The Shadowglass (The Bone Witch, #3)(31)
The last several visits, however, had been failures. I sought the oracle many times for counsel on shadowglass and my own black heartsglass, only to be rebuffed. No number of zivars thrown into her fires as offerings could change her mind. I had not expected this visit to be any different than the last.
I did not know how old the oracle was, only that she had presided over this temple when Mistress Parmina had been but a baby. The mysteries of her shrine were a puzzle; no one in the Willows claimed to know the process of selecting and training temple candidates. Some believe that the oracle was a title passed down from mother to daughter, that both come from an unbroken line of revered seers since the time of Vernasha. Still others were convinced the oracle was immortal, though no such spells or runes exist.
All I knew, as did everyone else, was that the oracle was a permanent fixture of the Willows. She—or perhaps more accurately, one of her ancestors—had been present when Vernasha first founded Ankyo, and she will be there when the last asha-ka closes its doors.
The flames burned lower than they had on my last visit. The oracle was unchanged, or perhaps no one had lived long enough to see the variations between successors. A veil was drawn across her face to mask her features, though at times it would shift to reveal a soft, generous mouth. She was dressed from head to toe in a flimsy, silver gauze that revealed nothing and suggested everything.
As before, no servants tended her fires, none available to offer sustenance amid the heat of the hearth. The oracle seemed to survive without the need for food or drink or sleep. Worship was her nourishment.
I knelt before her and shook my crescent-and-stars pin out of my hair, one I had worn since my days as a novice.
“That is not necessary.”
I paused, shocked. This was different. It was customary to offer a zivar to the oracle’s pyre; in exchange, she might dispense advice or predict one’s future. “Are you turning me away?” I asked, my voice small and insignificant in the expanse of that bare chamber.
The oracle was silent. I could feel her eyes studying me from behind her veil. “Only those who call themselves asha are granted passage within these sacred halls,” she finally replied.
“I am an asha.”
“Asha serve the Willows and abide by the laws dictated by its elders. You no longer believe in those precepts.”
Her assumptions angered me. “You’re wrong. I am an asha regardless of what laws of the Willows I disagree with. I am an asha even as I go against the elders’ will. Obedience to a decree I had no say in does not make me an asha. My service to the people, performed to the best of my ability and to the best of my belief, is what makes me an asha. Protecting my fellow sisters and brothers makes me an asha. And that includes searching for truth. If the Willows’ rule is all that matters here, then maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m not an asha.”
I stood, but the oracle’s voice, stern and demanding, stopped me. “I gave you no permission to leave.”
I had never seen her like this before. The oracle had always maintained neutrality. And now this mysterious woman, this seeress who had prophesied that I would one day take control of the azi and kill a Faceless sounded almost afraid.
“Shadowglass,” she said simply, and I froze. “You seek it.”
“I do not want it for myself. I only wish to prevent Druj and any other surviving Faceless from possessing it. It was not fair for the asha elders to hide this secret from the rest of us. We had the right to know Blade that Soars’ true origins.”
“That magic is a deviancy and must be rid from the world?” The oracle’s voice had softened into velvet. “Do you understand the consequences of such knowledge?”
“It isn’t right for them to keep us in the dark.”
“And what would you do should you get your hands on shadowglass? What would you do, if you were able to keep the Faceless at bay, if you were able to convince the elders to impart this knowledge onto the lands? What will you do, my daughter?”
I had never wanted this power for myself. Shadowglass offered two options, it was said; immortality was one. And unlike Aenah, I had no plans of living forever.
The other was to rid the world of magic. But even I, who had relied on magic for so long, could smell my own hypocrisy. I balked at the idea.
How could we live without magic? I could not fathom the idea of a world without heartsglass, without the familiar glows of red and purple and silver to tell us the healthy from the sick, the deceiver from the truthful. Without magic, the asha would lose their luster, would no longer wield the influence and power we enjoyed. They would become nothing beyond glorified entertainers, diminished in stature in everyone’s eyes.
I could understand why the elder asha would keep the shadowglass spell their secret, to go so far as to burn books and deny knowledge. It is frightening to lose the power that you and your sisters have known for thousands of years.
But…
“I want to live.” The words came easily. Despite all the nightmares I’d suffered in the last few months, it was this admission that shook me to my core. It was my one constant fear since leaving Knightscross for a new, uncertain life in Kion, worse than slaying daeva or facing down Faceless and their minions. “As did the bone witches who have come before me and the bone witches who will follow after. We shorten our life spans every time we face the Dark and receive little applause for it. Instead, we are given derision and anger. All we want is the chance to live a full life.