Lightbringer

by Claire Legrand

  Please, help me.

  An answer came at once. I’m here.

  Eliana sank to the ground. Is it safe to talk?

  He is rather distracted by the evening’s events, the Prophet answered drily. With his mind in its current state, he is easily diverted by his own perversities. But you were right to run far before speaking to me.

  Can I come to you? She felt like a frightened child, begging for comfort after a nightmare. Her head pounded with a primal fear, and she could think of little else. I don’t know where to go.

  A feeling came to Eliana then, such a tenderness that her eyes grew hot.

  We must wait a little longer, the Prophet said gently. When you come to me, he will find me soon after. Everything must be ready by then, all the pieces in place. Your friends are on their way, but you must keep fighting until they arrive.

  Eliana wrapped her arms around her stomach, let out a single choked sob. She felt brittle, ready to fly apart from fear, as if the night’s horrors had ripped from her every plate of armor she had forged in the fire of her imprisonment. She could not even bring herself to ask what friends the Prophet meant. Instead, her skittering mind relived those moments with Corien in her bedroom, how he had smashed her face into her beaded gown as if to suffocate her. Simon at the door, his face hidden in shadows as she stared him down.

  You need to focus, Eliana. The Prophet’s voice grew firm. The more scattered your thoughts, the easier it is for him to find you, and therefore find me.

  Eliana’s exhaustion was a chasm; soon she would tip into it. If someone else tries to kill me, I might let them.

  He won’t let them. Nor will I.

  I have the right to choose my own death.

  No, you do not, the Prophet said. Too much depends on you. I know you didn’t ask for this burden, but it is yours nonetheless. Listen closely. We won’t have a better opportunity than this for you to enter the Deep. Ostia has been growing. The fabric of the empirium there has become thin and fragile. I think you can do it with one more try. I think you can finish your Gate.

  I cannot go back to the palace, Eliana replied, looking out across the city at the distant turrets.

  No. Chaos is spreading fast across the city. It’s too dangerous to go all that way. If you are injured, it could undo the progress we have made.

  Eliana wiped her face and drew a shuddering breath. Instead, I must find another place where the empirium is thin. Another way into the Deep.

  Yes, and quickly, the Prophet replied. When he grows bored of this culling, he will end it.

  Eliana recited the facts she knew, each thought bringing a little more steadiness to her mind. In the palace, the empirium guided me to that place in the garden. A place where I could open a seam to the Deep. It pulled upon me, and I listened.

  Perhaps that’s true, said the Prophet thoughtfully. Or perhaps it was you who guided the empirium. You who told it what you needed and where to take you.

  Eliana shivered in her wet dress, the blood-soaked fabric already growing stiff. She uncurled her tight fingers. In her palms, her castings held a hint of warmth. I cannot be afraid of them. I must use them to help me.

  Your castings are of you, the Prophet reminded her. An extension of your body, your mind, and your power, not a separate thing. It is yourself you must not fear.

  As if that were an easy thing. Eliana half formed a useless rude thought, then tossed it away. Under the arbor’s leaves, the screams of Elysium rising to meet her ears, she breathed. There was a chill breeze that raised the hair on her arms. The roof was made of white stone, and she felt the age of it, how long it had lived in the earth before it was carved free. There was water in the leaves shivering overhead, and there was sunlight somewhere beyond the horizon, where it was morning instead of night.

  Her palms grew hotter. Even with her eyes closed, she could see their twin flares, how they beamed to see her. She welcomed her power, cupped her hands around it, and in its vast brilliance, she found the river she had first made with the Prophet so many weeks ago.

  Never step out of that little river. She recalled the Prophet’s words, ran over the grooves of their memory in her mind. Keep your feet cool and grounded, even as your hands begin to blaze. He cannot find you here, little one, not in these waters.

  Feet in cool water. Mind smooth and hard as a stone. Fire in her hands and stars behind her eyelids. Her veins a web of light.

  I rise

  The empirium’s voice boomed inside her, singular and many. A wave threatening to crest, hungry for the shore.

  I rise

  I RISE

  “No,” Eliana whispered. “I rise.”

  Then she stood. She opened her eyes and looked once more into the eerie, silvered night. She watched Ostia’s light shift slowly in the sky and listened to the thrum of her power, how it moved through her body and into the air and back again. Her blood pulsed with the great ancient heartbeat of the world. A map of the empirium expanded before her, its brilliant vastness unspooling at her command. Cords of light rippling in an endless sea. Planes upon planes of shifting gold, and within them an infinite number of paths to walk.

  A beat, a held breath. Something pulled at her—the tightness of a sky ready to split with lightning. Arabeth in hand, she found the path she needed and followed it back down into the Emperor’s city, the screams of the hunted rising to greet her and the gold eyes of her castings open wide in her palms.

  29

  Rielle

  “I have decided not to tell anyone of what I saw in Meridian. Knowing that Rielle killed Grand Magister Belounnon will bring no comfort to anyone here. But I cannot stop thinking of the look on her face as she incinerated him: The shadows on her gaunt face. The furious molten gold of her eyes. One moment he was there. The next, there was fire, and he was gone. And before Annick and I fled, I looked back at Rielle and saw her trembling in the rain. She wept, her skin glowing with a faint gold sheen, and gazed across the sea toward the black eastern horizon.”

  —Journal of Garver Randell, dated February 17, Year 1000 of the Second Age

  Rielle knew after her first resurrection that it was impossible to continue working underground. All that weight above her, the mountain’s cold black bulk. She needed to see the sky.

  Corien asked for no further explanation. He ordered a dozen of his soldiers and an outfit of one hundred adatrox to construct an altar on the mountain beside his fortress. A stone walkway led from one of the windows on the highest floor of the fortress, near Corien’s own rooms, out across the snow to this towering black edifice, dark against the mountain’s endless white.

  The altar’s structure reminded Rielle of the Gate, which delighted her. Three steps led up to a flat plinth of black rock. There was a table of stone for the bodies to lie upon, and stone pillars flanked the spot where she would stand. The plinth itself was freshly engraved with wings, a whole storm of them, feathers so fine that Rielle knelt in her furs to run her fingers over their delicate grooves.

  “They made this so quickly,” she said, looking up at Corien. “Four days. How?”

  It had started to snow. Whorls of it, tiny swift flakes, danced across the altar. A cold wind ruffled the hem of Corien’s black cloak. His collar of dark fur was dusted white.

  He shrugged at her question, held out his hand. “They had no choice.”

  She took his hand and rose. The light was dimming. Near the horizon, past the snow-spitting clouds, patches of indigo sky held the last gold of the sun.

  “Bring me the next one,” she murmured, and kissed him distractedly. Her fingers tingled, hungry and eager. “I want to do it again.”

  • • •

  Corien came to her at dawn. He stood beside her in the gray light as the snow fell soundlessly from the sky.

  In silence, he watched her weave wings for the reborn angel on her table. The body
lay on its stomach, naked and stark white in the cold.

  Once, Corien had shown her where the wings would join the back—not with joints of flesh and bone, as with birds or bats, but with a simple blooming growth of light. He had drawn pictures for her with his mind, shown her the look of the wings in flight. Not just any wings, but his own, long lost. For the first time, he had shown her himself as he once was: Kalmaroth, warmonger and rebel. His name meant “light undying” in Qaharis, and he had understood that to signify he was meant for greatness. Pale skin and dark hair, tall and slender, blazing blue eyes, and wings flaring out from his back—light at the root, shadow-tipped. Apart from the wings and the height of his body, Kalmaroth had looked very much as Corien did now.

  Rielle thought of that as she worked. A smile played at her lips. She liked thinking of him years ago, escaping the Deep and finding a human who reflected his own lost beauty.

  Like a patient weaver sitting at her loom, Rielle pulled strands of the empirium from the air. Her eyes saw gold, and in it were many things. There was the long, ridged cord of the corpse’s spine. There were the stormy dark places within the mass of muscle and sinew where the wings should begin. Her body churned with aches, hot spools of tension burrowing into her shoulders, her wrists, the small of her back. Despite the mountain’s bitter cold, beads of sweat raced each other down her brow.

  But her mind was clear. Her thoughts soared like knife-winged birds of prey, swift and amber-eyed. She guided the empirium with the needle of her power, and with each swift silver stab, her blood leapt higher, seeking more.

  When it was done, the angel lifted herself from the table and stumbled to her feet. One of the palace attendants, teeth chattering even in his furs, hurried forward to offer the angel a robe to cover herself.

  But the angel ignored him and instead pushed herself into the air with a jubilant cry. Her wings were incandescent, twin stars of white light affixed to her back. They did not move like songbirds’ wings, that undignified flapping. Instead, they angled subtly when necessary to change the course of flight. They narrowed when diving; they expanded when rising.

  Soon, the angel’s form had vanished. Only the light of her wings remained, gliding fast from peak to peak.

  Rielle licked her chapped lips. “Bring me another.”

  “We’ll eat first.” Corien retrieved her fur cloak from the ground. “You haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

  “I don’t need to eat.”

  “You do. And you need to wear this.” He placed the cloak around her shoulders, over the thin red gown she had worn for days. The fabric, once fine, now reeked of sweat. “You’ll grow ill otherwise.”

  She swatted him away. “I would prefer to continue working. Bring me another.”

  His pale eyes were very still. “You’ve been working for seven days, Rielle, with very little rest.”

  “I am aware. Bring me another.”

  “You’re still human. You need sleep, food, and warmth.”

  She laughed. “What nerve you have. You whispered in my dreams for months on end, stealing sleep from me until I came to you. And now you say I need to rest.”

  Turning away from him, Rielle found one of his lieutenants, an ice-eyed female angel with honey-brown skin and black braids. She could not recall her name and did not care to try.

  “You,” she said. “Bring me another at once.”

  For hours, the lieutenant had been watching Rielle with shining eyes. She did not even glance at Corien before hurrying back to the fortress, two angels of lower rank at her heels.

  Rielle looked up at the sky. Around her altar rippled a shifting ring of shadows as if she were deep underwater, looking up at the light through shivering waves. Hundreds of bodiless angels crowded near to watch her work. How she delighted in the feeling of their awe. Their eager thoughts tapped against her mind like moths hitting a window, clumsy as they chased the light beyond the glass.

  “No, Rielle,” said Corien tightly, coming up beside her. “We will go inside now.”

  “We will not. And if you won’t choose another angel for me, I’ll do it myself.”

  She let her eyes unfocus, sent her power flooding out to illuminate the mountainside. In the golden realm of her vision, her power hit the angels’ minds like a blazing current crashing against rocks. The patterns of its waves were mesmerizing. With each ripple, sensations flew back to her, reporting. Tastes, sounds, textures.

  Ah. There was one she liked.

  She directed her power to the left. One of the angels peeled free from the rest and came flying to her open arms.

  Queen of light and blood. The angel’s voice trembled as she drew him down to the dark table of her altar. Thank you for choosing me. You have my heart, my queen; you have my love and my loyalty.

  Rielle held the angel steady against the stone, the fabric of his mind stretched between her hands like a canvas unrolled. Impatience prickled her skin. She glared at the walkway that led to the fortress. The snow was falling faster, veiling the black walls.

  “Your lieutenants are slow,” she observed. “I need a body.”

  Corien’s shoulders were rigid with anger. “Release him and come inside with me, now.”

  “I want to do it again.”

  “And you will, my love, but not until tomorrow.”

  She set her jaw, fighting to still her trembling mouth. She knew he was right; she could feel how her hands shook, the sway of her balance. Her stomach and throat felt on the verge of collapse, dry and pinched, desperate for food.

  If only he had not stopped her. While she worked, she noticed none of this.

  “I have only resurrected three hundred angels,” she muttered.

  He laughed quietly. “In seven days. A remarkable achievement.”

  “We need more than that to do all we have dreamt of.”

  She sent him a simple thought: I need more.

  “Celdaria isn’t going anywhere,” he said aloud, ignoring her silent plea. “The world isn’t going anywhere, and nothing can stop us.”

  “My mind aches for more of this.” She wanted to cry with frustration; she wanted to punch the stone table in two. “And yet my body is too weak for it.”

  “You are only human,” he said gently.

  “I am more than human!” she roared at him. Beneath her voice rang a deeper one, a furious distortion. The rumbling of some creature stirring on the ocean floor. Rielle fixed him with a brittle smile. “And isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?”

  Corien was very still. Above them, the cloud of circling angels flinched.

  Then Corien came close, mouth hovering beside her cheek. “You know I don’t wish to make you come inside with me, but I will do it if you leave me no choice.”

  “Do that and I’ll kill you,” she growled.

  A soft puff of laughter. “You won’t.”

  He had stayed out of her mind since she had opened the Gate and returned to the Reach, but now she felt him sifting carefully through the outer edges of her thoughts. He was not wrong. She would not kill him. It would destroy her to kill him. There would be no one left in the world who could watch her unafraid.

  The angel in her hands vibrated with excitement. Can you craft my wings to cast iridescent light? Before, my wings shone cerulean and violet in starlight, amber and lavender in the sun.

  Corien’s icy-eyed lieutenant emerged from the fortress, flanked by her inferiors. In her arms lay the body of a naked man with dark skin. Rielle delighted in the woman’s presumptuousness. Normally, Corien insisted upon being the one to take the human’s life.

  “Rielle, I swear to you, I will do it,” said Corien. “I will keep you dumb for days while I spoon food into your mouth.”

  “Leave me,” she hissed, watching eagerly as the body neared the altar. There was a stirring in her breast, molten and bubbling. “I must wor
k.”

  As the lieutenant stepped onto the plinth, Corien grabbed Rielle’s arm, wrenched her against his body.

  Brilliant white rage exploded behind her eyes. She shoved him away from her with a sharp cry. The plinth cracked in two. Corien staggered, nearly fell.

  And Rielle did not think before she did it. A furious instinct commanded her, and she eagerly obeyed. The scorching power boiling inside her spilled over, blazing down her arms and legs. She twisted the angel between her hands as if he were a mere plaited rope. The cords of his mind stretched, frayed, then snapped. He was clay in her palms, chunks torn off and squashed.

  Ignoring his howl of pain, Rielle clapped her palms together and smashed him into oblivion.

  The world fell away from under her feet. The landscape before her vanished. In its place, an endless black sea, a sky full of stars.

  Frightened by the hugeness of this place, how it sucked at her like a whirlpool, she fought its pull, reached for Corien with her mind and her hands, but could not find him.

  She opened her eyes.

  She stood in the black sea that had taken her after she had killed the Obex in Patria. Shallow waves edged with gold lapped gently against her shins. The sea floor was soft and ever-changing, a shifting blanket of tiny pebbles. Above, a profusion of stars—vivid azure, amethyst and rose, gilt and ivory and colors she could not name. So many of them painted the black sky that they seemed a solid mass, a sheet of woven jewels with only a few stones missing.

  “You’ve come at last,” came a voice from behind her.

  She turned. A child in a simple white gown stood not far from her. She was small and round-cheeked, with pale skin and unruly dark hair that fell to her waist. Her lips curved, a sly, familiar smile.

  Rielle stepped back, her skin crawling with cold. “Who are you?”

  The girl laughed. “You know who I am.”

  She did. The tones of her own voice chimed in those words. The child was herself as she had been at five years of age, except that her own eyes had been green, and the eyes of this child were a brilliant gold. An aura of light shone around her, as if she eclipsed the sun.