The sky over Astochia was spotless on that day. The sun’s golden splendor shimmered across the tight web of ripples on the sea surface, spilled across the white bridges and terraces, and broke against clear and stained glass windows. Its shine brought no warmth. It was swallowed by the sharp rolling wind that brought bite from the northern mountains.
The harbor and the docks were empty, people ushered by Eirran’s guard further inland. Ships and boats had already been hauled behind the cape.
The quarantine flag danced above the ghostly silence.
But the town was far from empty.
Hundreds of human bodies clustered on the bridges and platforms, hands gripping the railings and balustrades. Others peeked from the open windows, often three or four faces crumpled between the single pair of grilles.
The Ilari gathered above, less obvious but still undoubtedly curious. Clad in shimmering cloaks and furs, they sat on balconies and rooftop terraces, waiting.
Representatives of Astochian branches of all eight great houses gathered on the balconies of their respective palaces, V’Loraths included.
Vhanna sat on the low bench on the large terrace in front of the Lamp Hall, drawing snow-fox fur tighter around her shoulders. Vareth stood behind her, lips pressed to white, one hand clasping her shoulder, the other resting on Lioran, who observed the sky with furrowed brow and a bite to his bottom lip. Wind danced in his nearly grown feathers, promising the restoration of flight.
“What are we waiting for?” Lioran asked, restlessly shifting his weight.
“The Antarrila,” Vareth said grimly, his gaze fixed on the empty sky above the piers. “They do not clear the harbor for a simple flyover.”
“This can only mean one thing,” Vhanna interjected, a fervent light in her eyes as she turned to her son. “They have come to enact Ellevath’s will. To make a judgment.” Her voice trembled on the last sentence, as if she herself didn’t quite believe her words.
Lioran frowned. “But they answer to the Fifth House. Not the Temple.”
Vhanna and Vareth exchanged glances.
“Correction,” Vareth said, lifting Lioran’s chin. “They answer to the Heavenly Steward – Gioden, not Eirran V’Asanii. But above all, they answer to Ellevath.”
Lioran gave a slight nod but didn’t feel lighter. If this was meant to be a comfort, it didn’t feel like one.
In the Temple, Alerion stood on the roof entrance, in golden robes, surrounded by acolytes who opened their harmonics in holy hymn, ignoring the scribes the Seventh had placed on the nearby terrace.
From the balcony door of her chamber Fariah observed the eerie calm. “The Antarrila arrive,” was all the guards said. She grasped at the rough raw silk of her skirt, knuckles growing pale. The Antarrila would come, but whether to absolve or condemn remained unknown.
And on the rooftop terrace of the main Palace stood Lily, clad in a woolen cloak, hands gripping the balustrade. Evan stood on her left, wide curious eyes searching the sky. Behind the children, Mirna and Jereh stood upright and firm as stone columns. A few feet away, Keth kept them silent company.
~~~~~~~~~
Eirran stood on the eastern cliff, above the thick white cloth of foam pounding the blue in endless rhythm. The salt spray cooled his skin and burned his nostrils, returning him the old alertness of one commanding a battlefield.
His eyes traced the geography beneath – the cliffs, the shape of the bay, the sharp spear of the western cape. He saw the pier was clear of ships, the harbor empty of men.
He thought of Noemi and Lily, and of the vows he gave to them and to himself, then let everything else fall away.
Above him, hundreds of white wings rustled like blades.
Nair waited half a step behind; Revein on the cliff’s edge, wordless; Ithrim and Sareh alert with battle-sharpened eyes.
He spread his wings and lowered his hand.
~~~~~~~~~~~
They felt it before the sound reached their ears. The drop in the air pressure, the death of the wind.
Evan grasped Lily’s hand; her fingers wrapped around his.
From the distance, it thrummed, low and unyielding, growing louder and louder as the ripples on the water’s surface spread flat, then rose in a grid resembling a small-eyed net.
Shadow licked its way from the east, a cloud of black and white that blotted out the sun.
Wings – hundreds of them, a thousand perhaps – spread in a spherical grid two hundred feet across, beating the air as one.
A harmony cut through the air. Three tones long, the other two short. The sphere flattened and stretched into a box.
One pair of wings descended toward the city, while the others were left hovering.
He didn’t wear the black armor of the Antarrila, but a silver breastplate over indigo lliath, two crossed flaming arrows on its center.
Vhanna gasped, fingers burrowing into the white fur. Vareth paled, clutching her shoulder tighter. Lioran looked at them both, feathers shivering in the still air.
On the Temple’s roof the hymn began to bleed and dissipate. Alerion clutched the book in his arms like salvation.
Behind the glass of her chamber, Fariah’s hand flew to her chest, breath catching in her throat.
And on the Palace roof the adults and children held hands. Beneath wide eyes, Lily’s mouth stretched into a smile.
Eirran flew low enough to be heard, yet high enough that all had to look up at him. At the center of the sky he hovered.
“People of Astochia!” he called, harmonies clear and sharp. “The Temple whispers that a child’s fever is Ellevath’s punishment. They preach a god of fear. One so small as to deliver pestilence as judgement.” With outstretched arms he pointed to the legion behind him.
“But today I bring you the real Ellevath. I bring you His true judgment. So let Him judge. Let every soul witness the face of the divine, and know the difference between priests’ lies and heaven’s wrath.”
Eirran’s harmonies rolled across the bay like struck metal, ringing against glass and stone, vibrating in bone.
For a heartbeat, nothing moved.
Then the sky answered.
From the great hanging box of wings, two dozen Angels broke formation. They spilled out like shards of light, then drew together again with terrifying precision, arranging themselves into two neat clusters.
One sank lower until it hovered above the open sea beyond the harbor. The other climbed higher, fanning out over the line where water met sky.
Below, nothing had changed yet. The water still glittered calm and treacherous gold. The wind still blew sharp and clean.
Then they moved.
The lower cluster shifted into a crescent facing the open ocean, then split into three groups. Wings tilted together. Harmonies rose, low and slow at first, then climbing in pitch. The sound was not loud, but it sank straight into the bones of those meant to hear it.
The air buckled. One by one, the three parts of the crescent dropped into spirals that orbited each other in a mesmerizing dance.
Far beyond the bay’s mouth, the sea shivered, as if something under its skin had stirred. Ripples raced outward, collided, rose, folded back upon themselves. The bright, flat surface broke into overlapping patterns like scales.
The harmonies climbed again.
Water churned, then began to rise.
At first it was a swell, then a series of ridges. Pulled by an invisible hand, water receded away from the shore, revealing stones stacked with urchins, sand, and a meadow of sea grass.
Then came the first waves, slamming against each other, their crests dissolving into a mist that broke the sunlight into a myriad of colors.
“By Ellevath,” someone whispered on a nearby bridge.
The last remnants of acolyte chants on the Temple roof faltered. Alerion stepped back, unaware he was doing so, and nearly tripped on his robe.
On the Lamp Hall terrace, Vhanna’s breath hitched. “The Maestral,” she breathed. “They spin the Maestral.”
Vareth’s jaw clenched. “Not whole. Only a fragment of it,” he muttered. “A warning, not a war.”
Lioran could not answer. Sound and sight pinned him in place. His half-grown feathers trembled, catching the shock waves of magic and wind.
Out at sea, the swell peaked, and something changed in the pattern.
The second cluster of Angels, high above, shifted their alignment. They spread, angled, then folded in. The wind changed direction in a single breath. The pressure dropped so quickly that ears popped all through the city.
Evan squinted. “What are they doing?” he murmured.
Lily’s fingers tightened around the edge of the balustrade. Her heart thudded in time with the beat of distant wings.
“They are drawing the power out to the sea,” she said softly.
Mirna glanced at her. Jereh turned his head, eyes narrowing.
“How do you know that?” he asked. Keth said nothing, but his keen eyes fixed on the girl.
Lily swallowed. Her awareness locked on the patterns in the wind, her eyes on the way the smallest shifts of wings conducted the air like a symphony.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I just do.”
Just as she finished speaking, the rising waves twisted.
What had begun as a wall of water ready to crash was suddenly caught and pulled upward, spun thin and long. Columns of seawater tore free of the ocean’s surface and climbed toward the sky in pillars of crystal. They spun in place, perfectly contained, as if held inside invisible glass.
Gasps broke out across Astochia. Some fell to their knees, touching their throats in three points and whispering Ellevath’s name.
At the bay’s mouth, spray lashed the cliffs, foam exploding upward before getting caught and dragged into the spinning columns. The sound was like a hundred thousand wet sheets snapping at once.
On the slopes above the west cape, trees bent under the impact of the wind blast. Roots screamed in the earth. A few of the smaller ones tore free and tumbled down the rocks into the furious sea. But nothing living near the city walls was touched by more than a fine spray of salt.
Lily’s heart hammered. She could feel the tremor of power, but also its edges and paths. “Look. They are holding it,” she whispered, pointing at the two horizontal spirals swirling around the pillars of water, sending parts of it into a spray that scattered the sunlight into a rainbow. “They keep it from spilling over. They pull the storm away from the city, toward the open sea.”
Evan stared at her, aware that she saw something invisible to his eyes. “That is crazy.”
Mirna said nothing. She landed a hand on Lily’s shoulder, fingers curling as if anchoring them both.
Jereh’s mouth fell slightly open. Keth smiled with a nod of his chin.
The water columns spun faster. The harmonies deepened into a low drum. Eirran’s voice cut through it all, steady as a blade.
“Behold Ellevath’s will and might,” he called, gaze searching the Palace rooftop like an anchor. “Let your eyes and ears bear testimony to His judgement. Would Ellevath lend His power to a sinner? Or to His Sword?”
Out beyond the harbor, the columns reached their peak height, the mighty waves crashing against cliffs with force that sent stone crumbling.
Eirran issued a command. Two sharp tones, three lifting long.
The Angels changed angle of the spin, increasing speed. The pillars swayed, then crashed together as Angels split away like arms of an exploding star, before drawing back in in a dizzying spin that locked a collosal pillar in place.
Eirran let it last until the roar of wind and water quenched all other sound and filled every mind.
Only then did he issue the final command.
The Angels above shifted position. The pillar responded, unraveling into a wall, and the wall sped into the open ocean, losing height until it disappeared.
The sea, robbed of its fury, dropped back into a restless but natural swell.
Slowly, the wind over the city eased. The pressure lessened like lungs opening to breathe.
The water slid back over the naked rocks like a blanket, gentle waves kissing the pier.
On the Temple roof, all sounds of hymn had died. The acolytes stood with mouths half open, harmonics strangled into silence.
On the V’Lorath terrace, Vhanna pressed a hand to her chest, eyes wide and dried by the wind.
“No,” she whispered. “This is not…” The words would not come.
Vareth watched the sky. His face gave nothing away, but his hand on Lioran’s shoulder had turned from iron to bone.
Behind the glass of her chamber, Fariah sank slowly onto the bench. She could not look away. Her lips moved soundlessly. She did not know if she prayed, her soul strewn between pride and fear.
On the palace rooftop, Lily realized that for the first time, she had not only seen such power, but felt every bit of it. It was like a song she heard for the first time, yet somehow remembered.
She looked up at Eirran’s small figure in the sky. He circled once over the bay, then descended, hovering above the harbor itself.
Eirran’s gaze found the quarantine flag that still flapped on the main mast at the center pier.
“Plague,” he called, harmonies ringing clear. “The Temple proclaimed it was His condemnation. Now you have witnessed the judgement of His Sword. The disease you fear is not from Heaven. It is a scourge of earth, and earth has contained it until it was erased. The quarantine stands no more under my seal.”
He raised his hand.
On the pier below, a harbor officer who had seen the whole spectacle from his post fell to one knee. His hands shook as he reached up, found the rope, and began to pull.
The quarantine flag slid down the mast slowly, until the cloth lay bunched in his arms like a dead thing.
He rose and lifted it high once more, folded now, not flying.
All across Astochia, a murmur rose. Bewilderment. Relief. Fear. Awe.
On the Temple roof, Alerion’s fingers dug into the leather binding of the Book. For the first time in years, he did not know what words to speak.
On the V’Lorath terrace, the last of Vhanna’s composure cracked. Lioran did not look at her. His eyes were on the sky where the Antarrila hung like a verdict.
On the palace roof, Mirna’s hand slid into Jereh’s and squeezed once, hard.
Lily leaned forward over the balustrade, wind lifting the edge of her cloak.
“Today the sky itself has spoken,” Mirna whispered next to her. “And it did not say what they wanted to hear.”
Lily watched her father, alone at the center of Heaven’s army, light catching on his silver breastplate, his wings steady in the thinning wind.
And as the Antarrila formation solidified and spread into a grid that covered the sky, wings shifting in perfect, terrifying unison to begin a slow, measured circle over the city, every soul in Astochia understood one truth spreading above them, clean and true.
The sky did not belong to the Temple and their books and scrolls.
It belonged to those who sang it with their blood.
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