Before I can press him, the walls of the palace lift away, exposing the hallway to the open air. We’ve reached the base of the palace. Through the columns lay a lush garden of trees shimmering in a warm breeze, bushes trimmed or magicked into the intricate, twining shapes of galloping horses and winged beings, and a riot of beautiful flowers. But it’s the wards more than the paradise around me that make me freeze, and those flickers of darkness in the bright sunlight behind them. They’re mostly gathered on the other side of the garden’s extensive grounds, toward the Hall of the Wards, I assume, identifiable by their red chlamyses with the black shields, talking in groups or strolling about. It’s the first time I could draw near them without fear of discovery, because I have been discovered. I’m one of them now: a ward, with a guardian. That doesn’t make me feel any better, and the urge to duck and hide is still strong.
My father must sense my tension. “We’ll stay over here, on the palace side. Most of them can’t enter without invitation. My office is just this way.”
I wait until we reach a wooden door carved with looping scrollwork, over which my father sketches a quick sigil to open it, before I ask, “Why did you ever come to this city from Skyllea if you knew it was like this?”
“Another good question,” he says, and holds the door open for me.
His office is huge, overflowing with scrolls and books and loose stacks of paper on every surface, even the floor. There’s so much paper, which has always been too expensive for me to purchase. I don’t know how to write other than the few sigils I’ve memorized and traced in my mind or in the dirt of our courtyard. I’m only slightly better off with reading, but most of what I know is what my father taught me when I was seven. My mother is fully illiterate and couldn’t help grow my meager knowledge.
“For a long while, my people didn’t know it was like this here,” my father says after resealing the door, oblivious to the wealth around him. He moves a pile of books off a chair for me, and then shoves some papers aside to lean heavily against a near-buried desk. “Skyllea refused to follow Athanatos all those centuries ago in the founding of the polis, so we remained isolated on our island.”
He points to a map on the wall, outlining a mostly bare continent, aside from Thanopolis on its plateau near the coast, with a large, oblong island to the west. He, or someone, has shaded in the frozen peaks and desert plains with smears of dark charcoal, which cover most everything other than the city’s plateau and the island of Skyllea. The blight. Within that shadow, scattered Xs mark what must be old city ruins.
“We were only aware of the blight’s coming, not its beginning—a gradual change stealing over the mainland, like winter and drought, except spring rains never came. And yet it’s worse than endless winter and drought. It’s a poison that seeps into the heart of everything that touches it, slowly at first, so that you might escape if you leave quickly. But if you linger, even to cross the mainland between Skyllea’s coast and Thanopolis without a magical shield that few know how to master, then you’ll be forever touched by it, and eventually die. All the more reason for us to stay isolated on our island, even though we heard disturbing rumors escaping this city about mandatory imposition and registration of bloodlines and strange rituals binding them to the dead. For years we ignored it, following our own path … until the blight reached the shores of Skyllea and began to affect our own lands. We are holding it off now with a shield of our own, but the entire island is still at risk. Mayhap the entire world.”
I glance at the map nervously. Lightly sketched shapes hint at other landmasses beyond our continent’s borders and oceans. “It’s continuing to spread?”
“Yes, it’s even starting to cover the sea with ice in the north, and the oceans are toxic in the south. There is an immense magical imbalance in the world, Rovan, but no one here cares because we—they’re safe behind the veil,” he corrects with a grimace. “My people actually suspect the source of the imbalance is here, in this city. We weren’t sure how or why, which is why a delegation from Skyllea came to Thanopolis a couple of years before you were born. Aside from the usual diplomats, there were two bloodlines, some of the strongest on our island: myself, and a woman named Cylla. We volunteered because we were young and foolhardy and ambitious. We weren’t utterly incautious, though. Only Cylla presented herself at the palace with a small armed escort, while I laid low. She was acting as emissary of our people, but also hoped to uncover the truth of what was happening here. She went without me, because we thought they would see her as less of a threat and reveal more to her, even though she was as strong as I. We never thought they would—could—do to her what they did, or else we would have never let her go alone.” He pauses, staring off as if into the past. “We would all have run.”
“What did they do to her?”
His hand clenches atop his cane. “She was bound to a guardian and married to the crown prince within the month. Pregnant within two, with the twins. The royal family wanted the strength of her bloodline for their own, and they certainly never wanted her returning to Skyllea with whatever she learned. Our delegation was quietly slain, and I was trapped in the city alone, hunted. Cylla didn’t betray me. But the veil”—he shoots a glance upward, as if he can see it through the cloud-carved wooden ceiling—“detects the presence of magic in whoever passes through it. I warned you and your mother about it ages ago. So the wards knew another powerful bloodmage had entered the city with Cylla.”
I thought he’d warned me away from it because the blight was dangerous without a bloodmage’s shield. Not because it would betray me. I was foolish to think I could ever simply cross through the veil with a Skyllean merchant caravan.
“That’s why you were hiding with my mother,” I say.
“Not at first. At the start, I was by myself in a city still foreign to me. I managed to sneak word of what had happened through the veil with a Skyllean merchant, warning them not to send any bloodmages after us. But I couldn’t leave and just abandon Cylla.” He smiles wistfully. “Then I met your mother. I didn’t plan for you, Rovan. You became the source of both my greatest joy and then my greatest fear, once I realized how powerful you were.”
“You were afraid they would find me.” I choke on a laugh that’s half sob.
“It was why I never tried to return to you, after they found me. I couldn’t. I was soon warded myself, by Ivrilos, and forced to marry Penelope, the crown prince’s youngest and most stubborn sister. They wanted my power for their future generations just as they did Cylla’s. And since your mother and I were never married, not officially, I was in that sense a ‘free’ man.” He spits the words with bitter irony.
“How did they force you? Did the dead man somehow … He can’t actually control our bodies, right?”
My father shakes his head. “Other than the usual threats of pain, Crown Prince Tyros promised to make Cylla’s life easier and to never touch her again, since he had his three children already—the twins and his and Cylla’s younger daughter.” He sighs. “So I married Penelope, even if I didn’t want to. But she was just as unwilling in the marriage as I, and nothing ever came of our match. No child.”
I can’t halt the words on my lips. “But you raised Crisea like a daughter.”
“Do you begrudge the girl any kindness I might have shown her?” He scrubs a hand over his face before I can answer. “Believe me, I feel guilty about it. Every single day. Every time I embraced her and remembered she wasn’t you. Every bite of food I took from a silver fork that I knew you and your mother would never be able to eat. Every night I lay in a soft bed next to a woman who wasn’t your mother—when the princess deigned to sleep there and not with her lover. Guilt has been my closest companion.”
I flinch at the self-hatred in his voice. “Did you never try to run?” I whisper. “I don’t mean back to us. But to Skyllea.”
I can’t tell him, not yet, that journeying there has been my greatest dream. It’s too precious, too fragile.
“Oh, I tried. Several tim
es. But I never quite mastered the trick of shielding against the blight. We have mages in Skyllea who specialize in that, but of course I could never ask the help of one of Thanopolis’s mages. Perhaps it was good that Ivrilos was too great a deterrent for me to escape.” His lips twist. “Though I’m not supposed to talk about that, so as not to sour your relationship.”
“It is most thoroughly and completely sour already,” I snap, standing abruptly from my chair to pace. And yet there’s not much room to move, with all the clutter. Nowhere to escape. I turn back to my father. “And Cylla?”
“Several months ago, she passed her bloodline on to her eldest daughter, Princess Lydea, twin of Prince Kineas, who will very soon be declared the crown prince once his father, Tyros, becomes king.”
“Then is Cylla…?” I begin hesitantly, and then trail off at the look on my father’s face.
“Dead, yes, before she could ever become queen consort instead of princess consort … all titles she never wanted in the first place. The process of passing on a bloodline kills the bearer,” he adds, as if it’s an afterthought and not the worst of it. “It takes a life to transfer it.”
I have to put a steadying hand on the chair back, because my eyes flood with tears. “So I’m here,” I choke. “I got caught, like a great imbecile, and they now possess a child of yours, which you never meant for them to have.” I look up at him. “What happens to you?”
He approaches me slowly, and I feel his hand cup my face. His thumb brushes a tear off my cheek. This time, I don’t pull away. I lean into him.
“Rovan…”
I squeeze out the words. “How soon?”
“Likely not until you are twenty. My time is running out in any case.”
“Why?” I throw up my arms, forcing him to withdraw. I want his comfort, want to fall into his arms and cry, but more than that I want to be moving. Doing something. “Is it really so heavy to bear, the bloodline? Can’t you hold on a while yet? We can figure something out, plan our escape!”
“The bloodline shouldn’t be doing this to me, or to anyone—” My father cuts off, hissing and slapping a palm to his forehead, fingers clenching his blue hair. “Stop it.”
“What is it? Is he hurting you?” The dead man must be. He seems to be able to sap my father’s strength in an instant or cause him pain. I don’t see how it happens this time, but I still spin in a circle, fists raised as if I can fight off the dead man. “Where are you, you dusty coward?”
My father holds up his other hand to forestall me. “Maybe I’ll only speak of what I can—the bloodline—and see how far that gets me. It shouldn’t be a secret that my own parents didn’t give this to me, but my grandfather, because in Skyllea bearers of the bloodline don’t wish to end their own lives before their time.”
My father’s lips press together, either in pain or because he’s worried he’s said too much. But I consider his words … and their significance. It’s enough for me to understand: Bloodmages live full lives in Skyllea until they’re ready to pass their bloodlines on. Meaning that something else is prematurely aging my father. Or perhaps something has changed the nature of bloodlines within Thanopolis, to make them sap their bearers of vitality.
“The veil,” I say suddenly. “Is it somehow drawing from the bloodlines—from you?” I gasp. “Or is it … them? The dead?”
He grimaces again. “Rovan, I can’t. He really doesn’t want me to say.”
I grit my teeth, biting back more curses. “Okay, then don’t. I’ll figure it out myself, without the dead bastard’s permission.”
My father sighs wearily, seeming older by the minute. “There is a lot I haven’t told you, and much of it I pieced together on my own, like you will have to.” He glances meaningfully at the papers strewn about, and then at the wall near the map, where another scrap of parchment hangs. This one shows a red sigil that nearly looks as if it’s written in blood. “You might just have to follow in my footsteps. Follow your eye.” He holds my gaze, the look heavier than the gold of his irises.
He’s obviously trying to tell me something, something he doesn’t want the shade to know, but I’m not sure what. I have no idea what the sigil means.
“I don’t know how to read very well,” I say hesitantly. “And I know only the few sigils you taught me as a child. Move, sever, seek, that sort of thing.”
My father blinks in surprise. “And they caught you based on that? I taught you those only as a means of channeling your urges toward magic, and to help your mother. What did you do to draw their attention?”
I’m indignant. “Just because I know only a few sigils doesn’t mean I can do nothing with them. I learned to get creative.”
He squints at me, as if trying to see me better. “Show me.”
I should feel indignant at that, but I don’t. I want to show him. To impress him. I glance around the room, my eyes bouncing from surface to surface, book to book, as if establishing the warp and weft, marking the invisible sigils as I go, weaving the pattern with my mind. When I’m done, I nod. I don’t even raise a hand to make the motions. Maybe I’m showing off, just a little.
Scrolls, books, and papers fly across the room, clearing the floor and chairs and realigning in neat stacks on shelves and desktops. The office transforms from complete chaos to tidily overfilled.
My father starts in shock, nearly falling over, and then gapes. “How did you do that?” he asks. “You didn’t even sketch a sigil in the air.”
“I did. Just with my mind and not my hands. Nothing you could see.”
“Which sigils?”
“Just one,” I say, feeling suddenly bashful. “Move. Only I used a lot of them, layered just so. It’s the only one I can do that with.”
He shakes his head in wonder. “Despite the seeming simplicity of what you did … the control alone … and your ability to hold it all in your mind … Rovan, many far more experienced bloodmages with an entire bloodline at their disposal couldn’t do what you just did, not without sketching in the air at the very least, and likely with their own blood as ink, to map it all out.”
“I did sketch the sigils out at first, in charcoal on a rock, or in the dirt. And when I could manage, I sketched them in the air. I didn’t know I could use blood, so I had to know them perfectly. I used move the most. Eventually, after years of practice, I could form a whole picture in my mind of whatever I wanted to weave, however complicated. Except it was more than a picture by then, it had…”
“Depth. Like a sculpture,” my father says knowingly. “You’re an artist, Rovan, except your tool isn’t a chisel or a brush or even a loom. It’s sigils.”
“Just one sigil, mostly.”
“You’ll learn more. And with them, you can make almost anything, you realize, not just a weaving.”
I remember the ball of water I summoned for Bethea and feel a flush of pride, but then focus on the ground as sinking shame takes its place. “I still got caught. And I couldn’t do anything to save myself, or my mother, or you. And now I don’t know how I’m supposed to follow in your footsteps.”
“I’ll help you. I promise. I’ll teach you. For the moment”—he sags back against the desk—“I think I need to rest before tonight’s banquet. And you have an appointment with the tailor.”
“I don’t want to see a tailor or go to any pompous banquet,” I hiss. “These people are vultures!”
“Do it, Rovan, for your mother’s sake. For me. Please.” He holds my eyes again, but this time I can tell he’s so, so tired.
“Ugh,” I say, and he smiles slightly, knowing I’ve relented.
But then his smile drops. “Rovan, I’m begging you … keep your head down. Try not to ask too many questions, at least for tonight. Be on your guard. Don’t think to find sympathy or succor.” His mouth thins to a grim line. “Not from any of these vultures.”
7
I hate my gown, I hate the grand banquet hall, and I hate the people around me. Most especially I hate my guardian, standing
all too visibly behind my father and me as the guests mill and mingle before serving starts.
Even he, the dead man, has dressed for the occasion. A bright silver circlet binds his dark hair, and he wears a long black robe, embroidered in ghostly silver thread around the collar and sleeves, though his black sword belt still cinches his trim waist. This time, two half-moon blades, gleaming wicked and sharp, hang on either hip. He looks like a king who has stepped out of legend. Or rather, the underworld.
Despite hating the sight of him, I’m jealous of his strange blades. I would feel more confident with a weapon facing all these people. My gown isn’t nearly protection enough. While the sapphire-blue creation has plenty of material, contrary to what Crisea implied, it’s terribly thin, draping in gossamer folds from gold feather pins at the tops of my bare arms to the floor, and belted tightly across my breasts and down around my waist and hips with a twining strophion in cloth of gold. My dark, blue-tinted waves of hair have been piled atop my head with a heap of red poppies and coiled with thin gold chain, which matches the spiraling gold cuffs around my upper arms and wrists. Other than the chains and cuffs, I feel naked … which is perhaps fitting.
I’m unarmed, unarmored, and in the den of my enemy. A feeling of helplessness threatens to consume me, but I need to stay alert, look for any way to help my mother and escape. Still, my predicament makes me want to do something, anything, even throw a table across the room, merely for something to do.
The dead man is a shadowy warning at my shoulder.
My father and I trail behind Penelope and Crisea, who seem far more at home than we do in this strange place. The palace’s grand banquet hall is as opulent as one would expect. There are golden chandeliers shaped like antlers so entwined with blooming flowers that they look like hanging baskets bigger than carriages, dangling from a sky-high ceiling painted in blue and gilt-lined clouds.
“My wedding feast was held here,” my father murmurs. “I haven’t been back since, and I can’t say as I’ve missed it.”
In the Ravenous Dark Page 7
