Chapter 14
Náli had been too highly prized as the Corpse Lord to be allowed out on hunts, or fishing expeditions.
He’d become an expert swordsman, but only thanks to his Dead Guard, and hadn’t had the chance to duel with anyone else until he’d started journeying to the capital with only his Guard as chaperones.
Had it been up to his mother, he never would have learned to ride.
But quietly, secretly, Mattias had swung him aboard his first pony and taught him all the ins and outs.
It had been years since then, and he was now not only an accomplished horseman, but a drake rider as well. The habit was deeply ingrained, his responses automatic. It was rare that he ever called upon Matti’s years’ old advice.
It was Matti’s voice that filled his head, now, as his mind froze, and spooked, and scattered. The horse can feel it when you’re frightened. Calm your breathing, calm yourself.
Easier said than done. He was panicking, which meant Valgrind was panicking, and there wasn’t a functioning brain between them.
But Rune was panicking, too, shouting, clutching Alfie’s reins for dear life, and so it was Mattias’s old wisdom that came to Náli now, and gave him the strength to shake the haze of disaster from his eyes.
One thing at a time. That was another Matti pearl of wisdom.
He tightened his hands on the reins and hauled Valgrind’s head around. “Hey now!” he shouted. “Stop that!”
Valgrind bleated in distress, but stopped thrashing in the air; settled into a steadier hover.
Náli didn’t share a psychic connection with Valgrind the way Oliver and Tessa did with their drakes, but he could read his mount well enough without it. Alfie had lost her mistress, and was frantic; Percy and Valgrind were in turn frantic as well.
“Hey,” Náli said again, leaning forward in the saddle. “Listen to me.”
Valgrind let out a pitiful cry, but cranked his neck around to nose at Náli’s boot.
“We have to keep our wits about us,” he instructed, sternly, mostly to himself. “We’re the only ones left who can do anything.”
Gods. He could go to pieces if he thought about that too deeply.
For now, he had to play general, because Rune was still clinging to a distraught Alfie’s saddle, screaming almost as loudly as the drake.
“We have to be composed for your parents,” Náli said, sternly, and when he steered, Valgrind, thankfully, went.
He ducked his head, and flapped his wings, narrowing his body so he could arrow toward his mother, who was trying to dive down through the cloud layer while Rune shouted and wrestled with her reins.
Náli swooped Valgrind in close enough that the tip of Alfie’s wing raked through the air an inch from his nose. “Rune!” he shouted over the howl of the wind. “Rune, stop it, you fool! Calm down!”
When Rune lifted his face, his eyes were huge and wild, his cheeks pale save the two windburned spots of pink high along the bone.
He looked feverish and terrified. “What?” His hair whipped around his face, tugging loose of its braids, and Náli didn’t think the tears leaking from the outer corners of his eyes were merely the result of the wind.
Poor sod.
Rather than try to talk up in the air, with the wind shrieking in their ears, Náli pointed downward, an exaggerated movement, and then heeled Valgrind and leaned low over his neck.
There was a moment, in the thick of the clouds, when Náli wondered if they were diving straight into a Selesee ambush. He envisioned gold-armored soldiers camped on the mountainside, a massive wood and iron scorpion loaded and wound tight, ready to fire the moment a cold-drake breached the mist.
But Valgrind dove quickly, and he didn’t have time to worry for long before they were beneath the clouds, and the jagged spines of the uninhabited mountains rushed up to meet them.
There was no vegetation at this elevation, and so Náli had a clear view of the mountaintops.
He spied a flat patch of ground, crowned on all sides by tall rocks, filled with unblemished snow.
He steered Valgrind toward it, and when they landed, the snow proved deeper than he’d thought.
Valgrind sunk down to his shoulders; the soft powder fluffed up over Náli’s knees, cold and thick around his boots.
“Bollocks.”
Snow swirled in a stinging miniature cyclone as Alfie landed, and then Percy. Alfie cried out heartbrokenly, and Percy butted his head against his mate’s in an obvious attempt at comfort.
“Rune—” Náli began, but Rune wasn’t listening.
“What are we doing?” he shouted. “We have to go! We have to find her! We can still catch them!” He fumbled his tether free of the saddle, and gathered himself to dismount.
“Rune, don’t,” Náli snapped. “The snow is—”
Fwoomp. The snow swallowed him whole save an inky tail of hair that flicked out over the topmost crust. He shouted something unintelligible, and Náli sighed.
“Pull him out,” he instructed, and Valgrind burrowed his head down into the snow. He withdrew a moment later, hauling Rune out by the back of his tunic.
Rune sputtered, and kicked, and swung his arms, and showered snow everywhere.
Valgrind craned his neck around so Náli was face-to-face with Rune’s spitting, cursing, red-cheeked visage. Close enough that Náli could slap him—which he did.
His hand left a gratifying red mark behind, each finger distinct, and snapped Rune’s head to the side. When he turned back, he no longer looked panicked, but, thankfully, furious. Good: an angry man was a man who could take action. Fear and panic were nothing but wasted effort.
“Shut up and listen to me,” Náli said, not as himself, but as the Corpse Lord. His was a laughable sort of authority, but by some miracle, Rune shut his gob and went still in Valgrind’s grasp. “We can’t go after Tessa because Tessa’s not here.”
Rune blinked at him, uncomprehending, and then scowled.
He pointed toward the capital, somewhere beyond the peaks.
“Of course she’s not here. That Sel took her!
Which is why we need to give chase! Our drakes are faster than the big one, and…
what?” He broke off, frowning, when Náli shook his head.
“You turn back if you want to, coward, but that’s my wife! I’m going after her!”
Náli almost slapped him again. He said, “That Sel opened a portal and took her through it. We can’t go after her, because it’s not a matter of flying faster. She’s gone, Rune. And we can’t follow.”
“What…but she…and he was…the drake…what?” He closed his eyes and shook his head so hard Náli thought he might dislodge something important. “No, no. You don’t know that. You can’t. Did you see a portal?”
Why Tessa had chosen this brother, Náli would never understand.
“I didn’t need to. I felt it.” When Rune gathered breath to argue, expression bewildered, he said, “I was born with magic. I might not be able to use it the same way the Sels can, coming and going through portals, but I can feel when they do it.” Like in the clearing the night of the ambush, all the fine hair on his arms and the back of his neck had stood on end; a headache had blossomed, a sharp point like a dagger tip in each temple; the diamond around his neck had tugged sharply at him, answering the call of power without being able to channel it usefully.
“The moment she fell, he opened a portal, and then it closed again, and they’re gone. He took her.”
Náli allowed himself to soften a fraction, when Rune’s expression broke. “I’m sorry. I know this is difficult.”
“What do you know?” Rune snarled, eyes glistening with unshed tears. “What do you bloody know?” he repeated, and started struggling to get loose, kicking and thrashing again.
Valgrind dropped him. Fwoomp. Back into the snow. This time, a lone braid was all that stuck up out of the hole, diamond-studded beads glinting like ice in the harsh, upper-atmosphere sunlight.
Muffled shouting issued from the snow.
Náli pulled his leg up and hooked it over the swell of the saddle, getting comfortable. “I’m not helping you this time. Use those big, Frodesson shoulders to dig yourself out.”
Rune floundered long enough that Valgrind trilled an inquiry, and Náli began to worry that he might suffocate down there.
But, finally, a gloved hand emerged, and then another, and Rune hauled himself up and up, panting and red-faced, before finally flopping delicately back across the fragile ice crust atop the piled-up snow.
“Fuck you,” he huffed. “You fucking brat.”
Yes, Náli reminded himself. Angry was useful.
He said, “Would you please gather what few wits you have and actually listen to the words I’m saying to you?”
“I am listening,” Rune said, sourly, still out of breath. He dragged a damp sleeve across his eyes and nose and breathed clouds of vapor up to join the tumbling quilt of actual clouds overhead. “She’s gone. There was a portal.”
“Yes.”
“A portal to where?”
“I don’t know,” Náli said, with true regret. “To some secret, safe location. Perhaps even to Seles.”
Rune cursed, quietly.
Nali hesitated. “For what it’s worth, I don’t know what it’s like to have a wife, no. But I know what it feels like to love someone so completely that thought of losing him is…intolerable.”
Rune lay still on his back, but his lashes flickered as he glanced down his body toward Náli. His jaw tightened, and his throat worked as he swallowed.
“And you haven’t lost her,” Náli continued. “Not in a final sense.”
“But I have no idea where she is.”
“No. But we know that the emperor is in Aquitaine, and that’s where we’re headed.”
“Fuck Aquitaine. Fuck all of Aquitainia.”