She took out a round loaf of bread she’d grabbed from the Free City. It had already been stale when she had stolen it, and after nearly twenty days of travel, it’d turned into a cross between a rock and a biscuit left in the oven too long.
“Mind sharing?” Nape said. “I’ve got some dried apricots left and I’m afraid that’s all.”
Catali tried tearing a piece off. She could not. She tried snapping a piece off. She could not. As a last resort, she took a shard of rock and walloped the loaf until it splintered into several portions and hundreds of crumbs.
“Have at it,” she said, offering Nape a solidified, nearly inedible wad of bread.
Nape gingerly put it in his mouth. He bit down and made a face.
Catali laughed. She uncorked her skin of water and poured a generous amount on her bread, letting it puddle in the center. Maybe it was the food or the fact that their long, grueling journey was finally—for a moment—over, but Catali felt happy and content.
Tomorrow, however, would likely bring about different emotions. She gazed at the city between the Bluffs, hoping to see some sign of life within.
She did not.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
He asked for its name, and it responded with “Osseus.”
Gynoth mounted Osseus, a dragon of bone as white as pearls. In the flesh, it had counted itself among the Iron Clutch, an order of dragons whose diet of stone and iron augmented their strength. Osseus’s death and subsequent rebirth had muted its powers. It could fly, and it could rive with talons sharper than daggers, and it could devour with jaws powerful enough to masticate a whole cow—but no longer was it an iron dragon.
With a necromancer upon its spine, it didn’t need to be.
Osseus flew northward, beyond the valleys and gorges of the Luthien Frontier, into the gloomy depths of the Brooding Hills and eventually passing above the unrivaled mountain range known as the Fist of Gods. Here the Ancient Lands came to an end. Here lay the coast, its shores sculpted of ice, its ocean made more of glacier blocks than flowing water.
It took four days by flight; it would have taken innumerably more by foot. Six months, to be exact. Gynoth had made the journey centuries ago, to strike a deal with the natives—the Uronno—who called this coast their home.
The Uronno would watch the icy horizons with their blessed eyes that could see twenty miles on a cloudy day, sixty on a clear one. In exchange, Gynoth returned to them their goats and horses and cows and sheep that had perished from plague. He told them that the livestock would live forevermore, and since they had been reborn without flesh, they would not succumb to the cold.
If demons and colossi were already here on Avestas and Baelous—as the hermit and so-called god of wisdom, Quarth, had claimed—then surely some must have made passage through the Fissured Sea. Why would the Uronno have kept this from Gynoth? He trusted them, and rarely did he misplace his trust.
Gynoth forced Osseus lower, nearly skimming the hills and humps outside the shoreline. He thought the sight peculiar; the hills were far larger than he had remembered and more plentiful. They stretched for miles in either direction, maybe even hundreds of miles—he could not tell where they ended. And they were craggy and choppy, not like the smooth mounds that had greeted him those centuries ago.
Maybe he’d approached from a slightly different direction, but he doubted this.
“There,” he told Osseus, a finger pointed at a circular foundation of a village that skirted the frozen sea. The dragon gently glided to the edge of the village and touched down. Its heavy, serrated talons fissured the ice, but only superficially.
Gynoth clambered down from Osseus with an uneasiness he didn’t often feel. He’d made it a habit throughout his existence always to place himself in situations where he had control. In circumstances that granted him supreme power, though those around him might not have known it at the time.
Here, on this frosted shore, he was at the mercy of uncertainty. The village before him lay in ruins, the blocks of ice from which its homes and its walls had been crafted shattered into chunks and morsels that were spread along the land like pits on a sponge.
He threw a leg over the low-rising outside wall, still partially intact, and waded through pockets of snow that rose up to his knees in some spots. The ground suddenly plunged into a crater that looked as if it’d been made by a meteor.
Gynoth stood at the edge of the crater and peered into it, unmoved by what he saw. It wasn’t that he’d expected to see the preserved faces of the dead staring back at him, but rather that few things in life unhinged him. He held that stoicism allowed you to make better decisions in times of crisis.
He jumped into the crater, somersaulting to roll out of the hard landing. There wasn’t as much fluffy snow lying in the bottom as he’d anticipated.
Sixty faces, maybe eighty, but no more. Some had bodies attached to them, others did not. They were all dredged with snow, as if having been breaded before thrown into a vat of boiling oil to be cooked.
Gynoth bent down and examined the heads. Their flesh was pale but perfectly intact. Eyelids were open, likely frozen in place. Those that remained on bodies were often missing their hands and feet, but oddly not their limbs.
There was a nary a hair on them, though that wasn’t particularly surprising. The Uronno believed that they had been born into the cold by the cold itself, and that hair was a sin that kept them from becoming closer to their mother. Gynoth had longed desired to know why winter was a mother and not a father, but he had never come upon a good time to ask the question.
And now, it seemed, he never would. The Uronno were all dead, at least on this section of coast.
Gynoth climbed out of the crater, only to find himself on the edge of another. He scaled a block of ice onto a partially collapsed roof to get a better view of the coastline.
Craters everywhere. Big ones and bigger ones, and some of them looked vaguely like the shape of a foot.
Gynoth returned to Osseus. The dragon yawned, exposing two sets of pointed daggers for teeth.
“This,” Gynoth told him, “does not make me happy.”
Perhaps a flood, Osseus said, burning the words into Gynoth’s mind, which was how dragons communicated—not verbally, but by placing words into the fabric of one’s mind.
“Have you ever seen a flood crater ice? Take us down the coast, but high in the sky.”
Are you worried about harpoons?
“Harpoons? No. I’d welcome harpoons right now. Something far larger and more deadly concerns me.”
Osseus glided down the coastline, high among the thick, moldy soup of clouds. Villages were spotty, but they existed, though much in the same way a tree exists after disease strips it of life. Homes were destroyed, blocks of ice fragmented and crushed. Bodies stamped into the frozen ground, hands and feet missing.
And then there were the craters. Hundreds upon hundreds of craters. Gynoth saw them at every village and between every village. They followed a straight path before terminating abruptly at the craggy hills Gynoth couldn’t remember seeing before today.
“There,” Gynoth said, “anywhere on those hills.”
With the grace of a swooping falcon but the terror of a dragon constructed entirely and only of bone, Osseus set himself down on a hill from which a short pillar of stone jutted. It looked like an arm with a clenched fist at the end.
Gynoth rapped a nail against the pillar. He sighed, feeling for the first time in a long time the contortion of discomfort in his guts. He got down onto his knees and began shoveling away snow with his hands. It was cold, bitterly so, but more stone revealed itself as he shoveled, warming him with excitement—not the fun sort of excitement, mind you, but the morbid kind you feel upon Death’s approach.
Gynoth, Osseus said, I feel the ground moving.
Gynoth looked up at his dragon. He’d felt the same, but thought it was his imagination. Cautiously he stood, arms held out to balance him in case—
The earth shifted once more, a t
remendous and trembling gyration.
Gynoth! Osseus cried, his voiceless words a shout inside Gynoth’s mind. The pillar of stone swung downwards, aimed at Gynoth’s head. Osseus charged forward, lunging with the broadness of his skull. The stone crashed into bone, making a loud thunk.
I should think, Osseus said, grimacing under the weight of the stone, whose momentum had only been slowed, not stopped, we will be leaving.
Gynoth threw a foot into the stirrup of Osseus’s saddle and jumped on. “Go,” he said, his voice deep and determined.
Osseus backed away, turning his head sideways to escape the stone’s hold on him. As the dragon took flight, the hills sat upward in synchronization, heaving snow and ice a great distance. And then the hills stood, and the Ancient Lands shivered and roared.
Icecaps broke from faraway mountains and avalanches stormed the slopes. Ripples washed across flat expanses like a wintry hurricane whipping about an ocean. Even the air seemed to move with an unusual gust that made Osseus teeter this way and that until he regained control.
What is it? the dragon asked.
Gynoth had swung himself around on the saddle, nearly sitting the opposite way. He stared at a ceaseless frontier not of snow and ice and cold, but of immense giants crafted from stone. They moved forward as one, and he felt the rumble in his bones.
“Unfortunate,” Gynoth said, turning and facing the back of Osseus’s head. “It’s very unfortunate. It seems the fallible god of wisdom struck gold for once.”
To the fortress?
“Yes.”
Gynoth would gather his forces at his fortress. But it wouldn’t be enough. He’d expected demons to arrive first, and with a bit of warning at that. The colossi would come, he knew that, but he hoped not at the same time. He never did have much respect for hope.
The reckoning had arrived, and it was far worse than he’d prepared for.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Oriana leaned her head into the heavy granite blocks of Torbinen’s wall. The walk there from the Pinnacle had freed her of the unadulterated anger and fury that had swept her up like a raging tempest when she’d learned Farris Torbinen had stolen her dragons. She no longer wanted to take a ten-foot pike and ram it down Farris’s throat.
A five-foot pike would do just fine.
“You feeling good?” Rol asked, deeply massaging her shoulders.
“I only want to sort of kill her now,” she said.
“Well, you can’t do that.”
Oriana turned, back against the wall. She looked up at a gloomy sky from which a spitting, spattering mist fell coolly on her face. She puffed an auburn strand of hair from her eyes and frowned at Rol. “Why take my dragons?”
Rol straightened himself and adjusted his belt. “That’s what we’re going to find out.”
“I told you I didn’t trust her.”
“And you were right. What more do you want me to say, Ori?”
She played with her fingers as if rubbing lotion into her hands. “I have a bad feeling about this. Put yourself in Farris’s shoes—”
“Slippers,” Rol said. “What? I never seen her wear shoes, only slippers.” Being the recipient of Oriana’s no-nonsense stare, he quickly added, “But I get your point.”
Oriana pushed herself away from the wall. She began pacing. “You’re Farris, and you sneak into my quarters with the intention of stealing the master dragon whistles. Why?”
“Well, I’m not Farris—thank all the dead gods—so I can’t serve you up an answer for that.”
“Part of the answer is obvious, Rol. She stole them to use them. Why she wanted to use them—besides luring our dragons to her—that’s what we don’t know.” Oriana dragged her big toe through the sand, sketching nonsensical designs. “Moving on. Farris uses the whistles and all of our dragons flock to her. Why didn’t Sarpella come back when I called her? Why didn’t Click and Clack return when Lamella and Wurtic blew into their whistles? Why didn’t one single dragon answer our calls? Besides Grish, obviously.”
Rol placed his locked fingers atop his head. “You know I hate rhetorical questions.”
“It’s not a rhetorical question. Okay, maybe it is, but as far as I’m concerned there are two answers. Either Sarpella and the others couldn’t hear our calls, which means they’re too far away—much farther than this city—or they did hear them, but they couldn’t fly to us.”
“Because they’re unable to fly,” Rol said.
“Exactly. She kidnapped my dragons, Rol. Here’s the rub—”
Rol chuckled. “The rub, huh? You sound like me.”
“Maybe I’ve been spending too much time with you,” she said, with a wry grin and wrinkly nose.
“Too much time with me? No such thing. That’s like, er… too much sorcery.”
“There is definitely such a thing as too much sorcery.”
He frowned. “That’s what I get for trying to be clever.”
Oriana palmed his bristly cheek. She winked and said, “You tried. Back to the topic at hand, Farris and our dragons. She had to have known that by imprisoning them, or whatever she did, I would come asking questions. Especially once I discovered the master whistles missing. I might not be queen of Torbinen, and maybe I’m not even very respected in the city—I don’t know—but I’ve plenty of sorcerers and even more dragon tamers and laborers.”
“Lots of eyes,” Rol said.
“Lots of eyes,” Oriana parroted. “I would have sniffed out the truth sooner or later. Farris knew this. She’s a smart woman. That’s why I’m worried we’re walking into a trap by confronting her right now.”
Rol swayed onto one foot and the other. “We’ve a score of sorcerers, you said it yourself. She wouldn’t try harming you.”
“They will be none the wiser if Farris imprisons me or kills me or ransoms me, though I don’t think she’ll go to any of those extremes. Point is, the tamers, the laborers, the sorcerers—none of them will know. That’s why you’re not coming with me.”
Rol scoffed at that. “The hell I’m not.”
“I need you elsewhere, Rol.”
“And where might that be?”
“Find Sar and the others. You have friends here now; someone will have seen something if a dozen dragons passed over these walls. More importantly—”
“Someone will have heard something,” he concluded. He rubbed his chin contemplatively. “Me and Polly Grendig have gotten rather chummy as of late.”
“The master-at-arms?”
Rol nodded. “With a few drinks in him, his throat relaxes like… well, you get the idea.”
“Perfectly clear,” Oriana said. “Find out what you can, but don’t act on it. Not alone. After meeting with Farris, I’ll go to our room. If I’m not there within two hours—make it three—come look for me, hmm?”
With a grin that stretched his sun-hardened skin like a hide of leather, he patted the hilt of his blade. “Oh, I will. With my sword in tow.”
Oriana drew in a measured breath, one intended to inflate her confidence and stir up the reservoirs of boldness and courage within. She felt shaky as she exhaled. Hands felt sticky, fingers swollen. She had a terrible feeling about confronting Farris, and no amount of preparation would change that.
She walked herself gently into Rol, cupped the back of his head and softly brought his face to hers. The sharp point of her nose touched his. She closed her eyes. “Let’s get our dragons back, and leave Torbinen for our next journey ahead. What do you say?”
Rol held her by the waist. “Do you know what that journey entails?”
“Not yet.”
His face moved against hers like the hands of lovers against silk sheets. “Those are the best kind.”
Rol’s lips sapped the breath from her mouth. Eyes still closed, she clutched his neck. She tasted him, but only once, and she pushed away, smiling. “I hope that’s not a goodbye kiss.”
A sheen from her lips glistened on his. “That’s a see-you-in-two-hours kiss. Which�
��ll lead to an I-haven’t-seen-you-for-two-hours kiss. And that, if you know anything about your communion of lips—”
“Communion of lips? Oh, Rol. You make a lip-biting lover, and a fine swordsman, but your poetry….”
“Makes you quiver, don’t it?”
Oriana laughed. “In more ways than one. I’ll see you soon, for whatever comes after that I-haven’t-seen-you-for-two-hours kiss.” She winked and aimed herself at the gate of the West Shore.
“Ori,” Rol called. “How much discretion do I have with that whole ‘find out what you can, but don’t act on it’? Particularly in respect to the second part.”
A squalling wind whipped Oriana’s hair into a frizzy mess that wound across and around her face. She peeled a strand from her mouth and said, “Very little.” He gave her a thumbs-up and a mischievous smile.
She started walking away, then stopped and turned back. “Oh, take this.” She handed him Grish’s master whistle. “Just in case.”
He pocketed the whistle. “Keep yourself safe, huh?”
Oriana nodded. “I’ll try my best.”
The walk to the West Shore gate was only a hundred paces at most, but it felt like two thousand. Every step brought her closer to Farris Torbinen, closer to the possibility of an unfortunate end. Maybe it would have been a more joyous stroll if the sand hadn’t been cold and wet under her feet and the sky hadn’t been so sheenless and gray.
It felt like the world had withdrawn into a shell of depression.
She passed through the gate and ambled along cobbles. Laborers were on their hands and knees, scrubbing the stones with rags and ropes of soap. The sun passed briefly overhead, and the cleaned cobbles winked, no longer sullied with hardened sand and dirt.
In Haeglin and in all kingdoms on Avestas, cobbles were rarely cleaned, and if they were, servants were tasked with the job. These men and women were no servants. They were well-dressed in light cotton tunics, free of tears and grime, and their bellies suggested they ate morning, day, and night.
Servants did not exist in Torbinen, and for that Oriana respected Farris. The queen had managed to create a society where free will reigned supreme. Granted, the only reason this worked was because Torbinen’s coffers overflowed with gold, and the crown could afford to pay for menial tasks—such as the cleaning of cobbles—rather than force some down-on-their-luck peasants to do it.
Reign of Gods (Sorcery and Sin Book 2) Page 14
