A Priestess for the Blind God (Legends of Rahasia Book 1)

Chapter Three

            "The tent to register is located on the southwest side of the encampment." Ryu and I are blocked before we can even enter the practice arena. A hulking guard with square features stands in front of us, a Diviner of the highest rank, sent directly from the temple of Cato the Elder. He's too old to present himself as a champion, so he serves the gods in their temples and rituals, more of a traditional temple priest than a Diviner. All the wealth and comfort of a Diviner's life is given to him, just without the added glory and possible death from being a champion.

He's also kept around to scare the younger recruits into obedience.

I glance at the markings of his Diviner's instrument, a sword gleaming with runes for wind. I bow my head and slowly move toward the southwest area, but something in my gaze evidently displeases him. "Hold. Turn around, runt." The head guard says. I refuse to turn around, something within me reaching a breaking point. Maybe it's terror, and I'm just too ashamed to admit that it's terror rather than courage that keeps me from obeying.

"I said turn around!"

I do so, all my muscles tensed to run, my hold slipping on my mirror. I see Ryu startle at the corner of my eye. He was already walking toward the registrars. I wish he wasn't trying to be kind. He's one more witness to my embarrassment. "Yes?"

The guard comes closer to me. "Your Diviner instrument... it bears the mark of Lord Ngayoh's house. I was unaware that Lord Ngayoh had a son. There was rumor that Ngayoh's greatest shame was that he had only women in his line, that he was forced to send..."

I say nothing, fearful my voice will give me away.

He pushes the blade closer to me, using it as a rod aimed to shove my hood back.

Then a shaggy head of dark hair and glass beads dodges in front of me. "Why, Alef, darling. You have me jealous. You've visited my father's house plenty of times before, and you've never once tried to catch a glimpse of my pretty face." Alef stumbles away from Ryu, but he has none of that. Ryu only steps closer, mimicking a lover's caress as he holds his fingers against the grizzled guard's face. "Seeing now how you look at me, I wish you had."

The guard holds his hands over his shaved head, as though covering his face from shame beneath the eyes of his god. "I was former champion to Cato the Elder, the thirteenth son of a mere country lord. I killed my own brothers in combat to win the god's favor, cursed to never win the throne. Now I'm here, stuck babysitting spoiled rich bastards and runts." He shoves Ryu away, but Ryu adjusts his stance automatically. It seems the young man is used to being pushed around. But Alef is not content with that. He moved forward quickly, feigning an attack. Ryu, in fear, falls to Alef's barking, doglike laughter. "It's not wise to cross me."

He presses the blade against the exposed skin of my neck, just hard enough to draw a thin trickle of blood. "Watch it, little sand fly. That is, if you even survive the contests."

With that threat hanging in the air, Alef finally stomps back to the gate. Ryu brushes sand off his robes as I help the lanky young man to his feet. "I think the sand suits these ugly robes better, don't you?" He jokes, though I can see the hurt in his eyes at being called a bastard. No matter how much he plays it off, the words still sting when spoken with such obvious malice.

"Come on, let's leave for the register. We don't need any more trouble with that golem as an enemy." Ryu leans comfortably toward me as we turn back into the crowd, ignoring the pointed stares and snickers. "Bastard." Some point at Ryu. "Runt." They call me." And, finally, when they see the two of us so close together and assume I'm also a male, "bed boys."

Ryu might have saved me from disgrace in front of that brute, Alef, but he won't be able to save me from my own birth certificate. The registrar will know the truth. I am the great shame of Lord Ngayoh, the only fruit from his loins. A woman.

"Your mother was the most powerful Diviner I knew. When I came home from battle, sometimes needing fingers reattached, she was the only healer I could trust, superior even to the Emperor's surgeons, though I was the only man to support her." Here, my father would choke up, remembering the mysterious woman I could hardly imagine, the one who always smelled of cinnamon, who had dark hair that ran like waterfalls to the small of her dainty back, who had burn marks over her belly from where I'd clawed out of her at pregnancy. The mother who eventually died from a stray missile when she was trying to heal a foot soldier. Killed by friendly fire because our own men assumed a woman couldn't be a Diviner, only a traitorous witch.

"Your mother had the power of life. You have the power of death. Remember, Ode. To them, you shall always be a woman first, and a threat second." I remember father grinning at me as we studied the spell texts in the library, the taboo scrolls for my fittingly taboo nature: to summon the dead. He'd never been one for reading himself. He was not always a warlord able to afford pretty stories. Father had been taken away from his family as part of tribute to a foreign general, raised only on blood. The warlord part was lucky. He was granted some fields because he got shot in the thigh with an arrow while saving the general's life. Even then, my father still hates the general for what he turned my father into: a man who thirsts for blood. A man who wants to instill that same militance in me since I can control death, not a healer like my more elegant mother. "The men in that arena will not suspect you. Use that to your advantage."

I will be the first woman Diviner to ever become champion to the gods. I will find a way to turn this Diviner's mirror into an actual weapon in that arena. As I turn to Ryu now, seeing his easy-going grin and branded neck, my heart plummets.

If I have anything to learn from my mother's death, there are no friends in war.

Only opportunities.

***

Hello my Champions!

Argh, unfortunately, now you have to meet Alef.

Trust me, he gets worse.

Love

Sophia :)