Kingdom of Ash

 

She was no messenger, but Manon took the hint—and the offer. Along with three other brooms, all for witches across the camp.

It would not be enough to fly with them to Eyllwe. No, she’d have to learn about them. Each of these witches.

Asterin, who’d been monitoring from across the fire, fell into step beside her, taking up two of the brooms. “I forgot they used the redwood,” her Second said, studying the brooms in her arms. “A hell of a lot easier to carve than the ironwood.”

Manon could still feel how her own hands had ached during the long days she’d whittled down her first broom from the log of ironwood she’d found deep in Oakwald. The first two ventures had resulted in snapped shafts, and she’d resolved to carve her broom more carefully. Three tries, one for each face of the Goddess.

She’d been thirteen, mere weeks past her first bleeding, which had brought about the zipping current of power that called to the wind, that flowed through the brooms and carried them into the skies. Each stroke of the chisel, each pound of the hammer that transformed the block of near-impenetrable material, had transferred that power into the emerging broom itself.

“Where’d you leave yours?” Manon asked.

Asterin shrugged. “Somewhere at Blackbeak Keep.”

Manon nodded. Hers was currently discarded in the back of a closet in her room at her grandmother’s seat of power. She’d thrown it in there after magic had vanished, the broom little more than a cleaning tool without it.

“I suppose we won’t be retrieving them now,” Asterin said.

“No, we won’t,” Manon said, scanning the skies. “We fly with the Crochans to Eyllwe tomorrow. To rendezvous with whatever human war band they’re to meet.”

Asterin’s mouth tightened. “Perhaps we’ll convince all of them—the Crochans, the Eyllwe war band—to head north.”

Perhaps. If they were lucky enough. If they did not squander so much time that Erawan crushed the North into dust.

They reached the first of the witches Glennis had indicated, and Asterin said nothing as Manon motioned her Second to pass over the broom.

The Crochan’s nose wrinkled with distaste as she let the broom dangle from two fingers. “Now I’ll need it cleaned again.”

Asterin gave her a crooked smile that meant trouble was swiftly approaching.

So Manon nudged her Second into another walk, wending between the tents in search of the other owners.

“You really think this is worth our time?” Asterin muttered when the second, then the third witch sneered upon receiving their brooms. “Playing servant to these pampered princesses?”

“I hope so,” Manon murmured back as they reached the last of the witches. Karsyn. The dark-haired Crochan was staring toward the ring of wyverns, just where Glennis had said she’d be.

Asterin cleared her throat, and the witch turned, her olive-skinned face tightening.

But she didn’t sneer. Didn’t hiss.

Mission done, Asterin turned away. But Manon said to the Crochan, jerking her chin toward the wyverns, “It’s different from using the brooms. Faster, deadlier, but you also have to feed and water them.”

Karsyn’s green eyes were wary—but curious. She glanced again at the wyverns huddled against the cold, Asterin’s blue mare pressed into Abraxos’s side, his wing draped over her.

Manon said, “Erawan made them, using methods we’re not quite sure of. He took an ancient template and brought it to life.” For there had been wyverns in Adarlan before—long ago. “He meant to breed a host of thoughtless killers, but some did not turn out as such.”

Asterin kept quiet for once.

Karsyn spoke at last. “Your wyvern seems like more of a dog than anything.”

It was not an insult, Manon reminded herself. The Crochans kept dogs as pets. Adored them, as humans did. “His name is Abraxos,” Manon said. “He is … different.”

“He and the blue one are mates.”

Asterin started. “They’re what?”

The Crochan pointed to the blue mare huddled beside Abraxos. “He is smaller, yet he dotes on her. Nuzzles her when no one is looking.”

Manon exchanged a glance with Asterin. Their mounts incessantly flirted, yes, but to mate—

“Interesting,” Manon managed to say.

“You didn’t know they did such things?” Karsyn’s brows knotted.

“We knew they bred.” Asterin stepped in at last. “But we haven’t witnessed it being for … choice.”

“For love,” the Crochan said, and Manon nearly rolled her eyes. “These beasts, despite their dark master, are capable of love.”

Nonsense, yet some kernel in her realized it to be true. Instead, Manon said, though she already knew, “What’s your name?”

But wariness again flooded Karsyn’s eyes, as if remembering whom she spoke to, that there were others who might see them conversing. “Thank you for the broom,” the witch said, and strode between the tents.

At least one of the Crochans had spoken to her. Perhaps this journey to Eyllwe would offer her the chance to speak to more. Even if she could feel each passing hour and minute weighing upon them.

Hurry northward, the wind sang, day and night. Hurry, Blackbeak.

When Karsyn was gone, Asterin remained staring at Abraxos and Narene, scratching her hair. “You really think they’re mated?”

Abraxos lifted his head from where it rested atop Narene’s back and looked toward them, as if to say, It took you long enough to figure it out.

 

“What am I supposed to be watching for, exactly?”

Sitting knee to knee in their tiny tent, the wind howling outside, Manon’s golden eyes narrowed as she peered into Dorian’s face. “My eyes,” he said. “Just tell me if they change color.”

She growled. “This shape-shifting is really a pressing thing to learn?”

“Indulge me,” he purred, and reached inward, his magic flaring.

Brown. You will change from blue to brown.

Liar—he supposed he was a liar for keeping his true reasons from her. He didn’t need Damaris to confirm it.

She might forbid him from going to Morath, but there was another possibility, even worse than that.

That she would insist on going with him.

Manon gave him a look that might have sent a lesser man running. “They’re still blue.”

Gods above, she was beautiful. He wondered when it would stop feeling like a betrayal to think so.

Dorian took a long breath, concentrating again. Ignoring the whispering presence of the two keys in his jacket pocket. “Tell me if it changes at all.”

“It’s that different from your magic?”

Dorian sat back, bracing his arms behind him as he sought the words to explain. “It’s not like other sorts of magic, where it flows through my veins, and half a thought has it changing from ice to flame to water.”

She studied him, head angled in a way he’d witnessed the wyverns doing. Right before they devoured a goat whole. “Which do you like the best?”

An unusually personal question. Even though this past week, thanks to the tent’s relative warmth and privacy, they’d spent hours tangling in the blankets now beneath them.