Prologue: The Dead Forest
Ten Years Ago
The trees grew at impossible angles from the limestone escarpment, and brittle rock crunched underfoot. The sound forcefully reminded Goodson Anskar of the day he half ran, half skidded across the broken floor tiles of the monastery’s chapel—the ominous crush and scattering of marble beneath his feet—before he peered down into the Vault of Mount Djall and found it empty.
That emptiness reached inside him now, two years later—two years of research and guesswork, convincing himself his hunch was right. He had arrived in Hedenskia with two thousand knights. Now only he and Brother Marton remained, trudging through the Dead Forest, taking turns carrying the precious child they had never expected to find among the heathens.
The Goodson’s back ached, so he set the girl down beside a gnarled tree to stretch. In that moment, a crack rent the air like a whip. The bark split down the middle, and from within the tree came two skeletal hands pushing apart the chasm. There was an answering crack in Anskar’s chest, a paternal feeling so ferocious it nearly brought him to his knees. He lunged, grasping the child by her cloak and yanking her behind him. Her body soared through the air like a bird as the monster oozed from the tree.
A telleg.
It attacked Brother Marton first, scraping a thick gash across the knight’s throat before biting into his shoulder with savage teeth. Anskar drew his sword as the creature sprang at him with unnatural speed, and he sliced it in half, exposing the spine within its bloodless gray flesh. When he was certain it was dead, he rushed to Marton, only to find his friend’s eyes staring blankly toward heaven.
Fighting the urge to weep, the Goodson glared down at the telleg that had killed the last of his men. On the monster’s chest was a mark that resembled the Hand of the Father, the same emblem stitched across his own tunic. This was surely a sign from the One True God, a symbol of Anskar’s failure and disgrace.
Silent as a fawn, the girl came to stand beside him, taking his big hand in her small one. She gazed up at him with innocent eyes, and his heart lurched. Her soft presence was like his favorite verse from The Song of Saint Ovin, the one that always brought him comfort:
When the berries of the gelya tree turn red,
Then you will know that I have called you home.
Squeezing the girl’s hand, Anskar reminded himself that his name meant spear in Aurian. Now, more than ever, the Father required that he be sharp to protect this child, the Vessel of the One True God.
Casting aside his despair, he crouched before her, and because he did not know her name, he gave her a new one. “Poor little Gelya. Come. I shall carry you now.” Then he scooped her into his strong arms and carried her through a forest full of monsters and night.
I.
The Vessel
One
As Daughter Andra plops a scoop of thick oatmeal into my bowl, I recall the last conversation I had with Zofia before she left for the Monastery of Saint Helios:
Have you met the new Daughter yet? There are three girls your age here now, and it might be nice for you to have friends other than a thirty-year-old woman and the Goodson.
Those girls look at me like I’m going to bite them.
Then be your lovely self, Gelya, and show them that you don’t bite.
Well, Zofia is about to get her wish. With the other Vessels treating me like a nuisance and the rest of the Daughters avoiding me like the plague, I’m lonely enough in her absence to follow her suggestion. Girding myself, I walk past the Vessels’ table and head straight for the only other teenage girls in the refectory.
Vessels are Daughters who were chosen by the Grace Tree of Saint Vinnica to sing the Father’s Word for the faithful, while the other Daughters of the convent are simply women who’ve chosen to dedicate their lives to the One True God. These girls may not be Vessels like I am, but they are young women, and I’m a young woman, and surely that counts for something, especially in a convent full of old ladies. Not that I have anything against old ladies. It’s just that I’m not one.
I try to remember the girls’ names as I cross the room. Lucia? Lucretia? Something like that. And Trudi. I think. And . . . and that other girl. Most Daughters, unlike Vessels, don’t enter the convent until they’re at least sixteen. That means each one of these girls has a home to remember, a wider world they’ve seen that I haven’t—at least not that I remember clearly. I was only five or six years old when the Father chose me. I watch them stiffen, then stiffen a bit more, then turn into a set of petrified wooden boards as I get closer. By the time I reach their table, I think I’d rather hide under it than pull up a chair, but there’s no going back now. I almost ask, “May I sit here?” but then it occurs to me that they could say no, and that would be mortifying. Instead, I opt for “Is this seat taken?” because it clearly isn’t, and lying is a sin.
“No?” Probably Trudi answers doubtfully, her blue eyes wide in her round pink face. Lucia or Lucretia and That Other Girl gape at her in panic.
My hands are shaking so badly that my teacup vibrates on its saucer, and my orange nearly rolls off the tray. “So,” I chirp as I sit, my voice two octaves higher than normal and five times louder than necessary. “What do you study at the convent?”
“Um,” gulps That Other Girl, her brown eyes darting between her friends. She has the fine bones of someone from southwest Rosvania or northwest Tovnia, the sort of person who makes me feel extra enormous. She stares at me like she might vomit from terror. Because I’m not just a Vessel. I’m also Hedenski, a girl from the most brutal and uncivilized place on earth, a land where people worship a tree goddess—a tree, for the love of the Father—and that makes me terrifying twice over. But honestly, I’ve lived at the convent so long that I don’t remember anything about Hedenskia. It’s not like I murder people, and to my knowledge, I’ve never carried a battle-axe. Can’t they see that?
“Well,” says Lucia or Lucretia, adding a third word to the girls’ collective lexicon, which is promising. With her dark hair and olive complexion, I’d guess she comes from south of the Koz Mountains, and I feel a pang of sympathy for her, living so far from a home she must miss. I may not remember where I came from, but I do remember mourning its loss.
Probably Trudi finally gives me a complete sentence. “I’m studying herbalism so that I may serve the Father by treating the sick.”
Her accent is thickly Degmari, and since my Degmari is pretty good, I figure that speaking to her in her native language would be a friendly thing to do. “That is interesting,” I say a little too enthusiastically. “I recently translated a book on medicinal herbs from Middle Tovnian to Rosvanian. I was surprised to learn how useful goldenseal is.” By now, I notice that Probably Trudi appears to be shrinking in on herself and on the verge of tears, yet my mouth runs on a few seconds longer as if it has a life of its own. “And . . . and . . . chamomile as well.”
“Um, yes,” she sniffs in Rosvanian, dabbing at her eyes with her napkin.
“Did I say something wrong?” I ask, feeling even more gigantic than usual. And then I realize my blunder. Many people on the continent think of the Degmari as backwater yokels, probably because of the archipelago’s proximity to Hedenskia, and here I am, a Hedenski, pointing out the girl’s embarrassing origins in front of her friends, who are now looking at me like I’ve sprouted fangs when I was trying to be kind. I wish the floor would open up beneath me, but since that’s not going to happen, I escape before I can make things any worse.