The Blessed City

They'd left food in their rooms and fresh linens to wash with. Between not eating since midday the day before and training half the morning, her appetite was hearty. Maleah ate until her stomach felt as if it might burst. When Arik came to retrieve her, she didn't fuss over the ruse he pulled in the circle nor argue about the efficacy of his actions. Or lack of. Instead, she kept to an easy conversation as she followed him through the winding halls of the castle.

"Will Rhys and Cam be joining us?"

"No. They will be attending their first lessons separately." At the end of a particularly long hall, he stopped. They stood in front of two delicately gorgeous doors. "Your studies will happen here. Every day after sun-high and after you've had your dinner."

With both hands, Arik pushed them open. She gaped into the expansive room. A long table stretched its belly, surrounded by shelves stacked with rows of books she suddenly longed to read. The smell of them melted heavenly in her nose. Under the mantel on the far end was the largest fireplace she had ever seen. Odd knick-nacks were scattered in a decorative manner around the room.

At the end of the table waited Rohan and Rowena and in front of them rested her book. Cautiously, she cast a glance at Arik before crossing to them. Very aware that every pair of eyes heeded her restlessly, she reached for her book.

"My book," was all she could manage to say in a room filled with peculiarities and observations.

"The book," Rohan corrected her. When she stared at him blankly, he explained. "We have searched near two centuries for it. I had begun to lose hope that it ever truly existed when no word from Drocomir or Vamirah returned to us. Yet, you have restored it."

"You know of its prominence, yes?" Rowena inquired.

Maleah nodded. "I had my suspicions upon first reading it. It wasn't until near halfway through that I knew for sure what I held in my possession. However, the author never identifies themselves. Though I know they were one of the eight gods." The twins looked at one another, their faces full of knowing.

"Are you familiar with the history of the gods?" Rohan pulled a chair for her, urged her to sit.

"Doc has told me some from time to time."

"Doc?" Rowena's brow furrowed.

"Drocomir," she revised and received a nod in return.

"Then you know of The Fall and the rise of the king."

"I have learned that the gods hadn't the intention to abandon us and those who blindly follow him believe the king to be the last of them."

"You do not believe the king to be a god?"

"No. A god serves, they are not served." She smiled to herself, remembering having had the same thought once before. She caught a glimpse of pride pass over their faces.

"It is a wise girl to follow her own intuition. An even wiser one to see past the ruse of someone as powerful as the king." Rohan picked up the book. "Kalli was one of the eight. Still is, as one never stops being a god. She disappeared from the gods home among the stars. Left it to walk the earth for centuries. Hiding among the people and fae and hiding from us."

"Years after she left, the gods fell," Rowena continued. "The Fall, as you know, left the world unprotected and unguided. Blessed were born without guides, their gifts emerging as a strange mockery of the purity they were meant to be. Then Nikolai began to take possession of every feeble mind foolish enough to believe him a god. His power is great. There is no denying that. But he was never one of us."

Maleah found herself hanging onto their words, leaning forward where she stood as if she were back in the borstal eagerly listening to one of Doc's stories. In a few short words, they quenched much of her suspicions. The book was written by a god. The Fall disrupted the natural order. The gods abandoned - no, were cast out and forced away from their duties, she corrected herself. But . . .

"I had seen it before. In your faces. Once on a coin and heard it in many stories. The two of you are one of the eight. I am right?" She looked from Rowena to Rohan. Then to Arik who nodded as if he, too, knew the answer.

"Two of them, actually. We are the gods of abundance and fortune. It is how we were able to build and maintain the secrecy of Sabhille to the extent we have."

"Yet, we are afraid we cannot secure it for much longer." Rowena stepped to the wall, pulled the fabric that obscured stone. In the hole, Maleah saw the scry. Brilliantly blue and real. At her beckoning, Maleah joined Rowena to stare into it. As the god spoke, the scry moved. Images crossed over the white wisps. "The magic of the gods is fading. We have been on earth too long. Our presence sways too much of man's free will and protects their divinity too little. It is time the gods return home and mend what has been broken."

Kalli's words echoed Rowena's. The responsibility spoken of in the book, she presumed was to bring the book here. After all, it was here Vamirah intended to bring it, to begin with.

"Then I do not understand. What do you need with me? What do you intend I study?"

Rohan sighed easily, but not with impatience. "Drocomir believed this book would contain allusions to where all the gods ended up after The Fall. You see, Drocomir is the god of wisdom and knowledge. Most people would call him the prophet of the gods. However, he saw possibilities, not certainties. For there was one thing the Creator gifted us all: free will. And with free will came infinite possibilities. When Kalli separated herself from the rest of us, tracking her became impossible. Yet, for some reason, Doc continued to believe Kalli knew of our whereabouts always. He could never explain that much to us."

Maleah recalled Kalli writing of the prophet and concealing herself to his eyes. But still, what their need for her was unclear. When she frowned at them, Arik stepped in.

"We want you to read the book. To help us identify where the gods had gone or are stranded."

"Why not read it yourselves? You know Kalli much better than I. Deciphering whatever paths she scribed would be easier for you." Silence sang soundly in the room until it dawned on her. "You cannot read it."

"We cannot. Nor can Arik. His gifts with languages - both written and not - are astounding. Perhaps the most talented aligist we have ever encountered. But he cannot read it." Maleah looked from Rohan to Arik who cast his eyes away from her. Was it shame or embarrassment that shrouded his usually confident demeanor?

She waited a moment. Let her mind clear of the clouds that muddied its clarity. Slowly pulling together a coherent thought, she spoke aloud. "In the stories, gods were the ones to first bestow gifts to the Blessed. If what you say is true, then the gods have not gifted anyone in near two centuries."

"Not intentionally, no. It is unfortunate that we no longer have control over that part of our duty. Our connection to our Blesseds has been severed ever since The Fall. There is much I'd like to tell those who have been born with gifts mirroring a sliver of ours but I cannot." For the first time in some time, Rowena's eyes grew heavy with tears. Rohan laid a hand to her shoulder in a gesture of love and reassurance.

Much began to make sense. How so many's gifts have evolved into different pathologies. How easy Blessed became Broken without the guidance of the gods. That even her gifts grew with her every day. And the woman from her dreams . . . The woman from her dreams.

"I have seen her. Kalli, that is." She looked from the table where she had laid most of her thoughts. "She has been visiting my dreams for some time. Sometimes I have seen her while I am awake. If what you say is true, then Kalli is the one who has blessed me?" It wasn't a real question, at least not one she needed answered. Besides, she felt it ring true deep inside her bones. "She is the reason I can read the book."

"In all of my thousands of years," Rohan began, looking to Rowena who shook her head in disbelief. Maleah twisted her face in a question of "what." "Kalli was the only one who never blessed a soul - people or fae. If she has chosen to - if she has the power to after all this time - then you are a rarety this world is not prepared for."

There rose a fear she had hoped to avoid. Rising like sharp spears in her chest, panic began to claim her. She never wanted to be special. She never wanted to be hunted because of what she was or imprisoned because she refused to conform. All she ever hoped for was freedom and safety. And now, here she was, thrown into the pits of responsibility where all eyes and hopes fell upon her to fulfill. She wished she hadn't the inquisitive mind to ask and receive answers.

Shaking her head, she hoped to ward off this discovery. "I am only a naturalist. That is it." But even she knew she sounded half-hearted in her argument.

"It does not matter what you believe yourself to be, Maleah. If Kalli is your guide, then it is you who we need to help find her and the others." Rohan, though firm in his words, sounded unsure

"But why me? Why bless me? What does the king want with me?"

It was Rowena's turn to console. Taking Maleah's hands in hers, she pulled her in. "Asking ourselves why will only drive us insane as the only person with an answer is lost to us. As for the king, there is a prophecy." Maleah wanted to pull away, roll her eyes, scoff in disbelief. But she remained silent and yielding even as she felt as if she'd fallen into one of Doc's fae-tales or her fathers' legends. "Drocomir had written of it shortly before The Fall. But it wasn't clear and written in fragmented sentences."

Rohan recited what he could. "Born into the Age of the Broken, the power to mend the world rises. They will have the power that rivals the gods. Seek the fallen who've hidden in plain sight. Return the pieces to heal the whole." As Rowena had said, it sounded as if pieces were missing.

"If I am to understand correctly, you want me to find all the pieces - the gods - and bring them to you so that you can heal the world?"

"You are the only one who can read the map," Arik gestured to the book. "Our studies will consist of you learning the maps of the world. Old tongues and names for cities and landmarks and more so that you can decipher where each god is or was. And hopefully, how Kallie was able to find them."

Easy as it sounded, she knew it was not. And as much as she wanted to decline them and run away to hide somewhere else - anywhere else - she had made a promise. And for the love of her father, she would keep that promise.

"Very well," she said despite herself. "If we are to - as some might say - save the world, then we mustn't waste time." Pulling away from the twins, she turned to Arik. She could've sworn he wore a smile when he reached for the first book. Somewhat pleased with that, she waited as he dropped the book onto the table and said,

"We begin where it all began."

. . .

She spent the next seven days in the library after dinner. Listening to Arik spew fact after fact, repeating nearly word for word the books he had her read. She studied old maps nearly three hundred years old and preserved by the magic of the twins. Tracing the lines of the world with her mind again and again until they became frozen stills and she could draw them herself without reference to the pages they originated from.

She learned to speak the old language. Fragments of sentences with widely forgotten meanings and names Dianmoore once wore proudly before The Fall. She stooped over books of history and fae-tale, of myth and legend. Gaining from each a piece of truth and honing the ability to retrieve fact from fantasy.

Arik left her several times alone in the library to work by herself. Sometimes he'd be gone for hours. Disappearing to tend to his other responsibilities and returning only when the Sun began to hang low and always with supper hot from the kitchens. When alone, she would pace the length and width of the room. Loosening her legs and coaxing her mind. Wrapping it around everything she had gleaned from the week cooped up in the library.

Like Vamirah's story, they were eight gods. Each was chosen because of their unique inclinations. Doc, the god of wisdom and knowledge, was claimed to have been chosen because of his admiration for the cycles of nature. As a dwarf, he was shunned for his opposition and dislike for mining. But it was his opposition and determination that caught the attention of the Creator.

Then, of course, there was Rohan and Rowena, the twins and gods of abundance and fortune. Easy enough to remember that they were chosen because they were the first twins to be carried to birth and survive.

There were also the gods of mercy and forgiveness, of compassion and health, of creation and destruction, and, lastly, of courage and inner strength. And unfortunately, there was not a single picture to show their faces. Only the description that every so often, their vessels would be reborn and their appearance be forever different. It was because of this, there were no pictures.

Which, again, was unfortunate, as there would be no one alive to remember what the gods looked like before The Fall and no one who knows whether or not they have encountered one.

More so, she learned that The Fall was unexpected. Though the prophet predicted great consequences, Doc did not describe what those consequences consisted of. Using all the books she could - and the occasional moment to pester the twins with questions, or Arik - she stitched the story together.

The gods became carried away with their duties. Losing sight of their purpose in the pursuit of enhancing the common creature. Kalli spent half a millennia arguing with them to cease gifting altogether. She believed that nature must take its own course. And only when they are called to, bless a child who held the potential to lift the world to greater causes. But no amount of pleading had swayed them. Rather, it became a competition between several of the gods of who could create the best blessed. When that grew out of hand, she left.

But her leaving, Maleah concluded, was not the cause of The Fall. Instead, The Fall happened much later.

It took some years after Kalli took her leave for three of the gods to realize the repercussions of her disappearance and the ramifications of their actions. At last, they came to their senses understanding just how far they had strayed from the duties and responsibilities bestowed upon them by the Creator. As Rohan tells it, he and Rowena and Drocomir began their path of realignment and in doing so began searching for Kalli.

The other four gods disagreed with the three's newfound purpose. But they did not stop them from pursuing Kalli. Not long after the gods had chosen their separate paths, they fell. Still, Maleah felt that this was not why.

She felt she was on the precipice of discovering the true reason when Arik pressed through the library door.

"You missed supper," he said as he carried a tray of food to her.

Leaning back in her chair, she rubbed her face. Tilting her head, she found the sun had set and the fires inside the library had lit themselves.

"I keep trying to put it all together. I feel that I almost have the answer I seek."

"To what question would it belong?" Puzzled she cocked her head. He only shrugged. "You ask a lot, so it would make sense that I'd inquire to which question you sought the answer to."

Fair, she thought. "I want to know what caused The Fall."

He shook his head. "We have already told you, it was because the gods had chosen their paths."

She almost laughed. "And you believe what that? Arik, I have not known you long, but I did not take you to be submissive and agree with everything you are told."

His eyes narrowed as he passed her buttered bread. "Unlike you, I have grown up here and I trust in the people who helped raise me. If they say that is what happened, then I am in no place to question them."

"You are in the precise place to do that because you know them," she countered. "I have grown up mistrusting everyone and everything I encountered. My inquisitorial nature is a nuisance to them. But from you, it is honest curiosity." Finally, she accepted the bread. "If only I could find out how it happened."

Sensing her weariness, Arik urged her to eat. As she nibbled on the food, he wondered just how she was able to survive the borstal. From the stories of the world north of the swamp, he hardly believed someone as quaint, malnourished, and wide-mouthed would be able to last a day among King's Men without being discovered.

In all his twenty years, very few had survived the journey south from behind the swamplands. Those who did, he and the other protectors raided, interrogated, and sent on their way without so much as a peep about Sabhille.

For three Blessed to have escaped from a heavily guarded, magically warded fortress with only the clothes on their back and wits about their minds astounded him. There was much to learn about her and the foreigners. And he intended to do just that.

"I think it's time you saw Sabhille," he said after she finished the soup.

"I have already seen it."

He shook his head and rose. "Eat, rest," he smiled. "I will retrieve you in the morning."

Before she could reject his invitation, he was gone. Strong-headed and strong-armed, that's how she would describe him. Reluctantly, she finished her food and left the library for her chambers. She would need the best kind of sleep to get her through the next day with whatever Arik had scheming in his head.