Sacred Head
| Type | Sacred title |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | The Sacred City |
| Notable members | Beatrice Tidal |
| Sigil | The Five-fold Symbol |
| Status | Held by Beatrice Tidal |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
The Sacred Head is the highest of the Sacred titles of Eslura: the guardian of the Sacred Rulers and of the Sacred Books they hold, charged with keeping the elemental balance of the world.[1] One Head holds the title at a time, and the land itself chooses the next.
Choosing
A Sacred Head is not appointed, inherited or elected. Eslura chooses, and the Books choose with it. When Alistair Archibald was challenged over Beatrice Tidal's claim, he answered that the Books had chosen her, and asked whether anyone present meant to speak against their decision.[2]
A flash of gold erupts in the sky at a choosing. Alistair saw one on the day Bea arrived in Eslura, and recognised it as the same flash that had preceded Amelia Lunala's choosing fourteen years before.[1] Amelia had foretold before her passing that a hundred years would go by before a new Sacred Head was chosen, and that Obellius would rise again in that time with the power of the Book of Fire; the first half of the prophecy did not hold.[1]
The mark
The Head bears the Sacred Symbol on the right wrist, five gold circles woven together and set into the skin. In Eslura the mark identifies its bearer on sight.[2] It also reports on her: the symbol runs on a spectrum with gold as full and black as empty, measuring the Head's own energy and her connection to the Books. A Shadow Reaper's claw dragged Bea's mark down to brown, and touching the Heart of the Book of Land carried it back toward gold.[3][4]
Authority
The Sacred Head commands the Sacred Guard stationed in Blighburrow, Galecrest, Ovallia and Zybersia. The units on Morgaedion are the exception: they answer to the Captain of the Guard, and are outside the Head's hands.[3] The Head also names the Primarch of the Academy, a duty the students took on themselves by vote during the years the seat stood empty.[5]
Seat
The Head's seat is The Sacred City, the capital of Eslura, and by tradition each new Head trains there as every predecessor did.[6] A long line of Sacred Heads lived in one room of the city's castle, Amelia Lunala last among them; a stained-glass window bearing the Sacred Symbol still hangs half-shattered in its wall, and The Sacred Cloak was found in the wardrobe there.[7] The city's council room was destroyed and has not been rebuilt.[1]
Powers
A Sacred Ruler is bound to one element. The Head is not. Alistair told Bea that she is made of the same energies that sustain the world, fire, water, land and air, and that her body has to be brought back to the source of that power when it is drained.[3] She pulled water out of a dry well in the Sacred City and grew grass and vines out of a broken wall there, though neither came easily to her.[2][8] Wearing the Sacred Cloak in Amelia's old room, she found her own reflection looking back at her with gold eyes.[7]
The mark itself acts. It flashed gold and turned aside Demise's axe when he swung it down on her open hand, leaving her unscratched.[9] The same gold light, coming out of her hand and out of the symbol, undid the spell Obellius had cast on Demise and his hounds and returned them to the shapes they had lost.[8]
Known Heads
- Aezaros, the goddess who took the Eyearke Stone from the sky and made Eslura's first five people, and who is remembered as the first Head of Eslura. Every Head since is called her true descendant.[10][11][12]
- Amelia Lunala, chosen fourteen years before Bea and remembered, unjustly in Alistair's view, mostly for failing to cast Obellius into oblivion. Eslura believed Obellius had killed her.[1] He had not. Lumikki Otsby shared a Nelazgian cell with a sick, filthy woman named Amelia who kept turning over a bare wrist to look at it, and only later understood who she had been sitting beside.[13][8]
- Beatrice Tidal, the current Sacred Head, chosen while she was still living on Earth and unaware that Eslura existed.[1]
Little is recorded of the Heads between Aezaros and Amelia beyond the room they shared in the Sacred City and the cloak they handed down.[7]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Book 1, Ch. 8.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Book 2, Ch. 5.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Book 1, Ch. 22.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 24.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 17.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 2.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Book 2, Ch. 9.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Book 2, Ch. 28.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 20.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 10.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 19.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 24.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 12.