Page 107 of The Castle & the Cloister

“There they are,” the golden-haired guard said, as if he offered Ariana a kindness. “Did you know that’s who’s taking the throne?”

She glanced upward to the stone stair that plunged into the sanctuary from the castle above. Limned in firelight, the Priest and Fia stood at the top of the stair, with Justus in Fia’s arms. Ariana knew she should be glad. That she should feel, somehow, that her sacrifice had been worth the effort.

Instead, the world spun around her at the sight of her child. She’d killed his rightful father, and he would grow up parentless once she was gone.

The guard caught her when she slumped, propping her up and murmuring something comforting. Ariana could not focus on the words, not with her vision fading in and out and her limbs beginning to tremble. All she could see was Orden.

Orden in a Corrinian hospital tent, smiling down at her on her knees.

Orden in the Inver audience hall, raising her to her feet and pronouncing her his queen.

Orden on their wedding night, Orden every day after, Orden when she’d sat across from him and poured him a glass of summer wine laced with poison, so cleverly devised by the people of her own faith that it would harm no one but him.

The crowd cheered, though Ariana was unsure why. Drums and viols and organettos rang out, and a billow of choking incense rose.

“Just a little longer,” the golden-haired guard murmured. “Soon none of this will matter anymore. Soon you’ll be all right.”

She would not. She would be severed from Lyria eternally, cast into the bitter dark to wander in despair. But this was, perhaps, the last kindness she would receive, and so Ariana reached out and clung to the guard’s strong hand.

Ahead of them, on the altar rise, the Priest was approaching Tyrus’s shrine. Around the altar of the god of war, a prodigious mound of wood had been laid, dry as bones. A single pathway gave access to the altar from its rear, and the Priest handed Justus to Fia before stepping forward to take his place before the god of war.

“It is tradition,” the Priest said, his voice ringing back from the walls and the cavern ceiling, “for an Inver succession to be ushered in by blood. Yet my half brother, Orden Inver, rightful king of Honoria, who won his throne at the edge of a blade, was killed bloodlessly and cravenly, by a foe who could not so much as claim and hold the crown for a day following his death.”

Ariana shuddered at the words. She did not know if he meant them—if it was a ploy to secure the goodwill of the Invers who’d had little love for their gentle queen, or if she’d truly lost the Priest’s regard. Angry murmurs rippled through the crowd as they sounded their agreement.

“In the absence of another worthy successor, I stepped forward.” ThePriest infused his words with disdain, and Ariana had never known this version of him. He was imperious, scathing, regal as Orden had ever been. “Ished the necessary blood. I dealt out judgment by the rite of conquest to Lucian Inver, who colluded with heretics and foreign powers to undermine the sovereignty of our nation. And I will punish Orden’s ingrate queen, who flouted the practices of this court when she put down her king like an ailing animal, with no power or plan to seize the throne. I will make an offering of her to Tyrus, to legitimize the reign of my brother’s son and my own regency—let Justus be king, as I will never have sons of my own and he is the true descendant of our dread forefathers. As for me, I will bear the responsibility and the power of both Priest and regent.”

The mood was lightening, buoyed up by the Priest’s pride and scorn. When he gestured to the golden-haired guard and Ariana was led out from where she’d been hidden, the crowd erupted into jeers and hisses. As she moved through them, they hurled curses and spat and attempted to batter her with their fists, but the guards flanking her held firm. Tears tracked down Ariana’s face, a reflex of the body, for she felt beyond any fear or grief now. There was only guilt, merciless and all-consuming.

She was taken to the top of the rise, and to Tyrus’s altar, where the guard gave her over to the Priest. He pushed her roughly forward and up, until she lay face down, splayed out across the altar of Tyrus and the pyre that surrounded it. When the Priest seized the offertory knife without so much as chaining Ariana’s hands, the crowd grew louder, cheering and shouting insults—the sight of someone helpless, unrestrained yet in their power, turned them into a mindless, seething mass.

The Priest raised his arms, brandishing his offertory knife. Briefly, he stood motionless above Ariana, and then in an instant, every light in the cavern was doused. Just as he’d ordered at Justus’s naming, the sanctuary plunged into absolute darkness. Ariana lay and waited, at the utter end of herself. There was only this. The dark, the guilt, the coming knife.

“Here,” the Priest said, passion ringing in his voice, “is what we rose from. Here is what our enemies would return us to. The dark. A world without light, or heat, or fire. They promise you a night illuminated by goddesses—the capricious, changeful moon; the weak glow of the stars. But it takes no more than a cloud to banish that light. Dependence on itwill make fools and paupers of us all. We are neither cowards nor pawns to rely on powers outside our control. In this place, we are the power. We are the light. We are the flame. And we will be the ruin of any who try to force us back into darkness.”

The Priest reached for Ariana, and unable to help herself, she let out a startled gasp. But his hand was gentle on her shoulder, and she felt she moved in a dream as he drew her down from the altar. Then there was Fia—Fia—her strong arms tight around Ariana, her mountain-bred stoniness holding the fallen queen up. She smelled of light and hope and redemption, even in the darkest of all possible places. Ariana hugged her back and drew in breath after breath, as if she had never known clean, wild air before. The Priest pressed something into Ariana’s hand—the nightglass pendant she’d been given long weeks ago, wrapped in a rag to obscure its glow.

“Beneson will take you now,” Fia whispered into Ariana’s ear. “You must go with him, Ari. You must be strong. None of us can manage without you.”

“No, Fia, I—” she began, a confession scalding her tongue. But Beneson had Ariana’s hand in his own already and was tugging at her to follow.

From the dark came sounds that passed for the conclusion of death throes—something heavy moving, the displacement of kindling. Beneson was hurrying Ariana along, chivvying her down one of the Priest’s wire roads, whispering that they must be as far from the altar rise as possible before—

A spark struck as Ariana looked back, and light grew, only a dwarfed and uncertain flame at first, but it licked hungrily at the waiting kindling and the oil drenching a soria’s body. They’d ordered Ariana to dress in her old kirtle, the day before the execution, and she’d thought it only a cruel mockery of who she’d been. Now she knew it was something much worse.

She had been robbed, here at the end, of the just punishment for her crime. Another daughter of the stars had claimed martyrdom, and left Ariana to live with the horror of her guilt. She stumbled, blind and sick and wretched, but Beneson helped her upright and shepherded her on.

Behind them, the body of a soria burned, and the Priest stood gilded by its flames.

“This is who we are,” the Priest shouted. “We are the devastation of our enemies, the downfall of heretics, the scourge of those who strive for peace. No matter the odds, we will rise and stamp out our rivals not just with blood, but with Inver fire, until there is nothing but ash left of those who would stand against us. Here on Tyrus’s altar, by blood and flame I consecrate an Inver king and declare my own regency. Well may I lead you, and long may Honoria’s son Justus reign.”

The seething crowd broke into a roar, loud enough to bring the cavern ceiling down. It was a long time before they were quiet, and during their outcry, torches were relit and bonfires rekindled. The jubilant swell of music resumed. But Ariana and Beneson were well away, swathed in the cavern’s long dark that stretched beyond the Invers’ pitiful and misguided attempt at driving back the night.

They carried on and on, until Ariana thought she might drop from weariness. At last, the looming darkness around them became closer, and when Ariana stretched out a hand, she felt the stone wall of a tunnel.

Abruptly, lamplight flared ahead, a figure approaching them in the tunnel’s narrow confines. Gwylen looked like a haint in the lamp’s glow, shadows playing eerily across her sharp features and shorn hair, glinting in her canny eyes and on her spreading goddess mark.

“Well then, little queen,” she said. “Orden is dead now and his throne taken. Afon swore an oath to see that come about, and swore, too, that he’d have a child of yours in his power. Will you finally finish the task you were given, and safeguard your children by ending Caervallion’s king?”