For the purposes of my trip today, I was headed for the granted temple, just one room off the astrologer’s tower and close to the palace. Unfortunately this meant the ascension of stairs. Innumerable stairs. Unlike Akadia, Uldin Keep held no lifts, nothing inventive, only silver stone, and echoes, and darkness.
I passed outside a handful of times, always it was colder and the wind was fiercer. Finally I saw the domed top of the astrologer’s tower; not far from it was a thinner tower made of silver blocks, tall but impossibly simple to climb. It had been my first experience with scaling a wall.
I didn’t mean to, but I recalled an especially cold winter’s night—what I thought at the time was the worst day of my life, and maybe it was. In the cover of darkness, I’d scaled that tower for the first time, kicked through the tapestry that blocked its window and dropped inside. Disoriented and frozen I wasn’t able to get my bearings before I was pounced upon by a small figure wielding a knife and wearing layers of silk. She shouted some threat about how skilled she was, moved her blade close to my neck, and relented only when I started coughing.
“Cyric?”
My coughing turned to shaking. It was too dark to see, but she pressed her warm hand to my face. “You’re half frozen. What have you done to yourself?” She rolled off of me immediately and made for the door.
“No, don’t,” I said.
“I have to get a healer.”
“I don’t need a healer.”
“You could be sick.”
“I’m fine.” I got to my feet. I could see her now, from the light of a fireplace on one side of her room. Her face was pale and anxious. “See?” I spread my hands, forcing myself not to shake.
She narrowed uncertainly. “What are you doing here? Everyone’s been looking for you.”
I doubted this. I made a face that said so, then began to make my way towards the fire.
“Well, two of the scholars were,” she conceded. “And I was.”
This sounded more accurate. Nobody cared what I did, not today. Ellia ran behind me to pin the tapestry back over the window, then bring me a cup of something warm.
“Don’t fuss,” I said.
She knelt beside me where I sat at the edge of the fireplace.
“I just need to stay for a few hours,” I explained. Anything else I thought to add sounded stupid.
She nodded quickly, brows low. “Whatever you want. Just don’t climb back down outside. And tell me where you went. Please.”
I waved her off. I stared at the fire a long time. But then: I’d stared off at things for most the day, and that wasn’t why I had come here, was it? I didn’t know why I’d come here.
“I went where they buried him,” I decided to tell her. “I followed them after the execution, and then I watched them put him in the ground, and then I just sat there.”
“All day,” she said. “And in the snow?”
I met her eyes. They were much too large for her face. The scholars said this meant she would be beautiful when she grew older; I thought they were probably the reason she saw so much better than I did, so I sometimes envied them. They grew glossy, then she started to cry.
I didn’t understand. It wasn’t her father that had died after all, and I hadn’t shed a tear all day. Perhaps this was why I’d come. Something about this made me forget everything else.
The next day I was thrashed for waking up in the princess’s quarters, but it never once kept me from going back.
I dropped my hand to the castle wall, feeling suddenly too cold, and too small, the wind rushing violently through me. I forced my gaze to the astrologer’s tower and took the necessary steps until I was inside. I hadn’t even noticed my torch had blown out. I had to re-light it and then I walked through a circular maze of walls, with spiraling alcoves above that opened to a domed ceiling. The viewing instruments, and silver ornaments, and hanging chimes that had once decorated it were all gone, but the painted stars and constellations covered every surface.
I ran my torch past them as I walked. I saw familiar patterns, but saved my real inspection until I had entered the main chamber of the granted temple. It was small, square, all walls and ceilings speckled with constellations of silvery white. If I had better sight, I could put the torch out and see them. They were meant to glow in the darkness.
I locked the torch into a holder at the front of the chamber then pulled the star-charts from my pocket. These were the ones that Lox had sent far away for, but hadn’t ever opened due to the war. There were three of them. Each depicting a constellation of stars, each I’d outlined to show the central form they represented. One a dragon, one a tiger, one a tortoise. The dragon constellation I had already found at the very center of the back wall. I compared the wall to paper, then set it down on the ground in front of it. Now I could follow the map laid underneath the constellations; a thin outline, in a darker silver. It portrayed the lands and oceans of all the kingdoms, like a regular map, only utterly unconventional in its shape. I found the high mountain that ran behind Shaundakul easily enough, just beside the dragon. But I had trouble following the map to the kingdom I thought the next animal would match with. Instead I tried a different tactic. The back wall of the chamber faced east and that was also the direction belonging to the dragon in the myths. Each of the creatures had their own. I took my torch and went to the center of the north wall. Sure enough I found the tortoise, exactly the same as the constellation on my paper. Beneath it was a mountain range I recognized as Genbu, some distance northwest of Akadia. The people that lived there weren’t known to have a granted animal, but they wouldn’t be the first to hide them, and that would explain why I’d never heard of a granted animal resembling a giant tortoise.
I left the paper and went to the west wall. It was just above the door; a tiger. I recognized the outline of the Byako swamplands immediately. This, at least, I had guessed. They lived just southeast of Selket and depending on the location of the fourth animal, they would be the easiest to reach.
I went to the south wall with barely restrained anticipation. The last animal was meant to represent fire, that much I knew, and when I saw the constellation of a bird at the wall’s center, that’s what it looked like: fire. A bird of flames. I had no doubt what it was, even before I saw the outline of Echren beneath it. These granted birds were well-known but seldom seen, residing on the northeastern side of the Ghaundian Crag.
I stepped back from the wall to the center of the chamber. I looked over each direction, naming its creature.
Azure Dragon, Shaundakul.
Black Tortoise, Genbu.
White Tiger, Byako.
Vermillion Bird, Echren.
The four mythical constellation animals. Otherwise known as—or at least alleged to be—the four oldest granted animals. And much more importantly, the most powerful.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ELLIA:
I took lungfuls of fresh air and calming breaths as I rode Fauna in circles around the stable district. This was my second day under Slark’s care and the third district I’d been allowed to visit under his watch. He stood close by, leaning against a fence where three more soldiers stood close; all watching me, but nothing would dissuade me from appreciating my small freedom.
Riding Fauna reminded me so of Luffie that it pained me, but it likewise reminded me of how full of life and strength animals were. Whether I would survive our separation remained to be seen, but Luffie would. Even now she might be chasing her brothers around the volcano cavern, or brooding over Arrin and Tris. There was another reason for my delight: Fauna herself. Upon entering the stable district, Slark had said that I could take my pick of a horse to ride, emphasizing that I was more than welcome to share his saddle if I liked. But in the round circle of stalls I had very quickly noticed a regal, white and cream, female horse that Slark explained had long been in retirement, because she had belonged to a departed and much-loved Captain of Akadia.
Despite her uncertainty, and despite the fact tha
t Slark loomed close, the moment I entered Fauna’s stall, I ran to her and buried my face in her mane. Then I put every effort into not crying, while thinking of my friend and how he had made Akadia so much better. Its prince that had made it so much better.
Fauna’s uncertainty disappeared, Slark saddled her, and I was allowed to ride her around the red-dirt circle at the center of the district. After hours, Slark left the other soldiers and mounted his own horse, a rich chestnut brown stallion. He came up beside Fauna who had begun to slow her pace, though not at all the regal lift of her hooves.
“They’re already jealous of me and I’ve only been watching you a day,” Slark said. “I don’t know how the Lieutenant doesn’t seem to take more advantage of it. I would be carting you around to every event available. Then again, he’s probably used to it.”
This sort of absurd and open comment Slark said frequently. As if he weren’t insulting and shouldn’t infuriate me. But he did and I persisted in disliking him, despite his Shaundakulian appearance, and despite the freedom he allowed me. It seemed by his own admission that he did it for his own gain anyways.
Neither I nor Fauna acknowledged him.
“I thought that you would be happy to have been captured,” Slark said absently. “But in the past days I see that you aren’t. Do you view Akadia as so different from Shaundakul?”
I scoffed and glared at him, unable to ignore this no matter how I would have liked to.
“It’s not so different for me,” he went on, “I live the same life I always have. At first, it wasn’t like that, I didn’t take to Akadia, its systems and training. It took me longer than most to become a soldier, and that was only with the Lieutenants help.”
“I can’t understand that,” I said. “Why do you serve Cyric and speak so highly of him, when for years in Shaundakul you scorned him?” I didn’t mean it as a question precisely, more of an attack, but Slark seemed to take it seriously.
“I’ve always believed that men should bend to their betters,” he replied, “Back in Shaundakul I believed the better man was me. Here, without all the customs of court and names, I realized that it was Dracla who was the better man. So I serve him and I’ve only been proven right since.”
“The better man. The things you and the rest of the Akadians believe make Cyric better just prove he’s worse.”
“Worse than me?” Slark asked lightly.
I eyed him. There was a mischievous glow to him, but I could not tell whether he meant the question. “You’re both the same to me,” I said. “I meant that he’s worse than himself.”
“Worse than himself?” Slark echoed. He looked skeptical. “Can a man be worse than himself?”
“Yes.”
Slark laughed at me. I bore it by tightening my fists.
“You don’t really think Dracla’s any different than he was in Shaundakul , do you?”
“Of course he is,” I shot back. And then I realized that this wasn’t something I wanted to be speaking of, least of all with Slark.
“But, you know, he was always good in battles,” he said, “And with his father…”
I stopped Fauna in her tracks, turning wild eyes on Slark. “Cyric is nothing like his father.” Here was the Slark I remembered, forever calling Cyric by his last name with thick derision.
“You mean, he wasn’t,” Slark said, undaunted by my explosion, carefully stilling his horse’s pace.
I didn’t understand what he meant.
“We were speaking of what he is and what he was. You said he isn’t like his father.”
I felt taken off-guard, at my own words, and exposed under Slark’s curious gaze. But it was what I’d said, and I’d said it for a reason. “Cyric is not like his father,” I repeated, “You have no right to even speak it. Cyric chooses to be a mockery of himself. His father was evil, true evil.”
“A murderer,” Slark said.
“Yes.”
“But doesn’t Cyric kill?”
My throat locked up; I saw the bodies of fallen Katellians and Democedians. “It is different to kill in war. He isn’t killing for his own gain. He isn’t killing defenseless men.” I comforted myself with the image of Cyric letting his sword fall before Tobias.
Slark threw back his head and laughed, suddenly and wildly. He drew the attention of even those soldiers who were wandering many yards away from us, though no one was near enough to hear our words.
“You have truly been in Akadia too long to know so little.”
In the context of our discussion, I didn’t like these words, I liked them less than I liked his laughing. “Explain yourself,” I demanded.
“Oh, but Princess Ellia, I’m not sure that you want me to.”
This rocked me even more. I might have pretended the whole thing away, just an exaggeration of this foolish, wicked lord, but he went on without request.
“I spoke before of Cyric’s reputation as an errand runner for Lox—do you remember? It started with the traitorous Commander, Commander Tarful. He was one of the three opposite Venoc and Lox. This was before the war when Cyric was under his battalion. You’ve heard at least about the conspiracy that began the war with Karatel?”
“I’ve heard. None of it’s true.” I’d heard it in my days of spying, the story of an Akadian commander and the prince of Karatel plotting to destroy Akadia. I knew it wasn’t true for one because Prince Nain would never have assassinated his father, King Milos, and second because this was Akadia, and lying to steal kingdoms was what they did.
“Many would agree with you,” Slark said casually. Then he leaned closer. “But it was the uncovering of this betrayal that allowed Cyric to become a Lieutenant.”
I didn’t want to say anything in response to this because part of me didn’t want to know it. I recalled something the queen had said the first night I’d arrived in Akadia, something about Cyric and the betrayal of Karatel.
“Speak plainly,” I commanded. “What does this have to do Cyric’s father, or running errands for Lox?”
“Because his most infamous errand surrounded this,” Slark responded, ominously, but with a smile that bespoke of pride. “Commander Tarful was sent belowground, but two of his Lieutenants, all but Scanth, retreated with a councilman to the plains of Karatel—before they could be questioned or convicted. They say it was Lox’s order, and that Lox promised Cyric the position of Lieutenant if he carried it out…”
Carried it out. I meant to speak but the words, but they just echoed in my head.
“He went to them, before the war had even begun, and…” Slark put his finger to his throat and slid it across. I saw the soldier on the streets of Akadia, making the same gesture, referring to what Cyric might do to Venoc if he were away at war. I saw more, Cyric’s face at the battle of Karatel. The greyness, the tiredness, the rage barely hidden—the change from the person I had known for so long. Was this what I had seen that day? Was it Dracla the elder he resembled? I sorted through the possibility that these lieutenants were evil and deserved to be executed… but surely men that Lox would execute were not men that should die. Men like Tobias who were probably making plans against him. I sorted through the possibility that Cyric hadn’t known what he was doing, but that wasn’t the way that Slark had made it sound. He’d made it sound like Cyric did it to gain a title and because of Lox’s order.
My vision went blank as I forced myself to think of the elder Dracla from my memories. The way he had looked before he hung. The color of his eyes, the sheen and wildness behind them. I compared them to Cyric’s. I compared them to Cyric’s the day I had seen him on the battlefield of Karatel.
“What’s going on here?” I heard a voice ask. It was short and angry, and in all my spinning thoughts it sounded to me like Cyric.
“Lieutenant,” Slark said. His tone was so revering and full of surprise that it rocked my mind clear, then my vision.
I focused on the figure mounted atop the black horse that had just ridden next to ours. Cyric’s angry eyes wer
e all for Slark. His gloved hands clung firmly to his reigns, and his legs to the sides of the horse. I noticed strange things, like the blankness in his horse’s gaze, or the scar on Cyric’s neck, a scar that hadn’t been there the many years we’d spent together in Shaundakul.
“I thought to take the Princess Ellia where she could get some fresh air,” Slark was explaining, not without a tremor in his tone, “I thought that the riding would—”
“Cyric,” someone interrupted.
I didn’t realize until his gaze snapped to me that it was I that had called him. His eyes showed the slightest moment of surprise and then they hardened over. He waited, staring at me, his face darkened with fresh days of sun, but when I didn’t speak he made to look back at Slark.
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