Highland Raven

Chapter 24

Later, and I am not sure if it was day or night since the sun never rose, Nimue took me to explore the city, Thora trotting along beside us.

“Why only darkness?” I asked Nimue.

“When she drew this island into the abyss, the Dark Lady cast out the sun. She permitted only her colors to rule in this place.”

I looked around then said, “Black, gray, silver, purple, and red.”

“White as well. All colors of the Dark Goddess. Silver is the color of the spirit of this world and of the Crone. Black and gray are the colors of magic. Purple is the color of the soul. Red is the color of war. White has many meanings; it is the color of divination, visions, anything involving power and consciousness. This is why the moon is sacred to all aspects of the Goddess. Its light is all-powerful.”

It seemed to me that the Morrigu was like a petty child. She was capricious, killing and taking what she believed to be hers. When she’d grown weary of her people, she’d simply snapped her city into the otherworld, painted it with her colors, then went to play somewhere else. While I had no love for the White Christ, his priests—other than Father Edwin—sometimes counseled love and justice. Their Savior was said to have been a kind man. The Morrigu, on the other hand, seemed vicious.

But as much as I loathed her viciousness, I felt her within me. I knew she was right; I had belonged to her all along. I had been hers the night I took on my raven wings and killed Alister. I had always been hers, whether I knew it or not.

“Here we are,” Nimue said as we stood outside the smaller temple at the base of the main temple stairs.

I looked up at the face of the building. Stone skeletal figures had been carved all over the walls. They fought with swords and carried shields. Whole legions of the undead were depicted fighting the living. Similar images existed throughout the city. Stone skeletons seemed to be a common decorative fixture.

“The priests were much like the Druids of my time,” Nimue continued. “They were acolytes, and bards, and warriors. They had an understanding of music and the power of resonance. Sound, they discovered, was a fabulous killer,” Nimue told me as she pushed open the door. “But unlike my people, and yours, they also knew necromancy,” she added, glancing back at me.

A shiver went down my spine. Necromancy. Just beside the door was one of the stone skeletons. Carefully, I reached out to touch it. It had a stain of blood on its head.

Nimue slapped my hand away. “Careful. This place is not quite as dead as it seems.”

I stared into the empty eye sockets of the statue and got the eerie feeling that it was looking at me. I could feel its…disappointment. “Is it…what is it?”

“Sleeping,” Nimue said. “You’ve heard the stories, I am sure, of how the standing stones that dot our beloved isle were once giants dancing with ladies. The truth of that story is not far off. You are looking at a hint.”

I looked from Nimue to the skeleton and back to Nimue again. “Come on,” she said, leading me within. “I’ll explain later.”

We stepped over broken stones as we made our way inside. The left side of the building was completely burnt. Nimue led us down a hall on the right and into a large room. The front of the room near the widows had a raised stone platform. Stone benches, most of which had fallen over, faced the platform.

“This is where they used to perform music. See how the wall is open there?” she asked, pointing to the far right. “The townspeople, though not permitted to enter the temple, were allowed to come to the courtyard to hear the priests play and sing.”

Carefully, Nimue led me up some crumbling stone stairs to the second floor, where we found the priest’s chambers. Some of the bedrooms contained elaborately carved furniture that had begun to decay.

“You can’t reach the third floor anymore,” Nimue told me. “The stairwell was destroyed, but you can just spy the space from here,” she said, pointing to a hole in the ceiling.

I gazed upward to see an overturned trunk. Plaster and stone loosened from the third floor ceiling and dropped to the floor overhead. It stirred up a swirl of ash, making both me and Nimue cough.

“We’d better go. The building is not stable.” Nimue said, turning quickly.

As I turned to join her, I spotted something on the floor overhead. It was sitting just at the edge of the hole in the second floor ceiling.

“Wait,” I said. “There, do you see that?” I asked her. I took a few steps to the side to get a better look. There, at the very edge of the hole, was a small silver box. “A box.”

“Probably just an old stone, part of the wall or ceiling.”

“No, no. It’s silver. It glows. There, do you see it?” I asked, pointing.

She stood beside me and looked up. “It is a box.”

I spotted a bench toward the side of the room, just tall enough to help me reach the hole in the ceiling. The temple groaned in protest as I slid the bench across the floor. From below, I heard stones clatter to the ground.

“Easy,” Nimue cautioned, her eyes darting about nervously.

Nimue steadied the bench as I crawled up. I had to stand on my toes to reach the very corner of the box with the tips of my fingers. But working slowly, I was able to scoot it to the edge. It tumbled into my waiting arms. I crawled down and set the box on the bench. Nimue stood beside me as I opened the lid.

Inside was a pair of silver wrist torcs capped with raven’s heads and a matching raven amulet. The ravens held glimmering purple stones in their beaks. Their eyes had been crafted with the same sparkling purple gems. The amulet was adorned with three silver ravens twisting around a large purple stone. The stone glowed. I had never seen anything like it before. The jewels were tarnished but in no other way damaged.

“Beautiful,” Nimue whispered. “You must show these to Andraste.”

I stared at the jewels. They were finer than any piece of jewel-work I had ever seen before. The silver looked very heavy, and the stones, well, I didn’t know what they were, but they looked like amethyst. “It seems so strange to find something so old. So…lost.”

“Just like us,” Nimue said, then set her hand on my shoulder.

I looked up at her. “Isn’t there a way out of here…a way back? Did you ever try?”

Nimue stared off into the distance. “Once. But I was…brought back. And not without consequences.”

I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth. Anger seethed in me, and for a brief moment, I swore I heard my raven wings.

“Let’s go,” I said then, closing the box lid. I followed Nimue out of the temple.

As we headed back up the main stairs of the temple of the Dark Goddess, I remembered the skeleton statue that had stood outside the priests’ temple. I turned and looked back toward the temple. My body trembled when I realized that the statue’s head had turned; its dead eyes were watching me.