Chapter 34
White feathers rustled, then settled back in sleep.
There was so much I wanted to say. But I didn’t have the words, so I removed my gloves and laid my bare hand on his neck, touching the smooth feathers, stroking the sleek neck.
“Fog the questions,” I said quietly. “I don’t need to know.
Just, thank you. Thank you for pulling me from the water all those months ago.
Thank you for waiting with me in the sea.
Thank you for letting me join the crew, and thank you for letting me stay as Navy, as I needed, for as long as I needed. ”
I took a deep, shuddering breath.
“Thank you for teaching me the deeper magiks and challenging me to be more than what I was and for letting me know it’s foggin’ glorious to want more. And thank you for sharing with me the most remarkable woman I’ve ever known.”
And I reached with my other hand to touch the ship’s hull beneath the window. Chimeric sprang to life and glistened along her staves. I could hear the canvas thunder, knew runes raced up her masts.
Aro’el, she said. Child of the north. Chase the mirror. Find the mage.
Tears stung my eyes at the sound of her voice.
And so, I sat, a fulcrum between two worlds, one hand on him, the other on her, feelings like memories sweeping through my bones.
Love. Loss. Grief. Joy. My heart broke and mended with each successive beat, and I closed my eyes as the chimeric sang the song of suns and moons, islands and trees, and the hawk that soared between them all.
But they weren’t my memories. I didn’t know what they were, but I knew they weren’t mine.
I’m not sure how long we sat, but at some point, he stirred, the feathers changing beneath my palm.
It was so smooth, so effortless, just a rush of feather and fabric and midnight black hair.
He was a man now, reclining on the chest, back arched against the windows, one leg tucked, catlike, beneath him, the other draped over the side.
My hand was on his thigh, and I pulled it away.
“Why are you here?” he murmured. “You should rest before the Dreadwall.”
The words I had planned were gone, dissipated like Forge in Winterdark.
“Why are we doing this?” I asked. Forge, I was so blunt.
“Now is not the time,” he said.
“You know what you’re asking of me,” I said. “I might not come out on the other side, and I want to know you before the end.”
He turned his head to stare out the mullioned windows, thought a long while as if weighing my worth.
“You and Kirianae,” I said, and I leaned forward. “And the House WoodRaven. I know you’re the last Priestlord. Your name’s recorded in the list of the dead.”
His eyes were heavy-lidded, and he ran an elegant hand across his face, exhausted.
“And the Touchstone is the RuneTree. But she is a goddess, too, yes?” I took a deep breath and forged ahead with the question I’d been afraid to ask. “Who was she…to you?”
The air was as heavy as a gathering storm.
“Who was she?” I pressed.
“Aro’el…”
“Was she your lover?”
He grunted, released a long breath.
“I am not a Priestlord,” he said finally, not looking at me.
“Not a Priestlord?” I blinked. “What the hels?”
“Not truly,” he said. “It requires forty suns, a series of exams, and trial by chimeric. I may have the power, but I do not have the name.”
Suns. Even the ironmages called him Priestlord.
“I was sent as an acolyte twenty-two years ago, when the order was strong and vibrant and in the crosshairs of an insecure king.”
I nodded slowly. He hadn’t answered my question yet, had tacked neatly around it, but I knew he would come about eventually. He always did. And I respected that about him. He could change course when given the right winds.
“In fact, I was the youngest ever to be sent. Six suns, I believe. The youngest age allowed was eight. I was good.”
He looked down at me with a twitch of his lips.
“Very good.”
I almost smiled back.
“Were you cheating?” I teased.
His eyes glittered like stars over the sea.
“Most likely. I remember arriving with a Rhi’Ahr escort, leaping out of the longboat, and swimming to the shore.
Meeting the Priestlords and feeling their rebuke.
Scaling the mountain and knowing the chimeric as a true and dangerous thing.
And I remember the first time I saw the RuneTree… ”
He struggled as if to catch his breath, as if the memories actually ached at the telling.
“Kirianae, the RuneTree, a thousand years old, born from chimeric and the blood of old Dreadmages. She was so tall, her branches full and reaching for the skies. Her trunk grew along the mountainside, her bark thick and covered in rune. She was glorious, Aro’el.
I heard her voice the moment I set foot in the sand of the bay. ”
Kier Gavriel, she said, her voice faint. Beloved, come home.
“There were seventy mages living on the island, all older than I, but that was the way it was run. The old ones taught the younger, and when a new acolyte arrived, a seasoned one returned to their king, to counsel and to guide. There were so many books, and I was an eager reader. I was not allowed to climb the Tree, but every night, I would take a book, scale her branches, all the way to the top, and read by the light of the moons.”
I smiled to myself and gazed up at his shelves, countless spines of boundless knowledge.
“I never slipped. I never fell. And when I would fall asleep, she would keep me safe until morning. She would not let them chasten me, either, for she had grown protective of me and my reckless, fearless ways. I took Kier as my Lore name to honor her.”
Kier. I loved that name. It sounded like the cry of a winter hawk.
My Beloved. My Kier Gavriel. Honor Aro’el.
“I was there but a year when a midnight raid came from the North. I was asleep, hidden in her canopy, and I awoke to the crack of a flint. And then another and another. Bonavanczek had ordered them all slaughtered, with his soldiers and his shot. The screams of my order are seared in my ears as they died in a hail of gunpowder.”
He looked down at me, and I could see memory hollow the lines of his face.
“I tried to help them, though in truth, I could not. I was a child of seven, could barely cast a shield. Kirianae refused to let me go, held me fast in her branches, and I watched in horror as the fusiliers dragged bodies from the Heart of the Cloud. They chopped them all to pieces, in case some arcane magik could bring them back. That very night, they fled with trophies for the war room of the king. She let me down at dawn.”
He slid his leg out from under him and leaned forward, clasped his hands between his knees.
“I had never seen blood like that, Aro’el. I had never seen bones and brains and shattered faces once filled with life. My teachers, my friends, slain the way you might pick flowers, and we didn’t know why.”
Forge, I wanted to soothe him, comfort him, but I didn’t know how. I laid a hand upon his back. I don’t think he felt it, but somehow, it seemed right.
“And then I was alone. Alone on an island at seven suns of age. I cannot tell you the times I nearly died of starvation or thirst or exposure or wounds. I learned to fish and hunt and make fires from water-damp wood. I became skilled at knowing which berries would feed my body and which would spin nightmares that would last for days. It was a long, painful, treacherous time, and I know I would have gone mad if I did not have the books…”
He looked up at me now, a weak smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.
“Oh, the books, Aro’el. And they were mine. I devoured each and every one. Books on magecraft and books on rune, some written in Rhi’Ahr and others in Overland. I read them all, and I grew strong in magik and skilled in rune.”
This was the reason for his formal speech, I realized. He had been raised in a library, as I had once mused, but his teachers weren’t scholars or sages. They were the very books themselves.
“I could hear her then, when she was glorious and wise. Kirianae taught me the only language she knew. Magik, wylde and Archaic. She taught me how to cast and how to spin. She knew every spell that had ever been, for the chimeric was the sap in her veins. She was the heart of the Worldrune, knew the location of every web and knot, and which to pluck and which to strum and how to make them sing. She also had the patience of lifetimes because, moons know, I was not an easy learner.”
My heart swelled at the thought of this ancient being, this goddess tree, loving a little boy and teaching him the mysteries of the world simply because she could.
“She was the one who taught me to mirror. We could be equals, she said, so that, like her, I could soar…”
He lifted his hand, twisted his wrist. His arm became a wing before I could blink.
“What better way to protect the island than as a hawk that could survey all on the wings of the wind, completely at home by air, land, and water?”
I could get both hands to form wings now, could grow feathers all along my neck and spine. My feet could shrivel, and my toes could shrink, and tiny tips of talons could form across them. It was a mad, exhilarating, excruciating thing.
Another twist, and his wing was gone.
“It was easy to live as a hawk,” he said, “to hunt and fish and sip from the bay. I slept in her branches by night, and I grew in rune by day, and she was my only companion for ten years. My heart, my soul, my protector, my kel’yion.”
Family, friend, closer than either.
My heart thudded in my chest as I realized he’d answered my question. It was there in the lines in his face, in the shape of his smile. The goddess wasn’t his lover. She was his mother.
I reached out to touch her again. Her wisdom echoed through the boards, deep and joyful and pensive and true. My eyes began to sting.
“I lived for her, and she for me. And I protected her as she had protected me. And I knew I had to keep the King of the Oversea from her shores at all cost. So we spun a magik so wylde…we made the Cloudgate disappear.”