Chapter 4
When Syla woke from unconsciousness, her head pounded, and she didn’t want to open her eyes.
But she was swaying back and forth in someone’s arms and worried she’d been captured.
When she pried her lids open, the blurry view wasn’t illuminating.
Smoldering fires provided ambient light, and she could tell she was outside, but it took her a long moment to make out that she was staring at the side of someone’s thick neck.
“Sergeant Fel?” she whispered, hoping that was who had her.
“Yes,” he said, a hint of relief in the single bass note.
Thank the sun and moon gods.
“I’m glad it’s you.” Syla peered uselessly around, the looming shapes of buildings impossible to identify. “Are we going…”
Home, she wanted to say, but the memory of all that had happened came crashing back to her. The castle wouldn’t feel like home anymore. And Moon Watch Temple? Had it made it through the attack? Were her friends and colleagues there safe?
“We’re almost to the castle,” Fel said.
“The temple might be a better spot.” She thought of her spare spectacles in her room there and touched her face, though she already knew she wasn’t wearing the broken ones. “If you need more healing—”
“I’m fine. You were the one I was worried about when I woke up with you collapsed on top of me.”
“Sorry about that. I, uhm, got tired.”
“You healed me. Magically.” His tone was hard to read.
Did he disapprove? Or feel dread knowing her magic might bind him to her for some time going forward?
“I did,” Syla said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get your permission first. You were unconscious, and I needed you. I couldn’t see, and there were men scrounging for valuables, and— Wait, what happened to them?”
“I happened to them. When I woke up. They were patting us down, looking for items to steal. I knocked their asses into the street, left them bloody, and didn’t care in the least that they were kingdom subjects.”
“I… found the thought of them looting distasteful as well.”
“Yes.” Fel shifted his grip on her, balancing her briefly in the crook of one of his big arms, and she tightened her grasp around his shoulders while he drew something out of his pocket. “Here. These look like they were stepped on by a dragon, but I’m sure you need them.”
Syla held out a hand, and Fel pressed her bent spectacles frame into it. Unfortunately, the lenses were as broken now as they had been before and would do her no good.
“Thank you, but I’m going to need another pair. They’re at the temple. Can we—”
“It’s gone,” he said grimly.
“Gone?”
“Flattened.”
“Flattened,” Syla mouthed. “But… the stormers honor the same gods we do. To destroy a place of healing…”
“A dragon did it. I don’t know if it had a rider, but those scaled monsters don’t care about our gods. They don’t even honor the mad storm god who created them and all the other unnatural beasts in the world.”
“No.”
Syla slumped against his chest, not trying to put the spectacles on. With the lenses broken, what was the point?
“There were injured and ill in there recovering,” she whispered.
“And my colleagues were there. I’d just seen them not hours before this started.
Larvee brought honeyberry streusel in for us today, and we were sharing it for an afternoon snack.
” The words sounded inane coming out, but just that afternoon everything had been normal.
“I showed her an old foraging map from my collection that points out the location of some of the best wild berry patches and bogs in the kingdom.”
How had everything fallen apart so quickly?
Had any of her friends escaped the destruction?
Since most healers lived and worked in the temple…
they would likely have been present for the attack.
It was only chance that she’d neither been at the castle nor in the temple.
No, not chance. Her dillydallying because she hadn’t wanted to attend a family gathering.
If she had been at that dinner on time, the way she was meant to have been…
A hiccup of emotion came out, sobs threatening. Fel turned his head toward her.
“Sorry,” Syla whispered, trying to swallow down her grief. She wiped her eyes. Now, more than ever, she needed to hold herself together. She was alive, even if she shouldn’t be, and that meant she had duties. “This is all just so awful.”
“It’s outrageous,” Fel said. “This never should have happened.”
“No.”
“The dragons are monsters.”
“So are the riders.” Syla thought of that captain they’d seen. “They’re the ones who were behind this. They had to be. A dragon couldn’t have gotten through the barrier and somehow sabotaged the shielder.”
“Agreed.” Fel nodded toward the route ahead.
In the blurry dark, Syla couldn’t see much, only that they were climbing the road that led up the bluff to the castle.
“I think I can walk,” she said as the route steepened and the sergeant’s pace slowed. She sensed more than saw the tautness of his muscles and clenching of his jaw. Though she’d mended some of his wounds, he ought to be resting in bed, not carrying her.
“You are injured.”
“Not badly. I just passed out.” Deciding that sounded pathetic, Syla added, “Due to the effort required from using my magic.”
“From healing me.”
“You were the focus of my magic, yes.”
“I will carry you. As far as you need me to.” Was that his loyalty as a bodyguard speaking? Or some compulsion he felt after being healed?
Syla didn’t ask. If it was the latter, she didn’t want to know.
“Just to my bedroom in the keep, please, to find an old pair of spectacles.” By the time they reached it, she should have recovered enough to stand on her own and convince him she didn’t need to be toted around.
Fel looked up, seeing something in the dark sky that she couldn’t. A dragon flying high overhead?
“I’ll take you there,” he said, “but unless the Royal Protectors have restored order, we dare not stay long. I’ve seen surprisingly few Kingdom enforcers in the streets, and those looters weren’t the only people taking advantage of the chaos.
I spotted a couple of fleet ships in the harbor, the military helping put out fires, but they looked busy with that and watching for more attacks.
I’ve glimpsed dragons now and then, not only over the city but farther inland.
Hunting or lighting homesteads on fire. Who knows? ”
“Did they have riders? Do you think the stormers will attack again? Is there…” Syla’s throat tightened, and she had to once more blink away tears. “How much of the city and castle are left to attack?”
“I haven’t seen much more than you have, but not all neighborhoods were damaged. The castle and areas around it were most directly targeted.” Grim, Fel lowered his voice to add, “The castle especially.”
Syla, remembering the way the dragon-rider captain had focused on her birthmark, didn’t need to ask why. “Do you think the stormers will be back to occupy the island? Was this just a raid or… part of a larger plan?”
“I don’t know, but their people have never been populous. A lot of them die because of the dangers of the world out there. It’s unlikely they have the numbers to occupy the kingdom, even an island.”
Syla believed the various stormer tribes, if they were all working together, could field more people than he’d suggested, but she didn’t argue.
He had far more experience when it came to military matters.
Whether it had been a raid or invasion, the results were the same. Her people had been decimated.
“We’ll have to find and join the Royal Protectors to ensure you’re properly guarded going forward,” Fel added.
Syla rubbed her face. That made sense, but… “What about the shielder? If it can be fixed… we should figure out how.”
“Do you know where it is?”
She started to answer but hesitated. Many years ago, when her mother and father had shown her and her siblings the locations of all the sky shielders in the kingdom, they’d sworn them to secrecy.
More than that, Syla and her siblings had needed to promise that they wouldn’t reveal those locations to anyone, even under duress of torture.
At the time, she’d been twelve and laughed away the notion that anyone would bother torturing her. Now… now it was all far too real.
“As your mother’s daughter, you should,” Fel added, “at least according to the legends. The locations and how to use the devices are supposed to be passed down to those in line to inherit the throne and protect the kingdom.”
“I know where they are.” Whether her mother would approve or not, Syla didn’t know, but she had to trust Fel.
Depending on what they found in the ruins of the castle, he might be the only one she had left who she could trust. “I’ve been to the ones on Castle, Harvest, and Vineyard Islands, and I had to memorize the locations of the others on maps. ”
“Do you have any idea how to fix a shielder that’s broken? Or has been sabotaged?”
“No.”
“Ah. I thought your love for heinous medical tools might hint of mechanical aptitude.”
“Sorry. I just put the tools on my shelves to enjoy looking at. Also, they’re fascinating, not heinous.”
Fel’s deeply dubious grunt aptly conveyed his opposition to that opinion.
The road leveled, and he nodded toward the dark remains of the castle wall and gatehouse ahead.
With the rambling ancient structure mostly made from stone, fewer fires burned up here, and the air was clearer, smelling more of the briny sea than of smoke, but Syla didn’t doubt that it was as damaged as the city.
Probably more so. Even with her poor vision, she could make out huge gaps in what had been a solid wall around the courtyard, keep, barracks, and ancillary buildings inside.
And was the southeast tower missing entirely?
She squinted but couldn’t make out the details of what had to be rubble where it had stood.