The ceremony required specific words to be uttered—words that contained great power—together with the use of magical seals. Sandra shared everything she knew with Nadia, and if they’d both had photographic memories, it would have been easy. However, with no records remaining, the two women had to make do with only what they remembered.
“Karl felt safe in the knowledge that all the books and documentation had been rendered to ash,” said Nadia, looking back with a nostalgic smile. “But if he’d known that we were in possession of some knowledge ourselves, no doubt he would have had us killed. It was anything but easy to set up. The ceremony can only be held on the night of the full moon, and it wasn’t like we could just draw the seals anywhere. We had to be selective of the location...”
That Nadia was still here, and still trapped, told me that the ceremony had not had its desired effect. I think that was why I saw flashes of sorrow and defeat etched into her features—because the ceremony had ended in failure. When she’d conducted it the first time, she’d noticed nothing at all, but all the same, she tried one more time.
“We couldn’t remember the exact procedure, and we were working with large gaps in our own memories too. One month after the first attempt, we tried again, but nothing came of that either. I shouldn’t have been surprised. So much of it was lacking... You could barely have called it a ceremony at all.”
“I see now just how involved it all was,” I said. “You didn’t try a third time?”
“We’d given our everything to those first two attempts. I didn’t have the energy to try again...”
And so the tale ended without the magical ending one might have hoped for. Nadia offered a sorrowful smile.
“I never meant to tell anybody about this. It’s preposterous, trying to make fairy tales into reality, and yet look at me—now I’ve told you everything.”
“Lady Nadia...?”
“I think it’s because...you listen so intently. So earnestly. It makes me so happy that you didn’t laugh when I told you of my home and our heralds. Karl always belittled our culture at every opportunity, and so I simply stopped talking about it altogether.”
The emperor had heard about the traditions. He knew something of the mountain capital’s past, and for that reason, he approached the royal family. But when Nadia told him of the heralds, he flew into a rage. Nadia received none of it firsthand, but the emperor seethed for a good long while. Given that he was a man who exiled people to the furthest reaches of the empire for simply rubbing him the wrong way, Nadia felt very much like she’d put her foot in it.
“He is a man who believes in a lone god, and he did not take kindly to my telling him of the heralds.”
This was the main reason, to this day, that Nadia was not allowed to leave the palace. Karl was nothing if not faithful to his own ideology, and he could not stand for the mountain capital, nor the rumors of its living gods.
“I know this is perhaps neither here nor there, but when did you hold the two ceremonies you attempted?” I asked.
“When was it...? Hmm... I imagine it must have been about twenty years ago now. Oh my, you’re as pale as a sheet. Are you quite all right? Would you care to lie down for a moment?”
“Er, no, please don’t mind me. I’m just a bit shocked. It’s quite the tale.”
A fear had sprung to mind. You might have become aware of it too, having come this far, but what it came down to was when the ceremonies had been held and how many of them Nadia had attempted. And while Nadia could not remember the exact details, with a little prodding, I had a sense that the time matched with my own age.
I knew that it was foolish to jump to conclusions, but I felt that my own reincarnation was somehow linked to Nadia, one of the last survivors of the mountain capital. I was painfully aware that I was still squarely in the realm of speculation, but I couldn’t escape the sense that there was a connection.
And if I’d been reborn before Nadia, as planned, would things have been different?
“If your ceremonies had succeeded, would we be living a different future now?” I asked.
“While I appreciate your kindness, we need not cling to such hopes. I’m fine with it all now.”
“You mean to say you’re glad for how things worked out?”
“I am far too old now to want to cling to ideas of how things might have been. And it is only now that I truly understand how foolish I was. I put my faith in a tradition that could never have borne fruit, no matter how hard I might have wished otherwise...because we lacked a vessel.”
This was, to Nadia’s mind, why the ceremonies had ultimately failed.
“Oh, I see. You were calling upon souls, and they required a vessel to inhabit.”
“Yes. Had we succeeded, the souls would have awakened within the body of somebody in the palace, and how could we have explained it all? It was a reckless attempt.”
On this particular matter, Sandra was far more knowledgeable, and so Nadia called her back to explain things to me. Sandra was at first hesitant to speak, intrigued as I was. Still, she followed her orders and, more than anything else, simply seemed tired of keeping secrets. All the same, she made me swear not to share what I learned with anybody else. With that agreed to, she began explaining to me the select children who acted as vessels for the heralds.
“The children are raised from a young age to be appropriate vessels for the heralds when they arrive.”
When the ceremony was successful, the herald descended to the body of its vessel, after which it led the mountain capital to further prosperity. In time, the original body’s soul would slowly fade until it disappeared entirely. This was not a case of two souls sharing the one body—rather, it was more like a takeover. I wasn’t sure what to say, and Sandra nodded—she could understand my hesitance.
“That is why the children are selected,” she said. “The vessel’s life is given to the herald for the sake of the nation, and their family’s future is assured. This is a ceremony that goes forward only with the approval of the vessel’s family and the vessel themselves. I realize it may be difficult for someone foreign to our culture to understand, but for the people of the mountain capital, it is a most sacred role to play.”
It was at this point that Nadia revealed to me why she had gone through with the ceremonies anyway—because Karl so vehemently refused to entertain any of the mountain capital’s culture. He called it primitive and their people uncivilized for still believing in it. Nadia missed her family, and her heart was being crushed with each passing moment. To hear her tell it, she desperately needed something to cling to in order to go on.
“At the time, there were rumors that Lady Nadia was pregnant, and this sowed great discord among the emperor’s wives. It was anything but an easy time,” explained Sandra.
“Please don’t feel compelled to speak on the matter if you’d prefer not to,” said Nadia.
“I’m not sure why, but when I look at Lady Conrad, I cannot help but open up. Perhaps I feel that I must, being in the presence of one who desires the truth.”
I had one last question, and in truth, I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask it.
“Is the vessel always chosen from among the selected children prepared for the invocation?” I asked. “Did the heralds ever awaken in different bodies?”
“I’m surprised,” uttered Sandra. “It is as if you believe our traditions—you speak with keen insight.”
And as it turned out...there were exceptions. Though Nadia had never known of any, Sandra knew of a number of such exceptions, having been raised in the family of a priest. Sometimes the herald did end up in a different body. But even when this happened, the vessel’s original personality faded as the new soul took hold, and this change of character often led to a herald’s discovery.
“Perhaps the heralds enjoy their pranks,” said Sandra. “On occasion, some would simply watch over the people for a time and say not a word of their arrival, but we would always find them eventually and invite them to the temple.”
“If so, I imagine that some of them must have simply blended in with the regular citizenry. How did you find them then?”
“In all the examples that come to mind, the vessel’s mother simply lost all memory of the child who became the herald’s vessel. Families that encountered such trouble inevitably came to the temple, and thus the truth came to light.”
All language seemed to desert me in that instant. Mothers with selective memories was a topic that hit far too close for comfort.
“The mothers lost all memory of their children. Past records showed that when a herald took control of the vessel’s body, the vessel’s soul departed. We believed this to be a kindness on the part of the heralds—the erasure of a mother’s memory spares them the sorrow of losing their child.”
Apparently, the disappearance of a soul could take a long time—anywhere from one to twenty years. When a child was raised as a host, however, the time for a herald to settle into a body—and the past soul to disappear—was comparatively quicker.
I have so many questions...
For one thing, how long did they continue to call upon the help of these so-called heralds?