by Elise Kova
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and events in this book are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Silver Wing Press
Copyright © 2019 by Elise Kova
All rights reserved. Neither this book, nor any parts within it may be sold or reproduced in any form without permission.
Cover Artwork illustration by Livia Prima
Editing by Rebecca Faith Editorial
eISBN: 978-1-949694-06-2
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-949694-08-6
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-949694-09-3
Contents
Map of the Solaris Empire
Detailed Map of Meru
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Also by Elise Kova
Appendix
Pronounciation
Common Terms
Elemental Affinities
Lightspinning
Map of Solaris
Sehra’s Map of the World
Detailed Map of Meru
The Story of Dia
About the Author: Elise Kova
for my author community
The Solaris Empire
Detailed Map of Meru
Chapter One
Her hands moved through the dark night, leaving strands of light in their wake.
Vi Solaris was illuminated by the lingering remnants of fading spells and bright sparks of sorcery that caught on the rough-hewn walls of the sparring pit. The lines cut against the darkness in brilliant streaks—concentric circles, triangles, and dots that all spun together. Every mark had meaning, crafted by her knowledge and will, and brought to life with the utterance of intricate sounds.
“Juth starys.” As she spoke, her right hand lifted. The left was balled at her side, rigid, an anchored glyph circling her wrist. It held a completely different spell in place.
“Juth mariy,” the man opposite her quickly called back, impossibly fast. Symbols flashed into existence around him, hovering before her. The glyph was the embodiment of the words he’d spoken—words of the Goddess Yargen. It crashed against her own forming glyph, snuffing it instantly. “Don’t lift your hand. You’re telegraphing your movements.”
“My mother had a problem with that, you know.”
“Not surprised, then.” Taavin lunged for her. “Mysst siti larrk!” The light sparked, running down his outstretched forearm as he moved. It condensed before his open palm, shooting out and away from him to form a short sword.
“Mysst xieh,” Vi said hastily, dodging even faster. His sword bounced off the glyph she used as a shield.
Taavin uncurled his fingers, allowing the sword to fly from his hand at the momentum. When it left his palm, it looked just as any other normal sword would. But before it could hit the ground, the weapon unraveled into thousands of threads of light and vanished. Around his other hand, fresh magic was already gathering.
She could almost see the meaning in it before he even spoke the words. She had been studying the glyphs for months now. Training with their shape and words. Vi knew what he was about to levy as the magic collected.
But she saw it too late.
“Loft dorh.”
“Jut—” Vi began to say. But his glyph had formed before she could complete the two words that, when combined, meant to destroy magic.
Her body went rigid and all movement vanished. Loft, the high-level magic to incapacitate. Dorh, the secondary for immobilization. Vi fought against the invisible chains holding her, but they were too strong. No matter how hard she struggled, she couldn’t even move an inch. Even her mouth was frozen open, mid-juth.
Taavin stared at her. The glyph still surrounded his fingertips. His magic was elegant, carefully crafted, and twice as bright as Vi’s. She admired it, just as she admired the way its glow highlighted the deep purple of his hair and cut of his jaw; there wasn’t much else for her to do in her present state.
Finally, he lowered his hand. The moment the glyph vanished, Vi could move once more. She stumbled, found her footing, and turned to face him.
“How do I fight against that?”
“You were right to go for juth mariy. You just weren’t fast enough.” Taavin ran a hand through his messy hair. When he pulled it back his pointed ears were visible. Whenever she saw them, it was a reminder that for the easy closeness she had found with the man, there was nothing physically close about him. He was elfin, a race that didn’t exist as far as the Solaris Empire was concerned, and he lived across the sea in Risen on the continent of Meru—a distance Vi could barely comprehend and hadn’t even known existed until a few months ago.
A distance she’d have to find a way to traverse to get to him.
Her magic tutor, her friend and confidant, wasn’t actually there at all. She could see, hear, and feel him, but he only existed for her. The magic Vi had anchored to her left wrist had summoned him, and would keep him with her as long as she willed without sapping her magic, thanks to the word of power the goddess had bestowed on her at an apex of fate.
“So if I can’t cancel the immobilization, I’m trapped?” It seemed a vastly unfair spell.
“As long as the caster holds the glyph.”
“Someone could keep me trapped forever?” Not that she wasn’t already trapped, in a way. Vi hadn’t left the fortress for weeks now—not since the latest and worst outbreak of the White Death had taken hold of Soricium.
“No one could hold the word forever. Loft takes a great deal of energy because a whole person is very difficult to keep completely still. The second the caster’s magic or attention wavers, you’d break free.”
Vi looked him over skeptically. He’d shed his usual heavy, embroidered coat for their practice. Now he wore a tight-fitting, long-sleeved shirt that hid little of his lean chest and was tucked beneath a wide pair of trousers. Not one area of fabric clung with sweat.
“You don’t look like you expended a great deal of energy.”
“Looks can be deceiving.” A small grin quirked the corners of his lips. “And I am the Voice.”
Yargen’s Voice. It was a title Vi still couldn’t fully comprehend. She knew it meant Taavin was important, that he held vigil over an eternal flame said to be the last remnant of the goddess’s power on earth… And that he had been kept sequestered all his life above the city of Risen, under lock and key.
It was a situation all too similar to Vi’s.
“A similar form of incapacitation you may want to begin with is loft not—to sleep. It’s not as effective, because anything could wake the person and the spell would be broken. But it’s easier to cast and maintain. You could actually move while holding it.”
“Well, I’m the Champion… so I should be able to make loft dorh look just as easy in time.” She hoped, at least. But the only thing Vi knew less about than being Yargen’s Voice, was being the godd
dess’s Champion. “Speaking of our supposed titles… Any progress on the Apexes of Fate?”
Vi started up the stairs to the pit, Taavin following dutifully behind. She glanced over her shoulder at him, pausing when the silence continued to stretch on. His brilliant emerald eyes were fixated across the pit, avoiding hers.
“That’s a yes.” Vi slipped her long braid over her shoulder, running her fingertips along its end. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure, entirely.” Rather than pestering, she waited for him to find the words. “The vision of the room keeps appearing.”
“Room…” Vi thought back to the last time he’d listed possible locations for apexes. “The throne room? Or the one you mentioned with the two women?”
“The latter.”
“Have you seen anything different?”
“That’s the thing: every time I see it, it’s different.” He looked up to her. “All glimpses… sometimes focused on shelves crammed with jars of various objects—bits and baubles stacked around them to the point of chaos. Sometimes there are people, sometimes not. Tapestries darkened with soot hanging over a fire. I see them holding things, and—”
“Casting them into the flame?” Vi finished for him. Taavin’s lips hung, slightly parted, the words he’d been forming never leaving. Instead, they closed briefly, and a new statement was put together.
“How did you know that?”
“It sounds like a curiosity shop.” Vi glanced over the top of the training pit, looking for the horizon line—or as close to it as she could see in the jungles. The sky was still dark, which meant she didn’t have to be rushing back to her room. This was a conversation that Vi didn’t want to cut short. “I’ve never seen one, of course…” She had spent her life in this fortress, confined to the city and at most its immediate surrounding area. All of that would change soon. “But that sounds like the descriptions I’ve read in books—the variety of objects to burn, people there sometimes and not at a later date. It all seems to add up.”
“It can’t be a curiosity shop, then.” Taavin shook his head, his tousled hair getting further out of place in the process. For one brief second, Vi wondered if it was as soft as it looked. But she fought off the need to tuck a stray strand behind his pointed ear.
“Why?”
“Because in the last dream I had…” His voice disappeared, and with it his attention on her once more.
“You… what?” Vi shuffled on the step. There wasn’t much room, and she couldn’t catch his eyes without all but stepping into him.
“I thought I saw you looking into the flame.” Was that a blush on his cheeks, or a trick of the magical light that lingered on him? “I think it was likely just a run-of-the-mill dream—not tied to fate or us or the apexes.”
He’d “run of the mill” dreamt about her? Vi swallowed down her heart so it wouldn’t beat so loudly in her ears. She was being ridiculous. He’d said she’d tortured him in dreams all his life.
But wouldn’t those be related to the Apexes of Fate?
Did he dream of her differently now than he had before?
“Why—” Vi cleared her throat. “Why couldn’t it be me?”
“You see the future at the apexes, but my visions and dreams seem to look to the past—places where fate was changed, not will be.”
“Well, then I suppose it couldn’t be me, given that I’ve always been cooped up here.” Vi shrugged and started up the stairs again, ignoring the opportunity to follow up on the implication that she’d been appearing in his dreams. If she acknowledged that, then she’d have to admit he’d begun to do the same for her and that—
A new thought stopped her dead in her tracks at the top of the pit. Taavin’s hand rested lightly on her back as he rounded her side.
“What is it?” he asked, gravely serious the moment he saw the expression on her face.
“Unless it was me, but wasn’t me,” Vi whispered, looking through him, back to a strange interaction with a Western woman in the winter solstice market.
“How is that possible?”
“If you dream of the past, where the lines of fate twist and align, then perhaps I’ve never been the one torturing you.”
“I’ve seen you.” He took a small step closer. “I’d know your face of any in the world.”
“Perhaps… Unless my face isn’t my own, but that of a princess reborn,” Vi whispered.
“What?”
Vi glanced once more to the horizon. She should have time still. If she hurried, she should have time.
“Vi, rebirth isn’t—”
“How clear of a look did you get?” Vi turned to him, scooping up his hands. They were warm under her palms, as though he eternally lounged in sunlight. “Are you certain it was me? Beyond all doubt?”
“I can’t say beyond all doubt about anything.” He sighed heavily. “My dreams don’t come with instructions.”
“Good, because I think I know who it was—who it might have been all along.” Vi started off over the hard-packed earth that lined the fighting pits.
The fortress of Soricium, built directly into the towering trees that were hundreds of stories high, had many entrances from the fighting pits. There was the walkway that arched over the center of the fortress, up to a balcony that connected to the tree that housed the nobility. There was a gaping entrance in a trunk that ultimately led up to where Chieftain Sehra’s warriors resided—not far from the new wall that now surrounded the whole fortress.
But Vi headed for a staircase off to the side that wrapped around a smaller tree.
“Not that I can’t keep up.” Taavin matched pace at her side. Vi wondered if he had to exert energy to traverse her world with her or if it happened by sheer will of magic. “But I don’t know if you really want to bring me into the fortress.” He pointed to the glyph around her arm. “Just in case someone sees…”
“Right.” Vi held up her left hand, looking at the magic she’d anchored there hours ago, about which she’d all but forgotten. What would it be like if his presence wasn’t solely determined by a set of words? His fingers closed around hers, as if he could sense the thought, and her eyes jerked to his.
“Before you do, tell me what you’ve managed to piece together?”
“Curiosity shops are a distinctly Western trade. My family has roots in the West.” She could see as he began to connect the dots she’d already joined to form a clear picture in her mind. “Months ago, during the winter solstice, there was a Western woman who mentioned curiosity shops—that her caravan was said to be in possession of one bestowed on them by my grandmother.”
“Your grandmother?”
“Princess Fiera, the last princess of the West.” Her insides wriggled in excitement. Vi’s fingers closed tighter around Taavin’s and they were drawn closer together, by just a fraction. “The woman said she came to see me, because in the West they say I am her, reborn. That I look just like my grandmother.”
“The grandmother of the Champion… a curiosity shop designed for peering along the destiny Yargen has laid for us…” Taavin’s grip tightened to match. “That sounds like it could well be an apex. You are brilliant,” he whispered.
“No, I’m not. I’m just doing what any good Champion should and helping find a way to save our world.” There was a small, determined smile on her lips. She wanted to joke and be jovial. But she couldn’t. She had seen the end of the world in all its horrifying detail. The only thing standing between her and the ultimate death of everyone she loved was finding the apexes, seeing the futures there, and helping Taavin use those visions to stop the destruction the freed dark god Raspian wrought—or would, if they didn’t find a way to thwart him from gaining a physical form once more.
“Don’t be afflicted by a false sense of modesty. You can be both brilliant and a good Champion.” His mouth quirked into a similar grin. Then it fell from his face as his eyes drifted back down to her wrist. “You should go,” he said softly.
“I don’t ha
ve much time,” she agreed. Yet their fingers lingered, entwined. “I’ll summon you again when I’m able.”
“Please do. It’s much less lonely with you.”
What were his days like? The question lingered in the forefront of her mind. It was obvious Taavin didn’t like talking about himself. But at some point he had to—at some point she needed to know, if for no other reason than to get to him when she finally made it to Meru.
“Keep your fingers crossed for me.” Vi released him. “Hopefully, we’re on our way to another apex.”
Taavin gave a nod as she let go of their communication. Vi watched, staring through the spot he’d once stood. The man seemed so real to her. She could feel him, touch him, smell him as though he stood before her. But when she let go of the magic strung between them, there was nothing—a sobering reminder that Taavin was, in true flesh, across the world.
Pushing it from her mind, Vi sprinted up through the fortress, taking the stairs two at a time to hasten toward the unorthodox jail of Soricium.
Chapter Two
On the far edge of the fortress were the holding cages. Getting to them was no easy task—a feat Vi shouldn’t be able to perform.
After the first stairwell, Vi headed to a second via a long walkway supported by a branch already several stories up. She crossed to a third that wound around the outside of the tree. From time to time, she would look down for the sole purpose of continuing to acclimate to the dizzying height.