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Raithe stood in the middle of what used to be the lower courtyard. What had once been a grand fortress of soaring walls and majestic towers was little more than a hillside again—a barren crag littered with piles of broken stone and broken bodies. Hundreds had been crushed by the collapse. Some were trapped when buildings came down, others were below walls that toppled. When it became apparent that the Fhrey had given up their assault for that day, the remaining inhabitants of Alon Rhist began the sad and exhausting process of digging out the dead. With only one good arm, Raithe was useless. He stood in the center of the rubble and simply watched as people he knew were pulled back into the sun.
A face here or a name there from Dahl Rhen, Tirre, Melen, Warric, and Menahan, folks he’d known for only a year. Thinking about it, he really didn’t know any of them. Raithe had kept to himself, stayed apart, avoided friendships and connections. Better that way, he’d felt. No sense in establishing ties that might be hard to break. But looking at their bloodied faces, he discovered something terrible. He hadn’t managed to remain as distant as he thought.
Tope Highland was laid beside his last two sons, Colin and Kris, both great dancers and singers, who’d displayed their talents on many a night after the late meal. Their mother was arranging marriages for the two lads with girls from Menahan, and neither was anxious to see whom their mother had picked. Tope’s other son, Kurt, who was the same age as Tesh, had died the day before. Filson the Lamp was stretched out on a small bit of still-visible grass across from Tope’s family. He’d been a quiet man, once the only full-time lamp maker in Dahl Rhen, but few knew him as “the Lamp” anymore. He was a soldier, one of Moya’s archers. Filson had befriended a stray dog that wandered the Rhist. He fed the bony animal leftovers from his meals, causing the mongrel to follow him everywhere. Raithe caught him giving the dog as much as half his food. The fool was going hungry to feed a mangy mutt. Next to him were Gilroy and his wife, Arlina. Her head had been caved in. Raithe identified Arlina by the dress. She only had the one.
Before he knew it, Raithe found himself weeping. I only stayed in Dahl Rhen for Persephone. She was all I wanted, all I cared about. None of these others mattered. So why in Tetlin’s name do I feel so awful?
“Raithe?”
He turned and saw Malcolm near Roan’s smithy, one of the few structures still intact. The thin man was out of his armor, back to wearing the old wool clothes Brin’s mother, Sarah, had made him. What a year ago had been clean and neat was as stained and tattered as Malcolm’s old robe had been. The man was hard on clothes. He waved Raithe over, then went into the workshop.
Moving slowly, Raithe crossed the courtyard and followed him. Inside, the place was a cave, dark except for the eerie orange light thrown by the forge and the patch of sunlight entering the doorway. The dwarfs and Roan were there, which was to be expected, but Tressa also stood in the shadows. Suri knelt on the floor beside Arion, who lay on Roan’s cot. A blanket was pulled to the dead Fhrey’s neck as if she were sleeping. Raithe paused to stare at her a moment. The others probably thought he was paying respect or was overcome by grief. Neither was in his mind. A dead Fhrey was still such a strange thing. Arion was pale, but she always had been. Yet on that cot, catching most of the doorway light, she appeared ghost-like. So fragile was she that he found it difficult to accept that she had ever been alive. As he stared, Raithe realized with a good deal of reluctance that he had liked Arion. He had liked her a lot, though he couldn’t remember a single conversation they had shared.
Suri’s eyes were puffy and red, her cheeks streaked with tear tracks. Raithe knew how close the two had been. Suri had often spoken of Arion as if she were an older sister or even her mother. A strange way for a human to feel about a Fhrey, but Suri was anything but usual. That was what he liked the most about her. She could find the person inside the drapery, see the truth behind lies, and she cared for those uncared for by others. That he was Dureyan never mattered to her, and even if he knew nothing about the one called Cenzlyor, Raithe would have felt her loss because Suri loved her. He wished he could help, but knew from experience there were some things no one could fix.