Innocence is subjective, and power always has its price--so his elders told him. Silas Blane is destined for greatness. Born into an elite family with many skeletons in the closet, he learns to harness his inherent shamanic powers and finds purpose...
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Image: Actress Pola Negri
Selketh rambled for several minutes in our language and Hepslovian, intoxicated, until she came somewhat to her senses and selected the third talon. Her breath shivered, hands tight around the cord, her shadow reaching long across the floor toward Mother.
Mother waited, aloof and perfect as a priceless doll on a pedestal too high to reach. A draft blew down the stairwell, diffusing the trails of incense smoke around her in a perfumed haze.
Selketh continued. "The third, the third of May. I'm ten years old." She reached for the long ebony pins supporting her rolls of hair, pulled them free, and removed her fascinator. Dark waves spilled loose down her back. "Eleiana says the Kaezer has an honored role for gifted children like me. There are other special people, she tells me. She's one of them. And she's taking me to meet the others. There's a place where people like us gather, and where our power can feed and become strong. Power is real, Eleiana says. Only a few know about it, and even fewer can use it, and make it do what they want. This place of power is called a Circle, and it's older than the trees, older than my Amya's Amya's Amya. It's in another prison compound, far from the one where I'm held captive. We're flying in one of the big, noisy rotor transports, with three troopers in long black uniform coats.
"I've never seen their rank symbol before, a pair of two-toned arrow pins on their collars, and a sharp arc pinned above Hir Kaezer's emblem, on the right side of their chests. If I behave well and do what they ask, Eleiana says my power can become so great that people will bow to me, worship me. But only if I want them to. I don't know if should believe her. These Pruessians make me feel strange inside, and I know this isn't what it seems. I love Eleiana. She's more like a big sister than my Amya, but she takes care of me. The commander of Daushenszek compound wants to send me back to the dorm, with all the other Unfortunate girls. But Eleiana fights to keep me as her ward, and somehow she wins every time."
Selketh paused, and hummed in time to my song. Intoxicated from the effects of the truth-inducing potion, her expression fluctuating between bliss and terror. She was oblivious to the rest of us, wandering through a rapid wash of memories. Her fingers shook as she took the fourth talon.
"Is this the next branch on my mad snarl of time?" she asked herself. "So it is. I'm thirteen years old here, without a doubt. The might of my initiation into the Circles of the Old Ways. At least, that's what Eleiana and a very few others call them. The Pruessians and everyone else ignorant of power calls the gifted ones by their elite secret name--Myrktilhet. It means The Shadow in Pruessian. All of the Pruessians fear them, and give them great respect. Myrktilhet practices the Old Ways, the primitive religion of their ancestors, and they've taught me much. I speak fluent Pruessian, now. And I'm on my way to becoming a true citizen of the Kaezer's new society, like Eleiana. She is a seer and a sorceress, and her family was once allied with the shamanic Circles of Hepslovia. My country had seekers of the Old Ways too, though they were no match for the superior might of the Pruessians, and are now scattered to the corners of the Empire.
