Lightfall, p.49
LightFall, page 49
At least she wasn’t alone. A few other Chosen, somewhat more besmirched, gathered with her. From here, the flickering points of their candles were faint as distant stars. The glitter of small blades set to vulnerable flesh was even harder to see, but… Ah! The roar and flare of purifying flames, blood-fed with sanctified auric power, blazed across all the disjointed views.
When Dyania flattened her hand against the battered wall, the fire raced upward. No, it wasn’t fire anymore. Like the ethereal lightning of the auric storm, the glow spread and branched.
Following the old runes revealed by the crumbling façade, I realized, just like the lady’s blood in the carved candlewax that long night in Velderrey. The other Chosen followed her example, adding their auras to the glow, each curling line of power shimmering with its own hue—threads weaving.
My breath caught. “I didn’t realize it would be beautiful.”
“They can’t bleed forever,” Aric said.
I narrowed one eye at him, scowling. “Give me this moment, if you please.”
“If it pleases you,” he murmured.
But it was ruined, both because I was distracted by the way he said please you and also because I knew he was right—no one could bleed forever, not the pure Chosen, not even the dreadmarked prince.
“Maybe the runes will hold the palace.” I tried not to fret that the only reason we could see the runes at all was the falling façade.
“It only needed to be a distraction,” Aric reminded me. But even as he started to back away from the crack in the wall, he hesitated. “It’s Mikhalthe… And Claeve.”
I crowded to his side, peering down.
We’d climbed so high from where we’d entered on the tower’s uphill side. From this angle, the two men looked like poppets, their hair glistening threads of gold and silver—and thief though I was, I’d never been more unnerved by the proximity of such precious findings. They circled each other—the vortix motif in diamonde white on the king’s gorget and the flawless blood-red ruby of Claeve’s cloak—feinting and testing, each looking for an opportunity to strike, a chance to kill.
“The king shouldn’t risk himself,” I fretted. “Not like this, for glory.”
“For glory, for kingdom, for love, does it matter?”
Despite the momentous battle below, my focus fastened on the man beside me. Did it matter? Obviously not, only victory counted.
For some reason, I wanted it to matter.
But before I could answer, Aric pulled me away from the crack, back into the ruined hall. Though the corridor had mostly collapsed into lower levels of the tower, a part of the flooring still jutted from the wall leaving ragged, treacherous footholds.
I gazed askance at the path. “I told you once before, I’m afraid of heights.”
“Still?”
I snorted. “Maybe worse now.” But my words and sincere feelings on the matter didn’t stop me from stepping again toward that edge, if more slowly. “Keep your weight to the wall,” I muttered, more to myself than him. “Think of the treasure ahead. Don’t look down.”
Sliding one foot along the broken path, I felt the bite of rock through the sole of my boot. Ignoring my fear for a moment, I glanced back. Aric was watching me, a strange half-smile quirking his lips.
“What?” I demanded.
“Thinking of treasure.” Not looking down, he followed me.
The Dragon Prince followed me.
Why did that make my heart lighten?
It certainly didn’t lighten my body. With each creeping step, I expected to plummet to my death. Although if I bounced off the sheared wall at the proper angle, maybe I’d splatter the king and the demon master, and wouldn’t that be a comedic moment in the ballad of this battle?
Step by agonizing step, we crawled across the exposed wall. Below us, the battle raged on, oblivious.
At least I hoped there were no demons creeping toward us. I wouldn’t look down to check.
To my disbelieving surprise, my boot found a steady hold, and with a grunt, I swung myself into the intact hallway on the far side of the damage. I peered ahead of us. “It looks better from here,” I said over my shoulder.
“Almost there.” Aric’s voice sounded strained. Neh, he might be fine with swooping over the Living Lands aboard a dragon, but holding on by his own fingernails was likely something else again.
I spun back to offer him moral support—or maybe a bit of teasing since he was nearly safe, and it wasn’t like I could offer him much physical support considering our size difference—only to see the reason for his worry.
Unfurling up the wall were threads of the blood-fed auric power of the Chosen, swelling from the exposed runes. According to the stories, the runes were supposed to be protective, not offensive, but what would that touch do to a dreadmarked prince without his demon dragon? I didn’t know.
Judging by his expression, Aric didn’t know either.
The filigrees of pure aura that had seemed so beautiful now felt like a threat.
“Almost there,” I reminded him, struggling to keep the fear from my voice. “Just a few more steps, then reach for my hand.”
“I won’t pull you down.”
“No,” I said harshly. “You won’t. I have a hold here. Just reach for me.”
“Fei—”
“Don’t you dare leave me again!”
That shut him up. Clinging to the wall, those once fancy boots of his looking far too wide for the fragile footholds, he spidered another step. I bit my tongue until I tasted blood to stop myself from telling him to hurry. I refused to look down, but the glow of the rune lines burned on the bottom edge of my gaze like unshed tears.
The edge of the white tiled façade where I leaned crackled and popped unnervingly beneath my fingers, more felt than heard as it threatened to flake away. Aric’s ashen face was slashed with the locks of his black hair, as if I were seeing him through stony cracks and iron bars.
But his icy gaze was fixed on mine, as if my yearning alone could hold him.
It could, I swore to myself fiercely. I would.
Only one more step. His boot on the last foothold, his hand stretched across the gap toward me.
Through the runes carved in the raw rock of the lightkeep, the auric light of the Chosen Ones spiraled up beneath his other hand, still grasping the wall.
He sucked in a ragged breath, the etched scars behind his eyes reflecting the spectral hues. His back arched, bearing his weight away from the wall…
“No!” I lunged toward him. My boots skidded on the glossy white tile, then caught on the busted edge. The leather sole twisted, along with my ankle, sending a violent spasm up my knee and farther, and I might’ve fallen then.
Would’ve fallen if Aric hadn’t thrown himself toward me. It was an impossible twist, launching himself off that meager foothold, knocking me back.
And still catching himself before he flattened me.
Sprawled on the corridor floor, we both caught our breaths, him straddling me, me blinking up at him.
“Too close,” I whispered.
“Just close enough.” He lowered his head and his kiss was unbearably sweet.
I might’ve laid there, swooning at his touch—and partly in enervation and relief—but eventually our breath ran out and our lips parted with a soft smack.
He gazed down at me, those scarred eyes soft and shimmering as opals in the reflected flames and auric devastation. “Forgiven yet?”
“Mm.” My lips tingled. “Getting closer.”
With one hand, he hauled me to my feet though I swayed on my sadly mangled boots. Waiting until I’d steadied, he gestured me onward. “We must be almost there.”
“Truly, this time,” I told him as we sped down the remaining corridor. “The white tower mirror of your mineral pool is just beyond this locked door. I’ll need to—” Reaching down, I groaned. When my boot had twisted, my good knife must’ve been knocked out. At least I still had my great-great-grandfather’s blade. I gazed at Aric. “I need my animdao knife. I’m sorry it hurts you.”
“I won’t feel it now.”
With my shoulder braced on the door, I crouched down, fumbling in my other boot with one hand. Eyes half-closed, I traced the outline of the lock. The poor lighting might’ve been a problem for some, but shadows had never been my enemy. “Why won’t you—”
Abruptly, the sealed door flung inward, and in surprise, I tumbled along with it, rolling awkwardly and hastily blinking away the sudden dazzle of light.
Mouth twisted in rage, Kalima loomed over me. She had a knife of her own in her hand.
And she raked it in a vicious upward arc into Aric’s heart.
The road goes on and far away,
Leaving my beloved far behind.
Though the lonely path turns and twines,
The call of the horizon will not let me stay
~ A song of the earthbone travelers
CHAPTER 34
I SCREAMED.
All my life, I hardly ever screamed, and yet I cried out like that blade was coming for me. And maybe my panic mattered for once, because in response, Aric angled toward me, and the knife slid up across his ribs at an angle to bury in his opposite shoulder.
As he spun away from the blow with a sharp oath, half trapped by the confining doorway, I realized why he was so distracted and slow that a surprise lor could wound him so badly. His other hand, not the one that’d helped me off the ground but the one touched by the bloodfire rune, was…wrong. Exposed by his sleeveless gilet, the skin up his arm was marked with blackened streaks. I wanted to believe it was just dirt or soot, but somehow I knew it wasn’t.
Kalima slashed at him again, and for all her pristine silkha white and finely woven spectrum threads, I could see she was not without shivving skills. More, there was a mark of righteous wrath upon her—cheekbones bright with roused blood and her mouth drawn wide with grim exultation at stabbing the reviled Dragon Prince.
Despite his wound, he danced away from the blow. But not far; though he was obviously hampered by my presence, he wouldn’t retreat, not when that would leave me exposed to her strike even though her long-simmering hatred for him had been obvious from the start and I knew a lightkeep-named thief was mostly beneath her notice.
To my surprise, she didn’t press the attack. Instead she retreated a step toward the stagnant pool in the center of the room, glaring at Aric, her expression a maleficent tangle of anger and loathing—and glee.
I glanced at the blade in her hand. It had none of the ceremonial beauty of the haloria’s other sacred trappings. It didn’t even poise like the well-balanced working blades of my streetwise acquaintances. My gaze caught on the narrow groove carved in the metal, not so unlike the runes in the walls…
“Aric,” I said urgently. “The blade is poisoned.”
Kalima glared at me, the brown and green and gold of her eyes roiling muddied. “And once again you speak out of turn.”
“Even the lowliest guttersnipe has the right to call out a traitor to the Living Lands,” I snapped.
“I’ve sought always to preserve the Living Lands.” She angled the knife. “And the blade isn’t corrupted.” Before my relief could take hold, she continued with a sneer, “The sanctified sunlaris tincture is lethal only to the demon-touched.”
With the bulk of his body, Aric put me behind him, though I caught the metallic tang of blood on the air. “The king is here to destroy the horde and its master. The Chosen Ones are pouring their light into the darkness. Whatever you hoped for, Kalima, the power you’ve hoarded is gone.”
“And so will you be, Dragon Prince,” she snarled. “The sunlaris will sever your bond with the monster. All those scars you took will finally bleed, and you will die, alone.” Her vicious smile twisted tighter. “At least you will be at peace.”
She all but spat the word, and I recoiled at the shocking cruelty of her attack, even without the knife.
And to my horror, Aric swayed, as if his boots were once again poised above a terrible precipice. “Peace?”
The word cracked with the rough harmonics I’d heard when he’d cut himself down from the dragon to approach me that first night in Velderrey. But it wasn’t the dragon’s voice in his that I heard now, just his own longing.
No. I would not let him go for mere peace.
This time, I stepped in front of him. Clinging ostentatiously to the front of his gilet, I angled him sideways. “Go,” I wailed at her. “You’ve won. The palace and the Living Lands are yours. Just leave us here to die!”
With a smirk, she sidled away from us, onward to whatever she intended.
Then she paused.
“Too much,” Aric murmured to me.
“Never enough,” I whispered back.
Kalima glared at him and then at me. “You can’t save him,” she said through gritted teeth. But I saw the way she gripped the fouled knife tighter, as if she weren’t entirely sure. “I don’t have time to watch him fade, but I deserve this meager pleasure.” She peered at Aric with sharp assessment. “And he will die. I won’t allow any miracles in my wake.” With a twitch of her knife, she gestured at the befouled pool. “The sunlaris wasn’t meant for you, but since I suspected you’d sneak back here…”
I misliked her suddenly calculating tone, but we’d come for the luminarci anyway, so I supported Aric’s wavering steps as Kalima prodded us within toward the columns.
The first time I’d seen the columns, I thought they’d channeled fitful cloudy sunlight from beyond the tower. But that slowly churning nacreous glow was the distilled auras of so many unknown victims, and my heart seized at the knowledge.
As for what we must do with the luminarci now…
“Tell me you’re faking this weakness,” I begged Aric under my breath.
“I’m faking,” he said, so obliging. But his rasping voice was too faint and his weight was too heavy on my shoulder for me to believe him.
When I’d sneaked through here before, I’d wrinkled my nose at the stagnant pool with its scrim of algae, but now the stink was almost overwhelming. As if Kalima had been tossing dead bodies into the thermal waters to make corpse soup.
Neh, mustn’t think about corpses.
Kalima was glaring at Aric. “Why are you still standing?”
“Folly,” he said. “And a touch of stubbornness, I suppose.” Despite his bravado, he sagged against me. “You taught me that, though, so blame yourself.” His arm across my shoulder tightened just a little. “And maybe I just needed a reminder.”
Warmth trickled through me. Probably just the blood from his stab wound, unfortunately.
Kalima wasn’t any more amused. “This was never about you, poor boy.”
“As you might imagine, I’m still feeling personally affronted,” Aric drawled. “And I already told you, I stopped being a child the night you sent me to the dragon.”
“It wasn’t I,” she objected. “You blame me, but I never wanted you at all. I tried to convince your father not to bring you here, to leave you with whatever tavern wench he’d swollen with his seed. But ah no, a king must have his pride.” Her lips twisted with derision. “I never fooled myself that any dreadmarked prince could hold back the horde.”
Aric tilted hard against me, so heavy I almost dropped him. Helpless, I had to ease him down to the floor.
Crouched beside him, I stared at Kalima, my mind whirling like when I picked the lock on a rich man’s jewelry box only to find dust. “Why? Why would you sabotage our only hope since Ormonde’s time?”
Though I thought I was impervious to derision and disdain, her look of contempt was so abiding I actually felt bad for speaking.
“And where has that gotten us? Only here.” She expanded her glare to Aric, as if annoyed he was still breathing. But once again, her expression shifted to something shrewd and sad. “Let me tell you a story.”
I tucked my chin back. “Ah no, never mind. I know I just asked why, but really you needn’t—”
“I was noble born,” she said, ignoring my long sigh, “but a younger daughter in a large family, and so I was pledged to the blessing of the light everlasting. I studied so hard, but by my first trial, it was clear I didn’t have the auric strength to become lor.” For a heartbeat, she aimed her glare around this rotting heart of the white tower. “Neither of you could understand what that was like. Even though it was everything I’d been meant to do, everything I trained for, everything I wanted. And it would never be.”
“No, how could we ever feel such loss?” Aric murmured. “We who should never have had anything at all.”
The knife in Kalima’s hand twitched as if she wanted to stab him again, but when I adjusted my stance slightly, to ready myself, she apparently thought better of getting too close. “Just before my last chance, a young woman came to me. I’d seen her around the dawn well but we’d never spoken. She offered me a draught and said if I drank it, I would pass my trial. I did. I found another draught on the night before my last trial to become lor. Years later, on the night after my consecration as numinlor, she came to me again and bid me follow her. She brought me here, into the depths of the haloric hall, into the bones of the mountains, and she showed me the flaw.”
When she paused, I swallowed hard, reluctantly riveted. “Flaw?”
“A fault through the protections that had existed for centuries, a glimpse into the Lost Lands. She said just as I’d been pledged to the haloria, she had been fostered by a secret circle tasked with hiding the flaw. I had to close this part of the tower so they could build the luminarci to patch the flaw, but I couldn’t tell anyone else because the resulting fear and chaos would only widen the chasm. As numinlor, I kept the secret and kept the luminarci filled as a barrier against the horde.” Kalima’s tone turned peevish, like a dinzah dreamer denied. “Maybe if I’d had a few more of those vitalizing draughts, I would’ve…” She restrained herself with obvious difficulty. “I’ve searched ever since to find a way to preserve the Living Lands.”
“And your best guess was stabbing Aric?” I said incredulously.
