?nnywella wakes, finding herself lying on her back, looking up at a starry night sky. The ground is comfortable, soft with the natural springiness of plant life and cold enough for her to sleep comfortably, like a still, early winter's night. She rubs her eyes and focuses on the sky: Luhnylla's Great Moon is still full, dominating the night sky, casting bright moonlight down across the world, tinting everything in a soft blue. But the Pale Maiden is nowhere to be seen, and stars are different; she was no longer in Ianya—the constellations were not where they should be, all out of alignment with the moons at their zenith;she must be farther north, and many a maiden traveled farther west. Slowly, she shifts herself so she is resting on her knees. All around her, stretching to the horizon, is a field of blue flowers only broken by a single large black oak; she has seen the flowers before, but never in person, only in the colored woodcuts of her illustrated edition of The Seven Guardsmen; wishing to inspect one of the flowers, she gently cups it within her hands but does not pluck it—it looks to be jasmine, more specifically a gray-blue jasmine; if she recalls corrrectly this was the same flower Wylh?lm vel'Herst kept in the visor of his houndskull bascinet. She releases the flower, and stands, turning to head to the oak. She makes it no more than twenty steps before the hair on the back of her neck stands up, and she hears light footsteps in the flowers behind her—with a soft touch, someone takes her hand. A woman walks into ?nnywella's vision and stops in front of her; she immediately recognizes the woman—K?spyra, the Maiden Who Guides the Lost; she looks identical to her depictions in paintings and books.

  K?spyra is a tall woman, clad in a long, light-blue dress; the base of the skirt is frilled. Aside from that, the rest of the dress is covered from the knees up by a thick, gray wool cloak. Trimmed with a white fur, the cloak has the night sky when her constellation is observable embroidered in a silver thread, which glints in the moonlight. The hood of the cloak is pulled up around her head, obscuring most of her face in shadow, leaving only the alabaster skin around her mouth visible and her glowing light gray eyes.

  She holds a lantern in her left hand, which emits a moonlight blue. The lantern is simple in design: a large rectangular box made of silver with a hinged black-oak handle. The glass on the sides is cut similarly to the arched windows of the College.

  K?spyra bows deeply, extending the lantern far out to her left side, and softly presses her forehead against ?nnywella's hand. After a brief moment, she rises.

  ?nnywella looks at the lantern, curious to see what is inside, as it certainly cannot be a candle. She squints through the light trying to see what is creating it.

  K?spyra, wordless, with just a smile, lets go of ?nnywella's hand. Opening the lantern's hinged door, she reaches inside. The blue light vanishes as she wraps her hand around the source. She withdraws her hand from the lantern; blue light seeps through her fingers. She opens her hand before ?nnywella. The Pale Maiden floats in K?spyra's palm. Closing her hand, K?spyra returns the small moon to its spot and shuts the door. The lock softly clicks back into place.

  Once again, she takes ?nnywella's hand and begins leading her to the oak.

  A greatsword rests against the enormous bole of the great oak. Moonlight casts shadows through the tree's full branches, silhouetting the leaves, dancing in the soft wind, across the wide blade taller than she is. She steps closer, trying to make out the detail in the sword before her; her stomach ties itself in knots, her heart jumps into her throat as it becomes clearer; she approaches the blade, leaving K?spyra behind her—her hand slips out of K?spyra's grasp, but the touch of the maiden still lingers, like that of a departing lover—it cannot be... Kaladrae... The real Kaladrae, not the replica at the College, nor the one in the hall of Herst Castle—The Kaladrae, the blade forged fifteen-hundred years ago along with the Hands of the Three Sisters, taken with Wylh?lm vel'Herst to escort the Saintess—history itself rests against the bole of the great oak before her, forlorn and discarded in this moonlit groove; Kaladrae calls to her, innate, primal, a blood memory; it is hers, lost to the ages, remembered only in fae-tales and festivals; so she gets closer, close enough to watch the pattern in the Ianyan steel ripple and flow in the pale moonlight—it was not her first time seeing the metal; she would spend hours gazing into the narrow blade of Fryge Klende Myn, but Kaladrae was more, so much more; the figuring casts a swaying haze over the engravings, like an early morning fog that rolls before the facade of the Temple of the Second Moon and casts a fine shroud over the three dancing women depicted on the tip of the blade; even their hair looks to be flowing; she stops before she enters the shade of the leaves, and tries to look back to K?spyra, but she struggles to glance over her shoulder—her neck will not move, nor her eyes; so she gives up fighting against an invisible force that keeps her focus on the blade and steps beneath the shade—K?spyra matters not to Kaladrae, she should not matter to ?nnywella, the passing of time cannot matter; it cannot affect one's choices in the face of history—Kaladrae never called to her, it beckoned, it summoned a master to a slave, she is, was, and always will be truly nothing, devoid of all value outside of her relation to Kaladrae, as Kaladrae determined the causes of her birth, Kaladrae will determine the causes of her death—just as Kaladrae had for all the Hersts since Wylh?lm, and as Kaladrae will for her descendants... (if she lives long enough to have any) for over a thousand years, the very knowledge of Kaladrae's existence shaped everything she... no... everyone had ever and will ever know; she reaches out to touch Kaladrae, to run her fingers along the blade, to just once feel history beneath her fingers—a blade for each guardsman, a blade for each kingdom and its people—and the Saintess for the Tyrant—her hand slips into Kaladrae's blade; the quilting in the steel ripples like water in a clear lake; she feels the warmth of a crackling hearth inside, but this is not what she wants— she wants to feel the blade beneath her fingertips; she withdraws her hand back from inside the blade and raises an arm up to the cross-guard, barely managing to feel it beneath her fingers, unlike the blade, it was solid; she briefly considers tapping the blade with her foot but decides against it; the action is far too disrespectful— instead, she prostrates herself before Kaladrae, just... just to see if she can touch the blade with her forehead or kiss it; she feels her bangs sink into the steel—it's too much... it's all too much; tears begin to work their way down her cheeks, dripping onto the flowers beneath her—she could never touch it, she must never touch it—a slave cannot touch their master without permission—she's a fool for thinking otherwise, a fool for wishing otherwise... Kaladrae owns her; she is only alive to enact Kaladrae's will, to enact the will of the Ianyan people; Kaladrae has gifted her an audience, an audience that she cannot decline—she must step into the blade; and so she stands, turning sideways, she places a hand on the cross guard to steady herself and extends her leg, putting her foot into the blade, feeling around; the ground inside feels wooden, with the texture of a stained table—most importantly, it feels stable—she steps through.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.