Lightbringer

Eliana’s palms began to burn. She clenched her fingers tight and turned, pressed her back flat against the pillar, tried to catch her breath. A screaming crowd rushed by. An elbow jostled her. A man with a shrieking child thrown over his shoulder ran past. From somewhere in the chaos came an explosive crash of glass and wood. Screams rose and were quickly silenced.

“You’ll have to fight them,” Remy said quietly at her side. “We’ll never make it otherwise. There are too many of them.”

Eliana squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t. She’ll find me. He’ll find me.”

“And they’ll come for you, and you’ll fight them here instead of there.”

“Or they’ll kill me where I stand without ever having to leave the castle.”

Something tugged at her breast, a familiar urgent pull. Her castings sparked and popped like a growing fire.

A voice of thousands, of millions, neither kind nor cruel, spoke in her mind. A single cold instruction, spoken not with words but with feeling, with a particular flavor of power veering left in her veins.

there

Eliana’s eyes flew to the smoldering iron gate. She pushed off the pillar and shoved her way through the running crowd. Remy hissed her name, grabbed for her sleeve. She pulled free, crawled over the wrecked gate, and entered a small courtyard. One of many, she could see, of various sizes and designs. Immaculate stone arcades connected them, and narrow passages capped with vine-draped arbors created a maze of walking paths. Pale statues lined the walls, hidden in private alcoves piled with flowers. Others stood proudly on the elaborate cornices, robed and stern. Eyes turned to the sky, shields in hand.

“These must be temples,” Remy whispered, joining her with his sword raised. “There’s Saint Marzana. And again, over there. You can tell by the shield she holds.”

But Eliana hardly heard him. She was staring at the far end of the courtyard, where a man and boy knelt beside a woman twisting in pain. The man was pale with graying hair, his skin lined but his movements deft as he cut an arrow from the woman’s shoulder. She screamed past the cloth stuffed into her mouth, turned her face into the boy’s arm. She crushed his hand, her knuckles white with pain, but the boy did not flinch. Ash and dirt streaked his sweaty face, but his eyes were keen, a watchful bright blue.

Eliana, watching him, could hear little but her own pounding heart. The screams and crashes of battle faded. Remy murmured a question, then spotted the boy and drew a sharp breath.

The sound unstitched her. Her eyes filled with tears as she watched the boy pass a jar to the man beside him, then bandages with which to dress the wound. Everything about his face was familiar—the stubborn jut of his jaw, the set of his serious brow. His hair, ashen in the dim light, shaggy and mussed, in need of a trim.

His name was in her throat. She clutched the front of her coat, and then Remy’s hand, because if she didn’t hold on to him, she would rush across the courtyard, all reason abandoned, for the chance to look even once into Simon’s eyes, innocent and not yet full of hurt.

A few moments later, the man patted the woman’s shoulder. Simon’s father, Eliana assumed, her head spinning wildly. Garver Randell. She watched Simon help the woman to her feet. His father fastened a cloth wrap around her torso, gingerly placed a fussing baby inside it. The woman nodded weakly, then pressed a kiss to Simon’s head and limped away through one of the narrow courtyard passages.

Simon’s father hurried through another passage at once, and Simon followed close behind, their bag of supplies strapped to his back.

Once, before he disappeared into the shadows, Simon paused and looked back over his shoulder. Such a frown on his face, such a fearsome little glare. There were echoes of the man she loved, the man she had left to die at the hands of his tormentor. Thinking of it, the air left her lungs; she gripped Remy’s hand hard and tried to push from her mind the image of Simon, alone at Corien’s mercy.

Then the young Simon was gone, hurrying after his father, and the courtyard was empty—except for one shape, long and dark and lithe, like the one she had seen only moments ago slithering down a building.

And now it was here, darting into the passage Simon and his father had taken.

Eliana launched into a fevered run across the cobbled stonework and into the shadows, and when she emerged into another larger courtyard, she saw the beast crouched to jump—scaled and bulbous, yet feline in its grace. Dragon-shaped, but a mutilated, vicious version. Charred castings had fused with its body, but it seemed not to care. It stared at the people gathered nearby. Simon was there, and his father, and several others, huddled around a man lying prone on the ground. They didn’t see the beast, nor the three others approaching through the courtyard’s garden. Tails lashing the air, long snouts glistening with blood.

Eliana did not think once of her sword or the knives at her hip and in her coat. She snapped her wrists to awaken her castings and threw herself at the beast she had followed. She tackled it, rolled, then slammed her palms against its hide and sent it flying through the courtyard. It hit a wall with a startled yelp, then fell and did not rise again.

The small group of people cried out and scattered.

Eliana turned away from them, Simon’s presence a hook in her heart. The three other beasts converged on her, mouths open wide, their broad malformed paws pounding the ground. A child rode one, pressed flat against the back of its beast. Gray-eyed and silent, the child sent spinning discs of light flying at her like arrows.

Eliana dodged them, then flung back at the child raw waves of power, furious and blazing. In mere seconds, her attackers were ashes. Shards of the blown-apart castings skittered across the ground like sparks, then went dark.

Eliana stood, breathing hard. She saw Remy watching from the shadows, ready to come to her aid. He shook his head at her, his mouth thin. Eliana flexed her hands, wrangled her wild thoughts, commanded her castings to dim.

But was it too late? The people in the courtyard had seen her. Had Corien? Had Rielle?

She held still, feeling for a change in the air, but none came. A moment passed, then two.

She dared to glance back. Simon was gone, as was his father, and Eliana bit back a wild cry. An ache seized her, so hard it felt like a punch to the chest.

A man stepped forward, tall and shadowed. He gestured the others away, sent them scurrying off through a narrow passage between buildings of pale stone. Saints stood at every corner, watching with blank white eyes.

Soon, the man stood with only two others—soldiers, hands on their swords and shoulders square with tension. The man approached Eliana slowly. One of the soldiers hissed, “Odo!”

The man waved them back, and as he came out of the shadows, Eliana saw his face. He had brown skin, smooth and taut, oiled black hair in neat waves, a neat black beard. He stopped a few paces away, narrowed his dark eyes, and said, “Who are you?”