The Bellborn rite.
She forced her hooves to find each narrow step in silence. She cupped the starbloom’s glow in both hands now, hooded against her breast.
The third turn opened onto a short, level passage. At its far end, a low door stood half-ajar, light spilling around its edges in a cold, wavering radiance with the same strange quality as scale-lamps.
Beneath the bells, beneath the chant, something else moved.
Water, restless. Under that came the bone-vibrating shudder of a living thing in agony.
She crept down the passage until she could see through the crack in the door.
All her memories of this place filled her mind until her vision doubled with it, the cavern opening around a great suspended bowl of granite.
The bowl’s lip was a perfect circle above the black mirror of water. Light leaked from the water itself, silver-blue, casting the cavern walls in trembling patterns that rippled like scales. Chains of woven light plunged from the vaulted ceiling into the depths, vanishing against the wyrm’s vast back.
The Underserpent was not still now, as it had mostly been during her sacrifice. The dark length of its body twisted and rolled against its bindings, muscles throwing up waves that slapped against the rock. The chains flared and dimmed, flared and dimmed, as if signaling to someone in the distance.
The Underserpent tried to rise. The chains held. Each time it strained, the whole chamber shuddered.
Lain reached a hand back and grasped Rhalir’s. He gripped down fiercely. In her Tuning she knew he’d never seen something so horrible.
At the far end of the bowl, on the familiar narrow walkway that jutted out toward the water, stood the Triad. High Glinnel Seli was in the center, white robes immaculate, sleeves heavy with bells. High Glinnel Peter stood to her left, his stoop deeper, face drawn. To her right, Anthony’s lips moved in ceaseless prayer. Behind them was a half-circle of Elders and Sisters, veiled, their voices layered into the chant.
And there, in front of Seli, kneeling on the stone with her hands bound in front of her, was Sister Hellen.
She wore the Bellborn collar.
Gold circled her throat, the metal engraved with the familiar serpent-and-bell. Someone had placed a wreath of flowers upon her head; the white petals looked ghostly in the scale-light. Her face was ashen with fear.
From the viewing gallery, Brighthand watched with drawn bows and ready swords. Their armor gleamed dully in the watery light. A few looked uneasy. Most looked numb with exhaustion.
On the altar-stone beside Seli rested a bowl.
Lain recognized the thick, viscous sheen of the liquid, the faint halo of pale glow it cast over Seli’s hands. But the color was wrong. Not opalescent white shot with blue, as it had been when they’d brewed it for her. This mixture was dark, veering indigo, with threads of black that curled and uncurled like ink within it.
Starbloom, brewed at night.
It pulsed faintly, and in this world Lain knew that all things had a heartbeat.
Lain’s hand flew to her own throat, to where the vial of her starbloom hung. It hummed there, answering her with a note of horror.
“They’re making her sacrifice,” Lain whispered. “The new Bellborn. With starbloom brewed at night.”
Hellen lifted her head then, as if she’d heard Lain. Her eyes were wide, but they were clear. Terrified, yes, but clear. She looked at the Underserpent, then at the bowl, then at Seli.
“I’m ready,” she said. Her voice shook. She was so brave. So brave, just as Lain had been.
Lain watched Seli’s face.
There was no pity there. Only a hard, brittle righteousness, the certainty of someone who had already decided how this story must end.
“For Ivath,” Seli said. “For the world.”
“Praise the Underserpent,” Hellen said, so soft Lain thought the word had fallen upon her ear like a nearby whisper.
Seli picked up the bowl.
Freeze.
She turned toward the edge of the walkway, where the Underserpent’s vast eye lay half-lidded below the water, a dark moon opening and closing in slow, pained blinks. The chain of light nearest her flared, reacting to the potion’s presence. Seli lifted the bowl high.
Freeze.
Lain’s hands shook around the starbloom’s glow.
Suddenly, through the bond she felt Morgan’s distant surge of impatience as the ward’s collapse fully reached him – a prickling awareness that his way was open now.
He would be coming.
She couldn’t wait for him. If she did, there would be nothing left for him to free.
Seli gave the bowl to Hellen.
Lain stepped through the doorway –
But a shout cracked across the hall.
“Wait!”
A man broke from the archway, his robes flying behind him as he sprinted. He dodged a startled Glinnel, nearly slipping on the wet stone, and threw himself between Hellen and Seli.
It was Elder Tanel.
“Tanel, we have discussed this,” Seli said. “We must have a new Bellborn.”
He was breathless, shaking, but didn’t yield. “You have discussed,” he said, “and you have decided. But that doesn’t make your decision right.”
Seli’s eyes narrowed. “You would deny Ivath a Bellborn, on the brink of her destruction?”
“I would deny Ivath another murder,” he said, louder now, voice ringing in the chamber. “We are not cornered beasts. We are not creatures of one solution. This ritual is only fear, dressed as doctrine. And she –” he pointed at Hellen, who trembled behind him – “is a child of this city, not a tool to be sharpened and thrown into the dark.”
The Brighthand stiffened. Murmurs rippled. Lain watched Seli feel the shift in the room, the perilous loosening of certainty.
Seli’s jaw clicked tight. “Stand aside, Elder Tanel.”
“I will not.”
“You presume to interpret the Underserpent’s will?”
“I presume that it does not wish to feed on our daughters.”
A sharp inhale from someone in the ranks.
Seli flicked two fingers. “Seize him.”
The Brighthand surged as one. Tanel took half a step back before they hit him. They tore his arms behind him, slamming him to his knees. His cheek struck the ground. He grunted but did not stop speaking.
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“This is wrong,” he gasped, voice muffled under the press of armored hands. “Seli, if you do this, if you spill more innocent blood, Ivath will drown in it –”
“Gag him,” Seli said.
A Brighthand clamped a palm over Tanel’s mouth.
Hellen whimpered.
Lain, now at the threshold, the starbloom’s light trembling between her fingers, took Fillan’s bell and rang it high above her head.
The sound knifed through the chamber like a ray of light.
Every bell in the room answered.
The ones on Seli’s sleeves, the ones hammered into the Underserpent’s chains, even the ones hidden in the architecture of the Spire, long silent. They all chimed once, discordant and jarring, breaking the syncopation of the rite.
The bowl in Hellen’s hands trembled. She jerked, splashing a thin arc of dark liquid onto the path at her knees. Where it struck, the rock hissed and smoked, as if the brew resented being wasted on anything but the flesh of a girl.
Silence fell, and every face turned toward the sound.
Lain stood at the top of a narrow stair, the starbloom light at her chest, Fillan’s bell at her side. Mallow rose with her, sword unsheathed but held low. Rhalir stepped a half-pace forward, not behind, his presence at her shoulder as much declaration as protection.
Hellen saw her first.
Her eyes went huge, shining. “Lain,” she whispered, shock and relief and wild hope all tangled like vines about the single word.
Seli’s expression went blank for all of an instant before it hardened into something sharp enough to cut.
“Bellborn,” she said. The sound of the title in that voice made Lain’s skin crawl. “You presume much, walking into sanctum unbidden.”
“First they want you back, now they want you gone,” Mallow murmured beside her. “Fickle, them.”
“You presume more,” Lain said, and was surprised at the steadiness of her voice. “You would kill the Underserpent to spite a man.”
A ripple moved through the gathered priests. Peter’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. Anthony’s knuckles whitened on his staff.
Seli did not look away. “We would spare it shame,” she said. “Spare the world the ruin your Veinwright would make of it. This is mercy, not spite. This is stewardship.”
“You’ve bound it in chains and called the prison mercy,” Lain cried. “You took its sleep and named it peace. And now, when it strains toward freedom, you mean to cut its throat and call that mercy too.”
She stepped forward onto the first step of the stair, then the second. Each movement brought her closer to the familiar stone, closer to the memory of her own near-death. The underserpent’s eye rolled sluggishly toward her, following her every step.
“I won’t let you,” Lain said. “Do you not see how it suffers? Do you not feel it? How dare you make a sacrifice of another Sister, after what doing the same to me has brought you. Are you so eager to make the same mistake again?”
The Brighthand above shifted, drawing bowstrings taut. More than one arrowhead angled toward her heart.
Rhalir moved instinctively, placing himself between her and the archers, his shield coming up in one smooth motion. Mallow slid to her other side, sword rising, his body a taut line of readiness.
“Stand down,” Seli said sharply to the guards. “She is bound to the Veinwright. If she bleeds, he will be drawn here.”
Seli didn’t know. The High Glinnel couldn’t tell the wards had fallen, that Morgan was already riding for the gates.
Seli’s gaze returned to Lain. “You are too late,” she said. “We will not halt our rite because a frightened child has learned new words for sacrifice.”
Hellen flinched as if struck.
Lain’s hands shook so hard she nearly dropped the bell.
Child, she thought, absurdly. She’d drowned in the starbloom brew. She killed a hundred men by her own hand, only that day. She’d made love in the saint’s chapel, and woken with the gifts of Saint Fillan as her reward. She was not Seli’s child.
The Underserpent shifted again, a weak, desperate flex that sent small waves lapping against the stone lip. Through the Tuning, through the memory of the tremor-serpent, through the starbloom pulsing at her breast, she heard it. It was not words, but only that deep deep need she’d finally understood through the gift of her Heat.
No more.
No more chains, no more poisons, no more being used as a lever for the wars of men.
Lain lifted Fillan’s bell.
“I am the Bellborn,” she said, her voice carrying strangely in the hush. She rang the bell once, a strange quieting note. Then, twice, and the chains about the serpent flared with great heat, then darkened like a forged blade in water.
“You have sacrificed a thousand before me in a rite of endless slumber,” Lain continued. “But this is not your rite anymore, High Glinnel. I hold in my hand the bell of Saint Fillan, the ringer of the bell, the first Bellborn. She was a Kelthi woman. You lied about her. You lied about the wyrm’s purpose. And you’ve lied about me.”
Her antlers glowed softly as she took another step. The memory of Fillan’s hand on the wolf’s jaw, of the saint’s voice saying bells bind, and bells free, empowered her.
“This is no longer your story. Now we have the truth. The nightmare you’ve stewarded ends now. For everyone.”
She rang the bell again.
The underserpent’s chains flared. The whole chamber shuddered. The next wave of the wyrm’s movement was not weak. It was rising. It was not fully awake – she would need the starbloom, as she’d always known. But when it did wake, it would be free.
Seli’s composure finally cracked. “Seize her!” she screamed.
Brighthand lunged for the stairs. Priests scattered. Hellen cried out, the sound torn between fear and something more hopeful.
Lain braced her hooves on the walkway. She unstoppered the vial of starbloom potion. The faint luminescence coiled upward like mist, brushing her lips. The scent of starbloom – sweet, mineral, unbearably clean – hit the back of her throat. Her vision blurred. Her pulse throbbed in her ears.
The Underserpent’s agony rolled through her.
I have to wake you.
I will wake you.
One swallow of the mixture that was both day and night had almost killed her before. This – her own mixture, brewed in full daylight with the help of Morgan and Sena, steeped in blood and heat and the Tuning – would burn her alive from the inside. She knew it; she had always known it, even when Morgan had promised to be here, to draw off the poison so she might live.
But she saw it. She welcomed it, if it freed the wyrm. If it spared Hellen. If it ended the Bellborn cycle forever.
Those three miracles would make her worthy of sainthood.
She raised the vial to her mouth –
And the bond ignited.
It hit her like a chain snapping tight around her breastbone. The breath rushed from her lungs.
“No.”
The word thundered through her before she even heard it with her ears.
Morgan.
He burst into the chamber in a shock of smoke and feathers, every bloodwyrm flooding behind him like an avalanche of black snow. They swarmed the high gallery, spilling like water across the stone, their manes bristling, claws scraping the rock with a hungry, eager hiss. The Elders screamed and stumbled back. The Brighthand loosed arrow after arrow, some of the wyrms falling to writhe in pain – Lain felt this the way she’d felt it in her Tuning only minutes before – others moving with the fluid speed of a falling kestrel to dodge the blows until they found their terrified targets with claws extended.
Morgan didn’t look at any of them. He saw Lain, and the universe narrowed.
His eyes were red at the edges, fever-bright at their pale centers. Power poured off of him in volcanic waves. Their bond sang under Lain’s skin, thick as blood and twice as heavy. His pulse thrummed through her own veins.
That she should be paired with this creature – that such a man had pulled her from the snow, healing her wounded leg with the touch of black smoke – that he would kneel in a cart, and tell her he was not to be feared – that he would choose her, bond with her, take her in his arms and tell her of his losses in vulnerable sweetness – that he would stand here, the roping masses of his power roiling about the room to snare them all – it was a wonder, that he only had eyes for Lain.
He lifted a hand.
Mallow jerked back as if someone had hooked a wire through his spine. His sword dropped, clattering across the path. His knees hit the walkway. His breath left him in a ragged grunt of pain.
“No!” Lain cried, spinning toward him.
Mallow strained against invisible cable, teeth bared. His eyes met hers in wild and terrified fury.
Morgan’s voice was quiet, but it cracked the air like a steel hammer.
“If he moves again, I will break him.”
The bloodwyrms closed in around Morgan like a living throne. The blinking masses of their golden eyes shuddered across Lain’s field of view. Morgan walked toward her with slow, measured steps, never looking at Mallow, never looking at the priests, never looking at the Underserpent thrashing in its own chains.
Only at her.
Always at her.
“You cannot drink it alone,” he said. “It will kill you.”
“I don’t care,” she choked. “I have to wake it –”
“You will die.”
His voice softened on the word as if with fondness.
“And without you, the wyrm will die anyway. We must bond to it if we have any hope of saving it now.”
Seli, half-crushed against the wall by a dead Brighthand, shrieked – “Kill the Veinwright – kill the Bellborn – kill all of them –”
But each time a Brighthand fired into the swarm of warms pressing across the galley, it turned to smoke and rushed back to its maker, filling Morgan with power. Everyone could see it now. They stopped firing, and waited.
Morgan reached Lain.
Very gently, he closed his hand over hers, covering the vial. His palm was hot. Too hot. Heat rolled through the bond in dizzying pulses, drawing her breath into his and back again.
“You need another,” he murmured.
Another breath. Another pulse. Two hearts. Two hearts.
“You need me.”
Mallow’s voice tore out of him, wrecked. “Lain – please – don’t. Let it die. Let it all die. He wants to control the wyrm. He can’t do it without you. The bond –”
Morgan used his will to shut Mallow’s mouth.
Mallow’s desperation arrived at Lain’s doorstep as his last starving plea. Mallow wasn’t begging for his life, or even for the sake of his own revenge. He was begging her to choose her own freedom.
But she saw Hellen kneeling, shaking, forced to hold a bowl that would kill a god. She saw Seli’s face snarling with righteousness. The Underserpent trembled, folding in on its own pain.
And she saw Morgan, not a man who owned her, but as a force she might finally wield herself, the way Saint Fillan had wielded the wolf, once tamed.
“Please stop the bloodwyrms from killing,” she said.
Morgan nodded. “I will command them only to protect us.”
She wiped her eyes, and found Mallow’s.
“I can’t,” she whispered to him. “I can’t let it die.”
Mallow bowed his head in a grief so deep it looked like prayer. “I know,” he whispered.
Morgan exhaled a shuddering breath of relief and triumph.
“Then come,” he murmured, taking her face in both hands. “Come to me, Lain. We will finish this together.”
Saint Fillan’s bell thrummed once in her bandolier.
Lain, with her third and final offering, lifted the starbloom vial toward her lips, and surrendered herself to the bond that would make her divine.