Page 16 of The Deathless One (The Gravesinger #1)
“Magic gives more than just power.” A soft movement, one of Sybil tucking her hands into her sleeves, before she continued.
“Anyway, it was hard to worship so many gods without some people thinking theirs was more powerful than the others. Every faction seemed to hate another. Every sect of powerful magic users claimed to be more useful than the next. Magic boiled over from so many people using it and so many gods giving it, and then the plague appeared. We didn’t know where it came from, only that it was spreading rapidly.
Everyone had their own opinions on how to fix it.
Scholars, healers, none of them could touch the disaster that followed.
“The witches were the ones with the most power. The Deathless One has always been the most powerful conduit. He gave us more of himself than any of the others.”
Words whispered through Jessamine’s mind, a ghost of those dark creatures. Take from him. Rip from him. Tear her future out of his flesh and become something she had never dreamed of being.
Jessamine shook off those thoughts. “So the followers attacked each other because they wanted to be the ones to fix the plague? We’ve always been told that the plague happened after the gods died.”
“It is the lie we created. The plague happened first, and still no one knows where it came from. Everyone wanted to be the hero, and they focused more on each other than actually fixing the problem. My coven saw what was coming. The witches did what we had to do, what we had always done. We sacrificed our god and all our gravesingers combined to be given the most amount of magic this realm has ever seen, and the Deathless One has been trapped ever since.” Her frown deepened.
“After we couldn’t cure the plague, everyone wanted someone to blame.
They called our arts black magic, darkness incarnate.
They claimed we were the reason for all the evils in the kingdom, and they hunted us.
We were destroyed as so many other powerful sects banded together.
A few of us survived, hiding as we always did. ”
“What happened to the others?”
Sybil shrugged. “The gods died. No one knows how or when that happened, perhaps only the Deathless One knows the truth. Their followers used up all the magic that their patrons had given them, and then there was nothing left. The berserkers became mere men. Priestesses lost their value when blessings no longer came true. Scholars lost the knowledge gifted them by the God King. Without the gods, we are nothing. What remained of those who worshipped attacked each other, and then almost all magic disappeared. We were left with what you see now.”
“A shell of what once was,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“It is like living in the skeleton of a leviathan you once knew well. There is still fear of its jaws and teeth that I walk through every day.” Sybil patted her knee and then stood. “But it is just a skeleton, my dear. All the things for you to fear are dead.”
An icy touch traveled her spine. “I think I might be dead, too. Should I fear myself?”
The words made Sybil shiver. Jessamine noticed the flick of Sybil’s fingers, the start of the same motion those men in the sewers had made. A motion that was meant to summon the Deathless One’s favor in times of need.
“I do not know whether to tell you to be afraid of yourself, Jessamine. Your path is yours to walk. Do you want people to fear you?”
Yes, a voice whispered in her mind. I do.
But she shook her head. “You said those were ancestors in my dreams?”
“They are usually the ones who summon our spirits out of our bodies to speak with us, yes.” Sybil turned to leave, pausing in the doorway to look back at her. “You shouldn’t be afraid of them either.”
“Why were they covered in ink?”
Jessamine didn’t imagine the way those curled hands suddenly clutched at the wooden frame of the door. The inhalation of breath, and the way Sybil’s eyes widened not with surprise, but fear. “Covered in ink?”
“They were dripping with it. Just like the Deathless One.” She wrapped her arms around herself, shuddering in the brisk wind that came in through the open window. “They told me not to trust him and to rip him apart. I don’t know what that means.”
Sybil sagged against the door, her spine rounding and her hunched figure looking more like the ancient crone she was. “The gravesingers spoke with you.”
“You said there weren’t any gravesingers left.”
“They all sacrificed themselves,” she muttered.
“The last of their kind, to keep him locked away. To take his magic and save our world. Along with the coven, the gravesingers sacrificed the last living god, stripped his power, and tried to use it to cure the plague. We knew what we were doing. We knew that by sacrificing all who could bring him back at the same time, that it was the only magic this realm would ever see again. At least, so we thought, until you. But the spell failed, and then there was no one left to get magic from.”
“Then they’re all dead?”
“Except you.”
Jessamine shook her head. “Who was talking to me, then?”
Haunted eyes stared back at her. “What remains of a great dynasty of women. They are the last vestiges of magic that linger in the realm between, where the Deathless One is bound. They wished to give you a warning, and perhaps a prophecy of their own.”
“So they want me to hurt him?”
“No, Jessamine. They want to you follow in their footsteps.”
Sybil slipped out the door and left Jessamine with only lingering questions and a continued icy feeling that trailed down her spine. If the people who had come before her wanted her to follow in their footsteps, did that mean they wanted her to sacrifice herself?
She lay down on the rags that covered the floor and couldn’t help but feel like that wasn’t at all what they were asking.
They wanted her to take from the Deathless One and use his power. To do what? She had no idea. She wasn’t a witch. She didn’t know how to cure the plague, and if that was what they wanted… they would be sorely disappointed.