“They won’t leave this room,” she commanded. “Eventually, this place will become yours and you may do as you wish but I have been entrusted with this knowledge by nature of my title. Though you may be ordering our House about, I’ll remind you that you haven’t inherited that title yet. So you will do as I sayand keep these books here where none but us may lay an eye on them.”
Properly chastised, I nodded my agreement.
“Raghnall hears nothing of this,” she snapped then, glancing toward Isla who still sat at the edge of the bed, wide-eyed.
After only a brief moment of hesitation, Isla nodded.
Nascha reached forward and gently gathered the second book in her hands, the one bearing the titleOriginsemblazoned in silver on the faded cover. She blew off a thin coating of dust and I thought I heard the pages crackle at just that small amount of movement. She strode out of the closet and back into her room where she set the book down on the only available table space in the room, the top of her long oak dresser. Carefully, she pulled back the ancient pages, flipping through in search of something I couldn’t possibly begin to imagine.
When she stopped turning pages, the book laid open to an image of a woman with dark skin that shone in the light of both sun and moon illustrated in the sky above her. Her eyes were closed to reveal shimmery lids. Little web-like designs covered the sleeves and bodice of her purple gown, trailing down into thin stringy stripes of silvery thread over her skirt. Her hair was thick and dark, trailing down her back and disappearing beyond the illustration. She certainly wasn’t someone I would describe as delicate with her broad shoulders and athletic frame but there was still something quite feminine about her. Beneath her image was a little illustrated scroll with a name written in a curling stroke.
Rhene.
I felt Isla behind me as she leaned over my shoulder to get a look of her own but my eyes slid to the next page and the columns of text there.
The goddess Rhene is known as one of the original three gods of Criaye. She is the goddess of prophecy, souls, and bonds.The first record of Rhene can be found in the story of Zadok the Conquerer, a tale from approximately 579 DA, the Divine Age, which predates the founding of the city of Kax Abroth. Rhene is known for giving the gift of the Sight to mortals of her Choosing, with a preference for women. She is also attributed with the selection of the bonded pair and the creation of the soul bond itself. This bond is often seen as the most sacred gift of the gods and historically has circumvented borders, laws, and even national security as no nation shall seek to tear a bonded pair asunder. Doing so is considered the most blasphemous act one can commit as the gods have a documented history of turning their backs on those who disrupt or disrespect the soul bond.
“Geist,” Isla swore before I could finish reading the page.
I looked up to find my grandmother’s eyes on me.
“This is her?” I asked, fighting the urge to glance back down at the page and the likeness of Rhene. “The goddess you spoke of?”
She nodded once.
“The others…how many are there?”
“Fifteen,” she answered. “Though they vary in level of importance. At least, that’s what the book says.”
“And what is the Criaye? Who is Zarok and where is the city of Kax Abroth?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, shaking her head. “None of the names in this book are recognizable. It’s so old it speaks of heroes and ages that have come and gone. I see references to that city, Kax Abroth, throughout the book though. I’ve often wondered if it was an old name for Sanctuary, but it doesn’t seem to ever mention the rings or describe the architecture at all so it’s impossible to tell. Besides that, the gods are consistently woven throughout the narrative. The history is fascinating and rich and many of the events laid within it are attributed to one god or another, almost as if they somehow walked among us or spoke to us in some way.”
“This is it, then,” I said. “The basis of your whole religion.”
Her shoulders deflated, clearly disappointed by my reaction after showing me what she’d likely been wanting to show me for so long.
“Don’t do that,” she warned.
“How do you know any of it is real?” I asked, pressing her. “How do you know it isn’t just a storybook? A fictional account of some fantasy world dreamed up by an ancestor from long ago?”
She was shaking her head when she reached out and shut the book with a loud snap. Some of the pages already sticking out crumbled a bit more and I winced at the destruction. Even if I was questioning the authenticity of the tome, it was still thousands of years old. Valuable information could be pulled even from fictional tales that ancient.
“I thought you might see,” she muttered as she turned away, taking the book with her, and headed back toward the closet. “Of all of them, I chose you because I thought you might see.”
“Grandmother–”
“You have always questioned the Geist,” she snapped, whirling to face me again. A fire had ignited behind her eyes I didn’t expect to find there. “You have never believed in the beings that left us here with those cruel Trials as our only way out and yet when someone you love, someone you’ve always respected, presents to you an alternative, you dismiss it at once. You heard agod’s voicein your head, Milo! And still, you doubt! There is the doubt of the scholar and there is the doubt of the fool and you, dear grandson, begin to veer too far toward the latter.”
I frowned. She was right. Ihadheard a god’s voice in my mind when I touched the necklace. Something I’d thought before was an impossibility had happened and it had happened to me. So if that were possible, perhaps the existence of fifteen ancientdeities, heroes of a forgotten age, and cities long renamed or crumbled to ash was a possibility as well.
“I can’t…” I started, running a hand through my hair as I tried to determine how to voice the one fear aloud I’d had all along and refused to claim. “I cannot accept the possibility that everything we know is a lie.”
Nascha’s gaze finally softened. She set the book down on the edge of her bed and stepped forward to grip my shoulders in her hands.
“Not everything, hafid,” she intoned gently. “The Geist are real. They are a part of our history as surely as the ancestors of Viper, Avus, and Lynx are. What manner of being they are is the only thing in question and what manner of being have we been ignorant of all along? Some things don’t change. The history of our people, the lives we’ve lived and the destruction we’ve wrought. Our greed and anger and sorrow. Our triumphs and happiness. All that came after is true. It is only our origins we question.”
“But how can we know?” I whispered.
