Ashes of Honor: An October Daye Novel

“This gets better and better,” I said, and together we tromped into the heather.

We were on a mission—the glow of the Luidaeg’s charm was a constant reminder—but it was hard not to get distracted by the sheer alien novelty of the landscape, a place as unfamiliar to me now as the Summerlands were, when I was a little girl, I could have spent hours just looking at the stars, trying to guess what the people who used to live here made of them. Instead, we had to keep walking, fording through the waist-high brush as we tried to find the place where Raj had gone to ground.

True to Tybalt’s prediction, there were thistles scattered through the heather and broom, their bright purple flowers only providing a little bit of warning before their prickles bit into my ankles or hands. “I think the landscape is out to get us,” I muttered, after the fifth stealth attack.

“Almost certainly,” said Tybalt. “A knowe, allowed to go fallow, will lash out at one who enters it. Why should a realm be any different?”

That gave me pause. When I went to claim the knowe at Goldengreen, it fought back. Not because it wanted to be left empty but because it was hurt. It had been abandoned, left alone, and it was angry. Our hollow hills are alive, in their own slow way, and just like any living thing, they have feelings. Why would a realm be any different?

Answer: it wouldn’t. “Oak and ash,” I muttered. “I hope Raj is okay.”

“As do I,” said Tybalt.

We walked faster after that. The moor seemed endless, but eventually the brush began to thin, the formerly hard-packed ground turning soft and marshy under our feet. Tall stands of bulrush made their appearance, some of them growing higher than Tybalt’s head. Finally, Tybalt stopped, looking straight at one of the patches of bulrush.

“All right,” he said. “You may emerge. Quickly, if you please; the ground is damp, and I would prefer not to sink.”

There was a moment of silence. Then the bulrushes rustled, and a boy-sized missile flung itself at us, zigging at the last moment to slam into me. If Tybalt hadn’t been standing there so calmly, I might have reacted with violence. As it was, I simply braced myself, and when Raj made impact, I wrapped my arms around him, letting him bury his face against my shoulder.

“You came you came you came,” he was saying, the words so fast and jumbled-together that they were practically a chant. “I didn’t think—I wasn’t sure—I didn’t know—”

“Hey. Hey!” I unwrapped my arms and grabbed his shoulders, pushing him out to arms’ length. He went reluctantly, but he went. That was all I could ask for. “We’ll always come. You got that? If we have to move heaven and earth—”

“Or find a route into a realm that’s been sealed for centuries,” interjected Tybalt.

“—we will,” I finished. “Do you understand me? We’ll always come for you, Raj. You’re family. We look out for our own.”

Raj nodded, eyes wide and swimming with tears. Then he ducked out from under my hands and slammed into me again, resuming his embrace. At least he didn’t start chanting again. I looked over his head to Tybalt.

“We got him,” I said.

Tybalt nodded. “Indeed. Allow him his distress. Even for a Prince, this must have been…trying.” He looked around. “I know where we are, and I doubt I would have taken this so calmly at his age.”

The idea that Tybalt was ever a teenager was almost enough to make me start laughing. Instead, I snorted and said, “Now that we have him, we should probably be getting out of here.”

Raj pushed himself back enough to look up at me. “How?” he asked, an edge of panic in his voice. “I tried and I tried, and I couldn’t find the shadows. They wouldn’t come.”