The Wings of War: Books 1-3: The Wings of War Box Set, Vol. 1

by Bryce O'Connor

  He tempered the desire, however, choosing rather to glare at the woman with as much malice as his nature would allow.

  “She’s alive,” he said for what had to be the hundredth time in the last hour. “I swear it, and Raz will swear to it as well.”

  “That thing?” Behn Argo scoffed. “Swear to what? To family? To gods? Does it even understand the concept of gods?”

  “That’s enough,” Jofrey said, his voice a dangerous, impatient hiss.

  At once, every participant in the argument fell silent.

  They were standing in the wide, vaulted space of the great hall, everyone on their feet around the leftmost worn and food-stained table. Those still breaking their fast had been unceremoniously banished and told to finish their meals elsewhere. The benches that usually flanked the table had been slid out of the way, every single member of the council—with the exception of Jerrom, who had retired to rest after the excitement of the morning—far too agitated to even think of sitting down.

  They’d been there for two hours now, arguing themselves in a circle, half the time spent debating whether Syrah Brahnt was indeed alive, and the other half equally divided into disputes on what should be done if she was, what Carro was thinking in allowing a beast like Raz i’Syul Arro into their halls, and what use could be made of the news the pair of them had brought up the path with them.

  And in those two hours they hadn't made so much as an inch of progress.

  “We have been chasing our own tails long enough,” Jofrey continued, the harshness of his tone spelling out all too clearly that his patience was at its end. “This pointless hounding is getting us nowhere. I choose to believe that Syrah is alive, and as you were all fool enough to cast me as High Priest, that part of this discussion is at an end. As for Arro—” he turned to Carro “—if you say you’ve never seen the likes of what we witnessed in the consecration room, then I believe you. However, that doesn’t change the fact that it happened.” He picked up a roll of parchment from the table before him, the letter having been delivered not ten minutes prior by a red-faced acolyte who looked like he had run flat-out from wherever it was he had been sent. “The healers say they had to set Aster’s leg, and will be keeping her asleep until they know she hasn’t suffered anything worse. Vora Grees is likely to walk with a limp the rest of her life. Bonner Loric has a concussion, broken ribs, and won’t be allowed to move his neck for at least a week. And Reyn—”

  “Priest Hartlet’s injuries are purely of his own doing,” Carro said, bristling. “He attacked Raz and I without provocation, going against direct orders, as Cullen has already explained three times.” He paused just long enough to allow the master-at-arms to nod gravely from where he stood by Jofrey’s left shoulder. “As for the rest, Raz was not in his right mind, and even in that state was only defending himself, and doing so with the utmost lenience, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?” Elber asked, crossing his arms over his chest and narrowing his eyes.

  “He means that the atherian could have ripped the lot of us to ribbons and then some, if he’d wanted to,” Cullen Brern cut in before Carro could answer. “And I’ll second that, too. I’ve seen him move, when Hartlet decided he’d rather preach war than peace. If Arro had wanted Grees or Loric dead, then we’d be scrubbing blood from the stone of the consecration room right now, not arguing amongst ourselves.”

  “Then the only thing you’ve proven is that al’Dor has brought a killer into our home,” Petrük snapped pointedly. “What sort of beast is this ‘Arro’ if you can so calmly tell us that he would end life so easily?”

  “He is a friend,” Carro snapped. “Of mine, as he was of Talo’s. If we were to shun every man in this world who did not walk the path of Laor’s light, then we would be nothing more than sour old hermits bickering amongst ourselves up on our lonely mountain.”

  “Your ‘friend’ attacked me!” the old Priestess howled, slapping the table between them with both hands in anger. “With no cause or reason, he attacked me.”

  “While I’m not denying that he went after you, Valaria,” Benala Forn said coolly from beside Carro, “it’s a little brazen of you to claim that he had no reason. I seem to recall you caging him in a detaining ward before the man had so much as lifted a hand against us.”

  At that Valaria Petrük flushed and fell silent. Her lapdog, though, was quick to come to her aid.

  “It was a preemptive measure,” Behn Argo snapped. “The beast was going after our High Priest.”

  “He was after the stairs, you deluded IMBECILE!” Carro roared. “Raz realized—just as I had!—that we had left Syrah behind! We left her, when we had the chance to save her!”

  “Syrah Brahnt is d—!” Argo began, but the retort choked off under the withering gaze Jofrey gave him.

  Carro forced himself, then, to calm. He took a long moment, feeling the eyes on him. He had already explained to the group what he and Raz had borne witness to, as they snuck past the Kayle’s camp, what they had been forced to ignore. There had been a few accusing glares, but most had borne looks of pity, both for the woman and for the hard choice Carro had had to face.

  Now, though, he didn’t need their pity.

  Now, he just needed them to listen.

  “Syrah Brahnt is alive,” he said slowly, evenly, “and Raz i’Syul Arro is our only chance at getting her back.”

  There was a heavy, dead pause, as the council registered what he meant.

  Then everyone started shouting at once.

  “Blasphemy!” Behn Argo was hollering. “Blatant blasphemy!”

  “Carro, you can’t mean…?” Cullen began, but let the question hang.

  “Madness,” Kallet Brern and Benala Forn could be heard echoing each other.

  It was just as Petrük opened her mouth, obviously all too ready to make sure she got her quip in, that Jofrey held up a hand for silence.

  Once more, all talk ceased immediately.

  “Carro,” Jofrey started slowly, his voice kinder now as he looked upon his friend, “I understand what you are suggesting. I even understand why you are suggesting it. I can’t begin to claim that Syrah means as much to me as she does to you, but I hope you know that she still means much to me and more. Despite that… releasing that man seems not only a gamble to me, but a clear breaching of our cardinal laws.”

  “He might not—” Carro started, hearing the desperation in his voice, but Jofrey cut him off.

  “He will. He will kill, Carro. Of this I have no doubt. I’m still unconvinced that Arro is completely either the friend you claim he is or the animal he has proven himself capable of being, but of this I am certain. Beyond that… I think you are too.”

  At that, Carro stood silently, possessing no response. All he could feel was the crushing weight of the options laid out before him, just as he had felt when Raz had given him the choice to turn his back on the Citadel or accept the cost of climbing the mountain.

  Lives will be lost, he realized once again, no matter which path we take.

  “By leaving her down there, you are sentencing her to death.” He met Jofrey’s eyes evenly as he spoke. “You realize that, don’t you?”

  He expected the question to take some toll on the man, to exact some effect on him. All he saw, though, was a resigned sadness steal across the High Priest’s face, subtle as the shifting of snow.

  “Most likely,” Jofrey said. “But I hold out hope. I’ve been going through every manuscript in the library that might give us an opportunity to negotiate with the Kayle, or at least whoever holds command at the bottom of the pass. There may be something they want more than Syrah.”

  “There won’t be,” Carro said, desperately now. “It’s very possible Gûlraht Baoill is after her specifically.”

  Jofrey nodded. “I thought the same. She was the key in the leap forward Emreht Grahst took for the Sigûrth.”

  “Or the door that slammed shut on centuries of tradition, depending on h
ow you look at it. The Kayle won’t want anything more than Syrah, Jofrey…”

  The High Priest nodded again. “I know, but I still hold out hope.”

  Carro felt his patience wear again.

  “Raz could save her,” he insisted. “Trust me. Let me go with him. I’ll make sure he doesn’t—”

  “You’ll do nothing,” Jofrey said firmly, making it clear that this conversation, too, was one he would see end. “At the very least the atherian seems nothing more than unpredictable and uncontrollable. Until he proves himself otherwise, he will stay where he is.”

  His face softened once again, falling as though pulled down by the exhaustion Carro now suddenly saw mixing with sadness there. “I’m sorry, Carro,” Jofrey said quietly. “I will continue to search for another way, but as of now Arro stays put. I won’t allow the discarding of our laws for the sake of one life. We took the vow. If death is the price we pay for holding true in the reverence of Laor’s light, then it is a coin we must all be willing to produce when the time comes.”

  “But this isn’t our life,” Carro insisted angrily. “This isn’t our decision. If Syrah were here—!“

  “If Syrah were here, I have absolutely no doubt she would be standing by my side, echoing my words!” Jofrey responded just as fervently. “I’m surprised at you, Carro. To think you would have any other notion of what Syrah would wish concerns me. If you ever knew her at all then there should be no question as to what she would tell you to do in this situation.”

  He paused, the look he gave Carro now a strange mix of suspicion and concern.

  It was the look of a friend suddenly realizing something wasn’t right.

  “What happened?” he asked slowly. “Carro… What happened?”

  Carro—only a moment ago all too ready to smash aside the idea that Syrah would so casually nod her life away—felt himself go suddenly cold. He had the strangest sensation, like all heat were being stripped from his body, as he felt the blood go from his face. Unbidden, the hand slung across his chest began to quiver slightly, and he was thankful his fingers were mostly hidden within the cloth.

  He didn’t think he would have had the strength to worry about hiding their shake and fight the rush of horrible images that were clambering up to the forefront of his thoughts.

  Talo. The bear. The tree. The blood.

  Raz’s sword, poised over the heart of the man he loved more than anything in the world.

  Unable to handle the crushing wave of grief that ripped upward through him, Carro straightened up. Shaking bodily now, he reached down and lifted the staff from where it lay propped against the table.

  Then he turned from the group, and slowly started making his way between then, heading for the arch of the great hall. He felt as though he were moving against the flow of some crushing river, fighting the current as it pressed back and down on him, redoubling with each new picture as they flashed across his mind.

  Talo’s broken ribs. His final words. Their last kiss.

  And the soul-wrenching, world-shattering sound of the man’s dying breath as steel slid home.

  Carro barely noticed Behn Argo start to step in front of him, and Jofrey’s snapped order of “Let him go!” sounded muted and dull against the thrumming of blood coursing through his ears. He pushed past the shorter Priest, making his way down the table, along the wall and through the archway, then into the relative dimness of the hall beyond.

  Only one thought permeated the grief that Jofrey’s pointed question had brought surging back. As he saw again the slick redness of Raz’s gladius pulling slowly, almost tenderly from Talo’s still chest, only one thing broke through the quickly-rising sorrow.

  Not Syrah, too.

  Jofrey watched his friend go with rising concern. When Behn Argo had made to stop Carro he had stepped in, ordering Argo to stand down. It had been an instinctual decision, one made as a man who shared a little of the wretchedness and despair Carro must be drowning in as Talo’s death and Syrah’s torment weighed on his shoulders.

  Had Jofrey made the decision as High Priest, though, he wasn’t so sure he would have been as quick to let Carro leave…

  Something was wrong. Something was off. More than Talo’s passing. More than Syrah’s situation. Much more, surely, than Raz i’Syul Arro’s incarceration. Whatever had happened somehow affected the Priest Jofrey had known, diminishing him.

  No, not diminishing, Jofrey thought privately as Carro disappeared into the outer hall. Warping.

  That was more accurate, he decided. Carro al’Dor had left the Citadel one kind of man, but appeared to have returned another. There was something bent now. Not twisted, per se—Carro certainly seemed to be there, somewhere buried beneath a layer of grief and sadness—just… off-keel. Unbalanced.

  But Jofrey didn’t have more than a moment to contemplate what it was that could possibly have unfooted the normally so steadfast Carro al’Dor. As he stood there, looking toward the last place he had seen the retreating back of his friend, Cullen Brern gave a soft cough, bringing the new High Priest back from his distracted thoughts.

  It must have been apparent that he had lost his train of thought, because Valaria Petrük smirked and Benala Forn spoke up gently.

  “Jofrey…” she said. “The pass … If we assume the Kayle’s men are waiting for the rest of the army to arrive, this may be our only chance to act…”

  Jofrey set his spectacled eyes at her for a long moment, collecting himself. Once he’d done so, he turned to the master-at-arms.

  “Cullen, how many of the faith would you consider competent fighters?”

  Cullen Brern frowned. “Two hundred? Maybe three, if we take into account promising acolytes.”

  “Do so,” Jofrey said with a nod. “Every staff will count, if this is a fight we plan on taking down the mountain.”

  “We’re going to attack them?” Behn Argo demanded, sounding shocked. “What madness is that?”

  “The sanest sort,” Jofrey said slowly. “Whatever else he might have done, the atherian was right about one thing: we can’t stay in the Citadel. I for one can’t see any other way around it. We leave… or we die.”

  CHAPTER 33

  “All men are destined to fall. It is only a matter of fate’s interruption, the obstructing factor that is death, that prevents the darkening of the soul within the span of a lifetime. I—in some twisted logic that only a mind as old as mine is capable of conceiving—envy the youth we gave to the Giving Grounds on this day. He was less man than boy, not even twenty years of age, a victim of the perilous footing along the path and the sheer drop of the cliffs. He was a true bastion of the faith, I am told. Pious, humble, kind, giving… Naïve. I envy him that. He did not have time to discover the seeds of doubt, nor witness the ravages they reap as they grow…”

  —private journal of Eret Ta’hir

  Reyn awoke slowly, blinking away the ache as his eyes adjusted to a sudden, familiar brightness he did not expect to find as he rose from his slumber. He knew that light, knew that wavering, clean glow.

  And he knew the familiar sensation of comfortable, humid warmth that surrounded him.

  Rapidly Reyn came to, somewhat disoriented as he shoved himself up onto one elbow, intent to make out more of his surroundings. As he did so a jolt of pure, white-hot pain lanced along his left side, extending outward from the edge of his chest to shoot down his leg and up into his neck. He inhaled in shock, falling back down onto what he realized was a thin, feather-stuffed mattress, the blankets bunching up about him as he curled around himself, attempting to stop the agonizing throb.

  There was a shout, followed by a hurried exchange of voices, and Reyn saw a number of figures in the white robes of the faith appear at the foot of the bed, moving to either side of him as he continued to groan.

  “Easy, Hartlet,” a man’s familiar voice said gently. “You’re going to ruin everything al’Dor managed to do for you if you’re not careful.”

  Slowly, gingerly, Reyn eased
himself over onto his back again, eyes shut tight against the shifting pain that tore at him once more with even this simple motion. When he opened them again, three faces were peering down at him, one from the end of the bed and another on either side. He recognized all, two men and one woman. He’d been in the infirmary enough times in his years working in the practice chamber to be on good terms with most of the Citadel’s healers, after all.

  “Wence,” he grumbled, eyeing the man who had spoken, hovering at his feet. “What am I doing here? What happened?”

  Priest Wence al’Kars grimaced in a half-amused, half-annoyed sort of way. He was a tall man, thin but paunchy, with a small gut that awkwardly contrasted with the rest of his narrow frame. He kept his long, brown-blond hair loose and wild around his shoulder, and his square jaw clean-shaven. All in all Wence had a gaunt, unsavory look about him, but Reyn knew him to be deceptively good-natured.