by Ken Scholes
And then suddenly, it was just her and Neb and the small entourage that accompanied them. She’d watch him slip away a few times, a silver crescent pressed to his ear as he scowled and asked questions into it tersely.
When he returned this time, he slipped the artifact into his battered leather pouch. “I have to go,” he said, glancing to Lieutenant Erys and her Blood Guard.
Winters felt her heart fall, and it surprised her. “So soon?”
He nodded, and she could see the hesitation in his eyes. He doesn’t want to leave me. She heard the same in his voice when he spoke. “I won’t be gone so long this time.”
Still, she’d only just realized how badly she missed him, and the idea of being separated again was an unexpected knife in her ribs. She looked from the young man to her captor, but before she could say anything, the officer offered a smile that caught Winters off guard. “Perhaps you should escort your friend to the edge of town and meet us back at the manor when you’ve finished. You’ve a journey to pack for, Lady Winteria.”
Winters blushed and inclined her head. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”
The lieutenant looked from her to Neb. “Do not test my goodwill and spirit her away, Homefinder.”
Neb blushed as well but said nothing.
Winters watched the others leave, and when they’d vanished, she held out her hand. Neb stared at it for a moment before taking it. He let her lead, and she guided them toward darker streets that meandered slowly out of the town. She glanced at him as they walked. “Was that Petronus? On the moon?”
“Yes.”
She’d seen him in the dream and had not recognized him at first. He’d looked so different. “Is he really so young now?”
“Yes.”
She looked to him again and saw for a moment the slouched shoulders and castaway look of the boy she’d fallen fell in love with what seemed so long ago. She juxtaposed that boy against the man she’d so recently seen speaking to the crowd, his voice full of wonder and passion as he described their new home. And between the two, she tried to find that terrifying being of light and rage she’d seen not so long ago, but she couldn’t see that Neb anymore. “And he needs you?”
He hesitated and looked around, making sure no one was near enough to catch his low voice. “There are Y’Zirites en route. I need to…” His words trailed off as he considered them. “I need to deal with them.”
Winters took him in, dressed in the rough clothing of a fisherman. “How will you do that?”
“Deal with them or return to the moon?”
“Both,” she said.
His brow furrowed. They were at the edge of town now. “I don’t want to scare you.”
I don’t think you can anymore, she thought. There was nothing about him now that frightened her. Instead, she had feelings she’d forgotten in their time apart. She glanced at him. “I want to know,” she said.
He nodded. “Okay.”
They continued walking until the sky was lost to the overshadowing pine forest. They were quiet, moving slowly hand in hand, until he stopped.
“This is it,” Neb said.
She met his eyes and felt her mouth go dry. The idea of him leaving felt like a sharp knife on her skin, and it surprised her to feel that way. “But you’ll be back soon?”
He nodded. “I will. I also need to go and get the staff from Vlad Li Tam. Unless Isaak is successful.”
Winters felt an unexpected rush of anger at the mention of his name. Does he know? Behind the anger, the grief threatened to leak out, and the words came even faster. “Tam killed Lord Jakob.”
Neb blinked. “He did?”
She watched his face fall as the news set in, and that part of her that had stirred back to life was dashed beneath the cold water of the agony she saw in his eyes. When he spoke, he stammered. “It’s because we didn’t get the staff in time,” he said.
Winters shook her head. “You had no control of that, Nebios.”
He sighed, and she could hear the frustration and weariness in his voice. “But I should have. I’m the Homeseeker, right? But none of it went as it should. Petronus opened the temple; I was trapped inside. Aver-Tal-Ka gave his life because of that. We didn’t get the staff; Vlad Li Tam has used it to terrorize the Y’Zirites, and he’s murdered Lord Rudolfo’s son—” Here, Neb’s voice broke, and his sob made Winters do the same. “He could’ve never gotten close to Jakob without the staff.” She saw tears forming in his eyes and felt her own rising up. “It’s not how the dream meant for things to go.”
“No,” she said. “But I think the dreams we’ve followed were never meant to be exact. In thousands of years of dreaming, we never saw the possibility that my own people might forsake the dream in favor of the bloody Y’Zirite knives my sister offered them. And if the Watcher hadn’t removed the Final Dream from the Book of Dreaming Kings, I would’ve dreamed it myself, sharing it only with you. But because that happened—and because I needed a way to get that dream to you and Petronus—the dream meant for two has become a dream shared with all.” She heard her voice flooding with passion. “And you saw them tonight. It’s giving them hope. Some of them will come with us, and we will start something new in a new place.” She took his hands in hers and looked up at him. “We have paid a terrible price, all of us, but at the end of it, home rises before us. A new home for whoever wishes.”
As she said it, Winters watched the realization dawn upon him. “Whoever wishes?”
She nodded. “Yes. We all shared this new dream. Anyone who wishes should heed it and come home.”
Doubt clouded his face. “I don’t see how—”
Winters stretched up onto her tiptoes to silence him with a kiss. It was brief—the merest peck—though a part of her wanted to linger. Still he blushed, and she took advantage of his silence. “We don’t need to know how all of it will work right now. You need to get the staff and tend to matters at the temple. But give the Y’Zirites the option to lay down their cutting knives and join us.”
“And Tam?”
She needed no time to consider it. Her words marched out quickly and clearly. “No,” she said. “Not Tam.” She couldn’t bring herself to say the rest of it, but Neb’s eyes and the line of his jaw told her he already knew. I want him to die for what he’s done. “But he must give over the staff. The violence has to stop, Neb.”
She saw something wash over his face that she couldn’t quite read. Was it guilt? “I will do my best,” he said, looking away quickly.
She stepped back from him. “Now,” she said. “Show me.”
He blushed, then took a deep breath. The sound that came from his throat was not like anything she’d heard before. And Winters jumped when she heard a cry that echoed his own, this from deeper in the forest east of the road they stood upon.
Something large moved through the trees. She heard the breaking of branches and the crunch of feet in the underbrush.
When it stepped onto the road she gasped. It was a massive beast, dark and ambiguous with no moonlight to illuminate it. Still, she knew what it was. “A kin-dragon.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“You ride it?”
“It’s … hard to explain,” he said.
She smiled. “You can tell me later. Go do what needs doing, Nebios Homefinder. Find me when you’re done.”
“I will.” Now he was awkward, shifting on his feet as his voice hesitated. “I’m sorry I was gone so long,” he said. “I’m sorry I—”
This time, when she kissed him, she gave herself to the kiss and felt the moment when he gave himself to it as well. When they finished, she held him close, then pushed him toward the kin-dragon.
As he approached it, the beast reared up, opening its forearms and embracing Neb. There was a slight pop, a flash of light, and a shift in the air. When Winters blinked away the brightness, she saw that Neb was gone now and only the kin-dragon remained. It took a step toward her and inclined its great head toward her.
She re
turned the gesture, then stepped back as Neb unfurled his wings. He lifted with ease, branches slapping against the massive body as he took off. Winters watched him break through the evergreen ceiling, pine needles and broken twigs raining down as he went. Then she heard a loud buzz as the wings beat faster. The kin-dragon hovered a moment, its head still inclined, then shot south.
And Winteria bat Mardic turned back toward Caldus Bay to finish packing for her journey, the memory of his kiss like magicks on her lips, warming her entire body as she walked.
Ria
Ria shivered from the cold as she tugged on her pants and coat. Her fire had gone out sometime in the night, and her aide was nowhere to be found; but it was the nightmare that had pushed her out of sleep, not the room’s dropping temperature.
For the first several days, she had not left her command cabin at the edge of Windwir. She’d heard Sister Elsbet’s voice leaking from the kin-raven—the old woman unable to keep the grief from her voice as she recounted all that had transpired—and lost all sense of time and place. Garyt and the ravener’s faces had gone pale, and without a word, she’d retreated and locked herself away. On the second day, her grief had swelled into a rage she did not know how to still, and by the third day, she’d understood just how she’d failed.
I did not finish the kin-healing. No, Rudolfo had interrupted their work and she had run out of time. The magisters didn’t get what they needed to fully alchemize the Tam blood and distill it into the magicks that would give Lord Jakob life.
The weight of it threatened her faith. And the nightmare, she realized, was merely a symptom of that threat. She’d been falling, and she’d stopped screaming long enough to hear someone else screaming on the hot night wind. She’d twisted and turned, suddenly aware of her wings as she moved in the direction of the scream.
There. In the distance, she saw the tower and lunged for it. These eyes—better than her own—saw the old woman clearly there. And the old woman, it seemed, saw her. She stood in silver robes, a silver staff held loosely in her hand.
“How does a Downunder come to fly a dragon?” the old woman called out.
Ria landed heavily, her six claws digging into the tower’s surface, and wasn’t prepared at all for the solid crack and the bright flash of light that spilled her naked onto the ground when the woman’s staff connected with her.
“The tools of the parents,” the old woman said as she lifted Ria up with ease, “are not toys for the children.”
Then, as Ria screamed, the old woman tossed her with ease over the edge of the tower and cackled as she plummeted down.
Now she took another deep breath and held it as she shoved one foot and then the other into her waiting boots.
She is some aspect of me, she thought. The Androfrancines were wrong about many things, but their understanding of the hidden world of dreams—aether not withstanding—was significant. She’d used some of that knowledge to help counter the dreams she’d fought to suppress most of her life. Ria suspected that the old woman represented the full fruit of her anger and self-hatred—a product of her guilt regarding Vlad. The tone of the old woman’s scolding was that of a disappointed and angry parent.
Ria went out into the night and noticed immediately how dark the camp was. It wasn’t uncommon for it to be quiet this late at night. But never dark unless they were at alarm and trying to stay hidden. The moon was veiled behind clouds and gave limited light. And her guards were gone.
Ria glanced behind her to the knife belt hanging near the headboard of her narrow bed. She slipped back inside quietly and grabbed it up, buckling it on beneath her coat. Then she closed the door behind her and gave a low, inquiring whistle as she stepped onto the frozen mud path.
No answer drifted back.
Ria moved along the path toward the mess hall and enlisted quarters. She found her aide lying outside the hall, his platter of food freezing on the ground and his tin cup in his hand. She went to him and crouched, a knife slipping into her hand by habit as she checked his body.
No wounds. Ria looked around. There was no movement and no sound other than the wind. She whistled third alarm and waited to hear its chorus picked up by the rest. Silence.
The galley’s door stood ajar, and she moved to it, glancing inside. There were more bodies, and the magnitude of it twisted in her gut.
She whistled third alarm again and finally heard it echoed deeper in the camp. Farther out another whistle answered the second. Following the sound of alarm, Ria made her way across the camp. She paused at the officers’ galley and poked her head in. She recognized Sister Gwendolyn by her robes and saw Magister Captain Onell stretched out beside her.
Poison? It seemed the most likely. She counted the other bodies and then closed the door.
“Lady Winteria.” She looked up at the familiar voice. Garyt had been with her from early on. His grandfather had been one of her sister’s most trusted elders. He’d converted quietly and said little about it. But he spent his meal periods poring over his copy of the gospel and had taken the mark not long after the Mass of the Falling Moon. Ria herself had administered it.
Now he looked frightened and recently dragged from sleep.
“Captain,” she said. “What do you know?”
“I suspect poison, but it’s too soon to tell. I’ve not been able to locate any living magisters or Daughters.” A handful of soldiers came shuffling along the path, their eyes and mouths open wide with fear. Garyt whistled them over. “The Blood Guard are all dead, too.”
Ria regarded the men as they approached. She could smell their terror. “Search every building. Do not disturb the dead. Gather up the living and set them to searching as well. I want to know our numbers. And I want to know what’s happened here.”
“Yes, Lady Winteria.”
She joined in the search, and by dawn she had the numbers. All of the Blood Scouts. All of the magisters and the Daughters of Ahm. All of the officers in the Y’Zirite army, and nearly half of the Machtvolk. And even more surprising, the kin-ravens were dead along with the camp’s ravener. Ria was left with a handful of Y’Zirite and Machtvolk infantry and camp servants and an even smaller number of Machtvolk officers like Garyt. And there was evidence that some of those surviving had already deserted, fleeing south. At best, their faith had been shaken to the point of apostasy, and at worst they pursued the new dream and had forsaken the promises carved into their very flesh.
And that is without knowing fully what has happened in Y’Zir. Rumors were certainly doing what rumors did in any army, but she’d made no formal announcement about the news she’d received.
How do you announce the death of hope? A wave of powerlessness washed over her, and she sat down heavily in the snow, dropping her end of the body she was helping Garyt haul from the mess tent to the wagon.
She thought she saw a flash of something upon his face, and she suspected it was worry. He laid down his end of the corpse. “Lady Winteria?”
She waved him away, fighting a sudden rush of tears. “I’m fine, Captain.”
He squatted beside her. “Darkness is upon us,” he said in a quiet voice. “And there are whisperings of an even greater darkness back in Y’Zir.”
She held her breath a moment and tried to regain her focus and composure. “Yes,” she said. “And we must do our best to be light in that darkness.”
He nodded and waited beside her, his face grim, until she climbed to her feet. “What is your plan?”
They wrestled the stiff Blood Guard into the wagon with the others. “We’ll pack our dead in the snow and await word from the couriers. We can’t dispose of the bodies until the magisters have had a chance to examine them. We need to resupply with whatever game or fish we can find. Every provision in the camp is suspect at this point.”
Garyt nodded. “I’ll have it all packed in the snow as well so it can be checked.”
They returned to the galley slowly and took hold of the last body there. Other wagons were being loaded th
roughout the camp, and the bodies were being packed into snowdrifts beyond the small town of wooden buildings that served the work at Windwir. Once the last were buried, Ria knew she’d need to find something to say to the others. Some word of encouragement to carry them through this latest bit of dark. But she had no idea what that word would be. First, Yazmeera and her officers had been assassinated. Then, the Crimson Empress and the Child of Promise. And now, most of her leadership was dead and yet somehow she was spared.
She wanted to offer her people some kind of strength, but faith in the promises of Ahm Y’Zir had been her strength and her life. A faith reinforced by the cuts she’d given and received over the course of her life in service to those beliefs.
And now, Winteria the Elder thought as she loaded one last corpse into the wagon, my faith has been cut out of me.
And she had done it to herself. Tam may have been the knife, but she was the wielding hand. She had cut him, and now he had cut them all.
Not him. Me.
Closing her eyes against the wind and tears, Ria leaned into the cold and swallowed the rancid taste of her shame.
Lysias
Winter still held the northern Machtvolk Territories with fang and claw, and General Lysias shivered against it beneath his blankets.
They’d left the Beneath Places just three days earlier after being harried by the kin-wolves and the Blood Guard that followed after them. He’d seen the remains of his forces whittled down to nearly nothing, certainly not enough to be of conventional use in what was coming. Still, they’d brought down the kin-wolves and what he estimated to be half of the Blood Guard. It was time for the rats to resurface. He’d never favored the idea of fighting outside their element. These were men of the great Ninefold Forest, accustomed to snow and woodland, not tunnels and caves.
So he’d brought them up through an access shaft thirty leagues southeast of the Papal Summer Palace, well north of the Desolation of Windwir. Lysias had seen the Gray Guard intelligence on the excavation of that dead city and thought it a likely place to observe firsthand whether or not his mission had succeeded.
