Page 52 of Daughter of the Dark Sea
Once their flesh touched, Agatha stopped talking and sharply inhaled. Her white eyes met Kora’s dead on, and she swallowed, fidgeting under that stare, and Kora could see the faint outline of where Agatha’s pupils and irises should be.
“What is on your neck?” Agatha spoke slowly, thickly.
“What?” Tension seized Kora. She couldn’t tell anyone what had recently happened. “Nothing? There’s nothing.”
“Do not lie to me,” Agatha inhaled deeply, closing her eyes. “You carry something dark and powerful. Maybe dangerous.”
Kora’s hand flew to her chest, gripping the talisman as if she could shield it from Agatha’s perception, whilst Agatha pressed into Kora’s other hand, her long nails biting into her skin.
No, no, no.
What if Agatha revealed her to the empire? She needed the money. They would send Kora to Deadwater Prison for possession of a potentially powerful trinket—a magical charm. Or maybe worse. Mages were hunted and executed right in front of the king. Dragged across the islands and sea to the vast continent, knowing they were being hauled to their death during the weeks it took to make the journey.
All so the king could witness it.
“No . . . Agatha,” Kora tried pulling her hand from her firm, knuckled grip. “Please! I-I don’t know what it is.” She stumbled for words, desperately seeking for where Agatha’s allegiance sat. She may have taught her the history of Devania, but it didn’t mean she wouldn’t sell her out to survive the poverty rife in these streets.
Agatha yanked her forwards, the table painfully pressing into Kora’s ribs. Hovering near Kora’s head and neck, Agatha breathed in Kora’s scent—heressence—and her eyes widened. She clicked her teeth and abruptly let go.
“Where did you findthat?” Each word was clipped, and Kora sat back shakily.
Agatha had always been stern, sometimes scolding, but she’d never been aggressive towards Kora. She’d always displayed a fondness towards her, a sympathy for her unrecovered memories, and it was here in Agatha’s Emporium that Kora had discovered her passion for reading and learning, especially about the ancient gods and the history of magic—or lack thereof.
The Devanian magic system had been broken into five factions. The first blessed from the gods in the form of the elements, and they bestowed it on the first humans that walked their lands as a welcome gift. Shortly after, witches evolved and emerged, honing their own special grasp on magic through the written hand, and chants echoed from their mouths, learning how to channel the magic without the blessings of the gods.
What interested Kora more were the fables. When the gods withered and faded, they breathed their final dregs of power into the land, and from it sprung three new divisions of power that blended with humans. She’d never discovered readings on what each faction contained, only that they were named the physical, illusion, and divine—along with elemental powers and witches. Creating the five forces.
But humans had grown greedy and lustful in their conquest for power. The gods’ gift wasted upon their narrow-minded souls. They stopped praying, stopped granting offerings to the gods who’d blessed their ancestors, and magic died, withering like rotted roots in blighted lands. The Devanian scholars fadedaway along with the gods, and then the islands were united by Admiral Darkon during the longest war.
It was a mystery as to how many mages remained. Either their power had been leached through generations of ignorance to the divine, or executed by those who could never wield it. It was a historic tale Kora had delighted in frequently. And a pastime she’d kept secret from Erick, Blake, and Bree for the whole ten years of her carefully constructed new life.
“I found it on a pirate ship.” She couldn’t say too much without giving away valuable information.
Agatha’s lips pulled back in a grimace. “That’s a relic from the Silver Sisters clan, in the Shannara Territory.”
Kora stilled. The most vicious, feral, and highly organised of the witch clans. Surely the witches wouldn’t have gifted an ancient relic to Cannon? It must’ve been stolen.
“What is it?” Kora asked, not daring to look down at her chest in fear the talisman would come alive and swallow her whole. Her heart pounded.
“A vessel to contain formidable power. A way for mortals to harness gifts that couldn’t be bestowed upon them by the ancient gods.”
What was Cannon doing with a talisman like this? Did he have any idea of the power he beheld in a necklace casually discarded in a chest?
“Magic doesn’t exist.”Anymore.
But . . . maybe it did? She’d manipulated water. It had terrified her, and something otherworldly had guided her hand, but it’d still happened. This talisman had to be doing something to her, making her hallucinate or channel some kind of presence, like the voice.
As far as she knew, no one else still prayed to the mysterious beings that created these lands—but perhaps the witches did? The last she’d heard, they were potion swindlers like Agatha, butalso practised ritualism, and conducted wild voodoo chanting to scare off trespassers.
Nothing more than filthy wenches, as Blake would say.
“Don’t speak of that drivelhehas been feeding into your mind,” Agatha snapped, spitting the words. “You do not come to me, to my home, for all these years, and still insist that magic isn’t real. That the history I have taught you is lies. Magical power never disappears, not completely. It is simply lost and reborn.”
“I’m sorry,” Kora bristled, her mask creeping in at the edges. “I must continue with this façade. You know citizens who believe in the gods are outlawed. Exiled to the Silent Tundra for heresy, or Deadwater Prison . . . or hanged.”
Agatha huffed at the mention of heresy. To believe in the gods was to deny King Staghart—Emperor Staghart soon—the chance to be regarded as one. Kora huffed with her. There had been endless writings discovered on the Devani gods, and the language from their reigning era still lingered to this day. Secretly. Despite that, itexisted. It was a history—true history—that the empire denied.
“I-I don’t understand. This necklace is harnessing power from someone?”
