Firestorm

by Lucy Hounsom

  ‘No,’ Kierik whispered.

  It is now, Era told her, its voice ringing in her head. We will grant you power, but you must prove yourself the stronger.

  Although the touch of the star brought clarity, it didn’t still the turmoil in her chest. She stood squarely between her two selves – Kyndra, the girl from Brenwym, and the Starborn, the being who lived forever apart. There would have to be a reckoning, just as there would have to be one between her and Kierik.

  Just as there has been, Era murmured. Just as there will be.

  But Kierik was her flesh and blood, someone who fought against the tyranny of Sartya as she did. They were more alike than she realized. Below them, the Sartyan cannon still fired, pounding the citadel that had stood for seven hundred years.

  Kyndra raised her head. ‘I’m sorry, Father.’

  Kierik stilled. ‘What did you call me?’

  Anohin interposed himself between her and Kierik, but Kierik thrust him aside. ‘Who are you?’ the Starborn demanded.

  ‘One day,’ Kyndra answered, ‘centuries from now, you will ask and I will tell you my name.’ She held out her other hand. ‘Veritan.’

  Sweat appeared on Kierik’s forehead. He wasn’t touching the star, but he’d be able to feel it used. Kyndra knew that the effort of holding Mariar steady in his mind was the only reason he hadn’t yet challenged her.

  She looked at Anohin. ‘One day we will meet again too.’

  I saved you because Anohin believed you would help Kierik. Instead you killed him and stole his power. Kait’s words echoed back to her and Kyndra briefly closed her eyes. She had no choice. It was time to close the loop, to patch the hole the eldest had torn in history.

  Before doubt set in, she directed the full force of Veritan against the Yadin. ‘The only thing Anohin will truly remember from this day is my promise to help his master.’ The star turned her voice into a ringing chorus and Anohin stiffened. ‘The rest he will believe as I once did: that Kierik destroyed the Yadin, that Medavle was responsible for his defeat. This is now Anohin’s truth.’

  The Yadin swayed. She watched his eyes roll up, showing only the whites before he toppled to the floor.

  ‘You forget’, Kierik said through clenched teeth, ‘that I am here. I will remember all of this.’

  Kyndra let Veritan go. As soon as she did, she felt the pain of what she had done. The lie she had told; the lie that one day Anohin would tell to her. When she looked at Kierik, another image overlay the Starborn – the image of the scarred man huddled before the Nerian – and she shook her head, a lump in her throat. ‘Just a madman’s memories,’ she said.

  ‘You truly are Starborn.’ Kierik raised a hand. ‘The Starborn who will come after me.’

  ‘After you and from you.’

  He studied her, seeming to see her for the very first time. She felt his gaze on her face, on the hair that curled just as his did, on the eyes they both shared. ‘It’s impossible,’ he breathed finally. ‘I will father no children.’

  ‘You will,’ she said. ‘Just me.’

  She might as well have told him that the sun rose in the west – such was his look of disbelief. ‘I could not come to care for any woman.’

  Again Kyndra saw him as she’d first seen him: fists against his temples, crouched and crying; the Nerian keeping their distance in a twisted union of fear and reverence. ‘Not as you are now,’ she murmured.

  Kierik heard her. ‘You plan to fight me? You are a child. I have seen out a hundred winters, know the names of each and every star. I hold a score in my mind as we speak. You may be Starborn, but you’re untested. And you realize it. I can see it in your face.’

  Kyndra could feel it brewing, the confrontation that could not now be put off. But the horror of what she had to do, the price she would pay for her victory, almost dropped her to her knees. Breaking Kierik meant breaking Mariar too. The storm that would claim so many lives, that would drive her from her home as it burned – it would be her fault. All that death, destruction and grief would lie at her feet.

  But if Kierik won, the dead could number legions. She seemed to hear Ma’s voice ringing across the gulf that separated them. Time is one of the stitches that holds together the fabric of existence. If the world itself and its entire people would cease to be, how could Kyndra stand aside?

  But she couldn’t do it.

  As Kyndra, she couldn’t do it.

  Forgetting Kierik, she crouched, hands curled against her chest. She stood at the crossroads in her mind and it was a desolate place where her actions were ghosts to haunt her. In that grey and featureless expanse, there was nowhere for the truth to hide. She had done terrible things and lived with the consequences. But Kyndra saw, clearly, that she wouldn’t be able to live with this.

  She rose to her feet in one swift movement. Era, she commanded and the star hearkened to her call. You will not speak of what I do today. To anyone, including me.

  And I have not, Era replied in its hollow tones. I obey, Starborn.

  Only one being could shoulder the burden that would crush a human. If she remained as herself, her actions would destroy her. The world was more important than a single woman’s soul. Kyndra fed the last of her doubt, the last of herself into Sigel. The star consumed it hungrily, as it longed to consume everything. She raised her other hand and the demon star, Hagal, flowed over her fingers like dark oil.

  Sigel, Kierik’s command cracked through the void, you are mine.

  If creating Mariar hadn’t weakened him, he might have ripped Sigel from her grasp. But even Kierik could only hold so many stars at once and Kyndra was relying on Sigel’s own need to be wielded, to unleash its fire and ruin upon the world.

  ‘Stop.’ He sounded panicked, the most emotion he’d yet shown. ‘You must let me finish. While I am linked to Mariar—’

  ‘You are both vulnerable,’ Kyndra said coldly. Anohin’s bitterness echoed in the vaults of her memory. The Breaking is Medavle’s legacy, his curse upon a world whose creation he opposed.

  But it was her legacy. A small price to pay to keep the world in balance. She looked into Kierik’s eyes. ‘You understand,’ she whispered.

  He had just enough time to widen them before she struck. She felt him curl his mind over Mariar in an attempt to shield it from her assault. But it wasn’t Mariar she intended to attack – it was Kierik himself. As she’d done with the wraiths in the hoarlands, she splayed a hand and Hagal enveloped the Starborn’s body. For just a moment he disappeared entirely under its shadow, but with a roar of effort, re-emerged, his skin shining with the silver-grey of Tyr.

  Kyndra had prepared for it. Casting her mind out across Mariar, she found the join between the two worlds – in the westernmost mountains – and began to pull at their roots. Sigel gloried in it, rending the stone as if it was unformed clay.

  ‘No!’ Kierik cried. He dropped Tyr and seized Ur and Isa, shoring up the damage Sigel had wrought. She was ready for that too. She used the wail of Kene as a distraction; even Kierik wasn’t immune to the banshee star. Without Tyr’s protection, he cried out, clamping his hands over his ears in a fruitless attempt to block out the sound. Before Kyndra could bring Sigel to bear again, however, Kierik lowered his hands. He struck with a snarl and Kyndra felt Kene torn from her grasp. The backlash sent her sprawling.

  ‘Stop,’ Kierik said again. He was panting; the attack had clearly cost him. ‘We do not have to fight.’

  ‘I have no choice,’ Kyndra replied, picking herself up. ‘I cannot let you go. You will seek to rule Mariar just as you threatened in the Sentheon. Solinaris will oppose you. War will follow.’

  Kierik shook his head. ‘I would not rule as the empire rules. I created Mariar because I wanted peace. Why would I then start a war?’

  He struck. Kyndra gasped at the suddenness of his assault; she’d let him distract her. She could feel him clawing at her control of Sigel, hear him promise the star fire and blood. You heard him, she thought at Sigel, infusing
all her will into the words. He wishes peace. In Mariar, he will have no need for you. But I offer this. Kyndra imagined a tide of fire flowing over Solinaris. She imagined glass turning to black stone, raining ruin on the Sartyans below. She remembered that morning, which seemed so long ago now, when she first felt the presence of Acre. She remembered what it was like to tear down the last of Kierik’s barriers, to reunite the two worlds.

  Sigel grew brighter in her mind, in her hand. She called fire. A thunderous crack and then it streamed from the heavens, pulled from the void. A firestorm that, if left unchecked, would ravage the world.

  Kierik blanched. ‘You foolish—’ The rest of his words were lost in a cry as Kyndra turned the full force of Sigel on him. He seized Elat, the lesser fire, but Elat was a spark amidst an inferno. He was already holding Lagus, and he drew water from the clouds to crush her beneath a foaming torrent. But Kyndra stood tall, her flesh become fire. She and Sigel had been as one and neither of them had forgotten that joining.

  Kierik met her next attack with nothing but his will. He was strong, stronger than she could have imagined while holding so many stars. His flesh caught fire too as they locked wills, battling for control of Sigel. The earth threatened to split apart under their struggle. Kyndra felt it rumble beneath her feet, as flame called to flame. The tower shuddered.

  And Kierik stumbled. Hidden under Sigel, Hagal had continued its quiet work, wearing at the borders of his mind. Now the Starborn’s eyes flew wide and he began to scream. Kyndra felt it all, the creeping disintegration that sped up as Kierik’s will failed him. She felt it almost as if it were her own mind being torn apart. But she kept the star on him, refusing to weaken. Kierik cried tears of shadow. He fell to his hands and knees and a great fracture opened in the skies above him, a sheet of lightning cracking across the roiling clouds.

  Cries reached her from below. The Sartyan attack faltered, as soldiers cowered beneath the maelstrom. Kierik’s screams tore at Kyndra. Her mind was full of that terrible memory she’d seen amongst the Nerian; of the agony she’d thought was the black wind – the spell that had killed the Yadin. But it was Hagal, and the star’s steady annihilation of Kierik’s mind brought her no satisfaction. The shadow oozing over his skin doused each glowing tattoo, turning them into the scars she remembered. She’d reduced a proud man to a broken creature.

  Kyndra turned her head away, sought solace in the icy void.

  Perhaps even Hagal, merciless Hagal, found her actions distasteful, for it abandoned her, leaving Kierik a ragged heap on the tower top. The sky bellowed above her – the fracture racing in all directions, carrying the first Breaking to each corner of Mariar.

  ‘Kyndra!’

  Char burst through the glass door, just as the frame shattered around him. The tower rocked beneath their feet, supports finally giving way.

  ‘Get behind me,’ she shouted. Dashing across the tower top, Char’s gaze alighted on Kierik and Anohin, but his question was lost in a peal of thunder. Kyndra clenched her fists around Sigel and Ur. As the glass citadel began to crack, she called up fire in one hand, earth in the other. With the twin powers, she hardened the glass to stone. In the lava tunnels beneath the citadel, the tunnels she had once traversed with Kait, fire roared again, forcing up molten rock. Kyndra brought it out of the ground, carried in the white heart of Sigel, and, spreading her hands, drove it into the sky. Columns of fire rose around her like geysers. When she was satisfied, she cooled them with Lagus.

  She could still see the swirls of flame in the rock – they were the faces that would one day peer at her as she rode across the newly formed chasm. The day she would see Naris for the first time.

  When she looked out across the land, the devastation was total. A wasteland, the rock blackened by fire and the searing touch of Sigel. Lava had rolled over the Sartyan army, melting their siege weapons, removing any trace of them from Kierik’s world.

  A moan reached her: Anohin sat up, groggily shaking his head. Kyndra seized Fas and Char’s wrist; they both faded from sight. She watched as the Yadin crawled to his master. Kierik had curled into a foetal ball on the stone, bloody grazes on his face and arms. Anohin reached out a hand to him and Kierik flinched. For a stunned moment, Anohin gazed at his master, his expression an agony of horror and disbelief. Then he began to weep.

  Kyndra stood before the ruin of Kierik and Anohin. She stood before the ruin of Solinaris and its Wielders. On the stone at her feet was a wisp of tattered white, a robe once worn by a Yadin, whose long years had ended here. Deep inside her, through a door of dim light, a young woman fled the ruin she had wrought, and Kyndra closed the way behind her.

  42

  Brégenne

  Later they would describe the march of the Wielders as a golden dawn that swept across the land. They would say a woman walked at their head, moonlight in one hand, sunlight in the other, her robes rippling in the wind of her power. Moon-and-Sun, they would call her, the greatest Wielder there ever was.

  They would say many things, Brégenne thought, that weren’t true.

  ‘But they are true,’ Nediah reproached her.

  ‘First, it wasn’t even dawn. Second, I’m not the greatest Wielder who ever was. Thirdly, I’m still alive.’

  ‘A fact for which I’m daily grateful.’ He slipped an arm about her waist. ‘I have big plans for you.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ she said with an arch of her brow. ‘Do I get a say in these plans?’

  Nediah kissed her forehead. ‘If I’m feeling generous.’

  Brégenne grumbled something. ‘Anyway,’ she said, freeing herself. ‘It’s not just me. You realize you’re now “Nediah, who can heal any injury short of death itself”.’

  ‘I know it’s a let-down,’ Nediah said, mock-distastefully. ‘I’m working on it.’

  Brégenne laughed. ‘If there are stories to be told, they should be about Kyndra.’

  ‘She has plenty of her own.’ Nediah paused and she wondered if they were thinking the same thought, remembering the same scene: Kyndra plummeting from the sky, landing in the middle of the battlefield, straightening from her crouch. Cracks radiated from the earth as if a falling star had struck it. She looked up, said in a great voice that must have carried for leagues, ‘STOP.’ And none resisted that command. Her gaze fell on those still standing and they dropped their weapons. She might wear the body of a young woman, but there was nothing young about her face or the aura of power that bent the world around her. She scanned the battlefield, dark with dead and she raised a hand. ‘Etoh.’ A cleansing fire, so bright that none of them could look at it, scorched across the land. When Brégenne opened her eyes, the dead were gone, including the terrible army Gareth had raised.

  Or Kul’Gareth, as he called himself. Brégenne did not think much of the novice remained alive behind those eyes. The necromancer had faced Kyndra. Wind caught in his cloak, whirled it around his armoured form. He was taller than she, a deep chill in his eyes, and for a moment Brégenne was worried for the Starborn. She’d witnessed the twisted power of the gauntlets first hand, watched the ease with which Kul’Gareth slew and then raised the dead as slaves.

  ‘It’s your fault,’ Kul’Gareth said in low tones. ‘You killed him.’

  ‘Shika.’

  She spoke the name impassively and Kul’Gareth’s fists clenched, his rage as palpable as a storm. ‘You will pay for his death,’ he said.

  ‘I did not kill him, Gareth.’

  ‘You let him die. With all the power you wield, you let him die.’ The cold visage broke and Brégenne could see a dreadful pain, a loss that seemed to go beyond Shika, beyond a single death. It was a loss nursed for hundreds of years.

  Kyndra’s eyes narrowed. ‘I see you, Aeralt Kingswold,’ she said. ‘No pattern is hidden from me.’

  Kul’Gareth went very still. They locked gazes.

  ‘I can destroy the gauntlets you wear as easily as I can destroy you.’

  ‘Once,’ the necromancer whispered, ‘I fought s
ide by side with a Starborn.’ Wind rattled the grasses. Neither of them moved.

  ‘I won’t,’ Kyndra said, breaking the stalemate. ‘Not today. But I will be watching.’

  As if to emphasize her warning, a great black dragon swooped in to land behind her. Char, Brégenne realized, with Ma upon his back.

  Kul’Gareth turned away. Catching the reins of his horse, he swung into the saddle and pointed its proud head northward. He did not look back.

  ‘If only we’d realized sooner,’ Brégenne said now, feeling a hollowness in her heart. ‘Do you think any part of Gareth still lives?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Nediah replied, clearly doubtful. ‘Don’t blame yourself, Brégenne.’

  ‘I could have done something.’ Exactly what, Brégenne didn’t know. None of them understood the bond between Kingswold and the gauntlets. And now it was too late.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Mercia appeared in the entrance of their tent, one of hundreds erected outside Market Primus. With the city still under repair, everyone needed to be housed until some sense of order was established. There would be meetings, Brégenne thought with distaste, a great many meetings, in which she’d have to represent Naris and the interests of its Wielders. And she’d already lost her ally in the Assembly; Astra Marahan had been laid to rest yesterday in a private ceremony attended only by her family.

  ‘It’s time,’ Mercia said, shaking Brégenne out of her reverie. The soldier’s expression was as sombre as Brégenne had ever seen it. ‘We have a way to go.’

  Wordlessly, they followed the Sartyan woman out of the tent. Finally reunited with her horse, Myst, Brégenne stroked the mare’s neck before climbing into the saddle. Once Nediah was mounted too, they joined the head of a small procession, which wound its way across what days ago had been a battlefield. Their destination was a small hill, rising above the sere valley. The season was still young, Brégenne thought, but come summer, green would carpet the land, and soften the new-cut stones of Hagdon’s cairn.