Chapter 4 #3
Thanks to her queasiness, she had no desire to eat, but with all the rubble piles blocking routes, it might take hours to reach and then study the shielder.
And if it was destroyed and they had to go to another island to find another?
Syla shook her head, hoping the rest of the kingdom had been spared, that this hadn’t been a concerted attack with multiple sky shields failing at once.
“Let me grab a few things.” Syla plucked a bag out of one of the armoires. “Then we’ll see if we can find some food to take, and I’ll be ready to go.”
“From the outside, the kitchen looked badly damaged. Part of the roof came down. At the least, the doors are blocked.”
“Oh.”
Fel waved toward the courtyard, the wyverns. “Once we’re somewhere safe, I’ll find provisions.”
Somewhere safe. Where on Castle Island would that be?
As she packed, her scattered mind thinking it practical to tuck in such items as an antique venom extractor and hernia tool, Syla shared her thoughts about checking the farm outside the capital where her aunt lived and worked.
“Your aunt?” Fel asked, as if he were trying to place her.
“Yes. She looks like me except older.” Syla pointed at her spectacles. “She’s moon-marked but uses her power as an engineer. She’ll be perfect to help with the shielder.”
“I’ve seen her around the castle, but doesn’t she build… tractors?”
“Her specialty is agricultural engineering, yes, but she went to school and apprenticed for years, studying widely before going to work on the royal farm.”
“So… yes to tractors?”
“Magical tractors, Sergeant. Supernaturally sturdy.”
Judging by the twist to Fel’s lips, he didn’t think the maker of such implements would be useful in their quest. That was only because he didn’t know Tibby well. She was versatile.
The challenge would be to get to her.
Syla glanced toward the shuttered window.
Would they be able to escape through the courtyard past the wyverns?
Or—her gut clenched—would they need to wait until the creatures feasted their fill and left?
The idea of having to walk past the half-eaten bodies of people she’d known threatened to make her throw up again.
“We’ll check the shielder first,” she decided.
If all they had to do was flip a switch to turn it back on, they wouldn’t need Aunt Tibby.
While packing, Syla found two more old pairs of spectacles and tucked them away.
Her corrections hadn’t needed to be as strong back then, so there would be more blurriness, but anything was better than her horrible vision of minutes before.
On a whim, she tucked a couple of treasures into the pack, including her favorite book on the history of the kingdom and how it had been established.
Unlike the things she read as an adult, it had beautiful painted pictures and maps of current places and those that had once been.
Even though she largely had the information memorized, she’d always loved that book.
Maybe it was silly to take so much with her—since the riders had achieved their objective, they wouldn’t likely return to further raze the castle—but who knew what other scavengers would come along before order could be established?
If there was anyone left to establish order.
She couldn’t help but wonder since they hadn’t encountered anyone from the fleet or Royal Protectors yet.
Of course, if the wyverns had been circling all along, she could hardly blame the military for waiting.
She paused at a fist-sized, red glass figurine of a dragon.
Given the day she’d had, she ought not to want anything to remind her of their kind, but her father had left her the antique.
Even though the great scaled beasts were a constant threat to the kingdom, he’d always found them beautiful.
Once, he’d taken her to Eyrie Point, a rock formation perched above a beach miles east of the capital, where dragons fished just outside of the shield.
Breathtaking, he’d called them as they’d soared and dove.
Back then, she’d also admired them and found the idea of riding one wondrous, but now…
Her fingers clenched, and she almost threw the ornament across the room.
But she couldn’t destroy something that had been special to her father.
Besides, it had some magic about it. He’d never told her what it did—maybe he hadn’t known himself—but through her moon-mark, she’d always sensed its power.
“Maybe it’ll help somehow.” That was wishful thinking, but Syla tucked it into the bag with her other belongings.
“Lighter than books, anyway.” Fel had watched her pack.
“Books are wondrous founts of knowledge that can either guide us in the world or enrich our imaginations while allowing us to visit other realms.” She wished she could take more of her old tomes; in the coming days, she would need an escape for her mind. She had no doubt.
Fel grunted. “They’re heavy.”
“They’re worth their weight in gold, diamonds, and sapphires.”
“That’ll soothe my mind when I end up carrying your pack.”
“You won’t have to do that.” Syla adjusted the straps and snugged the bag on her back. That old book was a touch heavy, but she lifted her chin, determined to carry her own load.
“Unless you heal someone and faint?”
“Well.” Syla noticed he was leaning so that one of his legs took more weight than the other. She might have healed his acute wounds, but she remembered his earlier strains and grimaces. He endured a number of chronic issues. “Maybe you could find a horse with a cart to haul me and my books around.”
Fel took the lantern and stepped into the hall. “Sergeant Horiks, the man who drilled all the bodyguard rules into me, said we must do what we can to ensure a royal’s comfort while simultaneously prioritizing their safety. Carriages were mentioned, not carts.”
“You can throw me in a sledge fashioned from whale bones,” she said, following him, “as long as I can keep my book.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “You’re quirkier than your siblings.”
Yes, and she’d never fit in with them. Part of it had been the seven-year age gap between her and the next youngest of her siblings, but part had been that they’d been athletic, outgoing, and at ease in their bodies.
She’d always been the opposite: awkward, introverted, and more at home in a library with her books.
“Is that why you don’t call me Your Highness?” Syla had always heard him use that deference when he’d been Nyvia’s bodyguard, but she was heir to the throne and naturally exuded authority.
Was or had been? The unsettling reminder made her shoulders slump. What she packed was hardly important in light of everything else.
“No. That’s because I’m almost retired, and I don’t care that much about pomp and propriety anymore.” Fel hurried her past a body, maybe realizing she could see them now.
Doing her best to avoid looking down, Syla was relieved when the doorway to the courtyard came into view. Until she spotted the green wings of a wyvern feasting on the dead.
She groaned and halted. The creature lifted its reptilian head, slitted yellow eyes turning to peer through the half-blocked doorway. The nostrils at the end of its long snout twitched.
“Is there another way into the underground tunnels?” Fel asked. “I know of the routes from the queen’s suite and the stables, but neither are easy to reach now. The tunnels would be our best chance for escaping.”
And finding the shielder. Fel didn’t yet know it, but the hidden doorway to its chamber lay under the castle.
“There’s an access door in Serk’s suite,” she said, naming her oldest brother.
“The way to that was blocked too.”
“I know.”
The wyvern cocked its head, slitted yellow eyes focused on them. Those eyes looked hungry. Clearly, the beast hadn’t yet eaten its fill and wanted more.
Though wyverns weren’t much taller than men when they stood on the ground, with wingspans of ten or twelve feet, they were lean and powerful with dense muscles under their scales.
The fangs weren’t quite as long as those of dragons, but that didn’t mean they weren’t deadly.
And this one stepped toward them, looking far too interested in devouring them.
Fel held up a hand, though they’d both already stopped. “That’s what I was worried about.”
“That we’ll have to wait for them to go away?”
The wyvern took another step, wings flexing, nostrils twitching again.
“That they won’t go away,” Fel said, “and they’ll prefer fresh prey over the dead.”
The wyvern crouched and sprang, arrowing straight for the doorway. For them.