Juniper waved a cheery goodbye, and I stepped forward to make my Oath.
“Down the tunnel,” the woman directing us inside said. “You’ll know it when you see it.”
That was it? Doubtful I could see anything in such darkness, I stepped forward and made my way into the tunnel as instructed.
For the first few steps, I was right; I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. But after another step, a slight draftfrom somewhere to my right brushed my arms, and a dim light flickered into existence, buzzing overhead and casting everything in a soft white glow.
I was in a vast, open chamber. The walls were made of solid, smooth gray stone, almost the color of charcoal, with thin veins of white running through them at odd angles. That singular, faint light shone down on a massive hunk of porous stone which took up most of the room. I approached it slowly, in awe of the size. I’d always thought the Oath Stone was small, something you held in both hands while reciting some vow the attendants guided you through or had written on the walls.
I glanced around. There were no words. Not on the walls, not on the floors, not even on the stone itself. There were no words written anywhere, no instructions, no Oath. I spun around again and again, searching in vain as my panic rose to the surface.
How do I know what to say?
How pathetic. Utterly, depressingly pathetic. How was I ever to make it past a single Trial if I couldn’t even figure out how to take my Oath?
My palms itched. I scratched them with my fingernails as I walked toward one of the walls. I narrowed my gaze, trying to discern a pattern in the white lines running through them. There was nothing.
I huffed, my nails continuously running back and forth on the sensitive skin of my palms. But the more I scratched them, the more they burned. I switched to rubbing them as I approached the stone. I leaned down, staring at the hunk of porous stone, tilting my head side to side as I inspected the bumps and crevices until I hissed—the burning in my palms had become an inferno.
Frantic, I held up my hands, expecting to see inflamed skin, a rash even, but they weren’t even red.
Still, they burned.
Flooded with an overwhelming compulsion to find relief from the cool surface of the Oathstone, I reached out and pressed my palms flat against the massive rock. The burning stopped, the itching soothed. I closed my eyes and took a breath.
Then I heard it. A faint voice in the back of my mind getting louder and louder…
I jerked back in surprise, but the moment my hands left the stone, they began to burn even worse than before. I hissed and stared at them again. I still saw nothing but my own skin. Shaking, I reached for the stone again.
The moment flesh met rock, the voice returned. I twitched, uneasy, but concentrated, frowning and pressing my eyes shut tight as if that would help me hear it. It spoke in a whisper and cycled through its message before I could finally make out the words.
“Repeat after me.”
I again startled. The words echoing around in my head were coming from my own voice. I tried to pull my hands from the stone, but I couldn’t. My palms were fused to the rock.
“I vow to obey the tenets of the Trials.”
I hesitated. Did I truly want to go through with this? As confident as I’d been this morning, as resigned to follow through with Darius’s last wish of me, this was…something else entirely. Something I hadn’t expected.
“Make your Oath,”my own voice hissed at me.
“I-I vow…to obey the tenets of the Trials,” I repeated. It seemed to be my only way out of here.
“I shall not speak of my experiences in the Trials, neither now nor upon their completion,”my voice whispered, then waited for me to repeat before continuing.“I shall use my blessings in service to the Geist. I shall seek to keep all knowledge and capability given as a result of my success between myself and my partner. I shall train my body, mind, and soul to be aproper reflection of the holiness of the Geist. For the duration of my candidacy in the Trials, I forfeit all worldly obsessions and submit myself to the will of my gods.”
Again, I hesitated. It seemed a lofty price to pay in honor of a friend I’d never see again. A friend the Geist had stolen from me. The thought of Darius, in this moment of all things, was like a punch to the gut. But it was a reminder as well: I wouldn’t be swearing it forthem. So I took a deep breath and made my Oath. The words turned bitter on my tongue.
The Oathstone released its hold on me and I stumbled backward. I rubbed my wrists, looking briefly down at my hands, but they were completely unchanged, unmarked by my Oath. I stared at the stone, open-mouthed and massaging my palms, before I turned away and headed back down the dark tunnel I’d entered through.
No one awaited me on the other side.
I reached up and brushed my fingers over my forehead. I couldn’t feel the mark, but it was hot where I touched, as though I’d been branded.
On autopilot, I made my way to the first tunnel where the first Trial was being held. The attendants had us lining up in two columns, one for men and one for women. I went to the back of the women’s line and watched as the others ahead of me tried to arrange themselves so that they were across from whoever they wanted to be partners with. Was that how it worked? Were we partnered with whoever we were across from in line? I turned to see who I was across from and sighed. The guy who’d been wringing his hands together in line for the Oathstone before.Great.
“I believe everyone is here,” someone spoke from the front of the lines. A woman in a rich blue pantsuit. Her lips were painted red and her blonde hair was cut short in the fashion of the upperhouses. She smiled out at all of us as she spoke again, a little louder. “Welcome, new candidates, to your first Trial!”
Some scattered applause rang out as families cheered for their own candidates, but those of us in the lines remained unsure of whether we should clap. It didn’t seem to deter her.
