Crown of Gold and Ruin, page 22
The usual tradition of Saturnalia was for the merrymakers to dance down the main thoroughfare of Elenon, the Opal Route that led off Palace Square onto the threshold of the Sapphire Temple, a haven to worshipers of the council of the ten great deities who presided in heaven. Above the revelers were strung more lanterns, these glowing blue.
Wild music surrounded the hundreds of dancers today. The melodies enhanced the shine of a lover’s eyes, twined in the unbound hair of a maiden. The musicians mingled with the crowd, so that songs melded effortlessly into another. Violin music spilled like silver water to give way to a fiddler’s pipe and the growl of a trumpet, the clearness of a muse’s voice buoying them all to rise to the night sky like the pledge of human beauty, mortal and more vivid than any everlasting credence of lost empires.
Di turned to ask who her brother planned on asking as a partner to the parade dance, but a voice carried over to them before she could.
“Princess Diana? I would like the pleasure of speaking to my betrothed.” Galahad’s smile was handsome, his tunic an elegant peacock blue, its lack of sleeves revealing puckered scars on his sleek, dark skin. He inclined his head to Jaden politely.
Jaden raised an eyebrow, glancing at Di, and when she nodded her agreement, he hesitated only slightly before disappearing into the crowd, though this acquiescence did not occur without a meaningful battle of gazes passing between the two future kings of the most powerful kingdoms of western Rhona. Jaden’s threatening stare conflicted for a moment with Galahad’s amused, glittering one.
Hurt my sister or thrust her into peril and bleed, Jaden warned with his frown.
Why, of course, little princeling, was the reply from Galahad’s canine black eyes. Don’t you worry.
“Shall we dance, my lady?” the prince of Kordonia asked.
As Di accepted his muscular arm and was led towards the center of the procession, her thoughts were assailed with Jaime: the hot slant of his mouth over hers, and the secrets in his eyes as he had confirmed his Velazaan connections. She shivered, and glanced back at the palace, wondering if he was slinking somewhere in there, in the shadows of deserted pillars. And then her eyes wandered to the gap in the maze of palace towers, where just last night, the Tower of Asclepius had stood before she had decimated it into dust whilst a beautiful, macabre man wrapped his clawed arms around her and urged her on. Something roiled inside her, and when she glanced at Galahad, he was staring at her impatiently, quizzically, waiting for her to dance, for she realized she had quite rudely and abruptly come to a halt. Heat coiled at the back of her neck.
Galahad gripped her arm too tightly for gallantry. “What’s the matter with you, princess?”
She shook him off and glanced wildly around. Am I imagining things?
Elenon’s gentry and commoners alike cavorted and danced tonight, for Saturnalia was a festival where even a king’s blood was given leave to mingle with the smallfolk. Yet around the heads of everyone in the crowd, be it soldier or lady or pickpocket, there was an eerie purple mist. The peculiar, misty tendrils crept over the mingling citizens. Convoluting around a lord’s bald head, wrapping around a trailing blue gown, steaming from the wine-cups and food platters borne by grinning servants, that deep purple oozed vaporously over Palace Square.
“Do you not see that strange haze?” she asked Galahad, her pulse beginning to race.
“What are you talking about?” he squinted at her as if she was mad, and suddenly, she became aware of how foreign and unknown his face was to her, how unfamiliar and cruel looking it truly was when it didn’t bear his practiced court smile.
She glanced back at the palace again. Dribbles of purple mist rose in columns from the tower of the Healing Hall; it was thickest there, as far as she could perceive it.
And remember, be wary tonight, Jaime had said. Be ready to flee at any moment.
She looked around for Jaden, frantic, but he had long been swallowed by the crowd.
“Diana.” Galahad waved a hand in front of her face, and his razor-sharp Kordonian features seemed truly angry now, his lips curled down at the ends unpleasantly.
The beauty of the night, which had before seemed so lambent, her people grinning and loving and dancing in an ecstatic human flood, now corroded and disintegrated around Diana. Her nostrils flared as a finger of the purple-black mist floated under her face, and she breathed in its rank, defiled reek.
“I wish you a good evening, Prince Galahad,” she blurted out. “Be careful.” And doubting her very sanity, the inner entity throbbing inside her, Di turned and sprinted back to the palace.
After the princess had left, no one else noticed the darkness that was moving in through the merrymakers, the darkness tinged with a deep purple like twilight. Overhead, the stars shivered and folded in upon themselves, refusing to expose the night’s secrets.
* * *
“Looking for someone in particular?” Scythe’s voice floated to Jaden, mingled with the music that rippled across the Opal Route.
He turned, and his breath hitched.
She wore a long gown of silvery material so thin it revealed more than it concealed. The length of it, studded with bits of dark jewels that drank in the glow of the lanterns, was held up only by a spider-webbing of glimmering strands. Her eyes were lined with dark kohl that accentuated their emerald brilliance.
Certainly, she was a vision, but to Jaden, the tall man standing with his arm interlinked with hers, was a black slash across the beautiful night. Trystan smiled innocently; the gold circlet crowning his black hair glinted.
“Hello, brother. Care to accompany us to the Sapphire Temple?” Trystan smiled again, the pompous idiot.
“Of course, I remember, you and my shadow are old friends,” Jaden said, his smile just as charming and insincere.
“Shadow?” Trystan enquired, flicking up an uncertain brow.
Scythe moved forward until Jaden could smell the scent of cinnamon oil in her braids. “Actually, Your Highness, I just encountered your brother, and he has asked me to be his partner for the dance of Opal Route this Saturnalia.”
Irritation and jealousy flickered through Jaden. “That sounds wonderful. Do enjoy yourselves.” He turned, aware of his own rudeness, and plunged back into the crowd. As he left, he heard Trystan saying, sounding confused, “Why did you lie to him?”
The pang of disappointment in Jaden’s heart hollowed him more than he had expected it to.
“Jaden?” said a familiar, loud voice from behind him.
Cassia linked her arm with his and leaned up to kiss his cheek. She smelled like elderberries and incense, her dark curls falling in perfectly styled ringlets to her bare shoulders. She drew back, studying him. “Why is your face so long and gloomy?” she demanded, propping a bangle-heaped wrist on her hip. “You look positively forlorn.”
He shook her accusations off. “I think we need to dance to catch up with the procession, Cass,” he said, and blinking Scythe out of his head from where she had quietly forged a niche, he swept his lover out into the throng of revelers.
The crowd forced them forward, into the very midst of the music and dancing, and they swayed along, passing beneath patches of multicolored light.
“My father is going to speak to the king,” Cassia said suddenly, as they danced beneath a patterned archway, “about our betrothal.”
Jaden coughed, nearly trampling Cassia’s feet. “Our what?”
“Our betrothal,” she repeated slowly as if he were a child, sticking her chin out as she often did when being defiant, or when stressing her opinions, which were as many, strong, and unbudgeable as oaks in the Whisperwood. “Father wants you to marry me before you leave for the Empire War next month.”
“Of course, he does,” Jaden smiled, “but we have agreed that we will never be forced into a marriage of convenience to please our fathers, have we not?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Even after all this time, I am still a convenience to you?”
Jaden gaped at her, urging his traitorous limbs to continue the methodical movements of following the swaying dance, while he saw Cassia’s coal-black eyes quickly became laced with annoyance and hurt. “What I meant was,” he tried to amend. “Cass, you and I have never taken our friendship and liaison as anything more than just that, an affair of—”
She shook her head as if forcing her mind to safer channels, made an impatient noise, then whispered, “Just shut up, you daft, ignorant boy,” and reached up to wrap her arms around his neck. “Forgive me for bringing up such serious matters on Saturnalia, Prince. I must have drunk too much wine.” And she deliberately plastered his lips with hers, tasting like pipe-smoke and sugar, her sweet, hot mouth opening to him to sip like wine. Her kisses were so insistent it felt to Jaden that, despite her having told him to shut up, it was actually her own traitorous mouth and the words that had tumbled out, that she was smothering so fervidly.
What have I not been seeing? Yet another strange happenstance to add to the many piling up since the Briar Road. Bloody hell.
When he glanced up for a breath, he saw the Sapphire Temple was now quite close; celebratory flags flapped in the distance, red streaks against the diamond stars. The ancient temple was a looming structure of flying colonnades and soaring pillars. The blue marble the whole thing was fabricated of made it look like the ocean’s waves had crystallized into a giant jewel. Another armada of lanterns was strung to its walls and balconies, these ones reflecting pastel blue radiance. All the blue created an unnerving, gorgeous effect that made one feel as if one were underwater, swimming through a world unknown and strange. The revelers around Jaden and even Cassia were making soft sounds of wonder.
Their dance had ceased now as they entered the thoroughfare leading to the mighty blue sanctuary.
“So beautiful,” Cassia said, gazing at the temple, and pressed her head into Jaden’s shoulder, nestling there, almost unconsciously.
Jaden, feeling a pang in his chest for her, wrapped an arm around her warm, delicate body, showing clearly to Elenon who exactly the crown prince favored, his lover with whom he danced beneath the public spectacle of Valandil’s lanterns. It was, after all, the least he could do. As he did this, he glimpsed of his father standing accompanied by Drast, Vralen, Tyndareus, and the Lionsbane, all of them dressed in their most resplendent garments. Behind them, suspended upon one of the immense blue pillars, was the king’s grandest gonfalon, the royal lion prancing golden, as if it too were in a festive mood. Before them, a flight of stairs curled down toward the milling throng, lined with blue and yellow lanterns.
The music died away slowly, as couples throughout the square gently disengaged from their lover’s arms to sip wine and watch the customary ritual unfold before them. A priestess of the temple, clad only in blue paint and a blue loincloth, her breasts swinging bare beneath the flickering lights, gracefully stepped up to King Flavian. Jaden noticed that even her long, black hair was smeared with the signature blue paint. She offered the sacred fruit bowl to the king, sprinkled with dried blood from the morning’s sacrifices, that she would place before the greatest altar of them all, that of Lord Nexus, brother of Valandil, king of the heavens according to the ancient Rhonan texts of religious dogma. The people clapped jubilantly as Flavian placed two jeweled medallions upon the bowl piled high with blood-orange and grape, and then placed a kiss on its solid gold flank.
Having obtained this blessing from the King of Gold, the pantheon’s priestess and her sanctified, bloodied fruits swayed forth into the blue depths of the temple. Eight more such priestesses followed, and the ritual was repeated again and again, honoring each and every deity ranging from Terai, the sun goddess—whose face, according to the Rhonan myths, even her godly family could not look at without scalding their eyes—to Thoros, Terai’s lover, the lord of war, and even his brother, Yuheros, the king of winter and death.
“I’m going to find some more wine,” Cassia whispered in Jaden’s ear, and when he looked down, her eyes were brimming and wet, the black kohl around them running in stained rivulets. She reached up to his confused, worried face and placed a soft kiss on his jaw.
“Wait, Cassia, what’s wrong …”
“Go join the royal court in the temple, Your Highness. Doubtless, your presence is required for the ceremony.” And she, without another word or backward glance, disappeared into the mass, her salmon-pink gown and bare olive arms eaten up by the multitude of bodies.
A conversation for another time then. He made a mental note to be more present next time when he and Cassia were together. And he would speak to Lord Pergeus about this entire betrothal affair.
Jaden looked around for Di and Galahad, wanting his sister to accompany him for the long walk up the temple stairs so they could together bear witness to the lighting of the biggest sacrificial bonfire of them all lit by Flavian—each year, the court strained to see what their aloof, blunt king would give to the flames to cleanse himself of the past year’s misdeeds.
But Jaden forgot all about Cassia and even his fruitless search for Diana as he advanced through the crowd toward the Sapphire Temple a few minutes later and spotted the prisoners strung up like lanterns themselves to wooden blocks along the right promenade of the temple, bloodied and battered. He forgot all about it when he saw what the king was allowing to happen to them.
* * *
The heady blue lights of the Rhonan temple submerged Elenon as an ocean upon a sunlit day submerges a pearl-diver, the waves caressing one another over his lithe form. In the royal palace, however, blue was the last color Diana could imagine seeing. Brooding shadows greeted her as she ducked and dived through the eastern corridors—dodging the fires.
For indeed, like waves closing over the diver, fire, that fickle, twin life-giver and life-destroyer had inundated the royal palace, springing up in random crevices like overgrown weeds. There were little fires everywhere. The princess, not daring to allow her mind to ponder which traitor had started these flames, ran through her home with the sleeve of her dress hoisted over her face, protecting herself from the heavy black smoke already immersing the marble hallways.
She met a few servants fleeing from the Lionskeep, coughing and hacking away smoke, their eyes red. And in corners she didn’t dare glance at for too long, corpses lay strewn of palace soldiers, their throats slit or their limbs detached from their bodies, blood spreading in black pools as the small arbitrary fires ate up the old tapestries fluttering above them. With almost everyone else reveling in the city in the name of the gods, it must have rendered a simple task for whoever was unleashing this disaster to round up the dregs the court had left behind. But why? Who?
Wheezing, her heart thudding, summoning up every sediment of her inner entity, Diana burst out into the north-east gardens, the olive trees like gnarled black monsters in her haphazard path.
Not aware of exactly where her feet were taking her, she followed the insistent tug of her inner entity. From the very moment she had first skidded between the palace gates, leaving the square behind, she had felt it. It was like an external being was forcing its hand into her chest and tugging on her organs till they hung only by thin red strings, forcing her along to trail the being’s indomitable will as her path wound around the Lionskeep, smoke burring from its ancient windows in pitch floods. Something spurred her on and quickened her strides even as her lungs burned with the scorching air she inhaled, so she kept running. She neared the Healing Hall; indigo mist curled from its spires in gusts. And although she was unaware of where exactly the obstinate conviction that drove her sprung from, she sensed clustered within Drast’s mysterious staircase of wonder, some deep evil creeping. The inner entity flared inside her, and the corners of her vision blurred slightly, the ground swaying again, but she kept racing and unseeingly collided right into a very tall figure, cloaked in velvet.
“Sweet little human,” Taliesin drawled, steadying her by the shoulders, his claws pressing tightly into her exposed flesh. His platinum hair was stark against the black-red night. He bent down, peered at her face. “Ah, I see it, your energy has sensed the presence of demons this night.”
“Of … what?” she stammered. And then a sudden thought blasted her. “Are you responsible for this? For the fires and the mist?”
“The mist?” He stroked his chin with fingers like white spindles. “You can perceive the Malakim? Interesting. I have not known a human to do that in many centuries.”
A bout of urgent, terrified madness seized her, and she stretched up to clasp this immortal, terrifying creature’s powerful shoulders, and shook him hard—well, as hard as any petite female human could hope to move a Frenalin prince who stood near seven foot tall. “Are you responsible for this?” she gritted out. “My home is burning, and some strange mist that I can sense bodes nothing good is smothering my people out on Palace Square, though they do not seem to realize it. What is happening?”
He stepped away from her smoothly and brushed off his sleeves. Taliesin’s smile was amused, but there was something peculiar in his eyes—did Di dare connect it to a shard of worry? “It is not me unleashing all this chaos, child. When a Frenalin wishes to wreak devastation, he is not normally this crude,” he gestured at the flaming palace, the ocean roaring beyond, “and frankly, this tasteless. We prefer smaller, more intimate delicacies of violence.” His voice grew flat. “Not the kind of mindless slaughter on a wide scale that I suspect will very quickly be unleashed here in the city.”
“Slaughter,” Di repeated slowly, panic flavoring the roiling sea of dread in her. “Then if not you, who is doing this?!” she shouted.
“Why were you running about inside the palace when your entire family is at the Sapphire Temple?” Taliesin asked knowingly, still infuriatingly calm.
“I—the energy, as you call it, something is pulling me along to what I suspect is the source of the mist. I don’t know why but—” She felt foolish even explaining it. In her right mind, she should really be running to warn her father of the immediate danger, to beg him to summon soldiers.
