Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [26]
Rafiq felt no victory. He had only one thing on his mind—someone had set him up to fail, to dishonor himself, and to break the law. Why in Asha’s name do that? he thought. He turned to face Aarsil the Blessed in the crowd. She had an inscrutable smile on her face.
“You did well,” said Aarsil the Blessed, after the match. Her bemused smile was the reverse of Rafiq’s scowl.
“I did what I never thought I’d do,” said Rafiq. “They didn’t deserve such treatment. I shamed the arena and my caste.”
“You did what you had to do,” said Aarsil. “That was the important thing. And they’ll survive. I’ve had my best healers tend to them.”
“You used your influence here,” said Mubin, his eyes narrow. “You used your caste privilege to influence the judge.”
“Mubin, please!” said Rafiq. “Remember your place!”
“No, he’s right,” said Aarsil. “And my associates from the Order of the Skyward Eye supplied the enchanted swords. I’m sorry we deceived you, and put the mercenaries at risk. But I need a special kind of champion—one who has the right skill and character to perform a grave duty in the times to come. I had to test you. And you passed.”
Rafiq bowed sharply, and cast a look at Mubin, who bowed grudgingly. “We are at your service, of course, Blessed,” said Rafiq.
“Good. Then you leave for Giltspire Castle immediately.”
“Giltspire? What is our mission there?”
“To discover who destroyed it.”
“Giltspire … destroyed?” Rafiq said. “It doesn’t make sense, Mubin. I don’t understand it. How could the angels have allowed such a thing?”
Mubin rubbed his chin pensively. “What I want to know is who would want it done?”
A long line of mourners marked the road to Giltspire—all heading to the city, none away from it. Individual travelers, couples, and entire families had picked up a minimum of belongings and were making a grim pilgrimage to the site of the disaster. As Rafiq and Mubin passed them on their leotau steeds, the pilgrims’ faces didn’t look pleading, or even sorrowful. They looked resigned, as if they had already accepted their fate. Rafiq noted that many of them had copies of Asha’s Prophecy with them, the prayer spread across Bant in recent years by the solemn Order of the Skyward Eye.
“Asha’s Prophecy predicted this,” said one old man at a pilgrim’s camp one night. “The Prophecy warns that once grace falls, doom will come to the world, and the ultimate test will begin.”
“What does that mean?” Rafiq asked him.
“It means you of Sigiled caste must unite to save us,” said the old man. “Without you, we won’t be able to stop them from pouring out of hell and destroying us. As the Prophecy says, unless you scour the underworld of evil itself, Bant will fall.”
Rafiq didn’t know where the Order of the Skyward Eye had gotten their grim vision of the future. The angels had had no ruler, no supreme Asha, for generations, and only the monarchs of the Blessed caste could presume to speak for the angels, according to divine law. Yet the people of every nation of Bant had adopted the prophecy fervently, and had tended to interpret every dire event as confirmation of it.
“Do you think this prophecy is the true word of Asha?” Mubin asked him.
“I don’t know,” said Rafiq. “But it’s right about one thing—the disaster at Giltspire heralds nothing but evil.”
When they arrived at Giltspire, the castle was gone. The gleaming white obelisk that remained was surrounded by three concentric haloes: one of the rubble of the former castle, in which mourners hunched, looking for signs of lost loved ones; a second circle of knights of the Skyward Eye, who stood vigilantly, assigned to guard the shining relic that had been exposed; and a third circle, the encampments of pilgrims who had come to grieve and pay tribute at the site of the disaster.
After showing their sigils to the guards, Rafiq and Mubin approached the obelisk. Its surface swept upward from a shallow base, its shape guiding the eye to the heavens.
“This is ancient,” said Mubin, his leathery hand touching the stone. “It must have been under the buttress tower for centuries.”