“Are there tales older than you?”I tease.
“Just wait until you have a century under your belt. Then I will be the one making jests at your expense.”
My mind spins at the thought of that. A hundred more years of this. Somehow, the prospect of an immortal life does not seem quite so abhorrent as it once did.
“You know, there was a time you claimed you had no interest in immortality or your role as a Remnant,”I remind him.“If I remember correctly, you declared the prophecy was more than likely some fabricated tale conjured up by a senile oracle who’d spent too long in the opium baths.”
“A statement I stand by, having met the woman.”
“What do you mean, you met her?”
“Precisely what I said.”
I blink hard.“You met the oracle who gave the prophecy?”
“Indeed.”
“How?”I ask, stunned.“And…why?”
“What can I say? I was fifteen years old and curious. I wanted the truth about the prognostication set to dictate my life. So I tracked her down in a paint-spattered temple by the North Sea and demanded an explanation for the rather inconvenient forecast she’d croaked out in the wake of the Cull.”
“And?”
“And what?”
Gods, he could be difficult.“What did she say, Soren?”
“Nothing that made much sense,”he hedges.“Though my memory may be a shade hazy. Have you ever tried to hold on to your wits in an opium bath?”
“I can’t say that I have.”
“Not easy, skylark. Not easy at all.”Humor creeps into his voice.“Though perhaps it’s a good thing I do not remember with perfect clarity. That seer looked older than time itself, with wrinkles to match her years…and a propensity for walking around in the nude whenever she saw fit.”He pauses.“Which seemed to be every waking hour of the day.”
I bleat out a laugh.“Be serious, will you?”
“If only I were joking.”He heaves a mental sigh.“By the time I dropped in on her, she was addled. Spoke mostly in riddles with no answers. At one time, however, she must’ve been sane enough. She spent hundreds of years in the emperor’s employ, counseling Belenus on all matters before his demise.”
“And yet, she did not see the Cull coming and think to warn him,”I say wryly.“Makes one doubt her gifts.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“Did she tell you anything else? Reveal any more clues about how we are meant to restore the balance, should all four Remnants appear?”
There is a long pause.“Nothing I comprehended at the time.”
“And now?”
“It’s been a hundred and eighty-five years, Rhya. She is dead and gone, her insights with her. Though the memory of her wizened form may never fully fade from my mind’s eye…”
I do not entertain his attempts to distract me.“Soren.”
He sighs.“Yes?”
“If you are withholding something—”
“Fine. I can admit now that perhaps I was wrong about the prophecy.”He cuts me off.“But meeting a rambling, raving seer was hardly what altered my opinion on our joined fate.”
My brows arch high on my forehead.“Oh? Then what did?”