She found Yuli in the new room, down a passage that hadn’t been there, before the bonding. They’d both marveled at the smooth-cut stone, fashioned to appear precisely the same as every other chamber in this place, and Yuli had been all wide-eyed wonderment, seeing its appointments: animal hides stretched across its floors, ornately carved wood chairs, tapestries and scrolls printed in what she said was her native tongue.
“You’re going,” Yuli said as soon as she appeared in the entryway.
She nodded, finding the words caught in her throat.
“Take me with you,” Yuli said.
“It’s dangerous,” she said. “And besides, I don’t think you can leave, yet. The journal says ascendants have to stay until all the champions are chosen.”
“A strange thing,” Yuli said, “to be a champion. I feel I should be able to share it, with my people, with my sisters among the warriors of my clan. A momentous thing, and a great honor.”
“Soon,” she said. “You’ll see them again, as soon as the Divide comes down.”
Yuli bowed, then opened her arms, welcoming Sarine forward for an embrace.
“Be careful, sister,” Yuli said, whispering it into her ear.
“I will,” she said.
“Then go,” Yuli said, “with my blessing.”
Reyne was a simpler affair, a curt dismissal in the library, where he was poring over the copies of the Codex the shadow had produced when she’d asked.
She went back to the central chamber when it was done, once more stepping through the jagged maze to reach the untouched plinth near the light. She wasn’t sure whether she needed to be here to leave, but it felt right, and that was enough.
Ready, Anati thought to her before she could ask.
She nodded, shifting her vision to the blue sparks, and almost gave herself a start when the shadow was there, mere paces away, between her and the light. It had an arm upraised in what looked like a sign of farewell. She returned it, then swallowed, and calmed herself again, delving deep within to the well of energy she’d come to recognize as the Veil’s power. Her power. It belonged to her. She took it in, losing herself in its waves and flickering sparks, until consciousness blurred, and she felt her body wash away.
The infinite plane stretched around her on all sides, exactly as it had been when she’d come here. Swirling columns of blue lightning arced between the floor and ceiling, extending as far as she could see in every direction, save for the column of burning light in front of her.
Tendrils of light hung from the central column, a curtain draped between her and the rest of the infinite plane. She hovered inside the shell they made around the column of light, watching their strands move in unrecognizable patterns, colliding and exploding in dazzling bursts of color before they re-formed and moved again.
Are you ready? she thought, trusting Anati to understand.
Yes. Go.
She watched for another beat, tracing the lines as they spindled around the central column of light. Ten thousand streams of white against a backdrop of infinite blue, a raging storm that promised to go on for an eternity without her intervention. A place she didn’t belong, but then, it was born of her power. It should obey her. She reached for it, the same as she would draw on the blue sparks to set wardings in the physical world, and for a moment the strands of light lurched apart, twisting toward her in a neat spiral, where before they had been only chaos.
I can guide them, she thought to Anati. I don’t know how, but I can make them obey.
Cut here, Anati thought back.
Suddenly she felt a glimpse of something wide and expansive, like gazing into the harbor, far beyond into the depths of the sea. This was her. She was more than a woman, more than her uncle’s daughter. She was a well of power, as broad and vast as oceans, but hollow, as though she had once been filled with unimaginable reserves of strength. And deeper still, Anati guided her thoughts to a place of shadow. A darkness, burning alongside her core.
She repeated what she’d done, willing the strands of light in the infinite plane into place.
Where before chaos had reigned, she’d created a bubble of calm around her will. Fifty strands burned, fighting her to move and collide and resume their unpredictable patterns. She held them down. One strand rose from the rest, obeying her as it moved.
She brought it closer. Then let it touch her.
A dissonant note sounded in her ears, and the world split in two.
Agony shot through her, a wave of pain as she held the cord in place. It burned, and she saw it manifest in the vast emptiness Anati had shown her. A searing column of heat and light, ripping through the empty space and surrounded by pure white energy. Anati’s shield. White.
Another will shot out to grab hold of the light.
Don’t, a voice said to her. You are stronger than I ever imagined, but you are not strong enough to face what comes. Let me survive. Let me have this body, or you will doom the world.
The Veil. She knew it, as the power of her will struggled to hold on to the cord. White flared, the burning hiss of energy trying to melt through the shield. Another pair of hands grabbed at the light, and she felt them being burned, without the benefit of Anati’s protection. Still the Veil reached for the light, trying to wrest away control.
No, she thought back.
The cord knifed through her, boring holes through the emptiness, as close to the shadows as she could guide the light.
Every movement reverberated through her with waves of pain, even through Anati’s shield.
Please, the voice thought. Don’t leave me here.
She focused her will, and the cutting continued. Anati’s strain came through in her thoughts, the sensations of anxiety, fear, love, and pure force of will. She could feel the White cracking, fizzling as it came into contact with the cord. It consumed her, all parts of her being. Awareness of Anati, of the voice, of the rest of the cords suspended in place all dimmed against the sensation of guiding the light as it tore apart the shadows.
Be strong, the voice thought, even in defeat. Don’t let him rule for longer than you must. Beware your champions’ power. Don’t make the mistakes I did. Follow the Master’s path, even if—
The shadow came free, and the voice dimmed as the darkness fell away.
The cord snapped away from her control, and she felt an emptiness, a great void as though she fell through a vast distance.
Exhaustion ached in her, doubled by the sensations from Anati.
A dull light pulsed, and she drifted toward it; her body, such as it was in this place, beaten and bruised. But she was alive. She had survived. She was whole, though a part of her was missing. Memory returned only the life she’d known: the Maw, the Harbor, the Rasailles palace green. Sketches and clinging to survival in the shadows of the city. Zi. The stained-glass reliefs of the Sacre-Lin chapel, shining down on her with warmth in spite of the winter chill.
The cold stone floor between the dais and the pews, and the sound of her uncle sweeping. The clatter of his broom, dropping to the floor.
“Sarine?”
His voice, warm and gentle, as though he were there in person.
“Sarine, oh, by the Veil herself, it’s you.”
He rushed to her side, and she opened her eyes. It was him, his mustaches already glistening with tears sliding from his cheeks.
“Not the Veil,” she said as he lifted her, cradling her in his arms. “Not anymore.”
73
TIGAI
Field Command
The Road to Orstead, Old Sarresant
The hills had been transformed and, from the look of it, were about to be again. Tents and horse-lines had been put up in all directions, with just as many being taken down, carts of stores and foodstuffs moving as quick as they could be loaded, one after another.
“She’s sending you out again, isn’t she?” Remarin asked. He wore one of their uniforms, as strange a sight as Tigai had ever expected to see. Blue cap atop his short-cro
pped hair, though his beard still marked him as Ujibari, thick and tied with cord in a style unlike he’d seen on any Sarresanter. He carried one of their long rifles, and that much was familiar; even with all the advantages of their superior technology, he’d wager on Remarin over any five of their best marksmen, and if their flint-caps and powder bags let him fire in the rain, so much the better for them all.
“Which one?” he asked, joining Remarin in moving out of the way of a wagon and its team. “Empress d’Arrent, or Mei?”
Remarin grinned. “Does it matter?”
“D’Arrent has me set to ride again this afternoon. Making for the eastern line two days hence.”
“A hard pace,” Remarin said. “I’m with Dao’s brigade. The Nineteenth. We’ll follow in your wake, a few days behind, I’m sure.”
“Acherre bloody rode me raw for a week, and now we do it again. They didn’t even stay long enough for the anchor to take hold. I could as well have not bothered. It’ll be gone within a day, unless I go back to secure it.”
Remarin gave him a wistful smile. “Just as well you came back. Dao is busy, but he’ll be relieved to see you.”
They halted for another train of supplies and men, shouting in their strange, throaty tongue.
“Remarin … I … I’m not sure Mei made the right choice, allying us with d’Arrent.”
Remarin raised an eyebrow, and for once, it was a blessing that none around them understood the Jun tongue.
“I saw the battlefield,” he continued. “A terrible rout. The enemy’s kaas-mages are a terrible weapon. We saw their power firsthand, at Kye-Min. I want us to have a new start, but if this army is going to lose …”
“Talk to Mei,” Remarin said.
“I have already. She wouldn’t listen. Said she’s afraid we’ll be branded turncoats if we switch sides so soon after coming here.”
“A wise stance, it seems to me,” Remarin said. “Trust her, Tigai. We all have our gifts, and your sister-by-marriage is adept at these sorts of affairs. She’ll suss out the realities of what’s to come, and I needn’t remind you there are spoils to be had, even for the losers, in war.”
“What if there was another way …” he began, but Remarin clicked his teeth, cutting him short.
“Your magi tale again,” Remarin said. “Mei won’t hear of it, after our time with the Herons. We’re done with their games.”
“But there’s one of them here,” he said.
“There’s one of them everywhere,” Remarin said. “That they wield no power openly in this Empire is enough for me.”
He fell quiet. It had gone the same, with Mei. He hadn’t yet brought himself to mention the shadow-creature after Voren had stabbed him, or the old man’s offer of strength and security for his family. The strangeness of it had weighed on him since the first night on the road.
Remarin clapped his shoulder. “Go,” he said. “See your brother. He’s in his element here, never mind these soldiers’ lack of speaking proper tongues. I’ll credit this Empress d’Arrent: She knows talent when she sees it. That’s rare enough, among any nobility.”
“I have to report to the Empress first,” he said. “She sent a courier to fetch me in my tent at daybreak.”
“Then she’ll be expecting you long since,” Remarin said. “And I’ll leave you alone to your tongue lashing for it.”
He watched Remarin trot ahead, vanishing into a sea of blue coats as the camp stirred itself to move. He’d expected exactly that sort of reaction. His family had never trusted magi—in spite of his nature, they’d managed to make him feel like one of them, but it hadn’t erased the truth of what he was. They’d certainly used his gifts easily enough. Perhaps this was the same sort of thing. Perhaps he should consider the old man’s offer on his own, if Mei wouldn’t hear him out.
He pivoted, making his way toward the central tents. Remarin was probably right that he should have gone there first thing, but he’d been dreading the kind of use he was sure d’Arrent intended for him.
A week of some of the hardest travel he’d ever endured, and he’d as good as gotten nothing for it. He’d tried to tell Acherre and d’Arrent it took time for an anchor to settle, that he needed to stay there for a day or two in order for a strand to form between him and the place to the south, but in the moment all that had mattered was moving Marquand and his company to and from the battlefield. He blinked to shift his sight to the starfield as he walked, and sure enough the light he’d set was there, dim and fading fast, in the mountains far to the south. If d’Arrent had just let him stay, the week wouldn’t have been wasted. All he would have needed was—
He almost stumbled into the way of a passing horseman, earning a shouted curse and a horse’s whinny as the rider tugged the reins.
He steadied himself and blinked again. Something was there, among the stars. On this side of the Divide the field was black, almost lifeless, save for a tiny handful of lights scattered across all its continents. He’d come to recognize them all, but a new one had appeared, blazing with a sun’s intensity, far to the west.
He could have counted on two sets of hands every star in the field on this side of the Divide. This was new, and near the one they’d used to put themselves close to New Sarresant. It might even be in New Sarresant itself, saving him the two weeks’ journey from the site in the northwest.
Sarine.
It had to be her. This was what the old man among the stars had wanted him to watch for. A star five times the size of any other, as though she’d punched a fist through the fabric of the starfield itself.
D’Arrent was waiting for him, and his instinct was to consult Mei and Dao for what to do. But no—they wanted nothing to do with the old man’s offer. And for all its intensity, there was nothing promising that the star would linger if he didn’t have a strand tied to it himself.
He closed his eyes, tethering himself around its light. At worst he could come back, and if it cost him a day of recovery, well, he’d earned as much, whatever d’Arrent wanted to believe he could handle.
He shifted.
Darkness swallowed him, but it was only ordinary nightfall, having traveled westward against the path of the sun. He stood in a stone building lined with rows of wood benches, facing a dais backed by massive stained-glass windows, lit by a single hooded lantern on the wall. The shuffle of his steps echoed through the chamber, under a vaulted ceiling thirty armspans above his head.
“Êtes-vous perdu, mon fils?”
He spun to find a mustached man in a brown robe hovering in an alcove behind him, holding a broom as though he’d been sweeping in the middle of the night.
“I followed a star here,” he said, realizing belatedly the man wasn’t going to understand a word of the Jun tongue. “Sarine,” he tried instead. “I’m looking for Sarine.”
The man knew the name. He saw it in the suddenly stiff shoulders, the way the man’s grip on his broom suddenly transformed it halfway to a quarterstaff.
“Qu’est-ce que vous voulez avec elle?”
Tigai shook his head. Damned if he hadn’t spent weeks around the Sarresant tongue and not bothered to learn a word.
“Tigai?”
He turned around again, this time looking up toward a loft built below the panes of stained glass. The silhouette of a figure stood there, at the edge of a wood railing.
“Sarine,” he called back. The man in brown said something further in the Sarresant tongue, and she replied, in her strange manner of speaking every tongue at once.
“Yes, I know him, Uncle, though I have no idea what he’s doing here.”
“It’s … complicated,” he said. “And where did you go? We were traveling together and you bloody vanished with Yuli and Lin.”
She stepped back from the railing, sliding down the ladder leading up to her loft.
“That’s complicated, too,” she said when she landed on the stone floor. “But it’s good to see you.”
He returned the warmth in her expression, t
hough it masked the feeling that he’d been a fool to come here. What was he supposed to do, wait until she turned her back and then knife her? Stay close, the old man had said, and keep her trust. Seeing her here in person colored it all in gray.
“My uncle was telling me about Erris d’Arrent,” she said. “Empress now? And that she took the army across the sea. Were you with her? And your family?”
“Yes,” he said. “She had me setting anchors to move her magi—her binders—to the fronts. A bloody mess, between kaas-mages, officers with golden light for eyes, more bloody magi than you’d ever want to see in one place.”
“Wait—kaas-mages? And golden light?”
“That’s what Marquand called them. And yes, golden light—I saw it with Acherre, and again among the enemy’s ranks on the front lines … look, you should come back with me. D’Arrent’s on the shit end of the battle that’s coming. She could use you. And … whatever it is you can do, scattering soldiers like flies. I guess that makes you a kaas-mage, too?”
“Yes,” Sarine said. “Partly. That’s what Anati is. But the golden light—you’re sure you saw it among her enemies?”
He nodded. “I saw it firsthand. Why? Isn’t that something d’Arrent can do?”
“It is. But if you saw it among her enemies … Lin put a glass knife in Paendurion’s back, at the Gods’ Seat. It must mean he survived.”
“Paendurion. Empress d’Arrent’s enemy? And Lin, is she—?”
“Lin is dead,” Sarine said. “At least I think she is. But Paendurion … you said the Sarresant armies were losing?”
Blood of the Gods Page 66
