Lightbringer
Page 5
The sound of her voice reminded him to breathe.
4
Tal
“My darling Tal. I’ll send this to that inn we love, in Beaulaval, in hopes that it will reach you. No word from Audric yet. Things are changing quickly here. Merovec’s soldiers stop citizens on the streets. They barge into homes unannounced, patrol neighborhoods constantly. Searching for something, but what? When any of us try to offer counsel, or ask what Merovec is trying to do, we are dismissed. More later, but for now I must tell you that Odo Laroche and I, we’ve begun what you might call a resistance effort. Those who are loyal to Audric. You’ll think it rash, but you aren’t seeing what I’m seeing. We’ve named ourselves Red Crown. Don’t laugh. None of this is funny, and we’ve got to do something. I miss you. Be careful. Trust no one. Bring her home.”
—Encoded undelivered letter from Miren Ballastier, Grand Magister of the Forge in me de la Terre, capital of Celdaria, to Taliesin Belounnon, Grand Magister of the Pyre, dated November 15, Year 999 of the Second Age
Safely hidden under his heavy woolen cloak, his hood drawn up to shield his sodden blond hair, Taliesin Belounnon, Grand Magister of the Pyre, entered the buzzing tavern hall of the Glittering Mare and headed straight for the goddamned barkeep.
It was a chill night, and the ferocious winter storm that had swept down from the north earlier that day showed no signs of abating. But inside the crowded Glittering Mare, so named for Saint Katell’s legendary godsbeast, the air was damp and thick.
The barkeep glanced up as Tal approached. Her mouth thinned, so much like Miren’s when she was cross—her red cap of curls was, similarly, eerily reminiscent—that Tal had to avert his eyes.
“If you’re going to drip water all over the place,” she said, “then it’s double the price for everything we’ve got.”
From underneath his hood, Tal met the woman’s eyes and gave her a tiny grin, the sort of charming, cockeyed smile he had for the most part put to rest since being ordained Grand Magister.
For the most part.
“Are you certain about that?” he asked. “Happy to wring out my cloak a few times and give the place a good scrub.”
The barkeep’s frown deepened. “You think a joke and a nice smile’s enough to make me change my mind?”
Tal stifled a sigh. He was tired and cold, and his boots and socks were completely soaked, and his shield casting, strapped to his back underneath his cloak, was unfairly heavy, and all he wanted in the world was a drink, all to himself, without anyone bothering him or complaining about the state of his clothes.
As soon as his mind formed the thought, he knew it for a lie.
All he wanted in the world—all he really wanted—was to look behind him at the dozens of drinking, gossiping, shouting people jammed into the tavern and see a pale young woman with wild dark hair and bright green eyes. She would be standing there, the crowd swirling obliviously about her, and when her eyes locked with his, her face would crumple with relief, with exhaustion. She would run toward him, arms outstretched, and he would gather her close, smooth down the tangles of her hair, kiss her tearstained cheeks. He would reassure her that she was safe at last, that he would take her swiftly home.
Her name curled on the curve of his tongue. It was a word familiar enough to have a flavor, tart and explosive, as if he’d bitten down on a ripe summer berry. Rielle.
He had to look. He could almost feel her standing there, frightened and tired, heartsick and homesick.
But when he turned to glance over his shoulder, he saw only the tavern and its customers, only the high-raftered ceiling and the shutters drawn tight against the storm.
He closed his eyes briefly, a sharp pain twisting in his throat. This wasn’t the first time he had sworn that she was there—just behind him, just beyond that turn in the road, just beyond that copse of trees. Her echo had accompanied him for days as he searched the Celdarian wilderness, and it was that remnant, that pull, that had him convinced she was always near, that he was getting closer to finding her.
Either that or she was dead, and it was only her memory that haunted him.
But he couldn’t imagine that the world would survive her death. And if it could, somehow—if everything could stay as it was even though she no longer breathed the air that kept them all alive—then theirs was a world he no longer wished to inhabit.
He lowered the hood of his cloak, shaking the tangles out of his rain-soaked hair—and shaking loose thoughts of Rielle. Maybe, at least for a few minutes, he could clear his head and find some peace. He glanced up, offering the barkeep a pretty view of his pretty face, as well as a rueful smile that succeeded in making her blush.
“Forgive me,” he said, chuckling. “It’s been a horrible, long day, I’ve been traveling for many horrible, long days, and my temper is frayed. Do you have a rag? I’ll sop up this mess of mine and leave you be.”
“Oh, stop charming me,” the barkeep scolded as she moved away, but he’d seen her mouth twitch, and when she returned a few moments later, it was with a steaming mug of cider and two white rags.
“Clean yourself up, and then you can pay for the next one,” she said with a wink that reminded him, once again, so utterly of Miren that he lost the capacity to speak.
Instead, he smiled at the woman, found an unoccupied stool, and sat hunched over his drink. Hot and spiced, it loosened some of the knots in his chest, but it did nothing to soothe the headache that had been steadily pounding against his temples since he’d left me de la Terre. He had worked diligently over the past several days to keep his thoughts of home fleeting, skimming over them as he might the spines of books he had no interest in reading.
But the cider wasn’t excellent only at loosening knots, and soon he was nursing the dregs while thoughts of home whirled and raced through his mind.
It was driving him mad, not knowing what was happening in me de la Terre. Word of Audric’s ousting and Merovec’s assumption of the throne had made its way across the country. Judging by the several hushed conversations taking place around the room and the furtive, curious glances thrown at the door each time it opened, the citizens here in the little village of Tavistère had heard the news too.
Tal gripped his mug and closed his eyes, trying not to think of Miren alone back in the city, dealing with Merovec Sauvillier.
Merovec Sauvillier, king of Celdaria. King Audric, gone into hiding.
Queen Rielle, vanished into the night.
The whispered words floated around the room, and each time they met Tal’s ears, the sounds curdled inside him like some horrible blockage he couldn’t dislodge. His only consolation was the knowledge that if Audric were found and killed, Merovec would ensure that particular piece of news traveled quickly. Until then, there was some measure of comfort to be found in the confused speculation regarding his whereabouts.
“Here.” A fresh mug slid into view. The barkeep was watching him curiously. “You look like you need at least a few more of these.”
Tal managed a weak smile. “I’ll pay for the third one, then?”
“Keep me engaged in fascinating conversation, and you won’t have to pay for any of them. You look like you have some fascinating conversations brewing in that pretty blond head of yours.”
“Fascinating,” Tal agreed. “Startling. Disturbing.”
The barkeep’s eyebrows raised. “You know how to intrigue a girl, Wet Cloak.”
“Aiden,” he lied, with another smile.
“Rosette.” She propped her chin in her hands and grinned back at him. “So? A deal’s a deal.”
And suddenly, Tal wanted nothing more than to confess everything. “I left my home to do something very important,” he said instead, his throat constricting. “And I left behind someone I love.”
“Why couldn’t they come with you?”
Miren’s face flashed before him—sharp-chinned and m
ischievous. A dense field of freckles across pale cheeks. Soft red curls that gleamed like molten copper in the candlelight of their bedroom.
And then, the last night he had seen her, in the gardens behind Baingarde—her face hard and solemn, her eyes bright but full of resolve. She had stayed behind in the capital to be Audric’s eyes. A loyal spy for the deposed king.
Be brave, she had whispered against his mouth under the garden pines, and then hurried back to the castle before he could even begin to craft the goodbye she deserved.
“Because,” he said at last, rubbing his forehead, “she has an important thing to do as well. Too important to abandon her post, as it were.”
“Quite significant people you two must be,” Rosette mused, a single finger tapping against her lips. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what these grave tasks are?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“You’ve been sworn to secrecy, have you?”
He placed a hand on his chest and bowed his head. “Sworn to secrecy and bound with gilded chains of honor.”
Rosette’s smile widened. “I do love when brooding men laden with noble secrets enter my establishment.”
Tal’s tired mind struggled for a reply. He had drunk too much cider; his thoughts were clouded and sloppy. Miren’s face and Rielle’s face collided and combined—short red curls and long dark waves. Rielle’s echo once again touched his shoulder, sharp and sudden as a gust of wind, and he clenched all his muscles against it.
“I know you’re not really there,” he muttered, pressing his fingertips hard against his temples.
“Aiden? Are you ill?” Rosette touched his arm. “You’ve gone so pale. I like you, but you had better not get sick on my counter.”
The door to the tavern hall slammed open.
A desperate shout rang out. “The pale mark! They’re here! The pale mark! My daughter! Someone, please, they’re here! Someone’s here!”
Rosette stepped back with a choked cry.
Tal turned, his vision pulsing with the rhythm of his headache, and saw a man standing at the open door, the storm raging at his back. In his arms was the body of a young woman, her limbs rigid, her face twisted into a grotesque, bone-white mask of horror.
Panic snapped through the Glittering Mare like spitting flames. Those nearest the man staggered back as if the girl in his arms carried a foul sickness. Others cried out and hurried for the doors, the windows, the stairs leading up to the boarding rooms.
Tal stood, hot-cold dread flooding down his arms.
He had heard of this “pale mark.” King Ilmaire of Borsvall had written to Audric about it, and reports of it from their own soldiers had arrived in the capital week after week in recent months. At the borders of both Celdaria and Borsvall, villages and military outposts alike had been plagued by these unexplained deaths—people killed swiftly in the night. By shadows, was the rumor. There were whispers of beasts, though none of the reports on Tal’s desk had managed to describe anything comprehensible.
Some of the dead had been massacred, their bones scattered and their flesh in shreds; others were left lifeless with no wounds on their bodies. The only clue as to what had happened to those mysterious corpses, report after report noted, was their unnaturally pale faces, each and every one of them distorted in horror as if, in their last moments, they had been unmade from the inside out.
A cold hand touched Tal’s arm. He turned to see Rosette staring at him, her eyes glazed over with a gray film and a smug smile splitting her face. Tal lost his breath.
She cocked her head sharply to one side. “Too late, Tal.”
Her neck snapped with a horrible crack; her eyes cleared. She collapsed, smacking her head against the countertop.
Tal staggered back. Those nearest him screamed and fled. He knew very little about angelic behavior, but Rielle had told him everything that had happened to the late King Hallvard of Borsvall just before he died, and as he stared at Rosette’s frozen eyes, her bone-white face twisted in agony, a horrible chill swept across his skin.
Angels.
Corien.
Rielle.
“Too late, Tal!” A new, male voice crowed the words, and by the time Tal found the source, the man—bearded, gray-eyed, smiling madly—was already falling, his neck broken, his face bleached and twisted.
“Too late, Tal!” A serving boy, hardly older than fifteen.
“Too late, Tal!” A woman trying to calm her crying children.
The trail of their broken bodies taunted him, monstrous white faces leading him toward the door. Tal shoved past the panicking crowd and the poor sobbing man falling to his knees at the threshold. His daughter’s body tumbled to the floor.
Outside, the storm sucked the air from Tal’s throat. Black rain battered him like needles. He unbuckled the straps across his chest and withdrew his shield, then used it to scoop up a broad plate of flame from the oil-soaked torches sputtering at the tavern door. Several people cried out and jumped back, but he ignored them, racing through the crowded, muddy yard. The terrified cries of the horses stabled in the inn’s barn pierced the air. Their hooves pounded against their stalls. There was no fire, besides that of his shield; they were afraid of something else.
Only when he reached the trees at the yard’s edge did he stop to listen. Not to the cries of those back at the inn. Not to the storm.
Instead, he listened for Rielle.
His body trembling with rage, he closed his eyes, gripped his shield hard, and called upon the empirium with more desperation than he ever had before.
The empirium is in every living thing, and every living thing is of the empirium, he prayed.
Burn steady and burn true. The flames lining his shield grew, snapping and hungry.
Burn clean and burn bright.
Rielle had uttered those same words the day of the fire trial. They had recited them together, again and again, as the burning replica of her parents’ house spewed ash and sparks at their feet.
But then…feathers had fallen instead of flames. Brilliant and fire-colored, all of Rielle’s making.
Rielle, where are you?
Her echo skipped past him, almost playful. A cold snap across his abdomen.
He ran after it through the dark woods, sodden branches whipping at him, the only light that of his blazing shield, and when he emerged into the clearing where she stood—he knew it, he knew she was there even before he saw her, he could feel it, he could feel her; he had begged the empirium to find her, and it had, for once, cleanly and completely obeyed him—the pulsing pain in his head exploded.
He crashed to his knees; his shield flew away, the flames extinguished. He fell forward on his hands, and when he looked up, the world tilted, and he saw her for only a moment.
She wore a long, dark cloak so large it swallowed her. Her wet hair clung to her cheeks.
Their eyes locked, and even as his vision darkened, his skull screaming as if it were tearing itself in two, he recognized that look in her eyes. He had taught her for years; he had practically raised her.
She was frightened.
He reached for her, his arm shaking. “Rielle, darling, it’s all right, I’m here—”
But then he could no longer hold himself up, and as he watched from the mud, immobile and dazed, a white-haired girl with pale brown skin carved a ring of light from the air at Rielle’s feet. He didn’t understand what he was seeing. Was the girl a marque?
There was a sweep of darkness, swift movement, a snap in the air. A tall man, the wind whipping his coat.
Then the light was gone. And so was Rielle.
All that remained was a voice that did not belong to her. It was soft and refined and highly amused.
It said, Too late, Tal.
And then it kicked him hard into oblivion.
5
Rielle
—And Fire Fell From the Skies: The Great Angelic Descent and How It Changed the World, a collection of scholarly writings compiled by Lyzet Taval, of the First Guild of Scholars
Rielle had not yet mastered the art of traveling through Obritsa’s threads with any sort of grace.
The third time she stepped through the humming ring of light she had come to despise, she managed to keep her balance for only a moment before her knees buckled.
The ground came at her fast, a flat, hard stretch of red dirt scattered with sharp pebbles that pierced her tender palms.
She looked up, swallowing against the faint urge to be sick that always seemed to accompany traveling by thread, and discovered she was at the bottom of a narrow canyon of towering red stone. There was a roaring river nearby, carving its way through the rock with white foam and a black current. The sky was bright with sunset, casting an eerie crimson light across the flat canyon walls, into which intricate designs had been carved. Rielle picked out familiar shapes: Winged angels soaring through cities crowned with high towers. Great sleek warships pushing toward a distant shore. Stars and moons dotting the canvas of red rock in various configurations, like some sprawling map left behind by a mammoth traveler.
“It’s beautiful,” she said softly.
“Of course it is. Angels made it.” Corien approached her with his left hand outstretched. “This is Samandira, the entrance to Eridel. One of the greatest cities in Vindica, long ago. A place of study and enlightened thinking. Universities where angelic scholars worked to unravel the mysteries of creation. Libraries containing thousands of works examining the nature of the empirium. Before humans destroyed it,” he added lightly. “The war did much damage. And then, after our imprisonment, thousands of humans journeyed here to demolish what remained. For years they have done this—undoing everything we accomplished. Pillaging the ruins.”