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Her voice was thunder on the horizon. “Do as I tell you. If you press me right now, Warren, you are going to go for a swim. Now go link up that prophecy, and as soon as you find anything, you come tell me.”
Verna knew about the prophecies in the vaults. She knew that it could easily take years to link branches. It could take centuries. What choice was there?
He brushed dust from his robes, giving his eyes an excuse to look elsewhere. “As you wish, Prelate.”
As he turned to go, she could see that his eyes were red and puffy. She wanted to catch his arm and stop him, but he was already too far away. She wanted to call out to him and tell him that she wasn’t angry at him, that it wasn’t his fault that she was the false Prelate, but her voice failed her.
She found the round rock beneath the limb and sprang up the wall. Bothering with only two branches on the pear tree, she dropped to the ground inside the Prelate’s compound and, when she regained her feet, started running. Panting in hurt, she slapped her hand repeatedly against the door to the Prelate’s sanctuary, but it wouldn’t open. Remembering why, she dug in her pocket and found the ring. Inside, she pressed it against the sunburst on the door to close it, and then with all her anger and anguish, heaved the ring across the room, hearing it clatter against the walls and skitter across the floor.
Verna pried the journey book from the secret pouch sewn on the back of her belt and plopped down on the three-legged stool. Gasping for her breath, she fumbled the stylus from the spine of the little black book. She opened it, spreading it flat on the small table, and stared at the blank page.
She tried to think through the rage and resentment. She had to consider the possibility that she could be wrong. No. She wasn’t wrong. Still, she was a Sister of the Light, for what that was worth, and knew better than to risk everything on presumption. She had to think of a way to verify who had the other book, and she also had to do it in a way that wouldn’t betray her identity if she was wrong. But she wasn’t wrong. She knew who had it.
Verna kissed her ring finger as she whispered a prayer beseeching the Creator’s guidance, and asking, too, for strength.
She wanted to vent her wrath, but before all else, she had to make sure. With trembling fingers, she picked up the stylus and began to write.
You must first tell me the reason you chose me the last time. I remember every word. One mistake, and this journey book feeds the fire.
Verna closed the book and tucked it back into its secret pouch in her belt. Shaking, she pulled the comforter from its resting place atop the box bench and dragged it to the fat chair. Feeling more lonely than she had ever felt in her entire life, she curled up in the chair.
Verna remembered her last meeting with Prelate Annalina when Verna had returned with Richard after all those years. Annalina hadn’t wanted to see her, and it had taken weeks to finally be granted an audience. As long as she lived, no matter how many hundreds of years that might be, she would never forget that meeting, or the things the Prelate had told her.
Verna had been furious to discover the Prelate had withheld valuable information. The Prelate had used her and never told her the reasons. The Prelate had asked if Verna knew why she had been selected to go after Richard. Verna said she had thought it was a vote of confidence. The Prelate said it was because she suspected that Sisters Grace and Elizabeth, who had been on the journey with her and had been the first two to be selected, were Sisters of the Dark, and she had privileged information from prophecy that said the first two Sisters would die. The Prelate said she had used her prerogative to pick Verna as the third Sister to go.
Verna asked, “You chose me, because you had faith that I was not one of them?”
“I chose you, Verna,” the Prelate said, “because you were far down on the list, and because, all in all, you are quite unremarkable. I doubted you were one of them. You are a person of little note. I’m sure Grace and Elizabeth made their way to the top of the list because whoever directs the Sisters of the Dark considered them expendable. I direct the Sisters of the Light. I chose you for the same reason.
“There are Sisters who are valuable to our cause; I could not risk one of them on such a task. The boy may prove a value to us, but he is not as important as other matters at the palace. It was simply an opportunity I thought to take.
“If there had been trouble, and none of you made it back, well, I’m sure you can understand that a general would not want to lose his best troops on a low-priority mission.”
The woman who had smiled at her when she was little, filling her with inspiration, had broken her heart.
Verna drew the comforter up as she blinked at the watery walls of the sanctuary. All she had ever wanted was to be a Sister of the Light. She had wanted to be one of those wondrous women who used her gift to do the Creator’s work here in this world. She had given her life and her heart to the Palace of the Prophets.
Verna remembered the day they came and told her that her mother had died. Old age, they said.
Her mother didn’t have the gift, and so was of no use to the palace. Her mother didn’t live close, and Verna only rarely saw her. When her mother did travel to the palace for a visit, she was frightened because Verna didn’t age to her eyes, the way a normal person aged. She could never understand it, no matter how many times Verna tried to explain the spell. Verna knew it was because her mother feared to really listen. She feared magic.
Though the Sisters made no attempt to conceal the existence of the spell about the palace that slowed their aging, people without the gift had difficulty fathoming it. It was magic that had no meaning to their lives. The people were proud to live near the palace, near its splendor and might, and although they viewed the palace with reverence, that reverence was edged with fearful caution. They didn’t dare to focus their minds on things of such power, much the same way as they enjoyed the warmth of the sun, but didn’t dare to stare at it.
When her mother died, Verna had been at the palace for forty-seven years, yet appeared to have aged only to adolescence.
Verna remembered the day they came and told her that Leitis, her daughter, had died. Old age, they said.
Verna’s daughter, Jedidiah’s daughter, didn’t have the gift, and so was of no use to the palace. It would be better, they said, if she were raised by a family who would love her and give her a normal life; a life at the palace was no life for one without the gift. Verna had the Creator’s work to do, and so acquiesced.
Joining the gift of the male and the female created a better, though still remote, chance of the offspring being born with the gift. Thus Sisters and wizards could look forward to approval, if not official encouragement, should they conceive a child.
As per the arrangement the palace always made in such circumstances, Leitis didn’t know that the people who raised her weren’t her real parents. Verna guessed it was for the best. What kind of mother could a Sister of the Light be? The palace had provided for the family, to insure Verna wouldn’t worry for her daughter’s well-being.
Several times Verna had visited, as a Sister merely bringing the Creator’s blessing to a family of honest, hardworking people, and Leitis had seemed happy. The last time Verna had visited, Leitis had been gray and stooped, and was able to walk only with the aid of a cane. Leitis didn’t remember Verna as the same Sister who had visited when she was playing catch-the-fox with her young friends, sixty years before.
Leitis had smiled at Verna, at the blessing, and said, “Thank you, Sister. So talented, for one so young.”
“How are you, Leitis? Have you a good life?”
Verna’s daughter smiled distantly. “Oh, Sister, I’ve had a long and happy life. My husband died five years ago, but other than that, the Creator has blessed me.” She had chuckled. “I only wish I still had my curly brown hair. It was once as lovely as yours, yes it was—I swear it.”
Dear Creator, how long had it been since Leitis had passed on? It had to be fifty years. Leitis had had children, but Verna
had scrupulously avoided learning so much as their names.
The lump in her throat as she wept was nearly choking her.
She had given so much to be a Sister. She had just wanted to help people. She had never asked for anything.
And she had been played a fool.
She hadn’t wanted to be Prelate, but she was just beginning to think she could use the post to better the lives of people, to do the work for which she had sacrificed everything. Instead, she was again being played for a fool.
Verna clutched the comforter to herself as she cried in racking sobs until the light was long gone from the little windows in the peaks and her throat was raw.
In the heart of the night, she finally decided to go to her bed. She didn’t want to stay in the Prelate’s sanctuary; it only seemed to be mocking her. She was not the Prelate. She had finally exhausted all her tears, and felt only numb humiliation.
