Citadel of the Sky (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 1) (19 page)

Tiana’s shoulders slumped. “Fine. I still don’t know how to do that.”

His voice seemed somehow closer as he murmured, “I do. Come out.”

“But Kiar—”

“Will be helped, whether you are in the phantasmagory or not. You are hidden here. I am blind. Come.” And somehow he pulled on her, quite unlike the gentle tugging of Lisette’s touch and voice. Confused and curious, she didn’t resist. The storm of words faded away but as it did, she heard a gasp and a sob, the whimper of a child. Then she opened her eyes. Her nose was pressed against the wall in the Morning Room, grey emanation char on the wall and floor, and the sword Jinriki in her hand.

“Didn’t you get enough working-as-one when you stole my body?” She swallowed as she stared down at the blade. Somehow the voice in the phantasmagory seemed too real and complicated to originate from the sharp bit of metal.

**Take a seat and continue holding me. You’d be unhappy if you broke anything.**
Once she was sitting at the table again, he continued.
**I am a weapon. When you hold me in your hand, I am the staff that lends reach to your arm, the emphasis that puts weight to your words. It is my task to focus and strengthen whatever you do. In this case, you will track down that memory of a memory, and I will create the words of the Logos that match it, put those into your head, and you will muster the will to present them.**

He paused.
**It will be hard, and it will be painful. If it is too hard, you can simply stop. Perhaps there will be a chance to try again later. Perhaps not.**

Tiana scowled and tightened her two-handed grip on the sword. “Will you take over my body again?”

Suddenly the malevolent amusement and burning, violent hunger emanating from the blade was all around her. She choked and bent her shoulders against the onslaught of presence. She felt it scratching at her mind.

**Only as necessary, I promise. I am not going to attack you. Fear will only distract us. Find the memory. Want it. Will it. Name it.**

“But I don’t want it,” she whispered. “I’ve put it in the place I never look. There are other things there too.”

**Look anyhow.**

My mother didn’t love me. My father is insane.

My aunt and uncle killed themselves. I’m going to do the same thing someday, even if I don’t want to.

I will never be normal.

She gasped for breath as her eyes flooded with tears. “Nemesis beast. Will it appear? Will it be real? Here? Not here, please. Somewhere else. Outside. Please. Not here.”

A pause, and then he merely said,
**Not here.**

She took another deep breath, pulling it in through her nose and sending it out through her mouth. Then she reached for her memory of the cow-monster again. Revulsion flooded through her, and sudden terror that what this sky fiend god-blade had convinced her to do was not a good idea. Then needles stabbed into her skull from all directions, and the memory dissolved into impossibly intricate symbols.

Her gorge rose, but it was words that spilled from her mouth. The sounds were spiky, many-edged things that clawed their way up her throat, scored her tongue, and made her teeth vibrate. She tasted blood, and the warm trickle in her throat gagged her, but the words kept coming.

The symbols were nearly incomprehensible, but she could dimly sense the physical nature of the creature in the word-shapes that chewed up her mouth. The smell of blood was thick when the words that described the physical nature stopped, but she wasn’t done. There was still more.

She could barely imagine what she was describing now: the things that made it live and breathe, the things that gave it the nature of a monster. The words didn’t just rip up her throat now, they hurt her ears, harsh, ugly sounds that she had trouble believing her throat was actually making.

Something else was flowing through her, too: it seemed as if lightning chained the words together, and she could feel the lightning stealing some of her own strength with each syllable. She wanted to sag, to relax, to forcibly close her mouth, but—

Twist stepped into existence before her, his eyes wide. “Lord of Winter—Tiana—” His gaze moved to Jinriki and Tiana felt herself pulled to her feet, the endless painful words still gagging everything else. Unbidden by her, the hand holding Jinriki moved him into an offensive position, pointed directly at Twist.

Twist stepped back, and she desperately hoped her own horror showed in her eyes, that everything that was Tiana wasn’t obscured by blood and froth and the words.

His own word was as harsh as anything torn from her throat. “Enough.” Two syllables followed, and he slashed his hand out. The words of the Logos vanished from Tiana’s head, stolen by silence.

“A—Ah—,” Tiana tried to say, and felt her knees fold under her, depositing her onto the floor. Her hand remained clenched around Jinriki’s hilt. She swallowed a mouthful of blood and tears.

**Enough,**
said Jinriki smugly.
**We did enough. It is real, in a meadowed location very much not here. You did well, even though it took more than I anticipated.**
The black stone on the sword’s hilt was now clear, empty.

She realized her nose was bleeding too, but she couldn’t summon the energy to do anything other than tilt her head back. She’d done well, the sky fiend sword said. And she had no idea what that meant, to the rest of the world.

Twist said, “Let the sword go, Tiana.” And she tried. She tried to open her fingers, but they were white and tight.

“Jinriki!” she gurgled. “No!” Breathing hard hurt, but she couldn’t help panting with panic.

**Not me, little princess, but your own enthusiastic strength.**
He chuckled.
**But I will help. He is not dangerous, this time.**
Painfully, her fingers opened, and the blade dropped to the floor, the enveloping presence retreating with it.

Twist put his hands in his pockets and then pulled out a handkerchief to pass to her. “Do you know what you’ve been doing?”

She blotted at her lips and face, wincing. “Logos-working.”

He wrinkled his nose. “Very unbecoming Logos-working, Princess. Fiend’s magic is poisoning part of the Logos to make it pliable, ripping and shaping the Logos to your own ends. You created an abomination. I wonder why?”

Sudden anxiety spiked through her. “It’s real, right? What I did? It’s part of the Logos? The Logos is under it?”

Twist half-smiled, but his eyes were shadowed. “It’s real now. What has the sword been telling you? You know it’s not always a good idea to do what fiends suggest? There are consequences, as I’m sure you feel now.” He rubbed his face.

“It was my idea. To help Kiar and the plague victims.” Her voice sounded odd, liquid and husky. “I saw the illness. It wasn’t anything real. So we had to make it real. So it didn’t hurt them as much.” She realized her throat had been numb only when the feeling started coming back, and agony surged through her.

Twist stuck his hands in his pockets again, looking at the floor. Then he looked up and lightly said, “I think I’ll go find Kiar. You get back to your room and rest.” And then Tiana was alone.

**Not alone.**
Jinriki was pleased. And she didn’t know what to think about that.

A
stranger walked
through the village of Tranning, north to south. He looked at the sky, turned in a circle in the center of the village, but he did not stop. No one spoke to him, though he was watched. He was garbed in elaborate layers, decorated with black jewels and wrought metals. That he went south made him less remarkable, not more. There were ruins to the south, and every season strangers walked through town on their way to find adventure and treasure. Mostly, they came back, disappointed. The old men of the town liked to tell stories of the ones who succeeded. The innkeeper liked to console the ones who failed.

The stranger walked across the fields, even though there was a road. Winter wheat was sprouting in the harsh, midseason sunlight, and so the watchers knew he was an aristocrat. The Highway wound through the hills close to the ruins, and the carters and the morning messengers saw him as he strolled down the biggest hill. They called it Little Sel, for its resemblance to Sel Sevanth far to the north. The oldest of the ruins in the valley was cradled along its western flank, where the remains of the old temple sprawled on the shattered tile plaza.

The stranger in his old black and iron stood out against the cream and pink stone of the ruins. Once there had been red in the heart of the mosaic, an eye or a bloody moon, but time and dust had washed the crimson to rose. The hunters and foragers kept the ruins clear of encroaching greenery. It was their history, even if nobody remembered quite what it was.

On the highway, a carter waved cheerfully at the figure and nudged his dozing companion. Then he stood up, letting the reins fall, shading his eyes against the late morning sun the better to see. A messenger, trotting by on his fine, tall steed, drew to a stop as well.

The stranger in his old black and iron had been starkly visible against the pale plaza. But now there was a puddle of blackness around him. It obscured the rose moon.

The messenger, whose name was Trace, wondered if the stranger was wounded. But the pool spread more quickly than any man could bleed, until the entire plaza was drowned in night. The visitor himself was just a shadow at the heart of the murk that he had awoken; his iron trinkets were dull and unreflective, coated with gloom.

A tremor shook the ground and on the road, men concerned themselves with settling mounts, checking cargo. When they turned their attention to the ruins again, the man was utterly lost among the darkness. It was now that the watching carters decided to tend to their calling and urged their frightened beasts on. Another solitary rider pulled rein beside Trace, and Trace said a single word to him before the second rider continued his journey.

Time passed. The sun reached its zenith and began a long, slow descent. Trace, in no hurry, continued to observe the ruins. A son of the Hathlanan family urged his horse off the road, down the slope, determined to investigate further. Halfway between the ruins and the road, his horse balked. The rider fought the animal for only a moment before dismounting and leaving the horse to wait.

Trace observed.

The Hathlanan walked only half the distance between the ruins and his horse before he paused. He took a few more uncertain steps. Then he turned to run. From his vantage point, Trace could see the expression on the explorer’s face. It made him pull his bow from where it rested beside his saddle and send an arrow into the darkness.

The Hathlanan reached his horse and tried to mount, but the nervous animal shied and reared. Behind the explorer, the darkness was spreading, the puddle stretching after him. The explorer slapped his horse to send it fleeing and ran. And then he looked back.

The darkness swallowed him.

Trace lowered his bow, backed his horse up a few steps, absently reached out to catch the reins of the Hathlanan’s mount as it fled past. Then he hailed the next rider to pass. Once again, words were exchanged. This rider wheeled his horse to stare at the ruins and then resumed his journey at a gallop.

Trace resumed his vigil. When other travelers slowed to gawk at the ruins, he waved them on, but otherwise he remained still. The darkness in the ruins was growing. The old temple was gone, as was the smooth marble facing on the Little Sel hillside.

When the darkness was over halfway to the road, Trace’s agitation made his horse prance. He could see what the Hathlanan had seen.

The darkness was not a black storm cloud come to earth. It was not a localized patch of night. It was a hole, and on the other side was a place that had never known the kiss of the sun.

It expanded steadily, widened by the birthing struggles of something clawing itself from the ground. The newborn was already twice the height of a man, with a bell-shaped, obsidian head and a dozen spider-like legs.

Another earthquake shook the ground. Trace lost his hold on the explorer’s horse and the animal fled down the road. He spent some time settling his own horse as he watched the strangeness at the ruins.

The newborn doubled in size and widened as well, pushing the hole of darkness before it, until it was climbing the slope to the road. The newborn—but it was no creature, no strange fiend. It was a stronghold, pulling itself into existence. It was unornamented, but the material that comprised it was slick and organic, with swelling buttresses and tooth-like crenellations. The curve of its highest dome was very like the curve of a skull. The first layer of spider legs had curled up and a second, larger, thicker set was pushing up the next level of the fortress.

On that level, there were doors.

Trace looked up and down the road, and bowed his head. Then he pointed his horse north, towards the distant bulk of Sel Sevanth and Lor Seleni, and let it run, crouched low over its neck.

An hour later, the first doors of the dark fortress were free of the earth that had encased them. The growth of the fortress did not stop, but the great doors opened. A swarm poured out. Black silhouettes moved like dancers with great gaping maws. Giants, carved from the same material as the fortress, galloped on four human legs, holding chains in each massive hand. Eight-legged, winged creatures, like dog-sized grasshoppers with fins, lifted into the skies.

The fields of Tranning were taken before the village was, but the road fell before fields or village. Even where it hadn’t fallen into darkness, the road was torn and broken by the earthquakes. The creatures of the dark world roamed up and down the road looking for those unable to flee. When the fortress had swallowed the Little Sel, its growth seemed complete, but the dark world did not stop spreading until Tranning and its fields were just a memory, from the river to the far side of the road, fully twenty-four hours after the stranger in archaic clothing had walked south.