Lightbringer

by Claire Legrand

  Eliana stared at her, full of too many warring sadnesses. “You loved her.”

  “I did.”

  “And yet you speak of her so coldly?”

  “I have had centuries to grieve for her,” said Ludivine. She plucked a piece of carrot from her sleeve. Her unfinished stew streaked the floor. “I no longer fear her death as I once did.”

  The cool mask of her face unnerved Eliana. “I don’t understand how we would even do this thing. Simon tried traveling many times in the palace. He could not find his power.”

  “Because you wouldn’t let him.”

  A deafening silence fell between them.

  Ludivine smiled gently. “You understand, then, what you must do. You reawakened his power when your love for him was nearing its peak. Once when you healed Remy. Then again during your time at Willow. The world’s magic is dead, Eliana, the empirium wrenched and distant. Only through you does it live again. And with your trust in Simon lost, beneath the iron press of your angry will, his power has become dormant once more, and unreliable, as you have seen. You must truly accept him into your heart once more, allow him to find his power again, if there is to be any hope of doing what we must.”

  Eliana shook her head. She found her chair and sank slowly onto it, her knees suddenly unsteady. “How can I? After what he’s done, after what he’s seen and heard…” She closed her eyes, struggling to find her voice. “I could say, ‘I forgive you’ until my throat bled, but it wouldn’t be true, even knowing what you’ve done to him.”

  “I didn’t say forgive. I said accept.”

  Hearing Ludivine kneel before her, Eliana opened her eyes and stared at her through a simmering field of hate.

  “You could choose not to,” said Ludivine kindly, considering her. “You could continue to refuse him his power. We could sit in these rooms waiting for Corien to recover from the blightblade and find us. He’ll kill all of us, including Simon, and me, and you, perhaps, because he has very little sanity left now, and then this will all have been for nothing. Everything you’ve endured. Every moment Simon spent sobbing at my feet as I dissected his mind. I know that’s not what you want to happen.”

  Eliana looked away, her shoulders aching under a terrible new weight. Arguing with Ludivine would be futile. She knew what Eliana thought as surely as she herself did.

  “And if we do this,” she said quietly, “what will happen to everyone living now? Remy and Navi, everyone I’ve ever known and loved?”

  “They will no longer exist. They will never have existed. At least not as they are now. Remy may still be born someday to Rozen and Ioseph Ferracora, but he will not be the Remy you know, not entirely. Nor will Rozen or Ioseph, nor even the city of Orline. If you succeed in convincing Rielle to kill Corien, then the world will begin again at his death. There will be peace. She will repair the Gate, and the angels will remain sealed in the Deep.”

  They will never have existed. Eliana, numb with horror, remembered her discussions about this very thing with Simon. While he practiced threading in Willow’s gardens, they had spoken of altered futures, lives snuffed out. She had not truly been able to fathom the concept then, and now was no different. It was too colossal, too terrible. Navi, Patrik, Hob. Remy. Her Remy. All of them changed, or maybe not even born. Maybe alive, maybe not. Maybe themselves, maybe not. A whole world of people, blinked out of existence.

  Her mouth went dry, her insides a plunging hot swoop of revulsion. She felt somehow dislodged, as if Ludivine’s words had shaken loose her deepest foundations. She stared at this golden-haired angel before her but found no comfort in that steely black gaze.

  Then Ludivine rose and stepped back from Eliana’s chair, her expression shifting. From down the hallway came sounds of a brief struggle. Running footsteps approached, and a woman with warm brown skin and tangled black hair that fell to her shoulders stopped abruptly at the door. Her clothes were filthy, streaked with blood and grime.

  Eliana’s shock bloomed swiftly, sweeping her mind clean. Her voice was a soft puff of air. “Navi?”

  Navi let out a strangled cry, then rushed for Eliana and pulled her into a crushing embrace. Eliana clutched her shoulders, held her fast. Navi pressed her face into Eliana’s neck, saying things Eliana could barely hear, for there was a ringing in her ears, as if her joy were a struck bell.

  She looked past Navi’s shoulder to where Ludivine stood pale and still in the shadows.

  “Is this a trick?” Eliana whispered.

  No, little one, Ludivine replied. Her black eyes glittered in the candlelight.

  Navi pulled away, her cheeks wet with tears. She brushed Eliana’s hair behind her ears, looking ready to say a thousand things. How lovely Navi was, even with the blood drying on her arms, the smell of death clinging to her. Bright blue drops spattered her collar. Eliana held Navi’s face in her hands, and still she couldn’t speak. She shook her head, laughed a little, tried to pull her friend close once more.

  But Navi stepped back, her hands warm around Eliana’s own. “Zahra is here. I think she’s been waiting to see you before she…”

  Navi’s voice trailed off. She looked back into the hallway. Beyond her was a woman with chin-length white hair and ruddy freckled skin. Eliana blinked, her mind racing to catch up with everything she saw. Patrik was there, and Hob too, and Navi’s brother, Malik, and dozens of others Eliana didn’t recognize.

  And drifting slowly toward the door was a figure faint and gray. Hair streaming like ripples of wind across water, eyes dark and flickering. An echo of the angel she had once been, drawn in thin shadows.

  “Zahra,” Eliana whispered, reaching for her. At that single word, Zahra cried out softly, faded, and then reappeared only to float slowly to the ground.

  Eliana knelt to meet her. Her hands hovered over what she could see of Zahra’s shrinking form. She had diminished to the size of a child. The shifting lines of her body were like curls of fading smoke.

  “What happened, Zahra?”

  “My queen,” Zahra mumbled. A thin hand of shadow moved toward Eliana’s cheek. “My queen, my queen. There you are.”

  Navi knelt beside them, her hazel eyes shining. “She was wonderful, Eliana. She hid our ship for the entire journey across the ocean. She guided us through the Sea of Silarra, helped us elude dozens of imperial warships. She shielded us on the road to Elysium, through the city, and down here to you. The Prophet…” Navi glanced at Ludivine, her brow furrowed. “The Prophet guided her to you. All of us survived the journey. One hundred and seven of us, alive and well thanks to her.”

  “Zahra, you marvel, how did you manage such a thing?” Eliana drew a picture in her mind: the two of them embracing, Zahra in her angelic form, as Eliana had seen in that vision so long ago. Rich brown skin, white hair falling like spider-silk to her hips. Platinum armor bright with sunlight, gossamer wings streaming like rivers of starlit shadow from her back.

  But before she could send Zahra the image, Ludivine stopped her with a gentle press in her mind. She cannot bear it, Eliana. Her mind is losing cohesion from so much strain. Be gentle.

  Eliana stared at the floor, where only the faintest black wisps marked Zahra’s unraveling. The vague dark print of her eyes were but a suggestion of shadow on the stone. Eliana shook her head, her throat aching. Her tears washed away all color from the world.

  “Zahra, why did you do this?” she whispered.

  A fractured voice replied, a mere breath of sound. “For you, my queen.”

  Then, a slight tremor against Eliana’s skin. A soundless give, as if the air had previously held a great weight, a mammoth intelligence, and now held nothing but itself.

  38

  Audric

  “Rise with the dawn, my brothers, my sisters, my friends! Rise with the light! With the sun at our backs, we meet our enemies without fear or despair or doubt! We know only the rage bloo
ming bright in our hearts! The love for those we have lost! The love for the home that has been taken from us! And love for the day we know will come tomorrow, and the next, and the next, until the sun rises and looks down upon a world of peace at last!”

  —A speech delivered by Saint Katell of Celdaria to the elemental troops at the Battle of the Black Stars

  Audric rode Atheria to the highest slopes of Mount Cibelline and stood in the quiet, thin air, watching the horizon. From such a height, the puny watchtower flames seemed laughable. Beyond them churned a relentless black sea—the angelic army, scattered with white starbursts of light that hovered and glided and sometimes soared.

  Audric knew what those lights meant. He had read every account of the Angelic Wars he could find. He had seen the illustrations in his books and had drawn his own sketches when he was young. Angels in flight, wings of light and shadow carrying them past mountaintops and into the clouds. They could glide through an army and leave dozens of glassy-eyed, empty-minded soldiers in their wake.

  Rielle had given them bodies, which was no surprise. But it seemed she had also given some of them wings.

  Audric watched the distant angels fly until he could no longer stand on his own. He turned to Atheria and leaned hard against her, his knees unsteady. She watched the horizon, ears flat and teeth bared. She snapped her tail as if longing to whip it at someone.

  He breathed hard and fast against her coat. When he returned to Baingarde, he would be not only a king but a commander. He would show no fear. He would neither balk nor cower.

  But on Cibelline, sheltered by the ancient whispering pines, he clung to Atheria, seeking anchor in a storm. She covered him with her wing, and he gladly hid beneath it. Long moments passed. On the mountain, the world was quiet. A few bird calls, a whistle of wind. No marching boots, no crackle of elemental energy, no clank of angelic armor.

  Evyline and the Sun Guard were waiting for him in the grid of armory courtyards. He would dress soon, and he would need their help to fasten the plates of his armor, secure his cloak of emerald green, violet, and amber.

  And then, he would need to face this. Face her. He would need to show himself before his army, and the Mazabatian troops, and the elemental regiments sent from the temples, and somehow rally them to face their inevitable doom. How many thousands could they claim? And how many more could Corien?

  He wrenched himself from the solid warmth of Atheria’s belly and climbed clumsily onto her back. Even kneeling, she towered, and he was too shaky for grace. He huddled there between her wings, then climbed off and tried again, and again, until he had shaken the nerves from his skin and could swing easily onto her broad back.

  Long weeks ago, they had ridden out to meet the eye of a storm.

  A storm, an army—one was not so different from the other.

  He held the lie in his mind as Atheria shot down the slopes, swift and silent over the treetops. These were his last moments of peace. He knew somehow that he would never again be able to breathe without also drawing a sword or watching a soldier sworn to him cut down by an angelic blade.

  As Atheria rode the wind, Audric tried once more to reach for Ludivine. Surely she would not leave him to this. She would reappear at the last moment with some great piece of information or brilliant strategy, or with Rielle on her arm. Ludivine, triumphant. Rielle, bright-eyed and giddy with relief to be home at last.

  An embarrassing thing to imagine, like a child spinning fantasies.

  Audric set his jaw. Ludivine? Are you there?

  But she didn’t answer. In a city of thousands, in a country of millions, he was utterly, irrevocably alone.

  • • •

  It was night when he faced his soldiers. Ten thousand troops, mounted and on foot. Armored and cloaked, swords at their hips and castings aglow with waiting power. Metal bands and daggers, tridents and spears, shields and hammers, all scattering the city with light.

  Throughout me de la Terre, those who had not fled the city, too young or old or weak to take up arms, gathered on rooftops and crowded at windows for a chance to see him and Atheria as they passed through the city on their way to the Flats.

  The ground shook with the marching footsteps of the enemy, a storm unlike any that had ever darkened the sky. Soon, the angelic armies would breach the mountains. Earthshakers had been working for weeks to bolster the mountains themselves as a defense, blocking passes with avalanches, cutting through solid rock to create canyons, sheer cliffs, mazes of rock. The winged angels would be able to fly over such obstacles, the stolen elemental children would perhaps manage to flatten them, but his earthshakers were stationed at the pass, ready to reinforce the barriers as needed. He hoped this war of stone would slow the angels’ progress. Even the broad, sloping pass between Mount Taléa and Mount Sorenne, a huge gap in the encircling mountains, had been fortified. Audric glanced at the pass as Atheria flew. Almost two years ago, Audric had nearly died there during the Boon Chase. It was strange to recall a time when Borsvall was the enemy rather than a desperate ally. Even stranger to remember the chaos of that day—the earth flying apart around him, swift tongues of fire streaking across the Flats toward the city.

  Rielle, wild with fear and glorious in her rage, tearing apart the world to save him.

  He drew a breath and urged Atheria out onto the Flats, where his armies waited in orderly ranks. Archers, foot soldiers with pikes and spears, elementals holding fire and wind in the palms of their hands. They had erected a towering stone wall around the city proper, twenty feet thick and two hundred feet high. Archers and elementals were stationed atop them, arrows at the ready and fists crackling with power. Once the army had marched onto the Flats, earthshakers had demolished the city bridges spanning the lake that bordered most of the city. Now, the water gleamed unadorned, a deep and broad expanse curving around from one side of Mount Cibelline’s foothills to the other. If the angels managed to both traverse the lake and breach the wall, they would meet the second army—another thousand soldiers and elementals, ready to defend the streets of their city.

  Audric’s traitorous mind fixed on the thought that it was not a matter of whether the angels would breach the wall. It was a matter of when. There was no hope of defeating the army marching on them. Not all of the angels had wings, but his surviving scouts had told him about the beasts among the angelic ranks—perverse creations, mutilated and malformed, just as Kamayin’s spy had reported. Elemental children rode atop these creatures, gray-eyed and deadly, their castings bound to the beasts’ forged armor. Monsters unholy, one of the scouts had called them before he burst into hysterical tears on his knees before Audric’s desk. Beasts in flaming armor. Children who stamped apart the earth without flinching.

  Audric guided Atheria to the top of a tall stone platform Grand Magister Florimond had constructed at the lake’s outer shore. He dismounted Atheria and looked out upon the Flats. Twenty thousand soldiers turned to watch him—his own troops, and those from Mazabat. He touched the forged amplifier at his belt, a gift from Miren. His father had used it the day of the Boon Chase. To celebrate another year of peace in our kingdom.

  He raised Illumenor until the soldiers quieted. Citizens within the walls would be listening, too, watching the Flats with fear in their hearts. Many of them knew this fight was hopeless. Far fewer understood that the true fight would not be on the battlefield between humans and angels.

  It would be between him and Rielle, wherever it was that he found her. If he could convince her to use her power against the army she had created, then perhaps the tide would turn.

  Otherwise, the city, the country—the world—would fall. Of this he was certain. The world will fall, Aryava had said centuries before. Two queens will rise.

  Only once in recent months had Audric allowed himself to look upon those words with hope. Alone in his bed in Mazabat, Ludivine’s news sitting in his gut like a stone, he had recited the
familiar words. Two queens will rise. Rielle, after he had won back her loyalty. And then, in the aftermath of war, their daughter. A princess of peace, and someday a queen.

  Atop the tower of stone, Audric lowered his sword. Around him, the air pulled taut with tense silence.

  May the Queen’s light guide me, he thought, and held in his mind a fuzzy imagining. The shape of his daughter’s face, the weight of her soft head in his arms. What would she look like?

  “You are afraid,” he said, his voice booming through the amplifier. Even with its aid, he had to shout to be heard. The night was thick, close, as if the world knew what lay ahead. “You see the darkness coming for us. You hear its roar. I see it too. I hear it in my bones. And I too am afraid. But more than that, I feel love. I feel love for you, for this city we live in, for this country and the people in it, for every farm and every forest, every river and every mountain.”

  He began to pace the platform. His cloak whipped at his legs. The air shivered, stirred by the presence of so many gathered elementals.

  “We can feel our fear. It is allowed. It is right, and it is human. Our blood will race, our knees will quake. But our hearts…” He shook his head, looked fiercely out at them. Thousands of them, elemental and not, wide-eyed and rapt, their helmets burnished to a shine. Wrists ablaze, swords gleaming silver, fear pulsing at each and every throat.

  “Our hearts will not fail us today,” he told them. “This is not a day for fear. It is a day for love. Hundreds of years ago, our saints fought these same enemies and won. They lit the sky with fire, they cast mountains into the sea, and they drove the angels into the Deep. Now they are back, and the saints are long dead. But we are not dead, my friends. We live! And on this day, it will be our swords that bring the enemies to their knees! It will be our power that turns them to ashes where they stand!”

  He paused, letting the soldiers’ shouts and cheers rise and wash over him. The sound made him sick with love. He wanted to gather each of them to his chest and hold them there safely until dawn came. He blinked until his eyes cleared.