40. Aldrin
Chapter 40
Aldrin
W e step out of the portal into a graveyard. At least fifty fresh mounds of earth dot the space around the great temple. The site is utterly still, as though every living thing holds its breath.
I motion for our force to fan out, our swords and magic at the ready for a horde of enemy guards to swarm us, but none come. Long moments pass while the Mothers of Magic stream out of the portal, but the garden remains peaceful.
Naomi claps her hands and motions for us to silently follow her. She leads us along a path between trees with wide canopies and sculpture bushes, toward a high stone wall.I prepare for soldiers to launch an ambush at every thicket of trees or bend in the road, but they never arrive.
“The guards will be at the gate, but my spies tell me it is only a token number,” Naomi hisses to me.
“Why would a warlord like Desmond leave such an opening into the city?” I ask.
She sighs. “We Mothers of Magic are pacifists who don’t engage in war. Not before this one, at least. We have never transported warriors or fae. But times are changing. It’s almost as though this kingdom forgets that to become priestesses, we first venture into the Otherworld as warriors.”
There are ten guards at a gate of tall metal bars that leads out to a busy city street. I could kill all of them easily, as distracted as they are, but we don’t want to make a scene. Instead, Naomi walks straight up to them with the group of priestesses in tow.
The High Priestess puts her hands on her hips. “I demand you open this gate immediately!” she barks. “How dare you lock us up in our own sanctuary? I will have words with the king and Lord Desmond on the state of my temple!”
The guards take one look at her headgear of twisting antlers, the crown of the High Priestess, and scurry to open the gate. Four of them approach us in the gardens, their eyes widening as they spot my band of warriors behind the priestesses.
My fae throw their wields of earth magic together and open rifts in the ground, each the size of a grave. They snag soldiers with the roots of trees and drag them beneath the dirt before closing them up. A muted scream is all that leaves the humans’ lungs before they are crushed.
The quick deaths are a mercy they don’t deserve after hiding the evidence of the atrocities at this site. I recognized some of those faces from the visions Keira sent me, and I would have loved to take my time with them.
I focus the intensity of my magic on the willpower of each guard outside the wall. There is little resistance to my mind penetrating theirs, to my power flowing through their muscles and taking control.
A dull ache builds at the back of my head and my vision blackens at the edges as I have two guards at a time slowly stroll into the garden for the rest of my people to dispatch. I am doubled over and panting by the time we are done.
We swarm into the city, breaking up into ten groups, a few priestesses paired with a few disguised fae guards, heading to different regions of the city. I have kept my most loyal band together, along with Caitlin. We have our own mission when those armies reach the gate.
The city is ripe for rebellion.
Crowds mill about in dirty streets, arguing with each other or whispering gossip in corners. I wrinkle my nose at the stench of this place. Every surface is stone. The paved streets and squares. The tan bricks of the buildings and terracotta-tiled roofs. Greenish sludge coats the roofs, black smears slide down many of the walls, and I don’t even want to think of the muck on the ground. Especially the piles of refuse in the alleyways.
There are no rivers to wash the human filth away. No trees to soak up the nourishment. No patches of greenery to function as nature’s drains.There are fountains in every square, but that water is contained and washes nothing away.
Caitlin selects a site in the middle of a square, before a fountain with a sculpture of three women pouring water out of vases. I scan the area around it, a ring of busy porticos with cafe tables spilling out into it.
I send Klara, Silvan and Zinnia to different points in the terrace as lookouts. Drake and Hawthorne pretend to line up for a drink of water from the fountain. They will join the crowd of Caitlin’s onlookers and discreetly feed her power for her show.
I enter what must be a guild hall with Cyprien on my heels, and immediately race up the spiral staircase to the bell tower I spotted from the ground. The entire balconied space is dotted with bird droppings, and the creak of the bell’s rope as it gently moves overhead is a little disconcerting, but the stink of so many people pressed together is gone.
The tower gives us an excellent view of Caitlin striding toward the fountain and the streets funneling into the square, providing anadvance warning if unrest breaks out. It functions as a lookout beyond the city wall, to the shantytown that rests up against it and the road Edmund will arrive on with the armies of the North and South combined.
I can’t help glancing behind me, deeper into the sprawling city, where the palace lies. A savage beast of fury awakens in me at that sight, claws extending, teeth bared and craving blood.
The royal castle is as ugly as the rest of this city. A squat thing of low buildings of different styles haphazardly shoved together, bland and monotone with only a handful of spires and turrets to break them up.
Keira is there, in a prison of opulence.
It takes everything within me not to charge up that rise toward her. To scale the wall around the palace and kill every guard on it. My hands twitch at the thought of the pain I will inflict on the mad king when I get my hands on him.
“Aldrin, you cannot do anything for her today.” Cyprien’s voice drags me back to the moment.
“I am so sick of hearing that.” My teeth grind so hard thatmy jaw hurts.
“I know.” He puts his hands on my shoulders and guides me back to the other side of the bell tower, forcing me to look at Caitlin and the fountain below.
She stands before all that flowing water, raising her hands over her head and clapping multiple times. Her air magic amplifies the sound to the intensity of thunderclaps.
“Heed my warning!” Caitlin’s words bounce off the porticos, the echo whispering back in a dozen voices. The crowd stops and everyone turns to her. “Heed the warnings of the High Priestess. Of your Mothers of Magic!”
I lean my arms on the brick railing, grim satisfaction filling me at the way the humans below mutter frantically between themselves and crowd around Caitlin. A breeze whips around her, lifting her auburn hair and rustling the divided skirts of her white gown.
A stronger gust kicks up the pool of water in the fountain. Tendrils of it form a platform beneath her feet, then raise her off the ground with an air base that is invisible to the humans. Slowly, Caitlin is brought to the apex of the tall fountain, a pedestal of churning water beneath her feet.
The weaves of magic from Drake and Hawthorne as they hold their magic trick are clear to me, but the humans stare at Caitlin as though she is a messiah.
“Your king has gone mad! His reign has brought nothing but war. Death. Famine,” Caitlin yells, and the commoners call back their agreement. “The good people of this city pay for his war in the North with their taxes and their sons, so King Finan could kidnap a woman who had no interest in marrying him. A Mother of Magic who had given herself over to the temple, no less!”
There are more angry murmurings, but this is old news to the people.The priestesses have been lecturing them about this since the war began.
“Now, King Finan is slaughtering priestesses! The sanctuary in this city is closed because the king murdered every single woman within it. He has gone to other sanctuaries to kill their Mothers of Magic. When will he stop this sacrilege? When all Mothers of Magic are dead?”
The crowd eats up her words, yelling and thrashing. More people channel in from the four streets that feed into the large square. I watch them all closely in case we need to pull Caitlin out. Cyprien and I could build a staircase of air for her to run to us.
“You have had no priestesses in this city for weeks because the king slaughtered them,” Caitlin roars. “Who has helped the expecting mothers in this city birth their children? Who has healed the sick in their darkest hour? The king is to blame for those avoidable deaths of your loved ones!”
The people react, throwing up their arms and screaming.
Caitlin doesn’t miss a beat. “When the crops fail because there are no Mothers of Magic to save them, the famine will be your king’s fault. When the magic dies in this land because there are no more pilgrimages, it will be your king’s fault.”
Voices ring out in the crowd.
“The king must be stopped!” a man screams.
“The gods will curse us for such sacrilege!” a woman bellows.
“The mad king is no longer fit to rule!” Caitlin growls. “An army is marching on this very city to stop him. King Finan would sit behind his palace walls and allow you to starve under a siege. To die in the streets if a battle broke out. When has he ever dirtied his hands to save you? He has only ever robbed you!”
Wails rise from the amassed people and I grit my teeth. This is the most dangerous part of Caitlin’s speech. We cannot have uncontrolled riots in the city. The mob needs to be turned into a finely tuned weapon.One that we wield.
“We must remove the mad king from power!” she urges. “When King Niall arrives to claim the throne, we must rush to the city gates, to the palace gates, and storm the guards to open them for the oncoming army. I promise you: King Niall will go straight to the palace to remove the madman within. King Niall is coming to save the people of Sunbright City from his brother. From being cursed by the gods who frown on him. King Niall will free all of Strathia!”
The crowd screams their approval, many cursing the mad king.
A half-smile forms on my lips at the vulgarity of their words. It matches my mood exactly.But this is a dangerous game we play, and our timing to get Keira and Diarmuid out of the palace before the mob arrives is essential. We need to strike when the guards are so swamped by the onslaught that they cannot stop us from entering through the portal.
Caitlin preaches until the sun goes down and her voice turns hoarse. Then we visit tavern after tavern, where she gets on the performers’ stages to reach the men and women in their cups. By the time we select an inn to sleep at, she is swaying on her feet.
We pay for a noble’s room in an upmarket inn with servants’ and guards’ quarters attached, because I fear that someone may come for Caitlin in the night. Klara heals her throat and shares her bed, just to be sure.
During the middle of the night, while I toss and turn on a lumpy pallet as soft footfalls approach and recede in the corridor outside, and roars of laughter float up from the hall below, I feel her.
That presence that pulls at my heart, somehow connecting me to the woman I love. My heart swells and it is as though I can finally breathe again. The smallest fragment of that huge missing part of me returns.
Keira. My very soul calls out to her. I miss you, Keira. Hold on. Please hold on. I am coming for you.
No words return to me. It is like a distant, groggy muttering from a person who is still half asleep. The connection is so incredibly thin, but I bask in the warm embrace of it, as I would in holding her soft body to mine and nuzzling my face in her neck. I can almost smell the sweetness of her hair and skin. I shoot those sensations to her in the crazy hope that she can feel them too.
We hit the streets the next morning, and this time the people flock to Caitlin as soon as she speaks. We fae take turns guarding her and feeding her our power for her tricks.
The day is long and hard.
The palace guard catches wind of our activities, and we are constantly forced to move to prevent a confrontation. A clash could create the boiling point we need, but it would be too soon.
The only consolation is Keira’s presence within my mind, gradually growing in strength. Eventually I can hear her voice whispering to me, but I can’t quite make out the words.
It is during the morning of the third day that the mood of the crowd changes during one of Caitlin’s performances. They pull away from her and glance around frantically.
I examine them from my position at the edge of the square, trying to understand what is happening. Large bodies of people run through the square from an adjacent street, confusing the rest and pushing past those watching Caitlin.
“The army is here! The army is here!” one man screams as he passes me.
“Run for your lives!” a woman screeches, holding a wailing baby.
I grab another fleeing man by the tunic, forcing him to stop. His eyes are wide and dart everywhere but my face. “What is happening, man?” I yell at him.
“A h-huge horde is advancing on the city,” he stammers out, and I drop him.“They fly the king’s banner, but it is all wrong. Different. The colors are inverted.”
King Niall has arrived.
I glance at Caitlin’s position, where Klara, Hawthorne and Silvan have formed a protective circle around her, then I run into the building at my back. I take two steps at a time as I scale multiple flights of stairs to the roof. Drake and Cyprien are already up there.
The view that greets me has my heart hammering with anticipation. An advancing army sprawls across the empty lands that meet the city, flying King Niall’s banners, alongside the green and bronze of Appleshield.
“They will be at the gate in an hour.” Drake squeezes my arm. “Then you can let out that murderous rage.”
“Maybe less.” Cyprien pulls his gaze away from the horizon to look at me. “Are you ready for what we might find?”
“We extract Caitlin now and make our move on the palace. The mad king dies today .” Something dark within me revels at finally giving those orders.
We rush down the stairs and into the churning, hysterical crowd. Despite the frantic movements and needless yelling of some, most have turned to Caitlin again, utterly transfixed. I am forced to push past tightly packed bodies to reach her, receiving elbows in the chest as they raise theirarms to her.
“The time to empower yourself is now!” Caitlin bellows. “Pick up your arms. Storm the city gates. Let in that army who is here to save you and your true king, King Niall! Remember, the queen is a prisoner, and a Mother of Magic. Save the queen and the gods will smile on you. SAVE THE QUEEN!”
It is jarring to hear Keira referred to as another man’s queen. It stabs a knife in my heart, then twists the blade, but this is not about me.
The people amassed repeat Caitlin’s words. Chant them while they thrash as one. Save the queen. Save the queen.
My legs feel weak at those words, and I would hug Caitlin if we had the time. My band of warriors encircles her, and we push our way through the mob.
Behind us, a man jumps onto Caitlin’s pedestal. “Let’s rid ourselves of a mad king!” he screams, and the crowd churning toward the palace roars in agreement.
It is an effort to move against the current of people. Many have picked up weapons: axes, butcher’s knives, planks of wood. Their bodies tug at us, and multiple times, I am forced to throw up air shields to push them back. Abruptly, we break through their number into an alley that leads neither to the gates at the wall nor to the palace.
We dash into the stillness of the priestesses’ sanctuary. The quiet of these walled-in gardens is eerie when the city outside is in such turmoil. Barked orders in masculine voices and the rattle of chain mail float to us as we near its center.
I break the tree cover first, and hundreds of soldiers whip around toward me, their numbers swarming around an activated portal. I put up my hands in a disarming gesture as Edmund steps out of the ring of his warriors.
He slaps me on the shoulder, then calls for a servant, who rushes toward Caitlin with her armor. Caitlin pulls off her loose robe in a single motion, revealing the leather leggings and tunic beneath. A servant helps her dress quickly and hands her a blade.
Around us, Appleshield soldiers are disguised as commoners, wearing simple tunics and trousers in neutral tones, but hints of chain mail show at their collars and hems. They are well armed with swords and shields. A group pulls crude battering rams through the portal.
They will be the true force attacking the gates from within, wolves hidden among sheep.
Cyprien powers up a portal that leads to the closest Sanctuary of Magic at Seaport, near the ocean just outside the city. I place my hands on the moonstone gate, with Drake crouching next to me to do the same and Klara on the other side.
We pour our raw magic into it, overloading the structure of the crystal and forcing a new path of trajectory on the gate. I grind my teeth with the effort. It is like rolling a boulder up a steep hill.
We push and push, liquid fire searing through me at the amount of raw power leaving me, until that tunnel cutting through space bends, arching in an unnatural curve from where we stand to the portal on the other side. When the center of the arc is closer to the palace than the Seaport portal itself, the tunnel of magic finally lets go of its original destination and snaps to the portal within the palace library with the signature of Seaport.
Drake lets out a breathy laugh. I double over, my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. Sweat beads across my face, stinging my eyes, and I wipe it away with a sleeve.
The portal before us will now lead us right into the palace.
Edmund puts a hand on my shoulder and stares at me with a feral intensity. “Go get my daughter.”