The Foxglove King, page 43
Bastian’s voice cut through the din, the timbre recognizable even if the words weren’t. Gabe’s, the same, soundless roars, growls, clashes of steel and the meaty sound of fists in flesh. He must’ve woken up. That was good. Maybe they’d both live. Two out of three wasn’t bad.
“Take her to the gardens,” Anton said, and distantly, Lore felt hands beneath her knees, around her shoulders, lifting her like a fainted noblewoman. “She’s waiting for us there.”
Lore’s eyes fluttered closed.
Hard ground. Cold seeping through her ruined clothes, making the wound in her side and her sliced-up hand ache. Wind through stone, curling around leaves turned to rock, granite petals.
Lore forced her eyes open.
The stone garden. Torches burned around the well, replacements for the light stolen by the eclipse. Her vision was still blurry, pain and blood loss making it hard to focus, but she could see Anton standing before the open pit of the well, the statue of Apollius that held it closed placed carefully to the side. Other muted shapes around him—the Presque Mort, all of them that hadn’t been dispatched to the village to deal with the new corpses.
New corpses, after her dream…
There was another figure near Anton, standing on the other side of the well. Willowy, dressed in black, with a long river of pale hair.
Anton turned before her mind would let her comprehend what she was seeing. A small blessing. “Ah. Lore.”
At the sound of her name, two of the Presque Mort approached, gingerly helping her up. Blood soaked the side of her gown; her head felt as heavy as the stone roses lining the path.
“You did so well,” the Priest Exalted said as she stumbled toward him. “Really, Lore, you should be proud of yourself. To be part of this, to have Apollius speak of you by name. And more than once! The vision that brought me my scar is where I first heard of you, but He has spoken to me since—He told me to learn the art of dreamwalking, how to draw out your power to make our undead army.”
He talked too fast, too excited, as if he’d been waiting for the chance to spill all these secrets. “Shut up,” Lore said, but it came out nothing more than a croak, and Anton didn’t hear.
“Gabe teaching you to guard your mind did present a bit of a problem,” the Priest Exalted continued. “I paid dearly for showing him that trick.” His whole hand stroked the other, the one with the new burn scars.
His non-scarred hand held a golden circlet, studded in garnets. August’s crown, the simple one he’d been wearing when his brother cut him down. Lore wondered why Anton hadn’t put it on yet.
“But all has worked out as it should now,” the Priest Exalted continued. “When you finally die, when I strike you again—my apologies for that bit of unpleasantness, but needs must—your power will go to Bastian. He will have the magic of life and of death, Spiritum and Mortem. And then it will begin.”
But Lore was barely listening, the words sliding off her like water to oil. Because her eyes had finally focused on the person across the well.
Smooth golden hair. Pale, fine features. A body long and thin, so different from Lore’s own. But the bright hazel eyes, those were the same.
A Night Sister. The one who’d given her the moon-shaped scar, and then decided to save her instead, sending her to the surface rather than into that obsidian tomb to have her mind scooped out, her eyes made blank, something vital ripped away.
The woman smiled, and there was true sorrow in it. “Hello, daughter.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Endings take time.
—Kirythean proverb
Lore had never known her mother’s real name. The Sisters didn’t use them. By the time Lore was born, her mother had been living with the remains of the Buried Watch for months, completely assimilated into their ranks, though the others watched her with apprehension.
Lore knew why. She’d been told the story. After she arrived, her mother had approached Nyxara’s tomb, as every Sister must, and darkness had reached out. Darkness had caressed her middle, where Lore still slept, unaware of the world and the role she’d have in it.
So the first time Lore channeled Mortem, by accident—pulling a strand of it from the Buried Goddess’s tomb and sending it into the rock that made their underground cathedral, nearly causing a collapse—it hadn’t been a surprise. It’d been something they were waiting for.
The flashes of memory she retained from her first thirteen years were brief—she’d done her best to bury them—but they were filled with sidelong glances lit by the strange phosphorescence of the crystal on the walls, murmurs behind hands.
When the eclipse came, her mother had approached her with the crescent moon brand glowing orange, and that hadn’t been a surprise, either. She’d wept as she burned Lore’s palm, the sign that she would be the next one to enter the tomb. Lore remembered that it’d been a time of celebration for the other Sisters, how they’d congratulated her mother for her strength, for finally doing the right thing.
But that night, while Lore slept—a nudge in her side, her mother’s terrified eyes. She’d led Lore up the tunnels, up to where the light of the last day before the eclipse was already coloring the sky.
“Run,” her mother whispered.
And Lore had.
She’d run and run, and it’d all been in a circle. Because here she was again. Looking at her mother’s face and seeing something like terror, something like deep sorrow.
“I’ve missed you.” Oh, gods, the genuine note in her voice made it all so much worse. The Night Sister stood on the other side of the well, but her hands still stretched out, as if she could gather Lore into her embrace. “You’re so grown up. So beautiful.” She sighed, a hitch in her throat. “I wish it could be different. I thought maybe there was a chance She would change Her mind, that you wouldn’t be one of the chosen…” Her eyes closed, a crystalline tear falling down her cheek, catching the light. “But the goddess is unchanging. I should’ve sent you into the tomb before, let Her power consume you, burn itself out before you reached the age of ascension. Now death is the only way.”
Lore thrashed in the Presque Mort’s grip despite the sting in her side, the stark words finally enough to snap her out of her haze. “No,” she said, and it sounded like her mouth was full of cotton. “No no no no I don’t want to—”
“We can’t let it happen again, my love,” her mother murmured. “The Night Witch was one of Nyxara’s chosen, too; she was to become the goddess’s avatar. And She would’ve laid waste to the world. I’m so sorry. You have to die, and I’m so sorry.”
“But you’ll wait.” Anton’s voice was different, the thin veneer of sense stripped away. Strange, to hear it gone and realize this was what waited beneath. “The deal was that you get your avatar back after six villages are added to the army, and that I get to strike the killing blow. The paperwork to make Buried Watch once again part of the Church is filed, but I can rescind it at any time if the terms aren’t met.”
“Of course,” the Night Sister murmured. “A deal is a deal.”
“Precisely. I see why the Sisters made you the Night Priestess.” Anton’s eyes shone with unsound light. “I hope you do better by the title than the last one.”
Lore’s mother—the Night Priestess—simply inclined her head.
Three mothers, two betrayals, all for some greater good that Lore couldn’t bring herself to care about. She only cared about living. The greater good could hang.
“Please don’t let him kill me.” Lore knew she sounded pathetic. She was pathetic, limp between two Presque Mort, bleeding out and helpless to stop it. “I haven’t done anything, I didn’t choose it, please…”
“Oh, dear heart.” The Night Priestess’s hand came up, then fell, like if they’d been closer she would’ve cradled Lore’s cheek. “It’s the only thing we can do. The world wouldn’t survive you.”
“A deal is a deal,” Anton said, turning to face Lore. “Now let’s settle our accounts, and we can all be on our way.”
The Night Priestess’s lips flattened in distaste. She waved a hand. “Take what you’re owed, then.”
“I’m thankful for your cooperation,” Anton said, though there was a sneer in his voice. “Thankful that you understand there is only room for one god, this time.”
“There certainly isn’t room for six again,” the Night Priestess said softly. “Gods are not content to share power.”
“That’s the trouble with ascensions,” Anton agreed. “When humans become gods, they bring their natures with them.” The Priest Exalted bared his teeth, a triumphant rictus as he stepped toward Lore. One hand raised.
It was the same tugging feeling she’d felt in her dreams, but without the buffer of sleep, it was agonizing. Her heart stilled, just so much meat, and felt like it was being pulled slowly from behind her ribs. Strands of dark Mortem leaked from her chest, seeping out slowly like blood from a million tiny wounds.
The mad priest knotted raw death in the air, gnarling the strands together. “Apollius,” he murmured, looking up at the sky as if he could find his god there. A rapturous tear slid down his cheek. “See what I do for You. How I manipulate the power of Your treasonous wife and turn it to Your glory.”
He still pulled power from her as he spoke to the empty sky, weaving it between his fingers. It coalesced above their heads, a writhing, intricate knot, pulsing like an organ as it took shape. Tendrils reached from the central mass, curling into the eclipse-shrouded sky, seeping outward as if they were looking for something.
Looking for another village. More people to kill, more corpses for Anton’s undead army. Using her to do it; Mortem channeled from her goddess-touched body, fashioned to do things no other channeler could do.
“You’ve given us Your sign,” Anton murmured to the sky. “Your promise that a new world awaits, one You will shape for Your faithful. Remember, Bleeding God, how I helped usher it in, here when two opposite powers can be held in concert.”
Opposite powers.
Even through the slow leak of her blood, the chill in her fingers and the cold creep of death, Lore could feel Spiritum, the comet-streak of life woven through her when her and Bastian’s hands were carved, then thrust together at the moment of totality.
She had them both. Mortem and Spiritum, life and death. Both of them lived in her, both of them could be channeled.
There wasn’t time to overthink it. Lore thrust out her hand and pulled.
Light flowed from Anton, a surge of it flashing across the garden to her waiting fingers, stolen from the corona around his living body. It didn’t come together like a thread, a pliant thing to be braided; this was lightning, this was all crackling energy, and Lore’s roar echoed Anton’s own as she pulled it into herself, her veins running hot and full, her heart thumping hard enough to bruise her lungs.
White-hot pain in her side, an encroaching burn. She knew it was healed without looking, the power of life rushing through her and healing everything.
Lore couldn’t hold on to it. It was too much, too bright. She relinquished her hold with a shout; the lightning-crackle left her hands, rebounded across the garden to Anton’s kneeling form. The old man breathed like a bellows, his hands clutched over his heart, his lips pulled back from his teeth.
“Little deathwitch,” Anton snarled. “You think you’re in the right?”
“I think,” Lore panted, forcing herself to stand, “that I’m not going to let you kill anyone else with my power.”
“That’s what you don’t understand, Lore,” her mother said, slender and sad and wreathed in flame-light. “It isn’t yours. It’s Hers. And the longer you live—the more powerful you grow—the more like Her you will become.”
“We can’t have another Godsfall.” Anton got up, slowly, looking every inch the frail old man. Except for his eyes. Those glittered with a sheen of madness, a fervor that made her recoil. The knife he’d used to stab August twisted in his grip. “We can’t let it happen again.”
“So you kill people instead?” Even healed, her side still ached; Lore pressed her fist against it. “You’re addled, Anton. There won’t be another Godsfall, because there are no more gods!”
“There is one, and you will cede your power to Him,” Anton replied, spittle flying from the corner of his scarred mouth. “The world brought to heel beneath Apollius’s merciful rule, through His blessed—”
A scream ripped the night, cutting off whatever Anton had been about to say. Torches toppled, rolling across the cobblestones; another torch swiped through the air. The living flowers growing on top of their stone counterparts were dry and brittle from a summer without rain; they licked into flame, surrounding the well in jumping tongues of fire.
And Bastian stepped through them.
His fine shirt was ripped, crusted with blood from the cut through his eyebrow. His teeth gleamed in the flickering light, bared and snarling.
Anton’s face split in a beatific, unsound smile, one that made Lore’s stomach twist uncomfortably. He had hidden all this… this worship, this devotion, keeping Bastian at arm’s length even as he worked to keep him safe from August. But now that everything was coming to a close, he looked on his nephew with the same light in his eyes that he’d cast toward the sky as he prayed.
“Bastian, my boy!” the Priest Exalted called. “I’m sorry you were hurt; I told them that you weren’t to be harmed, but when things get chaotic—”
“Your monks are all hurt far worse than I am.” Bastian held a short sword he must’ve taken from someone; he turned it so the bloodied edge caught the firelight.
The Presque Mort scattered around the garden seemed uneasy; hands fell to the harnesses around their chests. They glanced at their Priest, waiting for instruction, ready for violence if it was called for.
“It’s good that you’re here,” Anton continued, oblivious to the low, dangerous tone in Bastian’s voice. “Things have gone a bit off schedule with the girl. But now that you’ve arrived, we can move forward. Perhaps you can convince her to see reason.”
Bastian’s eyes swung to Lore, panic flashing bare and jagged across his features. “Are you hurt?”
“She’s fine,” Anton said dismissively, waving his hand. “Better, even; she channeled Spiritum and used it to heal herself.” A sharp laugh echoed over the stone roses, the hiss of flames. “If her magic has been heightened to such a level, imagine yours!”
Across the well, the Night Priestess stood still as a carved icon. Her expression wavered in the growing flames, but she didn’t look at Bastian with fear. It was closer to resignation, as if his appearance here marked a sea change, diverted the flow of her plan. She turned her eyes to Lore. There was no pity to be found in her face.
Slowly, she made her way closer, close enough for her whisper to be heard. “You care for him,” her mother whispered. “Don’t you?”
Lore didn’t answer.
“If you care for him,” she murmured, hazel eyes sheened in tears, “if you care for anyone in this world, you will let this happen. Please don’t make it harder than it has to be, Lore. You don’t understand what hell you could bring on the world.”
“I’m sorry for keeping you in the dark.” Anton moved toward Bastian the way one would approach an altar, Lore and the Night Priestess cast completely from his mind. Bastian stood still. The fire gilded him, made him look cast in gold rather than flesh.
“There was much I didn’t understand, not until recently,” Anton continued. “And I know you were fond of the girl—for that, I’m sorry, but you must understand it’s a weakness, an echo that cannot be allowed to continue for all our sakes. You must overcome it, must be ready to sacrifice old feelings and remake the world in Apollius’s image.” A tear broke from the line of his lashes and spilled down his cheek. “In your—”
“You won’t be sacrificing anyone.”
Gabe.
He appeared behind the Priest Exalted, flame-wreathed, his dagger in his hand. The blade pressed against Anton’s throat, and his hand didn’t shake as he took the Priest’s wrist, twisted it to make him drop the knife still caked in August’s blood. Gabe looked worse for wear than Bastian, his eye patch lost, bruises forming on nearly every inch of visible skin.
“Ah, Gabriel,” Anton sighed. “Your loyalties are ever-shifting. I suppose I should expect that.” A snarl lifted his mouth. “Part of you knows, I think. What you could become if this is allowed to continue. An abomination. Recurring sin.”
Gabe’s throat worked as he swallowed, as he shoved the blade close enough to pucker skin. “Be quiet,” he said, the ghost of something broken in it. “Please, Father, be quiet.”
“I’m not your father, boy,” Anton hissed.
A flinch, Gabe’s one blue eye fluttering closed, then open again.
“Lore.” Her mother’s hand was cold on her arm. “Lore, please, before this comes to a point we can’t return from.”
The sky was lightening, slowly. The moon edging away from the sun.
The knot of Mortem that Anton had been molding was still rotating in the air, a mass of death and darkness held in stasis. Annihilation, waiting for its target.
Anton’s bright eyes tracked to Lore and the Night Priestess. “I’m still owed a village,” he said, almost irritated, as if he didn’t have a knife to his throat.
Lore reached up, eyes fixed on the Priest Exalted’s, and called her Mortem back in.
It felt the same as before—the deadened limbs, the grayscale vision, the lurch of her heart in her chest. But as she unraveled the knot of Mortem and let it funnel back into herself, she realized what was different. What made this something more.
This death was hers, spooled from her own bones, the meat that made her up. Its power was hers. She wasn’t just channeling it, she was absorbing it: sewing it between her vertebrae, braiding it into her veins.
The knot unspooled in the space of two heartbeats, tangled threads that slid into her fingers, settled alongside the current of light that was Spiritum. Both she could sense, both she could use.
