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I walked past another painting that depicted a young woman with sharp, knowing features that belied her youth. She was dressed in a black gown. Strands of ebony and silver hair fell around her shoulders. There was a gleaming curved blade strapped to her back and her hands were cupped in front of her. They were filled to the brim with bones.
“I believe you call her Marzanna,” Crescent offered.
I nodded slowly. “But I’ve never seen her like this before.”
In Pendrath, the goddesses were always depicted in sculpted stone. I had never imagined them in full color. The paintings made them seem so lifelike. So real.
“Devina!” I exclaimed as I passed to the next image. There was no mistaking the goddess of the hunt.
And yet, this was a new Devina entirely.
The goddess depicted by this artist was a tall woman with nutbrown hair and violet eyes. She wore the familiar leather armor she was often depicted wearing in Pendrathian art, with a spear in one hand. There was a floral wreath around her head, full of bright pink and purple buds. And there the similarities seemed to end.
Horns poked through the floral crown, just like Draven's. Only smaller, more delicate and deer-like. The hand that held the spear was human, but in Devina's left hand she held a bouquet of vibrant feathers and her fingers ended in talons not tips.
The goddess wore a pretty homespun dress, the kind of embroidered gown a peasant girl might wear to a country fair. But the dress ended mid-thigh and from there down, Devina sprouted slender furred legs that ended in delicate pointed hooves.
The most surprising thing to me–and the thing that would surely have disturbed my brother Arthur the most–was how natural it seemed.
This Devina was as beautiful as the one back home. Of course, she had horns and claws and hooves. Why should that surprise me? She was the goddess of nature and everything wild, was she not?
“She’s Siabra? Your Devina is Siabra?” I asked Crescent.
“She’s fae,” he said simply. “Why wouldn’t she look like us?”
I walked to the next painting.
Crescent followed quietly behind, his leather boots padding softly on the marble floor.
A tall and robust man stared down at me from behind fierce, cold eyes. A long beard tinged with gray reached down to his chest. On the man’s head sat a helmet carved with lightning bolts. He wore a suit of gold and silver armor. Overtop the armor a cape of brilliant red flowed majestically around his shoulders. In one hand he gripped a round shield, emblazoned with the symbol of an oak tree. And in his other hand...
I gasped.
The man held Excalibur. I would have recognized the blade anywhere. The dark metal blade had been unsheathed as if in preparation for imminent war. I recognized the etchings that covered the blade, patterns of leaves and thorns like those surrounding a rose.
“Perun,” Crescent said from behind me. “Perhaps you’ve heard of him?”
All I could do was nod.
“But he is not the only one to hold the sword,” Crescent noted, almost conversationally. He indicated the next two paintings where a noble-looking man and woman were represented, with something none of the other paintings had contained–a shared background which stretched from one to the other.
A stunning woman with honey beige skin filled the first frame. Tall and slender, her shining black hair was loose around her shoulders and on her head she wore a crown of willow branches and roses. With shock, I saw that her eyes were like Lyrastra's, beautiful, narrow, and snakelike with turquoise and purple shades. As I looked more closely, I realized she was scaled like Avriel, too. Pale gold scales wound down her left cheek and stretched down her neck disappearing below the neckline of the pure white gown she wore.
In her hands she held Excalibur, stretched out like an offering, resting lightly on her palms. But in contrast to the naked blade the fierce-looking man held aloft, here Excalibur was sheathed. The hilt of the sword glimmered with a silver hue, vines winding around the grip. At the top of the pommel I spotted the brilliant carved ruby rose.
A shiver went through me as I remembered touching that sparkling ruby gem, moments before Orcades prison disappeared around me and I broke through the surface of the water holding Excalibur above me... as Vesper ran to the edge of the lake.
“Vela,” Crescent explained. “And next to her, Khor. Legend says she was the first of the fae.”
I turned to him. “And Khor?”
Crescent’s dark-skinned face turned thoughtful. “Some say he was human. Some accounts claim fae. What do you think?”
I turned to the painting of Khor.
Khor was golden-haired and dark of skin, and he was laughing. I had never thought of a god or goddess laughing before. Vela seemed to be in on the joke, I realized, for a small smile was playing on her lips, too. Or perhaps they were simply happy to be together, I thought, as I took in the shared backdrop the painter had given them. A breathtaking vista of a volcano spewing lava as it sat on the edge of a majestic sapphire ocean.
The golden-haired god was decked in a silver breastplate with a white tunic beneath, and he was stretching out a hand to his consort in the painting beside him, as he sat proud and upright on...
