The Stonewater Kingdom
by Rachel Gillig

Strap in... When Sybil realizes that the king is making an unexpected visit, she rushes out of Aisling Cathedral. Through the courtyard, past the massive limestone statues that each hold an object in their left hand (a coin, an inkwell, an oar, a chime, and a loom stone), through the orchard and finally, to the stone wall where five other maidens wait for her. They’re dressed all the same in gossamer dresses with a gossamer shroud covering their eyes, no shoes on their feet. They watch as the new king, King Benedict Castor II, barely older than a child, rides close with his retinue of knights. The maidens draw straws to see who will be the one to dream for him. No one wants to, but whoever gets the short straw has to. The maiden doesn’t know any of the other maidens’ names, they’re called by their numbers one through five. Just as they know her by the number six. Six gets the unlucky short straw. After the king rides past them with his bevy of knights, maidens one through five return to the cathedral. Six turns to follow but notices one last, lone knight with three golden hoops in his ear and charcoal around his eyes, whose horse has discovered an apple and refuses to leave until it’s eaten every bite. Six speaks to the knight, but she doesn’t get the response she expects. He is irreverent and cynical. Their meeting is interrupted by one of Aisling Cathedrals twenty-three gargoyles. Most of the gargoyles are quiet but not this one, he is always talking and he has the habit of calling everyone Bartholomew. He calls Six back the cathedral where Six changes into her Divining robes. The gargoyle leads her onto the transept and into the spring that the cathedral had been built around. Six steps into the oily and foul but still sweet-smelling water, like rotting flowers. Above her there are six stained-glass windows. Five depict the items that the courtyard statues hold, but the sixth shows a flower with five petals that look like a moth’s wings. Six gargoyles enter and position themselves around the spring just before the king’s knights come in. Behind them, King Castor walks with the abbess holding a knife. The king has brought twenty gold pieces as an offering. He wants to know if he is favored now as the new King of Traum. Six sees him clearly: young and afraid, though he tries not to show it. These glimpses make her feel strong and wise. It is why she loves being a Diviner even though she hates what comes next. The abbess hands the king the knife. The king cuts his hand, and the abbess brings it to Six’s mouth so she can taste his blood. Then the abbess tells the story of the Stonewater Kingdom. Once, there was five hamlets: Colton Faire of the merchants, the Seacht for the scribes, the Fervent Peaks was the hamlet of fishers, the Chiming Wood of the foresters, and the Cliffs of Bellidine for the weavers. The hamlets battled monstrous creatures called sprites. Food and money was stolen, as were children. Crops died, people were murder, tragedies ensued. Until six gods visited Traum. At this point, the knight who had been rude to Six stands and noisily leaves the Cathedral. The abbess continues. A foundling child looking for food found the spring instead and drank deeply of its waters. The foundling dreamed of six unearthly figures. Five of them carried stone objects that resonated with each of the hamlets. Each object had a unique power. The child learned to drink and dream, drink and dream, and the child learned to read those dreams. The child called the gods Omens and named each of them. The Artful Brigand with the coin, the Harried Scribe with the inkwell, the Ardent Oarsman holds the oar, the Faithful Forester has the chime, and the Heartsore Weaver with the loom stone. The sixth Omen holds no object, appearing in dreams only as a pale moth. Some say the moth comes the moment you are born, some the moment you die. It’s impossible to know which is true. The cathedral was built around the spring and more foundling children, like Six, were sought to become Diviners. The daughters of Aisling. The Stonewater Kingdom was united by the Omens, the king and his knights existed to do the Omen’s bidding. It is imperative that the king understands that he is not truly in charge, nothing exists above the Omens. The abbess tells Six to lie down in the water and when she does, the abbess drowns her. It hurts, just like it does every time. Six begins to dream. She drops to a stone floor. Six calls to the Omens and tells them she has come to Divine. She drops again, landing hard on a layer of coins. The cathedral is gone, but the stained-glass windows are still visible, though higher up than they are in the cathedral. She finds the Artful Brigand’s coin with the rough side up - a bad sign. She drops again, into the dark hallway of a university or something similar. The carpet under her feet is wet and she sees the Harried Scribe’s inkwell has been overturned and spills black ink - another bad sign. Dropping again, she lands on a boulder on a mountain peak and breaks her collarbone. Looking around, she sees that the Ardent Oarsman’s oar does not touch the water of the lake - not good. She drops again, her collarbone no longer broken when she lands. She lands in a forest of birch trees, but the Faithful Forester’s chime rings discordantly. Yet another bad sign. The woods disappear and she is in the dark. There is just enough light to be able to walk. She finds a stone bench with a frayed tapestry on it. The Heartsore Weaver’s loom stone hangs from frayed thread. Five Omens, five bad signs. King Castor is not favored by the Omens. Six can hear footsteps in the dark behind her and whirls around to find no one, just a sense of being watched. She runs, falling into a maw of black endlessness, until she is called out of the dream by the abbess. Six does not remember who gave her a name. She does not remember how she found the spring. What she does remember is the abbess, who held her as she coughed up the spring water and asked her if she wanted to give her ten years of her life to Divine for the Omens, in exchange for her care and her love. For a foundling, what answer is there other than yes? Then the abbess drowned her. She told Six that the sick little girl she had been, Sybil Delling, was gone now - made magical and holy by the spring. But people want to claim magical things for themselves, so she would not be safe outside of the cathedral. It is why she had to hide her eyes with a shroud and not use her name, using only a number. She swore she would never forget her name but after years of dreaming, she almost broke that oath. She wakes up now behind a curtain with the talkative, bat-like gargoyle watching over her. He tells her that some of the knights got a bit too brave and tried to steal some spring water, but he sent them packing. Six vomits. She always vomits after dreaming. It’s nighttime and everyone has already gone to bed. She leaves the cathedral to go to the Diviners’ cottage but stops to get a drink of water in the dining hall. The door is being guarded by a guard. The woman tries to stop Six from going in, but Six bypasses her and finds the rude knight inside shirtless. The king is also there hiding a cup behind his back. Six is pretty sure he’s drunk. He certainly doesn’t look as somber as he should for a man who just got five bad portents. The knight is smoking something, and she notices that his side is riddled with bruises. That’s none of her business. He changes the subject, asking questions about being a Diviner and making it clear that he has no respect for the role or seeing portents. The king tries to defuse the situation by getting Six some water, moving the cup he hides behind his back in the process, and Six can smell what’s in it. Foul but sweet-smelling water from the spring. That explains the knight’s bruises. She vomits again before running out of the room. The knight follows her, stopping her before she can go through the gate to the Diviner’s cottage. The knight calls the king Benji, Six cannot believe his gall. Even a king who receives five bad portents is due to be called Majesty. The knight offers Six a drag from what he is smoking, he calls it petrified idleweed - he claims it will help with her pain and nausea. He wants to know why only Diviners can drink the spring water. Does she vomit from the water or the blood? He is not a fan of how Traum is so focused on portents that can be found in five very common items. The portents are vague and easy to misinterpret, yet people pay money to have the Diviners dream for them. He doesn’t understand it. He says his name is Rodrick Myndacious, or Rory, and asks her for her name. She takes his idleweed and coughs on it before answering that her name is Six. He takes the idleweed away again and asks why her name and her face and the spring water are such a secret. She insists that the spring water isn’t a secret though. Once a merchant was so desperate that he drank from the spring himself. The gargoyles knocked him out and removed him. All he did was vomit it all up violently. But only Diviners dream. He asks what makes her a Diviner? Giving up her name, her face, never leaving the cathedral? Her time to rejoin the world is probably coming soon and she is vastly unprepared after having lived so sequestered from the hamlets. She has no what really goes on outside of the cathedral. He leaves then, and she’s so angry she doesn’t sleep that night. Some of the Diviners stumble in through the window around dawn. They aren’t technically supposed to drink or have relations, and they definitely aren’t supposed to leave the tor where the cathedral is located, but many of these rules are ignored. Even Six has slept with a few people, though the last time was so underwhelming she decided to give it up altogether. But what Rory said to Six the night before sticks with her, and she tells the others that they should sneak out. They should go see the other hamlets. They have just under two months until their service is done, they should be prepared for what’s coming. Five brings up how unsafe it is for them to go out on their own, but Six knows how to fix that. She walks to the dining hall and finds Rory sitting with Maude and King Castor. They are very familiar with the young king; Maude even calls him a dolt. Six asks Rory to escort them to Coulson Faire. Rory says no. She tries to blackmail him - she won’t tell anyone that King Castor was drinking the spring water if Rory takes them. He still says no. He’s unimpressed with her manipulations and not interested. She knows that he hates Diviners, Omens, and portents for some reason, but she tries to get him to reconsider. He still refuses. Even when she says please. She leaves to do her day’s work. Each of the Diviners spends their decade of service learning a trade so that they can find work when their service is finished. Six does stonework. She fixes the stone wall, accompanied by the bat-like gargoyle that calls everyone Bartholomew. They don’t get any sort of reimbursement from the abbess. Being a Diviner is reimbursement enough. All the money received by Aisling goes to the upkeep of the cathedral and to the foundling houses where the next Diviners will be found. At noon, Six joins the others at the cathedral where they take turns dreaming for parishioners. Once that’s done, Six finds One and sits next to her. Six can’t wait till their service is over and they’ll never have to dream again. Even if she does try her hardest to be a good Diviner. She’s given up her plan to go to Coulson Faire, it was foolish anyway, but then she and One see a little arrangement of sticks. Six sticks of idleweed and a note that says to be ready at nightfall. Each of the Diviners smokes a stick of the idleweed. It helps with the nausea. Four dances around and talks of what they’ll do when they’re done at the cathedral. Even after they remove their shrouds, people will still want to know them just because they were a Daughter of Aisling, not because of who they are. At least they’ll have each other. She makes them all promise that they’ll stay together. There’s a knock at the door and they don their cloaks, finding six knights waiting for them. Rory is there, as is Maude - who is in charge. She lays out the ground rules. One knight to each Diviner, a personal guard in case the group is separated. No gambling or fighting, don’t drink too much. She looks at Six and asks if she agrees to their deal and Six does. They set out for the Faire, and the knights help the Diviners over the stone wall surrounding Aisling. One introduces himself to Six and asks to be her escort, his name is Hamelin Fischer. One wonders if she kissed him last night, but that was his friend Dedrick Lange. During their walk, Six sees sprites flying around. One of the knights hits a sprite with the hilt of his sword and kills it. Six is sad to see that but the knights insist that the sprites are feral bloodthirsty creatures, even if these ones were quite small. Six can’t stop thinking about Rory and decides to put him out of her mind by sleeping with Hamelin. She leads him off the road, not caring about who sees them go, and he kisses her against a tree. He thinks she’s lovely and he couldn’t look away while she dreamed the day before, it was like something from a myth. He asks if Diviners marry and Six guesses that they can after their service is done, she’s never been told otherwise. Hamelin imagines out loud how influential the husband of a Diviner would be. No one back home is going to believe he slept with one. She loses her taste for him right then and pushes him away. He asks for something to prove they were together. Her name or being able to see her eyes. Both of which are forbidden. She walks away from him, disgusted. Just like Four said, they aren’t people to outsiders, they’re just Diviners. She forges her own path to the Faire, leaving Hamelin behind. Once there, she sees the other Diviners and walks to join them but gets distracted by a merchant selling stone busts that he carved. She’s impressed, but he tells her to get lost when she says she doesn’t have any money. Until he realizes who she is, or rather, what she is. He grabs her arm, asking for her to give him good fortune. He refuses to let go until Rory comes up and pushes him away. Maude is just behind him. Rory tells the man not to touch Six again or he will be back, and the punishment will be much worse. Maude gives Six a drink as Hamelin joins the Faire, to some catcalls from the other knights. Hamelin gets embarrassed (Six was not gone for long) and does not come over to Six. He steps behind a building instead. Rory and Maude join him to remind him of his duty, but not before Rory whispers in Six’s ear that he hopes Hamelin did a proper job - even if it was quick. One pulls Six to where people are dancing and the Diviners dance together. At first, there are other people including knights dancing, but soon it’s just the Diviners. The knights and the band create a little pocket of space for them, surrounding them, and the Diviners dance without any cares, even taking their cloaks off. King Castor joins them and asks Six to dance. He has been drinking a little and seems nonplussed by his five bad portents. He thanks Six for not mentioning the spring water. He would like to tell her why he did it, but he’s afraid she wouldn’t believe him. He also wants to apologize to her personally for Rory’s rudeness. So, he calls Rory out to the dance floor. The knights around them get excited and call for Benedict to challenge Rory’s craft. It’s a game everyone in the hamlets know. If you challenge someone’s craft and they refuse the challenge, they have to run naked through the field. If they accept and lose, they receive a punishment that is agreed upon by both parties prior to attempting the challenge. If they accept and win, the challenger has to run naked. Benedict challenges Rory that he cannot stay standing through three attacks. If Rory falls, he has to have his future Divined. Six doesn’t think he will do it, but Rory agrees, as long as he chooses his attackers. He points to the Diviners, so the king makes an addendum. Rory’s hands will be tied behind his back. The Diviners get together and decide who will attack. One volunteers when she finds out that Rory was mean to Six, as does Four. Six is more than willing to pummel Rory herself. One goes first, kicking him hard in his bruised ribs (Six told her where to aim). Rory does not move. Four takes a different approach and kisses him long and hard. Six’s breath catches. Rory still does not fall. When it’s One’s turn, he thanks her for making sure his ribs were kicked. She points out that if she lets him win, she won’t have to Divine for him, and she can never see him again. He scoffs at “let him win” and calls her nervous. He asks why… is she thinking about kissing him too? She retorts that she’d rather put him on his back. That doesn’t get the response she wants, he’s fully aware of all the different things they could do while he’s on his back. She tackles him around the middle, lifting him and throwing them both with her momentum. He lands in his back with her on top. She says this was much more pleasurable than kissing him. He surprises her when he smiles back. The knights go crazy. Six tells Rory to meet her for his Divination before dawn. She barely sleeps and wakes the bat-like gargoyle on her way to the nave. She explains that she doesn’t want the abbess to know what they’re doing and the gargoyle is fine with that. She’s a bitch sometimes. Rory is not there yet, so the gargoyle offers to tell Six a story. He’s noticed how when she and the other Diviners are nervous, they tell stories about what they’ll do after their service ends. Six points out that he’s never lived anywhere but at Aisling and never will. He responds that neither will she, but she insists that’s not true. Her tenure is ending soon. This makes him cry. He tells her he only has one story anyway, and it’s not happy. It starts tragically and the middle is desolate. Rory finally arrives and they get started. Six realizes she forgot a knife. She needs his blood to Divine for him. Rory bites the pad of his thumb and asks if that’s okay. She says yes. When she asks for his name, he gives it to her. He asks for hers and she nearly responds, but then his thumb is in her mouth. There’s not so much blood that it makes her stomach turn like normal. The gargoyle doesn’t want to drown Six. He asks Rory to do it, but Rory absolutely refuses. So, the gargoyle does what needs to be done but he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t say what the abbess usually does. He says only that he wishes things could be different. Once Six starts to dream, she calls for the Omens. She gets no response. She can hear Rory and the gargoyle talking but she can’t understand what they’re saying. Still the Omens do not respond. Then a moth comes out, flying around her and picking at Six’s clothes until her shroud falls off. She sees life in true color for the first time she can remember. She sees the five hamlets and the cathedral. The statues in the courtyard holding their objects except the figures are human, not stone. A sixth person stands in the entrance of the cathedral. Six can see the spring and faces in the water. The abbess. The gargoyles. Knights and kings of days gone by. Diviners in gossamer. The Diviners grow distorted, their bodies bend and fracture, they scream. The moth flaps over Six’s eyes and she feels a terrible pain and hears a voice say that swords and armor are nothing to stone. She wakes up gasping. The gargoyle is there to help but Rory is already gone, collected by the king and other knights to continue their journey. Six runs out of the cathedral to the stone wall where the other Diviners watch the king’s procession ride away. Rory is at the front with King Castor and Maude. He spots her in the wall. She nearly calls him back to ask him what he knows of the moth, but she doesn’t have time. One asks what she dreamed of and Six responds that she couldn’t read the signs. Six decides to hope that the moth meant nothing. Things will go back to normal now that the king’s retinue is gone. But the next morning, she knows as soon as she wakes up that something is wrong. Four is gone. The abbess assigns a gargoyle to each of the Diviners for their protection (Six gets the bat-like gargoyle) and sends the wolffish gargoyle to search for Four. Six looks too, searching every inch of the wall for where Four may have gone over. She finds nothing. The other Diviners argue about what happened. Perhaps Four went after the knights. They decide if she’s not back the next day, they will go to Castle Luricht in Coulson Faire to see if Four is there, that was the next stop for King Castor’s knights. The next day goes much like normal, but Four does not return. That night when the other Diviners try to leave to search for her, their door is locked and they cannot get out. That night they all sleep next to each other, but when they wake up, Two is also gone. Six thinks of her dream of the moth and the screaming Diviners. She seeks out the abbess and tells her how she dreamed for Rory and what she dreamed about. Six has always been the abbess’ favorite. The abbess does not discuss the moth, which Six is taking as a portent of death. Instead, she says she already knew about their rule breaking and how they went to the Faire. She also knows that Six dreams more often than the others. That she thinks she is better than her fellow Diviners, holds herself a little apart from them, sacrifices herself so they don’t have to dream as often. It must hurt more knowing that they ran away even after all her sacrifice. Six returns and tells the others that the abbess didn’t listen. Six tries to stay awake the whole night but she eventually falls asleep. When she wakes, Three has disappeared. That day, she tries to shake off her gargoyle by telling him that she’s feeling queasy from all the extra dreaming. He does not want to see her puke and wanders off in his own. She takes off running, grabbing her cloak that she had already hidden and going over the stone wall. She waves to One and Five, who watch for her from the Diviners’ cottage. They will keep each other awake tonight while Six goes to Castle Luricht to try to find the others. Six passes through the forest and is followed by sprites. They don’t come close enough to touch her though. Soon, she’s scared by the sound of her gargoyle behind her. He had worried about her being sick and went to find her, only to see she was gone. He worried even more and came to find her. He continues with her as she skirts the Faire and goes to the castle. She is not allowed in. The guard isn’t allowed to let anyone in after midnight. He does tell her that the king and his knights have already left. He hasn’t seen any other Diviners around, but he can’t make any guarantees that they weren’t there. He goes to check if the other guards saw any Diviners and while she waits, a wagon of drunk men approach the gate. One of the drunk men grabs Six and the gargoyle breaks his arm. Six and the gargoyle run back to the tor before the wagon riders can come after them. When Six enters the cottage, One is sleeping and Five is already gone. That next morning, the door remains locked. The Divingers aren’t allowed to leave at all, food and water is brought to them. Bars are hammered over their windows. That night, One sits in front of the mirror and undoes the shroud around her eyes. She’s been dreaming of taking it off for so long but if she waits any longer, she may not get the chance. Six leaves her own shroud on. One gasps, asks what has happened to them, and then places the shroud back around her eyes. She lays down and asks Six not to forget her if she disappears. In the morning, she’s gone. Six tries to break out of the cottage when her food is delivered next, but the bearlike gargoyle stationed at the door carries her upstairs and throws her into the room hard enough that she hits her head on the floor. When she wakes up, she’s lying in a pool of her own blood. Six doesn’t remove her shroud, it didn’t seem to help One anyway, but she does break the mirror. She lays on the mattress and looks at the moonlight coming into the window. She sees a small shadow moving toward her window and then a man steps into the room and catches the shadow. She’s astounded. How did he get there? What is he? She crashes into him, but he throws her onto the mattress, pinning her down. It’s Rory. She assumes that he is the one that has been stealing the Diviners, but Rory assures her he has not. He is only there because the king sent him. Benedict received a letter from Castle Luricht that said a Diviner came to the castle demanding entry, roughed up some drunks, and then ran away. Rory was sent out from the Seacht, where they went after leaving Castle Luricht. He asks questions about the missing Diviners and Six tells him that they disappeared one after the other in the night from this cottage, and now she isn’t allowed to leave. The bruises on her arms are because she’s been pinching herself to stay awake, but the head wound and blood is from the gargoyle at the door. She asks him to help her escape. After a moment’s thought, he tells her to pack her things. That’s easy, she doesn’t have “things”. Not even shoes. She would like to have her chisel and hammer, but they’re kept in the toolshed. They go to the locked front door, but Rory is unable to break it down, so he tells Six to close her eyes. He tosses the object he holds, grabs her hand and pulls her through the door while the object is in the air, then he catches it on the other side. Then he tells her that the object is none of her business, so don’t even ask. The door to the shed is also locked and unable to be broken down, but the bat-like gargoyle shows up before Rory can throw the object again. When Six explains that she’s leaving the tor, the gargoyle starts to cry. He doesn’t want her to leave him. Six is too busy trying to calm him to notice when the abbess shows up with three more gargoyles. Six speaks to the abbess, giving her resignation. The abbess doesn’t think so. The others were not as good as Six. They tried but they never reached the level that Six did. Even so, Six is nothing without the shroud and the cathedral. Six doesn’t care, she wants to leave and Rory is going to make sure she gets the chance. The abbess tells the gargoyles to kill Rory and bring Six to the spring. Rory bursts into action, using the object to jump around (he’s invisible while it’s in the air) and then he throws the object at the gargoyles, causing them to explode. He tells Six to move and she convinces the bat-like gargoyle to open the shed door for her. The gargoyle asks her if he can come with her. He’s sick of watching children dream and not see beyond the cathedral, and from starting over again and again. Six says he can come and grabs her tools. Then she is tackled by the bear gargoyle from behind. She’s knocked to the floor, and the gargoyle drags her out of the shed. Suddenly, she’s no longer being pulled, and she turns to see the bear gargoyle no longer has a head. There’s a coin lying on the ground next to him. It’s a coin, smooth on one side and rough on the other. Rory picks the coin up. The falcon gargoyle Rory’s head with its wing, but she hits it in the head with her hammer. Rory takes her hand. They run toward the stone wall; Rory uses the object to go through the wall and travel down the steep hillside to the trees below. They hide together in the trees as gargoyles fly past them overhead. Soon, Six’s gargoyle finds them, humming a tune as he flies. Rory plans to take Six to the Seacht, and then they’ll see what they can find out about the missing Diviners. Six is introduced to Fig, Rory’s horse who follows absolutely no one’s will but her own. The entire ride to the Seacht Six wonders about Rory’s coin. She’s seen that coin in nearly every time she dreamed. Every dream except when she dreamed for Rory, in fact. No one has ever seen an Omen, though they are said to live in the hamlets and fight the sprites. Could Rory be the Artful Brigand? He has the Omen’s coin. They reach the river separating Coulson Faire from the Seacht and Rory wakes the scribe at the bridge. When the scribe realizes what Six is, he pours his ink out and asks her what the portents say. She is the first Diviner he’s ever met. So the others didn’t come this way while he was on duty - although he was sleeping when she and Rory arrived and was difficult to wake up. As Rory haggles with the scribe to gain entrance to the Seacht, Six looks in the river. There’s a sprite swimming there. It comes to the surface and takes Six’s hand gently. Then it slowly pulls her hand to its head and bites her. It hurts but it doesn’t break the skin. The scribe runs over and pours ink on the sprite. The ink is poisonous to the sprite, which swims away quickly. The scribe explains that they’re a nuisance since they eat the plant that the scribe’s scrolls are made from. The gargoyle asks why it bit Six if it eats plants, and Rory says the sprite was starving. He pulls up some of the aforementioned plant from where it’s growing nearby and throws it at the sprite that is swimming away. The scribe begins to lose his cook, but then Rory pays the scribe for the plant before they enter the Seacht. The city is busy already and it’s not even morning yet. Six pulls her hood tighter around her face but Rory encourages her to remove the shroud. If she doesn’t, the people will swarm her, wanting her to read their fortunes. She says no. She doesn’t say she won’t remove the shroud because of One. What did One see to make her place her shroud back on her face and give up? Six doesn’t want to know. Rory doesn’t push it. He does ask about when she dreamed for him. Why was she silent in the water? She says she doesn’t know. She nearly tells him about the moth, but she doesn’t. Maybe she would have if he didn’t carry the Brigand’s coin. He asks how old she is, but she doesn’t remember anything from before she was a Diviner. The gargoyle says she is quite old, but also very young. Rory thinks that makes sense. She doesn’t look old, but she has a sense around her. He is only twenty-six himself, but his youth seemed endless so perhaps he is the same. Young, but also quite old. He doesn’t ask about her shroud or the dream again. As they continue, his distaste for portents and Omens rears its head. He doesn’t understand how the people of the Seacht, who place such importance on knowledge, can also care about their so-called fortunes. Still, he smacks a man who calls Six a whore when he sees her shroud. That’s not cool either. Soon, Six is beset upon by people who have discovered she is a Diviner and would like their fortunes told, but Rory pulls her to the side where he has spotted Maude and King Castor waiting, disguised in cloaks. They’re excited, they found who they were looking for and were going to see him. Rory thinks it might be helpful to bring Six. Maude disagrees, but she’s overruled by King Castor. Six gets to come. They leave the gargoyle with Fig and climb the stairs of a building. Rory comments about how Six only ever calls him by his last name. All the better to not get familiar with him. They enter a windowless room with a glass ceiling. It is lined with tens of thousands of books. In the center of a room is a man with stone eyes holding the inkwell that Six has dreamed about. He introduces himself to her. He is no mere man. He is Traum’s scribe, its historian, its knowledge. He has been alive for more than two-hundred years. His inkwell allows him to travel unseen or can be used as a weapon. His writings have inspired those who read them. He is the Harried Scribe. If that’s not a god, then what is? He shows her that he can use his inkwell in much the same way that Rory uses the coin. It allows him to disappear and show up somewhere else. King Castor introduces himself as well. He has come to challenge the Harried Scribe at his craft and take his mantle and his inkwell. If the Scribe beats them, they are at his mercy. He accepts, throwing his inkwell and flinging Six fifty-feet in the air before disappearing and reappearing to catch her, holding her while standing on one of the shelves above the others. He explains this isn’t the first time someone has tried to take his inkwell. A king can claim all five stone objects and take the Omens’ power for himself, but that’s never ended well for kings in the past. The Scribe yells down that he will pose three questions, they must answer at least one correctly and ask him a question he cannot answer in order to win. Rory is too busy yelling at the Scribe to bring Six down to hear the rules, Maude whispers something to Rory that makes him go quiet. While Six is with the Scribe, she asks him where the other Diviners are. She will have to wait for answers. The Scribe tells the King and knights that he will ask them one question about love, one about faith, and one of war - the three virtues of knighthood. The first question: according to poet laureate Ingle Taliesin, what gift does a king give his bride on their wedding night? They don’t know, they guess it’s a share of his land and wealth. The answer is much more crass: his cock. No one but the Scribe thinks the answer is funny. Question two: what was the first Diviner’s name? Not even Six knows, the abbess never names the first Diviner. They guess that the child had no name. He tells them they’re incorrect but refuses to tell Six what the child’s name was when she asks. The only thing that matters is that he knows and they don’t. He also continues to refuse to answer the questions she asks about the other Diviners. His last question describes a weapon and asks what it is. During the description, Six goes still. She has wielded this weapon; she knows it well. Rory notices her reaction and gives the answer to King Castor. The weapon is a hammer and a chisel. The Scribe is not pleased that they’ve managed a correct answer, but they still have to stump him with a question of their own. As they take a moment to confer, Six again asks if he knows where her Diviners are. He pulls out a few strands of her hair, eating them. The Diviners do not belong to her. They belong to the Omens. Rory gets the Scribe’s attention. King Castor calls out their question for the Scribe - what is the name of the Diviner that the Scribe holds. The Scribe responds that Six has no name, she is a daughter of Aisling. But Six remembers her name, she whispers that he would know it if he were truly a god. The King has beaten the Scribe fair and square, but the Scribe isn’t giving up. He starts to wield his inkwell as a weapon, the ink burns whatever it lands on. Six yells at him, he just continues to attack. She tries to climb down the shelves but before she can get to the ground, the Scribe grabs her by the arm and pulls her. On instinct, she kicks the inkwell out of his hand and to the floor. The Scribe smacks her across the face, splitting her lip open. Then he falls to the ground and begins to lick up her spilled blood. He can smell Aisling’s waters in her blood. He grabs her leg and pulls her toward him, but Rory yanks him away by the collar and throws him to the ground. He pulls the coin out of his pocket and throws it at the Scribe, causing him to burst into gross pieces. Six runs into the hallway but Rory catches her. She pushes him against the wall and reaches for the coin he carries. She wants to know if he is the Artful Brigand. He says no. It’s true that the coin belonged to the Brigand, but they went to Castle Luricht, challenged him, and killed him with his own coin. Rory isn’t a god. He’s the one killing them. He doesn’t stop Six from running down the stairs. She wakes the gargoyle up from where he’s sleeping next to Fig and holds his hand as they run away. She can’t trust King Castor or his knights, or the Omens, or anything she thought she knew. The gargoyle points out that she hasn’t eaten or had any water, and she needs to sleep. Then they will figure out what to do. They find a building with a fallen roof to sleep in, and the gargoyle keeps watch over her. He also steals her some food and water to drink. When she wakes up that evening, it’s very late. They walk around the city and eventually she sees one of the foundling houses. She knocks on the door, waking the house mother. Aisling is their patron. The house mother has not seen a Diviner recently, nor has she ever had any Diviner return to this house. There are three foundling houses in the city. Six gets the same answer from the second house but no one answers the door at the third. She asks the gargoyle how the abbess chooses the Diviners. He doesn’t know, but she did say once that girls deal with the pain of drowning better and the ones that were sick before drowning wake up changed, so they are always girls who were sick. When the morning comes, Six and the gargoyle take refuge in an alleyway to think. Two girls walk down the alley; followed by three men. Six doesn’t like the looks on the faces of the men and she sticks out her foot to trip one, giving the girls time to get away. He retaliates by smacking Six and an all-out brawl ensues. She starts hitting with her hammer and the gargoyle uses his claws and teeth. Soon, the men are calling for guards. The guards chase Six and the gargoyle until they are cornered and then the guards tell them that there is a warrant for their arrest. Six doesn’t fight her arrest, she and the gargoyle are taken to the king. Rory sees the guard bring them in and he is astounded. He wasn’t sure he’d see her again. He gives the guard the reward. He is angry to see Six hurt again, but she assures him that it is only her face. The gargoyle needs to sleep so he is sent to the stables, and Six tells Rory she has questions. But he has made his disdain of the Omens, the Diviners, Divinity as a whole, and of her very clear so she is not sure she should ask them. He blows out a shaky breath. He has much disdain, but none of it is for her. They share an electric moment where neither of them can look away from the other, but then Maude interrupts. Six needs a bath before she speaks to Benedict. Maude gives Six new clothes. Tunic, pants, boots, a belt for her chisel and hammer. She puts on her dirty Diviner robes instead but also wears the belt. Maude takes Six to speak to King Castor, waking up the gargoyle so he can be a part of the conversation too. He immediately goes back to sleep when Benedict enters. First thing, Benedict asks Six to call him Benji. He’s nervous, he tends to be nervous - it’s not just about this conversation. Maude thinks he needs to practice talking to people on his own. He usually relies on Maude and Rory to help him, and alcohol. She and Benji discuss the stone items. Each item can be used either as a weapon or to transport the wielder. He shows Six how if he swirls the Scribe’s inkwell one way it will allow him to move without being seen, but if he swirls it the other way, the ink will burn through the table. The coin works in a similar way. Moving on, he flips open a book. It belonged to his grandfather, King Benedict Castor I. Castor I had been a very intelligent craftsman from Coulson Faire who was elected to be king by the elders of the hamlets. He was eventually stoned to death for heresy. He had an alternate version of Traum’s history. Two hundred and fifty years ago, five craftsmen came to the tor while Traum was in disarray, harried by sprites. The hamlets fought over who would lead them all, the leader of each hamlet believed that they would be the best option. Then a sixth person came to the tor with a foundling child. They showed the craftsmen the water and allowed them to drink, which made them dream. The sixth figure gifted each craftsmen a stone item made from the spring’s limestone. Each item was so powerful that the craftsmen no longer fought amongst themselves and instead used their objects to control the sprites in their hamlets. They didn’t need to fight anymore. They were gods. They became the Omens. And the sixth Omen that they call the moth is the abbess. All the Omens have stone eyes; there is a reason that everyone at Aisling keeps their eyes covered. As for a sixth stone object for the abbess, Benji asks where Six got her chisel and hammer - they look quite old. Divination became quite lucrative for the abbess, and more Diviners were brought to the tor. Only the most privileged can afford to have their futures Divined. The cathedral is the most prosperous of all of the markets and the abbess the most powerful of the Omens. King Castor I found this out in a roundabout way. He was in Coulson Faire when he ran into a foundling boy who had a very strange master. That master tended to brag and had showed the boy his coin, which allowed him to travel unseen. It allowed him to steal from the merchants of Coulson Faire. The boy’s master had stone eyes. He paid the foundling boy to steal spring water from Aisling. He told the boy that the Omens would live forever as long as they drank the spring’s water and that the abbess paid them to walk their hamlets acting like mysterious godly figures. She paid them obscene amounts of money. King Benedict I smuggled the foundling boy away from Castle Luricht. That child was Rory. Then Benedict I tracked a shipment of gold from Aisling to the Chiming Wood, where he found the Faithful Forester. She refused to answer his questions unless he beat her at her craft. Luckily, he had Maude (who was gifted with an axe). They killed the Faithful Forester but never found her chime. It remains hidden in the Chiming Wood. Soon, Benedict I started to unravel the lies they’d all been told and became intent on killing the other Omens. The nobles were not fans of that, and the knights come from noble families. The knights turned on the king and forced him to be Divined for. He got five bad portents and was stoned in the courtyard by his knights and the gargoyles. He never figured out how the Diviners dream, but it has something to do with the water. The water there makes those who drink it eternal. It does something to the Omens. They were able to use Aisling’s waters to lure out the Artful Brigand and the Harried Scribe. The Omens are always desperate for more. But Benji doesn’t know what the waters do to the Diviners. He wants to kill the Omens and take their items before confronting the abbess. He tells Six that he could change the hamlets with the money the abbess sends to the Omens, but he has to be careful. He could easily go the same way as his grandfather. That’s why he needs Six’s help. She would lend him an air of respect and piousness. And wherever they go, they will be sure look for the Diviners and try to figure out what happened to them. They leave for the Fervent Peaks the next day, he wants Six to come with them and he needs to know her answer soon. Wherever the other Diviners go, they will be in grave danger. The Scribe was willing to lick Six’s blood off the floor just for a taste of Aisling’s spring. Six decides she will help him. She wanders for a bit after their talk and returns to find two knights sparring in the courtyard. One of them is Rory. She realizes she’s never seen knights actually fight. She can’t look away. Rory eventually wins the bout and takes his helmet off. Their eyes meet and they stare at each other until the Hamelin comes to speak to Six. He apologizes for the way he acted when he was more interested in having sex with a Diviner than with her as a person. He’d be willing to give it another go if she was interested, he wouldn’t talk as much this time. Six doesn’t have to tell him no because Rory calls him to the field; it’s Hamelin’s turn to fight. Rory speaks to Six, who confirms that she is coming with them to find the other Omens. That agitates him. Traum is full of danger, she will need better clothes and armor too. Rory takes her to the forge and heats some wax. He’s going to take a mold of her body and send it to the blacksmith at Maude’s home so the blacksmith can make armor for Six. They’ll find Six some chainmail for her to wear until her armor is complete. But in order to make the mold, he will need to tailor her Diviner robes to her body and cover it with beeswax. It will not be recoverable afterward. She tells him to go ahead. As he tailors the robe, they talk. He lived for awhile with Maude and at Castle Luricht, but most of his time was spent at Foundling House 2 in the Seacht. He asks what Hamelin wanted and she says just to reminisce, but she admits that she never slept with him. She only wanted to do it to prove Rory wrong about her being sheltered and devoid of fun. But it turns out, it’s not actually fun to have sex with one person just to spite someone else. He admits that he said that just to get under her skin. He saw her on the wall, all in white, and felt like she was looking at him patronizingly. He wanted to prove that she was no better than he was, but he regretted what he said and he deserved to watch her disappear with Hamelin. And how much he hated it. He apologizes. He puts some beeswax on her lip where it is cut to protect it and asks why she fought the men in the alley. When she tells him and he admits that he thinks the children of Traum are particularly vulnerable. It hasn’t passed his notice that the Diviners are always little girls with no families. Six explains that foundlings are more likely to believe what is taught them in kindness. She always thought the abbess was kind but has realized that she used her affection as a lure, doling it out like a miser. Six would have done anything for it. After he tailors her robes, Rory starts with the wax. He pours the wax onto her limbs and smooths it down to form to her muscles as it hardens. He runs his arms down her back, her arms, her legs and thighs. He is very respectful, making sure that he is not making her uncomfortable. She asks about a helmet and is told she can have one if she likes, but it will be difficult to see through with the shroud on as well. But he doesn’t tell her to take it off. When he gets to her chest and stomach he blushes. She asks why he’s nervous, teasing him. He leans right up so their noses touch and says he thinks she actually likes it when he’s a bad knight. She likes putting him in his place. Her whole body is probably aching to put him in his place right now. She wants to throw him down and he wants to take her with him. She can barely breathe but then he steps away. He will send Maude in to finish. Six puts on the tunic and leggings that Maude brought her, but she still won’t put on the boots. She and the gargoyle ride in a cart toward the Fervent Peaks. She tells Maude that when she dreams of the Peaks, it is of jagged rocks around a body of water. The whole area is made of jagged rocks, so that’s not super helpful. They decide that they will have to lure the Oarsman out with spring water like the others but first, the local families will have their spectacle. Six asks how Maude got to know Benji and Rory. Benedict I was Maude’s mentor. She was already a knight when Benji was born. Then his parents died and his grandfather was off tracking Omens, so Maude’s family, the Bauers, took Benji in. When Benedict I found Rory, Maude took him as her squire. He was a terrible squire at first, but he grew into it. When Benedict I was called a heretic, she would have stayed by his side, but he implored her to continue hunting Omens. So instead, she was the first to cast him aside. The first to throw a stone at him. And she made it her life’s mission to make another Castor into the king. But this Castor would succeed when he took up the mantle. As they ride, the hillside begins to move. Six realizes belatedly that it is not the hillside but a mountain sprite, infinitely bigger than the sprites she saw near the tor. The mouth of this particular sprite is larger than the cart she’s riding in. Maude tells her and the gargoyle to stay in the cart as the knights close in on the sprite with whips. The sprite breaks through their line and comes for the cart. The horse runs, knocking Six and the gargoyle out of the cart. The sprite opens its mouth and catches the horse and cart in one chomp. Six watches as the knights regroup and back the sprite away with the sound of the whips, but one of the knights falls from his horse and doesn’t get back up. Actually, not a knight. Benji. Six and the gargoyle run to Benji, who has fallen and gotten a piece of armor wedged between two rocks. They are trying to free him when a second, slightly smaller mountain sprite rises up in front of them. The sprite is between them and the knights. After driving the first sprite away, the knights turn to see the second sprite. It’s too close to Benji and Six, the knights won’t be able to stop the sprite before it gets to Benji. Six can see the sprite’s ribs. It’s starving. She desperately tries to unlock Benji’s armor, but the latch has been damaged as well. Instead, as the sprite comes closer to them, Six grabs her chisel. She slams it into the rock that Benji is stuck between, hitting it with a resounding crack. The stone breaks and she is able to stand Benji up. She holds onto Benji as the gargoyle lifts them both into the sky, then flies over the sprite and the knights to place them back on the ground where they will be safe. The knights kill the sprite. Six wonders if it would not have been more humane to feed it, but Benji says the land belongs to the nobles of the Fervent Wood, and they don’t like to share. Besides, sprites have plagued the land for ages - everyone knows that. Six points out that everyone knows the story of the Omens too, but that doesn’t make it true. The knights check on Benji, sorry for not noticing that he fell right away but thankful he’s okay. Rory storms through the crowd, takes one look at Benji and Six (both of which are unhurt), covers his mouth with his hand and storms away again. The gargoyle points out that Six’s boots fell out of the cart as well and were not eaten, and Maude finds her waxen robes in a small box still. Good, they can still make Six armor. All the better if she’s going to be fighting sprites. Maude tells Six that she did good before walking away. They arrive at the heart of the Fervent Peaks very late, but there are five people waiting for them. The zealots. One of them seems to be related to Hamelin, his mother perhaps. When she notices a Diviner riding with the King, it does not make him look more credible. In fact, one of the zealots says he heard that Benji received five bad portents. Perhaps he is going the way of his grandfather. The gargoyle, of all people, steps up to Benji’s defense. He doesn’t like this man’s tone. A Diviner has chosen to accompany the king. To question her is to question the Omens themselves. Is that what he meant to do? The man claims he meant no offense. Unfortunately, they haven’t seen any other Diviners recently either. They proceed as a group to a lake for the spectacle. In each hamlet, the zealots of the hamlet create a spectacle designed to humiliate and embarrass the king. To remind him that he is not the important one. He lives to serve the Omens, as do they all. Benji stands at the edge of the lake. He removes his plate armor piece by piece, then his clothes, until he is fully naked. Then he submerges himself in the water and tangles himself in the nets laid out in the water. Six is astounded. The water must be freezing. Maude agrees. Benji has to prove that he is subservient to their gods. He wants to make the nobles happy, so Benji plays along… for now. Soon, Rory comes to get Six. Benji will be in the water for an hour, they’re going to go hunting for an Omen while the others are distracted. He uses the coin to flash them to a set of trees and lays an open vial of spring water from Aisling on a rock. Then they wait. He thought she did a great job with the sprite; she was very brave. She asks about his views on sprites since he fed the one in the Seacht. He explains that sprites have never hurt him like people have. They’ve never beaten him, used him, or taken advantage of him. They never did even worse than that. Then he asks why she’s not wearing the boots he found for her. She’s surprised. She thought Maude got those for her. She’s a bit uncomfortable and he wonders if it’s because of what happened in the forge. She points out that nothing happened in the forge. But she does ask him if he’s married. He’s not, would it bother her if he was? She asks if he has any crushes, maybe on another knight. No, he does not fancy any other knights. He asks about her. Though she had some dalliances, nothing ever stuck. She always knew the person wouldn’t stay around so she never got lost in them or surrendered herself completely. She’s never finished with someone else. He’s quiet. She guesses he was thinking there is something wrong with her, but that’s not it. He was thinking of what she would look like as she unraveled. That makes her go quiet. Then they see sprites moving toward the water, three of them. They’re confused as the sprites investigate and look around. Once the sprites decide it’s safe, they melt back into the shadows and the Oarsman comes out. The Ardent Oarsman takes the water and leaves; they follow him quietly. He leads them to the waterfall. At the top, Benji is still in the pool of water. The Oarsman puts his oar in the water and disappears, appearing higher up and disappearing into an opening in the rock face. They can’t follow. It’s too high for Rory to jump with his coin, so Six suggests he goes to get the gargoyle. After much cajoling, the gargoyle grumpily pushes the two of them together and flies them to the entrance. Rory has his arms wrapped around Six to hold her as they fly. He doesn’t let her go when they land, not right away at least. Inside, there is a pool of water that leads to the waterfall, which feeds the whole river. There’s also a castle guarded by sleeping sprites. Rory holds the coin in one hand and Six’s hand in the other. She grabs the gargoyle and they sneak past the sprites and into the castle. The door is locked and they are forced to knock on the door loudly, waking the sprites (who look confused about what they’re expected to do now), but the Oarsman comes fairly quickly. They enter the Oarsman’s hall and see a throne, a pool of water, and mountains of gold. Aisling’s gargoyles always bring him more (Six’s gargoyle swears it wasn’t him). They have come for answers about the Diviners and to take up the mantle. The Oarsman dips his oar into the water, disappearing and appearing again in front of Six. He grabs her by the throat and the two of them travel to his throne, where he forces her to sit on his lap. If Rory throws his coin, the Oarsman will rip out Six’s throat and the sprites will kill him. Six has never seen Rory look as angry as he does now, his eyes are flashing with fury. His eyes move from her face to her waist, where her chisel and hammer rest on her belt. When the Omen tries to take her shroud off, Six slams the chisel into his leg then runs to stand between Rory and the gargoyle. She demands to know what has happened to her Diviners. Rory reaches for one of her hands, the gargoyle the other, and they stand united against the Oarsman. He will tell Six everything if she stays with him. Rory looks at her, beseeching her with her eyes and the squeeze of his hand not to take the bait, but he says nothing. He does not try to sway her decision. She refuses the Oarsman and then she offends him. He’s no god. He’s just a man. He would be nothing without her and Diviners like her. The Oarsman still refuses to answer any of her questions. Rory challenges the Omen to a match of vigor. And once the oar belongs to the king, the Oarsman will answer the Diviner’s questions. The Oarsman laughs. A challenge of vigor is a challenge to the death. Rory is unfazed, only asking for three days to prepare. The Oarsman agrees but says that if Six wants her questions answered, she will have to be the one to challenge him. The next morning, she starts to train. Her first challenge is the boots, which proves more difficult than expected to overcome, but which Rory is delighted to see her wearing. He runs her up and down steps. He wants her fast and nimble. He doesn’t want the Oarsman to touch her ever again. He doesn’t even want the Oarsman within a mile of her. Then they spar. Her job is to anticipate what the Oarsman may do, and he has his oar to aid him, so Rory uses the coin to move around. It’s embarrassing. She can’t catch him no matter what she does. She tells him that this whole situation is personal for her. If the Omens are not real, then she drowned and dreamed for nothing. That gets him to stand still for a moment. She’s says that it is her job to look for the other Diviners because no one else is even bothering just before she tackles him to the ground. He tells her that it’s personal for him too. She needs to know that. He nearly kisses her then but Maude, Benji, and the gargoyle show up. Rory can’t get off the ground for a moment; he needs to order his thoughts first. Benji suggests that Six not go to the fight unarmed, Rory offers her the use of the coin. She practices with it. First disappearing and reappearing, then breaking things apart. When thrown with the rough side up, the coin will destroy anything it comes in contact with while it’s still moving. But you have to retrieve the coin afterward, so make sure the throw counts. That night, Maude looks very concerned. Six overhears her talking to Rory and Benji. She’s afraid that Six might die in this fight before she has ever had the chance to really live. Even though Rory tells Maude that he believes Six can win (and he really doesn’t want her to get hurt), this sticks with Six. She does better the next day but stumbles every time she thinks of Maude’s words. Then there’s no more time to train, it’s the night before they meet the Oarsman again. Six can’t sleep so when she hears a knock at her door, she answers quickly. It’s Rory. He wants to take her somewhere that may help her nerves settle. And she doesn’t even need her boots. He takes her to hot springs, which makes her nervous because she can’t swim. He assures her that they aren’t that deep, she will easily be able to stand. She also gets nervous when he starts to take his clothes off and gets in. But she channels Four and follows him into the water, he gallantly turns his back to her until she’s covered. The hot water eases her sore muscles just like he said it would. He gives it a little help by rubbing the sore spots for her, namely her wrist - sore from practicing with the coin. His ribs are nearly healed from when the gargoyle caught him stealing the spring water at Aisling. He asks her every time he moves to a new muscle to make sure it’s okay that he touches her. Not a bad knight at all. Unlike what she first thought of him, she thinks he’s a rather good knight. And she has noticed that he really does not doubt that she will beat the Oarsman the next day. Simply because he believes in her. They play a little and he pulls on her ankle, which causes her head to go under. She is immediately transported back to Aisling, but he pulls her to the surface and murmurs reassurances to her. He doesn’t stop apologizing even after she says it’s okay. He’s awful and discourteous in general, plus she makes him nervous, so he especially doesn’t know how to act when she’s around but letting her go underwater was unforgiveable… she puts her hand over his mouth. He won’t look her in the eye at first until she calls him Rory. He looks miserable still and he mouths to her that he’s sorry. He thinks they should go back but she asks him to rub her shoulder first. He tells her that her hair is so pretty and her skin is incredibly soft, but she’s strong underneath. So strong. He’d chip his teeth if he bit her. The first time she saw him smile, she thought about how his bottom teeth would leave a unique mark if he bit. He’s down to test that theory out, he would bite her wherever she told him to. She chooses the palm of her hand. He bites down, but then he kisses the same spot. He’d rather leave that mark instead. She asks him for a favor. If the Oarsman kills her, she asks him to find a home for the gargoyle and keep looking for the Diviners. He refuses to believe anything will happen to her, but he still promises. He has a sneaking suspicion that he would do anything she asked him to. He pulls away from her then and sends her back to her room to sleep. Surprisingly, she does sleep. She dreams of him that night. In the morning, Maude suggests that the gargoyle act as Six’s squire and lends her armor to Six to wear, it should fit well enough until her own arrives. It was Maude’s mother’s and grandmother’s so she asks Six not to die - she wants the armor back. They arrive to the Oarsman’s castle, Six dressed in armor and holding the coin. No one answers the door. When they break it down, they find the Oarsman waiting for Six on a platform in the middle of the pool of water, which feeds into the Tenor River. He has his oar with them. The gargoyle gives them the good news and the bad. Six can’t swim, but she’s really good at drowning. Maude is angry. She says that Six is as good as dead if she goes out there, but this makes Benji and the gargoyle angry. The gargoyle flies away while Benji says that Maude should put her faith in Six. Six thinks she can still defeat the Oarsman, but she won’t chance losing the coin in the river. She gives the coin back to Rory. She steps up to the boat and Maude comes up beside her. She does have faith in Six; she hands Six her axe to fight with. But the gargoyle returns and gives Six her hammer and chisel instead. After all, it is a squire’s job to carry a knight’s weapons. Rory gives Six a helmet. She’s decided to wear helmet and shroud both. She asks Rory for a story, and he tells her about a foundling boy who didn’t believe in anything - not even after the miraculous happened and he became a knight (which is typically only for nobles). Not until the boy came to a cathedral and met a woman that made him forget about unfairness and cruelty. She made him believe that things could be better. But this story won’t end until Six kills the Omen, comes back to him, and kisses him. He declares that if she goes in the water, he’s coming in after her. She gets into the boat at the edge of the river, and the Omen pulls Six to the platform. He begins by using the flat end of the oar to manipulate the water, creating great waves that push Six to the ground. Then he uses the handle to allow him to travel. The gargoyle and Rory are both being held back. Six knows if they help her, she will lose the challenge, and her life will be forfeit. She struggles to her feet and hits the Oarsman with her hammer a few times. He rips off the shoulder of her armor and bites her, tasting the spring water in her blood. She drank so much more water than the others did, he can tell. As they fight, he taunts her. The Diviner came to him just like they always do - every ten years. He knocks the helmet off Six’s head, and her shroud goes with it. What he sees stuns the Oarsman. Six is able to tackle him, defeating his strength with her own. He has lost his challenge. She wants to know where the other Diviners are. He laughs at her. One Diviner was delivered to him and he drank her dry. The others are dead, just like Six is. He breaks the platform below her, sending Six into the river. Six wakes up after dreaming of the abbess drowning her but not letting her up. Actually, drowning her. Someone has put a new shroud over her eyes. She remembers what was said about the Diviners and throws up before trying to find someone, anyone, to speak to. She ends up in Benji’s room and sees his grandfather’s book. She flips through it. She finds where Benedict I wrote about Diviners at the back of the book. He says he’d never met a Diviner who left their service. He’d never even found the name of one or heard stories of one. He wondered what happens to the Diviners and how the abbess chooses them. When Benji comes in, he’s relieved to see Six up. They thought she was dead. Her breastplate was caved in and she wouldn’t wake up, even after Rory tried to bring her back. They brought her to Maude’s home in the Chiming Forest and Six didn’t wake up for the entire journey. They did retrieve the oar though. Six confronts Benji about what his grandfather wrote. He admits that he didn’t tell her because he thought it would upset her. He also thought she wouldn’t come if she knew. And he’s sorry, he should have told her right away. She runs away from him, ending up outside and screaming as loud as she can. Soon, a cart comes, driven by a gray-haired man. Rory is next to him. He’s so relieved to see Six, it was him that put the new shroud over her eyes. She tells him what she found out while crying hysterically. He insists he didn’t know. She wonders if she knew, deep down. If her dream of the moth was a sign of what was coming. Rory says that he’s sorry about what had happened and about the Diviners. That the only people that understood what she’s lived through were taken away from her. But he also tells her that he would have come for her. He doesn’t even know her name but if she hadn’t left Aisling on her own, he would have done absolutely anything to set her free. He would do anything for her. Maybe it’s because the others will never get the chance, but she tells him her secret. Her name is Sybil Delling. He kisses her thumb and then leads her over to the cart that he had been riding in. He pulls out her breastplate. The rest of her armor has not arrived yet. They left the Peaks very quickly; the rest of the knights will be following them at a slower pace, and they should have the rest of her armor with them. She decides to go back to bed and he tells her good night, calling her by her name. Sybil is bowled over by grief. She doesn’t get out of bed. She doesn’t eat. The gargoyle stays next to her and tries to remind her that all is not lost. But it’s not until Rory and the others force their way into her room just to sit with her that she feels like someone cares. Maude reminds Sybil to use her anger, but don’t turn it in on herself. After six days, Sybil gets out of bed. She has a new story to tell. She will find the chime, kill the Weaver, and then she will go for the abbess. She will bring this all to an end. Sybil begins to realize that Maude is like the golden child of the Chiming Wood. The people watch her as she walks around. They will have to wait until the other knights arrive to look for the missing chime. It’s most likely in an area that is not accessible except for special occasions like when the king comes for the first time to prostrate himself to the people and the Omens. Benji will make a good distraction while they search for the chime. Rory had helped to tend to Sybil’s neck wound from the Oarsman’s bite. He was careful in his ministrations, and she didn’t move at all, but somehow, they were both left breathless. The gargoyle is sick of watching them dance around it and he demands that they confess their feelings for each other. Benji and Maude are delighted but Rory and Sybil are mortified. They do no such thing. When the knights arrive, they all dress in their breastplates and charcoal to watch the king. Even Sybil. But unlike everywhere else, even the regular citizens of the Wood charcoal their faces. Not just their eyes like the knights normally do. Here, they charcoal their cheeks and their mouth as well. They mimic the sunken face of a skull. The sprites here, which they call Birke, mimic the birch trees but the knots of the trees are really eyes. Sybil realizes that she has seen them as she dreamed. When they arrive in the glade for the ceremony, the nobles of the Wood are happy to see a Diviner with Benji. That says good things - that he isn’t like his grandfather was before him. Helena Eichel, who leads the ceremony, comes to the dais holding a velvet cushion. When Sybil sees what is on the cushion, she recognizes it from her dreams. It is the chime. When the chime rings melodically, they all see happy memories. When it makes a discordant sound, it brings pain and fear. Helena calls it a gift from the Omens, like the gold they’ve found sprinkled throughout the Wood. They use yellow idleweed, which appears to be stronger than regular idleweed. One of the nobles breathes it in deep and blows it into Benji’s mouth. It makes him have visions. The chime doesn’t help either. Some of the knights partake in the idleweed as well, blowing into one another’s mouths. Hamelin invites Sybil to breathe in his smoke, but she says no. He continues to offer until she pushes him away. He grabs her and suddenly Rory is there, making sure Hamelin knows not to touch her again. Rory ties a cloth around his own face and Sybil’s so the smoke does not affect them as much. Maude speaks to them. She is going to distract Helena while Rory steals the chime. She asks Sybil and the gargoyle to protect Benji. Before they can get to Benji, the chime rings a discordant sound. Both Sybil and the gargoyle are affected. The gargoyle sees young girls in shrouds age, or break, but their cries, like his own, disappear on the wind. It sounds like Sybil’s moth dream. Sybil grabs a tree to steady herself and feels flesh under her hand, not bark. One of the knots opens to reveal an eye. It’s an ambush by the starving sprites, who can no longer get yellow idleweed to eat so instead have turned to flesh. About half the trees in the glade come to life. One of them heads directly for Helena and Benji on the dais. Benji is too out of it to even lift his head, but Sybil screams at him to move anyway. She watches as he disappears, reappearing twenty feet away with Rory. Rory shoves Benji toward Hamelin and Dedrick, who whisk Benji away. The sprite grabs Helena instead, lifting her up and eating her whole. The chime flies out of Helena’s hand and lands high up, on one of the sprite’s high branches. Rory moves again, looking for Sybil, who runs to him. The chime is too high to jump to with the coin, so the gargoyle agrees to fly Sybil up to grab it. She can’t get close enough to reach, so the gargoyle throws her at the tree. She lands and climbs up, well-practiced from all her climbing at Aisling. Meanwhile, Maude starts to cut at the sprite with her sword. Rory screams at her to stop, but she doesn’t. Sybil grabs the chime just as the sprite starts to fall. She loses her grip on the tree, but the gargoyle is able to catch her before she falls too far. But when the sprite lands, it lands on Maude. They close up Maude's home and send the rest of the knights to the village nearby so none of them see how broken Maude is, or how broken Benji is when he looks at her. Maude has a ton of broken bones, which a healer sets - but the most worrisome thing is her severe concussion. The healer isn't sure Maude will ever wake up. Benji stays by her bedside, desperate to keep watch and lashing out at anyone who tries to get him to leave, even if it is just to eat or sleep. Including Rory. He even tells Rory to drop the white knight bullshit because no one is buying it. Even the gargoyle chastises Benji for that. After days, Maude does wake up. She recommends that they do something to commemorate Sybil's bravery - like making her a knight for real. She already has all the armor. Benji likes that idea but wants to make sure everyone knows that Sybil needs to remain a Diviner. He is already publicly humiliated by each hamlet just to remind him that he is not as powerful as the Omens. Sybil lends him a little credence, some goodwill, and he does not want that to end. But if she is okay with that, then he will also knight her. She agrees and the next day they have the ceremony. The gargoyle helps her dress in her armor and reminds her that she doesn't have to do this. She has already taken vows and lived by Aisling's wishes. It's okay to want to go her own way for a little while. It's also okay to go forward if it's what she wants. She goes to the ceremony, and it is only the four of them, the gargoyle, and Viktor the blacksmith who brought the rest of her armor. Benji does not make her take vows to the Omens like the rest of the knights do. He asks her to swear to protect the weak and those who ask for protection. She says yes. He asks her not to take on mercenary work and to live off what the realm provides and the charity of others. She agrees. He asks her to swear her loyalty to him, to be his knight and his Diviner. She hesitates and is told by Rory that she can stop at any time, but Benji says no. They get into a spat, Benji says that Rory has never seen the point or the virtue in noble vows. Rory wonders if it is because he's neither noble nor virtuous. But in the end, Sybil says she has taken too many vows already. She does not make that vow and Benji still knights her. She claims her name, telling Benji and Maude and the gargoyle that her name is Sybil Delling. That evening, she doesn't let the gargoyle take her armor off. After hours, she makes her way to Rory's room. She just wanted to see him. He's still awake and he helps her take her armor off and the chainmail underneath. She tells him to take everything off, including her shroud. She wants him to see all of her. He does as she asks and after looking into her eyes, he kisses her. He keeps kissing her and he makes her unravel. Then they fall asleep together on his bed. When she wakes up, she's alone in the room even though it's still night. She sees all the things that Rory has, shelves heavy with trinkets and papers, then she spots a mirror. When she looks, she sees eyes that are completely white. No pupil, no iris. Eyes of stone. She's about to put her shroud back on when Rory comes in with a tray of snacks. She nervously mentions his many trinkets. He explains that when he was at the foundling house, he had nothing. The Artful Brigand thought it was a game to keep necessities away from Rory, let alone luxuries. His three gold hoops were the first thing he owned, given to him by Benji's grandfather. Since then, he has collected whatever he could. At first, he stole them, but he's either paid for everything or replaced them in the years since. He's ashamed of how he stole, and worries she will think less of him, but she doesn't. Then he sees the shroud in her hand. She asks how he could say she was beautiful when she looked like this. She thought he might've changed his mind about her and that was why he left. He rushes to her. She is beautiful. She's smart, and lively, and funny. He doesn't care about the effect of the spring water on her eyes. He still thinks she's the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. And he asks her to stay. He wants to keep looking at her. And she does. She doesn't want anyone else to see her eyes for now, so she covers them again as they travel to the Hills of Bellidine. Maude rides in a wagon, still very sore. When Sybil sits with her, Maude says she's been fighting sprites because it was expected. She never liked killing them, but her mother did it, and her grandmother did it, and so she did it. But she sees Benji fighting to do what his grandfather could not, and Sybil fighting to rid herself of the consequences of Aisling, and Rory fighting against his childhood, and she feels stupid. She should have looked at what she wanted more than anything else. And she doesn’t like killing sprites. It storms when they get to the hamlet. Not all the knights came with them this time, some stayed to help rebuild the Chiming Wood. Benji gave his own money to help, which makes Hamelin laugh. A true Coulson Faire resident, money is the only thing that is true. The weavers of the Cliffs believe that love and heartbreak are the true test of the world and that has made them, as a whole, kinder somehow. That evening, Rory invites Sybil to meet him on the beach. On her way out, Sybil sees Benji talking with Hamelin, Dedrick, and another knight named Tory Bassett. She asks why he didn't invite Rory, but Benji did. Rory seemed... distracted. Benji says this with some derision. Hamelin says it doesn't matter anyway. Rory is not noble and he has no sway over the families. He is brash and uncharismatic. He has no value, in other words. Sybil knocks the drink right out of Hamelin's hands and Benji tells him to watch his mouth. Benji has been standing up straighter, has been more confident with his words, he’s been drinking less. He has tasted a bit of power and he likes it. Benji asks Sybil to stay and discuss the upcoming spectacle. He also wants to discuss her role after they are done in the hamlets. She says she can't stay; she already has a prior commitment. She goes to meet her brash, uncharismatic, completely ignoble knight at the beach. The next morning, the gargoyle is gone when she wakes up in her bed. She panics, remembering when the Diviners disappeared while she slept, until she finds him on the beach watching the sunrise. He thanks her for giving him the courage to leave the tor. Thinking of him and the other Diviners gives her the courage to take off her shroud for good. Maude and Rory, who have come to find them, applaud her. When they return to the inn, the scheduled spectacle has been delayed again by more storms. Sybil waits for Benji to seek out Maude or Rory, or herself, that evening but he doesn't come. That night, she wakes up to find a hooded figure standing over her bed. She screams as lightning flashes, grabbing the figure’s arm. It’s as hard as stone. By the time her screaming wakes Maude up, the figure is gone. The next morning, all four of them are waiting for Sybil to wake. Benji asks what she saw and Sybil explains that the Heartsore Weaver was less human than the others were. She’s almost completely stone. They prepare for the spectacle (Benji is already wearing a vibrant sweater Tory's mother made him), and when Sybil leaves her room, she finds Benji waiting. He wants to clear the air. Hamelin's family is very rich in the Fervent Peaks, Dedrick's owns half the Seacht, Tory's is important on the Cliffs (and he's a fearsome fighter). Being on good terms with them is just political. She just hopes it does not come at Rory's expense. Benji says he's always looked up to Rory because Rory never felt the need to really live by a knight's vows of loyalty and chivalry. Sybil says maybe he's been looking so closely that he doesn't see clearly - because Rory is the most loyal person she knows. He notices that her shroud is gone but doesn't say anything about it. Her stone eyes do the same thing; he will make use of that when he returns to Castle Luricht. She tells him that her goal has always been to get rid of the Omens and the abbess. To take down Aisling. She doesn't know if she will be returning to Castle Luricht with him. She doesn’t know what she will do afterward and doesn't want to make false promises. He warns her that Traum is dangerous, full of dangerous sprites and dangerous people. Who knows what she will decide to do. His words give her a chill. At the spectacle, Benji is not brought low just to place the Omens above him. He is not humiliated. Instead, the weavers each take a thread from his new sweater and pull until the sweater is destroyed. Then they dance with the threads. Benji and Maude nod to Rory and Sybil, giving them the go ahead to sneak away to lure the Weaver out. The gargoyle dances. They place the water and wait. They discuss what is to come. Rory says that Sybil can do anything she wants after their quest is done. Wherever she goes and whatever she does, she will have the gargoyle and Rory with her. She asks about Benji, but Rory says that Benji is stronger than he realizes. He doesn't need Rory as much as he thinks he does. He will understand. They wait, but the Weaver does not show. Eventually the spectacle ends and the others join them. The gargoyle says they've been looking in the wrong place. He leads them away until he finds the right spot, but no one recognizes anything here either. No Weaver, no loom stone, nothing from Sybil's dreams. Until they hear the sound of water and trace it to a hole in the ground that is covered by a large rock. A hole large enough to crawl into. They enter the hole one by one and see glowing worms that Sybil believes are sprites. It's very dark. The gargoyle can spot things the others can't. Like tapestries showing the little worms, then their cocoons being boiled, and whatever worms survive then becoming moths. The cave splits into three passages. They decide to split up but no one will search alone. Maude and Benji will go down one passage, the other three travel a second path. They will meet back up in twenty minutes and go down the third together. If one group doesn't return, the other group follows after them. In their tunnel, the gargoyle recognizes what he thinks are decorations, but when he rips a thread off the wall, it triggers a trap. Water rushes toward them, pushing them down the tunnel and into a gorge filled with golden coins. They all make it out okay, but Rory's breastplate was badly dented, and he needs to take it off. He realizes that the coin was ripped away from him by the water. He needs to find it, so he goes to search the bed of golden coins for a single coin made of stone. In the meantime, a moth flies right up to Sybil’s face and then flies down a passage. Sybil follows it, leaving the gargoyle with Rory and orders to follow after Rory finds the coin. Sybil finds the Heartsore Weaver - but she's unlike the others. Firstly, she is completely stone, more like the gargoyles of Aisling. Secondly, part of her resembles a goat, also like the gargoyles. But thirdly, she has not eaten her Diviner. One sits on a bench. She's dead but not bitten. The Weaver explains that the Diviners are dead already when they arrive, but she gives them the best burial that she can manage. She does not have the loom stone anymore, she has not had the loom stone in a long time. You could put your finger through the hole in the center of the stone and when it faced outward, it would transport you. But faced inward, it would allow you to see memories. The Weaver liked being an Omen though, so she never faced it toward herself. The abbess came to her one day and asked for a robe for a foundling child - the first Diviner. The foundling was usually the one to deliver the spring water to the Weaver. Years later, the abbess came again and asked for five more robes. She did not have the foundling with her then but was followed by a gargoyle instead. As the Weaver worked, she grew tired. Not just tired, weary. She decided to use the loom stone on herself and remembered her family, her brother, her wife. But too much time had passed, they had all already died believing that the Weaver had gone missing. When she delivered the robes to the abbess, she asked not to be an Omen anymore. The abbess called her a traitor and sent her away. She no longer delivered the spring water, at least not for a long time. That was when the Weaver began to change, the stone growing past just her eyes. The Weaver agrees to tell Sybil where the loom stone is, but she wants Sybil to kill her in return. She’s waited so long. Sybil hits her four times in the chest with her hammer and chisel, finally striking a blow that will kill the Weaver eventually, and the Weaver says she left the loom stone at the tor. The abbess, the sixth Omen, the moth, Aisling. She began to send dead Diviners instead of spring water to the Omens. The Diviners became Aisling’s gargoyles. The Weaver isn’t sure why the gargoyles don't speak, maybe they don't remember enough. Maybe they're too scared. At least, most of them don't speak. Except for the first gargoyle, the first little foundling boy. Bartholomew. Rory and the gargoyle Bartholomew find Sybil sitting between the Weaver and One, both dead. She asks the gargoyle to hear his story now. He doesn't remember the beginning, so he tells the story the way that the abbess told him. He was a foundling who stumbled across the tor and drowned. The abbess, a graver who carved stone with her chisel and hammer, found him. She placed him in the spring water, and he came back to life. She raised him like a son and one day, one merchant from each of the five hamlets came. They couldn't decide whose creed was better and each believed they should have been the one to lead all the hamlets. They fought until they all killed each other. The abbess took a handful of spring water to each of them, woke them, and convinced them they were gods. She carved for them each a tool of their trade using her own. She sent them back to their hamlets to rule as gods. Gods she had made. She taught Bartholomew to drown and to dream. She would push him under the water and send him visions. She would orchestrate the dreams that he saw. This is why Sybil dreamed of the moth in her last dream. Because Bartholomew had put her under, not the abbess. Bartholomew was so good. Loyal and obedient, until he wasn't. At this point, he can remember what happened. The abbess locked him in a room and refused to give him the spring water. She believed he would die but instead, he became stone. He became a protector of the cathedral that the abbess had built, and she was happy with him once again. She would send him out to find foundlings who had died, and he would carry them to the cathedral to be reborn. The abbess said only to bring girls from then on. She would give them the water and wrap their eyes in gossamer so no one would see the stone. Every ten years, he would have to find more. She would send the previous Diviners to the Omens, except for those that were special. The most obedient. The ones she gave her chisel and hammer to. Those Diviners she would lock away and make into a gargoyle to keep with her. The abbess wiped his name from history, and the names of all the subsequent Diviners, so that it was only her name remembered. He has been trying to tell his story for so long. And he's sorry, he wishes he had never found Sybil in the Seacht and brought her to Aisling. But he thinks if he hadn't, the rest of the story would not have happened either. They all ride fast for Aisling. The other knights will follow at a slower pace. Maude is too sore to ride, so Bartholomew flies with her. He carries the chime, Rory the coin, and Benji has both the oar and the inkwell. When they get to the cathedral, Sybil rushes before the others and screams to the abbess to come out. The abbess shows with a phalanx of gargoyles. Sybil's own friends flank her; Bartholomew puts his hand in hers and Rory stands with his chest to her back – lending her strength. Sybil rushes forward and rips the abbess’ shroud off. Unlike the Diviners, the abbess' shroud covers her entire head. Sybil realizes that the abbess is entirely stone, but not like a gargoyle or the Weaver. She is a woman made of stone. Aisling’s hand goes to a string around her neck, and she pulls the loom stone, which is tied to the string, out of her bodice. She grabs Sybil, telling the gargoyles to kill the others. She transports Sybil to the spring and plunges her into the water. Aisling explains. Sybil was dead when Bartholomew found her in the gutters of the Seacht and brought her to the cathedral. That is why she has no memory of before she became a Diviner. But Aisling was different. She was born in these waters - a stillborn baby. The waters took her and gave her life; it made her entirely stone. Bartholomew taught her that Diviners cannot dream for too long or they start to rebel. The abbess knew it was time to find new Diviners when Six went with the others to the Faire. That's why she made the Diviners disappear. She used her loom stone, disappeared with them, and then snapped their necks. It was a bit earlier than she would have liked, she still hasn't found replacements for them. Sybil doesn't understand why she didn't just let them live like she had promised. Why did she keep sending a Diviner to the Forester if the Forester has been dead for decades? By her look, the abbess didn't realize the Forester was gone. But that's no matter. The abbess will make new Diviners. New Omens. She can do that. This whole cathedral, this whole country depends on her. She orders gargoyles to hold Sybil down and she can't fight against that many, even with her chisel, but she tries anyway. Eventually she grows weak. Just before she drowns for real, Rory hauls her out of the water. Benji holds on to Maude and uses the inkwell to keep them out of the gargoyles' reach, but Bartholomew faces off against the abbess to protect Sybil. The abbess uses the loom stone to fly to the stained glass windows above, leaving her gargoyles to fight in her stead. Sybil uses her chisel and hammer to give them all their long-awaited death. The abbess disappears, reappearing right in front of Benji. She hits him so hard that his breastplate dents. She tries to disappear again, but Maude cuts off one of her arms with her axe. Sybil springs forward, going head-to-head with the abbess. The abbess takes her knife and hits Sybil again and again, but her armor blocks most of the damage from the knife. Then Sybil pulls the abbess into the spring. She holds her under the water until the abbess stops fighting. Only then does she pull her out. She hits the abbess again and again with her chisel and hammer until the last Omen is dead. Benji wants the cathedral destroyed and Sybil wants the spring buried, so they set to work. Sybil works so fanatically that she breaks her hammer. When the cathedral finally falls, they can hear the other knights riding toward them. Benji sighs. It's about time! He takes his sword and stabs Rory in the side, stealing the coin from him. Then he uses the coin to hit Bartholomew hard. Both Rory and the gargoyle are unconscious on the ground and Sybil runs to them. Luckily, they're both still breathing. Benji says he knew what was coming. He could see it in the way that Rory looked at Sybil. He wasn't loyal to Benji or to anything - except maybe to her. They were going to run off together after the abbess was dead, but Benji can't have that. He needs Sybil. She is the last remaining vestige of their faith. And since no one understands how the dreams work, he will make it seem like it is Sybil’s eyes that are magical instead of the spring. He will put her shroud back on. He wants Sybil to be his queen. They can kill the Omens and destroy the cathedral, but it will still take time to dismantle a religion, and he needs Sybil with him to do that. All that money from the Omens, he made sure that it made its way into the hands of his knights and their noble families: Hamelin’s, Tory’s, and Dedrick’s, to be precise. And as for Maude, Benji looked up to Maude too much. He needs to be able to make decisions on his own, plus Maude is too good to condone what he's doing. The irony: Maude is too good a knight while Rory is too bad. But Benji leaves the decision up to Sybil. She can come with him, and he will allow the three others to live, or she can deny him and he will make sure they all die. Sybil agrees to go with him and reminds Rory to take care of the gargoyle like he promised her he would. Benji uses the coin to blast a hole in the wall for them to make their escape and Maude has to drag both Rory and Bartholomew out. Not because they can't walk, but because they don't want to leave Sybil. Sybil turns to Benji and the approaching knights. He tells her to look happier. He's about to make her a queen and a god.