Chapter 1
The Priest has two weapons which are unknown to the rest of the world. Our Marks allow us to kill. Our Infusions allow us to survive.
~Rhaskar Thorne, Book One of the Priests
Fiona
I clench the Infusion tightly as I look up at the Crimson Tower, the seat of power of Lysara, the Goddess of Death and Beauty. I take a deep breath and close my eyes, listening for the steady hum that’s only grown louder as I’ve traveled through the lands of the Undying.
A cacophony of sounds no one else can hear fills my mind as I stare ever upward at the tower in the center of the city. I’ve spent a month getting here: two weeks walking from Stormhaven to the border and two weeks in the Kingdom of Averna, a land of forever twilight where the recently departed walk among the living.
The glass vial in my hands is smooth and soothing. Its contents are more valuable than a peasant here would earn in a lifetime, evenif no one would recognize it as such. Dark as midnight, the liquid feels lighter than air, and I down it in a single swallow.
The Infusion of the Cat is one of dozens of tiny vials hidden in the tattered black cloak I wear. Each of them has a different purpose—a unique essence—that will attach itself to my body and mind, changing me in incredible ways for a short time. Two hours for this one in particular.
I stow the empty vial in my cloak as awareness of my body and surroundings becomes intense, like realizing I’ve been wearing darkened glasses my entire life and suddenly I’ve taken them off. The stars become brighter. The red obsidian bricks of the tower shine as if they hold a fire inside each of them when they were barely more than a shade of darkened rust a moment ago.
Grass brushes against my legs with a sound like thunder. Mice scurry through it, and my attention is drawn to their incessant chittering, making it hard for me to focus on the task that must be completed with haste. Two hours to rob the Prince of Bones, the most dangerous creature in the world, is far too little time.
I’m standing hidden in the tower’s shadow at its base, my boots balancing on two inches of rocky ledge that surrounds it. Those two inches of stone are at the midpoint between the city and the top, a hundred feet in either direction. As most towers and castles, this one was built on a hill overlooking the land where its citizens live.
I leap, my fingers gripping the sill of a leaded-glass window that looks into the Great Hall of the tower. Eight feet from the ground, no normal human could do what I’m about to do. Then again, I’mnot exactly a normal human with the Infusion of the Cat running through my veins. My gloved fingers cling to the inch of stone that juts out of the wall. I swing my body side to side, my abdominal muscles straining with each movement, until my foot catches the ledge as well. The Infusion gives me uncanny balance, awareness, and senses, but it’s the twenty years training to be a Priest that gives me the strength and muscle memory. My hand moves to the arch of stone around the window, and between my natural strength and the balance given to me by the Infusion, I haul myself up onto the thin ledge.
“Eight feet down, only a hundred to go,” I mutter quietly to myself. Castles aren’t built to keep Priests out of them. Lysara placed wards around this place, but even the gods don’t understand our magic, so she can’t protect against us. If a Fae tried to fly here, the wards would have ripped the magic from their body, and they’d have plummeted to their death. Priests are human, though, and our abilities are one of our closest guarded secrets. Those secrets have kept us safe and allowed us to bypass any protection the Godforged have put up.
I look up at the next window ledge. Ten feet above me, it’s still well within my reach. I repeat my earlier movements, something I’ve trained to do a thousand times since I began climbing the castle of Stormhaven when I was five. I’ve only fallen once, and the long scar down my arm is proof of it.
Window by window, I climb the tower that is home to the Prince of Bones. He isn’t home, though. He’s too busy massacringDraeven’s troops atop Inni, the smallest of the five dragons still here on Nyth.
The minutes pass too quickly as I make my way up undetected to the top of the tower where Azric Cyrus’s chambers wait. It’s a treasure trove of powerful god-touched items that no other member of the Order of the Priests has ever attempted to steal.
Rhaskar will have to allow me to become an official Priest when I bring home a treasure like this. Even a single item, a single weapon of the gods, is worth more than any king’s vault. Thoughts of wielding a weapon infused with the power of Death herself tempt my Cat-infused mind, but I push them away. I’m standing on a ledge less than an inch wide over an almost two-hundred-foot drop. Now is not the time to be daydreaming.
The wind whistles across the obsidian. My leather gloves are the only thing protecting my fingers from the razor-sharp edges of the bricks, but they’re failing. The doeskin gloves I chose specifically for this, for their ability to let me feel through them, aren’t stout enough to get me all the way to the top. It was a mistake that I have no remedy for. It doesn’t matter, though. I’ve come too far to turn back now, and there’s no telling how long it will be before the Prince of Bones comes back from his battle.
As soon as I’m settled on this ledge, I look down at my gloves. The fingertips are barely hanging on. Dozens of thin cuts show flesh beneath them. This is going to hurt. I could drink the Infusion of the Boar to thicken my skin, to protect myself from what’s certainly going to be unpleasant. All Infusions have theirdrawbacks, though, and just as the Cat makes it hard to focus, the Boar numbs my ability to feel. That would be disastrous.
Only two more ledges are left. I leap, and when my fingers grip the obsidian this time, it’s flesh on stone. I wince as the stone bites into my fingers as if I’m clinging to shattered glass. Hanging nearly two hundred feet over the city means that pain doesn’t matter, and once again, I swing. My fingers and forearms ached before, and the sharp sting of the stone cutting into my fingers only makes it worse.
But it’s the blood that’s running down my arm that scares me. Blood is slicker than you’d expect. Worse than water, but not as bad as oil. Pain doesn’t matter, but slipping would be ruinous.
Just as I’ve done a dozen times already, I pull myself onto the ledge. The one directly above me now is Azric’s. I wipe my bloodied fingers on the black linen pants I wear over thin pieces of leather that have been hardened into a unique type of armor, just as covered in symbols as I am.
I take a deep breath and leap again. My fingers catch, and I swing as I have so many times already. The gashes on my fingers are worse, so much worse. As my body swings, my balance shifts too much to my left side, and my hand slips just a little on the blood. That’s all it takes.
There are two things which allow a Priest to survive in a world ruled by Godforged monsters, two things that allow us to keep the gods and their creatures out of the Kingdom of Sylvantia, my home: Infusions and Marks. Even as I feel my body begin to slideoff the ledge, out of control, I reach for my Mark of the Cloak with my mind.
That Mark allows me to move from one shadow to another, and it requires two things: physical contact with shadows and a destination shadow within sight. My fingers brush against the darkness under the ledge, and I look upward at the window to see the shadow under a table.
Dark power floods my entire body, stolen from Nyxthos himself. I know the tattoo that runs along my lower back is glowing as I’m pulled out of Nyth and into a world of unbroken darkness for a half second. My mind holds the image of that shadow under the table, and then I’m back in Nyth, kneeling under it.
“Burn it all,” I curse as I crawl out from the shadow. Marks of the Priest are magic, but they’re very limited versions of what Immortals and Godforged creatures can do constantly. Shadow walking, which is what I just did, is one of Azric’s abilities, but I can only go to a place I can visibly see, and I can only do it twice before I must let the Mark recover. Azric, on the other hand, can travel half-way across Nyth and then back as many times as he wants.
That particular Mark is one of our most powerful tools, giving us a chance to escape situations we can’t survive. Using it once already leaves me vulnerable.
But I’m in the chambers at the top of the tower. Azric Cyrus’s chambers. I survived the easy part. The myriad of sounds in my mind is deafening here. Everything here is god-touched. Even the sheets hold tiny bits of Azric’s power, though those aren’t worth collecting.
I’ve been drawn to god-touched items for as long as I can remember, a quirk I was born with, and the sounds that lead me to them have been both a blessing and a curse. Tonight, those sounds are my guides, leading me to objects that most likely look very little like treasure.
