Seeing the traitors advance, the king’s warlords chanted Dagrun’s name, their soldiers leveled their blades and set their shields in a ring. The turncoats pressed in around them, slaves and servants leaping over one another, eager for blood, for revenge, for a chance to strike at the false king’s soldiers. The yelling and the clinking of blades, the roar of the battle was all around her. Kepi fought from within the ring, thrusting her sword between her soldiers’ shields, doing her best to hold back the rebels, but already she knew what was coming next. The circle would not hold. When the first soldier fell, the traitors would pierce the ring. They would come for her first. She was the one they wanted. So she waited for their attack, pacing in a tight circle, balancing on her toes, ready for the fight. Get it over with, she thought. This waiting is worse than dying.
The first strike came from behind Kepi. The soldier fell to his knees. The circle broke. Something ragged cut her skin, a blade cleaved her leather bracer. This is it. The rebels were all around her. She waited for the final blow, but it did not come.
Instead, a piercing shriek rattled the very room in which she stood. All eyes bent toward the ceiling. The cry came again and Kepi recognized it. She had heard it in the Cragwood and on her journey to Rifka, in the yard outside her chamber and on the post wall of the caer. It was the kite. Through the Wind’s Eye, she watched it wheel amid the distant treetops, through the cool and the damp. It soared through the great Eye and circled the Kiteperch. Smaller birds followed behind it. One after another, the birds of the Gray Wood flooded through the Eye. They filled the air with the furious beating of wings, with terrible shrieks. Amid the ruckus, a soldier halted his blade, midstrike while another let down his shield. A slave froze in place, his dagger trembling before a soldier’s brow. The servant girls put down their knives and the stable boys their pitchforks. One by one, then two at a time, both sides stopped what they were doing and watched in awe as the kite circled the room, as the birds of the Gray Wood flew through the Wind’s Eye.
The sound they made was the voice of the ancient forest. It was the voice of Llyr. The kite cried out to the people of Feren, saying halt, stay your hand, stop.
And they did stop.
The soldiers and slaves threw down their weapons. The cooks and the physicians, the scullery girls and manservants, dropped whatever they held. All of them gawked as the Kiteperch shivered and swayed, as the birds of the forest alighted upon its limbs.
The slaves and servants reversed their attack, retreating across the chamber, leaving Kepi all alone. She stood in a clearing and held out her arm, as she had done before, in the yard—when Dagrun was still king. You came to my aid again, she thought, her eyes on the kite. You’ve been following me since that night in the Cragwood.
The kite cried out as it caught hold of her leather-covered wrist. It stretched its wings once, gave another cry, and settled on her arm. Kepi touched its head. Why did you not come to me earlier? Already, Kepi knew the answer.
It was Dagrun, the false king. The kite would not come if the false king sat on the throne. The king of the Ferens had not suffered the Waking Rite, but she had. She had fought for her life in the Cragwood—she’d been fighting for it for years.
Kepi stumbled to the center of the Chathair and stood in the shadow of the great Kiteperch. The tree shivered, its limbs alive with movement. Birds streamed through the Wind’s Eye, one after another they landed upon the branches of the Kiteperch, the hall echoing with their grisly cries. The people of Feren had revolted because Dagrun was not a Kitelord, and he had not suffered the Waking Rite. Dagrun had given them cause to rebel, and they had done it. But the kite had returned to Rifka. It had come to the queen. The great gray-winged beast cawed, but not to Kepi: The kite sang to the crowd, its eyes black and baleful. It made a sound that shook the earth beneath her feet and made the Kiteperch tremble. It spoke with the voice of Llyr, crying in a language that spoke to the people’s deepest memories, to their instincts and the minds of their ancestors. It bellowed, and its cry made those closest to her kneel.
All around Kepi the people stooped to their hands and knees. First the slaves bowed, then the servants of the house, the men and women who tended the great caer. Then the soldiers fell to one knee, one after another up the ranks, until only the warlords of Feren were left standing on one side of the Chathair, while Gallach stood alone on the other.
The gray bird cried again. It gave a loud call and then another, a string of raucous, babbling sounds that bounded through the Chathair, each cry breaking upon the walls before splitting into an even more dense chorus of echoes. The smaller birds echoed the larger, they shrieked and squawked, the cries building. They sang the Dawn Chorus, the hymn of the kite, the song that heralded the dawning of a new rule, and Kepi sang it with them. She howled till her lungs were raw.
Then she said, “Quiet.” And the birds ceased their crying.
At her foot, the warlords bowed, and in a hushed silence Gallach bent the knee and acknowledged Kepi, the Kitelord and queen of the Gray Wood.
THE VOICE IN THE STONE
The boy woke and pulled himself up, unsteady on his feet. There was dust on his face, sand gathering at the corners of his eyes. His head throbbed and his fingers were stiff.
How long have I been here?
There was a thick layer of dust on his clothes. In the place where he had rested, his silhouette was outlined in the dust.
I must have been out for a long time.
The boy stumbled forward, nearly colliding with one of the twelve obsidian statues. When he saw them, kneeling before him, arrayed in a circle, his memories flooded back to him.
He recalled the black-sand beach, and the time he had spent at sea. He recalled his march to the Dromus, and the way the Gate of Coronal had rocked on its hinges. Along with a host of aged fishermen and young boys, he had traveled from Scargill, in the Stone Reefs of the Wyrre, to the mainland and the black-sand beaches of Sola. He’d eaten and drank and marched with the rest of the Scargill fishers, but he was not one of them. He was a priest, not a fisherman. He had only needed their ship, a means to reach Sola with his oilskin sack and the translated symbols it held. He had journeyed to Desouk and met the Mother Priestess. He recalled the grain silo and the curious map on the chamber ceiling. It had led them here, as he had somehow known it would, to the Shambles, to this very place. The throne room of the dead Soleri.
I am Nollin Odine.
The taste of Sarra’s poison still lingered on his tongue, burning when he swallowed. I died in this place. I drank poison and I died.
But I am no longer dead.
How? he wondered, his gaze settling on the twelve statues. Could it be? Could they have saved him? Noll had dedicated his life to the study of the Soleri. From his earliest memory, the old gods had fascinated him. Noll had felt a calling. He had given his life to the study of the Soleri and now he stood before them. The last pilgrim come to find the dead gods of Sola. It was said that Mithra’s true followers would share the sun’s fate, that they would rise again. Is that what happened? Did they give me life just as they once gave life to the desert?
“I must know,” he said aloud, his voice echoing in the darkness.
“Did you wake my still heart? Did you bring me back to life? Give me a sign. Let me know that you yet live, that your power is real. That you are more than just statues.”