But she slowed to read the last section, titled “On the Establishment of the Watchers.” It was further divided into four sections that explained the overall responsibilities of the Watchers, the individual responsibilities of each order, and the methods of replenishing their number. But the part she was most interested in was the section on the rites of investiture.
She had been thinking about it ever since she’d had the vision of the firebird losing her scales in battle, and on the heels of that, the woman who had brought back the sacks of golden scales to be forged into something worth dying for, and the spill of human blood mixed into the mask mold. The rest of the visions fit the pattern, too, right up to the one of the man on top of a tower in the rain, mask in hand.
She wasn’t sure of the mechanics of it all, but she was convinced there was something more than theater in the wearing of the Sun Priest’s mask. She had always loved the mask, felt a strange connection to it, even though it had not been in her possession long. She had thought herself simply attached to a symbol of her station, but now she wondered. If the vision had been true, and the mask was not forged gold but instead was wrought from the very essence of the god, what did that mean? And if the teeth and sweat of a god were used in southern sorcery to attempt to resurrect the dead, what might be done with a god’s golden scales? And what did it mean to wear it? Might wearing the mask infuse the wearer with power? She wasn’t sure, but she hoped to find the answers in the book.
She read it through carefully, and while it confirmed her suspicions about the origin of the mask, it said nothing about it granting the wearer any powers. She turned to the pages describing the other priests’ masks, hoping to find something there, but there was even less written for those, only that the priests were meant to be anonymous to guard against any one individual rising in popularity. The priesthood was meant to be a selfless vocation and not one that allowed any single priest to develop leadership based on the strength of personality. It was something that had become less important in her time, but the signers of the Treaty had railed against individual charismatic leaders at length, no doubt a reaction to the spearmaiden who had started the war.
Tired, and disappointed that she had come so far and found so little, she read through the final page. She skimmed it so quickly and the ritual seemed so mundane that she almost missed it.
She had experienced the ritual herself, and yet she had not recognized it for what it was. The blood-marred scales that made the mask, the invocation of the sun god, the will of the raised dedicant, and the declaration of desire. It was all there, plainly written.
Anyone who knew what to look for would have seen it immediately. In fact, she had no doubt that those who established the Watchers three hundred years ago knew exactly what they were doing. But she had never thought to see it, because she had been told a thousand times that the Watchers did not practice magic. That they did not worship the old gods. That there was nothing mystical in their rites, only reason and order.
And they had been sorcerers all along.
* * *
She hurried from the ta dissa’s sacred room to a more familiar section of the library. On these shelves were the day-to-day references of the Sun Priest, the oft-consulted Manual, and other documents. She flipped through them, an unnamed urgency pushing her forward, but there was nothing about the Sun Priest’s powers. Nothing about magic. Skies, to even say “Sun Priest” and “magic” in the same sentence felt blasphemous enough to rot her tongue.
Exhilaration buoyed her on to the next document, and she flipped through the pages looking for any information that would help her understand the heat in her chest and the change in her eyes. Her eyes! With a sudden jolt, she remembered Kiutue’s eyes. They had been flecked with gold as well. Almost a deep amber by the time he reached his end. Why hadn’t she thought of it? How had she not put the puzzle pieces together? All the elements right in front of her, but she had been taught not to see them.
She slammed the last book closed. Nothing. There was one more place to look.
She ran up the stairs to her old rooms. She was at the door and pushing it open, caught up in the giddy joy of discovery, before it truly hit her. There was her old bed, and there her desk, and there her washbasin… and there the stand where the Sun Priest’s mask should have been. It was gone. Someone had taken it. It took her brain a moment to realize that Eche must have been wearing it when he was killed on Sun Rock. Had it been lost, or had her vision of the man in black holding it been the past and not the future after all, a vision of the Crow God Reborn claiming it for himself? She didn’t know, and she could not answer the question now. She had other mysteries to solve.