Page 155 of Golden Queen
Terror raced through me. There were six of them—not good odds for me at all.
They looked like they had once been men, or something like it, but they had been burned alive, leaving their skin and the bald domes of their heads charred and cracked.
Some of their wings had the remains of feathers hanging limply from them. The rest were like thin bones covered by dark, melted wax. It looked painful.
I was trying to decide if running was my best option when they surprised me by going to one knee in the snow, all as one. They bowed their heads to me.
"Come, my queen," the first burned man said. "We will show you the way." His face was almost beautiful with a long, sloping nose and bright solid white eyes, but his mouth was a dark, cavernous hole as he spoke. “Come,” he repeated, holding out his hand.
"Come where?" I asked, backing away.
He didn't answer, only stared back at me for several heartbeats before they all opened their mouths to speak in one hushed, resonant voice. It was more wind than words. "The mother's veil is ashes. Cut with gold and corruption spills out. The angel opens her eyes. The father's grief is poison. Her shadow falls across the stars. Her tears fall upon the little blind rat. She remembers malice, but the child knows only the night."
I spun around, looking at the dark creatures who now surrounded me in a circle. There were more of them, maybe a dozen then. They were all kneeling with their charred, cracked heads bowed, whispering some version of the Totampresario—the Arkyllan prophecy.
"The sleeping angel bleeds red gold. Angels weep. Angels die. Angels rise! Aelia! Aelia! Redemption!"
When they said my name, it was in a nearly devout cry that sent dread through me—bone deep dread and horror.
"Death stalks across the plains as godslion's teeth rend flesh of the twice born king. Wings and drums beat." Their voices were growing more frantic as they spoke. "Aelia! Aelia! Savior!" they cried in their terrible hissing breath.
I turned wildly in the circle, clapping my hands over my ears. I did not want to hear another word!
But the sound, barely more than the hiss of dried leaves blowing across the ground in autumn, seemed to come from inside my head. There was no blocking it out.
"She harbors the seed of salvation and ruin. Aelia! Aelia! Hope! She hides behind the beast while gold burns beneath her feet. Aelia! Aelia! Traitor!"
I closed my eyes, feeling my knees sink down into the snow.
"The stolen shadow bleeds darkness upon light. He opens his father's eyes. The unnamed is made. Infinity is crowned with shadows and blood. Adrill, Adrill, destroyer!"
I realized the words of the familiar Totampresario were different; new. I tried to commit them to memory.
"He breathes a frozen breath of ether that wants to burn the worlds to ash. Flesh is broken and black flame rends the sky in two. The dragon opens its bloodied eyes. It is hungry with her own fell appetite. Aelia! Aelia! Death!"
The pounding of my heart in my ears was so loud I could hardly hear the last of the words.
"A flame is kindled as they watch and cry; she is the first. Her tongue bleeds lies. The kingdom burns. The Golden Queen burns! Blood will bear ash across the seas and the skies will rain fire before Malus rises on a tide of death. Her veil is ashes and the taste of glory is her meal. Blood opens the gate."
The whispered voices died away as an icy wind kissed across my skin. I opened my eyes, barely daring to hope.
They were gone.
I pushed myself up, turning in a circle again, looking for some sign that they had ever been real. Now that they were gone, leaving not so much as a single footprint in the snow, it didn't seem like they had ever been there at all.
Their words, though, were seared into me as though carved into my heart.
Aelia, Aelia, death, they had whispered in what I now knew was not the sound of autumn leaves blowing across the courtyard. The sound of their voices had been the hiss of the godsgrass swaying in the gentle winds that blew across the Windemerian plains.
I had never before left the godsgrass, so it was a sound that I had always known. A constant backdrop to life that could be heard if you were standing outside even in the middle of the city.
I once thought it sounded like the hiss of snakes as the golden heads of the stalks rubbed against each other.
But as I grew up, even before anyone told me, I began to know in my heart that the sound of the godsgrass was the sound of protection. It was the sound of safe harbor from forces that I could barely begin to understand.
And now that silence surrounded me in this snow-covered land on the other side of the world, where the godsgrass ended, I felt vulnerable.
I knew that the burned angels had come to give me some kind of warning. I would heed that warning, even if I did not know what it meant or how to do it.
