Because the Beasts Came (Wells of Istri #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Being ripped apart by beasts would be less painful.

The walls of the building that was once her home pressed inward as Iryana forced herself through the hallway. The urge to turn back, to escape before the memories crushed her completely, was almost impossible to smother.

Eyes burning and fists trembling, she hurried past old family portraits, sketches of cities she’d never see again, and woven tapestries depicting scenes of gods’ blood and of champions.

The sight put a bitter taste in her mouth, but the entire house was like that: cluttered with unwelcome reminders of a past far out of reach.

Reminders of a time when the whole Kleesold clan stood by her.

Iryana always wondered if her family, if the world, had any idea how far the lands of Istri would fall to the beasts.

Would they have bothered to take so many things if they had known they would likely never return to their lives from before?

She brushed that thought aside; it hardly mattered now, not after so many years.

Turning down another hall, Iryana took a few quick breaths, trying to calm herself. To stay steady. To prepare herself.

There had been a time when her grandmother, though strict and demanding even then, had been her favorite person. Always quick to offer advice and corrections, always watching in a way that made Iryana feel as if her every action mattered.

Once, Iryana could have told her grandmother anything. Trusted her with anything. But that was also lost to the past, and there was nothing to be done about it now.

Iryana paused, her body stiffening painfully. Just around the corner, her grandmother’s study loomed. She’d have done just about anything to avoid the meeting—anything short of leaving the post entirely.

Leaning against a tapestry, she stared at the wooden walls and ceiling as she begged her heart to slow. So she could feign indifference, detachment.

When she finally felt like she wasn’t going to jump out of her skin, Iryana righted herself.

Looking at the wall where she’d been leaning, Iryana chuckled dryly.

The tapestry she’d been leaning against depicted the last great battle of the gods, towering over the land in their giant-forms. The moment before they abandoned the people of Istri completely, leaving only their magic to linger in the earth.

Fitting. Her family had abandoned her, too. And she’d abandoned them right back.

After checking the hardened leather of her armor, Iryana adjusted her skirt under the leather plates that hung down over her thighs, and inspected the steel and leather helmet tucked under her arm.

Even brushed the dirt off her boots. Thankfully, her braided hair was still neat under the dark fabric of her headscarf, because she didn’t have the patience to rebraid it.

A guardian was always expected to be orderly, and habits were hard to break.

She wished she could stop caring about what her grandmother thought of her. What any of them thought.

Iryana rounded the corner and walked through the open door into her grandmother’s office, finding the aged woman behind her small desk. Already giving her a sharp look.

Vesima Kleesolda was a force of nature, the First of the Kleesold Guardian Clan.

Her features were delicate but sharp, and her thin lips pressed into a grimace.

Wisps of her colorless hair escaped from the red-flowered scarf that covered the rest of it.

Iryana’s grandmother was too old to have much hold left on her magic, but she was fierce enough to keep the rest of the clan in line.

As a child, Iryana knew she could sway most of the adults into getting her way, but her grandmother would never budge. It didn’t matter if it was an excuse to skip a lesson or an uneaten pile of beets. Her grandmother’s word was strong as a metal-forging.

Iryana had to pick her battles carefully.

“Uncle Dinhal said you needed to talk to me,” Iryana explained, voice thankfully steady.

Her anxiety had been gradually rising since her uncle had refused to hand over her assignments until she talked to the First. He was in charge of the watch rotations and training schedules for the guardians and volunteer fighters stationed at their post.

She already knew she had made a mistake, knew she was about to pay the consequences. But how bad they’d be this time was the question. Any time Iryana crossed the boundaries she had placed for her work with the clan, they thought they could smash right through the rest of them.

One of Iryana’s most important conditions was that she would only take shifts at the smaller watchtower to the west, where she could man it alone and avoid interacting with the others.

Yet she’d let herself be swayed when she heard her uncle and her cousin, Tonhald, panicking as they tried to figure out how to fill a shift at the main watchtower, left open by a recently injured volunteer soldier.

She’d known immediately that she’d regret it.

But she’d pictured the beasts scrambling up the steep climb, ripping her cousins into pieces and tearing down the wall, and had volunteered before she could help herself.

They called the beasts the dakii: the devourers. It was fitting, for every dakya among them was threat enough to take even a skilled fighter down.

She braced for her grandmother to pounce on that bit of weakness she’d shown.

“I just finished a meeting with the 18th’s liaison,” the First said with a sneer, ignoring what Iryana had said entirely.

After blinking in surprise, Iryana bristled at the mention of the 18th, the local brigade that controlled the territory outside their settlement.

Istri’s military had been meant to fight off the dakii so that the people could one day return to their homes, but instead, the soldiers had become thugs.

Her grandmother continued with a growl, “I explained to the man that their protection was not living up to the goods we trade for it.”

Iryana didn’t answer; she wasn’t meant to. Her grandmother didn’t really care what she thought, and anyone else walking into the office then would have heard the same. Iryana was far from being in the First’s confidence.

“And his solution? They could have more patrols covering the mouth of the Yuresh if we paid additional tribute. Those heartless, honorless thugs! I’d have them all fall to the dakii if it were up to me.”

Iryana shuffled awkwardly, wanting to get back to the reason she was there so she could leave, though she didn’t disagree with her grandmother’s sentiment.

She wished her clan could just refuse to pay, but they’d heard of what happened to the few posts that had refused.

Slaughtered by packs of dakii too large not to have been deliberately led there.

A shiver ran down her spine. Surely the First wouldn’t risk that.

“I wasn’t surprised they didn’t care that we’d lost another fighter, that we’d had to abandon foraging in the Yuresh Valley.” The First laughed without emotion, a dangerous glint in her eyes. “They’d doom us all to the dakii if they didn’t benefit from our survival.”

Iryana nodded, feigning patience.

“He even had the nerve to threaten me, right in this very office.”

Her grandmother was quiet for a moment, and then her eyes roamed over Iryana with contemplation. “Dinhal told me you took on a couple of shifts at the main watchtower this week.”

Finally.

Iryana really shouldn’t have done it. But…

The alternative had been letting two of her younger cousins manage it alone or forcing one of her uncles to go almost two days without sleeping, both being far too great a risk.

If dakii had come too far into the valley below their wall, grown too interested in the mostly obscured switchback path that led up to the hanging valley hiding her family’s home—she didn’t want to think about it. Thankfully they had not.

Iryana looked up from where she realized she’d been staring at her feet, knuckles white where she held her helmet. The First was still staring at her, waiting.

“It was an extenuating circumstance,” Iryana bit out. “It can’t be repeated.”

The First’s jaw clenched as she sucked in a sharp breath through her nose. “Time with the family will help you get used to being around them again.”

Iryana’s head was shaking before her grandmother had even finished. “It was a mistake. I could barely focus, barely… barely breathe the entire time.”

The words were a struggle to force through her lips, but her grandmother had to know that nothing had changed.

Part of her understood her grandmother. She was responsible for the entire Kleesold clan, the couple dozen of them that were left at least. And in charge of the Dovaki Post, which included nearly a hundred volunteers, and all the farmers and villages that existed further up in the valley to support the duchess’s settlement.

Their lives were all in the First’s hands.

She didn’t have room to worry about Iryana.

They were silent for a moment, Iryana trying not to tremble as she avoided her grandmother’s eyes, and the guilt that would come from meeting them.

“You will start training with the others again.” Iryana’s entire body stiffened at her grandmother’s words. “There’s only so much you can do on your own, and Byorsh could use help teaching the younger ones to handle their bows. You always excelled at that and—”

“NO,” she shouted, unable to listen a moment more, breathing ragged.

She trained by herself, or occasionally with one of the village soldiers or Uncle Dinhal to get some sparring in.

He never pushed her, never asked questions.

Training with the others had grown increasingly painful after she’d moved out.

Especially after Marisha—no, she wouldn’t think of that now.

It had gotten so bad that she’d struggle to breathe, head spinning and her vision darkening.

Sometimes she’d have to run off and vomit in the side yard.