The trappings of a family loyal to the Empire.
“You’re sure we can trust them?” Eliana said quietly.
“The Prophet says we can,” Simon answered. “So I will trust them until I am told otherwise.”
As always, the rare mention of the Prophet piqued her curiosity, but she was too tired to form a question. They reached a door at the end of the hallway. Simon opened it, then stood back to let her pass. It was a small but cozy room, with a low, slanted roof and a bed tucked into an alcove, away from the windows. A brazier in the corner glowed softly, and the pile of blankets at the foot of the bed beckoned to her like the arms of a lover.
She blew out a breath, smiling a little. “I feel like it’s been ages since I’ve slept in a real bed.” Then she glanced back at Simon, who waited at the door. The sight of him standing there, scanning her room with a little frown, as if he were inspecting its contents and finding them lacking, was dear in a way that frightened her.
“Do you also have your own room?” she said, simply to talk over the sound of her racing heart. But it was a terrible question and only made her heart race faster. She attempted a coy smile that felt all wrong. “In case I start to feel lonely.”
His gaze shot up to meet hers. The smile he gave her was strained and small. “I do. At the other end of the hall.”
She wanted to turn away from him but felt physically incapable of it. “And Remy and Harkan?”
“Second floor.”
“Patrik? Jessamyn?”
“First floor, second floor.”
“We’ve the whole floor to ourselves, then?”
He raised an eyebrow. “There are five other rooms between us. Some of our party, and some who were already here when we arrived.”
“Yes, of course.” She struggled to maintain her composure, which had once been an easy thing to do. “Well, then. Good night.”
“Before I go,” he said before she could shut the door, “I have to say this: I know you need rest, and I do, too, but we must begin our work tomorrow. We cannot delay.”
Our work. So here it was, the thing they had not spoken of in the past weeks of traveling—not since the moment in Karlaine when the thread had appeared at Simon’s fingertips. Eliana had been working over the nuances of it in her mind, and now, it seemed, they would have to face it.
“You mean, I must continue practicing with my castings,” she said. “And you must practice your threading. You want to send me back in time to Old Celdaria. You want me to confront my mother.”
“A confrontation may not be necessary,” Simon replied. “And that’s one of the things we’ll discuss as we work. How will you approach her? What will you say and do? What is our goal in traveling back to that age?”
“To prevent this future from happening,” Eliana answered at once, determined to keep the absolute terror she felt at the idea from showing on her face. “To change something that occurred in the past and, by doing so, prevent the rise of the Empire.”
Silence fell between them, punctuated by a soft rumble of thunder from the growing storm outside. Simon searched her face for a long, tense beat. Once again, as when she had watched him in Karlaine, his body lit by the gleam of his fading thread, she felt the urge to touch his face.
This time, she did.
He turned into her palm at once, eyes closed, and pressed his lips to her fingers. A single word itched on her tongue: stay.
But instead she stepped back from him. She needed rest, and if she asked him to stay, she would not sleep. She would kiss him until her fear of what lay ahead diminished. She would kiss him for hours, and then how would she bear to look at him after that? Already, looking at him made her feel as if the world were shifting beneath her feet.
“Where should I meet you?” she asked. “In the morning.”
“Afternoon,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “It’s already late. We’ll need a full night of sleep. After lunch, I’ll find you. I’ll ask Dani where in the gardens would be a safe, private place to work.”
He hesitated, his mouth turning down at the corners. Then he looked once more at her and said quietly, “Good night, Eliana,” and left her standing in the doorway, watching his retreating form. When he reached his room, she closed her door and leaned back against it until she had caught her breath. Then she climbed into her bed and nestled into its piles of blankets, watching the rain slide down the windows across the room.
Now that the concept of traveling back to Old Celdaria had been said aloud, her mind raced with questions she desperately did not want to ask but knew she would have to, and soon.
What if Simon sent her to the past, and then he lost his ability to thread, because his reawakened power was new and fragile, and she was left trapped there in a foreign world?
What if she found her mother, and did whatever she and Simon decided she must do, and it failed? What if she had to flee, having made some fatal mistake, and then returned to an unrecognizable future altered by her own misstep in the past?
And if everything proceeded as they hoped it would—if Eliana traveled to Old Celdaria and met her mother, if the Empire never rose, and maybe, if the Blood Queen never fell, and the world was never razed to near-destruction—what then? What would happen to the Eliana of now? To the Simon of now? And to Remy, and Harkan, and Patrik and Jessamyn, and everyone she had ever known and loved?
Would they, and she herself, cease to exist?
Sleep did not arrive for some time, and when it did, it brought troubled dreams that, blessedly, she did not remember upon waking.
35
Rielle
“Feel the wind slide round the trees,
Listen to the waves eat at the shore,
Watch the sun climb up the sky,
See the shadows reach always for more.
Listen! The old world speaks to you.
Wait! The old magic lives in you.
Breathe, and do not be afraid!”
—“Prayer to the Old World,” traditional
With Princess Kamayin’s blade pressed against her throat, Rielle began to laugh.
“I told you not to make a sound,” Kamayin hissed.
“What are you hoping to accomplish here, Your Highness?” Rielle asked. “If I wanted to, I could burn you to ashes.”
“Not before I slit your throat. Not even you can conduct magic while bleeding out on the floor.”
It was then that Rielle noticed how Kamayin’s words trembled with tears. Quickly she clamped down on her furious instincts—Kill this girl, burn her, punish her for daring to threaten you—and smoothed the anger out of her voice.
“Why are you doing this?” She waited, listening to Kamayin’s tight, shallow breathing. “Someone’s put you up to it. Why?”
For a long moment, there was only silence and a distant rumbling—the arrival of a storm.
Then Kamayin’s blade began to shake.
“They have him, Lady Rielle,” Kamayin whispered at last. “They have my Zuka, and they told me if I kill you, they won’t kill him.”
“I assure you, if you kill me, or even if you try, nothing good will come of it. My country will wage war on yours, as will Borsvall, and possibly others, and then whatever has happened to your friend will be the least of your many problems.”
After a tense pause, Kamayin whispered, “If I release you, will you kill me?”
“The thought has crossed my mind,” Rielle admitted, “as it does anytime someone attacks me in my room in the middle of the night and holds me at knifepoint. But, no, I won’t kill you. Then your country would wage war on mine, and I have quite enough to worry about at the moment.”
At last, Kamayin relaxed and lowered her knife. Rielle stepped away, rubbing her throat, and watched as Kamayin sank onto a low cushioned stool, burying her face in her hands. She looked her age again, a frigh
tened girl.
“How did you get past my guards?” Rielle demanded. And how, she thought, did you get past Ludivine?
“There’s a secret passage that leads into this room,” Kamayin mumbled. “Behind the mirror on the wall.”
Rielle inspected the enormous mirror in question, pulling it carefully away from the wall, and discovered that, indeed, it masked a narrow doorway and a dark stone passage. She turned back at the sound of Kamayin’s quiet sobs.
The girl sat hunched on the stool, her mouth screwed up with the effort of containing her tears. Beyond her, the wide square windows revealed a storm approaching across the Sea of Silarra. Lightning danced atop the waves, striking with an alarming ferocity and frequency. A low rumble shook the floor, the walls, the ceiling overhead.
Rielle tensed, listening. Was that thunder shaking the queens’ palace? Or was it something else? She recalled Jodoc’s report in the Sunderlands—the earthquakes in Astavar, the blizzard in southern Mazabat. It had been months since that day, and here they all still stood. No irrevocable disaster had yet occurred.
She walked to the windows and opened one, allowing in a gust of salty air that brought with it the acrid bite of lightning and the bloom of rain. Once again, the strange sensation she had felt when approaching the shores of Mazabat returned to her—the sensation of being watched. And now, accompanying it, was something else. A tug on her fingers, on the crooks of her elbows, on the knobby length of her spine. The charge of the approaching storm? Perhaps.
And yet storms did not frighten her. This feeling did. If she was being watched by a foreign, all-seeing eye, then she was also being urged forward by mighty phantom hands, and she felt they were connected—the eye and the hands, all belonging to the same inexorable body.
Urging her forward. But to what?
She turned away from the storm, her temples pulsing with the thrum of her heartbeat. “Who is it that has your friend, Kamayin?”
“The Obex.” The princess looked up at her, wide brown eyes shimmering with tears. “They hate you, Lady Rielle. They have no intention of allowing you to take Saint Tokazi’s staff. They believe you to be the Blood Queen, and that you cannot be permitted to gather the castings of the saints.”
“And they captured your friend to pressure you into killing me.”
Kamayin visibly fought for composure. “Yes. Zuka is his name. He is an acolyte in the Holdfast and my dearest friend.”
“And if you kill me, they’ll release him.”
“I know it sounds absurd.”
“Indeed it does.” She glanced at the bands around Kamayin’s wrists. “You’re a waterworker, aren’t you? Why didn’t you use your castings? You could have drowned me in my sleep.”
Kamayin hesitated, and in her silence, Rielle found the answer.
“Because you don’t want to kill me,” she said. “You haven’t killed before.”
Miserably, Kamayin nodded. “My mothers have ensured that I know how to fight, but the most I’ve done is break my sparring teacher’s nose.”
“And if you’d managed to kill me, what then? The Gate would have fallen, with no one left alive capable of repairing it, and the Obex would all die anyway.” Rielle waved her hand, turning back to the windows. “They won’t kill your friend, Kamayin. They’re testing me, and using you to do it. They were hoping I would lash out at you to defend myself, perhaps even kill you, and then I would have proven myself to be exactly what they believe me to be. They were willing to lose their princess if it meant exposing me.”
Kamayin straightened, an angry light flashing in her dark eyes—but then, with an explosive smack, something enormous struck the palace, throwing both Rielle and Kamayin to the ground. Every window in the room shattered, spewing shards of glass. Through the empty panes came furious, howling winds and cold spits of rain. Miles of angry flashing clouds roiled across the sky. The sea was a tableau of whitecaps and black waves cresting some twenty feet in the air.
Rielle pushed herself to her feet, dimly noticing Kamayin rising beside her—and the soft buzz of her castings flaring to life.
She touched the princess’s arm. “Don’t waste the energy fighting this storm. It’s of the Gate. You can’t stop it.”
Another slam against the palace sent paintings crashing down from the walls. The floor tipped as if trying to buck them off. Kamayin staggered, catching herself on the nearest bedpost. Rielle found her boots on the floor and tugged them on.
The bedroom door flew open, admitting Evyline and then, an instant later, Tal, flinging his scarlet magisterial cloak over his shoulders. And Ludivine last of all, gazing in despair at the shattered windows.
I didn’t hear her. She sent Rielle a feeling of utter terror. Kamayin. She slipped right past me. She walked through the walls between our rooms, and I heard nothing. I felt nothing.
Rielle went to her, ignoring the terrible sight of her exposed, scarred arm. Was it Corien? He’s shielded me from you before.
Ludivine shook her head. She held up her blackened hand. In the storm’s light, it glittered like a jewel. I think it was this.
Rielle folded the ruined hand into her own. The puckered skin was rough and cold. “I swear to you, Lu, I will make it go away. I’ll tear away your scar and crush it beneath the blade of my will.”
Ludivine leaned her forehead against Rielle’s. “I do not deserve a friend such as you.”
Evyline stopped short at the sight of Kamayin. “Your Highness? Begging your pardon, but how…?”
“No time.” Tal held out his hand for Rielle. “There are shelters underground. The queensguard will escort us there.”
Rielle released Ludivine to glare at him. “I’m not going underground. I’m going to stop this.”
“No, you’re not. You’re going to conserve your power for the task ahead.”
“And how do you suppose we’ll find Saint Tokazi’s staff if Quelbani is buried beneath the ocean?”
“How do you suppose you’ll repair the Gate if you’re dead?”
Rielle shook her head. “Tal, you don’t understand. I won’t die. Not today. Not because of this storm.”
The sky was alive with lightning; it cast unflattering lines across Tal’s stricken face. “How can you possibly know when or how you’ll die?”
“I don’t. But I know my power, and I know what it can do.”
Rielle turned away from him, pulled toward the balcony by a force she could not name. With a sharp cry, Atheria alighted upon it and then ducked into the room, shaking water from her wings.
Rielle smiled faintly, stepping across the rain-soaked, glass-strewn floor to meet her. The chavaile’s black eyes watched her approach with unearthly steadiness, her breath steaming in the suddenly frigid air. All sound dimmed—the roar of the sea, the piercing howl of the wind, the shudder and groan of the storm-battered palace. Rielle heard only the resonant chime of her own heart, slowing to meet the drum of Atheria’s, and she understood, as she touched the godsbeast’s velvet muzzle, that the eye she had felt upon her, and the unseen hands she had felt touching her, and Atheria’s drenched wings tender on her back, urging her closer, were one and the same.
She let her eyes unfocus, following the twin beat of their hearts down into the quiet space only they two could see—and suddenly Rielle’s eyes streamed with tears, for Atheria glowed before her as hot and golden as the sun.
She looked down at herself, at first to shield her eyes from Atheria’s glory, but then because she had to see the truth for herself—and there it was, glowing hot and golden in her own breast. The brilliant light that was the empirium, living inside her blood and bones—of her blood and bones—and it was telling her, through the storm, through the great unfeeling eye and the phantom, guiding hands, and Atheria’s patient and tired gaze: Come. Come find me.
And it was nothing like when Corien crooned to her through her
dreams, and it was not even the sweetness of Audric murmuring to her in the haven of their bed.
This voice was cold and pure and many, like the light of stars that burned for no one but themselves. And Rielle knew if she followed it, she would find Saint Tokazi’s casting.
This voice was of the empirium, and it was trying to help her.
Tal grabbed her arm and spun her back around to face him, jarring her concentration.
Evyline moved swiftly toward him, her expression ferocious. “Lord Belounnon, release my lady at once.”
Tal ignored Evyline, his gaze frantic as he searched Rielle’s face. “Take me with you. You’re going somewhere, and I won’t let you go alone.”
She could not even be angry with him. She touched his face, drawing him down to kiss his rain-soaked brow. “My path is not one for you to choose, dearest Tal.”
“Please,” he said reverently, his hands tender in her hair. “Let me come with you. I beg you. I want…” He swallowed. In her golden clarity, she saw his fragility, his confusion. “I want to understand how you are possible.”
Rielle ached for him. Tal would never be able to understand what it meant to exist like this. He would always be separate from the empirium, no matter how often he prayed, no matter how diligently he studied. She pitied him deeply for it. She pitied them all.
She clasped his hand in hers. “Come, then.”
Evyline started toward her with a sharp protest, and Ludivine sent Rielle an urgent, faint plea: Don’t take him with you. It’s unkind to take him. The more he sees of your might, the more fervently he will despair.
But Rielle ignored them all. Atheria knelt in the rain, and Rielle climbed onto her back, helping Tal up behind her. He clung to her, shivering, and then Rielle remembered the boy Zuka and found Kamayin watching her thoughtfully from the ruined bed.
“I’ll find your friend, Your Highness,” she said. “And I’ll bring him home to you.”
Kingsbane Page 39
