Chapter 16
16
W HAT AM I going to do?
As the fifth latterday bell rang throughout the Cloistery, Nyx stood at a rail atop a crowded balcony on the fourth tier. The perch offered a view across the breadth of the main stair that climbed from the gates of the school to its summit. At long last, the drizzling skies had dried out, and the scud of gray clouds had broken in places, letting through spears of bright sunlight. The mist in the air even glowed in brilliant bows.
A nonne on her left pointed skyward. “It’s a blessing of the Father Above. He smiles His grace upon us all.”
Nyx glanced to the shining arches in the air, marching off into the distance across the emerald of the swamp. She could not discount the nonne’s words. Nyx had never viewed such majesty, such divine radiance. The shimmering azure, the rosy reds, the glowing yellows.
How could it not be a blessing of the gods above?
Still, as joyous as this display was, it could not dispel the misgivings in her chest. She gazed from the sky down to the procession slowly winding up the steps. First had come rows of knights. They had donned light armor that glinted in the sun, their helms topped by bristled horsetail plumes. They carried shields strapped to their left arms, bearing sigils of different houses. The clinking of their armor sounded like the ticking gears of the school’s bronze orrery, as if the procession was a vast machine set in motion, one she had no hope of stopping.
Behind the knights now came a large hump-backed shaggy beast with his head down low. It was led by a tall figure marching alongside it, leather lead in one hand and a grip on a bridle in another.
“Isn’t that your brother?” Jace asked on Nyx’s other side.
Nyx swallowed. “And Gramblebuck.”
The bullock shouldered into his harness, the straps digging deep into his pelt and muscles. Behind him, a flat wagon bumped up the steps on iron-shod wheels. A tall cage, wrapped in leathers, had been lashed atop the cart.
Nyx pictured the wounded bat inside. She swore she could hear a faint wailing of its distress. Or maybe it rose from her memories. Still, she rubbed an ear with a shoulder, trying to ease the itch deep in her skull.
Around her, the crowd whispered at the sight of the cage. Some sounded awed, others frightened. Several kissed their fingertips and touched each earlobe in a ward against evil. A few even glanced her way with sympathetic expressions.
No one suspected what lay within her heart.
Earlier, she had entertained a hope to somehow free the bat, to pay back a debt long overdue. She now recognized the futility of it all. It was the fancies of a silly girl, one who had deluded herself into thinking she was capable of such a defiant act. She only had to stare at the long line of knights that would encircle the ninth tier to accept defeat already. Only a handful of people would be allowed atop the summit where the cage was headed—and certainly not any student.
Nyx had trespassed up there once and brought about much misery. She dared not do so again, not after all the efforts of the prioress to secure her spot among the ninthyears. Even her own family was participating in the sacrifice to come. How dare she consider sullying their efforts with some rash ploy?
“I’m such a fool,” she whispered to herself.
Jace glanced her way with pinched eyes, but she waved away his concern.
As the wagon trundled across the fourth tier, a pair of men followed the wagon. One bore light armor, but carried his helm under an arm, exposing the shining crimson of his station as a member of the Vyrllian Guard. The vy-knight towered over a slimmer, darker figure hidden under a hunter’s green cloak, with a bow strapped across his shoulders. From this last one’s position of prominence in the procession, Nyx wondered if that squint-eyed hunter had been the one who had shot down the bat.
Anger stoked in her breast at the sight of him.
Behind the pair followed two dozen more of the hardened Vyrllian Guard.
The nonne on her left leaned toward a neighboring hieromonk. “I heard the king’s forces intend to finally rid us of the scourge of those daemon bats. To slaughter a path all the way to the volcanic flanks of The Fist where those monsters roost and breed.”
The monk nodded sagely. “I heard the same.”
Nyx’s fingers tightened on the rail. She pictured dark shapes tumbling from the skies, crashing into marsh and bog. Her vision grew blood-tinged with swords and axes swinging, hacking into broken bodies.
The nonne pointed below. “And it’s high time Goren called for such a hunt.”
Nyx stared down as a final pair climbed behind the crimson-faced guards. The highmayor of Fiskur waved at the crowd as he huffed his way toward the summit. His round face, shining bright red, dripped with sweat. Beside him strode a figure Nyx had dreaded to see again—Kindjal, twin sister of Byrd.
Nyx clutched harder to the balcony rail as her legs trembled. The sight of Kindjal stoked the guilt and worry inside her. Byrd was dead in part because of her own cowardice. She had fled where she should not have, luring her classmate to his doom.
And more death would follow.
She again pictured the slaughter to come.
All the bloodshed and misery will be because of me.
She stumbled back from the rail, barely able to stand, gutted by despair.
Jace drew closer. “Nyx?”
She looked to him. “Get me out of here.”
He scooped an arm around her and helped her away from the rail. He half carried her across the crowded balcony toward the doors. Her hurried departure did not go unnoticed, especially the way she hung on Jace’s arm.
Voices followed in her wake.
… poor girl will soon be avenged.
… her suffering will fuel the flames as that monster writhes.
… no doubt, the Mother has twice-blessed her.
Nyx fled from their words, from their misplaced concern. Shame strengthened her legs. She pushed free of Jace’s arm and rushed through the narrow halls and past the wards. He followed behind her, but she wanted to flee everyone. She did not deserve his friendship.
I’ll only doom you, too.
She reached her set of borrowed rooms and stumbled inside. She tried to close the door on Jace, but he would have none of it. He pushed through after her.
His worry rushed out of him, his eyes huge, his breath panted. “Nyx, what’s wrong? Are you feeling ill again? Should I fetch Physik Oeric?”
She turned to him, ready to batter him back outside, but instead she fell into his arms. She pressed her face into his chest, smelling bitter lime and musky sweat. She shook there, trying to find comfort, to settle her pounding heart. Her body quaked with sobs. She had no words to express her anguish and guilt.
Instead, she felt a darkness closing upon her.
As if from far away, Jace’s voice reached her. “What’s that noise?”
Only then did she hear the sharp keening past the pounding of her heart. It cut through her misery. She stared into the rafters of the study—and spotted tiny eyes, glowing a furious crimson from the shadows. Her lost brother’s ululating cries filled her head, vibrating the bones in her ear, in her skull, and firing across her brain.
Under that barrage, the world began to shiver away.
Nyx gasped, clutching to Jace. “Hold me.”
Then she was gone.
She stands amidst flames. A shadow thrashes and writhes inside a burning cage. Pain is carried on smoke and wind. Before her, wooden bars turn to coal. Flesh to cinders. Bone to ash. The flames cast higher, lifting her. She becomes a fiery ember carried aloft, swirling skyward toward gray clouds.
High enough now, she spots a black storm building at the horizon, stacking higher, roiling with dark energies. It rolls forth from a mountainous shadow in the distance. But no thunder flows from that stormfront, only a wail of fury. The blackness breaks apart into a thousand wings that come crashing toward her.
No, not her.
Bathed in the smoke of charred flesh, she stares down from her height.
Below, the breadth of the school lies quiet and dark, unaware of the savage storm about to break upon it. She tries to cry a warning to those below, but all that comes out of her mouth are the screams of a thousand bats.
With a shudder, Nyx fell back into herself, still in Jace’s arms.
“They’re coming,” she moaned to his chest.
Jace shifted her higher. “Who… Who’s coming?”
A snap of wings drew their attention to the rafters. A dark shape dropped toward them.
Jace yelped and sheltered his body over hers.
The bat dove across their heads and swept out the open window.
Jace kept low. “Stay. There could be more.”
She knew there were many more. She pushed out of his arms. She understood the reason for this visit from her long-lost brother. He had come with a warning and a threat. She shared it with Jace.
“We have to stop the sacrifice, or all will be lost.”
Jace’s face scrunched with bafflement. “What’re you talking about?”
She faced the door, knowing she could not do this alone. “I must speak to Prioress Ghyle. Before it’s too late.”
N YX STUCK TO Jace’s shoulder as he slipped a key into the lock of a forbidden door. He glanced back at her. “Maybe I should go alone.”
She chewed her lower lip and stared at the brand in the door bearing the vine-wrapped sigil of the Cloistery. A small silver crucible and pestle adorned it. Tension kept her shoulders by her ears. At any moment, she expected to hear the final latterday bell. After that, with the first bell of Eventoll, the fiery sacrifice was due to begin.
She took a breath, then shook her head. “No. We have too little time. I must risk this path.”
“But why?” Jace pressed.
“I don’t have time to explain.”
Certainly not time for you to believe me.
He sighed, keyed the lock, and opened the way to the private stair up to the ninth tier. Jace—no longer a student—had been given access to haul precious books up to the scholars, which included Prioress Ghyle’s chambers atop the school. Such dispensation did not apply to guests. Nyx knew she was putting Jace’s position and livelihood in danger by this trespass. If caught, she intended to deny his involvement.
Jace led the way over the threshold. There was not enough time for him to run up from the fourth tier to the ninth, convince the prioress of the urgency, and return with her back down here. Nyx knew she had to press the matter directly with the head of the Cloistery. No other would believe her.
“Hurry now,” Jace warned. “It’s still a long way.”
He took off up the steps with her in his wake. She found herself holding her breath for long stretches, expecting to be accosted by an alchymist or some other scholar on these steps. But as they wound around and around the narrow stair, they encountered no one. Most likely everyone was out watching the last of the legion marching toward the summit.
“Almost there,” Jace gasped out, his cheeks ruddy, his back soaked with sweat. She suspected a significant amount of that wetness came from fear. He slowed, pausing at a landing, and nodded toward the door there. “This leads out to the eighth tier.”
He was giving her one last chance to take another path. She could escape out that door and no one would be the wiser. “If you hid on this tier, I could fetch the prioress to you,” he offered.
She considered it, swiping her damp brow.
Before she could answer, a bell clanged loudly, muffled by stone, then growing louder as its ringing spread throughout the school.
The last of the latterday bells.
She stared at Jace and waved for him to continue. But he suddenly lunged at her and shoved her behind him. He leaned back to pin her against the wall. She panicked for a breath—then heard the rasp of a lock and the creak of a door being opened. Brighter light bathed them both.
Hidden behind Jace’s bulk, she could not see who entered.
“What are you doing here, Journeyman Jace?” a woman asked with a note of accusation.
Nyx cringed as she recognized the nasally voice of Sister Reed, the novitiate who taught the seventhyears.
Jace stammered for a frightened breath, then straightened but kept Nyx hidden behind him. “I… I was summoned by Prioress Ghyle, to pick up and return a copy of Plentiarorio’s Doctrine of Seven Graces to the scriptorium.”
Sister Reed groaned, “Then get about it, rather than blocking my way.”
Jace scooted to the side. Nyx matched his step to stay behind him. Sister Reed scuffed past them both, likely with hardly a second glance at someone as lowly as Jace. Still, they waited until her footsteps had faded before hurrying upward again.
The rest of their flight was a blur. Jace led Nyx up to the ninth tier, across a cavernous room under a candelabrum smoking with strange alchymies, and down a long, curved hallway. They encountered a handful of scholars, but Nyx kept in Jace’s shadow. Luckily, the others all appeared to be too involved in their own affairs or with what was happening outside to even note Jace’s hurried passage.
Finally, their trek ended where the black volcanic rock of the alchymists’ towers brightened into the white limestone of the hieromonks’. Between those two, a tall arched doorway stood to one side of the hall, plated half in iron and half in silver.
Jace rushed forward and used a hinged knocker to rap loudly.
Nyx winced at the noise, expecting knights to rush down upon them from all directions. In truth, she couldn’t even be sure the prioress was still in her chambers. If not, Nyx was prepared to go shouting up and down these halls if need be.
I have no more time.
Finally, a faint shuffle sounded, and the door opened on well-oiled hinges.
Nyx exhaled her relief when she spotted the familiar countenance of Prioress Ghyle. The woman’s eyes narrowed curiously at the sight of Jace, then widened when her gaze discovered who stood beside him.
“Nyx?” Ghyle must have immediately surmised that something dire had happened for Nyx to be standing at her threshold. “Get in here.”
The opening was pulled wider, and she and Jace rushed through. The prioress closed the door after them and stepped to follow—then turned back and twisted the bolt in the door.
“What’s this all about?” Ghyle asked.
Nyx struggled with where to begin. She took in the room, which was circular in shape, lined by shelves of ebonwood on one side and white ash on the other. Dusty books, cubbied scrolls, and strange arcane artifacts filled the shelves. In the center was a table halved by the same woods. Nine high-backed chairs stood around it: four white, four black, with the last and tallest split like the table into ash and ebonwood.
Nyx realized here must be where the Council of Eight deliberated and discussed matters pertaining to the school, presided over by the prioress in the ninth seat. Nyx also took in the four tall hearths, presently cold, and noted other doors that must lead into the prioress’s private chambers.
Ghyle drew her toward the table. “What has you so distressed to risk trespassing up here?” she pressed.
Nyx opened her mouth to speak—when a stranger, seated with his back to them in one of the tall chairs, stood and faced them all. The man wore the black robe and crimson sash of an alchymist, but Nyx had never seen him before. He looked a decade or two younger than the prioress, with dark auburn hair tied in a tail and bright hazel eyes.
Nyx took a step away from the stranger, only to have the prioress hold her from retreating farther.
“This is Alchymist Frell hy Mhlaghifor. From Kepenhill in Azantiia. A former student of mine. You can speak freely in front of him.”
Nyx realized the man must’ve come with the king’s forces. Despite the prioress’s reassurances, Nyx didn’t know if she could trust a man who had arrived with the same legion who intended to sacrifice the captured bat.
The alchymist approached with a smile that seemed genuine. “Ah, this must be the miracle girl. Survivor of poisons. And the bless’d of the Mother. And someone the king demands we secure and take to Highmount.”
The blood drained from Nyx’s head at his words, dizzying her for a breath. “Wh… What?”
Jace looked equally shocked and turned to the prioress. “You can’t let that happen.”
Ghyle turned to the both of them. “Trust me, I will do everything in my power to keep Nyx here. Alchymist Frell was kind enough to alert me in advance, so I might ready my arguments.”
Nyx pictured herself being trussed up in chains and dragged to some dungeon in Highmount. She might never see her father or brothers again. But even that heartbreak paled in comparison with what was to come.
“I… I must tell you something,” Nyx whispered, finding it suddenly difficult to breathe. She cast a guilty look at Jace, then concentrated on the prioress’s kind but firm face. “Something I’ve kept from all of you.”
“What does it pertain to?” the prioress asked.
“Moonfall.”
A gasp rose—not from the head of the school, but from the strange alchymist. He shifted closer. “What do you know?”
Nyx didn’t have an answer to his question.
Everything, nothing.
She slowly related all that had happened during that strange visitation, about the nightmare, about the disturbing visions—both in the past and atop some blasted mountaintop. She finished with, “I think I was rescued in the swamps by one of the Myr bats, raised as one of her own, alongside the one who visited me.”
Jace looked aghast, even stepping away from her.
Nyx sniffed back tears. As she fought against them, the alchymist leaned closer to the prioress. Nyx heard his whisper.
“You don’t think she could be the same child. Graylin’s—”
“Not now, Frell.” Ghyle held up a hand. “Such speculations can wait. But it is now clearer than ever that we cannot let this girl fall into the shadow of the king. That must not happen.”
The alchymist straightened with a nod. “From her story, the bats must have sensed their milk was tainting the child, blinding her, and so returned her to her own kind.”
“Which suggests a level of intelligence far superior than anyone ever imagined.” Ghyle grew silent as she contemplated this, then spoke again. “Is it possible that they poisoned the girl a fortnight ago on purpose? Reawakening her—both in sight and knowledge—to serve as a vessel of warning to the greater world? Do we dare place such reasoning and cunning upon those winged beasts?”
The alchymist rubbed a finger in the crease of his chin. “I reviewed several texts after receiving your missive, to better understand the venom that had afflicted the girl. Justoam’s Anaticum Plenary. Lakewright’s Historia Animalium. Even the oft reviled Klashean tome Fhallon’s Dialogues of Biologica Variations. We know other bats—like the eyeless fruitwings that inhabit the shadowy depths of Cloudreach—navigate somehow via their near-silent cries. Surely the Myr bats must do the same, experiencing the world in such a manner. A handful of alchymists suspect these kings among their kind also use their high-pitched calls as a means of communication, binding one to another, like bees in a hive, ants in a nest. Perhaps even magnifying their entire genera’s intelligence.”
“The whole greater than its parts,” Ghyle said.
Frell nodded. “Fhallon’s Dialogues goes so far as to conjecture that their knowledge, shared and communed, might go back generations, farther than our own histories. We also know other genera of bats, especially those in the dark western fringes of the Crown, prefer the dark of night, as if binding their behavior and patterns to the cycles of the moon. If so, surely our Myr bats would be equally sensitive to changes in the moon.”
While Nyx was lost by most of this, Prioress Ghyle’s eyes narrowed with intent on her former student. “Frell, are you suggesting the bats have somehow intuited what your research has shown?”
He nodded. “That the moon has been growing larger over the centuries, and more quickly now.”
Nyx put herself back on that accursed mountaintop, watching a moon swelling, crashing toward her, its edges on fire. “Moonfall,” she whispered.
Frell turned toward her. “Mayhap that is what they were trying to show you, to warn you in their own way.”
Nyx knew his explanation did not illuminate everything. Her vision atop the mountain had been too detailed. Even now screams echoed in her head. She remembered the name shouted from her own lips. Bashaliia. Still, she set aside such mysteries for now and addressed a question that had been plaguing her since that nightmare-riven day.
“Why me?” she asked, glancing over to Jace, then back to the two scholars. “Why am I the one beset by their calls?”
Frell shrugged. “I think it’s obvious.”
Nyx frowned. Not to me.
Frell explained, “You lived your first six moons under their tutelage, when your mind was soft clay, still pliable, far from fully formed. Your brain grew while under a constant barrage of their silent cries. Under such persistent exposure, your mind may have been forever altered by their keening, as a tree is gnarled by winds.”
She glanced to Jace, whose eyes had grown even larger, shining with fear.
Of me.
Frell continued, “I believe, in some small way, that you joined the greater mind around you. And though grown now and diverged on a new path, you still remained attuned to that pattern ingrained upon your spirit.”
Nyx shivered, wanting to argue against the alchymist’s words. Still, she remembered those moments when she saw herself through another’s eyes, through her lost brother’s eyes.
Ghyle spoke up. “If Alchymist Frell’s suspicions are true, then it suggests your recent poisoning awoke more than just your eyesight. It opened an inner eye long closed since you were left in the swamp.”
Nyx swallowed, her stomach churning sickly and hotly.
Then what am I?
Jace must have sensed her distress and pushed through his fear to step closer. “Nyx, is that what you came here to tell the prioress?”
She stiffened, realizing what she had forgotten. “No,” she blurted out, and turned to Ghyle. “I had another visit from my lost brother.”
Jace took her hand. “I saw the bat, too.”
She looked gratefully over at him. She took strength from the firmness of his grip, fighting back tears at his simple gesture, at his show of support and friendship.
“I had another vision,” she said, and explained about the coming storm, an attack by thousands of bats to avenge the sacrifice about to happen. “We must stop the others from burning the creature they captured, or we’ll be attacked from the air.”
Jace’s brows pinched. “But how could the bats know what we intend to do here, when it’s not even happened yet?”
As much as it disturbed her, Nyx knew the answer. “If I know that greater mind, then perhaps they also may know mine.”
She again pictured the switching back and forth of her vision. She also remembered the fury that had grown inside her upon learning about the sacrifice and the fervent stirring to do something about it. It was a rescue that her normally meek self would never have contemplated or risked.
Where did that desire come from?
She lifted a hand and touched between her breasts.
Was it born of me? Or stoked by them?
Before she could decide, a ringing rose from beyond the walls, clanging louder with each heartbeat. She cringed at the sound.
The first bell of Eventoll.
She gaped at the others, her breath seizing in her chest.
I took too long.
It was already too late.
The prioress turned to Frell, plainly not giving up. “We must intervene, but I’m not sure my word alone can cast aside a king’s order.”
The alchymist nodded. “Then it may take that of a prince. If I can convince him.”
A prince?
Ghyle crossed and took hold of Jace’s arm. “Nyx has already drawn the king’s attention, and I fear her situation will soon be far graver. You must get her somewhere safe.”
“Wh… Where?” Jace stammered.
“Out of the school. It is no longer safe for her here.” The prioress looked at Nyx. “For now, get her back home.”
Nyx did not resist as the two of them were rushed toward the door, but an unsettling question chased her heels.
Where is my true home?