Kingdoms of Ether (Kingdoms of Ether Series Book 1) Read online

  He had the faintest grin. “And my mother used to tell me the Goddess was under my bed ready to kidnap me if I didn’t get to sleep. I’m not sure which is worse.”

  She chuckled.

  “If you miss home so much, why haven’t you requested to take your short leave yet?”

  She took a deep breath and turned for the drawing room. “I have. Several times.”

  “And?”

  She shook her head.

  He hesitated before following after her. “But we go home every—”

  “You do, but not me. And your home is right here in Stadhold. They reject my requests. One time I was rejected because Ingini were pressing in on Revel. Then it was because they feared for my safety in Neeria. They sound like excuses, and I can’t take it much longer. I’m still waiting for a reply from my request two weeks ago. But they’ll reject it, too.”

  “You don’t know that,” he said, still at her heels. “Lomnis and Shah were just permitted to go with their Keepers earlier this week. I bet you’re about to get yours.”

  Maybe, but she was scared to hope. A real trip home? And Grier would be ordered to come as protection. “I won’t hold my breath.”

  He squared himself in front of her, deep eyes stern. “I understand wanting to go home—”

  “Do you understand never being allowed to go home?”

  “The Librarian is always aware of the risk. If she says it’s too risky, she’s right. If Ingini got a hold of you, they could force you into making them grimoires or torture you. I get that it’s frustrating, but the rejections aren’t excuses.”

  And yet his flawless armor said otherwise. She nodded to say she didn’t believe him.

  He frowned. “You’re not expendable, Emeryss. The rejections are for the best, I’m sure. Librarian Jgenult doesn’t take these difficult decisions lightly.” He tilted his head and pulled his chin back. “Is that why you want to be a Caster? To leave the library?”

  Yes and no. She wanted to be a Caster because she was supposed to be a Caster, and it would give her her freedom. Only Scribes were chained to the library, and when she figured out how to cast, the library’s excuses would evaporate. They’d have to let her go, and she’d use casting to help her people, too. She’d bring Neerians more honor and respect than being a Scribe ever would.

  “Something like that,” she said.

  After a brisk walk across the bridge from the Scribe suites, they were at the entrance of the drawing room. At least seven times her height, the shiny white doors had been carved from stormstone—a fusion of lightning ether and sand. Two Keepers stood on either side at attention.

  Grier opened the door for her, and she entered, finally able to pull her arms free of her uniform. Hustling down the long hallway with its dark-gray carpet and white pillars twice as wide as she was, they passed several other mumbling Scribes and their Keepers leaving for the night. The grand chime noting eight o’clock echoed through the campus. After pushing open the final set of white doors, she slipped inside with Grier beside her.

  The cream tile in the drawing room was as clean and shiny as always. The aisles of bookshelves towering a few stories high were lined with hol-hide covered grimoires. Sometimes she regretted not wanting to scribe. The library and its many wings were breathtaking. With domed stormstone ceilings and intricate etchings of the ethereal plane, it was a marvel erected by ancient Casters. The pride of Stadhold.

  Grier gave a quick nod and made for his post; she sighed and headed for the scribing table.

  “Emeryss.”

  The muscles on the back of her neck tensed. She stopped and turned.

  Avrist—advisor to the Librarian and someone who could easily pass for a deep-sea jelly in human form—approached with his stringy arms crossed. His tall and lean frame held up his oblong head and slicked back salt and pepper hair. His skin was as thick as paper and just as pale. Fine wrinkles outlined his gray-green eyes narrowing on her. He held out a letter with the Librarian’s stamp on it.

  Her latest leave request to go home? They’d always just sent it to her suite. They’d never delivered it like this before, and it was thin, too thin—again? But Grier had just said… It should’ve been two to three pages thick with details of available dates, safe rest stops, the requirements for Grier to accompany her.

  She slipped the paper from Avrist’s fingers and unfolded it.

  Request to leave for Neeria — Denied.

  All leave requests beyond Stadhold’s borders will be denied until the grimoire shortage is under control and current tensions between Revel and Ingini are eased. For your safety, please adjust future short leave requests to reflect this.

  - Librarian Jgenult

  Heart pounding, she fought back tears. Nothing beyond Stadhold? What was the point? If she couldn’t go home, what was there to request now that she couldn’t even leave Stadhold?

  The frustration in her chest bubbled up, threatening to come out in choice words. Being a Scribe wasn’t a gift like her people had claimed. It wasn’t a paradise like her mother had said. Every day away from her life, her home, had become more torturous than the last. The rejections, even Grier’s denial, were all salt in the wound, and this library was an opulent prison. They were never letting her go home.

  She slid the paper in the pocket of her raclar before she ripped it and tossed it in his face. She wanted to scream loud enough to splinter the bookshelves, to rattle the perfect tile floors, to shatter the stormstone ceiling—

  “I suspect that means the Librarian took my suggestion?” Avrist held his hands behind his back and looked her up and down. “Wise choice.”

  Her hands squeezed into fists within the pockets of her uniform. “What about Lomnis and Shah?” she ground out. “What about their Keepers? Why do they get to go home—”

  “Escorting you all the way to Neeria and all the way back wouldn’t be an efficient use of anyone’s time.” He’d said the name of her birthplace like it was a dirty word, a stain on the fabric of Revel’s greatness.

  Unfortunately, Avrist was the world’s current locator Caster, able to sense the tethers of ether across Revel. His main job was to seek out future Scribes and bring them back to the Great Library for training and protection.

  For imprisonment.

  She clenched her jaw. But he was a liar. He wouldn’t have to search for her to make sure she got back to Stadhold. Neerians never had Casters, and she was their only Scribe, ever. “It would be easy to pick me out—”

  “Ether is everywhere and in everything.” He plucked a piece of lint from her shoulder and flicked it off his fingers. “It bursts forth from the greatest places of the world, only to settle like dust—like residue—over the forgotten, pointless places.” He took her palm and turned it over, most likely sensing the ether from her attempts to cast earlier. She yanked her hand back. “We all have a destiny in this world, Emeryss. As the first Scribe of her tribe, try to remember how lucky you are to have one—an important one.”

  She bit back the urge to put him in his place, to tell him how unfair it was to keep her from seeing her family, and that she couldn’t care less about scribing. She wouldn’t hear another word about her destiny or how honored she should be. She didn’t ask for this. There was nothing wrong with wanting something more. Something different.

  She wouldn’t react to him though. She couldn’t, because it would only make things worse. When all of Revel and Stadhold had watched Avrist reveal her as Neeria’s first Scribe, they’d been itching for her to fail, waiting for her to mess it up with her backward and primitive ways. Acting out would feed them more of what they expected of her.

  She took a deep breath and made for the scribing table instead.

  Making a scene, refusing to scribe right then wouldn’t help Revel or the war. It wouldn’t help her get home, and waiting to leave until she became a Caster would take too long. There was no telling when she’d ever figure it out—if she ever did, considering she couldn’t even lift the ether o
ff the page yet. No, she needed another plan, and it couldn’t include Grier. She didn’t want him in trouble or at risk. It would have to be something she could set up on her own.

  Her footsteps echoed in the empty hall. The drawing room was an entire wing off the main campus and at least five stories high. Despite being specialty grimoires, most books on these shelves were incomplete and needed several more pages of sigils before being sent to specific Casters across Stadhold and Revel. Generic grimoires for everyday use were completed in a much larger hall on the opposite end of the library.

  Finally, after passing several aisles of books, she made for the center. The scribing table sat perched on a dais with a few shallow steps leading to it. It was as wide as she was long and sat over ten Scribes at any given time with its shiny, dark wood surface. It had been infused with a rare kind of ether that pulsed a soft blue through the grain. It was one of the tolerable things in the drawing room. That, and the stormstone dome at the top. When she was done scribing for the night, or just bored, she’d allow her fingers to run over the blue veins in the table, or she propped her head on her hand and stared at the stars through the ceiling.

  A fellow Scribe sat at the table in a deep ethereal trance. With a rigid posture and his eyes rolled to the back of his bald head, he communed with a plane higher than himself. And despite his eighty years or so and graying complexion, he furiously worked the quill in his hand to form perfect sigils inside the grimoire before him.

  Emeryss retrieved a shielding grimoire from one of the nearby shelves and placed it in front of her at the other end of the table.

  The man blinked several times and rubbed his one good eye. The other had gone white and blind—the cost every Scribe eventually paid for viewing the essence of the universe. “Ah, is that you Emeryss, dear?”

  She smiled politely. “Good evening, Dolan.”

  “Stuck with another night shift, eh?” He smacked his lips, and his Keeper appeared from around the corner with some water. “Keep your chin up, hun. Revel needs you.” Dolan thanked his Keeper and closed his grimoire. His Keeper then assisted him down the dais. “Have a good night, my dear. See you tomorrow.”

  And tomorrow. And tomorrow. But not forever. She’d find a way to get out, even if she had to run and scale the walls.

  The worst part was that all of her peers were nice. Even most of the Keepers were, too. Except for Avrist and Captain Lerissa, everyone was nice, old, protective, and so pleased with their station they made wanting to leave and wanting more feel selfish.

  She scanned the empty hall. The table, the room, the chairs, the people… They’d be all she’d ever know.

  Get out or die a dried up, blind Scribe.

  She looked over her shoulder toward the end of the aisles. The drawing room emptied into a darker corridor that led down into the main lobby, and Grier stood guard to one side of it. Even from all the way up at her table, it was easy to tell his features had softened when she’d looked at him. She gave a commiserating smile and waved a little.

  He wouldn’t wave back—and didn’t—but he did smile.

  She sat and flipped open the cover of Bracings and Bulwarks. Her own work of violet sigils twinkled on the page at her. Pulling an empty quill from the waistband under her raclar, she took a deep breath. No ink necessary, the quill was loose in her left hand and rested against the page. She closed her eyes.

  Her mind tickled as it traveled back and forth in time until settling into the present. Her trained mind found the light tug of ether calling to her. In her mind’s eye, she followed the pull until she, the book, and the quill had squeezed into the space between space, the space between time.

  On the ethereal plane, there was a vibrancy of color so bright, so bold, so varied, it hurt to stare at for too long. The tufts and specks of ether undulated against a black infinite. Some colors didn’t even have names though she tried to come up with some. “Almost blue with peach” and “nearly green but gold” were her favorites.

  Clusters of ether swirled around her, coalescing to form larger blobs and stretching apart until their fingerlike connections snapped and floated away. Whispers accompanied the strands of ether, and they were in a language she understood as symbols, shapes, and numbers.

  She held out the quill with the intent of writing shield sigils, and a string of glowing, purplish ether found its way around her hand to the tip. Quill to paper, she recorded the voice of the universe, or so she’d been taught. The voice wasn’t angry or urgent. It wasn’t peaceful or encouraging. It just… was.

  Her fingers moved at a breakneck speed.

  Right triangle turned thirty degrees right, repeat twenty times, flip the page two hundred fifty-three times, three waves, two arcs, four concentric circles, flip back four pages…

  Sometimes the whispers spoke forward, sometimes reverse, sometimes both. It was up to the Scribe to get it right, as well as in the correct location of the book. If she didn’t, the voice would repeat itself over and over and over until she did. Her first few months had been rough.

  A loud crash echoed through the plane.

  She, as well as the whispers, stopped.

  Other muffled voices came through. Voices from home. She tumbled back until she felt the cool wood of her seat and the smooth lacquer of the scribing table.

  “Are you here? Are you back?”

  Grier.

  She blinked away the other realm and found his familiar face beside her. “What’s wrong? I just started—”

  His ethereal shield was out, and the muscles in his neck were taut. “I need you to hide. Go under the table or stay out of sight until I come back for you. Someone’s broken into the drawing room.”

  Chapter 2

  A window — Great Library — Stadhold

  The cool chill of the night was at Adalai’s back.

  She gripped the edge of the window she’d been perched in and peered down the seventy feet into one of the many wings of the Great Library. She couldn’t make the full drop without breaking something and alerting the Keepers, but she could jump to the top of the bookshelves. They were still a good ways down, but if she timed her Blink just right, she could teleport midair and land on one shelf without so much as a thud. The short drop to the ground from there would be nothing.

  She grinned. This would be easy.

  Compared to the main hall where her squadmates were busy picking up government-approved crates of grimoires for their next assignment, this room was skimping on the number of grimoires it held. Still, there were some books, and that’d be good enough. She only needed a few to satisfy Tully and Vaughn’s bet, and then they could stuff it in their tart-holes for good. The Zephyrs might have been a newer unit, but she wasn’t new to taking what she wanted, especially when her reputation was on the line.

  After scanning the room, she gathered that the drop down seemed to be her only concern. Just like the rest of the library, this wing was boring, plain, silent. She mocked a yawn.

  A lone Scribe wrote at a glowing blue table in the center while a few other Scribes put grimoires away before exiting with their Keepers.

  She rolled her eyes. It was impossible to imagine being so weak that she’d need a bodyguard everywhere she went.

  Let me die before that happens.

  They even looked stupid in their silly bird-like uniforms—floppy arms, no shape, round heads on triangles. The Revelian Caster Army uniform was at least streamlined, an advantage crucial for illusion casting. She needed to be light and agile, and a fitting suit from ankles to neck did just that. Stadhold was all about show and looking important; never about practicality like Revel.

  She looked for the Keepers, but there was only one to her right, guarding a hall leading down into the main campus. He was a decent size, but one? There had to be others posted outside the doors. She’d still have to be quiet, but it was almost silly. Maybe they were too used to Ingini focusing its attacks on Revel instead of Stadhold. Either way, the lack of security practically begged for
an intrusion.

  Yes, that was it. She was doing them a favor, a security check, and they’d fail. She would get some books, escape, and then tell General Orr to advise Librarian Jgenult and her Keeper commanders to do a better job. They needed to pick up some of the slack when it came to defense. The RCA couldn’t do everything for them.

  She pulled back her dark-blue sleeve to check her wrist. Written in magenta ether in her skin was a list down her arm of symbols and numbers.

  Blink - 14

  Disguise - 2

  Refraction - 3

  Dispersion - 4

  Glamour - 75

  Dazzle - 15

  Illusionary Object - 341

  She huffed and shook her head. She was running low. Not the lowest she’d ever been, but low for how rationed ether had become these days. Then again, if Stadhold had only one Scribe working overtime to produce grimoires for the RCA, then there was no surprise that everyone was suffering from a grimoire shortage. If she’d had it her way, every Scribe in Stadhold would be working overtime, and the war would be over tomorrow. Sadly, she didn’t make decisions for the country—yet.

  No matter. She’d make do. She had plenty of ether to get in, grab books, and get out. If she got caught, that’d be a different story, and one she’d rather not explain to General Orr. She was certain he appreciated a little mischief in his youth, but even she knew this stunt was stretching it a bit. Good thing she wouldn’t get caught.

  Sliding her sleeve back in place, she freed a black hair-tie from her forearm and tightened it around her straight, bright-pink hair. She snapped her fingers, and magenta ether sparkled over her scalp until every strand had turned black. Summoning more ether at her fingertips, she shaped it into a full-length mask with subtle whorls of violet running through it. With her face completely covered and her dark hair tied back to match her suit, she’d be a blur if anyone saw her.