Kingdom of Ash
Page 122
Dorian knew precisely what sort of uses the man would have. He lifted supplicating hands. “I am your servant, milord.”
Erawan stared at him for long heartbeats. Then he said, “Go.”
Dorian straightened, letting Erawan stride a few more feet toward the tower. The blank-faced guards posted at its door stepped aside as he approached.
“Do you truly hate them?” Dorian blurted.
Erawan half-turned toward him.
Dorian asked, “The humans. Aelin Galathynius. Dorian Havilliard. All of them. Do you truly hate them?” Why do you make us suffer so greatly?
Erawan’s golden eyes guttered. “They would keep me from my brothers,” he said. “I will let nothing stand in the way of my reunion with them.”
“Surely there might be another way to reunite you. Without such a great war.”
Erawan’s stare swept over him, and Dorian held still, willing his scent to remain unremarkable, the shift to keep its form. “Where would the fun be in that?” the Valg king asked, and turned back toward the hall.
“Did the former King of Adarlan ask such questions?” The words broke from him.
Erawan again paused. “He was not so faithful a servant as you might believe. And look what it cost him.”
“He fought you.” Not quite a question.
“He never bowed. Not completely.” Dorian was stunned enough that he opened his mouth. But Erawan began walking again and said without looking back, “You ask many questions, Vernon. A great many questions. I find them tiresome.”
Dorian bowed, even with Erawan’s back to him. But the Valg king continued on, opening the tower door to reveal a lightless interior, and shut it behind him.
A clock chimed midnight, off-kilter and odious, and Dorian strode back down the hall, finding another route to Maeve’s chambers. A quick shift in a shadowed alcove had him scuttling along the floor again, his mouse’s eyes seeing well enough in the dark.
Only embers remained in the fireplace when he slid beneath the door.
In the dark, Maeve said from the bed, “You are a fool.”
Dorian shifted again, back into his own body. “For what?”
“I know where you went. Who you sought.” Her voice slithered through the darkness. “You are a fool.” When he didn’t reply, she asked, “Did you plan to kill him?”
“I don’t know.”
“You couldn’t face him and live.” Casual, stark words. Dorian didn’t need to touch Damaris to know they were true. “He would have put another collar around your throat.”
“I know.” Perhaps he should have learned where the Valg king kept them and destroyed the cache.
“This alliance shall not work if you are sneaking off and acting like a reckless boy,” Maeve hissed.
“I know,” he repeated, the words hollow.
Maeve sighed when he didn’t say more. “Did you at least find what you were seeking?”
Dorian lay down before the fire, curling an arm beneath his head. “No.”
CHAPTER 72
From a distance, the Ferian Gap did not look like the outpost for a good number of Morath’s aerial legion.
Nor did it look, Nesryn decided, like it had been breeding wyverns for years.
She supposed that the lack of any obvious signs of a Valg king’s presence was part of why it had remained secret for so long.
Sailing closer to the towering twin peaks that flanked either side—the Northern Fang on one, the Omega on the other—and separated the White Fangs from the Ruhnn Mountains, Nesryn could barely make out the structures built into either one. Like the Eridun aerie, and yet not at all. The Eridun’s mountain home was full of motion and life. What had been built in the Gap, connected by a stone bridge near its top, was silent. Cold and bleak.
Snow half blinded Nesryn, but Salkhi swept toward the peaks, staying high. Borte and Arcas came in from the north, little more than dark shadows amid the whipping white.
Far behind them, out in the valley plain beyond the Gap, one half of their army waited, the ruks with them. Waited for Nesryn and Borte, along with the other scouts who had gone out, to report back that the time was ripe to attack. They’d made the river crossing under cover of darkness last night, and those the ruks could not carry had been brought over on boats.
A precarious position to be in, on that plain before the Gap. The Avery forked at their backs, effectively hemming them in. Much of it had been frozen, but not nearly thick enough to risk crossing on foot. Should this battle go poorly, there would be nowhere to run.
Nesryn nudged Salkhi, coming around the Northern Fang from the southern side. Far below, the whirling snows cleared enough to reveal what seemed to be a back gate into the mountain. No sign of sentries or any wyverns.
Perhaps the weather had driven them all inside.
She glanced southward, into the Fangs. But there was no sign of the second half of their army, marching north through the peaks themselves to come at the Gap from the western entrance. A far more treacherous journey than the one they’d made.
But if they timed it right, if they drew out the host in the Gap onto the plain just before the others arrived from the west, they might crush Morath’s forces between them. And that was without the unleashed power of Aelin Galathynius. And her consort and court.
Salkhi arced around the Northern Fang. Distantly, Nesryn could make out Borte doing the same around the Omega. But there was no sign of their enemy.
And when Nesryn and Borte did another pass through the Ferian Gap, even going so far as to soar between the two peaks, they found no sign, either.
As if the enemy had vanished.
The White Fangs were utterly unforgiving.
The wild men who led them kept the mountains from being fatal, knowing which passes might be wiped out by snow, which might have an unsteady ice shelf, which were too open to any eyes flying overhead. Even with the army trailing behind, Chaol marveled at the speed of their travel, at how, after three days, they cleared the mountains themselves and stepped onto the flat, snow-blasted western plains beyond.
He’d never set foot in the territory, though it was technically his. The official border of Adarlan claimed the plains past the Fangs for a good distance before they yielded to the unnamed territories of the Wastes. But it still felt like the Wastes, eerily quiet and sprawling, a strange expanse that stretched, unbreaking, to the horizon.
Even the stoic khaganate warriors did not look too long toward the Wastes at their left as they rode northward. At night, they huddled closer to their fires.
All of them did. Yrene clung a bit tighter at night, whispering about the strangeness of the land, its hollow silence. As if the land itself does not sing, she’d said a few times now, shuddering as she did.
A far better place, Chaol thought as they rode northward, skirting the edge of the Fangs on their right, for Erawan to make his empire. Hell, they might have given it to him if he’d set up his fortress deep on the plain and kept to it.
“We’re a day out from the Gap,” one of the wild men—Kai—said to Chaol as they rode through an unusually sunny morning. “We’ll camp south of the Northern Fang tonight, and tomorrow morning’s march will take us into the Gap itself.”
There was another reason the wild men had allied with them, beyond the territory they stood to gain. Witches had hunted their kind this spring—entire clans and camps left in bloody ribbons. Many had been reduced to cinders, and the few survivors had whispered of a dark-haired woman with unholy power. Chaol was willing to bet it had been Kaltain, but had not told the wild men that particular threat, at least, had been erased. Or had incinerated herself in the end.
It wouldn’t matter to them anyway. Of the two hundred or so wild men who had joined their army since they’d left Anielle, all had come to the Ferian Gap to extract vengeance on the witches. On Morath. Chaol refrained from mentioning that he himself had killed one of their kind almost a year ago.
It might as well have been a decade ago, for all that had happened since he’d killed Cain during his duel with Aelin. Yulemas was still weeks away—if they survived long enough to celebrate it.
Chaol said to the slim, bearded man, who made up for his lack of his clansmen’s traditional bulk with quick wit and sharp eyes, “Is there a place that might hide an army this large tonight?”
Erawan stared at him for long heartbeats. Then he said, “Go.”
Dorian straightened, letting Erawan stride a few more feet toward the tower. The blank-faced guards posted at its door stepped aside as he approached.
“Do you truly hate them?” Dorian blurted.
Erawan half-turned toward him.
Dorian asked, “The humans. Aelin Galathynius. Dorian Havilliard. All of them. Do you truly hate them?” Why do you make us suffer so greatly?
Erawan’s golden eyes guttered. “They would keep me from my brothers,” he said. “I will let nothing stand in the way of my reunion with them.”
“Surely there might be another way to reunite you. Without such a great war.”
Erawan’s stare swept over him, and Dorian held still, willing his scent to remain unremarkable, the shift to keep its form. “Where would the fun be in that?” the Valg king asked, and turned back toward the hall.
“Did the former King of Adarlan ask such questions?” The words broke from him.
Erawan again paused. “He was not so faithful a servant as you might believe. And look what it cost him.”
“He fought you.” Not quite a question.
“He never bowed. Not completely.” Dorian was stunned enough that he opened his mouth. But Erawan began walking again and said without looking back, “You ask many questions, Vernon. A great many questions. I find them tiresome.”
Dorian bowed, even with Erawan’s back to him. But the Valg king continued on, opening the tower door to reveal a lightless interior, and shut it behind him.
A clock chimed midnight, off-kilter and odious, and Dorian strode back down the hall, finding another route to Maeve’s chambers. A quick shift in a shadowed alcove had him scuttling along the floor again, his mouse’s eyes seeing well enough in the dark.
Only embers remained in the fireplace when he slid beneath the door.
In the dark, Maeve said from the bed, “You are a fool.”
Dorian shifted again, back into his own body. “For what?”
“I know where you went. Who you sought.” Her voice slithered through the darkness. “You are a fool.” When he didn’t reply, she asked, “Did you plan to kill him?”
“I don’t know.”
“You couldn’t face him and live.” Casual, stark words. Dorian didn’t need to touch Damaris to know they were true. “He would have put another collar around your throat.”
“I know.” Perhaps he should have learned where the Valg king kept them and destroyed the cache.
“This alliance shall not work if you are sneaking off and acting like a reckless boy,” Maeve hissed.
“I know,” he repeated, the words hollow.
Maeve sighed when he didn’t say more. “Did you at least find what you were seeking?”
Dorian lay down before the fire, curling an arm beneath his head. “No.”
CHAPTER 72
From a distance, the Ferian Gap did not look like the outpost for a good number of Morath’s aerial legion.
Nor did it look, Nesryn decided, like it had been breeding wyverns for years.
She supposed that the lack of any obvious signs of a Valg king’s presence was part of why it had remained secret for so long.
Sailing closer to the towering twin peaks that flanked either side—the Northern Fang on one, the Omega on the other—and separated the White Fangs from the Ruhnn Mountains, Nesryn could barely make out the structures built into either one. Like the Eridun aerie, and yet not at all. The Eridun’s mountain home was full of motion and life. What had been built in the Gap, connected by a stone bridge near its top, was silent. Cold and bleak.
Snow half blinded Nesryn, but Salkhi swept toward the peaks, staying high. Borte and Arcas came in from the north, little more than dark shadows amid the whipping white.
Far behind them, out in the valley plain beyond the Gap, one half of their army waited, the ruks with them. Waited for Nesryn and Borte, along with the other scouts who had gone out, to report back that the time was ripe to attack. They’d made the river crossing under cover of darkness last night, and those the ruks could not carry had been brought over on boats.
A precarious position to be in, on that plain before the Gap. The Avery forked at their backs, effectively hemming them in. Much of it had been frozen, but not nearly thick enough to risk crossing on foot. Should this battle go poorly, there would be nowhere to run.
Nesryn nudged Salkhi, coming around the Northern Fang from the southern side. Far below, the whirling snows cleared enough to reveal what seemed to be a back gate into the mountain. No sign of sentries or any wyverns.
Perhaps the weather had driven them all inside.
She glanced southward, into the Fangs. But there was no sign of the second half of their army, marching north through the peaks themselves to come at the Gap from the western entrance. A far more treacherous journey than the one they’d made.
But if they timed it right, if they drew out the host in the Gap onto the plain just before the others arrived from the west, they might crush Morath’s forces between them. And that was without the unleashed power of Aelin Galathynius. And her consort and court.
Salkhi arced around the Northern Fang. Distantly, Nesryn could make out Borte doing the same around the Omega. But there was no sign of their enemy.
And when Nesryn and Borte did another pass through the Ferian Gap, even going so far as to soar between the two peaks, they found no sign, either.
As if the enemy had vanished.
The White Fangs were utterly unforgiving.
The wild men who led them kept the mountains from being fatal, knowing which passes might be wiped out by snow, which might have an unsteady ice shelf, which were too open to any eyes flying overhead. Even with the army trailing behind, Chaol marveled at the speed of their travel, at how, after three days, they cleared the mountains themselves and stepped onto the flat, snow-blasted western plains beyond.
He’d never set foot in the territory, though it was technically his. The official border of Adarlan claimed the plains past the Fangs for a good distance before they yielded to the unnamed territories of the Wastes. But it still felt like the Wastes, eerily quiet and sprawling, a strange expanse that stretched, unbreaking, to the horizon.
Even the stoic khaganate warriors did not look too long toward the Wastes at their left as they rode northward. At night, they huddled closer to their fires.
All of them did. Yrene clung a bit tighter at night, whispering about the strangeness of the land, its hollow silence. As if the land itself does not sing, she’d said a few times now, shuddering as she did.
A far better place, Chaol thought as they rode northward, skirting the edge of the Fangs on their right, for Erawan to make his empire. Hell, they might have given it to him if he’d set up his fortress deep on the plain and kept to it.
“We’re a day out from the Gap,” one of the wild men—Kai—said to Chaol as they rode through an unusually sunny morning. “We’ll camp south of the Northern Fang tonight, and tomorrow morning’s march will take us into the Gap itself.”
There was another reason the wild men had allied with them, beyond the territory they stood to gain. Witches had hunted their kind this spring—entire clans and camps left in bloody ribbons. Many had been reduced to cinders, and the few survivors had whispered of a dark-haired woman with unholy power. Chaol was willing to bet it had been Kaltain, but had not told the wild men that particular threat, at least, had been erased. Or had incinerated herself in the end.
It wouldn’t matter to them anyway. Of the two hundred or so wild men who had joined their army since they’d left Anielle, all had come to the Ferian Gap to extract vengeance on the witches. On Morath. Chaol refrained from mentioning that he himself had killed one of their kind almost a year ago.
It might as well have been a decade ago, for all that had happened since he’d killed Cain during his duel with Aelin. Yulemas was still weeks away—if they survived long enough to celebrate it.
Chaol said to the slim, bearded man, who made up for his lack of his clansmen’s traditional bulk with quick wit and sharp eyes, “Is there a place that might hide an army this large tonight?”
