15
Feir had asked for two hours to get Lantano Garuwashi’s sword out of Ezra’s Wood. He had no idea how much of that time had passed. In fact, he couldn’t remember how he’d come here. He looked up at the towering sequoys stretching to the sky.
Well, at least, he knew where here was. He was definitely in Ezra’s Wood. He looked at his hands. Both of them were scraped and his knees hurt, as if he’d fallen. He touched his nose and could tell it had been broken and then set properly. There was still crusty, dried blood on his upper lip.
Dorian had told him stories about men who’d taken a blow to the head and forgot themselves, either forgetting everything before the blow, or more commonly completely losing the ability to remember anything at all after the blow. They could meet a person, the person would walk out of the room, and five minutes later ret ner urn and be greeted as a stranger once more. For several moments Feir felt a panic rising inside him at the very thought, but aside from his nose, his head didn’t feel as if he’d taken a blow. He could remember leaving Lantano Garuwashi, he could remember approaching the vast bubble of magics that surrounded Ezra’s Wood, and he could remember the turmoil within those magics as—miles to the east—the Lae’knaught had entered the Wood and been trapped within it. Feir had used that turmoil as a distraction for his own attempt. But from that point, he could remember nothing.
He was facing the bubble now, as if he was leaving. He took a few more steps, disoriented and came around the trunk of another giant sequoy. Before him, not fifty paces away, just outside the magic, were Lantano Garuwashi and, oddly, Antoninus Wervel.
Maybe I have gone mad. Antoninus Wervel was a red mage, one of the most powerful and most intelligent men to walk the halls of Sho’cendi in decades. He was a fat Modaini man, and he’d been a casual friend for years. To see him sitting awkwardly cross-legged beside Lantano Garuwashi, who sat as gracefully as he did everything, was surreal.
Then the men saw Feir and both rose. Antoninus called something out, but though he was only forty paces away now, Feir couldn’t hear him.
Feir walked straight to the wall of magic. Whatever clever magic he’d used to get into the Wood, it obviously hadn’t been clever enough. He was alive only by the forbearance of whatever it was that lived here. So Feir walked straight through the magic. It slid around him, and for a moment, he could swear something in the Wood felt amused.
Then he was out.
“What are you doing here?” he asked Antoninus Wervel.
Antoninus laughed. “You escape the Wood, something no mage has done in seven centuries, and you ask what I’m doing?”
“Do you have my sword?” Garuwashi demanded.
Feir was carrying a pack strapped to his back that he hadn’t been carrying when he entered the Wood. “Him first,” he said.
Antoninus lifted his kohled eyebrows, but said, “I came with a delegation from Sho’cendi to recover Curoch. After the Battle of Pavvil’s Grove, the delegation turned back. They were sure that if Curoch had been present in such a desperate battle with so many magi and meisters present, that someone would have tried to use it. No one did, so they decided to backtrack and follow other leads. The truth is, I don’t think Lord Lucius trusts everyone in our delegation. He and I don’t care for each other, but he knows where my loyalties lie, so he released me. So now it’s your turn, Feir. Did you recover Ceur’caelestos?”
The Modaini was too damn smart. Feir could tell that the man had put together Feir, who’d held one nearly mythical sword, with the appearance of another nearly mythical sword and found no coincidence.
Feir opened the pack. There was a note inside with directions and instructions, written awkwardly, as if the hand writing it had been writing in an unfamiliar language. Feir read it quickly and remembered bits and pieces of what had happened in the Wood. Setting the note aside, he pulled a hilt out of his pack—a hilt only, with no sword. It was a perfect replica of the one on Ceur’caelestos, and it would fit Lantano Garuwashi’s sheath perfectly. As long as the sa’ceurai didn’t draw his sword, no one would ever know.
“What is this?” Lantano Garuwashi demanded.
“It’s three months,” Feir said.
“What?” Garuwashi asked.
“That’s the time I need,” Feir said. “I’m a Maker, Garuwashi, and I received instructions in the Wood—a prophecy left by Ezra himself, centuries ago. If you prefer death, I will be your second, but if you want to live, take this hilt. Antoninus and I will go to Black Barrow and do things no one has done since Ezra’s time. I will make Ceur’caelestos for you by spring.” Or at least a damn good fake. “You can be the king you’ve always wished to be.”
Lantano Garuwashi stood for a long moment, eyes hot and then cold, trapped between his desires and his honor. He swallowed. “You swear you will bring me my ceuros?”
“I swear it.”
Lantano Garuwashi took the hilt.
Logan and Kylar rode at the head of Logan’s five hundred horse and nine hundred foot. Logan’s bodyguards rode ten paces back, giving them privacy. The sharpened-tooth simpleton Gnasher rode in his usual spot beside Logan, but he didn’t care what they might say; he just liked to be close. Kylar unrolled a worn letter.
“Whatcha got?” Logan asked.
Kylar gave him an inscrutable look, shrugged, and handed it to him. In small, tight handwriting, it said, “Hey, I thought it was my last one, too. He said I got one more for old time’s sake. He might even have been telling the truth. Be careful who you love. Don’t follow prophecies. Don’t let them use you to bring the High King. Your secret is your most important possession. You’re more important than I ever was, kid. Maybe for all those years I was just holding it for you. MAKE NO DEALS WITH THE WOLF.”
“I assume this all means something to you,” Logan said.
“Not all of it,” Kylar said.
“Who’s the Wolf?” Logan asked.
“Someone I made a deal with right before I found that letter.”
“Ouch. And the High King?”
Kylar grimaced. “That was part I was hoping you could help me with.”
Logan thought. “There was a High King who held Cenaria and several other countries maybe four hundred years ago, but Cenaria’s been held by lots of different countries in the last thousand years. Sounds like an Ursuul thing. They’re the only ones in Midcyru in a position to rule over other kings. I’d guess they’re dredging up a prophecy to give themselves legitimacy. Is the secret what I think it is?” Logan asked.
“Here we are,” Kylar said. They had circled Ezra’s Wood, looking for signs of the Lae’knaught. Kylar said it was something Logan needed to see for himself.
Fifty paces away, Logan saw a wall of dead men. Hundreds of them pressed against an invisible barrier, trying to escape the forest. In places, bodies were piled twenty feet deep as men had clambered over the dead, hoping to reach the top of the invisible wall. There was no movement. No one was merely injured. Every body had been mangled, torn with sharp claws that must have had godlike strength. Helmets had been crushed flat. Heads were simply missing. Swords had been snapped like twigs. Even the horses were dead, heads torn off, sinews ripped through the skin, some muscles snapped instead of torn.
For as far as the eye could see into the sequoys, there was only devastation, and as far as the eye could see west and east, Lae’knaught were pressed against an invisible wall. They’d tested every place they could before dying, and found it everywhere impregnable. Gore still drained from the bodies, sliding against the wall like glass, but strangely, there was no smell. The magic sealed in even the air.
Logan heard vomiting from his bodyguards.
“The villagers of Torras Bend say someone tries to go into the Wood every generation. It happens so much that their term for suicide is ‘walking into the Wood,’” Kylar said. Logan turned. Kylar’s eyes were hollow, stricken. “I did this,” Kylar said. “I lured them here so they’d fall into the Ceurans’ trap instead of you. These souls are on my tab.”
“Our scouts heard the fighting. That’s why we held back. What you did here saved fourteen hundred lives—”
“At the cost of five thousand.”
“—and maybe saved Cenaria.” Logan stopped. It wasn’t making a dent. “Captain,” he said. “Bring the men forward in groups. I want everyone to see this. I don’t want any Cenarian to ever make the mistake we almost did.”
Kaldrosa Wyn saluted, obviously glad to be given a duty to take her away from the massacre.
Logan changed tack. “Kylar, I know you think you’re a bad man, but I’ve never seen anyone who will go to the lengths you will to do what you’ve decided is right. You are an amazingly moral man, and I trust you, and you’re my best friend.” Logan looked steadily at Kylar to let him read the truth.
Kylar gave a sarcastic, you-can’t-be-serious grimace that slowly melted. The tension left his face as the truth sank in. Logan meant every word. Kylar blinked suddenly. Once, twice, and then looked away.
Oh, my friend, what have you gone through that being called moral nearly makes you weep? Or was it being called friend? Logan thought. He had been isolated for months in the Hole and found it hell. Kylar had been isolated for his entire life.
“But?” Kylar asked.
Logan heaved a deep sigh. “Not stupid either, are you?” Kylar flashed that old mischievous grin, and Logan loved him fiercely. “But you were a wetboy, Kylar, and now you’re something even more dangerous. I can’t claim that I don’t know what you might do to Terah—”
“Do you really trust me?” Kylar interrupted.
Logan paused, maybe for too long. “Yes,” he said finally.
“Then this conversation is finished.”