58. Rorax
“We are on business for the Queen—”
“I don’ care if you’re the Queen’s uncle, the Queen’s donkey, or the Queen’s favorite tit. It’ll be six coppers for the night, and everyone’s gotta pay an extra two coppers a person if they’re gettin in past sundown,” the innkeeper—a man with a belly so round, Rorax thought for sure there was a watermelon hiding under his shirt and a beard bushy enough Rorax could barely see his eyes and mouth—informed Ayres with his hands on his hips. “That’s the policies.”
Ayres gritted his teeth. “Four extra coppers?”
“Five if you keep wastin’ me time.”
Ayres grumbled and pulled out the coins from his back pocket. Rorax could have paid, but there was something deeply satisfying watching Ayres get extorted by his own house. The innkeeper pocketed the money, but pulled out a long, iron key from behind the counter and dropped it into Ayres’s palm. “Third door up the stairs to the left.”
They had ridden their horses until they were frothing at the mouth. Day and night for three days, swapping out the beasts for fresh horses where they could at rest stops or little villages on their way. They had to catch a ferry over the Pike River yesterday morning and were now somewhere between Nyson’s Gap and the Old Volcano.
Rorax was anxious that they were taking too long, that they would arrive to see that one of Sumavari’s Pets had already been summoned, but Ayres reassured her that some summonings from the Books of Sumavari could take weeks from the very first pulls of magic to start them to the time of actual summoning depending on how much magick needed to be absorbed.
Rorax turned and started up the stairs with Ayres on her heels. They were in Karduru, staying at the only inn in the village. They had camped every night before this one, but the stables would be closed until morning, and they needed to buy fresh horses so Ayres had thought they should splurge on a real bed before they fought the Lyondreans tomorrow.
Karduru was barely a village. It was more of a small camp in the Jagamines that was strategically placed on a common trade route through this area of the mountain range. It was a dangerous road, so the village was fully equipped with not only an inn but with a small barracks, healers’ quarters, and a tavern that Rorax was incredibly tempted to spend the night in rather than in a cramped room with Ayres.
They said nothing as they climbed the stairs and used the key to unlock their room. Inside there were two beds, both barely twin sized. Rorax sat on the one farthest from the door, and immediately pulled off her boots.
Ayres sat on the other bed.
“How far is the Old Volcano from here?” Rorax asked as she reached up and started to undo the war braids from her hair.
“It’s a half day’s ride from where we are to get to the base. Not too far from where they are pulling magick.” Ayres pulled off his traveling cloak, giving Rorax a better view of the black, high-necked leather armor he had on.
Rorax cocked her head and squinted at Ayres, watching as he started to loosen the ties on his greaves. “Why do you always wear clothes that cover your neck?”
The fingers at his wrist paused, and his eyes flashed dangerously up to hers. “What are you talking about?”
“Your neck. You always wear armor that comes nearly up to your jaw, and every other shirt I’ve ever seen you in is a turtleneck or something similar. Are you hiding your tattoos?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ayres snapped.
Rorax continued to work on her braids until her hair was in loose waves around her shoulders and down her back. “My Heilstorm armor is designed similarly to yours. I wanted to hide my Contestar mark. Don’t bother trying to deny it, but you don’t have to get defensive; I was just wondering.”
Ayres narrowed his eyes at her and ran his tongue over his teeth. “I’m not hiding anything.”
She had to bite her lip to keep from rolling her eyes. “Okay, Lieutenant.”
Rorax unbuckled Glimr”s sheath from around her waist as they continued to get ready for bed in awkward silence. It wasn’t until the candles had been blown out and Rorax was snuggly under the covers that Ayres spoke again. “You were right. I wear high-necked armor to hide my tattoos.”
Rorax looked across her shoulder to Ayres, her eyebrows raised. “Honestly?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh . . . why?” Rorax scrunched her nose.
Ayres’s voice was low when he answered. “I don’t like them.”
Rorax huffed a laugh into the night. “That’s a pity.”
“Why?”
Rorax debated saying anything before she rolled over to face him, even though it was too dark to see anything besides the faint outline of him in the night. “That’s a pity, because I remember—the first time I saw them, you were shirtless and escorting a woman out of your room—I remember being jealous that she had gotten to touch them, and thanking the gods that men could look like that.”
Ayres’s head whipped around to look at her and there were a few beats of loaded silence before he rumbled, “Honestly?”
“I will deny it if you ever bring it up, but yes. I really thought that. It didn’t matter though; you opened your mouth the second later and quickly reminded me that you’re nothing but a Death Born prat.”
Ayres laughed under his breath. “Nothing you don’t deserve.”
Rorax smiled. “Maybe.”
“Goodnight, Greywood. And . . . thank you.”
“Stop staring at me,” Ayres grumbled when he caught Rorax staring at him for the sixth time that day. She couldn’t help it. She’d never seen anyone with enough death magick that it manifested in their eyes. It was beautiful.
“When you track the power, there’s red in your eyes,” she mumbled. His irises pulsed a brilliant ruby red that rimmed his pupils and made his eyes appear to glow. They were getting close, so he had been keeping close tabs on the magick today because they were constantly red.
Ayres nodded. “Whenever I use, or even want to use my death magick, my eyes turn red.”
“What other magick do you hold? Dark?”
“Yes. My mother held an abundance and passed down the ability to me and most of my siblings.”
Rorax nodded, adjusting the reins of the palomino horse they had bought that morning in Karduru. “When you”re angry, your eyes turn silver. I should know, I’ve seen it enough.”
They were passing through the grounds of the Old Volcano, a huge dormant volcano that used to burn down the forest here regularly thousands of years ago, but now only served as a famous landmark. They were riding their horses around the edges of a huge pit, where there had once been a lava lake that had drained away, leaving a cliff on all sides but one. Two large towers built out of black lava bricks emerged out of the forest and were on each side of an old lava bed. Rorax edged her horse closer to the edge of the cliff that overlooked the sunken ground to see what was at the bottom, but it was just filled with dirt. Not even any plants grew there.
She hummed, looking over the other scenery around them. Besides the barren pit and the two black dilapidated towers, it was beautiful here. They were on an old cart path going through the mountains and were high enough in altitude that only tall pine trees stretched over the mountain as far as her eyes could see. A sea of evergreen pines.
“Where did you feel the pull come from?” Rorax asked.
Ayres closed his charcoal and red-streaked eyes, breathing deeply. When his eyes flicked open again, they were bright red.
He jerked his head to the side and pointed past the Old Volcano looming to the northwest of them. “They are a few miles north of here . . . But there’s some kind of barrier around it. Something that muffles the magick.” Ayres’s forehead creased.
“Is that a problem?”
Ayres waved his hand in the air dismissively. “I don’t think so, it just means they have an Elite with them, someone who’s capable of muffling magick. There’s another abandoned tower a few miles from here. Helfast, they used to call it. I would bet that’s where they have their camp. I can’t think of another structure anywhere in that area to use to hide unless they took a home from a civilian.”
“Isn’t this Helfast?” Rorax asked, shivering as she passed under the shadow of one of the tall, black towers. “It feels like a place that could be named after hell.”
“No, these are just the Volcano Towers. I can’t remember which war with Wymeria it was, but Death used to use these towers as a little military base,” Ayres explained. He pointed over to the tower closest to the base of the Old Volcano. “They used to have bunkers that connected to lava tubes where soldiers would live. The ground is still warm here, even if the volcano isn’t active, and there are hot springs under the towers where they would use to bathe. They used it until Wymeria attacked it and hundreds of soldiers died here in the lava bed as they tried to escape the tunnels. Marras likes to remember the places where her people have died, and war zones in Death seem to never be able to grow vegetation back properly.”
Rorax shivered again. “Fitting.”
“You said fifteen, Ayres. Fifteen,” Rorax hissed as they laid in the grass, elbow to elbow, staring out at an encampment of soldiers. There must have been seventy . . . eighty of them milling around in front of Helfast, the crumbling tower, running drills and keeping a wary eye on the tree line.
“How does a force this size even get across the border?”
A dark shadow passed over Ayres’s features as he studied the soldiers. “I don’t know.”
“Gods save us.”
Ayres’s jaw flexed. “Come on. There’s always a back entrance to the old towers.”
Helfast was not just a tower. It was a small fortress with walls twelve feet high built around it. They wouldn’t be able to walk right up to the Helfast tower, they’d have to find a way over the wall first.
They crept through the woods to the back of the castle. Thirty men had set up camp in the area. There was still a patch of forest between them and the encampment though, and Rorax was eternally grateful for the small grove as Ayres nudged her with his elbow and pointed to a black grate.
“The back entrance into the keep.” Ayres worked his jaw, clearly conflicted. “There are too many of them. We need to retreat and get reinforcements.”
“What? No!” Rorax exclaimed.
Ayres looked around at all the men. He appeared hesitant, but there was an edge in his eyes that made him seem almost eager, which contradicted what he spewed at her. “No. We have to go back and get Cannon and Piers.”
“Look at me, Ayres. We’re doing this, and we’re doing it now. If we leave, we risk them being successful in this summoning.”
Ayres bristled, but Rorax pressed on.
“We risk them being successful in conjuring up whatever foul thing your ancestor created. So, no Ayres, we aren’t waiting. We go in, and we go in right now. I can take out half of those men before they even know they’re in danger.”
Ayres stared down at her, rolling his jaw. “You would cripple yourself if you did that. Even Glimr has restrictions, Rorax.” They’d retrieved Glimr from the salt box before leaving.
“I wouldn’t be crippling myself, I’d be pushing my limits,” she snapped. “I have more than enough power to get me through the castle.”
“And how do you know that castle isn’t teemingwith more soldiers?”
“Well, is it?”
Mistrust and anger made his mouth tight, but Ayres’s eyes flashed red as he reached his magick out to feel the souls in the castle. “No, it’s empty except for ten, maybe fifteen life forms.”
“So, as long as we do this quietly and don’t alert the soldiers training out front, this can be done.”
Ayres narrowed his eyes, his indecision naked for her to see.
Rorax took another step closer to him and attempted to soften her tone. “I won’t be able to rest, won’t be able to sleep or eat, and will scarcely be able to live until every one of those books are found.” She placed her hand on her chest. “So, I’m going in there. With or without you, Ayres.”
Ayres looked over at the men again, and that same fleeting eagerness flashed over his features, before he glared back down at her and growled. “Fine. But if you do anything rogue, unexpected, or try to get this book back to your Butcher King—”
“I will remind you that my king is currently stationed in Morvarand. Fighting for your House, your land, and your people. So even if I were to bring the book back to Raengar, at least I wouldn’t have to go very far to do it.” She seethed, edging up on her toes to get in his face. She had to talk herself down from lunging for his throat with her teeth.
He snarled at her. “Raengar? You’re on a first name basis with the Butcher King?”
If only he knew.
They glared at each other for a long second before she turned away, summoning Glimr to her palm. “We don’t have time for this. Go down into the tunnels and search the vaults. I will climb the tower and start from the top.”
“Meet me on the middle floor. Helfast has its jail on the main floor.”
“Understood.” Rorax nodded.
She was about to turn when Ayres reached out and grabbed her arm. “Be careful. My queen will cut off my balls if you die up there.”
Rorax smirked and pulled her arm away. “You, too. I won’t carry you out of here.”
They stepped out of the shadows.
Rorax let Glimr fly, at the same time a burst of black magick streaked with red lightning catapulted towards the unsuspecting soldiers.
It took them less than thirty seconds to silently clear the camp of thirty men.
Ayres heaved open the grate to the tunnel entrance, and Rorax ignored the way his muscles flexed under his leathers.
“Scream if you get caught,” Ayres quipped and lowered his body down into the grate.
Rorax rolled her eyes and crept closer to the wall. There was a massive tree growing close enough she might be able to make the leap from a long branch to the tower. She climbed until she was near the top and sent her knife at the necks of eleven guards lining the walls. They all dropped like potato sacks straight to the ground. Her power strained as she summoned her knife back. She’d only have a few more kills with Glimr before the magick she held would be used up and she’d be forced to choose between killing the soldiers manually or passing out.
Rorax leapt from her tree branch to the tower, catching herself and dangling by her fingertips on the extruding wooden beam. She carefully hauled her body upwards, so she was perched on the wood, then she peaked in through the window. It was an old bell tower with a big bronze bell hanging above the one man in the room. He was slight and had sandy blond hair. He sat at a dilapidated desk with his back hunched, scribbling furiously on a letter. His sword sat propped against the doorframe behind him, and when she slipped in through the top window, she positioned herself between him and his sword, rendering him defenseless.
She landed on the stone floor in a crouch, she looked up into his face as he scrambled from his seat. As he took in her white eyes, his face went pale. “Fuck. I . . . I know you.” He croaked.
Rorax slowly uncurled and couldn’t help the triumphant grin that crept across her face. “You do?’
“Y-you’re the Spine Cleaver.”
Rorax’s grin split into a smile. “I always liked that nickname.”
“More than the Pup?”
Rorax’s smile fell off her face and she pulled a knife out of her hair. “Why are you here?”
He put his hands up in surrender. “Helfast was abandoned almost four hundred years ago, but it is still strong, the foundations—”
“No,” Rorax snapped, slicing the air between them with her knife. “Why are you in the Realms? Why have you and all your men started to crawl out of your reeking rat hole?”
Rorax advanced a step forward, and the man scrambled back, hitting his desk with his hip, and causing the contents on it—ink bottles, quills, rolls of parchment—to rattle and fall off the edge to the floor.
“The . . . the Books. Sumavari’s Books. We need to summon Sumavari’s pets if we are to stand a chance in this war.”
“The Pit monsters aren”t sufficient?” She snarled.
“No, House of Ice is too strong.” A calm look of steely determination came over him. “The Realms need to fall. They have abused their ministry over magick.”
“It seems that we are protecting it just fine.” Rorax sneered as she towered over the man.
“The magick in Lyondrea is corrupted.”
Rorax remembered the wolves in Lyondrea, how her knife could not puncture through any of the wolves’ fur and believed him.
Magick in Illus lived in the earth. The Gifted could absorb it, holding it within themselves before they put it to use, but any magick in the ground that was not used regularly could spoil, rot until the magick spawned monsters. The Realms, the most magickly concentrated country in the world, had priests and paladins that roamed the land to use magick. Rorax didn’t understand why he and his men would summon monsters when they popped up anyway, uninvited and without any prompting.
“Then why go to all this fucking trouble?” She snarled. “Why not just ask for the Guardian’s help to solve it. It’s their job to protect everyone in Illus. Everyone down to the dogs are allowed to request a meeting with the Guardians.”
The man gave her a sad smile. “Do you truly think it’s that easy? That the lords of the Realms do not push their issues to the front of the line?”
“Then push harder.”
The cowering man in front of her seemed to regain a modicum of his courage. “Do you think we have not exhausted every conceivable route before choosing this one? We have begged until our knees were raw and pleaded until our voices ached for an audience with the Guardians and have received nothing.”
Rorax tilted her head. There was no lie in this man’s face. “Why have they ignored you?”
The man gritted his teeth. “The Guardians and the Council of Houses in Valitlinn often turn a blind eye to those who do not reside in the Realms.”
Rorax’s brow furrowed. “So, you turned to the Pits? You think that unleashing the Illus’ horrors back into the world will solve anything?”
It actually might, Rorax thought. And that terrified her. Between the Pits, Lyondrea’s forces, and Sumavari’s monsters it might be enough to break them.
“We are desperate,” the man hissed. “I warn you now, Spine Cleaver, war is coming, and the Pits are just the beginning. With or without Sumavari’s pets, we will burn the Realms to the ground until there is nothing but a smoking rubble of ash and bones so we can rebuild it from the ground up.” The man smiled, a smile of defiance and determination.
Then the man lifted his hand and a flash of a white pill passed over his tongue into his mouth. Rorax leapt forward and snatched his hand away, but she was too late. Seconds later the man’s body seized. Rorax stepped back, knowing there was nothing she could do. He coughed up a fountain of blood over his breastplate right before his chest stopped moving.
Rorax stepped to the man’s desk, looking over his letters and paperwork, but there was nothing to be found but a map of Helfast and a letter from a scout who had come to check out the location prior to the rest of the soldier’s arrival. She opened the top drawer of the desk, and there, on a leather cord, was a golden key. Rorax plucked it out and jammed it into her back pocket. She didn’t know what it was for, but it was bad practice to leave keys behind.
She rummaged around the desk some more but didn’t find anything else that seemed useful. She stared at the dead man for half a second, sifting his words around in her mind, before she turned and hurled herself down the stairs.
Ayres thundered down the steps and paused as he saw the crumpled body of a prison guard, Rorax’s knife still embedded in his neck. She flicked out her fingers and the knife returned to its sheath at her back.
“Do you have the book?” Rorax asked.
He shook his head grimly. “It’s behind a locked door. In a witch room.”
Which meant he wouldn’t have been able to open it without the key, no matter the amount of magick he held.
Rorax fished the mysterious key out of the pocket of her leather pants with a triumphant grin. “Got it.”
Ayres’s mouth went tight as he snatched it out of her hand.
“Good work,” Ayres grudgingly praised.
Rorax opened her mouth to respond right as a bell started to ring, cutting her off with long, loud tolls.
“Fuck,” Ayres hissed. “Fuck.”
“Let’s go.”
They took two hurried steps toward the exit, when Ayres suddenly froze, causing Rorax to barrel into him.
“Umph. What’re you—”
But Ayres was already bent over, cooing at something—at someone—in one of the cells. A little girl, maybe five or six years old, with dirty pale cheeks and wide, scared eyes. She had big blue eyes and dirty blonde hair, looking up at them from where she had crammed herself in the corner of her cell.
The little girl’s dirty blonde hair was curly, and her eyes weren’t the same color as Volla’s, but the panic Rorax recognized. The same helpless expression, the same hope in her eyes that Rorax might be able to save her.
Rorax looked at the lock. It was thick and would require precious minutes to open.
Ayres took a step towards the girl, and Rorax gripped his wrist to stop him, panic inflating in her throat. “Ayres. The book.”
“You aren’t going to even try to save her?” He hissed at her in the darkness, the faint glimpse of warmth in his eyes she’d seen a few times since the Selection was replaced with the more familiar cold black hatred.
“Ayres, we can come back and get her after we find the book,” Rorax demanded, a desperation in her voice that she hated. The soldiers from outside were undoubtedly ascending on them right now. They wouldn’t be able to save her. They would fail the girl and she would die.
Plain agony danced in his eyes, and he sliced his hand through the air between them. “Fuck the book. I’m getting her out and you won’t survive here alone. Let’s go.”
“If they’re successful in summoning Sumavari’s pets we could be putting thousands of lives at risk. I would never be able to live with myself if we let that happen!”
“And I will never be able to live with myself if we leave her here!”
They stood toe to toe. They needed to move; she could hear the shouts of the men outside the gates getting closer.
“Do you honestly have no compassion in that cold, black heart? Gods above, Rorax,” he insisted. “This little girl could die. Someone could come back for her. We’re getting her out of this cage now.”
Rorax gaped at Ayres before looking down with wide eyes at the little girl who was curled up and shivering in the dirt, watching them with eyes that held the same amount of panic as Rorax’s own.
Her tongue felt like a lead brick in her mouth, and her heart was hammering against her ribs so violently she could hear it in her ears. Rorax wouldn’t be able to save her, even if she wanted to. The gods hadn’t built her for that.
Ayres tossed Rorax the key and shook his head at her in disgust then spun to the girl’s cell. Rorax caught the key in her palms, the weight of the warm metal suddenly feeling like an anchor to her soul.
Images of Volla and Sahana’s broken bodies, of the thousand others that Rorax had been unable or unwilling to save, danced in Rorax’s eyes as darkness laced with hints of red lighting looped around the bars of the cell. With a flick of his hand the bars ripped out of the cement and flew across the room, and Ayres moved into the cell. Rorax could see his exhaustion weighing on his shoulders as unbuckled his belt and held it out to Rorax as he knelt beside the girl.
“Strap her to my back.”
No, just run!
“Ayres,” Rorax whispered, her voice cracking in panic. “We won’t survive. We could be leading her straight to an even more painful death. We don’t know if we’ll be able to make it out of here. We’re going to fail her.”
“We can do this, Rorax.” His black gaze narrowed. He studied her for a split second as he tossed the belt away and bent down to the child and carefully cradled her up in his arms.
They ran out of the fortress together. Rorax slung her knife through the lock on the back gate, and they started to run.
The men that had been stationed in the front of the fortress came around the corner and arrows started hitting the grass behind them. They ran in zig zags and Rorax positioned herself between Ayres and the archers until the woods got thicker.
They ducked behind a massive pine tree and Rorax took the opportunity to stop and breathe, putting her hands on her hips. They were still a five-minute run from where their horses were tied up.
Ayres offered up his hand to her, “Come on.”
She stared at it for a beat, two, and then shook her head.
“Get her out, Ayres,” Rorax said. “Get her out, I’m going back for the book.”
“Rorax, get your ass over here,” Ayres growled; his hand still raised in the air towards her.
She shook her head and took a step back. “I have to do this.”
Before he could say anything else, she turned and slipped back through the trees towards the tower.