Chapter 5
FIVE
Nova
Iwoke up slightly hungover, as Bastian had predicted, but my pounding head remained mercifully free of voices.
Someone had left a glass of water and a vial of pain-relieving elixir on my bedside table. I gulped both down and dressed just as quickly, refusing to linger long enough to let any stray voices find their way in—or to let myself think too hard about what I had to do today.
A short time later, I was at the stables, greeting Bastian and King Marius.
Both were busy readying their scourge stallions—beasts specifically bred to withstand the harsh conditions of Noctaris and its shadows.
The stallions were like living embodiments of the darkness itself, the way their bodies rippled with power, occasionally sending twists of vaporous black energy into the air.
Their eyes were like flames, burning unnervingly bright even in the relatively strong morning light.
Phantom had shifted into the shape of one of these imposing horses. But he still sat much like a dog, cocking his head as he watched me approach.
(You’re late), he informed me.
“Then let’s make up for lost time, shall we?” I said with a yawn, motioning for him to kneel so I could climb onto his back.
We rode for hours.
The distance our revitalized zone stretched across wasn’t particularly wide, but there were lots of stops to make along the way to its edges—people to speak with, re-growth to observe, detailed notes to take.
Bastian spoke calmly and deliberately with the stewards we’d assigned to each area, doling out measured encouragement and quiet, stoic direction in equal amounts.
King Marius observed from a distance, never dismounting, never speaking unless spoken to. I got the sense he was taking his own kind of notes—a judge witnessing evidence.
I had little hope that his ruling in this trial would be fair.
Finally, we reached the westernmost edge of our revived area.
Here, the strained limits of the Aetherstone’s life-giving magic quickly became apparent.
There were patches of green, stunted and thin, and our people had started to rebuild simple irrigation lines and rough shelters, but the soil was still dry and crumbled between our fingers, and the air had a tightness to it—a tension that seemed to increase with every breath we took.
Beyond the edge, I could see the barren wasteland that made up much of Noctaris.
I could see the ghosts within it, could hear their low, keening murmurs and smell the dust they stirred up as they drifted across the landscape.
They watched from a safe distance, occasionally glancing into our sanctuary with dead eyes, and—I assumed—with no real awareness or interest in what they saw.
None of them tried to pass the threshold into the revived territory.
They didn’t even come close to it.
We’d had more success gathering some of the wraiths from the sanctuary cities and bringing them into these healing zones—as many as we dared, while making certain not to exhaust the resources barely sustaining the fragile rebirth of Noctaris.
Even that had proven a surprisingly delicate process, getting them to step into the light after they’d spent so long in the dark.
But these shades that haunted the emptiness had proven even more difficult to save.
Most of the ones who had crossed the threshold were not ones that we’d managed to coax into salvation, but those who hadn’t been given a choice one way or another; the power that surged from the Aetherstone a month ago had fallen over this area with little direction or restraint, thrusting all the shades it overtook violently back into life—or into the beginnings of life, at least.
The long-term effects of this violent reawakening remained to be seen.
Nevertheless, we carried on and hoped for the best. This western edge was where we’d decided to purposefully build out from.
Over the past few weeks, we’d worked with revived beings and the soldiers we’d stationed here, laying the foundations of a proper base camp—a point from which all our future revival might expand.
But as I stood there watching the reborn shuffle through the half-built structures, toiling among the dirt, so many of them wearing oddly vacant and haunted expressions…
Well, I could almost understand the ones still in the dark and their reluctance to step across the threshold.
They might have been ghosts, but I imagined there was a certain blissfulness that came with that empty existence.
“I expected the perimeter to be wider,” said King Marius, pulling his stallion up between my brother and me. “All the talk of revival and salvation was somewhat exaggerated, wasn’t it?”
My brother didn’t take the bait. All he said was, “It’s certainly a slow process, bringing an entire world back to life.”
Marius snorted. “It’s that word—entire—that concerns me.”
Bastian ran a soothing hand along his stallion’s neck as it stomped its hooves. “Why don’t you tell me your exact concerns, Marius?”
Not for the first time, I admired my brother’s patience.
“We’re stretched too thin here, Bastian,” growled Marius.
“You must be able to see that.” He gestured out at the expanse of grey beyond the revived zone before casting me a quick, disapproving look.
“If our Shadow Vaelora here cannot expand this effort into something greater, there is no hope of rebuilding anything resembling a proper empire. Circling inward, as you suggested last night, will not be enough. I shudder to think about the sacrifices that will have to be made.”
Despite the words, he didn’t appear rattled by the idea of sacrifices at all.
“You shouldn’t have told so many people of your plans, or invited them to have a say in this reawakening,” he went on. “Now they’ve all descended upon your palace like hungry wolves, each with their hand out. And what will happen when you run out of magic to feed their ravenous appetites?”
“Should I have sent word only to you, then?” Bastian asked.
Marius smiled without warmth. “You could have honored the long-held alliance between our courts. That would have been a start.”
“Nearly everything else in this world is undergoing a process of death and rebirth,” I interjected, unable to keep quiet any longer. “Why would you assume our old alliances wouldn’t be subject to change as well?”
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand the loyalties and alliances of this realm,” he said, casting me another disdainful look. “As I understand it, you spent most of your life playing princess in the world Above while this one rotted.”
“Yes.” I gritted my teeth in a smile. “And now that princess is a queen, and if you want your rotten kingdom to stand any chance of revival, I’d choose your words and actions very carefully around me.”
Marius laughed, bitter and brief. “A queen with no crown, ruling over a kingdom with more ghosts than people. You’ll have to forgive me for not rushing to bow down before you.”
“She is the destined Queen of Rivenholt whether you choose to kneel before her or not,” Bastian said, somehow still maintaining his calm.
Marius laughed again. But then he seemed to be calculating his odds, his eyes darting between my brother and me. He kept silent, though the look he gave me was enough to make me want to reach for the dagger resting against my back.
Phantom bristled beneath me, his tolerance for this man clearly reaching its limit.
But I was slowly getting better at biting my tongue and choosing my battles, so I resisted the urge to grab my dagger. I merely tightened my grip on Phantom’s mane and looked back to the distant shades—though I continued to watch Marius out of the corner of my eye.
“Tell me the truth of it, Regent,” he said, turning his shrewd gaze back to my brother.
“There is no entire world in your plans, is there? How small do you really intend to keep this oasis of rebirth? And with Rivenholt remaining in the middle, I presume. What a powerful centerpiece it will become, hm?”
“My plans are constantly evolving, as would the plans of any decent leader,” Bastian said, his tone uncharacteristically cold.
The three of us stood, studying our surroundings, for several minutes more before the Drynland king said, “How decent the two of you are remains to be seen, I suppose.”
With this, he pulled his horse in an about-face and trotted off to observe the rows of various, freshly-planted crops in the distance.
Phantom’s voice was in my head a moment later. (I should rip his chest open for speaking about you the way he did.)
I exhaled slowly through my nose. “I’m not sure that would solve anything.”
(It would make me feel better. And that’s what’s important here, isn’t it?)
I gave him a weak smile and patted his neck. “Maybe next time.”
Bastian moved closer to me. “An exhausting bastard, isn’t he?”
“Yes. But maybe he has a point,” I said quietly.
My brother lifted a brow.
“What if I can’t draw more magic into this world by myself, no matter how many stupid practice sessions I suffer through with Eamon?
The stone was barely pulsing when we checked on it yesterday.
And nothing I’ve tried to do has reawakened it.
The amount of magic trickling down into Noctaris is pitiful, really, and every trip we take to Midna feels more useless than the last.”
He shook his head. “You brought back an incredible amount of information yesterday—knowledge we can use to plot out our next steps. That’s plenty useful.”
“Knowledge isn’t going to keep war from breaking out if the other leaders of our world get impatient. Not to mention the threat of Lorien and whatever chaos he’s planning from the Above. It feels like we’re balancing on the edge of a cliff, doesn’t it?”
Bastian ran another few soothing strokes over his scourge stallion’s dark coat; the creature’s eyes were wide, its ears and tail twitching. Restless and ready to bolt into the distant shadows and not look back.
I understood the sentiment.
“There are answers out there, whether in the middle realm or otherwise,” Bastian insisted. “Paths to a more permanent, more complete solution. We just haven’t found them yet.”
I tried to believe him, ignoring the heaviness in my heart. “You’ve managed to decipher some of what we brought back?”
He nodded. “Eamon planned to leave our notes in your office for you to look over,” he said. “He was working at a frenzied pace when I left him this morning; I don’t think he slept. So, there will be lots of half-legible ramblings for you to look over, if nothing else.”
I took a deep breath, looking one last time at the camp around us. It seemed so meager against the great expanse of darkness beyond.
The idea of locking myself in my office and searching for something—anything—to give us more hope suddenly seemed incredibly appealing.
“I’ve seen enough,” I told Bastian. “Let’s head back.”
The palace was abuzz with movement when we returned—the patter of restless boots upon the marble floors; the voices of our visitors arguing in borrowed chambers; the guards and servants hurrying through the halls, trying to impose some kind of order over everything.
I ignored it all as I made my way toward my office on the second floor, pausing only to duck into my room and grab the bundle of notes I’d left on my bed.
Phantom stayed behind on that bed at my insistence; he was a distracting force whenever I brought him into my office, always bored and incessantly pacing or trying to get me to play fetch within the first hour I shut myself in.
I cloaked myself in shadows as I walked from my room to the office, letting darkness bleed from my skin in soft, subtle waves. The power worked twofold, both snuffing out any light I passed and helping me blend into the darkness that followed that extinguishing.
In this way, I slipped largely unnoticed into my refuge, closing the door behind me and leaning against it for a moment. The silence on the other side of the heavy door was like a welcome, long-awaited embrace.
I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths—the deepest I’d managed all day. The scent of ink, old books, and candle wax washed over me, warming me from the inside out.
“I was beginning to think you’d never show up.”
My eyes flashed open. I turned toward the voice and gasped, my notes slipping from my grasp and scattering across the floor.
Aleksander was waiting for me, leaning casually against my desk.