The Starless Crown, page 15
It was all too much, too daunting.
She covered her eyes with her palms, letting the darkness calm her.
I can do this.
Her only hope of making that come true was Jace. Even after she ascended, he would continue to aid her. The prioress recognized that Nyx would need his ongoing support—both in her studies and as a friend. All the other aspiring ninthyears had climbed through the tiers together as a class. She would be joining them as a stranger, an interloper, and likely viewed as someone unworthy to be among them.
She took a deep breath and lowered her hands. As much as she might wish to return to the comforting familiarity of her clouded vision, she had to learn to live in this new world.
She opened her eyes and searched her face in the mirror. Her reflection still struck her as strange. It was the face she had always pictured in her mind’s eye, but then again not. When her vision had been clouded, she thought she had a good notion of herself, between what she could read with her fingers and how others described her. But her returned vision added details she hadn’t imagined.
She ran fingers through her brown hair, so dark it could be misconstrued as black, but within its shadows were golden strands, as if a sun lay hidden somewhere within. Her complexion was a richer color of polished amber, her lips rosier, and her eyes bluer, speckled with flecks of silver.
In many ways it was a stranger in that mirror, but maybe therein lay another measure of hope. Maybe she could set aside the girl she was, the meek and beclouded girl. And become the woman in the reflection, the one stranded in gold and flecked in silver.
“I can do this,” she tried again.
She almost believed it.
Almost.
She firmed her resolve to redouble her efforts on her lessons. If nothing else, the hard work had pushed the fear nestled inside her deeper and deeper. Collapsing into bed each night, exhausted and mind-numbed from studying, she slept soundly. No more screams or visions of arcane rituals under a swelling moon plagued her slumbers. She refused to even utter the word moonfall. She certainly hadn’t shared any of this with the prioress, especially as that strange bat had never returned to haunt her rafters. How could she try to explain her inflamed memories, of the sweet taste of milk on her tongue, the spicy warmth of pelt and wing, the red eyes glowing across to her from another nipple?
She wanted to dismiss it all as a fevered dream from her poisoning, to put that darkness behind her. Instead, she concentrated all of her efforts and energies on the immediate task ahead of her.
She ran her hands down the robe one last time. The contrast of black and white represented the choice facing her over the next year. Once she completed her ninthyear, she must pick a path forward. To take the black of alchymy, or the white of religious studies. Once she had chosen, she hoped one day to achieve the status of Highcryst in one order or the other.
Or maybe both.
She pictured the two halves of her robes merging to the gray holiness of a Shrive—then shook her head at such foolishness.
Let me just complete my ninthyear.
Determined and knowing Jace was waiting for her in the next room with a stack of books, she wiggled the robe over her head. Standing in a simple shift, she neatly folded the garment and gently returned it to its lacquered scentwood box. She closed and clasped it, securing all her hopes inside.
She placed her palm atop it.
I can do this.
* * *
NYX ROLLED THE nub of sharpened charcoal between her thumb and forefinger, both of which were grimed black as she struggled through the last of the morning. She squinted at the triangular shape that Jace had jotted down, along with the numbers written on two of its sides. She had been instructed to divine the length of the third and the space held within all.
“Remember the dictum of squaring the triangle,” Jace offered.
She huffed out her frustration. “I know, but what damnable use is any of this?”
He reached over and forced her hand down and drew her attention toward him. His green eyes sparked with sympathy and amusement. “Knowledge can often be its own reward, but more often it reveals the inner truths of the outer world. It can raise a lamp and lift the shadows around us to show us the beauty within.”
She had to look away from his intensity, sensing a more personal meaning behind his words. She noted the warmth of the hand still clasping hers, the way his touch lingered. She withdrew her fingers and returned to the problem drawn on paper, a matter more easily resolved than what had grown between them.
Jace straightened. “As to squaring the triangle, it is the magick behind much of everything around us. Used by builders to reckon the slope of a roof and the position of walls. Sailorfolk tap its power to chart their course across the seas. Mappers do the same to draw coastlines and borders.”
Inspired by his explanation, Nyx set about solving the problem with renewed vigor. She scratched her sums with her nub of charcoal and worried her way through to the end. Once done, she turned to Jace, who smiled proudly but with a slight sadness in his eyes.
“Very good,” he said. “In no time, you’ll be leaving me far behind.”
It was her turn to reach to him. “Never,” she promised. “I can’t survive my ninthyear without you at my side.”
“I failed my fifthyear,” he reminded her, the smile dimming. “I think the girl who survived the poison of a Mýr bat can face anything.”
She wanted to believe him, but this reminder of the attack, of the nightmares that followed, further unsettled her. Still, she sought to reassure her friend. “Jace, you’re far more than your stumble in your fifthyear. Prioress Ghyle recognized your potential by keeping you here at the Cloistery, working at the scriptorium, aiding me these past years. I wager you know more than most of those who will be crawling alongside me to the top of the school.”
His grin returned. “You are kind to say that. But of late, I’ve struggled to keep abreast of you. I know it. But I will admit that I have learned much on my own, not only by studying beside you, but also by copying faded ancient texts in the scriptorium, preserving them before their ink vanished. Some volumes were shockingly blasphemous. Others so raw in subject that it would make the vilest whoremonger blush. It’s certainly been a tutelage very different than any path up the tiers.”
“And no less important.” She patted his knee. “And that is how you will get me through my ninthyear.”
“But what after that?” Jace asked, his voice going softer. “Where will you go then?”
She heard the unspoken query: What’s to become of us?
“I don’t know,” she answered, addressing all of those questions. “I hadn’t dared look past what’s in front of my nose. I would hate to leave my dah and brothers, so perhaps the prioress would allow me to continue my advanced studies here at the Cloistery.”
Jace drew taller in his seat, hope brimming in his eyes. “I would like—”
A blast of horns cut him off. They both turned to the window of her borrowed room. A steamy drizzle hung in the air, all that was left of a storm that had been blowing through the swamps for several days. As they stared, another bright trumpeting echoed across the breadth of the school.
“What is it?” Nyx asked.
Jace gained his legs with a heave. “Let’s take a break and find out.”
She happily stood. Jace crossed and grabbed her cane, but she waved it aside. She would need to learn to walk on her own. She had to adjust to the strange dimensions and sights of her new sighted world. Plus, she had Jace if she became too overwhelmed.
They abandoned her little cluster of rooms and headed through the physik’s wards. They drew more of the curious in their wake. Once they reached the open air, they crossed toward the tier’s main stairs. Further bursts of horns urged them onward, now clearly rising up from below.
Nyx swiped her wet brow. Under the low weeping clouds, the heat smothered. Over the past days, it had quickened tempers and slowed everyone’s pace. But the strident blaring could not be ignored. The novelty pulled everyone out of hiding.
“This way,” Jace urged.
He guided her through the worst of the gathering throng and over to a terrace just off the steps. It offered an expansive view to the town of Brayk below. The sight and spread of the world transfixed her and terrified her. In the past, her clouded eyes had always kept the world tight around her. Now it spread endlessly in all directions.
Another blow of horns drew Nyx’s attention down to the swamps. “Look!”
Bright torches flickered through the shadowy bower. Scores and scores of them, all slowly drawing toward the island of rock in these drowned lands. The faint beat of drums rose, along with the deeper lowing of bullocks. Hard snaps of whips echoed up now, sounding like the crackling pops of a log in a hearth.
“It seems we’re being invaded,” Jace mumbled.
Nyx glanced sharply at him, all too aware of the tensions with the lands of the Southern Klashe.
He gave her a consoling shake of his head. “This morning at the scriptorium, I overheard talk of a large hunting party coming through Mýr. The teeth of the storm had kept them holed up in Fiskur for a while. Still, never imagined there’d be so many.”
The first of the torches reached the edge of the swamps. Crimson oilskin banners were raised, but with no wind to unfurl them, their bearers had to wave them loose. Though the distance was far, Nyx recognized the black crown against a gold sun.
“Sigil of the king,” Jace said.
Despite the heat, Nyx shivered with dread.
What is going on?
A commotion on the neighboring stairs drew their eyes. A long-legged figure flew up the steps, taking them three at a time. Nyx recognized one of her former seventhyears, identifying him by his lanky form and flailing gait. His face now glowed with excitement, practically bursting with barely suppressed glee. She also knew this particular student was the class’s chinwag, always ripe with gossip.
“Lackwiddle!” she called out to him.
The damp-haired youth nearly tripped over himself trying to stop. He glanced around and spotted Nyx. He gave her a hard scowl. With that one look, he revealed what all her former classmates likely thought of her.
“What’s happening down there?” she asked.
He gestured rudely and braced his legs to continue his flight upward.
Before he could, Jace thrust out an arm and grabbed him by the collar, pulling him closer and anchoring him in place. “Answer her!”
As wet as Lackwiddle was, he probably could have broken free, but he was clearly incapable of keeping what he knew bottled up any longer. “It’s the king’s legion, I tell ya! A full mess of ’em. Even some red-faced Vyrllians. Can you believe it?”
Nyx’s chill sank deeper to her bones.
But Lackwiddle was not done. “And who’s marching with ’em? It’s Kindjal and her father, the highmayor of Fiskur. I’d give up one of my hairy bollocks to be sitting there with ’em.”
Nyx shared a worried look with Jace. Her heart pounded. She again felt the weight of Byrd’s headless body atop hers, the spill of hot blood.
Jace finally let the boy go and moved closer to her.
Though freed, Lackwiddle dawdled, his eyes bulging with one last bit of gossip. “And best of all, I heard they captured one of those winged bastards.”
Nyx stiffened, picturing the lurker in the rafters. “What?”
“A big ’un,” Lackwiddle said, holding his arms wide. “All arrowbit and caged. Heard they’re dragging it up top. Gonna burn it alive in the pyre. As fitting vengeance for Byrd.”
To hide her reaction, Nyx turned to the twin fires ablaze in the drizzle. The taste of sweet milk again filled her mouth. She felt the enfolding warmth of protective wings. A keening filled her head, full of grief.
“Can’t wait till that beast be flopping and screaming in those flames,” Lackwiddle said, and darted away, anxious to spread what he knew.
Nyx continued to gaze upward, but she fell back into a smoke-shrouded world of screams and thundering war machines. She found herself again on a mountaintop, running toward a huge winged beast nailed to a stone altar. Her foremost desire in that moment fired through her again.
To free what was captured.
Then she snapped back into her own flesh, standing in the drizzle. The keening remained—both past and future—but it had grown into the buzz of an angry hive inside her skull. It spread through her bones, sharpening her certainty.
She turned to face the approaching legion.
She didn’t have a plan, only a purpose.
I must stop them.
15
KANTHE STOOD SULLENLY in the rain.
He could have sought shelter in the covered livery sledge, where the highmayor of Fiskur and his daughter were offloading a mountain of the girl’s chests and crates. The pair of bullocks at the front looked no happier than him, with their pelts sodden and dripping, huffing heavily and stamping the splay of their three-toed hooves.
He saw no reason to be over there. His breeches were already soaked to the skin. His boots squelched with mud and bogwater. His hair was pasted to his scalp. It seemed like ages since he’d been dry, though it had only been a dozen or so days. Not that he was confident in his accounting. The large company had left the port of Azantiia during a lull in the stormfront. Still, winds had tossed the seas into frothing white peaks. His stomach still had not fully settled from the voyage.
When they finally made landfall at Fiskur, the squall strengthened again. The skies blackened, split with jagged spears of lightning. Thunder boomed loud enough to shake the stilts that held up the town. They had been trapped in Fiskur for four long days, where the only fodder had been salted, dried fish and equally briny ale.
Kanthe had initially been relieved to escape Fiskur as the black skies turned gray and the worst of the storm blew off to the east. Then came days of sucking mud, bellowing beasts, pushing through clouds of bloodsucking meskers or stinging botflies that left worms under the skin. All along, whether they were on foot, huddled on sledges, or poled on rafts, the swamps tried to trap them. Thorny vines tugged at clothes or pulled caps from heads. Then again, better that than be grabbed by the fanged jaws of the multitudinous adders and pit-vipers that draped from mossy branches or slithered across the water.
Kanthe cursed his father with every hard-earned league. He now wished he had allowed Mikaen to intercede on his behalf and convince the king to spare him this torturous trek.
Their group’s only advantage lay in their numbers. The passage of a hundred knights and a score of Vyrllian Guards had kept the worst of the swamp’s denizens away. And the storm god Tytan—perhaps apologizing for his temper—had granted them a rare boon with a well-aimed bolt of lightning.
Kanthe looked past the livery sledge to a raft being poled toward the rocky shore. A large wrapped cage rested atop it. The two bullocks nearby lowed a note of distress and shifted away from the approaching raft, dragging the livery to one side. The driver had to crack a whip over their haunches to root them back in place. Still, the beasts shivered their flanks in anxiety.
Despite the bullocks’ warning, Kanthe found himself crossing in that direction. It felt good to feel solid ground under his feet. Plus, he didn’t want to be conscripted into setting up the tents or gathering firewood. Out in the swamps, his princely status had held no sway. It was hard to maintain a royal decorum when groaning as one shite over the edge of a sledge.
Curiosity also drew him toward the raft and cage. He had barely caught a glimpse of the large Mýr bat as it had been dragged in a tangle of ropes and chains from the swamp. The victory had been celebrated with boisterous cheers and the battering of swords on shields, as if a major battle had been won. Though, according to the fireside chatter later, it wasn’t much of a fight. A chance lightning bolt had shattered the cottongum where the beast had unfortunately roosted during the storm. A clutch of six Vyrllians had stumbled upon it, discovering it weak and dazed, a wing burned clean through. Still, they had peppered it with a flurry of arrows before netting and roping it.
Kanthe had watched the beast be caged with a pang of pity. The captured bat was the size of a small pony. And even bleeding from wounds and pained by burns, it had thrashed and screeched, struggling for freedom.
He had understood that desire all too well. And maybe that was what drew him now. A mix of guilt and pity. Unfortunately, he was not the only one who gathered toward the caged prize.
“Let’s take a look at it,” Anskar said, hopping deftly onto the tall raft. “Before we drag it upward.”
Anskar vy Donn was the head of the Vyrllian detachment. Kanthe’s head barely reached the height of the man’s chest. And the vy-knight was as muscled as an ox. He had not only inked his face and shaved head in crimson, as was traditional, but also his legs and arms, both of which were also tattooed in black thorny vines. Kanthe had heard he added another thorn for every man he killed.
Maybe that’s why the king had secretly assigned the vy-knight to be his bodyguard, though it was never stated as such. Still, Anskar had been his shadow throughout this journey, seldom letting him out of his sight, even when Kanthe was wiping his arse. Despite that, Kanthe had come to respect the man’s hard, but amiable nature. By now, Anskar already felt more like a stern older brother than a bodyguard.
Kanthe climbed up onto the raft to join the knight.
Anskar lifted a flap of leather covering tied around the cage. Kanthe bent to peek under it.
“Not too close,” Anskar warned.
“No worries there. I’d like to keep my nose where it’s at.”
From two steps away, Kanthe peered into the shrouded darkness. It took him a breath to discern the darker shadow within. He spotted no movement. Maybe it’s already dead, succumbed to its injuries. It would be a mercy, considering its fate from here.
He glanced to the top of the school. The Cloistery was similar in shape to Kepenhill, only a quarter smaller. Twin flames smoked at the top. Alchymist Frell had already abandoned his pupil, climbing toward the summit. Frell had wanted to meet with the head of the school, a prioress who had once taught the man. Kanthe had tried to follow him, but Frell asked for his patience, abandoning the prince on this rocky shore.
