Lightfall, p.44
LightFall, page 44
When we all looked at each other, he laughed, a big, kingly guffaw that took up even more room. “By the amaranthine light, things have never been so dire, true, but it is in the darkness that we shine. It is such times when heroes are made.”
And corpses.
But I kept that graceless observation also to myself since everyone here had lost someone, some more than others, and they didn’t need me to make light—or dark—of that truth.
Maybe I was learning some discretion after all.
The king dispatched one of his servants to fetch Lor Berindo—”Unless he’s gone too,” Mikhalthe said bitterly—and called for another chair for Lady Dyania. Nothing for Lisel and me, not that I expected it, so the two of us loitered in the dusty dimness off to one side while the rest of them discussed this unsettling turn for the worse.
The old lor’s arrival, as far as I could tell, merely added another cantankerous voice to an already complicated discussion. I understood now why Aric returned to our crumbled guard shack even more exhausted than I was from hard manual labor. I stood with one shoulder canted into Lisel, and it wasn’t long before she was leaning into me with equal weariness, which, considering she was an offspring of military line, told me just how tiresome this was.
A lengthy dissertation from Lor Berindo about the history of the demonic verges. A much shorter but to me equally stultifying recap from Captain Elaf on current resources in regards to the kingdom’s offensive capabilities. A worried and worrisome update from the palace steward about the increasingly desperate situation in our refugee camp. The briefer but at least more potentially productive intermission while the king called for a small repast—which, sadly, passed by Lisel and me too quickly to even grab a cup of kavé—and then returned to his tirade about the lightkeeps not sending fighters.
I wondered if he even realized he was back where he started. Even a thief knew better than that.
When it became clear that the steward would not pass the tray around to the murky corners—and there wouldn’t be anything left even if he did—I nudged Lisel. “I can add nothing to this conversation but unsolicited commentary. So I’m going to go…anywhere else.”
She gave me half a smile that I thought was almost approving. “I’ll stay with our lady and let her know where you’ve gone.” Her smile faded. “The prince too, I suppose. Fei…you should be more careful.”
“That’s why I’m leaving,” I told her.
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
I did, and my gaze shifted without my conscious will to Aric. With all the heartache we’d endured so far and all the dangers ahead of us, for her to believe that I could still find more trouble… I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or sigh.
I settled for a shrug. “I’ll have you know, I still haven’t taken anything from him.” I hesitated. “Except a cup of kavé. And he took that from the king, so it wasn’t even his.” But I’d also taken that bubbling bath in his tower. And that kiss…many kisses actually.
I grumbled. “Why is a gift considered cursed if it’s everything I wanted?”
She answered with a laugh and a sigh. “If I harbored any delusions of understanding the vagaries of the weavings of fate, perhaps I would’ve pledged myself to the haloric hall as any good second child would have. Instead…” She waved one hand at our current circumstances.
“Neh, Imbril ended up right here too,” I pointed out. “Maybe the weave of the fates is more deliberate than we know.”
“It would be nice if someone had a plan,” she said. “Come find me later and I’ll let you know what, if anything, is decided.”
I nodded and started to walk away, then paused. “I know this isn’t the place for me. But now that I’m here it feels wrong to just walk away.” I pursed my lips. “I mean, not walk away right now. I mean walk away from…” I echoed her hand wave all around. “But I’ll try not to make anything worse.”
“Luckily, I think it will be bad enough that our worst will mean less than a shadow in the void.”
I wrinkled my nose at her idea of luck. “Lady Ani would say something inspiring right now.”
She inclined her head in agreement. “But people like you and me know sometimes we must soldier on without it.”
As I made my way through the ruins of what had once been the kingdom’s finest lightkeep—a harsh preview of the High Keep’s fate—the camp felt like a gray sludge of all the emotions I’d passed: the king’s bluster, Aric’s anger, no’Maru’s cynicism, Dyania’s bruised optimism, Lisel’s resignation. How could such disparate threads ever come together? And would we even have the chance before they were all severed?
I had meant to find myself something to eat—that one purloined cup of kavé not enough to hold me—but instead my steps bent toward the old market square and the small ring of wagons. My aunt caught me loitering on the outskirts. Coming from the direction of the well I’d helped dig out, she had two large flagons of water yoked over her shoulders and a third in her arms. Wordlessly, I fell in beside her, taking the heavy flask from her hold.
“Thank you, Feinan,” she said, adding a lilting cadence to my name that I dimly remembered. “I wasn’t sure we’d see you again.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d still be here.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I winced. The retort was unkinder and more revelatory than I wanted.
But she didn’t flinch, and in her steady gaze, I glimpsed a reflection of the struggles she’d endured on the road—her sister lost, children left behind, a familiar ease with the heavy, unwieldy flagons that spoke more eloquently than any lor or high lord about the strength she’d needed to survive—all burdens that my family had freed me from.
Though I hadn’t asked for that freedom, I reminded myself, fastidiously fanning my resentment.
She paused before we crossed into the circle of wagons. “Your father didn’t want to leave, not when he’s just found you.” She slanted a glance at me and I thought she was going to parry any angry comment I made about them “finding” what they’d so purposefully left behind. But she added, “Also, King Mikhalthe requisitioned our yaxen.”
I made a sound of sympathy. At least she’d been honest about their reason. And I found that I didn’t like the idea of them being stuck here. “I have friends. I’ll see what I can do about the yaxen. Maybe can’t get all of them, but enough.”
She gazed at me, and though I’d never spent much time studying my own face, I caught a glimpse of myself there, not just in the facets of her features but in the lines left by her life—threads of a path I hadn’t taken but that had somehow caught me still. “Do you want to see the backside of our last wagon so badly?” she murmured.
Since she’d been honest with me about the yaxen, I shook my head. “I don’t remember you well enough to really miss you anymore.” For once I put no particular bitterness in the words; it was only the truth. “But I do remember…the happiness of being together on the road, and I don’t want that taken from you.” I let the flagon of water sag in my arms, because it was very heavy. “Also, I think you’d be safer if you weren’t here.” It was saying something that the open road with no one to call for was a better choice. I realized she was smiling at me. “What?”
“That’s why your father left you in Sevaare,” she said. “Because he wanted you to be out of harm’s way.”
I tried to summon up the indignation to walk away again, or at least scowl at her, but… Why? “I would give the same warning to any who might have a chance of saving themselves.”
She looked at me. “Save ourselves for how long? We are all woven on the same loom. If the warp is cut…”
I swallowed against the lump in my throat. “I remember Mama showing me how to darn a hole, to keep going only with what we had. Just because I’m being fancy and making bad choices doesn’t mean anyone else should.”
“A choice made from love is a thread of gold, even in an unraveling sock.” She swung the yoke down and rolled her shoulders. “As I told you, the reason we never came around to Sevaare again is that we weren’t sure your father would be able to let you go a second time. It was so hard for him—harder than you probably want to believe, harder than he’ll ever let you know. I still hear him cry your mother’s name in his sleep, and it took most of what remained of his heart to leave you in the innkeeper’s care, but he would not risk you to the road.”
I let out a slow breath. “Since the risk is everywhere now, even the High Keep, I suppose the rest of it doesn’t matter anymore.” It was the closest I could come to forgiving them, at least for now.
Although this might be the only chance I had.
So when my aunt jerked her chin at the heart of the circle of wagons, I followed her in.
Maybe I’d get that breakfast I’d missed—and perhaps a taste of the love that had left me behind.
And then the demon dragon swooped down—rawr!—and breathed its nothingness at Ormonde—oh no!—but the master of the diamonde light who would become our mighty king lifted his shining sword—heyo!—and smote the demon dragon a mighty blow—take that!—and then the demon dragon chomped off the king’s mighty arm—another oh no!
~ Transcription from children’s poppet show
CHAPTER 31
I SPENT THE DAY with my father and my aunt among the wagons. At first my father tried to forbid me from spending time with nobility—“They talk too much of heroes and sacrifice but it’s our yaxen that they take”—until my aunt reminded him that I was no longer a child and he needed to trust me to make the right choices for me.
“But she’s still my child,” he protested. Then he slanted a look at me, clearly expecting to be rebuffed.
I managed a smile that must have seemed honest enough since he eased, and I said, “As I told Aunt Karligh, I can’t be sure my choices are good ones, and some of them I can’t even be sure are mine at all, but I’ll take advice if you have it.”
My aunt scoffed. “Never give him such an opening. Or we’ll be stuck listening to him opine all day and all night and into the next.”
He skewed up his face in exaggerated affront, then laughed. “Fine then, no advice. Just a memory?” When I nodded, he continued. “It was something your mother sang all the time.” We’d had some watered-down wine with lunch—anyway, mine had been watered-down—and his eyes were a little red; now they were damp as well. “Maybe you remember it too.” When he closed his eyes, twin droplet squeezed from the corners. “The road twists and turns, rises and falls, but love—”
“But love flies straight and true to carry me back to you,” I finished softly. The words hung in the air for a moment, shimmering in my memory as if some distant light was aimed my way. “The whole thing rhymed when she said it,” I recalled.
“She spoke the old tongue,” he said. “Had it from her grandfather’s side.” He let out a laugh that ended on a sigh. “I called her my lost princess.”
I sighed too. “I wish”—and as soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t started wishing because that way was as precarious as luck and wintryberries, but it was too late so I kept going—“I wish I remembered more about her. No, I wish that she hadn’t died at all, that when I saw the wagons she would have been here with you still.” My voice cracked. “I wish I could tell her once more that I loved her.”
“Oh, Fei,” he whispered. “I wish that too, more than anything.” He held open one arm, and after the briefest hesitation, I went to him and fell into that long-forgotten embrace, the scent of strong wine and campfire smoke closing around me like another arm.
When we finally sat back, both of us wiping our eyes and my aunt doing the same, I fumbled in my boot. “I still have her ancestor’s knife,” I told them. “The Rokynd who sent the word that brought you here told me it’s an animdao blade.” I held out the knife to him. “And it may have held a heart-charm once.”
He took the haft carefully, turning the edge toward the lowering light. “For true? I always thought ‘twas but a story her brother told around the campfire,” he mused. “Maybe your mother was more than my princess after all.” He handed the knife back to me with great ceremony. “They say such blades unite more than they sever. And in the end, it has brought us back together.” Quietly, in a wavering tenor, he sang,
“At last the road goes dark and worn,
But I see a gentle light that burns.
Though the path twines and turns,
My beloved calls me home once more.”
As the day was fading, my father, my aunt, and I left the sheltering circle. We stood at the edge of the marketplace, gazing up the thoroughfare that led to the earthbone road, which arrowed across the Widening Leas to the mountain pass up to the High Keep, now home only to the horde and the auric tatters of their victims.
My aunt shook her head. “How can this end well? The dark is too strong.”
“The dawn comes again,” my father countered. “That is the balance promised us.”
I wondered what the demons had been promised.
I hugged them both, careful not to hold on too tight or too long, to not seem desperate—or despairing. I gave them my best blithe street smile as I waved and walked away.
But as the dreadmarked prince had taught me, I did not look back.
It wasn’t so late when I left my father’s wagons, but clouds had moved in while I ate and drank with my family, and now the low winter sun had dropped behind the Argonyx. Somewhere in that direction lay the demons and the dragon and our destiny, and it felt cold, colder even than the coming winter night could justify. Maybe it would snow, which would at least add to our fresh water.
That seemed like cold comfort, literally.
I hastened across the camp to the old granary but found only Zik and Nenzo with Lady Morowyn there. The two caretakers glanced up at me expectantly, and the lady looked away with a barely concealed shudder.
I gazed back at them. “Ani and Lisel haven’t returned?” I didn’t actually need that answered and I grimaced when they shook their heads. “This bodes ill—more ill,” I added, also unnecessarily.
“We heard that the lightkeeps won’t be sending fighters,” Zik said, biting his lower lip. His freckles were bright as flecks of blood on his paled cheeks. “Just like no one sent defenders to Osiroon.”
I couldn’t reassure him, not when the king had seemed equally worried although he hid it behind blusters. “Perhaps their plan is so well-planned that it’s taking extra…planning,” I said with tragic ineloquence. Which was what happened when one neglected one’s skills for dissembling.
Nenzo gestured his assessment of my reply, and I grimaced. “I said perhaps.”
“There can be no stratagem against the horde,” Morowyn murmured. “Just sacrifice. Our deaths are only delayed.”
I squelched my unreasonable irritation; she had been sacrificed and half-dead long enough that she had earned her hopelessness. But still. “Aric saved you,” I reminded her. “He could still save us all. If we all help.”
Nenzo silenced me with only a look, and I subsided. I handed over the small flask of wine that Aunt Karligh had sent with me—to my wry amusement, my family hadn’t shared all their supplies with the palace steward; at least I came by my trickery honestly—and headed back out into the night.
In just the few moments that I’d stopped at the granary, the night had turned darker and colder, the wind surging through the ruins, like it was emboldening itself for something worse than snow. I slouched back to the king’s hall, expecting to be challenged at the door and readying some quick words, but the guards were clustered off to one side and didn’t even see me as I slipped past in the shadows.
But I caught the essence of their words: “…alone…no one is coming…not enough of us…alone…”
Like a dark reflection of the gloating whispers Lady Morowyn heard in her swoon as the horde swept past; no wonder she shuddered.
Within the abandoned tavern, it was as if I’d never left. The king was pacing in angry circles. Dyania still sat elegantly in her chair, Lisel posted at her shoulder as if she would stand there for all time. The king’s advisors looked as fraught as ever. Aric…
Though no one else had looked over at me—maybe this unexpected life among the nobility had tempered my lies, but my steps were as soft as ever—his gaze sought me out even before I cleared the doorway. He didn’t smile, and his stance didn’t ease, but somehow his regard took the knife edge off the winter’s night. I tried to mirror that look back at him, to return that warmth so he would know how it felt.
“There’s no other answer,” the king was saying. “Those who can’t fight, we send to what protection they might find in Maru Deep, where they’ll have the waters at their back”—he grimaced—“if no one else.” Another irate head shake sent his golden-brown hair flying. “And I will lead our bravest and strongest back to the High Keep to seal the verge and send the demons back to hell.”
He paused in his pacing to toss a challenging glare around the room, and though no one answered him, to me it seemed there remained many questions between “return to the lightkeep” and “send them all to hell.”
Into that silence, no’Maru said quietly, “If there is a verge such as has been told, it will need a pure and powerful aura to close and seal. We have only one source for such.”
Aric swiveled his head to glare at no’Maru. “Without the dragon—”
“Not the dragon,” no’Maru interrupted. “Our king.”
Blade to bone, and I thought the night had been cold and the silence frozen before? That was nothing compared to the horrified shock that rippled through the tavern.
After the longest moment, Captain Elaf sputtered. “What? You would have him throw himself into the verge? Sacrifice himself…” He trailed off as he seemed to realize what he was saying.
Lor Berindo huffed out a contemplative breath. “That’s not so unlike how King Ormonde ended the Great Gorging,” he said thoughtfully. “Losing himself—or a part of himself anyway—to defeat the horde.” He sat back, rubbing his chin. “It would be a terrible sacrifice, of course. After all, the kingdom’s purist auric power resides in its ruler, as does of course its courageous leadership.” The lor lifted one finger as if anyone had said anything. “And yet, what is courage or even purity if the Living Lands fall? Such a sacrifice may be our only choice—”
