Lorelle of the Dark, page 18
He rose gracefully to his feet. “I have come seeking help, Aravelle.”
“Then you have come to the right place.”
“I would…” he hesitated, but it was as though, with only the start of his sentence, Aravelle had heard his entire message in her mind.
“Ah…” Her gray eyebrows lifted. “I see.” Her eyes narrowed to slits and she regarded Lorelle again. This time, it was more pointed, and clearly Lorelle came up short in the scrutiny.
Aravelle shook her head slowly. “Zaith… You reach for the stars like our beloved Uldantier.” She indicated the sword-wielding figure in the statue. “I fear you shall be disappointed. This one is nearly dead from the Luminent curse. She will need more strength than she has left, I fear, for what you desire. And though her loyalty is strong, it is not toward you. Are you sure you would have her touch the Cairn?”
“It is… necessary,” he said.
Lorelle didn’t quite understand what they were talking about, but she knew it had to do with whatever magic was needed to mend her soul.
Aravelle drew a long breath and let it out. “I see.” She shook her head regretfully. “You walk in lands that would blind the rest of us, Zaith. In these dangerous days, you must be our eyes. We will trust you.”
A murmur of disapproval rippled through the crowd. There was a sharp clatter, steel on stone. Lorelle glanced to her left in time to see the Nox who’d drawn his knife earlier, Savenk. He’d thrown the knife to the cobblestones and stalked away, through the crowd until he disappeared.
Aravelle ignored the outburst. “I ask you again, Glimmerblade. You are certain this is what you would choose?”
“It is.”
“Then come with me.”
Aravelle turned and started away from the fountain. Zaith moved to take her arm. The crowd made a hole leading up the widest street, and Lorelle, Zaith, Aravelle, and her attendants moved through the rest of the seething Nox in silence. If glares were whips, Lorelle would have died of a thousand cuts.
Aravelle motioned with her free hand. “Come here, girl,” she said. “Take my other arm. Help an old woman.”
Lorelle moved to the her side and gently took hold of the thin, fragile arm. The old Nox glanced up from her stoop with an awkward bend of her neck. “You’ve shocked us by coming here, dear, but I can only imagine what a shock all of this is for you. Will you tell me what you know of the Nox?”
“I—That you live in the noktums. That you were once Luminents who had… fallen from grace.” She felt heat in her cheeks as she said it aloud.
“And no doubt that we murder and steal and lie.” The old Nox gave her a wizened smile. “And that we would boil your bones for our stew?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, perhaps there is some truth to that.”
Zaith raised an eyebrow.
“I am sure we would have fallen from grace, if we’d ever had any grace to start with.” Aravelle winked.
Despite herself, Lorelle found that she liked Aravelle. She felt an easiness around the old Nox, an acceptance that stood in stark contrast to the hostile stares from all around them. Aravelle seemed like someone who had seen the turning of the world so many times that she was incapable of being surprised by swift turns of events.
Then something occurred to Lorelle, striking her like a bolt of lightning.
It was possible that this entire exchange, this seemingly innocuous chit chat, was Aravelle’s polite way of waiting for Lorelle to introduce herself. Zaith’s scolding about not giving her name to one who had snuck up on her—a Nox custom—came back in vivid detail. Though Lorelle had overheard Aravelle’s name, the old Nox had not offered it. Zaith had not introduced her nor had Aravelle asked for Lorelle’s name. That suddenly seemed conspicuous. If giving one’s name was a form of deference in Nox culture—given to a stranger whose abilities and experience outstripped one’s own—it made sense that this would also extend to an elder.
Lorelle stopped and inclined her head. “My apologies, venerated one. My name is Lorelle Miere.”
Lorelle raised her head and saw a merry twinkle in Aravelle’s eyes again, and she nodded her head as though Lorelle had passed some test.
“My thanks, Lorelle Miere. I am Aravelle L’orntia, elder of Nox Arvak and Voice of the Dark.”
Lorelle inclined her head in an imitation of Aravelle’s gesture. “I am most pleased to meet you,” she said in the courtly manner her parents had taught her when she’d first come to Usara.
“The similarities in our names is a curiosity to me,” Aravelle said. “Aravelle and Lorelle. We could be sisters by the sound of it. I wonder if we share a branch somewhere far down the tree.”
“That we are related, you mean?” Lorelle asked.
“Sometimes the Dark speaks in such ways. It appears, perhaps, that you are meant to be here.” She glanced sidelong at Zaith. “Tell me, has our Glimmerblade already begun educating you?”
Lorelle thought of the whirlwind of the last day. By Lotura, had it only been a day? She felt like she’d lived an entire lifetime.
“Yes… Aravelle.” Lorelle felt like she should be giving the woman an honorific, calling her “Your Majesty or “Your Grace” or something of that nature, but she had no idea what that honorific should be.
“She is lacking in knowledge, Aravelle,” Zaith said. “Even of Luminent culture.”
“Hmmm,” Aravelle said.
The crowd slowly dispersed as they walked up the cobblestone street, which Lorelle had deduced was a main road through the city. By the time they reached an open-air rotunda at the end of the street, only Zaith, Lorelle, and Aravelle remained. The crowd had completely gone.
The rotunda was made up of purple pillars and lintels of marble with glowing white veins. In the center was a craggy black stone over ten feet tall. The jagged monolith jutted left and right as it reached toward the indigo sky. Dark, pulsing purple light glowed deep in cracks running the length of the stone.
“The Cairn,” Zaith said.
“I will leave you now, Glimmerblade. Proceed with my blessing. Please the Lords.” She gave the barest gesture with two fingers and he bent before her. She kissed him lightly on the cheek. “The Dark keeps all secrets.” She whispered the words like a prayer.
“So we listen close,” he murmured back with the same reverence.
The old Nox turned. Three young Nox in black robes materialized from the irregular shadows that seemed everywhere in this place, came to her side, took her arms, and helped her walk away.
When they were alone, she turned to face Zaith.
“This is where you will mend your soul,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-three
Lorelle
Lorelle gazed at the monolith. Just looking at it eased the burn in her chest like traveling through Zaith’s cloak had done. She glanced back to where Aravelle had retreated.
“Who is she?” Lorelle asked. “The Nox queen?”
“We don’t have queens in Nox Arvak,” he said.
“I just… She is obviously a person of great importance.”
He smiled softly, as though her comment was an understatement.
“That mob wanted to kill me, but they didn’t because of her. How should I call her? Does she have some honorific?”
“Aravelle is the Voice of the Dark.”
“So, she is your leader.”
“She is the one for whom we still our hearts to listen to her words. Of us all, she best understands the whispers of the Dark. And so she speaks for it.”
The Dark keeps all secrets, so we listen close…
“She said a phrase to you,” Lorelle said. “What was that?”
“A reminder. We learn the words when we are children. We spend our lives living up to it.”
“Secrets and listening?”
“Simply one line from the Nox Decrete.”
“Decrete?”
“A mantra, if you will.”
“That one line is your mantra?”
“It is the first line meant to indicate the rest.”
“How much more is there?”
“Would you like to hear it?”
“Please.”
He spoke the words softly, with reverence:
The Dark keeps all secrets, so we listen close
The Dark lives in silence, so we are its voice
The Dark swells with power, so we may know strength
The Dark holds our future, to give us at length
“So, everything comes from the Dark,” she said.
“Is it really so different from how Lightlanders feel about the sun?”
She looked around. Her new eyes brought the noktum into brilliant, colorful clarity. It was as though, because there was no light overhead, everything glowed with its own inner vibrancy. There were still shadows everywhere, but they weren’t the same as shadows in a world lit by sunlight. The patches of darkness weren’t—couldn’t be—a function of light because there was no light. Shadows existed as their own entities, like the buildings and the trees. Some didn’t even make sense, they just grew out as incongruous formations from walls or pillars or trees, like animals lying in wait.
“We have crossed the first threshold,” Zaith said. “Aravelle’s blessing. You have permission to approach the Cairn.” He tipped his chin at the craggy, cracked monolith.
“She calls you Glimmerblade sometimes. Don’t you have an honorific for her?”
“I’ll tell you all, Lorelle. But would you not rather have this discussion once you’ve mended your soul?”
The moment he mentioned her pain, the searing burn seemed to increase.
“How does it work?”
“Put your hands upon the Cairn,” he said.
“And then what?”
“That is all. It will do the rest. The pain you feel will be replaced by a calm you have never before experienced.”
“Just put my hands on it,” she repeated.
He gestured with his hand for her to proceed.
“What’s going to happen?” she asked. “Beyond what you’re saying.”
“It will unravel the need you have developed.”
“How is it going to do that?”
“If you do not do this first, we cannot go hunting for the Plunnos,” he said.
Already Zaith seemed to understand her. He was right. That was really the only question that mattered.
She faced the Cairn, reached out, and put her hands on it.
Chapter Twenty-four
Lorelle
The moment Lorelle touched the Cairn, darkness dropped on her like a shroud and she went blind. She gasped and tried to let go, but she wasn’t in her body anymore. It was as though her heart and soul had tumbled into a free fall inside the darkness of the stone.
She was vaguely aware of her body somewhere far behind her. She could feel her fingers clutching the stone, her eyes staring sightlessly ahead, but it was all so far away. She was barely connected to her hands or legs anymore, though she could feel her fingers clenching the stone hard; she simply couldn’t make them let go.
But the soul-burn in her chest was as fierce as ever.
“Lorelle…” A whispering voice slithered past her, next to her ear. Except she had no ears.
“Where am I?” she screamed, but she had no voice. Instead, the intent of her message moved away from her like ripples on a pond.
“Lorelle…” the darkness said again, and the voice became clearer. “Why have you come?”
“To mend my soul,” she said into the darkness.
She couldn’t see anything, couldn’t make out the littlest detail, let alone any kind of distance, but she felt like she was being pulled forward.
“This… is your soul,” the darkness said.
Her soul-burn flared. The blackness shifted and a tapestry floated forward. The glowing threads made beautiful pictures, one after the other, shifting images. There were too many pictures to conceivably fit, but somehow, they did, each growing larger when she focused on it, then shrinking back when her gaze moved on, as though her gaze alone was a magnifying glass. The pictures were moments in her life, each one framed in golden thread the color of her hair.
In one picture she walked by the Iridescent Canal in Lumyn, seven years old.
In another, a vicious tangle of black threads showed her and Rhenn standing before the noktum at ten years old, Vamreth aiming a crossbow at them.
Another showed black threads mixed with shining white as she and Rhenn discovered their first Amulet of Noksonon.
Yet another wove together vibrant reds, creating the moment when she sat on the slope in Rhenn’s camp, her knees bent and her feet bare, wearing her red dress for Khyven.
But the blanket was not whole. One entire side had been ripped away, exposing angry, agonized tendrils burning like glowing coals, squirming like worms. These threads sought the missing half, the half of her soul that now resided inside Khyven. The pictures that moved across the tapestry approached the rip, then recoiled and shrank as though the raw edge was painful to them.
“Mend it…” the darkness said.
“How?” she cried.
“Mend it…” the darkness repeated.
“How!”
She desperately studied the questing threads. There was nothing for them to latch onto, nothing except the darkness.
The darkness…
The writhing tendrils flailed in the black, but Lorelle suddenly imagined the darkness as a vast tapestry of its own with threads just waiting to tie into hers.
The moment she thought this, the reaction was immediate.
One writhing, burning thread burrowed into the darkness. It turned black and the darkness seeped into the tapestry along that single thread, weaving into the pictures.
She felt a slight ease in the burn. She imagined a second thread doing the same. It turned black, another thin stripe raced across the tapestry of her soul. Then another. And another.
With each thread that turned black, the tapestry not only became darker, but the wriggling threads eased, linking to the darkness and going quiet.
Her pain began to fade, as did her craving for Khyven.
She gasped in relief as she changed thread after thread. The pictures remained the colors they had been, depicting the same moments from her life, but the frames changed, one by one, from gold to black. The remaining threads responded, connecting to the darkness without her asking, without her envisioning it. Thread after thread after thread changed, racing through the tapestry.
“Wait!” she cried, feeling a sudden, profound remorse. The pain was receding, but so was her bond to Khyven. Was that what she wanted?
“Stop!” she shouted.
The transformation ceased immediately, but it was almost too late. Only eight threads had not connected to the darkness.
“Finish…” the darkness urged, and the compulsion was so strong she almost gave in. It was just eight little threads. What did she care about eight little threads?
Another thread slowly changed, racing across the tapestry. Then another. Then another—
“Stop!” she insisted, panicked.
“You must finish…”
“No!”
The will of the darkness set itself against her, pushing, and she felt the walls of her mind collapse. The darkness oozed inside her, tried to steal her resistance. It was in her soul; throughout everything she was or had been.
“No!” she screamed in that place where no voice carried. She fought with everything she had.
“No!”
The darkness crashed in on her from all sides, drowning her.
And she knew no more.
Chapter Twenty-five
Lorelle
Lorelle’s eyelids fluttered open. Zaith was leaning over her. She lay in his lap while he held the back of her head like he’d done before, fingers intertwined in her hair. Her mind felt thick and cloudy. She remembered putting her hands on the Cairn, falling into darkness and then…
Nothing. She remembered nothing after that.
“What happened to me?” she asked.
“How do you feel?” He pushed tendrils of black hair away from her face.
Black hair!
Lorelle sat bolt upright and pulled away from him. She yanked her hair in front of her eyes. It was midnight black with a purple sheen, just like Zaith’s.
Her arms were midnight black like Zaith’s and Aravelle’s!
“Lotura!” she gasped. She strained to remember what had happened. She felt like she should know. Something momentous. Something… hard. A fight?
She couldn’t remember.
Zaith was calm. “Tell me how you feel.”
“Like someone… twisted my body into the shape of a new one…” She trailed off.
Then it hit her. Her soul-burn was gone. The searing pain was just… gone. Nothing at all.
“The burn…” she whispered.
“Yes,” Zaith said.
She felt giddy. She felt like she could jump straight up into the sky. Lotura, the pain was gone! She had forgotten what it felt like to be free of the tearing, searing agony.
“As I promised, you are free.”
“But I don’t… I don’t remember what happened. Why did my hair… my skin…?”
A flicker of a memory flashed through her, quick and elusive like a glimmer of light. Pain. Anguish. A fight…
But then the memory was gone.
“The Cairn unlocks your potential,” he said. “It strips the Luminent curse laid upon you at birth.”
“It was… I think it was painful,” she murmured. But no, that wasn’t the right word. Why couldn’t she remember?
“Is it painful now?”
“No…” She didn’t feel the burning of the incomplete soul-bond anymore, but there was something different inside her replacing it, a coolness like the air that comes off a lake. She looked around at the strange noktum with its indigos and purples and she suddenly felt like she belonged here. Here felt… safe, not dangerous.
