Citadel of the Sky (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 1)

by Chrysoula Tzavelas

  It was old, showing an interpretation of the events surrounding the founding of Tiana’s family. Shin Savanyel, seven feet tall and bearded, wielded a white sword against a shadowy figure that dominated half the fragment. The white sword was painted with the curls that indicated eidolons and emanations in older works; it was just a symbol for the family magic.

  The shadow clearly represented the first Blighter, whom Shin had destroyed when it had risen up after the Firstborn’s removal from the world. That part of the mural had been mostly reassembled, but the flecks and cracks made it seem like something hidden lurked under the shadow of faded paint.

  Tiana shook her head and kept moving. Somewhere in the library she knew there were nearly-contemporary accounts of her ancestor’s days. But they were written in an old dialect and hard to follow, and very often boring. Or so she’d read, in the foreword of a novelization of a play commissioned in her great-grandmother’s day, The Chosen King.

  The play and novel made dusty history very exciting, and while Tiana was technically aware that probably Shin hadn’t quite done those things that way and said those things and romanced those ladies, she had never seen how it mattered very much what had actually happened. It was all a very long time ago, and even the more recent histories always seemed to examine the older histories through the lens of The Chosen King.

  It had all happened a long time ago, just like these murals had broken long ago. But someone was restoring them, and something was calling her from the depths of the phantasmagory. Something that had to be old. Maybe something even older than The Chosen King. It was disturbing.

  Tiana, Kiar, Lisette, and the lurking bodyguards walked down the promenade, past other gallery rooms that Tiana ignored. Other corridors opened off the promenade too, untended depths only rarely explored by wanderers. They could be dangerous. Even the gallery curators preferred some kind of backup when looking for treasures.

  Kiar led them down one of them, lifting up her lamp. “This way.” She paused and looked at the floor. “I’m not sure if anyone’s been here since Pell. Look, you can see a little vermin trail in the dust. Charming.”

  Tiana closed her fingers around the inscribed lightstone she’d taken from the library. They didn’t need that much light, just to see vermin tracks.

  Slater cleared his throat. “My Ladies, Your Highness… where are we going?” He raised his hands again as Tiana glanced at him. “Just curious.”

  “Exploring,” she said. “You can stay behind, if you’d like.”

  “No, we can’t,” he said. He hesitated. “I’ll get a lamp.”

  Kiar started walking again. After a while, she passed her lamp to Lisette so she could study her map. She led them into a room with a square door frame, which led to a sequence of rooms, each one perfectly square and completely empty. The plaster had long ago chipped from the stone walls, and there was no sign of the chambers’ purpose. Their footsteps were odd, loud clicks. Tiana thought the ceilings were getting lower in each room.

  Kiar paused at a doorway ornamented with carved vines. “Do you think Pell was so used to this he didn’t bother to label it?” Her voice echoed.

  Tiana opened her hand to let the lightstone illuminate a broad staircase and a sunken hall, far larger than could be lit by a single stone. Stacked columns supported a ceiling that definitely seemed too low. Kiar continued, “The door we’re looking for is on the other side of this hall, down several more corridors.” She descended the steps. “I suppose this was some kind of banquet hall, eight hundred years ago.”

  “Eight hundred years ago… that was when Shin brought the Blood into Ceria,” Lisette said, and lifted the lamp higher. “I wonder if they danced here.”

  Tiana pointed ahead. “It’s an Antecession chamber.” There was a broad, shallow basin with a broken fountain in the stone floor. On the far side, a spillway opened into a deep, narrow pool, now dry and dusty. It looked like the channel stretched the rest of the hall; Tiana could just see the shadowy corners and the darkness of doorways.

  She shuddered. “It’s lonely down here. I’m glad we celebrate Antecession in the city now. Though I guess you’d like it more here, Kiar.” The ritual holiday of Antecession involved a public performance, and Kiar hated public anything.

  The corridor on the other side was narrower than the corridors they’d traversed thus far, and it had a mild downward slope. It took them past a room that Kiar guessed was an ancient kitchen, and past two intersections, until finally there were four steps down and a real door, rather than just an opening.

  “Here we are. Metal, not wood,” said Kiar. “It won’t be easy to open.” She gave Tiana an expectant look.

  Tiana said, “Will you try the Logos?”

  Kiar shook her head vigorously. “Absolutely not. Not down here. If I made a mistake, I could bring the whole ceiling down.”

  Tiana said, “You wouldn’t make a mistake. You hardly ever make mistakes.” When an encouraging smile only met with another head shake, Tiana sighed and went down the steps. That sort of cajolery always worked for Lisette.

  She pressed her hands against the black door. It was cool and rough, and she could feel the ornamentation of the cast bronze, with shallow divots that might have once held gold. There was a ring in the center of the door, and she tugged on it, pushed on it, with as much effect as pushing on a wall. She slid her fingers to the edge of the door, where it fit against the jamb. It wasn’t a tight fit, but it was close enough that she couldn’t get her fingers around it. Then she stepped back and sat on the steps.

  “First, I’ll need to see what I can learn with an emanation.” She thought that was more responsible than just knocking the door down.

  “Don’t you make the ceiling collapse,” Kiar warned.

  “This is the sort of magic I’m supposed to be good at, remember?” Eidolons were avatars of the Blood’s will, but emanations were a far more direct manifestation of their power. She preferred to do things the normal, human way when she could, but this just wasn’t the day for that.

  Tiana narrowed her eyes at the door and stretched out one finger. A slender ribbon of phantasmal force emanated from the tip, glimmering like a prism in the lamplight. She swept the ribbon of pressure around the door, noting where it encountered resistance. Finally, she let her breath out and curled her hand up again.

  “I think I can just cut through the connections linking it to the rest of the wall. Then I should be able to push it over. I wish I could see what was on the other side first.” She looked hopefully at Kiar. Kiar only frowned in response. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I have to go through, or all this murder business will get worse.”

  She extended her hand like a blade, and this time the emanation that she sent out was not pressure, but an edge, sharp and fast, biting through ancient stone, the warped metal, and the clots of mortar. By the time she was on the final side, eating through one of the hinges, she could tell that the door was sagging towards her, though it wasn’t yet visible to the eye. “Back up, back up,” she muttered, trying not to lose her focus. “Get out of the way!” The phantasmagory yawned beneath her, eager to pull her down and change her perspective.

  She stumbled backwards, tripping over the stairs. She couldn’t stop the magic. She hadn’t prepared properly, she’d rushed, she was scared, and if she stopped now, she’d fall into the phantasmagory again. For the second time today. And then the door would fall on her.

  A horrific metallic squealing twisted out from the door, rising in intensity as she tried to focus another emanation to press the door away from her. But the phantasmagory was still open, and the thump-thump of the presence she sought was getting louder. She couldn’t hold on to two emanations without giving into the phantasmagory. Not today. Not now.

  An arm hooked around her waist and lifted her over the stairs. Gasping, she released the door. It finished falling forward, smacking into the stone steps with a ringing clang. Beyond the door, the staircase continued down into darkness.

>   Berrin set Tiana on shaky legs. “Sorry about that, Your Highness.”

  Behind him, Slater removed his hands from Kiar and Lisette’s arms. Kiar rubbed her arm, while Lisette favored him with a smile. Berrin coughed. “Didn’t want you to get flattened, and it seemed like the door was leaning close.”

  “Thank you.” Tiana took a deep breath. “I was careless. I should be more careful.” Kiar nodded vigorously.

  “Of course,” said Berrin. He placed a boot experimentally on the fallen door and then pushed. The door vanished into the darkness. The noise was horrendous. The bottom edge thudded into a step and then screeched across the stone until it reached the edge, at which point it thudded again. The top edge rang like a poorly tuned bell on each step. The echoes grew louder and louder until the there was a final, ringing thud.

  Slater found his voice. “Guardsman! Do you want to be transferred someplace even worse than Stormwatch?”

  Berrin saluted. “Not possible, sir!” He bowed deeply to Tiana. “My apologies for not thinking things through!”

  Kiar shook her head. “I wonder if that’s why the other stair collapsed. If there is anything alive down here, it knows we’re coming now.” She peered down the narrow staircase. “It’s really dark.”

  “I’ll go first,” said Berrin brightly.

  Briskly, Tiana said, “Well, it’s a good thing Shanasee isn’t here, then.” She raised the lightstone and marched down the stairs, pushing past Berrin.

  The corridor at the bottom was narrow and lined with more open doorways. It was also far dirtier than the hall above, with dust thick on the floors and heavy, ancient cobwebs a shroud on the ceiling. Passing by the doorways, she saw that each one once had a metal door similar to the one at the top of the stairs, and in each chamber, the door had fallen inwards. The rooms beyond were painfully small. She remembered the vision in the phantasmagory and shuddered. “A prison.”

  “Or a cloister,” Lisette said. “Before Shin came, the Niyhani Magisters lived here, after all.” Tiana didn’t realize she had stopped moving until Lisette squeezed her hand.

  “There were… nightmares living here, in the phantasmagory. Somebody’s very bad memories.”

  “Would you like to go back? Is this what you came for?”

  Tiana shook her head. “No. Below….” She pointed into the darkness. The cobwebs seemed to catch the light, swallowing it, so that the darkness was more than simply a lack of illumination. It had depth to it, a murk that made Tiana suddenly understand a little of her cousin Shanasee’s fear of the dark. But Shanasee was ruled by her fears, and Tiana couldn’t let that happen to her.

  She said, “We have to find it, for Tomas. We’ll solve the mystery. We’re…” She sought for the right word. “We’re plucky.” When Kiar rolled her eyes, she quoted, “‘Pluck up your courage, my dears. We go forward.’”

  Behind her, Kiar completed the quotation: “Into the heart of the maelstrom.” She muttered, “Didn’t some of them fail to come back?”

  Tiana ignored this. She moved her feet forward. The dust muffled her footsteps, hid her feet in the clouds she kicked up. At the end of the long, crowded corridor, there was another staircase down. It was a half-spiral, so that the bottom was just out of sight of the top. Tiana hesitated. Then the others moved up behind her, and moving forward was easier than backing down.

  There was another black, corroded door, but this time, a disc of bright gold was pressed into the door just above the ring. The seal of the Blood was pressed into the gold, as were the marks of Niyhan and the other three Firstborn. Inscribed above them, in heavy, ponderous lettering, it said ‘Let The Shadow Sleep Forever.’

  Tiana squeezed her eyes shut and passed her hand over the gold seal, feeling the texture of the impression. Then she pressed her ear against it, listening. She heard the low murmur of the guards above, Lisette’s breath as she waited a few steps higher, and Kiar’s lighter voice as she said something to the guards. From the metal and the stone, there was only silence.

  “Will this door open?” asked Lisette. “What does the cartouche say?” Tiana moved her head out of the way. Lisette read it and then called, “Kiar….”

  Kiar poked her head around the curve, blinked, and said, “That’s distressing. Somebody wanted that door to remain closed.”

  “I’m sure it’s locked, then.” Tiana found that her hand was on the brass ring. Experimentally, she pushed.

  With a creak, the door swung open.

  A long silence followed, until Kiar said, “Is this it?”

  The room beyond was uninhabited. Lamplight illuminated some stone furniture, but other than that, it was empty. There was no other way out. At first glance, it was beyond disappointing.

  Then Lisette said, “There aren’t any cobwebs. There’s hardly any dust at all.”

  Tiana moved into the room, feeling warm and tingly. Was this it? Was this the source of the heartbeat? But there was nothing here. Just the thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump—

  “Just furniture,” said Kiar from the door. “None of the other rooms above had furniture. If they left anything behind, it must have fallen to dust long ago. But this is made of stone.”

  Tiana tried to focus on something other than the throbbing heartbeat of the phantasmagory. There was a rounded stool and table of white stone situated in the center of the room. Somebody sitting at the table would have their back to the door. On the table was a plain casket of yellow bone.

  She set the lightstone on the table and pulled the box closer. Agitated, Kiar said, “Tiana, there isn’t a fiend down here. There’s nothing alive. Maybe we should think about this again.”

  Tiana looked up, puzzled. “Can’t you hear it here? How can you ignore the phantasmagory when it’s so loud?”

  Kiar stared at her, then inhaled through her teeth. Her eyes fluttered closed. When they opened, they were pale silver instead of Blood black, just as Tiana knew her own were. Lisette, standing between them, opened and then closed her mouth.

  In a strained voice, Kiar said, “I hear it. Oh, Lord of Winter. There’s something here! What—” she jerked, her gaze traveling up to the ceiling of the room. “There’s— it’s—” She whirled around, her eyes brightening to a cloud-white sheen.

  Behind her, Lisette gathered herself together and moved beside Kiar, touching her arm and murmuring familiar phrases.

  Kiar was not as comfortable with the phantasmagory as Tiana. Lisette could draw her out just as she could draw Tiana out, soothe her waking nightmares before they became manifest, just as she soothed Tiana’s. But the panic of someone else lost in the phantasmagory created an undertow, treacherous and powerful, threatening to entangle Tiana within her own chaos. She closed her eyes to try and drown out the heartbeat and push the phantasmagory far away.

  She could be normal if she tried. She was very proud of that. She had real friends, outside the court, outside her family. There were people who understood how much she wanted to be like them. The theater. At the theater, a special kind of magic happened. It was like the phantasmagory, but outside, where everyone could share it. She imagined the curtains closing on the phantasmagory.

  “I’m here,” said Kiar. “I’m better. I’m sorry. I saw… it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t useful, just my own bad memories. I’m sorry. But you’re right. There’s something here. I’ve never fallen so easily. Tiana?”

  Tiana realized Kiar was talking to her. “Oh. Don’t apologize. I understand. I’m going to open the box now.”

  Kiar nodded, moving closer. The surface of the box was cool and just barely uneven. The bone jewelry boxes Tiana had were all ornamented with carvings and wire and glass beads. But this one was smooth and darkened with age, the size of both her hands put side by side. There was a clasp. She opened it.

  The heartbeat in the phantasmagory stopped.

  The box slipped out of fingers suddenly nerveless with dread, spilling the large opal pendant inside onto the table. Tiana stared at it in
silent horror. She recognized it.

  Kiar stepped back. “That’s the Royal Pendant. The King is supposed to be wearing it. How did it get down here?”

  Tiana found her voice. “How did it break?” A deep, viridian flaw ran up one side of the opal and, within the flaw, the stone had shattered.

  Chapter 4

  Let It Spin

  Tiana stared at the pendant. In a faraway voice, she asked, “Kiar, do you know what time it is?”

  Kiar frowned and looked inward. “Almost six. What are you going to do with the pendant?”

  “Oh, no, already?” Ordinary life reasserted itself. Tiana snatched up the jewel. “You take the box, Kiar. We can ask Father about it tomorrow. But I have to get to the theater!”

  Kiar picked up the bone box. “What? How can you think of the theater after a find like this?”

  “It’s been here this long; it can wait until morning! I’m going to be late and I said I’d be there!”

  Lisette said, “Tiana, nobody would blame you for staying home today.”

  Tiana looked sideways at Lisette. “After a day like today, I’ve got to go.”

  Lisette studied Tiana and then nodded. Kiar blew out her breath. “Well, let’s get out of here, before something collapses.”

  On the catacombs level, Tiana started for the main gate of the Palace. Lisette said, “Tiana, you want to change clothes.”

  “Zenith!” Tiana swore. She looked down at her filthy sundress. “I do. Yuck. I don’t have time!” But she ran up the wide, curving stone staircase all the same. She was out of breath by the time she made it to her rooms, but when Lisette showed up, she was wheezing. The guards, jogging behind her, were hardly winded.