Realm of Ruins

by Hannah West

  “No matter what it costs, we get Valory to that tower,” Glisette said.

  Mingling fear and grit churned up a glorious swell of power inside me. Glisette, Rayed, Rynna, and I hurried forward as a pack and started across, Glisette casting a shield of protection at the helm.

  But a horde of Darmeskans found the nerve to attempt crossing to freedom, like floodwaters bursting a dam. A rain of arrows slashed through the air in response. I watched in horror as they struck innocent people, piercing their chests, their eyes, their necks, spraying blood in the air. Disturbing cries of suffering wrenched out of them. The lucky survivors moved as a nervous herd, desperate to reach the other side. Glisette had to draw in her shield, leaving room for them to go around it, forcing us to file behind her. Beside me, a figure fell off the edge, howling as she became nothing but a shadow hurtling into the ravine. I heard a young boy crying out for her. More victims were plucked off, and the frenzied stampede became even more desperate.

  An arrow whooshed past my ear to take down a white-painted sentry perched on the wall, alerting me to Kadri’s presence on my left. Theslyn stepped up on my right and released an arrow that sent another of the Moth King’s soldiers into the abyss. Refugees had begun to pile up, jamming against Glisette’s shield. Glisette had no choice but to drop the shield entirely so they could pass.

  Someone pushed by me, throwing me off balance until the ravine reeled below me. Regaining my composure, I reflexively drew my dagger, but what could I do? Attack the very people we hoped to save?

  “Calm down!” Kadri yelled to the crowd, to no effect. “Calm down or all of you will die!”

  A large man with a gray beard pushed past me and I lost my footing, stumbling and landing on my side. Someone stepped on my elbow and another kicked my chin. I longed to lash out at these people, who didn’t seem to care that we were risking our lives to save them.

  But I could imagine the Moth King peering down at this spectacle from above, high enough that these flesh-and-blood humans looked like nothing but swarming gnats. He would not see fear or hear the screams of the sufferers. He would see people turning on one another, helpless enough to show their primitive underbellies, and if I gave in I would be one of them.

  “That’s about enough of this,” I heard Rynna say. She seized my elbow, effortlessly lifting me to my feet, and charged down the center bridge, baring her long dagger in front of her. A head taller than everyone else, with flaring, golden eyes, she seemed to bring some back to their wits. “You’re killing each other like rats!” she yelled, driving me through the crowd until my soles landed on the dirt at the other side, past where the gates had stood just minutes ago. Now standing within the citadel walls, I looked ahead at the cobblestone streets that branched to either side of the front entrance to the fortress itself, an imposing great hall. Rynna wheeled around to glare at me. “You can’t be so soft.”

  A group of soldiers surged out from a side street to attack the fleeing Darmeskans. Rynna jumped into the action.

  Kadri caught up to me. “We can’t save them all.”

  “I know,” I said.

  An arrow jetted between us, narrowly missing both of us. The crowd, the city walls, the windows and doorways of the great hall were haunted with white moths painted on faces, and everywhere the soldiers aimed there were violent bursts of blood, cries of suffering. Impaled bodies on pikes waited at the entrance to the fortress. I couldn’t bear a closer look at their features; the number of them matched the number of elders, and I would die where I stood if I found Grandmum among them, her flesh a feast for ravens.

  The Darmeskans had been permitted to live, but only in the shadow of death. Children had looked up at these corpses. My stomach heaved. My path, an unavoidable path toward the Moth King, cut through a forest of twisted remains.

  Kadri loaded another arrow and pointed it at a soldier charging her with a sword. But he was barely more than a boy, and his white-painted eyes looked vague and distant. As he raised his blade, I thought of the compulsion Tilmorn had placed over Glisette and me. “Kadri, they’re Darmeskans!” I called, but too late. Her arrow hit its mark and a red flower bloomed on the boy’s chest. Awareness appeared in his eyes as he dropped his sword point-first and stumbled into her.

  “Do you know how to use that knife or not?” Theslyn demanded, nudging me hard with his elbow.

  “They’re Darmeskans. Innocent people compelled to kill us!”

  “Will gawking at them break the enchantment? You have to kill the one who enchanted them. So do it!”

  I looked up at the looming tower and brushed away the strand of pity that remained for my attackers, drawing my dagger. Blameless victims or willing soldiers, I couldn’t discern, so I started toward the steps of the great hall. People who had not been compelled to fight darted from their hiding places toward the bridge, trying to escape their captors in this city of shadows and death.

  A soldier with a knife lunged to stab me in the ribs. I dodged and he followed the arc of the failed blow, leaving his neck vulnerable. I sank my blade into his jugular and felt warm blood rushing over my fingers, heard him choke and gurgle out his last breaths.

  Piercing flesh was too easy, like stabbing a ripe fruit. I ripped out my knife and shoved him to the ground. Another fighter closed in from behind and gripped my fist, staying my blade. I lashed and kicked, skimming his shin with my boot, but he was strong and turned my hand so that the dagger pointed toward my own heart. I gritted my teeth and resisted, but the lethal point trembled closer to my fragile flesh….

  Closing my eyes, I invited the Water’s power to the fore. All it took was a twitch of two fingers and the magic lashed out of me, snapping the bones of the hand and arm that clenched me. If flesh was no more than a tender peel, bones were dry stalks of wheat.

  The man screamed and retreated. I darted through the maze of bodies, up the steps toward the six soldiers guarding the doors to the great hall. I looked not at their features but at the moths splayed in cracked paint across their faces. When I raised my hands in front of me, my dagger dripping bright blood down my knuckles, I thought of each man as nothing but a pillar blocking my path, a pillar flaunting the enemy’s emblem. My wrists snapped outward and the pillars cracked and collapsed, falling to either side. Swords clanged tersely on stone.

  More compelled Darmeskans advanced from behind them. Glisette appeared at my side in a flurry of blond waves, panting, shallow cuts shining like latticework on her pale skin. Her elicrin stone shot light and flung three of them down the hall, cracking them on a statue with lethal force. Having made my job easier, she drew her sword again and lunged away from the great hall’s entrance back into the streets. I hoped most of the lucid Darmeskans had managed to escape across the bridge, but the persistent howls and sobs of terror suggested otherwise.

  Facing the remaining attackers, I tested my power again. What I didn’t break, I pierced and jabbed. Warm life flooded over my hands and sprinkled my face. One of the soldiers clawed my cheek like a cornered animal and I deepened the stab into his chest in vicious vengeance.

  Finally, I faced an empty, vast hall.

  The Moth King’s tower eclipsed whatever light should have fallen through the high windows. The men Glisette had sent flying back with her spell had struck a stone statue of Queen Bristal and King Anthony surrendering their elicrin stones with peaceful smiles. Bristal’s cupped hands had broken off and lay on the floor as if pleading.

  Only when the quiet fully cocooned me did I realize how loudly the battle raged outside: my friends against the soldiers, the soldiers against their own people.

  I burrowed deeper into the silence, passing lucid Darmeskans daring to scurry from hiding places. The fortress was immense, the halls and rooms within its walls as complex as the city streets, but I had explored enough to know how to go up and keep going up, beyond meeting chambers, residences, and libraries to secret rooms holding dusty artifacts stale with old magic. I could feel the spirit of this ancient place, st
alwart, unruffled, drafty with mountain wind creeping through cracks. As I walked on, deeper, higher, my legs burning but my breaths calm, the smell of stone and timber gave way to the bite of mountain wind and iron.

  From the topmost level, there were cold stairwells leading to a mountain plateau, unscalable from below. I shoved open a creaky door and looked across a metal bridge spanning grass and rocks, connecting the fortress to the looming tower of its new ruler.

  It took all of my self-control not to crane my neck and look up to see its austere form stabbing into the heavens.

  “You’re a flashy sort of fellow, aren’t you, Valmarys?” I whispered as I walked. “Men who like the idea of power tend to erect monuments to themselves. But you’re just a half-fairy, half-elicromancer man in a tall tower. Glisette would probably accuse you of compensating for inadequacies.”

  Though light humor eased the terror in my chest, I heard a cry of suffering, Mercer’s, echoing from the heights, glancing off the mountain cliffs. The terror came rushing back full force.

  There was no door to the base of the tower, just a gaping entry. I swallowed hard as I stepped inside, expecting to be bombarded. Instead I found myself alone in a glass chamber. The chamber closed, jolted upward, and carried me into the dark belly of the looming bastion. I pressed my bloody hands against the enclosure, panicking and short of breath. The dark walls soon slid away and were replaced with glass revealing the view. Clouds shrouded Darmeska below. My belly and knees seemed to drop out from under me as I continued upward.

  I was out of my element. I could break bones with a twitch, but I could not send a glass room whirling through the air. The Moth King was bigger, grander, greater, smarter than I.

  Chilling images raced through my mind as I imagined standing in his presence. Would he look like a blight, decayed by his dark deeds? Would he be a fork-tongued ghoul, a giant shadow man in a cloak with eyes like glowing coals?

  The soaring prism came to a smooth halt and a pane of the glass chamber slid open.

  Vast stairs led toward a platform with a magnificent back wall of glass laced with intricate metalwork. Faint clouds muted the sunlight from gold to silver.

  Two guards stood at either side of the glass door that had opened for me, but both of them seemed to look through me as though I were made of glass, and therefore I didn’t move to attack. One simple mistake could demolish any chance of victory.

  I had no choice. I started up the stairs, daring to look beyond the deadpan faces of the soldiers. The moment I crossed the threshold, the prism plummeted.

  I was trapped in the Moth King’s lair.

  HEN I reached the platform, a long banquet table stretched before me. At the far end, a figure sat silhouetted against the light.

  Could this be Emlyn Valmarys? So ordinary and human in shape? I recognized Tilmorn’s bulky, stoic form standing at his right side. On his left, Jovie wore a silky white dress that clung to her curves.

  “Welcome,” the sitting figure said. The greeting was so bizarrely mundane I wondered if I could be dreaming. “Come in, please, Valory. I plan to keep this most inevitable of encounters amiable. I am far more powerful than you, and yet you are said to be fated to end my life. I feel neither of us would benefit from an altercation.”

  The surge of intensity that had seen me this far skittered away, leaving me small, weak, cold with the dampness of others’ blood. My mouth was dry. I swallowed to bolster the frail confidence in my voice. “You sent blights to kill us. You ravaged the forest. Forgive me if I am not convinced you seek a civil encounter.”

  “That was before,” he said, rising to his feet. He was tall. As he came closer, I could make out his features. There were no signs of decay, despite his dark elicromancy. His long hair was glossy black. He did not have tapered ears like the full-blooded fay, but his eyes glittered a crisp silvery blue to match the sky. His cheekbones were harsh, his lips thin. He wore an elicrin stone of rough coppery red streaked with iridescent blue. Above all, he was ordinary-looking, someone to whom I might not have given a second glance were he a face in the courts of Arna.

  The lilt in his voice proved that he had only recently tried this language on his tongue, that he must have absorbed it by some magical means other than omnilingualism. There used to be a girl in my tier who could memorize absurd amounts of information. She had received her elicrin stone just after Ander. I wondered if hers was one of the many powers Valmarys had borrowed.

  “Before what?” I asked, my magic vigilant inside me again, longing to react to every step he took.

  “Before I realized: neither of us has had any peace since I returned. We have been living in fear of each other. When Glend Neswick told me your name, I wanted to destroy you so that you couldn’t destroy me. I couldn’t stop dwelling on the vision. Until it occurred to me how miserable I was, how I had stopped enjoying the pursuit of my passions because I was thinking of you always, like a tormented lover, ransacking the realm to exterminate you. And you, how miserable you must have been carrying this task of murdering me, thinking you would meet some beast far worse than any storybooks have told. So I have decided to close the distance, to light the lamp that makes the shadows less frightening. Instead of running from you, I have, like you, decided to look destiny in the eyes. And to have a conversation with it. I much prefer to learn than to lash out in violence. Won’t you sit and join me?”

  He gestured. The table was set for two. Tilmorn strode around and pulled a chair out for me. The Moth King retreated to his own seat, thin and willowy compared to his strapping right-hand man.

  I noticed that despite standing by her master’s side, wearing an elicrin stone as she’d always dreamed, Jovie did not look happy. Valmarys dismissed her with a flick of his finger and she stalked away, her glare hateful as she disappeared down a side corridor lit with bluish light.

  “My favorite pet thinks I’m too fascinated with you,” Valmarys said. “She argues there is nothing special about you at all, that you came upon your elicrin power by chance. Ivria, however, she regards highly, and regrets that her sorrowful death made you mighty.”

  I would kill that hypocrite Jovie, make her a pincushion like the Darmeskans I’d been forced to destroy. But this creature knew too much about me, and I knew so little about him. Before I lashed out, I would need to learn.

  A corner of my mind acknowledged that the meal laid out for us looked enticing. A hearty portion of fish with silver-white scales was drizzled with an aromatic yellow sauce and garnished with radish roses. If this was a dream, it was an odd dream indeed.

  I cooled my temper, perched on the edge of my chair, and surveyed the Moth King’s features again, searching for something I could use. He focused his attentions on the meal, using elegant cutlery to carve small bites. Tilmorn hovered at his side again, his smoky elicrin stone winking with readiness. I examined his eyes, hoping to find a secret message of awareness, some sign that he would help me, but saw nothing.

  I dared to slide my gaze away from them. Glass chambers lined the walls from front to back. They reminded me of display cases that held jewels and artifacts in the palace’s relic room in Arna, with three solid sides and a transparent front. Beyond the glare of bluish lights on their surfaces, I could see that what lay inside each separate case was not an object, but a person.

  A new terror pierced my heart. The captives were elicromancers—wearing stones around their throats—and Tilmorn was a trader of elicrin gifts.

  It was a collection.

  The Moth King could try on elicrin gifts like jewels. And he wore them until they dulled. Because he borrowed others’ gifts, the dark magic he performed affected them, not him. Each elicromancer showed signs of dark magic decay. Small ones—a festering sore, a discolored eye—but the Moth King hadn’t been in this age very long, and he had already created stains and marks that no Healer could reverse.

  There was no question in my mind that it was in my best interest to dine rather than fight.

  I didn�
��t see Mercer, but I dared not search for him. The Moth King could not see how I cared for him. In my mind, love had always been an advantage. It meant friendship, protection, loyalty. Now, I saw it differently: an exposed vein, a weakness, a chink in my armor that could not be revealed.

  “The food isn’t poisoned,” the Moth King said. “How petty would that be?”

  “Pettier than pretending to be Ambrosine’s doting suitor?” I asked.

  “You can’t say someone is pretending if you do not know their intentions,” the Moth King said. “I have not told a lie since I returned from my nap. Tilmorn, would you please give the lady a napkin to clean her knife? We’re attempting to enjoy a meal.”

  Tilmorn stalked over to unfold the silk napkin at my elbow. My hand shook as I accepted it from him, accidentally brushing his broad knuckle. I wiped the keen blade and hilt of my knife. It was not the deadliest weapon I possessed, so I forced myself to part with it, sheathing it at my side and taking up the dainty fork. If eating would make the conversation last, I could gain an advantage. The second I dared use my power would be the point of no return. If I failed to break him as I’d failed to break Prosper, Ander, Neswick, and Jovie, it would be the end of me.

  I separated the scales from the meat and took a small bite, testing it, my eyes on the Moth King. A flutter of fluid movement drew my gaze to one of the glass chambers. This one was filled with water and its occupant turned out to be a sea maiden, though she looked nothing like the beautiful one I’d encountered off the coast of Beyrian. Her eyes were the size of small plums and red-rimmed. She was silver and white, hunched, her upper body thin and her fluke translucent and ragged. The webs between her fingers were so protracted that her hands resembled fins. She remained still, staring at me, until she snapped at me with horrid eagerness, revealing sharp teeth.

  “A cold-water sea maiden,” the Moth King said. “If you extract a creature from its natural habitat, over time it develops new traits to survive. During my prior reign, I relocated her ancestors from the south sea to the northern ice caves, and there, as I expected, they became more carnivorous over time for lack of edible plants. Those with paler features survived the predators, as they were less easily seen, and the survivors bred until most of them looked like this.”