Soulkeeper Page 24

  “Lyra of the beloved sun, hear my prayer. Your children weep for your touch, and so I come, and so I pray.”

  The words flowed so easily off her tongue. Her doubt eased away. She’d run from herself since the crawling mountain’s arrival. No more.

  “Sickness fouls the perfection you created. Darkness mars the glory you shone upon us. With bowed head and bended knee I ask for succor. With heavy heart and weary mind I ask for blessing. This beloved soul requires healing, Lyra, my savior. Cleanse the sickness. Chase away the pain. Precious Lyra, at my touch, heal this woman.”

  Laura let out of a soft gasp of air and then slumped. Adria pulled back.

  “Is she…?” Rosa asked. Adria shushed her. She watched the young woman through the eyes of her mask. Color steadily returned to her face and lips. Her breathing deepened into that of a heavy slumber. When Adria removed the heavily stained rag, no more blood flowed.

  “Let her sleep,” Adria said. “As for you, go, and tell no one of what you saw.”

  Tears ran down Rosa’s cheeks.

  “You’re a miracle, Adria. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She flung her arms around her neck. “Goddesses above, thank you for sending her to us.”

  Rosa placed a kiss atop Laura’s forehead and then exited. Adria stood in the darkness, her mind receding deeper and deeper behind the white and black of her porcelain mask. She waited for Faithkeeper Sena to address the miracle, her heart steeled against whatever she might say. So far, the woman revealed no emotion beyond intense concentration.

  “My room,” she said. “Now.”

  The two returned to Sena’s room, the older woman leaning against the door with arms crossed as Adria sat atop the bed. Adria felt weirdly guilty, like she’d been caught doing something inappropriate by her schoolteacher all the way back in seminary.

  “How long?” Sena asked.

  “Since the crawling mountain arrived.”

  “And how many times?”

  “Just the one time with Rosa’s knee,” Adria said. “I haven’t tested it since.”

  Sena locked their gazes. Adria couldn’t look away if she wished; the other woman’s forceful personality was too strong. Even the mask was meager comfort.

  “Is this why you’ve been erring with your prayers, to prevent these miracles from occurring?”

  Adria nodded. Silence fell between them. She didn’t know what to say, and Sena looked lost in her own mind as she struggled to understand. One thing worried her above all else, and she finally gave it voice.

  “Will you tell others?”

  The Faithkeeper ran her hands across her temples to the back of her shaved head, as if pulling away phantom strands of hair from her face.

  “I don’t know. You saved a life tonight, Adria. How many others might you save if we make your gifts public?”

  “And how many investigations will the Keeping Church launch?” Adria asked. “How many will shift their faith from the Goddesses and onto my own self? What of the other Faithkeepers and Mindkeepers? How many will doubt their faith and compare it to my own? My prayer came true the moment the mountain crawled to the gates of our city. What if… what if this power I have is not of the Goddesses?”

  “Is that what bothers you the most?”

  No, ashamed as she was to admit it, something else bothered her worse. Sena was her friend, and a fellow servant of the Sisters. If she could tell anyone, it had to be her.

  “I’m not a fool,” she said. “If my prayers heal at a touch, then I bear a gift of tremendous importance. If they truly are blessings from the Goddesses…” She closed her eyes and imagined the separation between the world and her true self deepening behind her mask. “The greater the gift, the greater the task. Whatever fate they set before me, I am terrified of it. I’ll stumble. I’ll fall. Anointed prophets and healers don’t live long lives, Sena. They die abandoned and alone, as martyrs and madmen. How do I embrace such a fate?”

  Adria let the quiet tears fall behind her mask. She’d bottled up this fear from the moment her hands lifted off Rosa’s knee and she saw clean, healthy skin. Night after night she’d prayed that other members of the church showcase the same talents. Anything to make her less special. Anything to reduce the burden awaiting her.

  Sena put a hand on her shoulder, then pulled her in for an embrace. Adria closed her eyes and accepted it, but her hands stayed at her sides. She felt too numb to return Sena’s gesture.

  “I will think on what I have seen and heard,” Sena said when she withdrew. “As for you, stay at your brother’s house for tonight. Get away from Low Dock and its people and its refugees. Focus on yourself. A well that runs dry is of no use to anyone.”

  “If you insist,” Adria said.

  “This world is not ending,” Sena said. “It’s enduring birthing pains, but a new one will emerge. You’ll help guide us to our first steps, Adria, I promise you.”

  Adria smiled behind her mask.

  “I wish I had that same confidence.”

  Adria exited the church, and the moment the doors closed behind her she breathed out a long sigh.

  “A penny for a poor woman, keeper?” A voice spoke from the dark, startling her from her thoughts. A woman lay beside the bottom steps, her dirty hair long and gray. “Or maybe a silver penny if you’re feeling generous?” she added.

  “I have nothing to give,” Adria said. “Come inside if you need shelter and food.”

  The woman smiled, revealing multiple missing teeth.

  “Too loud. Too crowded. Here suits me just fine, miss keeper. I’ll buy what I need.”

  Adria pulled several copper pennies from one of her pockets and placed them inside the woman’s eager palm. She knew she should discourage begging at the church steps, but to the void with it. The woman likely needed alcohol or herbs to sleep the night away, and given the amount of misery in the world since the black water’s arrival, she had no desire to judge.

  “Stay warm,” Adria said before hurrying down Low Dock’s familiar streets. Candlelight shone in the occasional window. Lanterns hung from sparsely placed poles, rare enough that she mostly walked by starlight, and she drank it in with greed. There was a reason she’d become a Mindkeeper and not a Faithkeeper. Some people fed on companionship, conversation, and noise. She was drained by it. Fantasies of her future blinked in and out of her mind. In some she was revered as a holy prophetess, men and women eagerly awaiting hours for her touch. In others she knelt atop a platform awaiting the executioner’s axe while crowds called her a heretic and a Ravencaller.

  Adria passed a cramped shed built in the space between two homes. A drunk man stumbled from the door. He laughed when he noticed Adria watching from the corner of her eye.

  “Pleasant nights t’ya,” he said.

  “The night may be pleasant, but if you don’t sleep soon, your morning will not be,” Adria said.

  “Spare me the advice. I already got my fun, didn’t I, girl?” The man tipped his hat before he disappeared down the street.

  Adria glanced to the night woman standing in the shed’s doorway, her body thinly covered by the blanket she held. Their eyes met. The woman slowly nodded, and she flashed a handful of silver before tucking it away. She was safe. No intervention necessary. Adria slowed her walk so the drunk man gradually faded farther down the street. She heard the loud thunk of the shed door closing behind her. Adria hoped that was the woman’s last for the night. Too often such girls came to her in the mornings with bruises and cuts needing to be cleaned and bandaged. The violence of the buyers seemed to know no bounds.

  A strange hooting pulled her attention to the rooftops. An owl, in Londheim? She couldn’t quite place the direction, but she heard it again and again. Seeing the rooftops rankled her nerves. Gargoyles leered down at her from their perches. No matter how many times she told herself it was ridiculous, she could not shake the feeling that they watched her with their stone eyes.

  The hooting abruptly turned into a screech, followed by
silence. Adria froze in place. It had come from an alleyway to the right. Inaction was seductively easy. The reptilian selfishness of her mind urged her to let it be. Adria forced her legs to move. Someone needed her help. She sprinted down the road and then slid to a halt before the alley. A scream stuck in her throat and refused to release. Her hands shook at her sides. Her eyes spread wider than the holes carved into her mask.

  A massive wall of white feathers huddled over the shredded carcass of the drunk man from earlier. Clawed feet dug into his body and stomach, pinning him to the ground. The creature’s head curled over its shoulder and rotated ninety degrees to stare at her. Bleeding flesh hung from its coal-black beak. Wide yellow eyes blinked at her from beneath the perfect snow-white circle that was its face. Deciding she was no threat, it turned back to its meal. The beak scooped up a large part of the rib cage and ripped it free. Bones snapped and crunched with terrifying ease.

  “That’s not an owl,” Adria whispered aloud, as if convincing herself. “It can’t be an owl. Owls aren’t that big. Owls don’t hunt humans.”

  Her words stole back its attention. Adria’s heart hammered in her chest. The creature swallowed down the rest of the bones and then spread its wings to reveal speckles of black feathers interspersed among the white.

  “But I do,” said the owl. “Shall I hunt you?”

  The massive creature’s claws clacked upon the stone as it took a step toward her. Each one looked the size of her forearm. Its beak was bigger than her head. Those enormous eyes imprisoned her. Was this what happened to mice when they spotted a snake? Her arms stretched out defensively before her as a desperate prayer of devotion tumbled out her lips.

  “Blessed Sisters, I seek your protection. Bind the darkness so it may not touch my flesh. Show mercy so I may stand in the light.”

  It was the shortest of Lyra’s Devotions, a prayer she’d whispered a thousand times when she first walked the dark streets of Low Dock and feared every set of watching eyes. The owl lowered its head upon hearing those words. Clack, clack, clack, the claws bringing it closer. Those eyes, she could not look away from those eyes! Every part of her mind screamed to run, but the thought would not travel to her legs. She could only stand there, arms up, lips stammering out prayers behind her mask.

  “No Sisters,” the owl said. Its wings spread wide, a single flap lifting it several feet into the air. “Just us.”

  Tears ran down her face. Her hands quivered like shaken rabbits.

  “Blessed Sisters, I seek your protection. Bind the darkness so it may not touch my flesh. Show mercy so I may stand in the light.”

  Another flap and the owl surged toward her, its legs extending, its claws opening wide to grab her. Adria knew her death had come. Her final words were a most earnest plea against the terror of those claws and the pain they’d inflict while ripping her frail body apart.

  “Show mercy.”

  An enveloping circle of brilliant gold light flared across the stone, lighting up the night as bright as day. The owl let out a single high-pitched cry as it slammed to a halt in midair. Its body shattered and twisted. Its beak cracked in half, its claws ripped, feathers and gore splashed outward. The warm fluid splashed across Adria’s monochrome dress. Blood slid down her mask, dripping from the eye holes to her cheekbones. The circle around her faded away. The carcass instantly dropped into a disgusting crumple of feathers and bones. One eye was hidden behind a wing; the other remained locked open and staring at a wall. Their hypnotic spell broke. Her mind regained control of her body, and she used that freedom to drop to her knees and scream.

  Adria tore her mask free from her face so she could retch. Her vomit joined the gore upon the earth. Cold sweat poured from her forehead and neck. Her heart felt ready to burst. She wiped at her mask, frantically cleaning off the blood with a scrap of her dress as if her life depended upon it. Once satisfied, she flung it back over her face and closed her eyes. She fell away from herself and into the carefully controlled persona of a Mindkeeper. Goddesses help her, she wanted to flee her body and go to a world where she hadn’t just eviscerated a creature that shouldn’t exist with the mere words of a prayer.

  Seventy-nine devotions, she thought as she lurched to her feet and exited the alley. No doubt remained within her: All seventy-nine would be at her disposal. This went beyond healing. This went beyond everything. She’d already feared wielding the power of miracles to heal and bless. Now she bore the power of death. Adria leaned against a ramshackle home and crossed her arms over her body. The city guards needed to be informed and Londheim’s people warned in case more owls hunted elsewhere. All things she’d do, in time. But not now.

  “Please Alma, please Lyra, please Anwyn, pass this cup to another,” she pleaded. The stench of blood filled her nostrils. She closed her eyes and imagined her mask as a wall between all the world. Only she and the Sisters remained. Silent. Alone, together. “I cannot do this. I can’t. Please, Goddesses, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…”

  CHAPTER 23

  Jacaranda and Devin stopped just in sight of Londheim’s gates so their horses might rest. The day was pleasant enough, the sun bright and warm on their skin as they sat upon the grass. Jacaranda hoped it’d be a foretelling of how the remainder of the day would go.

  “You’ll need to enter the city before I do, and on foot,” Devin told her as they munched on the last of their rations. “Gerag will suspect something amiss if I return with a red-haired woman who somehow isn’t his former soulless.”

  “I could disguise myself,” she said. “Maybe hide my hair entirely?”

  “There’s no reason to risk it,” he said. “Hiding your face or hair will draw more attention, not less.”

  Jacaranda shrugged. Until she got her feet underneath her, she’d rely on the Soulkeeper’s judgment.

  “What shall I do once I’m in the city?” she asked.

  Devin crunched a nut between his teeth.

  “Good question. I’d say make your way to my home and slip inside when you think no one is watching. If I give you directions, do you think you can manage?”

  Jacaranda shot him an indignant look. Since she’d awakened he’d shown an annoying tendency to treat her like a child.

  “My training included hours of poring over maps of Londheim, and my skills at stealth are better than yours. Yes, I think I can manage.”

  “Sorry,” he said, lifting his hands in surrender. “No offense intended. It’s just your first time inside the city as a free person. I don’t know how that will affect you. The amount of people might be a bit overwhelming.”

  Jacaranda ate her own handful of nuts and washed them down with a drink. Better to eat than say something mean when Devin was just trying to help. Besides, as much as she didn’t want to admit it, she was nervous about entering the city alone. At least, she assumed the fluttery butterflies in her stomach and the vise tightening around her lungs and throat was nervousness.

  “I guess you’re right,” she said. “I’ll humor you for now. If I’m to enter the gates alone, where shall I say I come from? And what name shall I give?”

  Devin thought for a moment, a familiar look crossing his face. It was as if he receded into himself, the outer world vanishing so he might decide.

  “Answer that you’re from Ostenbrook,” he said. “It’s a small village far to the north. You’re frightened by what’s happening and came to Londheim for safety.”

  Not a bad idea. The reason also helped explain any nervousness or fear she might show at being discovered.

  “And my name?”

  He shrugged.

  “It doesn’t matter so long as you’re consistent.”

  It was beyond weird to ponder something so unique as naming herself, even if it were just to fool some guards at the gates.

  “How about… Anthea?” she said, figuring she’d stick with the flower theme.

  “That’ll work,” Devin said. “Don’t slip up, though, or it might lead to more questions.”

/>   “Then I won’t slip up,” she said. “But I cannot predict everything. What do I do if the guards discover my tattoo?”

  The chain tattoo underneath itched with soft heat. She hated remembering its presence, hated everything it represented.

  “If you try to enter the city and then flee upon discovery, Gerag will hear of the red-haired soulless who fled the gates,” Devin said. His tone had stiffened. His eyes locked on hers with deadly seriousness. “If you don’t run, the guards will bring you to the Mindkeepers for interrogation. At best they’ll return you to Gerag. At worst…”

  He drifted off.

  “What are you saying?” she asked.

  “I’m saying being discovered isn’t an option. Once you approach the gates there is no backup plan. If that distresses you, then we can look into other, safer courses of action. We might find a smaller village to the east that hasn’t been too adversely affected by this whole ‘end of the world’ thing. You could hide out there, just another refugee fleeing the black water.”

  Jacaranda shook her head. She would not flee from a threat. Londheim was where she needed to be. It was where her vengeance would be had.

  “No,” she told the Soulkeeper. “Gerag’s reckoning is coming, and it will be at my hands. I’ll make it through the gates unnoticed, I promise.”

  “Have you ever made a promise before?”

  Jacaranda frowned, taken aback.

  “No,” she said. “I guess I haven’t.”

  “Then don’t start making them now unless you’re certain to keep them.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a small iron key. “My home is at Seven-Five Sermon Lane. It’s in a quiet neighborhood, so I suspect you won’t have any trouble entering my house unnoticed. Don’t expect me until late. I need to report the events at Oakenwall to my Vikar, which will be a long tale on its own. I’ll also meet with Gerag and settle the official request for aid.”

  “What will you tell him?” she asked. The thought of seeing him again filled her with a mixture of anger and disgust.

  “I’ll tell him the truth, in my own way,” Devin said. “The soulless woman who accompanied me from Londheim disappeared in Oakenwall, did she not?”