Chapter 34
My head is still spinning as I follow Roiven back up the stairs. Being some long-lost queen of these people, all because a terrifying beast in the ocean decided to latch onto me as a child, is so impossibly weird that I can’t believe him. And yet, I know he still can’t lie.
I don’t know that it makes any difference. I didn’t agree to be a queen any more than I agreed to be his wife. But I know trying to reach a Hellion in a rowboat is idiotic, and if the Hellions aren’t coming here, I want to find out where they’re going.
The room he was in before is dark now, the door shut. We pass it and go all the way up to the caldera. Climbing the stairs back up to the top of the mountain uses different muscles than the ones I brutalized by riding Sava here, but my thighs scream with every step anyways.
“What’s Lusern?”
“A place.”
“Is it a secret?” I ask, trying not to sound annoyed, but his answer told me little I couldn’t have already guessed.
“Only to the Empire.” It’s dark on the staircase we’re using. Roiven takes a moment to press his hand to one of the stones and it slowly lights up in response, glowing at his touch. The shadows shrink away.
“And to me, apparently.” How can he say I’m a queen here, a statement that already makes no sense, if he won’t tell me the basic facts? Roiven sighs.
“This Tower used to just be a place for the dragons, their bonded, their families. A small community. After our last city fell, we Crafted one here…”
“I’m sorry, Crafted?”
“Torain and his brothers are Crafters. It’s their power,” Roiven says. I blink at his back and try to make sense of that. “They moved the earth to make spaces for us. Magic built all of this. That tree, in the coven room? It didn’t grow indoors. The indoors grew to hide it from sight.”
Rearranging a whole mountain seems like an immense amount of power. If he thinks my power is bigger, I’m bound to disappoint him.
“Most of our people moved here. But not everybody was willing to leave their homes. And some argued putting us all in one place made us too easy a target, even if we could concentrate our strength to defend it.”
“So Lusern is a village like we came from,” I guess.
“Bigger. Nearly three hundred people. But yes, it’s another hidden village.”
“Aria said Nor’s magic lets them speak with the people here. Can Nor see the Hellions, too?”
“...No,” Roiven admits. “Nor just talks to other witches. Those of us with flying familiars, mostly birds, keep an eye on our surroundings, and tell Nor if they’ve seen anything.”
I wonder how many titans and other birds have flown over Hellions I rode on, without me realizing they were reporting back to anybody.
We reach the doors to the caldera, and Roiven pauses.
“You didn’t ask the right question earlier, you know.”
“What?”
“When you were asking why I tricked you into the bond.”
He pushes open the door and steps through, and the sight steals the words from my lips before I can ask him what he means.
There aren’t any of those glowing-stones here, but a row of torches shoved into the crumbling ground illuminate the scene with flickering firelight.
Some twenty warriors prepare to ride out.
They’ve got leather armor and weapons strapped to their sides; the women who passed me earlier are among them.
In the distance I can see somebody fitting supply packs to the back of a deep blue dragon.
Besides the blue, there’s the red who greeted Sava on our arrival, a green dragon of about the same size, and Sava herself.
The behemoth black dragon hovers over the young hatchlings, who are huddling together in a dejected puddle.
I’d guess they’re upset at being left behind.
Sava’s worry for them rings so loudly in my heart it almost overwhelms me for a moment.
Far more people than dragons. The witches swarm Roiven, updating him on what preparations are complete and who has already assembled.
“Two minutes,” Roiven tells them. They nod and scatter to tell the others.
“There aren’t as many adult dragons as there were people in that coven,” I note.
He glances at me.
“The hatchlings bonded young. We needed the magic to keep our people alive.”
My heart tightens. I thought he was going to say the other dragons were elsewhere. I know I’ve seen far more in the past. Have we really killed that many of them in the last two years?
“That’s it?”
“We have Nor’s dragon, too, but he’s old enough that he barely flies anymore, much less fights. Nor isn’t part of the coven—they said far-reading for us was enough of a contribution.”
I draw a deep breath, and step to the side as a pair of witches barrel through, carrying bundles of swords. Perhaps to bring to the people they’re going to save.
“I want to come. To Lusern.”
Roiven grimaces.
“You’d rather I didn’t go,” I mutter.
“You haven’t connected fully to your magic,” Roiven says. The words might sound like an insult from somebody else’s mouth, but he says it gently enough. Facts, not judgements. “Perhaps not a good idea.”
“I don’t need magic to fight,” I remind him, patting my sword hilt.
“Can I trust you to fight on our side?” he asks, eyebrows furrowed.
“I want to convince the War-Father to turn back, if I can. Not because I’m taking his side, Roiven. It’s because of the Enchanted.”
Roiven draws a deep breath. His hand cups the side of my face, then falls away just as fast. Warmth flutters through me.
“It’s not going to work.”
“Maybe not, but…”
Before I can finish, a white-blue light snaps across the sky, washing all the other color away from the Caldera. Our surroundings flash so bright it could be midday. It immediately darkens back away, letting the glowing torches restore the warmth of Roiven’s skin and the burning gold of his eyes.
My whole body feels empty, like I’m floating outside it. I know that shade of blue. My nose burns from the acidic tang of the crystals. A tremor starts in my hands as Roiven’s head snaps back to look at the sky.
A booming sound echoes across the heavens, long seconds behind the flash of light.
“Roiven!” Aria calls sharply. I look to find her far above us, on a wide landing at the caldera’s rim.
In the overwhelm of arriving earlier today, I managed to miss the narrow stairs carved up one of the basin’s sides: they emerge seamlessly from the same rock, easy to overlook.
But now other witches race up those same steps toward Aria.
Roiven sprints for the stairs after them. I follow more slowly, until I’m at the back of the group.
“What have they done?”
“What is that?”
“By all the gods, please…”
There’s a column of blue light, rising to the sky and glazing the underside of a billowing cloud.
In the darkness I can’t tell how far away it is, but from the height it could be far back on the horizon.
The column fades to dark until all that’s left is the blue cloud.
An explosion the size of which I’ve never seen.
When I was still part of the military, there was no Hellion capable of that much destruction. I stare open-mouthed.
“Lusern. That’s due west,” Aria says in a shaking voice.
“What was that?” Roiven asks. His eyes cut through the crowd to find me. And suddenly all the witches are staring at me, a mix of horror and anger in their eyes.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” I whisper.
“Some… some kind of Hellion weapon, from the color and the burn, but…” None of the Hellions have that kind of power.
Rancor’s weapons aren’t even a fraction that large.
I was only on the Bluff for two years. Could they build something that big, that fast?
Could a single blast of enchantment destroy an entire island?
“You must know more,” Torain says. I hear the raw edge of desperation in his voice.
I just keep staring at the billowing blue cloud in silence as dread weights my limbs. I don’t know what it is, or what they did, or what remains of Lusern. But there is one thing I’m certain of. That was a display of more power than I have ever seen a Hellion use, by an order of magnitudes.
How many Enchanted did they drain to create the blue light now fading from the sky? The brightness of the explosions lingers in my eyes. Hundreds, at a minimum. A ship’s worth of sacrifices.
Every accusation the Empire leveled at the witches held the truth about what we were doing ourselves. Draining life. Killing innocents. Immense sacrifice, for unholy power.
This is the power that Harfor was seeking, when she brought Roiven in bondage to the Bluff, and arranged for everybody there to die.
Wind stirs my hair as the witches all stare in silence at the fading light.
“Let’s go,” Roiven says. His voice is thick with emotion. I feel the rage in him.
“There? You can’t be…” one of the male witches, one I haven’t met, starts.
“There could be survivors,” Roiven says grimly.
“Of that?” the man asks.
“Is your suggestion that we abandon them without checking?”
“We could run,” the man suggests quietly. Roiven opens his mouth to answer, but Aria cuts in.
“We have no ships. The hatchlings can’t fly, and the adult dragons can carry perhaps three dozen between them. What, then, do you suggest we do with the other four thousand of our people?”
Four thousand people? There’s a lot more of this island I have yet to see, then.
And yet, at the same time, it’s such a small number in comparison to the Empire. The fleet of Hellions alone carries nearly that many people.
“They made Roiven tell them where the Tower is, but they don’t know all our hideouts,” one of the woman witches responds. “If we hide…”
Made Roiven. Gods, the enchantment. Harfor must have commanded him. That’s how they learned about the Tower. I draw a shuddering breath, my heart aching for him.
“I am not going to hide and hope that thing doesn’t find us,” Roiven says, pointing in the direction the attack came. “We have nowhere to run, and we can’t hide forever. Either we fight, or we die rolling over. Imili’s unit, mount up. Savasaeirn and I will fly alone.”
“You’re going to leave us behind?” I hear a voice snap.
“If there are survivors, we’re going to need room to carry them,” Roiven answers.
“There aren’t,” I say, so quietly nobody listens.
In my mind I’m seeing the village we stayed at, the children playing and Nor carrying a tray of food, Hevrin finding peace and a new life, in a land with plants and people who just want to survive.
I know this is a different village, but the people in it deserved life just as much.
I don’t want any more Enchanted to die. But if I keep trying to reach the War-Father and beg for peace, am I just dooming more people to die, with a plan that will never work?
If he’s willing to use weapons like this, to destroy a peaceful village, why would he accept a surrender?
He doesn’t care about saving the Enchanted or the sailors. He never has.
“All others, stay here in case those ships make it to the Tower before we return,” Roiven says.
“There aren’t survivors,” I say more loudly.
“We’re going to check,” Roiven says flatly. “They could have evacuated before the blast hit. We don’t know. Nor can only farspeak to those they’ve met, so there’s only one way to be certain.”
There’s a push to move down the stairs, a flood of bodies trying to leave that way. As the last to come up, I jog down to get out of their way. A sick feeling still sloshes in my stomach.
“Roiven,” I call. I don’t see him in the crowd around me. Sava launches up into the sky, and I raise a hand to block the snap of wind from my eyes.
Roiven is already airborne.
The green dragon launches up a moment later, carrying Aria and the troop of warrior women I saw before.
Sava wheels ahead of the green dragon and plunges into the night.
I reach for the bond and feel him slipping further away.
I feel cold all over. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that he left me behind, without saying farewell, and in the face of whatever annihilation just happened I have no right to feel upset about it.
“Put out a call. All lights dark. We do nothing to help them find us,” Torain announces to the witches still in the caldera.
A pair of them unload the packs they’d strapped to the blue dragon.
The others are talking in tight, uneasy clusters.
A few still stand on the platform, staring out the direction that Aria and Roiven flew.
“Why should we harbor a knight?” a man growls. He shoulders through the crowd towards me. The witch is tall and broad-shouldered, with red hair in a long braid. People part to let him through. “She could be a spy. We’ve seen what her kind does.”
I stiffen, hearing the violence in his voice. This man wants blood. He emerges from the crowd. Ten feet separate us, and he doesn’t slow as he draws a shortsword. There’s a crazed look in his eyes that I recognize as grief.
“Beran,” Torain warns. The silver-haired witch folds his arms. He looks unsteady on his feet after watching the explosion. “She has the King’s protection.”
Beran slashes at me. I don’t have it in me to draw my sword on a witch, not tonight. Not after what I just witnessed. I block him with my metal arm and dodge to the side. I don’t want to lead the fight towards the other witches, not while he has a drawn blade.
“I don’t want to fight you,” I tell him.
He screams and stabs at me again. I move to block, but the blade doesn’t connect.
Shadows surge forward and drag Beran back, blinding him and yanking the sword from his grip. It clatters onto the caldera floor as Avreen shoves her way through the crowd. I can’t believe she, of all people, would protect me.
“You should go to your room,” Avreen says flatly as she strides between Beran and me.
“But…”
“It would be best, knight,” Avreen says. Her voice is low and simmering in anger.
I leave the caldera silently, slipping back through the doors into the mountain’s passages.
Surely I can find my way down to the sea without a guide. All I need to do is follow the stairs Torain took me to before.