After a moment, Wynne asked, “What about the rest of Fyrril’s note, the spell on his father? Can they really control minds?”
“I can think of nothing else that would lead men of the King’s Army to ride us down,” I said.
“My cousin.” There was no doubt in Bryndine’s voice. “That is why he has been acting strangely, why he was so eager to be rid of me after Waymark. I might have recognized something was wrong, and told my father. You suspected this when you warned the King about him, didn’t you Scriber?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “And they likely made Josia Kellen attack you for the same reason—so that you could not expose Ord.” I braced myself for her anger—she would not be pleased that I had hidden my suspicions about the High Commander.
But she only said, “You did well, then. Your warning and Uran’s display when we left the city will surely see to his removal.” There was a distant look in her eye; she was already thinking about what this new information meant, about our next step.
“If we are to believe this,” Sylla said, “what do we do about it? I know how to fight against a sword, not… whatever this is.”
Determination flashed in Bryndine’s eyes. “We go on. If these Burnt seek to stop us, then they must fear what Fyrril knew. I do not understand how any of this can be, but our path is clear. We cannot waste this chance. We will send word of what we know to the King when we reach Ryndport.”
“Shouldn’t we turn back?” I asked. “They will come after us again as soon as we move. We’re only safe as long as we have a fireleaf to threaten, we can’t possibly make it to Ryndport.”
She smiled slightly. “They cannot attack if they cannot find us. We will not go by the road.”
Chapter Twenty-one
The ride to Ryndport has thus far been the most harrowing experience of my life. I do not know if my sanity will survive the trip.
— From the personal journals of Dennon Lark
The next day, Bryndine led us north off the Searoad and into the hills. Perhaps ten leagues from the road, we cut back west towards Ryndport. We rode in the shallow valleys between hills, staying out of sight, sending Selvi and Elene out periodically to scout our surroundings from atop whatever rise was nearby. The twins often saw the Burnt searching for us; small bands roaming the countryside in the distance, or sometimes dangerously near. Even divided to cover the area, each group outnumbered us badly.
Small villages dotted the hillsides, but we saw none that were not burned or abandoned, a testament to the danger of the rebels who sought us. Any settlement too small to defend itself had been laid waste weeks before. We avoided even the ruins; it was tempting to take shelter in an abandoned building for a night, but too obvious. They would be looking for us there. There were fireleafs in the hills too, but we kept our distance from those as well. Bryndine suspected that the threat of burning would not work so well a second time, and if the Burnt thought we might try it again, they would be searching near the trees.
I could hear the whispers at all times. They sought me relentlessly, and they were never far off. It was a terrible sensation, being stalked by a hunter I could hear but not see. The voices had only ever noticed me in the past when I was terribly afraid, as I had been the day before, or the first night I heard them in Waymark, so I tried to distract myself from my fear by talking to the others. I shared jokes with Deanyn and spoke of history and philosophy with Wynne; sang with Nalla and let Varrie try to teach me to juggle; and whenever idleness threatened, I studied Adello’s songs, looking for clues to the location of Fyrril’s books. But through it all, I was always conscious of the whispers. I could not banish the creeping tide of unease; I could only try to keep from drowning in it.
In my dreams, I had no such defense.
The first night after we left the Searoad, when Deanyn shook me awake from a nightmare of fire and pain, I knew that the Burnt had found me, and that they were coming. It was sometime before midnight; no one had slept for more than a few hours. I had no choice but to wake them. We had to leave before the Burnt arrived.
“You are sure it was more than a normal dream?” Bryndine asked when I had explained myself.
“They know where we are. We need to go.”
She sighed, but acquiesced. “You would know better than I, Scriber. We will move on.”
From that night forth, the women took shifts watching over me at night and waking me every hour. If my dreams were of the Burnt, the company was roused and we rode on. And I dreamed of the Burnt more often than I did not.
After two days, I could barely stay awake in my saddle—and we were still at least ten days from Ryndport. The more tired I became, the more difficult it was to distract myself from my fears, and though I could not be sure, I strongly suspected that succumbing to terror would give away our position.
Several times, we were nearly caught. Selvi or Elene would rush down from a hilltop to report that the Burnt were approaching, and we would force the horses to run for all they were worth, though our mounts were no better rested than we were. We always put the rebels behind us; the Burnt were mostly on foot, and those with horses were not skilled riders. They could not match our speed as long as we kept moving.
Ten days after we left Three Rivers, we fell prey to the second ambush.
We had crossed the border into the Ryndport barony earlier that day, by my estimate, and it felt like a victory, like we had finally outrun the rebels. It made us complacent. I woke from a long, terrible dream of the Burnt to find Hylda asleep; it had been her turn to wake me. I did not know how long I had slept, but it was more than an hour, and already I could feel the voices screaming in my head, terribly near.
“Wake up! They’re here!” In a state of near-panic, I roused the others, praying to the Mother and the Father that it was not too late.
They were light sleepers, Bryndine’s women, trained to be on their feet at the first sound of danger, but still they were too slow. By the time the entire company was awake and mounted, the Burnt were nearly upon us. They marched between the nearby hills in two groups, each of at least two dozen rebels, flanking us from the north and south.
“Stay together, and do not stop for anything,” Bryndine ordered. “Ride!”
We rode. Pushing the horses as hard as we could, we put some distance between us and the rebels, just enough that I dared to think we might escape.
But the Burnt were cleverer than I had thought. The hills to either side grew steeper as we rode; too steep for the horses to climb. They had driven us into a ravine. And then I saw the rest of them, some thirty strong, blocking the path forward while our pursuers rushed in from behind. It was the same trick they used on the road, but this time there was no way out, no fireleaf to threaten, just sheer bluffs on both sides.
“All will burn,” the voices screeched, echoing the words they had spoken the day we left Three Rivers, the rage-filled warcry I had heard so many times.
“Do not stop!” Bryndine repeated her order. “Our only chance is to break through. Ride them down!” She kicked her horse forward and drew her sword.
For once, I was too distracted to be properly terrified. I am no great horseman; it took all my concentration to stay in my saddle as we surged forward. I kept to the middle of the group, counting on the women to protect me.
The company met the Burnt in a screeching crash of metal and hooves. The noise was terrible, and yet our foes were silent—only I could hear their voices screaming in rage.
The ground began to shake, and lightning struck no more than a foot away from me. My nostrils filled with the stink of burnt flesh and horsehair, and I watched Hylda’s mount slump to the ground, as dead as the woman on its back. Hylda’s daughter had been pregnant, I remembered. The baby would never know its grandmother.
I had no time to dwell on her death. Angry voices shrieked in my head, and the Burnt closed in from all sides.
The rebels could not match the women in skill—they relied entirely on their overwhelming nu
mbers and their magick. But on foot against trained, mounted soldiers, those numbers were not enough, and their sorcery was as dangerous to them as to us in such close quarters. The furious charge of Bryndine’s company scattered their front line like leaves in a storm. Debra trampled one down and beheaded another; Kaelyn followed in her wake, disembowelling a third man with casual grace. Tenille’s sword rose and fell with steady precision, a counterpoint to the savage fury of Sylla’s strikes. And at their head rode Bryndine Errynson on her huge warhorse, dwarfing all those around her—a colossus among ants. Every stroke of her giant blade ended in death.
But despite taking terrible injuries, many of the Burnt kept their feet, kept fighting; their wounds did not bleed. Just like in my dreams, just like Hareld Kellen. The grass beneath us was stained with red, but it did not come from the Burnt who still stood. Their blood spilled only after they finally fell, the consequence of some magick I could not understand.
Varrie cried out behind me and I looked back just in time to see her horse fall—a crack split the earth beneath them, catching the animal’s hoof. The Burnt swarmed over the girl. She had just enough time to impale a man on her sword, and then I watched her die, her skull split by a rebel axe. Her body tumbled into the growing rift in the ground.
I urged my horse forward, trying to coax some last reserve of speed to outrun the chasm opening behind me. Deanyn and Orya rode hard to either side, guarding me against attack as we fled. With bone-crunching force, Orya kicked a lunging rebel full in the face, and Deanyn knocked a spear aside with her sword and sliced the attacker’s throat with a single motion.
A hand grabbed my leg. Instinct made me kick downwards, but the grip was too tight; the hand did not come free. I looked down and saw one of the Burnt clinging to me, dragging against the ground as he tried to pull me from my mount. His face was blank—no malice, not even a hint of concern for his own safety. Terror pounded in my chest as I looked into those empty eyes.
My horse slowed at the extra weight, and I clutched tightly to her neck as my saddle slipped sideways beneath me. My concentration broke, and the fear surged beyond my control. The voices wailed like damned souls in my mind, and I knew that at any moment I would hear that undeniable command—“BURN”.
Instead, I heard Orya shout, “Watch your leg, Scriber!”
A flash of metal, and the man fell away. Only his hand remained, still clutching at me for an instant before its fingers relaxed and it dropped to the ground.
My eyes followed Orya’s sword upwards, and she laughed her wild, half-mad laugh at the fear on my face. “No time to wet yourself. Keep ridin’!” She pointed ahead.
The path was laid bare before us. Bryndine and the others had cleared the way.
Laughing with relief, I galloped out of the ravine and onto a low plain. The Burnt still followed, and the voices still pounded in my skull, making my head ache, but they would never catch us on foot, not across open ground. Whatever sorcery they had was failing, weakened by the bloody swath Bryndine and her women had trampled through their ranks. As we broadened the distance between us and them, the lightning ceased, and the ground went still. In moments, the rebels were mere specks dwindling on the horizon.
That was the last time the Burnt came so close, and though the cost was high, it was not as high as it might have been. We lost only three: Hylda and Varrie I had seen fall, and Nalla died later that night of her wounds. Leste had been stabbed in the thigh and Ivyla took a deep cut to her side, but neither required much more than cleaning and stitching; others had minor injuries, nothing of great concern.
There was no time to mourn the dead. They, like Genna, would have to wait until we reached safety to be remembered as they deserved.
It was another week before we reached Ryndport, a week of painful dreams, little sleep, and constant, searching voices. The Burnt did not catch us again, but the fear was always there; we could never rest easily. The only way to avoid another attack was to keep moving.
But as we approached the sea, the voices grew fainter. There were few fireleafs near the coast, and just like in the foothills of the Salt Mountains, that seemed to mean fewer of the Burnt. For the last two days, I did not dream at all of the burning fireleaf, or the naked men and women who did not bleed. Someone still woke me every hour, but I was always able to return to sleep.
Shortly before sunset on the last day, when we crested a hill and saw the sea spread out before us, glittering blue-green until it met the sky, I nearly wept. After more than two weeks of terror and torture, with our horses nearly dying beneath us, we had arrived in Ryndport.
Chapter Twenty-two
Founded by Prince Rynd the Explorer, Ryndport is the Kingsland’s main port of trade with the Southern Isles and the Raen Empire. The shipping merchants who live there are the wealthiest citizens in the Kingsland. In Rynd’s honor, it is customary for the King’s eldest son to oversee Ryndport in place of a Baron, from the time he comes of age until he ascends to the throne.
It is also the Kingsland’s most diverse city—the realm is peopled by citizens of many cultures, from Salt Mountainers to the dark-skinned men and women of Raen and the Isles, but Ryndport is the main point of access for most foreigners, and the city where most remain after arriving. Like the rest of the Kingsland, the main population of the city is descended from the barbarians who followed King Erryn, but in Ryndport, one in three people hail from other lands, or have ancestors who did.
— From Dennon Lark’s Cities of the Kingsland
We entered Ryndport ragged, tired, and bloody, a sorry sight amid the rich markets of the coastal city. Bryndine wasted no time ordering the guardsmen to escort us to her cousin, and we were led through crowded streets towards the Prince’s estate.
Unlike Three Rivers, there was no chaos to Ryndport’s design—it was not the largest city in the Kingsland, but it was by far the wealthiest, and the merchants who lived there put a great deal of coin into its beautification. Each home was larger and more ornate than the one before it, and the broad, straight roads were paved with polished white stone and lined with exotic plants brought by ship from the Southern Isles. There was a poorer element, I knew, the sailors and workers necessary to keep such a town running, but they were as well hidden as the money of their wealthy employers allowed.
The Prince’s manor sat atop a hill on the southern side of the city, looking down over the markets. Despite its elevated position, it was not nearly the grandest home in Ryndport—Erryn’s Promise meant that the shipping merchants who did most of the trading also kept most of the coin. But it was grand all the same, a three-floored building of sand-colored stone on well-kept grassy grounds, shaded by the strange broad-leafed trees of the Southern Isles.
Prince Alyn came rushing out to meet us as we rode through the gates. A huge, broad-shouldered man of more than seven feet, he was the largest of the Errynsons I had yet seen—save for Bryndine, who still stood a half-foot taller. Shaggy blond hair framed his face, and beneath his bright blue eyes he wore a wide smile.
“Bryn!” he bellowed, practically pulling his cousin from her horse and crushing her in an enthusiastic embrace.
“Hello, Alyn,” Bryndine said with weary amusement.
“I swear by the Divide, woman, you’re taller every time I see you.” Releasing her, the Prince stepped back and looked her over with concern. “But you look awful. What happened? We expected you days ago.”
“The rebels forced us to take a… different route.” Bryndine outlined the terrible ordeal, including the voices, the strange sorcery, and my suspicions about Uran Ord.
Alyn’s large frame tensed as she spoke, and when she was done, he asked, “Are they still pursuing you? Do I need to prepare for an assault?”
Bryndine paused to consider before answering. “They have not yet risked attacking such a well defended city. But it would be wise to station more guards and alert the Ryndport Brigade.”
“I will. And I’m sorry, Bryn. I can’t imagine what you�
�ve been through.” The Prince squeezed his cousin’s shoulder. “If I’d only known, I would have sent men after you.”
“There is nothing you could have done,” Bryndine said. “We were not on the road; your men would not have found us.”
“Still, I can’t help but think I should have done something when you were late arriving. It must have been horrible. But…” He paused, a slight hint of disbelief marring the concern on his face. “Magick, Bryn? You’ve had a hard journey, I know, but you must see how foolish that sounds. Magick is for children’s tales about the Wyddin. There must be some other explanation. Sorcery is hardly necessary to make our cousin act like an idiot.”
“We saw what we saw, Alyn,” Bryndine replied. “And I trust Scriber Dennon about the rest.” I was absurdly grateful for that; the fear that I was simply insane had never left me, even after everything we had seen. “But you need not believe everything,” she continued, “so long as you believe that we need to find those books.”
The Prince nodded his head in affirmation. “Of course. You’ll have any help I can give you. You know that. I had a bird from the Academy several days ago requesting my aid.”
That caught my attention. “The Academy? Did they mention… is Illias safe?”
“He arrived there more than a week ago, with the books you found.”
I had feared for Illias ever since we were attacked, though it had been eclipsed by the other concerns of the journey. The books from Three Rivers were of little importance to the Burnt, but I had not been certain that they knew that. It was good to know that he had not been waylaid.
“So, what do you need from me?” Alyn asked. “Anything in my power is yours.”
“We have had a difficult journey,” Bryndine replied. “You and I can speak more later, but now I must send a bird to Three Rivers, to warn the King about Uran and the Burnt. After that, we will need a place to rest.”
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