It was hard to see much of the valley below—the sky was so clotted with storm that the stars were invisible, and the moon appeared and disappeared behind the streaming clouds like a winking eye. The strangest thing, though, was that the thickest part of the storm seemed to have settled on the ground, filling the river valley with tendrils of darkness like mud in a puddle of water. But not all was darkness: at the edges and in the hidden center of this ground-hugging storm, lightning flickered. During one such flash Aelin had a momentary glimpse of a single armored rider and his stamping mount, revealed on the headland above the ford. Was that Baron Curudan wearing the antlered helmet of the great god Hern? And if it wasn’t him, then who was waiting there for the storm as though it were a living thing?
Evan stole silently forward, leaving the shelter of the stairwell for a better view. Aelin wanted to stop him, but dared not make a sound. Lightning raced along the top of the storm like a stone skipped on a lake’s smooth surface. The lone rider did not move, but waited as the darkness seethed and loomed and at last, closed him in.
“Yes, there is a man!” shouted Samreas as he watched, his voice barely audible above the sharp whining of the wind. “Ah, by Murhagh’s bloody wounds, is it any wonder that King Hugh loves him? Curudan!” he yelled, waving his fist in the air. “Hail to the baron, master of the Stags!”
Aelin could only stare, dumbfounded. What was going on here? Had the Silver Stags all lost their minds? He turned to Evan to suggest a tactical retreat, but realized after a dumbstruck second that it was not Evan at all, but one of the Silver Stags who had just come out of the stairwell. For a moment Aelin and the Stag only gaped at one another, then Curudan’s man shoved hard against Aelin’s chest, sending him stumbling back against the battlement so that for a moment he actually feared he might fall over into the swirling, windy black.
“Look!” cried Evan, who had not realized what had happened. He waved his hand excitedly and whispered loudly again. “Those are more than clouds! There are men in that storm . . . Men or demons!”
“Trespassers!” shouted the Stag who had shoved Aelin, loud enough to be heard above the wind. “The strangers are here!”
“Strangers!” Even as he struggled with the soldier, Aelin felt a swift flush of rage. “This is Hernystir’s tower—the High Throne’s border station! It is you and Curudan who are strangers and criminals!”
The rest of the Stags had turned at the soldier’s cry and now came swarming back across the gallery. Aelin still held his knife, but he let them grapple him and drag him down without shedding any blood. They were the king’s guard, after all, apparently on the king’s orders: if he fought back, they had every right to kill him.
“Evan,” he called. “Do not resist.”
But the young soldier hardly seemed to be listening. A Stag had grabbed each of his arms, but Evan still stared out into the chaos at the mouth of the valley, his eyes wide with astonishment and wonder. “There are silver men in the storm!” he cried. “Were my parents wrong to deny the old gods? By all that is holy, I can see them! I think they are our ancestors, Sir Aelin! They are so tall, so fair! It must be Great Hern and his hunters!”
But Aelin had listened carefully to his great-uncle Eolair’s stories of the Storm King’s war. He remembered that when the Sithi had come to Hernysadharc, the king’s daughter had thought they were the gods come to save the Hernystiri people. He felt sure, though, that these creatures hiding in the storm were not the Sithi but their white-skinned, dark-hearted cousins from the north, being allowed to cross Hernystiri land as though they were old allies.
Something more than ordinary treason is going on here, he realized, and in that moment Aelin wished that he had fought to the death. Because it was the Sithi’s deadly cousins that the baron was welcoming onto the lands of mortals.
The Norns had come to Hernystir.
The song was so powerful that Viyeki found himself lost in it, helpless as a mariner cast from his ship and clinging to a floating spar. The singing seemed to knit together earth and sky into a single great tunnel of darkness, and hours and miles passed in mere flickering, lightning-licked moments as the world rolled away beneath their horse’s hooves. Outside of the storm-song it might have been deepest night or bright day, but inside the song Viyeki saw only midnight, heard only the wail of the winds. Even the stars, which should have been constant when he could see them through the tumult of the storm, turned into glowing snail trails in the sky, smeared tracks of light that ran from horizon to horizon.
The spellmakers from the Order of Song did not cease their music even when their horses stumbled from the pace, or when the great wagons of Viyeki’s builders toiled up narrow passes through the hills, and wove their melodies with such strength that their wordless song seemed to outshout the storm they had called down.
But still, Viyeki thought wildly, no matter how great the power of their song, we cannot hope to cross the lands of mortals without anyone seeing us, even in these mostly deserted lands. And what will happen when they do? When this invasion of mortal lands is known, it must be considered a declaration of war, and this time we may not survive the mortals’ anger and their far, far greater numbers.
Viyeki had not forgotten the days after the War of Return’s disastrous ending and the desperate defense of the Nakkiga Gate. The survival of his entire race had hung on the courageous sacrifice of a few hundred of his people—such a small number, yet at that moment it had seemed so large. As he and his workers from the Order of Builders had struggled to shore up the defenses while the mortals beat against the gates, he had felt sure he was living through the last moments of his people. Even in the aftermath, after the mountain fell, the gates were sealed, and the mortals retreated, it had seemed unlikely that the Hikeda’ya would ever again be more than a small, doomed tribe, a shadow of their former greatness that would wither away at last.
Why have the queen and Akhenabi set this in motion? How do they think to cause anything but the final destruction of our people?
Even as the heretical questions came to him, the music of the Singers changed tone. The riders slowed, and Viyeki, without conscious thought at first, slowed with them. He felt a superstitious flutter in his heart, the certainty of a child who had done something bad and could not escape from the knowledge of it.
The queen heard me! She heard my blasphemy and my weakness.
And just as quickly, another thought shouldered its way into his mind, the stern voices of his teachers and elders: of course Queen Utuk’ku must know what she was doing. She was the great mother of the Hikeda’ya and her every thought was for her people’s safety. She of all living things had seen the Garden and knew what had been lost. Who was Viyeki to question her? A hundred High Magisters had ruled the House of Walls since Utuk’ku had first come to this land—Viyeki himself had recited the name of every one of them at his investiture. He was still but a child compared to his immortal queen.
His heart pained him as though he had been stabbed. Forgive me, great mistress. Forgive me, Mother of All.
The great company now slowed and halted, but the storm did not dissipate. Instead it surrounded them on all sides, growling with thunder. In a sudden new flare of lightning Viyeki could see his Builders waiting, their eyes wide but their faces rigid as masks, so that they might have been mummers at the Ceremony of the Lost Garden, acting out an ancient tragedy. The Singers still made their music, but it was muted now, as though all the riders waited in the eye of a storm.
Time passed, but nothing changed. If they had reached their destination, Viyeki wondered, why were they not making camp? If something unforeseen had stopped them, like the arrival of mortal warriors, why did he hear no sound of conflict?
He rode forward against the stiff wind until he found Buyo, the leader of the Sacrifices. “Commander, tell me what is happening,” he demanded. “Why have we stopped?”
The officer bowed his head. “High Magister Viyeki. Your pardon, great one, but we have made a promise for the right to cross these lands, and must fulfill it.”
“A promise?” Viyeki was growing tired of the pretense that he was in any way leading this expedition. “I do not understand.”
“Nor do I, great lord. But that is all I know.” Again, Buyo bowed his head, as if offering it for the ax.
Many Great Years earlier, when Viyeki was young, a Magister of one of the great houses could have had even an important officer like Buyo killed for such a vague, unsatisfying answer and no one would have thought it either unusual or unjustified. Viyeki was more open to change than many of his caste, but at the moment he could not help a nostalgic yearning for those bygone days. “How may I learn more?”
“Host Singer Sogeyu will be back soon, I am told.” Buyo made a gesture toward the squall of rain and wind to the southwest. “She will doubtless answer all your questions, great lord.”
Viyeki had no choice. To complain or protest would be to show himself weak, and weakness was like a fracture in rock: eventually, it would lead to collapse. He nodded. “I will wait.”
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