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“FOOLISH BOY,” OSENA said, though the words were more tired than scathing. “Did you think alerting the Karits would end well? Our only advantage was secrecy. Now that they know someone has entered their temple, I can’t save you.”
“I only cared about saving you,” he said.
But his proclamation was met with silence. And through Cyrele had drawn closer to listen to Osena’s conversation with her disciple, close enough to watch their expressions, Osena’s dead eyes gave little away.
Aralath, still crouched by Kamene, cleared her throat to get their attention. “Prince Matiser is coming for the princess. And for whoever locked her inside the vault. He will find her, along with whoever he believes captured her—this isn’t negotiable, it is a fact.”
“And you don’t want him to find her inside the vault,” Osena finished, with a glance at the rest of them. “Understandable. The Karits would go on a warpath to ensure that no one knew of their vaults.” She turned a stern gaze towards Kamene. “Do you understand the implication, princess? The Karits must not know that you have been inside the vault.”
“I understand,” Kamene answered listlessly. “I don’t even know what a vault is. Why would I tell anyone I’d been inside one?”
But Aralath hadn’t moved her penetrating gaze away from Osena. “You and your student have both been inside three vaults now. I’m sorry, but he will kill at least one of you.”
“Me,” the captor said, looking to his master. “I told you I only care about saving you. He wouldn’t believe you could’ve done it anyway, not with how weakened you are now.”
Osena remained silent for a moment. Her gaze shifted to Aralath, then to Cyrele. “Which one of you is Cyrele?”
Cyrele startled at the sound of her name from a woman she’d never given it to—but then, Kamene had given her name, hadn’t she?
Then Osena shook her head. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. One of you is a glyphwriter—and a good one—or you wouldn’t be standing inside this vault right now. It is vital that at least one glyphwriter with the knowledge to open these vaults stay hidden from the Karits. My boy is right, he’s already doomed. He’ll stay here with your princess and fool the prince into thinking he’d lied about trapping her into the vault. I will get the two of you out of the temple complex safely. You’ve heard nothing and you know nothing. Remember that.”
Kamene suddenly lurched onto her feet. “What do you mean, I stay here?” she asked, her voice raised and panicked.
Osena regarded her impassively. “You must. The prince expects to find you inside the temple complex.”
Kamene’s gaze swept the room, as if frantically searching for something, before landing on Cyrele. “You,” she said, staggering closer. “You can’t let them do this to me. Contact my family and get me out of here.”
Cyrele lowered her gaze to the ground. “The prince will kill you if he suspects you were inside this vault, your highness. He can’t know someone already rescued you.”
“What? No, you can’t leave me here—” Kamene grabbed Cyrele’s shoulder, fingers digging in to the point where it hurt, where it burned, even.
“Sleep,” the captor said.
Cyrele barely had time to flinch away from Kamene, when the princess’ grip loosened, her body crumpling to the ground. Cyrele immediately examined her arm where the princess had touched her, but while the skin was slightly red from either pressure or heat, there was no visible proof that Kamene’s touch had any real power behind it. No blistering, no singed fabric from where Kamene had brushed up against her sleeve.
So what had Cyrele felt? Could the princess have absorbed some of the power from the fiery storm inside this room? Was it the residual power from the vault itself that had made the princess’ hand burn like fire across her skin? Or perhaps it was Cyrele’s overstimulated emotions that made the touch feel so much more visceral than it should have?
Aralath regarded the princess’ body on the ground with a solemn look, then turned wary eyes to the man who must have done it. “What was that?”
“As I told you, I’ve found my way inside a vault before—or rather, two. They each held only a fraction of the power that the Karits can access, but what was there became mine as well.”
“Take her,” Osena said.
The captor obligingly came over to Kamene’s fallen form and lifted her up. No flames erupted in retaliation, no streaks of lighting sprang from her skin. It was as if she were any normal, unconscious woman. But was she?
“Is it possible the princess gained any power from her time in the vault?” Cyrele asked.
“Anything is possible,” Osena said. “But she shouldn’t have been here long enough to gain anything beyond a few nightmares.”
Had Cyrele truly imagined it? She glanced at her arm again, to find the redness already fading.
Then Osena’s disciple turned to his teacher with a look of resolve. “Stay safe, master. What we’re doing is much more important than just my life.”
“It is much more important than either of our lives,” she responded.
The captor took a step towards the stairs, then stopped, looking back towards Cyrele, then Aralath. “I am sorry, for what it’s worth. I never wanted to hurt anyone. But you’re a part of this now, simply by knowing about the vault. And I, more than anyone, know what that will mean for you.” He turned towards the stairs and began walking away, tossing back the words, “You’ll understand why I had to do it in time.”
Having experienced the terror of her boats capsizing, of those powerful currents holding her underwater, Cyrele very much doubted that she’d ever understand his actions. But there was no point in bringing it up now. He would die soon—
—and the weight of that knowledge took her breath away. She stared at his back as he disappeared up the stairs, understanding that whatever else he had done, she was looking a man who would soon be gone. All to keep the rest of them from the prince’s notice.
Osena turned to Cyrele and Aralath. “You will have to help me walk.”
“No,” Aralath said, firm and defiant. “I’m finally inside a vault. I won’t leave with nothing to show for it.”
“And what would you like to have to show for it?” Osena asked with a scoff. “The power of the vault? The same power that I had to soak inside of for days before I could control so much as a breeze? The one that left my body so ravaged I have to rely on two babies like you to help me out of the temple?”
Frustration radiated from the tense lines of Aralath’s body as she considered Osena’s words. “You mean to say there is no time. The prince will arrive before I get any use out of the vault.”
“Obviously. Perhaps that brain of yours is good for something besides decoration after all.”
But while Osena had busied herself ridiculing Aralath to get her way, Cyrele was watching the fierce light behind Aralath’s eyes. The way her body leaned towards the center of the room like a desperate traveler finally finding an oasis in the desert. She wanted the vault’s power with an intensity that Cyrele would never mock—but would certainly distrust.
Then a calculating glint flashed over her expression, and suddenly that fierce light gave way to an embarrassed smile. “Forgive me, Master Osena. It’s only how close we are to challenging the power of the Karits that’s made me careless. Of course I trust your experience to guide us.”
Aralath sounded so sincere that Cyrele herself might have believed it had she been any less jaded about the politics surrounding the Karits. The girl she’d been a year ago, the researcher happily ensconced in her research project, wouldn’t have doubted Aralath’s apology for a moment.
And yet Osena gave Aralath a bemused, knowing look, before saying, “Good. Obedience is the right skill for a child like you to practice.”
The flash of rage that appeared in Aralath’s eyes was gone almost before Cyrele could identify it—almost. Then the two women were sizing each other up, each wearing false expressions. Cyrele felt like she was trapped between two titans, yet she didn’t understand the rules of the battle they were waging against one another. Or even what they were fighting for.
#
CYRELE AND ARALATH struggled up the long stairways in the chamber beyond the vault with Osena propped up between them, retracing their steps towards the temple’s exit. Osena had assured them that any obstacles they met would vanish with a wave of her hand. And yet, their pace was slow and grueling. Osena couldn’t stand without aid, Cyrele worried her shaking legs might simply collapse at some point, and even Aralath looked winded from the events of the day.
But they had to continue. After all the danger, all the uncertainty, and even the unnecessary standoff between people who should’ve been allies—they’d finally done what had seemed all but impossible. They’d extracted Kamene from the vault and devised a plan to convince the princes that none of them had ever been inside of it. And if they didn’t reach the riverbank before Prince Matiser found them, none of it would matter.
Of course, it might not matter anyway—regardless of what they did, only Prince Matiser could decide how much knowledge was too much to let them live.
Then the clanking of bones sounded from up ahead, as the three of them finally reached the long tunnel that had first brought them to the Temple of Lost Hope. Cyrele couldn’t help but hesitate, her instinctive fear warring with the knowledge that Osena’s power should protect them. But Aralath was already moving and so Cyrele had no choice but to continue, lest they drop Osena. Much good would her protection do if they broke her.
The noise grew louder with every step, until finally Cyrele’s glowing scrap of cloth revealed the skeletons that she and Aralath had tied up, still trapped in their bindings.
“Well done,” Osena croaked, her voice hoarse from dehydration. “But we can’t leave them like this. If we do, then the Karits might realize that someone without the power of the previous vaults had been here.”
She lifted a trembling hand, and the fabric holding the skeletons began untying itself. But even as the creatures tried to sit up, an invisible force crushed them back against the ground. Was this what Osena could do with only a fraction of the Maelstrom’s power?
Aralath watched the skeletons struggle with impassive eyes, before tightening her grip on Osena and ushering them back towards the exit of the temple complex. “There’s another loose end to consider,” she brought up. “The prince has seen the sailors’ faces. If they died here, and he comes across their bodies, he would know they were here.”
“Not to worry,” Osena gasped out. “Their bodies won’t be recognizable.”
Nausea welled at the back of Cyrele’s throat. What had befallen those men, while she and Aralath were lucky enough to escape? They’d come here for a chance at survival, a chance at coming home. They should have been here with the rest of them, alive and on their way out of this terrible temple. And instead?
Your blood shall water our garden, your bones shall guard our tomb. Those were the words written inside the tunnel, and suddenly, Cyrele felt as if they were a declaration of the sailors’ fates. A fate written into the temple’s stone by glyphwriters. By the original Order.
Why would those glyphwriters, the very ones the Maelstrom had called here then killed, have chosen to guard the temple’s secrets in such a macabre way? Was it their own idea or the first Maelstrom’s? And if it hadn’t been their idea, then why agree to such a thing?
But she found no answers to these questions inside the walls of the temple complex. Only the echoes of decisions past, reverberating across the centuries.
As the three of them continued through the tunnel, the paintings they passed took on new meanings with what Cyrele now knew. The image of the figure in a grey cloud became clear as a summer day—that was the inside of the vault, where Cyrele had found Osena and Kamene surrounded by an unnatural storm. The wall of fire surrounding a skeleton was more ambiguous...or perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps Cyrele simply didn’t want to admit that, in conjunction with the upper level’s painting of figures stepping through a fire, the painting told her more than she cared to know about where the skeletons had come from.
As for the painting with the pool of red liquid, probably blood...she still didn’t know what it meant. Nor did she know what garden the blood of trespassers was meant to water.
But those small mysteries were the least of the secrets she hadn’t had time to uncover, and Cyrele left them behind as she and her companions crossed the tunnel, passed the stairs, and reached the external exit. The copper sheets lay where she and Aralath had left them, next to the Maelstrom’s vicious storm, ready for use in what would be the most physically taxing portion of the journey.
But then Osena raised a hand out towards the storm, and the storm retreated in turn, pulling away from her until a path opened up before them—all the way to the Rasa River, visible through a sliver of clean air.
“Incredible,” Aralath murmured. “An easy way to traverse the storm. You could get us back inside the complex whenever you liked.”
Osena’s lips curled up in a bitter smile. “Oh, would you like me to ferry you across the barrens? Shouldn’t a glyphwriter capable of opening a vault be able to handle one little storm?”
Aralath paused, a shrewd look behind her eyes. “You could teach us what you know, which is obviously extensive.”
With a tired huff, Osena said, “I don’t have time to teach you girls like I taught my boy. Figure it out.”
The return trip to the riverbank was far quicker than the journey into the complex, even with how exhausted Cyrele felt, even while supporting a frail older woman. She felt a pang of regret at leaving the copper sheets behind—but the truth was, she simply didn’t have the strength to carry them. Which meant she would bring back nothing from the temple she had never been meant to enter. Nothing except the knowledge secreted away inside the confines of her mind.
As they finally stepped out beyond the storm, Osena closed the pathway behind them. Aralath directed them towards a couple of barrels along the shore, helping Osena to the ground. Then she began searching the wreckage. Cyrele meant to help—they might need provisions to last them until the prince arrived—but found herself collapsing on the ground instead, her muscles finally giving out.
“There’s only water here,” Aralath said, glancing at her exhausted companions. “Water is good, but we should at least have some food. I’ll search for anything else that might’ve washed up nearby while you rest.”
As Aralath left, Osena lay herself down, her breathing heavy. She hadn’t breathed easy since Cyrele had first found her collapsed inside the vault. What must it have been like, trapped down there for however long? Not knowing if those doors would open again while she was still alive enough to care?
Remembering how dry the old woman’s throat had sounded each time she’d spoken, Cyrele rose onto her aching feet to reach the water barrel. Refilling her flask, she brought it over to Osena. But the woman only shook her head.
“I’m dying,” she said. “I’ve been exposed to the power for so long that my body can’t withstand the strain. No need to waste resources on me.”
After everything she’d survived, for her to die now...it seemed so unfair.
“How can you be sure?” Cyrele asked. Osena may have been a stranger, may have been an unknown power about to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world—but for now, she was simply an old woman who’d been pushed past her limits. “You might still make it.”
“I won’t. I know it beyond all doubt. But you have more important matters to concern yourself with—like what to do with the power of the Maelstrom, hiding behind those vault doors that you’ve learned how to open.”
Cyrele hesitated. “Is there a way...rather than gaining the power, is it possible to take it away?”
A delighted smile broke out across Osena’s face. “You aren’t even tempted? Your friend was.”
Surprised at the thought, Cyrele quickly shook her head. She wouldn’t know what to do with a power like that. And she certainly couldn’t withstand the opposing forces that would array against her for having it.
“I suppose I’m the cautionary tale against the lust for power, aren’t I?” Osena said. “I spent so much time trapped inside that vault, searching for something that would help me escape, and still barely scratched the surface of the knowledge written along the walls. Maybe there’s something inside those vaults that answers your question.”
That wasn’t at all what Cyrele had hoped to hear—even if she could gain access to the vault again, she might never decipher enough of its glyphwriting to learn what she wanted to know. She truly was helpless against the scale of power she’d brushed up against, wasn’t she?
“Don’t look so despondent,” Osena said, a wry amusement in her voice. “You don’t need to find a way to take the power away. Look at me—I accessed the power of all three temples, but still couldn’t escape the vault. The Karits may have memorized how to access the temples, but they are not glyphwriters. If you want to keep them out of the vaults, or even trap them like they trapped me, simply change the locks.”
That...would certainly stop future generations of Kavan royals from wielding such absolute power against anyone, ever again. Perhaps it wouldn’t take back the power the way that Cyrele had envisioned, wouldn’t stop every Karit from wielding their power now, but who knew? Maybe a gradual change that everyone saw coming would come with its own advantages over a single moment when the world turned upside down?
“Is that possible?” she asked.
“I think so,” Osena said, closing her eyes. “But as time is no longer on my side, I’m afraid you’ll have to solve that mystery on your own.”
But even if Cyrele could find her way back inside the temple complex without the Karits knowing, even if she could find protection from the dangers inside and lure a royal inside a vault...could she trap another person the way Osena had been trapped? Could she bring herself to let anyone, no matter how dangerous they were, slowly starve to death while the vault’s power destroyed their body?
She didn’t think she could. Osena, her pupil, and Aralath were all ready to pit themselves against the Karits, whatever it took—but Cyrele wasn’t. She’d only just arrived in Kava, never even set foot in Lesra Kar. The Kavan royals frightened her, and Akaterin herself had admitted the princes were a threat to her life, but those were all abstract concepts. Not enough for her to feel the need to stop them at all costs. Not yet.
“You’re placing yourself at cross-purposes with your friend, you know,” Osena said, not opening her eyes. Her voice had grown so soft it was barely above a whisper. “Aralath, I mean.”
They weren’t friends, exactly—they had worked together, shared information out of necessity. Through Aralath did save Cyrele’s life...and filled the gaps in Cyrele’s knowledge in a way that left a pang of longing inside her heart. Perhaps they could’ve become friends, one day. But now, Cyrele would probably never get the chance to find out.
“I understand,” she said, not entirely without regret. “Aralath wants to take the power for herself, but I find myself not wanting anyone to claim it.”
“She wants to use the power,” Osena clarified. “Against the Karits, I’d wager, which I can hardly fault her for. Even I sought to do the same—oh, to think I had come so close, only to lose it all before accomplishing a single thing!”
Cyrele hesitated. For all that they were at odds, Osena and Aralath had so much in common. And they knew this land in a way she didn’t. What if they were right and she was simply too afraid to see it?
“Then why warn me about Aralath?” Cyrele finally asked. “If she wants what you want?”
A weak smirk appeared across Osena’s face. “Can’t a dying woman reflect on her life choices, Elei Cyrele? If I had followed my own advice and locked the Karits out of that first temple, instead of seeking its power, I would have changed the world by now. Instead, I’m going to die a useless death, having accomplished absolutely nothing. I should have chosen a battle I could’ve actually won.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Cyrele found herself protesting, almost for argument’s sake. She didn’t share Osena and Aralath’s world-changing goals, after all—she only wanted to find solid ground to stand on. But Osena would never be able to change the world the way she’d wished to anyway. It was needless for her to die blaming herself, especially when her goals seemed so much less...self-focused than Cyrele’s. “If you hadn’t gotten trapped down there—”
“Then my body might still have given out,” Osena interrupted. “Three temples worth of power and I am still nowhere close to rivaling even a single Karit. That means there must be more temples, possibly even one that makes this it possible to survive all this power, but these three are the only ones I know about. Finding all of the temples, claiming all of the power—it’s a fool’s errand. Might as well tamper with the first temple so that it won’t matter how many temples come after, because the Karits will never be able to access any of them again.”
That made for a particularly practical reason why locking everyone out of the temples forever could well be the safest option—it may well have been the only option in reach, at least for now.
“You should know...” Osena’s distressingly weak voice began, “that there are others like Aralath, like myself. There are also others like you.”
Like her? Did that mean there were more Order-trained glyphwriters hiding in Kava? Or that there were others who didn’t want the power of the Karits, but didn’t want to submit to them either?
“Who?” Cyrele asked, deciding that was the most urgent question. “Is there someone I could count on as an ally?”
But Osena would no longer reply—though her heart still beat weakly, she had fallen unconscious. The older woman would never wake again, taking all of the knowledge she had to the grave.