“Lain.”
Her name from his lips sounded nothing like the Glinnel’s sharp tones; it was gentler, human. She didn’t realize she’d taken a step toward him until the guards shifted, closing ranks. Morgan’s hand brushed her shoulder – a light touch, but heavy with warning. “Not yet,” he murmured.
The air in the hall seemed to leave her entirely.
Tanel stopped at the foot of the dais and bowed slightly, first to Seli, then to Lain. The misted light painted his face in pale blue from the scale lamps above. When he spoke, his voice was quiet enough that those nearest had to lean forward to hear it.
“I feared I would not see you again,” he said. “When they told me you lived, I thought it was a trick of mercy. But here you are.”
Lain’s breath caught. “But you knew they sent me away.”
“I knew they sent you on pilgrimage, to cleanse the failure they believed had taken root in you. I did not know what waited at the end of that road.”
“They meant to kill me,” she said. “They meant to silence me.”
He closed his eyes. “Then I have more to answer for than I feared.”
She wanted to move toward him – to strike him or embrace him, she couldn’t tell which. The memory of the chamber where she had woken after the ceremony returned to her like a fever: his hand sliding beneath her veil to caress her ear as he kissed her for the first time; his hand steadying hers as he gave her the draught; the quiet murmur of prayerful love against her hair. He had loved her, and in that love had sent her to die.
“You trained me for sacrifice,” she said.
“I did.” His gaze did not falter. “Because I believed it was the only way to save us all. To save you, from the snow. I still believe salvation demands a price. I only prayed the cost would have given meaning to the loss of you.”
“Meaning?” Her hands quavered, and then her eyes filled with tears, but she brushed them angrily aside. “You don’t get to dress my death in prayers and call it meaning. You told me I was chosen. You told me I was blessed. But I was – I was disposable.”
His eyes shone, his hand rising, and he took one step forward, then glanced around himself as if suddenly aware of the room he was in. “You were never disposable to me.”
“You let them use me,” she said. “You collared me and gave me the drought to suppress my heart. You did that with your own hands.”
A faint sound escaped him. “I thought I was giving you to the Underserpent,” he said. “Preparing you.”
“How long have you known it was a lie?” It was an unfair question, she knew. He either knew the truth all along but couldn’t say, or hadn’t known at all. But she didn’t care; she wanted to see him stumble, see him try to climb out from under it.
But he didn’t try. His eyes dropped to the floor, shoulders slumping. He couldn’t look at her, his guilt and shame like a visible umbra around him.
Whatever force had held her steady collapsed, and tears came streaming down her face.
Tanel moved before he could stop himself. The sound of his step broke the silence like a crack in glass. He reached toward her – the motion unguarded and instinctive – and Lain mirrored it, taking a step forward before realizing what she was doing.
The distance between them vanished until only the guards’ spears and the weight of ceremony remained.
“Lain,” he said softly. “Little one –”
The old name struck her middle and for a moment she was not the Bellborn, not the saint, not the Singer; she was the shivering child who had been carried half-frozen from the snow, who had been taught the letters of the holy script by scalelight, who had eaten apples from his hand while he lectured her on mercy.
A memory came: her small fingers sticky with juice from a jam jar he’d pilfered from the kitchen, his thumb brushing a smear of it from her cheek, his smile sad even then, knowing better than she did what would be lost when she died.
She wanted to go to him. Every muscle in her ached to feel his arms around her again, to let the sound of his breath convince her that there was still something kind in the world.
But before she could move, a hand caught her shoulder.
Mallow.
He said nothing, but his grip was solid, grounding. His other hand hovered near his sword, eyes locked on Tanel as if he expected danger even in that gentle face.
Sena’s hand came next, light on Lain’s other arm, her voice soft. “Easy.”
“I –” Lain swallowed, shaking her head. “He –”
“I know,” Sena whispered. “I know.”
Tanel stopped where he was, the moment of impulse dissolving into awareness. His hand lowered, folding once more against his chest. “I never wanted this for you,” he said. “Not this life. Not this war. I’m sorry that the best life I could give you was a stay of execution. I wish…” but he trailed off once more.
“What is it you wish, Elder Tanel?” Morgan said softly.
Tanel turned his head slowly toward him. “I wish the world were not built on suffering,” he said. “But failing that, I wish we could find a way to end it without tearing down everything that keeps us alive.”
Morgan’s mouth curved, faint and humorless. “Then you wish for the impossible.”
“Perhaps,” Tanel said. “But impossibility has never stopped faith, has it?”
“Faith,” Morgan said, “is the excuse of men who fear doing what is necessary.”
The priest faced the heretic, and between them Lain felt the weight of both their gazes upon her, one pleading, the other commanding.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Seli rose from her seat. The bells stitched into her sleeves chimed softly. Her tone was calm, but the effort behind it trembled faintly in the air. “Lord Balthir, Elder Tanel – all of you. This quarrel serves nothing but despair.”
Her eyes moved to Lain, gentling. “Bellborn. Sister. You were raised among us. You are loved. You always will be.”
Lain stiffened. The words felt like oil slicked over a wound.
Seli went on, her voice carrying to every corner of the hall. “Return to us, child. You were misled. Whatever wrongs were done can be made right. The Dagorlind will grant you sanctuary, and your companions mercy, if you lay down this rebellion. You would be honored, not condemned. Elder Tanel will see to your restoration himself – proof of the love we still hold for you.”
Tanel bowed his head, weary but silent.
Seli’s gaze shifted to Morgan, her expression softening with something that almost looked like pity. “You lead good men to ruin, Lord Balthir. Your army is broken. You may think yourselves reborn in fire, but the ashes are still ashes. Our terms are thus: you will remand the Bellborn to us, immediately. You will disband your forces, dismiss your corpse-eaters, and renounce all claim to challenge Ivath. In exchange, you will be allowed to return to your holdings, retain your titles, and keep your head. Your followers will be allowed to return to their homes. Such is the mercy of the Dagorlind. Repent, and turn away from folly, and we will allow you to leave in peace. Continue on your foolish grasp at power, and none who carry your banner will see the next sunrise.”
Morgan studied her for a long moment. The gathered Brighthand shifted meaningfully. More than two score armored knights ringed the room. The grip of the Dagorlind was unmistakeable, their might felt in the very stones of the hall. Seli and the Triad stood like headsmen holding aloft a grim and final blow.
Morgan smiled. “You misunderstand your position, High Glinnel.”
“Do I?”
“We are not here negotiating for peace,” he said. His voice was soft enough that it should not have carried, but somehow it did, in a clear, perfect note against the ringing hush of the chamber. “We are discussing the terms of your surrender.”
Gasps swept the benches. The Brighthand captain’s hand went to his sword; a priest cried out, “Insolence!”
Seli’s composure cracked, the smile curdling.
The youngest of the Triad leapt to his feet. “Our surrender?” he spat, eyes wild with disdain. “Your rabble outside are outnumbered two to one by the guards of Ivath, to say nothing of the legions marching homeward even now to crush you where you stand.”
“Peter,” Seli warned.
Peter ignored her, slowly approaching Morgan as he raved.
“Moreover, the walls of Ivath are impenetrable to any army, had you a hundredfold the men you now command. Even here, in this hall, you and your council of heathens, heretics and sellswords are surrounded on every side. To even grant you this audience under your treasonous banner is a grave insult tolerated only to reclaim what is ours and lay bare your hollow cause for the insane barbarism it is. There can be no terms granted to a Veinwright who fattens horrors on the dead. A man soaked in blood understands nothing else.”
Peter was within arm’s reach of Morgan now, unbothered by the bristling of the dozen swordhands just behind the rebel Lord.
“Shall I take this to mean,” Morgan said quietly, “that the Dagorlind reject our terms as offered?”
Peter raised a hand to strike Morgan. Morgan’s expression didn’t change.
High Glinnel Anthony cleared his throat. “Peter, this is unseemly.”
Peter lowered his hand, slowly, then turned his back on Morgan Balthir.
“Soaked in blood.” Morgan seemed to test the phrase as he said it. “Well put.” He took one measured step forward, and the light from the scale lamps gleamed along the wet edge of his sleeve. “In that case,” he said. “Let us finally understand each other.”
He lifted his hand.
The scale lights along the chamber walls guttered, then dimmed as if the air itself had gone out of them. A cold wind rippled through the hall, carrying the scent of iron. Shadows gathered at the edges of the floor, coiling from the corners, black smoke seeping between the cracks of stone.
The smoke thickened into six curling plumes, drawn to him as if encouraged forward by billows. They writhed upward, condensing into terrible beauty of form: great black bodies with feathered manes, catlike jaws lined with teeth that glimmered like wet glass.
The bloodwyrms.
They took their silent shapes and cast their burning eyes about the gloom. Their manes rose and fell as they breathed, their talons scraping lines into the floor.
“You wanted your dead. Here they are.”
Pandemonium broke out among the benches; priests stumbled backward, robes tangling. Peter tripped as he recoiled from the beasts and fell heavily to the stone.
Lain’s pulse thrummed with the echo of their arrival. She could feel the bond between Morgan and the creatures like threads drawn taut, his will moving through them as effortlessly as breath through lungs. One bloodwyrm stalked forward, padding after Peter as he scrambled for the dais on flailing limbs. It loomed over him, needled maw hovering over his trembling form. Morgan raised a hand. The beast froze, then slunk to Morgan’s side in the space between heartbeats.
“By the Underserpent,” whispered one of the Glinnel, collapsing to her knees. “He commands them.”
“You wanted proof of the world’s rot,” Morgan said, his voice reverent and nearly tender. “Look upon it.”
The wyrms stretched and flexed their tails and yawned and gnashed their teeth.
Lain could see the reflection of them in Seli’s eyes, terror and disbelief. But most surprising of all was what Lain saw beneath it: awe.
Seli knew power when she saw it.
“You have one day,” Morgan said. “One day to open your gates wide and let those who would not be bound leave Ivath in peace. Any citizen who wishes to go, any Dagorlind who will lay down the mantle of the church and renounce the rites that made this horror may take the southern road. Go to the ports, to the cities by the sea. There you will find refuge.”
He turned his head, looking each of the High Glinnel in the face as if measuring their souls. “After that day passes, we will do what you would not: we will unmake the chains. We will free the Underserepent, and we will raze the Dawn Spire. Any who stand in our way will die. And know this: every death you force upon us will only feed what we are becoming. Your blood will be our strength.”
A gasp cut the hall like a struck bell. Seli’s face went ash pale; Anthony’s lips pressed until they were white. Someone shouted for the captain to move, to seize them. The Brighthand shifted, steel answering leather, but the men did not step forward.
Lain’s ear flicked to the sound of a bowstring pulled tight. She turned her head to spot the archer.
She saw the glimmer of the arrowhead from a high embrasure.
Before she could think to move, a narrow shadow loosed an arrow. The string twanged, a quick, bright bird of a sound.
A black blur cut in front of Lain before it could strike its target. A bloodwyrm’s foreclaw split the shaft midflight; the arrow snapped with a staccato report and fell away in two useless halves. The hall exhaled. Before anyone could find their voice, another wyrm was already coiled along the turret’s stone lip, muscles bunching, maned head tilting with a terrible, elegant balance. It uncoiled and leapt.
The archer’s cry was thin and horrible. The wyrm’s jaws closed over his head; there was a single dull thud, a brief, sickening crack, and the creature shook like a dog with a rat in its jaws. The man slid from the embrasure. He struck the steps below and did not move, blood pouring from what was left of his head.
Two bloodwyrms raised their snouts, then slithered for the dead man to drink the blood from the floor.
For a heartbeat the chamber held on that image – black manes, gold eyes, the sickening sound of tongues lapping. The priests cried out, some falling to their knees. A woman began to wail. Men grabbed their weapons. The Brighthand drew steel and then, as if someone had cut the cord that puppeted them, they hesitated.
Morgan watched the frozen line of guards with a look like a dare. He let the silence stretch.
No one moved. None commanded them to.
Seli stood, hands tremulous, and then sank back onto the dais.
Morgan lowered his arm and turned toward his host. “Onward,” he said.
The column filed out beneath the great doors. The bloodwyrms fell into step at the front and back, black coils cutting a path. Lain felt the press of the crowd’s eyes at her back, but none weighed more than the eyes of Tanel.