Lightfall, p.2
LightFall, page 2
As we reached the outer wall, the huge, reinforced gate was opening. Through it, I caught a glimpse of the road beyond. A dozen conveyances waited, already tethered to the earthbone line. Each carriage was as distinct as Sevaare’s silverleaf, representing all the lightkeeps of the kingdom, even the distant southern deserts of Xabhad.
“Not just a Feast.” Jensim breathed hot on the back of my neck. “It’s a Devouring.”
Not just one Chosen for the Dragon Prince…
“Why?” Ula shrank back. “Why does he need so many?”
Neither I nor Jensim answered. Like everyone in the Living Lands, we knew the costs of keeping the demonic verges closed. But I’d never looked a Chosen in the eyes before.
A Devouring. Maybe just as well Lady Dyania was lost in dinzah dreams.
Jensim grabbed a bag for herself, and the attendants ransacked the carriage until only the least was left of the Chosen’s gifts and grave goods. Not that she would need them for long, if the tragic funerary cavalcade was any indication.
What that meant for the rest of us…
I squelched the worry. If I’d ever dithered about the future, I wouldn’t be here now, would I? I’d have accepted my own tragic fate and given up long ago.
Despite the bold thought, a hard bump of the carriage knocked an oath from me as we linked up with the ice-gray course of earthbone that would carry us to the High Keep. The jolt in my heart was harder and colder.
Though trapped in Sevaare for most of my life, I’d traveled the roads as a small child. Now, being bound to that ghostly glowing line, I wondered how my family had dealt with the dangers beyond lightkeep walls, especially since we hadn’t possessed the blessings to exploit the speed and span of the aurically powered earthbone nor the coin or countenance for the protection of armed guards.
Yearning seized me, as deep in my soul as the earthbone groove in earth. Were my people still out there, circling the roads from lightkeep to vassal town to freehold and back again? Why had they never returned to Sevaare?
Why had they never come back for me?
Maybe I’d finally find out.
A brusque rap on the carriage roused me from my dim memories. Ula squeaked in alarm as I swung open the door.
The hartier guard waited outside. Off the chariot, she was still so tall my vantage within the carriage felt inadequate.
“The cavalcade departs for the High Keep,” she announced in clipped, formal tones. “Will the Chosen speak to Sevaare one last time before we go?”
Ula shouldered past me and jumped down, deftly avoiding the hartier. When the guard half-turned to eye the smaller woman, Jensim slipped by on her other side. The hartier swiveled back, her chin jutting in consternation.
“We have nothing to say,” I told the confused guard with an airy wave to bring her attention back to me even as I half-closed the door against prying eyes. “Take us away.”
From where I perched, I saw Ula embraced by one of the procession followers, a farmer by the looks of him. She was throwing away her position in Sevaare’s noble house for whatever he offered, but it counted as a life, I supposed. Jensim vanished between the fluttering pennants, back to the sheltered confines within the gate. My last glimpse of her was the bag she’d crammed with Lady Dyania’s dowry.
For a moment, my conviction faltered. Was I wrong? Was I conning myself with this promise of another chance?
I clicked my tongue at the hartier the same way I did at the vicious canids that patrolled the lightkeep walls at night. They could sometimes be cozened with sweet words and hunks of raw meat; this one might be trickier.
“A question,” I said. “Will we be long on the road? Will there be anyone else who will, ah, meet with the Chosen along the way?” Such as anyone who might know I shouldn’t be there.
The hartier’s blue eyes clouded with suspicion. But I noted the instant she decided she had other concerns.
“Sevaare was our last stop,” she said brusquely. “And we’ve no reason to tarry along the way.”
Not quite an answer to how long I’d have to maintain this pretense.
As if echoing the urgency, the dragon called again. Without my conscious will, my gaze angled skyward, seeking the source of the cry.
But the dragon was so high it was little more than a mote between my eye and the hidden sun.
When I glanced away, the guard was retreating toward the hart, avoiding the nervous flail of its antlers. “You’ll be left alone.”
I wondered if she meant the Dragon Prince would keep us safe—or if she thought to reassure me we’d be shielded from the demon-beast. Certainly the hart seemed fearful of becoming its next meal. At least it would be quick.
Unlike the eternal doom of the Chosen.
The guard vaulted into her chariot and flicked the reins over the hart, shouting out a command to the rest of the cavalcade. A booming clang added emphasis as the lightkeep gate closed, with us outside.
Blade to bone, what had I gotten myself into this time?
Latching the carriage door behind me, I reflected that I had the width of a kingdom to figure it out.
Starting with the Lady Dyania l’Hazan a’Sevaare. About my age, smaller than I would’ve guessed from a distance, with her aura dimmed. Didn’t scions eat better than street-sneaks? She would have no chance against the demon dragon—or even just a prince.
No sense putting her on the cushioned bench when she’d likely roll right off in her drugged stupor. I wedged her against the seat base, on her side lest she choke on her tongue.
Speaking of eating… As the carriage caught the earthbone flow, I sorted through the goods Jensim and Ula had left behind: some provisions and lesser clothing items, a few toiletries. I put what remained into the cabinet, except for a slice of dried speridia rind sparkling with grains of salt. I’d been on the run from Tivvo and his crew for a while, so I thanked the light for the salty toothsomeness and the bloodless escape.
Neh, bloodless for me anyway.
I nestled my backside deeper into the cushion, braced my boots wide against the sway, and closed my eyes. No doubt the risks might be counted on more than one hand in pursuing this unexpected prospect, and I was leaving the only home I really remembered, but I liked my chances better than I had in a long time.
So why did my ear stay attuned for that distant, piercing lament of a monster?
+ + +
I woke with a prickly sense of being watched. In my old bed, it would likely be some sort of vermin, varying only in number of legs. But since I was lounging in the Chosen One’s silverleafed carriage, I suspected vermin were few. Other than myself, of course.
I cracked one eyelid. Sure enough, Lady Dyania was glaring at me.
“Who are you?” The question was a cracked croak. Even chronic dinzah use shouldn’t have done such damage at her youthful age. Was that her natural tone? How unfortunate. Although she’d had fortune enough—until now.
“My lady, I’m your companion,” I told her placidly since she probably didn’t know all her servants.
“No you’re not.” She swiped a shaky hand across her mouth with a grimace. The aftertaste of dinzah was yet another reason never to touch the stuff.
“I am now,” I amended. “Jensim and little Ula decided life on the road didn’t appeal after all. So I’ll be accompanying you to the High Keep instead. Thus, I am your companion.”
Leaning sideways, I rummaged in the cabinet for a tin of herb-steeped water. But when I uncorked the tin and tipped it toward the lady in offering, she flinched away. Her hand sank from her mouth to a defensive fist at her throat, and the embroidered sleeve of her silkha blouse slithered down. Red abrasions ringed her slender wrist, stark on the fawn-and-white dapple of her skin.
I stilled. Her recoil, those telltale injuries, her cracked voice… She’d been restrained. And she’d screamed until her throat was as raw as her wrist. Then she’d been drugged and tossed into this carriage—a pretty prison cell on its way to an execution.
Not a righteous offering but a sacrifice, coerced.
I wasn’t quite sure how a Feast went, much less a Devouring, but I knew something about losing.
I set the tin on the floor next to her and withdrew to my bench. It took her a moment to lever herself up to the opposite seat, eyeing me. I stayed where I was while she sipped cautiously at the water.
“I’m Feinan,” I said at last. “By the light, I mean you no harm. Not more than you’ve already been hurt.”
“They’re sending me to die.” Flat, she said it, as if she’d had plenty of time to think the meaning through.
I flicked a quick glance over her. “You’re not dead yet.”
“Should that be a comfort?” Ah, she must’ve found her scion sneer at the bottom of the tin.
“The cushions are comfort. As is the fresh water. Dinzah can be a comfort, even. Being not dead yet is sometimes less a comfort than an opportunity.” I crossed my arms. “Or so I’ve found.”
“And I should take counsel from”—her gaze, dark and light, raked me—“a gray-clad gamin?”
“We’re in the same carriage, lady, following the same road.” When she recoiled again, I sighed. “And I just said I wouldn’t hurt you. Forgive me, Lady Dyania. It’s been a strange day.”
“Strange? Not the word I would’ve chosen,” she muttered.
“You would know,” I muttered back.
Her light eye glinted like a dagger and her dark one glowered like a deep well where one might dump a knifed corpse, if one were murderously inclined. “This should have been my choice!”
“You are the Chosen, not the chooser.”
After a beat of outraged silence, she laughed. The sound was as rough as the brick of a dead-end alley. “For a slack-bottoms scavenger with muddy eyes, you are more honest than the writ that summoned me.”
Honest? Probably she meant that as a compliment. I bristled anyway. “What makes you think I’m a sludge-grubber?” Silly to think myself better than the rummagers who risked demon attack and lockjaw while sifting through the brackish delta where the river met the sea, but even a street-sneak might have her pride.
The lady looked pointedly at my boots. I followed her gaze to the spattered, curling tips and shrugged.
Fair enough. “But wouldn’t a thief have better shoes?” I prodded.
“I didn’t say you were a thief,” she objected, then immediately added, “Maybe you’re just a bad thief.”
I had to laugh too. Despite all she’d been through—imprisoned, drugged twice, dragged away from her home—she wasn’t giving up, and I could respect that. Too bad her shining aura would be snuffed out, feeding the malevolent monster that kept the Living Lands from falling into darkness.
“I’m a good thief,” I said. “I just had interests other than footwear.”
“And yet despite your interests, your nasty boots carry you on the same path as my jeweled slippers.” She closed her dark eye, fixing me with the colorless one in a way I could tell she’d perfected to make herself more daunting.
I had to admit, it worked, and I slumped back in my seat.
She proceeded to ignore me as she rifled through the nearest drawers, finding the bag of speridia. She barely nibbled at one piece. Apparently dried rind was less of a treat to her than to me.
I scowled. “Don’t take too much. We have to cross a kingdom, and we haven’t much in the way of supplies.”
The fretful warning dredged up a faint recollection of my aunt’s voice. I must’ve been so small, sucking on fruit leather, and we’d been out on the roads for so long.
But even as I grasped for the memory—who else had been there, and where had we been going?—Lady Dyania interrupted. “There’s plenty.” She bit resentfully into the fruit, chewed vigorously, and grabbed another. “My brother wouldn’t want the High Keep to claim Sevaare sent less than its due.” Her hands dropped into her lap, the nugget forgotten. “And he’s paying that debt with my life.”
The debt belonged to everyone in the Living Lands. The auras of the Chosen would be taken, and though I’d benefit along with everyone else—everyone who wasn’t Devoured—even as a thief, that seemed unfair to me.
But what could I say? I was neither noble nor pure, nothing anyone would choose.
After another careful sip of water, Lady Dyania lay on the far bench, curling with her back to me. Either she didn’t fear me or maybe she knew even if I was a threat, the one circling somewhere above us was worse.
Since I’d had rest enough before her glaring woke me, I wanted to ask her how long would we be traveling? Why had she been Chosen? What did she know of the Devouring? But considering her coming fate, my curiosity seemed callous.
When a faint, strangled sob reached me, my throat tightened, garroting anything I might’ve asked.
Because the cruelty of such questions was nothing compared to the endless hunger of the Dragon Prince.
Sweet as the love between my loins, a bun is yours for a quarter-coin—heyo!
~ Last words of a street vendor before Feinan no’Sevarre
CHAPTER 2
I MUST’VE DOZED out of sheer boredom, and when my eyes opened again, the light filtering past the curtains had dimmed. Wiping at the corner of my mouth, still sticky from the speridia, I leaned over to gaze out the window.
Towering trees—jealously holding onto their shriveled leaves—blurred past in the dusk, like a murky dream of a fleeing procession. If I blinked again, maybe I would truly wake this time to find myself still quailing in the alley with Tivvo coming for my head. Or maybe Orton already held my skull in his meaty fist, and this glimpse of the road was the last wish of my stained and fading aura.
But no, the earthbone flowed on and so did we. I sat back with a sigh.
According to old stories—sometimes called history, though I wasn’t sure how the tellings differed—the earthbone had vomited from catastrophic fissures in the earth along with the first demons a thousand years ago. When those demonic verges had burst, channels of molten ore from the Lost Lands had poured forth along with the monsters, blazing across the kingdom. The fires caused horrendous devastation, melting stone as brutally as flesh, leaving nothing behind and no one to mourn.
After the demons had been driven back at terrible cost and the fires put out, the peculiar roadways remained. A strange, lingering power folded distance and time on those paths, smoothing and speeding passage. Walled lightkeeps were built at the crossroads to protect outlying towns and freeholds from the horde. And if sometimes travelers on the earthbone went astray, reappearing at unexpected times and places or not arriving at all… Neh, such was the risk of leaving walls behind.
Over the centuries since, where verges broke open, demons emerged and people died—but always brave warriors and consecrated holy folk battled the demons and sealed the verges with their auric purity.
Until the Great Gorging three hundred years ago.
Then, the worst scourge in generations had raged from sunset mountains to sunrise sea, with hellish verges scarring the world. The Living Lands would have withered into the Lost Lands if not for the great hero Ormonde who challenged the horde and tamed the demon dragon. He dragged the beast out of the abyss and bent it to the defense of the kingdom. Then all the lightkeeps and their vassal settlements united under his rule.
Or so the old stories told.
Ever since, a royal scion compelled the monster into battle, wielding the demon’s own power against the horde. To keep the dragon restrained and sated, it was given the occasional Feast of a refined aura like Lady Dyania’s. That the never-ending struggle now demanded a Devouring of many auras meant… Neh, I didn’t know, but nothing good for sure.
I gave myself a little shake and then shook again inadvertently when the carriage rocked to a halt.
On the other seat, Lady Dyania rolled upright, blinking her mismatched eyes. “Are we there already?” Her voice was as raspy and trembling as when she first fought off the dinzah.
“Not yet, I think. The earthbone might hasten us, but the High Keep is not so close to Sevaare as that.”
“I wish it was farther,” she murmured.
I couldn’t blame her even though I was eager to seek out my family’s fortune and my own fate. We waited in tense silence, listening to muffled calls from beyond the carriage door. Not the screams of the demon dragon at least.
Despite our attentive focus, we both flinched at a hard rap on the door. Lady Dyania slouched back, both her eyes wide and wary.
I cracked the door to peer at the High Keep guard standing at attention. The gleam of torches flickered through the hart’s antlers, casting spooky shadows. “What’s going on? Why do we stop?”
Shifting her gaze past me, the hartier gave a respectful nod to the Chosen One within. “We pause here for the night. Remain within and affix the lock until morning.”
I frowned. “Why must we stay inside?” I wanted to see if the road might jar loose any memories of my family. “It’s not like anyone will wander off into the wilds here.”
The hartier pursed her lips, but the answer came from behind me.
“They don’t fear who might leave, but what might come in.” Lady Dyania’s voice wasn’t loud, but still it carried a point sharper than hart horns.
I glanced over my shoulder at her. “But demons won’t strike this many of us and well defended too.”
“Never forget, this road was theirs first.” She huddled into her corner. “If we’ve been summoned to a Devouring, something is coming—worse than we’ve known for nine generations.”
When I met the hartier’s somber gaze, she didn’t dispute the lady’s disturbing explanation. “Lock the door,” she repeated. “With the light, we will continue on.”
I had one moment to peer up the line of halted carriages before Dyania called sharply to me to close the door. But first I glanced the other direction.
Our silverleafed vehicle was last. Behind us was only the gray ribbon of earthbone disappearing into the dark. No memories there, just a forgotten past—or an ominous glimpse of a dire future.
