”
His eyes softened and I pulled him down until his lips met mine. The kiss was slow and sensual, deep and all-consuming. His arms wrapped around my waist, and he lifted me off the ground slightly, pulling a laugh from me.
Teeth scraped against my lip and a rush of butterflies swarmed.
I tried to pull back. The me living the memory did not oblige my silent command.
“Stop,” I said, and I heard my voice echoing somewhere distant. “Stop.”
The scene faded, and the Tapestry appeared before me once more. I wrapped my arms around myself, grateful for my regained autonomy. “Was anything amiss?”
I stared at the being before me. Not a single thing had been off about the vision. It even included details I’d tried to forget. I’d experienced the moment like I was living it all over again.
“What are you?” I whispered.
It extended its arms. I watched the threads it was made of swirl, forming minuscule images that changed as quickly as they formed.
“We are all who have come before,” it said.
“We see all. But there are many paths before you, and to tell you too much would be to choose your fate before you choose it yourself.”
“I don’t trust you.” I didn’t mean to admit it, but it was the truth. “Whose side are you on?”
“Ah,” it said. “You wish to know where our loyalties lie. We are not tied to the whims of mortals, young queen. Our ultimate desire is for the Fjordlands to thrive.”
I paced back and forth, wringing my hands. I was filled with too much nervous energy to stand still any longer. “Do people worship you?”
Its laugh was cacophonous. “No. It would be foolish to worship any being.”
“What do you…do?” I ventured. “Why doesn’t the world know of your existence?”
This god was not like anything I’d pictured. The statues in the center square of Bhorglid’s capital were larger than life, not my height—they towered, and in their towering they commanded. Obedience, respect, blind deference. This Tapestry didn’t seem to be asking for anything of the sort.
It did, however, seem to be all-knowing. A terrifying prospect.
What makes a god, then? I wondered.
“The Fjordlands are older than other places in the world, but they will only continue on if those with ill intent are not allowed to weave the threads in the ways of destruction. This is our purpose—to ensure that when the threads risk becoming tangled and broken, a person rises to keep them intact.” As it spoke, it waved a hand and threads split off into a true tapestry behind it, winding together into bigger, clearer images: villages filled with people, bonfires in the center of dances, a red-haired girl and a blond boy holding fishing poles and standing on a lake of ice.
“Wait,” I gasped, throwing out a hand. “Those two children—the girl and the boy. You know them.”
It hummed. “We do.”
“They’re real.” Tentatively, I stepped up to the woven image. It looked like intricately sewn fabric, but the threads emanated a small amount of light and warmth. I reached up but didn’t allow my fingertips to connect with the picture. “I’ve been dreaming about them.”
“Yes,” the Tapestry said. “Such things are to be expected now that your Lurae has fully awakened.”
“Fully awakened?” I felt like a child, repeating everything the Tapestry said. But so much was unclear, and I had endless questions.
“Your Lurae has lived inside you, dormant for your entire life,” it said. “Only when the timing was right could we allow it to wake.”