hiding behind the years of grime. With his attention on it, I’m free to watch him, so intently I’m half-afraid he’ll sense the weight of my gaze.
He draws a breath of surprise at the engraved lettering there—the lettering of the ancients, unreadable now to my people, except a very small handful of scholars. I am one of them—the long years I have waited to manifest have offered all the opportunities for study that I could wish. I used to wonder if I could discover my purpose if I searched hard enough. Now I know that I waited for a reason.
These words are in the language of the gods.
“Akra Chuki,” he reads without hesitation, voice slowed only by a hushed reverence for being in the presence of such an ancient piece of writing. “Honored Lord and Guardian of Peace.”
My heart is pounding, my body tingling. I cannot move, for fear I’ll discover I imagined it—that he can’t read the ancient writing after all, that I only want it to be true so badly that my mind conjured the moment like the mirage of water a dying man sees in the desert.
When I say nothing, North looks up at me with a smile that fades when he sees my face. “Nimh?”
“You …” I have to stop, breathe, summon my voice. “You really are one of them. A cloudlander.”
Divine, I think, although I do not say that aloud.
North’s head tilts, a hint of confusion on his face. “Ye-es. I told you I was.”
I manage another breath. “You read the ancient writing,” I explain, gesturing to the plaque, which gleams as brightly now in the sun as it did the day it was engraved, thanks to the spell. “North—I know you do not understand, but to me, for my people … this is unheard-of. Unprecedented.”
Important beyond anything that has happened in centuries.
A little of his confusion clears, and he says with a small laugh that warms his voice, “You’re just as big a shock to me, you know. There’s not supposed to be anybody left down here.”
His laughter makes me wish I could respond. I want to preserve this ease—this feeling between us—for as long as I am able.
Because soon he will know what I know: That he was sent here. That our meeting was destiny.
That he may be divine.
It is a selfish thing, to keep the truth from him. It will hurt him more later, when we reach the temple outskirts and there’s no more hiding my identity. It’s selfish—and it’s all I have.
“The storm may have moved on,” I say finally, keeping my voice even. “We ought to continue our journey, if it is safe. There is a festival at the temple tonight—you will like it, I think.”
North falls into step with me easily as we head back toward the tunnels, although there’s something in his voice that isn’t quite right. “You said your god lives there, right? The guy who understands the sky-steel and the mist, and how they power your shield stones?”
Perhaps that note in his voice is responding to the note in mine—perhaps he knows I’m not telling him everything. I glance at him, my smile reassuring. “The guardian stones, yes. And if the Divine One cannot help you return to the sky … if anyone in our history ever knew how this might be done, it will be in the records at the temple.”
I must get him to the temple—I am not lying, not about the records, and not about his safety. But I dare not tell him all that I’m thinking: that if he is divine, then he could be the Lightbringer returned to us.
In my vision, the lost stanza seemed to say that all I had to do was show the Lightbringer that ancient copy of the Song of the Destroyer. That, somehow, looking at the scroll would unlock his understanding of who he was.
He will look upon this page and know himself… .
Perhaps this boy is more than a messenger. Perhaps he is the message.
If he is the Lightbringer, then I am the one destined to be at his side.
I’m not fated to walk this earth alone after all.
He might not yet know it, if his destiny is to end the suffering of my people and begin the cycle anew, but I know mine—to keep him safe, and help him discover his divinity. For if his fate is to end the world, I must bring him to my temple … and I cannot let him