Chapter 44
She turned and ran.
She’d made it three steps to Six, ready to leap on her back and soar away, when Erath drawled, ‘Stop her.’
A whoosh of power, and suddenly his shadows had locked around her ankles, her wrists, faster than she could gasp at their icy touch.
‘Let me go!’ Ezer screamed, as panic tightened in her chest.
She tried to stumble backwards, but the shadows were too strong.
And then suddenly Kinlear was at her back, his body cold instead of warm, strong instead of sickly. ‘Don’t fight it, Ezer,’ he hissed into her ear. ‘Don’t fight what the One has fated for you.’
‘You will never have me,’ Ezer spat. ‘I will fight you until the day you—’
‘Silence,’ the Acolyte hissed.
Her words died on her tongue. Fear took anger’s place, because a tendril of shadow now swirled at his fingertip.
Shadow … that was slowly forming into the shape of a blade.
And it was pointed right at Six.
A sob rose in the back of her throat. ‘Don’t,’ she begged. ‘Don’t touch her.’
‘Bring her here,’ Erath sighed, and then Kinlear was pushing her towards the throne. Then past the throne, to the enormous crevasse in the floor where the pool of blood once sat. ‘To the Veil.’
Her toes were right on the edge. It was only the shadows holding her back now. Her breath froze as she looked into the endless dark abyss … as it seemed to sigh and breathe her in.
It was hungry for her.
She could sense it.
A desperate sob rose in her chest.
‘You are fated to join us, Ezer,’ the Acolyte said. ‘But you must make the choice yourself. You must see to believe. Listen to the voice! Let the whisper prove to you what glory and freedom awaits.’
‘Let me go,’ Ezer begged. ‘Please, Erath. For Styerra, let me go!’
‘I was afraid you would say that,’ he said with a tsk. ‘Which is why I will offer you the same mercy I give every survivor we find on the battlefield, inches from death. We bring them here, to the Veil. And the One offers them a choice. What will it be, Daughter? Will you die … or will you live?’
Horror raced through her as his shadows squeezed, like constricting snakes. So tight, she cried out. And then they were turning her around. Spinning her so that her back was to the void, and only the shadows held her from tumbling in.
Kinlear stood a breath away.
‘Ezer,’ he sighed. ‘Don’t fight it anymore. Join us. We could do great things together.’
‘No,’ she gasped as his hand lifted the blade from his hip.
Six screeched, fighting like hell to get to her, but the shadows had bound her, too. ‘Kinlear, please,’ she begged him through tears. ‘Come back to me. Think of before, think of everything we’ve been through. You love me. You love me, Kinlear. You would never hurt me.’
‘I do love you,’ he whispered, and smiled through his fangs. She flinched as he leaned forward and kissed her. ‘But I love the One more,’ he sighed against her lips.
She gasped as he pulled away.
Six screeched and thrashed like she felt the blinding pain for herself.
Because when Ezer looked down … she found Kinlear’s blade buried deep in her chest.
‘There’s only one way out of this,’ Kinlear hissed.
Ezer cried out as she ripped the blade from her chest. She stumbled, her body numb and cold, as the blade clattered to the stones.
‘Die, my love,’ Kinlear said. ‘Or choose to join us and live.’
His face was the last thing she saw before she fell into the abyss.
Into the darkness, she fell.
She could hear Six screeching, fighting against the shadows to get to her, and as the light from above faded, and the surface shrank …
Something dove in after her.
Two dark wings.
Six.
She felt the raphon swoop beneath her, and the feeling of falling disappeared as Six’s body caught hers.
There was no pain.
There was only warmth as her eyelids fluttered closed.
‘Ezer.’
She gasped at the voice.
Because it wasn’t Styerra.
She knew at once … it was the One.
It was ancient, and powerful, a voice that she felt rumble through her.
‘Please,’ she thought to it, while she clung to Six. She thought Six was flying up, but there was no surface in sight. They were lost in the darkness, so thick that not even Ezer’s scarred eye revealed a thing to her. ‘I’m not ready to die.’
She felt now that they were in some place other.
A place not quite living and not quite dead.
‘Then you must listen to the last truths of the Shadow Tome … and believe.’
And as they tumbled through darkness … the One told her the rest of the story.
‘It was in the black mountains, a land of darkness and omens, that Wrenwyn discovered the whisper. It came from a crack in the stones, a fracture in which the One was able to peer through, for the belief in the Five had waned just enough that it was able to free its voice.
A single tendril of its soul.
A mere shadow.
‘I am the One,’ it told Wrenwyn, and the princess knelt there on the edge of the world as it promised her many things.
Power and freedom, a life without holds on her magic. A life without laws to keep, where no one could tell her what to do, or who she was, or what to believe.
She wept as she listened, for she’d never had a choice of her own.
It was always the will of the Five, and the Masters, who forced it upon her.
‘What must I do,’ Wrenwyn asked, ‘to hold on to this promise?’
The One had only a single request:
‘Become my Acolyte.’
A mortal representative, someone to go before and sow distrust in the Five.
Someone to build an army and find this realm’s key.
‘Join me,’ the One promised. ‘And you, and all your ancestors, will rule upon earthly thrones.’
And so Wrenwyn became Lordach’s first Acolyte.
She shed her own blood into the mountain and allowed the One to feed upon it. Her humanity changed, but her soul was filled with power.
And it was wild, and wondrous, and strange.
It gave her wings of blackest night … for with her newfound power, she tamed the first raphon.
The One shared with her all the knowledge of the darkness.
She learned of new creatures, of new magic, from the realm conquered before. She learned a language that was beyond the comprehension of the Five.
And with it, Wrenwyn penned the truths in the Shadow Tome.
Only those who had doubt in the Five would be able to decipher it, to learn of its secrets and truths, for it needed to happen slowly.
Without mistake.
Too fast, and the Five would turn their eyes upon Lordach.
Too fast, and they would notice the tendril of the One’s soul that had gone missing from his cage.
They would silence him. They would cut off the root of power he’d taken centuries to sow … and stop it all before it started.
The Shadow Tome spread slowly across the land, and Wrenwyn turned many with eyes to see towards the north.
When they arrived, they need only shed their blood into the mountain to feed the One proof of their belief.
And their soul would be opened, and a tendril of the One would enter them and set them free.
They danced with the One, instead of marching to the Five’s false light.
Wrenwyn bore a child, and raised her in the ways of the One.
And when she grew old, her soul finally ready to pass on …
Wrenwyn’s child was given the same choice:
Live free in the dark. Or die loyal to the light.
The child chose freedom, and so as the One promised, it was through Wrenwyn’s own blood that arose the next Acolyte.
The One’s voice faded away.
Six continued to fly through the darkness, and past the tips of her wings, Ezer saw visions soaring by. Glimpses of memories in the dark.
She saw Styerra, sobbing in the Citadel’s library as Ervos lied, and used the fear of the Five to make her flee.
She saw Zey, her eyes filled with hatred as the Masters carved her hand with penance and told her she’d failed them again.
She saw Izill weeping before a statue of the gods. ‘Whatever I’ve done to cause you to turn a blind eye to me … please. I beg of you, forgive me. Grant me the gift of magic.’
She saw a beautiful, dark-haired Sacred – Soraya – with penance marks all over her back as Kinlear held her and she sobbed through the pain. ‘I didn’t mean to disobey,’ she cried. ‘Why do I still resist?’
She saw countless Sacred forced to wed before the Masters for the sake of strengthening the Five, not a hint of love in either partner’s eyes. She saw Styerra’s joy wither and die when Erath told her he’d been Matched with someone else.
The vision shifted … and suddenly Ezer saw herself, standing alone in the rain as Ervos boarded the prison wagon and left her behind.
She saw herself in the woods, a shadow wolf inches from her face.
She saw the ravens saving her.
She saw Six with a bleeding handprint on her scarred beak.
She watched her kiss with Arawn. It was forbidden by the Masters, and yet it had felt so right.
She saw her own Descent, as the wind tore at her braid and together, she and Six soared down to the depths.
How many others, Ezer wondered, had spent their lives trying and failing to live up to the Five?
How many others would never know what it was like to be free?
‘Ezer,’ the One whispered, as the visions faded away, and suddenly she could see the light again. ‘Choose now, before it’s too late.’
She could see the golden doors of the Ehver up ahead. She could see a line of bobbing lights – souls – waiting to meet the Five, face to face. The world beyond the doors was warm, and the light was lovely, like the sun on a summer’s day, and she turned Six towards it, ready to go home.
But then she saw the scroll at the entrance.
It unraveled before her, eternities long, glowing with every rule that had ever been written.
To fail is to fall, it said at its top, and she realized what it meant … as a soul tumbled out of those golden doors. She could see its light already dimming, hear its ragged scream as it was cast out. Even after death … perfection was the Five’s way.
Ezer reached out. She caught the soul before it could fade. It was cold, a tendril of light that died in her fingertips and turned to ashes.
She gasped as it crumbled away, caught by the wind.
‘Choose,’ the One whispered, and its voice was distant now.
So Ezer clung to Six.
And made her choice.