by Jane Kindred
Far below, I could see the tip of Lake Superna sparkling cobalt blue in the dying light. The last hint of sunlight was disappearing beyond it, which meant I faced west and we’d come nearly full circle around the lake through the mountain path. I sat on the rocks and tried to imagine what had happened to my cousin here. He’d only been missing a moment in the fog, and then had reappeared in his changed demeanor, swearing with certainty he’d seen the white steed. Aeval’s eventual deadly hold on him, Kae told me once, she attained with a kiss, but the mere vision of the horse had captured his heart, and there was no doubt in my mind it had been Aeval who’d somehow changed herself into that creature.
I thought I heard leaves rustling then, but there was no wind. When I turned on my perch, thinking someone had followed me, the path lay empty in the blue twilight. No voices came on the wind, no piles of leaves or petals danced in the air to speak to me of the Unseen World. This time it had been purely my imagination.
Back at the camp, I focused on the plan for tomorrow’s descent to the shores of Lake Superna, and south toward Iriy. I’d never felt more isolated than I did in the midst of these five hundred men who listened attentively to my every word. Vasily and Belphagor sat apart from the tactical planning. Though Belphagor excelled at keeping order, neither he nor Vasily were soldiers, and they preferred to leave strategy to men who were familiar with it. I envied them. I would have preferred to do the same.
I also would have preferred to fall asleep in Vasily’s arms each night as Belphagor did. There were no obvious demonstrations of intimacy between them on the march—they were really being quite well behaved—but it was clear even in the way they sat next to each other, not even touching, how right things were with them now. I had to be glad of it after all they’d been through, even if it left me feeling a bit sorry for myself.
While Margarita sat beside me as my second-in-command contributing her expertise, I noticed Lively and Love by the fire, engaged in conversation. These two days on the march had certainly changed Love’s disposition toward the demoness. From where I sat, they almost appeared to be friends.
A sudden, gut-wrenching envy struck me—not of Love’s friendship, but of her freedom. She didn’t have to concern herself with the commandeering of supplies from country peasants, or the taking of a city, or the rule of an entire world. At this moment, I felt no more qualified to speak or think of these things than Love. Within a few weeks’ time, she would be home, sitting in the garden of the dacha under the endless light of an Arkhangel’sk summer. Her only thoughts now must be of how much longer until she was there, and what she might miss in Heaven.
When I finally retreated to my tent to rest, as with the last time I’d slept in this place, I had dreams of foreboding. On that trip, I’d dreamt of Kae chasing my sister Ola and me on horseback through the snow. His horse had killed Ola with a strike of its hoof as it reared over her, and I’d thrust Kae’s sword into his gut. Tonight I dreamt again of Kae and Ola, and the rest of the family besides—the Elysium Day pageant, the very night on which Kae and I had been plunged into our separate nightmares from which we could never wake.
I was dancing with Kae and rebuking him for his treatment of Ola as I’d done on that night, and as he’d been then, he was shaken briefly by my words and went to his pregnant wife where she sat watching from a bench. He kissed her gloved hand and knelt on one knee before her and rested his head against her round belly in sincerest devotion.
I hadn’t seen him again until the moment I found him standing over the bodies of my family with his dripping sword and watched him plunge it emotionlessly into Ola before he turned it on me. But now I seemed to follow him through the palace, invisible.
As we left the great hall and went down the grand staircase to the garden, I knew with a certainty I couldn’t explain: this was no dream, but a glimpse of a moment I hadn’t been privy to. Something about this spot within the mountain seemed to tap into what Lively called the Nightworld.
I gasped as Aeval stepped out from among the roses before us, her ethereal beauty plainly adorned with a simple white linen gown and a garland of petals about her neck. I wanted to warn Kae, to stop her, but I had no voice or substance.
He looked startled at first, and his eyes were leery as he took a step back from her, but she touched his arm and he calmed instantly.
“Come, my angel,” she purred. “It is time to give me what I’ve asked for.”
I raged silently as he knelt before her, and she bent and whispered something in his ear. Her words alarmed him and he tried to leap up, but she grabbed his face between her hands and kissed him, and he went limp in her grasp. Aeval sat on the stone bench beside him and he laid his head in her lap as he’d done with Ola.
She stroked his hair and murmured in his ear. “Remember, my angel. Your uncle Helison has hated you since your birth—a fine, healthy boy who might have been heir to the throne after his cold wife had given him two stillborn sons in a row. And it was your aunt Sefira who cursed your mother with demon magic when she saw her sister-in-law was to give birth to another son after she herself had only succeeded in birthing three daughters. Your aunt cursed her and caused your mother to bleed to death during childbirth.”
Kae’s face twisted with emotion. Pain and disbelief were etched on it while Aeval smoothed her hand across his forehead and continued.
“Your uncle pretended to care for you afterward only to keep you close to his side so he could dispose of you quietly, but you were far too clever for that, so he poisoned your father to punish you. Helison and Sefira took your family from you out of jealousy and spite.”
He nodded against her lap; his tears had begun to stain the white linen.
“And your cousins have hated you every moment of your childhood, intruding on their idyllic lives, wishing you would simply drown or fall from a horse and break your neck.”
I realized he saw these scenes play out before his eyes as he stared blankly across the garden. She was weaving an alternate history for him, and he was remembering it as if lived.
Her melodic voice soothed like a lullaby, belying the terrible words. “Omeliea hates you most of all. She lies beneath you with her head turned aside in disgust when you bed her, enduring you as if she were being fucked by a filthy peasant. In fact, she hates you so much she has indeed carried on with peasants, taking demons to her bed when you’re away, and laughing while they despoil her in your marriage bed—writhing and moaning like a bitch in heat as she takes them one after another on her hands and knees. She’s bearing a demon in her belly now, to cuckold you before the entire kingdom, to let you know who shall reign when your weak little cousin Azel dies.”
Aeval twirled his hair about her finger. “It will never be you, though you’re the rightful male heir. You will be the laughingstock of Heaven as you raise the offspring of one of the dozen nameless peasants who had her on the night she conceived.” Her voice changed, now dripping with venom. “As soon as she’s queen, she’ll take them openly, right in front of you, their filthy, common hands groping her, putting her mouth on the ones who stand eagerly in front of her while she lets the others take her in turns from behind.”
“No.” He moaned, becoming restless, but she calmed him once more with a brush of her lips against his forehead.
“Do you see her there?” She pointed in the distance as she stroked his hair. “Look! She’s doing it even now! See how she laughs at you while they have her? And there, behind her, her sisters are laughing at you, too! She’s done nothing but tell them how you disgust her since the first time you touched her, and they whisper about it every time you enter a room. She tells them you’re impotent and hung like a child. Every time you’ve ever heard them giggling, with their insufferable honey curls together, falling about one another, they were laughing at you. Do you see it?”
“Yes.” His face twisted with pain and anger. “Yes!”
“That’s right, my angel. And they laughed when your poor mother bled to death in
your arms. The principality could have sent someone to help, but he simply waited until she hemorrhaged to death, with you the only one there to care for her. Do you think it was mere coincidence he sent your father off on that diplomatic errand with your mother so close to her time? In fact, the real reason he wanted her dead, and your aunt orchestrated it, was that your uncle himself had impregnated her. Every time he sent your father on a mission for the throne of the Firmament, he forced your mother to service him. He did it while you watched. Do you remember? You were only a little boy, and he made you watch while he hurt and degraded your beautiful mother.”
Kae was weeping again, his face wracked with anguish and rage. “How could he?” he choked. “I’ll kill him!”
“Yes,” Aeval purred with a pleased smile. “You kill him. You punish him for what he did to your mother. Punish them all. Defend your mother’s honor and your own if you’re a man. And when you’re done with them, you kill that smug little heir who thinks he can take the throne from you. You can tell by his infirmity and weakness Sefira conceived him of a common demon just as your Ola has conceived her get by one. Like mother, like daughter. Will you allow the spawn of a demon to sit on the throne of Heaven?”
“Never!” He sat up, his eyes blazing and ardent with conviction. “They have to be stopped! I must defend Heaven!”
“Yes, angel. Defend Heaven. In the name of the Firmament and all the Heavens, cut down these morally decrepit impostors. Take your sword and clean the filth out of this palace. Can you hear them? They’re all groping one another in an incestuous orgy—the father with the daughters, the brother with his sisters—and all of them laughing at you, laughing at Heaven, fornicating with demons in the palace of the Host!”
Kae jumped to his feet, drawing his knife, his eyes now wild as I’d seen them when I found my family dead by his hand. “They are wicked! Vile! I will not suffer such a thing in the palace of the Host!”
Aeval stood also, his sword suddenly in her hand. “Take this, my love, and run them all through. And when they plead and snivel, feigning innocence, laugh and tell them you don’t care what they say or how desperately they beg for mercy—you will rule the Heavens.”
Another voice suddenly eclipsed these, seeming more present, more ordinary, and more real. “There you are, Nazkia. What have you been doing?”
I turned and found my sister Maia regarding me with gentle disapproval. When I glanced back at the bench among the roses, Kae and Aeval had disappeared, and the light was different in the night garden, as though time had moved forward to another place.
“Ola’s been calling for you,” Maia chided. She tucked my arm into hers and walked with me through the garden to the courtyard beyond. The outer courtyard led into an open inner court spanned by wide columns of solid, polished seraphinite, its silvery green patterns catching the moonlight like the bright feathers of outstretched wings. This was not the Winter Palace.
“Where are we?”
Maia didn’t seem to hear me as we passed between a pair of columns onto soft, terra cotta tile. My feet were bare and we were dressed in light, wispy garments that drooped from our shoulders, instead of the tight corsets and bustles in voluminous layers of velvet and satin we were accustomed to. A sweet-smelling breeze fluttered the fabric and a soft, rhythmic sound whispered in the distance: the sound of waves on a beach.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” said Maia. “Ola’s been disconsolate, waiting for you to come. The three of us have been trying to entertain her, but she’s quite homesick.”
“The three of you? What three?”
“Whom do you think? Your sisters, of course.” She pinched my arm and then kissed me on the cheek, and I could smell her lilac perfume as if she were truly with me.
“But I thought it was Ola you were entertaining.”
“Yes, Ola.” Maia regarded me peculiarly. “Your daughter. What’s the matter with you?”
“She’s here?” I pulled away from her and ran forward into the palace. “Where is she?” When I looked back, Maia was gone. I heard Ola’s voice then, faint and sad, calling for me, and I ran through the corridors, searching and finding nothing but empty rooms painted with the soft glow of moonlight.
“Where are you, sweetheart?” I pleaded. “Mama’s here!”
“Mama!” I heard her from behind a door in front of me, her voice as plain as day, and I yanked on the handle, but it was locked tight. I pounded on the door in anguish and nearly fell forward when it opened suddenly. A young boy stood blinking up at me at the top of a set of stone stairs, and Ola’s voice came once again from below.
“Mama!”
I rushed past the boy and nearly tumbled down the stairs in my haste. Next to a small chair, a thick board lay on the floor covering a kind of well. I dragged it away and tried to see into the darkness beneath it.
“Mama?”
The walls of the little well began to glow as if bathed in flame, and at the bottom, in the center of the illumination, stood my baby. Her cheeks were grimed with soot and tears, her golden-red curls tangled and dull, and she was dressed in rags, but it was my sweet baby. Flooded with relief, I stretched out on the floor and reached for her, and she held her arms up to me, but the well was far too deep. My heart was anguished as Ola began to cry once more, and with her tears, the familiar column of flame sprang up around her.
“Ola!”
Someone tugged at me, trying to pull me away.
“Let me go! Ola!”
And then the dream crumbled away like a castle of sand in the tide, and I was thrashing and beating my fists against Vasily as he knelt beside me inside my tent.
“No! I have to save her!” I tried to leap up, but he pulled me into his arms and held me tightly as the dream drifted away. “I found her,” I moaned against his chest. “I nearly had her.”
“It was a dream.” Belphagor spoke behind me, crouched in the entrance of the tent. He put his hand on my back and rubbed it gently as if I were a child waking from a nightmare. But Ola was the child caught in a nightmare. What had Helga done to her? “We all dream of her,” he said sadly.
I’d forgotten that of the three of us, Belphagor had been separated from her the longest. Vasily and I had been reunited with Ola for a few short months at Gehenna, but Belphagor had been a prisoner of Kae’s and had only seen her from a distance before Helga’s Cherub once more stole her away. Though he wasn’t her biological father, Ola was as much his daughter as she was ours, and it was his arms she’d been taken from when the Nephilim abducted her, leaving him tormented by guilt.
I reached out and pulled him close to let him know he wasn’t on the outside of this. “But it was more than just a dream. I can’t explain to you how I know, but I connected to her on the dreaming plane, and I saw where Helga’s keeping her. I saw Ola.”
“Where did you see her?” Vasily, at least, seemed willing to believe me.
“I didn’t recognize the palace, but it must be somewhere in the south, perhaps at Erebus on the Gulf of the Firmament, or even Aden. Whatever palace it is, I think it’s abandoned. It seemed so empty. But it’s in a very warm climate, and I thought I heard the ocean.”
Belphagor sat on his hip. “Aden has been abandoned since the capital moved to Arcadia,” he said thoughtfully.
“And Azel Kaeyevich was there.” I realized who the little boy must have been. I’d run right past, concerned only with Ola, and hadn’t even taken a good look at him. “She has him guarding Ola somehow, and Ola… ” I leaned against Vasily in despair. “She’s put her into some kind of a pit.”
Vasily’s grip tightened, and a low growl came from his chest. “She what?”
“The boy is in a room at the bottom of a set of stairs, like a storage cellar of some kind, and there’s a…a pit…in the center of the room. And she’s inside.”
His voice rumbled like embers falling against a grate. “I want Helga dead.”
At this point, I couldn’t argue with him.
&nbs
p; By midafternoon, we’d reached the Shamayim Basin and the shore of Lake Superna. The old highway to Aravoth had once hugged the shoreline on the eastern side of the lake, and it wasn’t difficult to find the remnants of the crumbled stones that once paved it. We would be traveling the length of Superna until we were halfway to Iriy.
When we stopped for the night, everyone took advantage of the opportunity to bathe in the clear blue water under the rising moon. In the secluded cove where Love and I had gone with Margarita and Lively for privacy, I thought I sensed the presence of the syla once more, but there was only a persistent breeze that seemed to rise up from nowhere and then die down again as I bathed near the shore. No voices spoke. No spirits appeared.
I pulled on my uniform over my wet skin with reluctance and climbed the hill to our camp. It had been a long day’s ride and I was ready to fall into bed before I finished eating the meal our cook had prepared. I told the troops we’d make plans for replenishing our supplies early in the morning. I simply couldn’t stay awake another minute.
As I turned toward my tent, Belphagor asked for a word.
“What is it?” I was irritable as he took me aside. I felt as if I might fall asleep on my feet.
“Vasily and I discussed it while we walked today.” He colored a bit in the silvery light of the moon. “And we think you ought to bunk with us.”
I stared at him. “You what?”
“I know it’s unorthodox. But Vasily can’t bear to have you wake alone from those awful dreams, and selfish demon that I am, I can’t bear to be away from him for more than a night. We could trade off, of course, but it seems silly. We’re family. And I assure you, we’re quite capable of behaving ourselves while you’re with us.” Now he definitely blushed.
I nearly laughed. “I appreciate the offer.” I did; odd as it was, I was deeply moved. “But I don’t want to intrude. I’m all right on my own.”