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CHAPTER TWO OMENS
The blade made no noise when King Castor cut himself. He did it over the heartline of his palm, then curled his fingers, holding the responding swell of blood in his hand like a chalice holds wine. It was a sacred act—giving a bit of oneself up for the art of Divination.
The abbess took King Castor by the wrist and brought his bloody hand to my mouth. The king went gray and turned his gaze to the wall, like he could not bear the sight of his blood—or me.
“Drink,” the abbess commanded.
I opened my mouth, and the king’s blood poured over my tongue, viscous and warm. It tasted vile. Blood always did.
I swallowed, straining against the urge to be sick.
The abbess began her oration. “Traum is an old name for an even older land. Its history is as outlandish, as lurid, as a dream. But in many ways, its true history began upon this very tor—”
She paused, turning to the king. “Though perhaps a Castor like yourself would not like to hear the story I tell before a Divination. Shall we simply proceed with the dream?”
King Castor shuffled his feet. “I would like to do things the proper way. Please, go on.”
The abbess touched my cheek, a familiar act of silent affection, then continued. “We know Traum and its hamlets like our own five fingers. Coulson Faire, the hamlet of merchants. The scholarly city-heart—the Seacht—the hamlet of scribes. The Fervent Peaks, near the mouth of our river, the hamlet of fishers. The cosseted birch forest, the Chiming Wood, where the foresters dwell. The florid Cliffs of Bellidine, occupied by weavers.”
The abbess sighed. “The old stories vary, of course, but in one way they are all alike. Traum was full of monstrous creatures. Sprites, who roamed the hamlets. Folk tried to fight them, but the hamlets were not unified, floundering without gods, without divine principles, without a ruler. And when none of those things exist—”
There are inevitable tragedies, I recited to myself.
“There are inevitable tragedies.” The abbess’s voice echoed. “Food and coin and children were stolen from the hamlets by sprites. Murder was committed. Crops died, boats crashed, wool was infested by beetles. Soon, Traum’s people were like sprites themselves—wild creatures, strange and ravenous and entirely without virtue.”
“Sounds like a good time to me,” one of the knights muttered.
King Castor managed a shaky grin. I glowered at him from behind my shroud.
The abbess continued. “The deaths grew, and so did discord between the hamlets.”
Until one night.
“Until one night. One dark, lonely night, when the air was so cold it painted the sky an incomparable purple hue, six gods visited Traum.”
A scoff echoed through the cathedral.
Armor rattled and low voices sounded, then one of the knights was pushing away from a pew, his steps loud on the stone floor. He shoved the cathedral door open, evening light flittering through dark hair and over three gold bands in his right ear.
The knight from the road. He cast one baleful look over his shoulder—
Then kicked the ancient wood door shut behind him.
The abbess waited for the echoes of his departure to settle, then continued, unperturbed. “One dark, lonely night, a foundling child left its hamlet and climbed a looming tor in search of food. The tor did not offer much life save whispering grass and gowan flowers and pale moths. But then—a spring! A strange spring at the top of the tor, leaching from a great stone. The child came to the lip of the water—drank deeply.” She drew in an affected breath. “And was swept into a dream.”
I’d heard the story so many times I could see it in my mind. A child, like I’d been when I’d come to Aisling Cathedral, lying in dark water before transfixed onlookers. It made me proud that a foundling—like me—should be the most important figure in Traum’s most sanctified story.
Even if that child didn’t have a name.
The abbess carried on. “When the child woke, sick and weak, it told passersby a vivid tale of six unearthly figures who had visited its wakeless mind—shadowy figures who bore stone objects, each object possessing unique power. The child’s tale grew legs, and folk of the hamlets came to the tor to see the spring. Again and again, the child drank the water and dreamed. In time, the child learned that the movements of the stone objects were presages. And so, the gods who wielded them were named.”
“Omens,” I whispered.
“Omens,” the abbess repeated. She lifted a finger, pointing to the windows on high, and every soul in the cathedral raised their eyes to the stained glass. “The Omen who bore a stone coin, the child named the Artful Brigand. The Omen fitted with the inkwell was christened the Harried Scribe. The Omen who wielded a stone oar was called the Ardent Oarsman. The Faithful Forester carries the chime.” She pointed at the last arched window. “And the Heartsore Weaver employs her sacred loom stone.”
The abbess directed her finger to the final window—the great rose window. “But the sixth Omen bore no stone object. It revealed nothing of itself at all, appearing only as a pale moth on tender wing. Some say it shows itself the moment you are born, others believe it comes just before you die. Which is true”—she opened her palms, like two pans of a scale—“we ca
She put a gloved hand to her chest. “Of course, there are those of us who have long believed the Omens are vaster than the dreamscape they occupy. That the moth and the others exist—hidden in the hamlets, killing horrible sprites and swaying the fate of Traum with their magical stone objects. Ever present—always watching.”
Saliva pooled in my mouth, heavy and tasting of iron. It was almost time.
“And so,” the abbess said, “we find ourselves in the center of Traum’s greatest story. A great cathedral was built upon the spring’s tor, and more foundling children were brought there to dream, and they became daughters of Aisling, revered Diviners. A king was crowned, and Traum’s five hamlets were unified by belief, thusly named the Stonewater Kingdom. The king’s knights were tasked with defending the faith as well as they defended the hamlets against sprites.”
She paused, looming over young Benedict Castor, whose eyes were on his feet. “And the king swore to be more supplicant than sovereign, that he would never take up the mantle of his faith for personal gain—never seek the Omens or their stone objects for his own power or vanity.
“For in the end,” the abbess said, “we are all supplicants. Whether craftsman or a king, knight or foundling or Diviner—faith is the same. It, like Aisling Cathedral, holds up the hamlets. And while we all bear our own creeds, we must never forget—it is the Omens who rule Traum. Omens who scrawl the signs. We are but witnesses to their wonders. Pupils of their portents.” She raised her hands in beckoning. “Ever but visitors to their greatness.”
“Ever but visitors,” I called.
“Ever but visitors,” the king murmured.
“Ever but visitors,” the knighthood echoed.
The gargoyles closed in around the spring.
Breath shuddered out of me. “What name, with blood, would you give the Omens?” I said to the king.
He startled, as if he’d forgotten me. “Benedict Castor the Third.”
The abbess put her hands on my shoulders.
“Lie down,” she instructed me.
The smell of rotting flowers—the taste of blood—the slip of oily water—were everywhere. I lay on my back in the spring, looking up into Aisling’s reaching cloister and the windows therein, it in light, I in darkness.
The abbess leaned over me. “Dream,” came her final, resolute command.
She pressed down on my clavicle, hard enough to bruise.
I sank into cold, terrible water.
I shut my eyes, opened my mouth. Sucked water into my lungs and choked. My body spasmed once, twice—a ripple in the spring. Then I did what I’d always done since my very first day at Aisling Cathedral.
I drowned.
There was pain, pain, then—
Nothingness. A bright, pallid nothingness.
I lay on a clean stone floor, looking up at the same windows as before. Only now, it seemed much higher, the vaulted cathedral roof cloudy, as if far above me in the sky.
Gargoyles, Diviners—the abbess and the king and his knights—were gone. Not even the mahogany pews remained. I was alone in a pale, liminal version of Aisling that had never existed in my waking hours.
I got to my feet. My robe had disappeared. The only stitch of fabric I wore now was my shroud. I looked down at my nakedness, hair and flesh, fat, muscle, and bone. A strange laugh bubbled in my throat. I always felt a mile wide after swallowing blood and water and drowning in the spring. As if I were infinite, holding all that discomfort so well within my body. It made me sick with self-loathing—and flushed with pride.
A shadow shifted in the corner of my eye. I turned, but the shadow flickered, then vanished.
I was small in the vast space. “Omens,” I called. “I am your harbinger, your dreamer—ever but a visitor. I’ve come to Divine.”
Silence. Then—
The cathedral began to ripple. Light blurred away the details, pillars and windows and buttresses all caught in a strange, undulating glow. I walked through the pale nothingness, the world sluggish, but my heart upon a hummingbird beat.
The cathedral rippled in earnest. Dark spots, like stains upon fabric, perforated the wide white space. “I’ve tasted the blood of Benedict Castor the Third.” Once more, I said, “I’ve come to Divine.”
The cathedral rippled, rippled—
Then winked out entirely.
The floor beneath my feet gave way, and I fell through seams of light into darkness. My stomach lurched, hands and feet hollowed out as my body gave way to the sense of falling.
A flash of silver in the darkness. Then—
My knees hit first, then my hands, the substance beneath them cold and hard and unsteady. I swallowed a groan and teetered. Tipped, toppled, then rolled over myself like a pin over dough. There was a chorus of clinking, and when I stopped rolling, twisted and naked and already bruising, I braced myself and sat up.
Coins. I’d fallen upon a bed of coins. Hundreds, thousands of coins stacked in a dark room.
I sca
They’d have dragged me out of the spring by now. Once rendered unconscious by the drowning, a Diviner was always pulled from the water and laid down to dream upon the chancel, set on her back with open arms, like an offering.