Eyearke Stone
| Type | Stone |
|---|---|
| Owner | Beatrice Tidal |
| Origin | Fell from the sky as a gift to Aezaros and Nelazgus |
| Properties | Creation and manipulation of life, creation of the four elements |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
The Eyearke Stone is a purple stone worn on a gold chain, and the object the goddess Aezaros used to make Eslura's first inhabitants. Most Eslurians believe it a myth. Tabitha Glowdish says its power was never meant for anyone but the Sacred Head, the true descendant of Aezaros.[1]
Appearance
The stone is small enough to close a fist around and to tuck out of sight beneath a shirt collar, and it hangs from a gold chain.[2][3] Reagan Hideaway, who wore it from infancy without knowing what it was, took it for a cheap amethyst.[1] In the light of an oil lantern it shimmers and throws purple rays across a room, which is why Tab and Long Paws both told her to put it away the moment it came out.[4] Worn against the skin it is unusually warm, and it thumps in time with the heartbeat of whoever is carrying it.[5] After Bea's vision at the Sacred City a small gold crack splintered across it, and it has not closed.[6]
Origin
A mural carved into the stone wall beside the port gate at Veskadoth shows two figures with their hands outstretched to the sky and a purple stone suspended in the light between them. The stone fell from the sky as a gift to the two gods, who named it the Eyearke Stone. It could create and manipulate life and make the four elements of the world: land, water, fire and air. Aezaros, being the taller, reached it first as it dropped, and used it to create a settlement of five people as a test of what it could do. Those five were Eslura's first inhabitants and its first Sacred Rulers and Head. Nelazgus, jealous, stole the stone while Aezaros slept and made a settlement of his own under one all-powerful king: the Nelazgians.[7]
The version told in Ovallia runs a little differently, holding that Aezaros retrieved the stone from the heavens and then handed the power of the elements out to the Rulers, so that Bellbour Polindrad received water and raised his island with it.[1] Millennium Loftwind reads a telling of the same fall to the children of Galecrest out of a moss-coloured tome, in which the stone is a tool for creation and for destruction both.[8]
History
Elmryn, Sacred Ruler and Reagan's father, knew Obellius Kalaar would hunt the stone until he died. Rather than hide it in Eslura he put it where Obellius could never reach it, which meant giving it to his infant daughter on Earth. He left a letter for her with Tab explaining as much, though he was killed before it could be delivered.[9] Reagan grew up wearing it and cared only that her father had given it to her.[1]
Tab recognised the stone on Reagan's neck on the road back from Treenode, took her captive and appointed herself the stone's guard, meaning to hand both to the Council at the High Moon Festival.[1] A crocodile Nelazgian pinned Reagan to the floor of a room at The Avonbourn and hooked the chain out of her shirt with a claw before she killed it with a dagger; she found the stone afterwards stuck to the drying blood on her shirt.[3] The tavern's keeper, Reslyn Keiser, recognised it on sight.[3]
Reagan lifted the necklace over her head and gave it to Bea outside the ruined castle at the Sacred City, telling her it belonged to her.[5] Nindra, who had read about the stone in the forbidden section of the academy's library, told Bea that the legends called it the only true connection to Eslura and her powers, and had her hold it, breathe, and think of a happy place. What came instead was a vision of herself standing over her kneeling friends with the stone held out above them, and Obellius at her shoulder congratulating her. Bea threw the stone away inside the vision, woke drenched in sweat, and found the gold crack across it.[6] She has kept it since, calling it dangerous and vowing never to become the version of herself it showed her.[10]
Reagan reached for her bare neck out of habit at the gates of Elmryn's Castle and found nothing there.[11] Eslura at large still counts the stone lost. Reading a Nelazgian tunnel map at Veskadoth, Lumikki Otsby could not see why the enemy would want the Sacred City at all, since the Eyearke Stone had been missing for moons and nothing was left there.[12]
Behind the scenes
The pronunciation guide at the back of both novels gives the name as Eye-are-key.[13]