Blood of the Fold (Sword of Truth 3)

“The Sisters of the…” She glanced back into the main room. Even if it was empty, there was no telling how far one with Subtractive Magic could hear. They had heard Prelate Annalina name them. “You know.” She lowered her voice. “Warren, though you have the gift, it will not protect you against them. This will. There is no protection against this. None.” She spun the weapon in her hand with practiced grace, walking it over the backs of her fingers as it twirled. The dull silver color was a blur in the lamplight. She caught the rodlike blade and held the handle out to him. “I found extras in my office. I want you to have one.”

He flipped his hand dismissively. “I don’t know how to handle that thing. I only know how to read the old books.”

Verna snatched his violet robes at his neck and drew his face close. “You just stick it in them. Belly, chest, back, neck, arm, hand, foot—it doesn’t matter. Just stick them while you’re shrouded in your Han, and they will be dead before you can blink.”

“My sleeves aren’t tight like yours. It will just fall out.”

“Warren, the dacra doesn’t know where you keep it, or care. Sisters practice for hours on end, and carry them in our sleeve so they will be readily at hand. We do that for protection when we go on journeys. It doesn’t matter where you carry it, only that you do. Keep it in a pocket, if you wish. Just don’t sit on it.”

With a sigh, he took the dacra. “If it will make you happy. But I don’t think I could stab anyone.”

She released his robes as she looked away. “You would be surprised what you can do, when you have to.”

“Is this what you came for? You found an extra dacra?”

“No.” She drew the little book from its pouch behind her belt and tossed it on the table before him. “I came because of this.”

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Going somewhere, Verna?”

Scowling, she smacked his shoulder. “What’s the matter with you?”

He pushed the book away. “I’m just tired. What’s so important about a journey book?”

She lowered her voice. “Prelate Annalina left a message that I should go to her private sanctuary, in her garden. It was shielded with a web of ice and spirit.” Warren lifted an eyebrow. She showed him her ring. “This opens it. Inside I found this journey book. It was wrapped in a piece of paper that said only ‘Guard this with your life.’”

Warren picked up the journey book and thumbed through the blank pages. “She probably just wants to send you instructions.”

“She’s dead!”

Warren cocked an eyebrow. “Do you think that would stop her?”

Verna smiled in spite of herself. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we burned the other with her, and she intended to run my life from the world of the dead.”

Warren’s expression slipped back to sullen. “So, who has the other one?”

Verna smoothed her dress behind her knees and sat, scooting the chair closer. “I don’t know. I’m worried that it could be a telltale of sorts. She might have meant it to mean that if I discovered the other, it would identify our enemy.”

Warren’s smooth brow wrinkled up. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know, Warren.” Verna wiped a hand across her face. “It was the only thing I could think of. Can you think of anything that would make more sense? Why else would she not tell me who had the other? If it was someone meant to help us, someone on our side, then it would only make sense for her to have told me the name, or at least that it was a friend who had the other.”

Warren returned his stare to the table. “I suppose.”

Verna checked her tone before she spoke. “Warren, what’s wrong? I’ve never seen you like this before.”

She shared a long look with his troubled blue eyes. “I’ve read some prophecies I don’t like.”

Verna searched his face. “What do they say?”

After a long pause, he reached down, and with two fingers turned a piece of paper around and pushed it toward her. Finally, she picked it up and read it aloud.

“When the Prelate and the Prophet are given to the Light in the sacred rite, the flames will bring to boil a cauldron of guile and give ascension to a false Prelate, who will reign over the death of the Palace of the Prophets. To the north, the one bonded to the blade will abandon it for the silver sliph, for he will breathe her back to life, and she will deliver him into the arms of the wicked.”

Verna swallowed, afraid to meet Warren’s eyes. She set the paper on the table and folded her hands in her lap to stop their trembling. She sat silently staring down, not knowing what to say.

“This is a prophecy on a true fork,” Warren said, at last.

“That’s an audacious statement, Warren, even for one as talented with prophecies as you. How old is this prophecy?”

“Not yet a day.”

Her wide eyes came up. “What?” she whispered. “Warren, are you saying that… that it came to you? That you have at last given a prophecy?”

Warren’s red eyes stared back. “Yes. I went into a kind of trance, and in this state of rapture, I had a vision of fragments of this prophecy, along with the words. That was the way it happened for Nathan, too, I believe. Remember that I told you I was beginning to understand prophecy in a way I never had before? It’s through the visions that the prophecies are truly meant to be revealed.”

Verna swept her hand around. “But the books hold prophecies, not visions. The words prophesy.”

“The words are only a way to pass them down, and only meant to be clues that trip the vision in one who has the gift for prophecy. All the studying the Sisters have done for the last three thousand years is only a partial understanding of them. The written words were meant to pass knowledge to wizards through the visions. That’s what I learned when this one came to me. It was like a door opening in my mind. All this time, and the key was right inside my own head.”

“You mean you can read any of these, and have a vision that will reveal its true meaning?”

He shook his head. “I’m a child, who has taken his first step. I’ve a long way to go before I’ll be vaulting over fences.”

She looked at the page on the table and then glanced away as she twisted the ring around and around on her finger. “And does this one, the one that came to you, mean what it sounds like?”

Warren licked his lips. “Like an infant’s first step, which is not very steady, this is not the most stable of prophecies. You might say it’s sort of a practice prophecy. I’ve found others that I think are the same sort of first attempts, like this one here—”

“Warren, is it true or not!”

He tugged his sleeves down his arms. “It’s all true, but the words, as in all prophecies, while true, are not necessarily what they would seem.”

Verna leaned close as she gritted her teeth. “Answer the question, Warren. We’re in this together. I have to know.”

He flipped his hand, as he often did when trying to diminish the importance of something. To Verna, though, that flip of a hand was like a flag of warning. “Look, Verna, I’ll tell you what I know, what I saw in the vision, but I’m new at this, and I don’t understand it all, even though it’s my prophecy.”

She kept a stead glare on him. “Tell me, Warren.”

“The Prelate in the prophecy is not you. I don’t know who it is, but it isn’t you.”

Verna closed her eyes as she sighed. “Warren, that’s not as bad as I thought. At least it’s not to be me who does this terrible thing. We can work to turn this prophecy to a false fork.”

Warren turned away. He stuffed the paper with his prophecy into an opened book and flopped it closed. “Verna, for someone else to be Prelate, that has to mean you will be dead.”

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