The calm faded from the prisoner’s face. She looked as though she had seen a ghost. Her hand dropped away from the stone bar and pressed into the too-close wall. But she said only, “Go on.”
“The Flame at Night sent her to rescue us from the wolf,” said Mouse. “Though she was unable to speak because of his evil curse, she was empowered by the Flame. And when she had killed him, her voice was freed, and she spread the word throughout the Land that we were delivered.”
“No,” the prisoner whispered. “Oh no.”
“She is the prophetess,” Mouse persisted. “She liberated us from slavery and prepared us to receive the goddess. She is the great servant of the Flame. And . . . and you are she, aren’t you?” She was down on her hands and knees now, her face close to the stone barricade. “Aren’t you?” she repeated.
“No,” said the prisoner. “No, it isn’t true.”
Mouse thought she would burst with frustration. “Don’t lie to me!” she cried. “I know you are! I don’t know how I know, but I know !”
The prisoner’s body tensed as though she wished to draw back, but there was nowhere for her to go. The close confines of the cell held her, and the most she could do was sit with her knees up to her chest, her head pressed into them; the stone grating above nearly touched her ear. But she still held the starflower gently in one hand, and it gleamed.
The prisoner said, “I saw to it that the Wolf Lord was slain.”
“I knew it.” Mouse breathed the words, overwhelmed by the sudden relief that flooded her. “The Flame sent you.”
“No!” The prisoner’s hands balled into fists. But there was deep sorrow etched on her face, and almost immediately she contradicted herself. “Yes. I came at the behest of the Flame at Night. I came because she wished vengeance upon her former lover. But it wasn’t vengeance I meted out on Amarok! I did not come to do the Dragonwitch’s dirty work.”
Mouse sat up, pulling her face away from the cold stone. A weight dropped in her stomach, and her mind whirled. “The goddess would not take a lover,” she said at last. “She is Flame. She is Fire. Fire cannot love.”
“You are right,” said the prisoner. “Fire cannot love.”
“Fire is too holy to love!” Mouse insisted.
“There you are mistaken.”
Mouse could not see the prisoner’s face. But she saw the white light of the starflower shifting, casting the shadows of the stone bars in several directions. Then, turning her gaze up to the grate once more, the prisoner looked at Mouse.
“Only holiness,” she said, “can truly love.”
Blasphemy. Mouse had never heard it spoken before. Not out loud. Sometimes she had suspected her old grandmother of harboring thoughts unworthy of those who served the Flame. But Granna had never dared speak those thoughts.
Yet there lay the prisoner—the prophetess, the Silent Lady—speaking words that earned her nothing less than flaming death. Mouse could not speak. She sat staring down into eyes that were too familiar.
“Mouse is not your name. Is it?” said the prisoner after a long silence.
Mouse shook her head.
“I didn’t think so,” said the prisoner. “Your name is bigger than that. Your name is full of hope. Your name is—”
“No one knows my name!” Mouse snapped, though her voice was still scarcely more than a whisper. “The names of the Flame’s servants are secret.”
“I am sorry for you,” said the prisoner. “The greatest tragedy is to never be known.”
Tears welled up in Mouse’s eyes. Unbidden, a picture of Granna flashed across her mind’s eye. And with it came Granna’s warning: “If you go down to the temple, child, no one will ever know your true name, and you yourself will forget it.”
Had she forgotten it already? Was she becoming nothing more than Mouse? Would she someday be like the Speaker, her whole being caught up in her temple role?
Mouse bowed her head. At last she said in a low tone, hoping the dark echoes of the passage would not catch and carry her words:
“They’re going to kill you, Silent Lady.”
“I know.”
“But you are the prophetess.”
“I am not whom you have believed me to be. Nor are the worlds what you have been told they are.”
Trembling so that she could scarcely get the words out, Mouse said, “Is there no one who can save you?”
Suddenly the prisoner’s hand darted out between the slats and grabbed hold of Mouse’s. “My life or death matters little now,” said the prisoner. “What matters is that my mission here is not without purpose. I came to relay Etanun’s message, and this I have done. It is up to him to see the rest of my Lord’s purpose accomplished. But Etanun must know! He must know that I have told Hri Sora where Halisa rests. And he must name his heir.”
“The heir,” Mouse repeated. “The heir who can carry the sword from that chamber and not die?”