Her face, so close to mine, makes my chest ache. I have not been touched—not a brush of the fingertips, much less a kiss or hug—since I was five years old, but the wish is as strong as it ever was—and right now I wish I could let my friend hold me.
“But I’m not what Daoman says I am either,” I whisper, my pulse thudding as I hear that fear aloud for the first time. “Where is my aspect, El? The Feast of the Dying is nearly upon us, and then it will have been ten years from the time I was called. The Graycloaks will not wait another year—what if they—”
Elkisa’s hand drops to the soil between us, half an inch from the edge of my boot. The nearness of it stops my voice mid-word. Her eyes search mine.
“Daoman is not the only one who can see the divine light in you, Nimhara.”
There is a strange wistfulness to her voice that I’ve never heard before. Her eyes are almost sad, despite the warm words.
Too moved to speak, I sit silently until that pensive look is gone again, and she rocks back on one heel.
“We will go to Intisuyu,” she declares. “You will decipher this new prophecy and come home knowing your purpose, maybe even with your aspect manifested. Let them claim you are less than what they are—they will only feel more ashamed when they realize they were wrong. Tomorrow, Lady. As for tonight—will you eat?”
I swallow hard and look past her, toward the campfires. Bryn and Maita sit at one of them, not quite together, but near enough. Capac is moving off through the trees with a bowl in hand, no doubt in search of Rheesi so he can deliver the guard’s dinner.
“You go,” I tell her, lifting my chin, letting the mantle of divinity settle back over me. Elkisa may see me falter, but she needs to see me strong too. I owe that much to someone who would put her body between me and danger without a second thought for her own life. “I want to walk along the river a while and clear my head.”
“I’ll come with you.” The response is instantaneous.
“Please, El. A moment to myself is all I ask. I would see someone approaching by river, and to reach the barges an intruder would have to come through here and contend with you, and four others besides. I am perfectly safe.”
Elkisa’s eyes narrow, but she wastes no time in debating with herself. She nods, a quick and decisive gesture. “I’ll come to check on you if you’re not back within half an hour.”
I cannot argue, so I nod my thanks and slip away into the dark.
Elkisa seems content to believe in this “new prophecy,” though bits of undiscovered text crop up all the time, buried in ancient tomes or in the scribblings of the mist-touched, and most often foretell nothing of greater importance than the shifting of a stream or the birth of twins.
I think she would feel differently if she knew what I had found was a lost stanza oftheprophecy. The Song of the Destroyer. The only sacred text that matters.
Of all the things foreseen, the Song predates every one, going back to the time of the Exodus. Some scholars say it was written by the gods themselves before they left, as explanation or apology for the rift they tore in our world. My tutors claimed it was written by the first living god, the beginning of my line, who stayed behind to guide and protect humankind when the others took to the sky.
All life happens in cycles, even the world itself, and the life of ours was drawing to an end a thousand years ago. A young god named Lightbringer was given the task of ending the world so that it might be reborn again, new and free of suffering. But when that god, also known as the Destroyer, looked into the future and saw what lay in the gaping emptiness of the space between death and rebirth … he left us, and fled into the sky.
The Song of the Destroyer, as central to our faith as my own existence, tells us that one day the Lightbringer will return, with the Last Star to guide him. That amid omens of rising waters and falling stars, the Lightbringer will rejoin the living god to walk the land once more, before bringing us to rest in the instant of oblivion before the world bursts forth renewed.
Scholars and priests alike have devoted entire lifetimes to studying the Song. They ask what would have happened had the Lightbringer ended the world when he was meant to, whether we would now be in a new cycle of rebirth.
Some suggest that the last thousand years of suffering and waiting for the Lightbringer’s return have been a test of our worthiness, destined from the beginning. Others have gone so far as to suggest he never existed at all, that the Lightbringer is just a Fisher King’s tale, no more real than the stories of the Sentinels who guard the way between worlds, or the mist-touched wraiths that wait in the thickest, darkest mist-storms to drive the unsuspecting to the edge of insanity.
The Lightbringer cannot be real, they say—for how could a god turn his back on his destiny?
I could not help but wonder if the answer might be simple: that the boy-god born to destroy the world was afraid. I suggested this once, to one of my tutors—she came as close as anyone could come to calling her living divine a blasphemer. For what hope have men if even the gods know fear?
But I too am a god—the latest in a long, long line. And I know fear; I’ve met it many, many times.
Could I have destroyed the world, in his place? Would I have had the courage, thefaith, to believe all that I was to destroy would be born again?
I wish I could say yes—but the truth is that I don’t know. I cannot know—no one can, unless faced with that terrible choice themselves. Maybe the answer is that no one person, divine or not, can make that choice alone.
I was twelve years old when I fully understood the implications of the Song: that the Lightbringer wouldrejointhe living god, and together they would bring about the end of the world.
Together.
I used to imagine that he would come tome, that I was the one preordained to stand with him against the darkness. I could not help but long for it. To have someone by my side who understood the weight of destiny, someone who would give my life purpose and meaning. Someone who couldtouchme …
Perhaps that is why not even Daoman believes that my lost stanza is anything other than a girlish fantasy.
But I know what happened. It was no dream. I woke in darkness a fortnight ago, drenched in sweat, my skin tingling as if a mist-storm were all around me—and when I would have gone to the window, a vision seized me.
