And the scars… It looked as though someone had tried to cut his windpipe from his throat. Given their severity, it was a wonder they hadn’t succeeded.
“This is the last place I expected to see you,” he said. “Granted, Ineverexpected to see you again.”
“I can say the same.”
“Lorn.” Olivin’s illusion had dropped and he wasted no time crossing to the other elfin, clasping forearms with a friendly shake. “It is a relief to see you alive and in one piece.”
“Alive, yes. In one piece…” Lorn released Olivin and massaged his throat. The savagery had impacted his voice.
“What happened to you?”
“Risen fell.” He lowered his eyes and stared off into the corner.
“Lorn.” Eira shifted her stance, folding her arms. She tried to summon the image of Adela. “I realize you have been through a great deal. But right now, we need information and you’re the only one who can give it to us.”
His eyes turned back to her. She saw the unspoken question in them.
“We are going to Risen to kill Ulvarth,” Eira said plainly. If her worst fears that he had been indoctrinated by the Pillars were true, it didn’t matter that she was telling him as much. They were already going to have to kill him for simply seeing them. “Any information you have, however out of date it might be, will be of use. So I need to know everything you know.”
He assessed her for several steady heartbeats. Eira didn’t move. Flinching, showing doubt in any way, would have him questioning her capabilities—her authority in the situation.
“Lumeria’s castle is dust and every noble or commonfolk who was considered even remotely loyal died with her.” He stepped back and leaned against the wall as if he could no longer support himself under the weight of her stare—more likely the weight of his memories. “The Pillars had infiltrated it, or tunneled beneath it, perhaps like they did to attack the Court of Shadows, and lined the bedrock with flash beads. The castle sank into the hilltop with a rumble and a gasp, collapsing as if it were never there in the first place.”
“He had all the information he needed,” Eira figured.
“What?” Olivin looked to her.
“He was the head of the Swords of Light. He’d had unfettered access to the Archives for years and knew them better than anyone. There were records in there about the architecture of Risen going back to its founding.”
“I remember reading them,” Alyss realized in quiet horror. “All about the architecture of the castle and Archives—the building of Risen itself.”
“The Archives are his seat of power now. One ruler, ordained by Yargen, a merger of faith and law.” Lorn’s words turned so bitter that Eira’s own mouth soured. “He returned from the coliseum and made a show of carrying a flame through the streets—a holy fire from where he had expunged Raspian’s evil from our lands. A fire he merged with the smoking remnants of the castle.”
“To make a new Flame of Yargen,” Eira murmured. Unequivocally real this time. Sourced from godly acts, as Ulvarth spun it.
“It burns now not just in the brazier of the Archives, but all around it.”
“Was there any resistance?” Yonlin asked. The words were filled with a childlike hope, fragile and pointless. “Surely not all of Risen submitted to him.”
“Well, that’s why I’m here.” Lorn gave Yonlin a weak smile, not nearly as reassuring as he seemed to be making the effort for. “Not all of us gave in.”
“Just most.” Ducot read between the lines of Lorn’s words in the same way Eira did.
“What were people to do?” Lorn gestured to the windows. “You’ve seen Hokoh, how they’ve gutted any dissonance—literally.” Ulvarth was taking a page out of Carsovia’s books. The image of the man being strung from the entry arch of the town was forever seared onto Eira’s eyes. “And here is even without his displays of holy fire.”
“Elaborate,” Eira demanded.
“He summons flames and explosions without so much as a single glyph.”
She suggested the obvious. “Flash beads?”
“We all think so…but it’s seamless. Impossible to figure out how, in many cases.” Lorn shook his head. Eira wondered if there was some kind of trigger on his runic armor, akin to the ring that fired the pistol. “Many have truly begun to believe he was ordained by the goddess—that he wields her divine power.”
“Since most don’t know about flash beads…what else would they think?” Cullen said gravely, folding his own arms in thought.
It didn’t matter to Eira what others thought. Ulvarth could be the best thing that happened to Meru. She was still going to kill him.
“You said ‘we all,’” she pointed out. “There’s more in your maroon-cloaked resistance.”
