Eight Will Fall, page 16
“You are not the first Surfacers to wander into my home since the Reach was sealed off.” Bianca walked to one of the glass walls and stared out into the village. The glass blurred the cavern beyond, but Bianca watched carefully, as though she could see everything happening within her universe from the hut. “The Surface’s dynasty has permitted adventurers to enter over the centuries, perhaps hoping for them to return with tales of the Reach. It is how I’ve learned the change of language.” Noxious guilt brewed within the disciple. “And how we survived.”
Bianca was estranged from Kyran, but she was not innocent of his crimes. Larkin tried to keep her fear at bay, hoping the disciple would not sense it.
“I do not plan on killing you.” Bianca’s gaze remained transfixed by the glass. “You are an Empath, and I want you to succeed in finding Kyran as much as you do.”
Larkin had made the right decision after all. She hoped Casseem would think twice about listening to her once he found out. Still, Bianca’s well wishes weren’t exactly what she’d hoped for. “Then why won’t you tell us where he is?”
“We have an arrangement. If I do not interfere with him, he will leave me and my people alone.” Bianca brushed her fingers on the glass as if she were touching the village itself. “When I was banished, my child remained on the Surface. I never want to feel that loss again. These people who live here are my children now. My descendants. Some, the descendants of other disciples who have chosen me to take care of their followers. They know they are safe here.”
“But how would Kyran know you helped us?” Larkin asked.
“He knows you are here, doesn’t he?” Bianca left the hut, and Larkin followed her outside. The disciple looked upward, toward the cliff, the switchbacks, and the yawning hole within the cavern wall. “He led you here. He’s testing me.”
Bianca did not try to stifle her own dread, and Larkin felt a strange urge to comfort the disciple. Bianca was trapped, powerless. If Larkin were in her position, she would do anything to protect her people. Her family.
“I laid to rest any hope of being a good person a long time ago, but Otheil … he has fallen to an evil that I will not plummet to. I’ve had many centuries to ruminate on Queen Ilona’s decision. We were right to be condemned, but she should have killed Otheil, at the very least.” Bianca paused. “This angers you. Why?”
Larkin noticed her own anger, just like the anger she carried in her heart back at the camp. She thought for a moment. “I don’t want to believe our queen has been right all these years. I believed Kyran’s exile was only a story to justify our punishment.”
“I see,” said Bianca, saddened. “Ilona has been immortalized, yes? Your queen worships her?”
“Most Demurans do, as the Goddess of Light.”
“Well, she is not right.” Bianca reached toward her with pale fingers. As she touched Larkin’s cheek, a shiver raced through Larkin, the graze familiar. Bianca’s hand was cool and soft, like her mother’s.
“There is no such thing as Light, child. There is only Darkness. You will be fighting it with every step you take toward Kyran. And you will either succumb to it or claim it as your own.” Bianca’s eyebrows furrowed as she thought. “How many of you did you say have died within this place?”
Larkin winced as she thought of Brielle and Devon, and their horrible fates. “Two.”
“So there were eight … All of you are Empaths?”
“All but one. Tamsyn is a scholar. He was supposed to know enough about the Reach to guide us.”
Bianca dropped her hand with a spiral of curiosity. “There were seven of us. Your queen knew that her soldiers had died. And she knew you were underprepared and didn’t have the skill to conquer Kyran, and yet she sent you anyway.”
“We assumed that she was hoping to entice him.”
“No random band of Empaths would intrigue Otheil. You would have been dead days ago.” Bianca lifted the cold silver of her finger to Larkin’s chin, awestruck, and it was as though every muscle inside of Larkin was charged with light.
“All of us had children before the Uprising. All of us practiced our magic, hoping our children would one day inherit it. And they were left on the Surface as we were cast into the dark.” Bianca brushed the pad of her thumb across Larkin’s cheek, wiping away a tear. “You were not blindly chosen for this task. Your queen knows exactly who you are.”
Larkin stared in disbelief at Bianca, shaking her head. “That’s impossible.”
She was only a thief from the canyon. Not a descendant of Kyran’s disciples.
TWENTY
Descendants.
Larkin stormed away from the village and across the beach, kicking up sand in her wake. One of them had to have known.
Melay had hundreds of Empaths to choose from. She could have sent in an Empath army to find Kyran, or those more seasoned in magic from the depths of her prison. Instead, she chose them. Children who either knew little of magic or refused to use it.
At camp, the others were just waking up. Elf and Casseem were attempting to conjure new bags and torches from a pile of shredded lichen. They must have been using Amias’s emotions; Larkin gleaned a tender ache from him. Love, she realized. He was speaking with Jacque, their heads bowed in intimate conversation. Perhaps they were discussing the farm.
Casseem hopped up when he saw her, hot with anger. “Where in hells have you been?”
She ignored him, spotting Tamsyn, who knelt in the sand, scratching something in charcoal on one of his scrolls.
She halted at the edge of camp. “Why did you burn the registry?”
Tamsyn glanced up at her, confused.
“The registry,” Larkin repeated. “Why did you decide to burn it? What did you find out?”
“Find out?” Tamsyn rolled up the parchment. “I told you why I burned it. Melay had taken a sudden interest in lineage, and I wanted to stop her from doing anything—”
Larkin interrupted him. “Did you know? About us?”
Tamsyn scoffed, impatient. “Larkin, I—”
“We’re descendants of the original seven.” She turned and faced the rest of the stunned group. “We’re the descendants of Kyran and his six disciples.”
She waited for Tamsyn to feel guilty, ashamed he’d kept such a secret from them. Perhaps horrified that she had discovered the truth.
She wasn’t expecting genuine astonishment.
“I didn’t read the registry, Larkin. I wouldn’t have known what to look for. How in Ilona’s name did you find this out?” The scholar began to rifle through his parchment, as if truth of their ancestry had been within his papers all along and he’d simply missed it the first ten times.
Larkin was relieved to sense the astonishment from everyone. That meant Melay had kept every one of them in the dark. They would absorb this together.
Casseem was more outraged than she’d ever sensed before. “Did Elesandre tell you this? You went to see her, after everything?” He wasn’t angry at Melay. He was angry at Larkin.
“What do you mean, after everything?”
“We decided to leave, not berate the woman for information she wasn’t willing to give!” Casseem turned to Jacque. “That’s what we agreed on, right, Jacque?”
The soldier was still reeling. “Descendants?” She smoothed down her long ponytail and sank back into the sand. “I can’t even siphon properly. Are you certain?”
“No, she’s not,” said Casseem. “She’s just taking Elesandre’s word for it.”
“Bianca was as surprised as I was!” Larkin didn’t want to admit that Casseem had a point. Even though the discovery made sense, there was no evidence. And why would Melay send only seven Empaths? Larkin had wondered this from the very start of their mission.
“It doesn’t matter what you think, Casseem. This has merit,” said Tamsyn. He began scribbling on one of his parchment sheets, his fascination gliding through Larkin. “The queen’s interest in the registry was sudden, and the arrests of many of you were quite random, were they not?”
“I was arrested right before the temple was destroyed,” said Larkin. “When I should have been the least of Melay’s worries.”
“The guards were always patrolling our farm, always looking out for something amiss.” Elf’s eyes were wide. “Maybe they were waiting for me to step out of line.”
“And Jacque was arrested even though she followed orders,” Larkin said.
“And where did that get me?” Jacque glowered at the ground, knuckles white as she clenched her fists. “I should have known something was wrong.” Her eyes filled. “Risa likely thinks I’m dead, and I’m sure she’s received word that I’m a traitor too. All for what? My bloodline?”
“I suppose that would make one of us Kyran’s descendant, then!” Casseem gasped mockingly. “One of us fits that narrative, after all. What do you say, Amias? Crushing villages, following in the footsteps of your dear old ancestor, god of the underworld himself. After all, the queen threw you into a Reach of your own, didn’t she?”
The warmth drained from Larkin’s body so quickly, she thought her heart would stop, like she’d been tossed in the capital’s canal in midwinter. She could see the cold in Amias’s eyes, the film of ice as clear as glass. On the outside, he was stoic—so expressionless, it was like he wasn’t alive at all.
He stood from his boulder, turned from camp, and walked away.
Larkin snapped from her spell of cold. “Amias?”
Jacque hopped to her feet, turning to Casseem with venom. “Idiot. Do you have any idea what he’s been through?”
Casseem crossed his arms as though he could hide his guilt. “I was proving a point.”
“Ilona’s sake, Casseem! I watched Amias’s father get slaughtered by Melay’s soldiers the same day Amias was condemned to the dark, and you thought to make a joke of it to prove a point?” Jacque brushed a clenched fist beneath her eye.
Gods. Larkin watched Amias as he strode between two boulders, disappearing. She knew his father had died, but she didn’t know it happened the same day as his arrest.
Casseem opened his mouth.
“Shut up,” said Larkin, storming past a slack-jawed Elf and hurrying after Amias.
She followed him through a sandy field of boulders, still thawing from the darkest dread she’d ever felt. She wanted to steal the dread away, lock it up so he would never be haunted again. It terrified her that she didn’t know how.
But she could make sure that he wasn’t alone in his despair.
At the edge of the cavern, Larkin climbed the steps carved into the rock wall. The vast lichen sky sprawled out above her, a chaotic swirl of light and color. The cliffside path was dotted with beautiful, variegated moss, reminding her of the rainbows over the capital when the spring storms broke. The beauty granted her courage as the path widened, and she stepped out onto a vista point.
Amias stood at the edge, watching the false stars. His fists were clenched so tightly that she could see every one of the veins that threaded his arms. She knew he could sense her, like she could sense the corrosion of grief in him. But there was also the wonder she’d grown familiar with in the glowing grotto. She sensed him fighting to cling to it as he stared out at Bianca’s world, desperately attempting to bury his anguish.
“When we were closer to the Surface, you asked a question.” She approached him, hesitant. “Why send down only seven Empaths and a guide? I’m just trying to make meaning of that question. The numbers could be a coincidence.”
“And if they’re not?” Amias turned away from the ledge. His eyes were rimmed red. “I didn’t have to hurt Bianca, Larkin. I could have stopped her some other way, but I couldn’t control myself. I’ve been a monster all along.”
“Melay’s the monster, Amias. She’s the reason your father’s dead.”
He winced, tears rolling down his cheeks before he furiously brushed them away. “They were reassigning him to the mines. All he did was pull away when a patrol grabbed him, and the soldier gutted him with a sword. It was every nightmare I’d ever had, but real.”
Larkin pressed a hand to her mouth, her bottom lip trembling against her fingers. The soldiers could have done the same thing to her family when they broke into her home.
“I don’t remember it happening. I don’t remember destroying the barns, the wagons … I remember dust.”
“You were a child.”
“I lost control.”
“She took what you loved, and then she punished you for it!” Larkin’s voice was full of fury. “To Kyran’s hell with Melay, Amias. This whole damned realm should be nothing but dust.”
Again, Amias winced at the mention of the queen. The quiet, cold thunder of his dread rolled inside her.
Five years alone. Larkin couldn’t imagine five years without falling asleep against her mother, or pressing her lips to Vania’s hair. Five years without jumping into her father’s embrace when he came home late from the mines. Without Garran’s hand in hers, comforting her when they’d left Ethera with nothing to show for it.
Larkin crossed the shelf, wrapping her arms around Amias’s neck. He tensed, but she didn’t let go. She wanted him to sense the darkest corners of her grief and rage, hoping he could take comfort in her.
Maybe he would. Or maybe he’d pull away.
She waited—waited—her eyes shut and face buried in the crook of his shoulder, the pulse in his throat thrumming against her cheek. Finally, he relaxed and embraced her back, starved, elbows pinning her sides, the tips of his fingers pressing against her spine.
They were so close that Larkin’s lips were now flush against his neck. She didn’t dare move, unsure if she’d ever breathe again.
She didn’t care.
Larkin at last released Amias, confused when she sensed remorse, but then realized it wasn’t from him. His eyes flitted back and forth as he searched hers, and she cursed herself for being distracted so easily before noticing movement below.
Amias took her hand, the bracelet she’d given him pressing against her wrist, and they peered over the edge of the cliff as Bianca emerged from a crevice in the cavern wall, walking back toward the village. When the disciple was directly beneath them, she paused and looked up, finding Larkin.
It was Bianca’s remorse Larkin had sensed, but over what?
“I think she wants us to go into that cave.” Larkin looked up at Amias, her head light and face flushed. Perhaps this was a good distraction.
“I think you’re right,” said Amias. “Should we tell the others?”
Bianca’s eyes bored into Larkin, communicating with her. Whatever was in the cave was dire, something she was entrusting Larkin with.
“No,” said Larkin. “She only wants us to go.”
“How do you know?” Amias asked.
Because I’m hers, thought Larkin. She couldn’t explain how she knew, only that Bianca’s emotions spoke to her. It was intuition. But Amias wouldn’t understand until she had proof. “I just do.”
They hurried back down the cliffside and followed the path that Bianca had taken. The crevice entrance was small but not tight, and Larkin easily scooted inside.
Three lit torches rested in sconces along the wall of the circular chamber, illuminating charcoal markings. At first, Larkin thought they were glyphs, and wondered if Tamsyn would need to translate, but then she began to recognize a pattern. There were some glyphs, written tightly within a swirl of curving lines and sharp edges, and waves indicating water. Other lines pointed upward, petal shaped. Fire.
Larkin stepped backward until she recognized the image in its entirety.
“Holy hells,” Larkin breathed.
A map.
TWENTY-ONE
Tamsyn stood in front of the map, pressing his hands to his chest as if protecting his emotion from the group. He wasn’t only bewildered, but distraught. Almost comically so.
Larkin didn’t understand what was wrong. She thought he would be overjoyed to see the map. He’d fawned over the luminite tunnels and the glyphs on the walls, after all.
“I know nothing,” he cried. “I’m … utterly useless here.”
“You can read the glyphs,” Casseem said brusquely. “That’s more than most of us can do.”
Larkin wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but it irritated her. Still no thanks, no apology. Not after she was right about staying to see if Bianca would help them. Without her, they would be blind, with no idea where Kyran was.
But Larkin had found this map because Bianca trusted her. Bianca had placed her entire village at risk to help them kill Kyran, and to help Larkin get home.
“I know all of you think my obsession with this place is foolish.” Tamsyn ran his hand gently across the map. “My mother and father gave me up to the queen at a young age—seven. Can you believe I’ve been accruing utterly useless knowledge for half my life?”
“You’ve been studying texts over a thousand years old,” said Amias. “My tutor always told me to question the tomes Melay held.”
“Well, apparently your tutor was better than mine,” Tamsyn said jealously.
Casseem snorted.
Larkin wasn’t so ready to brush off Amias’s statement. “But your tutor worked for Melay.”
Amias was quick to respond. “She was an Empath, and cunning.”
“You were imprisoned,” Larkin pressed.
Amias’s intrigue danced through her. He enjoyed her interest. “So was she.”
“Melay has many Empaths working for her,” said Tamsyn. “She often attempts to school the children within her prisons to seem forgiving. And to indoctrinate them.” He returned to studying the map. “I can’t get into that now. We need to focus.” He tapped his finger against the map, the rind of his nail blackened by charcoal. “The names of all the disciples are scribbled in glyphs, so the map is split into their sectors, as Bianca called them. The language down here in the Reach must have morphed over time. Very difficult to read. But…” He pointed at the center of the western portion of the map. “Kyran.” He drew a line upward, northeast. “And Bianca. This, here, is where we are. A short hike to the west, and we’ll reach a river.”
