Chapter 32
Chapter
Thirty-Two
Izzy picked her way carefully along the Nabaspath.
On her right, the mountainside fell away steeply from the path, a bone-shattering drop to the sea where waves crashed and thundered on the rocks.
On her left, the mountain loomed high and craggy, throwing the path into gloomy shadows.
The air smelled of damp seaweed, with an undertone of decay.
Out toward the horizon, dark clouds gathered where a storm approached.
As the path wound on, the bramble thickets that littered the mountainside gave way to gnarled trees and ancient stumps covered in poisonous copper trumpets.
The bright orange mushrooms clustered in the decaying wood, their gills already glowing a sickly green in the dim light.
Once the mists began to drift down from the mountaintop, their strange lights would be unsettling reminders of the spirits said to haunt this place—Rayan among them.
Izzy stopped suddenly, almost causing Dashiell to walk into her.
Her back was cut in multiple places—burning slices from where she hesitated too long, or Dashiell felt it necessary to prod her onward—reminding her that he could so easily end her life, dump her body in a dark corner, and walk away.
At least here on the path, he’d given her more space.
Probably because there was nowhere to run.
There will be. We just have to hold on until we find it.
“Keep going,” Dashiell snarled.
Izzy turned to face him. “Not until you tell me the truth.”
He waved the slim blade toward her. “I’ll kill you here.”
“Maybe,” she agreed, “but I don’t think so. If you wanted me dead, you’d have killed me already. Like you killed Narya. Like you killed my brother.”
Dashiell growled. “Narya died so that we could end this mockery of a treaty and keep our soldiers guarding the border, where they should be.”
“Keep your supply caravan of Firebreather running, you mean,” Izzy scoffed. “At least be honest about why you want this war. How many people will you hurt so that you can make some gold?”
“Of course I need the caravans to run. Without them, my business would suffer badly. And why shouldn’t I make some gold?
What is this treaty but an excuse for rich people to eat expensive food with more rich people—and make gold for themselves—while the rest of us suffer and die on the streets of Naos? ”
“I don’t believe you care about poor people,” Izzy argued. “I don’t believe you’ve ever wanted to help anyone other than yourself.”
Dashiell stared at her for a tense moment, but then he shrugged. “Of course I care about myself. I learned early on that no one else gave a shit. Unless you’re a drake, then you can have anything you want. Utter steel-slag.”
“Is that why you killed Rayan?” Izzy whispered. “Because he’s a drake?”
“Rayan killed himself,” Dashiell muttered.
“He would never—”
“He shouldn’t have followed me,” Dashiell spat.
“He could’ve left well enough alone. Instead, he joined the physiks and started prodding and pushing.
I had to do something.” He huffed, as if the whole thing irritated him.
“I’d planned to subdue him, not kill him, but he had some kind of resistance to the scorpion venom on my blade.
He stayed awake, but he was delirious, and then he partially shifted and flew into the sea.
Fucking idiot.” He grunted. “He would have been an amazing prize. Instead, he brought half the castle guards onto my mountain. Thank Chaos he washed up before you got too far.”
A stabbing shaft of pain shot through her, and she almost gave in and crumpled to the ground there on the dank path. But she didn’t. Izabel forced herself to stand tall and hold her ground. Dashiell had killed her brother, and she would never show him any kind of weakness.
No weakness. But we will destroy him. Her beast’s hackles rose in a wave of sapphire spikes. And it is not his mountain!
Dashiell shoved her shoulder, turning her to face the path once more. “No more talking. We’re in a hurry.”
They walked on in silence, each glancing toward the sky more and more often. Izzy was looking for Luka—maybe Dashiell was too—but no drakes appeared.
The path narrowed as they twisted further around the mountain. Their way grew more rock-strewn and uneven as they continued on, far past the furthest point she’d ever reached before.
As they wound closer to the rock face, she began to see niches carved into the mountainside, overgrown with weeds and vines.
A few still contained ancient statues—too corroded and moss-covered to make out their features—carrying mottled green-and-gray lamps that looked likely to flake away at the slightest touch.
Slowly, she realized that the rocks beneath her feet, while jumbled by centuries of upheaval, were too uniform to be natural. Once, long ago, this was a paved path, lined with lanterns and statues.
The sun was lowering toward the growing bank of clouds on the horizon when the path curved sharply toward the mountain.
At first, it almost appeared to end there, but Dashiell prodded her to push through a small gap in the wall of hanging brambles, and Izzy found herself in a narrow chasm, protected from the wind and salty air.
It was warm and humid, the stone walls were covered with ferns and honey-bell flowers, and water dripped and splashed from somewhere nearby.
Here, the path was far better preserved, straight and even, leading to a short flight of stairs hewn into the rock.
Each step glittered with the warm gold-brown sheen of bronze plating.
Lanterns hung from iron chains embedded in the rocks, and she could imagine that when they were lit, the stairs would seem like a river of molten fire leading up into the mountain.
At the top of the stairs, a massive bronze door was inlaid with silver and gems to create the image of two vast dragons.
One drake was a vibrant combination of carnelian, ruby, and topaz, seeming to glow with internal sunlight, even here in the gloom.
The other was the deep sapphire, lapis, and obsidian of the midnight sky.
Both were sinuously curled, biting each other’s tails in an endless loop.
Day and night. Chaos and Order. Life and death.
Two parts of the same magnificent, infinite spiral.
Izzy had never imagined such a grand entryway…
or such a heavy sense that the gods were close.
It was beautiful and intimidating, and she did not want to go in there with Dashiell at her back. As if sensing that she was about to bolt, he closed the gap between them, his blade slicing through her cloak once more.
Izzy swallowed her desire to scream and kept moving, stepping carefully up the ancient path.
Large piles of stone rubble lay tumbled among the ferns, as if someone had spent weeks clearing rocks.
A new ceramic lamp hung from a chain, its wick partly burned down, and as they got closer, she could see a myriad of dents and scratches that marred the stairs and the great door.
Not all of those scratches are from the landslide, her beast muttered darkly.
Izabel held in a gasp of horror. Thick grooves in the bronze drove toward the largest gems, too uniform to have been created by falling rocks. Someone had tried to dig them out with a chisel. She glared at Dashiell over her shoulder. “You tried to take them!”
“I couldn’t get them off anyway. They were embedded with something more powerful than anything we have now. I would have had to take the whole door down, and I couldn’t do that on my own.” He tilted his chin toward the doorway. “Keep moving.”
The door opened easily under her hand, and she stepped forward into the ruins of a huge stone temple.
The first thing she noticed was the humidity, then the heat and the scent of lush foliage.
Dim light filtered down in dusty shafts from high above.
As her eyes adjusted, she saw what looked like might have once been sky-lattices.
The shafts would have been lined with mirrors and covered with stained glass, directing glorious colored light into the temple.
Now, only a few remained. Their mirrors were cracked and warped, and the lattices contained only fragments of shattered glass.
Enormous broken statues lined the walls—great dragons carved from ophite—dark green stone with white veins and a dull sheen. A few remaining wings and visages hinted at how imposing they must once have been with their wings spread wide, tips touching, side by side, spanning the length of the hall.
At her feet, cracked and broken marble tiles led from the entrance toward what once must have been a magnificent hall, but was now littered with great chunks of fallen rock and scattered puddles.
The puddles steamed slightly, and the floor felt warm, even through the leather of her boots.
The far end of the hall was cast in dark shadow, too thick to make out what stood there, if anything.
The growth of centuries climbed over it all.
Moss, ferns, and waterblossom grew everywhere.
Rampant everlasting silverbush and viper’s hemp suggested some of the plants had escaped from a healer’s garden.
It would have reminded her of the heated pools she’d swum in with Luka, but for the silence.
No chorus of frogs and insects broke the heaviness in this air.
Izzy’s beast stretched and turned in her belly.
Heat and power seeped through its hide until Izzy felt as if something glowed deep inside her.
It buzzed beneath her skin like an itch she couldn’t quite scratch, or a crick in her back she could release if only she could twist into just the right position.
But before she could, a flint struck steel and, moments later, light flared, dragging her attention away.
An area had been cleared through the dust and fallen debris, creating an open space about the size of her shop floor, surrounded by piles of rock.
On one side of the open area, a strangely shaped heap drew her attention, and she took a step forward before realizing the horrible truth. It was a mound of bones.
The pile of skeletons came up to her waist, stacked haphazardly in a grim repository of death and destruction. Unlike the rest of the wreckage, there was nothing natural about the macabre collection. Whatever great disaster had befallen the temple, it did not throw those ancient bones together.
She spun toward Dashiell, struggling to force the words out past her horror. “What have you done?”