Chapter 7
It had been weeks since the siege at Redan Pass. Falling snow had scrubbed the rot of decay clean, but the high battlements still reeked of death. Nyra Draeven stood above it, one boot pressed to the bulwark, her eyes steady on the horizon. Her skin shifted colors and shimmered around the battered leather of her uniform, deep blues brightening to violet with the dawn, and on her cheek a lattice of silvery scars reflected the light like a net spun from steel. She kept her hands behind her back, jaw set, every muscle taut with quiet alertness.
She had never seen a massacre like the one that had broken Redan. The ramparts had run slick with blood, so much so that the cold could not freeze it before the heavy boots ground it into paste. For three days and three nights, she and her Veyl had taken the keep one flagstone at a time, driving the human garrison ahead of them in a steady, methodical purge. The defenders had been tough and well-led, but they fell by the hundreds, first to the arrows and then to the sword. Only the southern road leading out of the fortress had given them any measure of difficulty. A volunteer company of human soldiers fought valiantly to allow their brethren to make their retreat into the forest. Not one of them was spared. By the time it was over, the snow had drifted high as the retreating soldier’s shins, and the wind made the howling of the dying hauntingly beautiful.
Now Redan was theirs, a massive fortress ringed by mountains, its human garrison replaced by restless Sylphar Veyl who patrolled the walls with a predator’s discipline. They left the wreckage in place as a warning to any who might come to reclaim it. Shields lay scattered against the outer parapet. Spears leaned in crooked rows against the walls, dried blood rusting their heads. Her Keth Veyl had given orders to gather the dead in a cairn below the wall, a mound higher than a horse, and the polished helmets of human officers and Brightwardens gleamed on the top, catching the pale sunlight like a crown of steel.
Nyra walked the length of the rampart, boots whispering against the frost-rimed stone. She stopped at every crack in the wall, every charred beam, every old sigil carved near an arrow slot. She made a ritual of it, and in every ritual, she came back to the memory of the order. The one that had come not from the Primars in High Command but from the hand of an Elyvari.
Ivaryn Sale. The name pulsed in her memory like a sore tooth. The Elyvari were supposed to be neutral, gods-appointed custodians of the Stillight and all the Grand Shrines. But the order had come with Ivaryn’s own seal. Take Redan Pass at any cost, it read. Secure the passage and hold until further instruction. For the first time in living memory, a Caretaker was not just an observer to a battle in the War, but its architect.
Nyra had read and reread that missive until the fibers at the fold were nearly worn through. She had studied every loop of Ivaryn’s ornate script, every faint watermark hidden in the vellum. The order had arrived with a silent, bone-pale Elyvari woman escort, who had stood at her right hand throughout the entire campaign, never speaking, never so much as drawing a weapon. Only observing and recording.
She had expected High Command to contest the order, to brand her a traitor for following a directive from outside the proper channels. Instead, they had lauded her and celebrated her. The winter siege became a winter occupation, and Nyra found herself lord of a keep.
She paced from the wall to the southern overlook, where the valley dropped away into a dense forest, with a winding river to mark the trail southward. Somewhere beyond that horizon, the human armies were surely gathering. Nyra had sent scouts south, down into the forests and hills beyond the first ridge, but they always returned with nothing but tales of poor villages and silent roads.
She looked back, letting the wind push the hair from her face. In the far distance, the peaks of the Stillspire Mountains were ablaze with dawn, their tops banded in gold and red. The sky was almost painfully clear, not a wisp of smoke anywhere. It felt wrong. Peace was always just the silence before a new storm.
She drew a slow breath, savoring the bite of the air in her lungs. Then she turned and descended the stairs, every footfall echoing with the certainty that today, as every day, she would be watched. Watched by the Elyvari, by the memory of the dead, and by the gods who had abandoned them all to this endless war.