Kingsbane

by Claire Legrand

  “If you fail? What about me?” Again, she tried to tease; again her voice emerged shaken. “I’m the one who has to face my mother, not you.”

  He swore quietly, kissed her hair. “I should be the one comforting you.”

  “Then comfort me.” She pulled away from him, traced the tired lines around his mouth. “Take me upstairs and comfort me, and then we’ll sleep.”

  He kissed her hands. “And tomorrow we’ll begin.”

  She helped him to his feet, this wild man with his blue-fire gaze. “And tomorrow we’ll begin,” she agreed and led him quietly upstairs, to the room she now thought of not simply as hers, but as theirs, and shut the door behind them.

  • • •

  At dawn, with the first arms of gray light touching the sky, Harkan’s team left the safety of Willow for the rocky grin of mountains circling Festival’s southern border. Eliana came downstairs, to the terrace where he had held her, to say goodbye. Mutely she received a gentle embrace from Viri and Catilla, and a fiercer one from Gerren; prayers from soldiers on bent knees; murmurs of thanks and well wishes from those Dani had brought out from the city.

  And then, an embrace from Harkan before Eliana was prepared for it—tight and brief, silent, his face pressed into the bend of her neck. Two seconds, her fingers clutching his shoulders, and he was gone, moving off through the trees to join the others.

  “Don’t make me do this,” came Zahra’s miserable voice, and Eliana tore her gaze away from Harkan’s retreating form to find the wraith drifting at her elbow, small and shrunken. Her dark eyes shimmered at the edges, as if losing cohesion.

  Eliana cupped the tight, cold air that held Zahra’s face. Listen to me.

  “No,” Zahra said, her voice buckling. She looked away, her cloudy black arms flickering as if distant storms were moving through them.

  Zahra, I command you to listen to me.

  My queen. Zahra’s thoughts scrambled at the edges of Eliana’s mind. Don’t ask me to leave you. Please. Not now. Not when you’re about to put yourself in such danger.

  I have my castings. I have Simon. Eliana ducked down to meet Zahra’s eyes. And Harkan will have you. Or else he’ll be fighting for me out there alone, facing the imperial army alone, and I’ll be out of my mind with worry for him.

  Zahra silently shook her head, over and over.

  And that is not the way you want me to meet my mother, is it?

  After a long moment, Zahra at last replied, No, my queen, and a knot of tension released in the air, as if something physical had given way.

  Then Zahra rushed at her, shrinking as she moved, shifting to the size of a child, and burrowed against Eliana’s chest. Pressed so close, Eliana felt the wraith open a feeling of love to her, so vast and sudden that Eliana stumbled, as if she’d misjudged the height of a step. Remy, crying quietly at her side, caught her elbow and steadied her.

  That was from me, Zahra said, her voice in pieces, and also from Harkan. You are lucky, my queen, to have such love in your life.

  And then Zahra was gone, darting through the garden like a shadow shot from an arrow, and then they were all gone, slipping fast into the morning. Remy hooked his arm through Eliana’s to help her back into the house, which was a lucky thing, for her own mind had gone soft and dark. She managed to put an arm tight around his shoulders and walked with him into the side parlor where Dani had held her, that first rainy night. There, she held him and let him cry against her shirt until he subsided, shivering and half-asleep.

  Eliana was glad Simon had stayed upstairs for this. She was glad to share this moment of grief with Remy alone.

  She sent a thought along the veins of the empirium she could now always sense at her fingertips, like the phantom echoes of a song that would never reach its finale.

  Watch over him, she prayed, more fiercely than she had ever prayed in her life. Watch over them all. Saints. God. The empirium. Whatever you are, wherever you live. May the Queen’s light guide them home.

  She closed her eyes. Give me the strength to burn bright for them, no matter what lies ahead.

  • • •

  Simon waited for her in the spot they had chosen—the patch of grass and clover by the tiny silver streams, near the willow under which she had healed his scar.

  She joined him wordlessly, Remy’s tears still drying on her shirt. She avoided his gaze but felt it nevertheless, a warm pressure kissing her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry, Eliana,” he said, and then looked ready to say more, but she feared they would be words of comfort, words that would do nothing to ease the pain in her heart or the worry buzzing like wasps through her body, so she hurried to him and pressed a hard kiss to his mouth before he could speak.

  He held her for a moment as she breathed, and then took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes.

  “We should not attempt this if you’re grieving,” he told her.

  “I’m always grieving,” she replied. “Isn’t everyone?”

  “You know what I mean.” He frowned and looked away into the trees. “This is happening too quickly. We haven’t had the proper time to prepare.”

  “And if we wait any longer, death may come for us before we can try. The Emperor’s army marches. Our friends march to stop them. So, we will do this.” She moved past him, standing in the center of the clearing. She lifted her chin against the heartbreak flooding her body. “Now. I’m ready.”

  “Eliana, please, look at me.”

  “I’ve been looking at you,” she said, her voice fraying. “I’ve looked at you so many times that I see you when I close my eyes. I can’t shake you. I’m going to lose you too, I’m sure. I’ll lose Remy and Harkan, and Patrik and Jessamyn, and I’ve already lost Navi, and I’m tired of knowing this. I’m tired of living in a world defined by loss. I’m ready to be rid of it. We’ve gone over our plan a hundred times. Let’s begin.”

  He stood before her, touched her face. “Look at me.”

  “No,” she said through gritted teeth. “I can’t bear it.”

  “Eliana, love. Come on, look at me.”

  She obeyed, unable to resist the soft pull of his voice.

  “I’m not sending you anywhere when you’re this upset,” he said, his gaze holding her gently. “You need a clear head to talk to your mother. You need to be able to focus.”

  She knew he was right, and yet if she remained in these gardens for another moment, she would lose all courage. Her sadness would drown her. She closed her eyes, allowing herself another moment of his touch, and then stepped away, wiping her cheeks dry and lifting her chin.

  “You will send me back now,” she said, her voice steady and cold. “As your queen, I command it. We don’t have time to spare, and if you continue to doubt me, I’ll consider it an insult.”

  He watched her for only a moment. Then he turned, every line of his body unhappy, and began to work.

  She was familiar by now with the sight of his threads, golden and shimmering, but as he gathered these into a sparking circle, they were joined by new threads, just as long and thin, but made of shadows instead of light. They were a blue-black color, iridescent, each of them churning viciously through the air like curls of smoke from an angry fire. These darker threads snapped and hissed; they fought the tight whirl of Simon’s fingers. Sweat beaded on his brow and neck. The force of his work sent him sinking slowly to his knees.

  Eliana fought to stay still, the urge to go to him overwhelming. But he had warned her about this, that the process of traveling through time would require much more of him, that it would be startling and perhaps upsetting to see. No matter what, he told her, she must not interfere.

  So she waited, her mouth dry and her heart pounding hard in her ears, until at last she heard Simon croak, “Now, Eliana.”

  Another of his instructions: She must not hesitate. When he told her to go,
she must go. He would hold open the thread for as long as she required, but every passing moment would be more difficult. The shape of him kneeling in the grass, threads of light and darkness twisting out from his chest and fingers, began to shift and flicker. His voice came out distorted.

  She took a breath, holding their plan in her mind. He would be sending her back to a relatively peaceful time in Celdaria, before the war against the angels truly began. Her mother was nineteen and newly pregnant. Her father, the Lightbringer, was still alive.

  She could not wait any longer. She moved past Simon, stepped into the net of his threads, and let them take her.

  43

  Rielle

  “Merovec has returned home from your capital and has invited me to supper tomorrow evening. From Belbrion, I’ve heard of Queen Genoveve’s resurrection. I’ve heard of your tumultuous streets, the crowds swarming to cheer Merovec’s name, and that there is no love lost between him and Lady Rielle. So I will tell Merovec what I’ve learned and read, in hopes that I may gently nudge him toward a friendship that remains elusive—one with you and Lady Rielle, between House Sauvillier and House Courverie. The two greatest houses in Celdaria must be united in friendship and must face the coming war as allies. For I know, as well as you do, that war is indeed coming. The angels’ eyes are everywhere, and they are hungry.”

  —A letter written by King Ilmaire Lysleva to Prince Audric Courverie, dated October 1, Year 999 of the Second Age

  Ten days before Audric’s coronation, Rielle awoke at dawn from the feeling of being watched.

  Slowly, she sat upright in bed. Beside her, Audric slept peacefully, his arm heavy over her hips. The room was dark; the Sun Guard stood outside, having given them privacy for the night.

  Rielle breathed into the dark silence for a few moments, waiting for the feeling to diminish, but it remained—the great invisible eye, watching her just as it had in Mazabat.

  The empirium, cold and endless, waiting for her to understand.

  She climbed out of bed, following the tug of energy at her breastbone, as if hot fingers were reaching gently for her heart. Quietly she stepped outside onto the terrace, where Atheria waited, ears pricked toward the towering black slopes of Mount Cibelline that dwarfed the castle. In the east, the sun was climbing, but the mountain remained still and dark.

  “You hear it too,” Rielle whispered. Her fingers sparked when she touched Atheria’s soft gray coat, and the godsbeast knelt, shivering, so Rielle could mount her.

  Palms flat against Atheria’s neck, she whispered, “We’ve got to follow it.”

  Atheria’s ears swiveled back, listening.

  “I know. I don’t want to either.”

  But the itch in her chest was insistent, and golden images she could not understand shimmered thinly at the edges of her vision. The empirium was a stubborn song she longed to shake from her mind.

  She directed Atheria up, away from the castle and into the great pine forests that carpeted Cibelline, and with every booming beat of Atheria’s enormous wings, the urgent fist in Rielle’s heart gripped tighter, until she could hardly breathe. Her blood raced and roared beneath the hot planes of her skin. She scanned the dark net of trees below, trying to shake the gold from her vision. She summoned up shreds of energy from her pinched gut and shoved them out of her hands as if that could dislodge the empirium from her eyes.

  “Leave me alone,” she whispered. “I just want to sleep. That’s all I want, to sleep for a while. Leave us alone.”

  When Atheria landed at last, in a thin copse of trees at the edge of a broad, grassy cliff, Rielle slid gingerly off her back and sank, gasping, to her hands and knees. She looked up once, searching the forest. She saw nothing extraordinary—only pines shivering in the high mountain winds. Rocks scattered across ridges of earth, rustling blades of grass. She heard the distant, lonely call of a hawk. Gold slipped across her eyes, as if the empirium were replacing the false frame of her body with something splendid and new.

  Atheria lowered herself to the ground, covering Rielle with her wings. She stared up at the canopy of feathers, watching in exhausted wonder as each soft barb lit up like a sky of stars, compressed into a single brilliant moment.

  Then a wave of light swept over her, pulling her under.

  • • •

  She had experienced such a thing many times before—dreams from Corien that left her restless and sharp-edged, visions from Ludivine that soothed her mind when nothing else could.

  This was different.

  This, she sensed, was a message sent from the empirium itself.

  She was limbless, bodiless. She was her truest self in this realm—a creature of boundless light. She was stardust, luminous and ancient; she was the infinitesimal ash of long-dead worlds.

  She floated in a sea of gold, buoyed by churning eddies of light. She hardly dared breathe for fear of splintering them, and anyway, breathing was an act relegated to the world of humans.

  There was an endless plain before her, but instead of stretching from horizon to horizon, it stood upright, like a vast mirror. Though she did not understand what she saw reflected on its rippling gold surface, she knew that what she saw was her own self.

  She reached out, though she had no arm, and touched the gold-sea glass, though she had no fingers.

  The image of her alien self shattered, replaced with something new. A million colors, a million sounds, cycling faster and faster until they were a frightening, terrible blur—pewter and periwinkle, screams of agony and waltzes performed on sweeping strings, mustard skies and jade fields, the red of an opened wound, the high shriek of a child at play, the dazzling blue of lightning arcing through a storm. A bruised sky, mottled and veined, a dark river of screams pouring from its mouth. A green world, peeling away from itself like thin curls of apple skin until only darkness remained. An oppressive darkness, a physical void that sucked the air from her lungs.

  Seven faces looked down upon this collapsing world. They were painted in fire and water, in earth and metal and shadow, in snapping wind and in the scorching light of the sun.

  Her human eyes would not have understood what she was seeing.

  But her true eyes—the eyes the empirium had given her, the ones she carried deep within herself—knew it at once. Ancient lies curdled, putrid, against the roof of her mouth.

  And the moment she grasped the truth, the empirium released her.

  • • •

  When Rielle returned to the mountain, she lay breathless in the grass beneath a cloudless blue sky, and Atheria was nowhere to be found.

  She sat up, her skin humming. She felt her mind rearranging itself in the wake of this vision, as if the very pieces of her skull were being remade.

  She held her head in her hands and thought to Ludivine, too shocked for anger, You knew. You had to have known. Why did you never tell me?

  Ludivine did not respond.

  Instead, Corien did. He walked out of the trees and extended his hand to her.

  “You do not belong in the dirt,” he told her, and she accepted his help only because the ground was cold, and she did not trust her body to stand on its own.

  “You’re not really here,” she said.

  “No, of course not. I’m far away, as requested.” He gave her a sardonic bow.

  “The saints lied to you. I just saw it, in my mind. The empirium showed it to me.”

  Corien froze, watching her in silence.

  She approached him slowly. “During peace negotiations, near the end of the war, they told you they had discovered another world, lying beyond our own. An uninhabited world, where you could create a new homeland for yourselves. Humans, in Avitas. Angels, in this new world. Two races, separated and at peace. And they lied.”

  She shook her head, laughing, and lightly touched her temples. “You thought you were traveling to a new home.
Then you found yourselves in the Deep.”

  “And bodiless.” The color was high in Corien’s pale cheeks.

  “It was torment for you. I felt it, just now. I lived it. I felt my body being taken from me, as yours was from you.”

  He rounded on her. “Vision from the empirium or no, you could not possibly understand what it is to have your body truly stripped from you. To lose your beauty and strength, all sense of touch and taste, and be forced to exist as a shell of yourself. And all the while knowing that your true home lies just on the other side of a veil you cannot move past.” He took her face in his hands. “Don’t you see, Rielle? What I do, I do to save my people. We were banished to a place that is not our home. We have been painted villains by the very people who wronged us.”

  “And they would not have had to wrong you,” she replied, “if you hadn’t grown so jealous of our power that you tried to kill us.”

  Corien’s expression turned to stone.

  “Yes, I saw that too,” she whispered, smiling. “You were the one to start this war, centuries and centuries ago. You started the movement in the angelic cities that caught fire and spread. You thought it was unjust of God to have granted elemental power to beings so much lower than you and your own. You thought us a scourge, an insult to your own existence, a blight on your world. You craved our power for yourself. You’re a warmonger. A zealot. You turned your race against mine. If anyone is to blame for what’s happened to your people, it’s not the saints. It’s you, and you alone.”

  She stepped away; his hands slipped from her face. “You led an insurgency, near the end. You tried to prevent the banishment, but the saints were too strong for you. They forced you through. Kalmaroth. That was your name.”

  He flinched, as if the word were a struck fist. “Do not ever say that name again,” he said, very softly. “It is no longer mine.”

  “Do you run from it because it reminds you of what you’ve done?”

  He lunged for her, catching her hard by her wrist before she could stumble. She braced herself to burn him if she had to, insults sharp on her tongue.