Ether-Touched (The Breaking Stone Trilogy Book 1)

by L. M. Coulson

  From the window in Alaric’s sitting room, Thyrian had a perfect view of the palace gardens: neat, carefully-clipped lawns edged with immaculate hedges and rows of flowers in bloom. On one edge, nestled against the palace wall, stood the imposing facade of the Royal Library. On the other, a narrow stone palisade separated the compound from the wide Greenstone River beyond.

  It reminded Thyrian a little of home. Meidhyr Castle, too, was edged in by water—though it was a lake, not a river, that protected Meidhyr’s walls. Galiffan summers never got as hot as Enserion’s, but on a sunny day like this, Galiffan courtiers, too, would roam the grounds in pairs or threes, either enjoying the gardens or partaking in an outdoor game of Ryst.

  Thyrian observed the noblemen and women below without really seeing them, his attention turning inward. The threat of war had affected his home city much more acutely than Cyair. Even if the weather was just as beautiful hundreds of leagues away in Saensre, the Galiffan Court would not be so idle as Enserion’s.

  His father would likely be in near-constant meetings, or traveling to the provincial garrisons to personally inspect his kingdom’s defenses. Thyrian’s siblings would be in attendance, reducing their father’s load when possible: competent Arythene, as heir, would likely be taking on their father’s duties at court while he was away; Caeslin, having a way with people that Thyrian had always half envied and wholly appreciated, would probably be keeping everyone smiling—if she could be bothered to lay down her brushes and come out of her studio. And his twin brothers, Firyn and Roric, would likely be keeping the household running smoothly while coming up with a dozen different clever schemes to aid the war effort.

  Everyone would be contributing. Everyone would make themselves useful.

  Thyrian flexed his fingers, a sense of urgency picking at the edges of his patience. He turned his head, finding Alaric still lounging on his couch, engrossed in a self-help book for housewives.

  I don’t even want to know, he decided.

  Vylaena hovered at the far wall, half hiding in the shadows of a large potted plant, sharpening Thyrian’s gifted dagger with a fine-grained whetstone and a meticulous eye. She glanced up as if knowing where his attention rested, her lips curved into a slight, natural frown.

  Thyrian turned back to the window. He wasn’t used to idleness. He’d traveled almost constantly as a soldier of the Order, and there was always something that needed doing in a guard camp. Or if not, he could always hone his skills against one of the other warriors, or help a new recruit correct his fighting stance.

  Danger prowled near Galiff’s borders, and Thyrian wasn’t among its defenders. He wasn’t even in the kingdom. Instead he was on a mission where his sword couldn’t assist him. It was agony to stand here, watching courtiers flirt between flower pots, and wait for a declaration of alliance he wasn’t sure would ever come.

  A knock sounded at the door, and a muffled voice called out, “A letter for Prince Alaric.”

  Alaric lowered his book and glanced toward the door, but Vylaena was already there. She pulled it open, dagger lowered but still unsheathed. Thyrian smothered a chuckle at the sight of the letter-bearing steward, whose face lost all color as he found himself face-to-face with an armed Shadowheart.

  Formidable. That was a good word to describe Vylaena. She might lean heavily on her people’s reputation as both a deterrent and a bargaining chip, but Thyrian could not deny she had the skill to back up her assertions. Not only had he sparred her himself—and goddesses, had that been an enjoyable fight—but he’d seen her fight off those mercenaries at the king’s hunt with ease.

  He’d watched her grin in the face of mortal pain, pressing on with adept nonchalance. Competent, cruel, unfeeling, she’d calmly dispatched the threat. She hadn’t even winced when she’d literally disarmed one of the men who drew too close.

  He should have felt disgust. Abhorrence. Unease, at the very least. Instead, he found himself drawn to the strange woman—found himself wondering how cruel her life must have been to scour her of the ability to display emotion. And beneath that pity, nestled beneath awe and curiosity, was the barest whisper of pride.

  Pride. He couldn’t explain why it was there, only that it was. The feeling confused him, leaving a twisted, hollow dread in the pit of his stomach.

  “It’s from a Duke Taemon,” Vylaena announced, having accepted the letter and closed the door during Thyrian’s musings. She handed the sealed note to Alaric and then slumped into a nearby armchair, content to resume work on her dagger.

  Alaric sat up, tossing his book onto the cushions beside him. He broke the seal and scanned the letter, eyebrows rising. “It seems I made more of an impression on Father’s council than I thought,” he murmured. “My uncle wishes to dine with me before he departs for the south.”

  “Do you think he could become an ally?” Thyrian asked, his attention piqued.

  “I’m not certain. My Knack says yes, but it’s hazy. Unclear. That usually means ‘yes, but not in the way you think’.” Alaric shrugged, tucking the letter into his book. “I suppose I’ll find out for sure at our lunch today.”

  Thyrian and Vylaena left the prince to pen a reply and prepare, setting off down the hall with no concrete destination in mind. Thyrian took the lead, Vylaena following beside him in silent acceptance of her role as guard.

  “Would you like to walk around the gardens?” Thyrian asked, unsure what else to do. He flexed his fingers again.

  “Not particularly,” Vylaena replied.

  “Hungry?”

  “No.”

  Thyrian fought the urge to sigh. He glanced over at the woman. “Would you prefer we sit in our rooms and watch the sun crawl across the sky?”

  Vylaena’s eyes flickered to his chest, resting there a moment before returning to his face. Her eyes were softer than they’d been before, tempered by whatever she sensed inside his heart. “You need a distraction.”

  “I need to do something useful.”

  Vylaena grinned, her eyes flashing a wicked silver. “Why not have both?”

  ✽✽✽

  Thyrian crept behind Vylaena, moving through the trees of the Elderwood with a quiet speed that reminded him of covert missions in the northeastern Ring Mountains, tracking packs of etherbeasts that picked off villagers in Galiff’s remote mountain towns. Being on the move had—for now, at least—quieted Thyrian’s restlessness, and he observed the passing foliage with a soldier’s wary eye.

  His breath was quiet, slow, his heartbeat steady in his chest. An undeniable thrill hovered at the base of his spine as Vylaena tracked their quarry deep into the woods. The boughs above grew tighter and more knotted as they walked, choking off the brilliance of the midsummer sun and allowing the two of them little more than a golden glow—a promise of light beyond their cage of trees, and nothing more than that.

  “You’re sure they’re still out there?” Thyrian had asked, when Vylaena had suggested a way to pass the time.

  “The Guard will have cleared out any that drew too close to Cyair or the Etherway, but wights are clever. They wait a long time for their bodies, and aren’t keen to walk into a slaughter.” Vylaena’s eyes had shone with impish anticipation. “Which is why we need to bring it to them.”

  If the wights were no nuisance to the people of Cyair, then why hunt them down, he’d asked. Vylaena hadn’t replied at first. Then she’d leveled on him a somber gaze and said: “My cottage is no kingdom, but it’s still home. You can always go back to Galiff if you want to. Right now, I cannot say the same.” She’d smiled then, a dark, eager thing that had seized his breath. “Besides,” she’d told him, “it will be fun.”

  Vylaena had killed a wight before, she’d explained. But it had taken her three days to do so. “Of course,” she’d said, her eyes rising to his brow, “I didn’t have a sun-crowned warrior with me then.”

  Attention drawn back to the present, Thyrian scampered over an exposed root thicker than his thigh, only just keeping up with Vylaena
. Goddesses. He hadn’t realized how quick she could be.

  “Through here,” she murmured over her shoulder, ducking into a green-leaved bush that had grown up and then over, forming a low, tunnel-like path. He obeyed, grunting as a stray branch snatched at his hair.

  There was ether here—more than Thyrian had ever seen in one place. It clung to the shadows, too shy beneath the fully-risen sun to investigate the strangers invading its territory. But it made Thyrian uneasy; everyone was taught from a young age to avoid the substance, and old habits were hard to shake.

  Loose ether without a master was usually harmless. But he was in the infamous Elderwood, a place of ancient power sacred to Ikna, from where all the stories that haunted children’s nightmares sprung. And he followed a former ether-touched who’d claimed to be on a goddess’s shit list. It wasn’t a comfortable combination.

  “It’s close,” Vylaena whispered as they finally drew to the end of the living tunnel, pausing a moment to look around.

  Thyrian kept a hand on his sword pommel. “How do you know?”

  Vylaena didn’t reply. She took off toward the north, more slowly this time, each footfall deliberate and silent. Thyrian followed her around a small ridge and over a tiny ribbon of a stream, coming to stop beside her as she paused, falling to a crouch, behind a misshapen boulder covered in moss.

  “There,” she breathed.

  Thyrian peered over the rock to find a . . . well, it had been human once.

  Once.

  It had two arms, two legs, a torso, a head. But its skin was a mottled black, painted through with shards of deep amethyst and icy blue. There were spikes along its shoulders and down its arms: sharp, threatening things that reminded Thyrian less of a porcupine and more of a metal flail. It was bald, its skull little more than a crisscross of black bone, like a woven basket surrounding a ball of pure blue flame where a brain might’ve once been.

  The sight set some primal part of Thyrian alight, sending a twitch of horror into his gut. But it was quick to burn out, replaced by confidence in his skill with a blade and a deep-set desire to see that unnatural thing returned to the Ether where it belonged.

  Thyrian leaned closer to Vylaena. “Any tips?” he whispered into her ear.

  She shivered reflexively, batting him away, but there was an eager smile on her lips as she gazed at the wight. “Don’t let it get a grip on you,” she replied. “And remember—it can’t die, because it’s not alive in the first place. We can only batter it enough to make the body useless. Beheading worked last time, but this one’s grown protective spikes. Clever, clever ether . . .”

  Thyrian loosened his sword in its sheath. “Do you want to—”

  But Thyrian couldn’t finish. Without so much as glance at him, Vylaena vaulted over the boulder.

  “Oh, rutting—”

  Thyrian was over the rock in an instant, just in time to see Vylaena take a furious swipe at the wight’s left thigh, ducking as it swung an arm at her.

  The punch had missed, but the blow had so much momentum that it crashed into a nearby tree, splintering the trunk with an explosion of debris. Thyrian sidestepped the tree as it began to fall, creaking, its limbs screaming as they tangled in the nearby foliage.

  He had no space to process what had just happened; Vylaena was already moving again, the cut she’d landed having done little to incapacitate the creature.

  The wight roared, the unholy sound like something from an inescapable nightmare. Thyrian had his blade out in one smooth sweep, and landed a slice of his own across the thing’s back. The hideous sound of steel screeching against glass reverberated through the trees, and Thyrian fought to keep a grip on his weapon as it vibrated painfully beneath his fingers.

  It was as if the thing was made of solid rock. There was barely even a wound—a line of blue light was the only clue Thyrian had landed a cut at all. Whatever the creature was made of, it was certainly no longer flesh and blood.

  The wight struck again, whirling around with inhuman speed, and Thyrian barely parried the attack, his arms shaking as he struggled to match the creature’s strength.

  It was Vylaena who struck from behind this time, lashing out with one of her daggers—

  —but it shattered on impact with the layer of spikes protecting the wight’s neck. Splinters of steel radiated from the blow; one caught Thyrian’s shoulder and he winced, losing his grip on his blade.

  He rolled aside as the creature bore down on him, oblivious to the woman who was now drawing a sword of her own behind its back.

  Shit, shit—

  Thyrian blocked another blow, then stepped aside and swung low. The wight let out another scream as Thyrian’s blade sank deep into its injured thigh—

  —at the same moment Vylaena plunged her sword through the wight’s upper back.

  The wight whirled around; Vylaena just barely ducked beneath its arms. Thyrian sidestepped, avoiding Vylaena’s sword now stuck in the creature’s hide. He searched for an opening—

  —but the creature was moving impossibly fast, taking off into the underbrush. Vylaena had to roll out of the way to avoid being trampled.

  “After it!” Vylaena shouted, scrambling to her feet, oblivious to the dirt and leaves caking her front.

  Thyrian didn’t need any prodding. He was already running, sword still held in both hands, heat blossoming at his brow like a flushed kiss. He bounded over a decaying, fallen tree, the sound of footsteps pounding behind him as Vylaena rushed to keep up.

  The wight was quick. Thyrian had wasted no time in pursuit, but the creature was already drawing away, fueled by ether and unable to tire.

  No wonder it took you three days to kill one, Thyrian thought, the sentiment quickly buried beneath a growing sense of awe that Vylaena had managed to kill a wight at all. The thing had taken four blows and eaten two blades and still showed no sign of losing momentum.

  Thyrian cursed. His heartbeat pounded against his ribs; he could almost feel the blood coursing through his body, fueling his muscles. Warmth suffused him, bolstering his energy and granting him a burst of speed.

  “Damnit!” he heard Vylaena shout behind him, her voice sounding much farther away than she’d been a moment before.

  Thyrian was making up ground. The wight gave a heaving roar and stumbled—hampered by that wounded leg, perhaps—giving Thyrian just enough of an edge to catch up.

  He crested a hill and skidded down the other side, fallen leaves and snapped twigs slippery beneath his boots. He lunged; the wight screamed as Thyrian’s blade bit into its side. The creature turned, mad with fury, the fires in its skull burning with crackling energy. It lashed out; Thyrian dodged. It swung; Thyrian rolled.

  The creature was bleeding light now; blue smoke seeped from its wounds. But it kept grasping at Thyrian, swinging its arms like clubs and shredding any nearby foliage that happened to be in the way.

  Thyrian struck, again and again, landing blows that would decapitate any normal man. But the creature inside had stripped away anything human remaining of its host body, and each cut seemed to only increase its fury.

  The Mark on Thyrian’s brow burned, searing his insides with divine light. He felt his mind loosen, opening to the possible choices his enemy could make, and felt his muscles naturally respond—answering each movement the wight made with a seamless counter.

  And then the wight cheated.

  Thyrian felt it happen a moment before it did, his mind open and attentive as it was, in tune with the world around him. He felt the ground beneath his feet shift—though that was too physical a word; the ground itself was still, it was Reality that shifted, twisting around him as something changed—as something erupted just out of sight, out of reach, out of the world itself—

  —and then spilled into it, manifesting as a third arm, growing out of the wight’s right side, which Thyrian was not anticipating and thus could not—

  His breath left him in a shock of pain, and for a moment his sight faltered, plummeting his awa
reness into cold, unfeeling darkness.

  A moment later he blinked, and his surroundings reappeared—blurry and spinning, but there. He was flat on his back in the dirt, sword knocked from his hands, his arm and side screaming in pain.

  And then the wight appeared, looming above him, arms outstretched—

  Don’t let it get a grip on you, Vylaena had warned. And Thyrian now understood why. With that strength, and those stone-like hands, it would crush him before he had a chance to retaliate.

  Thyrian tried to roll out of the way, but his senses were still smarting from the blow and his arm creaked an agonized protest so potent it threatened to carry him back into darkness . . .

  But then he saw her.

  Vylaena. Strange, clever, formidable Vylaena. Behind the wight. Wielding a tree branch like a club.

  She swung.

  The wight lost its balance, keeling over sideways, sprawling into the dirt beside Thyrian, who grasped for his sword. He rolled, yelling through the pain, and plunged his blade right through the creature’s fiery head.

  A burst of light, gold and electric blue, exploded beneath his sword, momentarily blinding him. Or perhaps it was the pain at his side—it was hard to tell. He heard Vylaena give a yelp of surprise, and then all was quiet.

  Thyrian was on his back again. He turned his head to find the wight gone, reduced to a pile of misshapen, blackened bones. His sword was lodged in the earth, gleaming silver and gold, a lone tendril of ether dripping off the blade.

  It was gone. He breathed a sigh of relief and exhilaration and—sweet goddesses—pain.

  He felt Vylaena kneel at his side and swiveled his head to meet her gaze. She stared down at him with a wry smile, her eyes gleaming. “That,” she said, “was a good fight.”

  He wasn’t certain how she was still upright with the excruciating pain currently ripping his left side apart; he knew she could feel every agonizing throb. “You didn’t tell me they could grow extra limbs at will,” he chastised through clenched teeth.

  “I didn’t know they could,” she replied in an offhanded tone, as if it wouldn’t have changed anything anyway. Her eyes narrowed. “You’re too injured to move, so don’t. Your arm’s been shattered and you probably have a few cracked ribs.”