Saphira's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Saphira woke each morning to broken pictures. Once her visions ran clean, like water over glass. Now they came in shards. A burning ship. A child's hand. A door that would not open. She could not tell which shards were true and which someone had planted after the mirrors behind her eyes cracked. Someone had tampered with her sight. To find them, she first had to know which fragments were the lie. She had no record of what she once saw. So she went to the one person who did. The old woman kept a stone stall at the edge of the sacred marketplace. Hanging charms clicked above her head. A pot of pale-flowered vine glowed on its hook, soft as spilled moonlight. Dextric sat beneath it, blind eyes white as bone, her carved staff burning at the tip. She had recorded every prophecy Saphira spoke since childhood. She was the only keeper of the old words. "You smell like fear," Dextric said, not turning. "You never used to." "I need what I said before," Saphira answered. "Every vision. From back when they were whole." Dextric's hand found a bundle of knotted cords beneath the stall. Each knot held a prophecy in the old counting. She dragged her fingers along them and began to speak Saphira's own past words aloud. Saphira closed her cracked-mirror eyes. She let the new shards rise while the old woman recited. She matched them, one by one. The burning ship was true. She had spoken it years ago. The child's hand was true. The door that would not open matched nothing. Dextric's fingers stopped at the empty cord. No knot. No record. "That one I never gave you," Dextric said. "It is not mine. It is not yours." Saphira's breath caught. She pushed harder into the false shard. Behind the door she saw a face she did not know, watching her, waiting for her to look away. The planted vision was not random. It was a message left inside her own sight. "Someone put it there for me to find," Saphira said. Dextric's white eyes turned toward her at last. "Then they wanted you looking. A trap wears the shape of an answer, child." Saphira opened her eyes. She now knew the lie from the truth. Three false shards, all leading to the same closed door. Someone had not only broken her sight. They had built a path inside it and were waiting at the end. She stood. The charms swung as she turned to go. "Where?" Dextric asked. "To open the door," Saphira said. "Before whoever is behind it opens me."