Kingsbane

by Claire Legrand

  Ilmaire touched his father’s hand. The man’s skin looked cracked, brittle. Rielle had the wild thought that if Ilmaire pinched two fingers together, he could pull off an entire piece of the king’s flesh, like a hunk of stale bread.

  “Father, Runa is dead,” Ilmaire said gently. “You know this.”

  “Lies! You lie to me!” And then, abruptly, the king began to weep—thin, keening sobs that reminded Rielle of the sounds a wounded animal might make before its pain pulled it under.

  She felt pressed flat beneath the weight of a rising panic. Audric’s hand found hers, and squeezed.

  We shouldn’t be here, she told Ludivine. We should leave now.

  “Father, if you’ll indulge me.” Ilmaire cleared his throat. “Perhaps you’d like to hear about my trip to the Sunderlands with Prince Audric of Celdaria.”

  The king’s wailing came to a shuddering halt. “What?” He struggled to position himself against the pillows piled along his headboard. “You did what?”

  Ilmaire’s smile was wry. “You heard correctly, Father. I recently journeyed to the Sunderlands with Celdarian guests—Prince Audric, Lady Ludivine of House Sauvillier, and Lady Rielle Dardenne, recently anointed Sun Queen by the Celdarian Church.”

  Now sitting rigid against the headboard, King Hallvard stared silently at his son. There was a sudden stillness to his body and his expression, as if some phantom power had scraped away all his excess.

  “And what did you do there, in the Sunderlands?” His gaze moved slowly across the room, sliding across first Audric, then Ludivine, then landing at last on Rielle. A thin smile curled across his face.

  “Lady Rielle,” he said softly, his voice cracking.

  Audric’s hand tightened around Rielle’s.

  It can’t be, came Ludivine’s voice, a note of fear ringing inside it.

  “The Gate is falling, Father,” Ilmaire was saying. “You remember this. I told you as much before we disembarked.”

  Instead of a response, silence stretched on. The king’s red-rimmed gaze remained locked firmly on Rielle. His smile twitched. At the door, Ingrid shifted uneasily.

  “Lady Rielle and Prince Audric requested that we visit the Sunderlands to assess the Gate for themselves,” Ilmaire continued, hesitant now. “I could see no harm in it, and after all, Lady Rielle saved our capital from a tidal wave of enormous destructive power. A wave caused by the weakening Gate. It seemed only proper to grant them this request.”

  For a moment, silence. Then the king drew his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms about his legs, like a child eager to hear a story.

  “And then what?” the king asked.

  Dread crept down Rielle’s back on narrow feet.

  Ilmaire grew very still. “Are you all right, Father? You’re acting strangely.”

  “I’m merely waiting for the end of your story. Go on. What did Lady Rielle do? She saw the Gate, did she? Was she able to repair it?”

  “No.” Ilmaire glanced Rielle’s way, obviously uneasy. “In fact, her attempts to do so seemed to have further weakened the Gate’s structural integrity. So said Jodoc Indarien, speaker of the Obex.”

  The king leaned toward Rielle. Though they were separated by several feet, she felt invaded by him. Ensnared.

  She wanted to move away, but her feet were made of stone. What’s happening, Lu?

  “We should leave,” Audric said quietly.

  But Ludivine was held rapt, her brow furrowed. She examined the king as if trying to dissect him with her mind.

  “By how much did she weaken it?” King Hallvard asked.

  “I’m not certain,” Ilmaire replied.

  “Pah. Yes, you are. You can do very few things well, boy, but you do at least listen. By how much did she weaken the Gate?”

  After a moment, Ilmaire relented. “Jodoc counted an additional thirty-three fractures—”

  “Only thirty-three?” Hallvard made a disgusted sound. “The bitch is a fool.”

  The words had hardly left his mouth when, with a sharp cry of pain, he was jerked across the bed as if by an angry, unseen force. His body snapped to the left, then to the right; his head smacked against one of the bedposts.

  Ingrid rushed forward, her sword drawn.

  Ludivine shoved both Rielle and Audric behind her. She snarled something in a foreign tongue.

  Ilmaire reached for the king’s flailing limbs. “Father, stop! What are you doing? What’s wrong?”

  But the king jerked away from his son’s touch. His wild movements carried him off the bed and onto the floor. He twisted violently on the rug, his back arching until it seemed he might snap in half.

  Audric started forward, but Ludivine held him fast. Rielle saw his eyes glaze over slightly and could not even be angry with Ludivine for taking control of his mind.

  Behind Ilmaire, the door opened. Several guards rushed in, then halted abruptly when they saw Hallvard convulsing on the rug.

  “Commander?” the foremost guard barked.

  But Ingrid stood unmoving, face pale, eyes wide, sword hanging uselessly at her side. Her gaze was perfectly clear. The horror of the moment had simply rendered her motionless.

  “Fetch Arvo,” Ilmaire cried, finally managing to subdue his father’s arms and barely avoiding a swift jab to his jaw in the process. “Find the healers!”

  The guard ran out at once.

  Hallvard wrenched himself away from Ilmaire’s grasp and prostrated himself on the floor, reaching feebly across the carpet for Rielle.

  She flinched back from him, grateful for the shield of Ludivine. Her hand clung to Audric’s, clammy with sweat.

  “I am sorry,” the king moaned. “My apologies, my lord. I do not think Lady Rielle a fool. Forgive me. I have rotted for too long in this corpse, and it is has weakened my mind. Please, my lord, let me come home. I ache for the north, for your presence and wisdom. I ache for the great work.”

  Ice gathered at the small of Rielle’s back. “What are you?”

  Hallvard lifted his head to smile at her. In a low, thin voice, he spoke words she did not understand. They were not in any of the Borsvallic or Celdarian dialects, nor the common tongue.

  “Lissar,” Audric whispered, his eyes still cloudy with Ludivine’s hold.

  Rielle’s mouth went dry. She knew that word. It was one of the old angelic dialects.

  In her mind, Ludivine translated the king’s words: I am infinite. I am invincible.

  Ingrid cursed softly and backed away from her father, raising her sword. Her eyes trembled with tears.

  Ilmaire held up a hand. “Do not harm him, Ingrid.”

  Hallvard continued muttering, the unfamiliar syllables rattling across his teeth.

  Ludivine’s translation continued: I am splendor, and you are dust. I am glory, and you are ashes.

  A grim look settled on Ilmaire’s face. A look of resignation as if, at last, a question had been answered. “What is your name, angel?”

  One of the guards let out a soft cry of terror.

  King Hallvard drew himself up to a height that seemed taller than his body should have allowed. The lines of expression on his face morphed into something haughty and furious.

  “I am Bazrifel,” Hallvard replied, his voice no longer muddled with disease and exhaustion. “Second lieutenant to the third imperial brigade serving His Majesty the Emperor of the Undying.”

  “I’ve never heard of this emperor,” Ilmaire replied.

  Hallvard smirked. “Soon you will meet him for yourself. You will behold his glory as he flattens your pathetic kingdom under the boots of his armies.”

  “Why must he do this? What is it that he wants?”

  King Hallvard’s smile widened. He approached Ilmaire slowly, his body hobbling with every step. Ingrid inched closer, her sword a glint in the corner of Riell
e’s eye.

  But Ilmaire, sad-eyed, square-shouldered, stood his ground.

  The king cupped Ilmaire’s face in one cracked, pale hand.

  “To watch you burn.” Then he leaned close and rasped four words. “Long live the king.”

  A shift in the air. A reshaping of the unseen planes of the world around Rielle’s body. She staggered, unbalanced. She fell hard against Audric, and he against Ludivine, who stood firm, her eyes blazing with fury as King Hallvard’s body dropped, suddenly heavy, as if every drop of his blood had been replaced with stone.

  Ilmaire caught him before he could hit the floor. “Father?” He gently touched the king’s cheek, brushing aside matted locks of silver-blond hair. “Father, can you hear me?”

  But Hallvard Lysleva did not respond, and in his wide, staring eyes—no longer so clouded, but rather a glassy, brilliant blue—Rielle saw no glimmer of life.

  • • •

  Two hours later, Rielle paced before the crackling hearth, struggling for patience.

  Audric sat on a nearby divan, elbows on his knees, gazing pensively at the fire.

  Ludivine huddled on a chair by the windows. She hadn’t spoken since they’d been escorted to their rooms after King Hallvard’s death—not aloud, and not in Rielle’s mind.

  But the silence had stretched on long enough, and Rielle had just decided to tell her as much when a knock on the door and an announcement from the stationed guards signified Ilmaire’s arrival.

  He entered alone, looking as if the past hours had scraped layers of color from his skin.

  “Ilmaire,” Audric began, “I’m so sorry for what’s happened.”

  Ilmaire shook his head, silencing him. “Leave us,” he quietly told the guards over his shoulder, and when they were alone—the four of them, Ingrid nowhere to be found—Ilmaire fixed his eyes on Ludivine.

  “Did you know the angel Bazrifel?” he asked.

  Ludivine shook her head, gracefully unfolding her body from her chair. “Not well. He is unremarkable in everything but his devotion to Corien.”

  “And, it would seem, his ability to occupy a human corpse for a considerable amount of time,” Rielle observed.

  Ilmaire shot her a glare. “Perhaps you’ll reconsider, Lady Rielle, before speaking in such blunt terms about my dead father?”

  Rielle flushed, but lifted her chin to meet his eyes. “Of course. Forgive me.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t sense Bazrifel was here, Lu,” Audric said.

  “No, though I did sense an oddness, a wrongness, when we returned from the Sunderlands, though I couldn’t name it.” Ludivine frowned at the floor, and Rielle at last understood why she had been so silent. She was ashamed; she was frightened. “Bazrifel should not have been able to hide himself from me so successfully.”

  “Unless he had help,” Rielle suggested.

  Audric stiffened. Ludivine fiddled with the sleeve of her scarred arm, her brow furrowed with worry.

  “You mean, from this emperor he spoke of?” Ilmaire asked, looking at them curiously.

  “His name is Corien,” Audric replied. “I didn’t know he was calling himself emperor now.”

  “Neither did I,” Rielle said quietly. Her gaze met his and held it for a beat of silence. She remembered how he had watched her on the Kaalvitsi in the aftermath of her vision. How patiently he had listened. The warmth on his face, the trust so plain on his features.

  Did he believe her, that she hadn’t known?

  Or did he wonder what else she might have seen in her vision? Seen, and kept locked away from him.

  She dropped her gaze to the floor, focusing instead on her hands clasped in her lap. She was being ridiculous. Audric had given her no reason to doubt his faith in her. The day had shaken her. She was exhausted; she was rattled.

  The door opened without warning.

  Ilmaire turned, frowning. “Joonas, I ordered no interruptions.”

  “Apologies, my prince,” said the woman entering the room, “but this cannot wait.”

  The woman looked stalwart, humorless, and wore robes of deep charcoal, hemmed in fiery orange—the colors of the Forge. She was, Rielle assumed, the Grand Magister of the Forge, whom she knew was the senior-most member of the Borsvall Church. They had no Archon; traditionally, it was the Grand Magister of the Forge who held the highest religious authority, in honor of Saint Grimvald.

  Six others flanked her, all in magisterial robes—and then there were three more, bringing up the rear. A man and two women, each of them wearing gray robes boasting a symbol Rielle recognized at once: a single, unblinking eye resting atop what she now knew was not simply a tower, but the Gate itself.

  The sigil of the Obex.

  Rielle’s heart thumped hard against her ribs. She moved toward Audric, Ludivine following close behind.

  The magisters moved aside to allow the Obex passage, and the three of them stepped forward as one.

  In their outstretched hands lay a familiar object—worn and immense, its shaft engraved with countless minute carvings, its head a chiseled block of metal bearing the sigil of the Forge amid ice dragons in flight.

  Ilmaire drew in a sharp breath. A chill moved slowly across Rielle’s skin.

  This was Saint Grimvald’s hammer. Not a replica, but the actual casting of the long-dead saint himself.

  A heaviness descended upon the room, like the rolling pressure of a black sky ready to break. Every person gathered, every pane of glass, every tile embellishing the floor thrummed, as if responding to the residual power the hammer still contained.

  Rielle approached the casting at once, pulled toward it inexorably, following the call of the power that lapped against her like waves.

  But then one of the Obex, flanked by her comrades, began to speak, and the words stopped Rielle in her tracks.

  “‘The Gate will fall,’” the woman intoned. “‘The angels will return and bring ruin to the world. You will know this time by the rise of two human Queens—one of blood, and one of light. One with the power to save the world. One with the power to destroy it. Two Queens will rise. They will carry the power of the Seven. They will carry your fate in their hands. Two Queens will rise.’”

  Rielle waited for the silence to end, apprehension bubbling in her throat. When no one spoke, she forced calm into her voice and arched an eyebrow. “Is there a reason you’ve come to recite Aryava’s prophecy for me? Do you doubt that I’m as familiar with it as I am with my own body?”

  “Lady Rielle,” the Obex speaker continued, “we are aware of Jodoc Indarien’s directive. You are to search for the castings of the saints on your own, without aid. We are aware of his reasons for declaring this. We are also aware that you saved this city from destruction when you could have abandoned us to it. We are aware that the Gate is falling, that darkness is rising. In the east, in the north, in Celdaria, in our own streets and mountains. It is our belief—that is, the belief of the Obex who live here in Borsvall and have devoted our lives to protecting the casting of Saint Grimvald—that there is simply no time left to any of us. Not for games or puzzles, not for anything but swift action.”

  The three Obex stepped forward once more and knelt before Rielle, offering up Saint Grimvald’s hammer on the altar of their hands. “This is a gift, Lady Rielle, and a powerful one,” the Obex continued. “We trust you will use it wisely and in good service.”

  Rielle gazed at the hammer, her head spinning. So close to the worn metal, her palms prickled as though she were holding her hands too close to a fire. And yet she hesitated to take the hammer for her own. Everything was happening so quickly. She glanced at the gathered magisters, at Ilmaire’s astonished face. Was he really to allow the Obex to gift her with Grimvald’s hammer without ceremony, behind closed doors, with his citizens kept ignorant?

  Do you care? Corien asked.

 
Rielle bit down on a small smile. It was a fair point.

  Take it, my love. He urged her gently, his words as cool and soft as a kiss of breeze. They’re offering it with no conditions. Take it. It belongs to you more than them. It belongs to you more than anyone.

  More than it belongs to you? she could not resist asking.

  I care nothing for human trifles, he replied. Then, softer, the sensation of his mouth against her neck so near that she could almost pretend he was there beside her: I want only you.

  “Take this, Lady Rielle, and hurry home,” said the Obex, shaking Corien’s voice from Rielle’s thoughts. “There are six more castings for you to find, and other factions of our order will not feel as charitably toward you as we do. Hurry home and hunt swiftly. The angels will not wait. Even now, they are coming.”

  Rielle hesitated, glanced back at Audric, then grasped the hammer in both hands and lifted it, with some effort. The air around her pulsed with an invisible resonance she could feel in her veins, like the heady bite of adrenaline, and she knew with a sudden ferocious certainty that even if the council, or the Obex, or Ilmaire himself, suddenly decided to take the hammer from her, they would fail.

  The casting of Saint Grimvald was hers now, the property of the Sun Queen, to wield or not as she saw fit.

  And God help anyone who tried to wrest it from her grasp.

  12

  Eliana

  “When performing elemental magic, it is crucial not to think of the act as forcing the empirium to obey your will. It is a union, not a conquest. Think of this: How can I slip inside the rhythm of the song the empirium is already singing? How can I match its gait?”

  —The Path to the Empirium: A Meditation on Elemental Practice by Velia Arrosara, Grand Magister of the Firmament in Orline, capital of Ventera, Years 313–331 of the Second Age

  Eliana waited for Harkan to respond for as long as she could bear the silence. Zahra floated nearby, her great black eyes fixed on his face.

  He sat on the edge of the divan in Eliana’s bedroom, brow drawn in an expression she didn’t like.