“Will you please lower your damned dagger?” Simon snapped. “We’re wasting time.”
Eliana did, and Simon threw her a murderous glare over his shoulder before adding, “Try not to fall off.”
As they fled through the eastern hills, leaving the city of Orline behind them, they passed the crest of land where the statue of Audric the Lightbringer had once stood. Now there was only bare land, scorched and gray from war.
Still, as they passed the spot, Eliana felt the old pang in her heart for the dead king and thought a prayer she had not allowed herself to say in years:
May the Queen’s light guide us home.
13
Rielle
“From sky to sky
From sea to sea
Steady do I stand
And never will I flee”
—The Earth Rite
As first uttered by Saint Tokazi the Steadfast, patron saint of Mazabat and earthshakers
The mountain was falling down around her.
Rielle hoped it was a dream. Maybe the last few days entirely had been a nightmare, and now she would wake up, and everything would be as it once was.
Open your eyes, Rielle.
Yes. She knew she needed to open her eyes, to move, to run, but the dumbwort coursing through her veins made movement feel impossible.
They’d drugged her.
The damned Archon had decided on it, so that when she awoke at the site of her trial, she wouldn’t know where she was or how she’d gotten there. As though throwing her into these trials the day after her testimony, with no time to train with her father or study with Tal, wasn’t enough of a punishment for her many lies.
Indeed it was not, according to the Archon.
“Perhaps, Lady Dardenne,” he had told her blandly, his watery dark eyes fixed unblinkingly on her face, “if you had chosen to reveal yourself immediately following your mother’s murder all those years ago, things would be different now.”
“And as a five-year-old child,” she had snapped, unable to keep quiet, “such a choice had been solely my responsibility, I suppose?”
The Archon had folded his hands in his lap, seven rings glittering on his soft white hands. “Even children,” he had said, “know it is wrong to kill.”
Open your eyes, Rielle. Her brain was screaming at her, or perhaps someone else was nearby. Maybe one of the council members overseeing the trial. Maybe Tal.
Maybe that strange voice had returned.
Open your eyes!
She forced herself upright, her limbs clumsy and leaden. Her vision rocked violently back and forth. She placed a gloved hand on either side of her throbbing head.
Then she sensed the heavy press of something rising high above her, cold and unrelenting.
Stone.
Be prepared to move as soon as you awaken. Tal’s instructions from earlier that morning drifted through her mind like sticky fragments of a dream. They won’t give you time to recover.
He had refused to look her in the eye, and she had refused to beg him for it.
A rumbling from behind and above snapped her head around. Like a series of gut punches, her senses crashed back into place:
The clean bite of ice.
The air, thin and freezing.
Her fingers, mostly numb. Cold seeped in through her leather boots and the thickest trousers she owned, neither of which were warm enough for such an environment. But the Archon had decided she had given up the right to proper clothing, that she could only use whatever she already had in her closet, and she would not be allowed any other aid. And so, twelve hours later, here she was, thrown out into—
The mountain.
It was falling down around her.
Not one of the little mountains from the Chase route, but one of the monstrous peaks that formed an angry, snowy spine heading east from the capital.
Move, Rielle!
She stepped back, looked up, stumbled over chunks of ice, caught herself on a snow-crusted boulder.
As she watched, sheets of stone slid off the nearest peak, crashing into the snow piled on their slopes and sending up glittering sprays of ice. Suddenly she was back on the Chase course, watching the mountain pass crumble and not caring—because how was she supposed to care about falling mountains with Audric in danger?
But Audric was not here. Rielle was alone.
Twelve tiny lights glinted high above, surrounding her.
Her sluggish mind caught up with her rapidly awakening body.
No. She was not alone.
Those lights belonged to elementals: Grand Magister Florimond and her earthshaker acolytes from the Holdfast. A dozen of them formed a perimeter, castings in hand, ordered by the Archon to bring down the mountain and flatten her.
This was the earth trial, the first of seven that would decide her fate.
They’d rushed things—angry with her, possibly afraid of her. This was sloppy and uncharacteristic of the Church, done without witnesses, pomp, or ceremony.
But that hardly mattered. If she didn’t run, she’d be crushed.
Rielle, run!
Down the mountain she bolted, darting past trees, leaping over veins of frigid rock. She jumped over a fallen tree half buried in snow and dropped into a drift three feet deep. Lost her balance, lurched forward, sank into the snow, and inhaled it, coughing. She fumbled for a grip on the ice, pushed herself to her feet, looked back over her shoulder.
The wide snow sea was now a churning wave cresting hundreds of feet high, devouring everything in its path. Black pines snapped in two; fleeing foxes and deer disappeared, sucked beneath the furious white rush. Great slabs of rock rode the wave, tossed and tumbling.
Terror shot through Rielle’s body, drowning out everything else she knew.
She looked ahead once more. The pass sloped slightly upward before her. If she could make it to higher ground, she could perhaps escape the avalanche’s path.
Or, said the voice, abruptly returning, you could—
But Rielle couldn’t hear the rest over the roar of the thundering mountain. Pine branches and fistfuls of ice rained down upon her. Her lungs burned, each frigid breath searing her throat as she fought her way through the snow. She clawed against trees to propel herself forward and scraped her gloved fingers raw.
There: a slight rise of rock, dotted with stumps of trees whose spindly roots cascaded down the rocks like snakes slithering for their holes.
Rielle leapt for the rise of rock—and missed.
No, she didn’t miss.
The earth was opening, her path falling away beneath her feet.
She reached out blindly, desperate for a handhold. Caught a lip of frozen rock with one hand, crashed into the rock front-first. Hung there, dizzy, gasping for breath.
A light winked at the corner of her left eye.
The earthshakers weren’t going to let her escape so easily.
Her feet dangling over the widening chasm, she flung up her other hand, grabbing for a better hold. She tried to pull herself up, every muscle straining.
When she made it home, she would have to ask her father for help strengthening her body.
If she made it home.
Would this be it, then? Would she die in this first trial, hastily slapped together as if it were nothing of importance? As if her life, and the fates of Tal and her father, meant nothing?
No, she damn well would not.
That, said the voice, is what I like to hear.
With a ragged scream, Rielle pulled herself up, her body burning in protest. She wondered if her arms would snap off, then scraped her knees against rock and scrambled to the top of the rise.
She ran to the left, her breath punching in and out of her lungs in ice-cold fists. Stone rose ahead of her in pillared clusters, ribboned with snow and mud
. The path was solid. Hope swelled in her chest.
Then, with a great echoing groan, like the plates of the earth had been shoved out of alignment, the path before her cracked open. Tiny chasms snaked across the ground, widening like the swarming mouths of subterranean creatures eager for a kill.
Rielle’s stomach plunged to her toes. But there was no time to waste. She closed her eyes and jumped.
Her feet slammed to ground.
She opened her eyes. Still alive, still breathing.
She jumped and jumped again across the shifting patches of rock. The chasms widened; the ground quaked and jerked, trying to buck her off. A violent shudder threw her to the side. She fell—scraping her arm and knees raw—pushed herself up, and ran.
The air churned with shards of ice and rock. The avalanche blocked out the sun and sucked the air from the sky. The world above her was white and roaring; the world beneath her was coming apart like it must have done when God first breathed life into the universe.
I will not die here, she thought.
She pushed herself faster, her entire body on fire. Past the trees ahead there had to be a path to safety, ground too high for the avalanche to touch. If she could just make it a bit farther—
Then she saw the truth:
Beyond the trees, there was no path.
It was a sheer drop. A canyon—and no way across.
Her mind screamed that this was the end.
Her body decided to disagree.
“No,” she whispered.
No, agreed the voice. Not today. Not ever.
Rielle whirled around to face the roaring white snow-sea, planted her frozen legs on the cliff’s edge. She thrust her hands into the air and squeezed her eyes shut. Didn’t think anything, didn’t even think stop.
She threw up her hands, the solid heat inside her screaming No! more loudly than any voice or word ever could.
A narrow wall of rock, wide enough to shelter her, burst out of the ground before her and shot up into the air mere seconds before the avalanche slammed into it.
Rielle stood, head bowed and eyes closed, her hands pressed flat against the fast-rising rock, palms sparking against the stone like flint. The avalanche broke with a roaring howl on either side of her. The churning snow and rock scraped against her arms and feet, threatened to lift her up off the ground and fling her into the canyon.
Hold fast to the rock, said Rielle’s blood.
Hold fast.
And the narrow slab of rock seemed to listen. It stood tall, shaking against the force of the crashing avalanche. The air tasted sour, damp tendrils of mud-scented earthshaker magic straining to their limit as they whipped through the air.
A tiny flame of triumph unfurled between Rielle’s burning lungs.
They had tried to kill her, and they had failed.
They had crashed a mountain down atop her, and she had lived.
She stood trembling on the cliff’s edge, the same mountain that had tried to kill her now shielding her from itself.
“Please stop,” she whispered to the mountain. She didn’t blame it for being angry at such abuse. She pressed her cheek against the hot wall of stone, which now stood rigid like an ancient thing that had always existed on that spot—a queer pillar of rock, lonely and stubborn.
The tips of her fingers were aflame. If she kept this going much longer, her chest would crack open, her heart would burst, her lungs would give out.
“Please,” she whispered, each word an effort, “stop.” Exhausted tears leaked down her cheeks.
Then, whether it was a response to her plea or simply the moment Grand Magister Florimond decided enough was enough, the mountain eased itself back whole. The avalanche subsided; boulders dropped abruptly from the sky.
It was chaos to stillness in the span of five seconds.
A bird called out forlornly.
Rielle let herself fall, slumping at the foot of her rock. The snow was a cool pillow under her flaming cheek.
“Only six more,” she whispered, a watery smile playing at her lips, and then pain hit her all at once.
I’ll be here when you wake, said the voice, and some dim, spinning part of her tired mind whispered back, Thank you.
14
Eliana
“Since our war with the humans began, I have had only one dream. Every night, the fog surrounding it lifts, and I understand more of what I see: a woman, made of gold brighter than the sun. She stands in a river of blood, and light falls from the ends of her hair. Is she friend or foe? This my dreams have not made clear to me. But I know this: she will come. In this war, or the next, she will come.”
—Lost writings of the angel Aryava
“I hear you’re a storyteller,” said Navi.
Eliana waited for Remy’s response.
Nothing.
For two days they’d been driving the horses north by night, hiding in tense silence when they heard signs of pursuing adatrox patrols, and then, from sunup to sundown, waiting in the trees for nightfall.
The moment they’d had a chance to rest, hiding in a ditch lined with reeking mud as the sun shone dangerously bright above, Remy had whispered, “What happened to Harkan?”
“He stayed behind to give us time to escape,” Eliana had told him, her voice carefully careless and her heart in shreds. “I left him instructions. He’ll catch up with us later—”
“Don’t lie to me. He’s dead, isn’t he?”
She couldn’t look at him. “Harkan? Come on, you know it takes more than a few adatrox to—”
“Shut up.”
“Truly, Remy. We can’t know for certain.” Even as she said the words, she couldn’t bring herself to believe them. “He could still be alive—”
“Please.” Remy had drawn his knees to his chest and turned away from her. “Just shut up.”
He had said nothing since.
Now, however, Navi seemed determined to make him speak.
“What kind of stories do you like to tell?” she asked.
Eliana, on first watch, leaned against a nearby silver oak, Arabeth in one hand and Whistler in the other. She glared into the forest. Slender silver oaks with faintly gleaming bark surrounded them, as did waxy-leaved, white-flowered gemma trees. Stout watchtowers, branchless save for frazzled-looking clusters at the top, stood lopsided throughout. They were popular along Orline’s outer wall, traditionally planted to ward off invaders, which Eliana found hysterical. She’d always thought they resembled old men with soft bellies and wild hair.
When she’d first told Remy that, he’d considered the tree nearest them, then put his nose in the air, bowed, and said to the tree, “Well met, good sir. Might I offer you a comb?”
Eliana had laughed so hard she’d actually squeaked.
Her hand tightened around Whistler. God, it’d be nice to fight something.
Instead of standing here, feeling sorry for myself.
And angry.
Mostly angry.
No. She drew a long, slow breath. Mostly missing Harkan.
And Mother.
And Father.
For a moment she allowed herself to imagine Harkan there beside her, on watch with her, distrusting Simon with her, worrying about her mother with her—and her throat tightened so painfully that she lost her breath.
Pay attention, Eliana. You’re on watch.
She glared at the trees until her eyes dried, then glanced sidelong at Simon, who had settled down to rest. He sat in the shadow of another oak, scanning the dawn-lit forest.
She considered him. Grief and worry nettled her insides. This stillness was maddening.
What would he do if she lunged at him with blades drawn? He’d bested her back home, but only because of his gun. If she could gut him before he could reach the holster—
And then wh
at? The whole point of this mad venture was to use him, not kill him.
Eliana thumped her head against the tree at her back and glared at the sky.
“Talking to me might make you feel better,” Navi insisted, her voice kind.
Eliana rolled her eyes.
But then Remy surprised her. “I like to write stories about magic,” he replied hoarsely.
Eliana’s breath caught. She hadn’t realized until that moment how deeply she’d missed the sound of his voice.
“Magic?” Navi sounded intrigued. “You mean the Old World?”
“I like writing about the elementals. Especially earthshakers.”
“Why earthshakers?”
“Sometimes I wish an army of earthshakers would come to Orline. Crack open the ground, let it swallow the city whole.”
“I see,” said Navi evenly.
“Sorry,” Remy muttered. “Eliana says I shouldn’t talk about things like that. It isn’t kind.”
That seemed to amuse Navi. “And your sister is?”
Bitch. Eliana flashed her the smile she usually reserved for marks she wanted to coax into bed. “When I want to be,” she replied.
Remy threw her an irritated look.
Navi put her arm around his shoulders. “I do understand wanting to tear down your city,” she said. “Sometimes I think life would be easier if the oceans would rise up and drown Astavar. Then I wouldn’t have to spend every moment of my life in an agony of worry for it.”
Remy nodded. “Waterworkers could do that.”
“Indeed they could, if there were any left. And they’d have to be quite powerful, even then, to sink an entire country.”
A beat of silence. Then Remy said, hushed, “Queen Rielle could have done it.”
“Ah.” Navi let out a little sigh. “The Blood Queen herself. Yes, I’m sure she could have plunged every mountain standing to the depths if she had lived long enough to do it. Do you ever write stories about her?”
“I wrote a story once about what would have happened if she hadn’t died. If she’d lived forever with the angels, and the world still had magic in it. Do you think the angels would have made her one of them? That’s what I wrote, in my story. She led them to the sky, and they searched for God in the stars.”
Furyborn Page 13
