Page 19 of Of Skulls Of Shackles

Should only shimmer

Like a star

Without its power

Lest starlight steals

All they are

To build her tower.”

I blew out a breath. “Yes, so I have heard many hundreds of times on the human radios that Princess Raise insists on leaving turned on all night. I am warned, as kings should be, that I must press on before my power is stolen.”

A lie. That is not what the verse of King Take’s gateman really meant. Luckily, no one seemed to have guessed the true meaning—that I would not just equal kings in power, but become most powerful of all by stealingtheirpower.

Or so I fathomed. My queendom was not at fullness, that much I felt, and though nearly equal to the power of kings now, I did not possess the ancientness of mind of some of them, King See, for instance. For others—such as King Bring—I felt greatly more ancient.

The twelve mothers deepened their voices into a new chant, and their voices layered and collected to spear down the ancestral line into my trembling soul.

“Up and out

Weaves golden fate

Feeling ancient in gifted wisdom.

Five powers grasp

All icy demise

Free from her olden prison.

If throne is seat

Union is seam

Skulls are skin

Shackles are stitch.

Until ancient in truth

Tarry not

Linger never

Lest the world becomes forever buried.”

Their chant faded into the hazy abyss, and a new voice rose from the haze, frail and tired. “Your immortal burden cold and lonely,

Hear! Rule until the bloody finish.

For the mighty never stirred at dawn,

They burst forth at dusk,

Into toothed beast’s yawn.”

The many millions of cogs in my mind were turning, of course. Because there was such language in the second chant uttered by twelve mothers that had reminded me of a poem first heard with my human ears.

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