“Looks nothing like me,” said Taryel, studying the statue.
“Oh, shut up,” Ru said, biting back a laugh despite herself. “Help me look.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know,” said Ru. “Anything. Inscriptions, prayers, items of note. I want to understand the people who worshiped him once, and those who still do. To find something that connects to Lady Bellenet, or you, or your heart.”
“Right,” said Taryel, still peering up at the statue. “What secrets are you hiding, you big stone lunk?”
Meanwhile, Ru’s intuition took her to the edges of the space, the shadowed corners where secrets might dwell. At the first alcove she came to, she knelt to see a book leaning against the stone wall. Dusty stumps of candles surrounded it in a crescent. The temple was ancient, but had clearly been in use until quite recently. It might still receive visits from time to time.
Unwilling to remove the book from its place against the wall, Ru leaned forward, torch held aloft, to read.
…and he said, follow me to the golden plain, to the sunlit fields beyond, where together we bask in joy. I ask so little of you. Only that you become who you were meant to be, that your footsteps trace the words of a story I have written since the world was new, that you fall upon the rapids of the river and be swept away. Only in the letting go will you see. Only when you see will you become. Only in becoming will we drench the world in light.
This sentiment was familiar to Ru. It was a verse from the chant the Children had intoned at Prayer, of faith and belief and cleansing light. Yet here, in this temple, on the pages of this wornold book, the words didn’t feel sinister. On the contrary, as she read them, Ru felt oddly reassured. If she had been someone else, a lost soul looking for meaning, she might have found respite here.
She stood and moved along the wall, stopping to inspect, to read. At another cluster of old candles, she found a locket lying open to reveal a painting of a young boy. Beside it, a polished pink stone the size of a knuckle. Further on was another book, also lying open. This time, a love poem. And when she had made it almost all the way along that wall, she saw a folded piece of parchment underneath a grey stone. A single candle, now nothing but a melted waxy shape with a blackened wick pricking its center, flanked the paper.
She moved the stone and set it aside. Plucking the parchment between her fingers, she unfolded it, ever so delicately. She didn’t know how old it was, whether it would disintegrate at the touch of her skin, or whether its ink had long since faded.
But upon handling it, she estimated that it was new, probably no more than a decade old.
I have traveled far and wide. You are my last hope, Festra. If you are listening, if you are here, please watch over my daughter, who was taken far before her time. Before I had a chance to properly love her. Due to my circumstances, I fear she is destined for the fires of the underworld. Yet I would do anything to know that she is joyful in eternity. Free. Happy and loved, as she ought to have been. If it is my life and my love you must take in exchange, so be it. I give myself to you wholly. I am your vessel. Do with me what you will.
D.B.
Ru read it again, but she had already guessed its author. The plea for a lost child, a woman turning herself over to Festra, tobe used as a vessel.I have traveled far and wide. The hair on the back of Ru’s neck stood on end. Lady Bellenet.
“Taryel,” she called out, still studying the paper. What did the D stand for? Dorothea? Diana?
No response.
Standing, Ru neatly tucked the paper into her pocket. At the last moment, she paused, changing her mind. Gingerly, she placed it back where she had found it, in a square of shifted dust underneath the stone. A sentimental gesture, but in that quiet temple, something in Ru urged her to be respectful.
She found Taryel on the far end of the temple, crouched behind the statue. He was squinting at a plaque of some kind, hair curtaining his face so he didn’t see her coming.
“Taryel.”
He looked up, smiling at the sight of her. The curve of his mouth seemed so natural, a habit born of familiarity. Her chest ached.
“What’s that?” she said, settling into an uncomfortable crouch beside him. She peered at the stone plaque. It was part of the statue, carved into its base near the back of Festra’s heel.
“An inscription,” said Taryel. “In ancient Mekyan.”
Ru blinked. “You know ancient Mekyan?” It was a language no longer spoken, fallen to memory and scholarship in a world that valued trade and easy communication. Navenian was the common language now, with so many ancient tongues having long since died.
It struck Ru just how old Taryel was, how many hundreds of lives he had lived.
He grinned proudly. “Centuries of life give a man plenty of opportunity for developing hobbies. I’ve learned eleven languages in that time. This one is particularly familiar to me. It’s Festra’s favorite.”
“His favoritelanguage?”
“The preferred language of prayer, anyway. No one spoke it in Ordellun-by-the-Sea, even then, except to praise Festra. King Alaric learned it, and he taught me.”
Ru reached out to run a finger along the stone and found that it came away clean. She frowned. “Do you think many people still come here?”
“Seems that way,” he said. “Though I can’t imagine who.”
