A Queen of Ice (A Trial of Sorcerers #5)

Chapter 29

29

L orn . Deneya’s left hand. The counterpart to Rebec. He was the secret master for what had been the Court of Shadows.

The last time Eira had seen him had been in the chamber of the Specters, deep beneath Risen, the night it had been attacked by the Pillars. While that night had been hard, whatever Lorn had faced since had clearly been harder. His face was gaunt, eyes sunken and haunted. There was a perpetual furrow to his brow, giving his face the appearance of a hardened soldier in place of the somewhat secretarial image Eira had always had of him.

And the scars… It looked as though someone had tried to cut his windpipe from his throat. Given their severity, it was a wonder they hadn’t succeeded.

“This is the last place I expected to see you,” he said. “Granted, I never expected to see you again.”

“I can say the same.”

“Lorn.” Olivin’s illusion had dropped and he wasted no time crossing to the other elfin, clasping forearms with a friendly shake. “It is a relief to see you alive and in one piece.”

“Alive, yes. In one piece…” Lorn released Olivin and massaged his throat. The savagery had impacted his voice.

“What happened to you?”

“Risen fell.” He lowered his eyes and stared off into the corner.

“Lorn.” Eira shifted her stance, folding her arms. She tried to summon the image of Adela. “I realize you have been through a great deal. But right now, we need information and you’re the only one who can give it to us.”

His eyes turned back to her. She saw the unspoken question in them.

“We are going to Risen to kill Ulvarth,” Eira said plainly. If her worst fears that he had been indoctrinated by the Pillars were true, it didn’t matter that she was telling him as much. They were already going to have to kill him for simply seeing them. “Any information you have, however out of date it might be, will be of use. So I need to know everything you know.”

He assessed her for several steady heartbeats. Eira didn’t move. Flinching, showing doubt in any way, would have him questioning her capabilities—her authority in the situation.

“Lumeria’s castle is dust and every noble or commonfolk who was considered even remotely loyal died with her.” He stepped back and leaned against the wall as if he could no longer support himself under the weight of her stare—more likely the weight of his memories. “The Pillars had infiltrated it, or tunneled beneath it, perhaps like they did to attack the Court of Shadows, and lined the bedrock with flash beads. The castle sank into the hilltop with a rumble and a gasp, collapsing as if it were never there in the first place.”

“He had all the information he needed,” Eira figured.

“What?” Olivin looked to her.

“He was the head of the Swords of Light. He’d had unfettered access to the Archives for years and knew them better than anyone. There were records in there about the architecture of Risen going back to its founding.”

“I remember reading them,” Alyss realized in quiet horror. “All about the architecture of the castle and Archives—the building of Risen itself.”

“The Archives are his seat of power now. One ruler, ordained by Yargen, a merger of faith and law.” Lorn’s words turned so bitter that Eira’s own mouth soured. “He returned from the coliseum and made a show of carrying a flame through the streets—a holy fire from where he had expunged Raspian’s evil from our lands. A fire he merged with the smoking remnants of the castle.”

“To make a new Flame of Yargen,” Eira murmured. Unequivocally real this time. Sourced from godly acts, as Ulvarth spun it.

“It burns now not just in the brazier of the Archives, but all around it.”

“Was there any resistance?” Yonlin asked. The words were filled with a childlike hope, fragile and pointless. “Surely not all of Risen submitted to him.”

“Well, that’s why I’m here.” Lorn gave Yonlin a weak smile, not nearly as reassuring as he seemed to be making the effort for. “Not all of us gave in.”

“Just most.” Ducot read between the lines of Lorn’s words in the same way Eira did.

“What were people to do?” Lorn gestured to the windows. “You’ve seen Hokoh, how they’ve gutted any dissonance—literally.” Ulvarth was taking a page out of Carsovia’s books. The image of the man being strung from the entry arch of the town was forever seared onto Eira’s eyes. “And here is even without his displays of holy fire.”

“Elaborate,” Eira demanded.

“He summons flames and explosions without so much as a single glyph.”

She suggested the obvious. “Flash beads?”

“We all think so…but it’s seamless. Impossible to figure out how, in many cases.” Lorn shook his head. Eira wondered if there was some kind of trigger on his runic armor, akin to the ring that fired the pistol. “Many have truly begun to believe he was ordained by the goddess—that he wields her divine power.”

“Since most don’t know about flash beads…what else would they think?” Cullen said gravely, folding his own arms in thought.

It didn’t matter to Eira what others thought. Ulvarth could be the best thing that happened to Meru. She was still going to kill him.

“You said ‘we all,’” she pointed out. “There’s more in your maroon-cloaked resistance.”

Lorn chuckled. “So you noticed we were following you… You’re not the single-minded young woman I first met, blindly charging headfirst, are you?”

“Oh, I can still be quite single-minded.” Eira’s arms relaxed to her sides. “But I try not to rush in, especially when my friends’ lives are on the line.”

He gave an approving nod following a brief assessment, as if somehow deciding she was telling the truth. “Rebec is back in Risen, trying to hold the Court of Shadows together as best she’s able. They’re being a pain in Ulvarth’s side, but unfortunately not a real threat.”

Ducot let out an audible sigh of relief, so palpable that Eira felt guilty for ever doubting that he had genuinely cared for the woman to first find him and offer him shelter following Ulvarth’s brutality. Even if he was a pirate and had Adela…Rebec’s gesture meant something. Of course he cared.

“Deneya?” Olivin asked, almost timidly. Her name was a notable absence.

Lorn shook his head sadly. “We…We searched for her in the rubble. But came up empty-handed. She hasn’t been heard from since.”

A heavy moment of silence was shared by them all for the former leader of the Court of Shadows. She could still be alive, missing didn’t mean dead. But Eira couldn’t imagine a world in which Deneya wouldn’t do everything in her power to aid the resistance. Her gut twisted with grief. She had a complicated relationship with the woman, but Deneya had been the first one to offer her vengeance. To offer her a way out of the life she would’ve been trapped in had she remained on Solaris.

The woman had deserved much better and, even if it looked bleak, a part of her would hold hope that Deneya would one day be found.

“I’m sorry,” Eira spoke for them all, and meant it. Lorn’s eyes shone in the lowlight with tears he clearly did not let fall. Probably tears he’d already cried to the point that there was no more that he could bear to shed.

“It’s been hard,” Lorn admitted. The words seemed like a grave understatement. “There’s only a handful of us left. Though our numbers grow by the day—lords and ladies who are resistant to this new regime change. What few remain after the tournament. Admittedly, in a self-serving way, since they were people who didn’t stand up for Ulvarth when he was first tried and whom he now holds a vendetta against. But we aren’t in a position to turn allies away.

“Our ranks grew enough that I could come here, to Hokoh. Thinking that perhaps if we could stop his influence from spreading—keep it to Risen alone—we could raise a resistance from the outside.” Lorn dipped his chin and sank further against the wall. “It’s proven challenging.”

Eira opened her mouth to speak, but he moved before she could get a word out. Lorn practically lunged from the wall, hands out, appealing to all of them.

“But, with you all here…powerful, capable, fresh-eyed and full-bellied…we can launch our countermeasure and drive them out of Hokoh once and for all.”

“What’s this countermeasure?” Olivin asked.

Eira was already skeptical of the idea, but she didn’t let it show.

“We’re going to hit them where it hurts—their temple. If we can bring that down, then better sense is more likely to prevail and we can teach the people of Hokoh to fight back. The people whose hearts haven’t been corrupted by the Pillars—which is still the majority—will know they no longer have to live in fear. That resistance is possible. By the time the Pillars back in Risen know of Hokoh having fallen at all, we’ll have an army.”

It was optimistic at best. Foolish, more realistically. She’d seen the people of Hokoh readily bow before the statue of Ulvarth and swear their fealty. There hadn’t been rage simmering behind their eyes. There wasn’t reluctance to their movements. Begrudging acceptance—resignation, at worst.

The people were hungry and desperate, tired of the upheaval. Eira had heard the woman: the Pillars were offering stability and reassurance. Why would they consign themselves to the fires of uncertainty once more? And even if Lorn got them to agree…there was no army to be had here. Hoping they could defend their city from being reclaimed was optimistic, even.

But it didn’t matter. Hokoh’s fate didn’t concern her. Not really. Eira had other plans.

“Will you help us?” Lorn looked to Olivin, rather than Eira.

Olivin shifted. His eyes were filled with uncertainty.

“We will, won’t we?” The words were said somewhat timidly, but there was expectation there. Eira lifted her brows. Olivin continued to hold his stare.

We don’t have time for this , she wanted to say. But, clearly, Lorn was still important to Olivin.

“Of course,” Eira said to him, and then shifted her attention back to Lorn. “When will this attack happen?”

“Sooner the better, less time for them to suspect things. Tomorrow?”

“Perfect.” That meant they could quickly be on their way.

“I can show you to the headquarters, if you’d like?”

Eira looked around the abandoned home they’d stumbled upon. The shelves were thick with dust. It was evident that the glow of candles hadn’t coated the insides of the lanterns in some time, given that cobwebs now were what clouded the glass, rather than soot.

“I think we’ll stay here,” she decided.

“Here?” Lorn sounded surprised.

“It seems as good of a place as any, and for the best that we don’t have too many people going to your hideaway—or else it might raise suspicions. Given that we’ve already killed one Pillar, I suspect they will be on high alert.”

“Very true.” His surprise evaporated. Meaning, he knew they had killed the Pillar. Eira had suspected that was what had tipped him off in the first place that they were potential allies. Or he had identified her with her ice daggers alone.

“I would like to see Hokoh’s headquarters.” Olivin stepped forward. “If I may join you?” he asked Lorn, then looked back to Eira. “One of us should know the way.”

“Good thinking,” she said. He was right. Yet, something about it felt unsettling. If someone was going to go, shouldn’t it be her as their captain? Or should she stay with the majority like a captain stayed with the ship? There was something shifting beneath her ever since arriving back to Meru that kept Eira continually feeling like she couldn’t find her footing.

“I’ll be back later.” Oblivious to Eira’s struggles, Olivin readily followed Lorn back into the shadows.