Lightbringer

by Claire Legrand

  “And you’ve been tracking them ever since?” Tal asked.

  “With help, and much more slowly than I would like.” He glanced at Annick. “Not many marques these days can travel such distances alone. Whoever is with the queen is someone of exceptional power.”

  “And when you find this marque and Queen Rielle,” Tal said, “what do you plan to do, exactly?”

  Before Garver could answer, Annick laughed.

  “He hasn’t gotten that far yet,” she replied. “I enumerated for him all the reasons why he shouldn’t do this foolhardy thing, and that topped the list. Not having a plan.”

  Garver bristled. “I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.”

  “No, so you decided to travel right into my bedroom with no warning, toss our son at me with no regard for my poor, shocked wife, and then go traipsing about the world after an angel with no plan other than dragging me along with you.”

  “I can help you,” Tal said urgently. “If we can find your marque, we can find Rielle. And if I can find Rielle…” A lump formed in his throat, breaking his voice. “If I can find her, I can free her from him. I can bring her home to Celdaria, where she belongs. Only then will we be safe. If we cannot do this, I fear she’ll be forever lost, and the world will fall, just as Aryava proclaimed.”

  “And what if Queen Rielle does not wish to be free of him?” Garver asked quietly. “What if she went willingly? What is it about you that will convince her to leave him?”

  “I love her.” The choked words burst out of Tal. “I love her, and she loves me. I have taught her everything she knows. I have protected her all her life.”

  “And done a piss-poor job of it,” Annick muttered.

  “Annick!” scolded Garver.

  “I know her. I know her.” Tal looked to each of them, praying they would believe him. “I can reach her. I know I can. I simply have to talk to her. If she hears me, she’ll see reason. If I can touch her, hold her, she’ll remember home. She’ll fight her way free of him if she has to.”

  After a long moment, Garver glanced at Annick. She said nothing, her expression grave, and nodded once.

  “Very well, my lord,” Garver said. “We will travel together. We’ll rest until dawn, then begin at first light.”

  Tal’s exhausted relief was too immense for words. He directed them to the cave he had found, then settled on the hard ground outside it, under a wide black mouth full of stars. He hooked his arm securely through the strap of his shield, which covered his torso like a burnished shell.

  Just inside the cave, Garver sat down heavily and put his head in his hands. Annick settled beside him, looking out into the night.

  “I hate being so far away from Simon,” Garver said gruffly, after a long moment. “He’s a tender-hearted boy, though he tries not to be. He’ll worry.”

  “Quinlan is looking after him,” Annick replied. “She has powerful friends. They’ll be safe.”

  “Your wife is entirely too good for you.”

  “Too true,” Annick said, and then added, a grin in her voice, “Do you know, at times like this, I almost find myself wishing you and I hadn’t ever stopped loving each other.”

  “At times like this, I find myself wishing I had no power at all, so I could send your sorry ass to save the world and stay at home with my son.”

  “Our son, you wretch,” Annick said fondly, and kissed Garver’s nose.

  Tal listened to their quiet conversation until his eyes began to drift shut, and for the first time since leaving Celdaria, he fell asleep with a flare of hope burning clean and bright in his heart.

  17

  Eliana

  “There are days when I too lose my courage. I hear the screams of the dying, and I think all is lost. But if you learn one thing from my writings, I hope it is this: Whatever pain you have been dealt, the Sun Queen, when she comes, will bear far more. And she will know all the while that, if she surrenders, she will do so at the cost of everything that lives.”

  —The Word of the Prophet

  It was over far too quickly.

  Eliana lurched across the terrace, clumsy with terror, and crashed to her knees against the low stone parapet. Ioseph and Remy fell fast toward the ground, their bodies blurred shapes in the darkness.

  From the moment Eliana grasped Corien’s intent, she knew what her choice would be, and therefore did not hesitate. She could sense the truth in his words: If she tried to save them both, he would kill them, and she would be left with nothing.

  But he had known that and had correctly guessed how she would respond to that threat, that she would have no choice but to do what she was doing now—reaching out for Remy’s body as it spun and plummeted, desperation making her castings flare to life.

  The empirium shifted at her command, the air around Remy weaving itself into a brilliant cushioned net. Eyes glazed, her vision gone golden and supple, Eliana could see the change in the air like the press of a thumb against skin, making the world’s flesh stretch and pucker.

  Silent tears rolled down her cheeks as she lowered Remy gently to the courtyard below, the clean white stone now marred by something Eliana could not bring herself to look at. Instead, she watched a pair of guards lift Remy to his feet and escort him away until he was lost in the shadows.

  She huddled on the terrace, shivering against the parapet. She laid her cheek on the rough cool stone, and as she listened to the sounds of soldiers carrying away Ioseph’s body, something broke within her. Not a snap, but a gentle giving way, as if a tree gone soft and half-rotted had been standing too tall in harsh winds and could no longer bear its own weight. An exhaustion unlike any she had felt before fell over her, drawing a thick blanket of numbness over her thoughts.

  She barely noticed Corien helping her rise. He smoothed her hair back from her face, wiped away her tears.

  “What a waste to make you endure this,” he said. “We would make a happy family, if you allowed it. You, me, Remy. Your mother too, once I’ve found her. I’ll let you flay Simon down to his bones if you wish and keep him alive for every second of agony.”

  Corien’s thumb caressed her jaw. He watched her with eyes blacker than the sky above them. “Send me back, Eliana, and you’ll never have to feel like this again.”

  Then he turned and was gone, and Eliana slipped into a quiet dark tunnel devoid of life. When she found light once more, she was on her clean white bed in her clean white rooms, every surface awash in soft moonlight. She curled atop the blankets, shivering.

  A crackling sound spit through the room, a warped buzz that reminded her of the sour hiss of galvanized lighting. From a brass funnel affixed to the wall, high in a corner of the room above a bundle of thick wires, came the soaring melody of the orchestra playing in the theater downstairs. The brass device distorted the sound, making it seem as though the orchestra were making music on a distant high mountain.

  Eliana did not know how Corien had achieved this, nor did she care. The music struck her ears like the blunt heels of vicious hands, and she let them pummel her to sleep.

  • • •

  Eliana awoke to the nauseating smell of breakfast arriving.

  She watched dully as her white-robed attendants carried dishes to the small white dining table by the south-facing windows—a plate, a bowl, a pitcher, a goblet. The scent of food sat in her nose and mouth like a sour film. Eliana turned away from the neatly set table. If she looked at it for another second, she would be sick.

  There was a moment of silence, and then from the doorway came a sharp huff of impatience. Jessamyn appeared, marching over to Eliana’s bed in her trim black uniform. A small collection of sheathed knives hung from her belt.

  “You will eat every bite,” she commanded, yanking Eliana upright. “His Excellency commands it.”

  Eliana did not resist. Once on her feet, she followed Jessamyn to the
table. Her mind felt muddled; to move her legs, to think her thoughts, was to slog through a swamp. She felt as though she had been pulled through a tight chasm into a state that was neither awake nor asleep.

  And yet her gaze flitted to Jessamyn’s daggers. How easily her thoughts tipped to Arabeth and Nox and Whistler, her own beloved, long-gone knives. Slowly, an idea began to form.

  Eliana sat before her breakfast and measured her breathing, allowed her idea to grow. If she moved too quickly, she would disrupt the fog that kept her mind torpid, and Corien would sense what she intended and stop her.

  “Eat,” Jessamyn snapped, standing tall beside the table.

  Eliana lifted a spoonful of mash to her lips. Morning light filtered through the windows; the glass was spotless, and beyond it, a dove perched on the gutter preened its feathers.

  Eliana’s idea turned and sharpened, steadily taking shape. She could not—would not—help Corien. And yet she could not endure more of this. The endless nightly torment, Remy brought before her and abused, the inability to trust her own mind.

  This was the answer. She had to end his game before he could win, and this was the only way to do it.

  She ate under Jessamyn’s watchful gaze. Spoon from bowl to lips until the dish was clean, and then she started on her fruit. A berry popped open between her teeth.

  “Where is Remy being held?” she asked. If she was going to abandon him to this place, she needed to hear the truth of his fate. “Is he hurt? Is he being fed?”

  “Fed, yes,” Jessamyn said after a slight pause. “Hurt, yes, but nothing egregious. The Emperor will make certain he is safe as long as he is useful.”

  As long as he is useful. Eliana smiled with faint relief. Once she was gone, they would kill him. He would want it that way. He would want her to do this. Two lives in exchange for countless others? A simple equation. If Remy knew, as she did, that it was the only way to win, he would hold the blade himself.

  “I had thought of that,” she whispered, finishing her fruit. “That he would be kept alive as long as I am.”

  She reached for a slice of buttered bread. She envisioned the three daggers strapped to Jessamyn’s belt but did not dare look at them. A strange peace came over her. She would have to be quick. One last kill for the Dread of Orline.

  Remy, forgive me, she prayed.

  Then she rose swiftly from her chair and struck Jessamyn hard in the throat.

  Jessamyn staggered back and gasped soundlessly, clutching her neck. She hadn’t been expecting it. Eliana was weak. She’d gone soft; she hadn’t held a dagger in weeks. She hardly looked like a person anymore, let alone a killer.

  But desperation gave her new strength. She found the shortest dagger on Jessamyn’s belt and wrenched it free of its sheath. Her mind a frenzy of white light and crackling noise, her blood afire with triumph, she thrust the blade toward her own stomach.

  Before blade could meet flesh, something seized her—a firm but gentle presence in her mind like a hand around her wrist, pulling her back from the brink.

  No, little one. Not yet. We have things left to do, you and I.

  Whoever this person was, sending mind-speak into her thoughts as angels did, it was not Corien.

  Eliana dropped the knife.

  The adatrox stationed around the room remained silent and still. Jessamyn leaned against the dining table with one hand, her other hand at her collar. She did not lunge at Eliana to counterattack. None of the adatrox hurried forward to apprehend her.

  Eliana stood slowly, staring. Jessamyn gasped for air. The dove at the window flew away with a soft trill.

  We have a moment to speak uninterrupted, the voice told Eliana. I am deceiving the eyes of your guards, but I cannot shield us for long.

  Who are you? Eliana stepped back from Jessamyn, her heart pounding in her ears. You’re an angel.

  I am a friend.

  Eliana spun around, searching for something to attack, but the room remained still and quiet. The only sound was Jessamyn’s ragged breathing. That does not answer my question.

  Not all angels are alike, and not all worship at the Emperor’s feet. After a pause, the voice said, gentler now, Haven’t you such a friend? Your Zahra, whom you love?

  Eliana sensed a kindness in this voice, and a great sadness. Her eyes filled with furious tears. Don’t you want me to stop him? This is the only way.

  No. There is another. I don’t have much time before he realizes I’m here, and he can’t know I’m still alive, which is why I haven’t shown myself to you before now. Despite its sadness, the voice held an iron resolve that frightened Eliana, even kind as it was—for in this, at least, the voice matched Corien’s own. An indomitable will. Centuries of purpose.

  I would have liked more time before coming to you, for your own sake, the voice continued. These months have been steadily wearing at you. You have suffered great losses, and you have so diligently worked against your power to protect us all that now you can find it only in moments of great duress, pain, or fear. That is why he hurts you so. That is why he promises happiness, only to tear it from your grasp. A pause. Then, an immense fondness. What you have endured is unforgivable. I wish I could tell you there isn’t more to come.

  Eliana was mystified. Standing in a pool of still sunlight, her unseeing guards staring blankly like statues, she asked again, this time aloud, “Who are you?”

  I have many names, the voice replied. But you know me as the Prophet.

  18

  Rielle

  “There is only one known scholarly depiction of Saint Tameryn without her dagger in hand—the frontispiece of a meticulously curated collection of obscure Astavari children’s tales. In the illustration, visible only when illuminated by direct sunlight, Tameryn is a child, and though ordinarily her likeness is of grave expression, in this instance she is beatific. In repose among a meadow’s flowers, she holds to her breast a white kitten in one hand and a beam of light in the other. No black leopard godsbeast to guard her. No dagger with which to fell her enemies. Not a single shadow in sight.”

  —A footnote in The Book of the Saints

  Rielle waited with mounting impatience for the tailor to finish adjusting the fabric of her new gown.

  But she could not allow herself to be impatient. She needed to keep her mind as schooled as her face—mostly blank, a touch of imperiousness. The tailor moved quickly around her, pinning fabric, taking measurements. Corien had insisted she have a spectacular wardrobe, and the tailor he had conscripted for the job hailed from Kirvaya. Brilliantly talented, Corien had assured her, and indeed the man had created something exquisite—a high-collared black gown with structured shoulders and long snug sleeves that glittered with artful swirls of tiny gold jewels, a high waist, and a sweeping, dramatic skirt that allowed room for her growing belly.

  Exquisite, and yet Rielle could not look directly at it. The black expanse of it, the glittering gold froth at the hem, reminded her of the endless sea of the empirium and how she had nearly drowned in it.

  How she had wanted to drown in it.

  The tailor fussed with a wrap of dark gray fur, draping it across her shoulders.

  Rielle locked eyes with her reflection. The same green she had always seen in mirrors now flared with thick bands of swirling gold. The change had been happening slowly over the past few months, and she had ignored it, but could do so no longer. The gold would soon eclipse the green.

  Suddenly, she could not bear to stand there any longer. Her stomach was unsettled; she couldn’t eat anything anymore without feeling sick. And she was surrounded by horrors. Monsters crafted from dragons and children forced into their magic. Monsters battering at the Gate. A monster who kissed her one moment and crafted abominations the next.

  And she herself, the most monstrous of them all.

  “We will finish this later,” Rielle announced, pl
acing a hand on her belly. “I feel ill and need to rest.”

  Half a lie, and one that almost made her laugh. She would never be allowed to rest.

  As her handmaidens helped her undress, slip into a sleeping shift, and find her furred slippers, Rielle imagined clamping her thoughts between the jaws of a vise, afraid to breathe too loudly. Corien was working somewhere deep in the bowels of the Northern Reach to which he had not yet introduced her. With his mind occupied—directing the movements of angels around the world, communicating with those still in the Deep, working with his physicians to cut and maim—Rielle’s own mind was as clear as it would ever be.

  But she had to move fast.

  As soon as she was alone, she gathered every piece of warm clothing she could find. Her sturdy fur-lined boots, which she had worn earlier that week when Corien gave her a tour of the reeking dragon pens. Thick tights, thick wool stockings, tunic, and trousers, and a long fur coat that fell past her knees. A scarf to wrap around her head and neck and a fur hat to tie down over that.

  She fashioned a sack from one of the bedsheets, trying to put out of her mind the recent memory of being tangled in it, Corien’s mouth hot on her skin. Her hands shook as she stuffed her makeshift bag full of clothing. Then she grabbed a blank page from the notebook on Corien’s desk and a pen and stuffed them into her bodice.

  She flew down the hidden staircase that began behind the mirror in the bathing room—a secret passage through which Corien could enter and exit his rooms privately. It was mid-afternoon—the laboratories and barracks, the mines and forges, would be bustling with activity, but the fortress itself was quiet. Rielle hurried to one of the supply storerooms near the kitchens, grabbed potatoes and hard rolls, a few strips of cured elk meat. She couldn’t guess what food they would be able to find or where their journey would take them.

  She reached out with her mind, wondering if she would feel Corien watching her.

  Silence. He was there, but distant, a faint shadow in her mind. He was still working. There was still time.