The white tower was first, a beacon of beauty and might shining across the kingdom. But behind it lurked the obsidian spire. And within that everlasting darkness—the demon dragon.
~ From A History of the Living Lands
I SLEPT POORLY and was awake long before the tap came at our ill-fitting door. Lady Dyania must have slept even worse since she rose from her bench immediately and went to answer the summons.
“The pyre is out,” Lisel reported. “And we salvaged…enough for proper burials. We rounded up the livestock, and all remaining carriages are being secured. We’ll tether to the road on your orders.”
The lady nodded regally, but her hands clenched at her sides. “Let’s be on our way—”
From without came a shout of dismay. “Kill it!”
My pulse stuttered at a quick patter of clanging. Another demon attack? I wanted no part of it, but even less did I want to be trapped in the confines of the carriage again, my bones tumbling like dice. I jumped out of the carriage on Lisel’s heels.
It wasn’t a demon though. It was the scrawny little attendant from the destroyed Osri carriage. He was cowering, so small he almost disappeared behind his freckles. Not small enough to avoid the point of the pike at his throat.
“Wait,” I yelled. “Don’t hurt him.”
“Demon-bait,” the pikeman announced. “Better to put ‘im down now afore the rot takes root and drags ‘im to ‘ell. Leave what’s left on the pyre coals so ‘e don’t pass the contagion.”
The boy whimpered as the pike pressed into his skin. My own throat tightened in response; I’d never been as close as that to the business end of the common guardsman’s tool, but only because I was fast and sneaky.
I grabbed for Lisel’s sleeve. “He’s Osiroon’s companion. Their carriage was…” I swallowed hard. “Gone. But he must’ve escaped the attack.”
The hartier frowned. “No one escapes the demons.”
“We did,” I reminded her. Only by the dubious grace of another monster, but still.
She didn’t say those words either. She gave the boy a narrow glare. “Did the demons touch you, boy?”
He couldn’t shake his head—or nod, for that matter—with the pike pinning him, but his brown eyes rolled every way.
“He’s not enough for a demon nibble, much less a Feast.” I slipped around the guardsman and nudged the pike aside. I had to push hard, but I didn’t really blame the guardsman for his hostility, not after the night we’d had. “Zik, what happened? How did you get away?”
“Don’t know,” he mumbled. “It was so loud. And black. But then the flames…” He finally shook his head, not denying me, I thought, but shaking off whatever he didn’t want to remember. “I hid from the fire.”
I held back a shudder of my own. Lost all night in the demon-haunted dark, shivering in the cold wind… I’d suffered through my share of uncomfortable nights, but nothing so bad as his. I gathered him under my arm. “Come with me. You’ll ride in the Sevaare carriage.”
Lisel turned her glare on me. “We can’t lose another Chosen to some demon-touched wretch.”
I glared back at her. “Unless he’s a princely demon-touched wretch, you mean?”
“We need to go,” Lady Dyania called. “The sun will be up soon, and we don’t want to spend another night on the road.”
Since we all agreed on that, Zik was added to our carriage with another glower from Lisel and a low warning that he must not touch the Chosen. Once the flow of the earthbone caught our carriages, we were on our way once again.
While the lady ensconced in her corner, I fussed over Zik. “Cleanse first,” I told him. “Then food.” I stuffed him into the privacy chamber, saying loudly through the door, “Use the soap, and plenty of it.”
Lady Dyania lifted an eyebrow at me as I set about spreading a breakfast. “You are quite the convert.”
I wrinkled my nose at her. “Just because I rarely had nice things doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate them.” I set a selection of preserved meats and cheeses in front of her with a deliberate clack. “Also, we’ll be stuck in this carriage with him for a day at least. He may as well smell nice.”
When Zik eventually crept from the privacy chamber on a waft of floral air, he crouched near the door. Although we’d wedged it shut, the damage had left a gap near the bottom that maybe wasn’t big enough to suck him out but let in a cold draught that tugged at his mop of sandy brown hair.
“You don’t have to sit halfway outside,” I told him.
“Can’t touch the Chosen,” he mumbled.
I pursed my lips. “I think if you’re worried about it, that must mean you’re not afflicted, heyo?”
From her corner, Lady Dyania cleared her throat. “I don’t know how the demon-ridden think, but I confess I am not as concerned about it as maybe I might’ve once been.”
I patted the bench beside me. “Come sit here and have some food.”
Though he crawled closer, instead of levering himself up onto the seat, he stayed on the floor. But he tucked into the plate of food with almost unsettling eagerness.
The lady and I watched, bemused. “Had you encountered a demon last night, who would’ve eaten who?” I mused.
He flushed, even the tops of his ears ruddy, but he didn’t slow down. “Bad harvest this year, and had to save for next spring,” he said around another mouthful. “I fear our vale will be down to chaff and fur before the second snow.” He stuffed a bigger hunk of cheese into his cheeks.
Lady Dyania frowned. “Was the weather so bad? Or was it outlaws? We heard no reports in Sevaare or from Maru Deep.”
“Not storms nor reavers,” Zik said. “Demons. Scythed crops and stole fruitage. Whole herds missing.”
She shook her head. “Demons take no heed of vegetation or animals.”
“Some farmers were slain in the fields, bones scattered like seeds never to grow. A few herders were taken from the hills too, along with their yaxen.”
“But I’ve never read anything like that about the horde,” Lady Dyania protested.
Zik rolled his eyes halfway then caught himself. “Don’t know much about demons, ya,” he admitted. “Just know we’ve gone hungry.”
“Did your lord send word to the High Keep for relief, supplies of some sort or soldiers?”
“Don’t know that either. Sure no one checked with me first.” The droll little glimmer faded, leaving the freckles blanched on his cheeks. “But if anyone asked, no one answered.”
“When we get to the High Keep, maybe we can speak to the king about your vale’s plight,” I told him.
“The king don’t care for Osiroon.” But he slanted a glance at the lady. “Unless you think it’d matter.”
She gave him a gentle smile. “By the Lyrac Accords, your lord pays tithes exactly for these needs. Plus, King Mikhalthe—as his radiance shines upon us all—will want to know about such brazen demonic attacks, for the protection of the rest of the kingdom.”
Zik looked down at the hunk of bread in his hand. “Lord’s dead. His lady rules us now.”
Lady Dyania tucked her chin back in surprise. “The lord of Osiroon died? When did that happen?”
Zik gave her a slightly less patient look. “Didn’t make note. No procession, no bells or pennants, just talk in the taverns of the widow, forbidding but fair. And when they put me in the carriage with Aimir, he cried for the lady, not the lord.”
My own bread was a lump in my throat. I’d never even seen the scion of Osiroon who’d been sent as their Chosen, but Zik’s comments on the lightkeep’s deprivation and his Chosen One’s desire to glimpse the riches of the High Keep before he died put my own complaints into some sort of perspective.
We finished our meal in silence, and Zik helped me straighten up the interior. I handed him the much-reduced bag of speridia rather than give him the excuse to pocket it. When he fell into a slack-jawed sleep, obviously exhausted from his night of terror, I tucked one of my blankets around him.
Lady Dyania watched from her corner. “So young. Too young to be on his own.”
“Older than I was when I was left in Sevaare.”
“And we wish better for others than our own fate.”
As she was going to be stripped of her aura by a captive demon, I supposed she meant that from her heart.
Since Lady Dyania and I had slept almost as poorly as Zik, we napped away part of the morning, ate again, and the lady read from her prayer book while Zik and I diced with etched clay hedrons he pulled from one of his many pockets.
“These are the threads that are woven,” he chanted each line as he played.
“This is the path that is laid.
Here is the hedron I’m holding.
Do I stand fast or cast it away?”
Though the lady said her prayers silently, her gaze kept straying to us, and eventually she closed her book. “Heyo,” she drawled. “Teach me this game.”
And so the afternoon passed with a certain unlikely enjoyment among the three of us. It wasn’t until Zik glanced at the window and froze that I realized the light was fading again.
“How much farther?” His voice cracked. “We won’t stop again, will we?”
“The prince said last night it was only one more day on the road,” I said.
Zik boggled at me. “You spoke to the Dragon Prince?”
“He spoke at me, mostly.”
But the boy didn’t seem to much care which direction the words flowed. “You spoke to the Dragon Prince,” he said with awe. “You didn’t take any gifts from him, did you?”
I rolled my eyes. “Am I the only one who never heard of these treacherous gifts?”
“Maybe you just didn’t listen,” Zik suggested.
Lady Dyania smirked. “Or maybe you just like to take things that don’t belong to you.”
Neh, I couldn’t really argue either point.
We all clustered at the window—me between the lady and the boy who spent the night in the demon-riddled darkness—to see the Argonyx Mountains stretched out like a black wing blocking the last of the evening light from falling across the kingdom.
We climbed through a never-ending twilight, the sunset rays retreating behind the high, ice-capped crags even as we reached for them. As the path turned steeper, the road roughened, and the yaxen had to take over the heavy effort. If I remembered my history aright, one of the reasons the High Keep had survived the Great Gorging unscathed was because demons struggled to follow the disintegrating paths of broken earthbone this high. So the mountains offered some security, to be sure, but also isolation. And with little room for fields or pasture amidst these winter-ravaged rocks, it took the more vulnerable lightkeeps of the lower lands to support this citadel with the commodities of their vassal settlements and nearby freeholds.
And it looked as forbidding to me as it must to the horde.
Zik sagged back with a gulp. “What’ll happen to me? I have no place to go and no one to go with.”
“Us,” I told him. “You’ll be with us until…” I swallowed hard too, slanting a glance at Lady Dyania.
She didn’t flinch. “The Devouring won’t happen right away. Since we lost some of our Chosen, the haloria will have to reweigh the balance of auras, maybe find more offerings, especially if the need is so great.” She gave Zik a solemn look. “Of course you must stay with us until…until the end.”
“Can I go home after?”
She flicked a return glance at me. “I don’t know.”
I didn’t respond. How would I know what would happen after? I didn’t understand his wistfulness anyway. Whatever he’d left behind in Osiroon didn’t sound worth grieving, considering the way he’d ransacked breakfast.
But maybe despite the hardships he’d had a life he wanted.
Probably there was something for me to learn there instead of swatting at happinesses that never came quite within my reach.
As the road kept ascending, for a surreal moment, I thought we’d scaled the world to the light of day because the sky began to pale to the lustrous gray of a misty dawn and then brightened further yet to the gold of a new morning.
“It’s the lights of the High Keep,” Lady Dyania said, and the wonderment in her voice made her sound as young as Zik. “I’ve read about the palace, of course, but I had no idea.”
None of us had seen so many lights in one place. The steep, winding pitch of the final approach to the High Keep gave us a clear view sideways up the mountain to the sky-piercing towers of the kingdom’s ruling lightkeep. The spires reached so high that despite all the blazing illumination of the towers, the uppermost pinnacles returned to the darkness of the sky except for a few lighted windows that shone like stars.
The only point taller than the towers was the peak of the mountain into which the lightkeep was nestled. That apex should’ve been the blackest of all, so distant from the lights. And yet the summit seemed to shimmer against the night.
Because, as the stories told, the mountain was crowned with obsidian glass in every hue of smoke and shadow and midnight that had risen from the deepest part of the earth during some great demonic emergence, even before the Great Gorging, during a battle that had never been named.
Unnamed, because none had survived to christen that particular calamity.
For all the wonders of the bright lightkeep, my eyes stayed locked on that brooding monolith above it all. As I gazed at it, some wayward gleam caught in the cracked glass of its surface and slashed with a light so pure, for a single heartbeat, I thought I’d been blinded.
Then the cavalcade rounded yet another switchback and left us staring across the deepening gloom of the demon-haunted leas, which now seemed less foreboding—maybe just because it was farther away than the mountain above us.
I wanted to see the peak again, something in me captivated by that lonely tower in the night. But we had finished the climb, and the mountain was hidden—at least for the moment—behind the towers and walls and lights.
From our angle, we didn’t get to see the grand opening of the gates, or what I imagined was the official welcome of the Chosen Ones’ cavalcade. Even through the walls of our carriage, the cacophony of chants and bells and drums made my head and heart pound. Seemed a little unfair that those who would pay the price didn’t get to partake in the glories. Lady Dyania sat in her corner, her eyes closed against the light and the dark. I couldn’t know what she was thinking, but whatever it was, I wouldn’t blame her.
Zik still had his nose pressed to the window. “So many,” he muttered. “So much.”
I joined him again. We’d passed into a large courtyard between the outer walls and the inner, the open space flooded with people, their faces turned our way. I knew they weren’t looking at me, but I slipped back from the window anyway. I glanced at the lady. “Quite the greeting.”
“Quite the goodbye,” she murmured.
We passed a walled garden, its round gate lined in mirrors. All lightkeeps had a dawn well to capture the sanctified light each day, but now the mirrors reflected the red and gold of our torches like blood in melted wax. While I’d rarely had reason to contemplate the fate of our kingdom, never had it seemed more real to me than now, in this barricaded lightkeep, under the black mountain, with this fragile procession of pure auras—and the scorched dry bones we’d dug out of the smoldering dirt of the pyre for what? A needless reminder of our fragile fate and the darkness that awaited us all?
The inner courtyard was quieter, and this time from the window I saw only guards, some with chained canids, and liveried staff converging as our conveyances halted. One made a gesture of blessing, but no doubt they’d all seen many a Chosen come through the gate—and vanish just as quickly.
A hard rap at our door brought us all to our feet. Zik and I looked to the lady.
“These are the threads that are woven. This is the path that is laid.” She lifted her chin. “Feinan, open the door please.”
For a ridiculous moment, I imagined flinging the door wide and jumping out, just as I’d so recently jumped in. The lady and her two urchins could cast away, fleeing into the night…
Definitely ridiculous.
But then I did exactly that: letting the latched door spring open as I hopped down to the frosty cobbles, forcing the guardsman in the High Keep livery away from the opening with my sudden appearance. Inhaling a nose-pinching draught of cold mountain air, I intoned, “The Lady Dyania l’Hazan a’Sevaare, Chosen One.” I slung my arm in a dramatic gesture, nudging the guard back another step.
If the lady wanted to run as I had, I would give her the space.
But she stood in the doorway and cast an imperious look about. “Sevaare offers its Chosen One to the Feast, as vowed in the Lyrac Accords after the Great Gorging, bidden by our sovereign savior, His Illuminance, King Mikhalthe l’Thine, to safeguard our realm from the horde of the Lost Lands.”
She intoned much better than I did, but she had more practice. In preparation for this terrible moment.
All around us, the other carriages were disgorging their occupants—Chosen and companions blinking around them in uncertain awe and exhausted shock. “Come this way,” the guard said, no intonation, just a curt order considering he was speaking to a scion of the realm. All the other Chosen and attendants were falling into line, flanked by High Keep servants ushering them toward the towers.
My neck prickled. It reminded me too much of Orton’s headthumpers chiding at the vanquished members of a rival gang. But Lady Dyania followed, Zik right behind her.
I caught his arm. “Stay with her,” I said under my breath. “I’ll find you.”
He swiveled to me, eyes wide. “Aren’t you coming with us?”
“Yes, but I want to talk to Lisel first.” She was the only one of the guards I’d felt any hint of kindness from. “I’ll be right behind you.”
The lady was walking away, stiff and focused, not realizing I wasn’t in tow. Zik kept glancing back at me. I waved him onward even as I melted toward the palace staff bustling around the carriage behind Sevaare’s. These servants were dressed in rougher fabric of duller hues, and they were caring for the burden beasts and unloading the mortal remains from the demon attack. In the fitful light, I blended with them as I whisked around the far side of the carriages next to the inner bailey wall. I caught a glimpse of Lisel between the conveyances and paralleled her as she strode forward.
I hung back while she spoke with a tall, distinguished man in excellent livery who I assumed was leader of the guard. And when they both bowed their heads, I suspected she was telling him of their losses. When he abruptly struck her across the face, I recoiled in surprise.
Lisel didn’t even rock back on her heels. I waited warily until the man spun on his boot and stalked away. Only then did I creep closer.
She caught sight of me and straightened. In the lights of the bailey, the handprint on her face was a brutal hue. “Why aren’t you with your Chosen?”
I kept my gaze on hers, not the bruise to come. “Lady Dyania asked me to pass our thanks to you for guarding us and then guiding us this last way.”
The hartier let out a rude grunt. “Did she now? What do you want, wily little urchin?”
While it was true I was smaller than she was and I was being wily, I didn’t like the way she was trying to look past me, already moving away although her body hadn’t shifted. “The lady is without some necessary belongings and supplies.” No need to mention what had been taken by her attendants, since it could’ve all been ruined in the attack. “I’m hoping you might tell me where to replace some items here in the lightkeep before…”
The spasming muscle in her jaw blanching some of the blood from the mark on her cheek. “The lady isn’t the only one who lost on this trip,” she growled. “And if the Devouring fails, we will all lose everything.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Maybe the Dragon Prince shouldn’t be so voracious. I’ve had to work hungry before, and I’m sure you have too. He might not get everything he wants.”
She finally looked at me again. “And you will tell him so?”
I grinned at her. “Maybe I will. But for now, a reference to a friendly face or two in the kitchen and the laundry would be most welcome.”
She sighed. “You are a survivor, aren’t you, urchin?” She rattled off a series of names that I hastened to imprint to memory. “For all the good it will do you,” she finished.
I thanked her profusely, then hesitated, eyeing her sidelong. “Are you all right? Did that man not understand how you held the cavalcade together?”
Her jaw tensed again, not in anger this time, but hiding a tremble. “That man is the marshal of the king’s army. Captain Vreas was his esteemed second, groomed for command—and his son.” Her shoulders bowed. “Also, my brother.”
I sucked in a breath. “Ah, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize.”
“Why would you have? It was something even he and my father would rather have forgotten.” She shook her head hard. “Why did I just tell you that?”
“Because I don’t matter, and telling me is like saying it to the wind.” I bit my lip. “I am no devout believer, but shall I ask Lady Dyania to add your brother’s name to her prayers? I think she wouldn’t mind.”
Lisel nodded. “May I bring you the names of all the fallen?” Both brows arched over her knowing blue eyes. “If I bring a flagon of ambra-wine as well?”
“Not necessary,” I said very humbly. “But much appreciated.” I gave her a little bow. “If I might also ask you directions to where Sevaare’s Chosen is quartered?”
With those directions and the staff names in my head, I hastened—by way of a very circuitous route—to the guest rooms. As I went, I segued through the kitchen and dry storage. At this time of night, not many servants were about, and those few were absorbing the work of the arrivals or preparing for the next morning so they had barely a glance for me. I was able to beg some supplies from a kindly kitchen maid—and pocket some more—before I finally made my way to the rooms set aside for Sevaare. Though the High Keep was larger than Sevaare, the footprint of the inner palace wasn’t so widespread, with most of it confined to the towers. Still, I was winded and weak-kneed by the time I made my way to our new quarters.
To my surprise—although in retrospect I shouldn’t have been—a guard was posted at the door. “Delivery for the Chosen One,” I told him, and when he eyed me suspiciously, I continued, “But they gave me too much, so maybe you’ll take one of these off my hands?” I held out one of the pastries that had been cooling in the kitchen. The honey glaze hadn’t yet hardened, so the glisten was even more enticing.
With a harrumph I chose to translate as gratitude, he reached for the pastry. At the same time, I reached past him to grab the door latch and let myself through.
If he made a noise of protest, it was garbled by the sticky bun.
The sitting room was the finest I’ve ever entered without a lockpick. In the mellow glow of the banked hearth fire, the etched silverleaf of Sevaare’s motif shone all around except where the sheerest silkha draped in lavish abandon. The room might be the guarded cell of a condemned hostage, but it was a lovely prison.
Wide, hinged screens were drawn back to reveal a second, smaller room. More silkha was swathed around a bed. I peered through two smaller doorways—one a privacy chamber, the other a dressing room with two narrow cots, obviously intended for the Chosen One’s companions. The open wardrobe held only a single pure white robe.
I turned back to the bedroom. The curtains around the bed weren’t drawn all the way, and the gap framed Lady Dyania’s sleeping face. Her brow was furrowed and her hands drawn up to her throat, as if the luxurious blankets and reflected firelight weren’t enough to protect her. On the hearth, a pile of what I’d thought was discarded laundry and perhaps a small canid was actually Zik sleeping close enough to the embers to burn, only the brown mop of his hair visible. Apparently both of them were seeking the light.
Neh, the shadows had never been an enemy of mine. And the cot looked more comfortable than anything I remembered in recent times. I went back to the closet and dumped my stash. I cleaned up in the privacy chamber—endless hot water, such luxury—checked my slumbering charges one more time, and went to bed myself.
Despite my boast of befriending the dark, I didn’t want to be unaware of my wider surroundings, so I left the closet door ajar. Not much, but in the ambient light, the ceremonial robe for the Devouring glowed with an uncanny aura of its own.
I stared at the robe. I needed to keep the door open enough to listen for the lady and the boy, but if they awoke and saw the reminder of the Devouring, they might be frightened.
In the end, I moved my blanket to the hearth next to Zik, eased the closet door closed, and fell asleep.
When I dreamed, an errant ray from the moon shining through the black glass mountain turned into the pearlescent glow mesmerizing me from the Dragon Prince’s half-closed eyes.