36. Leah #2
I cautiously approach the light. It’s coming from a smooth crystal orb about the size of a grapefruit. It brightens as I get closer, glimmering a little more fiercely. I glance toward Strickland. He’s watching me closely, but nods in encouragement when I catch his eye.
I stop beside the plinth, studying the gleaming light swirling in the center of the orb. Now I’m this close, I can hear that it’s also emitting a low hum.
“The Heart of Dawn is one of Aradis’s oldest artifacts,” Strickland says, crossing the room to light the candles on the other side.
As he does, I notice a second plinth that was hidden in shadow before, supporting a box.
“Not quite as old as the realm itself, but almost. It’s said that it holds the light of the first dawn that ever broke upon Aradis. ”
I blink at him, the idea sounding absurd. “And how would someone go about capturing a dawn in an orb?”
He smiles. “Apparently, the ephilium’s ancestors joined their voices together to sing the memory of it, and the power of their song captured some of the light into stone. That hum you hear?”
I nod; the sound has gotten slightly louder since I’ve been standing here.
“That’s the echo of the ancestors’ voices,” Strickland says. “The stone’s power is purported to be able to light any darkness.”
He sets the box of matches back on the side table and comes to join me.
“According to ephilium predictions, if the orb is broken, it will bring a period of terrible darkness upon Aradis.”
“Hence why it makes effective collateral,” I say.
“Exactly.” He turns his gaze over toward the box on the second plinth. “I imagine you can guess what’s in there.”
“The Mantle,” I say. My curiosity is burning now, and I’m almost relieved when he leads me over to it.
Close up, I can see the box is very old, the sides warped and varnish chipped. The top is carved with a ring of Cyrax runes, the engravings faded by the accumulated dust of millennia that’s worked its way into their grooves.
Strickland flips the simple latch on the front and carefully opens the lid.
For a second, I think I can’t see the collateral for the shadows. Then I realize that it is the shadows, an unnaturally black mass swirling and spinning inside the box.
“It doesn’t look much like a mantle,” I murmur.
“That was my thought too. I suspect the supernaturals placed some protections on their collateral before they handed them over. Sensible, really. We’re meant to keep these objects, not use them.”
I stare at the swirling darkness, wondering if I’m imagining the way its movement has sped up as we watch it.
“Hekate was known as the Daughter of the Dark,” Strickland says. “The story goes that she fell in love with—”
“The Son of the Light,” I say. “Yes, I’ve heard the story.”
Syrus told it to me when I was staying in Infernum. The tragic legend is supposedly the origin of the war between the wingers. The Son of the Light—Aphelion—asked Hekate to leave the darkness behind. When she refused, he killed her in a fit of jealous rage. That’s the demon version, anyway.
“Then you know that the Mantle was how Hekate slipped between the realms unseen to meet her ephilium lover, Aphelion,” Strickland says.
I shake my head. “I thought it was just a fable. I didn’t know anything about the Mantle.”
“Supposedly, it can carry its wearer between realms without requiring rifts,” Strickland says. “It makes someone ‘master of the aether.’”
He turns his back on the box, moving toward the glowing orb again.
“It’s the Dawnheart that concerns me most these days,” he says, and I follow him, hoping we’re finally getting to the reason I’m down here.
He turns when he reaches the plinth, and the glow of the Dawnheart illuminates his face from below.
“Like I said, we’re meant to be the keepers of these objects—they are as precious to us as they are to the supernaturals, because it’s upon them that the safety of our realm relies.
” All lightness has gone from his voice now. Its seriousness makes me straighten up.
“There’s something wrong with the Dawnheart,” he says.
“All records I have say that its light should be strong and consistent. But lately, I have noticed it will sometimes flicker and dim. I’m worried that it might be dying out in some way.
And if that happened, it could be catastrophic—for our realm and the others. ”
My stomach tightens as I imagine the repercussions.
The relative peace we have in Strata is a delicate equilibrium.
Putting aside what losing the Dawnheart would do to Aradis—that prediction about an age of darkness didn’t exactly sound good—it would take away Aradis’s main incentive to follow the rules.
The ephilium could do what they wanted with impunity—which would probably make the demons start reconsidering their commitment to the Concords too, collateral or not.
The war would surely escalate, and who knows what or who would be left standing by the end?
“Have you spoken to the ephilium about this?” I ask. “They might know what’s going wrong with it.”