Angry murmurs swept through the chamber. Rowen almost laughed. Then Aeko stood. “With reluctance, I must concur with his majesty. The Dhargots are the true threat now—perhaps more than the Throng ever was. I remind this council that according to Silwren, Fadarah’s plan is and always has been to prevent the Isle Knights from allying with the Sylvs and to use the Dhargots to stir up a war that might sweep across the whole continent until we destroy ourselves. It’s reasonable to question such claims. But to utterly ignore them is foolish.” She hesitated. “Though perhaps I should not be surprised, given who I am addressing.”
The Knight of the Lotus rose to his feet. Some of his fellow Knights started to draw their swords, but Crovis shouted for them to stop. Sir Ammerhel fixed Aeko with a withering stare. “Battle has a way of eroding the senses, even after it’s concluded. Perhaps you do not realize what you are saying. I offer you the opportunity to withdraw your words without reprisal.”
Rowen rested his hand on Knightswrath’s hilt. Silwren touched his arm.
But Aeko met Crovis’s stare with a smile. “Thank you, Captain. I respectfully decline.”
Crovis’s eyes widened. His face flushed, and he sputtered. He took an angry step toward Aeko, one hand on his sword’s hilt, but several of his fellow Knights stopped him. Crovis stomped out of the council chamber, shouting in Shao. Many Knights followed. In their wake, Typherius drew his advisors aside for a hushed, heated discussion.
Rowen rose, leaned toward Aeko, and whispered, “I think you just made a powerful enemy.”
“But I angered him long enough to make him forget you for a moment,” Aeko answered, deadly serious. “By the Light, if you don’t give Crovis the sword, he’ll see that it’s taken from you as soon as you set foot on the Lotus Isles. He might even risk rankling Typherius and taking it from you while you’re still in Lyos.” She squeezed his arm. “You are not my squire anymore. Crovis is your commanding officer. If he demands the sword and you refuse, he’ll arrest you. I am not strong enough to prevent that. Do you understand?”
Rowen looked down at the sword girded at his waist. He looked, too, at his new armor and tabard. “What will happen if I give Crovis the sword?”
Aeko flinched. “He will declare that it passed into his hands by divine providence. Coupled with his capture of what remained of the Throng, his supporters will see him made a hero. Bokuden will not be able to stop him. Crovis will be made Grand Marshal before year’s end.”
“And the Dhargots?”
Aeko hesitated. “I can’t say. But Crovis isn’t so foolish as to commit the Knighthood to a war it can’t win. And he certainly has no interest in an alliance with Sylvs!”
Rowen felt his stomach drop. He thought of how vainly Crovis had ridden from the gates to capture the already-deserting Throng after the Nightmare fell, the demonic figure sorely wounded—thanks to El’rash’lin. Crovis’ decision had left the city ill-equipped to repel the Unseen and Shel’ai attacking it from within, but it had given Crovis an excuse for glory. He thought of Phaegos, which Crovis had pillaged to fill his coffers. What would happen to the Knighthood if a man like Crovis were placed in charge?
Rowen shook his head. “Crovis cannot have the sword. We both know that.”
Aeko eyed him carefully. “Then you must never return to the Lotus Isles.”
Rowen leaned on the table with one hand, trying to clear his thoughts. In the distance, King Typherius and his advisors were arguing. Silwren stood nearby, her expression sympathetic. Around them were those few who sided with Aeko: all Knights of the Crane, veterans of the battle on the streets of Lyos.
“The Knighthood is divided,” Aeko whispered. “We are the weaker side. But I’ll do what I can to make them see reason. You have my word on that.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Then,” Aeko said, “your Knighthood will be stripped from you. You’ll be called an enemy of the order, and all Knights will be honor-bound to capture or kill you, given the chance.”
Rowen eyed the balancing crane on his tabard again. “What if I challenge Crovis to a duel? He’ll have to accept, won’t he? If I kill him...” Aeko’s skeptical look made him trail off.
I wouldn’t last five seconds against Ammerhel. He clenched his eyes shut, steadied himself, then opened them. “Fine, then. The sword can’t go to Crovis. So I’ll leave Lyos at once. Knightswrath goes with me.”
Aeko touched his arm, sadness in her eyes. “Where will you go?”
Rowen felt his gaze drawn to Silwren. “Where Typherius suggested,” he said without thinking. “The Wytchforest. If Crovis wants to follow me there, he’s welcome to try.”
Aeko stared at him. Then she smiled and embraced him. She whispered, “You’re a damn fool. But you’re still the closest thing in this chamber to a real Knight.” When they parted, she waved for her Knights to follow her. As one, they strode out of the hall after Crovis.
Rowen watched them go. He felt incredibly alone.
Silwren moved closer. “I will go with you,” she whispered. Her violet eyes reminded him of El’rash’lin. He imagined how traumatic it would be for any Shel’ai to return to the homeland from which they had been exiled, to say nothing of the risk.
Touched, Rowen was about to respond when the king joined them. Rowen started to fall to one knee, but the king stopped him. “No time for that, I’m afraid. If you’re interested in avoiding bloodshed, I suggest you leave through the rear gates, the sooner the better. Captain Epheus will take the Throng prisoners to the front gates and release them. That should prove a suitable distraction for Sir Ammerhel.” The king wished him luck, but Rowen was too stunned to reply. Typherius left, his advisors in tow—all save Captain Epheus.
The former sergeant faced Silwren uncomfortably. “I have forgiveness to ask of you.”
Silwren smiled. She squeezed his hand. Epheus jumped at her touch but did not recoil. Then the captain said to Rowen, “I almost forgot to tell you. One of the prisoners wants to talk to you. A Dwarr. The one who led the revolt, I think. He says he knows you.”
Rowen stared. He had not dared to hope. “What’s his name?”
“Hugh,” Epheus said. “No, Hewn. I think that’s it.”
“Jalist?”
“You know him?”
“Back when I was a sellsword. He worked with me and Kayden...” He broke off painfully. “Another madman won’t hurt. If you’re releasing him anyway, tell the Dwarr to meet us at the cave. He’ll know what I mean.”
The captain nodded and left at once.
With one gauntleted hand, Rowen smoothed his tabard, glancing down at the balancing crane again. He started to laugh. He had been a Knight for less than a week and already he had made enemies. They will hunt me. By tomorrow, I might be dead. Or worse.
He started for the door. One thing at a time. Escape first. Panic later. As he passed through a dusty slant of window light, he thought the faint red swirls in Knightswrath’s dragonbone hilt looked more like ancient bloodstains. Silwren followed him, her expression fixed and unreadable, the pupils of her eyes nearly matching the dusty light around her.
Can I trust you? Are you really so different from the bastards who tortured Kayden?
He remembered that she could read his thoughts if she wanted. Blushing, he cleared his mind by fixing his eyes on the door instead. Then El’rash’lin’s memories unexpectedly stirred to life, and he imagined that in place of the ring of cold boots on flagstone, he was a child again, walking barefoot through the Wytchforest. The sun dipped behind an endless span of trees. A fragrant breeze stirred the leaves.
He imagined he was going home.
EPILOGUE
The Sylvs called it Godsfall. It stretched for miles to the north and east of the Ash’bana Plains: a glassy, blighted place. Legend said Godsfall received its name because when Zet’s great, burning corpse fell from the heavens, that was where it landed. That was where it burst, and from his corpse, all life emerged.
But that came la
ter. First, there was fire. Zet’s fall smote a great crater into the ground, ravaging the soil and turning it to onyx. Flames burned for days, in the air and on land, scouring the surrounding countryside. So terrible was the devastation that even dragons—known once to have roosted in these parts by the bones they left behind—fled south, never to return.
Men said that in all of Ruun, no land was as harsh and unforgiving as Godsfall: a dark, rocky place pocked with chasms and crags. No weeds grew there, no wildflowers, not one single blade of grass. No wild animals roamed, and even the sun was obscured by clouds boiling with dank, acrid rain. But this was Doomsayer’s home.
For centuries, the Olgrym’s nearest enemies—the Sylvs, in the Wytchforest to the south—speculated that they subsisted on the bodies of their dead. How else could they find sustenance in a place without beasts or farmland? The Sylvs were partly correct. Yes, Olgrym ate their dead, but cannibalism was just a part of their religious rituals. Sometimes, they hunted the Ash’bana Plains for sport, even feasting on the Wyldkin they fought there. But mostly, they ate thorns.
No Sylv had witnessed this—not in centuries. But the bloodthorns grew everywhere, red as their name implied, rising between slabs of black, glassy rock. They were poison to anyone else, but Olgrym lived off them. And grew strong.
Doomsayer appreciated this as he raised another bloodthorn to his mouth. Powerful jaws split through it, releasing a foul nectar that he swallowed only through great discipline. Legends claimed that once, Olgrym had been frail and thin, the weakest of the races born by Zet’s passing. After years of strife and endless fighting, they were the strongest.
Olg males gained six feet in height by their tenth year. By sixteen, most towered eight feet or more. They had yellow eyes. Their skin, ash colored, stretched so tight that here and there, raw bone protruded through flesh. Their arms grew thick as tree-trunks. One solid swing from an Olg’s two-handed sword could cut a man in half.
But Doomsayer was even stronger than that. He walked alone as the sickly sun filtered through the boiling clouds that always loomed over the dark crags of Godsfall. The weak light lit the horrid burn scars covering all of his exposed skin, reflecting his clan’s ancient tradition of coating their armor—or even their bare flesh—with a thin layer of oil and lighting it on fire before charging into battle, the sight of which was known to send even the stoutest enemies fleeing in terror.
Just after dawn, Doomsayer was already awake. He traveled without guards. Men of his race won distinction by murdering their superiors, thus he trusted no one, even the men of his own Felmaul clan.
Unlike the Skullshard clan, who lived at the lowest point of Godsfall’s massive crater, or the Ash Hands who sulked in caves, the Olgrym of the great Felmaul clan lived in a kind of fortress: Felmaul Hold. It sat on a jagged peak overlooking the crater—“So that all other clans must look up at us,” Doomsayer liked to say. The fortress was massive but crude, consisting of a mountain of carefully piled rocks walled by ancient, petrified trees.
His Felmaul Olgrym had found the petrified trees along the rim of the Godsfall crater centuries ago and carried them—one by one—to the summit of the piled rocks. Though oppressively heavy, the trees were hauled, staked vertically in the earth, and lashed together to form a crude but indestructible wall. In place of a gate, his tribe used the gigantic skull of a dragon, its great mouth open.
To seal the crude gate, the Olgrym maintained a rudimentary system of pulleys that caused the dragon’s ancient, toothy jaw to slam down. So heavy was it that, without pulleys, it would take a dozen of the strongest Olgrym to pry the dragon’s mouth open again. One could not leave or enter Felmaul Hold, save through the mouth of the dragon.
The skull was just one of many dragonbones the Olgrym had found scattered amid the blasted stones of Godsfall. The Olgrym kept the dragonbones as hallowed relics, sometimes praying and sacrificing to them, but none were more sacred than this skull. The dragon’s jaw was large enough that even Doomsayer could pass through without the need to duck. As he left Felmaul Hold, he turned and paused a moment to appreciate the dragon skull’s eye sockets, each of them nearly as wide as he was tall.
He wished again that he could have seen this great beast when it was still alive. What a sight that must have been! The dragon’s wing bones had already been pilfered by other Olg tribes, but based on skull size alone, the beast would easily have covered the whole fortress in its ominous shadow.
According to legend, the entire continent had once swarmed with dragons, the first true inhabitants of Ruun. Now, terror was the province of the Olgrym—and, on rare occasions, their allies.
Doomsayer had earned his name by foretelling the rise of his race and the downfall of the despised Sylvs: two events which, at last, seemed poised to happen. Doomsayer halted at the edge of his land, shadowed by Felmaul Hold, watching as a lone sorcerer approached Godsfall.
The man—dressed in a cloak the color of sun-bleached dragonbone—dismounted his destrier and made his way, unafraid, toward the towering Olg. Doomsayer noted the man’s tapered ears and sharp, pretty features. He resisted the impulse to seize the nearest rock and dash the man’s brains out. Despite appearances, this man was a Shel’ai, not a Sylv. Besides, he was a guest.
Instead of bowing, the sorcerer nodded curtly. Doomsayer nodded back, dark locks braided with animal skulls shaking and clattering around his towering frame.
“I am called Shade.” The sorcerer’s voice echoed off the glassy rocks of the wasted land beyond. “I come on behalf of Fadarah to marshal your legions against the Wytchforest. It is time.” He paused. “The Sylvs are laughing at you.”
Doomsayer’s bony fists clenched. “They will not laugh for long.”
Shade watched the great chieftain stalk away, already rousing his Olg warriors in their crude, guttural language. He shuddered. He disliked being this close to Olgrym, but given the nature of Fadarah’s tattoos, it was best that someone else serve as the messenger.
It’s only a matter of time now. Shade still had doubts as to whether or not the Dhargots would honor their agreement to help the Shel’ai invade Sylvos and drive toward the World Tree—but it made no difference. With the Dhargots fighting the Isle Knights, the Oath of Kin stood even less chance of being invoked than it already did. And best of all, Fadarah had kept this alliance secret, guarded and hidden even within his own mind. Shade had only learned of it after the defeat at Lyos.
That means Silwren knows nothing of it. There will be no one to warn the Wytchforest—and no one who would listen to her, anyway.
“We have made an alliance with Olgrym,” he whispered to the cold air. “Gods save us.” He remembered Fadarah’s promise: this next phase of the war, pitting Olgrym against Sylvs, would end with both ancient foes all but ruined. Sylvos would be theirs for the taking—as would virtually any other realm they wanted. There will be no one left to threaten us. No one left to hurt us—
The blare of Olg-horns startled him. Shade had heard those horns before: not low and ominous, like the sound of Olgrym war drums, but shrill, erupting from crude horns fashioned from the bones of dead dragons. A new sound joined the nerve-rattling trumpets: the steady, growing chanting of madmen.
Shade turned his gaze southward, to Sylvos—the Wytchforest—that distant, leafy blur on a horizon that had once been his home, even the fantastic height of the World Tree, concealed by clouds. He thought suddenly of Captain Lethe and wanted to weep. Instead, he wheeled his mount and rode into the blood-red setting sun.
APPENDIX
THE CODEX LOTIUS
I. Honor, like dogblossom, blooms best when mired in filth.
II. A true Knight would fall upon his own sword before bowing in defeat.
III. In beasts, excellence is displayed through strength; in men, through honor.
IV. When two fighters meet—and no mercy is requested—one must fall.
V. Give aid and mercy when asked—but mostly, when they are not asked.
VI. S
eek Light not in the sky but in the soil, the split tree, the rock when it turns.
VII. He who calls strangers his enemies will soon have too many enemies.
VIII. One cannot take on the countenance of one’s enemy without becoming that enemy.
IX. Do not fear being wronged; fear becoming what wrongs you.
X. Good men feel thrice the pain they visit upon others.
XI. Why does the sighted peasant follow the blind king? Because he thinks he must.
XII. He who waits for the gods to tell him where to move will, in time, grow roots.
XIII. Speak plain, speak true, and honorable souls will listen.
XIV. Even the most desperate beast knows what it needs; often, desperate men do not.
XV. All enemies believe themselves right. All are fallible. All are loved.
XVI. It is better to deliberate than to repent.
XVII. There can be no courage without fear.
XVIII. Courage is not prudent. It is fear reborn. Learn to distinguish this from madness.
XIX. Be wary of peace; peaceful, too, are the greatwolf’s jaws before they strike.
XX. The false consistently outshine others in their words but rarely in their deeds.
XXI. One must either shun lies or risk embodying them.
XXII. It is good to prevent injustice; but if one cannot, one must not partake in injustice.
XXIII. To pray, unlearn words; to fight, unlearn anger; to love, unlearn desire.
XXIV. Crave only what you own. Own only what do you not crave.
XXV. Tend the blade but trust the scabbard.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you, Alysha, for your support of my writing.
Wytchfire (Book 1) Page 37
