Yrene and Chaol hurried to the Torre library immediately after lunch. Chaol mounted his horse with relative ease, Shen giving him a hearty pat on the back in approval. Some small part of Yrene had wanted to beam when she noticed that Chaol met the man’s eyes to offer a tight smile of thanks.
And when they passed through those white walls, as the mass of the Torre rose above them and the scent of lemon and lavender filled Yrene’s nose … some part of her eased in its presence. Just how it had done from the first moment she’d spied the tower rising above the city while her ship at last neared the shore, as if it were a pale arm thrust toward the sky in greeting.
As if to proclaim to her, Welcome, daughter. We have been waiting for you.
The Torre’s library was located in the lower levels, most of its halls ramped thanks to the rolling carts the librarians used to transport the books around and collect any tomes that careless acolytes had forgotten to return.
There were a few stairs where Yrene had been forced to grit her teeth and haul him up.
He’d stared at her when she’d done it. And when she asked why, he’d said it was the first time she’d touched his chair. Moved it.
She supposed it was. But she’d warned him not to get used to it, and let him propel himself through the brightly lit corridors of the Torre.
A few of the girls from her defense class spotted them and paused to fawn over the lord, who indulged them with a crooked smile that set them giggling as they walked away. Yrene herself smiled at them as they departed, shaking her head.
Or perhaps the good mood was from the fact that his entire foot from the ankle down was regaining feeling and movement. She’d forced him to endure another set of exercises before coming here, sprawling him on the carpet while she aided him in moving his foot around and around, in stretching it, rotating it. All designed to get the blood flowing, to hopefully awaken more of his legs.
The progress was enough to keep Yrene smiling until they reached Nousha’s desk, where the librarian was currently shoving a few tomes into her heavy satchel. Packing up for the day.
Yrene glanced at the bell that had been rung only a few nights ago, but refused to blanch. Chaol had brought a sword and dagger, and she’d been mesmerized while he’d buckled them on with such efficiency. He had barely needed to look, his fingers guided by sheer muscle memory. She could picture it—every morning and night that he’d put on and removed that sword belt.
Yrene leaned over the desk and said to Nousha, who was sizing up Chaol while he also assessed her, “I would like to see where you found those texts from Eyllwe. And the scrolls.”
Nousha’s white brows crossed. “Will it bring trouble?” Her gaze slid to the sword Chaol had positioned across his lap to keep it from clacking against his chair.
“Not if I can help it,” Yrene said quietly.
Behind them, curled on an armchair in the large sitting area before the crackling hearth, a snow-white Baast Cat half slumbered, her long tail swishing like a pendulum as it draped over the edge of the cushion. No doubt listening to every word—likely to report to her sisters.
Nousha sighed sharply in a way that Yrene had witnessed a hundred times, but waved them toward the main hallway. She barked an order in Halha to a nearby librarian to mind the desk and led the way.
As they followed, the white Baast Cat cracked open a green eye. Yrene made sure to give her a respectful bow of the head. The cat merely went back to sleep, satisfied.
For long minutes, Yrene watched Chaol take in the colored lanterns, the warm stone walls, and endless stacks. “This would give the royal library in Rifthold a run for its money,” he observed.
“Is it that large?”
“Yes, but this might be larger. Older, definitely.” His eyes danced with shadows—bits of memory that she wondered if she would glimpse the next time she worked on him.
Today’s encounter … It had left her reeling and raw.
But the salt of her tears had been cleansing. In a way she had not known she needed.
Down and down they went, taking the main ramp that looped through the levels. They passed librarians shelving books, acolytes in solitary or group study around the tables, healers poring over musty tomes in doorless rooms, and the occasional Baast Cat sprawled over the top of the shelves, or padding into the shadows, or simply sitting at a crossroads—as if waiting.
Still they went deeper.
“How did you know they were down here?” Yrene asked Nousha’s back.
“We keep good records,” was all the Head Librarian said.
Chaol gave Yrene a look that said, We have cranky librarians in Rifthold, too.
Yrene bit her lip to keep from grinning. Nousha could sniff out laughter and amusement like a bloodhound on a scent. And shut it down as viciously, too.
At last, they reached a dark corridor that reeked of stone and dust.
“Second shelf down. Don’t ruin anything,” Nousha said by way of explanation and farewell, and left without a look back.
Chaol’s brows lifted in bemusement, and Yrene swallowed her chuckle.
It stopped being an effort as they approached the shelf the librarian had indicated. Piles of scrolls lay tucked beneath books whose spines glittered with the Eyllwe language.
Chaol let out a low whistle through his teeth. “How old is the Torre, exactly?”
“Fifteen hundred years.”
He went still.
“This library has been here that long?”
She nodded. “It was all built in one go. A gift from an ancient queen to the healer who saved her child’s life. A place for the healer to study and live—close to the palace—and to invite others to study as well.”
“So it predates the khaganate by a great deal.”
“The khagans are the latest in a long line of conquerors since then. The most benevolent since that first queen, to be sure. Even her palace itself did not survive so well as the Torre. What you stay in now … they built it atop the rubble of the queen’s castle. After the conquerors who came a generation before the khaganate razed it to the ground.”
He swore, low and creatively.
“Healers,” Yrene said, scanning the shelves, “are in high demand, whether you are the current ruler or the invading one. All other posts … perhaps unnecessary. But a tower full of women who can keep you from death, even if you are hanging by a thread …”
“More valuable than gold.”
“It begs the question of why Adarlan’s last king …” She almost said your king, but the word clanged strangely in her head now. “Why he felt the need to destroy those of us with the gift in his own continent.” Why the thing in him felt the need, she didn’t say.
Chaol didn’t meet her eyes. And not from shame.
He knew something. Something else.
“What?” she asked.
He scanned the dim stacks, then listened for anyone nearby. “He was indeed … taken. Invaded.”
It had been a shock to realize whose dark power she’d been fighting against within his wound—a shock, and yet a rallying cry to her magic. As if some fog had been cleared away, some veil of fear, and all that had been left beneath were her blinding rage and sorrow, unfaltering as she’d leaped upon the darkness. But … the king truly had been possessed, then. All this time.
Chaol pulled a book from the shelf and flipped through it, not really reading the pages. She was fairly certain he didn’t know how to read Eyllwe. “He knew what was happening to him. The man within him fought against it as best he could. He knew that their kind …” The Valg. “They found people with gifts … enticing.” Magic-wielders. “Knew their kind wanted to conquer the gifted ones. For their power.”
Infest them, as the king had been. As that drawing in The Song of Beginning had depicted.
Yrene’s gut roiled.
“So the man within wrested control long enough to give the order that the magic-wielders were to be put down. Executed, rather than used against him. Us.”
Turned into hosts for those demons and made into weapons.
Yrene leaned against the stack behind them, a hand sliding up to her throat. Her pulse pounded beneath her fingers.
“It was a choice he hated himself for. But saw as a necessary decision to make. Along with a way to make sure those in control could not use magic. Or find those who had it. Not without lists of them. Or those willing to sell them out for coin—to the men he ordered to hunt them down.”
Magic’s vanishing had not been natural at all. “He—he found a way to banish—?”
A sharp nod. “It is a long story, but he halted it. Dammed it up. To keep those conquerors from having the hosts they wanted. And then hunted the rest of them down to make sure their numbers were fewer still.”
The King of Adarlan had stopped magic, killed its bearers, had sent his forces to execute her mother and countless others … not just from blind hatred and ignorance, but some twisted way of trying to save their kind?
Her heart thundered through her body. “But healers—we have no power to use in battle. Nothing beyond what you see from me.”
Chaol was utterly still as he stared at her. “I think you might have something they want very badly.”
The hair along her arms rose.
“Or want to keep you from knowing too much about.”
She swallowed, feeling the blood leave her face. “Like—your wound.”
A nod.
She blew out a shaky breath, going to the stack before her. The scrolls.
His fingers grazed her own. “I will not let any harm come to you.”
Yrene felt him waiting for her to tell him otherwise. But she believed him.
“And what I showed you earlier?” she said, inclining her head to the scrolls. The Wyrdmarks, he’d called them.
“Part of the same thing. An earlier and different sort of power. Outside of magic.”
And he had a friend who could read them. Wield them.
“We’d better be quick,” she said, still careful of any potential listeners. “I’m sure the volume I need for your chronic toe fungus is down here somewhere, and I’m growing hungry.”
Chaol gave her an incredulous look. She offered him an apologetic wince in return.
But laughter danced in his eyes as he began pulling books into his lap.
Nesryn’s face and ears were numb with cold by the time Kadara alighted on a rocky outcropping high atop a small mountain range of gray stone. Her limbs were hardly better, despite the leathers, and were sore enough that she winced as Sartaq helped her down.
The prince grimaced. “I forgot that you aren’t used to riding for so long.”
It wasn’t the stiffness that really brutalized her, but her bladder—
Clenching her legs together, Nesryn surveyed the campsite the ruk had deemed suitable for her master. It was protected on three sides by boulders and pillars of gray rock, with a broad overhang against the elements, but no possibility of concealment. And asking a prince where to see to her needs—
Sartaq merely pointed to a cluster of boulders. “There’s privacy that way, if you need it.”
Face heating, Nesryn nodded, not quite able to meet him in the eye as she hurried to where he’d indicated, slipping between two boulders to find another little outcropping that opened onto a sheer drop to the unforgiving rocks and streams far, far below. She picked a small boulder that faced away from the wind and didn’t waste any time unbuckling her pants.
When she emerged again, still wincing, Sartaq had removed most of the packs from Kadara, but had left her saddle. Nesryn approached the mighty bird, who eyed her closely, lifting a hand toward the first buckle—
“Don’t,” Sartaq said calmly from where he’d set the last of the packs under the overhang, his sulde tucked against the wall behind them. “We leave the saddles on while we travel.”
Nesryn lowered her hand, examining the mighty bird. “Why?”
Sartaq removed two bedrolls and laid them out against the rocky wall, claiming one for himself. “If we’re ambushed, if there is some danger, we need to be able to get into the skies.”
Nesryn scanned the surrounding mountain range, the sky stained pink and orange as the sun set. The Asimil Mountains—a small, lonely range, if her memory of the land served her correctly. Still far, far north from the Tavan Mountains of the rukhin. They hadn’t passed a village or sign of civilization in over an hour, and up amongst these desolate peaks: landslides, flash floods … She supposed there were dangers aplenty.
Supposed that the only ones who could reach them up here were other ruks. Or wyverns.
Sartaq pulled out tins of cured meats and fruit, along with two small loaves of bread. “Have you seen them—the mounts of Morath?” His question was nearly ripped away by the howl of the wind beyond the wall of rocks. How he’d known where her mind had drifted, she couldn’t guess.
Kadara settled herself near one of the three faces, folding in her wings tightly. They’d stopped once earlier—to let Kadara feed and for them to see to their needs—so the ruk wouldn’t have to seek out dinner in these barren mountains. Belly still full, Kadara now seemed content to doze.
“Yes,” Nesryn admitted, tugging free the leather strap around the base of her short braid and finger-combing her hair. Tangles snared on her still-freezing fingers as she coaxed them away, grateful that the task kept her from shuddering at the memory of the witches and their mounts. “Kadara is probably two-thirds to half the size of a wyvern. Maybe. Is she large or small, for a ruk?”
“I thought you’d heard all the stories about me.”
Nesryn snorted, shaking out her hair a final time as she approached the bedroll and food he’d laid out for her. “Do you know they call you the Winged Prince?”
A ghost of a smile. “Yes.”
“Do you like the title?” She settled on the roll, crossing her legs beneath her.
Sartaq passed her the tin of fruits, beckoning her to eat. She didn’t bother to wait for him before she dug in, the grapes cool thanks to the hours in the crisp air.
“Do I like the title?” he mused, tearing off a piece of bread and passing it to her. She took it with a nod of thanks. “It’s strange, I suppose. To become a story while you are still alive.” A sidelong glance at her while he ripped into his bread. “You yourself are surrounded by some living tales. How do they feel about it?”
“Aelin certainly enjoys it.” She’d never met another person with so many names and titles—and who enjoyed bandying them about so much. “The others … I don’t suppose I know them well enough to guess. Though Aedion Ashryver … he takes after Aelin.” She popped another grape into her mouth, her hair swaying as she leaned forward to pluck a few more into her palm. “They’re cousins, but act more like siblings.”
A considering look. “The Wolf of the North.”
“You’ve heard of him?”
Sartaq passed the tin of cured meats, letting her pick through which slices she wanted. “I told you, Captain Faliq, my spies do their jobs well.”
A careful line—nudging him toward a potential alliance was a careful line to walk. Look too eager, praise her companions too much and she’d be transparent, but to do nothing … It went against her very nature. Even as a city guard, her day off had usually sent her looking for something to do, whether it was a walk through Rifthold or helping her father and sister prepare the next day’s goods.
Wind-seeker, her mother had once called her. Unable to keep still, always wandering where the wind calls you. Where shall it beckon you to journey one day, my rose?
How far the wind had now called her.
Nesryn said, “Then I hope your spies have told you that Aedion’s Bane is a skilled legion.”
A vague nod, and she knew Sartaq saw right through all her plans. But he finished off his part of the bread and asked, “And what are the tales they tell about you, Nesryn Faliq?”
She chewed on the salted pork. “No one has any stories about me.”
It didn’t bother her. Fame, notoriety … She valued other things more, she supposed.
“Not even the story about the arrow that saved a shape-shifter’s life? The impossible shot fired from a rooftop?”
She snapped her head toward him. Sartaq only swigged from his water with a look that said, I told you my spies were good.
“I thought Arghun was the one who dealt in covert information,” Nesryn said carefully.
He passed the waterskin. “Arghun’s the one who boasts about it. I’d hardly call it covert.”
Nesryn drank a few mouthfuls of water and lifted a brow. “But this is?”
Sartaq chuckled. “I suppose you’re right.”
The shadows grew deeper, longer, the wind picking up. She studied the rock around them, the packs. “You won’t risk a fire.”
A shake of his head, his dark braid swaying. “It’d be a beacon.” He frowned at her leathers, the packs lumped around them. “I have heavy blankets—somewhere in there.”
They fell into silence, eating while the sun vanished and stars began to blink awake among the last, vibrant ribbon of blue. The moon herself appeared, bathing the campsite with enough light to see by as they finished up, the prince sealing the tins and tucking them back into the packs.
Across the space, Kadara began to snore, a deep wheeze that rumbled through the rock.
Sartaq chuckled. “Apologies if that keeps you awake.”
Nesryn just shook her head. Sharing a campsite with a ruk, in the mountains high above the grassy plains below, the Winged Prince beside her … No, her family would not believe it.
They watched the stars quietly, neither making a move to sleep. One by one, the rest of the stars emerged, brighter and clearer than she’d seen since those weeks on the ship here. Different stars, she realized with a jolt, than those up north.
Different, and yet these stars had burned for countless centuries above her ancestors, above her father himself. Had it been strange for him to leave them behind? Had he missed them? He’d never spoken of it, what it was like to move to a land with foreign stars—if he’d felt adrift at night.
“Neith’s Arrow,” Sartaq said after uncounted minutes, leaning back against the rock.
Nesryn dragged her gaze from the stars to find his face limned in moonlight, silver dancing along the pure onyx of his braid.
He rested his forearms on his knees. “That’s what my spies called you, what I called you until you arrived. Neith’s Arrow.” The Goddess of Archery—and the Hunt, originally hailing from an ancient sand-swept kingdom to the west, now enfolded into the khaganate’s vast pantheon. A corner of his mouth tugged upward. “So don’t be surprised if there’s now a story or two about you already finding its way across the world.”
Nesryn observed him for a long moment, the howling mountain wind blending with Kadara’s snoring. She’d always excelled at archery, took pride in her unmatched aim, but she had not learned because she coveted renown. She’d done it because she enjoyed it, because it gave her a direction to aim that wind-seeking inclination. And yet …
Sartaq cleared away the last of the food and did a quick check that the campsite was secure before heading off between the boulders himself.
With only those foreign stars to witness, Nesryn smiled.