by Anna Holmes
Caelin is fairly good at masking her thoughts, but currently, I can see them fomenting on her face. At length, she takes a breath, helps me to my feet, and explains almost too calmly, “All due respect, Mother, but it is not simply the safety of the temple at risk.”
The veiled face oscillates between us for a moment, then settles on me. “You…a great evil has been visited upon you.”
“Yep,” I answer, pushing out a fresh breath and adjusting my weight a bit to take most of it off my still burning leg. “And it’s going to be visited on a lot more people in a myriad of terrible ways if we don’t keep an eye on it.” I pause. “That’s not a threat. Did—that sound threatening?”
Bannon sighs and Caelin shrugs. “I mean, it is a threat,” she says. “It’s not coming from you. As clumsy as the prince consort’s delivery may have been, Mother, his point is sound. We must be kept abreast of Legion incursions, especially where cryst is involved.”
The priest presses her palms together, thumb and forefingers extended and the others folded in front of her veiled face, her breath playing with the edges of the fabric. “Come with me,” she says.
We venture deeper into a cavern behind the altar’s facade. The other priests have been left to reset the scene in case whomever they were expecting comes back. The Venerable Mother pauses every so often to allow us to catch up and to dip her head before the statues set in the walls even here in the rough stone tunnel. It takes me a good while to realize that I hear the water here, hear birds somewhere down the tunnel. The temple above has been left as a decoy. “After the first attack brought down our doors,” the priest recounts, “we retreated to the inner sanctum. As much as it saddened us to no longer be able to provide refuge and thoughtful retreat to the faithful and the questioning, we are sworn to protect the gifts the gods have left to us.”
At my side, still bolstering me, Caelin sets her jaw. I’m already a heathen, I suppose, so I give her tension voice. “Mightn’t that include the people, Venerable Mother?”
She turns to look at me—not sharply, but with a tilt to her head I assume is disapproving. “It does, Prince Consort. Which is why we do not open them to danger by inviting them into a space that has been a known target. And why we are inviting you into our most sacred space now.”
All right, I feel sufficiently chastised. Nothing like a priest to put you in your place. Caelin asks, “Have surrounding areas been attacked?”
“No,” the Mother answers. “They are focused on the river’s bounty.” She turns to me again. “Now we know why. I recognize the resonance in you. It hungers for the replenishment of the river.”
Honestly, even with the alchemists’ caution and protocols, this seems the most sensible explanation. I felt it, after all. Hunger is a good way of putting it. Humans will do a lot of things once unthinkable to them when hungry. I felt the cryst urging me toward that. Though I cannot see her face, I can hear the Venerable Mother’s frown. “But I fear the river will not recognize it. It has been tortured into something else completely.”
Yeah, me too, Mother, I want to say, but I’ve been rude enough already. Instead, I say, “Do you think it could be removed from me?”
“Removed?” She stops short. “No, I think what it’s become is something jealous. Something greedy. It is unlikely to let go. I think I know why you’ve come, Prince Consort.”
I laugh ruefully. “Will you tell me? Because I’m still not entirely sure.”
“The river rock can be quieted, but first it must be fed.”
Bannon glances at me, then shrugs. “That sounds like what the doctor and engineer were on about.” He reaches into his bag and pulls out a canister, the kind pilots use to transport cryst. The kind the Cloud Raiders definitely should have been using. “They had me modify this to hold less than the average cryst drive uses. Think they’re pumping more into you before keeping it from…doing what it’s doing.”
That makes an elementary level of sense. “So the script the Legion used deliberately kept me dependent?”
“Probably,” he answers. "Either that or they wanted room to up the energy later.”
That thought sets my guts churning. I carry more power than a human being has business having. If they were experimenting with me as a building block…an army of people with the augmentations I have would already be devastating. If they want to push even harder, I don’t honestly know if the world would recover. “Mother,” I say urgently. “As far as I know, I and my…actual mother are the only ones who’ve been….”
“Tainted,” she suggested helpfully.
I laugh. “Yeah, sounds about right. They are going to want to repeat this on more casters until they have enough to serve their purposes. They cannot and must not be allowed to take this cryst.”
“We are in agreement.”
“Five people, however powerful, however committed, cannot outlast them. They have many, and they have time.”
“Please permit me to send people,” Caelin entreats as we start walking again. “You need support.”
The Venerable Mother stops again. Her voice resonates terrifyingly in the corridor. “A temple is no place for violence and weapons and bloodshed. We cast them out, my Queen. We do not kill them.”
And that may have something to do with why they keep coming back. Caelin takes in a sharp breath. “I agree on principle, Venerable Mother.”
She starts forward again, pressing her hands together in front of her. “And yet you’re about to follow that statement with a but.”
Oof. Caelin grits her teeth for a second, then recovers herself. “There are methods of defense other than killing, and those are what my guards are trained to do. I understand you find fighting distasteful.” She pauses, makes a face as though the words taste bitter in her mouth. “But there will be more killing if these people are not stopped.”
And if the gods truly exist, and they truly care for us as the priesthood claims, I think they care more about that than they do despoiling a building devoted to them. This time I manage to hold my tongue.
“Ideals are not to be abandoned or modified in times of trouble, Your Highness.”
The cavern grows steadily brighter. Caelin manages to keep her anger from her face, but this was precisely the wrong thing to say to the queen who did away with the death penalty and refused to punish people who once swore to kill her on sight. “Again. I agree. But it is important that those ideals be realistic to begin with so they can withstand reality. We will be placing guards nearby, Venerable Mother. If it can be helped, they will not enter the temple. But I suggest you make peace with the idea that a single temple cannot be our only line of defense against a nation that swallows nations.”
The Venerable Mother says nothing, but continues to lead us down the hall. I can’t help but feel a little proud of Caelin, ending the conversation without resorting to yelling I’m the Queen, so shut it and deal with it. Not that she’s in the habit, but I think most people's patience would be sorely tested. Mine was. Then again, I also feel more than a little sorry that these sorts of back-and-forths are so normal for her that she’s this practiced. Her rigid back slowly slackens again, and I set my hand to the small of it. Well done, love.
“We’ll see,” she mutters under her breath.
We emerge into a larger cavern where the trickle of water is audible at last. This one has a very small opening out to the lake itself, and water cascades down from the river over the mouth of the cavern. Some of this water is collected in a stone bowl at the very edge of the water.
The purplish net of energy that spread over the cryst last night hums in a tangled ball in the basin here, waiting to be activated again. Next to it, in a glass orb, the eternal light burns strong.
The Venerable Mother stops to hold a hand out over the orb, then at last pulls the veil from her face. She’s an older earthfolk woman, creases at her eyes and mouth and trailing green vines nearly covering the rest of her brown skin. If she had hair to begin with, it’s plant matter
now. Venerable indeed. Earthfolk are the only ones of us elemental folk who change so dramatically over their lifetimes. As children, they’re no different than any Plain, until the plants start growing. They overtake their bodies as time does. I can’t imagine being veiled and trapped in a cavern is comfortable for her. Even Elyssia’s clouded light is necessary for plants to flourish.
“I can lift the protective for a time,” she says. “But it will call attention. I will….” She purses her greenish lips. “Leave you to deal with that in the manner you see fit outside the temple. I can lower the protective for an hour.”
Caelin looks at me. “Do you think you can get what you need in an hour?”
I shift. “Being underwater is no problem. What might be is that I am not, nor have I ever been, a miner.”
Bannon glances at the water’s edge. “Rye and I could assist.”
“It's too cold for that, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t say it’d be comfortable,” he answers with the smallest of smirks.
“There’s also the small matter of cryst poisoning. I might be able to tolerate grabbing it bare-handed. You wouldn’t.”
“Your concern is touching, Prince, but perhaps you’ve forgotten that you’re dying, presently. I’m not pleased with the idea of sending you alone.”
“I was literally born for this. I’ll manage.”
Bannon looks at Caelin as if we’re squabbling boys looking to a parent for mediation. Caelin’s mouth pulls up to the side in uncomfortable deliberation. “We’ll probably need all the help we can get if we do get Legion attention,” she says, shrugging.
At last he sighs and nods, pulling out the canister again. He slaps it into my hand with a heavy thud. “You need two medium sized pieces. That’s the size of your fist. Absent that, get three small ones. We’ll work out the difference. You need to work it out of the silt carefully. Don’t make contact with any of the other pieces or—”
“Explosion?”
“Yeah. Once you put it in the container, it’s inert, so it’s all right if it touches in there, but when you’re dislodging, if it takes more than a couple of tugs to get it free, leave it and find a different one. It’s not worth the risk.”
I nod, pushing out a breath. “Anything else I should know?”
“Don’t use magic to manipulate it.” He looks me up and down. “Maybe just don’t use magic at all. And…just in case, try not to touch it with your….”
Subconsciously, my fingers brush the scale-spine-things growing from my wrists. Probably smart. I’m not sure what these are, but they look enough like cryst to make me nervous. Caelin takes my hands. “I’m going to get the others ready for any ambushes. Maybe give us a ten minute head start before going in?”
I glance over at the Venerable Mother, who nods. “Be careful,” I say in the same moment Caelin says, “Don’t explode.” We both kind of laugh nervously, and she squeezes my hand as best she can through her thick leather gloves. “Meet you back at camp?” she asks.
“Promptly, Your Punctuality.”
She favors me with a smile, even if the light’s not behind it, and Bannon follows her out back the way we came. The Venerable Mother gives me a sidelong look, and I can’t help a small laugh. “Is there something I can help you with, Mother?”
“It is a comfort,” she answers, “to know your affections are genuine.”
I fold my arms and look down at the toes of my boots with a wry smile. “I’m comforted by your comfort. I need to start hiding it better, then.”
“If you revel in our people’s suspicion, by all means.” Her mouth quirks up. “But I don’t think you do.”
“I’m used to it, Mother.”
“One can be used to chains. It does not mean they do not chafe.” Point vividly taken. Underneath the crystal scales, the grayish scars of my captivity remain. She smiles. “Perhaps genuine is the best ointment, Prince Consort.”
As much as I loathe coming to any sort of realization in a temple, she could be right. I’ve been trying to play the part of the private, subservient, placid Prince Consort, happy to rise only to a fraction of my potential for the sake of the Queen all this time. Perhaps that’s the deception people keep picking up on. Perhaps I’ve partially built this gilded cage for myself. “I will…bear that in mind. Thank you.”
“You’re disappointed to hear that from me. I’m sorry to embody the cliche of the nosy priest, but it’s become a habit.”
“You’re perceptive.”
“You’re hardly the first doubter I’ve seen. The gods love a questioning soul, my Prince. Whether that comforts you or not…that is between you and them.” It doesn’t, but there is something nice about knowing that she doesn’t hate doubters. Maybe those words will comfort someone else someday. She begins to move her hands over the jumble of purple energy in the basin. “Prepare yourself. When the curtain lifts, you must hurry.”
The water’s embrace isn’t the comforting thing it usually is. I don’t always use a blanket—they get stuck in gills and snagged on webbing—but normally, descending into the depths feels like being swaddled in a very soft, light blanket that moves with my body, as ephemeral as necessary. Today, it feels like it’s snagging me, my limbs sluggish, trembling—burning, but not on fire. I realize at last that this is the difference between cool and cold, and I’m glad that Caelin took Bannon with her. If I’m this miserable, I can only imagine what those without the benefit of my heritage would feel.
I push past, tucking my boots into my belt and kicking hard against the stuck feeling. The deep black-blues and greens of the water in the cavern slowly start to give way to grays and greens, lakeweed reaching for my feet and arms and swaying into my line of sight in time to the current. I keep my eyes fixed on the light ahead. As I go, the water around me grows warmer. At first I assume that’s thanks to exertion, but the warmth crescendos with each tread forward until my pulse reaches a frenzied rhythm and exhilaration floods my veins. I claw myself to a stop in the water and pause for a breath. I watch the bubbles rise from my sides, some popping against my skin before escaping my shirt, some spiraling up to the surface above. The euphoria is a warning, and I’m a little horrified that I need the reminder. From my pocket I pull the little lead bar in its glass vial on a chain. I’d taken it from my neck before starting because of the Mother's exhortation to hurry, but whatever danger the protective might be…I get the feeling the cryst is worse for me.
The lead keeps my heart from rushing ahead without the rest of me, but the thrill remains, singing its mad song as though I’ve fallen in love with a hunk of glowing rock instead of a person. I’m almost indignant. I have standards. I focus on that bubble of indignation in the warm resin flowing through me, hold it close to my chest. That’s me, not this infatuated dimwit swimming straight at a pile of magical detritus embedded in the bottom of the lake.
And it is embedded. Deeply. I see why Bannon told me not to waste time struggling. The bright light we can see from the lakeshore is actually shed only by a few speckles glimmering among the silt. I clasp the lead firmly to my chest and expel the air from my gills, letting my body sink toward the ground so I hover just above the deposits. My fingertips glance over one of the stones. It’s hot. Almost unbearably so, the way a flame feels seconds before it’s too late. I reach out with a finger to touch it when most of the dirt has been cleared away. A spark of blue energy arcs between me and the stone, leaving my hand numb, my arm tingling, and my leg….
Well, my leg feels good, for once.
Unsettling. I shake out my hand, wait for the feeling to come back into it, then reach out tentatively to the piece of cryst. This time, no shocks. I close my fingers around the rock, pull up, like I’m harvesting some delicate vegetable. It comes away with little resistance. I hold it up and look at it a little closer.
The stone has ridges, but it feels smooth, like glass. Like the scales poking out of me. The light ripples outward from the glowing center. Funny. An ember underwater. It pulses
every so often, dimming and brightening in a rhythm that seems…familiar, somehow. I press my lead closer to my chest, and the rhythm slows. “What the hells,” I murmur.
The longer the stone stays in my hand, the less I feel the water around me, the general fatigue of dealing with the temple, any fear of company, any urgency—anything. I’m drifting.
I see now. That flicker isn’t light. It’s power. Raw, unprocessed. It could be mine. I can draw it out, out of its earthly container, into myself using only my will. The glass jar slips from my hand as I prepare to pull the energy free.
Don't use magic, Bannon said.
I frown. My hand drops.
What does he know? It’s inside me. The rules are nothing to me. I, who have broken the laws of magic on multiple occasions, feared by my own country, selected to be built up by the most powerful nation on earth. My hand rises again through the water.
In my head, my own voice says explosion. My hand drops again, and this time, I shake myself. What is wrong with me?
Quickly, I fumble with the clasp on the container and drop the rock inside, snapping it shut. Immediately, the ache returns to my leg, the chill to my fingers and toes, the awareness of time. Holy gods, that stuff is maddening. No wonder my mother has problems.
I look numbly at the rock glowing faintly on the other side of the glass. Pell can’t have this.
I don’t even know if I should.
Chapter Twenty
Caelin
The waiting, as always, is tense. The worst part of battle, maybe short of being ambushed. Elle is tucked safely away in the temple proper, and the rest of us line the shore nearby, keeping eyes on the pass from which we came and the river mouth. We’re well prepared. Well, as prepared as we can be.
This is the way it always is, waiting on the Legion. We do what we can, they swarm in, sometimes we can take it, sometimes we can’t. My hands dampen inside my gloves, and I flex the fingers, trying to keep nimble in this blasted cold. I worry that this is a prelude to the envoy—Alain’s mother’s arrival. We wait, we prepare, we get overrun, the pieces fall where they may.