Flight Into Darkness (38 page)

“Celestine,” he murmured into the night. Since Henri de Joyeuse's death, he had stood by her, protecting her, supporting her.

Everything is falling apart around us. She needs me—and I have no idea where she is, or how to find her.

“So it's the end of the world and you didn't even invite your oldest friend to share one last bottle of wine?” Kilian's eyes glinted in the darkness.

Jagu held out the bottle he had brought from the tavern.

“You'd better come in.” Kilian pulled him inside his room and shut the door. “We can't be seen to be setting a bad example to the cadets, can we?”

“It's getting too dark to see,” said Jagu. He fumbled for his tinder-box and tried, with unsteady hands, to strike a spark to light the oil lamp.

“If this is the end, then I might as well be damned.” Kilian's habitual bantering tone had gone. His friend was looking at him oddly, almost as if he could not quite focus clearly on his face.

“Damned?” Jagu said, not understanding.

Kilian came closer. “You still don't get it, do you, Jagu? Although it's pretty well killed me to hide it from you.”

“Come on, now, Kilian, if this is another of your jokes—” Jagu began. It was so dark that he could only just make out Kilian's face in the gloom—but he could see that all traces of malicious humor had faded from his eyes. He took a step back.

“If only it were.” There was a throb of anger, almost self-disgust, in those few gritted words.

The Commanderie chapel bell began to din out, clanging a warning. As if in answer, the church bells of the city began to ring too, a frantic tocsin. Both men glanced at each other, caught in the same
shared memory of the day, long ago, that the magus had infiltrated their school.

“The magus's mark?” Kilian reached out and caught Jagu by the left hand, pushing back his sleeve. The sigil gleamed in the gloom.

Jagu had been so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he had not noticed until then the tingle of fire that had begun to throb as if the magus were searing it into his skin anew. “What does it mean?” He gazed down at the mark. “Are the magi powerful enough to turn the skies dark? And why would they do such a thing?”

“It burns, doesn't it?” Kilian asked quietly. And before Jagu could snatch his wrist away, Kilian pressed his lips to the tender skin.

“K—Kilian?” Jagu retreated a step, finding his back against the wall. The growing dark, the ominous sense of impending doom, the frantic clanging of the bells, all conspired to confirm his sense that the world had gone mad. Kilian's face hovered close to his. “Stop. Enough. Don't play games at a time like this.”

“I've never been more serious in all my life, Jagu.” The look in Kilian's pale eyes was enough to convince Jagu. He had never seen Kilian so serious or so intent. He was too bemused to react swiftly enough. “You'll never forgive me for this,” whispered Kilian in the darkness, and kissed him.

Someone pounded on the door. “Lieutenant Guyomard! Captain Friard wants you in the Drill Hall and on the double.”

Kilian slowly relaxed his grip on Jagu, who was still in shock. He had had no idea that Kilian might have had hidden such strong feelings for him, feelings that went so far beyond friendship…

“Duty calls, even at the end of the world.” And Kilian flashed him a wry, reckless grin. But Jagu saw straight through to the raw humiliation beneath. “Well, you can't blame me for trying.”

CHAPTER 3

Celestine had not felt so abandoned since Maman had died. Memories of her desperate struggle to exist alone on the streets of Lutèce came crowding back.

“What am I doing here, all alone, in a foreign city?”

“You're not alone.”
The Faie's voice issued from the traveling bag in which her father's precious book was concealed. Her pale radiance lit the gloom as she hovered beside Celestine, her eyes brimming with concern.
“I'm still here with you.”

“But what can I do?” Celestine said. She heard her own voice as if from far away, listless and despairing. “Celestine de Joyeuse is well-known in Mirom. If I use my own name, it will only draw the Inquisition here, and it will all be over.”

“Then you must become someone else. And I can help you.”
The Faie bent over her consolingly.
“If you're willing to let me, Celestine, I can change your appearance.
”

“If I had enough money to buy henna or walnut juice, I could dye my hair…” Light-headed with lack of food, Celestine was not concentrating on what the Faie was saying.

“If I merge with you, I can make other people see you differently, Celestine.
”

Celestine looked into the Faie's luminous eyes, hovering so close to her own. “You could… merge with me?” The prospect of the Faie sharing her mind and body stirred up disturbing thoughts.
Suppose the Faie tried to take control of me? I'd be powerless to stop her.
Celestine blinked. “Is it the darkness outside, or are you growing brighter, Faie?”

“Become one with me and no one, not even Jagu de Rustéphan, will recognize you.
” The Faie opened her arms to Celestine, as if to embrace her, a calm smile warming her features.

The luminous figure came toward Celestine until the dazzle of light was so intense that it obliterated everything else.

A tall figure appears out of the golden mist. And then another—and another, a host of bright ones. Their bodies gleam so fiercely that she has to look away, her eyes dazzled by their radiance. Cords of flame whip from their outstretched hands and coil around her father, binding him. She hears his cry of agony as the glowing bonds bite deep into his body.

“This time you won't escape.” As her eyes become accustomed to the light, she sees that the speaker is as golden-fair as her father is dark, cloaked in a glimmer of folded wings. “Your rebellion is over.”

“Father!” she cries. Heedless of her own safety, she hurls herself toward him. The bright one raises one hand to stop her and she falls at his feet.

“So. You're his child.” There is such contempt—and anger—in his voice that she cowers in fear.

“Take me. But spare her.” Her father's face is distorted with pain; each word gasped out. “She didn't ask to be born my child.
”

“But she's an abomination. She's a half-breed, neither angel nor mortal. Her very existence offends the natural order.” The bright one stalks around her until the penetrating fire in his eyes makes her feel as if her flesh is burning. “Child of a forbidden union. You were never meant to be.” He bends down and takes hold of her face in one hand, gazing into her eyes as if reading her innermost thoughts. The touch of his fingers is hot as flame and she cries out. “She is aethyr, with her father's powers and a mortal body. When this body decays, as all mortal bodies must, where will she go then? Will she take another mortal body? What will happen to that mortal soul if she does? The balance between our worlds will be destroyed.”

“Don't hurt her, Galizur, I beg you.
”

“You? Beg me?” The one her father has called Galizur flings her aside and goes to stand over her father. “So only now the rebel prince who has split our realm with his pride and set brother against brother, deigns to beg—and for the insignificant life of this misbegotten creature?” He raises his arm and she sees dazedly that he has drawn his sword. Gouts of flame drip from its fiery blade and sizzle
as they touch the ground. “What of your followers?” He points the tip at her father's throat. “All those who followed you foolishly, blindly, faithfully, and are now condemned to eternal imprisonment? Why don't you beg for them?”

“They knew what they were doing,” her father says, his proud, dark eyes staring back at Galizur. “This one is only a child. She is innocent. Her only crime is to have been born my daughter.
”

”
I've heard enough. Take him away.”

“Father!” An anguished cry tears from her throat as they bear him away into the night, their fast-beating wings stirring up a great wind that knocks her back to the ground. “Father!”

CHAPTER 4

The Drakhaouls moved toward the gaping maw of the Serpent Gate, bringing the children toward the sacrificial stone.

Eugene halted, hovering overhead, his plan crumbling to dust. If he attacked the other Drakhaouls, he would almost certainly kill his children too. But as the crimson light streaming from the Eye lit the figures approaching the yawning archway, he knew that if he did not act, there would be no future for his children anyway. For he had glimpsed the shadow waiting for the blood sacrifice on the far side of the Gate. At any moment, the Gate would open and Nagazdiel would enter the mortal world.

It has to be now.

The crimson light flickered. High above his head, Eugene saw that Gavril Nagarian was trying to pry the Eye of Nagar from the stone serpent's head. And Sahariel was out to stop him.

Eugene raised his hand, pointing at Sahariel. He loosed a shaft of malachite fire straight at the Drakhaoul's head. The shaft caught Sahariel as he slewed around in the air, searing into his neck and shoulder, half-severing one of his scarlet wings.

Sahariel let out a rasping hiss of pain. Broken wing alight, he plunged from the top of the Gate to crash onto the ground below.

The empty, uncharted sea below Linnaius's sky craft lay like a vast lake of ink. The shadow seeping from the Serpent Gate was blacker than a moonless night and it had shed a chill over the warm waters of the Southern Ocean. Linnaius shivered, pulling his
cloak closer around him, willing the winds to carry the craft more swiftly.

It was disorienting navigating through pitch blackness with no moon or stars to guide him, and after a while Linnaius began to experience the disquieting sensation that, in spite of the rushing of the wind in the sail, he was going nowhere, hanging suspended in the dark of an eternal night.

Then he saw little bursts of fiery light in the far distance. He was a long way off still, and the explosions of jewel-bright flame looked like nothing more than the fireworks he had devised to amuse the guests at the Dievona Ball at Swanholm. But even from this distance, he realized that he was witnessing a battle between fallen angels. The chill dark air shuddered and crackled with each bolt of lethal dae-monfire. The six Drakhaouls were fighting a desperate battle, divided between those who were determined to set free Prince Nagazdiel from his prison in the Realm of Shadows—and those who were equally determined to stop them.

“Eugene,” Linnaius murmured, “did you get there in time? In time to save the children?”

“Eugene! Close the Gate.” Eugene heard Gavril Nagarian's voice as if from very far away. “Close it
now!”

Looking up into the swirling darkness, Eugene saw him winging high above the Serpent Gate, clutching the Eye.

“You and I together, Belberith,” Eugene commanded. “Let's make one final effort.”

“Together,”
Belberith echoed as Eugene lifted his hand, aiming at the snarling serpent's head at the crown of the arch.

“Stop.” Adramelech stepped out in front of the Gate. Now that the rubies’ maleficent light was extinguished, only his eyes could be seen, a glimmer of amethyst in the smoky darkness. “Destroy the Gate and you destroy your son.”

Rostevan let out a faint whimper in Adramelech's arms. And Eugene heard Astasia's distraught voice telling him,
“It looked like Andrei. It sounded like Andrei. But it took our baby.”

Until that moment he had not been certain. Now he knew for sure.

“Andrei?” he said. “Have you sunk so low that you would kill your own nephew? What kind of a monster have you become?”

* * * 

Andrei was wandering in a dark nightmare, through a lightning-riven wilderness. He was lost.

Someone was calling out his name as if from a great distance away. And he heard the plaintive cry of a baby.

He looked down and saw, as if for the first time, the baby in his arms. He looked into the baby's blue eyes. His sister Astasia's eyes.