The clear water of the Seer Spring. One sip and the future no longer remained a mystery.
I cocked my head to the side as the cleric filled the cups.
It would be considered blasphemy to drink of the spring water, but anyone who did could see the future. Imagine knowing what enemy might attack, or what the clouds would bring—drought or famine, richness or surplus. We could prepare for war or for illness. Blasphemy seemed a small price to pay for such a vision, yet there were rumors the seer water was also a judgment. If their goddess didn’t consider the partaker worthy, the water would kill.
I leaned forward.
Oh light. I seemed eager. My reputation would never live that down.
“Generations ago,” the cleric said as she placed a cup in front of my mother, “we were allies. I ask you to remember the time before the Seer Spring was discovered. Back before the first seer drowned in his vision of the future.”
“Before the walls,” Mother said, her voice measured.
Sir Tomlinson’s voice was not. “Before the hibisi.” Sir Tomlinson’s anger was well placed. He’d lost his wife due to the lack of those flowers.
When they discovered the Seer Spring, the Savak built walls around their island, and they stopped sending aid or emissaries to any other kingdom. The Savak closed their gates by the edge of the sword, only allowing certain traders to come, and only if they brought the seeds of the hibisi flower. A century later, they owned every hibisi flower on this side of our world, and they dotted their island like little white specks of light.
The cleric placed the small cups in front of my father, Sir Tomlinson, General Franciv, and Lord Reginal. She did not place one in front of me, which was wise, because I might’ve thrown it in her face. She lowered her gaze. “We, like you, regret the lives lost to the gray illness.”
Lord Reginal clasped his heart. “The Undergod was well fed.”
“By our greed,” the cleric said.
I agreed with the cleric, which felt fundamentally wrong. Six years ago, an illness spread throughout my kingdom. Thousands of lives were lost. Harsh ugly deaths. Nothing we tried could stop it, not until the Savak revealed the cure.
Brewed from the bloom of the hibisi.
They knew the hibisi held healing properties, unlike anything we’d ever found. They’d seen it in their visions. Centuries before the disease first spread, the Savak knew the lives it would take, and yet they hoarded the truth. The clerics came to our shores with the cure, which they offered for a price, and only if the recipients would praise the Savak goddess for her goodness. The Savak watched, holding the cure, as people—our people—who could not afford to pay, or who were too pious to blaspheme, died gasping in front of them. And the Savak never shed a tear for us.
And now she wanted us to trust her? There was not enough fortune in the world.
Father leaned away and clasped his hands under his chin. “You wish to ally yourself with us?”
The cleric’s expression was still as a bluff. “Not as such. We need to be united to save as many lives as we can from what is coming.”
I glanced at their seer water, despite myself.
Mother tapped her fingers on the table. With her black hair cascading over her shoulders, and a thin golden band tracing the line of her brow, she was the picture of a queen. “You come alone. Do you have your queen’s blessing?”
“Our queen does not know,” she whispered. Her shoulders hunched. “She must never know.”
“What is coming?” Father asked.
“War,” the cleric said. “Our young queen has assembled an army. She will make herself empress. We have seen it. We have seen the loss of life, the destruction she will reap in her rise to power. She will not govern well. She will not take prisoners. But there is a path to survival. You must drink to see it.”
“How do we know this isn’t poison?” Tomlinson asked. “How do we know she’s not sent you here to kill us all?”
“I will drink with you,” the cleric answered.
Not enough. Still, curiosity drove me forward. I lifted Lord Reginal’s cup to my nose and sniffed. It smelled clean and fresh, almost sweet. I gave it back.
The cleric lifted her eyebrow. “It is an honor to drink seer water. No one outside our island has ever been offered of our spring, and this we freely give to you.