BASTIAN CITY
Jules and Emilia ride hard from Sunpool, pushing their horses to the limit with Jules’s naturalist gift and trading them for new mounts when they can go no farther. When they stop at night, Camden hunts for them, and Emilia builds fires. They speak little and keep moving. It is when they skirt south past the capital that they know they are too late.
The path of the army is impossible to miss. A great number of mounted cavalry rode out toward Bastian City in haste. And a great number had already returned.
Emilia studies the tracks. She looks ahead, to the east. No smoke rises from where Bastian lies. Or at least not enough to see from such a distance.
“The horses are tired,” Jules says.
“Push them again. One more time. Please, Jules.”
They ride on. The closer they get, the more uneasy Jules becomes. They have passed no bands of wounded. No fleeing survivors.
“Perhaps the wall held,” she says, “and the army couldn’t make headway.”
Emilia says nothing. She nudges her horse with her heels.
Bastian City is visible for a long time as they ride, and they stare at it, searching for movement. As they near the wall, they see the holes, the places where it has been breached by catapult. There is still no smoke, and all is quiet. As if the city has been abandoned.
They tie their horses outside of the wall, and Emilia runs inside, sword drawn.
“Emilia, wait!”
But she need not have worried. They are far too late. Inside the city, Emilia stands amidst a carpet of bobbing heads and shifting wings. Carrion birds and seagulls arguing over the feast of dead. There are so many of them that the ground seems to seethe.
“Emilia—”
“Get them out!”
Jules hesitates. The birds are terrible, but the sight of what they hide could be much worse.
“Get rid of them!” Emilia kicks at the gulls and slices black feathers from the tails of crows.
Jules takes a breath.
“Go.”
The birds lift their heads as if waking from a dream. At once, they take wing, stirring the foul air and revealing the fallen that they fed upon.
“We should hurry,” Jules says, watching them fly high above the city. “Someone may have seen that.”
Emilia does not respond. She stands with arms at her sides, surveying the dead. There are so many. Piles before the breaches in the wall, warriors who stepped onto the backs of their friends to fight. This is not the city that Jules remembers, the people who took her into hiding and protected her. Bastian was red clay tiles and clean, bright banners. It was a warm breeze off the sea. It was not these stones splashed with rotting blood. Nor these streets clogged with bloated bodies.
“There are no queensguard soldiers.”
Jules looks up. Emilia has wiped her eyes and is picking her way through the battleground, kneeling to study wounds and scrutinize the edges of swords in the hands of the dead.
There are no queensguard soldiers. Not one amidst all of the fallen near the wall. Nor those strewn farther back through the streets.
“It is impossible,” Emilia says. “These are warriors!”
“Maybe they gathered their dead,” Jules suggests. “They must have.”
Beside her, Camden grunts. The cougar is no stranger to a bad kill, but she does not like this. Her ears flick nervously, and when Jules offers no comfort, she lopes ahead, away from the worst of the carnage. Jules kneels beside a woman whose legs have been severed. And not only severed but shorn off, as if by one stroke.
“These wounds,” Jules murmurs. “I don’t know what could have made them.”
Every wound is terrible. Every sword-strike deep and brutal, almost enough to cleave a torso in two. Other warriors lie broken against the sides of buildings, as if they were thrown like dolls. When Jules sees a head caved in, crushed flat as if by the stomp of a boot, she stands up and takes a deep breath.
“The queensguard couldn’t do this. Emilia, have you seen—?” She turns up the street. They have wandered among the carnage for so long, they are nearly at the temple steps. When Emilia sees what lies upon them, she screams.
“Margaret!”
Margaret Beaulin is strewn in pieces across the steps of the temple. Emilia stumbles up, scrambling. She crawls to her and falls upon her chest.
“Emilia!” Jules follows, but even her stomach turns at the sight of what was done. She cannot bring herself to go closer as Emilia gathers the severed parts.
“She was my mother’s blade-woman,” the warrior cries. “She would not have fallen like this! What could have done this to her?”
“I don’t know.” Margaret’s hand still grips her sword. The echo of a grimace still warps her face. Margaret Beaulin was fierce. One of the strongest war-gifted on the island. She would not have gone down easily. Yet the edge of her sword is clean.
Jules looks back through the streets. Bastian City is a city of the dead.
“What could have done any of this?”
From some distance, Camden screams.
“Camden!”
The big cat is not hurt; Jules can sense that. But she is agitated. Afraid. They find her in an alley, scratching at the door that leads to the Bronze Whistle, the underground pub where Emilia raised the rebellion. Emilia quickly kicks down the door and runs inside. Jules grits her teeth; the warrior is as rash and impulsive as Arsinoe sometimes. But before she can catch up, Emilia’s sword clatters to the ground.
“Emilia!”
Jules runs in and finds her on her knees, embracing two small boys. Jules quickly lowers her sword and urges Camden back as the children shrink away from her. There are at least twenty children crowded into the Bronze Whistle. Survivors. Little warriors with short daggers in their hands and wide, ready eyes.
“Hush, hush, it is all right now,” Emilia says, and draws as many close as she can. “Now you are safe.”
They waste no time getting the children out of the city. They find more horses in the stables and load the little ones into carts, set the older ones to driving.
“We’ll pass by Indrid Down in the night,” Jules says. “We won’t be seen. And then we’ll take them on, home to Sunpool.”
“No. Not Sunpool.” Emilia glances at the faces of the children. “The rebel city is not safe, and they have seen enough. We will take them to Wolf Spring.” It is an order but said with hope.
“Yes,” Jules says. “Wolf Spring. They’ll be looked after.”
As they mount their horses, Jules looks back at the broken city. Bastian had fallen completely. One whole arm of the rebellion snuffed out as quick as a candle. And it had been Emilia’s home. Jules cannot begin to imagine what she would feel if she had ridden into Wolf Spring and found it the same.
“Are you going to be all right?”
“Yes.” Emilia wipes her eyes dry. She looks at the children, and the tears return, so she wipes them again. “Beneath my sadness, I am angry. Soon the anger will rise to the top.” She takes up her reins. “Are you all right? You must be angry as well. Is the . . . tether holding?”
Jules nods. She does not, in fact, feel angry. All she feels is grief. And dread.
THE FIRST TEMPLE
Mirabella and Katharine ride their horses down the cliffs on the northwest shore of Bardon Harbor, dark hoods pulled down against the wind. High Priestess Luca follows behind on a steady white mare.
“Can you not ease this wind?” she calls out.
“I could,” Mirabella replies. “But it adds to the sensation of adventure!”
Ahead, riding in the lead on her black stallion, Katharine turns and smiles. The cliff path is not terribly steep, but it is narrow in places. Mirabella’s mount is the same gray charger she rode in the parade. Despite his high step and good looks, he has proven to be sweet and reliable, even for a poor rider like her.
They reach the beach, and the horses dance in the sand, happy as Mirabella is to be back on even ground. The day
is cold and slate colored, and the beach is deserted except for a few small birds racing back and forth before the surf.
“The northern cliffs are wild,” Katharine says. “Even before the mist rose, they were often empty. You probably did not need to wear that brown cloak as a disguise, High Priestess.”
“Perhaps not, Queen Katharine.” Luca dismounts and tugs the cloak tighter around her. “But an overabundance of caution has saved my old skin more than once.” She nods ahead. “There it is.”
Mirabella follows her gaze. The opening of the cave is not wide, though perhaps long ago, it was wider. When Luca said she had discovered the location of the first temple, Mirabella had not imagined a cave. She had thought they would follow the river, perhaps, and find an old circle of stones, or a crumbled foundation. A place to dig. Not to descend into.
“And just what, sister, do you expect to find?” Katharine asks, voice raised against the wind and the waves lapping at the rocks.
“I do not know.”
“Maybe nothing,” says Luca. “Maybe I am wrong, and it is only a cave.”
But looking into the dark, Mirabella’s queensblood begins to sing. Whatever remains of the first temple, they will find it inside.
“If you will not soften the wind, you can at least light us a torch,” Luca says, and holds out three. Mirabella lights them with a cupped hand as Katharine watches with wonder.
“Surely you have seen Bree light torches before.”
“Yes,” says Katharine. “But not even she makes it look so easy.”
They each take one and go, with Luca leading the way.
“Watch your footing,” the High Priestess cautions. “Do not slip.”
“She says that as though we are the ones with swollen knees,” Katharine whispers, and Mirabella smiles, shushing her with a glance. Inside the cave smells of salt and other minerals. And faintly of sea life. It sits above the tides, but the high tide must barely kiss it, leaving behind small pools and wet stones. Past the entrance, the ground rises and becomes drier, and the ceiling opens up to a small dome. The walls are smooth, worked by long-ago currents and perhaps by hands.
“Do you feel that?” Katharine asks.
“Feel what?” asks Mirabella, though the hum in her blood is almost as loud as the ocean.
“That sensation. It feels like I have been here many times before. Many times . . . yet—”
She does not finish her sentence, but Mirabella knows what she means. As they follow Luca, her eyes study every crack, every curve of dark, dripping stone. Soon enough, the flat path gives way to stone steps, down and curving deeper into the cliffs.
“Luca, how did you find this place?” she asks.
“Vague references in old writing.”
“Old writing?”
Luca waves her hand to end the questions, though that has never stopped her before. But then they reach the end of the path, and all of Mirabella’s words are forgotten.
The interior of the first temple is magnificent. The domed walls have been carved into ancient sculptures, etched with ancient stories. And at the heart of it sits a shrine inlaid with gold.
“Look at it,” Katharine says breathlessly, and hurries to the walls, her torch close as she touches the carvings. Some of the figures and scenes have been reduced to vague shapes by dripping and seeping water. Others are so well-preserved that they could have been carved yesterday. Even some of the ancient pigments have survived in blues and reds and yellows. “What must it have been like when it was new?”
“What was the world like when it was new?” Luca asks, her eyes wide. “How many have come before to worship? And how long has it been since anyone has walked this room? Breathed this air?”
Mirabella carries her torch above her head, urging the flame a little higher to better view the ceiling. She sees depictions of sun and stars, water and waves. Dogs and deer. She sees figures racing through forests of trees, telling stories she has never heard. She sees the shrine.
The gold is so bright in the light of the torch that it hurts her eyes. Upon the floor, plates of ancient bronze still sit, corroded green by minerals. Once, they must have held the offerings of the people or the burning herbs of priestesses. She looks up at the image behind the shrine, depicted in jewels and black tiles.
The first queen of Fennbirn.
“Katharine. Come here.”
Katharine comes to her side, and they look upon her, their ancestor. The origin of the line. Above her head is a crown in gold and below her feet, three dark stars: the first triplet sisters.
“Do you see her?” Mirabella asks as Katharine takes her hand.
“I see her.”
The first queen of Fennbirn is shown with five arms. Upon each of her hands rests each of the gifts. Fire in a clenched fist. An apple in an open palm. A clutched dagger. An open eye, faced out. And a snake twisting through her fingers. The first queen was a Legion Queen.
Mirabella reaches out toward the image, the lightest of brushes against her ancient cheek. When her fingertips touch, the picture in her mind comes fast. Strong enough to rock her back on her heels, and to ripple into Katharine through their joined hands.
Jules Milone. She knows from the stricken expression on Katharine’s face that she saw her, too. It was unmistakable.
“What?” Luca asks. “What did you see?” The High Priestess edges closer.
Mirabella turns to her sister. She draws her nearer and rubs the tattoo of Katharine’s crown gently with her thumb.
“The beginning of the line,” Mirabella whispers. “And the end. The dead queens rise and the Goddess has chosen her champion.”
“But why her?” Katharine asks. “Why not us? We are of her. Descended from her!”
“I do not know, Kat. Maybe because we are of that line. And that line has gone too far in the wrong direction.” She lowers her head. “Maybe there is no reason at all. But you saw her. We cannot deny it.”
“So what do we do? Are we not queens anymore?”
“We will always be queens,” Mirabella says, her hands on her smaller sister’s shoulders. “So we will fight the dead. And we will fight the mist. We will help her.”
She turns away from the shrine and feels the jeweled and painted eyes of the first queen on her back.
“Let us go back to the horses, Luca. We have much to consider.”
Mirabella gathers her skirts and prepares to make the long climb out of the temple. But before she can, a foul wind whips into the space, and all of their torches are extinguished.
“Strong wind,” the High Priestess says. “The tide must be coming in. Mira, relight them.”
She does, first her own and then Luca’s, and the cave is illuminated again. Katharine has crumpled onto the floor.
“Queen Katharine!”
They hurry to her and kneel. She has gone cold. And too late, Mirabella knows why.
“The dead queens,” Mirabella whispers as the dagger stabs into her stomach.
She shoves Katharine away and staggers back, hand pressed against the blood that soaks through the black of her gown.
“What have you done?” Luca shouts.
“No, it was not me!” Katharine grips her head with both hands, the bloody blade dragging across her cheek. “It was them!”
The dead queens had found her in the temple. They had returned somehow and found her in this sacred place.
“They would wear your skin,” Katharine cries. “Run, Mira. You have to run!”
Mirabella turns and races up the damp stone steps, through the narrow passageway with her torch thrust before her. She ignores the wet warmth that sticks her gown to her legs, her breath loud in the cavern as her footsteps ring off the rock. When she hears the dead queens scream with Katharine’s voice, she wants to cry.
She bursts out of the mouth of the cave and stumbles in the sand. Somehow, she reaches her horse and climbs onto his back.
“Go, go,” she moans, and he obeys, galloping up the cliff path. She
can see the summit. She can see her way to Sunpool. To the rebels and to Arsinoe. The horse is good, strong and steady. He can run for half a day, well past the shadow of Indrid Down. He can carry her to safety. He leaps the last strides up onto the cliffs.
And Mirabella loses her grip and tumbles from the saddle.
Dazed, she rolls onto her stomach and grimaces, fist pressed to her belly. She is bleeding badly. Weakening. But what she sees when she looks back makes her claw and shove against the ground to get away. Katharine has come up the path. Only it is not Katharine. This is what she meant when she said the dead queens wore her like clothing. The rotting skin mottling her cheeks. The milky eyes. The blackness seeping from her and rising like smoke.
“Katharine!”
The dead queens shake their head. When they smile, dark wetness shows between their teeth, as if their mouth is watering.
Mirabella calls her storm; she has no choice. She gathers her lightning as the queens lift her up by the arms, but her gift slips through her fingers like so much blood. They have done it. Weakened her, and made her a ready vessel.
“Katharine,” she cries, and touches her sister’s face. “You can’t let them have me!”
The dead queens recoil. The eyes close, and when they open, they are Katharine’s again, clear and black and suffering. Afraid.
“Little sister.” Mirabella smiles. “Do not let them have me.”
“I am so sorry, Mira.”
Katharine starts to cry, and Mirabella exhales. The blade against her throat is only a sting, and then Katharine shoves her clear, over the side of the cliff face. The wind at her back as she falls is like the wind atop Shannon’s Blackway. When she strikes the rocks below, it only hurts for a moment.
Katharine rides back to the Volroy alone. She could not remain on the beach, watching Luca weep and hover over Mirabella’s body, looking this way and that, back to the cave, up the path to the cliffs, as if there were something to be done. Nor could she stay and listen to the dead queens snapping their jaws, muttering bitter nonsense as they stared down at their broken vessel on the rocks.
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