Chapter 1

Joseph followed Sadie through the palace all the way to her room. He tried his best to cover his eyes in respect to her wedding gown, but he still watched her run down the halls like a dropped white lace cloud, rushing to find her sky.

Along the way, he hid behind pillars, plants, vases, and the throne-like chairs. Sadie never looked behind her. Her breath came to him, faint.

In her room she took the bottle filled with the sleeping oil that Everina had put in the vanity drawer. Joseph watched from a small hidden crack in the door as Sadie rubbed it all over her lips and the rest of her face. He tried hard not to look at her wedding gown, but even a glimpse of her beauty as a bride was painful to his heart. After loading herself with the sleeping oil, she left the room, clasping the bottle in her hands, and ran off down the hallway. “Oh I pray it doesn’t work on me right away, only him! I will force myself to remain awake!” she told herself. “Like I always use to do in the days of Ralph!”

Joseph’s heart was racing. What was Sadie up to? “Stay awake, stay strong,” she kept whispering.

She walked through surging wet smoke to find Lyre already bathing in one of the Roman Baths. Joseph hid within the steam.

“Stay awake…”

Before she let herself be seen by Lyre, she searched his tuxedo that was lying on a bench. She thought the map must be in a pocket. Lyre came up behind her, naked. His wet tongue slivered inside her ear. His body that always looked so chiseled, so unblemished, so cleansed, was full of sores. Along his skin were patches of black burns and holes, as if he had been shot by bullets, but the holes were scars from something else, something secret.

Joseph cringed through the steam cloud. A sting in his heart burned a hole within it.

Sadie faced Lyre and shut her eyes.

“I laid my wishes down to Orphanos.”

“Tell me them now.”

“I wish now for treasures,” she whispered through the sound of the steam hissing. “The kind of treasures that can never go away.” She kept her hands behind her, on his tuxedo, still searching the pockets, her hands slipping into drowsiness along with her eyes, her mind. “Treasures of darkness.”

Lyre took her face in his hands. Joseph could only watch with half an eye.

With her eyes closed now they fell into a dream. She saw within her the fresco on her ceiling moving in bleeding watercolors and she couldn’t see one movement separate from any others. “Where is he now?” She whispered to the fresco. “Where?” With a sudden jolt she forced open her eyes and stared at Lyre dead on. In his eyes she saw a hammer. Behind the hammer were two iron nails, and behind the iron nails was a chisel. Under the chisel was a small blue stone.

He ran his hand through her scalp and pulled it toward him hard. She kept looking at the blue stone and felt a bitter wind and the sound of bitter echoed through her, as if her skin was made of hollow stone. The bitter wind kept her somewhat awake, in the bitterness there could be no sleep.

“It is madness,” she whispered. “They’re trying to put his face on my stone.” Then she forcefully kissed Lyre on the mouth and wouldn’t take her lips away. “The King’s face on the serpent.” Lyre didn’t hear her last few words. He began to grow sleepy. With her first kiss he began to nod out. He sat down on the bench in a sudden fog, trying to compose himself.

“My sensual oils, dear Lyre.”

The sleeping oil from Everina had taken its hold on him. It seeped into his lips, sending a sweet numbness through his nostrils, into the bones of his face, and surging through his eyelids, making them too heavy for him to keep them open. The oil oozed everywhere within, finding his holes, sealing them with itself, its herbs, its aromas, its numbing drowsiness. All the wounds caused by lies he told, all the wounds caused by wandering without a home, all the wounds of needing love and never getting it, never asking for it, rejecting… His skull felt like it was sinking into his brain, his brain letting go of his skull, sinking into his eyes, closing like two heavy doors.

“The doors never opened for me,” he whispered.

“You’ll hear the hammer and the chisel even while you sleep,” Sadie said holding onto her breath.

“You will follow me into the long sleep,” was the last thing Lyre could muster. The numb fatigue raced through him, traveling into his arms, his legs, his groin. He tried to stand, to hold himself up, even while he was falling asleep.

“When my own strength that keeps me awake runs out, I just might.” Sadie kissed him on the lips again, and he walked away, tripping over his feet and she kissed him again, harder this time, until Joseph came through the steamy clouds…

“Sadie.” He pulled her off Lyre’s lips, and Lyre dropped to the ground.

“What are you doing here, Joseph?”

“You look beautiful, Sadie.” He wiped some of the steam from his eyes. “I tried hard not to see you.”

“How did you know I was in here?” The steam from the baths was curling her hair and pieces were frazzling around the diamond tiara, tilted on the side from all the groping with Lyre. She was drenched, and her make-up was running down her face as her eyes flickered. She covered her face in her hands, panting to stay up.

“Sadie, the palace is filling up with the guests invited to the wedding…”

“Before that happens, Joseph, I must dispose of this man.”

Sadie kicked Lyre’s body toward a bath.

“Who is this man you must dispose of?”

“Joseph, just pretend like you didn’t see anything. Think of it as one of my personal adventures.”

“But, Sadie…”

“This man you see here trespassed inside the palace, Joseph. The King had him leave Revelathia long ago, after he gave me my piano lessons. He seduced me. He played like you’ve never heard anyone play before. Or might ever hear again. And he taught me many things about talent. My talent. Talent I never knew I had until he showed me. After he left Revelathia he began to wander, he wandered so long so much and no one would let him in anywhere. No one wanted what was rejected; no one wanted what wandered so. I discovered him and his piano again, outside Eldgrimer Castle. And there he discovered me. Don’t just stand there, Joseph, help me dispose of him before I fall apart!”

Joseph just stood there.

“I saw you looking into his eyes, Sadie. What were you looking for? What did you see?”

Sadie got down on her hands and knees and pushed Lyre over with all her might, pinning her own eyes open, struggling with the drowsiness, the wet gown so heavy, all so heavy.

“Never mind Joseph, I must drown this man before he wakes up, so he’ll never find me again!”

“What did you find in his eyes, Sadie?”

“Nothing,” she said looking up at Joseph, widening her eyes as far as her eyes could take it.

“No one looks that way at someone without seeing something.”

“All I saw was a hammer, two iron nails, and a chisel. That was all. Come on help me.”

“Were the hammer, the nails and the chisel somewhere?”

“What do you mean were they somewhere?”

“A place perhaps.”

“They were no place at all.”

Joseph knelt beside her as she pushed Lyre’s body.

“Just like this man never went away, that castle will not go away until…”

“Until what, Joseph?”

“Until…” He held his heart. “You face it.” He held his heart harder. “And conquer it.”

She stood up and kicked Lyre’s body.

“Who are you?” she shouted down to Lyre. “Where do you truly come from? What are your roots, your fucking roots?”

“It’s in his mouth now.”

“What is?”

“The thing you saw in his eyes. The stone that’s being chiseled. It’s in the serpent’s mouth now.”

“How do you know, Joseph?”

“The same way I knew our tree had an inside.”

She kicked the body to the edge of the bath.

“You’re always filled with floating answers, Joseph.”

He sat down on the bench next to Lyre’s tuxedo.

“Today I am as empty as any man can stand.”

She bent down over the bath and dunked her face in, washing it.

“I have to face the castle, you said. And conquer it. But haven’t I already?”

“You still want to be in the arms you couldn’t kill.”

She scrubbed her face hard with the bath water.

“Sadie. You must conquer it before you marry. Your marriage will take you into eternity and from there there’s no going back.”

“I know, Joseph, I know.”

“The bride must not be divided. The bride must be done.”

“I know, Joseph, I know.”

Joseph kept his head down toward the Roman tiles. Sadie stood up, and with her sparkling blue shoes, pushed Lyre’s body into the bath. As it made a grand splash, Joseph searched through Lyre’s tuxedo. With one hand and his eyes still down, he pulled the map out, opened it enough to see it from the corner of his eye.

“This man tried to steal the sword you gave me, Joseph. He was determined to cut me up. Take off my fingernails, cut off my breasts and kill me is what he promised. I’m finishing him off now for good. Look at my little fingers!” As Lyre went deeper into the water, his body made no sound, nor did the waters.

Joseph pulled the map closer to him.

“The worst evil of all is not being able to marry the person you love,” he said, putting the map into his pockets.

Sadie knelt over the side of the baths, reached to Lyre and pushed down on his head.

“He’s asleep forever.”

“In the King’s waters,” Joseph said.

He stood up and waited to hear from his heart what to do. Sadie went to another bath and rinsed her hands.

“Why do we feel most alive when death is closest,” she said into the bath water, loud enough for Joseph to hear.

“When we’re ready for eternity we will feel more than alive,” Joseph said. A tear strut out of his heart the kind of tear that cannot separate sorrow from joy, a tear formed equal with both.

Chapter 2

Sadie went over to the bench and searched through Lyre’s things for the map.

“Where is it?” She opened up his pockets and turned his tuxedo inside out and shook it. “Where is it, damnit?”

“Stop playing with the serpent, Sadie.”

“Where is it?”

“Get off his tongue, Sadie.”

“Where the fuck could it have gone?”

“The serpent is real.”

“He couldn’t have had it on him, he was naked.”

“If I could willfully steer myself in a certain direction, where would I go? What would I be?”

“I must find something…”

She searched everywhere in a frenzy. Even through the jars of oils.

“I could steer myself. But I’ve chosen to steer myself unto the King. I’ve waited for love when nothing could be more painful than waiting. I’ve let things take a natural motion from the King. I know even that hole we made in the tree, was from him. The way our hands pressed together against it…and we believed…and it parted for us.”

“No,” Sadie said, walking through the baths, in a hurried delirium, searching for the map. “Nothing was known before it was seen, nothing was seen before it was known. I used to believe, but the painting is blurred.”

Joseph walked through the steam in the opposite way as Sadie.

“Was it blurred that night I carried you through the forest?”

“DON’T LEAVE YET, JOSEPH!”

Joseph turned through a cloud.

A dark shadow rose up from the bath and came behind Sadie. Lyre was rising, his shadow growing much larger than he was. Joseph watched him come. He knew she had to face what was in his eyes.

“If I kill him for you,” Joseph whispered through the steam, “you won’t receive the strength you will have by doing it yourself.”

He looked into Sadie’s eyes, immersing into shadow.

“There is another sword,” he told her. “It is the Sword of Revelathia. It is not a sword to bring you to Revelathia, but a sword to bring Revelathia to other kingdoms. It is a sword given by the King himself. But to get this sword you must lay the Sword of Spirit, at King Salvinthian’s feet.”

“But the Sword of Spirit was taken from me!”

“The archangel Gabriel, he picked it up, he carried it…”

Joseph opened the doors to the baths as the shadow grew behind Sadie, its darkness penetrating her veins, pulsing through her blood once again. It was a shadow larger than any man, a shadow…

“Where did he take it to, Joseph? And where is he?”

She followed him as he walked out of the room of baths, but she stopped when she saw the servants, coming down the left side of the hallway. She poked her head out, as Joseph walked to the right, his hair, his body, saturated in water, leaving a trail of water behind him that became like a river, turning the palace ground like crystal. The water reached the feet of the servants.

“Her disappearance will destroy the King’s heart,” Gladessa said.

“Where could she be?” they asked one another.

“Oh Lord, we must find her,” Oriana said.

Sadie couldn’t let the servants see her and the shadow had his one hand ready to strangle.

“Joseph,” she whispered as she watched as him walk away, his body taken over by a great light that came from the stained glass window at the end of the hallway. The servants saw only his river.

“Who said that?” Fintan asked.

“Did you hear something?” Cassidy asked.

“I heard a whisper,” Valentina said, with a bashful twitch of her eyelashes.

“I’m sure I heard a voice say, Joseph,” Fintan said.

They all tried to move out of the way from the water coming toward them. But the water was everywhere.

“The baths must be leaking through the doors!” Welig said.

“Yes they are leaking!” Abimbola said.

“Should someone inform the King?” Oriana asked.

“The King is busy preparing,” Gladessa said.

“It’s pouring out like a river!” Phelix said.

“But where is the bride,” Manjewel shouted, as he came toward the doors to the baths. Sadie slammed the doors to the baths and ran back through the steam, and the oils, as the shadow chased her.

“Gabriel!” Sadie cried out.

“I told you I heard something,” Fintan said as the servants entered the bath chambers.

“Who’s in here?” Manjewel asked.

The servants searched through the steam, sensing the darkness of the shadow but not knowing what it was.

“Someone turn the lights on,” Manjewel said.

“I’ve never seen lights in here, Manny,” Gladessa said.

“You’ve never seen these baths at all,” Adelaide said.

“I wish I could take one,” Valentina said. “They smell beauteous.”

“Someone find the lights!” Manjewel shouted. “Who’s in here? No one should be in here. The whole Palace is gathering in the Wedding Hall!”

“Perhaps it’s the bride,” Valentina spoke into herself.

Sadie ran through the rooms of myrrh and frankincense to the end of the baths where the golden pillars touched the sky, and the landscape of Revelathia lay like a dimming dream beneath her. The evening was thick with violet smoke illuminated by violet stars that came from a far off galaxy for the wedding, and new stars birthing. Behind her, the shadow was growing darker. His outstretched hand grasping the air she once easily breathed.

In the corner of the edge of the open rooftop of baths, were three pillars, two on the very edge and one behind it. The pillars were covered with wildflowers on lush green vines. Sadie ran to hide behind them, but what she didn’t see was a stone, out of place, on the ground between the first two pillars. As she reached for the third pillar, she tripped over the stone and bashed her head into the pillar. The shadow grabbed hold of her ankle. She lost consciousness, and she might have either fallen or been pushed over the edge if there hadn’t been a staircase, hidden, held and brought down from the sky with the talons of an enormous eagle. The staircase was made of pearls and it was very narrow. Before she fell over the edge and before the shadow consumed her, she took hold of the first step, and the shadow and the falling had to let go, they couldn’t go any farther.

She walked the pearly steps and touched the talons of the eagle on the way up. Its skin was soft, and its nails, the hardest thing she ever felt.

The staircase led to the middle of a river. The course of this river had been doubtful in places. As it passed by foothills, it became depressed, as it passed by forests, it became rapid, and often, very often, its flow had been hindered by men, horses, chariots, bows and quivers that had been thrown into it. These things dyed its waters with their blood.

And now, where she stood, the river divided. She heard a voice come between its waters, come between its two banks.

The voice had the sound of a man.

To hear it fully she had to walk through the river’s division.

It was dry and she became thirsty. It was a thirst she remembered well and her mouth spit it away. The ground was dust and the scales of many dead fish gave off silver tints in certain spots. She heard the voice say, “Gabriel, make this woman understand.” And the voice that had the sound of a man went away, and there she found Gabriel. He was sitting by himself between the banks of the river. His back was toward her. He was covered in a robe of white glory, but it was stained with the blood of the stars and the moon. He was bowed under it and she couldn’t see his face.

“Are you man or angel?” she asked him.

“Are you child or woman?”

“I might be neither,” she told him. “I’m sure you have something that is mine.”

“And you have something that is mine.”

“What do I have that is yours?”

As he turned, to come near to where she stood, she was frightened so she fell on her face.

“You are twenty miles above the palace,” Gabriel said.

“I’m not sure how I got here.”

“You must listen,” he said.

She listened as her face and body was planted in the dust. As Gabriel was speaking with her, she fell stunned and in deep unconsciousness, until he touched her on the shoulder and she turned over.

When she turned over, the light was full of blood and she could not see him. He took dust into his hand, spit on it and put it over her eyes.

He explained to her many things she had seen, the visions of the mornings and the evenings, and what they meant. Some of them had to do with a distant future and all of them had to do with what her soul was enduring. She was in a haze made by a moon that so much wanted to bleed. The moon dreamed of bleeding in such a way all of its blood would be drained, but today it couldn’t fully bleed. And the stone she was once given by Joseph, the one she planted on the snow mountain, dreamed the moon would bleed upon it.

At the end of his telling of the visions of the mornings and the evenings, Gabriel took the Sword of Spirit from the ground beside her. With her eyes still covered, he held the sword up and it cut through the light. A light, similar to the light of the moon, came shining through the division upon her. She felt its warmth on her skin and under her skin, but she could not see it.

Then Gabriel’s voice became more powerful.

“Behold, Sadie Sugarspear. Neither child nor woman has come upon you. Neither darkness nor light. Neither side of the waters touches you. Neither land of earth nor heaven feels you. Right now you are in a valley of decision. Put your hands on the dust.”

She turned her hands to face the ground.

“Now turn your hands upwards.”

She did as he told her.

“From above to give to below. The treasures of darkness will be given to you in the end of the beginning, but you must not take them on your own.” He seemed to breathe but his breath was a different breath and not breath at all. “And in the day that they are given, the Branch of the King shall be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land shall be excellent and lovely to those who have seen it wilted and dry.”

“Branch of the King…” she mumbled, feeling faint from his words.

“Your sword has traveled through an endless night. I now return it to you.”

With that he cut through the light, and the light bled as he nailed the sword through Sadie’s heart.

“You have been divided. No more. There is a victory that will come, and you will inscribe it in a book that it may be a witness for the time to come. That book will cut through the valley of decision as this sword has cut through you. In that time, the dust in your eyes shall vanish and the blood in the river will vanish and the sky will cover the earth and the earth will submit to it.”

“I will inscribe,” she wailed in ecstatic pain, “a fountain to water this valley.”

She let the sword seep into her heart. She let its warm pain melt through her. She sweat fever from her depths. Her body not able to take the pain, so she flew away from it, around the valley she was in, and another twenty miles above it. She hovered over herself, and saw the blood from her heart turning her white wedding gown scarlet. She had sweat enough to wash the dust from her eyes. With the dust gone, she returned to her body. Gabriel was gone.

Sadie pulled the sword out of her heart. She sat up. Then she fainted again and became very sick. She lied sick in the spot where she had been spoken to, coughing deeply and choking on all the dust that was around, sweating and full of fevers that seemed they would never leave her. She broke out in rashes that itched to the bone. She kept the sword by her side and wondered why it wasn’t healing her soon enough. She was too weak to walk anywhere. Too weak to find words she knew were in the sword. She called for Gabriel but she was alone.

Through this sickness, and stroking the sword, she received some kind of understanding. The eyes of Revelathia that had been given to her by Matone, in the invisible crown of winged eyes upon her head that dropped into her belly and soared to her head again, rose into the visible for one moment, which felt eternal. Their wings slapped fast as the speed of light, and suddenly became invisible once again. Her sickness had drawn them forth. When her body was at its weakest, her spirit was most strong. Some very deep understanding about her own self came upon her. She sat up slowly and breathed.

She realized why she was to betray the King and her arranged marriage with his son. She wanted to go back to the palace now and be obedient to the King’s decrees, but she was, for this season of her life, destined not to. It was something secret, no one knew, not even the King. It made no sense to her mind now, but all the sense to her spirit, that by betraying the King and turning her back on this marriage at this moment in time, and following her own desires for Alasdair, her own desires for her past would somehow cause her to never want to go away from the King again. Going away from the palace would strengthen her love for the palace, her gratitude for the palace, for her blessed life. That she would be forever committed to the King and his son, but she had to conquer her own desires, she had to face the castle that first took her in. She had to kill old wishes by fulfilling them, by living in their absolute emptiness, if they didn’t kill her first. Through all that, she would, if she survived, come to a passion that would not be for man, but a greater passion for the Kingdom.

She used the sword to pull herself up. She leaned upon it like a cane as she walked through the dust for miles. Most of the time, she was thinking that she had to get to King Salvinthian to lay the sword at his feet, so she could exchange it for the Sword of Revelathia like Joseph told her. But then she realized a person only lays a sword at the King’s feet when a battle is over. And the person’s sword is only changed when they have received the victory.

Chapter 3

There was silence as Sadie walked alone with the sword through the dryness between the very long rivers. Then she heard the sound of a violin.

“Matone,” she said to all sides of her. She touched her head, she couldn’t feel the eyes she had been given and she thought they for sure had flown away. She held one hand on her stomach and the other on the sword. And soon she saw the bow of the violin protruding out of the bank of the right side of the river. The bow was swaying up and down, to the right and to the left, like a tree branch in a storm. She walked toward it and watched. Soon the bow of the violin stretched open, and the right bank of the river divided, and through it became a path of small white stones. She walked through it, the music from the violin still playing. The stones were ice cold under her feet, but the sword and the music gave her warmth. At the end of the path was the handle of the bow, and there was Matone, his violin under his chin.

Weeds and wheat filled Matone's dark hair, which had grown to his ankles. The wheat and topaz and amber multiplied and the ink inside the amber thickened. Matone had more garnet beads around his head and hanging from his neck to his feet. His eyes had expanded and were now enormous circles full of midnight blue onyx and opals that had changed from white to multicolored. His nose was decorated with more gold stones and its cheeks were still red as red sunflowers. The pomegranates on his neck were now the size of watermelons and the gold chains and rings were now heavy as bricks. The lantern that hung directly over his heart shone with fire and wind, and the rest of his multicolored coat was made of a thousand layers of gemstones taken from caverns high above Revelathia.

Sadie stood in the sound of his music. Any sickness that might have been remaining in her body left. The sickness traveled far into very dry places.

“Beaushao, Sadie,” Matone said.

“Beaushao,” Sadie said, bowing her head, still leaning on the sword. “Are those eyes still on my head?”

Matone smiled.

“When I put those eyes of Revelathia upon your head, there they remain for always, like I told you, whether you see them or not. No gift from me can ever be revoked.”

“But what use are they if I don’t see them?”

“They see you.”

“What I have seen, Matone, cannot come from those eyes.”

“Or it can,” Matone said, looking at the crown of eyes Sadie could not see. “Without those eyes, how could you be seeing me?”

“But I saw you before you gave me the eyes.”

“And I see this pomegranate before I break it open, to eat of it.”

Matone took a pomegranate off its neck, split it open and fed it to Sadie.

“Matone, this pomegranate makes me think of love.”

“That is what it is supposed to do.”

“I’m missing my wedding. My own eyes dream of a place far, far away, a place I must return to face, something. And in that place, is a person I truly do love.”

“Your sword,” Matone said, his eyes upon it. “Like the bow of my violin. The way the spirit moves me, I never let go of it. Perhaps, also like the way you are with your pen.”

“Matone. I have my sword, I have my pen, but now, nothing feels as important as being with the person I love.”

“But you have not yet the Sword of Revelathia. You have not yet laid this sword you lean upon at the King’s feet.”

“But the Sword of Revelathia, where is it to be found?”

Matone pushed his hair back from his face. “I tell you again, my sword is this bow.” He spread his arms open wide for Sadie to enter. “The Sword of Revelathia, its form is not yet formed, but being formed. Would you like to see something about it now?”

Sadie felt safe in Matone’s arms, wrapped in the fullness of his color and power and beauty as he took her down a long white stone path that led to a secret place at the foot of a steep and fiery mountain. They walked through a cold hallway made of blue rocks where through the rocks she heard the sounds of digging and she heard the moans of pain and the cries of love. At the end of the blue hallway, a ram’s horn began to blow.

Matone removed Sadie’s body from his body. She was so dizzy from the walk with him that she leaned again on her sword. “The Cave of the Swordsmiths,” Matone said.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3