Flamebringer, p.1
Flamebringer, page 1
Dedication
For Ryan, Crystal, and Amanda
brother- and sisters-in-arms
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Map
Chapter 1: The Long Way Around
Chapter 2: Rushless Wood
Chapter 3: Wraiths of the Weald
Chapter 4: An-Edannathair
Chapter 5: He-Whose-Breath-Ignites-the-Morningstar
Chapter 6: A Pledge of Fire
Chapter 7: Sons of Their Fathers
Chapter 8: A Howl in the Dark
Chapter 9: The Mettle of Manor-Folk
Chapter 10: Sisters-in-Arms
Chapter 11: The Right Noble House of Curdred
Chapter 12: City of Kings and Queens
Chapter 13: Reunion
Chapter 14: A Brief History of Spices
Chapter 15: Salt and Ashes
Chapter 16: The Gray Abbey
Chapter 17: Unmaker
Chapter 18: Drums from the Deep Desert
Chapter 19: The Silent King
Chapter 20: Games of Gods and Monsters
Chapter 21: Night Falls
Chapter 22: Smoke Rises
Chapter 23: Tey Iskaros
Chapter 24: The Siege of the Small
Chapter 25: Through the Fire
Chapter 26: Saint Ellia’s Day
Chapter 27: The Guardians of Arle
Chapter 28: The Circle Completed
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Endorsements
Also by Elle Katharine White
Copyright
About the Publisher
Map
Chapter 1
The Long Way Around
We had made a terrible mistake.
I felt it in every beat of Akarra’s wings, in every white-clouded breath that rushed back to sting my face with ice crystals, every tear drawn out on the knife-blade of the wind. The storm was getting stronger. Snow was falling thick and fast, though falling was no longer the right word. Falling implied verticality. This snow drove toward us with single-minded horizontal fury, Tekari-like in its efforts to unseat Alastair and me. Worst of all, it was getting dark. I gripped Alastair’s waist with fingers I could no longer feel and squinted over his shoulder. Through ice-rimed eyelashes I could just make out the ground far beneath in patches of white and dirty gray where the snow had scraped its frozen claws over the Barrens of the Old Wilds. Still no trees in sight. Or hills or mountains or landmarks or anything. We were lost.
“Alastair, we have to turn back!” I shouted. The wind spun my voice away. I tried again, pulling down my scarf and clumsily waving one hand in the hopes he would see it.
He turned a little. The length of cloth wound around his mouth and chin was frosted with snow. “Can’t land here,” he shouted back, each word fighting its way through the wind. “Not . . . cover . . . shelter . . . wait.”
Wait for what? I wanted to scream, though I knew it was useless. The storm had long since swallowed our bearings, and landing in weather like this would be a near death sentence, dragon companion notwithstanding. No shelter, no wood for a fire, with night falling and our food stores already low, and no guarantee we’d be able to get in the air again if the Tekari of the Old Wilds found us, we had no choice but to keep going. No storm could go on forever.
But then, no dragon could either. Ice glistened on Akarra’s scales, her saddle, and the edges of her wings. We no longer flew straight but dipped and swayed with every draft, and in the lull between gusts I heard her labored breathing. It had been a long time since she’d had a proper meal. It’d been a long time since any of us had eaten. I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead against Alastair’s back. Janna have mercy, why did we do this?
The gods didn’t answer. They didn’t need to. It had been almost two days since we flew from Morianton on the shores of Lake Meera, chasing the Wydrick-ghastradi and his valkyrie mount. His words from the tavern still burned in my ears, vicious, poisonous, louder than the howling of the storm. “The summons comes for the House of Edan Daired and old things will be called into account. The ledger will be brought forth, and when all Arle kneels before our master, then you’ll know I’ve won.”
All through the night we’d flown after him, blindly, furiously, Akarra’s dragonfire burning through the swirling snowflakes like the avenging sword of Mikla himself.
It was a sword that proved blunted and faithless in our foolish hands. The first rays of dawn had found us in the mountain pass west of Lake Meera, illuminating the whole lake valley and the Old Wilds beyond. At Alastair’s command Akarra landed, breaking the crust of snow that spread all around us in a smooth white blanket, unmarked by any sign of Wydrick or his valkyrie.
“We’ve lost them,” I said.
Alastair’s voice came muffled from beneath his scarf, the single word short and sharp as the wind. “Yes.”
“What now, khela?” Akarra asked. “The ghastradi warn of a war that is coming, we are many leagues from our allies, and you”—she looked over her shoulder at the empty scabbard on Alastair’s back—“have no sword.”
We’d tried, even in our haste, to find a sword for Alastair in Morianton, but our bad luck had held. The blacksmith had nothing beyond a hunting axe, and the local regiment of Rangers had made themselves scarce since the flight of their captain. Alastair had fairly thrown a pair of silver dragonbacks at the blacksmith in return for the axe. It was a crude thing, bereft of the razor-edged elegance of Alastair’s Orordrin-wrought blade, which was now sunk in the depths of Lake Meera, but still better than nothing. Or so I’d thought. That little delay had cost us our quarry.
Akarra must have seen our dark looks at the mention of weapons. “Do we return to the town?” she’d asked.
I looked behind us. Watery sunlight poured from cracks in the overcast sky without warming anything. Far below us the waters of Lake Meera caught it like a wintery mirror, shattered on its northern shore by the promontory and battlements of Castle Selwyn. Save for the steward Mòrag and a handful of servants, the castle was empty now, bereft of its mistress after the madness of its vanished lord. I thought of what else it held, intangible but no less real: grief and silence and the hollow condolences of the midwife. We’d left nothing behind there but heartache and loss.
I turned from the lake and looked out over the pass, toward the Old Wilds. The horizon stretched in a solemn gray line farther than I could see, any landmarks lost in the haze of distance. Clouds like leaden curtains were already gathering in the south.
Alastair shook the snow from his cloak. “We need to regroup and take council. If Wydrick was sent to Lake Meera to recruit allies for the coming war, then we need to do the same.”
I’d agreed, trying not to think of the kind of allies Wydrick had tried to recruit. An ancient vengeful spirit from the Old Wastes, a creature that thrived on fears and drove children to their deaths, a shadow of a shadow of the first darkness that fell upon the world. I thanked the gods the Green Lady had fled in the end, but that was still little comfort. We had no idea if Wydrick had succeeded with other creatures like her, or what on earth we could do if he had.
“Akarra, how far is An-Edannathair?” Alastair asked.
“Edan’s Crest? You want to speak to the Vehryshi?”
“Your people may know more about the ghastradi than human lore can tell,” he said. “Where they came from, whom they serve. They may even know how to kill them.”
The dread weight of his words and their unspoken corollary settled over me like a snowdrift. And if they didn’t know? Or worse, if the ghastradi couldn’t be killed at all?
“I’ve never heard tales of the ghast-ridden in the eyries, Alastair,” Akarra said at last.
“Other dragons might have.”
She shifted beneath us and studied the sky. A few snowflakes settled on her back and evaporated in a hiss of steam. “The peaks of An-Edannathair are many leagues’ flight south and west, and I don’t like the look of those clouds.”
“It won’t be any easier taking the eastern route back through the mountains,” I offered, thinking of Rookwood and the Vesh ambush we’d escaped on our way to Castle Selwyn. “I agree with Alastair. If there’s a chance we’ll find answers with the dragons, we should take it.”
“Very well. But the wind is shifting, khela, Aliza. It’ll be hard going, and we’ll have to take it in stages. You’d both best wrap up.”
We’d obeyed, hunkering down in our fur-lined cloaks as she caught the updraft and soared out over the pass, toward the Dragonsmoor Mountains and home.
The snow started soon after that. It hadn’t seemed dangerous at first: stronger winds, a few snowflakes, a deepening chill, but nothing life-threatening. Akarra predicted the storm would move east, spending its wrath on the mountains surrounding Lake Meera and the Langloch and leaving us a clear path through the Old Wilds.
She was wrong. It grew worse.
Not an hour after we’d set out the wind turned and all direction lost meaning; up meant deeper into the heart of the storm and down was blinding whiteness and struggling dragon and numb fingers clinging to any handhold I could find. Shards of ice drove through my cloak, knifing through my riding clothes as if they were silk. My hair had stopped whipping around my face only because it was frozen in place. The sweat and melted snow streaming down my neck soaked into my collar, only to freeze again. My lungs burned with the cold.
I opened my eyes and regretted it at on
Janna, if you’re listening, give us strength. I mouthed the names of the Fourfold God with all the faith I had left and willed my arms to warm him. Mikla, protect us. Odei, make a way out. Thell—
Akarra faltered. Dark shapes rose out of the snow ahead, faint but growing clearer as we hurtled toward them: sharp, spiky things that looked like they’d hurt if we hit them, and oh gods, we’re going to hit them. The world tilted. My scarf slipped and powder filled my mouth, stinging like a thousand wasps and silencing my scream. I slid sideways, scrabbling for purchase on Akarra’s saddle, but I was no longer master of my limbs. Akarra roared and somewhere Alastair was shouting, but the dark prickly thing loomed out of the storm, and in ducking to avoid it I lost my grip on the saddle. I fell.
There was whiteness and blowing cold and pain. My side throbbed and I gasped for air, choking on snowflakes as I fought to catch the breath knocked out of me. For a second everything swam: frozen tears and trembling shades of blue and white and violet and more of those dark prickling shapes and the biting, driving, howling, ever-present snow.
“Aliza!”
Sensation returned slowly, in gasps and aching everything. Rational thought came next. I fell. I fell and I’m not dead. Akarra must have been close to the ground.
Dark shapes much like the ones I’d seen before falling now swayed crazily in my peripheral vision. I rolled to my side and looked up, realizing as I did that the snow was no longer blinding and the wind had lessened. For a second I stared at the shape above me, numb brain trying to make sense of it. Straight, with bristly bits coming off. And green? Is that green?
“Pine,” I muttered, then louder, “A pine!”
It was the first tree we’d seen since leaving Lake Meera. Hope warmed me like nothing else could. We were still lost, grounded in the midst of a blizzard, and very nearly frozen to death, but at least we’d made it across the Barrens.
“Aliza! Where are you?”
“Here!” I struggled to my feet, wincing at a pain in my hip. The snow was thin beneath the boughs of the tree and I could see bare earth and pine needles underfoot. It was only after I’d taken a few limping steps toward Alastair’s voice that a new thought tempered my excitement. We’d found trees on the border of the Barrens, yes, but which border? I racked my brain for a mental map of the Old Wilds. Our route to the dragon’s Keep at An-Edannathair should’ve taken us southwest, back across the treeless marshes of the Widdermere. If the winds had pushed us southeast, these would be the forests surrounding Lykaina and direwolf country. If we’d been blown north or northwest, we’d be deep in the heart of the Northern Wastes and undisputed Tekari territory. If we’d been driven west . . .
Cold that had nothing to do with the snow filled my heart. “Alastair?” I cried as loudly as I dared.
“Aliza!”
“Here! I’m here!”
Alastair shuffled into sight. Akarra followed, clearing the way with the occasional blast of dragonfire. I caught his arm and pulled him into the protective shadow of the tree. The lowest branches dropped pine needles around us as he crouched next to me, breathing hard and covered in snow. “Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No, I’m fine,” I said. “But, Alastair, look! We’re through the Barrens!”
He peered through the branches as Akarra dropped to her foreknees outside our little copse. “Do you know where we are, Akarra?”
“I’m not sure.”
Alastair growled something in Eth and Akarra looked at him sharply.
“No, I don’t have every corner of Arle memorized,” she said. “You can’t expect me to keep track of landmarks in a storm like that.”
More Eth.
“It was all I could do to keep us in the air!” she snapped.
“You should’ve turned around when you realized the storm was too much for you,” Alastair said in Arlean.
This time Akarra responded in Eth and their voices rose, fiery words mixed with the slither of falling snow and the howl of the wind, loud enough to set my head pounding. I pressed cold hands to my temples. For Thell’s sake . . .
“ENOUGH!” I cried, no longer caring if there were any Tekari around to overhear. “This isn’t helping! Alastair, we wanted to come this way, remember? Don’t put this on Akarra.”
“Listen to your wife,” she growled.
I whirled on her. “And Alastair and I are about to lose our noses to frostbite, so don’t you start either, all right?”
Akarra looked away. Alastair straightened the hunting axe in his sword-belt and ran a hand through his hair, shaking free beads of ice. His Rider’s plait had long ago come undone. “Fine. Akarra,” he said at last with exaggerated civility, “what’s your best guess as to where we are?”
“I can’t say for certain.”
“I said guess.”
Akarra snorted. A heap of snow slid off the nearest branch with a wet slumping sound.
“Please,” he added.
“The storm pushed us west, khela, fast and far. You know where we are.”
Alastair flexed stiff fingers in front of him and said nothing. My heart sank as understanding crept through the cracks in their silence. “Rushless Wood. That’s what you’re both trying not to say, aren’t you?”
“We can’t be sure,” Alastair said.
“Even if we’re not, it doesn’t matter,” Akarra said. “We can’t keep flying in this weather. You two will freeze to death and I’ll drop from hunger by the time we reach anything like a landmark.” She sniffed the wind and peered up into the darkening sky. “It’s too late to do anything more tonight. We’d best make camp here.”
Alastair pulled off his sword-belt and harness and hung them over one of the lower branches, and after several minutes’ struggle with the buckles, I did the same with our panniers. Together we cleared the dusting of snow around the tree trunk. The ground was cold, hard, and knotted with roots, but it was dry, or at least drier. There were even enough pine needles and dead twigs for a small pile of kindling, which Akarra lit with a carefully aimed blast of dragonfire. Three times it fizzled and smoldered before catching, and the cheers Alastair and I gave at the tiny tongues of flame were loud enough to make Akarra shush us.
“Until we know where we are, I’d rather not advertise our presence any more than we already have,” she said with a frown toward the darkening woods. She shifted closer to the fire and wrapped her tail around the trunk, enclosing us in a living, anxious fortress. Ice sloughed off her, running in little rivulets between scales. “I’ll take first watch.”
“I’ll take second,” Alastair said in a considerably less peevish tone. “Wake me in a few hours.”
Akarra tucked her head under her opposite wing. Alastair fished a bit of bardsbread from our panniers and sat with his back to her steaming side. I sat next to him, taking the chunk of bread he offered without enthusiasm. We chewed for a minute in silence.
“I was wrong,” he said at last.
“Hm?”
“To follow Wydrick. We wouldn’t be out here if we hadn’t chased him from Morianton.”
“We couldn’t just let him fly away.”
“Yes, we could have,” he said firmly. “I should’ve known he was taunting us. On the road north, in Morianton, even now. That’s all he’s ever done, all he’s ever been: a taunt. From our earliest days as boys together. Any time he trained longer with my father or bested me in a Sparring or mastered something before me, he would never let me forget it.” He exhaled long and slow, his breath suspended in a frozen white cloud in front of him. “We should have taken the long way around.”
I went back to gnawing at the stale loaf. Argument, justification, sympathy: whatever he was looking for, I was too tired to give. My jaw worked up and down, cold muscles moving mechanically as I navigated the crust of coarse seeds that stuck in my teeth. I no longer remembered what real food tasted like. Everything was chill and grit and cramp and numb hands and throbbing head, and still Alastair went on, chipping out icy monuments to his regret from the frozen air.
