CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
C HAPTER T HIRTY- T HREE
Ryon awakens with a groan.
His shoulders scream, the tendons torn and throbbing with a menace he has never met. But this cave he knows. It all comes crashing back to him.
“Awake again,” says the same voice as before – low and melodic. The mage with the braids tips a clay cup to his lips. “Drink, night wing,” she says.
Ryon splutters at the liquid forced passed his lips. It burns, leaving his throat scorched. “Ugh,” he moans, his head swimming. “Riv?” he mutters. He is not sure if the word fully forms. “Tash?”
“Your fellows are alive, though they have fared worse than you,” the mage says in the old language, choking any reply Ryon could give with another wash of the hot, fiery liquid.
Ryon thrashes, turning his head away, but it only tears at his shoulders and another moan escapes him.
“Easy, Glacian,” the mage says. “You’ll separate those arms from the rest of you.”
The substance works its way down his throat and makes his eyes water, but the pain coursing through his body quickly dulls. It makes it easier to think, to concentrate. His feet slip on the rocky floor, but he can focus on the mage, he can peer at the receding light from the entrance. Receding or dawning? He has no concept of time.
“How long have I been here?”
“Days,” the mage said. “You are stronger than I predicted.”
Ryon tries to steady the shake of his legs. “Please,” he says. “Let me go. I want no fight with you.”
“Ah,” the woman says. “Then you should not have wandered through our wards.”
“I was brought here. I did not come of my own means.”
The mage tilts her head to the side. “And who delivered you? Surely not Baltisse. Unless she is in trouble?”
“No…” Ryon hesitates. “No. Not her.”
The mention of her name brings to mind the first time Ryon stumbled upon this clan of mages – of how they intended to kill him. Were it not for Baltisse’s arrival, her ability to read minds and find his intention well-meant, they likely would have.
“Where is she? She has not visited in a long while,” the mage asks now, her eyes burning fiercely.
Ryon cannot answer. Doing so will surely bring about a swift death. He defers instead. “Yerdos folded me from the Chasm,” he says. “She brought us here.”
It has the affect he imagined. The mage’s eyes widen – bright beacons in this dark cavern. Her hand reaches out toward his neck, as though she might squeeze it, but her fingers retract. “Yerdos?” she repeats, the name hushed. She says it with reverence. “She sent you here?”
Ryon nods once.
“A gift,” the mage utters. “An offering.”
The muscles in his stomach recoil. Offerings tend to infer food. From what he knows of this ancient clan, it would not seem undue for them to consume Glacians and call it sustenance.
“She showed us mercy,” Ryon says, his voice softer. So soft he fears she will not hear. “She returned us to the mountain.”
The mage only stares with that lopsided tilt, the flame in her palm dancing haphazardly.
“What is your name?” Ryon winces.
“Samskia,” she answers, gaze unbroken.
“Samskia… Yerdos had other plans for me,” he grunts, his eyelids drooping. “There is a woman on this mountain. She needs me.”
“Women do not have need of men,” Samskia rebukes. “It is only men who suffer and destruct when women withdraw their attention.”
Ryon closes his eyes, feeling Dawsyn reaching for him through the dark. He thinks of the way her eyes search and search until they find him and thinks that this assertion might have been true once, but it isn’t true now.
She needs him, just as he needs her.
“In two nights, the moon will glow red. Perhaps you’ll live to see it, night wing, and your lover will come to find you. Far stranger things have happened on a blood moon.”
Ryon looks to the cavern entrance, where the light has brightened the snow beyond. “And if she does not?”
“Then we will bleed you dry in Yerdos’ name,” Samskia says with a sinister smile. Her teeth glisten. “You and the rest of your winged friends.”
With that, she thrusts her hand sideways, and the flame that she had held bounces along the cavern walls, lighting torches as it goes. It illuminates the tunnel-like cave foot by foot, until the unfathomably long expanse is thrown into relief.
Tied by vine to the earthy walls are the wilting bodies of not just three Glacians – though Rivdan and Tasheem hang limply beside him – but many.
And their skin is ghostly white.
“I hope you live to see the moon, night wing,” Samskia says, gliding toward the cave opening. “You were a fool to leave your woman.” With that, the mage disappears, stepping out onto the snow with bare feet.
Ryon turns his head as far as he can manage to his left, straining to see Tasheem and Rivdan. Their forearms and shoulders are encased in the same vine, their heads lolling forward onto their chests. Tasheem’s lips are rimmed in blood and drops of it seep from her mouth and fall to the ground. Rivdan trembles in his sleep. His eyes are only half-closed. Ryon can see the whites of them beneath the slits of his eyelids.
“Fuck,” Ryon breathes. He cannot strain against the vine. It only seems to wind itself tighter when he tries. In any case, his shoulders are too injured for the movement, stretched beyond their capacity from holding up his weight. “Mother help us.”
“Oh, I doubt the Mother will turn her head for the likes of us, Ryon,” a weak voice says.
It comes from the wall opposite, where the torch flames are beginning to flicker out and throw the bodies of the other captured Glacians into shadow.
Ryon squints and can just make out the shape of the nose, the lengths of steely hair, the sunken, translucent skin.
Vasteel lifts his chin to meet Ryon’s stare.
Ryon’s stomach lurches.
“The bastard son of Mesrich,” the former king says. “How odd that we should meet again.”