Thornton
As much as his eyes were on the city of Ellenos, Thornton could feel the eyes of the Athrani on him.
When the legion had reached the top of the wheel, they had unloaded onto a waiting ship that would take them into the city. Now, floating down the canal on a vessel of unimaginable weight, Thornton could feel that same weight pressing down on him and his sister. He watched as Yasha pulled her hood tighter over her head in a futile attempt to conceal her appearance. She flashed him a look that communicated just how alienated she felt, and Thornton suddenly knew what it meant to feel different. He knew how Kethras must have felt in Annoch—or anywhere that humans outnumbered Kienari—and looked to see if the staring from the Athrani was having any effect. If it was, Kethras certainly didn’t show it. His great black eyes were unblinking, focused on surveying the city ahead. Hands folded behind his back, the son of the forest stood unmoving, an inky black oak tree rooted in the hull of the Athrani transport.
Something about Kethras’s calm demeanor gave Thornton comfort as he looked back to his sister, Yasha, and again to the shore. They had been moving through the water for some time now, and Thornton guessed they were headed into the city’s center. Everything about the First City was impressive to him, and he wasted no time taking it all in.
He’d noticed a number of canals that intersected the one they were floating down—some perpendicular, some coming at sharp angles—no doubt used to get quickly from one end of the city to the other. Some of them had smaller vessels floating down them, holding just a handful of people; most of them would wave at the huge transport as they passed. A great purple flag planted at the top of their own ship bore a golden outline of an eye with six lines radiating out of it, three on top and three on the bottom, which Thornton thought looked like eyelashes. He figured it to be the banner of Endar, and it was most likely what people recognized when they would wave at them.
Another thing that intrigued him about the city was that Athrani buildings were so much different than human buildings. Thornton thought it was most likely due to the fact that they weren’t so much constructed as they were Shaped into being. They seemed to have been carved from a single source, like statues of marble and gold that towered toward the sky. And they were so close together, too! That had always been something that stood out to him in Lusk, and even Annoch: that there was almost no space between one building and another. In his small village of Highglade, people had entire fields to themselves. But in the cities, where the population was astoundingly large, there was simply no room for that kind of privacy. That was abundantly clear here in Ellenos, where sometimes it looked as though several dissimilar buildings were all part of one massive structure.
But one thing was obvious to Thornton as he gawked at the buildings they floated past: Ellenos was stunning. The word majestic echoed in his mind, and he thought that he had finally found somewhere worthy of the description. The rolling hills and valleys that made up the landscape of the city were perfectly incorporated into its construction. Even the light of the setting sun seemed to have been part of the city’s layout as it sank below the surrounding mountains to usher in the dusk, bleeding together the shadows that stretched off the Ellenian buildings.
“She’s impressive to behold, isn’t she?”
The words startled Thornton as he realized just how entranced he was at the sight of the First City. He turned around to see Endar grinning at him, once again draped in the purple cape that marked him as commander of the Athrani Legion. Coming out of his trance, Thornton stammered a yes.
“She’s the only home I’ve ever known,” the big half-eye said. Clasping his hands and putting his forearms on the edge of the ship, he leaned over to share the view. “Sometimes I feel like that spoils me.”
Thornton looked away from the commander and back to the fantastically made structures. Some of them looked like houses, others he recognized as inns, but many of the larger structures were entirely foreign to him. “I can see why,” Thornton admitted. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Yasha piped up. “If you’ve ever seen the depths of Khala Val’ur, you’d know just how good you have it.”
Since undergoing the Breaking, Yasha’s once-soft voice had taken on an ethereal quality that Thornton thought sounded like an echo trailing just behind her words. She was still soft-spoken, but the change in her voice commanded something when she talked, something that was enough to make Endar jump.
“So she does speak!” the commander exclaimed, turning to marvel at the girl from the Sunken City. Pressing his back into the wooden railing that formed the edge of the deck, he looked her up and down before speaking again. “Tell me: What is Khala Val’ur like?” His arms were crossed over his gold breastplate as he stared at her inquisitively. “I’ve never had the pleasure.”
Yasha squirmed a little and looked away. “It’s dark,” she said. “And cold. The inside of the city never sees the light of day, so a huge fire is kept going to take the place of the sun. It’s a poor substitute,” she scoffed.
“I would imagine,” Endar said, taking in a lungful of air.
“It’s nothing like this,” Yasha continued, looking off the bow. “The Khyth are very calculated. Everything is linear, and everything serves a purpose.” She shifted her gaze to some hills in the distance that looked as if someone had planted a tree in them that had grown into a cluster of buildings. “I mean, they moved the mountains themselves to build the city,” she said with a sweep of her arms. “If they don’t think something belongs somewhere, they’ll smash it and make room for something that does.”
Endar nodded. “You’ll find that the Athrani are quite different.”
Thornton was already looking past his sister when he felt the ship begin to slow. “What’s happening?” he asked Endar.
The huge half-eye grinned as he looked out beyond the helm. “We’ve arrived.”
***
Despite the beauty of the city that had surrounded them since they’d set foot inside it, Thornton suddenly felt cold and afraid. He looked at the face of his sister and saw that same nervousness reflected in her eyes. But one look at Kethras, stoic and tall, reminded him that his black-furred friend would do anything to protect him. He’d seen it in the forests of Kienar, and on the road from Lusk when the two Kienari had first made their presence known. Kethras had only just met him and Miera that night, but had been willing to die for them—and to kill for them.
Endar seemed to sense the unease that had penetrated the deck like a fog, and placed his hand on Thornton’s shoulder. “Relax, blacksmith,” he said. “The Keeper is wise and just. You’ve nothing to fear.”
The words did little to ease Thornton’s twisting stomach. He was still an enemy—to them—in the heart of their capital.
“Besides,” Endar added in a hushed voice, “I’m told that you’re friends with the Shaper. That carries some weight around here.”
A smile cracked Thornton’s lips as he thought of Miera again. Funny how she’s helping even when she isn’t here to see it, he thought. His shoulders relaxed as the ship began to dock, and Thornton found his thoughts wandering off to the Otherworld, to the last place he had seen Miera before she . . .
Before . . . He shook his head to try to jar the thought loose. It was no good to him. He wasn’t sure if there was any way he could get to her now, but he promised himself that he would never stop trying to find one, no matter how dangerous it might be.
And, judging by the whispers of the men as they had marched across Derenar, it was very dangerous.