A Conjuring of Light

by V. E. Schwab

  And when the shadow king spoke, it was his own voice, liquid, susurrant.

  “I know your mind, Holland,” said the darkness. “I lived inside it.”

  The shadow king came toward him, and Holland took a single, final step back, his shoulders meeting the pillar as his fingers tightened on the metal cylinder.

  He could feel Osaron’s hunger.

  His need.

  “Do you want to see your world? How it crumbles without you in it?”

  A cold hand, not flesh and blood but shadow and ice, came to rest against Holland’s heart.

  I am tired, he thought, knowing Osaron would hear. Tired of fighting. Of losing. But I will never let you in.

  He felt the darkness smile, sickly and triumphant.

  “Have you forgotten?” whispered the shadow king. “You never cast me out.”

  Holland exhaled. A shuddering breath.

  To Osaron, it might have sounded like fear.

  To Holland, it was simply relief.

  It ends, he thought as the darkness wrapped itself around him, and sank in.

  VI

  Lila was on her knees when it happened.

  Osaron returned to Holland, like steam into a pot, and his body went rigid. His back arched. His mouth opened in a silent scream, and for an awful moment, Lila thought it was too late, thought he’d been too slow, hadn’t had the time, or the strength, or the will to hold on—

  And then Holland slammed the Inheritor’s point into his palm and said a word through gritted teeth.

  “Rosin.”

  Give.

  An instant later, the shadow palace exploded into light.

  Lila gasped as something began to tear inside her and she remembered the binding ring. She closed her hand into a fist and smashed the band against the stone floor, severing the connection before the Inheritor could pull her in as well.

  But Kell wasn’t fast enough.

  A scream escaped his throat and Lila scrambled up, stumbling toward him as he curled in, clawing at the ring with blood-slicked fingers.

  Rhy reached him first.

  The prince was shuddering, his body slipping between life and death, whole and unmade and whole again as he knelt over Kell, his ghostly fingers wrapped around his brother’s hand. The ring came free. It skated across the floor, bouncing once before dissolving into smoke.

  Kell collapsed against Rhy, ashen and still, and Lila fell to her knees beside them, smearing blood on Kell’s cheek as she felt his face, ran a hand through his hair, the copper parted by a streak of silver.

  He was alive, he had to be alive, because Rhy was still there, leaning over him, eyes empty and full at the same time, soaked in blood, but breathing.

  In the center of the room, Holland was a sphere of light, a million silver threads laced with black, all of it visible, all of it unraveling into the air around him in silence that wasn’t silent at all but ringing in her ears.

  And then, suddenly, the light was gone.

  And Holland’s body folded to the floor.

  VII

  Kell opened his eyes and saw the world falling apart.

  No, not the world.

  The palace.

  It was crumbling, not like a building made of steel and stone, but like embers burning, rising up instead of down. That was the way the shadow palace fell. It simply broke apart, the imagined dissolving, leaving only the real behind, bit by bit, stone by stone, until he was lying on the floor not of a palace, but in the ruined remains of the centered arena, the seats empty, the silver-and-blue banners still drifting in the breeze.

  Kell tried to sit up, and gasped, forgetting he’d been stabbed.

  “Easy,” said Rhy with a wince. His brother was kneeling beside him, covered in blood, his clothing torn in a dozen places where the ice had run him through. But he was alive, the skin beneath the cloth already knitting, though the ghost of pain lingered in his eyes.

  Holland’s words came back to Kell.

  “You’ve cut strings from your magic and made a puppet.”

  Holland. He dragged himself slowly upright, and found Lila crouching over the other Antari.

  Holland was lying on his side, curled up as if he’d simply gone to sleep. But the only time Kell had seen him sleep, everything about him had been tense, wracked by nightmares, and now his features were smooth, his sleep dreamless.

  Only three things broke the image of peace.

  His charcoal hair, which had turned a shocking white.

  His hands, which still clutched the Inheritor, its point driven through his palm.

  And the device itself, which had taken on an eerie but familiar darkness. An absence of light. A void in the world.

  Holland had done it.

  He had trapped the shadow king.

  VIII

  In myths, the hero survives.

  The evil is vanquished.

  The world is set right.

  Sometimes there are celebrations, and sometimes there are funerals.

  The dead are buried. The living move on.

  Nothing changes.

  Everything changes.

  This is a myth.

  This is not a myth.

  The people of London still lay in the streets, wrapped tight within the cloth of sleep. Had they woken at that very moment, they would have seen the light flare within the spectral palace, like a dying star, banishing the shadows.

  They would have seen the illusion crumble, the palace collapsing back into the bones of the three arenas, banners still waving overhead.

  If they had gotten to their feet, they would have seen the oily darkness on the river crack like ice, giving way to red, the mist thinning the way it does in the morning, before the market opens.

  If they had looked long enough, they would have seen the figures picking their way out of the rubble—the prince (now their king) staggering down the crumbling bridge with his arm around his brother, and they might have wondered who was leaning on whom.

  They would have seen the girl standing where the palace doors had been, not the collapsed entrance to the stadium. Would have seen her cross her arms against the cold and wait until the royal guards came. Would have seen them carrying the body out, with its hair the same white as that dying star.

  But the people in the street didn’t wake. Not just yet.

  They didn’t see what happened.

  And so they never knew.

  And none who had been within the shadow palace—which was not a palace anymore but the bones of something dead, something ruined, something broken—said anything of that night, save that it was over.

  A myth without a voice is like a dandelion without a breath of wind.

  No way to spread the seeds.

  FIFTEEN

  ANOSHE

  I

  The king of England did not like to be kept waiting.

  A goblet of wine hung from his fingers, sloshing precariously as he paced the room, prevented from spilling over only by his constant sips. George IV had left the party—a party in his honor (as were most of those he bothered to attend)—to make this monthly meeting.

  And Kell was late.

  He had been late before—his arrangement, after all, had been with George’s father, and as the old man failed in health, Kell had made a point of being late to spite him, George was sure—but the messenger had never been this late.

  The agreement was clear.

  The trade of letters scheduled for the fifteenth of every month.

  By six in the evening, and no later than seven.

  But as the clock against the wall struck nine, George was forced to refill his own glass because he’d dismissed everyone else. All to please his guest. A guest who was absent now.

  A letter bulged on the table. Not only a missive—the time for idle correspondence was passed—but a set of demands. Instructions, really. One artifact of magic per month in exchange for England’s best technology. It was more than fair. The seeds of magic for the seeds of might. Powe
r for power.

  The clock chimed again.

  Half past nine.

  The king sank onto the sofa, buttons straining against his not inconsiderable form. His father had only been in the ground six weeks, and already Kell was proving a problem. Their relationship would have to be corrected. The rules defined. He was not a daft old man, and he would not stand for the messenger’s temper, magic or no.

  “Henry,” called George.

  He did not shout the name—kings need not need raise their voices to be heard—but a moment later the door opened and a man came through.

  “Your Majesty,” he said with a bow.

  Henry Tavish was an inch or two taller than George himself—a detail that irked the king—with a heavy mustache and dark, trim hair. A handsome fellow with the rather unhandsome job of conducting business the crown wouldn’t—couldn’t—do itself.

  “He’s late,” said the king.

  Henry knew of his visitor’s name and station.

  George had been careful, of course, hadn’t gone about spreading the word of this other London, much as he’d have liked to. He knew what would happen if word got out too soon. Some might see eye to eye, but woven in with the wonder, there would be a poisonous thread of skepticism.

  “Such tales,” they’d say. “Perhaps troubled minds run in the family.”

  Revolutionaries were too easily mistaken for madmen.

  And George would not have that. No, when he revealed magic to this world—if he revealed it—it would not be a whisper, a rumor, but a demonstrable, undeniable threat.

  But Henry Tavish was different.

  He was essential.

  He was a Scotsman, and every good Englishman knew that a Scotsman had few qualms about getting his hands dirty.

  “No sign of him as yet,” said the man in his gruff but lilting way.

  “You checked the Stone’s Throw?”

  King George was no fool. He’d been having the foreign “ambassador” followed since before he was crowned, had his fair share of men reporting that they’d lost sight of the strange man in the stranger coat, that he had simply disappeared—apologies, Your Majesty, so sorry, Your Majesty—but Kell never left London without a visit to the Stone’s Throw.

  “It’s called the Five Points now, sir,” said Henry. “Run by a rather squirrelly fellow named Tuttle after the death of its old owner. Gruesome thing, according to authorities, but—”

  “I don’t need a history lesson,” cut in the king, “only a straight answer. Did you check the tavern?”

  “Aye,” said Henry, “I went by, but the place was closed up. Strange thing, though, as I could hear someone in there, scurrying around, and when I told Tuttle to open up, he said he couldn’t. Not wouldn’t, mind, couldn’t. Struck me as suspicious. You’re either in or you’re out, and he sounded even more wound up than normal, like something had him spooked.”

  “You think he was hiding something.”

  “I think he was hiding,” amended Henry. “It’s a known thing that that pub caters to occultists, and Tuttle’s a self-proclaimed magician. Always thought it was a scam, even with your telling me about this Kell—I went inside once, nothing but some curtains and crystal balls—but maybe there’s a reason your traveler frequented that place. If he’s up to something, perhaps this Tuttle knows what. And if your traveler’s got a mind to stand you up, well, maybe he’ll still show there.”

  “The insolence of it,” muttered George. He set his cup on the table and hauled himself to his feet, snatching up the letter from the table.

  It appeared there were still some things a king must do himself.

  * * *

  It was getting worse.

  Much worse.

  Ned had tried banishing spells in three different languages, one of which he didn’t even speak. He’d burned all the sage he had stockpiled, and then half the other herbs he kept in the kitchen, but the voice was getting louder. Now his breath fogged no matter how high the hearth was stoked, and that black spot on the floor had grown first to the size of a book, then a chair, and it was now larger than the table he’d hurriedly pushed against the doors.

  He had no choice.

  He had to summon Master Kell.

  Ned had never successfully summoned anyone, unless you counted his great-aunt when he was fourteen, and he still wasn’t entirely sure it was her, since the kettle had been overfilled, and the cat quick to spook. But desperate times.

  There was, of course, the problem of Kell’s being in another world. But then, so was this creature, it seemed, and it was reaching through, so perhaps Ned could whisper back. Perhaps the walls were thinner here. Perhaps there was a draft.

  Ned lit five candles around the element kit and the coin Kell had gifted him on his last visit, a makeshift altar in the center of the tavern’s most auspicious table. The pale smoke, which was spreading even in the absence of the sage, seemed to bend around the offering, which Ned took as a very good sign.

  “All right, then,” he said to no one and to Kell and the darkness in between. He sat, elbows on the table and palms up, as if waiting for someone to reach out and take his hands.

  Let me in, whispered that ever-present voice.

  “I summon Kell—” Ned paused, realizing he didn’t know the other man’s full name, and began again. “I summon the traveler known as Kell, from London far away.”

  Worship me.

  “I summon a light against the dark.”

  I am your new king.

  “I summon a friend against an enemy I do not know.”

  Goose bumps broke out along Ned’s arm—another good sign, at least, he hoped. He pressed on.

  “I summon the stranger with the many mantles.”

  Let me in.

  “I summon the man with eternity in his eye, and magic in his blood.”

  The candles shivered.

  “I summon Kell.”

  Ned closed his hands into fists, and the quivering flames went out.

  He held his breath as five tendrils of thin white smoke trailed into the air, forming five faces with five yawning mouths.

  “Kell?” he ventured, voice trembling.

  Nothing.

  Ned sank back into his chair.

  Any other night, he would have been over the moon to extinguish the candles, but it wasn’t enough.

  The traveler hadn’t come.

  Ned reached out and took up the foreign coin with the star at its center and the lingering scent of roses. He turned it over in his fingers.

  “Some magician,” he muttered to himself.

  Beyond the bolted door, he heard the heavy clomp of a coach and four drawing up, and a moment later, a fist pounded on the wood.

  “Open up!” bellowed a deep voice.

  Ned sat up straight, pocketing the coin. “We’re closed!”

  “Open this door!” ordered the man again, “by orders of His Majesty the King!”

  Ned held his breath as if he could starve the moment out with lack of air, but the man kept knocking and the voice kept saying Let me in and he didn’t know what to do.

  “Break it down,” ordered a second voice, this one smooth, pompous.

  “Wait!” called Ned, who really couldn’t afford to lose the front door, not when that slab of wood was one of the only things keeping the darkness from spilling out.

  He slid the bolt, opened the door a crack, just enough to see a man with a sleek handlebar mustache filling the step.

  “I’m afraid there’s been a leak, sir, not fit for—”

  The mustached man shoved the door inward with a single push, and Ned stumbled backward as George the Fourth strode into his pub.

  The man wasn’t dressed as the king, of course, but a king was a king whether they wore silk and velvet or burlap. It was in his bearing, his haughty look, and, of course, the fact that his face was on the newly minted coin in Ned’s pocket.

  But even a king would still be in danger.

  “I beg of you,” said Ne
d. “Leave this place at once.”

  The king’s man snorted, while George himself sneered. “Did you just issue an order to the king of England?”

  “No, no, of course not, but, Your Majesty—” His gaze darted nervously around the room. “It isn’t safe.”

  The king crinkled his nose. “The only thing poised to cause me ill is the state of this place. Now where is Kell?”

  Ned’s eyes widened. “Your Majesty?”

  “The traveler known as Kell. The one who’s frequented this pub once a month without fail for the last seven years.”

  The shadows were beginning to draw together behind the king. Ned swore to himself, half curse, half prayer.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing, Your Majesty,” stammered Ned. “I haven’t seen Master Kell this month, I swear it, but I could send word—” The shadows had faces now. The whispers were growing. “—Send word if he comes around. I know your address.” A nervous laugh. The shadows leered. “Unless you’d rather I make it out to—”

  “What the devil are you looking at?” demanded the king, glancing back over his shoulder.

  Ned couldn’t see His Majesty’s face, so he couldn’t gauge the expression that crossed it when the king saw the ghosts with their gaping mouths and their scornful eyes, their silent commands to kneel, to beg, to worship.

  Could they hear the voices, too? wondered Ned. But he never got the chance to ask.

  The king’s man crossed himself, turned on his heel, and left the Five Points without a backward glance.

  The king himself went very still, jaw working up and down without making any sound.

  “Your Majesty?” prompted Ned as the ghosts yawned and collapsed into smoke, into mist, into nothing.

  “Yes…” said George slowly, smoothing his coat. “Well, then…”

  And without another word, the king of England drew himself up very straight, and walked very briskly out.

  II

  It was raining when the hawk returned.

  Rhy was standing on an upper balcony, under the shelter of the eaves, watching as freights hauled the remains of the tournament arenas from the river. Isra waited just inside the doorway. Once the captain of his father’s city guard, now the captain of his royal one. She was a statue dressed in armor, while Rhy himself wore red, as was the custom for those in mourning.