Reign of the Fallen

by Sarah Glenn Marsh

  “We won’t have far to walk, at least.” Evander points west, toward the sea.

  There, suspended in the air above a not-too-distant rocky tree-strewn cliff, a round blue gate shimmers as clearly as the moon and stars. The gates are easiest to spot at dusk. At least, for anyone with blue eyes. To everyone else, they’re forever invisible, and my stomach clenches as I imagine what walking through this particular gate will look like for Princess Valoria.

  Like leaping into the far-below sea.

  “What do you see over there?” the princess demands.

  “The way forward,” I answer, and her eyes widen. Sometimes I wish I’d been born with brown eyes like hers, so my Sight would show me how the parts of something worked together. I could’ve been a potioneer then, and worked in an apothecary like an ordinary Karthian. Of course, if King Wylding didn’t forbid change, I bet brown-eyed citizens would be anything but ordinary—putting their talents to work at new ideas.

  Standing and stuffing a few coffee beans in my mouth, I offer a hand to Princess Valoria. “Hold tight. If we get separated, you’re doomed.”

  The princess nods, but her face is pinched like she’s about to vomit.

  “Relax.” I squeeze her hand. “We’ll be in and out of there in no time. You’ll see.”

  The princess takes a shaky breath. “You can’t promise that.”

  “Of course I can.” Grinning, I point out one of the birds etched in indigo on my arm.

  “Forgive me.” Valoria rubs her eyes and blinks. “Of course I have absolute faith in you—you’re the Sparrow!”

  My grin widens. “The one and only.” I got the nickname because I’m the best guide through the ever-shifting Deadlands. It’s good to know my reputation is alive and well. “Now let’s grab the king before he wanders somewhere we won’t want to follow.”

  We begin the march toward the cliff nearest the gate, leaving the king’s body in the grass to await our return. Evander leads the way. Normally, I’d enjoy the view of his tight backside as he strides toward our destination, but the princess’s fingers are so icy in mine that I can think of nothing but her dread.

  “Did your family explain the price of walking into the Deadlands, Highness?” I whisper. I still don’t like how pale she is. Or, I realize for the first time, how young. She can’t be quite as old as my seventeen years.

  “Fertility,” she whispers back.

  I nod. Entering the realm of death demands life, at least for those without blue eyes. Necromancers like Evander and me can walk through the Deadlands without a cost, but not many realize the price we must pay later. When we die, our spirits never reach the Deadlands. We can raise the dead time and again, but no one will be able to give us a second chance at life.

  Valoria squeezes my hand tighter. “Will it hurt? Losing my—ah—?” She looks queasier than ever, pressing her free hand against her stomach.

  I hold back a smile with practiced ease. Our clients always ask that. “No. And fertility means a lot of things to Death, Highness.”

  The princess smiles. “Call me Valoria, if you please.”

  Clearing my throat, I continue, “Death’s touch might mean you won’t bear children. Or it might mean that any seed planted by your hand will never grow. Or that blight will strike your fields. Or you might never be able to heal from sickness, or wounds.”

  “I see.” Valoria’s voice grows smaller as we near the cliff, where it was deemed too jagged and steep to build any houses. Dotted with stubborn, twisted cypress trees, the layers of weathered white and gray rock plunge sharply into the deep blue waters below. Valoria looks between me and Evander, pressing her chapped lips together. “So what now? We just . . . fling ourselves into the ocean and wake up in the Deadlands?”

  Evander opens his mouth to answer, but the princess squares her shoulders and raises her chin as the wind whips her blond hair across her eyes. “Whatever happens, I’m not afraid.”

  I grip her cold hand a little more carefully. I’m starting to like Princess Valoria a lot more than most of the royals I’ve danced with at the palace. Maybe I’ll convince her to come to a party someday.

  Just a short walk away from the edge of the cliff, which juts out from the others around it, Evander begins explaining to Valoria how we’ll get through a gate she can’t see.

  As his voice washes over me, I tip my head back for a final glimpse of the stars, so numerous tonight that they glisten like diamond powder blown across a cloak of darkest velvet. Lowering my gaze, I take in the houses studding the other seaside cliffs, with their warm stone walls and jewel-bright roofs and gardens of olive and lemon trees. And on the second highest hill in Grenwyr, overlooking all that beauty, the distant palace. I open my mouth, sipping salt air and savoring the taste like I always do before entering the Deadlands. Just in case I don’t return.

  After a moment, I close my eyes to focus on the cries of the gulls. But a low groan coming from the gate at the cliff’s edge, followed by a thump, interrupts their chatter.

  At almost the same time, Evander shouts, a sound that clutches at my heart. My eyes snap open. As we draw our swords, my mind struggles to make sense of the grisly sight just in front of the glowing blue gate, separated from us by a distance of a hundred feet or less.

  Valoria clings to my arm as a misshapen figure fresh from the Deadlands struggles to push itself upright, clearly having fallen out of the gate. Swallowing hard, I force myself to focus on any details that might point to the identity of the unfortunate mess of blood and mangled flesh as it crawls toward us.

  There’s a tattered necromancer’s black uniform hanging in strips over a shattered leg. A hand clutching at a spill of guts. A bald head crowned with crimson. A torn and gushing throat. And just about the only part of him still wholly intact, a single bright-blue eye.

  A familiar eye. One that looked into mine mere nights ago, full of warmth and understanding—orphan to orphan—as I accepted my master necromancer’s pin.

  “Master Nicanor!” As his name tears from Evander’s lips, the horror of this reality hits me in a dizzying rush.

  “What happened?” I cry, my heart beating an erratic melody against my ribs. “Where’s Master Cymbre?” Nicanor shouldn’t have been in the Deadlands without his partner. It’s against the rules.

  I want to run to the edge of the cliff, to close the distance between us and be with him in his final moments. But like Evander and Valoria, I’m frozen in my tracks by a mixture of fear and revulsion as the battered and bloody figure crawls toward us with painstaking slowness, an arm outstretched.

  This can’t be happening. Not tonight. Not ever. Not to someone as good and wise as Master Nicanor. I wish I could tell myself I’m dreaming, but Valoria’s screams assure me I’m painfully awake.

  Nicanor opens his mouth. I tense, ready to hear the name of his attacker, but the raw, guttural sound that emerges is less than human.

  Not halfway between the gate and where we stand, his broken body cradled by the roots of an old cypress, he collapses and gasps out his last breath.

  II

  I close my eyes, drowning out the horrible scene before me, and allow my mind to carry me back to the beach below these very cliffs, where Evander and I stood with Master Nicanor only a week ago.

  There was a bonfire that night, stretching toward the indigo sky, calling for dancing and the kind of celebration we Karthians love best: one that rages late into the night, long after the moon and stars have gone to bed.

  And though there were only four of us gathered on the beach on that sweltering summer’s night, we ate and drank enough for a crowd.

  “More elderflower wine, anyone?” Master Cymbre asked, holding up a blue glass bottle and glancing at each of us in turn. The firelight melted years off our teacher’s face, and I had a sudden urge to throw my arms around her waist and hold on the way I did when I was ten. The year sh
e took me in and began my training.

  “I think it’s time we present your students with their pins, Cymbre.” Master Nicanor, her partner, drew out her name with the lyrical accent of a southern province. Sim-bree. He rose, the flames glinting off his bald head, and held up a velvet pouch.

  The sight of that little bag made my breath hitch in my throat.

  Cymbre leapt to her feet, accidentally whipping Master Nicanor in the face with one of her long cinnamon braids. I disguised my snort of laughter as a cough while Nicanor rubbed his cheek. In my seven years of training at Cymbre’s side, watching her every move as she worked with her partner, I’d seen this happen more than once.

  “Ready?” Master Cymbre’s steel-blue eyes sought mine.

  Squaring my shoulders, I nodded. She knew as well as I did that I’d been ready from almost the moment I began shadowing her steps seven years ago.

  Cymbre then turned to Evander. He grinned at her as he dug his toes into the sand, restless, more than ready for this next big adventure.

  Clearing her throat, Cymbre intoned in a solemn voice far from her usual drawl, “Odessa of Grenwyr. Evander Crowther. Please rise.” Evander winked and grabbed my hands, and we supported each other in standing as Cymbre continued, “The pins you are about to receive will signify your status as master necromancers to all of Karthia.”

  I raised my chin a fraction as my teacher—my former teacher now—stepped forward to fasten a gleaming gold and sapphire pin to my crisp new necromancer’s tunic.

  “Wear it with honor,” Master Nicanor murmured, though there was no need for such formality.

  There were no spectators that night, after all. The pin ceremony called for at least one member of a mage’s family to bear witness, but Evander’s mother—the only family either of us had—refused to come. Ignoring the ceremony was her way of protesting that Evander and I had chosen this path when she was dead set against it.

  I wondered if she knew how much it wounded him, or if she was too oblivious to see through the mask of pleasantries he put on for her. After all, she couldn’t see how Evander felt about me.

  At least we had Master Nicanor, ready in a pinch to be our fill-in family for the ceremony.

  “Nervous about next week’s raising?” he asked me as Cymbre turned to fasten Evander’s pin. My teacher’s partner was so tall, he had to bend his knees to converse with most people. “King Wylding requested you specifically,” Nicanor said quietly. “Requested the Sparrow,” he corrected himself, smiling at my nickname.

  “You know I don’t get nervous. It’s just . . .” I toyed with the twin eye-shaped sapphires on my new pin. None of the other mages I knew had ever bothered to tell me how heavy the little pin felt as it rested against their hearts. “Without this pin . . . without this title, I’m just . . .”

  “Just an orphan?”

  Startled by his understanding, I blinked up at Master Nicanor. His bright-blue eyes turned dark like the depths of the sea, unreadable for a moment.

  “How did you know—?”

  “Before I was Master Nicanor, I was just Nicanor of Dargany Province.” He smiled, and my heart skipped as understanding passed between us, orphan to orphan. I’d never thought to ask about his life before coming to Grenwyr City, and he’d never offered to share. “When I was a trainee, earning that title was everything. I thought that without it, I’d be just another poor boy condemned to a life in the Ashes. Insignificant.”

  Unable to speak around a lump in my throat, I nodded and glanced at Evander, who tossed me a wink as Cymbre admired his new pin in the firelight. Without his title, he would still be nobility. Still be someone’s son. Still be a brother. A mapmaker. An adventurer. Without my title, I’d be just a poor girl lucky enough to have been raised by the Sisters of Death. I’d be nothing more than a charity case.

  I clutched my new pin, the cold metal digging into my sweaty palm.

  This is a job to Evander, and one he loves, but to me, it’s everything.

  “I won’t pretend it’s not a daunting task, living up to the title of master,” Nicanor continued, cutting into my thoughts. “Counting you and Evander, there are only a handful of us in Grenwyr Province. But you’re more than just a necromancer. More than an orphan.”

  He turned, as if he meant to walk down to the shoreline, but I grabbed his wrist. I’d seen him and Cymbre at work for years. He had two trainees of his own, my friends, and we all agreed he was the wise man to Master Cymbre’s warrior.

  “What am I, then?” I demanded.

  Nicanor shook his head, a smile lingering at the corners of his eyes. “That’s for you to decide.” He strode to the water, dipping his toes into the frigid sea foam. A moment later, Cymbre followed with the remnants of the elderflower wine in hand, leaving me alone at the fireside with Evander.

  “See that?” I murmured, slipping an arm around his waist and pointing to the two masters by the seaside. “That’s our future.”

  * * *

  Evander’s hand on my shoulder tears me from the peace of the memory, back to a future now forever changed, to a reality where Princess Valoria is on her knees mere paces from the fallen Nicanor, shaking like a leaf in a storm. She’s probably never seen so much blood before.

  Nor have I. This goes well beyond a spilled vial from my necromancer’s belt. It seeps into the pale rocks, a gruesome river. Vaguely, Evander’s shouts pierce through the fog in my brain, but the sound is a faint hum compared to the roaring of blood in my ears as I try and fail to rip my gaze away from the crimson ground.

  “Odessa!” Evander shakes my shoulders, snapping me from my daze.

  Hot, nasty bile rises in my throat and forces me to swallow hard or be sick on my boots. My chest heaves with the effort, and Evander puts a steadying hand on my back.

  Far up on the high hill at our backs, the palace’s iron gates spring open. Several guards stream down toward us, brandishing spears and blades. “Who’s hurt?” a sharp-eyed woman at the front of the group demands as they finally draw near. She frowns at the sight of Evander’s ashen face and my tear-streaked one. Or perhaps at the princess cowering among rocks and tree roots. “Where’s the attacker? Did you—?”

  Her voice dies the instant she spots the body at the base of the tree, and she lowers her weapon. “By Vaia’s grace . . .” She invokes the name of the Five-Faced God, clutching a tiny pendant of the Face of Death she wears on a silver chain.

  “By Vaia’s grace,” another guard echoes.

  Murmurs ripple through the guards, but the blade-wielding woman nearest us drowns out the rest as she demands, “Who could do such a thing?”

  A Shade, I’m betting. Something with teeth that can tear flesh as easily as a hawk’s wing slices the air.

  And as my eyes meet Evander’s, he gives a slight nod, confirming my suspicion. “I saw it,” he mutters hoarsely. “Just a glimpse before it retreated, when Master . . . Nicanor . . .” He falters, and I grab his hand. As I squeeze his cold fingers, he finishes, “When he fell out of the gate. It was the biggest Shade I’ve ever seen.”

  Which means it’s been feasting on countless spirits in the Deadlands, growing stronger. It’s a necromancer’s nightmare come to life. Evander and I can perform a raising in no time with me leading the way, but we’ve yet to kill a Shade on our own, and this one has to be powerful if it killed a seasoned necromancer like Nicanor.

  The shrouded nobles and several of their living descendants watch from on high, distant black specks hardly discernable from the night sky, as more guards surround us, followed by a hazel-eyed young man in robes. A healer. He rushes to Princess Valoria’s side, breezing past Evander and me like we’re a couple of statues.

  “You need something for shock.” He presses a vial of smoking gray liquid into the princess’s hands. He has to hold the vial to her lips in order for her to drink it down, and after a moment’s hesitati
on, he drags her across the hard ground away from Master Nicanor.

  From the body.

  Someone’s covered it—or rather, what’s left of it—with a cloak.

  “As soon as you drink some of that potion, you’ll need to tell us everything,” a tall guard says, his voice hushed but his tone clipped.

  I nod. Everything seems to be moving in slow motion, reminding me of the few nights when I’ve had too much wine.

  “Here you are.” The healer approaches Evander and me with two more vials of smoking liquid. We accept them with barely uttered thanks, waiting for him to turn away. But he narrows his eyes at us and crosses his arms expectantly.

  Sighing, I lift the vial to my lips. Evander does the same. I let the liquid fill my mouth, its taste sour like overripe berries, and pretend to swallow.

  The healer gives a satisfied nod, then turns back to Valoria. After exchanging a quick glance, Evander and I cough the potions into our hands, then wipe the remnants on the rocks, where they smolder gently as they seep into the pale earth. We still have a job to do tonight, and we both know how important it is to have our wits about us in the Deadlands, where anything can happen.

  Evander wipes his mouth on his sleeve, then starts relating Master Nicanor’s final moments to the guards. There isn’t much to tell, and knowing it won’t be long until we’ll need to head through the gate bathing us in its ethereal light, I hurry to where the princess sits and crouch beside her.

  “I’m sorry to say this,” I say in a steady voice, squashing down my own pain for the sake of the younger girl’s shimmering eyes, “but we still have to find King Wylding. I hate to think of how far his spirit’s traveled while we’ve been delayed.”

  Valoria takes a deep breath, then pulls back her hair, seemingly trying to steel herself for what’s to come.

  “And I hate to think what would happen if the giant Shade in there catches a whiff of us. I don’t feel good about going in there tonight, even with this . . .” Evander murmurs, touching a hand to his sword hilt. “Fire is the only thing that destroys a Shade, but blades can slow them down,” he adds at the princess’s curious look. “I’m no Nicanor, and if even he couldn’t . . .” He lowers his gaze to the ground, blinking hard.