On Wings of Fire: Chapter 18

After the quiet beauty of the Giving Pool, waking to the cold, damp cave and the stale air was cruel. Cassia lit a rock with a touch of her hand, bringing a touch of Mithrinde to the oppressive cavern. The memory of her dream washed over her again, sending chills of wonder down her spine. She sighed and smiled at the light she had made. Now she knew that, whatever happened, Mithrinde was with her.

She got up and moved right in front of the great iron door, pressing her ear against the crack. She didn’t hear anything, but with nothing else to do she settled there anyway. She had long since determined that the few personal belongings Iona had left her had no significant magical essence of any sort.

She lost track of time again, staring at the far wall and thinking of home and of simpler days. Before Micah sickened. Before Mother died.

Her daydream was so deep that when the blue ribbon of magic first materialized in the air and streaked across her view, Cassia thought she was imagining it. Then it formed into words, and Cassia sat bolt upright.

How did it go? Dad wants you to scry him. I know you would’ve if you got it. Are you okay? We’re running out of—.

The message ended there, but it wasn’t hard to guess what the last word should have been. The Treatise wasn’t designed to last past the Renewal. They were running out of time. But one way or another, it would be renewed tonight.

Cassia traced the words with her finger, wishing more than anything that she was home in Mithrinde, lying on her bed with the door between their two rooms open. She had far more to tell her sister than she could fit in a handful of words.

The message flickered. She didn’t have much time to reply. She stuck her finger in one of the letters. It melted like blue ink on her fingertip, and she scrawled out her reply.

I’m okay. Out of quills. Can’t scry either. Lots has happened. First plan failed, but this one’s better. See you soon.

She reread the message, then added the last flourish to send it. There was no point in saying anything about Mithrinde or the truth about the Treatise. Not when she couldn’t explain any of it in full.

The message uncurled into a blue ribbon again and vanished, leaving Cassia alone again. She waited, hoping against hope that Tilana would send her another message, but none came. She had omitted the truth too well.

The bar locking the iron door behind her scraped horribly against its rack.

“Oh,” Cassia whispered, rubbing her eyes quickly to brush away a trace of disappointed tears. “Why now?”

She scooped up her glowing pebble and put it in her pocket, dimming the light with another touch. “Mithrinde is with me,” she whispered to herself as she got up and backed away from the door.

It creaked open, a familiar figure standing in front of the torchlight. “Bind her,” Iona commanded, and two of her guards came and bound her wings and hands as they had when they first took her prisoner.

“I won’t do anything,” Cassia said, but Iona took no notice.

“Please,” she added, wincing as the guards cinched the knots. “That hurts.”

But neither of them were the kind-faced young man who had given her her bedroll the day before, and they ignored her words.

They presented her to Iona, who pressed a cold hand at the nape of Cassia’s neck and steered her forward. They walked in silence in the dark tunnels.

“Is it time?” Cassia asked. It couldn’t have been, not already.

“Not yet,” Iona said.

She wouldn’t say anything more. As they reached a joining of several tunnels, Iona gave a wave of her hand, and the guards following them nodded and split off into one of the fully lit tunnels, leaving Iona and Cassia alone.

Iona regarded Cassia for a long time, eyes burning cold. Then she turned down the rightmost passage, which was dark but ascended out of sight. She walked without looking back, taking the torchlight with her.

Cassia followed. The only alternative was to remain where she was, lost in a web of tunnels with her hands and wings bound and only a faintly glowing stone for light.

The tunnel turned and climbed, and soon Cassia was stumbling along, her calves burning, trying desperately to both keep up with a rapidly receding Iona and not slip on the smooth rock.

They came to a rigid set of rough stair-like cuts in the stone, each as tall as Cassia’s knee. She climbed one and then another, and another and another, but on the fifth stair her foot slipped and she fell hard, rolling to her shoulder but still smacking her chin against the rock. She cried out as she fell and tasted blood after her chin hit stone.

Before she drew in a second breath, that cold hand clutched the back of her travel dress and pulled her up. Cassia scrambled to get her feet under herself. A trickle of blood ran from her lip down her chin, but she set her face and refused to wince in pain. Iona would be satisfied if she thought Cassia was weak.

Iona raised an eyebrow. “Well, since you are plainly too clumsy to walk without aid —” She touched a finger to the ropes around Cassia’s wrists. The knots unraveled at once and the cords fell to the floor. “—use your hands like a dog.”

Cassia almost laughed at the bizarre insult, but she set her jaw and did not mention that it was leaving her wings bound that made the climb the most difficult. Her arms were small and provided little counterbalance, while with every step she took now her wings strained instinctively against the ropes, trying to move with the rhythm of walking. Instead they were twenty pounds of deadweight pressed against her back.

Still, having her hands free helped, and Cassia made the rest of the climb without falling again. The top of the wide stair opened into fading, shadowed sunlight. Iona waited for her at the edge of the light. Cassia stepped fully out of the landing and gasped.

She was standing nearly at the top of the Hive, and the sun was setting. The spire of rock was only thirty feet across at this point, and most of it had been carved to make a wide, low-ceilinged, open-walled room, with thick pillars of stone holding up the point of the spire above. Wind whistled through the pillars near the ceiling. Though a thin rim of stone around the edges of the platform blocked some of the raw elements, Cassia’s feet still sank into inch-thick sand deposited by the wind over untold years.

Cassia marveled at the unlikely visage — the setting sun spilling orange across the striated, beautifully smoothed stone, the almost cool wind dancing in her hair.

Then she saw the bones. They slumped in the lee of a pillar, bleached white and glinting in the sun. Though the skeleton was half-buried in sand, a pair of wings spread unmistakably from its back, flared out against the pillar like the tattered sticks of an old hand fan.

Cassia clapped a hand to her mouth and stumbled back, letting out a strangled gulp despite herself. Her right heel brushed something as she backed away.

Behind her, in the lee of a pillar that was less a pillar and more thick and rectangular like a wall, an enormous, half shattered ribcage curved above her. Cassia stifled a scream and walked backwards to the staircase landing, not taking her eyes off the skeletons, gruesome and beautiful in death.

Iona was leaning against one of the pillars, her arms folded, the ghost of a smile playing around her eyes. She had brought Cassia here for this, to shock her or make her afraid or to prove something.

“Like what you see?” Iona said bitingly. “A drake and an angel together in death. However much your father disavows them now, he certainly welcomed their shelter in the last days before they sealed the Treatise.”

Cassia saw now that Iona was standing over the shattered remains of a smaller skeleton, one that looked entirely human and still clutched a cracked spear.

“What is this place?” Cassia asked, though she had her guess.

“One hundred and three years ago and five hundred feet below us, your Archpriests imprisoned our gods even as we fought you above.” Iona spat at the skeleton with the outstretched wings. “What this place is, angel, is proof of your guilt. Soon your judgement also will be at hand.”

Cassia crouched beside the skeleton of the angel, fighting back a shudder. She had never seen a dead body before, though this was so long dead it was only bones. Its ribs were splintered and cracked, probably from the wound that killed it. And a few feet away, the drake, whose spine was broken as if he had been thrown backward and hit the wall. Cassia could almost see the blast of force from a human mage that had done it.

She stood and walked around the full length of the platform. There was another skeleton, this one with the oddly lengthened limbs of a sylph, the only godformed who would have been at home in this harsh desert. Their gifts were given from Ais and they lived in Aisen, carefree creatures who cared little for law or borders.

But here, they had stood alongside drakes, and with Cassia’s own people, and they had all been retreating, making a desperate stand both above and below. These fighters had battled mages; the Archpriests below had wrestled gods.

And now Cassia needed to do the same, but with words rather than chains.

She closed her fist over the pebble in her pocket. Mithrinde’s words echoed in her ears. They fear us. They want to annihilate you.

“What will you do after you have your gods back?” she asked.

Iona smiled. The dying sunlight stained her white teeth red. “Take back what was ours. Cleanse the Basin of godformed.”

Her eyes were alight with malice. “Beginning with you. Once you’ve fulfilled your purpose, neither I nor the gods will have any need of you. Perhaps they will give you peace in the beyond. A gift for your great service to humanity.”

Cassia’s heart skipped a beat as the terror of Iona’s vengeful gaze sank into her bones. If Cassia couldn’t control the false ritual, there would be no second chances. She would be too dead to try again.

“I said it before, and I’ll say it again. It was wrong for my father and the other Archpriests to bind your gods,” Cassia said desperately. It was not Iona she needed to persuade to peace — it was Iona’s gods — but she had to try. “But he did it because you were killing us. How can you hate us just for holding a different kind of power?”

Iona’s expression did not change. Cassia spoke faster. “Please, we can fix this without violence. It’s Selach and Ashwythe that’s the problem, not the rest of us. The Treatise was her idea all along, and they tricked us. The drakes are the ones that treat humans badly. We can stop them.”

Iona gave a mocking laugh. “Without violence, you say, but you’re just trying to direct Consequence away from yourself. No. You godformed are abominations glutted on power you don’t deserve. You will feel the wrath of Consequence and you will not live to see more than the first blowing winds of Change. You would have done well to remember your true gods before whoring yourself out to elemental forces.”

She pushed herself away from the pillar and sand from her black tunic and leggings. “But you’ll find it doesn’t matter what I think. Save your pleas for the gods you sealed away and abandoned. It’s time.”

------

They led Cassia through the tunnels at the center of a joyous procession. Iona walked in front of Cassia, preceded by four guards dressed in heavily beaded, unfamiliar ceremonial clothing. Iona herself was dressed in a swirl of black and white, each swath layered over each other in thin, lace-like sheets to create a shimmering, shifting grey. She wore a headdress of silver and walked like an Archpriest.

More than a dozen men and women followed them, mages and warriors and the rest of the elite army Iona had brought to secure the Hive. They marched in rhythm, singing in their own language an energetic melody laced with anticipation and punctuated by the thud of their spears against the rock. She didn’t know if Sasha was among them. She didn’t turn to look.

Cassia’s wings were still bound and her hands had been tied again, the ropes rubbing her sore flesh raw. She had already lost three feathers to the chafing. Her heart pounded in time with the spears, though for an entirely different reason. If her plan worked, she would right two great injustices today.

She tried not to think about what would happen if it didn’t. Or how she would face her father if it did, knowing that he’d agreed to the injustice a hundred years before.

No one gave her more than a jeering glance as they walked, twisting deeper into the maze. Cassia’s legs were aching again, but she lifted her chin and walked on. She was certain Iona would only smirk if she fell.

Finally, they halted. Cassia could not see more than a few feet beyond the blazing torchlight. The advance guard parted to let Iona through. One of them handed her a torch. As she stepped forward, the light fell away from the walls and pooled around her. The song swelled to a chorus behind Cassia, resounding in the corridor and echoing out into what had to be an enormous cavern.

Iona gripped the lit torch at either end, brought it down on her knee, and snapped it in two. She threw her hands out and a ring of fire blasted from the broken torch, washing over Iona and into the hall. Cassia stumbled back in shock, but the blast rippled over the warriors in front of her without harm. It faded, but the cavern still glowed with light, a hundred ancient torches all lit at once.

Without looking back, Iona raised her hand and summoned everyone inside.

The cavern soared above Cassia, arching to such a height that even the dozens of torches couldn’t banish the darkness clinging to the ceiling. The chamber itself was cold and largely barren, filled with debris scattered across the smooth stone floor. The torchlight glinted off a small lake on the right, fed by a series of steady trickles down the wall.

If Cassia had expected to find some sort of ornate temple here at the heart of this drake-like network of tunnels, she was disappointed. The only sign of human or godformed presence was the unnaturally smooth floor, and a small raised stone platform on the eastern side of the chamber.

Iona led them to the platform and raised her hand for silence, which fell immediately. She smiled at her posse, a smile more genuine than any she had ever given Cassia.

“My people,” she said, “you have been chosen to witness the birth of a new era. Tonight, we take back what is ours. Tonight, we win.”

She slid off the large satchel on her back and opened it. A pure white glow preceded the Treatise as she took it out of her bag and hoisted the heavy artifact above her head. A great cheer went up from the assembled Seekers. Iona stepped back onto the raised platform and beckoned Cassia.

“Come,” she ordered, her smile hardening to a predatory grin.

The crowd parted. No one pushed her forward, and yet Cassia still had no choice but to go. She went, stepping up onto the platform and letting Iona take her shoulder in a viselike grip. Her legs were numb and there was a strange rushing in her ears.

Five jugs lay in a wide circle on the platform of stone, each unique in shape and beautifully painted. Cassia drew in a sharp breath — the colors and devices of the elemental gods were unmistakable. Valja’s gravel grays and reds, Rayne’s storm grays and light blues, Larisa’s leafy green and yellow, Atlan’s navy and tangled seaweed, and Ais’s tan and white.

There were two gaps in the circle; Selach’s jug was broken. Shards of pottery glazed fiery red and dark obsidian lay strewn across the ground, mixed with slivers of silver and white. Mithrinde’s jug was broken too.

Cassia felt like she had been punched in the gut. She strained to reach into her pocket and touch her still-glowing pebble, but her hands were tied too tightly. Iona, mistaking her movement for an escape attempt, dug her nails deeper into Cassia’s shoulder, hefting the Treatise under her other arm with ease.

“Don’t push me, god-stealer,” Iona spat.

Then she turned more fully and saw the shattered jugs. Her whole body stiffened.

“Who— how—”

Three of the mages had surrounded the platform by now, apparently ready to assist with the false ritual. They were staring openmouthed at the jugs too. One of them looked up at Iona.

“Iona, without each of the powers, we won’t be able to—”

Disquiet rippled through the crowd. Iona shook her head, fierce and proud, cutting across the woman who had spoken. “We’ll manage. Find the largest shards — they should contain most of the power still.”

Cassia stood stock-still as the mages pushed her into the center of the circle, still bound. They made themselves busy, picking up shards and sorting them and setting out candles and incense around the circle to amplify their magic.

Cassia closed her eyes as the power from the jugs pressed against her. She had never felt anything like it before, but of course this must be the containers Mithrinde had mentioned Micah and the others had used in the creation of the Treatise. Evidently pools of that same power still lingered, swollen from years of magic gathering from the empyreal plane.

She couldn’t help but feel it wasn’t a coincidence that Mithrinde’s jug and Selach’s were the ones who had shattered. It felt like the death knell for their little mission, that unlikely partnership that had survived so much, and had almost won. She was sure that by now Fyn’s body was lying somewhere in the gorge, either dead by dehydration or killed by mages lying in wait when he returned from wherever he had gone that fateful night Cassia was captured.

She knew he was dead and not just fled for one simple reason: Fyn might abandon her at the flap of a wing, but he could not abandon the Treatise and his mission. So he must be… gone.

She gritted her teeth as Fyn’s stupid grin flashed in her mind’s eye, a memory of his expression when she had handed him that meat skewer in Larisen. Her gut twisted. For a time, Cassia had almost thought they could be friends. Before Fyn had decided that whatever lay between them, his duty to his horrible god was more important.

If only she could have helped him more. Who said he had to go back, after all this was over? He could have come to MIthrinden, met Tilana, seen what service to a deity should actually look like. The image of Fyn walking the soaring halls of the Lunasium was at once bizarrely out of place and beautiful.

Not that he would have ever agreed to come.

Iona’s hand gripped Cassia’s shoulder and shoved her a step backward, startling Cassia back to the moment. The other mages had assembled the pottery shards into two rough puzzles, both set at the correct place in the circle of powers. Iona had centered Cassia in the circle and placed the Treatise at her feet. Now she and the other mages took a step back, down from the raised dais, and lifted their hands.

For a brief, pure second of panic, Cassia considered running. They hadn’t bound her legs. She could get fifty feet away at least before they caught her, assuming she didn’t trip. Then Iona and the other mages started chanting, and Cassia’s limbs froze in place.

The false ritual had begun.

The chant was low and threatening. Cassia’s eyes, the only part of her she could move, flicked back and forth between Iona and the mage next to her. Even though she knew what they were trying to do, and knew what she had to do, white-hot fear licked up her spine as Iona’s hands glowed a deep orange.

The chant built, rising to a crescendo, the magic somehow in tone and rhythm and not words, entirely unlike the true ritual Micah had taught her years ago, and yet somehow eerily similar, as if each word was changed just enough so it was no longer a word, only a meaningless collection of twisted, still-magical sound.

Iona swept her hands upwards and the jugs around Cassia blazed with multicolored light. The power rose out of them in twisted ropes, barely visible as faint streaks in the air but heavy with weight against Cassia’s chest. Her lungs burned but the fear at the base of her skull screamed at her to keep her mouth closed rather than gasp and let the power drown her. It pushed against her skin, six different alien magics, and her own magic rose as a shield but already the powers were battering it away…

The chant broke into the final shouted words, the sacred words Micah had whispered to her at the Giving Pool when she received her mote and was taken into tryst as the Archpriest’s daughter. These words alone were whole and pure, but they fell sullied and dirty on Cassia’s ears, tainted by the intent with which they were spoken.

“Ayenta encelta aes!” As one, we author peace.

Silence fell like a stone into water. At Cassia’s feet, the Treatise stirred, the clouded white inside swirling into a vortex that glowed brighter by the second. Iona’s hands were still raised high, ready with a motion to force the power from the jugs into Cassia.

Their eyes met. Iona smiled at Cassia’s terror. She tilted her hand.

And the ground underneath Cassia collapsed into crumbled rock.