Page 25 of The Isles of the Gods
“If it’s any comfort,” I venture, “I’m also far from happy His Highness has chosen our boat with which to make the journey.”
She snorts and retrieves a length of thin rope from her bucket, pressing it into place around the edge of the porthole, where it sticks to the mysterious goo. “All right. Let’s hear the evidence, then.”
I blink at her. “What?”
“You said there’s plenty of it. That spoiled brat of a prince has cost me—well, enough. Too much. Convince me it wasn’t for nothing. How’s he going to stop a war?”
I back up a couple of steps to take a seat on the edge of my bunk again, cradling the screws carefully in my hand as I consider where to start.
“Well, the story begins about five hundred years ago. Or, to be more precise, five hundred andoneyears. And in this case, precision matters. Prince Leander’s many-greats-uncle, Anselm, was king. And he was at war with Mellacea.” I pause, to see if I’ve made this too basic—I don’t know what sort of education girls who live on ships receive.
She nods, thumping the last section of the rope into place with her fist and retrieving a cloth from the bucket to clean off her hands. “Right, and in the stories, the gods were fighting too—I mean, literally running around like people, fighting each other. And in the end, Barrica the Sentinel made the king into a magic warrior, and together they put Macean the Gambler to sleep and defeated Mellacea, and then both vanished forever,” she says. “Or something like that.”
“Something like,” I agree. “Though Anselm was turned into a Messenger—perhaps—not a magical warrior.”
“What’s a Messenger?”
“Well, his sacrifice comes first in the story. Religious andacademic texts say the gods drew power from two sources: faith and sacrifice. The greater their number of worshippers, the stronger they were. That’s the faith. The greater the sacrifices made in their name, again, the more powerful they were.”
“Same as magic,” she concludes. “Except spirits only need tiny sacrifices, like candles, or a bit of your lunch, and more like sweet-talking than faith, as best I can tell.”
“Exactly,” I agree, pausing as I notice her phrasing.As best I can tell.Odd, for someone with magician’s marks.
“So his sacrifice was to help her bind Macean in sleep—this part I know. What did he sacrifice?”
“Well, you have to understand the stakes. The two gods had clashed so violently, the entire country of Vostain was destroyed. It lay in the place we now call the Barren Reaches.”
Her brows rise. “Where the Bibliotek is?”
“Exactly. The Bibliotek is a neutral, independent place of learning—that’s why they worship the Mother rather than any of the seven gods—and it was built in a place that reminds us of what happens when we allow conflict.”
“I didn’t know there used to be a country there,” she admits. “So Barrica and Macean were fighting, and…and that had happened.”
“Yes. And Macean was strong. And he was daring—there’s a reason they call him the Gambler, the god of risk. Barrica used to be called the Warrior, and she knew she was the only one who could stop her brother. She saw what happened to the country of Vostain—and what happened to their youngest brother, Valus, who had lost all his worshippers in one instant—and she spoke to King Anselm. As king of Alinor, he was first among her followers.”
“And she made him into a magical warrior.”
“Not quite yet. She needed him to strengthen her first. So he did. King Anselm made the greatest sacrifice he had to offer. His own life.”
She drops the rag she’s using to clean her hands back into the bucket, turning to stare at me. “He killed himself?”
“The only way to save his people was with an overwhelming act of sacrifice and faith. One so great, it would strengthen Barrica beyond compare. It worked. She rose up and bound her brother Macean in sleep, where he has been ever since.”
“And the king stayed dead?” she asks, frowning. “Barrica didn’t bring him back, for her first miracle? When does the Messenger part happen?”
“There’s…some debate. There are even older tales, from centuries before the War of the Gods, about the Age of Messengers. About beings imbued with the power of the gods, but themselves neither god nor human. They say there was a Messenger who created the flat plain Mellacea now stands on, another who diverted a whole river in Petron. The stories are so old, their origins are mostly lost.”
“So maybe they never existed at all?”
“The most important thing a scholar must learn to say isI don’t know.And I don’t.”
“What do you think?”
“Some say Anselm became a Messenger, centuries after the last of them were gone. But shortly after the battle he simply vanishes from history, and his sister is crowned, and her children after that. I think perhaps people wanted him to have survived, and they created stories to make it so.”
“Grim,” she concludes.
“It was a grim time. But it worked. With Macean bound in sleep and unable to assist them, the Mellacean forces were defeated, and Alinor prevailed.”
