Lightbringer

by Claire Legrand

  —Encoded letter from Ingrid Lysleva, Lord Commander of the Borsvallic army, to King Audric Courverie of Celdaria, dated April 19, Year 1000 of the Second Age

  He could not find her.

  Audric had imagined it would happen immediately, that some incredible burst of power would erupt within minutes. The rest of the battlefield would pale in comparison to her. She would stand at the heart of it, arms flung wide, power streaming like lightning from her fingers.

  And Audric would dive toward her, throw such blinding sunlight at her that even she would stagger. He would jump from Atheria before the godsbeast hit the ground, raise Illumenor to strike. Maybe he would say Rielle’s name. Maybe she would not allow him even this.

  But he could not find her.

  And they were losing.

  He watched the battle below as if it had seized him in his sleep, some horrible feverish nightmare rolling on and on before his disbelieving eyes. Angels fell by the dozens—speared by castings of fire, sliced in two by spinning shields flung hard by their elemental masters—but seconds later, they were whole again. The ruined pieces of their bodies simply crawled toward each other and reassembled. They found their dropped weapons and stormed back into battle.

  Some left their bodies to be trampled and forgotten and instead fought unseen. Celdarian soldiers dropped in silence. No wounds, no blood. Only contorted pale faces, mouths frozen in the beginnings of screams. A windsinger lashed her whip through the air, summoning sharp gusts that knocked angel after angel to the ground. A moment later, the light of her casting went out. Her body jerked, her face shifted, and she slipped off her horse and was gone, trampled beneath a sea of hooves and claws.

  Audric’s hand shook around Illumenor. The sunlight streaming from the blade was dimming, and angels teemed just beyond the reach of his light. They hissed in Lissar, shouted for him to drop his sword, crashed their blades against Illumenor’s bright beams until his ears rang with the sound of fists against glass.

  He could not drop his light. They would swarm him in seconds.

  But he had to do something for the dozens, the hundreds of soldiers being cut down around him. He searched frantically for even the smallest triumph. The zipping blue-white of Sloane’s casting, the spark and spin of metalmaster hammers hitting their targets.

  It wasn’t enough.

  A dark tide of beasts churned relentlessly toward the city wall, abominations with castings sewn into their skin and mighty roars like rocks falling. Gray-eyed children rode atop them, their wrists blazing with fire, shadows flying from them like arrows. A flock of avian beasts streaked across the lake on naked wings and dove at the wall. They plucked archers from their posts and tossed the bodies between them, tearing at flesh and bone until only scraps remained.

  Audric lay flat against Atheria and closed his eyes. At once, she dove fast for the battlefield. Angels followed on either side, their wings flashing. Their war cries were the howls of wolves.

  Before hitting the ground, Atheria pulled up sharply, then wheeled around and cut across the battlefield like a sleek ship through dark waters. Illumenor burned a flickering path through the angelic ranks, scattering them. Audric gulped down air. The wind streaming past him was knife-sharp, black with smoke. He looked back over his shoulder, saw the destruction left behind in their blazing wake, and felt a small burst of hope.

  Then a huge weight slammed into Atheria and knocked her hard from the air. Audric fell, lost Illumenor, went tumbling. Hands grabbed at him. Someone thrust a spear into the dirt beside his shoulder. He twisted, dodged another, then scrabbled through the mud for his sword. Something shrieked, a terrible snarling scream. His hand landed on metal. A familiar rope of power snapped into his palm.

  He grabbed Illumenor and spun back toward his attacker—a towering angel in gold armor. He thrust his spear once more. Audric dodged it, and Illumenor burst into brilliant light. The angel dropped his weapon, shrank back, shielded his eyes. Their blades crashed together. Other angels converged on them, swords raised. He felt their minds groping for his, fingers digging into the edges of his thoughts, but something was shielding him—a familiar, supple barrier that repelled their attacks.

  Ludivine. He hoped it was her. A sickening flash of terror swept through him as he imagined someone else keeping him alive, drawing him on through this battle toward some end he could not see.

  He spun to meet the angel’s swords, Illumenor sparking brighter with every metallic crash. He dodged their blows, stabbed one angel in the groin, carved a streak of white light across another’s plated chest. He looked for Ludivine in the chaos, but she was keeping herself hidden. Was she watching the fight unfold from some sheltered mountain cave? Had she truly left them all to die?

  A furious scream drew his eye. Atheria was locked in battle with one of the beasts—shoulders high off the ground, back ridged with fur and bone. Atheria reared up, ears flat and wings snapping. Red gashes striped her stomach. She kicked out with her forelegs, clobbered the beast with her hooves.

  Something hard and cold knocked the back of Audric’s head. He fell, his vision spinning black. He tried to stand but was pushed flat to the ground. A plated boot on his chest pinned him in the mud. He looked up, blinking hard, and saw the shape of an armored angel framed by radiant white wings.

  A blade touched his throat. His skin gave beneath it, a needle-sharp prick of pain.

  Then the air bloomed with sound. Rich and warm, like voices raised in song.

  The pressure on Audric’s chest lessened. He surged upward, Illumenor blazing, and sliced the angel’s torso in two. The body fell, its two halves smoking, and did not rise again. Whatever angel had lived inside it had fled, and Audric could see why at once.

  Across the Flats, great winged shapes were dropping out of the sky. The spinning light of casted magic illuminated them as they hurtled into battle. They swept fast through the fight and knocked scores of angels to the ground.

  Audric stared in wonder at their mighty furred bodies, their huge hooked wings that boomed like drums as they flapped.

  They were dragons. Dragons, which no one had seen for an age. Dozens of them, some skinny and lean, the size of horses, others broad and muscled, large as warships. Figures rode atop them carrying staffs and swords, cloaks flying like dark wings behind them.

  A passage from one of Audric’s favorite stories flashed through his mind. At the dawn of the Second Age, with the angels banished to the Deep, the saints began carving new cities out of the war-ravaged ground, and during these first years of peace, the godsbeasts fled the human cities. Where they went, it is not known, but some believe the ice dragons, the bestial champions of Saint Grimvald, retreated to the far north. They allowed only their chosen companions, the Kammerat, or dragon-speakers, to join them in those frozen reaches. Any others who have dared seek them have perished, their bodies returned home in the night, wrapped in the dark hooded plaincloth the Kammerat favor.

  Audric watched in awe as the Kammerat raised polished horns of bone to their lips. They rode the dragons as easily as if they had born atop them. It was they who filled the air with song, the cascading calls of their horns ringing through the night.

  The beasts tormenting the archers at the wall dropped their prey and shot back across the lake to meet the new arrivals, their shrieking calls piercing the air. Two winged battalions raced toward each other through a sky of smoke and sparks. For a brief moment, the sight rendered both armies dumb. Angels and humans alike cowered in fear.

  Then came a thunderous clamor from the pass between Mount Taléa and Mount Sorenne. Audric squinted through the smoke, and a chill passed over him. His pounding heart flew to his throat.

  For there, spilling down the pass, the earth rearranging itself neatly to provide a safe path, was a sea of flashing blades. Huge silver-dappled warhorses with streaming white tails, and rippling banners showing the colors of Saint Grimv
ald and House Lysleva—fiery orange, deep blue, and lavender soft as sunset, all snapping on a field of charcoal.

  The Borsvallic army, three thousand strong, roared down from the mountains. Their fresh castings flashed; their horns blasted high, sharp battle cries.

  Cheers erupted across the Flats. Celdarian and Mazabatian thrust their swords into the air.

  Relief burned through Audric’s body, leaving him lightheaded. He had not let himself hope for their arrival, but now the sight of them thundering into battle lit a fresh fire in his heart.

  He heard a clatter behind him, spun around, and cut three angels in two with three swift strikes, his arms blazing with power. They dropped, their ruined bodies hissing like wood afire.

  He whistled for Atheria. She came to him at once, her nostrils flaring wide, her coat spotted with blood. He hesitated at the sight of her wounds, but she snapped at him, impatient; her wings trembled to fly. He swung atop her, and then they were in the air, racing to meet Borsvall’s army in the foothills. Illumenor lit the way, and he knew that across the Flats and in the city, his people would be watching him. They would see the light of Illumenor streaking toward the mountains, see the warriors of Borsvall riding to their aid, and they would stand taller and dare to think of tomorrow.

  Atheria swooped low, brought Audric level with the leader of Borsvall’s troops—a rider on a white warhorse, fearless and fast. Two bannermen followed her, flying the colors of her house. It was Ingrid Lysleva, commander of the Borsvallic army and regent in her brother’s absence. She had not taken the throne, Audric had heard, even at the urging of her magisters and advisers.

  Ingrid glanced up as Atheria began to fly beside her, matching the pace of her horse. She wore a silver helmet crested with horns, and when she met Audric’s eyes, it was with a fierce, wild grin.

  Beyond her, one of the dragons spun down from the sky to fly alongside them. A smaller dragon, lean but ferocious, with snapping teeth, clever gold eyes, and a crest of patchy white fur. Her rider lay low against her neck. He was a fair-skinned man with dark hair whose face Audric did not recognize. He was dressed in a long loose coat and cloak sewn from dark plaincloth. One of the Kammerat, then, Audric thought. Behind him, clinging to his waist, was another man, similarly garbed, bearded and blond and thinner than Audric remembered.

  Their eyes met across the wild space between them. Ilmaire raised a hand in greeting, and Audric’s heart lifted to see his friend. He had never believed the rumors that Ilmaire was dead. To see him alive and well, riding a dragon alongside his sister, as all three of them flew into battle, brought new strength to Audric’s tired limbs. Illumenor crackled to brilliant life.

  Hundreds of angels had turned to face the charging Borsvallic army, their pikes at the ready. The sky rained black arrows. Audric heard horses cry out behind him, heard soldier after soldier fall. But still they charged, Ingrid’s shrill war cries piercing the air, and just before they met the angelic ranks, Audric reached out with his power, gathered every speck of casted light sunspinners across the battlefield had managed to summon, and thrust it all in one fell blow toward the enemy.

  Light detonated across the Flats, knocking half the angels to their knees. The rest staggered, shooting without aim. The Borsvallic army tore through the enemy lines like fire through a forest. Battle sounds swallowed Audric whole. He glimpsed the flash of swords, the white of snapped bone. The mottled gray of a beastly hide, a dragon’s clever furred head. Angelic breastplates marked with that proud crest of wings.

  Audric drove Atheria through the fray. He cast light left and right, throwing angels from their mounts, knocking swarming beasts away from their kill. The Borsvallic army churned behind him, following the path he blazed.

  Then the air tightened, prickling Audric’s skin. A voice drifted toward him as if carried on the wind, only he knew at once that no one else could hear it.

  Audric, it whispered.

  Sweating, breathless from the use of his power, Audric shivered on Atheria’s back, for it was her voice calling to him, and it trembled with something he could not name.

  Gold burst at the corner of his eye. He whirled, pulling Atheria up from the battlefield, and looked back over the Flats, past the lake and the towering wall, and across the city toward Baingarde.

  From the castle rooftops sprouted light so radiant, so sharp in its purity, that even Illumenor seemed to dim. The light shot into the night sky, volcanic, and then assumed a shape—two massive wings in flight, bold and familiar. The same symbol stamped on every angelic chest now hovering in the air above Baingarde, tall as storm clouds. A declaration: Here I am.

  Audric’s mind told him to ignore the bait. But a fierce clean anger shot through him, jolting his bones like cracks of lightning, and his mind’s warnings were easy to ignore.

  “Go!” he roared, leaning hard toward the city, and Atheria obeyed. Angels raced after him, their wings blazing. He hardly noticed them, knocked them easily from the air with his brilliant sword. Ludivine, wherever she was, was still helping him, or else it was Corien allowing him passage, toying with him for entertainment. Audric cared nothing for the reason. The angels’ mental attacks bounced off him, useless as tiny pebbles thrown at a mountain. His power raced hot through his body, irradiating his vision. Illumenor moved without his command. He thought only of Baingarde, the wings incandescent above it. The woman standing within it.

  Atheria sped over the lake, dodging winged beasts. Soon they were at the city wall—its parapets burning, the elementals atop it in desperate combat. Beasts clambered up out of the lake and up the stone. The angelic army’s elemental children had created bridges to provide easy passage over the lake. Gray-eyed soldiers raced across with huge black ladders, hissing beasts guarding their passage; hundreds of others had reached the great stone wall and began to batter it with a huge fat beam of steel and wood. Each impact exploded like thunder.

  Audric looked over his shoulder, tempted to circle back and use Illumenor to blind every angelic soldier on the new bridges, give his own people time to demolish them. But the light over Baingarde pulled at him, and he turned back toward the wall with fury in his heart.

  Just as Atheria reached the wall, a swarm of black birds flew at Audric with tiny claws like needles and jabbing beaks. Their cries were hoarse, strange, more canine than avian. Atheria faltered, tried to shake her head and wings free of them, but they clung to her like drops of oil.

  Audric scanned the ground beyond the wall. He knew these birds. They weren’t trying to attack him; they were trying to turn him away from the city. When he found the blue glow of Sloane’s scepter, he hissed her name in fury. Atheria dove fast; the birds made of shadow peeled off of her. By the time they landed, she was clean. At the doors inside the wall, soldiers hurried to make barricades. Elementals on the ground aimed their castings at every climbing beast. The enormous wings hovering over Baingarde washed everything in a hundred shades of gold.

  Sloane hurried over, her pale face streaked with blood, eyes snapping as blue as her casting.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she shouted.

  Audric dismounted. Atheria tossed her head and stomped on the fading remnants of Sloane’s birds.

  “I’m doing exactly as we agreed,” he told her, his voice as angry as her own. “Find Rielle. Win her help if I can. Stop her if I must.” He flung his hand at the castle, the wings shining above it. “There she is. So I’m going to her.”

  “You won’t defeat her alone, Audric. At least if you met her on the battlefield, you would have help, a chance to speak to her while the rest of us provided cover.” Sloane grasped his arm, her face desperate. Her drenched black hair carved harsh lines across her pale cheeks. “Let us come with you.”

  He looked past her. There was Miren, hurrying down from the wall, red hair pulled back into a messy knot. Evyline and two of the Sun Guard were at her heels, their cloaks dri
pping. Kamayin arrived just behind them, riding a wave of water over the wall. She had carried them all across the lake from the battlefield. The tails of her long leather coat whipped around her like tongues. She landed with a splash, crossed her wrists in front of her chest like a shield. Her castings flashed; the water subsided, shrinking into twin orbs of rushing foam in her palms. On her shining brown face beamed a triumphant smile.

  Evyline reached Audric first. Panting, she knelt before him. “We saw the wings, my king. We knew you would fly for them. We could not let you face her alone.”

  “You’ll have a better chance with us at your side,” Miren added grimly, standing a little apart from them. She tightened her grip on her double-headed ax. A tight cloud of metal spun to life around her—shattered dagger blades and tiny metal stars with deadly sharp tips.

  “Or any chance at all,” added Kamayin dryly. She pushed through the others, flung an arm around Audric’s shoulders. Her face half-buried in his collar, she said quietly, “Don’t be an idiot, you idiot.”

  Audric gently detached himself from her. “Rielle might want to keep me alive, or Corien might, long enough to talk to me.”

  “Taunt you,” Miren corrected. “Gloat and preen.”

  “Perhaps. But you… Why would they care about any of you? She could burn you to ashes the moment she sees you.”

  “Maybe that’ll give you enough time to stab her,” Kamayin said cheerfully. But her eyes were hard, and her jaw was set.

  Audric turned away from them, dragged a hand through his sweat-soaked curls. He didn’t know what to say to them. He wished they hadn’t stopped him. He could have ridden that tide of rage all the way to the castle, faced Rielle without a moment to think about it. No time to remember her, no time to feel fear. Now, that wildness was gone. His body ached with bruises, reminding him of his own fragility.