Chapter Forty-Seven
Forty-seven
Faolan
The Isle of Ashen Flames is known for three things: its horseflesh, the mighty warriors who ride them, and the endless feckin’ dunes.
We ride for hours along the sloping ridges bordering Kiara’s central land.
Cottages, taverns, workshops, and fields quickly give way to a sparse handful of fences and then nothing but pale yellow grass.
The horses—cobs, Kiara calls them—are sure-footed and broad-backed, snorting softly at one another as they flick their heavy brown and white tails.
Nessa thinks it’s funny when her mount shows its digestive prowess a bit too vigorously.
But I can’t quite summon a laugh. Not with Saoirse’s pale face fixed in my mind.
Instead, I dig my heels in lightly so the gelding trots ahead, climbing a hill at twice the pace of the others so that when we reach the top, none of them see my face as I look at what’s ahead.
Beaches stretch to the right of us, far into the distance with dark shells pebbling the sand. To the left, mountains frame the sky in silver, mist clinging to their cragged peaks. And ahead…
A path opens into a sea of Bruidin trees.
They look harmless from this distance, saplings at the edges and old growth deeper in.
The bark is dark as umber, leaves five-pointed, a few of them still bearing the green of summer, though most have already bronzed.
Even from this distance, with the wind shifting off the coastline, I can hear the crackle of them passing over one another like a thousand insects’ wings.
Hooves stamp the ground behind me, Kiara’s mare digging into the soft earth.
“I thought they didn’t turn color until nearly winter solstice.”
“You’ve been on the sea too long.” She looks over the tree line with a grim expression, then holds up her hand so Nessa and her two men pull to a stop. “Dismount. Pull on the leathers. We don’t want to be in there any longer than we must.”
For once, I obey without question, reaching into my saddlebags for the leathers she pulled from the castle blacksmith’s stores.
Thick and deeply scarred, the hides are ill-fitting, needing to be strapped on over our clothes, but they’re our best chance of surviving a fire if one breaks out.
I help Nessa with hers, and in turn she laces up mine, laying a hand on my shoulder after.
“I have to be honest. Can’t say this is the best look on you, Captain.”
The banter’s light, but her tone is heavy as she straps the rough hide to my back.
“Aye, well…” I open my mouth to retort, then stop.
Turn enough to look her in the eye.
My weapons master has sailed with the Wolf for seven years now. I’ve watched her grow confident in her strikes, bolder in her laughter—even now, her full cheeks twitch like they want to stretch in a smile.
But Nessa’s eyes have gotten older. Holding equal parts shadow to the light.
“We all must make sacrifices.” I swallow and take her arm, giving it a squeeze. “But you don’t have to.”
Nessa frowns, looking from me to my hand. “What are you playing at?”
“I’m not playing at anything, I’m saying—I won’t call you a coward if you want to turn back now.
In fact”—I face the guards, whose expressions are blank and steady—“all of you should know right now, if a spark catches in that forest, we’re all fecked.
There’s a chance Maira’s relic is inside those trees, but only a chance. ”
Not a one of them moves.
Then Nessa cracks a smile and punches me in the shoulder, once. “Spare us the drama, Faolan. We’re behind you, all the way.”
I cast a dubious look at Kiara’s guards, but she shakes her head. “They know the risks.”
“Fine. What about the horses?”
Her eyes flit over the piebald beasts, hand coming up on instinct to stroke one’s muzzle. The mare leans heavily into her touch. “We leave them. If a fire breaks out while they’re inside, the horses will panic. You don’t want to be anywhere near their hooves if they do.”
“What about us getting out?” Nessa asks.
Kiara raises a brow. “We run?”
Nessa snorts but digs into her saddlebags for a waterskin. “Right, I thought you were going to say something silly like walk.”
Kiara straps an axe to her hip and slings an extra waterskin over one shoulder. “If you do, you’ll be the only one.”
“I’m just poking fun.”
By the tightness of her jaw, Kiara’s having none of it.
I take a gulp of water, then chase it with whiskey from my flask for good measure, tossing it to Nessa with a wink. “Liquid courage.”
“Now, that’s a strategy.”
We walk on foot down a long path paved in ancient stones, saplings tugging at our ankles as we enter the woods.
It’s not long before the sun’s all but disappeared into a suggestion of light—the sky a freckle of blue amid a sea of gold and green-tinged leaves.
Kiara leads the five of us, shoulders raised nearly to her ears as she taps her axe again and again, as though waiting for one of the trees to stand up and attack.
For all I know, they might.
There’s always been something…not right about these woods.
I remember being a boy of thirteen, sent to live on this island, and trying to run away.
I got as far as the third dune before I encountered a Bruidin tree and all its residual brush.
When I heard voices chasing behind me, the king’s guard sent to fetch me back, I climbed like an eejit, leaves and branches splitting as I went.
Turns out, I was damn lucky that I fell.
The Gan Ainm had instructed us to revere the gods—hold fast to their stories—but seeing the inferno that burst out of that tree after me, I knew then and there I could never love a god. Not one so destructive as that.
Pebbles turn over under our boots, old paving stones broken and jagged in places thanks to the Bruidin roots growing in. I’m tempted to take Kiara’s axe to one of them, just to see what might come out.
Instead, I stop in my tracks as we reach something like a doorway.
A doorway made half by nature, half by man.
“Welcome to the Ardor,” Kiara whispers, her eyes sweeping over the bronze bower crawling with vines as she unstraps her axe and takes it in hand.
It’s one thing to know the story of this place. It’s another to walk into a home that once belonged to a god.
Maira was said to have built her house here first of woven branches, then of stone, then of bricks of bronze and gold.
At every corner, she planted climbing roses—the likes of which run wild now, scattering spent petals with curling brown edges over a rug of hairpins, jewelry, and a hundred other trinkets.
“That’s unexpected.”
“Tribute,” Kiara says simply, stepping over the pieces and keeping her eyes on the crumbling walls. “There were those who remained loyal. Still are.”
“Is that why you look like you’re ready to slaughter someone?” Nessa asks.
“No.” Kiara cuts her eyes to my first mate. “But if a door falls or a branch breaks loose in our path, you’ll be glad I have this.”
Nessa gives an appreciative grunt and removes her own couple of axes, even as her eyes snag on the treasures below. “Faolan, couldn’t we just—”
“No.” Kiara goes on. “Nothing that would slow us down.”
I wait until Kiara’s just out of earshot, then tip Nessa a wink. “Just wait ’til we’re through and we’ll snag the lot of it.”
She grins. “Aye, Captain.”
I press forward until I’m step for step at Kiara’s side, peering into what was once a window, trying to see what sort of structure lies inside. “What size is her shield, do you reckon?”
“I don’t know. That’s the whole point of this—to find out.”
“Well, are there any particular stories? Or statues in the great hall?”
Kiara glares. “You’re asking me?”
“You’re the one who grew up here.”
“Yes, but we kept to the keep or the grasslands. We never ventured inside the Ardor.”
“Really?” I can’t help cocking a brow. “You never got curious? Not even once?”
Kiara’s lips disappear in a pale line as she presses them hard together, then blows them out. “One time—and it was a mistake. My handmaid got burned protecting me.”
The jest dies on the tip of my tongue. “Ah. That’s…”
She nods. “It’s not worth it to play with fire.”
“Say that again, when you’re among your court. The seanchaí could use that bit of linework to map your legacy.”
Kiara falters a step, her eyes cutting to mine. “…It’s not half as interesting as yours.”
“No, it’s not.” My grin stretches wider when she rolls her eyes. “But even I’ll admit, it has quite a bit of potential. If we can manage to pull this off.”
Kiara walks on in silence for another minute or two as she picks our way through the rotting palace, the axe sliding slowly in her loose grip. It’s agony, waiting for her to form thoughts—but I’ve had thirteen years to get used to it.
Finally, she says, “I don’t care about legacy.”
I balk. “What?”
“I don’t. I know you have the Wolf and that saying, ‘Legends don’t die,’ but I’ve never cared about being a legend. I’ve only ever wanted to…do right. By the people who never asked for this. People born to a feckin’ wasteland that burns itself to the ground every few years.”
Kiara stares at the earth in front of her, then slowly shakes her head.
“I wanted to build something better. And with these relics away from Maccus, we have the potential to do that. Especially if your theory holds weight. If we could just…give it back. All of it. The magic, the corruption, the endless bloody cycles—”
“We will.” My voice is damnably weak. Not believable in the slightest. I swallow and try again. “I swear, we’ll find a way.”
“Good.”
“Hate to cut in, but I think this looks promising?”
I turn and see what Nessa’s noticed: a slender opening in a wall of cracked stone. It piles on itself up and up—a tower, much like the one on the end of Kiara’s keep now, though the top’s obscured by trees.
“Doesn’t it just.” Kiara signals for the two men to fall around the sides—but I’m already ducking into a wide crack, wary of branches sticking in between the walls. “Winds o’ fury, it’s a tight fit.”
“Make room, then.”
“What? No, Kiara—”
“I’m not coming to the heart of the Ardor and not seeing her relic if it’s here.”
“Right. I’ll just…stay out here, shall I?” Nessa gives us both a wave, turning to inspect the tower and surrounding trees. “Bit creepy on my own, but I’ll manage.”
“Call up if you need us!” I shout, then climb with care between patches of weak sunlight and spindly branches, the Bruidin leaves snagging on my hair and coat.
But they don’t break, not quite dry enough yet—thank the stars.
At first the steps are easy, carved of tight, spiraling stone that’s not quite yielded to time.
But as we get higher, there are chunks missing.
Places where roots or trees have grown around the rock.
Finally, I reach a door rotting on its hinges: the wood covered in moss, bent by time.
“Move aside,” Kiara says, balancing nimbly on the step beside me as she reaches a hand out and flattens it at the center of the wood. It bends beneath her touch but doesn’t break. Clenching her jaw, she lifts her axe until the back of it scrapes stone, then swings.
It’s a thing of beauty, watching my cousin let her anger loose for once.
Shards of wood go flying alongside bits of moss as she hacks at the door, still taking just enough care to make sure any longer pieces don’t fall behind us where they might snap the branches.
At last she breaks a hole wide enough for the both of us to step through, and we do, into what must have been Maira’s bedroom, hundreds of years ago.
There’s a tapestry on one wall—or was, most of it eaten by moths and tattered with time.
A bed, collapsed and blanketed in colorful mushrooms.
More trinkets: a hair comb, a necklace, a dagger.
Kiara starts to reach for them, and I can see the shimmer in her eyes that’s appeared in all my crew: a treasure hard-won, taken just because you wanted to.
But then Kiara stops. Frowns.
“Ach, would you just take them?”
“We’re here for one reason and one reason only.”
“That’s never stopped me before.”
“Yes, and that’s why you’re always getting into…trouble.”
I see it at the same time Kiara does, half-buried in mushrooms and rotted blankets, the iron pegs rusted over with time.
It takes both of us to wrench it free from the mess, whatever hide covered it once peeling at the edges, the center badly bent.
But her sigil is stamped on each of the four gold-tinged quadrants: horses in various states of movement carved into metal and leather so that when spun, it would appear to be galloping.
Maira’s shield. I’m certain of it, though it’ll take Saoirse to confirm it for sure.
I start to laugh—to tell Kiara I knew we’d find it—when her face blanches.
The wind shifts, drifting down from a hole in the ceiling.
“Captain?!” comes floating up the stairs.
And that’s when I smell it.
Smoke.