The Rage of Princes: A Portal Fantasy Adventure (The Chronicles of Otherwhere Book 2)

by Cassia Meare

"Nemours has magic," Ahn said. "He isn't afraid to use it. How are we to fight him without it?"

  "Is there going to be a difference to Mother, do you think, if she ever returns? If she can see all, is there going to be a difference to her whether you do magic alone or through a Set-Tuii? She will know all that is within you."

  Ahn lifted her chin. "Then she will know that I wanted to preserve our world. That I never lifted a finger against one of her children. What you say only makes me more certain that I am right and Nemours wrong. Go to Sefira, and have another look at what he did."

  "He knows she can get back together," Lamia cried. "Ty cannot!"

  "Sefira did that." Ahn didn't look at her sister as she added, "You knew about the kona, didn't you?"

  "Didn't you?"

  "You didn't speak of it."

  "Is it my fault now? She would come here with purple bits still in her eyes. It's because you weren't looking or didn't want to see."

  "Then it's my fault?"

  The mist had risen outside. It was always so pretty, shimmering in the air as if this were a fairytale land. Lamia was sick of it.

  "Let's stop with the blame," she said. "It's no one's fault or everyone's. I just can't help thinking there will be more deaths now. Mortals, and maybe more of us."

  "I shall try my best to win without shedding too much blood," Ahn said. "But you don't get the world without werewolves."

  "I hate that expression," Lamia spat. "What are we clever and powerful for, if not to have a good plan—"

  Ahn suddenly grasped her arm, cutting her short. "I need to know that you're with me, no matter what."

  The bracelet bit into Lamia's skin, but she faced her sister, looking deep into her eyes. Just how far was Ahn willing to go? And was Nemours willing to go farther?

  Perhaps it was better that Sefira shouldn't return yet, but Lamia certainly didn't want to fall in a crack between Nemours' relentlessness and Ahn's. There had to be a better plan.

  She twisted her arm, showing Ahn the hekas. "Whenever you doubt my allegiance, have a look at this. I'm the one risking some sort of hell if Aya comes back."

  "And you go and look at Sefira," Ahn repeated, "to see what your brothers can do."

  So Ahn knew what she was thinking. Where was the safest ground? But then, Lamia was always thinking that.

  "I am going to see Ty," she announced, pulling her wrist free.

  Ahn swayed almost imperceptibly for a moment. "I can't stop you."

  "Would you want to?"

  "No. I wish I could see him, but I can't. He will be there when all this is over. He will be the same as he is now." An almost mischievous smile crept onto her face. "Let's see if they let you in or cut off your head."

  If they do, will you wait to put me together?

  "Any messages?" Lamia asked.

  Ahn shook her head slowly.

  Mother's statues had begun to weep blood.

  It was bad. It was very bad, what they were doing. Mother knew it, wherever she was, and it was tearing her apart. But there was no turning back now, precisely because of what Aya would have wanted Ahn to do.

  How funny of Lamia to think they could win without Lotho and without magic. They needed everything they could get, or Nemours would keep his promise and destroy them.

  Before Mother's weeping statue, Ahn caressed her own arms, smooth and free of runes. Not so her heart. It was getting calloused. And no one understood the point of her not taking the powers and not starting magic herself. She would become too powerful. She might lose all sense in the headiness of it.

  Magic corrupted so wholly, only light spirits could take it. Lamia, who wanted pleasure and amusement. Delian. The human, Elinor, with her profound sanity. They might be able to take it and then leave it.

  Not Ahn. And probably not Nemours.

  And the human was a weakness of his.

  Yet Ahn couldn't — shouldn't — allow Lotho to do any Abuse spells on Elinor. What was the point? She was too strong for him to scry through her. She was clever.

  She needed to be kept from finding any more hekas for Nemours, that was all.

  Ahn entered her sanctum, and Lotho was there in the dark with his hungry eyes.

  "Mother is weeping," Ahn said. "She knows one of her children can never return. Ty can't, can he?"

  "No." The word echoed around her like blows hitting her head. "Otherwise, would Aya not have brought back Virso?"

  Ty, the sanest of them all, had fallen a casualty to their madness. Grief hurt like something thin and sharp that would not let her budge an inch, and she could not afford it. She would have eternity to think of Ty and weep for him. That baby in her arms, so happy. Always so gentle. His face, when he had been sent away at the bottom of a stone staircase ...

  "Your lady sister, of course, can return," Lotho added. "You have her heart."

  "Yes. I know. But Aya must see we are killing each other. I wonder if she would think that stopping Nemours was the right thing or—"

  The priest's voice was low. "Killing him, you mean?"

  Ahn shook her head. "I don't think that can be done."

  "I think you've just seen it can."

  "Ty was not Nemours."

  "Your father was stronger than the Lord Protector and was killed."

  "I guess there are different ways of looking at this. If Nemours had stayed bound..."

  "That will be difficult to perform again. He has protected himself."

  "There are still things hidden out there that can win it all," Ahn said. "Powers."

  "Indeed."

  Ahn approached him. He would not lift his eyes now, because he wanted her too much. "You gave me Time," she said. "But I need more."

  His lips barely moved. "I don't know where the hekas are hidden. If I did—"

  "You know what the one before yours is — you had to pass the clue to the person who hid it. What heka did this person guard?"

  Lotho took a deep breath. He could be inviting something much worse than death by telling her and betraying the quest. Suffering such as no one could conceive. And yet he said: "Might."

  Ahn's eyes shone in the gloom. "We have to keep this from Nemours, or he would become invincible."

  "So would you," Lotho pointed out.

  Ahn wondered if she would have the courage. Using Might in their world to win a war? Change could be used by someone else on her behalf, but if she ever had Might, she must not give it to anyone. She shook her head, as if shaking away a desire: it should not be anyone's — at all. It should be found and destroyed.

  There was something else, though. A clue her brother did not yet have.

  "The clue that comes after yours in the quest, which you had to hide with Time — who gave it to you?"

  The silence now lasted longer.

  "It can only be Change," she said with a show of patience. "The next ones are Might, Time and then Change. And then the Key."

  He nodded once.

  "Sigrit had Change. Is that why you hesitate to give it to me?"

  Though his face tightened with pride, he still kept silent. And a hypocrisy had begun to grate. She lifted her arm and put her palm over Lotho's lips, watching his eyes widen. She wiped the black hand imprinted on his face, the one he painted there over and over again, every day. The hand that signified he, and other Tuii and Tuaa, would keep Aya’s secrets.

  "Don't hide your nature," she said. "You're not a priest. You're a mage. You could be greater than the Lady of Inön. You have the talent."

  He trembled, and Ahn didn't think it was with fear. Still, he said, "She defied Aya at every turn."

  "Sometimes I wonder if Mother will ever come back..." Ahn said. It was true.

  "Impious lies for pious eyes," he whispered.

  The clue to Change. He was giving it to her.

  Her world might have been saved then and there, if she had any idea what it meant ...

  26

  The immortals were more in everything, just as Delian had said.

&
nbsp; Their love was greater, but so was their hatred — their misery, which would be eternal. Their thirst for revenge. They were quicker to turn from one thing to another, having lived so long and facing so much more life ahead. They were weary and had too much strength at the same time.

  A small thing happened, then another. Then, as Ty had said, one hurtled out of control and pulled something else. And then an accident, and then an intention. And another. And another.

  Ty had tried to be the voice of reason, and for that he was dead.

  Elinor didn't know what hurt more. The absence of Ty, which was like a presence; Delian's pain, thinking it his fault; the pain that would still come, when he truly realized he would never see his brother again.

  Nemours' pain for both.

  Her own pain, for all three. And for herself.

  She had lost her companion — Ty and his wisdom, his intelligence, his kindness, his laughter. She had not known him long, yet it hurt as if her heart had been torn out instead of his. She could not imagine his brothers' pain.

  The Set-Tuaa from the Temple of Dawn had come to say that the statue of Aya had bled from the eyes. Delian had marched into the temple with an iron hammer, sending priestess and acolytes running, and hurled it at Aya's face. The face had broken and fallen, and the blood had kept gushing. Blue blood.

  "Cry without eyes, hypocrite!" he had shouted at stone.

  It was frightening to see Delian beyond fear. It was as if he wanted to die too, as horribly as possible.

  Elinor's face was red and swollen as she walked along the corridors of High Hall, clutching a handkerchief that was always sodden, telling herself to stop crying. She must not bother them with her sorrow.

  She had ended up sneaking into Sibulla's room, Azure by her side. Did Sibulla know? Was she suffering? The princess sat with the bird curled around her neck, and her hand had stopped moving. The sparks on her transparent forehead were almost still.

  "A mercy sharp like a sword …" she muttered.

  Swords had killed Ty and cut Sefira — but how was any of that a mercy?

  Nemours had been absent these three days, conferring with his allies and officers, but now he returned. Mourning in Otherwhere was also black, and the three of them wore it. It was the color of the void, Elinor thought.

  She had finally gone riding outside, using the back door of High Hall into the countryside. She didn't go far, and the air did her some good. When she returned and dismounted near the gate, she gasped as something live wrapped around her. Whatever it was, it pulled Elinor behind an angle on the wall, and a hand closed over her lips.

  "Shhh-h!" Lamia hissed. Her eyes were yellow with vertical slits. "I mean you no harm. Will you please listen to me?"

  After a second, Elinor nodded. Lamia let go, and her tail receded, becoming legs again. Her eyes, now dark and human, filled with tears.

  "I need to see my brother," Lamia said. "I need to see Ty."

  Elinor glanced at the castle rising over them. "You could ask—"

  "He'll kill me. Nemours."

  Elinor shook her head slowly. "No. I don't think he will."

  "He'll throw me out. It will break my heart." Lamia fell to the ground as if she had lost her legs. "I have to see Ty. I have to see Delian."

  Elinor knelt by her side and took her hand. "They will let you. They aren't—" She had almost used the word heartless.

  "They blame me as well. But I would never have touched a hair on his head." Lamia grasped Elinor's hand with both of hers. "Please, please, what's-your-name. Please, help me!"

  "All right," Elinor said, rising and pulling Lamia. "Come with me."

  Drawing the hood over her head, Lamia followed Elinor through the gate and up the twisting stairs without saying anything. When they reached the upper floors, Lamia pulled Elinor into the passage and they made their way through it to the chamber where Ty lay. Elinor gestured, asking her to wait, and Lamia nodded.

  The internment chamber was made of black stone, and the three brothers were inside. Ty lay as if asleep, young and perfect forever — but he would have been so in life too. Delian sat holding his dead brother's hand, motionless, as if grief had frozen him. Nemours stood by a gigantic vase of almost transparent flowers that closed and disappeared as he touched them. Ghostflowers. After a while they opened again, but he just kept closing them as if that could occupy his mind.

  He looked back when Elinor entered.

  "Lamia is here," she said quietly.

  Delian's shoulders stiffened.

  "She begs to see Ty," Elinor said. "She begs you."

  Nemours glanced at Delian, then nodded briefly. Elinor went to fetch Lamia, who removed her hood as she entered the chamber. She hadn't stopped crying, and she didn't say a word to her brothers, only moved to Ty. Her weeping increased a hundredfold as she leaned and put her cheek against his. Delian didn't react, and Nemours kept his back to her.

  "How, how?" she moaned. "Why?"

  There was no answer and she swiveled toward Nemours.

  "This has to stop!" she cried. "Sefira lying on another cold slab—"

  He turned in profile at this, a small frown between his brows.

  "We know she can be brought back," Lamia said. "And that you'll kill her a thousand times. We know all that. But Ty!"

  Her grief was real, as otherwise her brothers would not allow her to almost howl with it. And it went on a while, every time she lifted her head to the pale dead face lying there.

  "Why ...?" she whispered, kissing her brother's eyes.

  Elinor had retreated to a corner, and she realized the neck of her dress was wet with tears. It was hard to watch.

  Lamia finally seemed to calm down and drew herself up. All the crying had only made her more beautiful.

  "We are all diminished," she said in a broken voice. "Four of us, gone or mad. We are all diminished, Nemours."

  He didn't contradict her. He didn't say anything. Lamia let her arms fall as in defeat — as if she had come in a sort of mission and failed, although she hadn't proposed or offered anything.

  Gathering her cloak about her, she kissed Ty on the forehead and moved toward the door. But Delian gained sudden life and reached out, taking her arm. "Stay here," he told his sister with a sort of terror in his eyes. It was terror for her.

  Lamia looked at Nemours, who stood glaring at the ground without speaking, then at Delian. She shook her head slightly. "Ahn's going to win," she said, and nodded slowly, as if giving a warning. "You find that priest."

  27

  The Tho Set-Tuaa, Mar Ve Taree, was welcoming despite the incident with the hammer and Aya's face. At least she did not seem to hold it against Elinor, who had gone to the Dome Library under Nemours' auspices.

  There were other great libraries in Highmere, notably the university's, but this was the one where Elinor could still find most books brought from Earth and research the clue. No book existed in Otherwhere which could not be found at the Dome Library, she had been told.

  If she found anything, it would be a quick jump by Nemours or Delian to get the new power on Earth and return. It might mean all the difference.

  A statue of Nemours in the enormous circular room, as tall as the ceiling and as severe as an effigy, indicated that he was a patron of the library. He would champion knowledge and education for all, Elinor was certain, and Mar Ve Taree spoke of him in a low, approving voice.

  "The Lord Protector has asked that you should have complete run of the library," she said.

  Only a few people were working at tall desks. Lights were suspended on large metal circles chained to the ceiling. Their glow was soft and yet sharp in the relative gloom created by the rows of bookshelves.

  "You can ask me anything you want," Mar pursued quietly. "And I shall try to help you."

  Elinor could have spent the day asking the Tho Set-Tuaa questions. She was the new highest priestess, having replaced the Tuii who sent Nemours to Canterbury; that made her the greatest spiritual authority of this wo
rld, which meant she knew much. She might know about the races of humanity, apparently pale reflections of the eight immortal brothers and sisters, with passions like their passions.

  Why was time so different in the two worlds, with Earth having existed for much longer than Otherwhere, yet Otherwhere being the beginning of everything?

  And if Aya and Virso had created all, what about God the Father in her world? Did He exist?

  But those were questions for another, more idle time. The Tho Set-Tuaa walked slightly ahead of Elinor, a seductive figure in her close-fitting white dress; pagan priestesses clearly did not have to bother with modesty, and in Otherwhere women wore what they pleased, long or short dresses, or breeches.

  Mar pointed to the right, where a room acted like a circle within a circle. "That is where you'll find books of your world, brought here by our Tuii and Tuaa. Sometimes by our princes."

  Inside the room, there was a globe of Earth. Looking up, Elinor found a constellation glittering in the ceiling: the Milky Way. And planets lined before the sun. There might be more books about Earth here than they had at the house — but she did not have the google.

  Find that priest.

  The warning, in Lamia's voice, hit Elinor like a dry slap. Find the priest because he was about to do something decisive. That was what Lamia had meant. Ahn is going to win.

  Lotho Sils was performing dark magic on Ahn's behalf, and stopping him could at the very least break the spell over Tayne — as well as not allowing worse spells to take place.

  If Lamia had told them to find him, then he wasn't with Ahn in Crystal Hold or Mistkeep, or even among her forces along the southeast coast.

  If he was on the move, he was planning something dreadful. And magic, especially dark magic, could be fast and devastating.

  Elinor turned her back on the room, and the Tuaa asked her, "Is something wrong?"

  "Am I allowed the run of the whole library, or just this part?"

  "Everything."

  "Then I need a grimoire. Do you have one?"

  Mar took a deep breath. "Yes."

  The expression on her face made Elinor ask, "You have more than that?"