The Other Side of the Sky - Amie Kaufman Page 0,22

a blasphemer. For what hope have men if even the gods know fear?

But I too am a god—the latest in a long, long line. And I know fear; I’ve met it many, many times.

Could I have destroyed the world, in his place? Would I have had the courage, the faith, to believe all that I was to destroy would be born again?

I wish I could say yes—but the truth is that I don’t know. I cannot know—no one can, unless faced with that terrible choice themselves. Maybe the answer is that no one person, divine or not, can make that choice alone.

I was twelve years old when I fully understood the implications of the Song: that the Lightbringer would rejoin the living god, and together they would bring about the end of the world.

Together.

I used to imagine that he would come to me, that I was the one preordained to stand with him against the darkness. I could not help but long for it. To have someone by my side who understood the weight of destiny, someone who would give my life purpose and meaning. Someone who could touch me …

Perhaps that is why not even Daoman believes that my lost stanza is anything other than a girlish fantasy.

But I know what happened. It was no dream. I woke in darkness a fortnight ago, drenched in sweat, my skin tingling as if a mist-storm were all around me—and when I would have gone to the window, a vision seized me.

I saw myself in the temple archives, uncovering an ancient version of the Song of the Destroyer. But as soon as my eyes fell on the page, the letters began to glow and shift, until I was dazzled by light. When I could see again, there was a new stanza there, nestled in among the old familiar prophecy. And my heart was filled with such certainty, such purpose, that when the vision faded, I found myself standing in the middle of my chamber, gasping, face wet with tears.

When I could move again, I ran to the shelf in the archives where I’d found the scroll in my vision. I crouched there on the tiled floor, unrolling the dusty text that had been hidden behind a row of ancient census notes, while the bindle cat batted at night insects attracted by my lamp.

The letters would not change or glow, no matter how hard I stared at them. There was no lost stanza, no sign of anything unusual.

But the ancient scroll was there, exactly where it had been in my vision. Though the words were missing, how could I have known of its existence unless my vision was real? Divinely inspired, showing me the path to my purpose?

That scroll meant everything.

When I showed it to the Master of Archives, he glanced at it briefly and shrugged. “The lettering is ancient, but the page is not,” Matias said. “See how the edges of it are milled here? It’s a copy at best. More likely, it’s a fake. Young scholars and acolytes do sometimes try to speed up their rise in the ranks by claiming to have found lost examples of prophecy.”

But I knew what I had seen. The lost stanza in my vision was burned into my mind with perfect clarity.

The empty vessel, it read,

will at the end of days

seek the land kissed by the sun.

For only on that journey

before a swift gray tide

will the last star fall.

The empty one

will keep the star

as a brand against the darkness,

and only in that glow

will the Lightbringer look upon this page

and know himself… .

The thick humidity of the forest-sea vanishes at the river’s edge, the change in the air pulling me from the memory. The bindle cat is waiting for me there, as if he knew I would seek some quiet out beyond the trees. I stoop to run a finger along the underside of his chin, then step out onto one of the smaller rafts lashed to the barge. Before I was called it would’ve been no different from walking on solid ground. Now, I notice how unstable it feels.

I’m becoming too pampered, I think sourly, glaring down at the bundled reeds below my boots.

The words of the prophecy’s lost stanza fade in my mind’s eye, replaced by the Graycloak we saw at dawn, his words still ringing in my ears.

An empty girl called Nimh …

I could not explain to Daoman’s satisfaction why the lost stanza had seized me so completely. I was filled up with