I waited inside the temple with the identification artefact in my hands, feeling the cold weight of the stone and the barely perceptible tremor of its surface, as though even the artefact knew that this was no ordinary day. Outside, beyond the closed timber of the great doors, the city was already waiting for the ceremony with anxious anticipation.
Anita, the kingdom's second most populous city. I had seen capitals that knew how to worship without putting on a display, cities that did not need to adorn every corner to pretend at grandeur. But Anita, by contrast, had always seemed to me like a square far too lacking in grandeur.
And yet I was here, because Tolmas's statue had turned to gold. Why had the sign descended upon this city and not another? Why was Tolmas calling here? Perhaps even this mediocre place could become the centre of the world.
I tightened my grip on the identification artefact as I ran the layout of the rite through my memory, searching for a structure that might help me endure the contempt this city inspired in me.
When the great doors opened, the light of the square struck like a blow. It was no clean light; it was laden with dust and ritual smoke, far too public for a moment so sacred.
I went out first, holding the identification artefact aloft, and behind me came the seven supporting priests of Anita, each carrying a baby in their arms. Seven newborn children, the firstborn of first-time parents. The first of the family line, the purest. They slept on, wrapped in their blankets.
I watched them line up on the steps, motionless, tense, with that reverent care that had always seemed to me more fear than devotion.
For a moment I stood there, studying the square. A heptagon, crowded with people. At its centre stood the ancient altar, surrounded by roughly forty metres of offerings of all kinds: clothes, weapons, armour... all of them waiting to be splashed with the blood of the sacrifices.
I descended the steps slowly, allowing the square to receive me with the authority I deserved. Once I reached the foot of the stairway, I began to walk slowly towards the altar.
When I raised the identification artefact above the altar, I felt that proud, almost automatic certainty that the rite would answer. I fed it with my mana with my usual precision, feeling the pressure rise through my arm and pour into the artefact like a current trained to obey. I waited for the vertical beam, clean, correct, a ray that should rise into the sky and announce beyond doubt what we already knew.
Instead, the light fractured. For a moment I could not understand it. The beam did not rise. It twisted and shot horizontally, towards the north, as though the world itself had decided to correct a sentence I had not yet spoken. I remained still, my hand suspended over the stone, feeling the blood in my body turn cold with humiliation.
No. It was impossible. The identification artefact could not fail. The sign could not lie. And yet this seemed like an insolent mistake, impossible to ignore, like a crack opened at the very heart of creation.
I snatched my hand back and the artefact fell silent upon the altar, abandoned for a second. I heard murmurs behind me, the nervous rustle of the masters of ceremony, and a held breath in the crowd.
I tried to think clearly, but all I managed was for humiliation to mix with fear. If the identification artefact had gone astray, then something was interfering, and for the first time since I left the temple I felt that Anita was not small. I was still the high priest, but Anita had just shown me that all authority can look ridiculous in an instant. The shouts of the faithful echoed across the city. "The Last Envoys are in Anita!" I tried to stop them and silence them with the help of the masters of ceremony, but it did not work, and then I saw them.
Two black flashes, far too fast to be ordinary men, crossed the square with a speed that made the air itself seem to part before them. I did not recognise them. Two masked figures, faceless, cut against the stone and the light like a living warning. My first instinct was to step back. My second, to protect myself. My third thought was not even a thought, but a reflex: cover myself. Fear rose in my throat with such force that I nearly lost my balance. I looked up at them with the certainty that I was seeing enemies, intruders, blasphemers, something come to destroy me. And so my voice, when it came, was broken, gravelly, useless with terror. I wanted to order my protection, I wanted to order everyone not to move, I wanted to be the sort of man who believes he can name danger from the comfort of his own chamber.
But the artefact reacted.
The light began to tremble over the altar once more, first with violence, then with a clarity that was unbearable. The identification artefact, which only moments before had seemed to betray me, corrected itself suddenly with cruel precision. The beam, which had fled northward, split into two colours and soared into the sky with a force that emptied my chest. I was no longer thinking of a possible attack.
I was no longer thinking of Anita, or the capital, or my office. I could only stare, with a mixture of horror and absolute obedience, as the artefact confirmed what my mind had refused to accept a heartbeat earlier. The true envoys. The last two. The ones of prophecy. The ones who should not have appeared like this, all at once, in the middle of a city I had dismissed as mediocre. I felt my knees give way before I had even decided to kneel. Everything I had considered solid dissolved in an instant, and in its place remained only one certainty greater than my pride: something had just begun that was no longer subject to my will.