Lightfall, p.46
LightFall, page 46
After a troubled silence, I said, “Heyo, it’s not all bad. The king and I found some honydka.” I told him about the hidey hole, as if it mattered.
He let out a sound, part sigh, part laugh. “That seems very much like something that would happen to Mikhalthe. A lucky find of a rare vintage that will make his troops think the world of him even as our world is crumbling.”
I shrugged a little against his unyielding hold. “It might not be hope,” I agreed. “But maybe it’s the next best thing.”
“A sign?”
“A reminder that even here, in this benighted place, the demons didn’t get everything.”
His skeptical grunt was very like his brother’s. “To answer your question, I don’t have hope and I don’t see a chance,” he said. “But neither do I see another way. We’ll fight as we always have, except…” He tucked his face into my hair, as if he might hide in that mess. “Except now I will hurt more because I feel again, and I fear more because I have something to lose.” He tipped my chin up. “You. Because of you.”
Probably the accusation should’ve stung, but if I hadn’t been one to weave what I could out of scraps, I never would’ve survived long enough to be here.
But maybe that wasn’t quite the validation I’d intended. Maybe I should want more than scraps.
Now was not the time or place for such wishes. “Because of you, I have not stolen a hart and fled across the plains with three bottles of priceless honydka.”
I’d meant the humor to ease the tension in his pectoral under my cheek, but instead he curled his fingers at my nape, holding me fast.
“That’s what I want.”
I blinked. “You want me to steal the honydka? The king has it, but I can take it back again—”
“To leave,” he clarified. “I want you to leave.”
For a heartbeat, the whisper of the winter wind seemed to fall silent, as if even the shadows of night were aghast.
“Leave?” My voice barely carried across the scant distance between us.
“I want you to go with the others for Maru Deep. There’s nothing for you in the High Keep, only death.”
“But…” A knot of that fear and hurt he’d mentioned clogged in my throat. “You’ll be there.”
“Only death,” he repeated. “That is not what I want for you. I am not for you.”
The words were like spears, arrows, clubs, and fangs, brutal and piercing. I knew he was only being noble, but…
But hadn’t that always been the problem? He was a noble scion, even more so without the dragon to mark him as undesirable, and still so far out of my covetous reach.
I held myself taut against the onslaught of anguish. “Aric…”
He kissed me. And I knew he just wanted to silence me again, as if those sensations could eclipse my sensibilities.
And curse him to the brightest lights and deepest shadows, he was right.
When I collapsed into an exhausted slumber, part of me knew he would not be there when I awoke.
So when I opened my eyes to the wan morning light—and sure enough, alone—I held the warmth and shelter of his cloak around me just a little longer, sighed, and headed out.
After all, he could decide not to look back, but that wouldn’t change anything if I was right in front of him.
The chaos of the camp was a fair distraction while I waited to ambush him. The king’s commandments had everyone in a frantic hustle, aiming either toward the High Keep or away from it. As if the direction would matter if there was truly a verge under the mountainous spires that cast their shadow across the entirety of the kingdom.
Uncertain where my dubious talents would be of most use, I went to find Dyania. Of course I had no particular virtue to offer, and I’d already proved my failure in the scholarly pursuit of auric history, but maybe I could bring her kavé or something. But when I found her and Lor Berindo composing a blessing to go with the honydka for the king to bestow upon his fighters, I could see it wasn’t going well.
The lady’s usual poised elegance was fraying like the ends of her spectrum threads. Poor Zik was apparently wasting his clever fingers on too many other tasks. “But I explained already, my blood in the candle was a lure,” she was saying. “It wasn’t truly a weapon. The king and his fighters won’t lack for demonic presence, and without the dragon to end them—”
“King Mikhalthe asked for your trick,” Berindo said stubbornly. “And so your trick we shall give him.”
“But the bloodrune will only summon more demons down upon him.”
“It is what he wants.”
“Since I will be going with them, I can do it, if it needs done,” she said, though her voice shook.
I stiffened. “You’re going back?” I blurted. “But—”
“Fei,” she said sharply. “Unless you have a trick for closing the verge? No? Then for once be silent.”
While I knew she was frustrated and frightened—and not wrong—her dismissal, coming as it did on the heels of Aric’s abandonment, felt too punishing. I bowed silently and backed out.
If she might’ve called some sort of apology or the like, I didn’t hear it over the shouts and clanks from the yard. So I went looking for Lisel.
She at least didn’t send me away, directing me instead toward a tangle of sweat-stained straps. “The beasts will sleep in harness tonight though we won’t send the wagons until the fighters depart at first light. If the horde attacks, maybe they will focus on the greater threat and leave the noncombatants alone.”
Alone… My fingers plucked at the twisted coils of leather, maybe not as creative as Zik’s hands, but I was just laying things straight. Which, now that I thought of it, was the opposite of my usual way.
“Will it matter who runs and who fights?” I murmured. “If there is a verge…”
“The lady said something about not being dead yet.”
“At least she’s talking to you,” I muttered. “She kicked me out.”
“No, she isn’t speaking to me either,” Lisel tossed aside a heavy yoke that had cracked in two, and the broken pieces sent up a puff of dust, quickly ripped away by the wind, like an aura shredded. “I did as you suggested and told her of my admiration for her.”
I swallowed hard. “Oh.”
“Yes. Which is why she isn’t talking to me anymore.” Lisel raised her gaze to mine. “But before she turned away, she said she has made too many mistakes to be admired, and any regard is just too much.”
I grimaced. This will have to be enough, Aric had said. And I’d told him it was, that it would be. But I was lying, to him and to myself. I wanted more, so much more. Maybe I was as hungry as any demon. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s better this way. Better not to go to this fight wishing and wondering.”
But wasn’t that what hope was?
And now me inciting for more meant I’d left her with less. Without even hope, what did our intrepid little group have left?
Lisel was called away to some other task, leaving me the tangle of harness and reins which I laid straight with uncharacteristic patience even as my innards grew more messy instead. When she hadn’t returned by the time I was done, I was left at loose ends, so as a last resort, I went looking for Imbril.
I ended up having to ask one of the haloric guard, though I had to evoke Aric’s name to scare an answer out of the officious wretch. He sent me away almost as fast as my friends had, directing me to an empty lot of bare earth beyond the edges of the roiled camp.
Once, the place had been a dawn well, I guessed, back when Velderrey was a thriving lightkeep at the heart of the Living Lands. Now it was a cemetery, fresh bumps of dirt embedded with the stones that had been churned up, like secrets and sins and hopeless wishes.
Imbril was kneeling in the dirt, no pretense to Lady Dyania’s serenity and beauty. If anything, he looked defeated, and we hadn’t even fought yet.
I crouched down in the dirt next to him. “Who were they?”
He glanced sidelong at me. “Seven of the guard, one courtier, three palace staff, four folk—no, five from the bailey.” He rubbed his hands down his thighs. “These are just the ones who made it out of the High Keep. I wrote down their names. Oh, and the marshal, of course. The previous marshal, I mean.”
“It’s good they will be remembered,” I said hesitantly.
He shook his head. “Will it matter?” I flinched at the echo of my own thoughts. “I just didn’t know what else to do.”
I restrained a grimace. His thoughts were much too much like my own. And that connection with the lor wasn’t anything I’d sought.
“It matters for this moment,” I said. “A thousand years from now can take care of itself.”
“At least they weren’t demon-touched.” He sighed heavily. “Kalima always dealt with that.”
Dealt with, meaning killed them. But he knew that. “Are you going to the High Keep or Maru Deep?”
“I don’t know yet.” His hands clenched into fists in the grimy folds of his white robe. “Lor Berindo—the numinlor—hasn’t decided where our place will be.”
“Neh, anyplace would be better than here,” I said in a weak attempt at grim humor.
He swiveled his head to stare directly at me. “Or just the same.”
Oh no. When even a lor had run out of platitudes…
At my probably aghast expressions, he sighed again. “Go away, Feinan. Maybe there’s a place for you too, but it isn’t here.”
I pushed to my feet, not insulted, exactly, since the lor had never appreciated my particular charms and the feeling was mutual. Still, the rejection rankled.
I wandered off again, skirting the edge of the ruins. The dawn wall here had boasted a ring of fountains, likely fed by the same waterwork I had helped dig out, now without the pressure to revive them. Even if there’d been enough flow, the spouts were missing and the basins were cracked. It all would’ve drained away again.
Tomorrow we would leave for the High Keep. We would fight. Some die. Maybe most of us. It seemed inevitable in a way I’d never thought about before. I’d always prided myself on having a way out, by foot or by tongue. There would be no such opportunity on the morrow.
Lost in my morbid thoughts, I almost walked past the small patch of greenery on the leeward side of the remains of one fountain.
The heap of crumbling, weathered stones had a gap in which a weedy plant had found some scant shelter from the winter wind to send up a single spire of belled flowers, the petals washed in hues from blue to violet to palest pink with bright yellow stamens. If I hadn’t just seen the bottles of honydka, I might not have even registered what I was seeing. But I knew the description from song. Though I didn’t believe in omens, the sweet scent, here in the chill hopelessness, lightened my spirit.
Which in a way seemed yet another cruelty.
I left them blooming there, untouched, and headed back to camp.
Along the way, I helped replace the wheel on a wagon, carried bags from stores to the larger conveyances, broke up a fight between a guardsman and a courtier, and never saw Aric. Probably he sensed with the dragon’s cunning that I was hunting him.
It was getting dark again by the time I made my way along with the other laborers to the empty square where the palace cooks had cobbled together a kitchen. I stood in line for the thin gruel and half a chunk of flatbread, meager but perfectly blistered with small rounds of char.
The brawny-armed baker huffed when I thanked her. “Enjoy, because that’s the last of it.”
I just nodded and moved along.
The invisible side dish, as heavy as the serving was light, was the knowledge of what was to come, and the mood among the folk hunkered down with their hunks of bread was somber. Clutching my allocation in both hands as if that might make it feel more substantial, I tucked behind a barrel to eat. According to the trademark next to my ear, the barrel had held salt fish, but even the smell was gone now, along with half the staves, likely gleaned for firewood; at least I was half out of the wind.
On the other side of the barrel were two men. Their murmurs reached me through the missing staves.
“I’m not going back,” one of them said. “Why would I, just to die?”
The other clicked his tongue. “Think Maru Deep will welcome any bearing the vortix? Or will you hie all the way to fartherest Osiroon?”
The first man hissed back. “There won’t be any left to point a finger at me.” The sound of gnawing at the hard bread, like rats. “Anyway, I could go elsewhere.”
“I think there will be no place in the Living Lands not haunted,” the other said. “But maybe—”
Whatever maybe he’d been about to add was interrupted by Mikhalthe stepping out into the empty spot between two torchieres. The king jumped up onto an empty chest that had held lamp oil according to the stamp on the side. The flickering torch light turned his hair to beaten gold.
Hands on hips, he turned a slow half circle, gazing upon us—but without really looking at us. “In the morning, we return to the High Keep,” he said in a ringing voice. “To reclaim our home, to defend the Living Lands.”
His gaze swept around again, but this time he paused, making hard eye contact as he went. “I know you are afraid. You feel hopeless. But you are not alone. Together, we will seal the verge and end the horde to take back what is ours.” He paused while he finished his perusal of the square. “And I will fight with blade and flame and aura to the very edge of the demons’ hell.” His ringing voice dropped to something like a growl. “But some of you do not believe. You have doubts not even a king’s promise can assuage and so you should leave.” He flung one hand, gesturing toward…somewhere else. “We don’t need you. We don’t want you. Those who remain will go into battle united, strong in our faith and our fury.” He paused again though not as long. “If you cannot stand with us, won’t fight shoulder to shoulder, then go. Just go.”
I wanted to glance over at the bread-nibbler who’d professed his intent to leave, but I was trapped by that imperious gaze.
When no one moved, he nodded slowly. “It is as I believed. The fighters beneath the l’Thine vortix are the boldest in a thousand years.” His smile was brighter than the torchieres flanking him. “So I call you to come to me, one at a time, with that faith and fury, like the line we will hold against the horde and drink from the honydka.” He produced the three bottles, seemingly out of nowhere, with a flourish that made my clever fingers twitch in appreciation.
The murmur that swept the gathering was less at sleight-of-hand than the suggestion of honydka, and his smile widened. “Yes, in a sanctification from King Ormonde himself, these bottles came to me last night. And tonight we drink from them to take heart from the memory of his might. As Ormonde ended the Great Gorging, we will end the horde again.” He half turned to gesture at Lor Berindo. “Numinlor, speak a prayer as we drink to our victory.”
I lost track of the blessing as I snorted silently at the thought that I, with my hand in dirt and dead bugs, had been an unwitting emissary of a dead king’s benediction. Not that the particulars mattered as the smitten crowd surged forward to approach their king.
“Three bottles, three lines,” he called. “Attack from the front and two flanking.” A smattering of relieved chuckles broke some of the tension that had lingered despite his impassioned speech. “The honydka waited here, as if we were meant to come, to find it, to find the strength and purpose to end the threat of the demon horde forever.”
A cheer, ragged at first but gaining steam as the first fighters drank from the bottles. One by one, they stepped back with exclamations, their fingertips at their lips.
The king laughed heartily. “Indeed, as sweet and strong as the day it was bottled hundreds of years ago. Just a sip,” he cautioned. “It’s potent enough to still be coursing through your veins on the morrow.” He tipped the bottle at each fighters’ lips while no’Maru and Elaf flanked him on either side with the other two bottles. Again and again, the three men dispensed the draughts until I suspected that there must be some surreptitious refilling because it was impossible the old bottles could hold so much.
Someone began to hum the lay of King Ormonde, and someone else sang quietly, first in the old tongue and then one of the many verses of the endless battle. I wanted a sip, just to try it, but I didn’t want to stand in front of any of those men, not the bold king, not the smirking advisor, not the unproven marshal. Neh, I’d just have to go into this battle as I always had, not with boldness or even clarity, just my usual insolent shrug.
“I see you licking your lips,” came the quiet murmur at my shoulder.
I glanced up at Aric. “You tried it?”
“Had to make sure it wouldn’t poison all our army.” He tilted his head thoughtfully. “It’s no yombark tea.”
I snorted. “Still, I would’ve liked to taste.”
He held out a thimble, the bottom barely shimmering with the rare spirit.
A whiff of dank sweetness niggled at me like a warning, but of course there was no chance I’d ever had a taste of honydka before. I took the tiny vessel and stared down at it.
“Do you doubt me when I say it’s not bad?” He gazed at me, his scarred eyes half lidded.
I shrugged one shoulder. “It’s not that. I just wonder…” I lifted the other shoulder helplessly. “Is it silly to wonder if I’m worthy? It’s not like King Ormonde knows or cares who’s drinking his left-behind liquor.”
“The honydka doesn’t determine who’s worthy,” he said, an edge to his voice. “And neither did Ormonde. Or Mikhalthe or the haloria, for that matter. Who lives or dies isn’t dependent on their value. Not even the Chosen Ones.”
I gazed at him, wondering at the savagery in his tone. “You are worthy. You matter. To me.”
