Chapter 38: The Terms of the Gift

Kai ran up the stairs without even realizing he was doing it until he was almost at the top, shoving his way through people who were cheering and reaching out to shake his hand or pat him on the back.

"Kai! Where are you going?" Mira yelled from behind him.

"She’s here!" Kai yelled back. "The High Priestess!"

Sunny jumped over the railing to chase after him, but the crowd swarmed around the Holy Champion the moment they saw his white armor, and in no time, he was mobbed by people trying to touch his sleeves and begging him to bless them. Kai didn’t stick around to help him, because by the time he reached the top of the stands, there was no one standing beside the pillar anymore, only a small archway that led down into the darkness.

[Kai, this is stupid]

"I know," Kai whispered.

[You are about to walk into a dark tunnel after the woman who tried to rip me out of your body]

"I know," Kai whispered. "Are you going to come or not?"

[I live in your body. I cannot choose]

The tunnel under the upper levels smelled like stale beer and damp stone, and every wall was lined with storerooms full of old seats and rolled-up banners. Kai followed the footsteps until they stopped, and then he followed the silence until he found himself in a small room lit by a single candle sitting on top of an upside-down crate.

The High Priestess was waiting for him there, and she wasn’t running or hiding anymore. She was just sitting on a pile of old seats with her white and gold robe draped over her knees, as if she was waiting for someone to come over for tea.

She looked older up close than she had in the Cathedral, with gray streaking through her hair and tired lines around her eyes, and Kai noticed that the hand she had used to grab Syraphim was still wrapped in a white bandage.

"You came by yourself," the High Priestess said. "How foolish of you."

"People keep telling me that," Kai said.

"Have a seat, Mr. Mercer," the High Priestess said, pointing to one of the crates across from her. "If I wanted you dead, those crossbowmen would have been aiming at you, and not at the Iron Father’s Champion."

"They were aiming at both of us," Kai said.

"They were aiming at him," the High Priestess said. "You were simply in the way. Elder Voss was always better at stealing my money than he was at following my commands."

Kai didn’t sit down, and he kept his finger pointed at her, even though they both knew that anything he fired would probably hit the ceiling.

"What do you want?" Kai asked.

"To speak the truth," the High Priestess said. "I have heard you enjoy that these days."

[Kai, I do not like this]

"I don’t either," Kai whispered.

The High Priestess watched his lips move, and for a moment, she almost looked sympathetic.

"She is talking to you again, is she not?" the High Priestess said. "You always stare off into nothing and whisper when she speaks to you, like a child with an imaginary friend. Has she told you the terms of the gift?"

"A hundred true believers in one year," Kai said. "Or I stop existing, and nobody remembers I was ever alive."

"Nobody," the High Priestess said softly. "Did she explain everything that word includes?"

Kai opened his mouth to answer, but he closed it again when he realized Syraphim had gone completely silent in his head, and in all the time she had lived there, she had never once gone quiet when he needed her.

"The Church has kept records of the Mother’s gifts for three hundred years," the High Priestess said. "Every Holy Champion who has carried one, every gift that was given, and every gift that was lost. When a bearer fails, he takes the gift with him, because it becomes bound to his soul the moment it enters his body." She leaned closer, and her eyes reflected the candlelight. "And everyone who ever believed in him forgets everything he did for them."

Kai felt his stomach drop all the way down to his boots.

"Your Lady Vallen will wake up in a slave cage in Ironwatch," the High Priestess said, "with no idea how her father’s name was cleared, or why she has a deed tucked inside her dress. The fishermen in Millbrook will forget who saved their village, and the Champion will forget why he betrayed his own Church. And your little voice will simply disappear."

"Syraphim," Kai whispered. "Is she telling the truth?"

It took so long that Kai thought she wasn’t going to answer him at all.

[Yes]

"Why didn’t you tell me?" Kai whispered.

[When we first met, you were already afraid enough. And I did not want you to think I was helping you only to save myself]

Kai closed his eyes and slowly lowered his hand to his side. Somewhere above them, the crowd was still chanting his name, thousands of people celebrating a god who had just found out he might take every one of them down with him.

"Why are you telling me this?" Kai asked.

"Because I am giving you the chance to save her," the High Priestess said. "The gift cannot be ripped out of your body, as I found out the hard way." She held up her bandaged hand. "But it can be given away. If you give her to the Holy Champion of your own free will and say the words, she will be bound to him instead, and she will live for as long as he does. The Church will make certain he reaches a hundred believers within a week."

"And me?" Kai asked.

"You will disappear," the High Priestess said. "Just as you would have, if the Mother had not made her mistake."

[Kai, do not listen to her]

Kai didn’t answer either of them, because he was thinking about the bathtub, and about how Syraphim’s face had lit up when she felt the water for the first time and told him those were the best seven minutes of her life.

"Why would you even want her?" Kai asked. "You tried to burn the letters that proved Lord Vallen was innocent, and you tried to kill the King. You don’t give a shit about the Mother."

For the first time, the High Priestess’s calm cracked, and she looked down at the candle instead of at him.

"The Mother has not spoken to anyone in the Cathedral for forty years," the High Priestess said. "Not to me, not to the High Priestess before me, and not to the Champion, though he would never admit it. I have spent my entire life speaking for a goddess who no longer speaks, Mr. Mercer, and then one day, she finally speaks again, to a thief." She looked back up at him. "I want my Syraphim back."

"She’s lying," a voice said from the entrance.

Kai turned around and saw Elowen standing in the doorway with her sword drawn, and the blade was glowing a soft white, not bright, but bright enough.

"Something she said is a lie," Elowen said. "I do not know which part it is."

Kai had no idea how long she had been standing there, but she must have followed his light through the tunnels, just like she had found him hiding in the bushes outside the city, and by the river, and in every other place he had ever tried to hide from her.

The High Priestess smiled at Elowen, and then she stood up and blew out the candle, plunging the room into pitch black darkness.

"Light! Minor Light!" Kai screamed.

An orb shot out of his hand and stuck to the ceiling, lighting up the room like the middle of the day, but the High Priestess was already gone. All that was left was a hole in the wall where one of the stones had been pushed aside, with a cold breeze blowing out of it.

Sunny came running down the tunnel a minute later, out of breath, with Mira right behind him.

"She left?" Sunny asked.

"Yeah, she’s gone," Kai said.

Mira looked at Kai’s face and stopped in her tracks, one hand still braced against the tunnel wall, because whatever she saw there frightened her more than anything that had happened in the arena.

"What did she tell you?" Mira asked.

Kai looked at Mira and Sunny, and he thought about the High Priestess’s offer, and about how easy it would be to give Syraphim to the man who never missed.

"Nothing that I plan on doing," Kai said.

Mira didn’t believe him, so she walked over and grabbed his arm, just like she had that morning, and this time, Kai didn’t pull away.

[Kai]

"We’re going to get the hundred," Kai whispered. "Both of us."

[352 days]

"Then we’d better start moving," Kai whispered.