“Did Kuruk send you?” Gexxek asked.
“That’s twice I’ve heard that name. Is Kuruk the Lord of Rifts?”
A chill ran through Gexxek. Kuruk did not play jokes. He did not send ambiguous messengers. Gexxek snatched up the dagger, stepped quickly forward and thrust it into the man’s—
The dagger clinked against solid air, unable to reach the intruder. The man whispered, and the blade melted. Gexxek yanked his hand back as steel dripped down his palm, cool as river water. He stumbled away, looking up in shock.
“Who are you?” Gexxek repeated.
The man grabbed Gexxek’s robes with a blackened, skeletal hand and shoved him backward. He bared his teeth.
“I’m the Whisper Prince,” he hissed.
Chapter 46
Grei
Stone suffocated Grei, eating his organs, his skin, his throat, taking away his life. He tried to scream, but nothing came out. The last thing he saw was Julin’s victorious gaze, eyes glittering. Then the stone covered him, and Grei went blind.
He screamed without a voice. There was no escape because he wasn’t anywhere. He wasn’t anything. He was thought without a mind, and all around him droned the voice, that horrible voice that would not be silenced.
Stone. Stone. Stone. Stone.
Grei tried to get past the fear, but the repeating words suffocated him. He was already dead! The dark overwhelmed him, and he floated endlessly, surrounded by that thudding, never-ending mantra.
Stone. Stone. Stone. Stone.
When he had been battered beyond sanity, when he realized there was no escape, he accepted. He let the droning voice wash over him and gave in. There was only stone. There was no Grei anymore. No Whisper Prince.
No Whisper Prince...
Whisper Prince...
The Whisper Prince whispered of love...
A voice sang softly, slowly rising over the droning of “Stone. Stone. Stone. Stone.” He knew that voice.
A lost fair lady looked into the mist
The Whisper Prince whispered of love
The lady saw slaughter, and terror, and rifts
The prince, he whispered of love
Adora!
The remains of his identity grasped at the song, at the poem, at the heart of Adora’s purpose. He listened past the awful droning to the voice that called to him, called him to task.
I’ve been searching for you, he said. Where are you?
But the voice just continued, pulling at him, lifting him up from oblivion.
A lost fair lady looked into the mist
The Whisper Prince whispered of love
The lady saw slaughter, and terror, and rifts
The prince, he whispered of love
Love came swimming along the lost road
Her heel painted with blood
The shadows came charging with wrath born of old
Their claws dripping with blood
With blood and from fire the shadows unwound
Losing souls too many to measure
The flesh and the faces of others were bound
And the shadows all took of their measure
Their measure felled hordes; their fires untamed
But the prince, before them, he stood
One hand on the rose, one hand in the flames
The prince, before them all, stood
All stood when the horns of the realm gave alarm
Too late for all and for one
But he sent them away
And never did say
Why a princess lay down for his charm
I am coming, he thought. I will find a way. I will find you.
A green light appeared.
It was a tiny thing, the barest flicker of emerald, but he was transfixed. In a land of absolute blackness, that tiny smear of green was a world in itself. As he focused on the color, it grew and enveloped him.
Suddenly there was a sense of space. He felt inhuman skin pulled over smooth bones. There was Faia magic, music and growing things, and Grei realized he could think. The droning voice had retreated.
I am in my arm, he thought. The arm the Faia healed.
With that thought came memories.
Julin came for me, but it was not Julin. Julin had become a slave of the slinks; he turned me to stone.
Grei huddled desperately into that single, wretched part of himself, clinging to his identity. After a time, he mustered the courage to think again.
I can undo it, he thought. That is why I am the Whisper Prince. This is not oblivion. It is only stone. It owned me, but I am not dead. Not yet.
He spoke to the stone. He told it to change back, to become Grei Forander again. It ignored him. The voice yelling “Stone!” was far too loud for Grei to shout over.
He tried concentrating on a small part of his body, his elbow just above the bony, gray forearm, tried to convince it to listen to his voice instead of the powerful drone.
It didn’t work.
He felt the pathways the droning voice had taken, turning muscles, skin, bone and blood to stone. There were minute distinctions in each, but try as he might, he could not turn even a fingernail back to its original state.
He retreated into the charred hand.
The wands were Faia magic, and Grei could feel its overwhelming power, but it was a power that had been twisted. The emperor had slain Faia, and this is what he had made with their deaths. The Faia would never create something like the rods of the Imperial Wands. They would never intend to torture humans in this way, turn them to stone and let their souls scream inside forever.
But Grei’s bone arm had not turned to stone. So recently imbued with Faia magic, the arm had been powerful enough to resist the transformation. It had saved him.
And then Grei knew what to do. Instead of trying to shout over the ceaseless droning and give a command to his stone body, he spoke to the voice itself.
“Your task is finished. Stop,” he said.
The voice ceased, so suddenly it was startling. A meek echo drifted into the back of his awareness, and then it was gone. The pressure and force of the Faia’s magic had been released from doing what it did not wish to be doing in the first place.
“Revert,” he whispered to his stone body, picturing it whole and complete. He saw blood becoming blood again, bones turning back to bone. He imagined his eyes and flesh and hair and clothes all becoming what they once were.
The transformation spread like wildfire. Without the droning command of the Faia magic, his voice was strong, and his body leapt immediately to do his bidding.
* * *
Grei fell onto his face in the dirt, gasping, then crying. The rich smell of earth and grass filled his nostrils. The silver moonlight lit his hands, his flesh-and-blood hands. His sobs turned to laughter. It seemed like he had spent lifetimes in the dark, but only minutes had passed. He stood on shaky legs and shuffled to the overlook, reveling in the strength of his muscles, the thud of each step through his body. He saw the Julin slink striding down the slope toward the imperial road. He listened for Adora’s song, and for a moment he thought he heard it on the wind, but then it was gone.
Like a ghost, Grei followed the slink into the city of Thiara, straight to the palace and up to this room. Julin knocked on the door and spoke the name “Gexxek.”
That was when Grei used what he had learned and turned Julin to stone.
Julin’s statue was behind the door where Grei stood when “Gexxek” returned.
He regarded the two statues now, the slink Julin and the one he had just made of the Imperial Archon. Turning the Archon to stone had been impulsive, but not a complete loss. Grei knew his handiwork much more intimately now. His learning inside his stone self had been excruciating, but he thought he could change both statues back to flesh if he wished. Whether they would be dead flesh or living people when he did, Grei didn’t know. Neither of them had a Faia-charmed arm or a song to pluck them from the darkness.
But if they were alive,
he could question them, find the next link in the chain. Both interlopers had mentioned “Kuruk”. Was this the Lord of Rifts?
Through our fear, he thought, they enslave us. I stand frozen in indecision because of it. We enlist men as Imperial Wands because of it. We order Highblades to steal innocents, drag them to the slinks and throw them like shovels of dirt on the top of our graves.
The Debt of the Blessed was part of a deeper plan. They were infiltrating human bodies.
Blevins’ question from a thousand years ago at The Floating Stone rose in Grei’s mind: Why just take one each month? Why not kill us all?
The answer was this. The slinks were taking bodies. Using them. But the slinks had the power to kill everyone in the empire. They had shown that. Why not use it?
He raised his head at the light clack of wooden footsteps. They came closer and stopped outside the Archon’s door.
Another visitor. Another link in the chain. Grei faded back into the shadows.
Chapter 47
Grei
The woman who entered the room was tall in her elevated wooden shoes. Her gown was black, trimmed with deep red and gold with not a pleat out of place. Her long, raven black hair flowed down her back, shining in the morning sunlight from the far window. A circlet of twisted gold rested on her head.
She drew a breath as if to speak, then her gaze fell on the stone Archon by his desk, and she froze where she was. That brief hesitation was the only indication she was repulsed. She stepped toward the statue, her wooden shoes clacking lightly, and touched the Archon’s face with light fingers.
Grei gazed at her back, into her. She had come here looking for the Archon, and anger simmered around his image. The Order had told her the prophecy had arrived at her doorstep, and she must look for weapons in the emperor’s workshop. But they had also told her Mialene was in the palace in the Archon’s hands.
The woman had decided to come here first. Her desire to see Mialene was tangled up with the foreboding of what she must do. These desires and thoughts halted in her shock at the Archon’s demise.
The woman straightened. The last image Grei received was fear, as she guessed that the Archon’s attacker might still be in the room. Her emotions became shielded, just as Adora’s had been in Fairmist.
She turned, her eyes searching the darkness, and spotted him.
He had received no indication that she was a slink, but she knew a great deal she hadn’t told anyone.
“Come forward. I will not hurt you,” she said.
“Your concern is heartwarming, Empress Via.” Grei took a small step toward her, allowing the morning light to touch his boots.
The empress’ façade was perfect. Her gaze asserted that it was his place to please her. If he had not just looked into her, he would never have thought she feared him.
The empress’ blue eyes were Adora’s. So was the delicate line of her jaw, her full lips, and that imperious stare. She was Adora, twenty years older. Only Via’s hair was straight and black without a hint of gold.
“You’re the Whisper Prince,” she said.
“And you’re part of Adora’s Order,” he said.
He caught a brief flash of her surprise through his magic. Nothing showed on her face.
There were so many lies. Were Adora and her mother collaborating? Had Adora fed him a false story about being sacrificed to the slinks as the first Blessed? About being saved by a Faia?
“I’m here to help you,” the empress said. “I came here looking for you—”
“You came looking for your daughter,” he said.
Her lips pressed together.
“How much do you know?” she asked.
He let out a short laugh. “Let’s try this a different way,” he said. “How much do you know?”
“The cusp is upon us,” she said without missing a step. “Now is your time to shine.”
Grei stepped into the light and brought his unnatural hand up to point at her. “I have only killed slinks so far,” he said in a low voice. “But I will make an exception for you.”
She lifted her chin, and he touched it with a blackened, skeletal finger.
“You threaten me?” she demanded, her blue eyes flashing.
“I’m sick of being manipulated. I’m sick of your Order.”
“Take your hand away,” she said in an even tone.
He lowered his arm. His body vibrated with the need to grab her, shake her. “Tell me everything,” he said.
“The fate of the empire is at stake, perhaps today.”
“And I think it’s worse than you know. Did you know about him?” He gestured at the Archon.
She looked at the stone Archon, then back at Grei. “I knew about him.”
“What did you know?”
She watched him, then said, “He held my daughter. He plotted against my husband.”
He looked into her as hard as he could, but whatever skill was required to hide emotions from him, she had it. He couldn’t tell if she was lying. Either she didn’t know that the Archon had been a slink, or she was withholding the information, trying to manipulate him.
Grei clenched his fist. “Stone,” he hissed through his teeth.
The empress gasped, snatching her hand back. He had turned a tiny square of her skin to stone. He knew the pain was excruciating. Her control slipped, and he saw her fear, but much greater than that was her purpose. She did not care so much for her own life as she did for her mission. Just like Selicia. Grei had had about enough of that.
“Tell me what I want to know,” he growled, fighting through the fog that descended over his mind at having forced his will on her flesh. He felt ill.
“You mistake yourself,” the empress said. “With a shout, I could have a hundred Highblades in this room.”
“Do it,” he challenged her. “And your precious prophecy can burn.”
The empress held herself still, one hand over the injury he’d given her. She had begun to bleed at the corners where her flesh separated from stone.
“I’m not here to play games with you,” he said.
“What do you want to know?” she asked.
“I want to know everything. What is this damned Order that you and Adora serve?”
She nodded. “It is called Baezin’s Order. They’re Faia worshippers, keepers of knowledge. They’re the only ones who knew the slinks were coming. They’re the only ones who can send them away again.”
“I’m the only one, you mean.”
She was silent for a moment, then said, “They predicted you would come.”
“And stood by while my family was killed.”
“Destroying the slinks is more important than any one person’s family.”
He felt remorse slip through her guard. She regretted her part, but not enough to stop playing it.
“You gave her to the slinks, didn’t you?” he hissed, feeling sorry for Adora that she had parents who would do this to her, but he also felt relief. Adora had not lied to him. “All this time, she has been angry with her father, but it was you—”
“No,” the empress whispered. A muscle rippled in her jaw. “I didn’t know about Mia.”
“You know about her now, and you have for a while,” he said. He was guessing, but how else could she have been so calm in coming here?
“Yes, but not then.”
“Did they lie to you?”
“No. The Order predicted the Slink War. A man came to me before it happened. He warned me, and I thought he was mad. I ignored his warning and had him thrown out of the palace.” She paused. “Things might have gone differently if I had only believed him.”
“Go on.”
“Later, after the unspeakable carnage, after we fled to Fairmist, the same man from the Order came to me again. He found me in the caves where we waited to die. He told me what we needed to do in order to survive, and I believed him. I would have been a fool to turn him away a second time. And the Order was right. The slinks agreed to a truce and rel
ented.”
“And you gave them your daughter as payment?”
“No!” she said vehemently.
“But you knew she hadn’t died.”
She shook her head. “Not at first. The Order contacted me later, told me they had saved her.”
Grei narrowed his eyes. So the Order had lied. Adora said it was a Faia who had saved her.
“And you didn’t go to her?” he asked.
The empress hesitated, then shook her head.
“Why?” Grei asked.
“Mia is at the heart of the prophecy. It isn’t finished.”
“She’s your daughter. You’ll sacrifice her twice?”
“And should I sacrifice my other daughter and my son as well?” The empress raised her voice. He felt her remorse more strongly now. The empress feared for Adora, but she feared more what would happen if she strayed from the Order’s instructions again. “There is no easy choice since the slinks arrived,” she said. “They will kill us all if we cannot stop them. The men of Baezin’s Order are the only ones who have given me reason to hope. They say that Mia understands. That she has...accepted her fate.”
“You’re a nest of backstabbing snakes, all of you,” he said. “Lies come easy as breathing. Who wrote this prophecy?”
“The Faia. And you have your part to play.”
She hung her head, and her dignity slipped. She leaned on the desk, her hands splayed flat, as though she had lost the strength in her legs. “Don’t make the same mistake I made,” she murmured. “I could have stopped the Slink War. All those children. All those people. They would be alive if not for me.” She paused. “The Order says the slinks came from somewhere else. A rift to a world of fire. Send them back, Grei. You’re the only one who can.”
“And Adora must die,” he said.
“My daughter must die,” the empress echoed.
Chapter 48
Ree
Fairmist Page 29