Lightfall, p.27
Lightfall, page 27
Tatiana hurled the fruit away, cursing and retching, and Aden did the same, gaze racing up to meet hers again.
“What in the stars is happening in this place?” Tatiana gagged.
Aden, for once, offered no consoling explanation, merely sat narrow-eyed, staring at the rotten fruit while the wind stirred the trees in the oasis.
Somehow, its beauty wasn’t as comforting as before. Not knowing the blight that lurked inside.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
NOTHING ASHE HAD endured was a dream.
Every day, she remembered this when she woke on the clifftop, pain and residual fever abating, to the sight of a dragon sitting across the rock from her. Sometimes it stopped her heart like a nightmare still fading; sometimes it coaxed up a sense akin to wonder; of all the help the gods could’ve sent, they chose a dragon.
By the fifth day, she just wished he would leave.
He watched her every movement intently, whether she struggled to her feet to relieve herself or ate the fish he caught from gods-knew-where, or tossed and turned at the threshold of sleep, uncomfortable and hopeless. He fed her herbs to help drive the infection from her body and mixed tinctures with shockingly-nimble claws for her wounded face. And he was far more eager to talk than she was, to tell her of the rumors he hunted for weeks in northern Valgard, tracing out from Siralek and beyond. The rain-dancer, the beast-slayer, supposedly killed in the catacomb riots, but he never believed it. Far too many rumored to be dead in that incident had turned up alive, including the Hive Lord himself.
Strange, to have that reputation and not know what to do with it stacked atop the terrible weight already in her chest. She didn’t want to talk, to mix tinctures and poultices herself. She wanted to sit and think long and hard about everything that had happened, to sort out what she wanted, to reach into the blackness at the bottom of her descent and see what lay around her, if there was anything there at all. But Bresnyar, as he called himself, never left her alone or stayed silent long enough for her to observe, consider, or reflect. And by the end of that long week, her apathy gave way to rage.
“Will you stop talking?” she snapped.
Bresnyar paused while mixing yet another tincture and telling yet another story, gazing at her for a moment. “You know, it’s considered not only terrible manners, but also poor for one’s mortality in general, to scream at a dragon.”
“I don’t care. I don’t care if you eat me,” she snapped, staggering up from her bed of moss and leaves. “I’m sick of you talking. I don’t want to hear about my feats in Siralek…I was there. And I don’t need to know about the places you’ve traveled since you left Kalt Hasa. I’m happy you’ve found your freedom, but I haven’t, and you’re making me want to throw myself off the next cliff. So if you’re really as invested in me as you’re pretending to be, will you please, for the love of the gods, shut your giant maw for one hour!”
Bresnyar’s eyes narrowed. “I’m only trying to help, you know. You always look as if you’re suffering from indigestion when we’re silent.”
“I don’t need your help! I didn’t ask for your help, and I don’t want it!”
“Ah, but ask you did. Through the stone.”
“If I’d known what I was getting myself into, I wouldn’t have!”
“Yet still you carry it.”
Roaring in wordless rage, Ashe stripped off the starstone and flung it with all her might.
A beat of silence so absolute, she heard the thing knock into faraway tree limbs as it fell. Then a gust of wind shoved at her as Bresnyar swept out his wings and plunged into the valley. He returned in seconds, starstone in his clawed grip, and dropped it at her feet. “Don’t do that again.”
Ashe gritted her teeth, snatched up the necklace, and pitched it in a different direction. Again Bresnyar lunged, flew, retrieved it, and flung it at her feet. “I said—”
She dropped it straight off the cliff this time. He tucked his wings and fell backward off the ledge; when he clawed his way back up to her, annoyance flattened his brows. Ashe yanked at the necklace dangling from his tooth, and he swung it out of reach. “Stop. This is infantile.”
“I told you, I don’t want your help.” His, or Maleck’s, or anyone’s.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m in this…this Nimmus where everything I ever was is breaking apart, and I’m trying to rebuild myself, if I even can. I can’t afford anyone’s charity!”
“It is not charity. If you are being remade, why not into someone who needs others?”
“Because that’s not who I am. It’s not who I’ve ever been.”
“Everyone needs help from time to time. Even dragons locked under mountains need mortal girls to help set them free.” Bresnyar cocked his head. “It is not, I think, that you’ve never needed anyone’s aid. It’s that it was never offered when you did need it. You are not frightened of needing help…you’re frightened because you know you need it, and you fear you’ll be dead before anyone sees you’re drowning.”
Ashe stared at him. The dragon gazed back, unblinking.
“What in God’s name gives you the right,” she hissed, “to think you know anything about me?”
Bresnyar slung the starstone down on the rock ledge. “Because I know what it is for your whole world to turn its back on you for one mistake! I know what it is to have your life crumble so utterly that death seems preferable. I left my homeland seeking a glorious end, Asheila Kovar, and instead I was held by a madman who stripped me of my hide, piece by piece, for years.” He bared his teeth, breaths rasping between their jagged tips. “I was kept alive against my will so long I began to dream of what purpose might feel like again, until a princess stumbled into the darkness and offered me help I didn’t think I wanted—or needed.” He towered above her, the steam of his breath stirring her hair. “I know you because I was you. I am you. I have danced long enough with my failures that we’ve reached an understanding. I would like to teach you that dance if you’ll let me.”
“Why?” Ashe spat. “Cistine told us how you barely agreed to leave that mountain with them. Nothing in these kingdoms comes for free! But you started this when you pulled me out of that fall near the cave, now tell me why!”
“Because you remind me of Ileria!” His roar thundered off the spines of the mountains. Below their feet, flocks of birds took flight in terror.
Ashe bit back a sigh. “And who is that?”
“My Wingmaiden,” Bresnyar’s voice broke. “Fierce. Untamable. We were raised together in Oadmark from hatchery to hearth. She too fought to her last breath, as you would’ve done against those men. She died screaming my name. And when I saw you fall, when I heard your scream…” Smoke puffed from his nostrils. He shook it viciously away. “You are not the only one who has lost things, not the only one who has been too late to save what was precious. A dragon without a sworn Wingmaiden will go mad over time. I’ve felt it begin to creep over my edges. I know I have lost much and have more still to lose, but I am here, and I am trying to help you. You do not have sole claim to self-pity, and loss does not give you the right to be cruel.”
He bent his head and nudged the starstone closer to her.
“Your voice through this stone helped clear my mind. So forgive me if I linger with you for whatever time I can. I choose to believe the Great Father gave you this stone for a reason, brought us near each other for a reason. Believing it is all that keeps my thinking sharp. Having enough pity not to cast aside someone else’s last hope is the least you could offer after I did the noble thing for you.”
With that, he took to the sky and shot off to the east, leaving Ashe stunned, shame unravelling in her middle, watching him go. When he didn’t return after several long, painful minutes, she crouched and picked up the starstone, cocked her arm to throw it again—then hesitated.
Patchy memories of that rain-veiled night slithered back into focus. How desperate she’d been to escape. How she tried to crawl, to save her own life. And why.
For a long time, she didn’t move. Simply stared across the mountains to the west, toward Middleton.
It was long after dark when Bresnyar returned, and Ashe had sharpened skewers and built a fire. She fed most of her leaf bed to it, keeping it alive since sunset; a storm rolled far away over the flatlands, and every boom of thunder tolling through the world she hoped against her own will was the echo of the dragon’s wings. After half a day alone, she wondered if he would come back at all, or if she’d have to make use of the skewers and actually hunt. The mere notion made her legs quiver.
And then there he was, alighting on the ledge and heaving up a mouthful of fish. Ashe wrinkled her nose as their slick bodies slid down the slimy track of his saliva. “Appetizing.” And then, with a pinch of remorse at the memory of their argument, she added, “Thank you.”
Bresnyar looked between her and the fire. “You have never made this effort.”
She shrugged. “I wasn’t sure you’d come back. And I got cold.”
Too late, she realized her attempt to save face had laid her soul wide-open; knew by Bresnyar’s satisfied hum that he’d expected her to simply lie down and wait for death if he didn’t come back.
Instead, she’d built a fire.
“I’m not saying I’m ready to walk down from this mountain,” Ashe warned, spearing a fish and holding it over the flames.
“No, of course not.” Bresnyar settled on the rock, forelegs crossed.
“I’m not saying I trust you yet, either. Or that I’m grateful for how you stuck your oversized snout into my life.” She paused at the dragon’s sardonic snort. “What I am saying is that you’re right about one thing: I’m the one who called into the stone. I asked the gods for help, and they sent me you.” She stroked the pendant hanging loose over her heart. “It’s easy to think you want something until you have it…even death. So maybe I’m not ready to give up just yet, no matter how tired I am. Maybe we both still have a purpose to fulfill. I’m not certain what that is yet, but I’m at least willing to help you stay sane while I think it through.” She offered the fish to him—a truce. “So, you tell me more about Ileria. I’ll tell you about the people I lost. Kallah and Julian and Helga. And I’ll tell you how I got this stone.”
Bresnyar considered the offer, the fish, and everything she refused to say yet—but at least she was willing to listen.
Then, gentle as a warm breeze, he plucked the skewer from her hand.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
THE SOTEFOLD FOREST was unseasonably warm and uncommonly green, distant clouds threatening a storm that would likely veil northern Valgard in a fresh burst of rain, then more snow, as was the pattern this year. But for now, Cistine sweated profusely, moaning with relief when she and Quill rode into the shade of one of the thickest groves following Daria’s tracking.
The moment Cistine had found her in one of taverns near where they first met and offered her the hunt, the grinning Valgardan hunter took it with a grin and a last gulp of ale. Now they were days from the city, riding through splashes of heat and shadows, and with her cloak lashed around her waist and her bow and quiver strapped across her body, Cistine turned her face up toward the sun. She didn’t really mind the lack of wind augments for the journey; the Chancellors had spent a fair amount moving Aden, Sander, Tatiana, and their Vassoran contingent north. According to Thorne, the use of so many flagons at once always made the Courts restless, a solemn reminder of their depleting stores however many remained.
With the treaty still in the balance, it wasn’t the time to argue for the casual expediency of travel; so they had their horses, and these glorious days of heat and sunlight as distant from cold Kalt Hasa as possible. Really, she was enjoying herself.
“You couldn’t have picked a better time for this little mission of yours, Stranger,” Quill remarked. “It’s almost like springtime out here.”
Cistine grinned at him over her shoulder. “I noticed. Are Valgardan winters always this fickle?”
“Never. But I’ll take it. I’m not very fond of snow anymore.” Quill squinted ahead. “So, Daria, you said Atrasat are usually found around Nygaten Temple?”
She nodded. “It’s the most secluded, and they prefer to be left alone.”
“Like the visnprests,” Cistine laughed. “Ariadne suggested we give the temple complex a wide berth.”
“You don’t say,” Quill drawled. “And here I was thinking a healthy dose of our charming company would be just what they needed.” Cistine jutted her tongue, Daria rolled her eyes, and Quill laughed. “So, we should reach the temple today, right? Battle strategy?”
“Atrasat are peaceful creatures by nature, so we shouldn’t have much trouble,” Daria said. “All we need is to subdue it by one of its legs, slit its skin, and collect the blood in Cistine’s jar.”
“And then we let it go,” Cistine added. “We shouldn’t need all its blood for the inkings.”
Quill slowed his mount. “We’re about to find out if that’s true.”
They’d reached Nygaten Temple.
They dismounted and lashed their horses to a tree, then approached the overgrown outer wall. A thick brook branched before it, hooping the temple grounds in an iridescent skirt. The wall’s arched entryway was accessible only by a land bridge; beyond that, broad stone stairs climbed up toward the temple body itself, a complex comprised of scattered outlying buildings and one high central tower, all furred in creeping ivy. The steps sunken into the hillside and leading up to the temple were overgrown with lichen, and grass sprouted in the rock seams, muffling the tread of Cistine’s boots when she mounted them.
Nygaten’s focus was on the integration of augmentation with cultural advancements, Ariadne had told her—on crafting things like augwains and harvesters once powered by the very augments they dug up from the wells.
It was eerily quiet, for a temple dedicated to such things.
The pit of Cistine’s stomach churned, her fingers curling into fists at her sides. It was coming back to her now that she climbed the steps: the strange, uneasy sensation she’d forced aside ever since Detlyse Halet. The unsettled tilt of a world out of balance.
Nazvaldolya.
Steel sang as Quill fingered his sabers. “It shouldn’t be this quiet. Cistine, get back here.”
She kept walking, some dark thread tugging at her middle, drawing her up the steps.
“Cistine!” There was an edge to Quill’s voice now. “I hate to raise concerns about entering a temple Ariadne told us to stay out of—”
“No, you don’t,” she said absently. “I’ll just be a moment.”
She pushed open the thick front door with her shoulder and ducked into the temple, then halted just over the threshold.
It was abandoned. Not a whisper of presence, not a lick of sound but the wind moving down the halls. Through gaps in the roof, sunlight washed the floor and inlaid bookshelves in glorious butter-yellow patches. When Cistine walked into the entry nave, that blistering sense of wrongness stirred and rose, clotting her throat with dread.
She swallowed and glanced over her shoulder. Quill and Daria had not followed her, and she couldn’t blame them. Two steps inside, her curiosity evaporated, and she wanted nothing more than to run from the temple.
Except when she faced forward again, she was no longer alone.
Cloaked, hooded, and utterly ignorant of her presence, a man stooped over a pile of broken rock halfway down the nave, bathed in sunlight. He brushed his long, bone-thin fingers over the stone bookshelves and chose one, flipped to the middle, scanned its contents, then tucked it into the front of his robe.
Cistine took a step toward him. “Excuse me, are you a visnprest?”
He didn’t turn, didn’t acknowledge that he heard her at all. With a brush of the wind kicking leaves across the floor, he disappeared.
That shadowy thread in Cistine’s middle jerked, and she ran to where he vanished at the mouth of the inner sanctum. There she slammed to a halt again, a scream ramming against her teeth.
She’d found the visnprests and prestas. What was left of them.
Quill’s wordless shout from outside barely penetrated the roar in her head as she stared at the ravaged bodies heaped in the middle of the sunken atrium. The bookshelves on the walls were stripped of their contents, too, leaving nothing but heaps of loose-leaf paper behind.
“Cistine!” Quill bellowed. “Get out here, now!”
She hadn’t realized she stopped breathing until air shuddered into her straining lungs again. Whirling, she dashed from the temple, lunging down the steps until she collided with Daria’s back, the hunter flashing out a hand to steady her. “Quill! Quill, they’re dead, they’re all dead—all the visnprests and prestas.”
“I figured as much.” His voice was too calm as he unsheathed his sabers. “And I think I know what killed them.”
The Atrasat was a vision plucked straight from the bestiary, its form like the octopi sold for exorbitant cost at Talheim’s coastal markets. But this one was dry and land-loving, its skin the texture of a crinkled raisin. It crossed the grounds with controlled flails of its tentacles, each one ending in a massive, pronged barb that sank into the soil, heaving the rest of its body along. Cistine cringed at its six white eyes and needle-studded open beak.
“Does that thing look friendly to you?” Quill muttered. “Or are those our horses’ bridles dangling from its mouth?”
Not just that, but bits of robe and banners of human flesh.
The Atrasat dragged itself around to face them with a wet, gargling moan. From a body of that stature, it was nearly a battle cry.
“I thought so.” Quill shoved Daria out of the way, grabbed the back of Cistine’s armor, and heaved her to one side as the Atrasat’s rubbery limb descended, smashing the steps to gravel.
