Lightbringer

by Claire Legrand

  Inside an empty office that belonged to one of Corien’s scout commanders, Anadirah, Rielle found a small leather rucksack with a strap meant to fasten around the torso. She transferred the food into it, leaving the clothes ready and waiting on the floor. Then, with a pounding heart and a face cool as ice, she strode through the fortress to the little room in the east wing where Obritsa lived.

  “I will see the marque,” Rielle announced to the two adatrox guarding the door. “At once.”

  They blinked in confusion, their eyes gray and fuzzy, but she stood firm, staring them down, and soon they unlocked the door and stepped aside.

  Blood thundering in her skull, Rielle entered the room and shut the door behind her. Whatever angels had been assigned to control those particular adatrox would soon let Corien know what had happened. It was an odd enough thing to risk disturbing him.

  Near the blazing hearth, Obritsa sat in a chair, tightly bound by long coils of thick chains. The girl was obviously uncomfortably warm, her pale-brown skin slick with sweat, her gaze bleary. So bound, she would not be able to thread. The art required use of one’s hands.

  Obritsa looked up at Rielle’s entrance, her eyes puffy from crying but her face hard with hatred. “Have you come to kill me at last? Or have you simply come to tell me that my Artem is dead?”

  Rielle ignored her, and with a quick lash of power, she dissolved the chains in an instant, leaving Obritsa abruptly free and sitting in a cloud of iridescent ashes.

  “We don’t have much time,” Rielle said, withdrawing the paper and pen from her bodice and beginning to sketch a map of the fortress. “He’ll come for us soon. I need you to take me away from here, as far away as you can manage. Bear in mind that we have a long way to go, and I’ll need you to keep your strength. I’ve gathered supplies and clothes and hidden them in a closet down the corridor. We’ll retrieve them before we leave. Dress quickly. I think the best route for us to take is due north, through the White Wastes. We’ll cross the ice fields and the pole, then enter Astavar from the north.”

  “Your sudden change of heart is surprising.” Obritsa’s eyes glinted with a new sharp light. “He showed you, didn’t he? You saw what he’s been making. The elemental children he stole from my country. He keeps them in cages. In his laboratories, he perverts their magic and turns tortured godsbeasts into monsters. You saw it all.”

  Rielle paused in her work. Memories of the last few days lingered in her mind like scraps of nightmares. She longed to chase after them, examine what Corien had done and marvel at the inventiveness of it.

  She longed to condemn him for it and personally see to it that he was punished.

  The contradictions of her own heart made her want to scream.

  “The Gate must not be opened,” she said, refusing to look at Obritsa. If she glimpsed a single smug smile, she would burn it off the girl’s face. “These abominations he has made are crimes against the empirium.”

  Then she braced herself, holding still and silent, as if uttering the words would bring him crashing through the door.

  But the only sound in the room was the crackling fire. She released a shuddering breath.

  “We’ll destroy the castings we already have. I know where they’re kept.” She pointed at her scribbled maps. “You will take me there first, and then to the castings. That will create a distraction, perhaps slow him down. We’ll go to Astavar next, find Tameryn’s dagger.”

  “Are you capable of destroying them?” Obritsa asked, watching her closely. “They were forged by the saints.”

  Rielle laughed a little, distractedly scratching at her temple. “I’m capable of anything. Now, quickly, while I am still myself. Before anyone gets to me.”

  She closed her eyes, pushing against the distant rumble of the empirium, the nibbling of its black-gold waves. Her scratching fingers drew blood.

  “You can’t touch me,” she whispered. “You can’t have me, not yet.”

  Obritsa sounded slightly alarmed. “Who are you talking to?”

  Rielle ignored her. “If you want to stop him, you’ll do as I command. Now.”

  The girl rose from her chair, then hesitated.

  “Artem is too heavily guarded,” Rielle said at once, “and we’ve lost enough time as it is. We’ll have to leave him behind.” She thrust the map at Obritsa. She could feel the edges of her control fraying, her thoughts spilling out. “Hurry, damn you! He’ll come for me at any moment!”

  Her mouth in a thin line, her eyes hard and glittering, Obritsa worked quickly, her deft fingers summoning bright threads from the air and crafting them into a humming ring of light. She glanced at Rielle.

  Rielle stepped through the light, and Obritsa followed shortly after. The threads unraveled with a simmering hiss, and the ring collapsed, snapping shut.

  They dressed hurriedly in Anadirah’s office, Obritsa dwarfed by the too-large furs. A gentle pressure was building in Rielle’s mind, her thoughts shifting into a familiar configuration.

  “Hurry,” she whispered, her fingers shaking as she tied her scarf and hat into place. “He’s coming.”

  Obritsa, eyes wide, summoned more threads. They stepped through the ring and into a small unadorned room of stone in one of the fortress’s towers, just as Rielle had instructed—but horror overcame her as she realized the truth.

  The room held only one casting: Saint Marzana’s shield, sitting alone in the center of the floor. Pale shafts of wintry light from four different windows intersected on the shield’s battered face.

  Obritsa closed her threads and turned. “Where are the others?”

  Rielle stared at the shield, a hot white rage rising within her.

  Corien had separated the castings, hidden them individually throughout the fortress, and he hadn’t told her.

  The last tattered cords of her control snapped.

  She screamed in fury and flung her hands at the shield, calling the empirium to her in an incandescent wave of power. The room exploded into gold, every fleck of dust, every trace of air and moisture illuminated with brilliant light.

  Obritsa threw up her arms to shield her eyes.

  A high, discordant hum pierced the air—the shield vibrating on the floor. Then, with a loud crack, it shot toward the ceiling, shattered into dust, and was gone. All that remained was a charred spot on the floor and a spiderweb of cracks that spanned from wall to wall. The room quaked violently, the ceiling swaying overhead.

  Rielle sagged to the floor, her mind bursting with stars. Her bones and muscles ached, her teeth and the space behind her eyes pulsed with pain—but beneath it was a depraved, wriggling pleasure. There was a delicate tingling in her fingers and toes, a supple energy playing at the ends of her hair and crackling along the soft lines of her skin.

  She sensed a light nearby, turned slowly toward it as if moving through water.

  “Go, Rielle,” said Obritsa, her voice tight with fear. “Hurry. The tower is falling.”

  A loud snap split the air, and the floor gave way beneath Rielle’s feet as she stepped through the ring of light hovering in the air to her left. She felt Obritsa right on her heels and heard the threads snap closed behind them as they fell together into a white world of snow.

  The air was so cold it immediately stole Rielle’s breath. She pushed to her feet, gasping, and fumbled to put on her gloves. Beside her, Obritsa adjusted the rucksack on her shoulders.

  They stood on a glacier, a low range of gray-and-white mountains behind them. A few hundred yards ahead of them gleamed a black grin of water shot through with icebergs. And in the distance, dark mountains that pierced the clouds.

  Rielle’s heart pounded as she watched them. Those mountains marked the Northern Reach, and she had escaped from it. From him.

  And as soon as the thought formed, he found her.

  Rielle, what have you done? He groped for
her, his fingers brushing against her wrist, his voice caressing her neck. His anger tugged at her chest; she was supper, caught in a snare. The shield, Rielle! How could you do this to me? To us?

  Rielle cried out, “Again, Obritsa! North!”

  The girl obeyed, her wide frightened eyes the only things visible behind her layers of furs.

  Rielle went first, Obritsa close on her heels, and as Rielle passed through the ring of light, Corien’s roar of fury struck the back of her neck like a whip.

  • • •

  They landed in a deep drift of snow.

  Rielle choked on it, the fresh white powder up to her chin, and pawed around for Obritsa. She found the girl’s gloved hand, held tight to it, then sent out a burst of power that melted every flake within ten feet of where they stood. Water gushed to the bare black ground in a brief cold torrent.

  Gasping and coughing for air, her furs drenched, Obritsa nevertheless did not hesitate. She summoned more threads, each drifting in a cloud of steam as the snow once again closed in fast around them.

  A vision settled before Rielle’s eyes: the black fortress at the Northern Reach, a gaping hole at the corner where the tower she had collapsed had once stood.

  She blinked, and then Corien was beside her, cloaked in black and gray furs. He had left his face bare, and in the relentless snow, his pale-eyed beauty was even more startling.

  “What is the point of this, Rielle?” he asked her. “What are you hoping to achieve?”

  Though he was not truly there, he was real enough in her mind, and Rielle swayed toward the promise of warmth in his arms.

  But then she turned away from him, remembering the cruciata corpse hanging from the ceiling, the stolen Kirvayan children crammed into cages, the crawlers howling in their pit.

  “You lied to me,” she told him. “You never told me what you had been doing, what atrocities you have made real. I may be a monster, but I am not so monstrous that I can permit the abuse of children and godsbeasts.”

  Corien laughed gently. “You’re confused, darling. You’re tired. I understand. Come home to me. Come home and rest.” His voice slipped down the curve of her back. “Remember how good I made you feel, how you came apart again and again under my hands? Remember the power of that, the rightness of it? You belong here. You belong in my arms, Rielle.”

  Teeth chattering in the cold, Rielle shouted at Obritsa, “Faster, please!”

  “Our throne awaits us,” Corien said urgently. “If monstrous acts are required to achieve that, then so be it. It was a monstrous act that was done to me and my people. All great work must start somewhere, and what our future holds will be glorious enough to burn away any memory of the grotesque and cruel. You want this more than anything. I can feel it. I know you, Rielle.”

  Obritsa looked back over her shoulder. “It’s ready!”

  Rielle hurried toward the ring of light shining above the snow.

  “You’re lying to yourself!” Corien roared. “Without me, what will be left of you? You’ll be alone! You’ll never find—”

  Rielle stepped through the threads, and his voice disappeared.

  • • •

  They landed on a steep icy slope. Rielle immediately skidded, then caught herself on a nearby rock.

  But Obritsa could not find her footing and slid past Rielle with a sharp cry of fear.

  Rielle reached out and stopped her, freezing Obritsa in a net of power that held her sprawled motionless in the snow.

  As Rielle felt herself begin to slip, her grip on the rock failing, inspiration bloomed. She touched the empirium and sent a gentle wave of power rushing out over their little stretch of mountain. Snow and ice became mounds of downy grass dotted with wildflowers, and the air turned balmy and sweet.

  She collapsed into a cool patch of clover, breathing in the smell of green.

  Corien’s voice came quietly. I’m ashamed of how I spoke to you. I was afraid when I realized you’d left me. I’m sorry. I was cruel, and I lied to you. Rielle, you’ll never be alone. His voice held stifled tears. And I’ll never stop loving you. I’ll never abandon you or flee from you or flinch away in fear. Queen of my heart, I was made for this. I was brought into this world to love you.

  Obritsa crawled through the grass to Rielle’s side, helped her sit up. She had summoned more threads, a ring of them humming cheerfully at Rielle’s toes.

  “It’s time,” said Obritsa, panting. “Come. It’s fading fast.”

  The girl was right. Rielle looked blearily around to see her meadow’s grass withering, the blooms turning black. Her focus was too scattered, her fear and anger running rampant.

  She pushed herself to her feet, turned away from Corien’s soft pleas, and passed through Obritsa’s threads to whatever lay beyond.

  • • •

  On a clear night in the White Wastes, Rielle and Obritsa sat with their backs against a squat low cliff, looking out over a magnificent vista of snowy fields. The world was white and flat as far as Rielle could see. Above them, a sky of stars and twisting lights—green and violet, turquoise and amber. The legendary Astavari sky.

  Obritsa—exhausted, her power depleted—rested her head against Rielle’s shoulder. Rielle stroked the girl’s arm through her furs.

  Corien was quiet, only the barest shade of color on her mind’s horizon. Rielle knew she should be worried about what that could mean, but she was too tired for worry. They had been pushing themselves ruthlessly across the White Wastes for days, and this was the first time they had seen the stars.

  “We’re almost there,” she murmured to Obritsa, who was growing heavy with sleep.

  A thin vein of power tickled the edges of Rielle’s awareness. The crooks of her arms tingled; she rubbed her boots together, restless. The casting was close, and it was calling to her. In her mind’s eye, she saw Saint Tameryn in battle, riding her black leopard and flanked by a pack of shadow-wolves she had summoned with her casting—an elegant dagger with an ebony hilt.

  Rielle closed her eyes. “We’re so close,” she whispered. “I can feel it.”

  • • •

  When Rielle stepped through the final ring of light that would bring her to Saint Tameryn’s casting, she was tense and ready, her power humming eagerly at her fingertips.

  She stood in an immense cavern at the edge of a vast, clear lake. Bounteous greenery covered the cavern walls—tangles of creeping vines trimmed with glossy jade leaves, clusters of tiny white flowers that hung like clouds. The lake’s shore was a broad expanse of black stone glinting with flecks of amethyst. A gentle breeze ruffled the water, and though there was no window to the outside world, sunlight gently suffused everything Rielle could see.

  Obritsa came up quietly beside her, lowering her furred hood. Chunks of snow fell to the ground. “Saint Tameryn’s cavern,” she whispered.

  Rielle closed her eyes, breathing in the gentle air. Here, the casting’s call was insistent and clear. Its power showed her a vision: Saint Tameryn in a sleepy-eyed embrace with Saint Nerida. One with golden-brown skin and a head of glossy dark waves, the other ebony-haired with pale skin kissed golden by the sun. Entwined in a white bed beneath a canopy of leaves, they glowed with happiness.

  An echo of their love bloomed in Rielle’s heart, the memory carried on the current of the casting’s power, and it was so overwhelming, so vivid in its purity, that Rielle felt choked by it. Dashing the tears from her eyes, she resolved to leave this place the first moment she could, for it brought memories of Audric too close.

  She swept her gaze across the cavern and found a circular belvedere made of stone, sitting on a plinth out on the water. A low wall connected it to the shore.

  Standing amid the belvedere’s columns were three men in gray robes, each with a familiar sigil embroidered on his chest—a high, square tower, and above it an eye. One of the men was already f
rantically pulling threads from the air, which made Obritsa draw in a sharp breath.

  The Astavari Obex, and one of the marques who served them.

  Rielle stormed toward them at once, Obritsa hurrying behind.

  “Relinquish it,” Rielle called out, “or I will destroy you.”

  One of the Obex clutched Tameryn’s dagger behind his back. “Lady Rielle, please, you must listen to reason—”

  “I warned you,” Rielle said. There was no time to argue with them, nor to spare them. Still some fifty yards from them, she sent fists of power flying, grasped their hearts in her blazing hand, and stopped them, as she had done to her father, to King Bastien, to Lord Dervin. But she was better at it now—swifter, more efficient. Their deaths were painless; she made sure of it. Tameryn’s dagger clattered to the ground. The marque’s threads unraveled and disappeared.

  Rielle crossed the wall to retrieve the dagger, then rejoined Obritsa on the shore. The girl looked utterly unsurprised by what Rielle had done. Instead, a faint smile brightened her tired face.

  “We did it,” Obritsa said breathlessly. “I did it.”

  “You did well,” Rielle agreed, and then held up the dagger, tilting its blade to catch the light. She tried not to think about how elated Audric would be to stand in Saint Tameryn’s beloved retreat, but her mind was a vicious traitor.

  “Take us to the surface,” Rielle instructed. “Somewhere remote. That waterfall we passed in the mountains. Take us there.”

  Obritsa frowned. “You won’t destroy it here?”

  Rielle tightened her grip on the dagger. She waited until her eyes were dry and her mind free of the imagined Audric, standing awestruck on the shore.

  Then she said quietly, “No. Not here.”

  • • •

  They rested under a cluster of pines in the mountains some distance north of Astavar’s capital, Vintervok. Not far from them, a slender waterfall tumbled down a black rise of stone. A thin mist pervaded the air, softening every leaf and limb.

  Obritsa slept soundly on the bed of her furs, snug between Rielle and a boulder velvet with moss. Shadows stretched deep and dark beneath Obritsa’s eyes, and her cheeks were hollower now than they had been in the Northern Reach. But then, so were Rielle’s. She had seen her reflection in the nearby river and had hardly recognized the person staring back at her.