Chapter 6
TAINTED ARTEFACT
LEILANI
I FUMBLE WITH the Reliquary key, worm it inside the locking mechanism. It’s stiff, rusted from long disuse. A clunk. The door opens. Mildew lingers in the shadowed recesses of the octagonal chamber and I’m glad of my pomander as I creep inside. Even its acrid fug is preferable to this rank rot.
I cross to the large rose window where scrolling tendrils of starcrystal tracery, encasing thousands of shards of jewelled glass, are all whiskered with ice.
Together they depict the sigils of The Nine – Estelia’s leading noble families.
I force the smaller lancet casements on each side of it open, hoping to clear the air.
Try as I might, I can’t ignore the cabinet looming opposite the great window.
It’s why no one comes here anymore. Six tiny jars, six tiny hearts – my lost brothers and sisters. I press my fingernails into my palms until my mother’s phantom screams, the stench of her blood-soaked birthing sheets, fades away.
A quartz podium stands in the centre of the room.
The reason I’m here. The replica Starlight Staff and Celestial Chain lie on a silvery cushion atop the pedestal, ready for tonight’s ceremonies.
Even with diamonds in place of the starstones of the lost originals, Noelani’s relics are still things of beauty.
I sketched them from memory countless times after Izarius first showed them to me.
The idea of wielding the originals, of possessing the Sister-Stones, fragments of the fallen Wishing Star, horrified and thrilled me in equal measure.
For it was these stones that allowed my ancestor to wield Shadow, to safely amplify her brandmagic, to perform the blood rite that purged the realms of shadow creatures.
Legend states the Sister-Stones were also capable of granting a single wish to their bearer, a consequence of the Elemagi’s bloodspell fusing with the desperate wishes of a broken heart which the Dawn Sister infused into her celestial patterns when she created Arcelia’s constellations.
Nobody knows how Noelani spent her wish, only that the magic of the stones wasn’t powerful enough to revoke the Sickening.
As a girl, when I dreamt of finding the lost relics, I imagined reuniting the Sister-Stones, using that wish to restore my mother back to health.
Surely, my father would forgive me after that. Love me as his daughter again…
My fingers inch towards the podium. Noelani’s artefacts are symbols of absolute power and I’ll finally get to hold them tonight… or the next best thing anyway. Ironic then, that I’ve never felt so powerless in all my life.
I snatch my hand back. The relics belong to a bygone age before the Sickening was unleashed, that brief interlude when carrying a brand was a virtue, not a curse.
But tonight, they’re not symbols of power, they’re instruments of oppression.
A curtain at the back of the Reliquary flutters in the icy draught now circling the room.
Something stirs in my memory and curiosity coaxes me forwards.
A portrait of the Elemagi once hung in the recess behind it.
Given how rarely the Reliquary is used, there’s a chance it might have escaped my father’s purges.
I listen.
No sign yet of Astrophel’s even tread in the hallway.
I shouldn’t look. Shouldn’t want to look.
But that desperate, twisted need is unspooling in my chest. I grasp the cord to the right of the curtain and tug, unleashing a thick plume of dust. I’m face-to-painted-face with the four figures who’ve haunted my imagination since Izarius first introduced me to their ill-starred story.
I can remember my tutor spinning that sad tale clear as crystal, as if we stood together before this very portrait only minutes ago, rather than nine long sunrings past.
‘How much have you been told about the Branded, Princess?’ Izarius asked, bushy eyebrows winging upwards as he unveiled the portrait.
My gaze slid to the floor. ‘My father forbids mention of such things, but Mother sometimes reads me stories from the Book of Starlore. She told me the Dusk Sister, mad with jealousy, mind addled by her dark magic, cast her twin from the Cradleworld using a cursed veil, and later sent shadow creatures through the Veil to kill her. That the Dawn Sister created the Branded with her dying breaths to expel these monsters from Arcelia and defend the realms from their corruption.’
Izarius nodded. ‘She entrusted her spellbook to the Branded, granted to them – alone of all her creations – the ability to wield both Light and Shadow Lore, so they could serve as her stewards. But the Dawn Sister died before she could teach the Branded the First Runes. Unable to read the Book of Mysteries, they could neither invoke the Dusk Sister’s dark magic to banish the shadow creatures, nor master their Sister-given affinities for the Aethers and use Light Lore to defend the realms.’
‘People came to fear the Branded,’ I whispered, ‘and the powers they couldn’t control. My kind were shunned…’
Izarius patted my hand. His grey eyes, milky with cataracts, searched my face. ‘Has your mother spoken to you of your ancestor Noelani? Of the other Elemagi?’
I looked at the portrait then, committing its four figures to memory. I shook my head. ‘Only to explain she’s where I inherited my… my… That she’s the reason for my affliction.’
Izarius frowned, deepening the furrows on a brow lined as one of his ancient star-maps. ‘It’s not right to leave you in ignorance.’
I opened my mouth to protest, but Izarius smiled, squeezed my hand again.
‘Don’t worry. Your father need never know we’ve had this conversation.
’ He moved closer to the painting, running a hand through tousled hair, more grey than silver.
‘I’ll tell you what I can, but almost eight centuries have passed since the Elemagi’s reign, and much of their sorry tale’s been lost to the tides of history.
What we know for certain is, during the first Tarnished Age, four members of the Branded, intent on reclaiming their rightful place in society, worked together to decode the Book of Mysteries.
Piece by piece, they uncovered the secrets of Light and Shadow Lore.
‘Sometime later, they gathered fragments of the Aether cores and incorporated these talismans into four powerful sceptres to protect themselves from Shadow’s corrupting influence.
Thus armed, they performed an ancient blood rite to vanquish the shadow creatures and restored balance, peace and prosperity to the realms. In homage, the Guardian races swore new bonds of fealty to them; they were given the title of Elemagi, treated like gods – revered and loved. At least for a time…’
Izarius sighed, turned from the portrait.
‘But all magic has its price and something went terribly wrong.
Arden, the Oralian Elemagus, succumbed to Shadow.
Not satisfied with being one ruler among four, she betrayed the others by unleashing the Sickening in a bid to gain dominion over all the realms. The remaining Elemagi confronted Arden, commandeered her sceptre, but she fled before they could bring her to justice.
Despite extensive searches, no trace of Arden was ever found.
The others pooled their magic, tried to revoke her curse, but only succeeded in creating defensive wards to slow its progress.
‘Defeated, all four sceptres and the Book of Mysteries hidden to prevent Arden finishing what she started, the Elemagi retreated to an island bower in the neutral Borderlands; their refuge since the earliest moons of their friendship. In a final act of cowardice, they cloaked themselves under a slumber spell, abandoning Arcelia to its lingering fate.’
It was here, before this very portrait, I learnt why people hate the Branded – it’s where I learnt to hate myself. Still, I can’t deny the thrill, the powerful sense of kinship. The Elemagi bore my same curse; it’s a bond that transcends the ages.
This is where my morbid fascination with forbidden, tainted artefacts began – the moment I realised I was a tainted artefact myself.
The painted Elemagi hold their sceptres and stand in a lush meadow, an approximation of the bower on the Silent Isle where the cowards retired, forsaking Arcelia, an emerald carpet punctuated by exotic wildflowers I don’t recognise – splashes of violet, yellow and soft-white, the petals painted in a thicker impasto than the rest of the composition, almost begging to be plucked.
I reach towards the painting, but start back at the sound of voices on the other side of the door.
I listen, heart in my mouth, but the muffled voices trail away.
Just Watchers patrolling.
I turn back to the painting. The two young men are so strange looking, so wholly unlike my own people.
Lyndon Vervale, the Xylian Elemagus, to the left, is stocky and soft-featured, with a mass of soil-brown curls, constellations of freckles, and stark lichen-dappled cheekbones.
Green eyes stare out from his cadaver-tinged face.
Zale Aguado, the Riverian Elemagus, is taller, still short by Estelian standards, but long-bodied, broad-shouldered and lithe.
He’s striking enough, even in this painted likeness, that I can understand Noelani’s decision to reject her court-appointed match in his favour.
There’s something magnetic about his lapis eyes and lazy half-smile.
It’s almost enough to make me overlook his ocean-hued hair and skin, the scales thickly sprinkled along his collarbones.
But like the first time Izarius showed me this painting, it’s the women that clamour loudest for my attention.