If only we had loved more than we feared.
~ A fragment of some old scroll in a language half forgotten turning to dust at the back of Ormonde’s library
WE DIVIDED: the king and prince to visit the royal treasury in search of raw materials for an auric reliquary, Dyania with Lisel and the marshal as escort to meet with the other Chosen Ones, and the pike-bearing palace guard to…sharpen their pikes or whatever.
Which left me alongside no’Maru as we all exited the throne room.
I’d started to tag along after Aric—of course I was drawn to the temptation of a whole royal treasury—but the advisor’s fingers wrapped around my elbow had other plans.
I wanted to yank loose but that would cause other trouble. Also, going to the treasury would definitely lead to trouble—of my making, even I could admit that much.
So I hung morosely in his grip until the others were out of sight.
“So refreshing to see Prince Aric out and about,” no’Maru drawled.
“Out of his imprisonment, you mean, both unwanted and self-imposed?” I tilted my head. “I suppose it’s a measure of our dire circumstances that he exposes himself again to those who tortured him.”
“Undoubtedly.” He still hadn’t released me and instead rotated me toward the windows where winter daylight brightened the panes. “But I’m thinking there are other causes. Kalima blames the pretty lady and noble pining, but I suspect other sorts of exposure.” He gave me a knowing smile.
Since he wasn’t wrong, I was even more indignant. But I hadn’t spent years talking my way out of the grip of Sevaare’s watch and Orton’s headthumpers just to babble to some upstart uncle.
“Prince Aric has secrets he’s buried deep beneath those scars. It’ll take more digging for the exposure you want.” I gazed at him with a fainter version of the same smile. “But speaking of exposure, I think you agreed with me about the numinlor. I saw your look when the king and the prince said she’ll fall in line.”
His smug expression vanished, gray-green eyes narrowing. “Mikhalthe and Aric have both faced tremendous threats and suffered terrible losses in their own ways, but they’ve never known the peculiar foreboding of not knowing what tomorrow holds. They don’t appreciate how the haloric promise that our auras at least will rest in the light everlasting offers commoners some small comfort of believing.”
“Commoners like us?” I muttered.
His smile returned. “We are neither of us common, Feinan no’Sevaare. So we needn’t pretend to believe, not when it is just us two.”
Maybe he wasn’t wrong—I’d always wanted to consider myself not just another waif in Sevaare’s alleys—but neither did I want to align myself with no’Maru and his shrewd smiles. Maybe I just didn’t want to understand him as well as I did.
But I also suspected I needed to tell him something if I wanted to keep him available as a possible resource. I needed to tell him something he’d already figured out for himself, to make him feel clever, that wouldn’t damage our position. “Prince Aric really does want to bring an end to the horde,” I said. “And I think he would risk almost anything to make it happen, would have before if he’d thought anyone might listen to him.” I gave the king’s advisor a hard look, quite out of keeping with my usual determination to not cause trouble. “I suppose what happens next will matter partly whether everyone else truly wants to defeat the horde.”
No’Maru gave me another smile, more bland this time. “Of course everyone wants to defeat the horde,” he said, much too smoothly. “Why would you even question.”
Again, I reflected his smile back at him. “After all this time in the High Keep”—I hadn’t been there long at all—“I suppose it’s true I’m no longer quite common enough to believe that so readily.”
He sighed, and for once I thought he might actually mean the emotion he displayed. “Maru Deep survives off its close association with the sea,” he told me. “It’s not demon fighting, but it’s not an easy life either. Even on its calm and peaceful days, the sea will kill you, and its rewards are buried deeper than veins of precious ore. Some, though born there, never find their sea stance, always left reeling by the relentless pitch of the waves.” His very genuine grimace made me sure he was speaking of himself now. “All that just to capture tiny, stinking fish that you must use to catch larger, more stinking fish, and at the end all you have is a lot of stinking fish.”
I tilted my head. “Were we speaking of demons, sir?”
His eyes narrowed, and I thought maybe he preferred the my lording as much as he professed he was no noble. “The haloria may speak of weaving the beauty of the light everlasting, but I see just another sea where we are endlessly tossed across the waves if we are lucky—or if not, falling into a fathomless dark that has no place for us. We cast our bloody chum upon the waters or set our finest nets and deepest hooks, and we try to survive between the storms. Let the king fight for his glory, the haloria for our auras, and the prince for his impossible redemption. The rest of us know we can’t trust that we’ll make it through the day.”
I didn’t answer him. How could I? I had faith enough to last through the rest of the night, but with the Devouring tomorrow night… What could save us this time?
No’Maru stepped back, opening a path for my escape. But I lingered. “You knew about the luminarci from the island beyond Maru Deep,” I blurted. The thought had come to me out of nowhere, bubbling up from beneath the surface like one of his stinky little fish. Part of me was always watching others, and somehow I’d sensed his lack of surprise. Now, when he flinched almost imperceptibly, I knew my guess was right. I held back a curse. “Why didn’t you say anything? Has it been tried before? What happened that time?”
Even before my questions ran out, he’d regained control of his expression. “Between battles, I taught myself to read in that library,” he said. “Mikhalthe and Aric hadn’t even been born yet. I stumbled upon a reference such as you mentioned. Although I never found a name to put to it, I’d hoped to make a name for myself with the discovery. But Kalima was never receptive to anything that might threaten the haloria’s oversight and control of auric power as laid out in the Lyrac Accords. The only other person I knew who had practical experience with weaponized auras was the woman bound to the dragon at that time. And she was…difficult in her own way. So I kept the possibility to myself.”
For a moment, I was distracted by the reminder that there’d been others bound to the dragon between Ormonde and Aric. Of course there had been; I just hadn’t really considered that unbroken line of very broken people going back to the first king of the Living Lands three hundred years ago. Of his own volition, Ormonde had lured the dragon out of the Living Lands, cut it loose from the horde, and tamed it. Had all the others been like Aric, tortured innocents, sacrificed to the beast?
I dragged my focus back to the present. “So why didn’t you talk to the prince about it when he inherited the dragon?”
No’Maru gave me a disbelieving look. “Because Aric is worse.”
That shut me up again, even though I wanted to argue.
The king’s advisor shook his head. “I know you don’t trust me, and why should you? But I was fighting for the Living Lands before you were born too.”
“So why are things worse?”
We’d squared off when he stepped aside, but now he turned, just a bit, as if acknowledging the hit, and a hint of bitterness tinged his reply, though it wasn’t an answer. “May you have better luck with it.”
“It won’t be luck,” I shot back. “I should think a lightkeep-named commoner like you would know that.”
I was already backing away, just in case he didn’t like my reply any better than I’d liked his, but he only gave me a cynical smile. “Come find me when that fire runs cold.”
He strode off, leaving me staring after him. I’ll find you, Aric had promised.
Come find me sounded like a taunt.
Hustling away, just to put distance between us lest no’Maru decide he was less about finding than keeping, I tried to decide where my efforts should best be aimed. Likely I wouldn’t be allowed in the treasury with the prince and the king, and my aura felt particularly besmirched at the moment, so no point in moping around my Chosen lady.
Might as well go save Imbril.
Since the lors had their own guard and their own staff and servants, as well as their own supplicants come to the High Keep for spiritual guidance and restoration, they occupied an entire tower of their own.
It was, not surprisingly, a white tower.
Having seen part of it when we’d been summoned to Dyania’s tribunal, I wasn’t quite as overawed by the pristine, shining tile. The headache was just as bad, though, even if I squinted. Now if I were numinlor, where would I keep a young, foolish, infatuated, possibly disloyal holy man?
A spurt of legitimate fear shivered through me on Imbril’s behalf. I didn’t appreciate his tone much of the time. He was too unworldly to be very useful but too learned to be discarded summarily, and his yaxen eyes for Ani were an embarrassment, but he didn’t deserve to have his tongue cut out or anything like that, as Kalima had threatened Aric. Would the other lors defend him against their superior? If they found him as annoying as I did, maybe not. But wouldn’t justness and righteousness be on his side?
I wondered how much justness and righteousness were like fairness. In which case, poor little lor.
Hoping that Kalima wouldn’t simply murder Imbril and call it a mercy as she had with Gryner, I tried to guess what the next most obvious punishment would be. Whipping and stockade seemed messy and public in the way that the numinlor wouldn’t appreciate even for a lesser lor on her council, and anyway, she seemed to prefer threats to action so what would a lor fear most of all?
With sudden certainty, I directed my steps toward the outer wall of the haloric tower where the dawn well was located, accessible to blessed folk and other High Keep inhabitants alike. Kalima would threaten Imbril not with toungelessness—as much as that would horrify him, I was sure—but with damnation.
Mid-day was a quiet time for guilt. Most sins pricked their sinners in the earlier or later hours. So the temple of the well was empty—except for one gray-clad form bowed before the collection of gently gleaming candles. The candles were protected by high sheaths of multihued glass so the flames burned unbothered despite the mountain draughts, the colors reflecting like a captive rainbow in the clear water.
As I inched closer, I heard the words, “…To illuminate the shadows in my heart, immolate all doubts and hesitation, reignite my guttering faith in the amaranthine light everlasting…”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. All Imbril had done was what he was told to do, so it seemed thoroughly unfair to punish him for it now. Maybe there was some extra stubby candle he could burn down to cure himself of an excessive deference to authority.
Warily, I glanced around to make sure I hadn’t missed any hidden lors or guards keeping watch over the penitent Imbril. But we were alone except for whatever old bones were kept in the shrines decorating the alcoves in the walls. My fingers twitched at the sight of them, all golden and jewel encrusted, but I assumed they wouldn’t betray us.
Although perhaps we could repurpose them for a luminarca before tomorrow night’s Devouring.
I slipped up behind him. “Loooor Imbril, you are forgiiiven,” I said in a sepulchral voice. “But you should be nicer to thieving waifs who are just trying to get by in this haaaard world.”
Jerking up straight, he scooted awkwardly in a half circle as his robe snugged tight around his knees. He wrinkled his nose. “Oh. It’s you.”
“Maybe the auric ancestors were speaking through me,” I told him. “You don’t know.”
“I’m sure if the auric ancestors sounded like tavern wenches with head colds calling out their wares, someone would’ve mentioned it in a scroll somewhere.”
I snorted. “Tavern wench? At least I have moved up to gainfully employed in your estimation.” Since he hadn’t risen—bound by his tangled hem and probably too stiff from all the hours Kalima had kept him here on his knees—I dropped to a crouch beside him. “Are you all right? Lady Dyania will want to know.”
A flush of hectic color chased around his face, and I felt a little bad in evoking the name of his temptation right here in his own house of spiritual purity. Neh, maybe he’d feel stronger for it.
He glanced around even more warily than I had, his eyes red-rimmed and glassy. The bruise on his cheek had bloomed and was starting to fade, like a muddier rainbow, the light everlasting spilled in the blood under his skin. “The numinlor is furious,” he whispered. “She thinks I was tempted to betray her because…because of Lady Dyania.”
I let out a gusting sigh though the crystal sheaths around the candles kept them from flickering. “How could Kalima be so wrong to think that when it’s obvious you would never?”
Unlike the candles, his expression flickered quickly between gratification that I believed him, dismay that I was questioning his superior, and sorrow that we both understood that he had no chance at wooing our lady. His sigh was much smaller than mine. “I don’t know which way to turn. All these lights around me and yet my path lies in darkness.”
Again, I suffered through a twinge of sympathy for the fussy little lor. “It’s not the end to walk in shadows when you must,” I told him. “You can carry your own light, even if it’s a meager one.”
His lower lip jutted, then he blinked. “I suppose…you’re right. But I always thought I was here to lend my light to brighten the haloria’s glow.”
We both sat there a moment, maybe contemplating how that sounded just a bit too much like feeding auras to a demon dragon.
“You were following the king’s command,” I reminded him. “It’s not your fault you didn’t realize the king and his advisors aren’t in alignment with the numinlor.”
He winced. “How could I be so oblivious?”
I thought about that too, although the answer was easier. “Because they wanted you to be.” Pushing to my feet, I held a hand down to him. “But now that you know, you can’t unknow.”
He eyed my hand for a moment, then grimaced and put his palm over mine. “Maybe with enough dinzah?”
Leaning back, I levered him up. “Not enough in all the Living Lands, I think.” I steadied him when he staggered, grimacing more as sensation returned to his cramped limbs. “But may I interest you in a certain sort of drunken elation at realizing you are in possession of valuable stolen goods?”
He peered at me. “But I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”
“That’s what I always say too.” I squeezed his hand and let him go.
He sighed again. “Tell Lady Dyania I am fine. She doesn’t need to worry about me or anyone else, not if Kalima insists on the Devouring.”
There wasn’t going to be a Devouring, but I nodded. “One other thing…” I explained that I was in search of the missing luminarca scroll.
“Kalima asked me to bring it to her.” He hovered one fingertip over the bruise on his face. “She was afraid someone would take it, misuse it.”
I held back a curse. How could he still be so oblivious? “She had you take it to make sure we didn’t use it at all,” I said with strained patience.
His fingers sagged down to his agape jaw. “Why would she do that?”
After a moment’s contemplation telling him exactly what I thought of his haughty holy superior, I shook my head. “We just need it back. Where is it?”
“I was straightening the library, and the haloric guard came on her orders. They told me to bring the scrolls. So I did and gave it to her.”
“So she took it and…?” I prodded.
He narrowed his eyes. “You’re going to steal it?”
“She stole it first.” I said that a lot too. “She must have a place for her treasures. Us thieves always do. Where is that?”
Imbril squirmed. “I don’t… That is, I’ve not been there myself…” When I crossed my arms and tapped the toe of my boot, he huffed out a breath. “There’s a hall in the white tower where the haloria used to gather for blessings. Kalima had it locked long ago, before I became lor. Berindo and the elders complain about it sometimes since there’s apparently a very hot pool that was delightful for soaking after prayers.”
I held back a snicker, thinking the lors would not appreciate knowing they likely soaked in the same subterranean waterways as the demon-touched prince.
Of course, that meant I’d gotten blessings all over me. Neh.
“Where is this hall?”
He balked. “It’s locked.” When I just gave him a meaningful stare, he squirmed some more. “Feinan—”
“You can stay here and pray for my poor besmirched aura. Unless you want to come with me?”
With his directions if not his approval, off I went.
Strangely enough, my night wandering around the obsidian spire gave me a better sense of the haloric hall. In fact, the towers were almost mirror images of each other, although the haloric tower was finished in white tile instead of black stone which helpfully reflected the small finger lamp I ignited. I found the locked doorway along the same passageway that would’ve led to the prince’s soaking pool and that also connected to the corridor that in Aric’s lair led to the sleepers’ deep cavern.
All threads interwoven, all ways connected…
At least until they were cut.
Tinkering with the lock on the barrier was easier than it should’ve been, and I was prepared to be disapproving until I considered that breaking into the numinlor’s vault was probably a sin as well as a delinquency, and perhaps that should’ve proved some additional safeguard. But even as I thought it, the pins tumbled and the latch turned under my animdao blade.
Too late now. With a helpless shrug, I let myself in.
Some part of me expected the polished tile to give way immediately to the rough stone, but instead, it continued within. And somehow, that made me more uneasy.
Maybe because I felt more concealed in shadows. Against this shining white, I was thoroughly exposed.
Best be quick then.
I sped to the pool chamber, half suspecting Kalima had made it her own private retreat and that was why the other lors were locked out.
But unlike the serene chamber Nenzo had made for his lord, this place had obviously been all but abandoned some time ago. The circular pool in the center was recessed into the floor, with a beautiful mosaic of intricately shaped tile arranged in a woven design around it, but some of the tiles were cracked, chipped, or missing, so the pattern was flawed. And the water…
A murky scrim of algae clung to the sides, and occasionally, a gob of gray-green gunk bubbled up, so different from the silvery bubbles in the prince’s pool. A rank stench wafted toward me, and carried on slow, obscured currents, the algae blobs circled to the edges, clumping up above the tiles in a few places as if trying to climb out.
Holding my breath, I skirted the edges of the pool. The water circulating through the mountain, driven by hidden fires in the depths, must go everywhere, so how could it get so stagnant?
Three columns tall enough to touch the ceiling ringed the putrid water. The oddly lustrous stones seemed to pulse with a gentle glow, and I aimed my finger lamp up into the shadowed heights, trying to see where the columns must be channeling the hazy winter daylight from outside. This place might’ve been beautiful once. Maybe the columns had supported silkha draperies or the like, but now the rings of woven metal circling the upper reaches had corroded, looking more like the ugly chains that had bound Gryner and the other demon-touched in the cloister. Other than the pool and the columns, the chamber was empty—no shelves or storage cubbies, no padded bench to display my wet and naked self to an aghast lor. Also no place to tuck a scroll or two, unless Kalima had submerged them, which I hoped wasn’t the case, so I hurried on.
Hurrying through, I followed the straight-hewn corridor to an empty chamber. In the black spire, this cavern was where the sleepers languished. Here…nothing.
With a sigh, I almost turned around. Maybe Kalima had kept the stolen scroll with her? But I kept pushing forward with grim determination. I would find the scroll that would tell us how to end the war against the demons.
Yet another locked doorway stopped me. But I’d been victorious once. Surely a locked passage within a locked tower would give me the treasure I sought.
With somewhat more cursing than before, I finally let myself into another corridor, this one the now-familiar dark, rough stone. I hurried along as the narrow walls squeezed closer, my fingers reaching forward to find my way without light.
A faint glow ahead. This had to be it…
I popped out, blinking like a vermin, beyond the palace wall. The portal closed behind me with a soft snick.
Wait…
I took a few steps away and glanced back. Somehow I’d gone beneath the bailey walls and was on the far side of the lightkeep from the main entrance. The doorway was neatly disguised in the rough rock around it.
So much for having mastered the confusing passageways of the palace. And worse, there was no lock to pick on this side.
Of course there’d be a secret entrance to the palace; any conscientious monarch would have one. But it felt to me a little like the numinlor mocking me as she booted me from my illicit endeavors.
Annoyed, I had to trek the long way around the lightkeep, stepped in yaxen dung twice—once for each boot, naturally—and got stopped by the gate guards who didn’t recall seeing me leave and didn’t appreciate being made to look careless. Since I didn’t want to admit I’d found a secret door, I tried to convince them I’d been out with the grazing harts—even showed them the bottoms of my boots—but they were skeptical in a way they hadn’t seemed before, as if the distrust between the king, the army, and the haloria was infecting everyone.
The thought left me apprehensive where once I welcomed such confusions that cracked the way for the sideways slippage of someone like me.
I might’ve stood out there all day, lying with all my tongue but only half my heart. Fortunately, I glimpsed Lisel past the guards’ stubborn wall of shoulders. “Commander Vreas,” I called, bouncing on my toes. “Ah, a moment, please?”
As the guards glowered at me, Lisel straightened in surprise then hurried over. “Feinan, what are you—?” At my subtle, imploring head cock, she cut herself off. “Did you carry my father’s message as ordered?”
Indirectly invoking the marshal seemed to appease the guards, and they stepped aside, leaving me room to sneak between them.
I grinned at Lisel. “I always do as ordered.”
She didn’t even bother snorting, just clamped her hand on my shoulder and marched me into the bailey. “I should’ve made sure you had a task before we left,” she fretted. “What were you doing out there?”
“Needed fresh air. But sadly…” I showed her my boots. To distract her from that very clearly insufficient answer, I went on, “Did you and the lady meet with the other Chosen? How horrified are they at maybe emptying their auras into a pretty crystal cage rather than the dragon?”
Her mouth twisted down. “I don’t know. The marshal sent me away. He will never forgive me for my brother’s death.”
I paused, turning to her. “I’m sorry. We have been talking about the prophesied horrors to come, but it’s already here, isn’t it?”
She looked away. “They’d both cut me from their lives because I wasn’t following in their path. Now we’ll never find our way back together.” Letting out a hard breath, she straightened. “Which doesn’t mean I won’t fight to stop others from suffering too.”
Before I could tell her about the secret passage—I’d hesitated because I didn’t want to listen to her yell at me for sneaking around the haloric hall—a sudden silence swept the bailey.
Wary, I glanced around, and my gaze fell on the Dragon Prince.
Everyone else was looking away, finding other places to be. And I didn’t even blame them. Somehow, even without the dragon, he looked like a threat, like one of those strange, lightning-threaded stormclouds descended into the yard.
He spotted us and banked around, a raptor in black swooping down, his unknotted hair unfurling like a dark wing. Even the few chooks left pecking nearby scattered at his approach. Wise, since judging by his expression, he wasn’t in a mood to be crossed, even by a chook.
For some reason, I wanted to laugh, not that the prince or our situation were amusing in the slightest. And yet somehow my heart floated like a silvery bubble at seeing him, and I couldn’t squelch a smile, though it probably made me look mad when I tried.
He stomped right up to us. “Where have you been?” he demanded.
“Lisel went with Lady Dyania to—”
“Not them,” he snapped. “I know they can follow orders. And not get into any more trouble than absolutely necessary.” He glared at me. “But you… I thought you were right behind me and the king going to the treasury. Why wouldn’t you want to go to the treasury?”
“Why would you think I would go skulking along behind you to the treasury?” I asked in a stuffy Imbril tone. When Lisel made a little noise that I identified as a sarcastic snort, I glared at her too. “I don’t always skulk,” I complained.
“What were you doing on the wrong side of the wall?” Lisel smirked at me.
I shook my head and turned my attention back to the prince. “I went to find Imbril, to make sure he was all right. The numinlor is not at all pleased with him, and he looked sad.”
Aric curled his lip in scorn. “The choice he made in subjugating himself to her. Did he think she’d share her power?”
“I don’t think Imbril is lor for power,” I mused. “Hard though it might be to believe. Not that it matters right now.” I rocked on my begrunged boots. “So, your hunt in the treasury. Did the king give up some treasures?”
The prince gave me an arch look. “Some likely choices. I sent it all to Nenzo in my tower,” he drawled. “Nothing remains on my person for you.”
I grinned at him, desperately wanting to say something about which part of his person I’d taken, and maybe he thought the same unspoken words in my grin or caught a glimpse in my impure aura because the faintest warm hue washed over his high cheekbones like a hint of sunrise.
Oh. Had I made the Dreadmarked Prince blush? Why did that feel like such a precious prize?
He tossed his hair back, ostentatiously ignoring me. “If there are tricks to forging the reliquary for a luminarca there’s only one person I know who might advise us.” He spun on his heel. “Commander Vreas, if you will make sure that Nenzo and Zik have what they need? Feinan, you’re with me.” He stalked away.
I cast a quick glance at Lisel, adding a bit of an eye roll for good measure. “Witness,” I urged her. “I am not skulking along. The Dragon Prince made me do it.”
She waved me away, and I hustled after him.