Citadel of the Sky (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 1)

by Chrysoula Tzavelas

  The woman beamed toothlessly at the Princess, eyes lighting up in recognition. “Grandson’s friend was noted bone-carver in Tranning. Gone now.” She clicked her tongue sadly and then pushed a comb into Tiana’s hand. “Made by Ajolo Rea, sold by Yatara Brighteyes. Take it. A gift, Your Ladyship.”

  Kiar surveyed the other camps. A wagon was dispensing the last shipment of doomed Tranning’s fine wheat beer. Several other blankets sold accounts of watching the devastation happen. There were more trinket-sellers, but Tiana was walking slowly back to her horse, looking at the comb.

  Lisette said, “Nobody likes to be afraid, Tiana, and this is more frightening than an army outside the borders. So they laugh instead.”

  “Are there always people selling things?” Tiana asked.

  Lisette said, “Yes. Souvenirs from the front are worth a lot. Some people collect mementos from each Blight.”

  Kiar said, “They make stories of them.” Tiana glanced at her, her eyes shadowed, and clicked her horse ahead.

  Further down the road, a middle-aged woman with a covered wagon was selling spyglasses. She hailed Tiana with a brisk, “Your Highness!” proffering one of the brass tubes. Slowly, Tiana shook her head. Then she urged her horse to a gallop, sending dogs, chickens, and children scattering.

  The vista from the lookout point was stunning. The river twisted along a panoramic sweep of green and brown, dotted with red tile roofs and grey stone castles. Here and there, the Niyhani peaks and Keldaran domes rose above the trees. It was beautiful, the stuff of paintings, until your gaze drifted to the east. There, half the vista was a shocking grey plain.

  It cut off the river and the road as if they never existed and inside the boundaries, nothing grew. There were black shapes against the grey expanse that Kiar thought might be twisted trees. Hoped were twisted trees. And in the heart of the grey, the black stronghold loomed. It wasn’t even the size of Kiar’s thumbnail at this distance, but it hunched like a giant over the starkness of the cracked land.

  Kiar realized she’d forgotten to breathe. She wondered what happened to the other side of the river. It didn’t look like it was dammed by the land that had interrupted it. Then Tiana said, “That’s what’s going to kill us, Kiar.”

  “Yeah,” said Kiar. Why did Tiana sound so enthusiastic? Then Tiana took her hand and squeezed it hard, white-knuckled and Kiar thought, Nobody likes to be afraid.

  Lisette ran forward. “Don’t say things like that! Don’t be fools!” She held onto Tiana’s arm.

  Tiana wrenched herself out of Lisette’s grip as she whirled around. “Would you rather I kill myself uselessly? Would you rather I grow old and mad, and hide myself away in my rooms because the world is too frightening?” She caught her breath. “I see that thing, that place, and I think maybe the reason the Blood is mad is because it takes a madman to fight against something like that.”

  Lisette shook her head, frantically. “This hasn’t happened before. This is really bad. Really bad.”

  Kiar didn’t want to listen to them argue. “I’m going to go see the Mystery Spot.” She took her horse back from Berrin and started walking down the hill. After a moment, the other two caught up with her.

  The road to the Mystery Spot was lined with more blankets, but this time, instead of merchants, there were priests and philosophers. Two itinerant priests of Niyhani argued philosophy with a laughing Knight of the Rose. A maiden of Atalya prayed on a blanket covered in silk flowers. A matron of Keldera, the Summer Goddess, comforted a man weeping into her bosom. A scholar of some sort worked furious figures on a chalkboard to an admiring audience of small boys and red-robed servants of Rann in his guise as Lord of Fire. A child with a dog instructed a pregnant woman. A woman sat on the edge of a wagon, staring at everyone who went by, carefully writing something down after each group.

  By the time they reached the Mystery Spot though, the blankets and wagons were gone. No one wanted to be too close to it, whatever the mystery was.

  “I feel strange,” complained Tiana. She slowed, and Kiar moved ahead of her. The Mystery Spot beyond was encircled by rope twisted around some pegs and almost invisible to normal vision. But through the Logos-sight, it was a hole pulled open by eidolon hooks.

  Tiana said, “Kiar, do you feel that? It’s like a humming in the—” Kiar reached over the fence toward the nothing—

  Chapter 22

  The Time For Prayers

  Lisette’s shriek as Kiar touched the Mystery Spot banished Tiana’s curious disorientation. But Kiar fading away was enough to give her vertigo.

  She took a wobbly step after Kiar. Maybe there was a trick to it…? Then she was borne to the ground by Lisette as Jinriki snapped, **No!**

  “Oof,” said Lisette and lay there, gasping for breath.

  Tiana complained, “What was that for?” and got back up again, moving over to the makeshift fence.

  “No!” wheezed Lisette. “Don’t go near it.”

  Annoyed, Tiana said, “I want to see what happened to Kiar.”

  “Please. No. Wait a moment.” Lisette looked like a fish, mouth and eyes both round.

  Tiana shook her head. “Why?” She shook her hair back and looked around the little street. Where could Kiar have gone? Any second now she’d probably saunter out of one of those buildings, looking smug about her trick.

  Lisette rolled to her feet and took Tiana’s hand in both of hers. “Because if something bad has happened to her, I don’t want it to happen to you.”

  Tiana squeezed Lisette’s hand. “Silly. Kiar’s just playing a joke.”

  Lisette said, “Let’s wait for her, then. Once she comes back, you can ask her what she did.”

  Tiana said, “Fine, fine.” She looked around. Then she called, “Kiar! Come on out.”

  Only silence answered. An unpleasant feeling sprouted in the bottom of Tiana’s stomach, and she promptly squashed it. “I wonder what else there is to do here. There’s some kind of rural dancing, isn’t there?”

  Lisette said, “We could go ask someone.” She pulled gently on Tiana, but Tiana resisted.

  “We need to wait for Kiar. She couldn’t have actually vanished. That makes no sense. If the Mystery Spot were eating people, there’d—well, there’d be a bigger fence!” The ache in the pit of her stomach surged up again.

  **Something happened to her.**

  “Shut up,” Tiana snapped. She watched Slater and Berrin walking down the dusty street with the horses. Then she dragged Lisette over to them.

  Berrin said, “Where’d Lady Kiar go?”

  Tiana said, “When I find out, I’m going to shake her until her teeth clatter.” She freed a hand and fumbled at Jinriki’s scabbard.

  Lisette said, “What are you doing? Don’t do anything stupid, please.” She looked on the verge of tears, but Tiana pushed that thought aside just as she pushed Lisette towards Slater.

  “Take her off me.” When Slater didn’t obey quickly enough, she shouted, “Do it!”

  Lisette jerked away, into Slater’s chest, then lunged after Tiana again. Tiana ducked and stepped away. Lisette said, “Don’t let her touch it!” But Slater’s hand settled on her shoulder, and she slumped.

  Tiana jerked the scabbard off her sword. Then she called, “Kiar, time to come out!” She scanned the street. People were staring. A small child ran away. Her shame mingled with a burning fury, and she ran over to the Mystery Spot. Emanations danced around her, lifting the dust in sheets.

  She leveled Jinriki at the emptiness. “Tell me about it.”

  **It is not a part of this world.**

  She pushed the tip of the blade into the space. “And?”

  **And what? It is not a sky fiend. I have not yet intersected it, though you think I have. I do not know how Kiar interacted with it.**

  One side of her head pounded and her vision flickered. “You’re useless, then,” Tiana said and sent the sword scything away from her. Then she kicked aside the makeshift fence and plunged her hand, and her e
manations, toward the Mystery Spot.

  Her hand never reached it, but the emanations did. While it seemed to drift just beyond her fingers, she could feel the broken-glass edges of it through her emanations. Blowing her breath out, she twisted and pushed against sharpness, staring at the spot until her eyes teared up. She couldn’t tell if she was having any effect at all.

  Blinking furiously, she released the emanations and turned away, rubbing at her eyes with the palms of her hands. What had Kiar done? Where had she gone? Lisette assumed the worst, but that didn’t have to be true. It didn’t always have to be the worst. Did it? No, it didn’t. It didn’t.

  “Aunt Rinta,” she whispered and bit her lip when she heard herself. Louder, she said, “No. I will find her.” Aunt Rinta hadn’t vanished, but Aunt Rinta had died. Just like Uncle Pell, just like Grandpa Anther, but Tiana remembered Aunt Rinta, remembered her face after she’d choked to death on her own blood. She remembered the yellow paper flowers at the funeral. She’d held Gisen’s warmth in her arms, just as Jerya had held her when their own mother went away. Shonathan had wanted her to know what she was getting involved in, but he couldn’t have meant this.

  She sent her emanation probing into the Mystery Spot a second time, concentrating so hard that the pain in her skull faded away. Plumes of fire blazed across her vision, but she was precise and clean in her direction of the emanation. After a time, she thought she could manipulate the blurry emptiness, move its leading edge around, but what good did that do? She couldn’t make it do whatever it had done to Kiar—

  She realized that Berrin was standing patiently beside her and let the emanation drop again. The hollowness left her dizzy and swaying, and her headache surged back. “What?”

  “What is it, Your Highness?” He seemed unperturbed, as solid and steady as a great ox.

  “I don’t know. Something unnatural.” She felt stupid as soon as the words escaped her mouth. Of course it was unnatural, and of course he was asking her. “I’ll figure it out.” He ought to ride back to the city, tell Jerya, get Yithiere and Twist to come out. People who knew what they were doing. But she couldn’t tell him that.

  She realized that Jinriki was resting by her foot, placed neatly on his scabbard. “How did that get back over there?”

  Berrin said, “Begging your pardon, Your Highness, but I brought it back over.”

  She wrinkled her brow, staring up at Berrin’s broad, bearded face. “You picked him up?” She glanced down at his hands, but he seemed fine.

  “It asked me to. Wanted to be closer to you. Did I presume?” He moved his eyes from her shoulder to her face, and she twitched and turned away.

  “It’s my sword, not the other way around.” She nudged the blade with her toe, but Jinriki apparently had nothing to say to her. Scowling, she added, “Go away. Go back to Lor Seleni if you must. Just let me be.”

  She raised her eyes to the blurred emptiness again and embraced the pain of her throbbing headache. The emanation rose around her, steadying her. She turned the pain into a knife and sent it against the Mystery Spot, tearing, ripping, rending. This time, the emanation was a tempest, and her mind was cold and empty, the taste of blood on her lips.

  Chapter 23

  A Place Without Light

  Kiar stood in a place without light and looked at the mist she could see anyhow. She knew, somehow, that there had never been light here. It was cold, but not freezing, and absent-mindedly she wondered where the warmth came from without light.

  Stepping into the distortion had been a matter of instinct. As soon as she saw it, she knew that beyond the strangeness was the phantasmagory. What was there to be frightened of? She recognized what she was looking at. The distortion was a gateway into the phantasmagory, simple as that. A gateway to the place the eidolons came from. So she stepped forward and reached into the place inside herself where the magic came from, and twisted just a little—

  She stepped in, and she thought of the eidolons in the plague. There was that to be frightened of. But it was too late.

  When she went into the phantasmagory, she fell. But she hadn’t fallen here. She did not descend. She’d simply stepped in and there she was, standing in a place without light. It didn’t feel very much like the phantasmagory, now that she was here. It felt… large. Wild. Alien. And it was full of far more mist than the phantasmagory usually was.

  She blinked and remembered the world she’d glimpsed twice before: when she’d swallowed enemy eidolons and reached into the distortion within a sky fiend. Ah. This place was that place, and she was here for real. This was her body, not just her mind, in a world where eidolons lived. Perhaps it was a cousin to the phantasmagory.

  She inhaled and something flowed into her lungs. It wasn’t air, wasn’t water. She wasn’t drowning, but she could imagine she was. She could feel the thickness on her skin, seeping under her clothes, clogging her eyelashes.

  She closed her eyes and reached inside. But that was no longer the road to the phantasmagory. She tasted the thick air in her mouth, like winter water. Was she without magic, as well? Fear flared, and instinct reacted. She held out her hand, and a flaming sword appeared. It was real, without the iridescent shimmer of an eidolon in the real world. She could feel its warmth and weight.

  She turned in a circle, trying to find the way back. All she saw was grey mist, illuminated by her flaming sword. She whimpered. What if she couldn’t leave? What if she was trapped here, in a place Twist couldn’t reach?

  She felt the sound on her skin, as if the mist reflected it back at her. Something else vibrated against her skin, and there was a cry, long and low. It undulated through registers lower than any human could achieve. Kiar froze, her sword still outstretched. Something moved through the thick greyness. She could feel its movement against her skin too, its slow, heavy tread on the ground and the flutter of motion higher than her head.

  She was in the place where eidolons lived, and that had to be one of them. Unless it was something else? In the phantasmagory, did something exist below the dreams and memories the Blood layered onto the mists? She resisted trying to call up the Logos. That was likely a quick route to utter insanity. The flames of her sword burned slowly but did not illuminate the grey. The invisible creature groaned and trilled.

  “What are you?” Kiar asked. Her voice sounded strange and distorted, like talking underwater. She walked forward, thinking about the eidolons she’d swallowed and the world she’d glimpsed through them. It had been mist-free, a vast, alien, monochromatic place.

  As she walked, the gauzy curtain lifted, vanishing as if it had never existed. The world was deep black, but strands of colorless vegetation surrounded her, bright against the blackness. Moving through the stalks and leaves was a giant. It had six legs, thick and stumpy as tree trunks, and a straight, tall neck wound around with more vegetation. Where she would have expected a head, she instead found dozens of silvery birds, quite recognizable: two eyes, wings, tails. The birds fluttered and trilled, a hole opened in the flock and that deep groan emerged.

  Kiar turned her head rapidly as she backed up, refusing to take her eyes off the giant for more than an eye blink. More of the vegetation surrounded her; it was a forest of vines and seaweed, growing in luxurious grey and white profusion.

  “Time to reconsider,” she said. “Do I really think this is like the phantasmagory? Are you in the phantasmagory, big guy?” The birds warbled in response, and several of them darted out to drag a length of vine back to their perch. She could just make out what appeared to be a spar of bone jutting out from whatever served as the base of the creature’s head, before the birds obscured it again. The creature moaned again.

  Kiar watched the creature until she decided it wasn’t about to attack her. Then she spent more time examining her surroundings, letting her sword fade away. She crouched down to peer at the ground and discovered only a thickening mist that she could force her hand into, like very loose, very fine sand. The vegetation had root tendrils buried
in the stuff. The giant had similar roots on its legs, though they waved and moved slowly.

  She felt the noise of something else moving just out of sight and scuffed behind the thickest grouping of the vines, wondering if hiding was even meaningful in this place. Then she saw the black silhouette that padded up beside the giant, and her thoughts were swallowed by fear. She’d seen that shape before, clawing its way out of a sky fiend. These were eidolons.

  She held her breath as the silhouette looked around alertly and pushed its head against the giant, who moaned in response. The silhouette was shaped like a human, but it moved like a deer, sudden and graceful, a black dancer cast upon a screen. Andani was the best name from the Catalog for it. It had four fingers on its hands and she could see movement like muscles beneath its skin.

  The face was alien, save for the eyes, which were grey and disturbingly human. It had a dog’s nose, an ugly, wide mouth, and it was totally hairless. It reached for the leaf on one of the vines twined around the giant and tore at it, shredding it with a sharpened bone plate in its mouth. Then it plucked another leaf and advanced on Kiar’s hiding spot, holding the leaf out like an offering.

  Warily, Kiar edged into visibility. She couldn’t help thinking of flies caught by honey, but she couldn’t hide behind vegetation, that was clear. Without conscious intent, a steel shield shimmered on her arm.

  The black dancer sprang backwards, emitting a high whine. Then it fell to the ground and scuttled away, looking from side to side like a panicked animal. “Are you scared of me?” Kiar asked. “Or my magic?”

  The andani made terrified clicking noises and hid behind one of the six legs of the giant. The giant had only moved a few steps since she’d first seen it, and it was unfazed by her magic. No—the birds were agitated. Several swooped down on the andani, their chirping rising in pitch. The giant stepped back, a surprisingly complicated maneuver. It was too much for the andani, which shrieked one final time and fled.