Chapter Three Frejara
Isaw my Mother’s Acolytes from afar, their skeletal forms swaying like reeds, pale arms outstretched to beckon me toward the tent where they had so lovingly prepared the Scrying Glass.
Even from a distance, their faint, rasping whispers reached me, like leaves scraping over stone.
I’d always loathed these creatures, who looked neither living nor dead and existed only to do my Mother’s bidding.
At Irongate, they catered to her every need: tending to spell ingredients, meticulously caring for her library of every book the Sisterhood of Sorcerers had written over hundreds of years, and scrubbing the floors of her halls and ritual rooms. Like wraiths, they were never sleeping or eating, yet always so present it sent shivers down my spine.
As I approached, the flickering flames cast shifting shadows across their gaunt, haggard faces – so far gone they barely resembled human.
Their whispers had merged into a rhythmic chant that clawed at the edges of my mind, and their sunken eyes glimmered faintly in the firelight, a cruel reflection of the magic they could never wield.
On the slope behind the tent, I caught sight of a ruined shrine half-swallowed by the earth, its stones cracked and bleeding moss.
Red ribbons fluttered from its fractured arch – old prayers, tied in hope and left to rot.
A clutch of Acolytes swarmed over it, their skeletal limbs snatching at the fabric like carrion birds.
I slowed, watching their frenzy with a prickle at the base of my neck.
Why tear down what had long since been abandoned?
The Old Gods had not listened to the prayers left on their shrines for countless generations.
Let others cling to hope in hymns – prayers were for those who couldn’t hold a sword.
“Come, daughter of the Queen. She awaits you,” one Acolyte whispered, its voice dry and cracked. It reached out to me as I drew closer, fingers trembling, flesh clinging to bone as though the effort of existence itself was too much. Then, with a hiss, it added, “You should hurry.”
I stopped and stared at the cloaked creature, trying to find its eyes, but they were lost beneath the tattered folds.
All I caught was a brief, unearthly glimmer when it pushed back the fabric at the tent’s entrance and the firelight inside reached the hollow where its face should have been.
I fought back a shudder, reminding myself that these creatures were just people—seduced by the proximity of magic, its destructive power, and the desperate hope of wielding it themselves.
How many years had it served my Mother, dreaming of a power it would never taste?
How many times had she spun promises into chains, binding them to her will?
These pitiable creatures, grasping at the impossible, were doomed by their ignorance – magic was never earned; it was inherited.
I wondered if Mother had ever told them that only those of the Sisterhood’s bloodline could wield magic – before she accepted their lives into her servitude.
I doubted she had. She would have only told them what she needed them to believe.
Nothing more. Truth, to her, had always been a currency – spent carefully, never freely.
As the Acolyte pulled back the fabric, the smell of brimstone and burning herbs hit me like a lash.
It was her signature – a scent that clung to her sorcery, woven through every spell she cast. The Scrying Glass pulsed faintly, its surface still, yet vibrating with a quiet hum.
The air around it felt thick, charged, as though the tent itself was holding its breath in the presence of my Mother’s magic.
I stepped inside, and the light of the fire danced strangely on the polished glass.
For a moment, the room was silent, save for the distant sounds of the camp —the clattering of swords and the murmured voices of soldiers.
Then her image flickered to life, sharp and vivid, as though she stood before me rather than hundreds of miles away in Irongate.
So clear, I could almost see the bright yellow circle of Dragon Fire roaring around her pupils.
She stood there in that familiar, impossible regality—skin as pale as bone, black hair gleaming like the night sky and all its stars. Her eyes, burning with that cursed fire, locked onto mine the moment her image fully formed. There was no softness in her gaze, no warmth.
I had not expected any.
“Daughter.” She said, her voice low and deliberate. It wasn’t a greeting; it was an insult.
And so it starts before we have even begun, I thought, tilting my head. The game we play.
“Mother,” I replied.
“My Acolytes tell me that the battle has been won. Haedor, at last, on its knees. I am pleased.”
I bit back a smirk. “Then I am pleased that you are pleased, Mother. I live to serve.”
“Frejara…” Her tone was a warning, and I heeded.
“Yes, Mother,” I replied, keeping my voice steady and free of mockery. “The city has fallen. The prisoner has been secured, as you commanded.”
Her lips curled into a faint, humourless smile. “Good. And yet, you linger. Why?”
I hesitated, then spoke, choosing my words carefully. “If Haedor burned to take the prisoner, why press on? You have what you came for.”
I didn’t ask to challenge her. I had long stopped pretending the reasons mattered.
Her eyes burned brighter, the fire in them flaring as her expression hardened. “You think so small, Frejara. Haedor was only a spark. The Twin Cities will be the flame.”
I frowned, my gaze narrowing. “And what, exactly, do you intend to burn?”
“Haedor is incidental. There are fires rising in the north. Whispers gathering in places long forgotten. The world forgets itself, Frejara, and I –” Her voice faltered, just for an instant, as if she were struggling to hold back something darker. “I am merely… reminding it.”
“Reminding it of what?” I asked before I could stop myself. I didn’t know what she meant, but the words sat wrong in my bones. It did not sound like the kind of thing you said about rebels and roads and taxes.
She didn’t answer at first. Instead, she stared at me through the Glass, unblinking, her eyes unreadable. For a moment, I thought she might say nothing at all. But then, with a flick of her wrist – as if the question itself bored her – she did.
“Veldrith and Drannoc have harboured sedition for too long,” she said, her voice low and cold. “Whispers become beliefs, and beliefs… they become blood.”
“You’re razing cities for whispers?”
Whispers. Beliefs. The way she said it – like ideas were more dangerous than armies. And if they were, then what exactly was it we were fighting?
“I am razing cities for certainty,” she snapped, and there it was – just for a moment – a flicker behind her eyes. Not anger. Not pride. Something else entirely. And it looked a lot like fear.
But it vanished as quickly as it came, hidden behind the iron of her gaze.
“The Twin Cities have long since defied me,” she said, her voice sharp with disdain.
“To leave them standing is to invite defiance from every corner of Eryndia. Veldrith and Drannoc guard the Ironvein River, the continent’s lifeblood.
Control the river, and we control trade, supply lines, and the flow of power itself.
Without it, their walls mean nothing. No kingdom can rise against me. ”
And then, as if an afterthought, “Against us.”
Her words lodged in my mind like splinters, and in their wake, the image of the Twin Cities began to form – immovable and stern, winding and watchful.
Veldrith, the “Unyielding Stone”, perched defiantly on its jagged cliffs.
Its towers clawed at the heavens, and its people were like the rock their city was carved from: unrelenting and tough to crack.
Every story I’d ever heard about Veldrith was about survival – about clinging to life when the odds crushed you under their weight.
It had been a long time since a victory that made a city like that kneel.
And Drannoc, its twin, the “Cunning River”.
Where Veldrith stood solidly, Drannoc flowed—adaptable and wily.
Its walls and traps made a mockery of invaders; its labyrinthine streets bred cleverness in its people.
Their loyalty was no birthright – it was bought and bartered, just another deal to strike.
Between the two, the Ironvein River churned and glittered like liquid steel, as treacherous as the cities it divided.
How to take the Twin Cities was a riddle we’d have to solve if we wanted to claim the last free cities of the continent. But they were not the end.
No, the end was farther still. The “Guardian of the Tide” – Tirn’vahl.
A place so battered by storms and salt it seemed the stones themselves had given up, crumbling into jagged remnants of their former glory.
Its marshlands were a trap no invader could cross unscathed, and its people were as relentless as the waves that crashed against its cliffs.
Tirn’vahl didn’t just resist – it endured.
Beyond it, the Last Sea stretched out into the unknown, its waters dark and restless. I’d heard stories of its depths, of ancient things hidden beneath its waves, things best left undisturbed. Tirn’vahl stood like a sentinel, daring anyone to approach the edge of the world.
“Frejara!” My Mother’s voice snapped like a whip, dragging me back to the present. I blinked, her fiery gaze locking onto mine with the sharpness of a blade. “Do not let your thoughts wander. Your distractions are not a luxury I intend to entertain.”
“I linger, Mother,” I said at last, keeping my voice as steady as I could. “Because the soldiers are weary, there is still much to do to secure Haedor, and our way to the Twin Cities and the Last Sea is not yet clear. If we press forward too quickly – ”
“Do not lecture me on war,” Mother interrupted, her voice sharp as a blade. “The Twin Cities and Tirn’vahl will fall just as Heador has. If her walls could not keep my armies out, neither could a few rocks, crooked roads, or salt-burned walls.”
“Mother, I don’t…”
“I want you to bring the prisoner to me. I want you to lead the escort who delivers him. And I want you here in time for the Feast of the Black Fire.”
“You want him at Irongate in ten days?” I repeated her wishes, slowly.
Part of me knew why she wanted him there. He would be the feast for the Black Fire, another one of my Mother’s cruel concoctions. A flame that would burn not only your body but also your soul, her favourite method of execution for those unfortunate enough to make an enemy of her.
She wanted to burn this old man, soul and all, in front of her subjects as a warning of what awaited those who stood in her way, and she wanted me to deliver him to her like I was an errand girl and not the General of an army.
“Shall I chop some firewood on my way, Mother?” I couldn’t keep the bite out of my words. “Maybe help the executioner to build the gallows while I’m at it?”
My Mother’s eyes narrowed, the fire in them seeming to flare. “Mind your tongue, Frejara. You forget your place.”
I bit down on my instinct to retort, to push back against her constant belittlement. The effort left a bitter taste in my mouth, but I held her gaze, refusing to let her see the frustration bubbling under my skin.
“Yes, my Queen,” I said, the words clipped but obedient.
Her expression softened, but not with warmth. It was the cruel satisfaction of someone who had reasserted their dominance. “Good. I expect you to depart by dawn. The Feast of the Black Fire waits for no one, least of all a child who lingers on the battlefield like a common soldier.”
Her image began to fade, the light in the Scrying Glass dimming. The last thing I saw was her smile – thin, cruel, triumphant. Then she was gone, leaving only the faint scent of brimstone and the oppressive silence of the tent.
First it was the prisoner. Then the Twin Cities. Then a war on whispers. It changed with every breath she took. And maybe that was the point – to keep us chasing shadows while she hunted something else entirely.
I exhaled sharply, running a hand through my hair as I turned away from the now-dormant Glass. The Acolytes were waiting outside, their faceless forms still as statues.
“What news from the Queen, child?” They demanded with authority they did not have. “What does she command?”
“Prepare the prisoner for travel,” I ordered, brushing past them. “We leave at first light.”