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BY THE TIME ARALATH came back, Osena had stopped breathing.
Cyrele had known the older woman for perhaps a few hours at most, and it had turned into the last moments of her life, slipping away with each increasingly labored breath. There was a sense of melancholy to that—Osena had clearly worked hard to reach this point, taken great risks in to pursue her beliefs. And just at the moment when she’d achieved the means to make a difference, her body gave out.
“What happened?” Aralath asked, rushing over to crouch by the woman’s body, searching for a pulse...and finding none. For just one moment, a blinding flash of rage sparked behind her eyes—but then her expression shifted, settling into resignation. “She didn’t have the strength to survive it. Oh, I’m such a fool. I should have known.”
“There was nothing you could do,” Cyrele said, though not without a touch of wariness.
“I could have been here,” Aralath argued. “I could have spent this past hour learning from her. She was so set on withholding information that I thought I’d need time to pry it out of her, but it turns out that time was the only thing I didn’t have. And she’d known that. It was why she was so infuriatingly smug.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, though she didn’t know that she meant it. Still, Aralath had been so close to knowledge that might’ve advanced her progress by years, but then it had disappeared before her eyes. Cyrele could at least sympathize.
Aralath sat down next to her. “I can’t believe we were the only two that made it—and even that might not last if the prince shows up in a less than generous mood. So now...I suppose we wait.”
“What should we do with the body? In Viemis, we would bury her with her possessions and a little food.” Lest her restless spirit return to torment the living, Cyrele didn’t add.
“In Kava, there is a complicated ceremony to prepare the body for the spirit’s journey into the afterlife, but it’s impossible for us to give her that here. A Viemian burial will have to do.”
And so Osena received a shallow grave in the middle of a wasteland, where her relatives would never find her, where no one would ever bring more food to curb her hunger. It was still more than the sailors got.
A bone-deep exhaustion pulled at Cyrele as she worked. Once she placed the last bit of dirt on the grave, she leaned back to lie down on the ground...and the broken mirror clinked from inside her bag. She still had no idea how badly she’d damaged it. And she needed to, didn’t she?
The glass of the mirror clinked together as Cyrele pulled it out, inspecting it. All of its pieces were technically still in place, but hundreds of spiderweb cracks marred the reflective surface. She had no idea if the artifact could still function in such a state. But for the first time in a long time, she couldn’t quite bring herself to care.
#
THE PRINCE DIDN’T ARRIVE that day, or the next. But on the third day, a barge finally appeared along the horizon.
The features of the barge, once came into focus, were surprisingly nondescript—no cabin like the one afforded to Princess Kamene, no elaborate sails or figureheads. This barge looked completely indistinguishable from most of the barges in Kamene’s fleet. Perhaps it was one of those barges, crewed by brave sailors who chose to search for survivors instead of fleeing for safety—but no, that didn’t feel right. Even from this distance, something about the sailors aboard that barge felt different. The cut of their cloth was more austere, they held themselves with more...poise, perhaps.
Then finally, Cyrele recognized a figure walking across the deck, flanked by a small group of stony-faced guards. It was him. Matiser.
Standing under the brightness of the sun, with the evidence of their disobedience out of sight and a rescue imminent, it was almost tempting to imagine everything that had happened at the temple—the skeletons, the sailors’ deaths, the sacrifices of Osena and her disciple—had been a terrible dream. That Cyrele and Aralath had survived a harrowing shipwreck, but their salvation was finally here.
That illusion was quickly shattered by the impatience with which Prince Matiser vaulted over the side of the barge, soaring towards the shore in a trajectory that was only possible with magical aid. He landed lightly on his feet, then began walking towards Cyrele and Aralath. Leaving a flurry of sailors who scrambled to land the barge behind him.
Seen clearly under the light of day rather than through a mirror, Matiser’s features somehow seemed sharper, more intimidating. His eyes looked cold and unreadable.
“The glyphwriter and the translator,” he said as reached them. “But where are the sailors? They were to protect you.”
Aralath lowered her head respectfully. “They went to find food and water, but they never came back, your highness. I fear something dreadful may have happened.”
Matiser eyed her for a moment too long. “That is truly a shame. Though I am relieved to find the two of you well, at the least. Or relatively well—are you injured, Elei Aralath?”
Cyrele glanced at the makeshift bandage around Aralath’s arm. She hadn’t considered what the prince would make of it. Was that a mistake?
Aralath, too, seemed startled that the prince had addressed her injury. “Oh, this?” she said. “I must have cut myself sometime during the shipwreck, your highness.”
Matiser frowned. “Strange. I don’t remember your injury from when we last spoke.”
Cyrele tensed. Matiser had seen Aralath after the shipwreck, in the mirror, but Cyrele hadn’t expected him to pay such close attention. Had he caught them in a lie already?
“It was dark,” Aralath demurred. “I am sure you had greater concerns.”
Cyrele held her breath as the prince turned a speculative gaze her way, before looking back at Aralath. But he merely said, “I apologize, then. Regardless, I have a physician on board that will attend to you. Now, the letter?”
Aralath handed him the note that had been delivered to Cyrele via flying arrow, the catalyst that had started their desperate trek inside the temple complex. The prince unrolled the parchment. As Cyrele watched him take his time in reading the contents, waiting for a sign of his judgment, she struggled to keep her body from trembling.
“Elei Aralath,” Matiser finally said, without looking up from the parchment. “You may go to the barge now. Your work is done and rest assured, we will bring you home safely.”
Aralath bowed, then began slowly edging towards the barge, dawdling as she waited for the prince to dismiss Cyrele as well.
“Elei Cyrele,” Matiser said next, finally lifting his head to regard Cyrele with an unreadable expression. “I’m afraid I can’t allow you to rest yet. Please do me the honor of accompanying me as I retrieve your princess.”
Cyrele felt her body freeze in place, stiffening from the shock at Matiser’s request—his order, rather. Aralath shot her a look of alarm, but she couldn’t even return it. She found herself gaping helplessly at the prince as she tried to understand why he wanted to bring her with him.
And most especially, why only her? Why not Aralath as well?
But there was nothing she could do except acquiesce. “Of course, your highness,” she said, her voice hardly more than a whisper.
He took a few steps towards the storm and Cyrele began following him, wincing at the sting of pain in her feet. Then Matiser slowed down and motioned for Cyrele to walk beside him rather than behind him. It was a discomfiting gesture from someone of his station, but especially so considering he wanted something from her—or possibly, he wanted to do something to her. Hesitantly, she stepped closer until the two of them were side by side, facing down the massive storm between them and the temple complex.
Osena had held out an arm, opening a passageway in the storm. Matiser didn’t make any such gesture. He merely continued his approach, until suddenly the storm began receding before him...and then kept receding, far more than it had done for Osena.
First, the storm rolled back to reveal the pristine waters of a small lake in front of them—and Cyrele could only stare in shock at the massive body of water that she and her companions had somehow avoided stumbling into while blundering about the wasteland. Then the storm retreated past a set of colossal buildings one by one, each of them architecturally intricate and unique, until six such buildings stood before them. The view would have been breathtaking if not for the ominous electrical clouds ready to swoop over it upon the prince’s command.
“The one in the center is the Temple of Lost Hope,” Matiser told Cyrele. “The other buildings are auxiliary to it—a purification hall, a library, a hostel for pilgrims. There are other complexes like this one elsewhere in the barrens, dedicated to different forms of worship, though I confess I don’t understand it all. It’s been a long time since anyone worshiped this religion.”
Why was he telling her any of this? Shouldn’t all of it have been a carefully guarded secret? Aralath, the sailors, Osena and her disciple—they had all acted like the knowledge of the wasteland’s temples existed under pain of death. So why would Matiser simply tell her about them? And moreover, why would a Kavan prince bother to explain anything to a servant of a foreign princess?
“Here, step carefully,” Matiser said, holding out his hand. “The ground is quite rugged and I’m not certain your sandals are in good condition after your ordeal.”
Was the all-powerful Karit implying that he was concerned for her?
She supposed it was true that Matiser himself had never been anything less than polite to her, though she certainly could not say the same for his relatives. Avenah had shown a casual cruelty, Akaterin a lack of concern for others. But Matiser, for all that his cold expressions were off-putting, had treated her with a respect that was unnecessary for one so beneath him in station and power.
She didn’t trust it at all, of course—if he truly cared, he could have brought her a spare set of sandals from his fully-stocked ship, or better still, not forced her to come along in the first place—but it made him the most enigmatic of the royals she’d met. She didn’t understand who he was or what he wanted. And perhaps that made him the most dangerous one of all.
Still, she gave him her hand. She couldn’t refuse, after all. With a nod, he guided her forward towards the temple.
This time, Cyrele strode towards the complex in the open, with no storm bearing down on her. This time, she saw the majesty of the temple as she drew closer. It should have made for an easier journey than her first time here. And yet somehow, with her hand held in the grip of a Kavan royal, she felt more frightened than ever before.
Dare she question the prince? How long would his polite façade last if she did?
“Your highness?” Cyrele asked, and her voice came out so quiet that she thought perhaps he hadn’t heard her, that perhaps she could rethink asking him anything after all—but then he gave her a questioning glance, and she knew it was too late. “Is it...acceptable, to ask why you need me?”
He gave a shrug in response. “Perhaps I don’t. But perhaps I will. These barrens are forbidden for a reason—they’re dangerous. I can protect you, but there’s much inside the temples here that even my family doesn’t understand. Some of it is glyphwriting.”
“And you think I could help you understand some of it?”
“Perhaps. The glyphs here are from before the fall of the Order.” ...the fall of the Order? That was an interesting way to describe a massacre. “There’s much written inside the temple that no one remembers how to read anymore, but my family would be happy to employ someone who could shed some light on those mysteries.”
Something was wrong. According to Aralath, Matiser’s ancestor ordered glyphwriters to work in the temple complex, then executed them so they couldn’t share what they knew. So shouldn’t the Kavan royals be the only people in the world who understood what the glyphwriting inside the temple complexes said? Did the first Maelstrom not share that knowledge with his children? Or perhaps Matiser knew what the glyphwriting was supposed to say, but couldn’t read it and therefore couldn’t alter it? Though why he’d want to change the old Order’s work, Cyrele couldn’t guess.
“I will gladly do whatever I can,” she said to Matiser, because what else could she tell him?
“I must ask that you not disclose anything you see here today, not even the existence of the temples. There are too many adventurous souls out there, foolish enough to risk their lives to satisfy their curiosity.”
“Of course,” she said, as if in agreement, all the while thinking that he would say that, wouldn’t he? Of course he would want the complexes kept secret, while never admitting the true reason why.
Still, anything he told her now became something she couldn’t pretend not to know later. This felt like a dangerous game, when every new bit of knowledge gave him another reason to control or eliminate her. And somehow, at the end of this, she needed to convince him that she was more valuable alive then dead.
How was she supposed to do it? He was giving her the impression that there was a way to succeed by bothering to tell her so much—but she also felt a growing fear that her ignorance of his intentions would cause her to misstep. And if she said the wrong thing, did the wrong thing, there might be no way to save herself.