“My dreams are strange of late. I fear… My darling daughter, please forgive me. I am sorry. I am so sorry.”
—Letter from Lord Dervin Sauvillier to Lady Ludivine Sauvillier
June 19, Year 998 of the Second Age
Rielle glanced back at Tal only once.
“Stay here,” she commanded, then ran out of the house, ignoring his shouts. She felt a twinge of guilt at leaving him pinned under the rafter and hoped it wouldn’t hurt him irreparably, but at least there he was out of harm’s way.
He also wouldn’t be able to interfere.
She raced out of the maze, aiming for the nearest hills and the spectator stands. The acolytes’ fire had ravaged much of the maze; her path out was clear, though clogged with smoking rubble.
At last she emerged into the foothills—and chaos.
Half the stands stood in ruins, bedraggled banners in the colors of House Courverie flying ragged in an unnatural gale. The sharp alpine scent of windsinger magic stung Rielle’s nose.
Dozens of bodies lay strewn across the ground. Thousands had come to see her trial, and now they scattered across the valley like upset ants. The air was clogged with screams, wails of pain, the crash of elemental magic.
On one of the ridges that lined the hills, she scanned the scene with a pounding heart. She could make no sense of what she saw—people running with children in their arms, elementals in scattered duels. Who was the attacker here? Borsvall?
Every sense pulled taut as she searched for some sign of him. Corien, here, no longer a dream. The very idea seemed impossible.
And yet—
She straightened, her skin tingling. A sharp twinge of satisfaction that was not her own plucked a song across her ribs.
Come find me, Rielle.
“Protect the king!” shouted a familiar voice. She whirled, saw her father and a company of soldiers herding King Bastien away to safety. Others, led by her father’s first lieutenant, hurried Queen Genoveve away in the opposite direction.
Audric. Ludivine. But she saw no trace of them.
She moved to join her father, then heard a furious shout.
A uniformed soldier—not one of her father’s—raced along a ridge, nocked his arrow, let it fly into the belly of the queen’s horse. It screamed and fell; the others nearby panicked, rearing up wild-eyed.
“Get her to safety!” bellowed the first lieutenant, shoving the queen behind one of his soldiers.
The uniformed archer shot another arrow, just before Sloane, long black coat flying, jumped down from a collapsed viewing stand. She knocked the arrow out of the sky with her twin obsidian daggers, then thrust them at the archer. A pair of shadowed wolves burst from her blades and tackled the man, jaws open wide. One latched onto his throat, the other his belly.
Rielle ran to him, joining Sloane in time to see the man’s clouded eyes flicker, as if a shadow had passed through his mind. The wolves flinched away and dissolved. The archer’s body jerked once; his neck snapped. His gray eyes cleared to an ordinary brown.
“What was that?” Sloane muttered, wiping the sweat from her face. “Did you see that?”
“I did,” said Rielle, a slow understanding creeping through her. Corien?
Hmm? He sounded entirely satisfied. What is it, my dear?
“These are Sauvillier colors.” She touched the man’s collar. “Why would Lord Dervin’s men attack like this?”
Something slammed into the ground, shaking the hills.
“I don’t understand,” Sloane snapped, a thread of desperate fear in her voice. “We’re their own people!”
What a tragedy it all is, Corien mused. If only there was a way to stop it.
“He’s doing it,” Rielle whispered. “He’s controlling them.”
Sloane stared at her. “What? Who is?”
If you want to stop this, you will come to me. Now.
A chill shook her. Where are you?
Come find me, my marvelous girl. Or I will kill them all where they stand.
Sizzling booms of magic and the agonized cries of soldiers ripped the air of the foothills to shreds. Rielle started to run.
Sloane grabbed her arm. “No, wait! Tell me what’s happening!”
Rielle knocked the flat of her palm against Sloane’s chest and sent her flying back twenty yards into a clump of grass.
She turned and ran, tears smarting her eyes, but there was no time for guilt. She tore up the hill’s rocky slope, along a series of cliffs overlooking the still-burning maze.
The earth bucked beneath her feet, sending her flying. She landed hard, turned to see an armored Sauvillier woman wrench her ax from the ground. An earthshaker.
The woman stared at Rielle with a face made of stone. Her eyes were an unseeing gray. The woman’s mouth twitched; Rielle recognized that smile.
“Come find me, Rielle,” the woman croaked, raising her ax once more.
Rielle flicked her wrist. The earth rose up like a cresting wave, then opened up and swallowed the woman. A terrified scream rang out, then fell silent.
Getting closer, Corien whispered.
She turned, following the trail of his voice along the cliffs. She ran past dueling soldiers, gathered churning knots of wind in her hands and knocked them all aside. An arrow shot past her, barely a miss.
Then she heard a familiar voice cry out, “Lady Rielle!”
She whirled, saw a group of people huddled against a rocky outcropping, young Simon Randell and his father among them. Fifty yards away, a dozen Sauvillier metalmasters advanced on them, palms outstretched, flinging an endless cyclone of blades.
And Audric stood between them and his people, Illumenor casting a brilliant shield of light around them.
But the metalmasters were fast, and their weapons faster. The blades tore themselves into smaller pieces as they flew, spinning so fast between their casters’ hands and Audric’s wall of sunlight that they became a storm of sparks and steel. They bore down on him, relentless, ricocheting off his blazing shield again and again.
Audric’s heels sank into the ground beneath the pressure. He lowered his head and let out a furious roar of pain. Light scattered across the ground like fallen stars.
From behind Rielle came a terrified cry: “Save him!”
Ludivine.
Rielle whistled for Atheria, power rushing down her limbs to pool in her palms. Atheria dropped from the sky, raced low across the clifftops.
Turning, Rielle whipped her arm in a circle. The metalmasters flew back from her, their weapons crashing to the ground.
She spun back to Audric, thrust out her palm. A blast of wind slammed into him, sent him flying back through the air right as Atheria passed by the cliff’s edge. The chavaile maneuvered sharply to catch him, then climbed back into the sky.
“Rielle, no!” Audric reached back for her as Atheria carried him away to safety. “Rielle!”
What a delightful development, Corien crowed. I would say how noble of you that was, Rielle, but we both know the truth, don’t we?
Rielle raced past the people Audric had been protecting and threw herself into the knot of metalmasters. They’d recovered, retrieved their weapons. Their eyes gray and clouded, they lunged at her. Daggers came flying. She pivoted, dodged them. An angry tongue of metallic-tasting magic wrapped around her foot, yanking her down. She slammed her palms to the ground; tremors cracked the earth open. The metalmasters stumbled, and she leapt up, ducked under a chain’s angry lash, then thrust her forearm at the group and watched them fly. Some skidded off the cliff’s edge.
She turned, searching wildly for Ludivine, found her and Garver Randell helping the survivors down a cliffside path.
“Lu! Over here!”
Ludivine looked up, hair mussed and cheeks bloodstained. Their eyes locked; Ludivine smiled breathlessly at her.
Then, an enormous metal-tipped hammer spun across the space between them, slammed Ludivine in the gut, and knocked her screaming over the cliff’s edge.
Furious instinct took over Rielle’s body. She spun on her heel, punched the air so hard that the metalmaster who’d thrown the hammer flew back one hundred yards. His skidding body carved a furrow into the ground before slamming into the mountainside.
Rielle stumbled to the cliff’s edge, searching the ruins of the maze far below for signs of Ludivine’s body—and finding nothing. The smoke was too thick, the distance too great. Shock swept through her in waves. She clung to the rock, her vision rolling.
“Lady Rielle,” said Garver Randell, approaching carefully up the cliffside path. He extended his hand, Simon watching wide-eyed behind him. “Please, my lady. Come with us.”
Oh, my darling girl. Corien’s voice was as gentle as it ever had been. Let me comfort you.
Rielle stood, pushing Garver’s hand away. She turned, unsteady, and gazed through tear-filled eyes across the hilltops.
Where? Her thoughts felt sluggish. I can’t… Corien, she’s…
Follow the sound of my voice.
She did, running first slowly and then frantically. A terrible clouded grief yawned inside her, threatening to swallow her whole, but beneath even that was the pulsing need—to see Corien, to know that he was real.
To stop him from doing anything worse.
His trail led her into a cave beneath a large hill. She ran through a nest of cramped stone passages, the walls trembling on either side as the fight behind her continued.
At last, she rounded a corner into a circular cave. Tree roots snaked up the walls. A small opening in the center of the ceiling gave her a glimpse of the sky.
King Bastien rose from a boulder against the wall. Lord Dervin sat on the floor. Gray clouds clogged each man’s eyes.
At the sound of footsteps, Rielle turned to see her father walking toward her out of the shadows.
She hurried toward him at once. “Papa, you’re all right!”
“You found me.” Her father’s mouth curled into a slow smile. “Well done.”
Rielle froze. He extended his hand, gray eyes unblinking on her face. She brushed past him, searching the room’s shadows.
“Manipulating my father’s mind,” she declared, “is not the way to win my heart.”
“Shall I release him, then?” murmured a voice.
She whirled at the sound. A column of still black watched her from the corner. Her mouth went dry; her heart skipped up her throat.
“Release all of them,” she ordered.
“As you wish.”
A ripple shifted through the room. Lord Dervin looked around in confusion, his eyes clearing.
King Bastien shot to his feet. “What is the meaning of this? Why are we all here?” He glared at Rielle’s father. “Armand?”
“I don’t know, my king.”
At the touch of her father’s hands, Rielle turned to face him. “Papa, I’m so sorry.”
“Are you hurt?” He smoothed back her hair. “What’s happening here?”
“Rielle is leaving you, I’m afraid.”
Rielle turned—and there he was.
Corien.
He moved slowly across the room, light-blue eyes fixed on her face. Tall and slender, hands held carefully behind his back, sleek dark coat buttoned at his shoulder and trailing to the floor. Pale face, cheekbones high and elegant, a full mouth that curved with delight at the sight of her.
Rielle’s breath came high and thin. Her dreams, as vivid as they had been, had not done him justice.
“My God, Rielle,” he murmured, his hungry gaze raking down her body. “I didn’t think it possible, but you are even more exquisite now than you are in my mind.”
Her father stiffened with fury at her side. “Rielle, you know this man?”
“Who are you?” King Bastien stepped forward, a furious expression on his face. “Why have you brought us here?”
Corien took one step closer to Rielle, then another. His eyes never left her face. “I wanted to make sure Rielle didn’t run from me. And you won’t, will you? Not with all these very important men so dangerously close to me.”
“You won’t hurt them.” She shook her head, her voice cracking. “I forbid it.”
“Queen of my heart,” murmured Corien, putting a gloved hand to his chest, “my greatest wish is to please you. But you must promise to leave this place with me, tonight, or I’m sorry to say you will force my hand.”
Panic and craving waged a war in her chest. “But I can’t, I need more time.”
“More time? For what? To be poked and prodded, studied by lecherous magisters and ordered around by an idiotic king too frightened to face the truth?”
Lord Dervin stared at his hands. “I never meant for this to happen.”
Corien laughed. “As if you could have stopped it!”
“Rielle, who is this man,” her father demanded, “and why does he talk to you this way?”
“He’s an angel,” Rielle bit out.
Corien’s eyes flared with displeasure, even as his smile grew.
King Bastien drew his sword. So did Rielle’s father, shoving her behind him.
“That’s impossible.” King Bastien looked as though someone had kicked him in the gut. “The Gate is strong. It was meant to hold for—”
“For a long time,” Corien snapped. “Not forever. Rielle, it’s time to go. Unless you’d like me to demonstrate firsthand what I’m capable of?”
Rielle swallowed hard and moved toward him, her power itching to touch him even as her mind screamed to stay put—but her father threw out his arm and stopped her.
“You will stay away from my daughter, whatever you are,” he said, “or I will—”
“Do what? Kill me?” Corien chuckled. “My dear man, I’d like to see you try.”
Rielle’s father didn’t hesitate. He lunged at Corien, raised his sword to strike. Then his body jerked, his eyes clouded over, and his sword crashed to the ground.
“No!” Rielle ran to him.
He looked at her, head tilted unnaturally to the side, and struck her hard across the face.
Rielle staggered to the cave wall. When she touched her lip, her fingers came away red.
“Interesting,” said Corien calmly. “I only told him to stop you. His mind was the one that chose to strike you.” He turned to her, and she could feel through their connection a twinge of genuine sadness. “Could your father be angry at you for something? I thought you two had put that mess behind you.”
Rielle glared at him. “Release him, or I will destroy you.”
“If you try, they’ll be dead before I hit the ground.”
Tears gathered in her eyes. “I thought you…”
“That I loved you?” Corien’s face softened. “Child, I love you more than I can say. I’m doing this for you. If you don’t leave them, they will stifle, shame, and punish you for daring to breach the walls they are building around you.”
He approached her slowly. “They will use every memory you share with them—every sweet feeling, every kind moment—to wring out all the power they can from that miraculous body of yours. And they won’t stop, or even consider sparing you, because they will be too afraid of what faces them. If you hesitate, they will remind you of their supposed love for you and chain you with it until you back down and do as you’re told.”
He now stood so close she could smell the clean coldness of his skin, a spice of scent on his clothes. He cupped her cheek in one gloved hand. Heat blazed through her body, her power firing so completely alive at his touch that she felt fevered.
Helplessly she turned into his palm.
“Yes,” Corien lowered his head to whisper against her ear, “even him.”
Audric.
“You’re wrong.” She desperately hoped it was true. “He loves me, and he always will.”
Corien’s pity caressed her mind. “Who told you that? The rat?”
And as he said the words, an image came to her, shoved violently across the plane of her thoughts:
Audric, crying out in pain on Atheria’s back. The chavaile landed on a grassy plateau seconds before Audric hit the ground. He dropped Illumenor, clutched his head in his hands. His eyes flickered from a brilliant, stormy gray to brown and back to gray.
The image vanished, and though Rielle couldn’t know if it was real or imagined, it was enough. Rage erupted in her heart. “You will not touch him,” she growled.
Corien stepped back from her. “Rielle, wait—”
She rounded on him, thrust out her palm, screamed, “Get away from me!” and let her power fly.
• • •
Not the wind, not the earth or the shadows lining the room.
This power was more than that and all of it and none of it.
Simply, it was this:
The empirium, raw and blinding.
At Rielle’s feet, the unseen fabric of the world split open and detonated. A wave of light, a savage shudder.
Not far, but far enough.
• • •
When the aftershock dimmed, Rielle was on the floor. Her head spun. She looked down at her palms; they were covered in blood.
Her own?
She blinked.
Yes. The pain surfaced in sharp, jagged waves.
And Corien?
She looked around, dizzy, heard a horrible, keening sound, and found him crawling away from her, his clothes burned to ashes, and his body…
The blast had burned him.
He was an unmade creature, red and ravaged and glistening. He howled in pain, dragging himself across the cave floor toward an opening that led back to the hills.
“Don’t look at me!” he screamed at her, his words slurring. “Not like this! Not like this…”
She could see not a single recognizable feature on his face. But his agony, his shame—his anger—vibrated through her mind.
When she looked up again, he was gone.
Then a low cry sounded from across the cave—her father, struggling to breathe. And beyond him, King Bastien, Lord Dervin…
Still, still, both of them still. Not burnt, as Corien had been, but rigid. The light gone from their glassy eyes, their faces frozen in shock.
Rielle tried to rise, crashed back to her knees. “Papa?” She crawled to him, turned his face to her.
He gulped down air, his eyes dim.
“I’m here.” She touched his face; his cheeks were wet with tears. “It’s all right. He’s gone, and I’m here. We just need… Oh, God.” She turned to the cave passage down which she’d come, screamed her voice raw. “I need a healer! Someone, please, help us! Garver!”
“I…remember.”
“Papa? What is it?” She held his hands against her cheek. “You remember what?”
“‘By the…moon…’” He gulped emptily at the air. “‘By…the…’”
“Mama’s lullaby?”
He gave her a shaky smile. “‘By…’”
“‘By the moon,’” she finished, singing unsteadily, “‘by the moon, that’s where you’ll find me.’”
He nodded, closed his eyes. Tears slipped down his cheeks and into his neatly trimmed beard. A ghost of a smile touched his mouth.
“‘We’ll pray to the stars,’” she continued, a mere whisper, “‘and ask them to set us free. By the moon…’”
He shuddered once, his hands falling slack in hers.
She closed her eyes, pressed her face against his fingers. If she finished the lullaby, if she didn’t look, then it wasn’t really happening.
“‘By the moon,’” she whispered, “‘by the moon, that’s where you’ll find me. We’ll hold hands, just you and me…’”
She could no longer speak. She curled up beside him, pressed her face into his side, and lay there shivering and alone.
• • •
A familiar cry pierced the air outside the chamber, shaking Rielle from her grief.
A gust of wind followed by stamping hooves announced Atheria’s arrival, just beyond the door through which Corien had crawled.
She sat up, her heart pounding. Audric. What would she tell him?
He rushed through the door an instant later, windblown and frantic. “Rielle?”
“Here,” she croaked. She tried to go to him, but her legs wouldn’t work. She instead watched with mounting dread as Audric hurried to her, then faltered with a sharp cry—and then stared in horror at his father’s frozen face.
Rielle at last found the strength to rise.
“I tried to stop him,” she whispered, approaching him slowly. “I’m sorry, I…I burned him. He’s terribly wounded, but…” She gestured at the floor, where the smears of Corien’s bloody body marked his exit. “It wasn’t enough. Audric, I’m so sorry.”
“Who? Who did you burn?”
“His name is Corien,” she managed. “He’s an angel, Audric. He turned the Sauvillier men against us… And Ludivine…”
Despair crushed her, left her choked with tears, and that was good, that was true and real, for when Audric turned to her, saw the blood dripping down her fingers and the mark of her father’s hand across her cheek, his shocked expression shattered, and he gathered her tightly in his arms.
“Thank God you’re all right,” he whispered into her hair, his voice thick. “Rielle, I thought I’d lost you.”
She wrapped her arms around him, shook her head against his chest. “Never. Never.”
You lie, Corien’s voice whispered, thin with pain. Even now, you lie to him.
She felt Audric’s shoulders shake under her hands and helped him sink to the floor.
“It’s all right,” she whispered as he wept against her neck. She took comfort from knowing that at least this one small fact was not a lie, and the truest thing she knew in this place of death: “I’m here, Audric, and I love you.”
