Kingsbane

by Claire Legrand

His mind is closed to me, my darling. Ludivine’s voice was thin with terror and anger in equal parts. I’m trying to understand, but I can barely keep my own thoughts focused. He is a great storm, and in his wake it is difficult to even stand upright.

  “Lu doesn’t know,” she replied.

  Audric looked furious. “It’s a trap, and we’re walking right into it.”

  “We can’t go back, Audric. We can’t abandon these people to him.”

  “Begging your pardon, my lady,” Evyline interrupted, “but the lives of a few villagers are not equal to your own.”

  “Lady Rielle is right,” Audric said. “If we abandon innocents to their deaths, all we will have done is make Corien’s task easier for him.” He glanced back at Rielle, his face framed in fur.

  Rielle wished, in that moment, that she could send him a feeling of love, as she would have done to Ludivine.

  Tell him I love him, she thought. Please, Lu, tell him how desperately I love him.

  But Ludivine did not respond.

  “She’s not answering me,” Rielle shouted, her chest a flurry of panic. She pushed her pony up a steep path, narrow between two rocky slabs. The beasts were up to their knees in snow, ears flat, heads bobbing with the effort of pulling themselves up the slope.

  Then, at the path’s crest, a rush of smoke and orange light greeted them.

  Rielle threw up an arm to shield her eyes.

  “My God,” Evyline exclaimed, pulling her mount up beside Rielle.

  The village of Polestal sat tucked into the crags of the mountain below them—tiny houses carved into the rock, little stone yards and paddocks piled with snow. Skinny black pines stood afire; screams rose through the wintry air. Dark, furred figures chased one another across a charred white canvas. Some flung knots of fire from brilliant castings—pendants, knives, arrows. Others fell, screaming. They clawed through the snow, frantic for escape. They were caught, pounced upon, beaten with flaming fists.

  They burned.

  Rielle’s breath came high and fast. The flames she had manipulated in front of the Kirvayan court were tame. These were different—wild and furious.

  She felt a soft pressure on her arm and realized Audric was touching her.

  “Are you all right?” he shouted. At his hip, Illumenor blazed.

  She nodded and reached again for Ludivine. Lu, I don’t know what to do. I know I managed the fire trial, but this—

  You know exactly what to do, Rielle.

  Corien? She tensed in her saddle, her every sense sharpened. Why are you doing this?

  His voice rang silver with delight. Because I can. Because you left me restless and unsatisfied, and one must find a way to take the edge off, mustn’t one? But also because I know you can save them, even those who have died. And save them you should, and you shall, unless you want the entire village to burn.

  Rielle’s pony shifted uneasily beneath her. Save them? I can’t do that.

  Of course you can. You transformed those flames into feathers. You command the empirium to weave nets and form shields. You wrangle waves and craft shadows.

  Yes, she whispered, her body turning supple and warm as his words washed over her. She closed her eyes, remembering the tidal wave. Stopping the swords at the metal trial and flinging them to the ground, flat and harmless at her feet. Burning Corien in the cave of her father’s death.

  Stopping the hearts of three men with the bludgeon of her rage.

  So, then? Corien was before her, in her mind’s eye. She saw herself as she could be at his side—unfettered, blazing, and brilliant. A maker of worlds, a granter of life and a dealer of death.

  “Rielle, stay with me!” Audric cried, his voice shaking her out of her reverie.

  She did not allow herself to look at him. If she looked at him, she would return to him, to her guard, to the weight of the shield waiting for her back at the temple, to the weight of a role that she had had no choice but to claim.

  Instead, she jumped down from her pony and plunged into the snow. With a sweep of her arm, she cleared a path for herself to the village. A storm of white flew into the air, momentarily clouding her vision and leaving behind a dark strip of soil and bare rock. She ran, following the path down the slope, ignoring the cries of Audric and Evyline behind her.

  The first body she came to was that of a man, she thought, though his features were cooked, mottled. Patches of glistening red skin, strips of white bone, singed clothes and hair. He writhed in the snow, and though it should have quenched the flames that had burned him, the fire persisted. It flickered up and down his body, blackening his skin and the snow beneath him.

  Rielle coughed, eyes watering from the smoke. She swept her arm through the air just over his body, dousing the flames, and allowed herself a tiny moment of triumph at the ease with which she’d managed it.

  Once, she would not have been able to. Once, the sight of flames had left her stricken and helpless with fear.

  You are stronger than any flame that burns, Corien murmured.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Rielle said to the man, though she was uncertain if he could hear her. “I’m going to help you.”

  Then she lowered her hands to his chest, her mouth souring at the gruesome texture of his ruined skin, and set to work.

  She breathed in and out, letting her eyes unfocus. In the books she had read with Ludivine and Audric, various discussions of elemental theory had touched upon the possibility of healing, of repair and restoration, even—though much more rarely—the concept of total resurrection.

  Such ideas were a natural extension of elemental power, several of the more radical empirium scholars had posited. To summon fire, to manipulate it, a firebrand must call upon their connection with the empirium and rearrange it, like shifting the blocks of a child’s creation to craft something new, taller, better. Similarly, a powerful enough elemental would, in theory, be able to delve beneath the surface of the empirium and manipulate not only the elements of the physical world, but also the elements of a physical body.

  Instead of water, earth, and metal—blood, muscle, and bone.

  I will need new prayers, Rielle thought, sifting through the golden layers of this man’s ruined body with her mind. The Bone Rite. The Blood Rite.

  And the world will need new prayers to worship you, Corien replied. The Prayer of Rielle. The Glory of Rielle.

  You flatter me.

  Because I know it delights you. Now, focus.

  It was more difficult than stopping a hundred swords in their tracks, more immense a task than corralling a tidal wave. There were so many more layers to be sorted through than there were in a flame or a wave. There were flesh and muscle, joints and ligaments, tendons and bone and blood, and beneath that—

  Oh, Rielle whispered. There are so many things in a body.

  Tell me, my darling girl, Corien replied. Tell me everything.

  There are tiny pulses throughout his skull, and along a strange web that spans the length of him—his torso, his limbs. Everything. They flash like storms. Her mouth fell open, in wonder. They carry information. They carry sight and sound. Sensation.

  What else?

  There is a map, underneath all the rest of it. She scooped through the sea of golden light that was the man’s body, looking deeper. Infinitesimal beads. They are pure empirium. They build him, like the bricks of a house. No. Smaller than bricks. The miniscule grains of sand, too small for the eye, that make a brick what it is.

  Distantly, Rielle felt something move nearby, heard someone calling her name. But she ignored whoever it was because it was far more important to shift around this body’s organs and understand how they connected, how they functioned. Like a pack of dumb beasts, pure instinct and meat, all crammed inside one fleshy hot den.

  Enraptured, she traced the man’s glowing skeleton with her fingers, feeling eve
ry knob and ridge, every rolling joint. She saw the ragged shell of his skin, how the fire had burned off its outer layers, and decided that it would be easy to knit this poor man back together. She saw the tiny storms of his body flashing frantically from skull to limb, from skull to belly, and understood how he currently existed in a froth of unbearable agony.

  “I will mend you,” she whispered. “It’s very easy.”

  Tell me what you’re doing as you do it, urged a new voice, small but eager. I want to understand.

  The voice shook Rielle, jarring her concentration. Lu?

  Leave her be, rat, said Corien coldly. You’re ruining everything.

  You poison her, Ludivine replied, her voice thick with anger. You will be her undoing, and then all your so-called great work will have been for naught. I will revel in your downfall. I will bask in it.

  You are a traitor and a weak-minded fool, Corien snapped, and when she destroys you at last, it will be too kind a fate for you.

  Their warring voices sent spikes of pain ricocheting between Rielle’s temples, like hot punching fists. But she could not let them distract her. She had work to do.

  She bent low over the man, her hands hovering above the shredded map of his skin. There, on his chest—a particularly horrible burn, the wound wide and deep. A discolored web of the empirium, knocked askew. A darkness where there should have been only light.

  She would start there. It would be easy. She would place her hands directly over the burn, energizing the empirium in that spot and encouraging its repair, its growth, until the flesh had re-formed. Layers and layers of it, healthy and new. And then she would move on to the next burn, and the next, and the next—

  Something jolted her. A terrible, rasping sound she had never heard before in her life sent violent chills down her spine. Her hands were wedged in something. She tried to dislodge them but found she could not move. The light blooming above her fingers was growing, brightening, so brilliant it hurt her eyes.

  Rielle, stop! Ludivine cried. Open your eyes!

  Hands grabbed her shoulders, pulled and tugged. A desperate voice called her name.

  Rielle blinked, her vision dimming. She was no longer staring at the shifting golden sea of the empirium.

  She was staring at her hands, trapped in a misshapen globule of flesh. It was as if some awful monster of skin and pus had arisen from the man’s chest and expanded, overtaking half his torso and continuing to grow. It consumed his burns, his convulsing limbs. It encroached on his glistening red mouth, raw and shining, newborn.

  His throat had birthed the terrible scream Rielle had heard. He was writhing underneath her, his eyes white and wild. Rielle tugged on her hands, trying to yank them from his body, but they were stuck fast.

  She sobbed, frantic, and Audric’s voice came to her from somewhere in this terrible black-and-white night—mountains and smoke, snow and ice and the man’s eyes, rolling back into his charred skull.

  But Audric’s voice, steady and familiar as it was, would not help her. Shaking, she returned her mind to the place it had been moments before—in that golden world, in the realm of the empirium. It was like trying to steer a ship through a gale. Her mind resisted. She teetered, gasping, and at last slipped through a wavering crack into that world beyond the veil of the seen.

  She saw the pile of flesh, growing from the juncture of her hands.

  Stop it, she commanded, her mind unsteady. Unmake it. Unmake it.

  At once, the empirium obeyed. The light that was the man’s overgrown flesh scattered, spilling over the sides of his body.

  Unmake it, Rielle said, over and over, light-headed, watching with glazed eyes as the man’s body unfolded and collapsed, the inhuman net of flesh releasing him.

  His screams, somewhere in the world outside her mind, abruptly ceased. Her hands were free once more. She pushed herself back from him with a sharp cry and fell against something warm and solid.

  Familiar hands caught her. Weak with relief, she allowed them to help her to her feet, but then her stomach lurched, on fire and roiling, and she staggered away from the warmth and retched into the snow.

  “Rielle, we have to leave, now,” Audric said urgently.

  She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, but her lips came away warm and wet. She blinked, bewildered, and looked down at herself.

  She was drenched in blood—her hands, her tunic, her boots. She cried out and staggered back, but there was no escaping her own body.

  “Rielle,” came Audric’s tense voice, “we have to run.”

  “What’s happened?” She looked around and saw three things at once.

  Surrounding them, a semicircle of hooded, furred figures. The villagers—no longer fighting, no longer controlled by Corien. They stared in horror, in fury. Several were crying, the wind swallowing their wails.

  Then there was Ludivine, pushing her way through the crowd.

  And the burned man, on the ground in the snow. The man Rielle had tried to heal.

  He was a man no longer. He was a collapsed pile of human parts—bones and organs, misshapen knobs of flesh. A sunken skull, hands shriveled and flayed, a faceless mouth of white teeth grimacing at the sky.

  Rielle’s knees gave out. Audric caught her, holding her close against him as the Sun Guard formed a line between them and the stirring villagers.

  “Blood Queen!” someone shouted. A rock flew out from the crowd. Riva deflected it with the flat of her sword.

  Another voice took up the call. “Blood Queen!”

  Soon it was a chant, a chorus. More stones flew at them. Someone rushed at the Sun Guard, wildly waving a small club. Evyline easily dispatched them, knocking them out with a blow of her sword hilt.

  “My lord prince?” she called over her shoulder. “Your orders?”

  Ludivine joined them. Run. I’ll distract them.

  Rielle’s head spun, her vision tilting painfully. I’m not leaving you.

  Return to the temple as quickly as you can. Don’t make me force you.

  Rielle hurried up the slope to their waiting ponies, Audric’s arm strong around her waist.

  Corien? Tears clogged her thoughts. What have I done?

  All great work must start somewhere, he replied, his voice blank as untouched snow. Then, without a touch of comfort, he was gone.

  • • •

  In the temple stable, the young queen was waiting for them, Marzana’s shield at her feet.

  “Queen Obritsa?” Audric dismounted. “This is a surprise.”

  Obritsa stared at Rielle. “What happened?”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” Rielle replied, her vision swimming as she slid to the ground, “but I think the villagers of Polestal might require some aid from the crown and a visit from your magisters.”

  The queen’s mouth thinned. “You are covered in what must be the blood of one of my citizens, if not more than one. Humor, however black, is not appropriate at this moment.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Rielle said, and then turned away to press her face against the cold hide of her pony. She had caught a whiff of her own clothes and felt close to losing what remained of her supper.

  Audric touched the small of her back, the warmth of his hand a balm. “Obritsa, if you’ll permit me to explain—”

  “No time for that,” she said briskly. “I have my instructions from Ludivine, and I must obey them. I’ll have your things sent to your capital, though it will take a few weeks for them to arrive. The other guards in your escort have been sent ahead and will meet you when you arrive.”

  “When we arrive where?” Audric asked.

  “A small forest, some thirty miles from here. I’m afraid that’s the limit of my abilities. Come. I’ve already prepared it.”

  “Has Lu explained any of this to you?” Audric muttered, as they followed Obritsa in
to the back rooms of the stable. “Evyline, please carry the shield.”

  Rielle shook her head, unable to speak—at first because of her raging stomach, and then, when they entered a spacious tack room lined with feed and hay, because she suddenly understood what it was that Obritsa had prepared.

  A thread hovered, glowing, in the center of the room. Several threads, in fact, bundled and bound into a shifting, wavering oval. One of the threads stretched longer than the rest, falling across the floor and dimming to nothingness. But as Obritsa approached, the thread brightened, thickening, until it visibly connected her to the circle of light illuminating the room.

  Rielle had never seen this sort of magic before, not in person. But as a child, she had been fascinated by the stories and had pored over every grisly, fantastical tale she could find.

  Behind them, Evyline swore quietly.

  “You’re a marque,” Audric murmured. “Do your magisters know?”

  “My instructions were to send you to safety,” Obritsa replied, “not to tell you the story of my life. The threads will deposit you in the Arsenza forest. I suggest you leave for Celdaria as soon as you’ve rested. Once word gets out of whatever you did in Polestal, you may no longer be as welcome in this country. There are supplies in that bag, enough to last you until Nazastal, where you can purchase horses. I’ve left a map in the bag as well.”

  “What about Lu?” Rielle croaked.

  “When she arrives, I’ll send her after you. I won’t leave until she’s safely away.” Obritsa opened her mouth, then snapped it shut, frowning. She gestured impatiently at the threads.

  “I’ll go first,” Audric said to the Sun Guard, “and then Lady Rielle after me. Evyline, send the others through before you, and follow last of all.”

  “Yes, my lord prince,” Evyline replied.

  Audric stepped through the threads’ passage without hesitation. The shifting space within the circle swallowed him completely, as if he had plunged beneath the surface of a glittering pool.

  “I don’t like this, my lady,” Evyline muttered.

  Rielle hesitated before the humming lights. She looked back at Obritsa, too numb for questions she knew she would later have. “Thank you for this.”