Page 77 of Lady of the Drowned Empire
My guard accompanied me on my walk up the mountain pass in the morning.
And I touched the statue. And I saw her. I saw the goddess as if she were standing right before me.
Her hair was dark, unlike any depiction I’d seen. It was the color of Lyr’s hair. Her eyes were closed. And when she opened them, they were Lyr’s eyes. And then beneath the sun, her hair was red.
She was weak, though, couldn’t stand. She fell against the statue.
Again, I thought, my daughter, and I reached out to grab her. Aemon said I looked like I was in a trance. That I’d reached for nothing. No one else could see what I saw.
But when I touched the statue a second time, she stood before me in all her power, holding the red shard of the Valalumir in her hands.
We were called back to the keep for breakfast and a meeting of the Glemarian Council. I didn’t hear a word. I kept thinking of the mountain and the snow. And Asherah.
I snuck out again at night. Unable to sleep. Possessed.
Under the moonlight, I saw something that was not visible before in the sun. Writing. It was faint, scripted in very old-fashioned High Lumerian letters as such:
Ha zan aviskan me shyatim, cain ani chaya tha o ha yara.
I squinted, absorbing my mother’s old-fashioned handwriting. I’d read many scrolls like this before, but it always took me a moment to adjust to the style. Slowly, the translation came to me.
The sun revealed my secrets, so I hid them with the moon.
The statue held a message that could only be read in moonlight.
Imperator Hart interrupted me then. Beneath the message, embedded into the moonstone, was the shape of a star—a Valalumir. But it was unusual in its shape. The rays curved, reminding me of a sun. And under the moonlight I could see there were creases along the edge of the moonstone, an opening.
“It takes a key,” he said. His voice was nonchalant. Off-putting.
I’d turned to him, startled, and asked, “A key, your highness?”
He smiled back at me, but there was something strange about it. Like he was hiding a grave secret. “It takes a key to understand this puzzle.” Those were his words. And he laughed. “No one yet has understood this. Looks like she belongs more in your country than mine.”
I nodded in agreement. “We have our own mysterious out-of-place statue. The Guardian, a great gryphon.” My heart was pounding so fast as I spoke.
He’d nodded in agreement. There was a knowing in his eyes I didn’t like, that made me sick to my stomach, but then he grinned easily at me, inviting me back inside, offering to take me away from the cold.
I may be High Lady, absolute ruler of Bamaria. But I dared not refuse the request of this Imperator.
I came inside. But not before I looked one more time. Not before I saw the tiniest inscription alongside the star.
Aniam aviska sol lyrotz, ka, e clavix. Shukroya mishverach, o tha trium.
Had I not been diligent in my studies, I’d never have memorized it so quickly. Luckily, I did.
And then only inside did I notice the hilt of his sword for the first time. A red star in the same exact shape and size of the Valalumir I’d just seen engraved into stone. And his star was not just red. But Batavia red. Red as the red shard of the Valalumir. Of my visions. Of Asherah.
He doesn’t know I figured it out.
Maybe he isn’t fully aware himself of what he holds. I don’t know. He’s hard to read. He is very sweet and accommodating. But he makes me uncomfortable. He is hiding his true self.
But my reservations about the Imperator aside, I know now beyond a shadow of a doubt what this means—the answer to the questions I’ve researched my whole life.
My visions, my dreams, the seraphim and the color red, all things that relate to her. To Bamaria. The shard I saw.
If I were to share this with someone, they might call me farther than Lethea. And they might be right. But I believe with whole heart that at least this one mystery may have been solved.
One of the lost shards of the Valalumir has been found.
