Stolen (20 page)

Part the Fourth:

CHILD OF VALLONIS

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

—JOSEPH CAMPBELL

Chapter 36

F
OR A MOMENT
N
AT WONDERED WHY SHE
was walking alone in an empty hallway. She had been following Shakes, Roark, and Brendon, and in her distant memory, she recalled them calling her name. Telling her to turn around, that she was making a mistake. But she did not hear them, or if she did, their words did not make sense.

All around her, the temple was burning, the fire from the killing floor making its way upward, consuming everything in its path. She climbed up one set of stairs, then another. She heard the screams and the terror, but underneath the screams she heard something else.

A voice calling for her.

Liannan's voice.

Like a key fitting into a lock and opening something inside her, drawing her to this place. She forgot about her friends, she forgot everything. There was only this place, and the voice, and the call she must answer. Nat realized she had been here before. She had been in this place, had walked through its white marbled walls.

She followed the voice to the top of the mountain.

She found the door with the golden lettering and opened it.

Faix stood in the room, his mouth open in a silent scream. But Nat could hear neither his voice nor his thoughts in her head. All she heard was the voice, soothing her, saying her name again and again, blocking her from hearing or understanding anything else.

“Why, Faix,” she said, “what are you doing here?” Her own voice was sleepy and slow as her mind struggled to make sense of her surroundings.

Why was she alone?

Why was Faix looking at her that way? Why didn't he speak?

As if she were awakening from sleep, suddenly she saw that something was terribly wrong here. His white armor was dirty and torn, and his nails were black with dirt. His silver eyes were gray and the necklace he wore around his neck was gone. He looked strangely bare without it, almost exposed. Nat shook her head, but the image remained.

It's not right. It's like the broken bridge all over again.

Faix shouldn't look like that. This shouldn't be happening.

Nat tried to compose herself. “Faix, what happened? Faix?”

But instead of answering her, Faix fell to the ground, his own long sword bursting through his chest as he was impaled from behind, and his sapphire blood spilling on the floor.

Nat saw but she could not see, not really.

Sapphire blood.

She watched the sword push through her lost friend's heart as a child watches a storm from the window.

Bluer than tears,
Nat thought.
Bluer than the Blue.

Faix fell to his knees, then pitched forward at her feet. The sapphire stain ran across the stone.

Faix is dead.

Faix.

My Faix.

She felt as if the air were leaving the room.

She felt as if her own heart were pushing and pounding out of her chest.

She felt as if she'd seen this all before.

Because I have.

It was then that Nat realized the room she was standing in was the same one she'd seen in her vision all this time. The chains on the wall, the blood pooling on the floor, a white-robed girl in the corner.

She had seen this. She had thought the girl was Liannan, that Liannan was calling for help.

But the girl was not Liannan, and Liannan had not been crying for help, not at all, but had been sending her a warning, garbled and suppressed by her captor, who had used her to draw in their prey.

Nat! Don't let them fool you! I need you to listen to me! Save yourself!

The white-robed girl tossed away Faix's sword and stepped over his body. Like the rest of the priests, she had white powder on her face and hands, and a third eye drawn on her forehead. She had thick brown hair and her eyes were as cerulean blue as the blood that she had spilled. She was beautiful and terrible, and she now wore Faix's necklace around her pale neck.

Nat wanted to rip it from her throat as she watched. This thing—this heartless beast—had stolen Faix's heart, and it was all Nat could do not to repeat the trick.

But it wasn't just that.

Something about her was familiar, the shape of her nose, her long, thin hands.

“Do you know me, Anastasia?” the girl asked. She looked at Nat strangely, with interest, as if she'd only just noticed her in the room.

“Eliza!” Nat gasped. “You're Eliza Wesson.”

“That was my name once,” she said, staring at Nat with contempt. “Before. When I was weak.”

Nat said nothing.

Before,
she thought.
When you did not need to steal hearts because you still had your own.

The girl's blue gaze was steady. Unnerving.

“But not anymore. I am Lady Algeana Penthos, High Priestess of this temple.”

Lady Algeana of the Dark. Eater of Souls. Destroyer of Worlds.

Eliza bowed her head with a smile.

“But that would mean . . . that . . .”

“Yes,” she said, amused. “Poor Bradley thought he was recruiting me into the program when he found me. Thought he could make me into one of his little fire-eyed puppets. Silly man. I might as well have tied strings to his arms and made him dance.” Her smile broadened as she relished the thought. “Did you enjoy killing him? That was my gift to you when I had no more use of him. I told him to go into the maze, that he would surely find someone there he was looking for.”

Nat backed up against the wall. There was something dreadful about Eliza, a gray darkness, a dank, seeping poison that swelled up from what should have been her soul. “You're a murderer. You kill your own kind. I don't understand. Why? What happened to you?”

Eliza lifted her chin. “They have to die. It is their honor, to feed my power, when they die as innocents in the maze I capture the essence of their souls,” she said. “My priests sell these worthless tokens to the rest of the population, but what they don't know is that each time a marked person dies, their power adds to my own. I claim it for myself, as only I can do.” Her eyes were blazing now. “I am more powerful now than I have ever been. The worlds I weave, my illusions, are no longer ephemeral; they have substance. I can weave fire that burns—ice that freezes. A good trick, yes? Turning nothing into something. A lesson I learned as a child.”

Nat was paralyzed. She couldn't move as Eliza took the rough chains and locked her hands in them. The chains that had never once been for Liannan, but were always for her.

I'm such a fool.

Eliza raised an eyebrow. “I saw you in the glass. The last drakonrydder of Vallonis. Anastasia Dekesthalias. The Resurrection of the Flame that will light the world,” she said. She tugged the chains tight, drawing blood from Nat's wrists. “If only I had known you were already in the program. I ordered Bradley to bring you to me that night you left MacArthur, but you slipped away. So how was I to find you now? And how would I get you to come to me? But then we captured the sylph . . .”

“Liannan. Her name is Liannan.” Nat couldn't help herself.
Her name is Liannan, she is not one of your toys, she is my friend.

Eliza shrugged. ”And suddenly, it all fell into place. I would use her blood to mask the bomb, and her voice to call you here. She was so very handy. But I had no idea until we caught her that you knew someone . . . someone close to me.”

“Wes,” Nat said miserably.

“Yes, my sainted brother, Ryan, who refused a commission when Bradley first offered it. Bringing all those pilgrims to our temple could have at least proved his usefulness. But no. He was too good for that, he would never do such a thing.”

Of course he wouldn't,
Nat thought.

“Wes always needed to believe in himself as the hero.”

Because he is one.

Eliza sighed. “I heard he was back in New Vegas, so I put my name on a blacklist, made sure he saw it. It seemed to be the only way to get him closer. I wonder if he liked all those little touches. My ‘room.' The bunny. I never had such a toy, but he wouldn't remember, he's much too sentimental.”

“Kind.” The word is “kind.”

“He had to believe I was their prisoner, even though he knew better. He had to think I was in danger. It was the only way to draw him out. He's always been a gullible boy.”

“Loyal.” The word is “loyal.”

Eliza dismissed her brother with a flick of her pale wrist. “Then those silly children set fire to the dome. But we got Wes anyway,” she said, her lips parting, white teeth glistening. She motioned to Faix. “I thought he would bring you to me, too, if he had, maybe I would have let him live.”

“You used them all to get to me. All my friends . . . ,” Nat said. Eliza had hunted them down, each one, had brought them all here to die.

“What are friends for?” Eliza asked. She picked up Faix's sword from the floor. “He was my teacher, too. Did he ever tell you about his favorite pupil? Did he start your lessons with the violin? You thought it was your idea, but it was always his. Faix. Give the Queen my regards, tell her I got her message.” She laughed, kicking Faix's body so it rolled into the blue blood.

“I called him to me, felt his presence the moment you landed on the island. Told him I was ready to change. And of course he came. ‘There is still time to repent,' he said. ‘The Queen still loves you.
I still love you.
' I called them Mother and Father, did he tell you? How can one be more than a thousand years old and so stupid?”

THE WEAVER AND THE QUEEN

T
HROUGH THE FIRE, THRO
UGH THE SMOKE
and flame, she saw the boy and the girl huddled in the corner.
Twins.
She hadn't known there would be two children, as she had seen only one in her mirror. Which one? The boy looked afraid, but his sister stared back boldly. The girl had sapphire eyes and a swirl on her shoulder. A weaver.

It was the girl.

A decision was made.

She was the one.

The one they had come to steal.

• • •

In the century since the ice came upon the world, the people of Vallonis sent scouts into the gray lands to search for the source of the corruption, with no success.

Then, sixteen years ago, the Queen beheld a vision. A vision of the one who would save them. A child of Vallonis born in the gray lands who would be able to unlock the tower that held the
Archimedes Palimpsest
. The child of the Queen, imbued with her spirit and power for a new age. The mirror showed them the child in the flames, and they stole her from her family when she was seven years of age.

The Queen and her loyal consort, Faix Lazaved, brought the child to Apis to live with them. She became like a daughter, a child to replace the one she had sacrificed for Vallonis.

They believed Eliza would be the one to recast the spell, to fix the frost and the darkness that had seeped into its making and set the world aright.

Faix declared he had never had a more apt pupil. He was so proud of her. Eliza was a fast learner, and took easily to her daily lessons of magic. She learned to shape wondrous creations out of the ether. This stolen child was everything they'd hoped for. They called her their star child, delighting in her cleverness, her talent, her sorcery.

Three years ago, they sent Eliza back to the gray lands with the key to unlock the
Archimedes Palimpsest
and bring it back to Apis.

But Eliza never returned to them.

Instead, there was news of more violence and darkness, of a shining white temple governed by a cruel mistress. News that their people were being tortured and killed, herded to their deaths by armies in gray, and turned into dust by holy men and women in white.

Eliza Wesson was not the child they thought she was.

Heartbroken and defeated, they came to the conclusion that there could be only one explanation.

They had stolen the wrong twin.

Chapter 37

W
ES COULDN'T UNDE
RSTAND WHAT
Liannan was telling him; it hurt too much even to try. The whole world was burning around him, and somehow the story burned him more. His sister was the High Priestess? Eliza was behind this temple? The one who ordered the white hunt? Who gathered marked pilgrims to this place only to slaughter them? The priestess who worked with the RSA? How could that be?

Eliza was mischievous and delusional, cruel and thoughtless, but she wasn't a killer, she wasn't a cannibal.

Was she?

“It's been nine years, Wes,” Liannan said, standing now and leaning on Shakes's shoulder. “People change. Sometimes for the worse.” The sounds of fire and fury were only growing stronger. They needed to go.

Wes tightened his fist, but there was nothing to strike. Not here.

“Where is she?” His voice was strangely cold, as if it belonged to someone else. Someone whose sister did not threaten all he loved along with the world they lived in. “Where's Nat? What does Eliza—my sister—want with her?”

“She went up the stairs,” Brendon said. “We couldn't stop her. She was like someone possessed.”

Wes moved to the door.

Roark put a hand on Wes's arm. “This place is burning down. We have to run. You can't go after her—we can't lose you, too.”

But Wes shook him off, pausing long enough to grip Roark by the shoulder. “Try to get one of the ferryboats. Wait for me at the dock. I'll come back with Nat. And I can handle my sister. I promise.”

“Wes,” Liannan said gravely. “Eliza's not your sister anymore. You have to remember that. She'll use everything and anything to fight you, to get what she wants.”

He nodded and ran up into the burning building, up into the smoke and flame, to find his love and his shame, his future and his past—at least, the one who held it hostage.

Enough.

• • •

The stairs were black with flame, but Wes kept climbing; he wouldn't leave Nat behind, and if they were going to die here, they would die together. He found the doorway and burst into the room. The chamber was hewn from the stone, a round room ringed by arched windows and encircled by a wide terrace.

Nat was chained up to the wall, her arms spread out like wings, wrists and ankles shackled.

Powerless as a pinned beetle. A broken bird.

A girl stood in front of her.

Eliza. My sister.

He recognized her bright blue eyes along with her thin nose, her sharp chin, the features that they shared—and yet her face had somehow gone wrong, slightly twisted, the nose too long, the chin too pointed. Even as a child, she had always been annoyed when their mother cooed over his good looks.

“Eliza.”

Her name seemed to rankle her. “You may call me Lady Algeana. And you may kneel.”

Wes didn't move.

Brother and sister stared at each other. He didn't recognize this stranger in front of him. He wanted to find his little sister, but she was gone for good: The snow had hardened into ice.

Wes smiled.

If there was one thing he knew, it was how to handle ice. He'd spent his whole life working it. Hard, he knew. Soft, that was more difficult to understand.

Try again.

“You've grown up, Lady Algeana.” He clenched his jaw and tried not to glance across the room at Nat, hanging from chains, uncertain if she was alive or dead, awake or unconscious.

“Surprised?” Eliza said with a shrug. She brandished a gleaming blade.

Careful.

Eliza was beyond saving, and he could see that as clearly as the sword she held under Nat's throat.