Prophesy
“I ached to ask her what she was seeing in the flames but was afraid to interrupt. I held my breath and waited for her to speak, and my stomach twisted in a knot as she stayed silent.
“‘I see a high peak, rocky and bare, often hit by thunderbolts,’ she spoke at last. Her voice sounded as if coming from across lands and mountains, carried on the wings of magic. ‘A cross rises there, growing from the ground as a mushroom after the rain. But lightning strikes it, and a crescent moon rises in its place. But then it breaks in two, and the cross rises once again.’
“She reached out to grasp my hand, and I squeezed hers back. ‘I see our lands,’ she said. ‘I see Christian temples everywhere, but then these temples burn. I see forty maidens, standing on a rock, their long hair woven together so none of them can run away. I see them hold hands, whisper a promise, and jump into the dark waters of the Black Sea.’
“‘But why?’ I asked, horrified. ‘Who are they?’
“‘I see people hiding in a temple,’ she continued, ‘I see a father killing his own child and then himself before they would fall into the hands of enemies. I see young boys sundered from their families and trained to fight for the enemy. I see them grow into formidable warriors with damaged minds, who return to their homelands and fight against their own kin.’
“A shudder ran down my spine. ‘Is it our people who suffer?’
“‘Our people?’ Roxana echoed, her eyes never leaving the flames. ‘They have some of our blood, and they carry our name, but they have abandoned our ways. They are our people as much as Bogdana is Thracian.’
“But Bogdana was Thracian, whether she practiced their ways or not. The blood of Spartacus and Orpheus flowed through her veins, just like our blood flowed through the veins of these people Roxana had seen in the flames. These were our people, and the steps Khan Boris was planning to take would lead to this future. Unity, strength—none of it would be worth it in the end. I took a deep breath. ‘Let us go,’ I said. ‘We’ve seen enough.’
“‘Have we indeed?’ Roxana asked, staring into the flames as if transfixed.
“‘Our people accept Christianity and suffer for it,’ I said.
“She frowned and moved closer to the fire and reached out with her hand as if to touch it. ‘Or perhaps I see only the bad and none of the good.’
“‘Why would Tangra show you only the bad, unless he wants us to stop it?’
“She gasped and raised her palm to silence me. ‘Wait. I see something else.’ Her hands fisted and her breathing grew faster. ‘Blood everywhere. Flowing on the streets like rivers. Oceans of blood, drowning everyone. Fire consumes it all. The whole world burns. Not only our land—the whole world; even lands I never knew existed. And the monster who did it all, rising to rule over the ashes of what once was.’
“Roxana screamed. I had never heard such a sound from her before. It was primal, and desperate, and terrified. She collapsed forward, barely avoiding the flames, shaking, her hands pressed against her face. The summer sun had turned her skin a soft, glowing brown, but now she was grey like ashes.
“I knelt next to her and caught her in my arms. ‘My love, what did you see?’ She stood frozen in my arms, her eyes wide and wild. ‘My moonshine, please, talk to me.’
“After what seemed like ages, she looked at me, trembling. ‘I… I don’t know what I saw. I must be mistaken.’
“I had never seen her so shaken by a vision. What could possibly be so horrific? ‘This monster that destroyed the world, did it look like any known creature? Can you describe it?’
“She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’ Her voice was barely audible. ‘I didn’t see his face very well.’
“‘His face?’ I echoed. ‘It was shaped like a human? And was male?’
“She squeezed my arm so strongly that she nearly broke my bones. ‘I said I don’t know. If you have any love for me, don’t ask me to speak of this ever again.’”
Myra gasped and pressed a hand against her mouth. “She saw you as the monster who destroyed the world. The poor woman.”
The Prince looked away, staring at the flames. “I never knew for certain what she saw on that day. I also suspect what you do, but I hope I am wrong.”
“Ah, do you, now?” Myra said. “Are you telling me you wouldn’t want your wife to know what became of you? That you’re ashamed?”
“I’m ashamed of nothing,” he said. “But she saw it out of context.”
Myra raised an eyebrow. “She saw a monster, drowning the whole world in blood. That sounds pretty accurate to what happened in reality.”
“You know but a small fraction of what happened in reality,” the Prince said.
“Fine,” said Myra. “But I still don’t understand how any of this drove you to destroy the world.”
He leaned back and looked at her. “You have the impatience of a mortal. But we are almost there—we have nearly met the person who tried too hard to push me down the opposite path and inadvertently turned me into who I am now.
“It was time to head back, and yet Roxana stopped me. She insisted that she had seen something else in the flames—a sign would come to us in the mountains after nightfall, and we had to wait here. It was, of course, impossible, and I told her so—if we tried to descend the mountain in the dark, we would surely fall to our deaths even if the night beasts spared us. In the end, we reached a compromise—we would go down, but we wouldn’t enter the village immediately. We would wait in the mountain outskirts for the fall of darkness and whatever sign would come to us.
“Roxana had quickly composed herself, and our descent was fast. We stopped only to wash the blood from ourselves in one of the cold mountain lakes. When we were an hour away from the village, we stopped. I prepared torches, and we waited for darkness to fall.
“The sun had long ago disappeared behind the high peaks, but the sky was still a bright indigo, sprinkled with purple and red. Once the hues started to fade, I lit my torch. We stood there, huddled to ward off the night chill. The dark woods surrounded us, hiding their secrets. The leaves whispered a soft song I could never understand.
“Roxana gasped, and my grip around the torch tightened. There she was, far ahead, under a high oak, dressed all in white. My mysterious forest spirit. My samodiva.”