Lynn Flewelling - Hidden Warrior

Saruel caught Iya by the arm just then. “Look! There in the harbor!”

A small ship was skimming across the water toward the ruined quays. Its square sail was an unmistakable shade of dark red, and it bore the emblem of a large white eye over a supine crescent moon.

Iya touched her heart and eyelids in salute. “The Lightbearer has a new message for us, it seems, and an urgent one, if the Oracle herself comes to deliver it.”

“But how? How did she know?” gasped Arkoniel.

Iya patted his arm. “Come now, dear boy. What sort of Oracle would she be if she didn’t see this?”

At the throne room the lead seals had been cut and the golden doors thrown wide. Entering with her guard, Tobin found the great chamber beyond already crowded. Soldiers and citizens made way for her in near silence, and Tobin felt all those hundreds of eyes fixed on her. The silence was different than it had been in Atyion. It seemed filled with doubt and skepticism, and the hint of threat. Tobin had ordered that her guards keep their weapons sheathed and Tharin had agreed, but he and Ki looked wary as they walked beside her.

Some of the shutters had been pulled down and slanting afternoon light streamed in through the tall dusty windows. Open braziers on either side of the high stone throne cast a red glow over the white marble stairs. A knot of priests awaited her there. She recognized those who’d come from Atyion among them, Kaliya foremost among them, maskless There was still no sign of the wizards. Someone had cleaned the birds’ nests from the stone seat and lined it with dusty velvet cushions, as it must have been in the time of her grandmothers. Tobin was too nervous to sit yet.

She stood tongue-tied for a moment, recalling the suspicion she’d seen in General Skonis’ eyes. But there was no turning back now.

“Ki, help me,” she said at last, and began unbuckling her sword belt. With his help, she pulled off her surcoat and the hauberk and padded shirt underneath. Untying her hair, she shook it out around her face, then summoned the priests of Ero up to join her.

“Look at me, all of you. Touch me, so that you can attest to these people that I am a woman.”

A priest of Dalna ran his hands over her shoulders and chest, then pressed his palm to her heart. Tobin felt a sensation like a warm moist summer breeze rise through her.

“She is a woman, and of the true blood of the royal house,” he announced.

“So you say!” someone in the crowd called out, and others echoed it.

“So says the Oracle of Afra!” a deep voice boomed from the back of the chamber. Iya and Arkoniel stood at the doors, flanking a man in a stained traveling cloak.

The crowd parted as they strode to the foot of the dais. Iya bowed deeply, and Tobin saw that she was smiling.

The man threw off his cloak. Underneath he wore a dark red robe. He took a silver priest’s mask from its folds and fixed it over his face. “I am Imonus, high priest of Afra and emissary of the Oracle,” he announced.

The priests of Illior covered their own faces with their hands and fell to their knees.

“You have the mark and the scar?” he asked Tobin.

“Yes.” Tobin pushed back her shirtsleeve. He climbed the stairs and examined her arm and chin.

“This is Tamír, the Lightbearer’s queen, who was foretold to this wizard,” he proclaimed.

Iya joined them and he rested a hand on her shoulder. “I was there the day the Oracle revealed this wizard’s road. It was I who wrote down her vision in the sacred scrolls, and I am sent now with a gift for our new queen. Majesty, we have kept this for you, all these years.”

He raised his hand and two more red-robed priests entered, bearing something on a long litter. A handful of dirty, bedraggled-looking people followed. “The Wizards of Ero,” Iya told her.

The litter bearers brought their burden to the foot of the throne and set it down. Something large and flat as a tabletop lay on it, swathed in dark red cloth embroidered with a silver eye.

Imonus descended to fold back the wrappings. Polished gold caught the light of the braziers, and those standing closest gasped as a golden tablet as tall as a man and several inches thick was revealed. Words were engraved across it in square, old-fashioned script like a scroll, the letters tall enough to be read halfway across the great chamber as the litter bearers stood the tablet on its end for all to see.

So long as a daughter of Thelatimos’ line defends and rules, Skala shall never be subjugated.

Tobin touched her heart and sword hilt reverently. “Ghërilain’s tablet!”

The high priest nodded. “Erius ordered this destroyed, just as he destroyed the steles that once stood in every marketplace,” he proclaimed in that same deep, carrying voice. “The priests of the Ero temple saved it and brought it in secret to Afra, where it was hidden until a true queen came to Ero again.

“Hear me, people of Ero, as you stand in the ruins of your city. This tablet is nothing. The words it bears are the very voice of Illior, set there by Illior’s first queen. This prophecy was fulfilled, and lived on in the hearts of the faithful, who have failed in their duty for a time.

“Here me, people of Ero, as you look on the face of Tamír, daughter of Ariani and all the queens who came before her, even to Ghërilain herself. The Oracle does not sleep, or see falsely. She would not send this sign to a pretender. She foresaw this queen before she was conceived, before Erius usurped his sister’s place, before their mother was lost to the darkness. Doubt my words, doubt this sign, and you doubt the Lightbearer, your protector. You have slept, people of Ero. Awake now and see clearly. The true queen has delivered you, and stands here now to reveal her true face and her true name.”

Tobin felt the hair on her arms slowly rise as the misty figure of a woman took shape beside her on the dais. As it grew more solid, she saw that it was a girl about her own age, dressed in a long blue gown. Over it she wore a cuirass of gilded leather emblazoned with the ancient crescent moon and flame emblem of Skala. The Sword of Ghërilain, which she held upright before her face, looked newly forged. Her flowing hair was black, her eyes a dark, familiar blue.

“Ghërilain?” Tobin whispered.

The ghostly girl aged before Tobin’s eyes to a woman with iron-grey hair and lines of care etched deep around her mouth and eyes.

Daughter .

The sword was notched and bloody now, but shone more brightly than before. She offered it to Tobin, just as Tamír’s ghost had, and her eyes seemed to hold a challenge: This is yours. Claim it .

As Tobin reached to take it, the ghost disappeared and she found herself looking instead out through one of the tall windows. From here, she could see past the burned gardens to the smoking ruin of the city and the wreckage-strewn harbor beyond.

So long as a daughter of Thelátimos—

“Tob?” Ki’s worried whisper jolted her back to the present.

Her friends were watching her with concern. The Afran priest’s face was still masked, but she saw Ghërilain’s challenge mirrored in his dark eyes.

“Tobin, are you all right?” Ki asked again.

Her own sword felt too light in her hand as she raised it to salute the crowd, and cried out, “By this tablet, and by the Sword that is not here, I pledge myself to Skala. I am Tamír!”

The sound of her chamber door being thrown open startled Nalia out of her dreams. The room was still lost in darkness, except for the thin bar of star-flecked sky visible at the tower’s two narrow windows.

“My lady, wake up. They’ve all gone mad!” It was her page, and the child sounded terrified. She felt his fear as keenly as the ever-present damp that permeated every room of this lonely fortress they’d been exiled to.