Page 35 of Sea of Stars

Augury grabbed Achates hand. We all stood in a circle, including Owly. I didn’t want to carry the burden of what I was about to hear, but I knew I didn’t have a choice.

Vellswar cleared his throat. “As you know, the brutarians, divinares, and humans have become enemies. The only thing brutarians and humans have in common is that they hate divinares. But they also both seek the magic that your race possesses. At this moment, as far as we know, that magic lies solely in you. There is a war coming. I know you seek to be the next ruler, but I fear that instead you might become the next weapon. If brutarians or humans capture you, they will annihilate the other race. They will gain the ultimate power and all divinares will become enslaved under their rule.”

I looked at him in horror. “But I can’t even read the symbols. I can’t control the visions. I wouldn’t be able to help either side,” I protested.

Vellswar shook his head and continued talking: “That’s not all. The Lords are angry at what everyone has become. They know all and they can see the war that’s brewing. Before Augury came to me, something began happening in the mountains. At night you could feel the rocks rumble beneath you. The Lords' wrath would be even worse than the war between the races. I don’t know what’s coming, but I think if you try you’ll be able to tell us.” Four pairs of eyes stared at me eagerly.

Chapter 13

I pulled the blanket up right under my chin. When I was a kid, this was always how I felt safest, with the weight of the covers on my entire body. I pushed the blanket completely off. Tonight it seemed too heavy. It felt like I already had a ton of rocks on me. Vellswar's words swirled around in my head. Chills went through my body and I grabbed the blanket once again, pulling it back up to my chin. I would surely die from all this weight on top of me.

I closed my eyes and pictured the mountains shaking. “Show me what’s going to happen,” I demanded silently of my brain. I concentrated hard but nothing happened. Soon I began picturing Chinook. All I wanted was for her to come back to me. I imagined her warm feathers pressed against my neck and somehow managed to fall asleep.

***

Mortwar was huddled by a campfire, surrounded by Quinwar and his minions. They were all wearing horrific armor. Chains crisscrossed on the front and spikes rose from the shoulders. Metal hoods were attached to the armor, probably to protect the back of their heads since they weren’t the best at hearing. I had never seen them look so menacing before. Mortwar carried a large club with a spear pointing out the top attached to a blade on the side. Spikes encircled the blade. Any part of that club could easily kill someone. I wasn't sure what he was using it for, but it was twice the size of even the tallest divinare.

The brutarians were surrounded by trees. The leaves were so densely packed that barely any light shone down from the stars, making the campfire cast an eerie glow around them. They were in the Murkthed Forest. My hair tugged uncomfortably when I heard the familiar caw. I looked up and saw Mortwar's pet crow encircling the fire from above. He was good at finding divinares. I crouched down, even though I knew no one could see me.

The brutarians stopped speaking when Mortwar stood. “To claiming what’s rightfully ours!” he bellowed, raising a jug into the air. Everyone else raised their cups, laughing. They were all drunk. I could smell the bitter odor of alcohol over the stench of their bodies.

Someone else stood up and screamed: “Here's to our king! The next king of the whole bloody realm!” Cheers and shouts erupted from all around. The noise grew and I noticed, in horror, how many of them there were. It wasn’t just his normal minions, it was an entire army.

Mortwar placed a sloppy kiss on Quinwar's lips and pushed her to the side. “Enough, enough,” Mortwar said cheerily. “We have more work to do tomorrow. One town is barely a dent,” he added, but he looked pleased with himself. He pulled some jars from his bag and tossed them at one of his minions. “Jar up the remains. We don’t want to be seeing them again.”

***

Despite the heavy blanket laying on top of me, I woke up shivering. I closed my eyes and tried to picture the jar. I had seen on

e like it before, but I couldn’t quite place it. I thought about the bottles on the shelves from the previous night. They were much smaller.

“Swishel,” I said aloud, sitting up with a start. I tried hard to remember. It was one of the bottles Swishel had given me. I got out of bed and ran over to my knapsack. I poured out the few remaining contents but the jar I had seen in my vision wasn’t one of them. I stood up and snapped my fingers. When Swishel had originally tossed the bag at me, one bottle had fallen out. I pictured it smashing on the ground. White powder had swirled into the air.

I glanced out the window. It was bright outside and I knew morning had come. I ran out of the room, and when I saw no one in the kitchen I ran outside. My grandparents and Vellswar stood by the house talking.

“I know where Owly came from. Before Chinook appeared I had broken a jar that was filled with this strange white powder. I think it was filled with her ashes. Mortwar must have collected them after he killed her. And I found similar bottles the other night...” I paused in my story. “...Um...when I went for a stroll and found a human village.” I ignored the glare I was getting from Augury. “Anyway, I overheard some children saying they were filled with ashes so I smashed all of them to free the spirits that they held. Owly’s remains must have been captured in there, so he couldn’t take his new form. Brutarians and humans must have been doing this for ages. They were preventing the ashes from reaching the sky. Some probably did it out of spite and others because they thought the ashes still possess magic. Owly could be centuries old,” I said excitedly. “And he did have the gift of the Moira.”

Achates looked at me skeptically. “Owly or owls?” he said. I saw all of them staring behind me. I turned around and saw dozens of huge owls. Some were snowy white, others light gray. They covered the whole roof of the small house.

I stood and stared in disbelief at the sight of all of them. I put my hand over my mouth as I realized what it meant for all of those owls to be here. It was most likely that all of them had been tortured and possibly even burned alive. For years and years their remains were captured in those jars, preventing them from taking flight. I didn’t know what to say. I was in awe.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and I turned to see Augury standing beside me. “Now we have numbers on our side.” She smiled briefly and I could tell she was probably thinking the same thoughts as I was. We all knew what it was like to be tortured. But the haunting thought returned to me that maybe divinares were getting what they deserved. Maybe we were demons that were meant to be eradicated.

I trained hard all afternoon and into the evening, only stopping once it had become dark. It was different practicing with Vellswar. I had no time to focus on the mounting problems at hand because I had to concentrate on a new opponent. He wasn’t as graceful on his feet, but his strength outweighed his missteps. The only way I was ever going to kill a brutarian was by being quick. I was truly beginning to think I had a chance after all.

Achates bellowed commands at me for hours before he got distracted by the owls. I had never seen him as happy as he was with those birds. Vellswar seemed tickled by the birds too. Or maybe he was just amused by Achates' behavior. I could not be so easily distracted.

When we sat down for dinner I immediately dove into my question. “Why do humans think we are a gift from the Fuorster instead of the Lords?”

Achates coughed and spit soup back into his bowl. He slammed his fists on the table and made a glass of water fall over. Liquid spread into a pool and seeped into the cracks of the wooden table. Drops splashed on the floor but soon I could not hear them over Achates’ roar. “Jealousy! Blasted over-imaginative thinkers! Trying to change the truth with their books of lies!”

Vellswar cleared his throat and cut in. “Achates, maybe it is best for an outsider to explain this.”

Achates stared at him angrily, but kept his mouth shut. His lips were pressed tightly together, forming a thin, straight line.

“You have to understand that humans and brutarians once agreed that you were a gift from the Lords. Divinares could see things that we could not. They had glimpses of the future. We all thought that only Lords created and saw one’s fate. But things quickly changed when the divinares began to forget who they were and started to act like the Lords themselves. Consequently, humans began to see divinares as a deceiving race. They thought they had been tricked, a trick something only the Fuorster was capable of. And some divinares did in fact begin to act evil, ignoring the Lords completely. Humans had trusted the divinares and felt like they were then stabbed in the back. They had been duped by a devilish trick. So they’ve seen you as that ever since.”

I nodded my head. I had heard about the divinare race becoming all-powerful and forgetting about their roots. That's why the gift of the Moira had almost disappeared. “But what about brutarians? What do they believe?”

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