Lightbringer

by Claire Legrand

  And these were the hours when the Prophet came and Eliana practiced escape.

  • • •

  The corridor just outside her rooms, at first, and the little sitting room. Then the stairs at the corridor’s northern end. The music room downstairs, where Corien liked to pound away on a massive piano. A ballroom of rose, midnight blue, and ochre. The dormitories where the palace servants slept. The horrible dark gallery full of Rielle’s likenesses.

  Days passed, and then weeks, and with each journey outside her rooms, Eliana’s muscles began to remember their former strength. She had not yet managed to knock over the candlestick, but she had learned much about the massive palace, its twists and turns, and was beginning to feel steadier in body as well as in mind.

  Good, said the Prophet. When the day comes for you to leave this place, you will know how to do it well and will be able to defend yourself.

  Eliana bit her tongue. Dozens of times, she had asked the Prophet the reason for this work, what day they were waiting for, what schemes the Prophet had designed.

  But each time, the Prophet refused to answer. Not yet. Not until you’re stronger and I can be sure every new corner of your mind is well shielded from him.

  How am I to know this isn’t some demented game? Eliana asked, bristling. You lead me through the palace night after night; you push me through these exercises of my mind and my power. And for what?

  The Prophet sent her a gentle plea, followed by that fondness Eliana so craved, its warmth sweeter than any wine.

  Please, trust me, little one, the Prophet said. I have deceived many in my life, but not you. Never you.

  And Eliana had no choice but to believe this strange friend whose face she still did not know and hope she wasn’t a fool for daring, yet again, to trust someone who lived behind a mask.

  • • •

  Then, one night, when the Prophet’s familiar greeting came, it pulled Eliana from a dream so vivid it followed her into waking.

  Like trying to recall a word only just beyond her reach, a tightness bent in her chest, pulling her onward. Her fingers tingled. If she closed her eyes, she could hear a thin black rumble, as from a nearing storm. If she opened her eyes and unfocused them, ripples of gold danced at the edges of her vision.

  I know where we’ll go tonight, she said, slipping from her bed.

  The Prophet’s curiosity curled. Where?

  I saw it in my dream.

  Will you tell me?

  Look for yourself.

  You know I don’t like to do that, the Prophet said gently. Not if I don’t have to.

  I’ll show you, then.

  Tell me first. Please. I must know where we’re going. There was a pause. I don’t want to invade your mind, Eliana. I’m not like him.

  I’ll tell you if you tell me what it is we’re working toward. What plans you have for me. Where you are, and if I can come to you.

  The Prophet fell silent.

  Eliana smiled grimly as she crept into the corridor, past Jessamyn’s frowning figure. For weeks, we’ve been working together. My mind is stronger than it’s ever been. We can talk without him noticing. You can hide me for, what, five hours now, as I move about the palace?

  That’s true, the Prophet said, thoughts carefully blank.

  Eliana turned a corner, hurried unseen past a patrolling pair of guards. You made me drop that knife for a reason, all those weeks ago. I think I deserve to know it. What is the purpose of this work we’ve been doing? Is it merely a diversion to pass the time?

  Not a diversion.

  Then what?

  The silence continued.

  Eliana darted like a shadow across the palace’s second floor, the strange memory of her dream guiding her through a maze of tiled rooms and curtained hallways until she emerged at last into a soft world of green.

  It was a vast courtyard, as large as one of Corien’s grandest ballrooms. Walls heaped with flowers, vines spilling down iron trellises, bushes painted bright with berries. Rows of red blooms, oiled wooden tables of seedlings growing roots in glass vials. Enormous shivering ferns, glossy-leaved trees heavy with fruit. Eliana looked up at a ceiling of colored glass. Crimson and gold panes. Vents open to let in the nighttime air.

  She cradled the nearest red flower in her hands, caught the familiar sweet scent from her rooms. So this is where he grows these flowers.

  The Prophet felt tense and a little befuddled. Your dream showed you this?

  Yes, this exactly. Every last detail. And…over here. It showed me this too.

  She crawled beneath the seedling tables and disappeared into the courtyard’s thick green gloom. It was absurd, what she was doing, as if she were playing a child’s game. But a strange tension bloomed in her chest, tugging her on, and she had to follow it or she would burst. A strange vibration rattled her teeth, and she remembered forging her castings, plunging her hands into Remy’s wound. This felt the same—the same vitality, the same urgent thread of power growing taut and golden inside her bones.

  I think it’s the empirium, she thought. I think it’s trying to show me something.

  A slight ripple of alarm from the Prophet. Why do you say that?

  Eliana pushed past a tangle of vines. She was deep in the courtyard now, a thick silence all around her. Moss soft under her hands and the air green in her lungs.

  Then she saw it, the place from her dream—a tiny dark thicket formed of joined ferns and vines, bordered by the roots of a flowering tree with weeping branches and rough black bark. Hardly large enough for her to curl up in, and yet she pushed her way through the wild growth until she sat hunched in the middle of it, shivering.

  “The air feels thin here,” she whispered, slowly moving her fingers through it. “Like I could push it aside and find something else behind it.”

  The Prophet had grown very quiet. Would you like to try?

  Yes, Eliana replied, trembling. Her castings warmed against her skin. But I don’t think I can.

  Maybe something small, first. Something natural. Not a candlestick, but a tree. Can you coax its roots from the earth?

  Eliana tried, her skin soon slick with sweat. The roots remained wedged in the black soil, but the air changed, vitalized with a humming hot charge. Eliana reached out with her power, guiding it to hold on to the feeling. The world buzzed with heat, as did her skin, and she felt herself lifting up off the ground to follow the air’s new current.

  Then she lost her grip and sank back to the dirt, exhausted and cold. Castings dark, head aching.

  You’re doing so well, little one, said the Prophet, and Eliana clung to the warmth of those words.

  They returned to the garden again and again, and each time Eliana crept on her hands and knees into her quiet, dark thicket, she felt a tiny piece of her old strength return to her. It was slow progress, for Corien’s punishments continued, even more vicious than before. He could sense the change in her but couldn’t discover its source, and he threw his fury at her with his fists and his mind. After these torments, body and mind battered, Eliana moved slowly, and her thoughts were sometimes too scattered to focus properly.

  Some nights, she could not move from her bed at all, and the Prophet simply comforted her, whispering words Eliana’s sluggish mind couldn’t understand, sending the illusion of soft hands on her back.

  Once, Corien spent twenty hours straight in her mind, searching through its every crevice for the answer to what was happening, somehow, right beneath his nose. And Eliana lost all sense of pride and self as those jagged spikes of pain split open her skull. She sobbed on the floor, twisting and jerking in Corien’s grip, and mired in that black agony, the only word she could summon was Simon.

  She screamed it over and over, reaching for the door as if he stood just beyond it. If she screamed loudly enough, he would come for her. If she begged him, he wou
ld save her.

  And then the door did open, and Simon strode toward her, picked her up from the floor, brushed his lips against her forehead. She knew he was not there. Corien’s wicked glee carved down her back like an ax’s blade. And yet Simon felt so real, so familiar, that she pressed her face against his chest and clung to him.

  He brought her to the little bed at Willow, underneath the slanted ceiling. The glowing brazier in the corner, the rain pattering against the windows. Safe in his arms, warm in their bed, she allowed herself a moment to enjoy the lie.

  Then she wrenched herself away, kicked him when he reached for her, scooped hot coals from the brazier and flung them at his face.

  Blackness, then, and Corien’s voice mocking her as she fell.

  For days, she tossed in the grip of cackling dreams, and when she next woke, her rooms were hushed.

  She sat up, donned one of her nightgowns, walked unsteadily toward the door.

  I’m so sorry, little one, the Prophet said, their voice thick with anguish. If I could take all of this from you, I would.

  I don’t need your apologies, Eliana said sharply. I need you to hide me.

  And in the garden, wrapped in the Prophet’s fierce cloak, Eliana cracked open the earth and pulled roots from it with only her power. She reached for the air, used it to push a path clear through the ferns, deeper into the garden. Delving down into the soil, she coaxed up water until it pooled around her in cool gurgling puddles.

  Her castings glowed faintly, washing the thicket in pale gold.

  He tries to break you, the Prophet said, voice warm with pride, and he fails utterly. Well done.

  Simon’s echo whispered through her hair. Eliana shook it free, set her jaw.

  I’d like to try something new, she thought. Ribbons of pale light streamed unbroken through her veins. Her power mirrored the new strength of her mind. They were connected, her mind and her body, and they in turn were connected to the water at her toes, and the roots she tucked back down into the earth so the tree could drink.

  She heard the roots guzzle, ripples of the empirium betraying their primal, unthinking appetite, and she understood the feeling.

  Her power was ready and coated in steel. It was hungry. And she ached to feed it.

  The Prophet was wary. What will you do? Tell me.

  It’s like I said before, Eliana replied. The world is so thin here. The air feels fragile.

  Her fingers buzzing and hot, her castings like little stars relearning their light, she thrust her hands forward, then pushed them apart, palms out. A wave of energy detonated, but she stopped it, absorbing it with her own flesh and blood so it would not shake the palace.

  The Prophet marveled. Oh, Eliana. Watching you work is a joy I have not felt in an age.

  Eliana only half listened, her hands still buried in the air. Gold veins of the empirium crackled around her fingers. Each grain of light painting the thicket gold whispered to her, and she listened closely, staring at the impossible thing before her.

  A shape floated in the air, dark and thin, like the pupil of a cat’s eye. Its insides roiled with stormy color—indigo and violet, a blue so brilliant it was nearly white. At once, Eliana felt pulled toward it, as if it were a mouth greedy to swallow her.

  She dug in her toes, braced her hands against the earth. In her mind, the Prophet’s surprise hummed like a struck bell.

  What is this? Eliana asked.

  A seam, the Prophet said carefully. You have opened many across the world without knowing it in those moments when you called upon your power in fear and anger. This, though—look how even it is, how precise. It was your focused will, Eliana, that opened this door.

  Eliana stared at it. Something pulled at her shoulders, beckoning her forward. She searched the darkness, the angry light shifting inside it, and saw a faint vista of low hills, scattered pine woodlands, a sky purple with twilight.

  A door to where? she wondered, her heart pounding, and before the Prophet could answer, Eliana’s hands flew to the seam. She gripped the edges and pried them open wider until it was possible for her to slip inside.

  The Prophet flew into a panic. Eliana, wait!

  But the empirium had pulled her to this place, and now golden whispers tugged her forward.

  here

  HERE

  come see

  they are everywhere

  hurry

  Before the Prophet could stop her, Eliana held her breath, shut her eyes, and stepped through the fissure into what lay beyond.

  Her feet hit solid ground. She opened her eyes and saw gray clouds moving fast across a violet sky. The hills were shallow and rolling, furred in downy green grass, and there was not another living thing in sight. No animals, no people. There was not even wind. Only a quiet that felt unnatural. An eerie, pale light suffused it all, like a dusk tinged with storms. Black clouds edged every horizon, and below her feet, past the green of the grass, shifted a vast darkness, as if the meadow and hills were only a thin veil cloaking something terrible and lightless.

  Then a bird called out, and when Eliana looked up to find it, she saw far above her the shifting faint shape of an enormous winged beast. It fluttered past, sending darkness rippling across the sky, and was gone, but another followed in its wake, and then another, and three more, slithering and serpentine, each of them a behemoth.

  Eliana stepped back, staring in horror. What she had thought were gray clouds were in fact the shadows of these creatures, swarming from horizon to horizon.

  A sickening heat blossomed at her breastbone and flooded her fingers. She ducked low, searching in vain for something to hide beneath. But the unnatural quiet remained, and when Eliana looked back at the sky, she saw that it looked just the same as before. The monstrous shapes were no nearer to her. It was as if she and this strange green world existed within a bubble beyond which writhed gargantuan beasts—but whether they were far away or very near, she could not guess. At least, it seemed, they could not reach her.

  She slowly straightened, forcing her breathing to calm. Cold sweat prickled the back of her neck.

  Then, a glottal cry split the air, puncturing the eerie quiet. On the horizon, something long and dark and twisting dropped out of the clouds and began to fly. This was no distant gray shape. This was clear and sharp, long-tailed with broad black wings, and approaching fast.

  Eliana spun around and ran for the thin vertical slice of lush green marking her path back to Corien’s palace. Long minutes passed before she managed to push through it, for a great force was shoving back against her.

  But with a last controlled burst of power, she managed it, tumbling out into the garden courtyard. She whirled to grab the seam’s edges. Her fingers tingled as if she had plunged them into water hot enough to burn. The seam sucked at her; that place, whatever it was, wanted her back. But she fought its force, wrenched the sizzling edges back together, and used her power to seal shut the fissure. Only a faint glimmer remained in the air, and then it was gone.

  Breathless in the dirt, clammy with sweat, Eliana reached for the Prophet. What was that place? What did I see?

  The Prophet’s voice was breathless with relief and wonder.

  You saw the cruciata, they replied. And you were in the Deep.

  24

  Rielle

  “The home the Kammerat have built is astounding—a thriving city of dragons and dragon-speakers, constructed in high mountain caves and canyons. Below, a lush green valley provides them with food and warmth. They say the saints helped create this haven after the Angelic Wars ended, and that they have lived undisturbed ever since. Until now. It has been difficult, convincing the Kammerat to fly to the Northern Reach and rescue their kindred. Their isolation is sacred to them, even at the expense of their own captured people. They say they will do nothing more in this war beyond that, and I don’t blame them.
Leevi, however, still thinks he can persuade them. He’ll have to persuade me too, I confess. Why leave this sanctuary for a hopeless war? But Leevi is determined, and so beautiful in his hope for victory that it takes my breath away.”

  —Journal of Ilmaire Lysleva, dated February, Year 1000 of the Second Age

  Rielle woke in the Northern Reach.

  As soon as she opened her eyes, she recognized the bedroom she had shared with Corien. Its black stone walls, the thick white furs draped across their bed, the wide wall of windows framing glaciers and a sky of dimming sunlight. Mountains and sea, industry and fire.

  Everything that had happened sat at the edge of her mind, a vivid portrait of her own design, and she shivered to look at it. The bitter taste of ash still coated her tongue. In her ears echoed the crash of a dark sea.

  Corien sat at her bedside, watching her quietly. He was in his everyday black—vest of brocade, tunic buttoned at his wrists with obsidian, high square collar, cloak fastened at his shoulders with ebony pins.

  She pushed herself upright, her body lighting up with pain, and croaked, “Do not harm that girl more than you already have. Obritsa had no choice but to obey me. If you hurt her again, I’ll kill you.”

  “You assume I’ve done anything to her at all,” he said, unblinking.

  She laughed, which made her raw throat burn. “You are an unconvincing innocent.”

  Only then did Rielle notice the three nurses bustling about her, changing the bandages that wrapped around most of her body. Three humans—two women and a man. Had they chosen to serve the angels in exchange for the lives of their loved ones? Their nervous eyes flitted up to her face and then back to their work. Her skin stung where they had slathered it with salves; she was encased in long white strips of cloth.

  And still Corien watched her, pale and still, but Rielle did not flinch from him. She had opened the Gate with her bare hands. She was radiant with pride; she was a force unmatched. And she knew, when he looked at her, that he sensed it too: a change between them. A ripple of new tension, the bend of a current changing its course.