Neph’s tent was undisturbed. The fifty Soulsworn guards and his spells guaranteed that. Neph paused inside before entering Khali’s room. Hiking up his robe, he touched his silver staff—the form he had chosen for Iures—and touched it to his ankle. It dissolved from his hand and wrapped smoothly around his ankle and calf. He willed it to be hidden, to remain inert even if touched with Khali’s magic, to simply record all the magic that occurred around it. Khali didn’t know about Iures, and Neph didn’t intend for her to find out until it was too late. Iures changed everything.
Composing himself, Neph pulled back the flap. Tenser was sprawled on as fine a bed as they’d been able to make, his limbs loose, features slack, breath slow, eyes open but unfocused and rarely blinking. Neph pretended difficulty kneeling at Tenser’s feet and extended the magic as Khali had taught him. “Holy One,” he called. “I am here to serve.”
Tenser’s eyes closed then opened again, and She was present. Her presence filled the little tent like a sooty cloud, making it hard to breathe. “You have been neglecting your duties,” Khali said. Her voice was Tenser’s but the intonations were wrong, the accent unfamiliar. “This host has bedsores.”
Neph’s throat relaxed. “I will attend to it personally. Immediately. I’ve been about your business, collecting specimens for you.” He cleared his throat but didn’t cough. His coughing irritated Khali. “I was hoping we could talk about my reward.”
Her laughter was amused, Neph thought. It was hard to tell because though Khali controlled Tenser’s voice and eyes, She didn’t control his facial expressions. They remained blank, slack except when tongue and jaw worked to make words.
Khali wanted to be truly embodied, not the rude parody of it She had in Tenser. She needed three things: Ezra’s weaves on Black Barrow to be broken, a willing host, and a spell that would require the blood of an Ursuul and the combined might of Neph’s two hundred Vürdmeisters. Godkings in the past had delivered two of the three, but none could dismantle Ezra’s work, because Ezra had used Iures to deny Khali embodiment. But Neph could undo Ezra’s spells—because Iures remembered every weave it had ever helped make.
“I want two things,” Neph said. “Godking Wanhope will arrive soon to kill me. I want to deny him the use of the vir. Second, I want to live another hundred years.”
“Impossible,” Khali said.
“Fifty then. Forty.”
“Once embodied, I can give you a hundred years. But I can’t deny Dorian the vir.”
Neph’s heart sank. Dorian was Godking Wanhope? Of all Garoth Ursuul’s sons, the last one Neph wished to face was his old pupil. “I thought You controlled—”
“I do,” Khali said, cutting him off. “The vir are magical parasites. Most of them were wiped out in antiquity, but Roygaris Ursuul captured several. What he liked about vir was that in the early part of an infestation, they broke open new channels in their host’s Talent, adding to the host’s power. Of course, they slowly devour their host’s Talent itself, but Roygaris hoped to keep the vir in that first stage indefinitely. He failed, until I helped him. We slowed the progress of an infestation, but they can’t be stopped. Try to use your Talent; you’ll see it’s a shadow of what it was when you were young. But I taught Roygaris something far more important. The vir is a like a grove of aspens. Each looks like a separate tree, but they’re one organism. Control the right part, and you control the vir of everyone who’s been infected with that strain. Your vir, Dorian’s, Garoth’s, every Khalidoran’s—they are all one. Roygaris and I made a grand bargain: his blood line would control the vir, and I would control the reservoir of magic. The vow was made in a way that breaking it will destroy the vir and the reservoir.”
Neph had expected Her to lie. He hadn’t known the details, but just holding Iures had made much of Khali’s magic plain to him. “If I can’t stop him from taking the vir from me, Dorian will kill me,” Neph said.
“When I am embodied, I shall protect you. Your service will not be forgotten. This I swear.”
Neph wondered about that. Did Khali really need to be embodied to protect him from a mere man? Was she not a goddess? Or was it simply that she wouldn’t protect him because if he wouldn’t help her she had no reason to help him? He wondered what Khali would do to the world if she were embodied. Would she wreak havoc on everything, simply because she hated life as all the Strangers did? Or was her thirst for power more nuanced? Neph’s interactions with her had been as infrequent as he could afford, but he hadn’t sensed the same all-encompassing rage from her that he had seen in the other Strangers.
It was vital to judge correctly—Neph wanted to be Godking, but he wanted to rule over more than ashes and the dead. Still, he might not have much choice. If by not raising her, he would certainly die, but by raising her, all the world might die, he would risk the world.
“I am an old man,” Neph said, defeated. “I have not the strength for this task.”
Tenser Ursuul’s arm flopped up as if lifted on strings, his hand limp. Neph touched the extended hand, and Khali’s magic flowed into him, invigorating him, setting cool fire to his lungs. When it faded, he felt stronger than he had in years, and Iures had recorded every detail both of the Healing, and of how Khali herself drew from the reservoir of magic. It might be enough.
“Thank you, Holy One.” Neph had only days to figure out the magic necessary, but with Iures in hand, he might depose more than Dorian.
“The latest ones approach,” Khali said. “Bring them in.”
Neph went outside and gestured to the Soulsworn. There were six young women chained together standing with them, and they all looked terrified. Khali’s potential hosts were all peasant girls. Neph’s men hadn’t had much to choose from in this wilderness. Neph led them inside. They were surprised that the goddess was a drooling young man. Perhaps they’d expected claws and fangs. Neph studied the girls as they studied Khali. Four were either ugly or plain. Khali hated ugliness. Two were pretty, but Neph could See that one had been raped—against Neph’s explicit orders. He would kill someone for that. Khali wanted any violation of Her host to come at Her own hands. The other girl was even prettier, with big brown eyes and radiant skin, but she was disfigured with scars.
“What’s your name, child?” Khali asked the scarred one.
“Elene Cromwyll . . . uh, Mistress.”
“Would you like to live forever, Elene?”
The girl’s big eyes filled with such longing that even Neph couldn’t help but pity her. “More than anything,” Elene said.
80
Feir was standing at a table in Ezra’s secret workroom under Black Barrow with a polishing cloth in his hand. He wasn’t polishing the blade. He’d polished it a dozen times already, and it didn’t need polishing in the first place.
“It’s finished,” he said aloud. “Except for one thing.” Feir unveiled the sword. His fraud was nearly Ceur’caelestos’ twin. He had held Ceur’caelestos, had marveled at it, had studied every whorl in the patterns of the mistarille. The heads of twin dragons were etched in either side of his blade, facing the tip, dragons of sun and moon, in accordance with Ceuran mythology. The blade had a single edge, curving slightly to give it more cutting surface. The thicker spine of the blade was to give it strength, the flexible iron core compensating for the sharp, hard fragility of the steel edge. This blade’s form was pure show. It was mistarille, and it wouldn’t break even if a man stood on the side of the blade and the wielder lifted it. Despite its incredible strength, Ceur’caelestos was lighter than it should have been. The mistarille, folded and refolded like steel, had the same steel patterns Ceur’caelestos’ blade had borne. The difference between the original and Feir’s fraud was that the original held the “fires of heaven.” In response to danger or magic or its wielder’s mood, the dragons could breathe what looked like fire out to the tip of the blade.
Feir knew the weaves to duplicate that, now. What he didn’t have was a heartstone to hold the weaves. Certain stones resonated with differen
t frequencies of magic. A ruby resonated with fire magics, specifically those having to do with red and orange light. If a stone was pure enough and exactly the right size, which varied by weave, a resonance could be built that sustained itself. This was nearly always imperfect, which was one reason magic imbued in items failed after a time. Feir needed as perfect a ruby as possible to be the dragon’s heart.
“This part was supposed to be simple,” Feir said. Even his own voice was depressing. “The prophecy was ‘The greatest red gives dragon’s heart and head.’” The greatest red had to be a big ruby, a heartstone, but placed at the dragon’s head on the sword.
Feir had done a dozen impossible things over the course of the winter. With the barest of clues he’d been given in his time in Ezra’s Wood, he’d come to Black Barrow and found the secret tunnel to this room. He’d found the magically hardened gold tools. He’d avoided the hundreds of Vürdmeisters who shared the shadowed city with him and found seven broken mistarille swords. He’d discovered Ezra’s notes—a treasure any Maker would give his right arm to read. By all the gods, Feir had learned to reforge mistarille! He’d made the most beautiful fraud in history.
But he couldn’t find a red rock.
“Could any other smith now living make this?” Antoninus Wervel asked, his voice low.
Feir shrugged. Antoninus waited. Feir gave in. “No.”
Antoninus picked up the blade reverently, and in spite of himself, Feir was warmed. Antoninus wasn’t a Maker himself, but he appreciated the mastery required for what Feir had done. He turned the blade over, examining it. “I thought you put your crossed war hammers on it.”
In a moment of vanity—well, two hours of vanity—Feir had etched his smithmark near the hilt. As a boy, he’d loved the stories about Oren Razin, one of Jorsin’s champions. Feir had been the only person he knew who could even think of wielding two war hammers as Oren had. Later, he’d mostly given it up. It was a lot easier to find someone to train you with swords. “It’s not much of a forgery if you put your name on it. It’s still there, but you have to know how to uncover it.”
“You should be proud, Feir. You’ve made a thing of beauty.”
“Without the dragon’s heart, I’ve made nothing.”
81
What troubles you, my king? You’ve been fondling that rock for two days,” Kaede said.
Solon pulled her into his lap and cupped her breast. “Only when you don’t let me fondle better things.”
“You beast!” she said, but she didn’t pull away. “I’m serious.”
The first days of their marriage had been bliss, except for the rock. Kaede’s repentance at ordering him to subdue the Takedas by himself had led her to make all the wedding preparations. The very night Solon had arrived they had been married. Kaede refused to wait until later in the spring when the outlying nobles could attend. She said if they were offended, she would threaten to send her Stormrider to “visit” their isles.
But there were only so many hours a day that could be absorbed with lovemaking—though Solon and Kaede were doing their best—and that left Solon with time to consider the rock.
“I told you a little about my friend Dorian,” Solon said. “And his prophecy over me.”
“Something about killing your brother and a kingdom falling, right?”
Solon pulled back his white and black hair. “There’s nothing quite as infuriating as having a man in a trance lay out your future in a sing-song: ‘Storm-riving, storm-riding, by your word—or silence—a brother king lies dead. Two fears deriding, hope and death colliding, of the sword’s man, regal third, true lies in your dragon’s heart—or head. The north broken and remade on your single word.’”
Kaede looked puzzled. “Well, you got the storm-riding part.”
“And before you ask, no, I didn’t name myself that. I used to have no idea about the rest of it, except the brother king part. If I came home, I would have rallied the nobles to stop my brother Sijuron, thus my words would have left him dead. As it was, I served a man named Regnus Gyre, a man who would have been king and was like a brother to me. I didn’t tell him I was a mage, and on learning it, he barred me from his company and was slain. The last part never made any sense to me, I only saw one king in the first part of the prophecy, my brother, so I thought Dorian was raving.”
“But something has changed.”
“This ruby, Kaede. I never heard of it. My father never spoke of it. Nothing is written about it in the royal records except to record its being in the treasury for at least two hundred years. It’s listed as the dragon’s heart. I think a third king, the regal third, the sword’s man, depends on me bringing this ruby to him.”
“What if you’re the third king? What if you’re the sword’s man? You said it was a sword that turned your hair white. Perhaps a threat approaches here, and you need the ruby to withstand it. Solon, you can’t leave. Not on some madman’s word.” Though she still sat in his lap, she was rigid, fear and anger rising in her.
Two fears deriding. The words were suddenly crystal. Damned prophecies could always be interpreted at least two ways, and usually both were correct.
“Kaede,” Solon said, “there’s a garrison called Screaming Winds that guards the pass between Cenaria and Khalidor. Dorian and I were there last fall. Dorian was unconscious most of the time, waking and scrawling fragments of prophecy and lapsing into trances again. One day he woke screaming. He demanded as much gold as I could get my hands on. I got it for him and we walked up into the hills to a stunted black oak. Dorian told me that Khali was coming and that she would tempt him. He said she would massacre everyone. He melted the gold and used it to cover his eyes and ears and made fetters for his arms and legs and asked me to drive stakes pinning him to the black oak. I wrapped him in blankets and left. The commander didn’t believe my warnings. I wanted to leave, but I took too long, so I had the men bind me in ropes and I emptied my glore vyrden, but before the men could blindfold me or block my ears, She came.”
“Khali?”
He stared into the distance. “I saw men throwing themselves off the wall. I saw a man tear his eyes out. And then, in a vision I thought was real, I saw you. I tried to go to you, but the ropes saved me. No one else survived. In fact, the Soulsworn came through and made sure everyone was dead. If a body hadn’t fallen on me and covered me in blood while I was praying, they would have killed me too.”
“So to what god should I offer sacrifices for saving your life?”
“None. It was a coincidence. A lazy soldier who didn’t clean the blood from his sword in freezing weather and couldn’t draw his sword.”
“While you just so happened to be praying,” she said. “That’s quite some coincidence.”
“Yes,” Solon said, more roughly than he meant to. “That’s what a coincidence is. Anyway, sorry, when I went to Dorian’s black oak, he was gone. His tracks lead north, toward Khalidor, but I couldn’t follow. I had to see you. Nothing else mattered. I signed on with a captain whose last run of the year was to Hokkai.”
“So this is why you believe Dorian’s prophecies,” she said.
“This is the dragon’s heart, Kaede. I’m the second king. A third king lives or dies by what I do with this.”
“What are the two fears?” she asked quietly.
“My fear of Khali and my fear of speaking the truth. The latter was the fear that cost Regnus his life. I feel like I’ve been given a second chance, first to speak honestly with you, and second to face Khali again. ‘Broken north, broken you, remade if you speak one word.’ I’ve still got something broken inside, Kaede. I thought marrying you would fix it, and I can’t tell you how happy I’ve been, and how much I want to stay here forever, but there’s a part of me that still whispers ‘coward.’”
“Coward? You’re Solon Stormrider! You braved the winter seas. You put down a rebellion single-handedly. You resisted a goddess. How are you a coward?”
“Dorian needed me when he went into Khalidor
. He’s probably dead because I didn’t go. Regnus is dead because I wouldn’t risk telling him who I was. If the prophecy is true, there’s a word I have to speak, a life I can save, and I can be remade.”
Kaede’s eyes were troubled. “Will it be enough? Will there not be ever one more thing you need to do to prove that voice wrong? Will you chase valor until it kills you?”
He kissed her forehead. “I’ve already done the hardest part: I’ve told you the truth. I won’t go unless you give me your blessing. My loyalty is all to you, Kaede.”
Her eyes filled with a weight of grief. “My love, I won’t give your death my blessing.”
Solon held her gaze for a long time, then he tossed the Heart of the Dragon aside. “Then I stay,” he said.
Kaede pivoted, sitting astride him. She put her hands on both sides of his face and looked deep into his eyes. “Please don’t ask again. Please.”
“I won’t.”
Her lovemaking was so fierce it left him breathless. She rode him to a silent climax, and even as her pupils flared and her breath caught and her fingers clawed into his shoulders, her eyes never left his. Then she clung to him, shaking, tears and sweat mingling on his chest, but she didn’t say a word.
82
I don’t know if I should have married you,” Jenine said. “I think I made a mistake.”
They were sitting together in the enormous Godking’s carriage, slowly rumbling toward Black Barrow. Despite the dangers of bringing her to a battle, Dorian hadn’t been able to leave her behind. Some plot might unfold in Khaliras that would take her from him. And if he had another episode, she was the only person he trusted to cover for him.
“But you love me,” he said. “I know you do.”
“I do,” she admitted. “I respect you and I enjoy your company and I think you’re brilliant and honorable. You’re a great man. . . .”