The starless crown, p.17
The Starless Crown, page 17
“We have to stop the sacrifice, or all will be lost.”
Jace’s face scrunched with bafflement. “What’re you talking about?”
She faced the door, knowing she could not do this alone. “I must speak to Prioress Ghyle. Before it’s too late.”
* * *
NYX STUCK TO Jace’s shoulder as he slipped a key into the lock of a forbidden door. He glanced back at her. “Maybe I should go alone.”
She chewed her lower lip and stared at the brand in the door bearing the vine-wrapped sigil of the Cloistery. A small silver crucible and pestle adorned it. Tension kept her shoulders by her ears. At any moment, she expected to hear the final latterday bell. After that, with the first bell of Eventoll, the fiery sacrifice was due to begin.
She took a breath, then shook her head. “No. We have too little time. I must risk this path.”
“But why?” Jace pressed.
“I don’t have time to explain.”
Certainly not time for you to believe me.
He sighed, keyed the lock, and opened the way to the private stair up to the ninth tier. Jace—no longer a student—had been given access to haul precious books up to the scholars, which included Prioress Ghyle’s chambers atop the school. Such dispensation did not apply to guests. Nyx knew she was putting Jace’s position and livelihood in danger by this trespass. If caught, she intended to deny his involvement.
Jace led the way over the threshold. There was not enough time for him to run up from the fourth tier to the ninth, convince the prioress of the urgency, and return with her back down here. Nyx knew she had to press the matter directly with the head of the Cloistery. No other would believe her.
“Hurry now,” Jace warned. “It’s still a long way.”
He took off up the steps with her in his wake. She found herself holding her breath for long stretches, expecting to be accosted by an alchymist or some other scholar on these steps. But as they wound around and around the narrow stair, they encountered no one. Most likely everyone was out watching the last of the legion marching toward the summit.
“Almost there,” Jace gasped out, his cheeks ruddy, his back soaked with sweat. She suspected a significant amount of that wetness came from fear. He slowed, pausing at a landing, and nodded toward the door there. “This leads out to the eighth tier.”
He was giving her one last chance to take another path. She could escape out that door and no one would be the wiser. “If you hid on this tier, I could fetch the prioress to you,” he offered.
She considered it, swiping her damp brow.
Before she could answer, a bell clanged loudly, muffled by stone, then growing louder as its ringing spread throughout the school.
The last of the latterday bells.
She stared at Jace and waved for him to continue. But he suddenly lunged at her and shoved her behind him. He leaned back to pin her against the wall. She panicked for a breath—then heard the rasp of a lock and the creak of a door being opened. Brighter light bathed them both.
Hidden behind Jace’s bulk, she could not see who entered.
“What are you doing here, Journeyman Jace?” a woman asked with a note of accusation.
Nyx cringed as she recognized the nasally voice of Sister Reed, the novitiate who taught the seventhyears.
Jace stammered for a frightened breath, then straightened but kept Nyx hidden behind him. “I … I was summoned by Prioress Ghyle, to pick up and return a copy of Plentiarorio’s Doctrine of Seven Graces to the scriptorium.”
Sister Reed groaned, “Then get about it, rather than blocking my way.”
Jace scooted to the side. Nyx matched his step to stay behind him. Sister Reed scuffed past them both, likely with hardly a second glance at someone as lowly as Jace. Still, they waited until her footsteps had faded before hurrying upward again.
The rest of their flight was a blur. Jace led Nyx up to the ninth tier, across a cavernous room under a candelabrum smoking with strange alchymies, and down a long, curved hallway. They encountered a handful of scholars, but Nyx kept in Jace’s shadow. Luckily, the others all appeared to be too involved in their own affairs or with what was happening outside to even note Jace’s hurried passage.
Finally, their trek ended where the black volcanic rock of the alchymists’ towers brightened into the white limestone of the hieromonks’. Between those two, a tall arched doorway stood to one side of the hall, plated half in iron and half in silver.
Jace rushed forward and used a hinged knocker to rap loudly.
Nyx winced at the noise, expecting knights to rush down upon them from all directions. In truth, she couldn’t even be sure the prioress was still in her chambers. If not, Nyx was prepared to go shouting up and down these halls if need be.
I have no more time.
Finally, a faint shuffle sounded, and the door opened on well-oiled hinges.
Nyx exhaled her relief when she spotted the familiar countenance of Prioress Ghyle. The woman’s eyes narrowed curiously at the sight of Jace, then widened when her gaze discovered who stood beside him.
“Nyx?” Ghyle must have immediately surmised that something dire had happened for Nyx to be standing at her threshold. “Get in here.”
The opening was pulled wider, and she and Jace rushed through. The prioress closed the door after them and stepped to follow—then turned back and twisted the bolt in the door.
“What’s this all about?” Ghyle asked.
Nyx struggled with where to begin. She took in the room, which was circular in shape, lined by shelves of ebonwood on one side and white ash on the other. Dusty books, cubbied scrolls, and strange arcane artifacts filled the shelves. In the center was a table halved by the same woods. Nine high-backed chairs stood around it: four white, four black, with the last and tallest split like the table into ash and ebonwood.
Nyx realized here must be where the Council of Eight deliberated and discussed matters pertaining to the school, presided over by the prioress in the ninth seat. Nyx also took in the four tall hearths, presently cold, and noted other doors that must lead into the prioress’s private chambers.
Ghyle drew her toward the table. “What has you so distressed to risk trespassing up here?” she pressed.
Nyx opened her mouth to speak—when a stranger, seated with his back to them in one of the tall chairs, stood and faced them all. The man wore the black robe and crimson sash of an alchymist, but Nyx had never seen him before. He looked a decade or two younger than the prioress, with dark auburn hair tied in a tail and bright hazel eyes.
Nyx took a step away from the stranger, only to have the prioress hold her from retreating farther.
“This is Alchymist Frell hy Mhlaghifor. From Kepenhill in Azantiia. A former student of mine. You can speak freely in front of him.”
Nyx realized the man must’ve come with the king’s forces. Despite the prioress’s reassurances, Nyx didn’t know if she could trust a man who had arrived with the same legion who intended to sacrifice the captured bat.
The alchymist approached with a smile that seemed genuine. “Ah, this must be the miracle girl. Survivor of poisons. And the bless’d of the Mother. And someone the king demands we secure and take to Highmount.”
The blood drained from Nyx’s head at his words, dizzying her for a breath. “Wh … What?”
Jace looked equally shocked and turned to the prioress. “You can’t let that happen.”
Ghyle turned to the both of them. “Trust me, I will do everything in my power to keep Nyx here. Alchymist Frell was kind enough to alert me in advance, so I might ready my arguments.”
Nyx pictured herself being trussed up in chains and dragged to some dungeon in Highmount. She might never see her father or brothers again. But even that heartbreak paled in comparison with what was to come.
“I … I must tell you something,” Nyx whispered, finding it suddenly difficult to breathe. She cast a guilty look at Jace, then concentrated on the prioress’s kind but firm face. “Something I’ve kept from all of you.”
“What does it pertain to?” the prioress asked.
“Moonfall.”
A gasp rose—not from the head of the school, but from the strange alchymist. He shifted closer. “What do you know?”
Nyx didn’t have an answer to his question.
Everything, nothing.
She slowly related all that had happened during that strange visitation, about the nightmare, about the disturbing visions—both in the past and atop some blasted mountaintop. She finished with, “I think I was rescued in the swamps by one of the Mýr bats, raised as one of her own, alongside the one who visited me.”
Jace looked aghast, even stepping away from her.
Nyx sniffed back tears. As she fought against them, the alchymist leaned closer to the prioress. Nyx heard his whisper.
“You don’t think she could be the same child. Graylin’s—”
“Not now, Frell.” Ghyle held up a hand. “Such speculations can wait. But it is now clearer than ever that we cannot let this girl fall into the shadow of the king. That must not happen.”
The alchymist straightened with a nod. “From her story, the bats must have sensed their milk was tainting the child, blinding her, and so returned her to her own kind.”
“Which suggests a level of intelligence far superior than anyone ever imagined.” Ghyle grew silent as she contemplated this, then spoke again. “Is it possible that they poisoned the girl a fortnight ago on purpose? Reawakening her—both in sight and knowledge—to serve as a vessel of warning to the greater world? Do we dare place such reasoning and cunning upon those winged beasts?”
The alchymist rubbed a finger in the crease of his chin. “I reviewed several texts after receiving your missive, to better understand the venom that had afflicted the girl. Justoam’s Anaticum Plenary. Lakewright’s Historia Animalium. Even the oft reviled Klashean tome Fhallon’s Dialogues of Biologica Variations. We know other bats—like the eyeless fruitwings that inhabit the shadowy depths of Cloudreach—navigate somehow via their near-silent cries. Surely the Mýr bats must do the same, experiencing the world in such a manner. A handful of alchymists suspect these kings among their kind also use their high-pitched calls as a means of communication, binding one to another, like bees in a hive, ants in a nest. Perhaps even magnifying their entire genera’s intelligence.”
“The whole greater than its parts,” Ghyle said.
Frell nodded. “Fhallon’s Dialogues goes so far as to conjecture that their knowledge, shared and communed, might go back generations, farther than our own histories. We also know other genera of bats, especially those in the dark western fringes of the Crown, prefer the dark of night, as if binding their behavior and patterns to the cycles of the moon. If so, surely our Mýr bats would be equally sensitive to changes in the moon.”
While Nyx was lost by most of this, Prioress Ghyle’s eyes narrowed with intent on her former student. “Frell, are you suggesting the bats have somehow intuited what your research has shown?”
He nodded. “That the moon has been growing larger over the centuries, and more quickly now.”
Nyx put herself back on that accursed mountaintop, watching a moon swelling, crashing toward her, its edges on fire. “Moonfall,” she whispered.
Frell turned toward her. “Mayhap that is what they were trying to show you, to warn you in their own way.”
Nyx knew his explanation did not illuminate everything. Her vision atop the mountain had been too detailed. Even now screams echoed in her head. She remembered the name shouted from her own lips. Bashaliia. Still, she set aside such mysteries for now and addressed a question that had been plaguing her since that nightmare-riven day.
“Why me?” she asked, glancing over to Jace, then back to the two scholars. “Why am I the one beset by their calls?”
Frell shrugged. “I think it’s obvious.”
Nyx frowned. Not to me.
Frell explained, “You lived your first six moons under their tutelage, when your mind was soft clay, still pliable, far from fully formed. Your brain grew while under a constant barrage of their silent cries. Under such persistent exposure, your mind may have been forever altered by their keening, as a tree is gnarled by winds.”
She glanced to Jace, whose eyes had grown even larger, shining with fear.
Of me.
Frell continued, “I believe, in some small way, that you joined the greater mind around you. And though grown now and diverged on a new path, you still remained attuned to that pattern ingrained upon your spirit.”
Nyx shivered, wanting to argue against the alchymist’s words. Still, she remembered those moments when she saw herself through another’s eyes, through her lost brother’s eyes.
Ghyle spoke up. “If Alchymist Frell’s suspicions are true, then it suggests your recent poisoning awoke more than just your eyesight. It opened an inner eye long closed since you were left in the swamp.”
Nyx swallowed, her stomach churning sickly and hotly.
Then what am I?
Jace must have sensed her distress and pushed through his fear to step closer. “Nyx, is that what you came here to tell the prioress?”
She stiffened, realizing what she had forgotten. “No,” she blurted out, and turned to Ghyle. “I had another visit from my lost brother.”
Jace took her hand. “I saw the bat, too.”
She looked gratefully over at him. She took strength from the firmness of his grip, fighting back tears at his simple gesture, at his show of support and friendship.
“I had another vision,” she said, and explained about the coming storm, an attack by thousands of bats to avenge the sacrifice about to happen. “We must stop the others from burning the creature they captured, or we’ll be attacked from the air.”
Jace’s brows pinched. “But how could the bats know what we intend to do here, when it’s not even happened yet?”
As much as it disturbed her, Nyx knew the answer. “If I know that greater mind, then perhaps they also may know mine.”
She again pictured the switching back and forth of her vision. She also remembered the fury that had grown inside her upon learning about the sacrifice and the fervent stirring to do something about it. It was a rescue that her normally meek self would never have contemplated or risked.
Where did that desire come from?
She lifted a hand and touched between her breasts.
Was it born of me? Or stoked by them?
Before she could decide, a ringing rose from beyond the walls, clanging louder with each heartbeat. She cringed at the sound.
The first bell of Eventoll.
She gaped at the others, her breath seizing in her chest.
I took too long.
It was already too late.
The prioress turned to Frell, plainly not giving up. “We must intervene, but I’m not sure my word alone can cast aside a king’s order.”
The alchymist nodded. “Then it may take that of a prince. If I can convince him.”
A prince?
Ghyle crossed and took hold of Jace’s arm. “Nyx has already drawn the king’s attention, and I fear her situation will soon be far graver. You must get her somewhere safe.”
“Wh … Where?” Jace stammered.
“Out of the school. It is no longer safe for her here.” The prioress looked at Nyx. “For now, get her back home.”
Nyx did not resist as the two of them were rushed toward the door, but an unsettling question chased her heels.
Where is my true home?
17
KANTHE SNIFFED AND rolled his eyes.
I thought I reeked of the swamp.
He shifted farther across the top of the school, trying to get upwind of the great shaggy bullock, but the cloud of flies hovering around the phlegmonous, farting beast buzzed after him.
Its caretaker—Bastan, the old swamper’s son—seemed oblivious, shifting within the muck of it all, checking the wagon’s leather traces and breeches. The young man kept his gaze away from the bundled cage atop the wagon. Having reached the ninth tier, the bullock was nearly done. It only had a few paces to go to complete its trek.
The plan was simple enough. The bullock would haul the wagon between the twin pyres atop the school, then the cart would be unhitched and left there. More kindling would be shoveled between its wheels and lit with torches. Then the wagon and wooden pen would be set aflame, briefly joining the two fires into one.
To Kanthe, it struck him as far easier to simply back the wagon into one of the two pyres and be done with it. But apparently both the hieromonks and alchymists believed their honor would be tarnished if their fire missed out on this opportunity to exact divine retribution atop the Cloistery.
So, this was the solution worked out.
He huffed his irritation.
Let’s get on with it already.
On the far side of the pyres, the highmayor stood atop a stone dais and finished some grand speech. Thankfully the roar of the flames muffled the worst of his pontification. From all the Glory bes and Blessed Hes and Shes, Goren wanted his son properly mourned, but just as ardently, he clearly wished to polish his own image before the scholarly elite and the Vyrllian Guard gathered here. For those outside the school, it was a rare opportunity to stand atop the ninth tier. Even the century of knights had to remain one level below, encircling the summit.
The winds shifted, and the smoke of the pyres washed over Kanthe. He choked on the cloying mix of bitter alchymies and sweet incense. Coughing, he retreated back into the stench of the bullock. A fat fly took the opportunity to gouge a chunk from his arm. He slapped it away.
When will this be over?
As if summoned by his thought, a tall set of doors opened behind the highmayor, where the black towers of the alchymists ground against the white spires of the hieromonks. Two figures appeared and hurried forth, though the pair quickly parted in opposite directions.
Kanthe recognized Frell, who set about circling the pyres toward him. The other was a woman with a crown of white braids dressed in a stately robe with a black-and-white stole over her shoulders. She headed toward the raised dais, where the highmayor stood with his arms lifted to the sky, preparing to once again extol the gods. The woman—who had to be Frell’s old teacher, the Prioress Ghyle—stepped to Goren’s side and whispered in his ear. The highmayor’s arms sagged, like the sinking wings of a deflating wyndship.
