The Midnight Kingdom, page 26
Footsteps echoed beyond the archway. The guards were coming back.
“—swear I’m hearing voices.” Two shadows darkened the entrance. “Hey! Is someone in there?”
Taesia froze like a rabbit at the snap of a twig. She considered herself proficient in running away, but in this situation, there was nowhere to go. Lilia reached for her shadows as the guards moved to the lip of the stepwell.
Somewhere in the distance came a deep boom. The walls shivered, dust raining from the ceiling. The guards took off running again.
Taesia let out her held breath. “That… wasn’t your familiar, was it?”
Lilia shook her head and handed Starfell back. “We need to get going.”
This time, Taesia didn’t argue.
XII
Julian could only just see the top of the golden barrier from behind the outer wall of the Sanctuary of Nyx. He stared at it, huddled within his cloak, and waited.
There—a faint tremor ran through the barrier. Julian exhaled, his breath turning to fog.
In being so close to Orsus, Julian had been able to turn his beastspeaking ability on Nikolas long enough to escape, but he’d hoped his infiltration of Nikolas’s mind would be long-lasting. If the barrier was showing weakness, that meant he’d succeeded to some extent.
Could he replicate the maneuver with Rian? Could he absorb enough of Orsus’s power to drive Phos out while simultaneously keeping Orsus’s influence at bay?
Don’t let Orsus take control of you, Taesia had told him. Whether a suggestion or an order, he planned to follow it to the best of his ability.
Soft footsteps on stone made him slip his fingers into his waist sash, where he’d tucked away the knife Marcellus had given him. He relaxed somewhat at the approach of Kalen and Marcellus. Kalen was carrying a bulky piece of fabric in his arms, which he shoved at Julian.
“Quickly,” the astrologer said.
Julian fumbled to shed his cloak and handed it to Marcellus before he slipped into the new garment. It was far too large for him, and thick with silver embroidery along the sleeves and hem. It smelled like dying leaves and spice-laden smoke.
“How did you get this?” Julian asked.
“Don’t worry about that,” Kalen said. “No priests were hurt, if that’s where your concern lies.”
“It wasn’t until you said that.” Julian raised the hood. “Are you sure this is going to work?”
“Absolutely!” Marcellus said at the same time Kalen said, “No.”
Julian sighed. “What happens if someone tries to speak to me?”
“Sometimes the priests enter vows of denial for a period up to a full lunar cycle,” Kalen explained. He held up two fingers together. “This gesture means you are currently unable to talk. But we’ll stick close in case someone bothers you.”
Julian pulled the hood down lower until he could only see the ground immediately before him and held the skirt of the robe so that the hem didn’t drag. “Let’s go, then.”
Kalen had insisted the easiest way to get inside was through the front entrance. Julian regretted this now as they walked through the courtyard of solemn, worried Noctans. The back of his neck turned hot at the notion that they could perceive him through the robe and raise an alarm.
They were halfway across the courtyard when a real priest holding a tray full of thin, crumbly flatbreads approached. He said something in Nysari while lifting the tray higher.
Gripped by mind-wiping dread, it took a moment for Julian to raise two fingers the way Kalen had told him to. The priest said something else, a question threaded in the tone.
Julian, hoping his face was sufficiently covered in the hood’s shadow, shot a panicked look at Kalen. The astrologer mimed picking something up. Julian slowly reached out and took the tray of flatbreads, hands hidden within his sleeves. The priest said something Julian guessed equated to thank you and walked off.
“Uh,” Julian said.
“Just set it down somewhere,” Kalen said.
“Hold on.” Marcellus took the tray from Julian and trotted up to a nearby Noctan dressed in roughspun wool, a woman whose figure was stooped with age. He said something to her and her filmy eyes widened. She nodded creakily and accepted the tray from him.
Julian watched Kalen. The astrologer’s face was carefully blank. Julian got the sense it wasn’t from disapproval.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Kalen muttered when the soldier returned. “The supplicants would have found it easily enough.”
“She looked hungry.” Marcellus gestured Julian on.
Julian stopped beside a wide silver bowl that held a pale liquid. Following Kalen’s quiet instructions, he touched the oil—careful not to let anyone see his distinctly un-Noctan hands—and pressed it to the aides’ foreheads. The gentle fragrance of lavender rose around them.
Turning, he allowed himself a moment to gape at the opulence of the temple’s interior. He’d never been particularly religious—ironic, all things considered—but his mother had dragged him to the Deia basilica several times while growing up. She’d told him it was important to make sure the god didn’t feel forgotten or unloved, and that small offerings based on what they could afford—usually a loaf of fresh-baked bread or a stick of incense—would help Deia remember there was a realm to take care of.
A god shouldn’t need to be reminded, he’d thought then. The sentiment welled back up as the initial awe of the temple waned. Instead of taking care of his realm and his people, Nyx was busy attempting to seduce Taesia to do his bidding. Even Orsus, a god truly forgotten and unloved, only desired Julian for his ability to become a vessel.
The gods had long ago ceased to care about anything or anyone outside of themselves. This temple, these prayers, were in vain.
Julian followed Kalen and Marcellus through an archway, head down and hands clasped within the wide spill of his sleeves. With his peripheral vision limited he could only focus on the aides’ feet, stepping where they stepped.
“The Sanctuary is full of twisting hallways,” Kalen had told them earlier. “Take care that you don’t get lost. We’ll be taking a circuitous route to the planetarium so that we don’t arouse suspicion.”
“Will they recognize you?” Julian had asked.
“I’ve only been to this planetarium once, and it was in my youth.” The other man had paused a beat too long. “It should be fine.”
Julian was already sweating with every possible consequence of getting caught. Did Noctans hold trials, or did they simply execute criminals? Would it matter, considering he was Vitaean and the possible source of the attack on the city?
They were in an echoing hallway lined with paintings in gilt-wreathed frames when Kalen and Marcellus suddenly stopped. They doubled back and pulled Julian into an alcove with a door.
“Others up ahead,” Kalen whispered.
“Is that…?” Marcellus leaned out a bit more, squinting. “Nesch. I think that’s one of the royal astrologers. Caelith Pyrin—I remember her and my father getting drunk at a well-blessing ceremony.”
Julian lifted the edge of his hood to better see. A group of five people were clustered before a set of wide, dark doors etched with designs of the moon’s phases and inlaid with a material that shimmered like quartz. Three of them were guards, by the look of their uniforms; the other two bore the same tattoos as Kalen, except the constellations upon their brows were different.
The woman who was currently talking was tall and silver-haired, dressed in fine silks with tinkling silver bells hanging from her horns. She would have looked ethereal had it not been for the terror creasing her face and the way her voice wavered as she spoke. Julian, unable to decipher the words, knew they couldn’t be good by the way Kalen clenched his jaw.
“What does she mean by calamity?” Marcellus whispered.
Kalen shook his head. “She must have charted something. A prediction. Or maybe she’s referring to the attack on Astrum.”
At that moment, the group turned and began making their way down the hall—right toward them. Kalen reached for the doorknob, not bothering to look inside the room before he shoved the other two in.
As soon as Julian tripped forward he was consumed by darkness. He raised his arms to feel around.
“Where did you go?” he whispered. His voice only echoed back, the range rising and falling and distorting. “Kalen? Marcellus?”
He wandered farther into the room—or what he thought was a room. The pitch-black felt like an entity around him. Like he was in the bowels of a beast, if the beast was pure shadow.
The longer he stood, the more his mind began to unravel, spinning away and away until his arms numbly lowered back to his sides. He didn’t know if his eyes were open or shut.
There was breathing in the dark. From his own chest, from the vaulted ribs along the beast’s sides, from nothingness itself. He wanted to turn but found his body unwilling.
Eventually a tableau grew out of the nothing, a gray wash of images that brightened and sharpened the longer he stared at them. A scene from a memory, a dream, a reality filtered in contentment. A table littered with steaming dishes, and two chairs occupied across from his, a man and a woman beaming first at each other and then at him.
“Da?” he whispered.
Benjamín Luca smiled at his son, one hand holding his mother’s. In a voice Julian hadn’t heard in years he asked, “What is it, Jules?”
“Da!”
It was all Julian could do not to fling himself across the table before his father could disappear. But he was solid and real in Julian’s desperate embrace, and he could taste his own tears, and hear his mother bemoaning the food he’d knocked to the floor. Relief as strong and violent as a tidal wave crashed through him, and he let himself be swept away by it.
Shift, and there were calloused hands rearranging his arms from behind, showing him the best way to hold a bow.
“You want to pull back until you feel it in your shoulder,” Benjamín instructed. “It’ll get easier with practice.”
The wood was solid under his hands, the bowstring biting into the soft pads of his fingers. As he pulled it back he found no resistance, found himself growing taller, older, while his father’s hair grayed and the fine lines at the corners of his eyes deepened.
This is how it should have been.
Running through a field, tracking down beasts, Paris swearing and laughing at his side. The medals above the fireplace grew in number, some now bearing his name. The apartment fell away and instead there was a house, well insulated against the biting winters, with a bigger kitchen for his mother—Marjorie laughing with ease, with no coughing to disrupt her joy. Benjamín took her by the waist and kissed her cheek.
But this isn’t how it goes.
The warmth in his chest waned. He looked around at this unknown place, this unknown version of his father whom he’d never met.
“Jules?” His mother turned to him, worry in her eyes. “Is everything all right?”
“Do you want to go out back and practice?” his father asked, because of course he knew the best way to calm him. Julian started to nod, started to slip back into the current.
No, his mind yelled, to assert this wasn’t reality, wasn’t possible.
But what if it was? What if everything up until now had been a nightmare, and he was finally opening his eyes to a different morning, a different life?
He took a step forward. Stopped. Stood in his indecision until fingers brushed his back.
“He didn’t sleep well last night,” came a midnight voice behind him. “Nothing a strong cup of coffee won’t fix.”
His scalp prickled. He didn’t want to turn around, even though every part of him screamed to do just that. A warm hand on his arm, a body leaning into his.
The scent of cloves.
Julian turned his head.
Taesia smiled at him, sweet from sleep but still sharp at the edges, a cold yet brilliant dawn. Her hand trailed upward, cupping the back of his neck. They swayed together, inching into closer orbit.
“What do you think?” she whispered against his mouth. “Cake for breakfast?”
Pain blossomed along his palm. He yanked himself back.
“Jules, your hand!” His mother rushed to get a cloth as his blood dripped onto the freshly swept kitchen floor.
Taesia came closer and Julian fisted his hand tighter, driving his nails in deeper, lusting after the pain even as he attempted to writhe away from it.
Something curled up tight in his chest kicked awake. Whether it was god or beast, or merely the urge to let the outer world and its problems fall away into oblivion, he couldn’t tell.
This could be yours.
He groaned. It wasn’t his—it never would be.
But here, maybe…
Here, he could forget what he could lose, forget what he had to fear. There would be nothing to mourn.
I need to mourn, he thought fiercely as tears burned tracks down his face. I need to remember.
Remember his father’s guiding hand, his mother’s cooking, the simple serenity of waking up to a rainy morning and lounging in bed. Sleepless nights and labored breaths and bandaged wounds. The things that made him human and fragile and troubled and real.
He ripped himself free from Taesia and pushed her away. He only caught a glimpse of her aggrieved expression before hands grabbed him from behind. Julian fought them, twisting and snarling.
A yelp of pain preceded a blinding light. He gasped and fell to his knees, throwing up a protective arm.
“Kir, I think he dislocated my shoulder.”
Someone forced his arm away from his face. “Get a hold of yourself, Vitaean.”
Julian struggled to open his eyes, vision blurred by tears and silvery light. They were back in the hallway with the paintings. Kalen knelt before him, his face difficult to read. Marcellus stood rubbing his own shoulder.
Kalen grimly studied the wrist he was holding. Julian blinked until he could make out the bloody pinpricks on his palm, the black spindle of his veins. As they watched, the black faded back to green.
“Let me see your eyes.” The astrologer gripped Julian’s chin. Julian jerked his head away.
“I’m fine,” he rasped. “What—what happened?”
Marcellus crouched down. “Exteri sulumn. It would translate to, ah… dream room? Vision chamber?”
“A chamber fortified with malachite,” Kalen clarified. “With the right properties, the stones draw out traumas, wishes, and fears from those who enter. It’s used in certain therapies, as well as priest training.”
Julian noted the strain in Kalen’s eyes and the pale, thin line of Marcellus’s mouth. Marcellus glanced at Kalen and away, uncharacteristically reticent. Whatever these two had seen had also shaken them.
“How is that supposed to help people?” Julian demanded.
Kalen huffed. “You typically have a guide to assist you. To lead you through processing what you experience. Then healing begins.” He shook his head. “But we don’t have time for this. The guards are gone—we can enter the planetarium.”
As if Julian could simply move on from the crushing blow of remembering which reality was his, bereft of the newfound joy at thinking his father was alive, his mother healthy, and that Taesia was…
He shivered and clutched the front of his robes, allowing the horror to sweep through him for only a moment before shoving it down, along with everything else he was too afraid to touch. Everything that room had wanted to expose.
Marcellus helped him to his feet. Kalen regarded him, gaze flitting between Julian’s eyes and his wrist.
“Belua,” Kalen murmured to himself before turning away.
XIII
Shale and pebbles rained down as Risha climbed the last slope leading to an overlook Val had directed them to. Together, she and Jas made their way past shelves of tourmaline and crouched behind a boulder of gray hematite to survey the land below.
The field was flat, surrounded by huge standing stones like sarsens. It had obviously been the sight of a battle. The ground was a patchwork of brittle grass and pockets of mud, littered with fallen weapons that had long since been devoured by rust and moss. There were tracks belonging to animals or beasts or both, freshly stamped into the dirt and mud, though there was no sign of what had made them.
But what was most alarming was the massive skeletal arm that seemed to have punched its way through the ground, exposing half an ulna and radius along with a puzzle of carpals and phalanges. The bone was weathered and yellow, the hand curled inward.
Risha slipped Val off her back and turned him around. “Is this the place?”
“The one and only. That’s where the weapon’s hidden.”
“What… is it?” Jas asked.
“It’s an arm, what else does it look like?” Val snapped.
“But where did it come from?”
“Leshya,” Risha guessed. “If she was pressed to abandon Samhara, she would have kept it somewhere safe. She would have made sure no one other than a necromancer could reclaim it.”
“Not even the kings? Seems like they’d be desperate to get their bones back.”
“The kings have power over spirits, but I don’t think they can manipulate bone.” She reached into her pocket before realizing she’d given away her bone shards. Instead, her hand settled on the hilt of her small knife. “Val, didn’t you say this area was dangerous?”
“Well, yeah,” he muttered. “Lots of things are drawn to a battlefield, no matter how old it is. But this is weird. I’ve never heard of a battlefield without—” He stopped suddenly, then hissed, “Shit.”
Risha heard it, too: the rattling chime of a rib cage.
She lurched forward to peer around the boulder. There, making its gradual way toward them, was a Sentinel.
“That’s why there’s no beasts,” Val growled. “This ugly bastard drove them off.”
Jas stared anxiously at the approaching Sentinel. “We could wait here until it leaves?”
