Lightbringer

by Claire Legrand

  “Saint Tokazi’s staff,” Kamayin added. She did not speak of the Obex Rielle had slaughtered to obtain the staff, but Audric saw the memory on her grim face.

  “And now, Saint Ghovan’s arrow,” Ludivine concluded, her expression grave.

  “And once she has found all seven,” he added, every word heavy on his tongue, “their power may be enough for her to do with the Gate as she pleases.”

  A hush fell over the room.

  Queen Fozeyah glared at Ludivine. “How do you know they are in Patria?”

  She hesitated. “I tried to speak to Rielle. I reached out to her. I…I saw her.”

  Shock jolted Audric. “Is she hurt? Is she well?”

  “She’s not hurt,” Ludivine said slowly. “Not in the way you’re thinking.”

  “Stop speaking in riddles and tell us the truth,” he snapped.

  Ludivine’s calm was maddening. “Her connection to the empirium is much stronger now than it was weeks ago. I was stunned to sense the change in her. It was as though I’d been thrust into some raging golden fire.”

  Then, a pause. A tiny flinch that Audric was viciously glad to see. He hoped it meant she was hurting in some way that would never heal, just as he was.

  “Her power is rising fast,” Ludivine finished, “and I don’t know how much longer she will be able to control it.”

  The silence was terrible. Audric leaned heavily against the table, ran his hands through his hair.

  For the first time in weeks, he reached out to Ludivine’s mind, clumsy and desperate. Is she afraid?

  Yes. Ludivine’s voice was a mere whisper of thought. And she aches for home.

  Audric pushed back from the table and went to the nearest window. He shut his eyes against the cheerful morning, the lush palace grounds, and tried not to imagine Rielle alone in an unfamiliar country, Corien whispering promises in her ear and the empirium burning her alive from the inside out.

  Unfortunately, his imagination had always been spectacular.

  “Besides the dragons and the children and whatever unholy beasts they’ve made,” said Sloane, her voice brimming with anger, “how many troops does he have at his disposal?”

  “By my last count, five hundred angelic soldiers,” Jazan replied, his voice hollow.

  “More will come,” said Ludivine quietly. “When Rielle opens the Gate, there will be millions.”

  “If she opens the Gate,” the Grand Magister of the Pyre pointed out.

  “But there are others,” Jazan continued. He pulled restlessly at the hems of his sleeves. “Thousands of humans. The angels control them.”

  Audric turned back to the table, his heart sinking as he began to understand. “He did that to the Sauvillier soldiers the day of the fire trial. He controlled them, turned them against their own people.”

  “Their eyes were gray,” Sloane breathed, her gaze distant. She was remembering, just as Audric was. “Gray and empty, like a fog had fallen inside them.”

  “The angels call them adatrox,” Jazan said. “His generals travel the world collecting them. Thousands of them. They slip inside their minds and remake them as they see fit. They tell them what to do, and the adatrox must do it. I don’t think they even know what they’re doing. I hope they don’t know.” Jazan’s face fell, lined with shadows. “The things the angels made them do to each other…the things the angels made them do to us…”

  He collapsed into sobs, and after Kamayin called for her handmaidens to escort him to the palace’s hospital wing, Queen Bazati turned to her and spoke for the first time since the meeting began.

  “I have many questions for you, my daughter,” she said, her voice low.

  “Three years ago, I recruited two dozen spies,” Kamayin said, facing her mothers with a defiant gleam in her eyes. “The Starlings. They’re very good. Better than your spies, Mama. Don’t worry. I fund them myself.”

  Queen Fozeyah’s mouth twitched, but the smile did not meet her eyes. “How enterprising of you.”

  “Every princess deserves her own private order of spies,” Kamayin said, bristling. “When I heard of the missing children in Kirvaya, I had to send out my birds. And it’s a good thing I did. Now we know what we’re facing.”

  General Rakallo, the decorated commander who had greeted Audric on the beach, scowled in her chair. “Yes, now we know, and now everything is changed.”

  “It changes nothing,” said Sloane, a bite to her voice. “We suspected Corien would be amassing armies to rise up against us.”

  The Grand Magister of the Holdfast, his ruddy face pocked with scars, spoke in hushed tones. “But we did not know just how large his forces would be, and we knew nothing about these monsters he is creating.”

  “I don’t even understand how such a thing is possible,” Queen Bazati muttered, her hands in fists.

  “The common angelic mind, Your Majesty, is extraordinary,” said Ludivine. “Corien’s mind is far from common. Before the Wars, he was strong. Now, after centuries spent in the Deep, planning his revenge, he is beyond any of us. Even me.”

  “Except for Rielle,” Audric said at once, and as soon as the words left his lips, tears sprang to his eyes. It was the first time he’d said her name aloud in weeks, and the cherished word snatched away his breath.

  General Rakallo sighed sharply. “Yes, the only being more powerful than the angel bent on destroying us is the woman who left her home and loved ones to join him. Forgive me, Your Majesty, if I do not find this particularly comforting.”

  Kamayin abruptly stood, hands flat on the table. “That kind of talk is neither necessary nor productive, General Rakallo.”

  The Grand Magister of the Holdfast shook his head. “I disagree, Your Highness. We cannot consider Rielle an ally or an asset. She is a weapon, and right now she is in Corien’s arsenal.”

  Queen Fozeyah sat with her fingers steepled at her lips. “Can she be killed?”

  Now Evyline was the one surging to her feet, her eyes bright with indignation.

  Audric reached for her. “Evyline, please sit down.”

  Queen Fozeyah held up her hands, the shining dark coils of her hair falling back over her tawny brown shoulders, left bare by the wide neck of her gown. “Queen Rielle is loved by many in this room. But we must ask ourselves these questions and be prepared for any eventuality if we want to survive this.”

  “Anything can be killed,” came Ludivine’s haunted voice. “But could we get close enough to do it?” Her desolate gaze moved to Audric. “That I do not know.”

  “Killing her may not be necessary,” Audric said quietly, and he hated how glad he was to see Ludivine’s small, approving smile in response.

  General Rakallo’s mouth was thin with exasperation. “Your Majesties, can we truly trust this man to be part of our strategizing? He is blinded by love. He has been deceived by Queen Rielle before, and he can be deceived again.”

  “Yes, I love her,” Audric said, and he had never meant the words so passionately. As if it were a crime to love her, this fearsome, inexplicable woman with her temper and her bravery and her surprising, glittering mind.

  “And yes,” he went on, “she deceived me, and when I discovered the depth of her lies, I let my anger and fear overcome me. I told her she was the thing she had feared becoming—a monster. I rejected her humanity; I dismissed everything that is good in her.” His voice broke. “And there is so much good in her. Courage and resilience, and such a capacity for love that anyone lucky enough to earn her trust could live off the power of her adoration alone.” He looked around at the gathered council, silently pleading with each of them to understand. “I pushed her away. And now she is with our greatest enemy. Were it not for my error in judgment, my weakness, she might still be with us.”

  He took a slow breath, fighting for calm. “She has been burdened from birth with a great and ter
rible power. For months she has been judged, tortured, worshipped, and reviled. And despite all of that, she stayed with us—until I made the mistake of condemning her. We cannot win her back without love. And without her, we cannot win.”

  The room was silent as the council members watched him with varying degrees of pity, embarrassment, sadness. Anger.

  “Queen Bazati,” he said, his voice steady but his stomach in knots, “Queen Fozeyah, you cannot allow this news from the north to affect today’s vote. I beseech you, speak with the assembly before the vote is called. Let me speak to them. Celdaria will be the first front of this war—that I can promise you. Corien will want the poetry of beginning his conquest at the seat of my power, and with Merovec on the throne, the city will fall swiftly. He is utterly unprepared to face such an army. He is paranoid and fearful, as the letters from Red Crown attest. I’ve shown them to you. You’ve read them and have heard reports through your own underground. He does not understand angels. I do. He does not know Rielle.” He smiled softly, his heart in tatters. “I do. And if we want her to come back to us, she must have a home to return to.”

  Then he looked around at all of them, willing them to understand. “To prepare for the true war ahead of us, we must amass as strong a force as possible in the place where Corien no doubt intends to strike first: me de la Terre. And before we can do that, I must reclaim my throne. I can do neither of these things without your army. Together, we can be our world’s first line of defense against Corien when he comes. Unless you would prefer that he face whatever ragged army Merovec patches together.”

  Queen Bazati’s expression was implacable. “I understand your argument, Audric. I supported your petition to the Senate, as did my wife.” She sighed, staring at the table, and then straightened to address the entire council. “But I cannot speak to the Senate before the vote. Because they have already voted.”

  Shock rippled through the room.

  Kamayin gaped at her mothers, shaking her head slowly.

  “What?” Audric whispered. He felt numb with horror. “When? And why?”

  “Late last night, we spoke to Jazan with the speakers of all ten Senate chambers,” explained Queen Fozeyah. “We wanted the chance to hear his report before you did and assess the situation privately.”

  “You made that man relive what happened to him twice in the span of twelve hours?” Audric said angrily. “I hadn’t thought either of you that cruel.”

  “It isn’t cruelty, Audric.” Queen Bazati’s gaze was full of pity. “It is survival.”

  Into the tense silence came a sharp rap at the door. Queen Fozeyah rose and opened it, admitting the high speaker of the Mazabatian Senate—a plump, stern-faced woman with rich brown skin and a cap of tight gray curls. She surveyed the room, her sharp gaze lingering on Audric.

  “You have news for us,” said Queen Bazati quietly.

  The high speaker nodded, then opened a leather packet and began to read.

  “On the matter of the petition of King Audric Courverie of the nation of Celdaria,” said the high speaker, her voice sharp and clear, “who has requested military aid to invade that country’s capital and oust the usurper, Merovec Sauvillier, with the far-reaching objective of establishing a base of defense against potential angelic invaders, the Senate has deliberated and voted. We have taken into consideration the counsel of our queens, the holy magisters, and the Mazabatian people, whose voices have bestowed upon us our power. Our nation has been battered by unprecedented disasters in recent months, and we simply do not have the resources or the bodies to send abroad while we are struggling to clear our beaches, rebuild our farmlands, and gather our dead.”

  The high speaker paused. “With a final count of one hundred and ninety-two to eight, we hereby move that the Celdarian petition be rejected and that the crown deny their request for military aid.”

  Audric sat heavily in his chair, watching numbly as the high speaker presented her packet to the queens.

  “If you concur with this motion for denial, Your Majesties,” the woman continued, “your signatures will confirm the vote. If not, you may appeal the vote in a special session.”

  Audric held his breath, not daring to speak, and then watched as if through the slow mire of a dream while the queens signed the document that doomed his country and would soon doom them all. He only vaguely noticed the others’ reactions: Kamayin rushing at her mothers, passionately protesting; the Grand Magister of the Baths touching her throat in solemn prayer.

  Queen Bazati was watching him, her expression compassionate but resolute. Queen Fozeyah led a shouting Kamayin into one of the private studies circling the room.

  And the worst thing, the most horrible thing, was that Audric understood their decision.

  Why should they trust him? Why should they send thousands of their troops to fight a futile war that had begun centuries before any of them were born?

  If he was going to take back his country and rally the people of Avitas to fight for their Sun Queen and their future, he would have to do it alone.

  13

  Rielle

  “From our observations in the Deep, we have divided the cruciata into five distinct groupings based on their closest similarity to creatures known in Avitas: vipers (reptilian), raptors (avian), catamounts (feline), bulls (a strange combination of bovine and ursine characteristics), and nibblers (insectivorous and arachnid, though far larger than is typical in Avitas). Notably, while the nibblers are smaller than the others—and their grouping the least populous, perhaps indicating a lack of strength that makes it difficult for them to navigate the Deep—they are also by far the most ravenous.”

  —A report written by the angel Kasdeia, surgeon of the Northern Reach, dated August 17, Year 994 of the Second Age

  For days, Rielle existed in a black-gold ocean. There, in the most exquisite and fathomless depths of her body, the empirium roared and roiled.

  Fleeting moments of awareness illuminated the truth: They were traveling north. She and Corien. The girl, Obritsa; her guard, Artem. They were traveling quickly. Rings of light flashed open, then closed, a faint scent of smoke with each illumination.

  The castings Artem carried, now four in number, emitted a new, stronger power that hummed against Rielle’s skin like the air before a storm, ready to snap open.

  And Corien was close. Rielle felt his mouth against her cheek, the nest of his arms around her. Sometimes she recognized his nearness and met his lips with her own. Sometimes she was lost at sea and cried out for him, but even he could not find her there in the dark shimmering depths.

  There, she was utterly alone with the empirium. Its tireless voice was an unending chorus of words too strange and terrible for her to decipher, and she could not plug her ears, nor did she want to. Wrapped up in its waves, she floated and dove and sank and drowned, and she welcomed each lung-crushing moment of pain. She opened her mouth and swallowed black water. She opened her eyes and saw skies scattered with gold stars. She reached out, fingers grasping, and was pulled down into darkness, and she welcomed the fall, because somewhere in the darkness was the answer.

  Somewhere in this endless world of the empirium was more—more power, more understanding.

  Why have you chosen me? She asked this many times. What do you want with me?

  The empirium answered in incomprehensible words that rattled her bones and cracked her spine, but where she should have felt pain, she felt only warm waves of pleasure. She turned into the tide, let it sweep her down through ecstatic black water. It broke around her, a cold curtain of needles.

  you are, rumbled a voice that was not singular but rather all voices, an eternal chorus.

  Yes? She held her breath, listening.

  Nothing answered her but the constant beat of her heart, the churning pulse of black waves.

  Then the empirium spoke again—a boom of noiseless noise that exp
loded between Rielle’s ears:

  I will wake

  Her eyes snapped open.

  • • •

  She was surrounded by white, and she was in Corien’s arms. He held her against his chest, his black hair peppered with snow.

  “There you are,” he whispered, relief plain on his face. “You’ve come back to me.”

  Air burst into her lungs. She coughed, expelling water that wasn’t there, and pushed against Corien’s chest. “Put me down!”

  He obeyed, looking flummoxed, and then Rielle was on the ground near a sweeping flight of black steps. The air repulsed her, as did the rock stretching for miles beneath her and the countless infinitesimal grains of moisture she could sense floating around her. She turned inward, away from the elements that called to her, away from the empirium that lived inside them all. In her head, she heard the crash of black waves, and when she fought them, they thundered ever louder.

  “I am just a girl,” she whispered, praying it. A lie, and yet it comforted her.

  Once she had remembered how to breathe, she looked around and saw that she huddled between two massive doors, each flung open wide. To her left, a sprawling landscape of mountains and ice. To her right, a dark entrance hall lit by torches in iron brackets.

  She pressed her forehead to the cool floor—polished tiles of black marble veined with white. She pounded her fists against it once.

  Corien knelt silently beside her. “What is it? What happened?”

  “I was almost there,” she said, hardly able to speak. “I almost understood. I could see it. I could feel it. I was swimming toward it, and then suddenly I was here, with you.” She glared at him through her tears. “Did you wake me?”

  “No,” Corien said calmly. “You woke on your own. I was worried…” He hesitated, his jaw working. “I was worried you might never wake again.”

  Rielle closed her eyes, pressed her brow hard against the tile. It was cold as ice and settled her frenzied mind. “There was an ocean. A great black ocean lit up with gold. I was inside it. It was taking me…”