A flicker of memory on Merovec’s face. “You try my patience.”
“I know the feeling. Lu died that night. An angel took possession of her body and her name. The transition was seamless. She wanted to be close to Rielle, to observe and protect her. Your sister did not suffer.” Then he added calmly, “I thought I would send you to your death knowing that, at least. Or you can release my mother and relinquish the throne you stole from me, and this bloodshed will end. We can talk more of these things. You and your soldiers can join my own and help us ready our country for war.”
A low boom exploded outside, shaking the castle—the unmistakable sound of two elemental magics crashing into each other. In its wake, the silence was woolen. A single Sauvillier soldier shifted to Audric’s right.
“Is there nothing you have touched that isn’t ashes?” Merovec said, his eyes bright. Only now did his voice waver, cracking to show the fear underneath. “You and Rielle both leave death in your wakes. There is nothing we can do to stop what is coming, and you know it. We cannot live while she survives. I will hang your corpse from Baingarde’s gate, and beside it the bodies of everyone in Red Crown. My soldiers will have seized them by now. Their faces will rot in the sun, turn swollen and black. And those who pass this monument of ruin will remember what happened to King Audric the weakhearted and everyone who loved him.”
Audric looked once more to the stained glass. A faint shadow swooped past it. His hand moved slowly to Illumenor’s hilt.
“The Scourge was a dark time in our history, Merovec,” he said. “That you would insist on recreating it, this time not hunting marques, but rather anyone you suspect of working against you, is proof enough that you are unworthy of your stolen crown.”
“Not another step!” Merovec bellowed. Three quick swipes of his knife left red gashes on Genoveve’s arms and cheek. She did cry out then, a muted yelp of pain that made Audric’s vision pulse black.
“I’ll cut her open and let her bleed out on this throne you think I don’t deserve!” Merovec’s face was wild. “And you’ll have ruined yet another life!”
A piercing explosion swallowed Merovec’s voice. The stained glass windows shattered. Colored shards flew across the room, and Atheria followed close behind, her mouth open wide to bare her fearsome sharp teeth. She trumpeted a cry of rage that hit Audric’s bones like ice.
Merovec released Genoveve, fumbling for his sword. Genoveve elbowed him in the ribs, then whirled and tried to punch him. He caught her wrist and flung her to the floor bright with glass, kicked her in the side again and again.
The Sauvillier soldiers in the loft shot their arrows. Audric dodged them, ran for the dais. To his left, Sloane pulled shadows from the hall’s corners, cast them into sharp-beaked hawks. They dove fast, repelled every new arrow shot. Evyline and the Sun Guard rushed forward, their swords flying. Some of Merovec’s soldiers tried to flee, screaming in terror as Atheria snapped at them. Kamayin whirled, her wrists blazing. She reached for the seven prayer basins lining the room and smacked the fleeing soldiers with foaming fists of water.
An archer crouched in the loft sprang to her feet and shot an arrow at Atheria. It struck her right shoulder, near her wing joint. She shrieked and dove for the archer, who shot her again, this time in the thick muscle of her upper left leg, but didn’t have time to nock a third arrow before Atheria reached her. She grabbed the archer by her throat and flung her hard to the floor below.
Audric raced up the steps of the dais and unsheathed Illumenor. His power raced through his body, crashed into the sword, then ricocheted back into him, flooding his veins with blazing heat. An endless cycle of power, blade to blood to blade again. Gold danced before his eyes, but instead of obscuring his vision, it enhanced it.
He swung Illumenor. The sword’s brilliance erupted, blasting the room free of shadows. Everyone fighting staggered, shielding their eyes.
Merovec left Genoveve bleeding on the glass-strewn floor and spun to meet Audric’s sword with his own. Their blades crashed together. Audric bore down on him, Illumenor crackling with trapped sunlight. Merovec cried out, looked away from the impossible brilliance, but held his sword fast.
“You won’t win, Merovec,” Audric told him. “Surrender, and you will live. Resist, and I will destroy you. I don’t want this for you or for me. We are family. We are children of Celdaria.”
Merovec thrust the weight of his body up against Audric’s sword, unlocking the grip of their blades. He swung wide for Audric’s neck, unable to aim in the glare of Illumenor.
Audric spat a curse. There would be enough death in days to come, but Merovec was leaving him no choice.
He focused his mind, sent bolts of power streaking down his arms. Illumenor scorched white-hot, its power extending past the metal until the blade became as solid and thick as a spear.
With the dawn I rise, Audric prayed, raising Illumenor. With the day I blaze.
He brought Illumenor down across Merovec’s torso, slicing clean through his armor, bone, and muscle. The two halves of his body dropped to the floor, the wounds steaming and clean, bloodless. Audric stared at the carnage in Illumenor’s unforgiving light. He would never be able to burn from his mind the image of those glassy blue eyes, frozen in shock.
The room plunged into silence. What soldiers of House Sauvillier still stood let their weapons fall.
Audric knelt at his mother’s side, making sure no one else could see his face. He didn’t trust it not to show his horror, how he loathed the destructive potential of his power and the fact that he had been forced to use it in such a way.
He inspected Genoveve’s wounds. The cuts on her throat were shallow, but she breathed carefully, her face white. Broken ribs, he guessed, and hopefully nothing worse. He held her head, and she turned her face into his palm and let out a single fractured sob.
“I thought I would never see you again,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should have stopped him. I shouldn’t have let him…”
She gasped, her voice lost in pain. Audric pressed his brow to hers. On the floor beside them, Illumenor trembled in a bed of glass.
“I don’t need your apologies,” he said. “What I need is for you to live and help us through these dark days. My brave mother. I love you. I’ve missed you.”
“I hate what I’ve become since your father died,” Genoveve choked out.
Audric shook his head, kissed her cheek. “I don’t.”
Then he rose. Everyone in the room was watching him—his people, the surrendered soldiers on their knees. All their eyes upon him were a terrible weight, even those of his friends. What were they to do next? They waited for him to tell them. Someone would always be waiting for him to declare war or peace, or dispense judgment, or grant mercy.
He had never imagined having to do all of that alone.
“Evyline,” he began, “send two of your guards for Garver Randell, and tell him King Audric requests his presence at the castle. Kamayin, you and your elementals will guard the captured soldiers, hold them here in the hall. Sloane, help me bandage Atheria’s wounds, and then we’ll need to find a sack or fashion a sling in which to carry this.”
He knelt by Merovec’s torso, made himself stare at the horror of it.
“I must ride out to the Flats,” he said quietly, “and show the brave soldiers of House Sauvillier that the man they fight for is no more.”
Then he closed Merovec’s eyes and retrieved Illumenor. The heat had burned away any trace of blood. The blade gleamed silver and clean, as if it had never in its life known the taste of death.
32
Eliana
“Kalmaroth and I were boys together. Once, I even loved him. We brought back to our houses injured birds and nursed them to health before releasing them into the wild. We played in our mothers’ gardens, read books and practiced mathematics in his father’s study. Our house
s crawled with happy, fat cats; Kal never met a stray he didn’t want to bring home and spoil. But whoever that boy was is gone. In his place is a man who burns with dissatisfaction, with unanswerable questions, with disdain for anyone whose mind cannot match his. His jealousy of humans and their power is consuming him. I no longer recognize him. I see in his eyes a cold gleam that freezes my blood. He must be stopped.”
—Writings of the angel Aryava, archived in the First Great Library of Quelbani
In a narrow alleyway near Elysium’s factory district, where massive buildings churned out smoke day and night, Eliana found her way back into the Deep.
Inside the factory walls, mechanized creations designed by angels and operated by human prisoners clanked and whirred, producing armor and weapons. The streets were slick with soot and oil, and still every stained cornice was exquisite.
Eliana knelt near one of the refuse pits, where those humans whose beauty the angels had tired of sorted through scraps and shoveled waste. The hot, acrid air stung her eyes. She tasted metal on her tongue. Behind her, violent cries rose throughout the white city. Vaera Bashta’s prisoners were sweeping through the streets on tides of blood, and Ostia—the great eye in the sky, rimmed in blue-white—shone its light upon all.
In this place of rot and ruin, Eliana raised her trembling, tired arms into the air and drew it apart. Her mind held fast to the image of the fissure she had already opened in the sky above Elysium. There. She sent the thought through the veins of her power, guiding it. She needed not only a door into the Deep, but a door that would lead her there, to the fissure waiting and widening and the air stretching thin within it. Her castings were fire in her palms; in her chest, the empirium turned in searing blades. It had guided her to this alleyway full of smoke, and she clung to it. A rope in a blizzard of ash, taut and tough.
Or perhaps it was you who guided the empirium, the Prophet had told her. You who told it what you needed and where to take you.
Eliana shivered, her skin soaked with sweat. Her ruined gown clung to her, its jewels winking cruelly.
Somewhere, Corien brooded, nearing the end of his amusement.
The Prophet’s voice was thin with strain. Hurry, Eliana. The world spins ever faster.
The moment the seam she had opened was wide enough, Eliana held her breath and stepped through it—and walked into a world at war.
She faltered at the sight before her, then set her jaw and moved through it. This world the Deep was showing her, this echo of a place that existed elsewhere, was different from the one she had seen before. Lavish sculptures of bronze and gold ornamented rooftops and shop fronts. Squat towers blanketed in ivy flanked a wide gray road down which armored soldiers marched in gleaming lines.
They held long spears with wicked points, swords polished to brilliance. The people they marched upon fled in screaming chaos, dragging their children and animals behind them. Some knelt with guns on their shoulders and fired, but when they hit their targets and the soldiers fell, only moments passed before they rose unsteadily to their feet again, their wounds closed, and resumed their inexorable forward march.
Eliana’s blood ran cold at the sight of them. Their eyes were not black, and yet…
What’s happening here? She tried to block out the echoes of screams tumbling down the road. What is this place?
My sight through your mind is dim just now, but if I see correctly, it is a world called Sath, the Prophet said, their voice so distant that it frightened Eliana. I recognize it. I have seen it myself. When your mother died, the shock resounded through the Deep. Holes opened into many worlds. Some angels lost faith in Kalmaroth long ago and have no desire to return to Avitas. They are making homes elsewhere.
Eliana’s bile rose. Why would any of them wait in the Deep to return to Avitas, then? When they could go to other worlds and escape the Deep’s torment?
The Prophet’s voice came quietly. Because Corien is a force unmatched, and has ingrained in so many angels a thirst for vengeance that cannot be slaked. Because some angels would endure a thousand more years of torment if it meant they could someday come home. A pause. Others despair at the devastating futility of war and want to protect humans from extermination. There are many reasons.
Eliana felt trapped between a great sorrow and an anger pure as ice. Is there no end to the ruin my mother has wrought?
Eliana, you must hurry. Do not allow the Deep to distract you. Remember what you must do.
She obeyed. A dim blue-white glow on the horizon caught her eye. She fixed on it and ran, her feet slamming hard against the road that wasn’t there. As the world of distant Sath sped by, darkness flashed and fluttered at the corners of her eyes: the true Deep, cold and endless, choked with beasts and raw power. The sky was teeming with cruciata, close enough now that Eliana’s tongue tingled with the hot rank stench of their massive bodies. Wings fluttered against her skin; something sharp and thin cut her upper arm. As she ran, she felt the air surge behind her. If she looked back, she knew she would see horrors swarming fast on her heels.
The beasts had been waiting for her. They were ready.
So was she.
Ignoring the dark brimming sky, she kept her gaze on Ostia, its light growing brighter and nearer as she ran, until at last she reached the fissure she had made—a jagged glowing cut through the Deep, and into Avitas.
Eliana went to its sizzling edge and sank carefully to her knees. Her original small cut had expanded to an area some sixty yards square. Shocks of light and color bloomed across it. Beyond and below rippled the faint shapes of Elysium.
Eliana’s pulse beat fast in her throat. She unfocused her eyes and let the empirium wash over her. Waves of gold, surging at her fingers. She could see how thin the fabric of the Deep had become within Ostia’s jagged ring. Only a thin membrane of power remained. A brittle pane of glass, ready to be shattered.
She pressed her toes against the hard road beneath her and believed it was real. She said a silent prayer that this would be enough. She gathered her power into her mind, imagined it as spears, sharp and ready.
Then she plunged her hands into Ostia’s bright edge and let her power explode across it. White light crackled against her fingers and snaked up her arms, as if she were elbow-deep in frothing water. Her castings blazed so hot that her instinct was to rip them off, but she gritted her teeth and kept pushing her hands outward, the pain shooting up her arms so specific and supple that it approached pleasure. Her vision lost all colors but gold.
Then, at last, the fabric of the Deep stretching thinly across Ostia’s mouth gave way.
There was a great hot shudder beneath her hands as of a beast heaving its last breath. A bolt of energy shot up through Eliana’s arms, and she fell back onto the road, gasping. Quickly, she braced her palms against the illusion of stone. She had to keep hold of the lie, for the thing happening before her eyes was so unthinkable that her head spun in protest.
Ostia had been opened. Angry light crackled across its mouth. It had at last become what Eliana had hoped for from that first moment when she awoke in her white rooms and thought of carving a door in the sky.
Her mother had opened the Gate.
And she had opened Ostia. A hole in the Deep. A door leading out from the abyss. Through it, Elysium was clear as a spotless reflection.
You’ve done it, came the Prophet’s voice, dim but triumphant.
Then the cruciata dove.
They tore down from the sky, plunging out of the Deep and into Elysium, a monstrous river of fury. Their clamor was so great it was as if all the beasts in Avitas had lifted their heads to the sky and howled as one. They screamed and wailed, clawing at each other, hungry to be the first to fly through and feed. Some were immense and bulbous, hulking beasts with flat snouts and paws like bludgeons. Others were slender and serpentine, and still others were avian, their hides a mottled mix of scales and fea
thers.
Eliana’s blood iced over as she watched the raptors fly. She remembered them from the attack outside Karlaine. One had grabbed Patrik and flung him to the ground, breaking his leg. Eliana had killed another with her dagger. The light of Ostia scorched them as they passed through it, leaving their feathers charred, but they flew on uncaring, their fanged beaks open wide.
The cruciata had come from another world. Hosterah, the Prophet had called it. They were mighty enough to survive the Deep.
But Elysium would not survive them.
Her gut clenched with horror as she thought of the innocent lives below that would end in claws and teeth. How many beasts had she already loosed from the Deep, and how many more would fight their way through?
But she did not see another way to fight him, not without this distraction to help her. And if she did not fight him, they were all dead anyway.
Only once did she allow herself to imagine Remy, pursued down a blood-stained street by a monster with gaping jaws. Then, slowly, her hands trembling, she crouched at Ostia’s threshold, its ragged hem sizzling around her. The force emanating from it threatened to hurl her back into the Deep. She clung to Ostia’s bright rim, watching the churning stream of cruciata. Not all of them were able to escape the Deep’s pull. Some were tossed away from Ostia; others clawed at nothing, pinned immobile by a force they could not fight.
But the stronger among them were able to escape. Eliana saw a nearing raptor and liked the look of it. The Prophet said something, a warning, but Eliana ignored them and threw herself onto the raptor’s back as it passed her. She hit it hard, flung her arms around its meaty scaled neck, and braced herself for the fall.
A ring of heat burned past them as they dove, peeling scales and feathers from the raptor’s hide. But then they were through, the beast shrieking as it steadied its wings. It tried bucking Eliana off in midair. Its tail caught an angelic statue and sent it smashing to pieces on the road below.
Lightbringer Page 40
