Epilogue Prophecies Fulfilled
The carrier pigeon landed on the man’s knee. He reached down and pulled the message from the small leather pouch tied to its foot. The bird flew off again, back to the south where it had come from.
“What news?” a voice asked from behind the man.
He untied the small roll of parchment and read. He did so slowly, not wanting to miss any of the details. “Reports confirm what we all felt. The boy has defeated Ramael.”
The second man let out a low, rich chuckle. “Good,” he said languorously, tasting the word. “What is next?”
“We wait,” the first man said. “He will come to us.”
“What was the prophecy from the Visigony?”
“It is only part of the larger cycle,” the first man reminded him.
“Yes,” the second man purred, “but this one mentions me.”
The first man recited it for him in the sing-song voice of a bird:
The Raven shall kill the Ox
The Kin will gain a throne.
The Blood will stain the rocks
And all the land shall moan.
But once the Veil falls,
And after the castles crumble,
The Raven for his vengeance calls
And over his pride will stumble.
The Sword shall be reclaimed,
The fruits of Empire sour;
But once the Lion shakes his main,
So ends the Raven’s power.
The second man laughed—a long, rolling sound that sent pleasant vibrations through the first man’s skin.
The second man turned and walked away, his boot heels clicking on the stone floor of the aviary.
A woman stood up abruptly from a chair in the corner where she had been waiting.
Green lines ran along her neck and hands, slowly pulsing as she walked after the second man, undulating with each step.
Two other figures, a man and a woman, both rose as well, the former with half of his face blackened as if burned and covered with glowing golden lines, the latter with grizzled gray hair that hung lank about her face.
“Well, that was fun,” said the burned man. “I’ve always enjoyed sitting in drafty stone birdcages. But pray tell why we were invited?”
“Hush,” said the gray-haired woman. She bared her teeth at him in annoyance. “Would you rather they had left us out?”
“Yes,” said the smaller man, “I’d rather they had left us alone. I’d rather they had left everything alone—this world is full of pleasant distractions and there’s no need to change it. They meddle too much. They always have.”
“Not all of us can depend on luck to make things turn out in our favor,” said the first man, still seated with the pigeon’s message held lightly in his hand.
He turned a single, piercing blue eye on the short man, whose golden eyes were laughing back at him, mocking him.
“And not all of us have your appetite for ‘pleasant distractions.’”
The golden-eyed man snorted, and then turned to leave. The gray-haired woman followed him with a slow, loping walk, but stopped at the door and turned back.
“I do not approve of this plan,” she growled at the first man. “I do not think Mother would approve of it either.”
“Mother knows of it,” said the first man. “She was the one who told me to gather the Children. Do not underestimate her. There is very little any of us do that goes unobserved.”
The woman’s mouth curled in disgust, and then she left.
The first man remained seated. Once the door had closed, he allowed himself a brief, small smile that pulled at the scars around the corners of his mouth, twisting them into a grotesque expression that had more than a hint of anticipation to it.
The light of the setting sun played on his bald head, bare chest, and bootless feet.
Strange markings, cold as ice and blue as the sky, swirled and began to glow, running from the crown of his head, down the back of his neck, branching along his arms to his fingertips, down his spine and around to his feet.
He cast his sight outward and looked into the future once more.
“Hurry along, little brother,” he whispered. “I have plans for you.”