Kingsbane

by Claire Legrand

  “I don’t care.” Rielle walked to the windows and looked out at the sunrise. The city was a wash of pink light and white snow, tiny lights quivering along the winding streets. “I almost wish you had done something to us. Merovec Sauvillier would have lost his mind with wrath if you’d hurt Ludivine.” She tossed a cruel little grin over her shoulder. “The Shield of the North would have come for you in the night and killed everything you love.”

  Ingrid stood stiffly at her brother’s side. “I am quickly losing any scrap of patience I might have had.”

  “Stop this.” Audric stepped between Ingrid and Rielle, blocking their view of each other. “If we are to move forward from this moment with any hope for peace, we must truly strive for it and not merely pretend understanding.” He paused. “And while we have much left to discuss about how our two nations will begin working toward friendship, I have one request I must make of you immediately.”

  Rielle frowned, startled. What is he doing?

  I told him we must travel to the Gate, Ludivine replied.

  That startled Rielle, as though she had stumbled over a step she hadn’t realized existed. You speak to his mind as you do to mine?

  Not as often. And not as easily. But when I must, I do.

  Rielle folded her arms over her chest. Crossly, she thought, Why did you speak to him just now?

  Ludivine’s reply was gentle. Because you are still too angry to be trusted with diplomatic relations.

  An obvious truth, but Rielle still bristled to hear it.

  Oh, Rielle. Ludivine’s surprise moved gently. You’re jealous that I would speak to him in that way. In our special way.

  I’m not, Rielle lied—knowing Ludivine could sense the lie nevertheless.

  You are, and I adore you for it. The faint sensation of Ludivine kissing her cheek floated through her thoughts, a cottonseed on the wind. My darling one.

  “We need a ship,” Audric said. “Your fastest ship, and manned by sailors you would trust with your most sensitive missions. You are welcome to accompany us, if you wish it, but we must leave soon. At dawn, if possible.”

  Ilmaire looked surprised. “Why?”

  “My Magisterial Council has reason to believe that the Gate has weakened,” Audric continued, glancing at Ludivine, “and that it is the cause of several strange occurrences throughout the world—the out-of-season storms that have damaged coastal cities in Meridian, Ventera, and Astavar. The months-long drought in the Vespers. And,” Audric added, “the storms that have ravaged your own country.”

  Silence filled the room. Outside on the terrace, Atheria echoed a bird’s cry with her own chirruping neigh.

  “How can your magisters possibly know if the Gate is weakening?” Ingrid asked, her voice sounding smaller and less cutting than it had only moments before.

  “Magisters Saksa and Pollari and I were discussing this possibility days ago, in fact,” said Ilmaire, the light returning to his eyes. Rielle recognized that look. It was one Audric wore when lecturing her and Ludivine on some obscure piece of knowledge obtained during his hours in the library.

  “The three of you see catastrophe in a single fallen tree,” Ingrid snapped at Ilmaire. “You long for it. You crave it.”

  “No harm can come from visiting the Gate,” Ludivine pointed out. “If it stands strong, then it stands strong, and we dismiss the waves, the droughts, the storms, as unfortunate but meaningless.”

  Ilmaire watched her quietly. “And if it doesn’t stand strong?”

  The answer was one Rielle had been considering for weeks, since the days before King Bastien’s funeral: then I must remake it.

  “Then, as the two nations closest to the Sunderlands,” Audric replied, “it will be even more important for Celdaria and Borsvall to unite in peace.”

  Ilmaire nodded, rising to his feet. “The Kaalvitsi can make the trip in a little over a week, given good winds.”

  “Why one of our ships?” Ingrid gestured irritably at the terrace. “Can’t you ride your godsbeast out to the Sunderlands?”

  “We could, yes,” Rielle replied at once, “but I would prefer to travel in luxury, as it will take some time for my body to recover after saving your city from total destruction.”

  “I will prepare the Kaalvitsi,” Ilmaire said before Ingrid could reply. Rielle thought she even saw him stifle a smile. “I would ask my father to join us, but as you know, he has taken ill in recent years and is not strong enough to make the trip. My sister and I will accompany you instead. While on board, you will enjoy every comfort we can provide.”

  “We’re grateful, Ilmaire,” Audric said with a small smile. “Thank you.”

  “While you prepare our ship,” Rielle added, enjoying the mutinous expression on Ingrid’s face and unable to resist, “I wonder if I might meet with your Magisterial Council. I understand they were perturbed to learn of my anointing—thinking, perhaps, that I did not deserve my title of Sun Queen, or that I was given it unfairly.”

  “Lady Rielle,” Ilmaire said quickly, “I don’t think anyone who witnessed what you achieved yesterday has any doubt that you are indeed the Sun Queen.”

  “Nevertheless, I would very much like to meet with them. To reassure them, and give them a chance to apologize for any part they may have played in the attack on Audric months ago and the attack on us only yesterday.” She smiled sweetly at Ingrid. “Surely you can understand how important that is to me.”

  Ingrid opened her mouth to reply, but Ilmaire stopped her with a hand on her arm—a hand she abruptly shook off.

  “Certainly, Lady Rielle,” he said. “I will see to it at once.”

  She inclined her head. “I’m grateful.”

  Was that necessary? Ludivine asked wryly.

  And then came an echo—faint with fatigue, delighted, and only for her: Well done, Rielle.

  Rielle stiffened, an icy heat gliding up her torso.

  Ludivine noticed at once. What is it?

  Nothing, Rielle lied—and she knew the moment the words formed that Ludivine could not sense the lie. That something distant and sly was shielding her from it.

  And Rielle found that she was glad for it, and relieved.

  She squeezed Ludivine’s hand, reassuring her. It was only a small chill.

  6

  Eliana

  “My brothers and sisters, my friends and compatriots, do not let these humans deceive you! They promise peace, but what they want is our destruction. You can feel it in their minds as well as I can, but you have let your desperation for peace, your exhaustion, get the better of you. I say to you now: Reach inside your ancient minds for the strength I know you possess. I say to you now: Stand with me, here on these icy shores, and fight for our homeland! This is our world! We were born to it, and we will not let these humans, with their weak minds and feeble hearts, send us running like cowards into the darkness!”

  —A speech delivered by the angel Kalmarothto angelic forces at the Battle of the Black Stars

  Below the palace of Dyrefal and the dark-cobbled streets of Vintervok, buried far below the snow-dusted mountains, was a world of stone and shivering shadows.

  As Zahra escorted her through the soaring obsidian halls, Eliana marveled. Each new chamber was different from the last—some vast and lofty, lined with rows of pale-gray stone arches boasting carvings of the saints at war. Others were narrow and still and padded with shelves of books, as if the mountains themselves were crowding down close to hear the pages whisper secrets.

  Slender torches mounted to the walls in elaborate iron casings threw shifting shapes across every surface, creating the illusion that Eliana was traveling beneath the canopy of a forest shaken by soft winds. Enormous tapestries decorated the walls, warming the cold stone passages with depictions of Saint Tameryn, daggers in her hands and shadows writhing in her curls. Prayer smoke sweetened the thick a
ir. Scholars in blue-and-black robes conversed in low tones; commoners come down below the mountain to pray knelt before gleaming black statues of Saint Tameryn in combat, in meditation, in repose.

  There were no idols of the Emperor here, as had dotted the streets of Orline—no razed temples, no shattered statues.

  This was a world untouched by the Empire, and Eliana did not know how to exist inside it.

  She averted her eyes from Saint Tameryn’s blank stares and placed her right hand on Arabeth at her hip to remind herself of who she was. She was not a coward, no matter what insinuations blazed in Simon’s eyes. Nor was she a queen, the lost heir to a dead kingdom.

  She was Eliana Ferracora. Daughter of Rozen and Ioseph. Sister to Remy.

  She was the Dread of Orline.

  Her strength lay not in her blood and not in magic but in her muscle, in the agile way her feet lit upon the ground, in her skill with her blades.

  She said it ten times, like working her way through her father’s prayer beads—words she didn’t really believe, but that brought her comfort nonetheless. Then she imagined her doubt as a small creature sniveling in a damp room, and closed it away behind an iron door.

  She would have to ignore her doubt, swallow her resistance to the idea of magic in her blood. If she wanted to save Navi, she would have to satisfy Zahra. She would have to summon her power again, just as she had on the beach at Karajak Bay. Prove herself capable of wielding it, deft and deliberate, in defense of herself.

  Somehow, she would have to control it, and be able to do so with ease and at will.

  The thought left her stomach in knots.

  “Remember, stay in my wake,” Zahra murmured, drifting just ahead of her. “Keep your voice low, and don’t fall behind. We must hurry. If my strength fails me, and you are left to fend for yourself without me to shield you from sight—”

  “Fend for myself against these people whose home I saved from Empire invasion?” Eliana said. “I think I’ll be all right.”

  “Not everyone in Astavar delights at the knowledge that you are in their palace, my queen. What you did on the beach frightened many.”

  Including me, Eliana thought darkly.

  As she followed Zahra for what felt like hours, down winding stairs and through stone passages, each one more unfinished than the last, she drew a map in her mind. But as the air grew colder, the weight of the mountain pressing upon her shoulders, her mental map disintegrated. Wherever they were, their route was too labyrinthine for her to find her way back alone.

  When the shadows grew so thick that Zahra vanished within them, Eliana withdrew the small gas lamp from her cloak pocket and turned the catch on the base.

  “Stop,” Zahra said quietly.

  But Eliana had already stopped, the sight before her leaving her speechless.

  The small flame in her lamp illuminated the edge of a black lake. High cavern walls rose around them, glittering with gemstones. Rocky crags jutted out from the walls, creating cliffs over the water. Small islands rose from the lake’s center like the humps of a beast. Eliana squinted through the dim lamplight.

  “Don’t be afraid, my queen,” said Zahra, sounding amused. “This is not the dangerous place I spoke of.”

  Eliana followed her along the lake’s edge. The ground was hard black stone, peppered with tiny amethyst flecks that glittered in the lamplight. “Where are we, then?”

  “We are far below Dyrefal,” Zahra replied, “in a private retreat that your Saint Tameryn requested her companions help her construct for Saint Nerida. Once, when magic still thrived, this was a refuge of light and greenery.”

  That sounded familiar to Eliana. She sifted through her memories for one of Remy’s many stories about the saints.

  “They were lovers, weren’t they?” She caught sight of a shadowed structure tucked in a shallow cove. “Nerida and Tameryn?”

  A low wall of stones connected the structure to the shore, and it was here that Zahra paused and looked back. The lamp’s flame could not fix upon her; she was a void of gloom in the dim amber light.

  “They were,” she replied. “Come, my queen. Watch your step.”

  Eliana hesitated, then followed Zahra across the slick stones to the structure. The lamplight slowly revealed it to be an elegant circular belvedere—the smooth stone pillars discolored and rank with slime, the tiled roof shimmering with shards of crystal. Water lapped gently against the steps, pushed by some faint subterranean breeze.

  “I believe it important for you to have a place of your own to practice your magic,” Zahra said, at last coming to a halt between two of the pillars. “A place far from prying eyes, with ties to the Old World in which your mother lived. That is why I have brought you here.”

  Eliana moved gingerly around the belvedere, inspecting its pillars, the flecks of stones glimmering across its floor. A childish impulse told her that if she trod too heavily, she would awaken ghosts.

  An even more childish impulse made her want to run from this place—from Vintervok, from Simon, even from the responsibility of Navi—and never look back.

  Then a thought occurred to her, and she grabbed hold of it eagerly. Anything to delay the inevitable moment of sitting there, before Zahra’s expectant gaze, and trying to work magic she did not understand.

  “This was a retreat built for Saint Nerida,” Eliana said slowly, dragging her fingers along the smooth stone of the nearest pillar. “Given to her by Saint Tameryn.”

  “Yes, my queen,” Zahra replied.

  “And how does it feel to exist in a space constructed by those who condemned your kind to the Deep?”

  The silence that followed her question expanded to fill the entire cave. She took three measured breaths before turning to meet Zahra’s gaze.

  The wraith shivered blackly. She seemed to take on a texture, as if she had recently emerged, soil-rich, from the earth. The lamplight carved strange shadows into the air around her, creating dark slopes of nothingness.

  “How it feels is irrelevant,” she said at last, her voice as even and cool as the stone beneath Eliana’s feet. “Being here is the best way I know how to help you, and helping you is what I have resolved to do since emerging from the Gate.”

  “But why? Why wouldn’t you resolve to hurt me? To hurt all of us?” Eliana’s heart pounded, but she had gone too far to relent. “Why help me when I should be your enemy?”

  A ripple of emotion shifted across Zahra’s face and then was gone.

  “Because the Emperor is insatiable in his quest to find you,” Zahra replied evenly, “and if he does, he may accomplish with you what he failed to with your mother. If that happens, it may spell doom for us all, in this world and in others.”

  That startled Eliana. “In others?”

  Zahra was still for a moment. Then she sighed, drifting to the ground as if deflated.

  “It would be easier, my queen, if I could show you, as I did in your Fidelia cell. My words are inadequate. I lose myself in them. Would you allow me this?”

  Eliana hesitated, then settled across from Zahra on the stone floor and placed the lamp beside her. She squared her shoulders, willing herself not to be afraid. She had started this; she would finish it.

  “Yes,” she said. “I will allow this.”

  “I shall be brief, my queen. What you will see may shock you.”

  Eliana nodded once. “I understand.” She gripped her knees hard, barely managing to swallow.

  Then, as before, Zahra moved swiftly toward her, like the rush of exhaled smoke, and disappeared.

  • • •

  Eliana opened her eyes to a vast green world at sunrise: cheerful woodlands, fields of quivering wildflowers, a quilt of slim silver rivers.

  Above, in a cloudless blue sky, swirled a bruise. As Eliana watched, furious veins sprouted from its heart and raced across the sky,
multiplying like cracks in glass.

  She stepped back. “What is it? Zahra?”

  Zahra appeared beside her, tall and whole, ebony-skinned. White hair to her waist, resplendent in gleaming platinum armor. Wings of light and shadow trailed from her back, flickering as she moved—smoky and dark one moment, brilliant the next.

  “It is the Gate, my queen,” Zahra answered, her voice thin and tired. “And on the other side of it is Avitas and your beloved saints.”

  “Then that means…”

  “Yes. We are in the Deep.”

  Eliana gazed wonderingly upon the idyllic green world around her. “But this is no prison. It’s an entire other world. Zahra, is this what you meant?” Her skin tingled, as if her body were stretching to accommodate this new information. “The Deep is another world like our own?”

  “So we were led to believe during treaty negotiations,” said Zahra. “Never mind that we were first to live in the world of Avitas, and that humans evolved later. Humans were weaker, they told us—the saints, and our own leaders. Humans could not survive outside the world in which they came to exist. But we angels were older, more advanced forms of life. We could adjust to existence in another world, and our departure would bring an end to the war. Both sides had lost many. Both sides were eager for peace. This seemed the easiest way to achieve it. So we were led to believe.”

  Then she pointed at the sky’s bruise. Her voice lowered, thick and bitter. “We arrive.”

  In the next moment, something ruptured—something deep within the fiber of the ground Eliana stood upon, within the air she breathed. The sky rippled as if struck, and its bruise darkened, rushing across the canvas of morning sunlight like the flood of an angry sea.

  “Look, my queen,” said Zahra gently, and Eliana obeyed, not realizing until that moment that she was clinging to the angel’s arm like a child gone to its mother after a bad dream.

  She looked up at the sky and watched it open.

  Out of it poured a great black cloud, thick and streaming, the fall of a dark river. It expanded in the open air—blooming, magnifying—and from within it came sounds like none Eliana had ever heard. Angrier than war cries, more unbearably lonesome than the howl of wolves.