A Conjuring of Light

by V. E. Schwab

  An arrow took her in the chest, loosed by a guard above. The young woman staggered a step before wrapping those same delicate fingers around the arrow’s shaft and ripping it free. Blood spilled down her front, more black than red, but she dragged herself after him another few steps before her heart failed, her limbs folded, her body died.

  Rhy reached the landing and spun back to see his city.

  The first wave of the assault had reached the base of the palace steps. He recognized one of the men at the front—thought, for a terrifying second, that it was Alucard, before Rhy realized it was the captain’s older brother. Lord Berras.

  And when Berras saw the prince—and he did see him now—those curse-dark eyes narrowed and a feral, joyless smile spread across his face. Flame danced around one hand.

  “Tear it down,” he boomed in a voice lower and harder than his brother’s. “Tear it all down.”

  It was more than a rally—it was a general’s command, and Rhy stared in shock and horror as the mass surged up the stairs. He drew his sword as something blazed in the sky above, a comet of fire launched by another, unseen foe. A pair of guards hauled him backward into the palace a breath before the blast struck the wards and shattered in a blaze of light, blinding but futile.

  The guards slammed the doors, the nightmarish view beyond the palace replaced suddenly by dark wood and the muted resonance of strong magic, and then, sickeningly, by the sound of bodies striking stone, wood, glass.

  Rhy staggered back from the doors and hurried to the nearest bay of windows.

  Until that day, Rhy had never seen what happened when a forbidden body threw itself against an active ward. At first, it was simply repelled, but as it tried again and again and again, the effect was roughly that of steel against thick ice, one chipping away at the other while also ruining itself. The wards on the palace shuddered and cracked, but so did the cursed. Blood ran from their noses and ears as they threw element and spell and fist against the walls, clawed at the foundation, threw themselves against the doors.

  “What is going on?” demanded Isra, storming into the foyer. When the head of the royal guard saw the prince, she recoiled a step and bowed. “Your Highness.”

  “Find the king,” said Rhy as the palace shook around him. “We are under attack.”

  * * *

  At this rate, the wards wouldn’t hold. Rhy didn’t need a gift for magic to see that. The palace gallery shook with the force of the bodies throwing themselves against the wood and stone. They were on the banks. They were on the steps. They were on the river.

  And they were killing themselves.

  The shadow king was killing them.

  All around priests scrambled to draw fresh concentration rings on the gallery floor. Spells to focus magic. To bolster the wards.

  Where was Kell?

  Light flared against the glass with every blow, the spellwork straining to hold under the strength of the attack.

  The royal palace was a shell. And it was cracking.

  The walls trembled, and several people screamed. Nobles huddled together in corners. Magicians barred the doors, braced for the palace to break. Prince Col stood before his sister like a human shield while Lord Sol-in-Ar instructed his entourage in a rapid stream of Faroan.

  Another blast, and the wards fractured, light webbing across the windows. Rhy lifted his hand to the glass, expecting it to shatter.

  “Get back,” ordered his mother.

  “Every magician stand within a circle,” ordered his father. Maxim had appeared in the first moments of the attack looking drawn but determined. Blood flecked his cuff, and Rhy wondered, dazedly, if his father had been fighting. Tieren was at his side. “I thought you said the wards would hold,” snapped the king.

  “Against Osaron’s spell,” replied the priest, drawing another circle on the floor. “Not against the brute force of three hundred souls.”

  “We have to stop them,” said Rhy. He hadn’t worked so hard and saved so few only to watch the rest of his people break themselves against these walls.

  “Emira,” ordered the king, “get everyone else into the Jewel.”

  The Jewel was the ballroom at the very center of the palace, the farthest from the outer walls. The queen hesitated, eyes wide and lost as she looked from Rhy to the windows.

  “Emira, now.”

  At that moment, a strange transformation happened in his mother. She seemed to wake from a trance; she drew herself up and began to speak in crisp, clear Arnesian. “Brost, Losen, with me. You can hold up a circle, yes? Good. Ister,” she said, addressing one of the female priests, “come and set the wards.”

  The walls shook, a deep, dangerous rattle.

  “They will not hold,” said the Veskan prince, drawing a blade as if the foe were flesh and blood, a thing that could be cut down.

  “We need a plan,” said Sol-in-Ar. “Before this sanctuary becomes a cage.”

  Maxim spun on Tieren. “The sleeping spell. Is it ready?”

  The old priest swallowed. “Yes, but—”

  “Then, for saint’s sake,” cut in the king, “do it now.”

  Tieren stepped in, lowering his voice. “Magic of this size and scale requires an anchor.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Rhy.

  “A magician to hold the spell in place.”

  “One of the priests, then—” started Maxim.

  Tieren shook his head. “The demands of such a spell are too steep. The wrong mind will break.…”

  Understanding hit Rhy.

  “No,” he said, “not you—” even as his father’s order came down:

  “See it done.”

  The Aven Essen nodded. “Your Majesty,” said Tieren, adding, “once it’s started, I won’t be able to help you with—”

  “It’s all right,” interrupted the king. “I can finish it myself. Go.”

  “Stubborn as ever,” said the old man, shaking his head. But he didn’t argue, didn’t linger. Tieren turned on his heel, robes fluttering, and called to three of his priests, who fell into his wake. Rhy hurried after them.

  “Tieren!” he called. The old man slowed but didn’t stop. “What is my father talking about?”

  “The king’s business is his own.”

  Rhy stepped in front of him. “As the royal prince, I demand to know what he is doing.”

  The Aven Essen narrowed his eyes, then flicked his fingers, and Rhy felt himself forced physically out of the way as Tieren and his three priests filed past in a flurry of white robes. He brought a hand to his chest, stunned.

  “Don’t stand there, Prince Rhy,” called Tieren, “when you could help to save us all.”

  Rhy pushed off the wall and hurried after them.

  Tieren led the way to the guards’ hall, and into the sparring room.

  The priests had stripped the space bare, all of the armor and weapons and equipment cleared save for a single wooden table on which sat scrolls and ink, empty vials lying on their sides, the dustlike contents glittering in a shallow bowl.

  Even now, with the walls trembling, a pair of priests were hard at work, steady hands scrawling symbols he couldn’t read across the stone floor.

  “It’s time,” said Tieren, stripping off his outer robe.

  “Aven Essen,” said one of the priests, looking up. “The final seals aren’t—”

  “It will have to do.” He undid the collars and cuffs of his white tunic. “I will anchor the spell,” he said, addressing Rhy. “If I stir or die, it will break. Do not let that happen, so long as Osaron’s own curse holds.”

  It was all happening too fast. Rhy reeled. “Tieren, please—”

  But he stilled as the old man turned and brought his weathered hands to Rhy’s face. Despite everything, a sense of calm washed through him.

  “If the palace falls, get out of the city.”

  Rhy frowned, focusing through the sudden peace. “I will not run.”

  A tired smile spread across the old man’s face. �
�That is the right answer, mas vares.”

  With that, his hands were gone, and the wave of calm vanished. Fear and panic surged, raging anew through Rhy’s blood, and when Tieren crossed into the circle of the spell, the prince fought the urge to pull him back.

  “Remind your father,” said the Aven Essen, “that even kings are made of flesh and bone.”

  Tieren sank to his knees in the center of the circle and Rhy was forced to retreat as the five priests began their work, moving with smooth, confident motions, as if the palace weren’t threatening to collapse around them.

  One took up a bowl of spelled sand and poured the grainy contents around the traced white line of the circle. Three others took up their places as the last held a burning taper out to Rhy and explained what to do.

  He cradled the small flame as if it were a life while the five priests joined hands, heads bowed, and began to recite a spell in a language Rhy himself couldn’t speak. Tieren closed his eyes, lips moving in time with the spell, which began to echo against the stone walls, filling the room like smoke.

  Beyond the palace, another voice whispered through the cracks in the wards. “Let me in.”

  Rhy knelt, as he’d been told to do, and touched the taper to the sand line that traced the circle.

  “Let me in.”

  The others continued the spell, but as the sand’s end lit like a fuse, Tieren’s lips stopped moving. He drew a deep breath, and then the old priest began to exhale slowly, emptying his lungs as the flameless fire burned its way around the circle, leaving a charred black line in its wake.

  “Let me in,” snarled the voice, echoing in the room as the final inches of sand burned away and the last of the air left the priest’s lungs.

  Rhy waited for Tieren to breathe again.

  He didn’t.

  The Aven Essen’s kneeling form slumped sideways, and the other priests were there to catch him before he hit the floor. They lowered his body to the stone, laying him out within the circle as if he were a corpse, cushioning his head, lacing his fingers. One took the taper from Rhy’s hands and nested it in the old man’s.

  The flickering flame went suddenly steady.

  The whole room held its breath as the palace shuddered a final time, and then went still.

  Beyond the walls, the whispers and the shouts and the pounding of fists and bodies all … stopped, a heavy silence falling like a sheet over the city.

  The spell was done.

  VII

  “Give me the ring,” said Holland.

  Lila raised a brow. It wasn’t a question or a plea. It was a demand. And considering that the speaker had spent most of the trip chained in the hold, it struck her as a fairly audacious one.

  Alucard, who was still cradling the silver band, started to refuse him, but Holland rolled his eyes and flicked his fingers, and the ring shot out of the captain’s hand. Lila lunged for it, but Kell caught her arm and the ring landed in Holland’s waiting palm.

  He turned the band between his hands.

  “Why should we let him have it?” she snarled, pulling free.

  “Why?” echoed Holland as a sliver of silver came flying toward her. She plucked the second ring out of the air. A moment later, Kell caught the third. “Because I’m the strongest.”

  Kell rolled his eyes.

  “Want to prove it?” growled Lila.

  Holland was considering his ring. “There is a difference, Miss Bard, between power and strength. Do you know what that difference is?” His eyes flicked up. “Control.”

  Indignation flared like a match, not just because she hated Holland, hated what he was insinuating, but because she knew he was right. For all her raw power, it was just that, raw. Unformed. Wild.

  She knew he was right, but her fingers still itched for a knife.

  Holland sighed. “Your distrust is all the more reason to let me do it.”

  Lila frowned. “How do you figure?”

  “The original ring is the anchor.” He slipped it onto his thumb. “As such, it is bound to its copies, not the other way around.”

  Lila didn’t follow. It wasn’t a feeling she relished. The only thing she relished less was the look in Holland’s eyes, the smug look of someone who knew she was lost.

  “The rings will bind our power,” he said slowly. “But you can break the connection whenever you want, whereas I will be tethered to the spell.”

  A cruel smile cut across Lila’s face. She clicked her tongue. “Can’t go a day without chaining yourself to someone, can y—”

  He was on her in an instant, his fingers wrapped around her throat and her knife against his. Kell threw up his hands in exasperation, Jasta called out a warning about getting blood on her ship, and a second blade came to rest below Holland’s jaw.

  “Now, now,” said Alucard casually, “I know, I’ve thought of killing you both, but in the interest of the greater good, let’s try to keep this civil.”

  Lila lowered her knife. Holland let go of her throat.

  They each took a single step back. Annoyance burned through Lila, but so did something else. It took her a second to recognize it. Shame. It sat, a cold weight, steaming in her stomach. Holland stood there, features carefully set as if the blow hadn’t landed, but it clearly had.

  She swallowed, cleared her throat. “You were saying…?”

  Holland held her gaze.

  “I’m willing to be the anchor of our spell,” he said carefully. “As long as we three are bound, my power will be yours.”

  “And until we choose to break that bond,” she countered, “our power will be yours.”

  “It is the only way,” pressed Holland. “One Antari’s magic wasn’t enough to entice Osaron, but together…”

  “We can lure him in,” finished Kell. He looked down at the ring in his hand, then slid it on. Lila saw the moment their powers met. The shudder that passed like a chill between them, the air humming with their combined power.

  Lila looked down at her own silver band. She remembered the power, yes, but also the terrifying sense of being exposed, and yet trapped, laid bare and subject to someone else’s will.

  She wanted to help, but the idea of binding herself to another—

  A shadow crossed her vision as Holland stepped toward her. She didn’t look up, didn’t want to see his expression, filled with disdain, or worse, whatever was now visible through the crack she’d made.

  “It’s not easy, is it? To chain yourself to someone else?” A chill ran through her as he threw the words back in her face. She clenched her fist around the ring. “Even when it’s for a higher cause,” he went on, never raising his voice. “Even when it could save a city, heal a world, change the lives of everyone you know…” Her eyes flicked to Kell. “It’s a hard choice to make.”

  Lila met Holland’s gaze, expecting—maybe even hoping—to find that cold, implacable calm, perhaps tinged with disgust. Instead, she found shades of sadness, loss. And somehow, strength. The strength to go on. To try again. To trust.

  She put on the ring.

  ELEVEN

  DEATH AT SEA

  I

  To the Nameless Saints who soothe the winds and still the restless sea …

  Lenos turned his grandmother’s talisman between his hands as he prayed.

  I beg protection for this vessel—

  A sound shuddered through the ship, followed by a swell of cursing. Lenos looked up as Lila got to her feet, steam rising from her hands.

  —and those who sail aboard it. I beg kind waters and clear skies as we make our way—

  “If you break my ship, I will kill you all,” shouted Jasta.

  His fingers tightened around the pendant.

  —our way into danger and darkness.

  “Damned Antari,” muttered Alucard, storming up the steps to the landing where Lenos stood, elbows on the rail.

  The captain slumped down against a crate and produced a flask. “This is why I drink.”

  Lenos pressed on.
>
  I beg this as a humble servant, with faith in the vast world, in all its power.

  He straightened, tucking the necklace back under his collar.

  “Did I interrupt?” asked Alucard.

  Lenos looked from the singe marks on the deck to Jasta bellowing from the wheel as the ship tipped suddenly sideways under the force of whatever magic the three Antari were working, and at last to the man who sat drinking on the floor.

  “Not really,” said Lenos, folding his long limbs in beside him.

  Alucard offered Lenos the flask, but he declined. He’d never been much of a drinker. Never thought the during was much worth the after.

  “How do you know they’re listening?” asked Alucard, taking another sip. “These saints you pray to?”

  The captain wasn’t a spiritual man, as far as Lenos could tell, and that was fine. Magic was a river carving its course, picking who to flow through and who to bend around, and for those it bent around, well, there was a reason for that, too. For one thing, they tended to have a better view of the water from the bank. Lenos shrugged, searching for the words. “It’s not … really … a conversation.”

  Alucard raised a brow, his sapphire glittering in the dying light. “What then?”

  Lenos fidgeted. “More like … an offering.”

  The captain made a sound that might have been understanding. Or he might have simply been clearing his throat.

  “Always were an odd one,” mused Alucard. “How did you even end up on my ship?”

  Lenos looked down at the talisman still cradled in one palm. “Life,” he said, since he didn’t believe in luck—it was the absence of design, and if Lenos believed one thing, it was that everything had an order, a reason. Sometimes you were too close to see it, sometimes too far away, but it was there.

  He thought about that, then added, “And Stross.”

  After all, it had been the Spire’s gruff first mate who ran into Lenos in Tanek when he was fresh off the boat from Hanas, who’d taken a shine to him, for one reason or another, and marched him up onto the deck of a new ship, its hull shining, its sails a midnight blue. There an odd lot had gathered, but oddest to Lenos was the man perched atop the wheel.