Lightbringer

by Claire Legrand

  And then Simon could say nothing else, for in the grip of those bloodstained white hands, he was no longer Simon. He was a mind in agony. He was a body inert on the floor.

  He was a weapon, dismantled by the hands of its master.

  12

  Audric

  “I write this so that, if I die, and someone comes upon my body, they’ll know where I have been and what I have seen. I have wandered north from the place that was once my home and never my home, and have now entered the northern mountain range called the Villmark. I’ve always wanted to explore these peaks in search of ice dragons, the ancient godsbeasts that Saint Grimvald rode into battle against the angels, but princes and kings are not allowed to wander off into the wild looking for beasts no one has seen in an age. Fortunately, I am no longer a prince or a king, or anything but a man alone.”

  —Journal of Ilmaire Lysleva, dated December, Year 999 of the Second Age

  Audric dodged Evyline’s sword. Then he spun and parried, sending Illumenor’s blade slamming into hers.

  Evyline had recommended they fight with wooden training swords, but both Sloane and Audric had disagreed. If Audric was going to impress the Mazabatian troops and perhaps persuade some of them to meet with their senators before tomorrow’s vote, he needed to show off properly.

  He also needed the Mazabatian Senate to vote yes on his petition for military aid. And if Sloane thought a public fight in the barracks courtyard would help achieve this, Audric would do it.

  He just wished Illumenor wasn’t so damned heavy.

  Another swing, another parry. He and Evyline danced around each other, their crashing blades glinting in the morning sunlight. For all her bulk, Evyline was fast, her footwork impressive. She thrust her sword; Audric deflected, but it was inelegant. She bore down on him, using the weight of her sword to press him toward the ground. He pushed against her and scrambled away. His boots kicked up dust as he spun around and desperately swung his sword to block hers.

  He was beginning to regret declining her offer to use the training swords. Fighting hadn’t always been this difficult.

  But after eight weeks of grieving, Audric felt thin and fragile, his muscles weak, his stamina eradicated. When he had pointed this out to Sloane, she had dismissed his worries.

  “You’re the Lightbringer,” she had said with a small smile, trying to cheer him. “A few weeks in bed hasn’t ruined you.”

  She was right; he wasn’t ruined.

  He was, however, exhausted.

  And Evyline was tireless. She flung her sword around as though it weighed nothing, dealing one ferocious overhead strike after another. Audric blocked all of them, but only just, and then he turned oddly, and his knees wobbled, making him stumble. He felt the fight’s tide turn and saw in Evyline’s pale brown eyes that she felt it too. Another shift of her weight, one more blow of her sword, and she would beat him.

  Audric glanced over Evyline’s shoulder, meeting Sloane’s gaze. She stood against a pillar, her arms crossed. He knew very well the worried scowl she wore.

  Then Evyline relented, dealing a clumsy, ineffectual blow Audric easily deflected, allowing him to regain some ground. She was letting him win, but he was too tired to care.

  She dodged him, but not quickly enough. He spun and caught her blade with his own, pressed his weight down against her. Their audience would think he had trapped her under the pressure of his sword, but it was a lie. This needed to end.

  “Do you yield?” he called out.

  “I yield,” Evyline replied, and they stepped apart, breathing hard. Evyline sheathed her sword and bowed.

  “Well fought, Your Majesty,” she announced for all to hear.

  But no applause followed her declaration, and when Audric dared to look at the soldiers scattered around the yard watching the fight, his stomach sank.

  Dozens had gathered—at the barracks windows, in the breezeways at the courtyard’s perimeter—and none of them were smiling.

  Don’t worry, came Ludivine’s reassurance, there will be other opportunities to impress them.

  He resisted the urge to swat her away like a fly. I asked you not to talk to me like this. This is my mind, and not yours to enter as you please.

  Without another word, she was gone, and the little twinge of pain in his heart infuriated him. Every time she spoke to him, every time he dismissed her, it was like being presented with the full breadth of her lies all over again: Rielle had killed his father, killed Ludivine’s father, killed her own father—and both Rielle and Ludivine had kept these secrets from him. They had promised him only truth and then continued to deceive him.

  Princess Kamayin kept trying to convince him to forgive Ludivine. They would need her as an ally in the war to come, she pointed out.

  Audric didn’t disagree. He would accept her help when the time came.

  But he didn’t have to forgive her.

  A voice from the gathered soldiers sharply cried out one word in Mazabatian: “Traitor!”

  A shocked silence. The word rang in Audric’s ears like a struck bell.

  Evyline withdrew her sword and took two furious steps forward, making the soldiers nearest her stagger back.

  “You are addressing the king of Celdaria,” she barked, “and you will demonstrate the proper respect or face the consequences.”

  “It’s all right, Evyline,” Audric said, joining her at the crowd’s edge. She reluctantly lowered her sword and stepped back to flank him. “If someone wishes to speak to me, you may come forward and do so. In fact, I welcome it.”

  A moment passed in which everyone gathered seemed to be holding their breath. Then, to Audric’s right, a young soldier, copper-skinned with shining black hair pulled into a tight braid, pushed her way forward, her eyes bright and ferocious. One of her fellow soldiers grabbed her arm, trying to pull her back; she yanked herself free.

  “My name is Sanya,” she announced, “and I would like to speak.”

  Audric nodded at her. “Please do so.”

  “Eight weeks have passed since you arrived,” she began. “You sleep in our queens’ palace. You eat at their table. You sit in council meetings for hours, but when we ask our commanders for information about what was discussed, they deflect our questions and won’t meet our eyes. How are we to know you aren’t stalling until your queen can arrive and kill us all? How are we to trust a king whose queen deceived him so completely?”

  Low rumbles of agreement swept through the crowd. Soldiers shifted their weight, glanced at each other uneasily. Others watched Audric in silence.

  Something inside him quietly crumbled. He had never imagined he would be looked upon with such suspicion, such hostile distrust.

  But this was now his world. This was what had come of the choices he had made, and the choices of others that he could not control. He would answer this woman with the truth.

  “You can’t know for certain that you can trust me,” he said calmly. “I understand your frustration and your fear, and I’m sorry.”

  Another soldier stepped forward—pale and glowering, Sanya’s companion who had tried to stop her. “We have heard that your friend, the lady Ludivine, is no human, but an angel.”

  “That’s true.”

  The crowd rumbled with anger. More voices cried out from behind him, from above: “Traitor! Liar!”

  Evyline leaned close. “My lord, we must leave.”

  “Their anger is valid,” he said, stepping away from her.

  “Will you send us to die for you?” Sanya called out, her eyes fixed upon him like arrows on their target. “Since your queen showed her face here in the capital, we have faced storms, quakes, and floods that have left much of our country in ruins. And now we will be forced to leave and fight for your throne instead of protecting our home?”

  “This is about more than my throne,” Audric re
plied. He knew he should say something better than that, that he should speak eloquently about the importance of all nations coming together as one to fend off the encroaching enemy.

  But he was tired, and the escalating force of the soldiers’ collective anger felt like stones piling on his chest.

  “Many possibilities are being carefully, thoroughly explored and discussed,” was all he could manage. “All I can tell you right now is that your queens trust me.”

  Sanya scoffed, her eyes flashing. “So did your people. And now we hear they’re being turned out of their own homes and imprisoned for using magic, even if all they can do is light a single candle. Is that what will happen to us too? Will we all be sitting with our magic beaten out of us when the angels come at last?”

  The crowd fell silent once more.

  Audric stared at Sanya, unable to speak.

  Because she was right: His people had trusted him to protect them, and he had failed them. He had abandoned them to fend for themselves in the chaos of a country on the brink of a war it could not win.

  Suddenly, a swirling cloud of shadows descended upon them, encircling both him and Evyline. The shadows held wolves with snapping teeth and leopards with shifting black coats.

  Veiled by their darkness, Audric hurried toward the nearest door leading back into the barracks, Evyline behind him. The rest of the Sun Guard waited inside, eyeing the shadows with awe and terror. One of their number, Maylis, muttered a prayer and touched her nape, honoring the House of Night.

  The barracks door slammed shut. Sloane strode out of the shadows, which dissolved at her touch. The glass orb at the top of her casting, an ebony scepter, glowed as bright as a flame’s blue heart.

  “That was my fault,” she muttered as they hurried through the barracks, back toward the palace. “We should never have gone out there. You aren’t ready for it.”

  Trying to shake off the memory of Sanya’s furious voice, Audric protested. “My sword work is rusty, I’ll grant you that, but—”

  “I’m not talking about your sword work,” she snapped. “I’m talking about your ability to face what’s to come and inspire the people whose help you’ll need to survive it.”

  To Audric’s left, Evyline grumbled a warning. Sloane sighed and stopped at a turn in the hallway, rubbing her face.

  “Don’t apologize,” Audric said numbly. He couldn’t look at Sloane. He wanted to return to his rooms; he wanted so badly to sleep. Maybe it would erase this day from his memory. “You’re right, of course.”

  “Listen to me, love.” Sloane gently touched Audric’s cheek so he would face her. “I know you grieve. I know your mind has turned against you, and I understand why. But many of us are grieving, and there’s more sorrow on the horizon, so I need you—we need you—to pick up the pieces of yourself and fight.” She smiled sadly. “You are the Lightbringer, and our world is growing dark.”

  He stared at her through a bright film of tears. Though he towered over her, he felt diminished beside her. A boy being examined by a beloved aunt, only to be found lacking.

  “When the moment comes, if it comes,” he said thickly, “what if I cannot do what needs to be done?”

  Sloane lowered her arm, her gaze solemn. “Then we will all die, Audric. All of us.”

  A royal page, pink-cheeked and tow-headed, breathing hard, appeared at the hallway’s far end and hurried toward them.

  “A message for you, Your Majesty,” he said with a little bow, and left as quickly as he’d come.

  Audric read the letter with dread rising fast in his heart. The message was curt, the letters hastily scrawled.

  “The queens are requesting a meeting first thing in the morning,” he announced, crumpling the paper in his fist. Tomorrow, the Mazabatian Senate would vote to approve or deny his request for military aid. “There is news from the north.”

  And whatever it was, he could not imagine it was good.

  • • •

  The next morning at nine o’clock, the war council met in the queens’ atrium, a circular room capped with a glass ceiling through which sunlight streamed, tinged green from the trees swaying overhead. The walls were a rich terra cotta, the floor tiled in pearl and cobalt.

  A massive round table carved from rich red oak sat at the room’s heart, around which the war council was seated—Audric, Queen Bazati and Queen Fozeyah, Princess Kamayin. General Rakallo, chief commander of the royal armies. The seven high magisters. Ludivine. Sloane. Evyline, who refused to leave Audric’s side.

  And this morning, an additional skinny, pale man Audric guessed to be ten years older than himself. He stared at the table, white-knuckled hands gripping its edge.

  All Audric knew about him was that his name was Jazan, and that he was a spy. Months ago, rumors of missing children in Kirvaya had piqued Princess Kamayin’s curiosity. When she had sent four of her personal spies to investigate, only one—Jazan—had returned.

  The room hardly breathed as he spoke.

  “He keeps them in little rooms,” Jazan whispered, his voice shaking. “Rooms with low ceilings, too small to stand in. When he sends for them, they’re taken down beneath the mountains. To his laboratories.”

  Jazan glanced up at Kamayin. “It’s like a whole city, my lady. A city carved out of the ice and black mountains.”

  Queen Bazati sat rigid in her chair, her dark eyes blazing.

  “What does he want with children?” asked Sloane, her face drawn tight with fear. “Why children?”

  “Elemental children,” Jazan corrected. “My lady. Pardon me. They’re all elementals. Most of them haven’t even come into their magic yet, and I think that’s what he likes about them. The things he does to them—with the help of his healers and his soldiers—force the children’s magic to awaken earlier than it would naturally, and when this happens, he can control it utterly. He can mold it. Mold them.” Jazan’s voice cracked. “I also think he takes them because it frightens people when children disappear.”

  Jazan dragged a shaking hand across his face. “Oh, God, he hates us. He’ll kill us all. Every single one of us. He’ll do it in the worst way possible. We’ll die burning. We’ll die screaming.”

  Audric leaned forward. “Jazan. What does he do with them? Experiments, you said?”

  “There are monsters in the Deep,” Jazan whispered through his fingers. “I heard his healers speak of them. But they’re not healers like the ones we know. They’re cutters. They’re angels in human skins, though not all of them are strong enough to stay anchored to their bodies. Some are, and they stay in the same skins for weeks. There were a few I never saw change. But some of them go through bodies like a soldier goes through gloves.”

  “You said they spoke of monsters,” Audric redirected him gently. “What kinds of monsters?”

  “I don’t know. They called them by a strange word: cruciata. As far as I can tell, they live in the Deep. And now he’s trying to recreate them, or something like them. He and his healers, they make serums, these vile elixirs. They smell like poison, and all the tunnels and caves underneath the mountains reek of it. And then they…”

  Jazan looked up at Audric, silently imploring. “There are dragons too. Dragons.” He laughed a little. “I didn’t believe my own eyes at first, but it’s true: There are still dragons in the world. Ice dragons from Borsvall. Furred collars and everything, just like in all the paintings. And he’s…” Jazan spread out his hands, palms facing up. He looked around the table helplessly, as if desperate for someone to tell him it was all a dream. “He’s making monsters out of them. He cuts them open and stitches them back together. And there are other beasts, too, that his healers play with and sew together with the dragons, or…God help me, I don’t know how they do it. But these beasts, they are abominations.

  “And the children… He forces them to forge castings, and he controls their minds while the
y do it. It’s perverse. It isn’t right. And the castings the children make—some are for themselves, and some are designed to fit the beasts, like a set of armor shared between child and monster, and… Your Majesties, I think he means to make an army of them. Elemental children with their minds under his control, them and their beasts armored in bound castings. I don’t understand how, but… These beasts, they can fling fire just as the children that ride them do. The children shake the earth and bend swords, and so do their beasts, same as any elemental. As if child and beast were one creature, split into two bodies.”

  “This is impossible,” muttered the Grand Magister of the Baths, wringing her freckled hands. “You saw wrong.”

  “I don’t see wrong.” Jazan wiped his eyes with bandaged fingers. The wounds he had sustained were minimal.

  And this disturbed Audric most of all.

  “Why did he let you live?” Audric asked.

  “He wasn’t even there. Not really. Not in body.” Jazan thumped his chest hard. “Not like this. He was off somewhere else in the world, and his generals were running things in his absence. But I heard him.” Jazan nodded, laughing a little. His tears spilled over. “I heard him. I’m his messenger. He wants you to know what is coming for you.”

  “What did he say?” Audric leaned forward. “Do you know where he is?”

  “He’s in Patria,” said Ludivine.

  Everyone turned to face her. She sat pale and still, her hands clasped on the table. She met Audric’s gaze and held it. “He brought Rielle to Patria. They’re after the saints’ castings. When they left Celdaria, they had three of them. Now, they have four.”

  Audric briefly closed his eyes. Of course Rielle would still be searching for the castings—now, perhaps, to open the Gate instead of repair it.

  Several people around the table drew in sharp breaths.

  “She has Saint Marzana’s shield,” Audric said quietly, remembering. “Saint Grimvald’s hammer.”