Finally, the priest pours all the oil on the bodies and lights the pyre. With so little wood, the oil will help the bodies burn. In Yusan, we consider the souls released as soon as the bodies catch fire. I imagine it’s the same in Khitan.
Once the souls are released, we head back down the blood-splattered stairs. The priest asks us to wait at the doors of the temple.
“What if it’s a trap?” Royo asks. His eyes dart around as he voices my paranoid thoughts.
“Unless he has an army hidden back there, I think we can handle it,” Mikail says.
But I keep my bow ready.
The priest comes back with a cloth for us to clean our boots. Royo is the first to sheepishly comply. The priest passes us, heading to wipe down the stairs.
When we get inside the temple, the girls are still at the reading table, only now it’s covered in open books and unfurled scrolls.
They stop and look up at us.
“What did you find?” Mikail asks.
“Well, there’s good news and bad news,” Aeri says. “Which would you like first?”
My stomach sinks. Of course there’s bad news. “The bad.”
“The good,” Mikail says at the same time.
He and I pause and exchange glances.
“Well, that was weird.” Aeri looks from me to Mikail. “Anyhow, the good news is that there appear to be two exceptions to the Rule of Distance. But neither of us speaks enough Khitanese to figure out what they mean. They’re written strangely.”
“Easy enough.” Mikail saunters over to the table.
“Wait, what’s the bad news?” I ask.
Aeri pales a little. “Well, the thing is…we figured out why the king wants the ring so badly.”
I raise my eyebrows, waiting.
She opens a scroll. “It’s right here. ‘The use of multiple relics amplifies their powers as man merges with god,’” she reads.
Mikail runs a hand down his face as my stomach sinks. Joon has the Immortal Crown, the Flaming Sword, and now he wants the ring, which would make him the most powerful being in the world.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Mikail
The Temple of Knowledge, Khitan
Under no circumstances can we let Joon get the ring. Succeeding here just became that much more important, and it was already life-or-death.
I take a seat at the long, varnished table to read about the exceptions to the Rule of Distance. Aeri and Sora are on either side of me, and Royo and Euyn stand across from us. As I finish reading, I wish I hadn’t. I sit back, and Sora’s violet eyes are on me. Actually, everyone is watching me.
“It’s not good, is it?” she asks, the corners of her mouth tilting down.
I run a hand through my hair. “Well, it’s not easy.”
That’s putting it lightly.
“Give it to us,” Royo says. He’s been standing there, waiting. I’m sure he can read, but he’s no scholar. While everyone else has flipped through a book or unwrapped a scroll, he’s been content watching Aeri read—when he thinks no one is looking, of course.
“All right,” I say. “The first exception states that the person who brings the king an egg of an amarth will be granted a villa with utmost standing on Oligarch Mountain. But more importantly for our purposes, they can dine at the table of the king.”
