Quintana of Charyn

The Priestking shook his head. ‘Just a mention of the Yut and his theory. So I continued my search. What kingdom has profited most from Yutlind’s mess and has become the greatest hoarder and pilferer of its works?’

‘Belegonia,’ Sir Topher said.

‘Although it could have been worse,’ Finnikin said. ‘The great works of Yutlind could have ended up in the hands of the Sorellians. At least the Belegonians have a love for words.’

The Priestking nodded. ‘Thus Celie’s achievement in their spring palace.’

‘I pride myself on being the greatest spy there is,’ Celie said. ‘When I was in the Belegonian capital, I had no such luck finding any foreign chronicles. In the spring castle, however, I found exactly what we were looking for.’

‘Celie,’ Isaboe reprimanded. ‘I told you to find yourself a lover, not hide yourself in a library.’

‘No, you said we could make these invitations to Belegonia work for us,’ Celie said.

‘Well, I don’t know what we would have done without her,’ the Priestking said.

‘Can’t you be both?’ Isaboe asked. ‘Someone’s lover and our greatest spy?’

‘I’ll try very hard to please you, my queen,’ Celie laughed. ‘But let me start as a spy. I searched the chamber of chronicles in the spring castle, every opportunity I could. There’s a foreign section. We’ll speak later about what they’ve pilfered from Lumatere. Finally I came across the chronicles of Phaneus of Yutlind. Of course, I couldn’t understand a word of it. So I returned home with the chronicles. It had been a strange time in the spring palace and I told the King that I was sick at heart and needed to be with my family. And here I am.’

‘And you were able to translate it, blessed Barakah?’ Finnikin asked, and Isaboe heard envy in his voice.

‘I promise it wasn’t easy,’ the Priestking said. ‘Phaneus of Yutlind’s writing rants and states that we all speak one tongue before we’re born.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Isaboe said.

‘There’s no Lumateran, Charyn, Yut, Sorellian, Sendecanese, Osterian, Belegonian, Sarnak,’ Celie said, excitement in her voice. ‘He called it the tongue of the innocents.’

The Priestking glanced down to where Isaboe held a hand on her belly.

‘I listen to you speak to the babe, Your Majesty. But according to Phaneus of Yutlind, that babe does not understand a word of Lumateran. All it understands is the universal language of the innocents. Untainted by life.’

‘Why can’t we remember it, then, according to this Phaneus?’ Finnikin asked.

‘Oh, Phaneus doesn’t have the answer to that. He was barely lucid at times. Dearest Celie had to witness some unmentionable sketches before we reached the pages of the unborns.’

‘Unmentionable,’ Celie said, her cheeks pink at the memory.

‘How unmentionable?’ Isaboe asked, intrigued.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ Celie said. ‘Among other things.’

‘Celie, you have taken a lover,’ Finnikin said. ‘Why is it that Isaboe gets to hear everything and I get nothing but Phaneus the mad Yut?’

Sir Topher made a sound with his throat that meant he was irritated by the chatting.

‘Go on, blessed Barakah,’ Isaboe said.

‘My guess would be that we don’t remember the language because we don’t remember birth. Perhaps the shock wipes it from our memories. Who knows?’

The Priestking swung the chronicle around and pointed.

‘The mad Yut’s tongue of the innocents,’ he said, pointing to the strange but familiar lettering.

Isaboe recognised one or two symbols with stems and curves that she had seen in the letters sent by both Froi and Tesadora.

‘I found a strange code that matched every symbol to Yut characters I recognised, and then I tried to translate Yut into Lumateran, but the Yut words on both Froi and the Charyn girl’s bodies didn’t seem to exist.’

The Priestking retrieved the two parchments with Froi and Quintana’s lettering.

‘Until I did this,’ he said, placing them together. They all moved closer to study the words in Yut. ‘Half of the message was with Froi. The other half with Quintana of Charyn.’

‘We are incomplete,’ Finnikin translated.

Isaboe felt her breath catch.

‘Is this saying they’re incomplete without each other? Froi and that savage?’ she asked.

The Priestking didn’t speak for a moment.

‘I think it’s something even more powerful than that,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s the spirits of the unborn babes that spoke.’

Perri was on his feet, pacing the room, and Isaboe felt the tension from them all.

The Priestking laid Froi’s letter out on the table. ‘We have to go back to the events of the night of our lad’s birth. A strange, horrific night when a mother and her son are wrenched apart, a man loses the love of a brother, another man loses faith in his king and himself, a babe loses her mother and twin sister. All those involved, the Oracle amongst them, were so powerful that their loss and pain and fury and grief became a splinter in the soul of a kingdom. We know it’s referred to as the day of weeping, when every Charynite woman who carried a child bled it from their loins.’

Isaboe held out a hand to Perri and he sat, his fists clenched.

‘Look at what Seranonna did to Lumatere,’ the Priestking continued. ‘All that rage and anguish. That wasn’t planned. It wasn’t conjured up in a spell. It came from in here,’ the Priest-king said, pointing to his heart. He flicked through another of the chronicles. ‘Two hundred years ago, it also happened in Sendecane. A young girl’s passion destroyed the kingdom and it is still a wasteland today except for the cloister of Lagrami. Five hundred years ago it happened to an island north of Sarnak, a place that no longer exists. Never underestimate the power of our raw emotions.’

Sir Topher was a man of logic and even he looked spellbound.

‘So the two babes and two brothers, and Lirah of Serker and the Oracle cursed the kingdom much the same way as Seranonna did?’ Isaboe asked.

The Priestking shook his head.

‘No. They didn’t curse the kingdom. They cursed a day and created the weeping.’

‘Destroyed only one day?’ Finnikin said.

‘Then who cursed the next eighteen years?’ Sir Topher asked.

The Priestking looked at them all, his eyes finally settling on Perri.

‘I believe the spirit of those bled babes had nowhere to go. Some were days from birth. They had no name, and no way of being called to rest. So they searched for the source. The vessels.’

‘Froi?’ Perri said.

The Priestking nodded. ‘And the Princess. Two vessels more powerful than we can ever imagine. Come to me. Come to me, they would have called out, hearing the cries of their lost brothers and sisters. All they wanted to do was protect them. And the spirits did come to them, but were splintered.’ He looked at Perri. ‘Part of the spirit of your unborn child went to Froi and the other part went to Quintana of Charyn.’

The Priestking paused a moment, looking at them all. ‘It’s what takes place during chaos, whether in this known world or that yet to be born. Look at what happened to us here all those years ago. Lumatere was divided in two. Those who were trapped and those in exile.

‘And the spirits of those babes have been full of fury and despair all these years. They’ve wanted the part of them that was lost returned. And now, finally, each has become one again, united in the babe that Quintana and Froi created. Let’s pray that it’s born, dear friends. Let’s pray that it stays safe in its mother’s arms.’

‘Mercy!’ said Finnikin.

Mercy indeed, Isaboe thought, placing a shaking hand on her belly. The kingdom of Charyn had not been cursed by evil. It had been cursed by innocence. By the power of the unborn.