Chapter Five My Queen, the Last Diviner #2
“Traum is a dangerous place, Diviner,” the king told me. “There are terrible sprites. Terrible folk, too. But my knights will keep you safe.” He grinned at his knights. “Think of them as your new gargoyles.”
Hamelin scoffed. “I’m ten times better than an ancient ruddy sprite.”
When I said nothing, Benji’s voice went eerily gentle, like I was a thrashing animal he wanted to soothe well enough to leash.
“I know it’s been difficult. That you’ve lost things.
Your Diviners, your gargoyle.” He swallowed.
“Rory. Maude. Would you believe me if I told you I was as heartbroken about it all as you are?”
“I don’t believe in anything anymore, Benji. Least of all you.”
Benji withdrew to the shelves along the wall. From a box, he took two objects, handling them with delicate care. A large square of white gossamer, and something gold. A veil—
And a crown.
He approached and held them out. Slowly, he draped the veil over my head, the fabric whispering as it fell just below my chin.
Then Benji held out the crown. Like his, it was gold but not gaudy.
Only his, nestled in his hair, had five gilt peaks designed to represent the five hamlets, and mine had none.
It was but a thick gold band, with textured moldings that made it appear like two large horns had sprouted from my ears and had been made to grow against my head.
“My grandfather fashioned it,” Benji explained. “He had a great fondness for otherworldly things. So do I, in my own way.” He placed the crown over my head, holding the veil in place and whispering, “And you are otherworldly, Six.”
When we stood face to face, I was Der ewige Mond, the great pallid sprite, and Benedict Castor the Third was the inferior hunter who’d put a blade in my body.
“My grandfather also said, ‘Everyone deserves two chances in this life: the first to err, the second to rectify.’ And if I have erred, let me now rectify. Together, we can show folk that there are holy things to believe in yet. Me, chosen by the nobility.” Benji nodded at the knights.
“Us, with our magical stone objects.” He looked into my face.
“And you, the last Diviner—fearsome and righteous, with eyes so strange—you are the new Aisling Cathedral.”
My voice was shaking. “Folk could spend lifetimes searching my fallow gaze and reap nothing. There are no gods behind my eyes, you fool. There is nothing but stone.”
“And yet they will look.” My colorless reflection drowned in the blueness of Benedict Castor’s gaze.
“Your abbess planned it well when she robbed you of your name—Sybil Delling’s faithlessness and despair will never touch the hamlets, because Sybil Delling does not exist. No matter what you do, the only things people see when they look at you are their own beliefs. ”
But then his eyes fell to my dress and the stain upon it. He saw it for exactly what it was. Flaw. Distortion. “No. She can’t wear that.”
“Agreed,” said Samuel Eichel. “A terrible portent.”
“S’ppose we could just cover it,” Tory offered.
The king chewed his bottom lip. “Dedrick.”
“Sire?”
“When you and the others scoured the tor last night, did you search the outbuildings?”
“Yes, sire.”
“Tell me: Did you find any robes?” His eyes rose to mine. “Silk ones?”
“We did. Six of them, each with a number embroidered in the sleeve.”
Daylight caught in Benji’s hair, painting it gold. “Fetch the sixth.”
Castle Luricht’s stomach was a great hall, wide and reaching enough to rival Aisling Cathedral’s sanctuary. There were even chairs lined in rows like long wooden pews. Windows high in the gallery that caught the light.
The hall smelled hot, like autumn leaves held near a flame. Not burnt, but on the cusp of it. There were sprigs everywhere—beech boughs with dead orange leaves—draped over chairs, over banisters.
I could still taste the ox-eye as we made our way to a dark corridor just outside the great hall.
My head was pounding, my breath shaking, my vision stretching and shrinking.
Tory had to catch my arm several times. Light winked before my eyes and shadows danced in my periphery, but when I whirled to face them, there was nothing there.
Beyond, the seats in the great hall were full, the perfectly lined chairs brimming with at least a hundred visitors, all facing forward, waiting.
Benji stood upon the dais. Behind him, twenty knights, helmeted and armed, lingered in a silent, polished display.
My vision kept winking. An abrupt light burst behind my eyes, the great hall and everyone in it eclipsed in a white, liminal haze.
Suddenly I was not standing but lying on my back, so rigid I couldn’t even peer down at my own body.
All I could do was look up, and I saw that the pale light was moonlight.
Castle Luricht had vanished. I was alone, lying beneath the moon, and the moon was rippling, as if all the sky was underwater.
I smelled it then. That familiar smell, dank and sickly sweet. And I knew, without a shadow of doubt, where I was.
The tor.
Then, a sound. It echoed hither and yon, brushing up against me and calling from afar. Strange and mournful, this sound. A minor tune.
A child, crying.
“Hello?” Was that my voice? That low, ugly rasp? “Is someone there?”
No one answered.
Like a flame snuffed out, everything vanished. I blinked and the undulating moon, its pale light, was gone. I was back in Castle Luricht, standing in the corridor, waiting in my wedding dress to get married.
What was in that ox-eye?
“Who are you talking to?” Tory, who waited at my side, was frowning.
My throat constricted. “Do you hear that? The child?”
Tory’s face was round. Her eyes small and dark. A permanent line had been etched between her brows, giving her the appearance of ceaseless consternation. “I didn’t hear anything.” In her hands was the silk robe, a VI embroidered upon the sleeve. My old Divination robe. “Shall I put it on you?”
She draped the robe over my shoulders, fastening it around me like a cocoon, hiding the blemish upon my dress, a slight tremor in her touch. “Another moment, then we go forward.”
“I hope the ceremony lives up to your standards, Diviner,” someone said behind me.
I turned. Several castle guards bearing spears lined the corridor. Ahead of them was a man. He was lean, with thinning black hair and ears full of gold bands. His robes were bright orange, and his wrists were covered in jeweled bangles. When he smiled, several of his teeth were silver.
“Who are you supposed to be? The Artful Brigand?”
The man’s laugh sounded like a steaming kettle.
“If only. I’m Regius Ormsby, here to preside.
” He gave a sweeping bow. “My family has the longest lineage in Coulson Faire—besides the Castors, that is. You’ll forgive the size of the crowd.
Most everyone in attendance is my family.
It was the best I could do for a wedding with such limited time to prepare.
” His smile widened. “Happily, the young king has been most instructive in what he desires. We were up all night stripping the glen of beech boughs.”
A trumpet sounded beyond. Tory’s grip on my elbow tightened. “It’s time.”
When we stepped into the great hall, a hush fell, a hungry silence that wore the sheepskin of reverence. Ahead, Benji stood, waiting for me upon the dais just like I had once waited for him in the spring upon Aisling Cathedral’s chancel.
It was almost time.
Regius Ormsby joined us, standing behind Benji and me, taking a moment to flourish his robe and set the jangling bracelets on his wrists just so. He smiled at the audience, opened his mouth to speak—
Benji put up a finger. “I know it’s tradition for the noble families of the Stonewater Kingdom to have a hand in the making of their king,” he said to the great hall.
“Including when and to whom he marries. Indeed, I have obeyed many rules thrust upon those of my position. I have endured a Divination. Been subjected to prostration in the name of the Omens. Fallen on my knees in all five hamlets. Proven, again and again, that a king is but a supplicant.”
His blue eyes narrowed. “But the Stonewater Kingdom is changing. You’ve heard the rumors. Last night, Aisling Cathedral fell.”
Gasps tore through the great hall, aromatic air pulled taut.
Benji said the word with slow, poignant abhorrence. “Sprites. I was there. I saw it with my own eyes. A horde of mountain sprites, bound to their own horrid nature, tore down the epicenter of our faith and thundered off. The abbess, the gargoyles, the Diviners, and my—”
His voice wavered. For a moment, I thought it was guilt, choking him. But his mouth was even—his eyes unclouded. The little shit was playing at sorrow, just as he played at reverence during his ceremonies in the hamlets. “And my friends, were killed.”
Echoes of shock turned to murmurs of condolence.
“But not all is lost,” the king told his captive audience, opening his arms, beckoning all of Coulson Faire into his embrace. “Our system of beliefs will not shatter. Just before she perished, the abbess granted me five stone objects. Gifts from the Omens for me to steward.”
Dedrick, Hamelin, Samuel, and Tory held out their hands, and the stone objects within them. Benji did the same, holding out the Artful Brigand’s coin, which sat smooth side up in his palm. He took it. Held it out like one holds a skipping stone, tossed it—
And disappeared.
The crowd called out in awe. When the king was visible once more, reappearing in the center of the aisle, folk pushed from their seats to see him. There was applause. Prayers to all six Omens. Complete and utter amazement.
Benji flushed, then grinned. “So you see, you are in resolute hands. Do not grow anxious about that fallen cathedral, and do not look for signs in the rubble upon the tor. Now, you must look to me, my knights, my stone objects—”
He turned. “And to my queen, the last Diviner.”