Chapter 10
Cyra
Phaedrus pulled a ring of keys from the pocket of his robes, a different set from the one I’d summoned, and unlocked the wall box.
Inside was something wrapped in cloth. He pulled it out, set it on a table in the middle of the room, and carefully pulled back the fabric to reveal the book he’d shown me and Bressen weeks ago.
“Your seeker powers are telling you the answers you want are in here?” he asked.
I held my hand over the book and felt the tingle that confirmed it.
“Yes,” I said. “Open it, please.”
Phaedrus pulled out a drawer under the table and removed a pair of cloth gloves like I’d seen him wear the last time he handled the text.
“Anywhere in particular?” he asked as he put the gloves on.
“In the middle,” I said.
Phaedrus did as I asked, and I hovered my hand over the first half of the book on the left. I didn’t feel anything, but when I hovered over the second part of the book on the right, my hand prickled again.
“It’s in the second part,” I said. “Open those pages in half again.”
Phaedrus saw what I was trying to do. He reached back into the drawer and took out a ribbon that he laid between the two halves. Then he again split the pages of the second part.
I hovered my hand over the two parts of the book again, and this time the section on the left made my hand prickle.
We now knew the information I sought was somewhere between the pages we’d marked with the ribbon and the new split.
Phaedrus pulled another ribbon from the drawer, marked our split and opened the section in half again.
We continued this process until we’d narrowed it down to a single page.
I held my hand on both sides of the page, and my magic told me what we needed was on the right-facing side.
“Have you translated this part yet?” I asked Phaedrus.
“I don’t think so, but let me check,” he said.
He went back into the lockbox where the book had been and pulled out some papers. His notes. He flipped through them and shook his head.
“No, I haven’t gotten there yet,” he said.
“How long will it take you to translate that page?” I asked.
He eyed the page. “Maybe a couple hours.”
“Can you do it now?”
Phaedrus looked hesitant. “I can try,” he said.
“Please. This could be very important.”
He nodded. “Of course, my lady. Do you want me to send you a message leaf when I’m done?”
“I’ll wait here for you to finish,” I said.
He raised a brow. “You plan to…sit and watch me translate?”
I held up the copy of Teachings on Desire I’d taken from the library’s erotic section. “I’ll just do some research of my own,” I said.
He gave me a small smile. “Very well, my lady. But I need to insist you find somewhere else to sit while you wait. We try to limit occupancy of the vault to one person at a time.”
I nodded. “Fair enough. I think we passed an alcove with some chairs down the hall. I’ll be there when you’re done.”
I left the vault and headed back down the hall to where I thought I’d seen a sitting nook. Sure enough, an alcove had been built into the wall just large enough to fit two cushy chairs and a small table.
I sat down with my book and began to read.
Cyra
An hour later, I was getting restless in more ways than one.
I was anxious to see what Phaedrus had discovered, but I’d also realized that reading an illustrated book on the myriad ways couples could bring each other pleasure while I was alone in public was a mistake.
I desperately wanted to find Bressen and show him some of the things I’d learned, but I couldn’t go until I knew what Phaedrus had found.
I was actually surprised I hadn’t heard from Bressen yet.
When we left our minds open to each other, which we did often, we could each feel the strong emotions of the other, and what I was feeling now should’ve had him swearing into my head.
I assumed the Priory’s wards were keeping him from sensing me, and that was probably for the best.
I closed the book and decided to check on Phaedrus. I walked back down the hall, entered the vault, and found him leaning over the text in concentration. He held a pen in one hand and scratched something on a piece of paper before turning back to the book. He looked up when I approached the table.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I was curious to see what you’ve found so far,” I said.
Phaedrus stood up straight and let out a shallow sigh. “Not much yet, I’m afraid,” he said. “As far as I can tell, it’s a poem, but I haven’t translated enough to make any sense of it. Supposedly it came to one of the ancient seers in a vision, and it was recorded here.”
“The poem is from a vision?” I asked, and Phaedrus nodded.
I frowned. “Raina once told me visions usually come true within a month or two of when someone has them. If so, why would I need to know about a vision someone recorded thousands of years ago?”
“Most visions do usually come to fruition within a couple months, if at all,” Phaedrus said, “but that’s not universally true. A uniquely gifted seer can sometimes see things that won’t happen for hundreds or even thousands of years into the future. This may be one of those cases.”
“What have you got so far?” I asked.
Phaedrus picked up the paper he’d been writing on. He looked at what he’d written, sighed, then read.
“Though it waxes and wanes among the stars,We feel its tug, a tether to our soul.A beacon in the dark, a promise keptTo find each other and again be whole.”
My mouth had gone utterly dry by the end of the second line as my eyes widened. It couldn’t be.
“That’s the first stanza,” Phaedrus said. “It’s likely about the moon, but I can’t begin to guess at its significance. I’m almost done with the second stanza.” He bent his head to the paper once more and read.
“Though it sets each eve, closing out the day-”
“We trust its rise again upon the morn,” I said, picking up the verse. “A sacrifice for love, a bargain’s made, To grant a gift and help a bond reform.”
Phaedrus’s head snapped up, shock written across his normally placid face. “How…how did you know that?” he asked.
“It’s a song my mother sang to me and my brothers as children,” I said. “It always calmed me when I was upset or helped me sleep when I was restless. Jaylan and I just thought it was a convoluted love story.”
Phaedrus seemed unable to do anything but blink at me. “Your mother used to sing this to you as a lullaby?” he asked incredulously.
I nodded.
“Where did she hear it?” he asked.
“I have no idea. But when Bressen and I went to Revenmyer yesterday to question Glenora, she knew it too. She started singing it to taunt me. I don’t know how she could’ve known I knew the song.”
“You know the rest of it?” Phaedrus asked, and I nodded again. He handed me the pen. “Please, write it down.”
I took the paper from him and bent over it, then paused. “Shouldn’t this be ‘souls,’ plural, in the second line?” I asked. “A tether to our souls?”
Phaedrus looked at his translation then back at the book. He picked up another book that lay open on the table, flipped through it to check something, then shook his head.
“No, the word is definitely singular, although I can see why you think it would be plural,” he said. “A tether to our souls makes more sense than soul.” He paused. “Unless…”
I knew immediately what he was thinking. “Unless it’s a reference to the Souls of the Moon,” I said, “men and women who share a soul. If that’s what it means, then a singular soul would make sense.”
Phaedrus nodded. “Yes, and look at the next stanza. Something that sets at eve to close out the day. It must be the sun, so perhaps that next part is about the Souls of the Sun.”
“Yes!” I said excitedly. “The third stanza is about the earth, if I remember correctly.”
I bent over the paper again and began writing.
It was possible parts of the song had evolved over the years and the version my mother knew wasn’t the same as the version in the book, but Phaedrus could check my work against his own translation.
If nothing else, having a starting point should make his work easier.
I finished writing and handed the paper to Phaedrus.
“Though it sets each eve, closing out the day,We trust its rise again upon the morn.A sacrifice for love, a bargain’s madeTo grant a gift and help a bond reform.
Though battered hard by tide and wind and flame,It stands the tests of time, remaining strong.An old wound healed, and forgiveness grantedTo act as one and right a grievous wrong.
When moon and sun and earth align once more,When hand to hand to hand are joined as past,Then will the separate once more unite,And live in peace again until our last.”
Phaedrus looked up at me again. “You and your brother thought it was a love song?” he asked.
I shrugged. “We had no idea what it was. Love song sounded as reasonable an explanation as any.”
“Well, theoretically, if it’s about the Souls of the Moon, Sun, and Earth, then I suppose it is at least partially a love song,” Phaedrus said. He pointed to the third to last line. “And look at this reference to hands. It specifies three, ‘hand to hand to hand.’”
He furrowed his brow and looked back into the book. He stood up a second later, nodding. “Yes, the word ‘hand’ is capitalized in the book. It likely refers to the Hands of the Gods.”
I bit my lip as I considered this. “It sounds like the Hands of the Gods are supposed to come together, but I don’t see that happening.
For one, I want to kill Magdalene, not work with her.
As for the other Hand, Praya could be anywhere.
No one has seen her in four hundred years, so she’s well-hidden, if she’s even still alive. ”
The warriors I’d released from the collar insisted Praya had to be alive, or they would’ve died at the bottom of the ocean, but there was no way to be sure. Bressen must’ve told Phaedrus about this discovery because the priest didn’t question my suggestion that Praya was alive.