The Starless Crown, page 52
As they gathered there, Shiya tried to continue, but Rhaif stopped her with a touch on her arm. She obeyed him, or maybe she recognized that she needed to gather her strength before beginning that long climb.
Xan took up a post under the arch.
Jace leaned toward Nyx and voiced his earlier concern. “Surely we’re not going up there.”
Xan heard him. “No.” Her gaze fixed on Jace, then swept across the group. “It’s death to climb these sacred stairs. Only those with the gift of bridle-song have any hope of returning.”
Jace sighed with relief. “Thank the Mother…”
Kanthe looked as pleased. “Then we can hole up down here while we wait. Try to signal the Sparrowhawk.” He shifted his bow off his shoulder. “Hopefully all of the legion’s eyes are still on Havensfayre and not looking this way.”
Nyx touched the prince’s arm, warning him to hold off for now.
Xan continued, “The Kethra’kai will assist Shiya during the last steps of her journey. But there are three among you who are welcome to come, who are perhaps fated to this path. Three who bear the gift of bridle-song.”
Rhaif pushed forward. “If Shiya is going up there, so am I. I didn’t cross half the Crown to abandon her here. And as you said, there is some whisper of bridle-song in me.”
Xan bowed her head in gratitude. When the elder lifted her eyes again, her gaze fell upon Nyx. Nyx had been expecting as much and stepped forward.
Both Jace and Kanthe grabbed her arms on either side.
Jace firmed his grip. “I won’t let you go.”
Kanthe agreed. “If I let anything happen to you, a certain knight will have my head. And I have enough people trying to kill me.”
She didn’t have to fight herself free. Aamon stepped around them, perhaps sensing her desire, and bared his teeth at the two. They quickly let her go.
She silently thanked them both with a touch. “This is my path. You both know it.”
She read the reluctant knowledge in their faces.
“Then we’ll go, too,” Jace insisted, straightening and glancing to Kanthe for support.
Nyx shook her head. She trusted Xan’s knowledge and warning. “That’s neither of your paths.”
“Then just come back,” Jace pleaded. “You have to come back.”
Kanthe sighed and glanced at the stone homes. “We’ll wait for you here. Maybe invite a certain knight to join us while you’re away.”
With the matter settled, Nyx headed to the archway. Aamon padded alongside her, glaring all around, challenging anyone to stop him.
As she joined Shiya and Rhaif, Xan nodded her approval, then stared across the group. “As to the third…”
Nyx studied those remaining. Who else bears the gift of bridle-song?
Xan’s gaze settled on someone Nyx would least suspect of such a talent.
Frell stiffened. The alchymist looked shocked and dismayed, maybe even offended. “Me?”
Xan simply stared.
He scoffed loudly. “Impossible.”
Xan spoke, as if to a child. “I hear faint chords rising from you. Perhaps you’ve grown deaf to it, putting so much stock in what’s here.” She touched her fingertips to her brow, then lowered her palm to her chest. “Rather than what lies here.”
Frell did not look convinced.
Kanthe nudged his former mentor with an elbow. “You did tolerate me. That says you do have a heart in there somewhere.”
Xan kept her gaze on the alchymist. She lifted her staff and traced a finger down the shells adorning her cane. “Consider this. What was it that first drew your interest into the mysteries of the moon, a study that led to your discovery of the doom ahead?”
Frell frowned. “Pure scholarly interest, that’s all.”
Still, Nyx heard doubt growing in his voice, in the crinkle between his brows. She could see him reevaluating his entire life in that moment.
“I was told you spent many years at the Cloistery,” Xan said. “Like Nyx. In the shadow of The Fist, home to the bats who stir the air with their warnings. I believe, somewhere deep inside you, you heard their fears. It drove you to your later studies, to seek answers to those mysteries.”
Frell’s eyes grew wider, a hand drifted to his chest.
Xan turned to the stairs. “Moonfall swiftly approaches. Any hope for the future lies up there.”
Frell took a step forward, then another, unable to resist.
Nyx searched the steps, remembering her dream of a fiery mountaintop, the clash of war engines, and the moon crashing toward the Urth. She had been so focused on struggling to survive these past days that she had forgotten the larger threat that had drawn them all here.
She kept a hand on Aamon’s flank, feeling the silent growl vibrating in his chest. So much blood had been spilled to bring her to these steps. She had no choice but to follow this through to the end.
If there are any answers up there, I must find them.
50
KANTHE WATCHED THE departing group climb the steep stairs. He kept vigil until they disappeared, one after the other, into the clouds.
Jace stood next to him, sagging as Nyx vanished away. “What can they hope to find up there?” he muttered.
Pratik, the Klashean alchymist, offered one explanation. “It’s said there is an ancient stone circle atop the Shrouds. The Northern Henge. Its presence was perhaps used to derive the name Dalalæða, which in the Elder tongue means deathly stones.”
Kanthe gave the man a sidelong glance. “That’s certainly reassuring.”
Jace paled. “I grew up in the Shield Islands. We have a henge down there, too.”
Pratik nodded. “The Southern Henge.”
“I’ve been to it,” Jace said. “It’s nothing but a ring of giant mossy slabs, a few of which had been knocked over ages ago. It sits in a sprawling heather where we graze our sheep. There’s nothing special about it.”
Pratik disagreed. “According to several scholars at the House of Wisdom, your henge is believed to have astronomical significance. Though in truth, no one can quite discern the meaning behind their orientation.”
“Do you know who placed those stones?” Kanthe asked. He remembered Xan’s assertion that the Shrouds were Shiya’s home. He pictured a bronze battalion hauling huge boulders over their heads and stamping them into those heathers.
Pratik shrugged. “Those stones date to the Forsaken Ages, so no one truly knows.”
Jace returned his attention to the stairs. His face was pinched with even more worry.
Ahead, Llyra crossed toward them. Her expression was dark and irritated. Earlier, Kanthe had overheard her last words to Rhaif as she pointed at the bronze statue: Don’t lose her.
Kanthe suspected the woman’s concern was not about Shiya’s well-being, but about her worth. Llyra had eyed Shiya like a ranchholder judging a prized ox, calculating how much gold all that bronze might fetch if it were melted down.
She joined them, trailed by a Kethra’kai scout who had been left with them, a wiry young man named Seyrl. She glanced around the group. From the sour set to her eyes, she was not impressed with what she saw.
“Prince Kanthe.” The use of his title sounded mocking. “What do you propose we do now? I heard you mention something about sending a signal.”
He nodded and stared back at the alder forest. “Hopefully, with luck, we might have a means of escaping this place, if I can lure them here.”
He turned from the cliff and headed to a flat rock. He laid his bow atop it and fished a pair of arrows from his quiver. He undid the ties of an oilskin satchel secured to his belt and removed two eggs of waxed leather. They were packed with alchymical powder and had threads soaked in flashburn draping from them. The pirate Darant had supplied them to Kanthe back on the Sparrowhawk.
He carefully tied an egg to each of his arrows, just behind their bone tips.
Jace stood next to him, staring up at the mists. “When will you launch them?”
Kanthe kept working. “As soon as I’m confident Nyx and the others are off those stairs and into the other section of copper tunnel. I don’t want to risk our signal drawing the eye of the enemy this way, at least not until those cliffs are empty.”
He secured another of the powder-eggs to an arrow. He planned to shoot one above the mists and another below it. Each would burst into a small cloud of blue smoke. He had to hope the legion’s forces continued to focus on Havensfayre. If not, he had to pray such a signal would be dismissed as the mere billow from a campfire.
Still, more than anything, he needed this signal to catch the sharp eye of the Sparrowhawk.
That is, if the ship is still out there.
As he worked, he glanced back to the stairs. He had consulted with Xan before the group left. She had told him the tunnel overhead lay the same distance above the mists as below them. Knowing this, he had been keeping rough track of the passage of time.
He was as anxious as Jace to fire off his signal, but he knew he had to hold off.
It’s far too soon.
He glanced back to the cliff.
Jace had already returned his attention in the same direction. Kanthe remembered the journeyman’s pleading words to Nyx.
You have to come back.
Kanthe concurred. It had pained him to see her climb those stairs, far more than he would ever admit. Lately, he had to keep reminding himself that Nyx could be his half-sister. Still, he couldn’t entirely quash down certain feelings that had begun to warm through him, no matter how much cold water he kept dowsing atop them.
He glanced to Jace. He remembered how he had misjudged the journeyman, believing him to be craven and soft. But now, as he watched Jace staring up, he read the full depth of the man’s heart. It shone in his face for all to see, unabashed and unafraid.
Kanthe turned away.
If only I could be so bold.
* * *
NYX SQUINTED IN the bright sunshine. She shaded her eyes against the sting of radiance as they climbed free of the foggy damp mists and out onto the stretch of steps baked by the heat of the Father Above.
While she appreciated the dry stone underfoot, the air smelled of smoke and fire. A glance to her left revealed a black stain in the white sea. It swirled in a maelstrom around a smoky pillar that climbed high into the sky.
She had to look away. She studied the wall next to her as she climbed. The dark rock showed layers of gray strata, poking with bits of shell, as if marking the bed of an ancient sea. An image flashed of this same wall, from when Xan had sung to her upon their first meeting. She reached and touched one of those shells, wondering if this was the source of the decoration along the elder’s staff, a row of shells sculpted to show the turning of the moon.
She dropped her hand, reminded of why they were ascending toward the Shrouds.
Moonfall …
She searched up the steps to where Xan led them, assisted and protected by one of the scouts. Three tribeswomen followed, with Shiya climbing behind them and Rhaif at the bronze woman’s heels.
Nyx kept a few steps back, still unsure of the mystery shining ahead of her. Once in the sunlight, the sheen of the woman’s bronze had quickly warmed to brighter shades of gold and copper. Shiya still limped on a damaged leg, but she moved more fluidly now, with a strength that grew with every step. Her stiff shell appeared to melt under the sun into something flowing and softer. Even the fall of her bronze hair shifted into strands that moved with the breezes washing up the cliff face.
Rhaif’s tense shoulders similarly relaxed, as if he were tuned to some song only he could hear, one that reassured him of Shiya’s recovery.
“She is wondrous, is she not?” Frell said behind her. He was last in line, except for Aamon, who trailed them all. “No wonder that Iflelen Wryth pursues her.”
Nyx glanced off to the warship circling that smoky maelstrom. It appeared to be the same one that had rained death and fire atop them. She had no doubt the accursed Shrive was over there.
She turned away, fearful that her attention might draw the warship’s eye.
She hurried after Rhaif. They dared not be on these stairs any longer than necessary, especially with the bronze figure blazing in the sunlight. Xan seemed to understand this and set a harder pace upward.
Nyx kept glancing warily at the massive wyndship, but it continued its slow swing around that black sea, showing no sign of moving this way. Finally, the group reached the mouth of the copper tunnel, torn and shredded like its counterpart below. They rushed out of the sun and into the shelter of its dark interior.
The sudden darkness blinded them all. Still, the Kethra’kai scout held off removing the shade of his lamp until they were well into the tunnel. It took until then for Nyx to realize that the copper walls no longer glowed beneath Shiya’s steps.
Frell noted it, too. “This tunnel must lack the energies of the other. Mayhap the first one still draws strength from where it’s rooted at the base of Oldenmast, leaching energies from the generous tree. But this tunnel, cleaved from that wellspring long ago, remains as inert as any dull metal.”
Nyx believed the alchymist, but it raised a worry. What if everything up here was just as dead and lifeless?
Maybe all of this will be for naught.
Still, they had no choice but to continue. She held out one hope, one indication that something might still be atop the Shrouds.
“Pethryn Tol,” Nyx whispered over to Frell. “The Kethra’kai send their youths up here, to test them. Why do you think that might be?”
“I’ve read treatises about it, but after Xan’s earlier warning, I think they’re all wrong.”
She glanced back, but the alchymist’s face was shadowed by her body. “What do you mean?”
“Pethryn Tol means listening heart. Xan told us that only those with bridle-song could safely traverse the Shrouds. I wonder if listening heart is a reference to bridle-song. If so, it suggests an ancient nature to this talent, one that seems rooted in the blood of the tribes who live here.”
Nyx pressed a palm atop her chest. Pethryn Tol. She remembered how she had felt when she sang. To her, listening heart sounded right.
“This ritual,” Frell continued. “Each Kethra’kai must undergo it to be accepted into the tribe. I wonder if that custom keeps bridle-song rich in their blood. Those born too weak or without it would be culled by this journey. Only those with strong talent would return and add their seed to the tribe.”
Nyx balked at such an explanation. It sounded unnecessarily cruel.
Frell warmed to this idea. “Perhaps the tribe uses the Shrouds as the stone upon which they sharpen their talents and keep it strong.”
Nyx lowered her hand from between her breasts. “But I have no tie to the Kethra’kai.”
At least, not that I know of, she had to admit to herself.
She looked back at Aamon. Did Graylin’s connection to the two vargr indicate some nascent talent? She had felt nothing from him when she had sung to his brothers. Then again, she had sensed no inkling from Frell. And Graylin might not even be her father. But what of my mother? Had her tongueless state as a pleasure serf forever silenced her gift?
Nyx shook her head, unable to untangle such a knot.
Frell offered another possibility, one unique to her. “Perhaps your infancy spent with the Mýr bats—bathed in their cries, fed on their milk—instilled such a gift into you. Maybe you’re something different, wholly new, yet connected to the tribe’s ancient bridle-song.”
“Jar’wren…” she mumbled, remembering something Xan had said when Nyx was being examined by the tribeswomen.
Frell shuffled closer. “That’s the Kethra name for the Mýr bats.”
Nyx nodded. “Xan claims the bats were touched by the old gods long ago. She said none of her people have ever been able to sing to the bats.”
“But you can.”
Nyx pictured Bashaliia winging through the air, whistling down at her. She could still feel him nestled in the wagon with her. He seemed too fragile to serve as a vessel for the old gods.
She gazed over at Shiya, her bronze form reflecting the lamplight like a torch. This living statue was also tied to the old gods in some manner.
That I can believe.
With no way of speculating further, the group continued in silence. A short time later, light appeared ahead, far quicker than she had expected. This tunnel must be no longer than an eighth of a league.
A distant squawking echoed to them, along with the patter of what sounded like rain on leaves. They hurried the last of the way toward the dim sunlight. Upon reaching it, the others filed out ahead of her, through an exit mangled and torn. She pictured this tunnel being ripped from the ground like the copper root of a foul weed.
After she ducked out, she straightened to face a dark jungle, a forest far mistier than Cloudreach. Every leaf and thorn dripped. The air here was so rich and fecund that she feared it would seed into her lungs, until she sprouted branches and became part of it.
From the jungle’s depths, life hummed, buzzed, and sang darkly. Something screamed far in the forest, as if warning them away, but it wasn’t necessary.
Nyx backed a step.
Ahead, bones were strewn across the forest floor. Skulls lay crooked or shattered, white limbs tangled and broken. Ribs formed cages for fat frogs that croaked and stared with wet eyes. Dark emerald moss grew over the deeper levels, as if the jungle were trying to swallow away what it had already digested.
Aamon slunk up next to her, his head low, his hackles high.
Nyx understood.
No one should trespass here.
51
KANTHE SAT ON the flat rock next to his line of arrows, each neatly tied to a powder-filled egg. He had prepared six, so he could shoot three volleys if necessary. He planned on spacing them out once every bell.
With his work done, anxiety had set in and grew with every breath.
Just a little longer …
He glanced over to Pratik, who stood a few steps away, having diligently watched over his work.
Needing a distraction, Kanthe nodded to the man. He had seldom had a chance to question a Chaaen up close, especially on a matter that always piqued his curiosity, one that concerned a unique Klashean custom. “So, Pratik, you truly have no bollocks? Do you ever miss them?”
