Gathering of the Chosen (10 page)

“
Dear Braim Kotogs,

You have been chosen to participate in the
Tournament of the Gods, which starts exactly one month from today.
Arrangements have been made to allow you to stay in World's End
until the start of the Tournament on the first of next month. We
will reveal more details about the Tournament to you in due
time.

Sincerely, Alira, Judge of the
Tournament of the Gods.
”

***

P
rincess Raya Mana stared at the
letter in her hand, the one with the unfamiliar handwriting upon
it. She read the single paragraph over and over again, at first
unable to believe what she was reading, but the more and more she
read the invitation to participate in the Tournament, the more she
believed it, until soon all of her doubt and disbelief was gone,
replaced instead by a sense of rightness and fulfillment.

Of
course
I was chosen to
participate in the Tournament,
Raya thought with a smile.
I'm the Princess of Carnag. I
deserve
a shot at becoming
the Goddess of Martir. I always knew that I was destined for
greatness. I just never knew just
how
great that
was.

Father stood next to her, patting her on
the back, saying, “Wonderful, Raya. I am so proud of you. I know
you will do better in that Tournament than anyone else. I know you
will win.”

“Thank you, Father,” said Raya, hugging
Father tightly for a moment before letting go and looking at the
letter again, which she clutched as tightly as if it was the most
valuable diamond in the world. “I cannot believe it. I didn't think
I'd ever get chosen to participate in such a prodigious event.”

“Why does that surprise you?” said Mother,
who looked even more excited than Raya at this possibility. “It
didn't shock me at all to learn that you will have a chance at
becoming a goddess. In fact, it makes perfect sense to me, seeing
as you are a very special girl. I will have to send a message back
to Carnag informing everyone of this amazing event. We should make
this day into an official Carnagian holiday that will be celebrated
for generations to come.”

Raya smiled again, but then frowned when
she read her letter again. “But it doesn't say whether you two are
going to get to stay and watch the Tournament or not.”

“I imagine the gods will send us home,”
said Father. “After all, neither of us were invited to enter the
Tournament and the gods do not exactly like me very much,
anyway.”

Raya looked at Father curiously. “They
don't? Why?”

“Let's just say that, when I was a youth,
I crossed the paths of the gods a few too many times and survived,”
said Father. He rubbed his disfigured face, a common habit of his
that Raya hadn't paid much attention to until now. “Indeed, I am
surprised they even invited me back to World's End at all,
considering how unpopular I am with most of the gods.”

“Even if we have to return to Carnag, rest
assured that we will pray every day to Grinf to aid you,” said
Mother. “And we will send you gray ghosts every day to keep you up
to date on recent happenings around Carnag and to find out how you
are doing, so it will be like we are still with you even when we
aren't.”

“You don't need to do that,” said Raya. “I
will contact you two every day myself. You can just worry about
making sure that the Carnagian people are supporting me at all
times.”

“Of course we will,” said Father. “In
fact, I doubt that the people will need much persuasion to support
you, considering how much the people love you already.”

“We need to celebrate tonight,” said
Mother. “We need to do something special to celebrate this big
event.”

Raya shrugged and looked out the nearby
window at the darkness of the night, which was broken up by the
lights from the city. “Oh, Mother, we don't need to throw any major
celebrations right away. You two need to rest after your very long
day. Father looks like he is just about to fall asleep
standing.”

“I suppose you are right, Raya,” said
Father with a yawn. “I am rather tired. But we will make sure to
celebrate this momentous occasion first thing in the morning.”

“Yes,” said Mother. She then rubbed
together her hands in a rather diabolical way. “But I need to
contact Jenur and tell her about your success. I doubt that
her
son was chosen to participate in the Tournament. I think
a little gloating is in order.”

Father frowned and yawned again. “Hana,
perhaps that can wait until morning as well. I doubt Jenur is even
awake right now, as it is rather late.”

Mother looked disappointed at having to
put off her gloating, but then she nodded and said, “All right. But
first thing in the morning, I will send her a gray ghost. Or maybe
I'll just make a special trip to the inn that she is staying at and
personally deliver the news to her myself.”

“Not everything in life is a competition,
you know,” said Father.

“Who said I was competing with Jenur?”
said Mother. “And anyway, if I
was
competing, I clearly won,
seeing as Raya was chosen to participate and Darek wasn't.”

Father sighed, but then said to Raya,
“This is good night, Raya. I wish nothing but the sweetest of
dreams for my little girl.”

“I wish the same to you, my daughter,”
said Mother.

Then Father and Mother returned to their
room, closing the door behind them as they did so. They left Raya
sitting alone on the sofa in the living room of the apartment that
the gods had given them. Raya did not hear anymore noise from their
room, which told her that they must have fallen asleep rather
quickly.

Raya herself was tired, but she was also
too excited at the prospect of entering the Tournament to even
think about going to sleep anytime soon. She just read the letter
over and over again, taking in the words as if she was breathing in
the freshest and cleanest air.

This is the happiest day of my whole
life,
Raya thought,
at least until I actually win the
Tournament, which will most definitely be the happiest day of my
life for sure.

That was when Raya's stomach growled. It
almost took her by surprise until she remembered that she had not
eaten in several hours. She had had a good dinner at that
restaurant earlier in the evening, but Raya's body burned through
food quickly, so she usually got hungry faster than her parents did
even if she had just recently eaten.

Unfortunately, to Raya's knowledge, the
apartment they stayed in had no food, and there was no room
service, either. That would have meant that she would have to wait
until morning to have breakfast, but the idea of having to wait
even that short a time was pure torture to her.

So Raya stood up, clutching her letter in
one hand, and returned to her room, which was located opposite her
parents' room. She slipped inside and closed the door carefully,
then listened to make sure that neither of her parents had gotten
up and left their room.

When Raya heard nothing, she relaxed and
walked over to the dresser on the left side of the room and pulled
open the top drawer. There she found a large piece of rainbow
fish—one of the dishes they had had at that restaurant earlier in
the evening—wrapped in a paper towel. She picked up the fish,
unwrapped it, and started eating, her hunger becoming more and more
satisfied with each bite.

The reason for Raya's secrecy was because
neither of her parents knew that Raya had taken this fish from the
restaurant. She hadn't exactly stolen it. At least, she didn't
think of it as theft. She had simply not finished her food and had
decided to take some of it with her without first asking the
restaurant's owner—a tall, rather handsome male katabans who was
excellent with cutting knives—if she could.

Raya knew that most people would see this
as theft, but honestly it was just one fish and it wasn't even the
biggest rainbow fish served that night, anyway. In fact, Raya saw
herself performing an important duty to the restaurant owner. By
taking what food she hadn't been able to finish, she saved the
owner the time he would have spent in throwing it out.

This was not the first time that Raya had
taken something that she technically was not supposed to take. When
she had been six, Raya had stolen a paper doll toy from the
daughter of one of the male servants who served the Carnagian Royal
Family. Of course, Raya had been sure to avoid being caught. She
managed to frame one of the other servant girls for her actions,
which had resulted in a rather memorable feud between the two
servant families that, to her knowledge, was still going on
today.

Raya justified this by telling herself
that the male servant's daughter—whose name she no longer
remembered, as that particular servant had been fired about a year
after the incident—already had plenty of paper dolls of her own and
didn't need any more. At the time, Raya herself had had about a
hundred such dolls, all of them infinitely better than the one she
took, but she didn't really want any of them as much as she had
wanted that one (which she had then lost in the Royal Garden about
a week later).

Then, when Raya was ten, she had taken the
pretty diamond necklace of a Shikan noble's teenage daughter. At
the time, Raya had been very jealous of the teenaged girl for her
beauty, especially the praise and attention the teenaged girl had
received from the boys. The diamond necklace had been a
particularly praised object that Raya believed to be the source of
the girl's beauty. Unfortunately, when Raya stole the necklace, the
teenaged girl was still popular with the boys and was married off
not long after to the son of a Carnagian nobleman who Raya had had
her eyes on at the time. The two were still married today, a
thought which made Raya feel sick to her stomach every time she
thought about it. She didn't even have the necklace anymore. She
had thrown it down the gutter of the streets outside Carnag Hall
after taking it, purely out of spite.

And when Raya was thirteen, she had taken
the painting of the daughter of a Carnagian nobleman that had been
praised by her art tutor for its originality and greatness. By
contrast, Raya's own painting had been rather bland and
unoriginal.

So Raya had taken the painting and smeared
it with paint, messing up the beautifully-done colors and shading
that had been the source of the original paint's popularity. It had
felt good at the time to see the other girl's hard work ruined and
even better to see that girl cry. Unfortunately, the girl had still
gone on to become a great painter respected throughout the entire
Northern Isles.

But despite her takings not always working
out the way Raya wanted them to, she had never been caught. In
fact, no one had even suspected her of stealing from anyone. She
had managed to deflect all suspicion from everyone by pretending to
be as disturbed by these takings as anyone. She sometimes felt a
little guilty for deceiving everyone, including her parents, into
thinking that she was innocent, but she always banished that
feeling by telling herself that she only took things from the
people who deserved it.

I'm sure that Grinf would approve,
Raya thought.
It's not an orthodox form of justice, but justice
comes in many shapes and sizes. There is no reason to believe that
any of what I did was unjust. And there is certainly no reason for
me to believe that taking this fish will get me in trouble,
either.

That was when Raya heard something behind
her. It sounded like someone's foot scuffing the carpet. The sound
made her freeze mid-bite, because she knew that there was no one
else in this room aside from herself.

Or there
shouldn't
be anyone
else here,
Raya thought.

To say that Raya felt dread was like
saying that the sky was blue. As Princess of Carnag, Raya was well
aware that there were many, many people who would like to kill her
or her parents for tons of reasons. Just the other day, the Justice
Enforcers foiled a plot by a lone assassin who had intended to blow
up Carnag Hall with her and her parents still inside it.

The only reason someone would sneak
into my room at this time of night without me knowing is to kill
me,
Raya thought.
He must think that I didn't hear him. Too
bad for him.

Raya whirled around and threw her
half-eaten fish across the room. But much to her shock, there was
no one else in here with her. Her fish flew over her bed and landed
on the floor on the other side, just outside of her view.

Then Raya noticed a green envelope on her
bed. It was sitting neatly on top of the blue covers, but Raya was
almost certain that the envelope had not been there even ten
seconds ago, when she returned to her room to get her snack. The
envelope was blank, which meant that it could have had anything in
it and she couldn't even tell who left it there.

Raya went over the rather extensive list
of assassination techniques that Teacher had taught her last year,
as part of her training as royalty. She could not think of any that
involved placing an unassuming, blank envelope on the bed of the
target and hoping they open it.

Of course, this is World's End, the
Throne of the Gods,
Raya thought.
The assassins here, if
there are any, probably know all sorts of deadly assassination
techniques that the assassins up north can only dream of.

Still, Raya doubted that this envelope was
supposed to kill her. If there was an assassin after her, then why
didn't he kill her while she was eating her fish and thinking about
her past? She was completely unarmed, after all, and not much of a
fighter. She had some combat and self-defense training, but Raya
knew she wasn't as good at fighting as she was at other things. Any
assassin worth his knives would be able to kill her if he tried
hard enough.