Lightfall, p.14
Lightfall, page 14
He nodded. “There are a thousand men better suited for the position, but I’m at least the better choice over Marcel. If I can hold the line long enough for Thorne to find a truly fitting Tribune, then all this will be worth it. Even Mira’s prodding questions.”
“For what it’s worth, I think you’ll make a good Tribune.” She offered a tentative smile, and he matched it. “Can I ask what you discuss with her?”
“Things that aren’t meant for your ears. For anyone’s, in fact, which is why we don’t meet in the courthouse. Sander’s other lovers always seem to be around her there.”
“They do, don’t they?” Cistine fingered the dagger strapped at her waist. “What do you think of him having twenty-seven lovers?”
Aden studied her for a long moment. “I think he must be masterful at doling out his time, since none of them ever appear jealous of each other.”
So, he’d noticed, too. Tucking that observation away, Cistine changed the subject. “Where do you and Mira go?”
“You’ll have to wait until this Darlaska Thorne mentioned to find out.”
She blinked. “He told you about that?”
“The moment I joined him in his rooms after you two spent the night in the library. He was more than enthusiastic about the notion.”
Heat floated across her cheeks. “He’s so good to me, sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve it.”
“Because of how you feel when you look at him?” When her gaze darted up, he added, “I can see it in your eyes.”
She huffed with frustration. “I’m tired of seeing Salvotor when I look at him. I don’t want to pull back anymore.”
Aden was quiet through several minutes of winding, rocky terrain, toying with the pendant at his throat. “Has Mira taught you about anchors?”
“A bit. You?”
“Briefly. Have you found one?”
Her fingers drifted to the betrothal ring tucked in the front of her armor, then fell away. “Not yet.”
Aden halted. With one swift snap, he broke the cord of his compass-pendant and held it out to her.
Sucking in a breath, she shook her head. “I can’t take that! Kristoff gave it to you.”
“Which makes it mine to give away.” His gray eyes were solemn. “I’ll never fully know what you both suffered in that place, but you needed one another then. Maybe you still do.”
“But—”
“I may not be my father’s son in any ways that matter, but in this, we’re one.” He gripped her wrist, sprang her fingers apart with a press of his thumb, and coiled the cord in her palm. “Take it. Make it your anchor. And remember my father was willing to die for you and Thorne, for the world you’d make together. Never squander that.”
Though protest lingered on her lips, she knotted the cord around her neck, still warm from Aden’s skin. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He offered a last half-smile, turned up the path, then cast out his arm with a low curse.
Ahead, the mist cleared, revealing the end of the pass—a high stone wall with a round slab in its face, etched in Old Valgardan runes.
Detlyse Halet.
Palms clammy at the sight of this mountain prison, Cistine followed Aden to the door. He drew a flagon from his satchel, wafting a citrus-and-spice sensation of growing things across Cistine’s senses; then he smashed it against the runes, and the earth augment broke the door down into a crumbled heap, laying open a path paved with shadows straight into the mountain. Aden stepped over the rubble and glanced back at her, ghostly green light dancing from his armor threads. She pressed her thumb to the compass’s worn ridge and entered the Lightless Pit behind him.
Harsh white ghostlight flared ahead and a gaunt, pallid man hurried toward them, colorless hair swaying around his waist and a blade in his free hand. “Who goes there?”
“Warriors of Kanslar Court,” Aden said. “On a mission from the Chancellor. We’ve come to see your roster.”
“You have proof?”
He drew a scroll from his pocket and tossed it underhand to the old man, who caught it effortlessly around his sword’s hilt. “Sealed and signed by Chancellor Thorne himself.”
“Thorne? I thought Thrand was Kanslar’s Chancellor.”
“Not for decades. His son, Salvotor, was just deposed for a trial.”
“Strange times, strange times.” With a jerk of his head, the old man led them into a small, rounded chamber. Cistine clutched Kristoff’s pendant harder while the overseer situated himself behind his desk and peeled through a stack of papers there. “Why have you come?”
“Court business.” Aden picked up another ghostlamp from a haphazard stack on a table near the door, examining the plant inside.
“I see. Who is it you seek?”
Cistine cleared her throat and finally forced a word in. “Vandred.”
His piercing eyes lifted slowly to her face. “Vandred has not had visitors in nearly twenty years.”
“Well, now he has two.” Aden’s tone closed the subject.
The overseer drew a sheaf from the mound of papers and held it out to Cistine. “Fifth level. Here is the map to his chamber, and here is the key.” He selected it from the ring on his desk and pressed it into her hand. “Be careful not to provoke him. We’ve not had guards here since a small incident a decade ago. Whatever becomes of you, becomes.”
“We appreciate the warning,” Aden said flatly, and led the way back into the mountain’s shadowy paths.
Cold sweat gathered in the dip of Cistine’s back and the pits of her arms. The clean, cold scent of bare rock was too familiar, scraping her throat with every breath. Valgard’s love for sealing its most valuable prisoners inside mountains would be her undoing.
They spun down level by level, Aden’s breathing as hoarse as hers, the weak ghostlight striping his face with lines of dread.
“Are you scared?” Cistine whispered, afraid to coax an echo from the stone walls.
His hand rattled, setting the ghostlight swaying, “Something like that.”
A distant moan turned to a high-pitched scream. Cistine flinched, bumping into Aden, and his hand wrapped around her arm by instinct, pulling her behind him. Even after the sound faded, they didn’t move.
“That could’ve been Quill a decade ago.” Aden’s voice was as shallow as his breathing. “I sent him here. I sent them all to Nimmus.”
Cistine tugged away, looking up at him. “You didn’t mean to. You were just trying to save your father. I know what that’s like.” A flicker of Julian’s face swirled through her mind like mist, and she closed her eyes. “Some people will do anything for their parents.”
“But in the end, I never had him back. I betrayed them for nothing.” His back hit the wall, and when Cistine opened her eyes, she found him rubbing his thumb over the deep creases in his brow.
She touched his arm. “You didn’t have to come. I could’ve found someone else.”
“Not one of the cabal.” He shook his head. “Besides, self-sacrificial stupidity runs in my blood.”
“On your father’s side?”
He chuckled sharply, pushing upright and offering his arm. “The sooner we’re through with this, the sooner we can leave.”
It felt safer when her hand was tucked in the crook of his elbow, but she could still barely keep from running when they reached the fifth level with a single door set deep in the black stone.
The moment the way evened out, she heard singing.
Every hair on her arms and nape stood at attention. That rotten, festering feeling returned, rattling her hand while she jammed the key into the lock. When it gave, Aden gripped her shoulder and half-turned her to meet his eyes. “You’re certain you want to do this?”
“Yes.” Though her trembling voice betrayed her. “I need answers, and only he can give them to me.”
There was nothing of note inside the cell, not even any light before Aden brought theirs inside and Cistine shut the door swiftly at their backs. But the prisoner made no move to sprint toward escape; he rocked on a bedlike stone shelf across the cramped, narrow cell, bent knees nearly brushing his ears. His singing was a cold rasp, Old Valgardan syllables crooning in the semidark.
“You’re Vandred, aren’t you?” He stilled at Cistine’s question. “A former visnprest of Azkai Temple.”
Vandred raised his head slowly, ashen hair cascading around sunken cheeks and blind eyes the color of spoiled cream. “Well, well…what are you?”
What. Not who. Cistine swallowed a jab of fear. “I want to know about the Keys you made.”
“And you suppose this information will come for free?” His smile bared cracked teeth. “If I tell you what I know, you must tell me what you are.”
“That’s fair.” No different from lying to Salvotor to save Thorne’s life.
“Marvelous.” Vandred slid from the shelf and spidered toward her. “What do you wish to know about the Keys?”
She stepped back from him, keeping some distance. “Do they possess…precognition?”
“Possibly. But is precognition not merely instinct? Isn’t that what raised the hairs on your body just now?” He paused, cocking his head. “Tell me what you feel in the darkness.”
Cistine crouched slowly, drawn like a lure down to his level. “Something is coming. I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it. It’s everywhere, when I’m awake, when I’m asleep. But I don’t know if I can trust that feeling…if it’s real.”
“An ill-begotten instinct is as only as real as the moment that begat it.”
Cistine stilled, remembering the instant she stepped onto the Door under the courthouse, the impacting ringing through her body, her bones, her very essence.
What if it hadn’t just rung through her? What if she’d woken something at the brush of her boot against that lid, at the joining, however brief, of Key and lock and Door?
A single word jolted inside her like lightning: Nazvaldolya.
Her breaths rattled from her chest. “How do I stop it?”
“Who says you can? This only ends one way.”
The entire room shivered into sharp relief as if time itself slowed, his words the echo of her corrupted Dreamwater vision. “No—”
“It is time for you to answer my question.” Vandred’s lips peeled back from his teeth in a ghastly leer. “What are you?”
Cistine lurched to her feet and spun toward the door. “Just a visnpresta acolyte who’s curious about the former Order.”
“No. You are a Key.”
Hand on the door, she stilled.
Aden knocked her arm away, yanking the door open while she spun back to face Vandred. The former visnprest unbent to his full height, rounded shoulders and bent neck grazing the roof seven feet above. “I was there when your bloodline joined to the Doors. I know precisely why you ask these things. So tell me, what do you sense now, Key?”
They were already out in the hall, door clanging shut behind them, when she realized what he meant. “Aden, stop! Can you feel that?”
The creeping sickness intensified; terror and illness braided together in her chest.
Danger wasn’t just coming. It was here.
His grip tightened on her arm. “We’re leaving. Now.”
They dashed through the corridors and up the stairwells, Vandred’s parting laughter muffled by the shrieking toll of panic in Cistine’s head. Aden thrust her ahead of him over the door’s rubble, shouting a warning to the old man inside as he whirled back to rebuild the stone barricade with what remained of the earth augment. Cistine backed away, sloughing the cold and the feeling of the stone prison from her arms, but it did nothing to quiet her terror.
Come, the breeze sighed. Come and see.
She fell on her heels, catching Aden’s gaze when he turned from the door. Something in her face made him blanch.
COME AND SEE!
Icy darkness spilled through her like plunging under fathomless waters as the wind roared down the pass, shattering Detlyse Halet’s door again. Aden’s hand snagged hers, yanking her in a pivot, and they fled for their lives.
Dusklike gloom and hurricane winds ripped past them and tears whipped from Cistine’s eyes, her vision glowing white-green where lightning flashed and thunder wailed. Illness spilled into the pass like black tidewaters, soaking her body with fear, tugging her hand against Aden’s.
“Hold on to me!” He yanked her up beside him and struck the pass on his knees, shielding her between him and the stone wall as all the thunder piled on top of itself in a single, world-ending roar.
This was death, this was breaking, this was Nazvaldolya—
Then the wind banked abruptly, screamed down the pass like a flame sucked behind a shut door—and vanished, taking the sickening feeling with it. Cistine’s ears rang in the sudden silence, and when Aden leaned back, she peeled her face from the stone to look wildly around them.
The hardy shrubs shivered still; above, the sky was blue again.
“Are you hurt?” Aden panted.
She gulped air and ran a hand over her cheek, rashed from the stone. “Not badly. What was that?”
“Nothing I’ve ever felt before.” Aden struggled up and offered his hand again. “We’re going back to the courthouse.”
“But…the old man, the prison…”
“Look at me,” Aden growled, and she stopped blinking past him down the pass, meeting the storm in his eyes. “This is not for us to do. We’ll report to the Chancellors and have them send the Vassora.”
Cistine didn’t argue again as he broke what remained of the wind flagon. Her courage felt thin as a sheer gown too narrow to wrap around her shaking, petrified body; she didn’t want to spend another moment in this pass, with its mountain prison and that cackling, seven-foot abomination and whatever evil still trickled down its walls, whispering after them.
Come back. Come and see.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PRIDE STIRRED THORNE’S blood, warmer than the midday sun pouring through the courtroom windows, when the time came at last for Ariadne to take her seat in the testimony chair across from Salvotor.
They’d spent all night preparing for this, and watched the sunrise that morning in quiet companionship and unspoken prayers. He trusted his strategist was as prepared as possible, the words readied on her knife-sharp tongue, her spine steeled and straight. All that was left now was to let the truth pour out.
Tribune Eskil planted himself firmly between Ariadne’s seat and Salvotor’s table. “For the benefit of the Court, will you restate your name and place in the proceedings?”
“My name is Ariadne,” she said. “I was the victim of the attack for which Chancellor Salvotor stands accused.”
“In your own words, would you describe the night of the event?”
She fixed her eyes on some indistinct point beyond the cabal, all clustered at the railing. “Ten years ago, I was nearing the end of my acolyte training. The night Kanslar’s constellation rose, I was summoned to Chancellor Salvotor’s apartment.”
“And what did you encounter there?”
“The Chancellor was lying in wait for me—”
“Objection,” Salvotor cut in. “That is a leading phrase.”
“I’ll allow it,” Bravis said. “It’s her assessment. When you’re telling your side of the story, you can choose to use less-leading language.”
Thorne gritted his teeth. Salvotor was no fool; he knew Bravis wouldn’t correct Ariadne. It was a well-timed interruption to break the momentum of her account.
“The Chancellor was lying in wait for me,” Ariadne repeated, much more quietly. “He entrapped and defiled me. When I struggled, he struck me on the head until I was too dazed to escape.”
Beside Thorne, Tatiana gripped the railing in both hands and rocked her weight against it, lips cutting back from her teeth in a vicious scowl. On his other side, Quill’s knuckles pressed to his mouth—likely the only thing holding a curse inside his clenched jaw. Thorne’s own stomach swooped with rage and shame.
He’d left the apartment minutes at best before that vicious attack. What if he’d just stayed just a little longer? What if he’d been there to step between them?
“Afterward,” Ariadne went on, “he dragged me through the streets still unclothed and bleeding, and nailed me by my hands to the door of my friend’s home. He left me there as a warning to—”
“Objection,” Salvotor interrupted. “Conjecture.”
Bravis nodded to Ariadne. “Let’s not speculate on intention.”
“What was the result of this action?” Eskil asked.
“It disqualified me from the Order,” Ariadne said. “All carnal relations, consensual or not, are forbidden.”
“To the best of your knowledge, is that detail well-known outside the Order? Would the accused have known his actions would result in your disqualification?”
“I would hope he knew, seeing as he is a Chancellor and there is a law about this.”
Eskil’s lips twitched. “I have no further questions.”
Salvotor dominated the ensuing silence gleefully, arranging and consulting his notes. Thorne’s body sloped with hate, his fist aching around the smooth railing while his father rounded the table to stand before Ariadne. “When you came to my family’s apartment on the night in question, what did you expect would happen?”
“That I would be given my dispatch to one of the temples.”
“Is it common for a visnpresta to receive her dispatch in a personal meeting with a Chancellor?”
Ariadne was too still for too long. “No,” she said at last.
“What is the common practice for dispatches?”
“The Chancellor addresses the acolytes and gives them each a scroll with their assignment.”
“Then for you to expect some sort of preferential treatment that night went against the very fabric of your Order’s oldest institution. I would hope you knew this, seeing as you were an acolyte and there was a certain way of doing things.” He inclined slightly. “Or are you not being truthful about the circumstances of your visit that night?”
“I stand by my testimony.”
“As would I, if I sat in your seat. What a flawless victim you make: cruelly lured to my apartment, mercilessly attacked, stripped of your future.” The courtroom, perfectly baited, held its breath when Salvotor paused. “Of course, there is another possibility. Perhaps you came to my apartment seeking an assignment of your own choice, to the temple you selected. And perhaps you offered yourself as incentive for this favoritism…a secret kept between a young visnpresta and her Chancellor.”
