Lightbringer
A vision took her: herself sleeping comfortably in a white nightgown, on a white bed, in a white tower, with a white shore far below. She knew it was a lie and tried to resist it, tried to punch her way to freedom, but the vision was too powerful, and it claimed her.
She was the Eliana sleeping in a strange white bed, and as she dreamed, she smiled, and knew nothing of grief, and was content.
A cool hand stroked her back. Sleep, Eliana. There is much work to do, I see. More than I had imagined. Sleep. Dream.
She obeyed.
7
Audric
“Merovec has begun calling elementals before him in the Hall of the Saints for questioning. From among our citizens and from his own ranks. We’ve heard he asks them if they know where Rielle has gone. If they speak to angels. If they are loyal to him, or to you. He does not allow the magisters to witness these proceedings—only the Archon, and only because he stopped using his magic upon his election, decades ago. What the Archon sees during these long hours, we do not know. Odo and I are doing what we can to comfort families and quietly grow our efforts with Red Crown, but the air is rank with confusion and fear, and we must move slowly.”
—Encoded letter from Miren Ballastier to the exiled king Audric Courverie, dated November 19, Year 999 of the Second Age
At home, when Audric had been unable to sleep, he had never minded.
He had his books for solace, the royal archives to disappear into, the gardens and catacombs to wander. As a child, he’d had his cousin Ludivine and his best friend, Rielle, who had never minded being woken up for a nighttime expedition down to the kitchens for sweets or joining him in exploring an unfamiliar wing of the castle. Baingarde was massive, an ancient and rambling construction, the secrets of which Audric had spent his entire life unraveling—just in time, he reflected wryly, to be driven away from it.
And then, of course, in recent months, sometimes he had been unable to sleep simply due to the sheer joy of knowing Rielle was there beside him in his bed. He would close his eyes and imagine their lives together, a golden future stretching on for decades.
At night, with Rielle beside him, he found it easier to ignore the dangerous reality of their changing world.
But here in Quelbani, in the queens’ palace, there was no solace to be found, and Rielle was so far away that the distance between them felt incomprehensible.
He tried reaching for her. Once, on that awful day when the fanatical members of the House of the Second Sun had taken their own lives on Baingarde’s steps, Ludivine had connected the thoughts of all three of them at once. At the time, Audric had thought it a careless mistake made by Ludivine in a moment of panic and horror.
Now, he could be sure of nothing.
But perhaps something of that three-person mental link remained. Some ragged, hair-thin thread he could access if he was lucky.
As if he had ever been lucky.
Another wave of weariness swept through him. He stopped restlessly pacing through his rooms to stand at one of the windows. Closing his eyes, he thought of Celdaria: the twelve snowcapped mountains encircling Âme de la Terre; the verdant farmlands in central Celdaria; the glittering canal cities hemming the southern coast.
Rielle? He felt tentative, embarrassed, as he reached out into the breezy Mazabatian night with his thoughts. Are you there?
He waited tensely for several minutes. He sent pleas out into the night, apologies, declarations of love.
Where are you?
Are you safe?
Rielle, I’m so sorry.
I love you, my darling, and I always will.
My light and my life, please come back to me.
But no answer came, and he gave up at once with a frantic sort of desperation, his mind a storm of barely suppressed screams.
He turned away from the window, dragging his hand through his curls, and then, the futility of his attempt slamming into him with dizzying force, he burst out onto the terrace, frantic for fresh air.
Some fifteen feet away, Atheria lay in her bed. Audric had asked his Mazabatian attendants to bring her cushions, as Rielle had done at home. It was a ridiculous sight—the massive, muscled godsbeast sitting primly on her pile of tasseled velvet, her enormous wings folded around her body like a feathered shell—and made him feel so homesick for his bedroom, and Rielle in it, and Atheria just outside, and his people sleeping in their beds in the city below, that his tired eyes filled with tears. He stood beside Atheria and leaned heavily on the stone railing.
“She may not even be in Celdaria by now,” he said, gesturing vaguely toward the north. “She could be anywhere. I might have been sending my thoughts to the wrong place. I can’t send my thoughts, not like she can—not like they can—and I’m stupid for trying.”
Atheria pressed her nose against his hip, her nostrils flaring.
“I should ask Lu to help me, but I don’t want to ask her for anything.”
With a soft, curious trill, Atheria rested her muzzle on the railing beside his elbow, as if sensing she should comfort him but not particularly wanting to leave her pillows.
“But,” Audric continued with a weary sigh, “that feels like a sort of stubbornness I should work through and not allow to control me.” He glanced at Atheria. “Isn’t that right?”
The chavaile, momentarily distracted, snorted at a white moth that had alighted on her leg.
“Right. Thank you. An excellent talk.”
Irritable, and irritated with himself for feeling irritable, he resumed pacing, this time on the terrace. His exhaustion was so complete that he felt not quite intact within his own body, dizzy and parched. He hadn’t truly slept since arriving in Quelbani four days ago, and he had hardly eaten. His dreams were shapeless and menacing, and every time he woke, it was with Rielle’s name on his lips.
A horn announced the arrival of a boat in the nearby harbor. He squinted, following the line of the lantern-lit shore, and at last saw a ship out on the dark water—squat and plain, lit by the rising dawn. There was activity on the beach. Rushing figures, casted lanterns sputtering to life.
A joyful thought came from Ludivine: It’s Sloane, and Evyline, and the Sun Guard. They’re all alive and safe.
Audric stood motionless at the railing, watching the ship bearing his fellow Celdarian exiles glide toward the shore. Exiles loyal to him, who had risked their lives and abandoned their country to help him. He knew what they would want—to help him take back his throne, to help him find Rielle.
Audric could not imagine those things ever happening. His mind felt clumsy with despair; he couldn’t clear his thoughts and didn’t want to try. He was convinced the fuzzy, twisting grip of grief would never release him and had come to feel glad for it, for if the grief left him, he feared some sort of anchor would be dislodged. He would dissolve without it, simply float away and no longer exist—which wasn’t the most terrible thing he could imagine.