The Light That Binds Read online

  Sem Aira’s few words upon the last battlefield between men—revered now like scripture—rang ever true: uncertainty empowered the ruvak, driving their magic and their tactics and probably their thoughts, as well.

  Chaos. It was a bitter enemy to have.

  Let’s add some order to this equation, then, Jasside thought, raising her hands, closing her eyes, and getting to work.

  A blanket of darkness fell in a wide swath across their likely path, and she immediately felt them. Six objects swimming through her dark pool, their shields still soft, rebuffing her sorcery but not yet hardened against it.

  Before she could pinpoint their locations, however, energy blasted out from six points.

  She took a beat to trace their likely trajectories. Two sped towards her. The other four were aimed directly for the heart of the stewing mass of civilians.

  She conjured dozens, now hundreds of her nullifying fields, bursting them across the sky between the refugees and the ruvaki ships. Highly modified from their original incarnation to account for the peculiarities of enemy power, they scoured the four lances of chaotic energy from existence, the last spiraling away harmlessly just paces above human heads.

  That left the two aimed at her.

  “Evade!” she cried.

  She summoned a shadow that appeared solid even as the deck beneath her lurched sideways. The shadow became a ship—identical to hers—that stayed in the space they’d just occupied, while the real one vanished from sight.

  You aren’t the only ones well-versed in deception.

  The lances crashed into the shadow ship, exploding. Lurid fire spread like lightning, and the stench of sulfur filled the air. Jasside reduced her power to almost nothing, hoping it might trick the enemy into thinking they’d been consumed in the blast.

  Hoping it would at least buy her the few beats she’d need to launch her own offensive.

  Jasside counted three slow breaths, building her anger with each one. Then, energizing to the limit of her harmonized capacity, she struck back.

  A thousand tendrils of virulent darkness shot forth from her hands. They sought the enemy ships, quickly latching on, forcing their shields to harden in response. Six fish, soon caught in her net.

  Unfortunately, that was all she could do.

  Because once attuned, a ruvaki ship could defend against anything, no matter how much power—the same kind of power, anyway—was poured into the attack.

  But Jasside was aware of that, and didn’t waste any of her own. With her spare energy, she sent blasts down upon the hillsides, where the enemy troops were now closing with the outnumbered protection force. A volley of wrath-bows arced their missiles out from below just as her own spells crashed from above. The hills turned into a bloody, smoking wasteland in an instant, thinning out the attackers to more manageable numbers.

  While all this was happening, however, the half dozen ships had pooled chaos for another attack. And looking up, she saw another ship approaching, far away but closing fast. It was massive, larger by far than the other six combined. The command vessel, then. For this squad anyway.

  “Send the signals,” she shouted over her shoulder. “We can’t wait any longer.”

  No one responded, but Jasside felt two small puffs of energy behind her.

  One dark. One light.

  Draevenus was squatting on the balls of his feet and peering through a crack in the entranceway into the irregular chamber beyond when he felt an urgent brush against his mind from commune. A few beats later, and another brush from the same source.

  That’s the signal. Time to kill again.

  He stood, already pushing through another door, this one deep inside the ship, which he’d spent the last few marks silently working loose. Reaching to the opposite forearms, he clutched eight throwing knives between the fingers of each hand. He energized for the span of an eyeblink. Thrusting forward, blades spun through the air past a pair of guards just three paces away. As they arced across the room, he consumed his gathered energy to give them additional velocity and to direct their path. Four other guards, facing him and some fifteen paces distant, crumpled as the knives sank hilt-deep through each of their eyes.

  In silence, except for the clattering of their metallic armor as it struck the floor, they died. Not so different than any other species, really.

  The two nearest guards turned, swinging wide, tapered blades towards Draevenus. He was already ducking, though, and while their swords passed over his head, he had pulled his own heavy daggers and lunged forward. Unnaturally honed edges tore through their armor with a grinding squeal.

  They both spun away, screeching in pain.

  Draevenus stabbed upwards, finding the gap between their back plates and the rear rim of their helmets. Two more bodies slumped dead to the deck.

  The other five occupants of the chamber turned wide-eyed gazes toward him, expressions of fear that needed no translation.

  Four stood in a roughly circular depression at the center of the room, hands pulling away from control devices of some kind, while the fifth sat on a raised platform overseeing their work. None wore armor. They were instead clothed in tight suits with exposed heads, revealing the intricacies of their strange bodies.

  Though subtle differences showed, most notably between the sexes, ruvak tended towards the tall and thin, with pale, waxy skin and joints that bent at angles too severe to seem real. Vertical slits replaced nostrils, and their upper lips protruded like shallow, fleshy beaks. Faint traces of fat fuzz adorned some heads, but not others, perhaps indicating a trend to remain shaven. Curled holes on the sides of their heads stood in place of ears. It was a familiar face, yet so alien.

  It was the face of the enemy.

  They didn’t look like much. Nothing like a match to the terror they induced, or the countless corpses they left behind. It didn’t matter. As always, Draevenus would do what was necessary.

  Only two beats had passed since he’d finished off the guards. He energized another half, took one step to his right to line up the attack, then shadow-dashed forward.

  Draevenus felt only the barest hint of resistance as dagger edges passed through two thin necks. Twin heads rolled, spouting blood more orange than red. He landed, quickly thrusting forward. The hearts of his latest victims pulsed once, sending a faint shiver up the steel that had pierced them.

  Four bodies fell at once. Draevenus turned to the last ruvak upon the raised dais.

  The man’s hands shot up in a universal sign of protest, but Draevenus knew he couldn’t afford mercy today. He leapt up and grabbed a bony shoulder. Unable to watch the life leave another set of eyes—no matter how dissimilar from his own—Draevenus turned away as he stabbed one last time, shuddering as the weight fell against him then slid slowly, messily down.

  Disentangling himself from the twitching body, Draevenus pivoted to face the chamber’s center.

  Amidst the four crew members sat a rectangular box, waist high and half again as long as he was tall. He hopped down and stood by it. Tugging off his bloodstained gloves, he shoved dark, bare fingers into the crack just below the rim, then heaved forward. The lid sloughed off with a hiss and release of mist that reeked like bile.

  Another ruvak lay in the coffin-like space. Tubes spread like a spider’s web from the seemingly unconscious body to the surrounding walls.

  Unbidden, memories sprang forth into his mind. Memories he hadn’t known he’d possessed. A deep cave. Darkwisps shaped like a face. His back pressed against a box just like this.

  His god resting within. Speaking.

  Travel across the void requires certain expediencies, Ruul had said, discomforting as they might be. I’ve no doubt they will have learned the lesson as I and my counterpart have.

  Draevenus slouched, grabbing on to the coffin’s edge to keep from falling as he wrestled to slam shut his mind’s eye.

  Not again!

  His remembrance of entering and leaving that dark god’s haunt was clear. The rest wa
s less than fog. Yet, somehow, bits and pieces occasionally floated up out of that murky gap in his memory, always relevant to his current situation, if not always opportune. It felt intentional. Ruul, even as he willingly set in motion his own death, had implanted inside Draevenus’s mind what he thought would be necessary for the future.

  Then promptly locked it all away, only to be revealed in moments such as this.

  Truth was, as annoying as it could be, at least it meant he knew what he needed to do.

  Fighting off the light-headedness that accompanied his visions, Draevenus began slicing through each of the tubes.

  A glob of sweat trickled down Jasside’s back despite the wind’s chill. She’d been forced to deflect three more volleys while still maintaining her stranglehold on the enemy ships, and had beaten back the same number of ground assaults as she waited. The strain had started getting to her.

  Where are they?

  Light glimpsed through parting clouds answered her a moment later.

  A silverstone mass surged out from behind the thunderheads, like a leviathan of the sky. It soon filled the whole of her vision on the right side, casting a natural shadow that covered the entire battlefield beneath her. Roots dangled below, easily a thousand paces long and dozens across.

  Halumyr Domicile, uprooted.

  Light burned along its leading edge, an aura surrounding a cluster of white-clad figures that sang of their intentions clearly, even to a caster of darkness such as her.

  The ruvak saw their doom and tried to escape, but too late.

  Like rays straight from the sun, six beams lashed out. They made contact with the enemy ships and met no resistance.

  And that was always the plan. For once attuned to darkness or light, the ruvaki shields had no defense against the other.

  The half dozen vessels morphed into molten slags, glowing with the pure red of fire as their masses dripped down upon hillsides, setting grass and trees alike on fire. Also part of the plan: the smoke would cover their retreat should enemy reinforcements arrive.

  One threat down. As for the other . . .

  Jasside glanced up. As if on cue, the approaching command ship banked sharply down, like a vertically thrown stone surpassing the apex of its flight. From that height, and at its speed, the impact it made with the ground sent a shock wave she could feel a league distant.

  She focused her eyes on the crash site, until she finally saw a single dark speck fly free of the wreckage.

  At that, Jasside allowed herself a single breath, then dissolved the link. Angla stepped up to her side once more.

  “They’ll need help below,” Jasside said, sagging. “Looks like your sisters, at least, will get to flex their wings after all.”

  Her grandmother offered a bittersweet smile before gesturing to the other mierothi. They dove off the ship’s ledge, unfurling as they fell. Joined by valynkar from the domicile, the sky below filled with flying figures, each striking at the enemy formations with bursts of both light and dark energy. Rather than flee, however, the remaining ruvaki threw themselves upon the defenders in a frothing rage. She didn’t blame them. With their ships gone, there was little possibility for retreat. Still, it was futile and meant more deaths that weren’t necessary.

  Jasside straightened as a figure thumped down on the deck beside her.

  “Well fought,” Gilshamed said, golden hair glowing in the sunlight. “Your tactic seems to have worked wonders.”

  “This time,” she replied. “The next—who knows? With a foe that seems capable of bending to any situation, how long will it be until we’ve run out of ways to counter them?”

  Gilshamed only sighed, turning his face away.

  Jasside followed his gaze. The battle was all but over. “Best start your landing,” she said, ever surprised, given their history, that he never balked at taking orders from her. “Thirty thousand people will be needing a ride.”

  He nodded. “Today, we managed to save them. I only pray we’ll enjoy as much success tomorrow.”

  Jasside didn’t know how to respond as he flew off.

  Who does he have to pray to when I’ve already murdered his god?

  Chapter 2

  Arivana had taken to staring at her councilors as they spoke, blinking as little as was humanly possible. It seemed to unnerve them. Not that she derived any pleasure from that—at least she tried not to—but she’d finally reached the point where they’d listen to her without obvious contempt. She’d cling to anything that kept them from realizing how precarious her newfound authority truly was.

  Even now, the Minister of Song, a middle-aged man from House Trelent, babbled on in protest to the reallocation of resources, which he claimed rightfully belonged in the hands of the great families. Every few beats his eyes would dart her way, and each such glance was accompanied by the same series of gestures: licked lips and a short hiss of breath before returning to his prepared speech.

  She drummed fingers on the armrest of her throne, her own anger building with each syllable he uttered.

  People are dying in numbers unimaginable, and still all they can think about are their abyss-taken profits.

  Once, there would have been little she could have done about her anger except bury it beneath the veneer of royal repose, staying obedient to the limits of her station, which had been far more constricted than she’d even realized at the time.

  But no more. Being a queen finally meant something. Beyond being a pretty face to parade before the crowds, a trained monkey to do and say all the right things at the right times. After five thousand years, House Celandaris again had power and respect.

  And the change had nothing to do, she was sure, with the manner in which her new councilors had attained their stations.

  Arivana spared a small smile for that. Jasside’s handling of her former council, and the two other most senior members of each house, had been the subject of much debate among both the high and the low in Panisahldron. Eighteen very public deaths will have that effect. But her own continued association with the dark sorceress had kept any such talk to the most respectful tones. Fear wouldn’t have been her weapon of choice, but it had done enough to tip the scales in her favor.

  And besides, it wasn’t the only tool she had at her disposal at the moment.

  She stood, disregarding the fact that the Minister of Song was still in the middle of his speech. He shut up immediately. All eyes turned to her, staring with the kind of rapt attention she could no longer afford to shy away from. Not that she felt any such need to anymore.

  Arivana took a moment as she rose to smooth down her gown, noticing with some pleasure the feel of her newfound hips. Nearly sixteen now, she’d grown fully into womanhood, more alike to the portraits of her mother than to that frightened child who’d become an orphan on the same day she’d had a crown placed upon her head. This, too, was a tool, one she didn’t even need to consciously use. Not in any lurid way; though seduction might have its place, she didn’t have the skill or desire to use it effectively. Nor the need. Rather, her body proclaimed a simple statement of fact: Before you stands a woman. The child you once knew is dead.

  “Ministers,” she said, allowing only the barest hint of disdain to enter her voice. “Need I remind you again that the interests of your individual houses are insignificant at the moment. Too many lives are at stake to waste time squabbling over petty concerns.”

  For a long moment no one spoke. The other members of the council darted glances at the Minister of Song, the only one of them standing, as if hoping his posture would absolve them from having to respond.

  He shrank back under their glares, then licked his lips, seeming to accept the burden none of them were willing to bear.

  “‘Petty,’ Your Majesty?” he said at last, raising an eyebrow as if he himself weren’t sure if it was truly a question. “Panisahldron has long stood upon the strength of our exports, and you’ve stripped the very means of our production. We’ll be facing a systemic financial colla
pse if we keep this up much longer.”

  “For good cause,” Arivana said. “For what is financial collapse measured against the collapse of our people? Of our allies’ very nations?” She paused, lifting her chin. “Unless you think otherwise?”

  He shook his head. “Most assuredly not. Only a monster would withhold aid from those in such dire need. These . . . unfortunates . . . must of course be taken care of.”

  “Now it is my turn to question a choice of word. Unfortunate might describe someone who makes risky business decisions that fail to turn out in their favor. But I do not think it applies in this situation. Those we seek to help are not unfortunates. They are refugees, fleeing an enemy who’ve induced more slaughter in a month than we did upon the Sceptrines in a year and a half of war. Their homes are gone, their nations are crumbling, and lucky are those among them who haven’t watched loved ones turned to ash or torn to shreds by invaders that know no mercy.

  “So no, let us not use unfortunates, because that, minister, is far too mild a term. These people, these innocent, helpless people, are dispossessed.”

  He looked around at his cohorts, probably hoping one of them would add their voice to his. When five beats passed, and no help came, he hissed in a breath once more and said, “But they’re just foreigners, Your Majesty. Send aid, by all means, but it’s not worth impoverishing ourselves for them.”

  “And what cause would be worthy, then?” Arivana said, unable to hide the anger any longer. “Must Panisians, too, be slaughtered by the millions before you’ll lift your noses out of your ledgers? Must more members of your own houses?”

  Looking thoroughly chastised, the Minister of Song tucked his chin to his chest and rigidly took his seat, clearly unwilling to face her wrath alone. No one else in the chamber had the courage to meet her eyes.