Awakening Arte (The Eldest Throne Book 1)

by Bernie Anés Paz

  The legionnaires shook their heads and some even looked away. Arbiter Desantil sighed.

  “One of your friends lies unconscious, the other is spilling ichor, the third is rooted upon a knee, none able to voice the warnings they likely so desperately want to scream.” Desantil frowned at him. “Surely you must wonder why?”

  Roun had no answers, so he said nothing; all he had was the hope that Exarch Kuro had sent them here for a reason.

  “Very well then, my young Grimoire.”

  Roun stared as simple, tidy script flowed across the arbiter’s skin while the guards hefted their weapons and straightened. The sight was more than a little shocking—script was already less effective on things like hides and wood, but it was useless on living flesh and couldn’t just appear out of nowhere like that.

  An intense pressure descended on Roun’s chest and a soft, incomprehensible hymn filled his ears. He felt his body grow rigid, but the pressure vanished when his spirit vessel shuddered with a deep, powerful longing. Desantil and the other guards looked at him oddly; Roun didn’t understand why until he noticed the drool pouring down from his lips.

  The arbiter regarded him with confusion for moment, then held his staff outward and thudded its base against the floor. Script was flowing across it now too, and the replica Throne and halos at its crown were radiating light.

  “What is this? By the Authority embedded within me, I invoke—”

  Roun’s awareness slowed toward a crawl with every syllable the arbiter intoned. A furious instinct filled his mind in their place, and, in that horrifyingly eternal moment of clarity, Roun at last understood what he had been missing.

  Revulsion and undiluted fear jolted through him, but it wasn’t enough to stop him. His bloodhawk soared from his hand before he even realized he had thrown it. Roun chased after it in the next heartbeat, leaping on top of the long dining table and sprinting towards the arbiter with empowered speed and balance.

  The axe slammed into Desantil’s chest. The arbiter was apparently still mortal despite his strange powers, because the axe killed him immediately. Roun could feel the tethers around the old man’s spirit unraveling.

  Desantil died with a look of calm bemusement and held it even as the force of the axe’s landing flung his corpse up and back. The uniformed Canton legionnaires jolted in shock, but Roun paid no attention to them. He leaped from the table’s end and landed in a crouch at the same moment Desantil’s body crumpled against the tiled floor, then ripped out his axe. True, mortal blood dripped from the edge and splattered against his raiments. His right arm, however, was already covered in inky sludge, and rather than horror at what he had done, all Roun could feel was a perverse anticipation that left him shivering.

  He thrust his hand in, beyond flesh and bone, deep into the dead arbiter’s vessel, and clutched his spirit. There was no resistance like when he had taken the hoard aspirant’s orb, and it was a far smaller, less impressive thing when it tore out from Desantil’s chest in a flash of nebulous light.

  There was nothing unusual about the spirit, nothing that differentiated it from those of the stunned legionnaires around him, yet, somehow, the arbiter had driven his repressed appetite to the breaking point.

  None of that mattered to him at the moment; he was captivated by the sheer joy and pleasure that thundered through him as black strands swallowed the spirit. Waves of shame and revulsion continued to echo as well, but he couldn’t do anything to stop the spirit from settling into the very center of his vessel where his own spirit should have been. Roun now understood why he had never sensed it before—his spirit was hollow, the outer layer smooth and blackened, the space within a void. A vessel within a vessel. There had been nothing to sense.

  Roun’s awareness shifted back to the Nymth manse dining room, his empty hand trembling in the air. Inside his vessel, the arbiter’s spirit gushed flavor like a lump of honey-sweets against his tongue. Its élan soothed the malice oozing from the chimera’s spirit, which had ached like a tumor ever since he had tried to use the second one. Unfortunately, he could also feel the arbiter’s spirit dimming with every pulse of its light.

  Roun shuddered and let out a slow sigh.

  Fane groaned as he rose, his wounds already closing, but ichor covered him from the attempts to bleed him enough to kill him. Sethra was unharmed, but she growled as she sprang to her feet, her face twisted by smoldering emotions.

  The red and gold legionnaires took a step back. A small voice in Roun’s head reminded him they had seen him murder a servant of the Imperial Cantons, but he silenced the voice almost immediately.

  “Leave,” he told them hoarsely.

  After a moment, they sheathed their swords and fled.

  24

  Kuro stood naked as a babe, hands on his hips, and stared out into the seamless gray void surrounding him.

  Indistinct shapes lumbered towards his place at the center with a sense of inevitability, but since there really wasn’t a horizon, Kuro found it difficult to judge the size and distance of the creatures. Their ear-splitting bellows and thunderous footsteps helped, but his memories were what defined them as colossal in the end.

  Each resembled an animal of some kind thanks to bits like avian wings or cloven hooves, but they were mostly a patchwork of flesh and the inanimate that had been arranged into something more artistic than horrifying, though he wasn’t sure the two were exclusive in this case.

  Kuro watched as they again bellowed together like an orchestra, their voices rolling across the featureless expanse with enough strength to force shivers down his spine. A silent gaze was the only response he offered as he took in the scene with the same patience and consideration he gave to wine.

  “I always believed they were meant to be some kind of salvation,” a voice said musingly.

  Kuro closed his eyes for a long moment, his breath catching and his heart suddenly racing, and turned to find an equally naked woman standing before him, her hands clasped behind her back. She was short, her raven hair unbound and falling almost to her ankles. Honey-gold script danced across her soft brown skin and around the amber of her irises, though the individual glyphs were so complex that naming them so seemed inadequate.

  “Not by any definition we would ever come up with,” Kuro whispered.

  The woman strode forward until she stood beside him. Her gaze looked outward towards the approaching silhouettes. “Knowing that I can’t stop even a single one of them is frustrating, you know.” She waved a hand and the approaching shapes vanished, leaving them alone in the gray expanse.

  Kuro frowned as he stared at her. She held his gaze and offered him a small smile and her hand.

  He fell to a knee and reached out to grasp her fingers, but hesitated before he did so. She snorted and rolled her eyes, then caressed him along his chin.

  “You are being so very silly,” she said.

  Kuro swallowed both despair and rage. “How long has it been?” He paused. “No, I should instead ask if your visit even matters.”

  “Does it not make you happy to see me? Are you not filled with joy at my touch?”

  “Even mere memories of you bless me so, but…”

  “Then it does matter.”

  “This… could be an echo for all I know. The last wisps of warmth radiated by something long dead, and you wouldn’t tell me.”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” the woman agreed. “Nor can I tell you about Yorin or Jacira, even knowing how desperately you wish to hear of them. Many of those who share my ability to gaze along the flow of Fate take pleasure in their manipulations and games, but I do not. My trust in you is far greater than the trust I place in myself.”

  She removed her hand and gestured for him to stand. He grudgingly did so, but made a point of indicating his displeasure through the look he gave her. The woman giggled, more amused than anything.

  “I don’t have much time left with you,” she said. “So pout another time. Roun and his friends approach.” She tilted her head.
“Ah, Roun… he has grown so beautifully, hasn’t he? Though I suppose there’s still a lot of growing left to be done.” She regarded Kuro for a moment while tapping her chin. “Many will call him Spirit Eater; often in fear, sometimes in awe, and potentially with hatred or envy, but don’t let them. I don’t very much like that name and neither should he.”

  Spirit Eater. He frowned. So she is aware of him, but what does that mean? Ah, you are as frustrating as ever. Kuro knew she could hear his thoughts, so he did his best to ignore the small, knowing smile that crept across her lips; if she hadn’t yet said anything, then she never would. “I intend to use him for my own ambitions.” Not that my demands could ever be harsher than those of an Incursion.

  “The Incursions are indeed a terrible threat, but never mistake them as humanity’s greatest,” the woman said in a reproachful tone, her eyes still watching him. “All they bring is death and destruction, which is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Creation’s truest foe is something far worse.”

  “You’ve said that before, yet have never even bothered to give that great cosmic terror a name.”

  “If I have my way,” the woman replied, “no one will ever need to hear it.”

  Kuro grunted and turned the conversation back on track. “You’ve no concerns or complaints about Jacira’s son, then?”

  “Would you give him up even if I did?”

  Kuro didn’t answer the question; she already knew he wouldn’t. Instead, he asked, “You are aware that he’s an unusual Grimoire?”

  “You are wrong, Kuro. Roun is no different from any other Grimoire,” the woman said, “and we should ask nothing more or less of him—he need only do his best to someday shine as brightly as the Eldest Throne.”

  Kuro frowned. Was that a cruel lie meant to be passed on to the boy?

  “It is no lie. We both understand that the Eldest Throne is more than just light. It is warmth and power. It is the will to protect driven outwards by relentless love. It is a symbol of life and duty. It is mother to all Grimoires and the home that ever awaits them. People are no less complex, so don’t measure them so simply.”

  “Well, it’s my job, you see,” Kuro replied with more bitterness than he intended.

  The woman nodded solemnly. “This is true. ”

  Kuro said nothing for a moment. Though unseen, the Eldest Throne continued to refuse him her name. If not for his bloodline, he wouldn’t even have remembered her. The thought pained him.

  “Why did you come?” he asked at last. “Tell me the truth.”

  “To visit you, of course,” she replied, and the honesty in her voice left him feeling no better. She stepped close and rapped her knuckles against his forehead. “And to serve as your voice of reason, as I’ve done all too often, mm? You are too harsh on yourself. You are too desperate to atone. Most of all, you are, as always, being a fool. I know that better than most, so go ahead and tell me I’m wrong. I dare you.” She cocked her head and gave him a painfully familiar smile.

  “I’m the very best kind of fool,” Kuro muttered with a smile of his own. “Well, thank you for daring to sneak into my thoughts, whether or not you’re real.”

  The woman grinned at him, then turned away and tilted her head. “Kuro?”

  “What is it?”

  “They’re calling for you.”

  He frowned. “What?”

  “Kuro. Kuro. Kuro!”

  He opened his eyes just in time to see Lilisette throw her gavel at him. He parried with his closed parasol—oh, it was perfect—and leaped up from his seat onto the council chamber’s table as the other seated exarchs watched him with varying expressions. The gravel spun an arc up and landed neatly in his free hand as he whirled, the far window-wall showing a darkened sky and a slumbering Throne.

  Lilisette passed hands across her face. “Kuro, I…” She sighed and slumped back in her chair. “Don’t have the energy to scream at you anymore. I realize we’re all exhausted, but please don’t doze off while we’re discussing the lives of the thousands who honor us with their trust.”

  He skipped towards the end of the table nearest to the door. The gift of his heritage didn’t work as well indoors, but it still allowed him to gesture at the door with timing as dramatic as his parrying of the gavel. “Pardon the interruption, friends.”

  Lilisette’s moan rose loudest above the others, but a knock came at the heavy double doors before she could rebuke him.

  “Enter!” Kuro shouted as he turned to fling the gavel back at Lilisette, who caught it with a raised eyebrow. Kuro opened his parasol and set it across a shoulder while he waited for the messenger to enter. The poor girl scarcely had time to kneel before he waved her away. “We’ll see them now!”

  The messenger seemed confused, but she rose and gestured to whoever was on the other side of the door. Roun, Sethra, Fane, and Zareus soon entered and glanced around. The scribe shut the door behind them after the messenger took her leave.

  “So.” Kuro said. “How was dinner?” The sudden darkening of their faces told him much, but not enough. “Oyrivia?”

  “We left her resting with Kamil and Laeshiro,” Fane said.

  “Did I not keep my promise to you?”

  Fane frowned, but nodded. “You did.”

  “Wrong!” Kuro cried. “Roun and Sethra fulfilled my promise, so it’s to them you owe your debt.”

  The young Grimoires glanced at each other.

  “There’s no debt between us, Fane. Just try to be a little less aloof,” Roun said, shrugging. Sethra agreed with little more than a nod.

  Fane seemed uncomfortable, but he bowed his head in gratitude.

  Kuro rubbed his chin as the other exarchs looked on in confusion. There were still some secrets between his Grimoires—Fane in particular was being stubborn about his, it seemed—but he was content to leave things as they were for now. The rest will come with trust, and trust demands time. “Anything else?”

  The shadow across their faces worsened, and Fane and Sethra both glanced at Roun.

  “I see you’ve discovered your arte’s little safeguard,” Kuro said, shocking the boy. He nodded. “Yes, I knew, but what did you expect me to say?”

  “I… killed an arbiter named Desantil,” Roun mumbled after a moment. “I didn’t mean to, but I don’t really regret it, either. He was helping the Nymth clan control Oyrivia and tried to murder the rest of us.” The boy hesitated and glanced at the other exarchs, but Kuro gestured in encouragement and then waited while the boy told the story of his night at the Nymth estate.

  In the end, it wasn’t all too far from how Kuro had hoped things would go; one of Avyleir’s more sensitive issues had been resolved and they had removed an agent of dubious loyalties from the Canton of Dawn.

  “Is it true, then?” Roun asked when he finished. “Was Avyleir taking the Nymth clan’s bribes?”

  “I was,” Kuro agreed as he felt the weight of everyone’s gazes. “Not Avyleir. Oyrivia refused to leave her home at first, so I agreed to look the other way so long as she at least made a show of attending the library.”

  Roun frowned. “And the rest? About executing untrustworthy Grimoires?”

  “Yes, it’s the truth.” Kuro shrugged. “No exarch is eager to make the decision, but we do what we must.”

  “And now that we know?” Fane demanded.

  “You’ll have to prove yourselves during your evaluation, I suppose?” Kuro answered.

  “Even Oyrivia and Fane?” Roun asked. “I’ll vouch for them if that’s what it takes.”

  “So will I,” Sethra said, straightening. “If you’ve really marked them as failures, then you’re wrong.”

  “Failures?” Kuro gave them a look of mild amusement. “Well, we won’t know until after the evaluation, so you might be better off worrying about that instead.”

  The words did nothing to calm their suspicion, of course, but they all nodded.

  “Get some rest, then,” Kuro said. “You’re going to need it.”
/>
  Zareus left with the three young Grimoires, again leaving him in the room with his fellow exarchs. The room was silent for what seemed like ages despite Kuro’s attempts to lighten the mood by humming.

  Lilisette watched Kuro with half-closed eyes. “He said he killed an arbiter. At first I thought he misspoke, but then I realized—that was the boy, wasn’t he? The Spirit Eater we’ve been waiting for.”

  Kuro flinched and was greeted by surprised expressions. “Yes, but don’t call him that, please.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us? We were close to denouncing him!”

  “Exactly,” Kuro agreed. “I promised you would all be certain about him or we wouldn’t keep him at all. The only thing that’s changed is that I now ask the same for my entire coterie.” He shrugged.

  Lilisette sighed and again rubbed her face. “I don’t know whether I hate you or really hate you.”

  Kuro grinned, but his grin vanished when she stood and quietly walked around the table towards him and waited. Kuro glanced around at the other exarchs, then stepped down beside the master librarian.

  “Was what they said about the Nymth clan also true?” Lilisette asked.

  Kuro sighed, but nodded. He guessed what she was going to do before she even raised her hand, but he didn’t move when she slapped him. The crack of her hand filled the silent chamber.

  Afterward, she stared at her hand with a frown, but then her features hardened as her gaze bore into him.

  “We promised to be better than the chaotic mess we left behind, Kuro.”

  The others muttered their agreement.

  “This was a… complicated situation,” Kuro said.

  “That’s what everyone always says,” Exarch Vicdan spat with a laugh. “Don’t, Kuro. Most of us are here because we share your ambitions, but what’s the point if you act like we don’t even exist?”

  He bowed, conceding the point. “Well, Desantil has been dealt with, at least. I don’t think the Canton of Dawn will risk losing face by officially addressing what happened, but we should expect them to have a heightened interest in Rozaria.”