by Cassia Meare
"One of you will have to be the boss in all this, I agree," Delian said.
"The three of us," Nemours corrected him.
"Come, come. You know very well it’s either you or Ahn. The Originals. We’re second-class princes."
"It’s brothers against sisters, more to the point," Nemours said.
"Boys against girls," Delian said, not as if he didn’t relish the idea.
"Please, Nemours," Ty said. "Let me go to Ahn and arrange a meeting with them first."
"We won’t save anything if we don’t stop Ahn and anyone who serves her," Delian said. "We will be tricked at every turn, and she may get to the hekas before we do to destroy Earth."
"You won't go to them," Nemours said. "Ahn has done wrong, and she must beg for a meeting."
"But you do mean to keep on looking for the hekas, for the Key?" Ty asked.
"I plan for you to keep looking for them," Nemours said. "While I deal with things here. Maybe it all blows over, who knows? Maybe Ahn accepts what I shall demand."
Drawn by the mirror again, Delian admired himself. "Damn, I'm beautiful." He turned to Nemours. "And I could absolutely have taken all those clowns outside the room where you were bound without batting an eye, and instead acted like a coward in front of Lady E. Where is she, by the way? I must go and dazzle her."
"She's on Earth," Nemours said curtly.
Delian frowned again. "Why?"
It took a moment before, with a forbidding expression, Nemours said, "I've banished her."
"Banished?" his brothers cried in unison.
"How could you do that?" Delian asked. "Why would you do that?"
"She's a traitor."
"She is not," Delian protested. "She was ready to die undoing what she did, fooled by our freaking sisters."
Slamming down his cup, Nemours repeated, "She is a traitor."
Azure sat up, ears pointed.
"She's a human girl from the Middle Ages, and you didn't tell her the whole truth," Delian said. "That pretty much opened the way for Ahn to tell her lies."
"People believe what they want," Nemours said.
"I think she was divine undoing the spell. Spectacular," Delian insisted, hands on his waist — his eyes were back to their elongated shape and now of a deeper blue. His face had all but returned to its original symmetry, and his hair both waved and shone.
Nemours gave a sarcastic smile. "Of course you do." He put his hand under his doublet and moved it to mimic a wildly beating heart.
"Piss off, Nemours. As if you would be punishing her if you didn't care."
"Try again now that you're all pretty," Nemours advised him.
Delian was a betting creature. "Challenge accepted!"
"I forgot how annoying your voice gets in my ear."
Winking at Nemours, Delian said, "That’s why you took me with you, right?"
"Lady Elinor is resourceful," Nemours continued. "She managed to come here, revert a spell and confound Ahn, and our sister may become more interested in her now. She will need your help." He turned away from Delian's knowing look, and added, "She may well be the Star, considering how much she has been able to learn in such a short time — and we cannot stop looking for those hekas."
"Don't you worry. We'll protect her," Delian said with a lopsided smile, leaning against the wall.
"You'll meet the lords and ladies with me," Nemours said, overlooking Delian's provocation. It was good to have them back as their own selves, that was the truth. "Then we'll wait for Ahn to beg for a meeting, which she will, and you'll attend it. We’ll show a united front. After that, you may return to your friend."
"Nemours," Ty asked before the Lord Protector walked out, "will it make a difference if you find that most mortals think like our sisters?"
"No," said Nemours.
3
"I've been summoned," said Thil Serle.
Ahn stopped touching her throat, an unconscious gesture she had acquired since the human girl had stolen her voice to break the Binding spell on Nemours.
How did she manage that?
"Everyone has been summoned," she replied, turning to the Lord of Mistkeep.
Thil had come to her at Crystal Hold, a short ride across the White Sea. But then he would; he was made of desire and ambition, at least in relation to her. It was hard to know when one feeling ended and the other began, since they fed each other so efficiently.
Now he was throwing her a bold, black-eyed look — lingering on her bare shoulders and even daring to flick down to the swell of her breasts.
"Say the word and I won't go," he told her.
What a fool, thinking she would be impressed if he challenged Nemours. Why, the Lord Protector would crush this man without a qualm, apart from the fact that Thil’s defiance would be bad for her. She must find a way of getting her greatest ally to be less stupid. The best outcome for her present dilemma must be a result of strategy, not pride or daring.
Although Nemours had called the banners, she would not countenance the possibility of war — not against her brothers.
"It won't do to defy the Lord Protector," Ahn said, taking a glass of ambrosine from the tray being offered by a servant, "and he won't let you prevaricate. You must say the truth."
"The truth," said Thil, slightly bending forward in a show of courtly obedience, "is that I am a vassal of Crystal Hold. Cala and Falmont are vassals of mine, and they've also sworn you allegiance. Rosy Marsh—"
Ahn cut him short. "Don't speak for the others. They shall be there."
"And you are sure of them? Of their answer to the Lord Protector?"
"I am sure they don't want the world to end. Or to let my brother gamble with our survival."
"He's thoughtless—"
"Don't!" Ahn turned, her red skirt billowing. "Don't ever presume to criticize him. Remember who he is, and all that he has done."
Thil bit his tongue, clearly against his will. He was dying to speak treason, yet he should still fear the immortals. Ahn held his stare until he broke it, shifting his eyes to the ground.
"Then let's ascribe his actions to too much zeal in protecting us," he said.
"Precisely. That’s all it is. And in any case, once he speaks to all of you, my family will meet — and I am certain we shall reach an agreement." She glanced outside. The morning sun was getting a tiny bit darker every day but still shone through the soft mist.
"We are running out of time," Thil said, following her eyes.
"You need not remind me of that," she said curtly. "Now leave me."
The Lord of Mistkeep bowed, waiting for her hand to kiss, and Ahn extended her fingers.
"If you allow me, I shall return to inform you of the meeting."
"Yes," was all she said.
When he left, she gave a sigh of relief. It was a bad thing — a bad, bad thing — to expect the mortals to oppose her brother. He was First Created, and his authority should not be challenged by them. But the immortals had disagreed on a matter most vital; and then he had made the old Tho Set-Tuii, Atra Ve Hasis, run spells for him — Change to turn Delian and Ty into entirely other people, and Oblivion to make everyone forget them. Even their sisters.
The knowledge of their existence had rushed back into the sisters at the same time when the spell was broken. They had sat there gasping, reeling, reaching for each other — mumbling their names.
How was that not Abuse?
She had found Nemours in the Shadow World by appealing to someone she would have rather not have called. But if Nemours was willing to get Atra on his side, he couldn't blame her for gathering her own allies. He now could not blame her for anything.
Crystal Hold was made of pink quartz with deep red and blue veins. The walls gave Ahn a turn as she walked to Aya’s shrine. They were almost like the map of a land where the blood of mortals and immortals had already been shed and mingled in rivers.
It won't come to war. Of course it won't. There will be another way.
Stupid human girl, Ahn thought, ca
ressing her throat again as she walked. And yet not stupid, or she would not have unbound Nemours. A sorceress in the making, and protected by him.
He would turn into a hell of a fury if she were hurt. Besides, Ahn didn't hate the girl; perhaps the Lady Elinor was only a passing annoyance, and perhaps that was all she would remain.
Ahn had reached the end of the corridor, and the pages were there to open the great doors to the shrine. The room was circular, as she had had a dome built especially for it. In the center of the dome, an image of Mother: beautiful as no woman, even immortal, could ever hope to be again, with her dusky skin, her large, melancholy eyes and her full lips. Below her, following the curve of the roof, the figures of her eight children, rendered in multi-colored mosaic: the four Originals she had had with Father and the four Womb Children she had conceived alone.
How had Ahn not noticed the lack of symmetry, the figures missing all the time Delian and Ty were under the Change spell? Now they were back where they belonged.
A large, concave nook in the far wall held a full figure of Aya surrounded by the much smaller figures of the seven Set-Tuii and Set-Tuaa, each holding the symbols of magic composing the Knowledge: Protection, Crossing, Binding, which Nemours already had, and she had taken from him. Well, she had made Lamia and Sefira take it, as she would not bear the marks of hekas.
Then there was Time, which Ahn had obtained from Lotho Sils, its keeper, and Nemours had taken. Change, which Atra had used for Nemours but clearly not let him keep. Likeness and Might, also still hidden.
The last symbol, for the Key, hovered above Aya, held by the Tho Set-Tuii, Atra himself. It wasn't part of the Knowledge. Ahn shuddered to think of it. It was the final payment for the ultimate power, and the price was unknown. They did not even know what they might be buying if they could pay for it.
That was the problem with magic.
Change, Likeness and Might: No one should have those hekas. No one should get to the Key. They should all stop now, and have the priests hide everything again.
Except how was she to break the hold of the Shadow World on theirs? How was she to cut it loose without magic?
Ahn pushed and twisted the symbol for the Key on the wall, a cross with circles at each of the four points, and a door appeared, allowing her inside an inner shrine.
As soon as the wall closed again, she was in the dark, listening to the rickety noise of something small and hard being shuffled and thrown. A few steps ahead, the walls still shimmered in the scant light from a brazier. Under its glow sat a man and a woman, looking closely at the ground.
She joined them by dropping onto an opulent cushion. "Have you seen anything?"
Lotho Sils' face was powdered white, with the black imprint of a hand over his mouth — as all priests’ and priestesses’. The hand signified they would not tell Aya’s secrets. Not to mortals, anyway.
The girl, Hesir, was Lotho's Pa-Siamun, or apprentice. She had not been made immortal yet, and perhaps never would be. It would take Lotho's murder or suicide for her to ascend to Set-Tuaa, and Hesir might go the same way of many, many, many of his acolytes and die before he ever chose to.
Hesir didn't seem to mind; her eyes avidly followed Lotho's gestures, examining his every throw.
The remains of Tuii and Tuaa rattled on the ground. Once dead by their own choice, they were burnt. Sometimes their bones were snatched from the ovens and carved into smaller pieces to be used for divination. It was a clandestine act, to get these bones, but not quite forbidden. Ahn couldn't hide her fascination; she was the true daughter of Mother.
"The world is divided," Lothos said, pointing at the way the bones had fallen. "No initial agreement." He indicated a larger bone and a few smaller pieces scattered like islands, away from the rest. "These will need to be won."
"Who will win them?" Ahn asked, almost sadly.
"That, we cannot know."
Standing, Ahn sighed and moved away from the flame, deeper into the darkness of the shrine. As she reached the wall, a small dot of light, cleverly produced by a hole in the quartz, unerringly hit a glass relic embedded in the rock. Inside it, her brother's heart.
The heart of Ydin, who had been the Prince of Burning Twilight — and who now was no more.
4
The six lords and ladies of the world stood on the map, whose colors represented the attributes of the vast territories they controlled.
Highmere was rendered in platinum and gold. No one occupied it, as it was the province of Nemours and his two brothers, Delian and Ty.
Far off to the northwest, Silverburn, made of whitest marble, was also empty. Erstwhile pirates, the savages from the island were ostracized, never having fully conformed to the rule of law laid down by the immortals. They would not have a say in the conflict to come.
To the right of Highmere, in the northeast, the Anvil was depicted in gray stone. Lady Nyree Sitsi had a coast she did not sail, as it included a stretch of sea so black no one could see the rocks below it. This was called The Eclipse, and it was haunted by an occasional fog, dark and thick, that would confound most instruments.
The Eclipse had come to exist by magic, to make it difficult for anyone to sail to Deep Realm.
Pragmatic to the core, Nyree dressed in trousers and boots, and was not prone to smiling — but she was a staunch bannerwoman of Nemours', and as firm as the craggy rocks on her shore.
Blessed with better seas right below her was Feroz Tinashe, Lord of Lockland. He stood on light-green jade, as he ruled over one of the most fertile territories in the world and hosted an important trading port. He was rich, and as full of joviality as Nyree lacking in it. Yet everyone knew he had not yet married because he nursed a hopeless love for his northern neighbor.
Even at that moment, Ty noticed, he was smiling at Nyree, undaunted by her scowl.
Lord Tinashe would cast for Nemours, no doubt. He wasn't one to forsake his allegiances. Besides, his native optimism must have already convinced him that the matter of the darkening sun and the cracking skies would be solved by the Lord Protector.
Further down, the red Midlands were held by Lady Taletha Grae. She hadn't had it easy, not with Dragonridge to the north and Witchsweep and the Jade Forest to the south. The worst creatures dwelt in those places, and they still had to be contained.
Yet her lands were bountiful, and Lady Taletha enjoyed the friendship of both Nemours and Ahn. Also, unlike the hardy Lady Nyree, she was fond of a good life — of the wines of her vineyards and the cheer of her court. She could sway either way, thought Ty, but she was southern, and the south favored Ahn.
What no one could doubt was which way the Lord of Mistkeep would go. He straddled his mother-of-pearl land even as it jutted toward the island of Crystal Hold, almost as if puckering its lips for a kiss. Ty could sense Nemours' displeasure at the man's cocky stance.
The final southern territory, Rosy Marsh, was ruled by Lady Dhais Faxon. She would inevitably follow where Ahn and Thil Serle led.
Crystal Hold was empty, of course, as were Areia and Cloud's End, the seats of Lamia and Sefira.
Finally, Ty's eyes settled on the man whose word might decide it all — because once he gave it, he would not betray it. Danek Tayne, Lord of Stonemount. Dragonridge crossed his territory from side to side, yielding precious stones, ore and metals that his silversmiths would hammer into the blades and armors every fighter craved. Stonemount steel was a beautiful thing: light and sharp, as beautiful as it was deadly.
Furthermore, Danek was the descendant of Sethe Tayne, the greatest knight the mortal world had ever known.
What would he say? The thing about Lord Tayne was that he would never mince words.
"Are you in love with that place, Lord Protector, above our own?" he asked from his spot, made of agate to symbolize his brown mountains and rich land.
At his question, there was shuffling from the northerners, raised eyebrows and pursed lips from Mistkeep, and a suppressed laugh from the Lady of the Midlands.
>
And from Nemours, the reply, "No."
The Prince of the Morning sat in the throne that had once been Virso’s and contemplated the people below him. It was his right to sit there, as he had defeated his father, but it was also a reminder of what he could do.
Delian leaned against the left side of the throne, and Ty occupied the stool on Nemour's right.
Ty refused to exchange any looks with Delian, although he could feel his brother throwing him glances full of meaning over Nemours' head.
"It isn't a question of greater or lesser love," Nemours said. "It's a question of preserving creation."
"You've spent more time there than here, as long as I've been alive," Tayne insisted, scowling. The man did have courage.
"You've been alive for only a part of my existence," Nemours said calmly. "But it isn't wrong to say that I've spent a lot of time there. That is also not the point."
"But what is that world supposed to mean to us," Lady Taletha asked, "that we should risk our own salvation for it?"
"I agree ..." the Lady of Rosy Marsh piped up, then cleared her throat to continue more softly, "I agree that we may be cutting it close. The suns are growing dark, and there are cracks in the sky. More every day."
"But how do you think, Lady Dhais, that we will save this world — even if we agree to let the other die?" Nemours asked.
Lady Dhais touched her chest. "Am I meant to know, Lord Protector?"
"Do you?" He looked around the room to find more shuffling. "Does anyone?"
Thil Serle almost spat the answer. "Magic."
It was as if the word had fallen flat on stone like some gutted fish in a market slab, left there to stink. It was greeted by deeper silence.
"Is that true?" Tayne asked after a good minute.
"Magic has been gone a long time," Lady Taletha said. "Forbidden."
"Says the lady who has Witchsweep to her south," Delian said. "What are those things coming out of the mountains to raid the Midlands, every now and again? And what's in Jade Forest, that no one dares to go there? And why don't you go to your beaches?" He scoffed. "Sure, there's no magic in the world."
