“What does it say?” Ru asked, still fixated on the tablet. Something about it attracted her, the strange curve and angle of letters unfamiliar to her. A puzzle, a riddle to be solved.
“I’m notexactlysure. I’ve never seen it before or heard of anything like it, despite my brief dalliance as a follower of Festra. Oddly enough, it mentions a heart. Or a stomach or liver, a word to indicate a large organ, but it’s used synonymously with—”
“Taryel.”
He shot her a sheepish glance. “You rub off on me. I think it says something like, ‘at the heart of me lies resurrection.’ Or that word could mean freedom, or even death. It’s… not a very precise language. Anyway, then it says, ‘Keep me and resolve me.’ No, that can’t be right. Resolve…”
“Compromise?” Ru suggested.
“Maybe. It’s incomprehensible poetry. Pretty, but probably meaningless.”
Ru caught his sleeve as he tried to stand. “Maybe not. It mentions a heart, resurrection, and…keep me. I’m the Keeper, Taryel. Is that all it said?”
He hesitated, then turned back to the stone. “No,” he said. “There’s one more line. ‘I give it to you. Resolve me.’”
“Thatcan’tbe the word,” Ru muttered, pushing Taryel’s hand aside as if she might understand the language just by staring angrily at it. “Resolve me… no, something else.”
Taryel hummed, chin pressed against folded fingers. Then he inhaled once, a soft, quick breath through the nose. “Absolve,” he said. “I read it wrong.”
Ru recited the lines, already memorized. “‘At the heart of me lies resurrection. Keep me and absolve me. I give it to you. Absolve me.’”
“It doesn’t have much of a cadence,” Taryel said. “Let me…” He recited the words in their original language, a strange, beautiful series of sounds that fell like music from his lips.
“That sounds better,” Ru said, moved by it despite herself.
Taryel stood then, offering his hand to Ru. “I suppose you’ve already come to some academic conclusion?”
She took his hand and got to her feet, her legs stiff from crouching. “It can’t be a coincidence, the mention of his heart. But what absolution would Festra be seeking?”
Taryel shrugged, and seeing her shiver in the morning chill, pulled her to him. His warmth enveloped her, and she relaxed against his chest, though her thoughts were running at full speed.
“Absolution,” she said. "Keeper of his Heart. Resurrection. Lady Bellenet… I think I found her here. Evidence of her, I mean. She left a note, offering Festra her life in exchange for her daughter’s place in the afterlife. That could explain her devotion to him, but…” She faltered. “There are so many missing pieces.”
Taryel was quiet for a moment, his chin resting on Ru’s head, his arms around her. “I asked you once if you believed in fate. I asked because I feel, often, as if I’m caught in it. As if I’m constantly walking in a circle, crossing my own footsteps again and again. As if there’s no escape from whatwillhappen, no matter how I try to alter the course.”
Ru stepped back, looking up at him. His expression was distant, thoughtful, and seemed to tilt on the edge of an understanding.
“You think everything is predetermined?” she asked, unable to hide her incredulity.
“Not everything. But… me, yes. And maybe you. At the Shattered City, when I told you how I’d felt you calling me, as if I’d known you would be there, all those months ago… I wasn’t lying. There is no scientific explanation for what I felt. What else could have guided me to you but fate? What else could have called you to my heart?”
“No,” Ru said, frustrated. “Magic, I believe. Gods… maybe. But there’s no such thing as fate. I mean, how would it work?”
But her thoughts, almost against her will, constructed layers of meaning from the chaos,and she began to see a shape. Taryel, in the name of Festra, trying to save the world but destroying a city. His heart, turned to stone, wrenched from his body and buried in the earth, cursing him to live forever like the hero of some dark fairy tale. A rebirth, of sorts.
At the heart of me lies resurrection.
And then Ru, called to the heart by some means she had yet to fully comprehend. Was it magic or Festra? Or was it the strings of fate? And whose fingers pulled the strings, if anyone’s?
Keep me and absolve me.
Ru wracked her brain, trying to find a connection. Ultimately, Ordellun-by-the-Sea had fallen because of King Alaric’s devotion to Festra. And, according toGods & Glories, Festra was a cruel god, smiting those who refused to believe, rewarding only those who followed him without question, leaving a trail of death and destruction in his wake. But what if those stories were exceptions to the norm? Brought to light only because the god was acting out of character somehow?
Ru gnawed her lip in thought.
Keep me and absolve me.
What if the Destruction wasn’t at all what Festra had wanted? What if it was nothing but the confusion of a simple devotee, a mortal man poisoned by power and ignorance?
