Ari and Yaga carry me out the city gates of Rahasia, heading toward the arena where the Divine Contests are to be held. From the youngest, eighteen like me, to the oldest of near-forty, we mortal magicians battle each other for the gods' amusement.
And then those who survive that bloodbath kill each other for the gods' war.
"Stay here," I order my brutish cousins, and their knees buckle as they set the litter down beside the other royal carriers. I hide my amusement at seeing them standing next to the mules, covering my lips with the surface of my golden mirror. When the glass's reflective surface touches my skin, it feels like biting frost when the desert plunges into night.
This, the final lioness gate outside Rahasia, rises into the blue sky. Nine stone lionesses, their jaws wide enough to devour a man at his full height, roar in silence, frozen and staring in righteous anger at the sky. The land around us is barren, a beaten dirt path leading to the circular arena. The sun in the sky smiles down upon us, but its smiles are cruel, flogging us with merciless heat. The earth is equally hot beneath my leather sandals. My robes keep the sun from burning my arms, but it doesn't stop the sweat from chafing and wiping away the clean rose oil from my morning bath.
I pull my scarf up higher over my nose, joining the other Diviners in their trek to the main contest. Since we all wear the same wine-colored Diviner robes, nobody bats an eye that I am a woman. I just appear to be a very short male. I bound my breasts in precaution, and everything itches due to the sweat. But it won't stop the other competitors for eventually finding me out.
I know it already, and I cringe just thinking about it, but they will ridicule me. They will accuse me of the mere crime of being a woman, of trying to use my feminine wiles to trick one of the Three Brothers into falling for me. They will accuse me of wielding my sexuality like a venomous sword, of staying in godly beds in exchange for Divine favor.
Even being the only daughter of Lord Ngayoh, of a royal line, won't spare me from ridicule. Once, the youngest, most beautiful child of an infamous warlord took to wearing womanly clothing and adorning her body with gemstones. I knew the child as Astera the Beautiful, yet the warlord insisted that the child was born to be a warrior, Aster the Strong. He stripped the beautiful maiden of all her beautiful gems, the piercings she took to wearing in her ears in honor of her dead mother. When she refused, insisting she was Astera and not Aster, insisting that her accident of birth did not make her a curse of the gods, her father renounced her.
Lordly child or not, the mobs threw stones until Astera was nothing but a streak on the ground. The warlord buried her as Aster, dressed her up in his old, bloodied armor. He visited the body before burial and carved a scar posthumously over her eye in an attempt to force her to fill a role as a "brave warrior". He desecrated her body beneath the watchful eyes of the gods just to save his lordly name.
I shudder, drawing my purple hood over my dark braids, ignoring the itch and the stale sweat and the rose perfume dripping down my body like candle wax. If I do not prove myself a Diviner worthy to be one of the gods' champions, then the mobs will ridicule me.
"Hello there!" A boy my age with honeyed skin and light eyes shoves into step next to me. He has a head of shaggy black hair with beads swaying at the tips. He's pretty enough to have been some foreign concubine's son from those pretty green eyes. I confirm the theory when I see a brand in his neck, a flower petal etched into his pretty skin, and see the state of his Diviner robes. They're coarse, just the bare minimum of what a lordly child should wear... a bastard child. "Did you hear me?" He waves his hand in front of my face. "I said I'm Ryu, eighth son of Advisor Hakim!"
I scowl at him, only to remember most of my face is covered by my robes. Since I can't speak in a decent male timbre, I make my voice gravelly, as though ill. "Ode." I reply. It's not a flowery name, so he probably won't assume I'm a female right away.
"Short one, aren't you? Short as a fox pup." Ryu grins, ever the joker. I notice he's put on his Diviner robes more for style than any practicality, more skin exposed than any decent Diviner would consider necessary. "What a nice mirror. Can I see it, pup?"
I glare at him from the side, hardly moving my head. "You don't need a mirror to increase your vanity." I pause. "Do you even have a Diviner weapon?"
He holds a necklace up, a string of red beads that concubines wear to mark their status in society. They glow slightly and multicolored flames dance merrily across his skin. I blush as he puts it and the flames away, but he doesn't seem perturbed by it.
Ryu laughs. "I'm branded. It isn't any secret I'm a bastard, Ode." He shrugs, putting his arms amiably around my shoulders. I flinch, pulling further into my robes. "I only talked to you because you looked kind of scrawny, like my other half-brother, Boaz. Bo's too young to compete though, and my older brothers are too important to risk since they're legal, unlike me. So my father sent my neck out to get wrung by better Diviners."
I look to my hands. "I'm an only child. My father didn't have a choice."
He looks to me sympathetically. "None of us do in a gods' war."
I raise an eyebrow at him. "That's blasphemy."
He rubs the branded, scorched flesh at his neck instinctively. "I'm used to being owned, Ode. I know slavery when I see it."
"But the gods bring honor."
As if on cue, we finally reach the arena. We spy a row of men, all well-muscled warriors, educated scholars, or military tacticians. They've all seen war, most are older than us, some in their late thirties. I see a variety of Diviner weapons coming in spears, blades, or shields, powers related to the earth mainly. Ways to summon floods from the skies and drown your enemies. Ways to open fissures in the earth to take the ground from under them. Ways to summon plants from barren earth to ensnare them.
Nobody else has the useless power of summoning spirits in a mirror.
"What does your mirror do, pup?" Ryu crosses his skinny arms, looking nervous.
"It summons the dead."
"Can they leave the mirror, pup?"
I shake my head. "My mother was the Diviner in my house. She died before she could teach me how to hone my powers."
Ryu stares out at our competition. "The gods only give honor to those that survive battle." He sighs. "The fire I summoned earlier, it was just an illusion. I do no more than magicians can in the street fairs. How will we survive, my friend?"
I scratch at my bound breasts, my body on fire with a mixture of adrenaline and nausea. "We don't."
***
Hello my Champions!
Meet Ryu, the sweetest little cinnamon roll in all of Rahasia! Don't you just love him?
Ciao,
Sophia Whittemore
YOU ARE READING
A Priestess for the Blind God (Legends of Rahasia Book 1)
Fantasy"The Blind God walks around me, and I feel my mind prodded again like it was in the cavern, a spider weaving a tangled web. "Would you do anything to be remembered, Ode, even play a villain, the one who rises against the Chosen One?" In answer, I dr...