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

by Chrysoula Tzavelas

  “I am a weapon. I am a sword!”

  “That’s true,” she murmured and looked away from Lisette’s contorted shape, toward the passage that led to her chamber, where she’d left Jinriki’s true form. It was just as fair to blame a baby for crying or a member of the Blood for being eccentric.

  Cathay said, “Tiana, it’s a monster. Look what it’s done to your best friend.” He was nursing a cut across one cheek. “You don’t understand how evil it is. You can’t stand here and discuss it! You owe it to Lisette!”

  “Lisette,” Tiana whispered and remembered the feeling of being confined to her big toe, remembered rising like a wildfire to overpower the wind.

  Then she remembered sobbing when her mother left her. She remembered a silver-eyed cloud finding her among her nightmares and giving her a reason to come out again.

  Kiar was looking around the atrium anxiously, but now she called, “Tiana, there’s more you should know—” Tiana held up her hand and Kiar stopped.

  She addressed Lisette again. “I feel so nice now. I bet this is going to hurt.” Lisette moved her head warily, and Tiana could see Cathay sloshing closer to her from the corner of her eye. She held out her hand to Lisette. “Jinriki the Darkener, leave my friend and come to me.” The burning on her head intensified.

  Then everything happened at once. Cathay pushed on her shoulders as the Magister said, “Oh dear,” and Kiar said, “Oh, no!” Lisette relaxed into a huddled pile, blinking rapidly. An awful tearing sound filled the atrium.

  Tiana had a dim sense of something invisible happening around her, but that was swiftly overwhelmed by the pain in her head. It felt like somebody was applying a brand and at the same time, Cathay was pushing her down, trying to immerse her.

  “No, stop it, Cathay…,” she panted, but he wasn’t listening, and he was too strong. Her emanations flickered around her. She pushed with them and flung Cathay away. She tried to aim him at some water; he was just trying to help her, after all. He thought she didn’t understand, but he was the one who didn’t understand. The sword was a lens and a channel and they would need him to fight the Blight. But he was also a soul, and she could not leave him alone in the dark, more alone than she had ever been.

  The light in the atrium flickered and dimmed. In the air above the fountain, a huge, ghostly geometric shape was unfolding. It swallowed the light around it and all its twisting planes were in shadow. The atrium was full of people shouting, babbling to the Logos, moving their hands as they worked, and she realized they were all focused on the unreal geometric shape. She looked to Kiar. Her cousin’s gaze was riveted on the shape, but she was silent.

  Tiana put her hand over her forehead and blinked up at the image. “I thought you were a sword.” She reached out to the shape. “Jinriki.” It surged and rippled, as complicated as a flower. There was a flare—

  All the remaining sources of light went out as one, and all the babbling Logos voices cut off. There was a heavy, familiar weight in Tiana’s outstretched hand. Her forehead no longer burned.

  Jinriki was laughing in her head. **These fools could never have bound me.** Sandpaper had become silk, but the silk had not turned to sandpaper again. She could feel him bound to her, his pattern overlaying hers, but the fit was better, steel instead of grit.

  “What happened?” she whispered. She couldn’t see anything, but she was still in the water, and suddenly it was shockingly cold. She hefted herself out of the pool and tilted her head, listening to the sounds of breathing around her. Even the fountain had stopped flowing.

  **I made the Logos stop listening to them. My master despised the Niyhani.** He sounded very pleased with himself. **It’s only temporary, unfortunately.**

  Kiar’s voice came out of the darkness. “It’s all crumbling, Tiana. You can’t see it but… the Logos was built into the Citadel. There are ancient workings here… so many inscriptions… but it cut through them all.” Kiar sounded as if this had physically injured her.

  **So I did. Excellent.** But she thought he sounded surprised.

  “Magister?” Tiana called, and then when there was no answer, “Lisette?”

  “Here,” came Lisette’s faint voice, a few feet away. “I’m fine. Tired. I knew what he was doing. I saw him… it was the right thing to do.”

  Tiana moved carefully in that direction. “You didn’t hurt them, did you, Jinriki?”

  **They’re still alive.** She thought he seemed rather unconcerned for someone who almost got washed away. **They’re standing still. I have no idea why. You can hear them breathing.**

  Lisette asked, “Is it dangerous, Kiar? Were the workings holding up the Citadel?”

  Kiar said helplessly, “I don’t know! I don’t think so.” There was a pause. “Everything that was pressing down is releasing pressure. It’s all going back to its natural form.” She laughed, sounding hysterical. “Lord of Winter! He really is the Darkener. We found out about your sword’s previous owner, Tiana! A murdered Firstborn—”

  An distant unfamiliar voice said, “I had a dream that a darkness lay over the city and a voice declared, ‘Bring The Darkness To Me.’”

  A different voice, closer, said, “I had a dream that the betrayer was punished, but the shadow sustains him yet.”

  Another voice called, “I had a dream that inside a soul was a universe.”

  Then there was a clamor of voices describing their dreams, all at once. Tiana looked around wildly, unable to see, unable to identify individual voices. “What’s going on? Why doesn’t someone make a light?” She moved restlessly, her dress wet and heavy against her legs.

  **I didn’t do this. I don’t know what’s going on. They’re all mad.**

  The susurration of voices was strange. She could only make out individual words here and there, but the ones she heard almost made a complete thought. Then she didn’t have to try; there were whole sentences drifting out of the noise, and a second shape was glimmering in the darkness overhead.

  The corpse of the Eldest cast a shadow between in and out

  Bring a descendent of the shadow to my throne.

  Bring a gate into shadow to the light.

  Bring the light to a gate into the shadow

  Bring light to the shadow realm

  Turn the shadow to light

  Free night from the shadow

  In between twilight and night is the shadow

  In between is the shadow

  Between is shadow

  We are light

  Gather what we have given

  Bring our light to dark places

  Gate into shadow

  Walk the road to the place furthest from heaven

  Follow the path laid down by your ancestor

  Between two halves of your soul is the shadow

  Seal the cracks as Savanyel did

  Seal the break

  Make what is broken whole, as Savanyel could not

  He gave her eternity

  Seal the break

  Create the light

  Take this

  The darkness streaked with midnight blue and azure and cerulean and cyan and more shades of blue, twisting together to form the image of a great throne. It shimmered like a jewel, simple and tall and radiant.

  “What is it, Jinriki?” asked Tiana nervously. There was no answer, no words but the murmur of the susurration. “Kiar? Lisette?” Tiana raised her voice over the noise. Jinriki was still in her hand, and she tried to lift the sword over her head. She couldn’t move. She tried to conjure up the emanations again, but all she could see was the great throne lowering towards her.

  The chant of the susurration started anew, and Tiana wanted to cover her ears, wanted to scream, anything to interrupt the cadence of the voices. She could do nothing. When the chant finished a second time, the throne of brightness shivered over her head. Then, with a sharp, clear chime, it shattered, and blue light rained down on her. Where it touched her skin, it vanished, sinking inside of her, carrying the words of the susu
rration inside her.

  The droplets of blue light brought with them awareness, as well. She could feel the stone of the Citadel around her and the mountain sleeping beneath her, could identify the individual breaths of each person within the Citadel. She felt the wind that caressed the earth, she could smell the winter yet to come, and all around her were words: prayers and oaths and lessons, the foundations of civilization. The light of Niyhan was blue, and it soaked into her.

  A timeless moment passed away. She realized there were three other lights to gather before the true light could be created and the shadow banished. She could feel them. They called her, pulled on her. A yearning welled up inside her, a deep desire to attend to them all at once. But she could only go in one direction at a time! The vast need was discouraging and tears spilled out of her eyes. “Please,” she begged.

  **That’s enough of that.** Jinriki spoke and snuffed out the extraordinary longing, dousing it to only the smallest awareness of something she needed to get. And now she was aware of her body again. And she was aware of the ground shaking, and people shouting and scrambling around her. There were flickers of firelight here and there, and Lisette and Kiar were holding her up by her arms.

  “What’s going on?” she gasped.

  “Earthquake,” Kiar said. “That… it came out of the words. The Throne. The power. We saw it. Into you. The Throne kept the mountain calm. The Logos is still ignoring us.”

  Tiana blinked and tried to swallow; her throat was dry. The wet dress was slimy against her skin and she reflexively tried to push water out of it with her free hand. “It’s not stopping.”

  “No,” agreed Kiar, her face grim. The statue of the Magister that Tiana had waited beside crashed over.

  Tiana fumbled for an awareness of the mountain again, reaching into that unreal space inside, where the blue light shimmered. She found a faint sense of the mountain, and she could see the surging core of fire and the great masses of earth and stone that groaned and scraped against each other. Unless the mountain was soothed back to sleep again, the core of fire would leak past the barrier of stone. That, she felt, would be bad.

  “Are you going to help me this time?” she asked Jinriki.

  **I like to fight.**

  She slipped into the phantasmagory, just a little. Just enough that she was no longer sensible of her slimy dress, just enough that she could pretend that she was big, huge, mountain-sized. The emanations, magnified by Jinriki, were as her hands. She awkwardly pressed them against the places where the stone was rotten and weak, trying to still the tremors. They weakened and slowed as her pressure increased, but when she slackened, the rumbling began again.

  Kiar was in the phantasmagory with her, studying the manifestation of the mountain that Tiana projected. “Here,” she gestured at a point low on the other side, where three masses of stone leaned against each other. “Push that one a little lower, if you can.”

  Tiana nodded and released her hold on the upper mountain. She could feel the renewed shaking even through the phantasmagory. She tried to focus on keeping the emanation coherent, moving them around the mountain and—there! She pushed as hard as she could. There was a terrifying creaking sound and a final sharp jolt, and then the vibrations of the mountain subsided into mere grumbles.

  Tiana could hear Lisette calmly talking Kiar and herself away from debris, and she reached up out of the phantasmagory to hug her. Or at least, she tried to. She was caught on something. She looked down.

  The ghost woman was holding onto her heel.

  Chapter 34

  All A Man Can Do

  In the distance, Lisette asked, “Is it over?” Kiar struggled to shake her head. The ghost woman was holding both she and Tiana by the feet. She had a queer, blind smile and somehow her grip prevented them from leaving the phantasmagory. It was changing around them.

  “Hey, stop it,” Tiana cried, waving her hands. “Jinriki!” An amorphous black and red mist swirling next to her darted over to the ghost.

  “There’s nothing,” the mist said, in a gravel-toned, masculine voice.

  “Who is she?” Kiar asked.

  “I don’t know! She’s been around for a while. Since Tomas’s funeral.”

  “I saw her in the library earlier. There’s something familiar about her….”

  Tiana gave her a grateful look. “At least you’re here this time.”

  Kiar looked away and noticed other members of the Blood fading in, Cathay and Jerya and the others. “She’s bringing us all. Wherever we are. That’s a good trick.”

  The mists rolled away, and the family was standing in a large solar, with a giant window dominating the west wall. The King gazed out of it, his back to the others. The phantom woman touched his shoulder, and he looked up and smiled. “She brought you.” The woman curtseyed and stood quietly.

  Tiana demanded, “Daddy, who is this?” just before questions burst out of everyone else. But Kiar went to look out the window. It was a view onto the broken lands, the Glooming, with the Blighter’s stronghold squatting in the center. The body of the King sat on a horse at the edge, a single eidolon trailing him.

  The King in the solar said, “I’ve no idea, my darling, but she’s been such comforting company in the phantasmagory the last day that I asked her if she might look about and see if any of you were present before I went. I tried to wait as long past Antecession-midnight as I could.”

  Jerya said, “She dragged us all down, Daddy.” Her voice sharpened. “What do you mean, went? Where did you go?”

  “Oh,” he said, looking embarrassed. “You can see.” He waved a hand and windows opened around the solar, showing a different view in each direction. Kiar looked at the image of the King on his horse, far below. The eidolon holding the stirrup of his horse looked up, as if it could feel her gaze. Kiar shivered and looked at the King in the solar. He nodded at her, a strange, sympathetic look on his face.

  She ducked her head and moved to peer through another window. It looked onto a village. Several of the Regency Guards loitered on the high wooden porch of a villager’s home. One of the King’s eidolons stood on the porch as well, unmoving. Kiar stared hard at the scene and realized there was an empty blurring behind the eidolon, like the one in Mousame. The guards were aware it was there; they moved around it as they paced the porch.

  Kiar squeezed her eyes shut against a rush of anxiety and stared at the scene. At another window, Tiana called, “This is Mousame. Where we were the other day. Did you go to see the view, Daddy? Oh, but why is your eidolon standing next to the place where we lost Kiar. Isn’t that—”

  Kiar returned to the main window as Tiana thudded up, Jerya taking long steps behind her. “He’s got a great view,” she said bleakly.

  “Daddy, what are you doing? You’re confused, Daddy, you must have half a dozen eidolons out there and so far apart. I never knew you could have them so far apart. It must be so hard. Please come home.” Tiana wrapped her arms around her father. Kiar looked at Yithiere, wondering distantly if she’d hug him if he were in Shonathan’s place. He met her gaze and sighed, and she looked out the window again.

  The eidolon was tugging on the King’s leg, urging him forward. It spoke to him. Kiar wanted to know what it was saying and dreaded knowing what it was saying. In the solar, the King tilted his head towards his daughters. “I wanted to see you before I went. To let you know I was sorry. I’ve been a terrible father.”

  Jerya said urgently, “Daddy, do you know what you’re doing?”

  “Yes, my dear one. It’s for the best.” He chuckled. “Even the Other thinks so. He doesn’t know everything, though. I have my tricks.” He winked. “He thinks they’re watchers.”

  Jerya bit her lip, and Tiana looked horrified. She buried her head against his chest. “Don’t leave me, Daddy. I can’t bear it.”

  “Why does the Other want you?” Kiar asked.

  “He hates me.” The King sighed, stroking Tiana’s hair. “For something Shin Savanyel did. His hate
has lasted a long time. He spent years coming up with inventive punishments. He’s been telling me about them. I’ve tried not to listen, but— oh dear.”

  Down below, the eidolon dragged the King off his horse and pulled him into the blasted land. Once he was entirely inside the shadowed land, it yanked the Royal Pendant off his neck. It spoke again, and this time the flat copy of the King’s voice echoed through the phantasmagory. “My prison. It was you who handed it to the wizard who cracked it open. Hook, he was called. Hooks are useful.”

  Shanasee, looking out one of the other windows, cried, “The King’s eidolons are going inside the holes! And they’re changing. I’ve never….” She trailed off.

  The Other continued to speak. “Thank you for bringing it to me. Such a petulant little man.” It kicked him. The King below twitched and jerked in response, and the King in the solar averted his face.

  “Oh, I don’t want to watch. I think this will be unpleasant.”

  “Shin grounded it in the earth, in the land. He thought that would make it inescapable. But he made it too strong. The connection goes both ways. A crack in this prison becomes a crack in your world. Shin was so clever, he had so much promise… and look at his descendants.”

  The King in the phantasmagory sighed, his gaze still on the floor. “He grounded us in the land, too. All those holiday rituals, every year, binding and rebinding us. So we’d never lose track of what our purpose was.”

  Again, Kiar had the sense that the Other was aware of them, before its attention was jerked away. “This isn’t my prison! What did you do? Where is it?” It kicked him again, and stepped on his hand. One by one, monsters were appearing around them. “This is a replica. Ah, no, I see. The prototype.” It held the pendant to its eye.

  Malevolence swept through the phantasmagory, a pure, sticky evil, and Kiar knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was aware of them now. The black mist near Tiana was muttering something over and over again: “That’s him, that’s it, that’s him….” The ghost woman looked alarmed and vanished.