Of the Mortal Realm Read online

  Dedication

  Of the Mortal Realm is dedicated to Rebecca and Michael, the greatest of the many blessings in my life.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One Chapter 1: Cadmia

  Chapter 2: Umber

  Chapter 3: Hansa

  Chapter 4: Umber

  Chapter 5: Cadmia

  Chapter 6: Hansa

  Chapter 7: Lydie

  Chapter 8: Umber

  Chapter 9: Cupric

  Chapter 10: Cadmia

  Chapter 11: Hansa

  Chapter 12: Lydie

  Chapter 13: Cadmia

  Chapter 14: Umber

  Chapter 15: Hansa

  Chapter 16: Umber

  Chapter 17: Hansa

  Chapter 18: Cadmia

  Chapter 19: Lydie

  Chapter 20: Umber

  Chapter 21: Hansa

  Chapter 22: Lydie

  Chapter 23: Hansa

  Chapter 24: Cadmia

  Part Two Chapter 25: Cadmia

  Chapter 26: Lydie

  Chapter 27: Cupric

  Chapter 28: Hansa

  Chapter 29: Umber

  Chapter 30: Cupric

  Chapter 31: Cadmia

  Chapter 32: Hansa

  Chapter 33: Cupric

  Chapter 34: Lydie

  Chapter 35: Hansa

  Chapter 36: Cupric

  Chapter 37: Cadmia

  Chapter 38: Hansa

  Chapter 39: Dioxazine

  Chapter 40: Hansa

  Chapter 41: Cadmia

  Chapter 42: Umber

  Chapter 43: Cadmia

  Chapter 44: Lydie

  Chapter 45: Hansa

  Epilogue: Rinnman

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  By Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Part One

  Winter, Year 3988 in the Age of the Realms

  Year 81 of the New Reckoning

  I sing of realms and times before,

  when worlds were one and life was more,

  than skin and bone, but soul and pow’r

  divine and ice and blood and fire.

  I sing of terror that kept us swift,

  in the ages before the realms were rift,

  of claws and teeth, and fire’s domain,

  darkness whose frolic is mortal pain

  in the lakes of fire

  lakes of blood

  of flesh and need and hungry lust

  and the shadows move on

  and we survey

  the ruin that’s left

  by Abyssi play.

  And I sing a devotion that swept the soul,

  defined a fervor, addictive zeal,

  creatures of wing, of lightning and frost,

  look upon one and be thou lost

  to a love like slavery

  love like chains

  of gold and silk and honeyed rain

  and you’d crawl on coals

  and pray for hours

  for the strength to please

  the Numen powers.

  From “The Seduction of Knet”

  Traditional Tamari Ballad

  Chapter 1

  Cadmia

  The high court of the Abyss was a maze of volcanic crystals whose shining black facets reflected the multicolored glow of the tiny luminescent creatures scuttling over them until their highest tips were lost in the sooty sky above. That sky never brightened beyond a dull, rusty radiance, so the tiny dancing lights were delightful—unless you knew they would sear flesh from bone if touched.

  Truth be told, Cadmia still found them lovely. Much of the Abyss was like that: achingly beautiful, hypnotic, deadly to the unwary, but ultimately fascinating. Her study of the Other realms—the infernal Abyss and the divine Numen—had been her driving passion for over a decade, even though such interest was frowned upon back in the mortal realm, and especially in the country from which she hailed.

  The thought made her press a protective hand to her abdomen. She wished she had the ability to feel the life there, the way the magic users around her could, but it was too early. If the child’s father had been as human as Cadmia herself, she wouldn’t even have been sure of the pregnancy yet. But the father wasn’t human; he was an Abyssi, a creature native to the infernal realm, and thus the pregnancy left a visible aura of power on her.

  Cadmia turned her head to see Alizarin, who was standing on the balls of his feet to try to grab one of the glowing wisps.

  If he had been serious about catching one, he would have shifted to his true hunting form, but for now he wore what he called his “play” form. In this shape, Alizarin stood slightly taller than most mortals, and though his body was masculine, he could never be mistaken for human. It wasn’t just that his lean, hard-muscled form was furred from the suede-like palms of his hands to the soft pads of his feet, or that the fur in question was a dozen different impossible shades of turquoise and blue. It wasn’t the claws that peeked out of the tips of his fingers instead of nails, or even the way his eyes glowed like the blue heart of a flame.

  It was something else. Some instinct that crawled along the spine when you looked at him, which whispered to the deepest, most animal part of your brain, This is the creature that makes us fear the dark.

  And it was the fact that, even though every instinct screamed that his presence meant claws and teeth in the night, he was still the most beautiful man Cadmia had ever seen.

  Mortals back in Kavet would call Alizarin a demon. The denizens of the Abyss called him a prince. Cadmia called him her lover, and the father of her child.

  “This way?” she asked as they reached a fork in the path.

  For the last several weeks, Cadmia and her companions had lived with a half-Abyssi woman named Azo. Azo had been recovering from a grievous magical injury, and as she regained her strength she had taken long, rambling walks that became Cadmia’s guided tours to the surface of the Abyss, and particularly the outskirts of the Abyssi royal court. Cadmia therefore knew most of the area well—up until the boundary of the court itself. As Abyss-spawn, Azo was powerful and influential, but even she was not strong enough to protect a mortal who dared approach the royal Abyssi.

  The only time Cadmia had seen the court itself had been when the supposedly divine, glorious, loving Numini had blackmailed and threatened her and the others with whom she now traveled on a dangerous trek to the fifth level court—the heart of the deepest level of the Abyss—to rescue a sorcerer named Terre Verte.

  Alizarin confirmed her guess with a nod of his head and a curious swish of his tail, then waited for her to take the lead again. He had taken her at her word when she said she wanted to know if she could find her way back to the court on her own.

  She continued forward, trying not to be distracted by the spiny vines that struggled to crawl up the slick glass towers. How did any kind of plant survive here, in a place with no sun and no rain? She mentally saved that question for later. Alizarin enjoyed answering her questions, but they were not alone, and the four others in their group were less indulgent.

  Hansa and Umber walked closest to Cadmia, but even they had fallen several paces behind, and Hansa’s steps had gained a notable drag of hesitation. It was one thing for the once staunchly conservative Quin to embrace his relationship to Umber here in the infernal realm, where no one cared who slept with whom and power was necessary for survival, but quite another to consider what it would mean when they returned to Kavet.

  Cadmia wasn’t entirely sure which part of the relationship would be considered more damning in the eyes of Hansa’s former frien
ds and cohorts: the fact that Umber was half-Abyssi, or the fact that he and Hansa were both men.

  In the end it didn’t matter. Sorcery was punishable by death. While the only true sorcerers among them were Terre Verte and Dioxazine, who shared a murmured conversation as they walked at the back of the group, Hansa and Cadmia were still complicit, and Umber had power of his own from his Abyssi father. One did not walk mortal and alive into the Abyss without the use of illegal magic—much less walk out, which was what they hoped to do next.

  “Here!” Cadmia said triumphantly, as they turned a corner and beheld the wide, slightly irregular arch to the central court.

  Inside the massive, black stone obelisk was a vast antechamber with a bone-white stone floor, with irregular streaks of dusty gray and veins the color of old, curdled blood. The surface was pitted in places, and in others juts of rock rose as if shoved upward by tectonic force. The resultant platforms served as the only furniture in the place, and most were occupied by the royalty of the first level court—the highest of the five levels that defined the Abyss.

  The first time they had crossed this floor, the monsters within had terrified Cadmia despite Alizarin’s protective presence. There were a score of them, and they made no effort to conceal their stares, which were intrigued and hungry in equal parts. Unlike Alizarin’s feline aspect on an otherwise mostly human form, the Abyssi of the first level tended to give a more reptilian or even arachnid impression, with heavy carapaces, bristly fur, and frequent scales and fangs.

  At least now Cadmia knew these Abyssi were the weakest of their kind. These forms were the only ones they possessed, and Alizarin could best them all together if they dared attack. The strongest Abyssi occupied the fifth level court, the low court, which Cadmia had also crossed once. Compared to that, this was nothing.

  The high-court Abyssi bowed to Alizarin before their eyes slid to Terre Verte. Tails lashed and eyes brightened, and she overheard a babble of hissing, chittering discussion she could not understand. Alarm? Anger?

  Alizarin said he had first heard of Terre Verte in the Abyssi’s version of children’s stories. According to the Abyssi, the mortal sorcerer was so powerful that, when he died, the king of the Abyss had offered to make him into one of them instead of having him linger in their realm as a spirit. Terre Verte refused, and was locked into a cell in the lowest level of the Abyss for untold years. The other Abyssi were so furious at the king for wasting their time and power on such an ungrateful man that they sacrificed him in the crystal caves so his blood would seed another generation of Abyssi—including Alizarin, who was born from that death.

  Cadmia still had many questions, not the least of which was why the Numini had put forth so much effort to rescue a man the Abyssi had once wanted as one of their own. Frustratingly, Terre Verte had evaded such questions in the days they had known him.

  At the opposite side of the court was another arch, this one filled by shockingly crimson doors leading to the central well, a stairway that passed between one level of the Abyss and the next. Cadmia groaned softly as she remembered walking down those interminable stairs into smoke and darkness.

  Terre Verte ignored the doors and pressed his palms to the smooth black wall instead. His hands were slender and graceful, his nails carefully trimmed, in keeping with his otherwise immaculate appearance. He always seemed to be posing, as if on stage.

  He closed his gray eyes. His brow furrowed in concentration.

  Dioxazine—Xaz, as she called herself, and as Cadmia had recently come to call her—caught up to them. “Do you need anything?” she asked Terre Verte, patting the pack she carried, which contained precious and powerful tools. Though Xaz was also a sorcerer, her power came from the divine realm, not the infernal one. As a Numenmancer, she had no control over this plane.

  Terre Verte on the other hand was something else. None of them knew for sure, except that he seemed to be comfortable using power from either the Abyss or the Numen—something that should have been impossible.

  “I’m fine,” Terre Verte replied, his voice distant. “It’s . . .” He stopped speaking for a few seconds, and then breathed, “Here.”

  A silver sheen surrounded the otherwise dark doorway that rippled into existence under his hands with a waft of sweet smoke. He stood up, tossing his head as if to clear it, and waved for them to go ahead.

  Umber moved forward first, and Hansa followed. Cadmia stepped behind them.

  The rift was cold, like a dunk in the icy Kavet harbor. Cadmia emerged shivering in near darkness. The rift’s silver light fell dimly on a cluttered room.

  “Where are we?” Hansa asked.

  Dust rose when Cadmia moved her feet. “Somewhere dark. And—achoo! Dusty.”

  Terre Verte emerged from the portal last. As it closed behind him, he lifted a hand and summoned an orb of silver-white foxfire, which illuminated a once-elegant sitting room.

  “Is there a door?” Xaz asked.

  “Of course.” Terre Verte pressed a hand to an apparently blank wall, and an ornate wooden door appeared.

  The door’s appearance wasn’t entirely a shock; Azo’s home in the Abyss, which she had shared with an Abyssumancer named Naples, had been a warren of concealed doors. Cadmia had never seen such magic in the mortal realm, but given Kavet’s laws and her respected position in the Order of Napthol, there was no reason why any mancer would have shown her such a thing.

  “We are back in the human plane, right?” Hansa asked, less trusting.

  “Yes,” Terre Verte answered. “But this was a hidden room, not meant for mundane eyes.”

  Eyes watering from the dust, Cadmia hurried after Terre Verte and found herself in a hallway decorated with cherry wainscoting beneath blue-gray walls, lit by wall-sconce oil lamps turned down low enough to cast as many shadows as light. Hansa, who came through after her, swore under his breath.

  Darting anxious glances up and down the hallway, which was empty except for them—for the moment—Hansa declared, “We have to get out of here.”

  “Where is here?” Cadmia asked, rubbing her itching nose.

  “We’re in the Quinacridone,” Hansa said, his voice choked as he referred to the building that was the heart of Kavet’s government, as well as the base of the elite group known as the 126—the guard unit specifically tasked with hunting and eliminating sorcery. “I don’t know exactly where,” he continued, “which means probably one of the private halls, maybe where the monks live. I recognize the—”

  His voice choked off as a figure turned the corner, one Cadmia didn’t need Hansa to introduce.

  President Winsor Indathrone was fifty-three years old, dark-haired, and shrewd-eyed. At that moment, he was wearing slacks and a shirt without vest or jacket; he was comfortably at home, which meant this hall was probably part of his personal residence. He frowned at them all, then focused his gaze on Hansa.

  “Lieutenant Viridian? What is the meaning of this?”

  Cadmia wasn’t sure how good a liar Hansa was, but if he could come up with anything, he had a strong chance at being believed. Shortly before their trip to the Abyss, Hansa had been accused of magical maleficence that led to the deaths of nearly a dozen of his companions. Umber and Hansa had never fully explained how the spawn had cleared Hansa’s name, but whatever lies or manipulation Umber had used had turned Hansa into a hero in the eyes of most of the city. President Indathrone would trust him.

  “We . . .” Hansa started to speak, then froze, clearly panicked.

  “Hansa?” Indathrone prompted, voice colder this time.

  Cadmia had just opened her mouth to say something when Terre Verte stepped past Hansa and said, “Winsor Indathrone, you are the very image of your mother.”

  “My . . .” The President frowned. “Who are you?”

  Terre Verte extended his hand, which President Indathrone reached for as if the habit was so engrained he could never think to resist it.

  “How rude of me not to introduce myself. I am Terre Verte.
And I believe you have overstayed your welcome.”

  Terre Verte accepted the hand Indathrone had lifted, but didn’t shake it. Instead he pulled President Indathrone closer, braced his Eminence’s body with his own, and broke the neck of the most powerful man in Kavet with a single, undramatic crunch.

  “We invited that family to supper,” Terre Verte remarked, his tone that of a man commenting on a particularly ugly species of cockroach as he dropped Indathrone. “Not to move in.”

  Cadmia stared at the body on the floor, her chest tight. He just . . .

  How could he . . .

  It wasn’t even the physical act that seemed impossible. Reason said Indathrone was as mortal as the rest of them—had been as mortal—and his corpse confirmed that fact, but . . . no. This was President Indathrone. He had been Kavet’s moral and political leader for decades. Such a man shouldn’t be able to die so swiftly, with so little fuss.

  Chapter 2

  Umber

  Umber’s first thought when Indathrone’s body hit the ground was, This is going to make things complicated.

  He looked at Hansa, without any hope that the man would be rational in that moment. The Quin’s skin had gone gray-pale. His mouth was open in an unspoken exclamation of horror, and the thoughts Umber could hear on the surface of his mind were barely more than white noise.

  Hansa had been raised to near-worship the man who was now dead in front of them. He had been one of the privileged majority whose comfort and protection were carefully coddled and sanctified by the laws Indathrone created and defended. Hansa wasn’t half-Abyssi, or a mancer born; he didn’t even have Cadmia’s background as a child raised by the semi-legal Order of A’hknet. Until he had been caught on the wrong side of the law, Hansa’s eyes had been firmly closed to Indathrone’s many flaws.

  Our fault, Umber heard him think. We brought Terre Verte here. We’re complicit.

  Shit. No. None of them had known Terre Verte would do this. None of them had even had a choice about rescuing him, thanks to the manipulations of the Numini and blackmail from an Abyssumancer named Naples. But Hansa wouldn’t believe that.