She drank.
It was a question she should have asked herself a long time ago. Her feelings had come like a flower on a tree. A bud, gently forming—and just like that, an undying blossom.
“I realized,” she said, after a period of silence, “that she had been spoon-fed a story from the day she was born. She had been taught no other way to be. And yet, I saw that despite everything, some part of her was self-made. This part, small as it appeared at first, was forged in the fire of her own strength, and resisted her cage. And I understood … that this part was made of steel. This part was who she truly was.” She held his gaze. “She will be the queen that Inys needs in the days that are to come.”
Loth moved to sit beside her. When he touched her elbow, she looked up at him.
“I am glad we found each other again, Ead Duryan.” He paused. “Eadaz uq-Nāra.”
Ead rested her head on his shoulder. With a sigh, he wrapped an arm around her.
Aralaq returned then, startling them both. “The great bird is on the wing,” he said. “The Red Damsels draw near.”
Loth got to his feet at once. A strange calm washed over Ead as she took up her bow and quiver.
“Aralaq, we cross the scorchlands to Yscalin. We do not stop,” she said, “until we reach Córvugar.”
Loth mounted. She handed him the cloak, and when she climbed on, he wrapped it around them both.
Aralaq slid and pawed his way to the foot of the mountain and crept out of its shadow to glimpse the lake. Parspa was circling in silence overhead.
It was dark enough to cover their escape. They moved behind the other Godsblades. When there was nowhere else to hide, Aralaq struck out from the mountains and ran.
The scorchlands of Lasia, where the city of Jotenya had once stood, stretched across the north of the country. During the Grief of Ages, the land had been stripped bare by fire, but new grasses had reclaimed it, and wing-leaved trees, spaced far apart, had risen from the ashes.
The terrain began to shift. Aralaq gathered speed, until his paws were flying over yellow grass. Ead clung to his fur. Her belly still ached, but she had to stay alert, to be ready. The other ichneumons would have picked up on their scent by now.
The stars spiraled and shimmered above them, embers in a sky like char. Different to the ones that peppered the night sky in Inys.
More trees sprang up from the earth. Her eyes were dry from the onslaught of wind. Behind her, Loth was shivering. Ead drew the cloak more tightly around them both, covering his hands, and allowed herself to imagine the ship that would carry them from Córvugar.
An arrow whipped past Aralaq, just missing him. Ead turned to see what they were facing.
There were six riders. Red flames, each astride an ichneumon. The white belonged to Nairuj.
Aralaq growled and pushed himself faster. This was it. Mustering her strength, Ead slipped free of the cloak, grasped Loth by the shoulder, and swung herself behind him, so her back was against his.
Her best chance was to wound the ichneumons. Aralaq was fast even among his own kind, but the white could outrun him. As she nocked an arrow, she remembered a younger Nairuj boasting about how swiftly her mount could cross the Lasian Basin.
First, she allowed herself to adjust to Aralaq. When she knew the cadence of his footfalls, she lifted the bow. Loth reached behind him and grasped her hips, as if he was afraid she would fall.
Her arrow sliced over the grass, straight and true. At the last moment, the white ichneumon jumped over it. Her second shot went awry when Aralaq cleared the carcass of a wild hound.
They could not outrun this. Neither could they stop and fight. Two mages she could take, perhaps three, but not six Red Damsels, not with her injury. Loth would be too slow, and the other ichneumons would make meat of Aralaq. As she drew back her bowstring for the third time, she sent a prayer to the Mother.
The arrow pierced the front paw of an ichneumon. It collapsed, taking its rider with it.
Five left. She was preparing to shoot again when an arrow punched into her leg. A strangled shout tore out of her.
“Ead!”
At any moment, another arrow could lame Aralaq. And that would be the end for all of them.
Nairuj was spurring on her ichneumon. She was close enough now for Ead to see her ochre eyes and the hard line of her mouth. Those eyes had no hatred in them. Just pure, cold resolve. The look of a hunter set on her quarry. She lifted her bow and leveled the arrow at Aralaq.
That was when fire ripped across the scorchlands.
The eruption of light almost blinded Ead. The nearest trees burst into flame. She looked up, searching for its origin, as Loth let out a wordless cry. Shadows were darting above them—winged shadows with whip-like tails.
Wyverlings. They must have strayed from the Little Mountains, hungry for meat after centuries of slumber. In moments, Ead had sent an arrow into the eye of the nearest. With a soul-chilling screech, it crashed headlong into the grass, just missing the Red Damsels, who parted around it.
Three of them rallied against the wyverlings, while Nairuj and another continued their pursuit. As a skeletal beast swooped low and snapped at them, Aralaq stumbled. Ead twisted, heart pitching hard into her throat, fearing a bite. An arrow had skimmed his flank.
“You can make it.” She spoke to him in Selinyi. “Aralaq, keep running. Keep going—”
Another wyverling tumbled from above and slammed into a fan tree in front of them. As it fell, the pulled-up roots groaning in protest, Aralaq weaved out of the way and charged past it. Ead smelled brimstone from the flesh of the creature as it let out a long death rattle.
One of the riders was getting closer. Her ichneumon was black, its teeth like knives.
They all saw the wyverling a moment too late. Fire rained from above and consumed the Red Damsel, setting her cloak aflame. She rolled to the ground to smother it. Fire churned the grass and reached for Aralaq. Ead threw out her hand.
Her warding deflected the heat as a shield did a mace. Loth cried out as the flames clawed for him. The wyverling swerved away with a shriek, swallowing its fire. The Red Damsels were in chaos, hunted and harrowed, circled by the creatures. Ead turned, looking for Nairuj.
The white ichneumon lay wounded. A wyvern was bearing down on Nairuj, its jaws flushed with the blood of her mount. Without hesitating, Ead fitted her last arrow to her bowstring.
She hit the wyvern in the heart.
Loth pulled her back down to the saddle. Ead glimpsed Nairuj staring after them, one arm over her belly, before Aralaq spirited them away from the trees, into the darkness.
A smell of burning. Loth wrapped the cloak around Ead again. Even when they were far away, she could still see the tongues of fire in the scorchlands, glowing like the eyes of the Nameless One. Her head rolled forward, and she knew no more.
She woke to Loth saying her name. The grass and fire and trees were gone. Instead, there were houses built from coral rag. Crows on the rooftops. And stillness. Utter stillness.
This was a town that had buried more than it still had living souls. A ship with discolored sails and a figurehead shaped like a seabird in flight was waiting in the harbor—a silent harbor on the edge of the West. Dawn stained the sky a delicate shadow of pink, and the black salt waters stretched before them.
Córvugar.
48
East
The trees of Feather Island had finally stopped burning. Rain fell in fat drops to quench their branches, which hacked a sickly yellow smoke. The Little Shadow-girl walked from her place of exile and sank her hands into the earth.
The comet ended the Great Sorrow, but it has come to this world many times before. Once, many moons ago, it left behind two celestial jewels, each infused with its power. Solid fragments of itself.
She held up the jewel that had been in her side, the jewel she had protected and nurtured with her body, and the rain washed it clean. Mud and water dripped on to her feet.
With them, our ancestors could control the waves. Their presence allowed us to hold on to our strength for longer than we could before.
The jewel shone in the cup of her hands. It was as dark a blue as the Abyss, as her heart.
They have been lost for almost a thousand years.
Not lost. Hidden.
Tané held the jewel to her breast. In the eye of the storm, where unbreakable promises had been sealed before the gods in times long past, she made a vow.
That even if it took her until her dying day, she would find Nayimathun, free her from captivity, and make her a gift of this jewel. Even if it took her a lifetime, she would reunite the dragon with what had been stolen.
IV
Thine is the Queendom
Why do you not inhale
essences of moon and stars,
Con your spirit texts of gold?
—Lu Qingzi
49
West