Chapter 7
THE SPACE OF A SUNRING
LEILANI
THE DISC OF violet wax bearing the Stellarion seal is smooth and brittle against my shaking fingers, but then softens, bows, disappears entirely. I snatch my hand away, shuddering. Magic. Star-damned magic.
The envelope contains four sheets of parchment, covered in the same spidery amethyst script, preserved as if written last night, not some eight hundred sunrings since. My heart thrums like a hive as I scan the pages.
Leilani,
How strange to finally commit your name to parchment, a name that has stalked my waking dreams for so long a time. I can only imagine how much stranger this must be for you. I ask only that you read this with an open mind.
Hope remains, because of you.
The visions began shortly after Arden disappeared. At first, I saw glimpses of your face, so like my own, and I didn’t understand their meaning. But these flashes soon became a message.
‘Two magi will rise. One of fire and one of stardust. One fated to destroy the world; the other to save it.’
And then a name.
You, Leilani Stellarion, last of the Starborn Seers, are fated to purge the Sickening and save the realms. You are Arcelia’s last chance.
I don’t need to tell you our shared gift is one of inference only; the precise means of revoking Arden’s curse will be yours to discover.
But on one point, my second-sight is crystal-clear – to do so, you must retrieve the Starlight Staff.
Our protective wards won’t last forever – just long enough, I hope, for you to come of age and embark on your search.
By now your brandmagic will have manifested, and you will need all your Starborn faculties to stand a chance of succeeding.
I lean back heavily against the stone bench. ‘She can’t mean that I…’ My tongue and lips won’t form words. They’re thick and slow. My thoughts are the same, swimming in treacle.
‘I’ve always known you were special,’ Orthriel whispers.
‘Suspected you were destined for greatness. I was never privy to the contents of her letter, but when Noelani entrusted it to me, I confess I hoped – but this exceeds my hopes.’ The look on my Guardian’s face as they stare down at me is one I’ve never seen before. Pride.
‘Special,’ I sputter. ‘Orthriel, I’m cursed.
I don’t want my magic; I can’t even wield it.
Noelani could summon starshine, move things with her mind.
Maybe in her hands, safeguarded by her talisman, it was a force for good, but you know brandpowers manifest differently in all the Sistertouched.
I can’t control anything. All I do is hurt people. ’
‘Or maybe you’ve just never tried to master it. You’ve always wanted a chance to prove yourself – this is it. Your fate is star-writ. You can’t turn your back on the chance of finding the Starlight Staff, of saving the realm. Of saving all the realms.’
And there it is. Dangled before me, tantalising as freshly sliced starfruit.
My means of redemption.
And though the looping ink is swirling before my eyes, and my hands are trembling, making the words on the page near impossible to parse, I force myself to read on.
I have enchanted the Celestial Chain; an inscription will appear when you hold it to the light of the Flowering Moons tonight, revealing the location of my sceptre. A generalised location for now; details await you in the Starshrine in the Silver City.
I cannot risk revealing all my secrets at once lest they fall into enemy hands – her hands.
For this reason, share the contents of the inscription with no one.
The location of the sceptre is for your eyes only.
My stomach unclenches. Cold waves of relief and disappointment crashing over me simultaneously. These words are the ravings of a woman on the brink. The last desperate hope of a desperate mind.
‘This isn’t a way out of my binding at all,’ I say. ‘She claims I need the Celestial Chain to seek the sceptre, and that’s been lost for generations…’
Orthriel murmurs a stream of soft sylphic words to the air. Another object materialises into the room. An object immediately familiar, though I’ve never seen it before. The sight of it stops the words in my mouth.
The Celestial Chain eddies above me. Gripping Noelani’s pages tight in one hand, I open the other and the chain drifts to a rest there.
It’s heavy, and cold as frost. I draw it close and inspect the delicate string of diamonds, emulated almost exactly in the duplicate lying on the podium that’s shortly to bind my hand to Astrophel’s.
But the presence of the missing starstone renders the replica worthless by comparison.
I’ve never seen a fragment of the Wishing Star before.
It gleams with an opal light, similar to Orthriel’s aura, only several times more brilliant, the depths of the heavens contained within its facets.
But darkness flickers at its core, a residual Shadow Mark from where the starstone was rent by the Elemagi’s Blood Bond, cleaving into two Sister-Stones.
This one, and the one set atop the Starlight Staff.
Even with this flaw, it’s mesmerising, magnetic – almost animate.
A strange rhythm, a crystalline heartbeat, vibrates through the stone as I cradle it in my palm.
It’s oddly comforting, even as an icy worm of dread gnaws my chest the longer I stare at it.
I leap to my feet as understanding dawns about what I hold in my hand, whom I can save, if I can only reunite it with its twin.
I tear my eyes from the chain to look at my Guardian. ‘How could you keep this from me?’
‘Noelani was clear. I was not to give you the bequest until you came of age. I swore her an oath that—’
‘But my mother might have died, she still might, and this… this gives me a chance to save her. What about your loyalty to me? You know it’s my fault she’s sick. You know I pray every night, wishing I could undo that morning she crossed the wall to go to the Asteum.’
The world tilts, blurs round the edges. I can’t catch my breath.
‘Breathe. Just breathe.’ Orthriel repeats the mantra over and over.
I force myself to listen, to slow my breaths, count them till the world rights itself and the pounding quiets in my ears.
‘Are you well?’ Orthriel asks once my pulse is steady and even.
I glare at them.
‘It’s not been easy to keep the existence of this letter – and what I suspected it might mean when Noelani also bequeathed her chain to me – from you.
But she made me swear the oath of secrecy on my heartcrystal.
The penalty for breaking it was banishment from Nimbi.
I’ve wanted to tell you so many times, but until now, my suspicions were only that.
I knew nothing for certain. And without the island, without the means to replenish my heartcrystal… ’
Orthriel doesn’t need to finish that sentence. It’s obvious what would happen to them without the island’s ready reserves of Star-Aether. Like all of Arcelia’s Guardian races, cielsylphs are immortal only so long as a connection to their Aether core endures.
‘So, you decided to gamble, not with your own life, but with my mother’s instead, is that it?’
Orthriel straightens and glowers back at me, their aura flaring.
‘That’s enough. You forget who – what – you’re speaking to.
’ They can shift from beautiful to terrible in an instant.
‘I’ve given it to you, haven’t I? And now you can use Noelani’s letter to interrupt the binding ceremony, delay proceedings so the moment of full moonslight passes.
They’ll be forced to postpone to the next Flowering Moons, or risk the union being star-slighted.
Foolish child, I’ve bought you the space of a sunring. ’
‘And what if I don’t have a sunring?’ I screech.
The whispers. The warnings. It all makes sense now.
I scan the letter again. ‘See, Noelani explains here the Elemagi’s wards can’t hold forever.
They were only ever intended to last until I came of age.
’ I stab my finger at the relevant passage.
‘What if Arden’s curse destroys everything before I can find the Starlight Staff?
What if my mother doesn’t last long enough for me to discover it?
’ I narrow my eyes. ‘I’ll never forgive you. Never!’
Hurt flickers across my Guardian’s face, along with the shadow of some other emotion I can’t place.
‘Finish the letter, Leilani,’ they sigh. ‘Save your spleen. There is more yet to learn.’
I don’t like the weight of that sigh. Orthriel must have read ahead. I turn my attention back to the pages crushed in my hand. What more can there possibly be? My world’s been tipped upside down already.
You are the key, Leilani, but you cannot unlock the curse alone.
By the time you read this, I fear Arcelia will have once more been torn asunder, our efforts to restore and unite the realms brought to naught.
Your first hurdle will be bridging these divides, for the Starlight Staff can only be retrieved if a Quaternity – a member drawn from each of Arcelia’s realms – re-enacts our Blood Bond.
A safeguard against Arden seizing it for her own and using it to wreak more horror.
But more than this, the magic within Arcelia, the magic within my sceptre, flows freely and fully only when the four Aethers are in balance, when the four quarters of Arcelia are united.
Self-interest will not serve the greater good, nor heal our broken world.
Stronger together. This was to have been our great lesson. Our legacy.
I am sorry to force you to invoke Shadow Lore, but it is the only way I can ensure the sceptre will answer to you. Our talismans were forged in Shadow; they respond to its call, to the power of blood. My blood that you share.