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This one goes out to all the musicians, artists, writers, filmmakers, actors, family, and friends who inspire me—the magic users, in other words
PART I
THE HOURS OF MORTALS
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!
—Edna St. Vincent Millay, “First Fig”
CHAPTER
1
The girl slept in her nest of flannel sheets and heavy down, dreaming the honeyed dreams of the few and the privileged, but awoke in the early hours to find her world aflame.
“Come,” her mother called in the dark of her daughter’s bedchamber, backlit by the unsteady lanterns of the servants who waited at the door. “Quickly, Sori, you must see.”
Yet Sori already saw, a faint glow creeping over the casement of her picture window with dawn still many dreams distant. She scrambled out of bed and went toward the window, the chill granite floor beneath her feet warning her this was no nightmare. Before she reached the stained-glass panes in the likeness of their blocky family crest, her mother slid off her beaver-lined cloak and cast it like a net over the girl’s shoulders, steering her toward the door.
“I said quickly,” said her mother, and more startling than the glint of Lady Shels’s breastplate in place of her gold-threaded nightgown was the trembling hand she pressed into her daughter’s back. That hand ought to be as firm as the steel the woman wore at her belt and, for the first time since her parents had told her that trouble might descend on their tranquil kingdom, Sori found herself afraid.
“Wait,” said the girl, turning toward her vanity, and when her mother’s fingers tightened to draw her away, she said, “I need Moonspell.”
Her mother hesitated, then released her, and when Sori hurried back with her sword she saw her mother’s teeth shining as bright as her golden war paint in the flickering light. Sori knew better than to ask questions as they strode upward through the keep, the tumult echoing through the halls and up from the courtyard making her heart pound; were they actually under attack? As they reached the spiral staircase leading to Father’s observatory, her mother stopped and addressed her daughter’s hovering handmaids.
“Go and pack, the lot of you, and be sure blades are brought as well as bonnets. Take only what you can carry on your own backs, then go to my chambers and help yourselves to whatever you wish from my closets and jewelry boxes. Do not tarry, though, and leave from the southern gates fast as you can. It may be safer if you travel in twos and threes, but neither all together nor alone.”
Tristessa, who had braided Sori’s hair for as long as she could remember, burst into tears, and Halfaxa shook her nearly bald head, meeting Lady Shels’s eyes as she said, “No, m’lady, we will not desert this house when—”
“You will do as you’re told,” said Sori’s mother in a stern tone she had heretofore reserved only for her children. “I should have dismissed you from the first, pray do not compound my crime by lingering a moment longer. They will be here by dawn, and there is nothing more you can do.”
“But Sori—” Tristessa began, but again Lady Shels interrupted her maids.
“It will be better for all if Sori goes with Corben.” Before Sori could recover from the shock of hearing she was to be sent away with her fencing instructor, a yet more confounding sight met her watering eyes in the lantern-bright corridor: her stiffly formal mother stepped forward and threw her arms around Halfaxa, the two women embracing. Then her mother stepped back and, bowing to her servants, said, “It has been an honor to have you wait upon my family. Now flee while you still may.”
Before, Sori had not spoken out of customary obedience, but as she followed her mother up the tower staircase she found herself unable to speak out of sheer panic. Even after the lecture Father had given her the previous week about preparing herself for some very big changes, she had never imagined such chaos. Her mother took her hand as they climbed the stair, and though she was almost fifteen years old, Sori still found herself choking back tears.
Father, Arkon, and Esben were already on the rampart when they emerged onto the level roof of the tower, Corben holding the door open for his mistress and pupil. The stars Lord Shels would contemplate from this roost were drowning beneath waves of smoke, the grey sheets hanging thick above them like exiled clouds that had gathered to muster their strength before retaking the heavens. Father turned from the glow to the north, and upon seeing his wife and daughter tried to smile but couldn’t quite pull it off.
“Time to go, boys,” he told his sons, but their mother shook her head, joining them at the low wall.
“Take them below,” she said, planting a hand on each of their heads and ruffling their hair. “We’ll be down soon, but Sori has to see.”
“We have no time,” said Father, his voice cracking. “They must leave, now, before—”
“We’ll be down soon,” Lady Shels said gently, hands lingering on the scalps of her sleepy boys as though they might float away if she released them. Then she said a word Sori had never heard her use before: “Please, Mervyn. She must see.”
Father yielded, as he always did, but he seemed just as embarrassed as Sori was at Lady Shels’s requesting instead of ordering. “Come along, boys, it’s time. Who’s ready for an adventure?”
They might be young, but neither nine-year-old Arkon nor six-year-old Esben seemed to buy whatever tale he had told them as they left their mother and went to the stair, looking at their sister with wide eyes. She shrugged and smiled, hoping if she put forth a firmer façade than their father they might not be as scared as she was. Esben flung his little arms around her hips, and she pulled Arkon in, too, when he seemed reluctant to hug his big sister. Their father joined them, a knot of arms shivering in the early chill, and beyond them Sori saw her mother turn away from her family, planting her hands on a battlement as she looked out onto the ruddy horizon. Then her brothers and father went back down into the keep, Corben following to give Lady Shels and her daughter their privacy.
“Come here,” Lady Shels called, and Sori dragged her cold feet over to the battlement, dreading whatever hellish sight must have consumed their lands. Yet when she put her own goose-pimpled arms on the granite rampart, she saw the fires were still distant and, stranger still, almost beautiful as they danced against the bruise-dark curtain of night at the northern end of the valley. “Do you know what’s happened, Sori?”
“The Cobalts,” said Sori, the hated word almost catching in her tight throat. “They’re… they’re burning our fields.”
“Yes and no,” said Lady Shels, her low voice carrying more fury than any shout or cry could have. “They’re on the far side, looking upon the same fires. But we set them, as soon as we spied their advance.”
“We did?” Sori remembered riding with her family along the wide track that cut through those fields, picnicking along the river, hiding in the labyrinth of corn with her brothers, plucking berries with her maids. Tears quivered in her eyes, but she held them back, as she kn
ew her mother expected. “Why?”
“Why do you think?” Lady Shels was looking down at her daughter, her successor, and Sori could scarce believe her mother would take even such a terrible occasion to deliver another of her endless lessons.
“To buy us time to flee,” Sori decided, her heartbreak giving way to relief, however mild. “To keep them at bay long enough to—”
“No,” said her mother, “that is not why. Do you know what a symbol is?”
“Yes?” said Sori, and knowing her mother expected further proof, tried to think of an example. “Like our crest. It’s a symbol for our province, and our history. The corn is gold because our gold grows from the earth. The bear is our family, guarding the realm. It’s all in a star, because food for the people and strength to protect them is what holds up the Star.”
“Very good,” Lady Shels said, and pointed to the distant fires. “I ordered that our fields burn as soon as the Cobalts came to take them because that’s a symbol, too. Do you know what it symbolizes?”
“No,” said Sori, embarrassed by the wetness on her cheeks. To ignite thousands of acres just before the harvest as some kind of a symbol frightened her nearly as much as the prospect of the Cobalts burning them.
“It’s a symbol that we will never, ever give up,” said Lady Shels, wiping away Sori’s tears with the back of her glove. “That we would sooner destroy our world than let our enemies rob us of it. That if thieves seek to take our lands from us, they will find themselves poorer for having made the effort. That what we labor to build is ours alone. Do you understand?”
Sori’s hand tightened on the scabbard in her shaking hands, and she shook her head.
“You will,” said Lady Shels, and now she sounded sad instead of angry, another unprecedented and upsetting change in her temperament. “I told you they ordered our surrender, yes? It would have been easier to accept their terms. It would have been safer, for our family, for our friends and vassals. But that would have been a symbol, too, and not a good one. Our enemies would use our surrender as a symbol to strengthen themselves, even as we were brought low. Instead our fall will be a symbol to our allies, to all just people of the Star, that might does not make right, that hope is not lost so long as good people stand strong by their principles instead of taking the easier path, when they know it is wrong. Now do you understand?”
“Our fall…” Sori gulped, the orange horizon no longer seeming pretty at all. “You don’t mean we…”
“We lost a long time ago, Sori,” said her mother, the gold flake of her war paint shimmering in the dark. “But even when one has lost, there is still a choice to be made—to stop fighting, or to carry on even when the odds are impossible, because you know that your fight is righteous. Our fight is righteous, Sori, and even if we cannot win this day, we may still be a beacon of hope for others, trusting that tomorrow the odds may be different. Our courage will not die, even if we do, and that is why the songs still speak of heroes long past—because true courage is only found when victory seems beyond reach but we stretch for it all the same. This will be my legacy, and when I am gone, you must uphold it, even when you are scared, even when you doubt yourself, even when all seems lost. We are not simply people, Sori, we are symbols, every one of us, and so we must ensure that our symbols are worthy.”
Sori was relieved her mother’s gaze stayed on the burning fields so she could not see her daughter’s weakness as she tried to digest this heavy lecture. Sifting for meaning in all the talk of symbols, she said quietly, “If we’re supposed to fight, why are you sending me away with Corben?”
“Because today we need but one martyr,” said her mother, and it finally sunk in all the way, what this was all about. Lady Shels, golden chin held high, looked down at her daughter and said, “When we go downstairs I will lead our people north, and we will fight the Cobalts to the last. I will die with my boots on the soil our ancestors have tilled for generations, and after I am gone, child, it will be up to you to avenge me. To lead whomever remains. To fight on, and not stop until you reclaim our lands, our legacy. In time you will rule from this keep, just as I did, and my mother before me, and her father before her. You must live, so that you may become a symbol of righteousness.”
“But you might not die,” said Sori, not caring that her voice was rising. “You’ve fought before, plenty of times, even against the Cobalts, and you always… you always…”
“Strength, Sori!” her mother snapped. “Everyone dies; our doomed fate is the very thing that unites mortals against the First Dark. Two centuries hence no one who draws breath this morn will still be alive, not one mortal in all the Star, and all that will be left are the symbols they left for their heirs. I must die, and so I will die fighting for what I believe in. And when the time comes, so will you. Won’t you?”
“Yes.” Sori blinked away the last of her tears and met her mother’s firelit eyes, and though it wasn’t quite true, not yet, she said, “I understand.”
“Good,” said her mother, leading her away from the ramparts, down into Junius Keep. “You will be strong, Indsorith, and in time even the Cobalt Queen will learn to fear your name. Now come, I ready for my last charge, and you must watch your mother ride to claim her fate. We shall not meet again, my child, and so let our parting be worthy of the songs of our heirs!”
Lady Shels’s final proclamations had been so fiery the words were branded into her daughter’s skull. Through all the hardships young Indsorith endured over the following weeks as she and her fencing instructor fled across Junius and into the Witch Wood, the words shone through like a beacon revealing the only safe path through the perilous night. Even when the agents of the false queen braved the Salted Crypts and discovered her and Corben hiding in that unhallowed place, Indsorith believed in her mother’s words the way feebleminded folk believed in the Burnished Chain. She and Corben fought shoulder to shoulder until his was hewed open by an ax, and even then she battled on until they battered her down, too. She was ashamed to be taken alive, her injuries minor, and all along the snaking trails back through the Witch Wood she repeated her mother’s words like a prayer, begging atonement for her failure to be a worthy symbol.
But then the girl was delivered to Karilemin, the work camp that the so-called Imperials had erected in the scorched fields of northern Junius, and she learned that her mother’s claims had never been fulfilled. Every single oath had been undone by the machinations of the Cobalt Queen.
And while Indsorith knew that she betrayed her entire legacy by doing so, she gave thanks to the Fallen Mother to see her parents and brothers again. That they had all been captured by the forces of the usurped Empire stung her pride, but Indsorith truly believed that as a family they could weather anything, even such an indignity as this.
Her mother had different ideas, refusing to eat or drink or even speak to her family. The morning that she refused to take her turn in the fields, rebuffing the command with silent dignity, a guard casually caved in her head with his mace. It happened in front of the whole camp, Father and Arkon and Esben wailing as they ran to Lady Shels while Indsorith just stood there, staring, remembering how it had felt when Corben’s arm had come off right beside her, spraying her face with its fading heat.
After that, none of them spoke very much.
Father died of a broken heart shortly after, or maybe it was just barrow plague.
And try as Indsorith did to protect her brothers from the vicious guards, to keep them warm through the blanketless winter and fed through the lean spring—
“Your Majesty?”
Indsorith didn’t startle away from her memories at the intrusion, as though they were something to be ashamed of. Instead she drifted slowly back to the present, to the play of late afternoon sunlight on the obsidian floor of her throne room. She was the Crimson Queen, Regent of Samoth, Keeper of the Crimson Empire, and so she let herself linger over the memory of awaking to discover Arkon curled against her, hard and cold as the rocks they prised ou
t of the stingy earth until their fingers bled.
“Your Majesty,” said the abbotess, “I am sorry to intrude but—”
“What?” Indsorith snapped, perturbed to have her reverie interrupted before she could properly agonize anew over the yet worse fate that had met her younger brother, Esben. These meddling Chainites grew bolder by the moonrise, no longer content to harass her only when the Brat Pope sat in state on the onyx throne beside Indsorith’s. Though really, now, if she only had to put up with one cultist at a time Abbotess Cradofil was far less obnoxious than Pope Y’Homa.
“Her Grace wishes to inform you that all is ready for your arrival in the Middle Chainhouse,” said the perpetually sweaty abbotess, even her voice sounding as greasy as collection-plate coppers. “If you might be so good as to attend her now, she assures you that the procession shall be completed by midnight.”
“Oh, is that all?” Indsorith climbed down from her sable-padded throne, sore and weary from another long day of sitting. Twenty years and a hundred different combinations of bolsters and furs later, that fire glass chair was just as fucking merciless as when she’d first seized it from Cobalt Zosia—no wonder the evil old witch had been so keen to give it away to the first comer. “I don’t suppose I can cancel over something as trivial as awaiting word from the Fifteenth Regiment on what exactly the fuck is going on at the Lark’s Tongue?”
“I would never presume to suggest what Your Majesty may or may not do, even under the most dire of circumstances,” said Cradofil, milky eyes everywhere but on her queen. What an answer! The old snoop must know as much about the unfolding situation on the Witchfinder Plains as Indsorith or any of her advisors; if she didn’t, she surely would have tried to fish more details out of Indsorith instead of settling for noncommittal toadying.
“No, you’re too smart for that, aren’t you?” Indsorith stretched from side to side in preparation for the strenuous hike down to the Middle Chainhouse. “Tell me, Abbotess, how many masters have you served in this chamber?”
A Blade of Black Steel Page 1
