Chapter 9 #2
Taven shook his head with a disgusted glance at the sack and demonstrated.
He cuffed himself, the latch clicking as it closed, then sprung it open just as easily.
“See? They aren’t shackles, reprobate. And Ellie’s right.
So put them on and stay out of sight until we reach the sept, both of you.
Ellie, you’ll ride up top with me while I drive. ”
Sesto clamped a ring over his wrist and removed it, showing Jesstin. “Seems he’s being truthful, about this at least.” He repeated the act with a mollified nod. “What choice do we have?”
Jesstin cursed to himself and dug his rings out of the bag.
As Elloven climbed up onto the driver’s bench, her eyes locked with the esguard with the four gold stripes. He neither blinked nor looked away, but his boldness made her do both.
“They’ll be fine, Ellie. They wouldn’t have offered the bracers if they meant them harm. And I wouldn’t put your life in danger.” He squeezed her knee. She cringed before she could catch herself. He sighed. “Are you ready then?”
Elloven’s heart pounded in her ears, her palms. She’d been waiting for this day since she’d been a child, but her doubts were back, stronger even, than the morning they’d left.
“Hey, Ellie, love. Inhale. Exhale.”
“There’s a reason they go to all this trouble to keep people out,” she said.
The last time she’d felt such unshaped panic had been on the night Fabrien had set her loose in the forest while he and his friends hunted her.
She’d fully expected to die that evening, arrows narrowly missing her as they whizzed past, convinced he’d finally tired of her.
“Maybe we should go to my mother’s people.
I know nothing about Rivenholde, about these esguards, about any of it. ”
“They’re—” Taven stopped himself. “Even if I wanted to, I don’t know the way.
We could be riding for weeks waiting for someone to come get us and lead us the rest of the way, and we don’t have weeks of provisions.
” He pointed at the esguards. “I’ve done this before.
I know what to expect. You have nothing to fear.
” A slow, joyful smile softened his face.
“You’ll be in utter wonder of everything Rivenholde is.
There’s nowhere else like it, nothing remotely similar in the kingdom.
” He curled his fingers through hers. “You trusted me to take you this far. So did your mother.”
Elloven retracted her hand. She wound it with the other in her lap and shivered.
Taven waved at the esguards, who turned their horses and started over the embankment.
An almost dreamy numbness stole over her when the carriage spurred forward, and it stayed with her as they crested the hill and started their descent into an endless valley.
But all her calm vanished when the bright forest disappeared, replaced by dusk’s instant arrival.
The road was no longer rutted earth but beautiful stones of various shapes, perfectly mortared into a smooth surface.
Ahead stretched a city larger than Whitechurch, spread across the valley and the surrounding hills and mountains.
The structures lining the hills had spires and arches and other elaborate designs, extravagant and dark and Gothic, dotted with what seemed a million warm lights.
Farther down was a more traditional village. Through the center wound a jagged river they’d built around.
In the distance was the most sumptuous building of all, a rounded, multi-tiered citadel with a skyline of towers. Fog split the spires in two, giving the illusion the tips were floating in the heavens.
“Welcome to Rivenholde,” Taven said. “What you’re gawking at is the sept, where the pretor and his family take residence. The necromancers live underground there, most of them anyway. It’s also where villagers go to request divine intercession, to socialize, and of course, to pray.”
“To whom? The Guardians?”
“The Guardians are a construct of the White Kingdom,” Taven said.
The cart traveled smoothly down the hill, still following the esguards.
As they passed by modest but convivial homes made of stone and wood, she could now see some of those lights up close.
They were lanterns, and they were everywhere.
“The Glass Tree is the source of all life and death, and the space in between.”
Elloven didn’t ask what the Glass Tree was or who had told him. To understand any of what he’d said, there was so much more she’d need to learn first.
As they neared the village proper, she finally saw other people.
They watched from their stoops with curiosity.
Like the esguards, they were dressed mostly in leather, practical trousers and vests and modest dresses.
Bands lined their arms as well, most having one or two gold stripes among the silver.
The carriage ambled through a commercial row.
Dozens milled about the smooth road, dipping in and out of a line of steepled buildings.
Each structure was as striking as the next.
Wrought iron wove strange, byzantine designs that looked green on the approach but changed to gold as the light danced around them from other angles.
Thick ropes, vines perhaps, wrapped around columns and poles painted in the same glittering hues as the gold sleeve stripes.
The sea of lanterns continued, the beautiful triangles painted in deep, cracking crimson.
She was mesmerized, lost in their glow, but she soon saw what they were made of.
Bones.
And... dried blood?
“Taven,” she whispered but once more didn’t know what to ask.
“The soul lumens unsettled me at first too,” he said.
“When someone dies here, they reserve some of their bones and blood to use in the construction of a lumen. They believe this keeps their loved ones’ souls near to them, although some store their lanterns at the sept or elsewhere in the village so they can visit at their pleasure. Not all lingering souls bring joy.”
Elloven could only shake her head. It was all so wondrous and strange, so dreamy and beautiful. Twilight bathed the village in velvety, purplish tints, mingling with the lanterns’ glow to form a lush, surreal haze that was otherworldly.
A soft train of voices drifted from the distance.
It grew louder as they moved through the village, but it was unlike anything she’d ever heard, as though from the skies or the sea.
Elloven’s heart slowed as the song neared them.
Her soul finally began to relax. “It’s so beautiful. Where’s it coming from?”
“The Choral Mori. You’ll see them when we reach the other side of town, as they come this way.
They sing for the dead at dusktide, carrying the soul lumens as they go.
They say it strengthens a soul’s connection to the corporeal world, but there’s a lot I don’t understand either.
” He chuckled to himself. “For a small fee, they’ll carry a lumen for you on their long walk, sort of like how the Reliquary increases your blessing based on the size of your donation. ”
“It doesn’t sound opportunistic. It sounds.
..” She almost said perfect, but perfect was a dangerous word.
Anything that seemed perfect was unsafe.
Yet... She didn’t feel unsafe at all. She felt cleansed in the light of peace, the sense she’d come home.
Nowhere else had ever felt that way. No other truth had ever settled upon her so fast. “Wait, what’s that? ”
They’d come upon a large square with a fountain in the middle.
But it was the people who had caught her notice.
Men, women, and children wielded fireballs, performing mesmerizing acrobatics set to explosions of light.
In the distance, a line of women used their fingers to direct the air beneath them, and a series of specter-like dancers twirled like ballerinas.
The aerialists held her attention the longest. It seemed another lifetime ago when she’d performed her own reality-defying feats, flying through the air with serenity and purpose.
She was a natural, handling stunts on her first try that many had trained years for.
Some people just have the talent, Esmeray would say, but now Elloven wondered if it went beyond that. Your father’s people, she heard again.
“Cirque Calliope must be soon. I hear it’s marvelous, like nothing you’ve ever seen before,” Taven said. “We’re in for a treat.” He sounded whimsical, and she heard the same peace in him that she felt within herself. Sharing it with him was surprisingly lovely.
Like he’d come home too.
The carriage climbed again, leaving the town behind.
“There are people from all seven curias in Rivenholde,” he explained. “Many have mixed bloodlines. There’s a way to determine which one is your prominent—I’m getting ahead of myself. There’s so much to tell you, but we’ll be arriving at the sept soon.”
The sept had seemed hours away, when only minutes had passed. “How did we cross the valley so fast?”
“Time moves differently here until you get used to how to control your moments.”
“What? How?”
Taven didn’t have an answer.
“How long have we been here?” The hills twinkled with lumens, brighter than before. It was no longer twilight at all but dark as midnight. She couldn’t recall when that had changed.
“Longer than you’d believe,” he said.
Elloven turned to check on Jesstin and Sesto in the back, but they were both glued to their windows.
The carriage lurched and then pulled onto a flat road again. They’d entered a broad courtyard that led to the gleaming gold dome she’d seen from afar. Branches of gnarled, majestic trees swept the ground, branches one could sit on, daydream on, and more lumens hung from the highest ones.
Elloven craned her neck back to take in the mesmerizing steeples of the sept scraping the skies.
She gripped the seat when the carriage came to a halt.
Taven was already off the bench, though she hadn’t seen him move.
A man appeared in the same, disorienting suddenness, standing near her side of the carriage.
He was tall, with a chiseled but placid face that reminded her of the way stoneworkers carved images of the Guardians, beautiful and out of reach of mere mortals.
He held out his hand. Experience told her not to take it, not to trust so easily, but her hand obeyed another side of herself, one just awakening.
The preternatural man smiled. “Warmest welcomes to Rivenholde, Aelloven. I’m your uncle, Estelar, and I have been waiting a long, long time for you.”