“Yes,” said the queen. “If a Deathless dies—truly dies—their soul is lost. There is no reincarnation, no coming back in another life. But what the thirteen discovered was an even greater blasphemy and would change the world forever. Now that they were separated from the Weave, they found they could see the threads of everyone around them. They could manipulate each strand, taking the life of whoever was attached to it, to fuel their own power. And not just from mortals. Their magic... my magic...siphons life from everything around it. This is not something we can control. The reason the Deathless are immortal, little Sparrow, is that we are constantly drawing in life. If you wound us, we will unconsciously siphon the energy out of whatever is close, killing it but keeping ourselves alive. Only when there is no life remaining anywhere will a Deathless finally become mortal.”
My stomach turned. I’d thought the queen was going to share the secret of how to defeat the Deathless King. But she made it sound hopeless. “I don’t see how I’m going to survive, then,” I told her, Halek frowning beside me. “I don’t see how any of us are going to survive.”
The queen smiled. “Normally, Fateless, I would agree. The lives of regular mortals are nothing to a Deathless. Even on his own, the king would be an unstoppable force. When you take into account his army of ma’jhet, servants, and abominations, no mortal kingdom will be able to stand against him. But that is not the worst of it. The prophecy says a Deathless will slay the goddess of Fate and take her place as the new god. And nothing under the suns will be free. They will weave the story of the world as they choose, and all souls will be forced to bow to their will.
“However,” she went on, as my stomach curled itself into a tight little ball of despair, “you are Fateless. You are not bound by prophecy. You can change the fates of everyone around you, just by existing. If there is one thing that even the Deathless fear, it is something that cannot be controlled.”
“I am still just one person,” I whispered. “I can’t stop an army on my own.”
“No,” the queen agreed. “But you can stop the king. Itispossible, Fateless,” she insisted, probably in response to my look of terror. “There is a way to neutralize the magic of the Deathless, but it is something only the Fateless can do. Before I give you this secret, I must know—will you stand and defy the king? Will you try to end his reign before it even begins? It is a terrible burden, and it is unfair, but know that the fate of the kingdoms—of the known world—rests on your answer.”
I closed my eyes, my whole body shaking like a leaf in the wind. For seventeen years, I had been a nobody. And now, suddenly, not only was I Fateless, I was expected to save the world? The goddess herself?
Beside me, Halek let out a soft snort. “The prophecy can go to the Void,” he muttered, and turned to me. His blue eyes were suddenly intense. “Don’t feel you have to say yes, Sparrow,” he said. “There is always another way. There will be others to fight the Deathless King. Whole armies of them, I reckon. Once he starts his march, I don’t think the other kingdoms are going to hand him everything without a fight.”
“True,” added Kysa. “There are those of us who would die before we let the Deathless King subjugate our people. We might all perish, but wewillfight. It is not your responsibility to save the other kingdoms, Sparrow.”
The Deathless queen didn’t say anything to that; she simply watched me, Void-dark eyes giving nothing away. My gaze slid to Raithe, still standing quietly to the side.
Those pale blue eyes met mine, and I shivered. Raithe had believed I was Fateless from the moment we fled Kovass together. Even when I hadn’t believed it myself, even when I’dwanted nothing to do with the idea, he’d never wavered in his conviction.
And... what if Iwasthe only one who could stop the Deathless King? If I refused, if I ran away again, I would be dooming the kingdoms to destruction. Just like Kovass. Maybe Raithe and his people would survive with another Deathless watching over them, but Halek had no such protection. Kysa’s clan had no protection. They would fight the Deathless King, and they would die. Unless I could stop it.
I set my jaw.No more running, Sparrow, I told myself.No more hiding. This isn’t just about you anymore. It’s time to start seeing what theFatelessisreally capableof.
My insides squirmed like a nest of snakes. I could probably have emptied the contents of my stomach on the pristine marble with no effort at all. But I met the impassive eyes of the Deathless queen and nodded.
“Yes,” I whispered. “I understand. If the Fateless is the only one who can stop the Deathless King, then that’s what I’m going to do. I’ve spent my life running and hiding, but this isn’t something I can walk away from.”
There was a shadow of movement from Raithe’s corner. I dared a peek at him and saw the iylvahn watching me, the expression on his face unreadable.
The queen beamed her beautiful smile once more, and for a moment, the decision I’d just made seemed worth it. “You honor us with your choice, Fateless,” she said. “I believe you are worthy to carry this secret. The single weakness of the Deathless King, and what he will never see coming.
“When we smashed the Loom of Maederyss,” the queen went on, “and cast a piece of it to earth, we severed our threads from the rest of the Weave. Where that sliver of the loom fell, the land it around it was forever changed. That broken piece still contains part of our souls. We didn’t dare touch it—doing so could draw our threads back into the Weave. So we constructed a temple around the fragment, to protect both the loom and ourselves. We filled the temple with curses and traps and magical guardians, and as the centuries passed, most of us forgot it was there.”
The Deathless queen paused.
“That broken piece still resides within the temple,” she murmured, “untouched and undisturbed. Mortals cannot see it—it is of the goddess, and those with their threads still bound in the Weave cannot perceive it at all. But the Fateless has no thread in the Weave. And a tiny portion of Maederyss’s power still clings to that fragment. If you can make it to the center of the temple, Fateless, you can touch the loom and claim the power of the goddess for yourself.”
A chill ran all the way down my body. I thought back to that very first mission in Kovass, before I’d known anything about a Fateless or Deathless Kings or murderous ma’jhet, when I was a thief tasked with stealing part of the Tapestry of the World from the Temple of Fate. Even though that tapestry had been a human-made replica, the mere thought of touching it had seemed blasphemous.
This was a thousand times worse.
“Claim the goddess’s power?” This was from Kysa, who sounded nearly as appalled as I felt. “What will that do to Sparrow?”
“I do not know, exactly,” the queen replied. “As I said, we Deathless did not dare touch the loom. Perhaps she will go mad. Perhaps she will gain some power over the Weave itself. But I do not believe it will do nothing. Maederyss is the only being the Deathless fear. We fashioned ourselves as living gods, creating people and races in our own images, insisting they worship only us. Because we hoped that people would forget the goddess of Fate and, if she was not remembered, she would fade into obscurity. Our hubris broke the world, and Maederyss herself withdrew from mankind, becoming a distant, unreachable shadow. But people still remembered the goddess. Even under the threat of death, she would not be forgotten. Her temples vanished for a time, and the Priestesses of the Path disappeared, never to rise again, but her name was still whispered by many hoping for a different fate.
“To this day, Maederyss remains the only one who can rival the Deathless King’s power,” the queen finished, staring hard at me. “What touching the loom will do to a mortal body is uncertain. But if you are to face the Deathless King, little Sparrow, you will need the power of a goddess to defeat him.”
For a few heartbeats, there was silence.The power of a goddess.To defeat the Deathless King, I had to find the temple that the Deathless themselves had constructed, reach a piece of the Loom of Maederyss that they had broken from the whole, and acquire the power of the goddess of Fate herself.
I felt numb. Like none of this was real. How had I gone from swiping trinkets and baubles from rich nobles to stealing the magic of the goddess of Fate? If I hadn’t been in front of theDeathless queen, I might’ve fled the room, found a remote ledge or rooftop that was close to the sky, and let both my stomach and my thoughts settle down.
“It is a lot to take in, I am sure,” the Deathless queen said, as if she were conducting a complex business deal, not casually informing me that I needed to steal the power from the literal goddess of Fate. “And I know the road will be dangerous. I would send a contingent of my finest warriors with you, but I know that adding more lives into the presence of the Fateless can have unexpected consequences. The more threads you touch, the more fates you could unravel, and in a game as razor-thin as this, even the smallest change could be disastrous. Your current companions, whose destinies you might have already shifted, will be your best allies and protectors.”
She glanced at Halek as she said this, and he shifted uneasily at my side. Halek already thought he’d cheated death twice by being in my presence, and for a Fatechaser who spent his life searching for his destiny, that was nearly as blasphemous as stealing the Tapestry of the World.
Kysa continued to stare at the queen, silent and impassive. But I wondered if I had drastically changed her fate, as well. Where would the insect rider be now, if she’d never met us on the strider that day? If she’d never agreed to help? Back home with her clan, where she was supposed to be?
