Tower of Dawn

She bit her lip again, the crunch of hooves on gravel approaching. “Good night,” she murmured, and took a step away.

Chaol reached out. Just to brush his fingers over hers.

Yrene paused, her fingers curling, as if they were the petals of some shy flower.

“Good night,” he merely said.

And as Chaol rode back to the illuminated palace across the city, he could have sworn that some weight in his chest, on his shoulders, had vanished. As if he’d lived with it his entire life, unaware, and now, even with all that gathered around him, around Adarlan and those he cared for … How strange it felt.

That lightness.

33

The Watchtower of Eidolon jutted up from the mist-shrouded pines like the shard of a broken sword. It had been situated atop a low-lying peak that overlooked a solid wall of gargantuan mountains, and as Nesryn and Sartaq swept near the tower, sailing along the tree-crusted hills, she had the sense of racing toward a tidal wave of hard stone.

For a heartbeat, a wave of lethal glass swept for her instead. She blinked, and it was gone.

“There,” Sartaq whispered, as if fearful that any might hear while he pointed toward the enormous mountains lurking beyond. “Over that lip, that is the start of kharankui territory, the Dagul Fells. Those in the watchtower would have been able to see anyone coming down from those mountains, especially with their Fae sight.”

Fae sight or not, Nesryn scanned the barren slopes of the Fells—a wall of boulders and shards of rock. No trees, no streams. As if life had fled. “Houlun flew over that?”

“Believe me,” Sartaq grumbled, “I am not pleased. Borte got an earful about it this morning.”

“I’m surprised your kneecaps still function.”

“Didn’t you notice my limp earlier?”

Despite the nearing watchtower, despite the wall of mountain that rose up beyond it, Nesryn chuckled. She could have sworn Sartaq leaned closer, his broad chest pushing into the quiver and bow she had strapped across her back, along with the twin long knives courtesy of Borte.

They hadn’t told anyone where they were going or what they sought, which had earned no shortage of glares from Borte over breakfast, and curious glances from Falkan across the round table. But they had agreed last night, when Sartaq left Nesryn at her bedroom door, that secrecy was vital—for now.

So they’d departed an hour after dawn, armed and bearing a few packs of supplies. Even though they planned to be headed home well before sunset, Nesryn had insisted on bringing their gear. Should the worst happen, should anything happen, it was better to be prepared.

Borte, despite her ire at being left in the dark, had braided Nesryn’s hair after breakfast—a tight, elegant plait starting at the crown of her head and landing just where her cape fell to cover her flying leathers. The braid was tight enough that Nesryn had avoided the urge to loosen it these hours that they’d flown, but now that the tower was in sight and her hair had barely shifted, Nesryn supposed the braid could stay.

Kadara circled the watchtower twice, dropping lower with each pass.

“No signs of webs,” Nesryn observed. The upper levels of the watchtower had been destroyed by weather or some long-ago passing army, leaving only two floors above the ground. Both were exposed to the elements, the winding stairwell in the center coated in pine needles and dirt. Broken beams and blocks of stone also littered it, but no indications of life. Or any sort of miraculously preserved library.

With Kadara’s size, the ruk had to find a clearing nearby to land, since Sartaq didn’t trust the watchtower walls to hold her. The bird leaped into the air as soon as they’d begun the climb up the small incline to the watchtower proper. She’d circle overhead until Sartaq whistled for her, apparently.

Another trick of the rukhin and the Darghan on the steppes: the whistling, along with their whistling arrows. They had long allowed both peoples to communicate in a way that few noticed or bothered to comprehend, passing messages through enemy territory or down army lines. The riders had trained the ruks to understand the whistles, too—to know a call for help from a warning to flee.

Nesryn prayed with each grueling step through the thick pine trees and granite boulders that they would only need the whistle to summon the bird. She was no great tracker, but Sartaq, it seemed, was deftly reading the signs around them.

A shake of the prince’s head told Nesryn enough: no hint of a presence, arachnid or otherwise. She tried not to look too relieved. Despite the tall trees, the Fells were a solid, looming presence to her right, drawing the eye even as it repelled every instinct.

Blocks of stone greeted them first. Great, rectangular chunks, half buried in the pine needles and soil. The full weight of summer lay upon the land, yet the air was cool, the shade beneath the trees outright chilly.

“I don’t blame them for abandoning it if it’s this cold in the summer,” Nesryn muttered. “Imagine it in winter.”

Sartaq smiled but pressed a finger to his lips as they cleared the last of the trees. Blushing that he’d needed to remind her, Nesryn unslung her bow and nocked an arrow, letting it hang limply while they tipped back their heads to take in the tower.

It must have been enormous, thousands of years ago, if the ruins were enough to make her feel small. Any barracks or living quarters had long since tumbled away or rotted, but the stone archway into the tower itself remained intact, flanked by twin statues of some sort of weather-worn bird.

Sartaq approached, his long knife gleaming like quicksilver in the watery light as he studied the statues. “Ruks?” The question was a mere breath.

Nesryn squinted. “No—look at the face. The beak. They’re … owls.” Tall, slender owls, their wings tucked in tight. The symbol of Silba, of the Torre.

Sartaq’s throat bobbed. “Let’s be swift. I don’t think it’s wise to linger.”

Nesryn nodded, one eye behind them as they slipped through the open archway. It was a familiar position, the rearguard—in Rifthold’s sewers, she’d often let Chaol stalk ahead while she covered behind, arrow aimed into the darkness at their backs. So her body acted on pure muscle memory while Sartaq took the first steps through the archway and she twisted back, arrow aimed at the pine forest, scanning the trees.

Nothing. Not a bird or rustle of wind through the pines.

She turned a heartbeat later, assessing efficiently, as she had always done, even before her training: marking exits, pitfalls, possible sanctuaries. But there wasn’t much to note in the ruin.

The tower floor was well lit thanks to the vanished ceiling above, the crumbling staircase leading into the gray sky. Slits in the stone revealed where archers might have once positioned themselves—or watched from within the warmth of a tower on a freezing day. “Nothing up,” Nesryn observed perhaps a bit uselessly, facing Sartaq just as he took a step toward an open archway leading down into a dark stairwell. She grabbed his elbow. “Don’t.”

He gave her an incredulous look over his shoulder.

Nesryn kept her own face like stone. “Your ej said these towers were laid with traps. Just because we have yet to see one does not mean they are not still here.” She pointed with her arrow toward the open archway to the levels belowground. “We keep quiet, tread carefully. I go first.”

To hell with being the rearguard, if he was prone to plunging into danger.

The prince’s eyes flared, but she didn’t let him object. “I faced some of the horrors of Morath this spring and summer. I know how to mark them—and where to strike.”

Sartaq looked her over again. “You really should have been promoted.”

Nesryn smiled, releasing his muscled bicep. Wincing as she realized the liberties she’d taken by grabbing him, touching a prince without permission—

“Two captains, remember?” he said, noting the cringe she failed to hide.

Indeed. Nesryn inclined her head and stepped in front of him—and into the archway of the stairs leading below.

Her arm strained as she pulled the bowstring taut, scanning the darkness immediately beyond the stairwell entrance. When nothing leaped out, she slackened the bow, placed her arrow back in the quiver, and plucked up a handful of rocks from the ground, shards and chips from the felled blocks of stone around them.