Sworn To Raise: Courtlight #1 (23 page)

Calmly, she and Sebastian walked through the seated pride and into the next chamber. She sighed in relief as soon as the lions were far behind them. “How long is this going to take?” she asked in a low voice.

“As long as it takes,” replied Sebastian.

She resisted the urge to whack him on the back of his head. He was, after all, the Imperial Heir.

Once again they were walking through a tunnel; this one wound about a bit more, however, and offered more room to maneuver. She wasn’t sure how much later in their journey it was when Sebastian stopped at a raised platform in the center of the corridor. It was unremarkable: a solid block of plain, square stone that rose up four or five feet from the ground. He hauled himself up onto the platform, then reached down to grip Ciardis’s wrist and help her scramble up the side.

Moving to the center of the platform, he waited. With a creak and a groan, the stone cube they were standing upon began to levitate. It moved straight upward, and Ciardis quickly looked up, expecting to see a stone ceiling ready to squash them. But the ceiling, which had been there only a few seconds before, had disappeared and been replaced by nothing but darkness. The ride was a bit jerky, and each of them wrapped their hands around the other’s waist for balance.

When the stone platform finished rising and clicked into place, they stood in a large, cavernous room with a smooth stone floor, rounded walls, and a quiet ambience. As they stepped off the platform, a multicolored light began to pulse in mid-air. It flickered between many forms: a tree, a bird in flight, a grassy knoll, a mountain stream. It never stayed in one form for very long. Most disconcertingly, it wept. Drops of water condensed on the rocks and fell down in eerie drips, thunderous rain wracked the grassy knoll, and thin rills poured down the trunk of the tree.

It was the Land Wight, and it was clearly in severe pain.

Horrified, but determined to do
something, Ciardis walked up to the elemental and laid her hand on its side. Underneath he skin, the fur, the bark, the grass— a rhythmic thud sounded – like the heartbeat f a living thing, a creature that gasped and sobbed in sorrow.

She closed her eyes in empathy. “Don’t you feel it?” she whispered to Sebastian, her head resting on the shuddering and shifting skin, fur, bark, grass, leaves. He stood by her side, close to but not touching the Land Wight.

When it shuddered again, Ciardis reached for Sebastian’s hand automatically. Without even thinking, she drew him forward into its embrace. The Land Wight had stopped shifting for the moment; it was a full-grown maple tree now. Sap leaked from cracks in its bark like the tears of a weeping woman.

Ciardis extended her entire body to embrace the tree. Without saying a word, she urged Sebastian to do the same.

The Prince Imperial opened his arms wide and pushed his body into the bark.

From the moment he’d entered the room, he’d had no idea what to do. Oh, he’d felt the Wight’s pain on some level for years, but it had never been like this before. He’d supplied the codes without fail, providing the blood required, and, most of all, he’d followed protocol.

Hugging
a powerful elemental wasn’t in protocol. But Ciardis, an untrained mage, had known instinctively what to do. He had no doubt now that they were meant to be here together—perhaps even to go through life together.

Sebastian bit back a cry as he dropped the mental barriers on his mind, opening his magic to the Land Wight. He needed to know what it felt, what it saw, to cause such intensity of emotion. As he threw the gates to his soul wide, the elemental’s images of the life and energy that powered Algardis came pouring in. It couldn’t talk—not in the form it was in now—but it could
show them and help them experience what it felt.

They saw and felt the iciness of winter on the Northern border. More disconcertingly, they felt the thrum of many boots crossing the perilous lands. The boots marched in concert with many heartbeats. They were soldiers—foreigners—on its soil.

The Land Wight showed them how it fought the foreigners to the best of its ability. It conjured snowstorms, ice, and hail to make the soldiers’ march difficult.  It made the land inhospitable to the foreign troops with the death of crops and a dearth of sunshine. But it was a taxing effort, one it was trying its best to maintain, but could not for much longer…not without help.

They experienced its fear—no, its
frustration
—at its near-helplessness. The absence of the Algardis blood fighting by its side was conspicuous in its mind.

The pain that was wracking it arose from the constant pressure of maintaining such an intense assault on the invading troops without its traditional partner.

Having learned all that he needed to, Sebastian hesitantly reached out to the Land Wight’s presence. Through its pain, he sent waves of comfort and reassurance to it. He indicated as best he could that he and Ciardis needed to step back for a moment, but that they were there to help, to put an end to its pain.

Mentally sighing with acceptance, it allowed them to withdraw from its visions, to pull back into their own minds and untangle their physical forms from its bark. Gratefully, Sebastian stepped back, pulling Ciardis back, as well. When he had caught his breath again, he said to her, “Do you know how dangerous that was?”

“It needed our help.”

“It needs more than just
our
help. Remember when I mentioned that each person within the Algardis court is connected to the land, or should be?”

She nodded. As he tiredly ran his fingers through his hair, he said, “Apparently those bonds used to be much stronger. They were even strong enough for the Land Wight or the Emperor to draw upon in times of peril.”

“Alright. So?”

“So what’s going on? Why isn’t my father helping the Land Wight guard against the hordes gathering in the North? Where’s the connection between the Court and the land?” Sebastian looked with sadness at the forlorn tree in the middle of the chamber. Softly, he said, “Why does it stand there with no aid?”

The tree shuddered. Twisting its branches, it snapped them in anger at Ciardis and Sebastian. “It wants us to come back,” she said softly.

Sebastian put a warning hand on her arm. “Stronger mages have died in the Land Wight’s embrace, Ciardis.”

“Well then, we’ll just have to make sure it knows we’re here to help.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he muttered as he watched her approach the trembling tree once more.
She treats it like a pet, but that tree is one of the greatest forces of nature this world has ever seen
.

Shuddering, he stepped forward again. They gripped the bark with their arms, their legs, and their bodies, and turned their faces into its embrace. “Here we are,” Ciardis cooed softly to the tree.

It began to send them images again, but this time, the images took the form of answers to their concerns. The first images that came were of Sebastian’s grandfather and his great-grandfather kneeling before the elemental in obeisance, asking for its guidance and its embrace. Then they saw the same men as infants, with proud Imperial parents hovering over them at their christenings. The Land Wight stood to one side of the crowd of courtiers, invisible but present. The only people who seemed to notice the unseen elemental were the children in their cradles, who tried to grasp its airy substance, and their fathers—the Emperors—who smiled in secret pride at the vision of the elemental that they and their children shared.

During the christenings, the Land Wight gave its blessings and benedictions to each child, welcoming them gently into its fold.

But conspicuously absent was the benediction of Sebastian’s father and then his father’s obeisance during his teenage years.
Where is he?
Sebastian asked the Land Wight. It answered with a void of darkness, a blank emptiness. It had never embraced the latest Algardis Emperor, never provided its benison, and that was when the Empire had begun to fold.

But why?
asked Ciardis urgently.

The Land Wight answered to the best of its ability, showing them more images of the boy who was now a man, the prince who was now the emperor,
the
ruler
who was not a mage.
Sebastian shuddered in horror.
The Land Wight is saying that my father has no magic, no bond, no power!

“How could this happen?” he whispered to himself as he withdrew. “The Imperial court would have known,
should have known,
if their emperor wasn’t a mage.
He had to go through multiple initation ceremonies including the offering, the obeisance, and the soulbonds.”

“How?” said Ciardis. “How would they have known? You’ve kept the Land Wight’s location secret. No one knows it’s here.”

“Yes, but the connection of the Court to the land cannot be faked! The Emperor is that connection from the courts to the land; the Land Wight is the conduit from the land to the Emperor,” Sebastian said angrily. “There are ceremonies my father has had to perform every year since he was a child. He’s gone through them – I’ve seen them. The very same ceremonies that I have gone through myself!”

He left unsaid the fact that he had failed in those ceremonies.

Denial came roaring through into Sebastian’s mind. The Land Wight was saying as clear as day that he was wrong – that the emperor had
not
performed the cermonies. After a few tense seconds, the message became clearer: the Land Wight had taken on the duty of renewing the Courts connection to the lands – weakening itself in the process.

Sebastian relayed this to Ciardis and she tried to process all that they had learned.

“Semantics,” Sebastian said tiredly.

“I don’t think so,” Ciardis said with excitement. “What if the Land Wight has been maintaining the connection this whole time?”

Sebastian was ready to object that was impossible. Then, abruptly, the Land Wight began to send another flood of images their way. This time, it was too confusing to understand. “Whoa, whoa,” said Sebastian, “Slow down—
please
. We don’t understand. We can’t understand.”

The images lessened in intensity as the Land Wight drew back. It began to form a slideshow of their mental images. The projected images showed them the Land Wight’s that the Land Wight hadn’t wanted the land to suffer even if the Emperor didn’t—or couldn’t—hear its needs. In order to make sure the land’s needs were met, the Land Wight had gone to every ceremony from the annual Blessing of the Court to the Midsummer’s Bloodletting for the fall harvest. Each time, it had poured from its own reserves the measure of geological magic required to activate the spell bonding the land and the Algardis family.

The land magic had come from it, but should have been coming from the Emperor. And then it got worse.

Sebastian was born, and the Land Wight rejoiced. Here was its partner and conduit to the Court, the one who would help it strengthen the crops and protect the people. It was clear from the early days of his life that Sebastian had the power necessary to partner with the land and join in union with the Land Wight.

Ciardis and Sebastian saw an image of the Land Wight hovering over Sebastian as a baby, its emotions dominated by joy. They saw the waves of power that rose from Sebastian’s cradle even as a child. They felt
the Land Wight’s anticipation. It had been waiting until the first obeisance ceremony, when Sebastian turned five, to introduce itself and initiate the bond between the Prince Imperial and the land.

But that never happened.

The Land Wight showed them a horrible
place
with dead trees, rotten fruits, and terrible odors. The night before Sebastian turned five a man had come into his room. He had not meant the boy physical harm, so the Land Wight had no ability to fight him. He had come and he had formed a spell as the Land Wight watched in grief.

The spell drew power from Sebastian’s mage core, draining it little by little in a continuous spiral into a small locket. After the spell was done, a golden thread rose from the core of the child’s magic and connected to the locket.

The Land Wight showed the locket being presented to the Emperor as a gift, and then it showed the sudden manifestation of the Emperor’s power. But the new, unlocked power wasn’t the Emperor’s.

It was all from Sebastian—drained from his mage core every hour of every day.

The Land Wight watched in grief, but could do nothing. What was worse was that the locket gave the Emperor the power to act as a guardian of the land, but never gave him the insight to connect with the Land Wight itself—the insight that every Algardis Emperor was born and died with, the ability to feel a disturbance in a distance mountain pass or unease passing through a forest as darkness wafted through.

“He didn’t have it. My father didn’t have the insight born to the Emperors,” said Sebastian in shock. He stumbled back and sat on the ground in confusion.

He sat and thought about what the Land Wight had shown them for a few moments. Then he denied it, “My father couldn’t have known.”

Ciardis crouched in front of him, placing her hands on his arms.

“There has to be an explanation,” he said.

“I’m sure there is.”

“How could my father accept the gift? How could he not know
it was coming from me? Stolen from me. Didn’t he notice something was wrong?”

“I’m sure he would have done something if he had known. Non-mages can’t sense magic. He probably never even suspected you’d been drained if you looked whole and healthy. He must have thought his sudden surge of ability was a gift from the Gods.”

Getting up, Sebastian flung a hand angrily at the Land Wight. “Do you think it can tell us who did this and why?”

“I think the Land Wight has shown us as much as it can. It has been helping your family for generations. It didn’t give up on you; you shouldn’t give up on it.”

“Right,” said Sebastian.

Hesitantly placing his hand on the Land Wight’s trunk, he showed it his sorrow, and his gratitude for its continued care of the land.
How do I take my place as your partner?

It gave him a warning flash of power, and then opened its mind. Sebastian fell into it, and Ciardis hurried to grab the prince’s suddenly falling body. Cradling his body she eased them down until they sat on the floor – his body in her arms. Grabbing his hand she pressed it to the Land Wight’s trunk. She desperately hoped Sebastian was still breathing.