“She wants you, for who you are,” Dellbar whispered. “But you aren’t where you’re born, or where you come from, or what you’ve done. Destroy her for hatred and vengeance, and you’ll become exactly what she wanted you to be. You’ll never win. Do it, instead, because you understand her more deeply than any of us here can ever know.”
Sora’s lip quivered. A tear rolled down her cheek. Dellbar wiped it with one finger as if he wasn’t completely blind. Then, he stood, wearing a thin smile, and gave her arms a squeeze before using his cane to tap toward the exit.
“Where are you going?” Torsten asked.
“I think I may have finally figured out how we banish her demons,” Dellbar said.
“We need you here.”
“You don’t.”
The High Priest reached the doors and knocked with his cane. Guards outside pulled them open, and like that, he was gone.
Torsten swore. The drunken version of Dellbar made far more sense.
Sora collapsed back into her chair. Whitney, the man who never shut up, remained silent, consoling her by rubbing her hand. It had been a year of strange sights for Torsten, and somehow, that felt like one of the strangest. It also erased nearly all the doubt in his head over whether or not they could be trusted.
He knew that look in Sora’s eyes. The pain of being violated. Having her entire life stolen. He’d seen it once, long ago, in the eyes of a girl taken from her tribe and brought to Yarrington. In Oleander’s eyes. There was something else there, in Sora’s eyes—something he couldn’t place…
“Remind me again, how was he chosen to be High Priest?” Sir Mulliner asked.
“Because, for once, the charlatans in Hornsheim trusted in Iam,” Torsten retorted.
He couldn’t believe the words he’d spoken about his church, and yet, there they were, hanging on the air. And Torsten meant it. Dellbar had been a breath of fresh air from the start, with no worry for politics or gold. He barely wanted to be alive.
“I like him,” Mahraveh said. “And he’s right. Sora is here, whether we like it or not. If she’s telling the truth, it’s our best shot. Nesilia spoke to me to try and lure me to her side, but she made a mistake. My father taught me to sense the weaknesses in everyone around me because even friends can become opponents like that.” She snapped her fingers. “For Nesilia, this isn’t a mad, murderous quest. It’s personal.”
“It is,” Lucindur agreed.
“Have I mentioned how much I love the Shesaitju?” Whitney remarked.
A chuckle snuck through Torsten’s lips. Lord Jolly looked like he’d heard a horrid curse.
“I suppose, I would have loved to be there to see father’s face after he found the stone missin from his vault,” Al said.
“Aye, I wish we could’ve, too,” Tum Tum said. “But fear’s got the best of him now. It was a sad sight to see.”
“That explains why he’s ignored any attempt to contact him,” Torsten said. “But it doesn’t matter. Here. This room. This is what we have to stand against the goddess: two knights, a mystic, a Caleef, a thief...” He continued like this, regarding each as he spoke their titles. “We might not all trust each other, but that’s the truth of it.”
“Hear, hear!” Whitney hollered, banging on the table and sending more of the little figurines and carvings sprawling.
Even Sir Mulliner showed a hint of amusement, then said, “What a ridiculous group.”
“She’s hurt us all,” Mahraveh said, standing. “Some deeper than others. My home. My father. I will do whatever it takes to stop her.” She moved to the model of Yarrington. “She may have revealed her weaknesses, but she’s also not a fool. She planned and built her army before rushing here for vengeance. She won’t come near the fight unless we draw her. I think if we—“ She stopped and looked to Torsten. “May I?”
He nodded her along, all while wishing Pi had lived. They would’ve made an impressive pair one day.
“What do you propose?” Torsten said
Mahraveh pointed to Dockside and Autla’s Inlet. “Put me in charge of defending the waterfront.”
“Are you sure that’s smart? We know from scouts that Babrak’s fleet is sailing around from the south. He’ll try to taunt you. We shouldn’t repeat Nesilia’s mistakes.”
“This isn’t personal, I promise. If we win, Babrak dies either way. But we all need to win. Nesilia might try to flood out the low-ground around the harbor, like in Latiapur. My people are used to fighting on the water.”
Torsten looked to Lord Jolly, the Master of Ships.
“I can think of no one better,” Kaviel Jolly said. “My ships are at her command.”
“Thank you, Lord Jolly,” Mahraveh said.
“She will have many Current Eaters with them,” Bit’rudam said. “Wianu,” he corrected when everyone looked at him quizzically.
“I’m sorry, that sounded plural,” Whitney chimed in. “How many of those monsters does she have?”
“Enough,” Torsten said.
“We’ll need one to devour the Brike Stone after we bind her,” Sora said. “The more, the better.”
“Sora, I love you, but that’s the craziest thing you’ve ever said,” Whitney replied.
“No, I like it,” Mahraveh said. “Your blacksmith, Hovom Nitebrittle and I had an idea when I helped him toss all the glaruium armor into the water. He wasn’t sure you’d like it.”
“All plans must be heard,” Torsten said. He turned and found the old blacksmith standing amidst the Royal Council, quiet as always. Hovom may not have been on the Council, and he certainly didn’t dress like it, but he’d been around for a long, long time. There was no one Torsten would trust more in regards to outfitting his army.
Hovom cleared his throat. “Well, we thought it might be wise to ignore saving Dockside and South Corner and transform them into a death trap. It is, as Mahraveh said, the lowest point of the city.”
“Abandon nearly a third of Yarrington?” Sir Mulliner asked in disbelief.
“In a sense.”
“Turn it into a weapon,” Mahraveh clarified. “Nesilia will attack with raw power again. The buildings there are the most brittle. Hovom thought maybe we craft chains, as many as we can, and lash all the structures together, pulling with my zhulong. In the harbor, we’ll create a snare of barbed iron.”
“I got the idea from the Shesaitju arrows,” Hovom interjected.
“Yes, and every strand they pull on,” Mahraveh continued, “will not only work to destroy their hulls but will bring buildings crashing down upon them. We can arrange it to purposefully funnel them to strong points. If the chains are durable enough, they could even slow the wianu, and then I will make sure to capture one alone.”
“You?” Whitney scoffed.
“Me,” she said firmly.
Whitney swallowed hard and stayed quiet.
Hovom agreed. “We can’t use glaruium, but they’ll be strong. I’ll see to that.”
“How do you expect to prepare so many chains in so short a time?” Lord Jolly asked.
Hovom was a large man. Perhaps not Torsten’s size, but not small by any description. He turned his gaze to the floor. “I hope I was not out of line, but I already have blacksmiths throughout the city working on it.”
Torsten eyed the man for a moment, then smiled.
“Well done, my friend,” Torsten said. “However, this will shrink our area of defense as you hold them off. That’ll mean tighter confines. More innocents and soldiers clustered in the high city. An easier target. There are no walls between South Corner and the rest of the city.”
“But we’ll slow them,” Mahraveh said. “I know Babrak. He’ll press an imagined advantage like a rabid boar. We can blockade routes out of Dockside, and defend choke points here, here, and here.”
“I’m with them,” Lord Jolly said. “I took stock of our naval forces after Winde Port and Latiapur. We won’t have a chance at stopping their fleet, they’ll roll right through us. So, we can u
se that. Send out ships manned with a barely workable crew, merely to lose and retreat. Load the ships with oil. While the crews escape on rowboats, they can set fire to their former vessels. We’ll block the enemy with flames and iron.”
“Dockside, too. Once the chains snare them, we’ll burn the whole district if we have to.”
Torsten cringed at the thought of South Corner engulfed. Though he hadn’t lived there in a very long time, that would always be home. He scratched his chin.
“Okay, so we do that,” Mulliner said. “That’s just one of her many armies.”
Torsten stood and skirted the table toward the model. “Freydis and the Drav Cra will march from the north. If she has the savages organized—even if she doesn’t—they’ll be a mighty foe.”
“Yarrington’s walls are tall and thick, many times that of Crowfall,” Lord Jolly said. “They won’t fall so easily.”
“They’ll rely upon her magic to break through,” Torsten said.
“So, we let her,” Sora said. “Make her confident enough to get in range.”
“We’re already letting them flood Dockside,” Lord Jolly said.
“Freydis is the key to everything. I need to kill her. She’s too strong for anyone else to take, but that’s how we draw Nesilia in. Freydis is the sister Nesilia never had, the one follower who never abandoned her, or went out on their own like Redstar. Who loved her.”
“What about the mystic?” Torsten asked. “You say it’s her sister-goddess, Bliss?”
Whitney blew a raspberry. “They hate each other. They’re just working together for convenience.”
“Sounds familiar,” someone from the Council grumbled. Torsten didn’t bother to find out who.
“He’s right,” Sora said. “If I take out Freydis, Nesilia will come for me.”
“Hmm,” Torsten thought aloud. “Drav Cra, Shesaitju, they’re human—them we can fight if they get in. Nesilia’s demons, they might infest us all. So, I will mount our main defenses here at the Eastern Gate. I’ll make myself very visible in leading. Nesilia will think that’s our focus.”
“So, let me get this straight,” Sir Mulliner said. “We burn Dockside and South Corner, and surrender the Northern Mason’s district—which is vitally close to the castle and Old Yarrington, I might add. Then, we put our leader on display, all to try and capture Nesilia with a magical stone?”
“He’s smart, Torsten,” Whitney said, pointing. “Really smart guy.”
Austun Mulliner sat back in his seat. “I just want you all to hear how insane this is.”
“We lose in a fair fight,” Mahraveh said. “We all know that. So why fight one? We have to play to their weakness, which is that they don’t think we stand a chance.”
Torsten returned to his seat, staring at the model the entire way.
What would Liam do? he wondered. The unexpected, sure, but he’d trust in Iam. This plan, however, required trust in many gods and peoples.
Maybe, Torsten hoped, that was the point of all of this.
“One problem,” Whitney said, raising his hand.
“What?” Torsten asked.
“We can’t put Nesilia in this…” Whitney picked up the Brike Stone and stuffed it into his pocket, beckoning the light to return. “… Without Lucy’s Lightmancing. We have Sora, whose connection to Nesilia should let her in, but as soon as Lucindur starts, every creature in Nesilia’s army will come after them. That means grimaurs from above, goblins from below. Wolves.” He shuddered.
“It’s true,” Lucindur said. “They’ll be drawn to me like moths to a flame.”
Every word out of her mouth fell on Torsten’s ears like a symphony. And when she looked at him, his heart skipped a beat. Was this the ancient, forgotten power of Lightmancery? He’d seen tales written about it in tomes, but that part of Glintish history had long since vanished, back when the mystics rose to power.
“So, Sora kills Freydis, Nesilia hopefully comes after her,” Torsten said, running the plan through his mind out loud just to make sure it wasn’t as crazy as it sounded in his head. It was, but that didn’t matter. “Then, she retreats back to the castle, and that’s where we take her. Lucindur and Sora will be safest there while entering Sigrid and Nesilia’s mind.”
“Once Freydis is gone, I’ll send Aquira to ring the cathedral bells, and we’ll all know it’s time.”
“What is an Aquira?” Mulliner asked.
“A wyvern,” Sora replied.
Mulliner exhaled through his teeth. “Of course.”
“Hey, she may only be a wyvern, but I trained her to be sneaky,” Whitney said. “She can handle it.”
“You trained her?” Sora said.
Whitney crossed his arms. “Yep.”
“Then it’s settled,” Torsten said. “We make our stand in the Throne Room and pray all the great kings of old are there with us to protect the Lightmancer.”
“She’ll have me by her side,” Tum Tum said.
“And me,” Whitney said.
“And what’s left of the Serpent Guard,” Mahraveh added. “If she’s the key, we’ll need our best warriors defending her while she uses her magic.”
“Then it should be the Shieldsmen,” Sir Mulliner attested. “You dissolved our Order, but we’re still the best in Yarrington.”
“The best of all of them,” Torsten decided. He gazed up at the finely carved chunked of stone comprising the Shield Hall. “This castle has stood since the dawn of Iam’s Kingdom. Where better to make our last stand against her?”
XXXVII
The Mystic
Since the moment she’d arrived in Yarrington—even before that, when she’d gained her first view of Mount Lister casting its shadow over the city—Sora had one lingering thought. She knew it was silly; she hadn’t even known the man, much less cared for him, but blood was blood. A mystic knows that if they know anything.
Walking through the Glass Castle dungeons gave her the chills. Though, it might’ve been the cold. It was freezing, as if part of the punishment endured by the prisoners was to suffer a slow death by frostbite.
“You’ve gotta think,” Whitney whispered beside her, “if it’s this easy to sneak into the castle dungeons, it can’t be too hard sneaking out either.”
“I still don’t understand why we are in the dungeons to begin with,” Sora said. “I thought the Royal Crypt was inside the mountain? It feels like we are going away from it.”
“Just a figment of your imagination. Things get confusing when you’re underground.”
Nesilia had been in Sora’s head for so long that Sora could almost imagine what the goddess would’ve said if she heard that sentence. Imagine how confusing things would be after thousands of years underground.
Right here, Sora thought. She was buried right here, only much, much deeper.
Sora, however, stayed quiet and trusted that Whitney was leading them the right way.
They passed dozens of cells—most of which were now empty. Torsten had given the command for even the prisoners to be given weapons and serve in the defense, under strict watch by former Shieldsmen. He’d said anyone capable of fighting needed to fight, criminal or not. Without the aid of all, there’d be nothing left for anyone. Sora supposed he was right, but that didn’t change how scary it was that so many who’d just been locked up were now running around Yarrington with sharp blades.
But she’d come to trust Torsten. His mind for war was keen, and she had to admit, the strategy they’d all developed sounded far better than any she’d have thought up on her own. The Shesaitju Caleef, too. Mahraveh had a collectedness to her as uncanny as her pure black skin. And at the same time, eyes that spoke of ferocity even Nesilia should fear.
This city was in as good hands as possible.
And Sora was thrilled she’d be the one to take down Freydis. A fire burned inside of her that had nothing to do with Elsewhere or magic. She wanted to see Nesilia and anyone who’d pledged allegiance to her, dead. She’d wrap vines arou
nd that warlock’s throat, tear out her tongue and silence her once and for all.
A chill ran through her at the darkness of her thoughts.
“Are you okay?” Whitney asked.
“Mmm-hmm, fine,” she said quickly. “Just get us to the crypt. I don’t like this place.”
“Wow, the all-powerful mystic is afraid of a few unoccupied cells.”
“Shut up,” Sora said.
“What do you think of Torsten’s plan?” Whitney asked.
Sora thought about how to answer. She couldn’t even believe she’d gone from a young girl, locked up in the basement of the town witch doctor to having just been seated around a table with the Royal Council, generals, and god-queens.
“It’s about as good as we can ask for,” Sora said.
“I don’t like that it has to be you who goes in with Lucindur,” Whitney replied.
“You know it has to be.”
“I still don’t like it. And that Shieldsman? Mulgibore? What is that guy’s deal? And a greedy little dwarf as Master of Coin? It’s like they plucked the whole lot of them out of a Royal Carnival. Who’d have thought that, in that room, the most sensible would be a priest and a Shesaitju?”
“Who’d have thought the Buried Goddess would rise again to kill all of us?” Sora said.
“Honestly? I could’ve called it.”
A sudden clang of metal sent Sora stumbling away from iron bars and into the stone wall behind her. A pasty hand reached through, grasping for them. Dirt caked its knuckles and fingernails, and dark liver spots dotted the length of the arm. Sora followed it in the darkness to the haggard face of a woman who had seen far better days. Gray hair, gray cheeks, brown teeth, and eyes covered by shadow.
“I see you,” she said.
The bars clattered again as the woman made another lunge.
“What?” Sora said back.
“I. See. You.” The voice was unfamiliar and cold. What followed the words was a shrill cackle that sent Sora and Whitney both skittering away from the cell. A cold shadow followed them down the hall.
“Sheesh, what a freak,” Whitney said, shaking his whole body out like he’d just been covered in ants.
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