Citadel of the Sky (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 1) (3 page)

Aunt Rinta catalogued everything in the library before she died. Yithiere, her older brother, then convinced her it was a good idea to let him encrypt her work. After her death, he wasn’t inclined to share the key, but Kiar had cracked it on her own. That was the sort of thing she did for fun.

Kiar led the way over to the catalog table, where a giant book sat open. “Any idea who to look for? Any ancestral names in the phantasmagory?”

Tiana shook her head, choosing to believe that was a serious question. “No names. There was a woman, but… there was something strange about her. I don’t think she was real.”

Lisette suggested, “Pell’s journals? He did rebuild most of the Palace.” Most of the Blood kept journals, although sometimes about very peculiar subjects or in peculiar forms. “Are they here, or did Yithiere remove them for safekeeping?”

Tiana thought that was a very diplomatic way to refer to obsessive theft. “Yes, find those. Jerya says he used to roam all over the old Palace. We went exploring with him once. Just before he found you, Kiar.”

Kiar began to thumb through the catalog. “He was building Starset then. The kitchens hated it. The maids had to deliver lunch to him and his building crew every day, and it was always freezing up that high.” She paused her turning of pages and said reflectively, “He almost claimed me as his own daughter, you know. He said, ‘But I don’t know if it will be easier for you, and I don’t know if Yithiere would ever forgive me.’ They came to look at me sometimes in the scullery. Two tall men, one nice, one scary.” She shook her head and resumed paging through the catalog. “I’m not seeing the adult Pell in here, though.”

“Yithiere or Cathay have them, then,” said Lisette. Cathay was Pell’s son.

Tiana said gloomily, “I’d rather not ask either of them.” Yithiere was prickly, and Cathay would want something particular in return.

Lisette gave her another sympathetic look. “Cathay’s very persistent, isn’t he? But I doubt he’d be much of a bother today.” She sighed. “He must be thinking about Sennic’s death again.”

Tiana scowled. “He wouldn’t let anyone get near me at the last reception. He made fun of all my suitors.”

Lisette said gravely, “And yet, you seemed to enjoy yourself.”

Tiana’s face warmed. “Well, it’s Cathay.”

With a little smile, Lisette said, “Yes, I know.”

Tiana made a mournful face. “Do you miss him? I didn’t mind, honest. I’d rather have things back the way they were.” Regents couldn’t marry, but chastity was neither expected, nor valued, in their service to Ceria.

Lisette shook her head. “You know it couldn’t have lasted. It’s his way. I expected him to move on to you or Kiar. I wish he wasn’t so fickle, but I don’t think he can help himself.”

Tiana grumbled, “Well, Kiar doesn’t even enjoy the receptions, so he couldn’t ruin them for her. And she’s taller. Why couldn’t he have fixated on her instead?”

“Too blonde. He prefers brunettes,” said Kiar absently. “Here, this is a list of topics. Let’s look around in the library some more before involving anyone else.”

“Architecture?” Lisette asked.

“Maps?” Tiana suggested, patiently.

“No such topic. ‘Maps’ refers to Geography.” Staring at the book, Kiar muttered, “Rinta, what was the Palace to you? The Royal Library? Pell rebuilt that as well.” She looked around the room and then back at the designation. “Over here.” She led the way to the shelf. “Up there.”

Tiana pushed the rolling ladder over and climbed up, pulling out a thick folio. It was loosely packed with documents and folded diagrams, and half its contents slipped out of the folio to flutter to the ground. On the floor above, Slater leaned against the railing, watching casually, until she glared at him. Then he raised his hands, lowered his eyes, and turned his back.

She handed the rest of the folio to Lisette and climbed down. “They’re not going to like us taking you to the catacombs, off the usual strolls. After all, we could be planning to murder you. I’ve read that in Cylisse, Royal guards protect the royalty, they don’t protect people
from
the royalty.”

Not looking up from gathering the scattered documents, Lisette said, “No one thinks you’re going to hurt me. Well, no one you should listen to, anyway.”

“Yes, Tiana,” Kiar added. “It’s just another missed bastard. You know how much trouble they cause.”

Tiana frowned at Kiar. Was she
trying
to pick a fight? Lisette handed the sheaf of papers to Kiar to sort, looking exasperated. “The two of you are quite the pair today. Kiar, no one thinks it’s you, either. The Chancellor thinks that it’s a bastard of the King who recently discovered his powers and is angry at being overlooked for so long.”

Tiana was shocked. “There’s no such thing. Father’s never been with anyone else since Mama left.” But Lisette just smiled in her soothing way.

Kiar, however, said, “That doesn’t explain what happened to the other Regents. Or provide a motive for killing them, either.”

Tiana sighed and took the book from Kiar. She went to the nearest table to spread out the contents, trying to pay no attention to the conversation.

Lisette said, “They were very different deaths! The Chancellor is assuming those were still natural.” She glanced up at the guards. “He’s just being careful.”

Tiana unfolded a thick sheaf of paper and announced loudly, “Maps of the castle. With…” she peered closer, “notes on the construction. And dates. Old dates. When it was built, I suppose.” She shuffled through the stack, tossing useless maps aside. Kiar grimaced and gathered them up again.

“Here! The catacombs!” Tiana sat down and smoothed the paper, focusing. Lisette read over her shoulder, and Kiar leaned across the table on the other side, reading upside down. “He says people used to
live
down there. Hundreds of years ago.” She ran her finger across the fading penciled lines, tracing the common strolls.

Kiar flicked at her fingers. “Don’t touch, Tiana. You’ll make them fade faster. I’ll get a scribe to recopy them in ink.”

Tiana flipped through several pages of the catacombs and then back to higher levels of the castle, poring over the diagrams. Finally, she sat back, running her hands through her hair. “There should be a down staircase. I don’t see that symbol, though.” She fought against the rising tide of frustration that brought the
thump-thump
of the beating phantasmagory with it.

“Here, let me look.” Kiar pulled the map away. “Well, this is a down staircase symbol.” She flipped quickly through the catacombs maps. “And no, there aren’t any marked on the catacombs.”

“Always so fast, Kiar,” complimented Lisette.

Kiar’s cheeks turned pink. “No, I’m not,” she muttered, and flipped through the pages again. “Here, there’s a door marked on the edge of the map. And here’s another one.” She leaned in to read the writing. “One’s locked. The other leads to a collapsed stairway. He thinks there’s a flooded sub-basement. The masonry there dates from… at least six hundred years ago. He’s got a note to return and investigate further, but I guess he never got around to it.” She looked up and her smile was brief and pleased.

“Locked doors are not a problem,” said Tiana happily. “Come on. Let’s get some lights and go see. If you can memorize it, we can leave the map here, Kiar.”

Kiar’s smile flashed again. “I don’t have your father’s gift for memorization. But I can recopy it. Hold on.”

P
arts
of the catacombs were clean and well-lit, with lamps maintained by the housekeeping staff. The main promenade was popular for strolling, and past generations had left a wealth of art on the walls to admire. Someone was employed to take care of those. Most days there was always somebody down here, cleaning or doing a restoration. Not today, though. Today was a day of mourning, even for the staff.

Both ancient frescoes and contemporary murals lined the wide corridors, illustrating the great victories of the Blood. The lamps occupied niches in the wall. Old sculpture and dusty crockery were casually displayed in some of the rooms that opened off the main promenade, alongside damaged carvings and wall segments rescued from one renovation or another. Tiana paused alongside one, looking through the archway at the broken mural someone was painstakingly reassembling.

It was old, showing an interpretation of the events surrounding the founding of Tiana’s family. Shin Savanyel, seven feet tall and bearded, wielded a white sword against a shadowy figure that dominated half the fragment. The white sword was painted with the curls that indicated eidolons and emanations in older works; it was just a symbol for the family magic.

The shadow clearly represented the first Blighter, whom Shin had destroyed when it had risen up after the Firstborn’s removal from the world. That part of the mural had been mostly reassembled, but the flecks and cracks made it seem like something hidden lurked under the shadow of faded paint.

Tiana shook her head and kept moving. Somewhere in the library she knew there were nearly-contemporary accounts of her ancestor’s days. But they were written in an old dialect and hard to follow, and very often boring. Or so she’d read, in the foreword of a novelization of a play commissioned in her great-grandmother’s day,
The Chosen King
.

The play and novel made dusty history very exciting, and while Tiana was technically
aware
that probably Shin hadn’t quite done those things that way and said those things and romanced those ladies, she had never seen how it mattered very much what had actually happened. It was all a very long time ago, and even the more recent histories always seemed to examine the older histories through the lens of
The Chosen King.

It had all happened a long time ago, just like these murals had broken long ago. But someone was restoring them, and something was calling her from the depths of the phantasmagory. Something that
had
to be old. Maybe something even older than
The Chosen King.
It was disturbing.

Tiana, Kiar, Lisette, and the lurking bodyguards walked down the promenade, past other gallery rooms that Tiana ignored. Other corridors opened off the promenade too, untended depths only rarely explored by wanderers. They could be dangerous. Even the gallery curators preferred some kind of backup when looking for treasures.

Kiar led them down one of them, lifting up her lamp. “This way.” She paused and looked at the floor. “I’m not sure if anyone’s been here since Pell. Look, you can see a little vermin trail in the dust. Charming.”

Tiana closed her fingers around the inscribed lightstone she’d taken from the library. They didn’t need that much light, just to see vermin tracks.

Slater cleared his throat. “My Ladies, Your Highness… where are we going?” He raised his hands again as Tiana glanced at him. “Just curious.”

“Exploring,” she said. “You can stay behind, if you’d like.”

“No, we can’t,” he said. He hesitated. “I’ll get a lamp.”

Kiar started walking again. After a while, she passed her lamp to Lisette so she could study her map. She led them into a room with a square door frame, which led to a sequence of rooms, each one perfectly square and completely empty. The plaster had long ago chipped from the stone walls, and there was no sign of the chambers’ purpose. Their footsteps were odd, loud clicks. Tiana thought the ceilings were getting lower in each room.

Kiar paused at a doorway ornamented with carved vines. “Do you think Pell was so used to this he didn’t bother to label it?” Her voice echoed.

Tiana opened her hand to let the lightstone illuminate a broad staircase and a sunken hall, far larger than could be lit by a single stone. Stacked columns supported a ceiling that definitely seemed too low. Kiar continued, “The door we’re looking for is on the other side of this hall, down several more corridors.” She descended the steps. “I suppose this was some kind of banquet hall, eight hundred years ago.”

“Eight hundred years ago… that was when Shin brought the Blood into Ceria,” Lisette said, and lifted the lamp higher. “I wonder if they danced here.”

Tiana pointed ahead. “It’s an Antecession chamber.” There was a broad, shallow basin with a broken fountain in the stone floor. On the far side, a spillway opened into a deep, narrow pool, now dry and dusty. It looked like the channel stretched the rest of the hall; Tiana could just see the shadowy corners and the darkness of doorways.

She shuddered. “It’s lonely down here. I’m glad we celebrate Antecession in the city now. Though I guess you’d like it more here, Kiar.” The ritual holiday of Antecession involved a public performance, and Kiar hated public anything.

The corridor on the other side was narrower than the corridors they’d traversed thus far, and it had a mild downward slope. It took them past a room that Kiar guessed was an ancient kitchen, and past two intersections, until finally there were four steps down and a real door, rather than just an opening.

“Here we are. Metal, not wood,” said Kiar. “It won’t be easy to open.” She gave Tiana an expectant look.

Tiana said, “Will you try the Logos?”

Kiar shook her head vigorously. “Absolutely not. Not down here. If I made a mistake, I could bring the whole ceiling down.”

Tiana said, “You wouldn’t make a mistake. You hardly ever make mistakes.” When an encouraging smile only met with another head shake, Tiana sighed and went down the steps. That sort of cajolery always worked for Lisette.

She pressed her hands against the black door. It was cool and rough, and she could feel the ornamentation of the cast bronze, with shallow divots that might have once held gold. There was a ring in the center of the door, and she tugged on it, pushed on it, with as much effect as pushing on a wall. She slid her fingers to the edge of the door, where it fit against the jamb. It wasn’t a tight fit, but it was close enough that she couldn’t get her fingers around it. Then she stepped back and sat on the steps.

“First, I’ll need to see what I can learn with an emanation.” She thought that was more responsible than just knocking the door down.

“Don’t
you
make the ceiling collapse,” Kiar warned.

“This is the sort of magic I’m supposed to be good at, remember?” Eidolons were avatars of the Blood’s will, but emanations were a far more direct manifestation of their power. She preferred to do things the normal, human way when she could, but this just wasn’t the day for that.

Tiana narrowed her eyes at the door and stretched out one finger. A slender ribbon of phantasmal force emanated from the tip, glimmering like a prism in the lamplight. She swept the ribbon of pressure around the door, noting where it encountered resistance. Finally, she let her breath out and curled her hand up again.

“I think I can just cut through the connections linking it to the rest of the wall. Then I should be able to push it over. I wish I could see what was on the other side first.” She looked hopefully at Kiar. Kiar only frowned in response. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I have to go through, or all this murder business will get worse.”

She extended her hand like a blade, and this time the emanation that she sent out was not pressure, but an edge, sharp and fast, biting through ancient stone, the warped metal, and the clots of mortar. By the time she was on the final side, eating through one of the hinges, she could tell that the door was sagging towards her, though it wasn’t yet visible to the eye. “Back up, back up,” she muttered, trying not to lose her focus. “Get out of the way!” The phantasmagory yawned beneath her, eager to pull her down and change her perspective.

She stumbled backwards, tripping over the stairs. She couldn’t stop the magic. She hadn’t prepared properly, she’d rushed, she was scared, and if she stopped now, she’d fall into the phantasmagory again. For the second time today. And then the door would fall on her.

A horrific metallic squealing twisted out from the door, rising in intensity as she tried to focus another emanation to press the door away from her. But the phantasmagory was still open, and the
thump-thump
of the presence she sought was getting louder. She couldn’t hold on to two emanations without giving into the phantasmagory. Not today. Not now.

An arm hooked around her waist and lifted her over the stairs. Gasping, she released the door. It finished falling forward, smacking into the stone steps with a ringing clang. Beyond the door, the staircase continued down into darkness.

Berrin set Tiana on shaky legs. “Sorry about that, Your Highness.”

Behind him, Slater removed his hands from Kiar and Lisette’s arms. Kiar rubbed her arm, while Lisette favored him with a smile. Berrin coughed. “Didn’t want you to get flattened, and it seemed like the door was leaning close.”

“Thank you.” Tiana took a deep breath. “I was careless. I should be more careful.” Kiar nodded vigorously.

“Of course,” said Berrin. He placed a boot experimentally on the fallen door and then pushed. The door vanished into the darkness. The noise was horrendous. The bottom edge thudded into a step and then screeched across the stone until it reached the edge, at which point it thudded again. The top edge rang like a poorly tuned bell on each step. The echoes grew louder and louder until the there was a final, ringing thud.

Slater found his voice. “Guardsman! Do you want to be transferred someplace even worse than Stormwatch?”

Berrin saluted. “Not possible, sir!” He bowed deeply to Tiana. “My apologies for not thinking things through!”

Kiar shook her head. “I wonder if that’s why the other stair collapsed. If there is anything alive down here, it knows we’re coming now.” She peered down the narrow staircase. “It’s really dark.”

“I’ll go first,” said Berrin brightly.

Briskly, Tiana said, “Well, it’s a good thing Shanasee isn’t here, then.” She raised the lightstone and marched down the stairs, pushing past Berrin.

The corridor at the bottom was narrow and lined with more open doorways. It was also far dirtier than the hall above, with dust thick on the floors and heavy, ancient cobwebs a shroud on the ceiling. Passing by the doorways, she saw that each one once had a metal door similar to the one at the top of the stairs, and in each chamber, the door had fallen inwards. The rooms beyond were painfully small. She remembered the vision in the phantasmagory and shuddered. “A prison.”

“Or a cloister,” Lisette said. “Before Shin came, the Niyhani Magisters lived here, after all.” Tiana didn’t realize she had stopped moving until Lisette squeezed her hand.

“There were… nightmares living here, in the phantasmagory. Somebody’s very bad memories.”

“Would you like to go back? Is this what you came for?”

Tiana shook her head. “No. Below….” She pointed into the darkness. The cobwebs seemed to catch the light, swallowing it, so that the darkness was more than simply a lack of illumination. It had depth to it, a murk that made Tiana suddenly understand a little of her cousin Shanasee’s fear of the dark. But Shanasee was ruled by her fears, and Tiana couldn’t let that happen to her.

She said, “We have to find it, for Tomas. We’ll solve the mystery. We’re…” She sought for the right word. “We’re plucky.” When Kiar rolled her eyes, she quoted, “‘Pluck up your courage, my dears. We go forward.’”

Behind her, Kiar completed the quotation: “Into the heart of the maelstrom.” She muttered, “Didn’t some of them fail to come back?”

Tiana ignored this. She moved her feet forward. The dust muffled her footsteps, hid her feet in the clouds she kicked up. At the end of the long, crowded corridor, there was another staircase down. It was a half-spiral, so that the bottom was just out of sight of the top. Tiana hesitated. Then the others moved up behind her, and moving forward was easier than backing down.

There was another black, corroded door, but this time, a disc of bright gold was pressed into the door just above the ring. The seal of the Blood was pressed into the gold, as were the marks of Niyhan and the other three Firstborn. Inscribed above them, in heavy, ponderous lettering, it said ‘Let The Shadow Sleep Forever.’

Tiana squeezed her eyes shut and passed her hand over the gold seal, feeling the texture of the impression. Then she pressed her ear against it, listening. She heard the low murmur of the guards above, Lisette’s breath as she waited a few steps higher, and Kiar’s lighter voice as she said something to the guards. From the metal and the stone, there was only silence.

“Will this door open?” asked Lisette. “What does the cartouche say?” Tiana moved her head out of the way. Lisette read it and then called, “Kiar….”

Kiar poked her head around the curve, blinked, and said, “That’s distressing. Somebody wanted that door to remain closed.”

“I’m sure it’s locked, then.” Tiana found that her hand was on the brass ring. Experimentally, she pushed.

With a creak, the door swung open.

A long silence followed, until Kiar said, “Is this it?”

The room beyond was uninhabited. Lamplight illuminated some stone furniture, but other than that, it was empty. There was no other way out. At first glance, it was beyond disappointing.

Then Lisette said, “There aren’t any cobwebs. There’s hardly any dust at all.”

Tiana moved into the room, feeling warm and tingly. Was this it? Was this the source of the heartbeat? But there was nothing here. Just the
thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump—

“Just furniture,” said Kiar from the door. “None of the other rooms above had furniture. If they left anything behind, it must have fallen to dust long ago. But this is made of stone.”