SALP Chapter 3

The language of divine revelation. The language angels spoke. The language of House Entridhal, apostles to those angels, who had carried the weight of ancient majesty in every syllable.

"...who will guide me to the high one..."

Her hair stood on end.

Even a prophet—who must possess more knowledge than anyone living—could comprehend less than half of it. And yet she understood it perfectly. The awe moving through her was not confusion.

It was recognition.

Could she have been hiding her ability all along?

"Stop! It's dangerous, Your Highness!"

Fiarelle reached toward the column of water rushing at the princess.

"Stop it, Your Highness!"

But Lanthe threw herself into the water column without hesitation.

In the instant their eyes met, Fiarelle saw clearly.

"Danger..."

Those eyes were stricken with fear, without question. Just as they had been that day in Roas. Deep terror rippled in Lanthe's eyes.

But now, within those eyes, the true feelings she had hidden all this time were revealed as well.

Cold contempt.

The sneer asking: did you think I truly followed you?

The mockery sent to a fool who'd been deceived—she could see it all.

Dangerous?

Ah, three months ago she'd had those same eyes.

Who was it that put us, who knew no danger, into danger?

Only now could Fiarelle read what Lanthe's eyes were saying.

But why are you mocking me? Me, your benefactor who will let you live as a noble woman.

"Ah..."

Fiarelle collapsed to her knees before the lake. She could do nothing but stare blankly at the lake water swirling violently through the air, being sucked somewhere as if vanishing.

When the lake finally grew calm, only three fallen Penmarkians remained.

In the clear water transparent to its deep bottom, no human shadow could be seen.

The princess had disappeared. Vanished without trace. As if she had become foam and dissolved into the lake.

"No..."

A cold wind scraped past the defeated prophet's cheek like a blade.

The Feast of Ailea. The night when the season of wind ended and the season of water began.

2. Lanthe Entridhal

It wasn't that she'd suddenly developed faith that some special miracle would happen for her.

Lanthe had grown up as a perfectly ordinary girl in the village of the innocent Raphlish. Or perhaps she'd been slightly more foolish and impure than the other Raphlish.

'You are a descendant of the Raphlang Kingdom that the angel protected. We Raphlish are the proud people of heaven.'

Was it true? Did the angel really protect Raphlang?

But Raphlang was destroyed.

'When you sing the song the angel taught us, your heart becomes peaceful. Singing is much easier than prayer.'

She couldn't empathize with other people's pure faith. Only she was like that. A child who mischievously teased innocent people and doubted everything.

She liked neither prayer nor song.

She never dreamed she was of royal blood. No one had told her.

She doubted even her parents, lost when she was young, had known about their house. Though the residents of Roas passed surnames to their children, they didn't consider the concept of houses particularly important.

Raphlang's angel? She knew well enough that it wasn't her.

That she had no special ability to cause great miracles.

That no matter how desperately she begged and prayed, miracles never happened.

She knew better than anyone.

"Angel of Eründel."

But hanging precariously at the edge of a cliff, there was nothing else she could try.

"Angel..."

Maybe. Just possibly. One chance in ten thousand. Even by pure accident.

'Could I feel even once what the people who raised me felt? Could I experience, before I die, the emotion of hope that the people I loved knew?'

"The daughter of the paradise you protect calls to you."

With vague heart, Lanthe called to the angel. Like flailing to catch and cling to thread as fine as spider silk glinting in sunlight.

So when her vision suddenly brightened and she felt the ground beneath her feet shake, she thought it was an illusion. Even as the ancient prayer the village chief had secretly taught her revived as clearly as if someone whispered it in her ear and flowed between her lips.

"...I call desperately upon you, borrowing the name of the master who rules you—lift me from the marsh of death that blocks my path and lead me to safe waters. Defeat my enemies with your sword of burning flame and guide me to eternal paradise, apostle of the highest one."

Before Lanthe could finish the short prayer, a tremendous column of water burst up like a monster with a roar like the earth collapsing.

"Your Highness...!"

The knights cursed and shouted, and Fiarelle let out a tearing scream.

"No, Your Highness!"

Lanthe ignored the voices passing indifferently through her ears and stared up at the water column with wide eyes.

Is this a response?

'A response to my prayer has come?'

But what is this. That's not an angel.

It's more like a monster...

Reality drifted away from her. She stared up at the water column with wide eyes and could not look at anything else.

'Will I die?'

Is this the angel's will?

'Come to think of it—the prayer I recited meant something about to eternal paradise. Don't tell me I prayed to be guided to heaven after death—'

"Come out quickly! It's dangerous!"

But she absolutely could not return to the demons behind her. She hated that above all else. If she returned to the palace, Lanthe would have to surrender herself to a monster more terrible than the water column writhing with gaping maw and become his wife.

"Your Highness!"

Will I die if I stay here? What's beyond this—heaven or hell?

'If I have any qualification as Raphlish.'

'Will I... meet Aunt Louise again?'

"Take me."

Lanthe's trembling lips moved.

Faces she missed wavered before her eyes. Her foster mother lost three months ago, and the face of a boy lost much longer before that.

They had made her small village into the largest and most beloved world—she missed them achingly.

"As the angel wills. Take me."

She stretched both hands over the lake.

'Vigo. Are you there too, with Aunt Louise?'

My dearest friend. If only I could meet you again and live those days running over our house's old orange roof and the hill, getting caught and scolded by Aunt Louise...

"It's dangerous, Your Highness!"

Ah, then that place would be heaven for me.

Lanthe threw herself into the arms the water column stretched toward her.

Before losing consciousness, her gaze was stolen for just a moment by Fiarelle's voice cutting through the wave.

...Dangerous? More than you demons who devour people?

Then the lake water pouring over her head swallowed her.

"No!"

At Fiarelle's tearing scream from far away, even as she lost consciousness, a faint smile formed.

'Ah, I did the right thing. I succeeded.'

Sleeping in the blue water, Lanthe dreamed. She dreamed of the water column that had swallowed her swimming carefully through the sky like a giant mother fish cradling an egg, traveling toward water deeper and wider than Newbella's lake.

"The angel sleeps in Lake Eründel."

Aunt Louise often told Lanthe old stories at night while knitting.

"Thanks to that, Lake Eründel gained mysterious power too. When the lake water evaporates in sunlight, it travels everywhere in the world, remembers everything it sees in detail, then returns to Eründel to tell the angel. So remember this. The angel can see everywhere snow and rain touch. It's as if the angel exists wherever water exists."

A village with no books, no minstrels. For children, the stories they heard from parents and village elders' mouths were everything about the world.

"Angel of Eründel, please pray for us."

"Protect our homeland."

"I'll be a good child."

Roas was a small village bordering a large forest and river. The descendants of Raphlang—fewer than five hundred Raphlish—lived gathered there. Because the surroundings were harsh and the land not fertile, even the native Penmarkians had abandoned it, and there the homeless foreigners had settled.

Even after hundreds of years had passed, they loved their lost old kingdom and guardian angel. They tried to preserve and protect what they knew of the old culture.

Even orphaned children were raised by couples who liked children or the entire village, never going hungry. Everyone was poor, but equally poor, so they didn't even know they were poor.

But in truth, even they didn't know much about Raphlang. They were so ignorant they didn't even know who had ruled them or why Raphlang had been destroyed. Not a single written record remained. Only the village chief could read.

An ignorant and innocent people. Long ago they had lived north of the Mediterranean, and after being destroyed, a few survivors had come down to foreign land and lived quietly hidden.

Foolish people who feared the aggressive, large-bodied Penmarkians and called them "demons of the outside world"...

"Aunt Louise! The village chief says when Eründel's angel sings, our kingdom will be restored!"

Lanthe's hometown was that small, small village. Unable to imagine either trampling or being trampled by anyone, knowing only peace...