Chapter XXXII #3
“Here,” the Priest said, passion ringing in his voice, “is what we rose from. Here is what our enemies would return us to. The dark. A world without light, or heat, or fire. They promise you a night illuminated by goddesses—the capricious, changeful moon; the weak glow of the stars. But it takes no more than a cloud to banish that light. Dependence on it will make fools and paupers of us all. We are neither cowards nor pawns to rely on powers outside our control. In this place, we are the power. We are the light. We are the flame. And we will be the ruin of any who try to force us back into darkness.”
The Priest reached for Ariana, and unable to help herself, she let out a startled gasp.
But his hand was gentle on her shoulder, and she felt she moved in a dream as he drew her down from the altar.
Then there was Fia—Fia—her strong arms tight around Ariana, her mountain-bred stoniness holding the fallen queen up.
She smelled of light and hope and redemption, even in the darkest of all possible places.
Ariana hugged her back and drew in breath after breath, as if she had never known clean, wild air before.
The Priest pressed something into Ariana’s hand—the nightglass pendant she’d been given long weeks ago, wrapped in a rag to obscure its glow.
“Beneson will take you now,” Fia whispered into Ariana’s ear. “You must go with him, Ari. You must be strong. None of us can manage without you.”
“No, Fia, I—” she began, a confession scalding her tongue. But Beneson had Ariana’s hand in his own already and was tugging at her to follow.
From the dark came sounds that passed for the conclusion of death throes—something heavy moving, the displacement of kindling. Beneson was hurrying Ariana along, chivvying her down one of the Priest’s wire roads, whispering that they must be as far from the altar rise as possible before—
A spark struck as Ariana looked back, and light grew, only a dwarfed and uncertain flame at first, but it licked hungrily at the waiting kindling and the oil drenching a soria’s body.
They’d ordered Ariana to dress in her old kirtle, the day before the execution, and she’d thought it only a cruel mockery of who she’d been.
Now she knew it was something much worse.
She had been robbed, here at the end, of the just punishment for her crime. Another daughter of the stars had claimed martyrdom, and left Ariana to live with the horror of her guilt. She stumbled, blind and sick and wretched, but Beneson helped her upright and shepherded her on.
Behind them, the body of a soria burned, and the Priest stood gilded by its flames.
“This is who we are,” the Priest shouted.
“We are the devastation of our enemies, the downfall of heretics, the scourge of those who strive for peace. No matter the odds, we will rise and stamp out our rivals not just with blood, but with Inver fire, until there is nothing but ash left of those who would stand against us. Here on Tyrus’s altar, by blood and flame I consecrate an Inver king and declare my own regency.
Well may I lead you, and long may Honoria’s son Justus reign. ”
The seething crowd broke into a roar, loud enough to bring the cavern ceiling down.
It was a long time before they were quiet, and during their outcry, torches were relit and bonfires rekindled.
The jubilant swell of music resumed. But Ariana and Beneson were well away, swathed in the cavern’s long dark that stretched beyond the Invers’ pitiful and misguided attempt at driving back the night.
They carried on and on, until Ariana thought she might drop from weariness. At last, the looming darkness around them became closer, and when Ariana stretched out a hand, she felt the stone wall of a tunnel.
Abruptly, lamplight flared ahead, a figure approaching them in the tunnel’s narrow confines. Gwylen looked like a haint in the lamp’s glow, shadows playing eerily across her sharp features and shorn hair, glinting in her canny eyes and on her spreading goddess mark.
“Well then, little queen,” she said. “Orden is dead now and his throne taken. Afon swore an oath to see that come about, and swore, too, that he’d have a child of yours in his power. Will you finally finish the task you were given, and safeguard your children by ending Caervallion’s king?”
Until the words left Ariana’s mouth, she did not know how she would answer. But when her reply came, she felt the bitterness and sweetness and rightness of it.
“No,” she said firmly. “I will not. I knew all along that the role I was bound to could not be Lyria’s will. I know it yet, though I shamed her in faltering. But I will never transgress the will of my goddess again. I will never undertake another act of violence, no matter the cost.”
Gwylen opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words came.
Ariana’s refusal had aged her, turning her gray and haggard, but Ariana pushed past the Caervallin woman and walked on, past the pool of lamplight, into the mountain dark.
She would brave its long, unknown roads just as so many of her countrymen had done before, looking for a place to rest when all the world had set itself against them.
So the reign of Honoria’s Lyrien queen ended, and the exile of Orden Inver’s widow began.