Lightbringer

by Claire Legrand

  They were all Rielle. Every one of them was Rielle.

  Rielle, painted in angry thick strokes of oil paint, standing alone on the edge of a cliff overlooking a red sea, the sky afire with countless stars. Rielle, a mere girl, abstract and cheerful, formed out of tangled wires splashed with garish colors, one arm reaching for a feather that hung suspended in the air.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” Admiral Ravikant asked with a knowing smile. They had come to the gallery’s far side, where narrow twin doors stood locked, their bronze handles cast to resemble wings. “His Excellency is a skilled artist.”

  What interesting company you keep. Corien’s words were beginning to roar, cycling through Eliana’s head in a vicious loop. What a life you have led.

  Her gaze flew to Simon, her skin icing over with understanding. Had he always planned to betray her? Or was it their ill-fated, ill-planned journey to the past that had changed him? Had Corien seen Simon in her mind on that awful day—his allegiance to the Prophet, his devotion to Eliana, his fervent belief in her ability to save them all—and had that somehow changed everything? Was Simon altered when they arrived back at Willow, infected, his loyalties belonging to the Empire?

  Simon had said he would not be affected by their travels through time, that as the weaver of the threads, he would be immune to any changes to the future world, as would she. But perhaps he hadn’t really known, or he’d been lying even then, eager to please her, eager to complete his mission and alter the past to save the future, hoping to somehow, miraculously, avoid the worst. Or hoping that the worst would find him.

  And where was the Prophet in this new, altered future? Whoever they were, how had they let this happen?

  Did the Prophet even exist?

  Admiral Ravikant pushed open the doors. “And now, sadly, I must leave you. Orders are orders.” The admiral lifted Eliana’s bound hands to his lips. “We will meet again soon, Lady Eliana.” He glanced at Simon. “Commander.”

  Simon inclined his head and said nothing.

  Then he was gone, the angel in her father’s skin, gliding back through the gallery with the guards at his heels, and Simon was pulling the doors closed, and it was only the two of them in an enormous shadowed room—gleaming parquet floors, massive framed paintings of angels in flight, gigantic windows with the drapes pulled nearly to, allowing in only thin streams of light that cut the floor into eighths. The ceiling was high. Three levels of curtained mezzanines bordered the room on three sides. It was a room meant for dancing, for elaborate ceremonies.

  And at the far end, a grand staircase coiled down from the third floor like a fat polished serpent. Eliana could not feel a breeze; the air was still. But something was moving in the shadows on the staircase—a gathering, a pull and push of darkness that shifted and curled, coalescing.

  Simon led her forward, his hand hard around her upper arm. It was only then that she realized she had been standing frozen at the closed doors. The shivering shadows on the staircase entranced her, so she did not fight Simon’s grip, but when they stopped ten paces from the foot of the stairs, sweat beaded on her forehead, and her palms turned clammy. She wanted to run and hide from whatever was coming down the stairs; she wanted to stay and look it in the eye.

  A faint sensation of intrusion toyed with the edges of her mind. Invisible coy fingers, plucking and stirring. She shook her head as if to shake off drowsiness, and her vision shifted violently, a discordant sound scraping against her skull. Flashes of images appeared with each blink: a man in black sitting on a throne. A woman standing in a field of fire.

  Eliana herself, ankle-deep in a shallow pool of black water, reaching for the star-dusted sky.

  She touched one of the stars, and it burned her fingers. She tried to yank away her hand, but the star had fused with her skin and was bleeding down her arm, flooding her veins, bubbling up her throat to disintegrate her tongue.

  The images abruptly disappeared, leaving her unbalanced. She watched the shadows gather as they floated down the stairs, joining to become a teeming black heart, and wondered wildly if a beast was coming for her, some feral, starved creature set loose from the city’s dungeons.

  She shook herself, blinking hard. She could not trust her mind. Of course she couldn’t.

  What nonsense, came a voice she recognized, sliding happily into her mind like a wriggling cat. Your mind is the only thing you can trust. It will show you what you must do to survive.

  She looked up, eyes burning, and watched shapes emerge from the shadows, until at last there were boots and trousers, a fine white linen shirt, a long black coat, unbuttoned, knee length. A smiling face, pale and elegant. Eyes black and liquid. Soft dark hair curling against cheeks and nape.

  The Emperor. Corien.

  “And here you are at last,” he said. “The daughter of my great love. Time tried to separate us, Eliana, but we managed to find each other eventually, didn’t we?”

  His voice was smooth and clear, so inarguably lovely that it sickened her. She could barely speak, her throat closing with fear. “Where is my brother?”

  “I’ll tell you if you help me. I’ll bring him right here, and you’ll never be parted from him again.”

  Stricken, she stared at him. “If I help you.”

  He laughed softly. “I can’t tell you how delighted I am to finally have the opportunity to learn everything about you.” He paused, his smile widening. “Well, I could tell you, in fact. I could make you feel my delight as keenly as I do. I can make you feel whatever I want you to feel. I could make you want to kiss me. I could make you rub yourself against me like a groveling dog.”

  Circling her, he fell silent, and when Simon stepped away, Eliana felt the absurd, mortifying urge to reach for him and keep him close, despite everything.

  “Awful, isn’t it? To love someone so very deeply? To love them enough that you would lose yourself to them, lose everything to them, if it meant they might stay beside you a little while longer?” There was mockery in Corien’s voice, with sympathy close behind. “I loved like that once, as you know. I loved many times before that, but never again since. It’s lonely to be loveless for a thousand years. Lonelier still to build an empire from the ashes of a world destroyed by your own mistakes, and to do that not once but twice.”

  Corien stopped before her, close now. He considered her face, and she fought desperately not to blanch under that terrible unblinking scrutiny.

  “Tell me where Remy is,” she said, her jaw clenched tight.

  “I won’t make such mistakes a third time,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “I’m sure you’ve guessed that. I’ve had centuries to plan for this moment. My hatred has grown for centuries. My hate for you, Eliana, and for all of your kind. My hate for the deceitful woman I loved. My hate for a God that would condemn me to this endless fate of war and grief and torment.”

  Corien’s gaze was thoughtful, his voice calm. “Can you comprehend how deeply I hate you? I’ll allow you to attempt imagining it for a time, until I decide to share the feelings with you directly. I hate you, and yet I love you, in a strange way. It’s an unsettling dichotomy I long to tear from my mind, but I can’t—it’s lodged there, it’s part of me. I love you because you are hers. I loathe you because you are his.”

  With no warning, he seized her chin, turned her face left, then right, inspecting her, and she was too terrified, too baffled, to react.

  A small smile curved his lips. “I see her there.” He waved with his free hand, his voice lilting. “I see you, Rielle!” Then he released her, wistful. “You have her sharp jaw, her cheekbones. But you’re lithe where she was soft, and darker than she was. And you’ve his mouth, his nose. His great brown cow eyes.”

  It was the mention of Audric that jarred her, awakening within her a surprising spark of defiance. Of the Lightbringer she knew only the old songs, Remy’s beloved tales. The dilapidated st
atue near the river in Orline—King Audric, proud and sad, mounted on the chavaile that had once been loyal to the Blood Queen, both of them looking toward the rising sun.

  Eliana bristled at the derision in Corien’s voice. Cow eyes. As if the Lightbringer had been a mere pitiful beast.

  “Considering all your mighty power,” she said, forcing the words through her teeth, “I’m surprised it took you so long to find me. I arrived in this time eighteen years ago. Surely your angelic mind should have found me much sooner than this. And yet you needed a crude human tool to scour the world and do your work for you.”

  She refused to look at Simon.

  But Corien only spread his arms, palms up. “You’re right, of course. If our world was as it should be, if my beloved hadn’t permanently damaged the empirium when she died”—he gestured to his ink-black eyes—“I would have found you within hours. My former glorious mind would have found you at once, right where you lay in Rozen Ferracora’s arms, and would have held both of you immobile until my soldiers came to fetch you. And then they would have slit Rozen’s throat, and Ioseph’s too, which would have been a shame, because out of all the bodies Ravikant has possessed, Ioseph’s is his favorite. But perhaps that’s only because he was so eager to see the look on your face when you realized what your adoptive father’s body was being used for.”

  He clasped his hands, gazing at her with an admiration that reeked of mockery. “I saw it, you know. I saw everything that happened that day. My soldiers are my eyes and ears, and I saw you on that beach, your hands blazing as you ran toward the water. Oh, dearest Eliana, you were so full of hope. It was really quite charming. I saw your face when you realized Ravikant lives in Ioseph’s body. And then, when Simon shut you into your cell? Splendid. A magnificent portrait of disbelief and devastation. It was almost like I could see your heart breaking. Which has always struck me as an odd expression. A heart can’t break, can it? It can burst, it can be torn to shreds, it can be stomped upon and smeared across the ground, but it can’t break in the way a bone does.”

  He spoke too quickly, his black eyes bottomless and glittering. He seemed elated to be looking at her, like a delighted child reunited with his best friend. Eliana’s stomach turned. She couldn’t contain a small, panicked sob.

  “Please,” she said, focusing on the one thing she could think of clearly, “let me see my brother.”

  He ignored her, smoothing back a lock of hair that clung to her damp cheek. “Can you imagine if you were mine instead of his? Your mother’s beauty added to my own? My angelic beauty, of course. How I looked before the Deep took me. My God. You would be a vision. And!” He clapped his hands. “You would have wings on your back, just like Simon once did! The sign of a marque. Isn’t that right, Simon?”

  “Yes, Your Excellency,” said Simon from somewhere behind her.

  “Do what you’re going to do and be done with it,” Eliana spat, tears hot in her eyes. “You’re going to hurt me. So hurt me.”

  Corien’s smile faded. “How disappointing. You seem to have inherited your father’s lack of humor.”

  “I also inherited his lack of tolerance for evil despots.” She felt dizzy with fear but forced herself to look straight at him. “I know what you want. You want to use me as a weapon, to finally eradicate humanity, as you failed to do with my mother. I won’t help you. You’ll have to kill me.” She grasped wildly for ammunition. “You can’t force me to do what you want—not on that scale, and not with the power I possess. If you could do that, you would have done it with Rielle.”

  A flicker of anger passed over Corien’s face. She latched on to it, startled. “Ah, see? There’s something about the power she had, that I have. Something surpassing yours, something you can’t touch.”

  “So it would seem,” said Corien evenly.

  “You had to persuade her to join your cause before she would do what you wanted,” Eliana continued, emboldened by the mutinous look on his face. “And now you’ll have to persuade me, only you’ll fail. I’ll never do what she did. I’ll never help you kill my own people.”

  “Oh, my sweet, stupid child.” Corien smoothed his thumbs across the slick arches of her brows. “You think I want to use you to eradicate humanity? I’ve nearly done that on my own. It’s only a matter of time until the rest of you are gone. No, what you will do is sit there and watch, mute and bound, while Simon uses the power you have so helpfully resurrected to send me back to find your mother.”

  Eliana stared as Simon approached, the strength she had summoned vanishing in an instant. Of course. It was not about her power, not anymore.

  It was about his.

  And she was the one who had reawakened it.

  Desperate, she tried to stand, to run at him, but she remained helpless and frozen to the floor. She struggled, straining against bonds she could not see. Pain exploded at her temples.

  Corien clucked his tongue. “Spare yourself, Eliana. Angelic chains are unbreakable.”

  She tried to scream; he stifled her voice. In horrified silence, she watched as Simon, not three steps from her, raised his arms and began to pull thin, pale strands of light from the air. His brow furrowed only slightly, his posture impeccable.

  Eliana blazed with anger as she watched him work. Once, she had thought his magic beautiful. The memory of his face, softened with wonder at his own power, scorched a furious path inside her, and for a single crystalline moment, she was wiped clean of all terror and knew nothing but the solid, sharp blade of her anger.

  Once, she had sat beside him in the gardens of Willow and mended a scar on his chest. They had held each other, whispering of old wounds and what had been done to them. They were more than their wounds; they were more than their anger.

  Once, she had awakened in him a power, and he had used it to send her to a time centuries past.

  But this time was different.

  The glowing threads Simon pulled from the air snapped at every tug. He struggled to fashion their floating scraps into a ring, but the faster he reached for them, the more quickly they dissolved, and soon they were gone entirely.

  Sweat beaded on Simon’s brow. His blue eyes fixed on some distant point in the dim receiving hall, he reached for more light, but nothing came to him. The room was quiet. He was a man alone, arms trembling in empty air.

  Simon let his hands fall. His shoulders were high and square. He did not look at Corien.

  But Corien was looking at him, all amusement gone from his face. “Why have you stopped?”

  “I cannot do it,” Simon replied tightly.

  “Of course you can. You did it before. That’s why you’re here now, with me. You sent her back in time, and now you’re mine.” Something sharp flickered in Corien’s eyes. His cheekbones were white knives in the shadows. “Do it, Simon.”

  Simon hesitated, then raised his arms once more, but after a long moment of strained silence, he cried out and fell to the floor, shuddering and pale. The air remained dark. Threadless.

  Eliana’s head buzzed with terror. She tried to move away from him, but Corien’s mind held her fast.

  “Again,” Corien said coolly.

  Simon obeyed. The dark room ached with tense silence. Then, at last, he dropped to his hands and knees, heaving.

  “Again.”

  Kneeling, Simon raised his arms, every muscle straining as if in his hands he held a mountain.

  Corien stood over him, watching without expression, and when Simon pushed himself to his feet at last and stalked a few paces away, breathing hard, still Corien watched him and said nothing.

  Then his quiet black gaze fell on Eliana.

  She tried to look away, but he did not allow her even a blink. Her eyes burned, and her lungs ached. She longed to gulp for air but could only suck in thin scraps of it. She tried to scream, and Corien’s will swallowed her voice.

  “I see,
” he muttered at last. He looked from her to Simon, then to her again. “I see.”

  Simon turned, his eyes watery and red, his skin sallow. “Your Excellency, I apologize, I don’t know what’s happened—”

  “I do.” Corien came to Eliana and stroked her cheek. “I think you’re nothing without her, Simon. And I think you’ve made her angry.”

  Eliana stared back at him, triumph blooming like fire in her heart. But before she could try to speak, she fell abruptly into a thick fog.

  Corien was everywhere and nowhere. She heard him whisper but could not see his face. She was being moved about like a doll, her legs carrying her against her will. She felt rough hands on her neck and arm, guiding her. She caught a glimpse of sunlight, a chamber of gold, a rustle of black fabric. Simon’s silhouette. Shadowed figures moving swiftly. The echo of Corien’s laughter. A clipped order: Make sure she eats. Make sure she sleeps.

  A vision took her: herself sleeping comfortably in a white nightgown, on a white bed, in a white tower, with a white shore far below. She knew it was a lie and tried to resist it, tried to punch her way to freedom, but the vision was too powerful, and it claimed her.

  She was the Eliana sleeping in a strange white bed, and as she dreamed, she smiled, and knew nothing of grief, and was content.

  A cool hand stroked her back. Sleep, Eliana. There is much work to do, I see. More than I had imagined. Sleep. Dream.

  She obeyed.

  7

  Audric

  “Merovec has begun calling elementals before him in the Hall of the Saints for questioning. From among our citizens and from his own ranks. We’ve heard he asks them if they know where Rielle has gone. If they speak to angels. If they are loyal to him, or to you. He does not allow the magisters to witness these proceedings—only the Archon, and only because he stopped using his magic upon his election, decades ago. What the Archon sees during these long hours, we do not know. Odo and I are doing what we can to comfort families and quietly grow our efforts with Red Crown, but the air is rank with confusion and fear, and we must move slowly.”