No skulls of the dead.
No bones, waiting to be buried.
Nothing except for the large pile of rubble, the disturbed rock. It was far, far larger than she’d realized, stretching into the darkness left and right.
“Maybe the entrance to another old cave,” Sonara said aloud. “The miners often close up the places where too many have died. I came here because…” She wasn’t sure why she was telling the princess, but she felt like now there was an opening between them. A comfortable place in which to speak freely. “My curse was calling me here.”
“What do you sense?” Azariah asked.
Sonara shook her head, frustrated that the aura had deserted her. “Nothing.”
And that struck her, again, as strange.
“Thali says that the planet lives and breathes,” Azariah said. She knelt to look at the rubble. The rocks were carved, from the looks of it, by ancient hands. Azariah held one to the light,illuminating symbols that Sonara didn’t think she’d seen before, though she felt a little tug of memory. “Maybe it’s calling you here to send you a message.”
Sonara snorted. “You truly believe the planet lives?”
“Of course I do,” Azariah said. She passed the rock to Sonara, who took it in her hands to get a closer look at the markings etched within. Swirling lines, with hash marks driving through them like blades. “I had the same disbelief as you when Thali first came to the castle. Clerics are either deeply relatable, or terribly misunderstood. It seems there is no in-between. But I’m not ashamed of what I believe in now, because Thali taught me the truth. Your magic holds power over you, enough to control you and command you, and you are bowing to it. I once did, too. And once I can forgive myself for killing those men…” She nodded to herself. “I will be able to unleash it once again.”
“I cage it,” Sonara said. “I set it free when I need it most. Otherwise, the pressure, the pain of it, is far too much to bear.”
“I once felt the same way.” Azariah gently set down the rock in her hand. “You love your steed, don’t you?”
A drastic change of subject, but Sonara nodded. “We have a bond. We came back to life together.”
“And now you ride him free. Unbridled, unsaddled. It’s rare, for any rider and steed. But a beautiful thing to behold.”
“Duran deserves his freedom,” Sonara said. “He spent most of his life being caged, too.”
The moment she said it, she knew she’d walked headfirst into the princess’ clever little trap. Azariah smiled beautifully. “Your magic is the very same. It pains it to be held back. It’s a living,breathing thing, just as the planet is. It deserves to fly free. It is your heart and your soul.”
“I didn’t ask for it,” Sonara said.
Azariah lifted her hands and smiled softly. “Neither did I. But we have a gift, and we must keep reminding ourselves of that. To be different isbeautiful.”She smiled again. “Have you ever heard the tale of the first Shadowblood?”
Sonara thought back on the tale. It changed often, like all stories did. But some details remained the same. “It was a girl,” Sonara said.
Azariah nodded. “Eona.”
An old northern name, common enough in the White Wastes. But Azariah spoke it like a song.
“Eona was the very first Shadowblood. A princess, not much younger than you and I are now, whose father was a nomadic warrior king. Jira’s ancestor, no less.”
“She rode a northern steed,” Sonara said. “One as black as the night.”
In the tale, the king set out on a journey from the north, slaying all in his path. But he lost a great battle along the way, so he and his warriors found solace for a time, to rest and recover somewhere in the Deadlands. It was there that her father and his court discovered the heart of the planet, and Eona laid eyes upon it for the very first time.
“There are many written accounts of the First King,” Azariah said, “though the original texts seem to have been lost with time as to what truly happened that night while they camped. But the scholars in Stonegrave believe that the First King came upon a great source of power. It pulsed with it… and seemed to beat with the answers to all things.”
“Like a heart,” Sonara said.
The Princess nodded. “The First King was like anyone who wishes to rule. I believe there is always a kernel of greed within them. A little portion of their souls that begs formore,and it is up to them to decide how they will feed that kernel. Will they shower it with good, or will they nourish it with evil, as my father does? The First King had discovered the planet’s very heart. And in his nearness to it, he decided to give in to that darker side of himself, for his lust for power was strong, and that lust was heightened by the pulse of the planet’s heart. He removed a piece of it himself. He cleaved it from the Great Mother… broke her, if you will.”
Sonara sat and pulled her legs to her chest. “What did it look like? The heart.”
“Shadow. A mass of shadow, pulsing, moving.Alive.The First King discovered he could do great things with that piece of the heart. The tale, of course, is that he used its power to raze every defiant army across Dohrsar, solidifying his title and beginning his long reign.”
“And what happened to the piece he removed?”
