The Wings of War: Books 1-3: The Wings of War Box Set, Vol. 1

by Bryce O'Connor

  And one of the few healers in the Citadel that was better at his craft than Carro al’Dor.

  “Apparently you bit off more than you could chew,” Wence answered. “According to Kallet Brern and Benala Forn, your little expedition returned home early this morning with guests. al’Dor and some hulking lizard-kind come all the way from the Southern deserts. You were apparently trussed up across its horse’s saddle. Beats me how in Laor’s name it managed to get all the way here without freezing to—”

  But Reyn was no longer listening. Wence’s words had brought his memory back in a rush. His argument with Cullen Brern. His rush down the mountainside. His encounter with the atherian.

  The confused realization, as he lay on the icy stone struggling to breathe, that Carro al’Dor was there, working quickly to save his life…

  Reyn winced involuntarily, his left hand moving up his side slowly, looking for the spot where the blazing hot knife had slipped through his ribs. He remembered wanting to die, then, wanting anything that would make that incredible, unending pain stop.

  “Don’t you even think about it,” the short, plump Emalyn Othel snapped from beside the bed, her hand moving like a whip as she closed her fingers around his wrist. “Your stupidity already cost you a punctured lung. I won’t let you make it any worse.”

  “May as well let him do what he wants while he can,” broad Vance Molder chuckled from his right. “When Cullen Brern hears he’s awake, he’s a dead man anyway.”

  Reyn flushed at that. Clearly the council had heard the whole story, and hadn't spared his healers any details. He felt like a fool, now. At the time he had allowed his rage to control him, hating the unnamed, unknown men below for whatever part they had played in Syrah’s taking.

  “What happened to Arro?” he asked, wanting to change the subject.

  All three of them gave him a bewildered look.

  “The atherian,” Reyn said, lifting his head from the bed to meet the healer’s gaze. “Arro. Isn’t that his name?”

  “We know who you mean,” Wence said, sounding bemused. “But how did you know that was his name?”

  Reyn sighed, letting his head hit the bed again. Quickly he told them of the mission he, Jofrey, Talo, and Syrah had taken to the Southern fringe cities some years back, attempting to spread Laor’s light as far as they could. He couldn’t remember the atherian’s whole name—Talo had only briefed them briskly on why they had had to leave so soon, and only Jofrey more fully later—but it seemed too much of a coincidence that any other lizard-kind might have come across Carro al’Dor in the wilds of the North, not to mention one who spoke the Common Tongue to boot.

  After he finished, it was the healers’ turn to fill him in. Wence did most of the talking, but only Emalyn thought she remembered the atherian’s full name confidently: Raz i’Syul Arro. It had sounded right to Reyn, and he nodded as they continued. They hadn't yet arrived to what had become of the atherian, however, before Vance let slip much more pressing news.

  “Talo Brahnt is dead,” the man said quietly. “Jofrey al’Sen has been voted in as the new High Priest.”

  For a solid five seconds Reyn gaped at him, head rolled to one side so he could look up at the healer.

  Then he turned back to Wence. “Is it true?”

  Wence was frowning at Vance, but he nodded. “Aye, it’s true. Though I prefer that my patients not be burdened by such tidings whilst recovering.”

  Vance had the decency to flush with embarrassment, but it turned quickly into a willful glower.

  “He was going to find out soon enough anyway,” he said with half-a-shrug. “It’s not like Cullen Brern wouldn’t have told him about Talo, or about Brahnt.”

  That confused Reyn outright, his uncertainty only magnified as Wence’s frown turned suddenly livid, mirroring Emalyn’s hiss of anger.

  “Vance!” she snapped.

  Vance shut up at once, looking suddenly mortified.

  It was the last straw, for Reyn.

  “What?” he demanded, looking around at Wence again. “What’s he talking about, ‘Talo and Brahnt’? What does he mean?”

  Wence, in response, only looked at him, almost like he were waiting for something. Reyn stared at him, wondering what was going on.

  He was just about to turn to Emalyn and demand she explain, though, when it hit him.

  “Syrah!” he gasped, and suddenly he was struggling to sit up again, ignoring the pounding pain that raked his left side. “Syrah! What happened? What do you know? Where—?”

  “Reyn, stop!” Emalyn yelled, reaching out and trying to push him back down. “Stop! You’ll only make things worse!”

  “Get off me!” Reyn yelled, shoving the woman’s arms away. “If Syrah’s alive then I need to speak to the council. Get OFF ME!”

  He could feel himself spinning out of control again, but he didn’t care. Even when Vance’s arms reached out to help Emalyn try to keep him down Reyn only yelled and fought harder. He was bigger, stronger than them, and they found themselves quickly hard-pressed to keep him on the bed.

  Woosh.

  There was a flash, and suddenly Reyn felt himself wrenched back, slammed down into the mattress. Like invisible iron hands had materialized out of the air, something was pinning him down, pushing through his shoulders and thighs and pressing his wrists into the bed. Reyn roared, attempting to thrash his way free of the magic, trying to writhe himself out from under the spell.

  “Calm down, Hartlet!” Wence yelled, and Reyn saw that it was he who was holding the spell in place, one hand extended over the bed like he were controlling a many-stringed puppet. “Calm down! When you’re ready, I’ll release you, but you need to stop trying to get up. If you break off a piece of rib there’s no telling what could happen!”

  For almost a minute more, though, Reyn strained his considerable bulk against the spell, yelling and cursing at all three of them and continuing to demand where Syrah was, if she was alive, and what had happened to her. He fought and thrashed, feeling the mattress shift under him and stick to the skin of his back as it became slowly dampened by sweat. He howled and screamed, only barely noticing Wence shooing away healers and patients alike as they rushed over, the former to see if they could help, the latter just curious as to who was causing the commotion.

  In the end, though, his recovering body exhausted quickly, and before long Reyn stilled again, forcing himself to calm, breathing hard and feeling his muscles wince and quiver involuntarily, unwilling to bear the strain and the pain in his side.

  “Where—Where is she?” he said in a voice of forced calm, speaking between heavy breaths. “Where—is she—Wence?”

  The healer didn’t answer at once. For several seconds more he held the spell firm, watching with a careful eye as though suspecting Reyn were faking this sudden subdual.

  Eventually, though, he let his hand fall, and Reyn felt the magic release him all at once, the arcane fingers slipping off his skin.

  “We don’t know,” Wence said gently. “I’m sorry. The rumors reached us about midday. I don’t want to give you false ho—”

  “Tell me,” Reyn snapped, looking up at him, though being careful not to make any sudden moves lest he be restrained again. “Tell me.”

  Wence, once again, hesitated. It was only after a small, encouraging nod from Emalyn, in fact, that he finally spoke.

  “The word seems to be that al’Dor and the atherian—Arro, or whatever his name is—claim that Syrah is still alive. When they realized it, in fact, Arro apparently went insane. Tried to kill half the council, they say.”

  “Kill the—?” Reyn started, surprised by this. “Why? Why would Arro attack the council?”

  “We’re not sure,” Emalyn said quietly. “There’s a rumor that he was sent here by the Kayle to assassinate the High Priest Brahnt’s replacement, and another that he’s just some wild animal Brahnt and al’Dor freed from the Arena in Azbar while they were down there. I don’t believe either of them, but it doesn’t
help that al’Dor won’t speak to anyone. He’s locked himself in his chambers and won’t answer the door. Most of the council tried. I didn’t even think he opened for Jofrey…”

  She looked suddenly nervous, glancing at Wence before continuing. “We overheard a few of Cullen Brern’s students talking, though, ones that were in your group on the pass. They stopped in to see how you and the others were doing.”

  “You weren’t the only one Arro managed to take a chunk out of, in the end,” Vance cut in eagerly, obviously attempting to rectify his earlier slip up. “Loric has enough broken ribs to match yours, and Grees is in worse shape than either of… of…”

  He trailed off slowly, quailing under the look Wence gave him.

  “As Emalyn was saying,” Wence told Reyn, though his eyes didn’t leave Vance for a several moments. “We overhead talk that the atherian was actually trying to leave when the council stopped him.”

  “Leave?” Reyn asked, annoyed by his own confusion. “Why would he be trying to leave?”

  For what seemed like the hundredth time, the healers paused, exchanging dark looks. Reyn was about to insist again when Wence finally answered.

  “Apparently… he may have been trying to go back for Syrah.”

  For a long time after that, Reyn could only stare at the healer standing at the end of his bed, his head still wrenched up at an awkward angle. He wanted to scream again, wanted to shout, to howl and demand why in fuck’s sake the council would want to stop a beast like the atherian attempting to save one of their own. He wanted to scramble up again, to shove past the three standing around him now like a guard, to hunt down his former Priest-Mentor and shake him until Jofrey explained himself.

  But there was no need. After all, it wasn’t hard to guess why the council would have strived to stop someone like Raz i’Syul Arro from leaving their sight. Reyn didn’t know much about the atherian. He had not met him, some six or seven years ago now, back then in the dusty heat of the South. He knew only what he had learned in their ten seconds of brief, eye-opening combat, of which he had certainly come out the worse for wear.

  Mostly, he suspected, because of the deadly, savage edge of murderous instinct he had seen in Arro’s eyes, half-a-moment before the creature’s kick had crushed his side in and sent him flying over the roughened stone.

  There was a ruthlessness there, a hungry, unsettled coldness in that look that Reyn knew suddenly he would never be able to mirror.

  It was the will of a killer.

  Reyn couldn’t even begin to guess as to why the atherian would bother with saving Syrah. He didn’t think they could have formed much of a bond during their brief encounter in the South, nor did he think it was Arro who owed Syrah, rather than the other way around. But if the atherian had been intending to make down the mountain again and attempt to save her, Reyn understood all too well why the council had tried to stop him.

  It was in this state of numb, hopeless shock that Wence and the others left him, giving Reyn his privacy. He would appreciate this later, though barely so much as noticed at the time. For longer than he knew, Reyn did nothing but lay on his back, staring at the greyish hue of the ceiling, cast in the white and blue light of the Citadel candles. The shadows moved across the mortared shale, reminding him of those that used to dance across the wall of his darkened room, cast from the single line of brightness that was the bottom lip of his doorframe. He thought of them now because he had only ever started to watch them after he’d noticed the flickering shimmer once playing across the soft, pale skin of Syrah’s neck and back as she lay naked in the bed beside him.

  Syrah…

  He loved her. Reyn was all too aware of that, now. He had known it the moment he’d heard she hadn't returned from her attempts to negotiate with the mountain clan, had known it from the black fear that had pooled up inside of him like ice set aflame.

  And now she was alone, abandoned by her peers and friends, left to die at the hands of savages that would see her—and every last narrow branch of her faith—burned to ash.

  Reyn didn’t notice the tears spilling from the corners of his eyes as he lay there, warm and comfortable in a bed that felt suddenly like a betrayal to the woman he loved. He was there, safe and whole, while she was likely curled up somewhere, shivering in the cold and snow. Slowly, steadily over a long time, his breathing became cracked and uneven, and all at once Reyn found himself sobbing quietly, his mind far, far away.

  He still hadn't noticed the tears when Cullen Brern arrived. The master-at-arms entered the infirmary like a thundercloud, his mood already darkened by the events of a day he didn’t think could get any worse. He was all too ready to vent some of his anger in Reyn Hartlet’s direction, ready to rage and abuse the man until nothing was left of the fool’s ego but charred cinders from which, hopefully, something better would rise.

  When he found the Priest, however, Cullen felt all the fire sapped from him. He watched for a time, silently from the far corner of the wide room, as his student cried quietly, still on his back, eyes empty as they gazed upward, seeing nothing and everything all at the same time. It didn’t take too many guesses to figure out who the man was thinking about.

  After a few minutes, Cullen turned and left the infirmary again, quietly this time, feeling that in the coming night Reyn Hartlet would likely suffer enough punishment to last a lifetime.

  CHAPTER 34

  “Mountains only fall when they rise too high.”

  —old Sigûrth proverb

  Kareth stood beneath the faded blue glow of the Woods’ icy canopy, lounging lazily with his back against the thick roots of a particularly behemoth ash wood. Its great branches were so high and so wide above them that the massive tree had formed a sort of pseudo-clearing all about itself, discouraging other life from growing where it could never reach the light. To one side a wide stream formed a thick stroke of ice through the forest, its steep sides dipping down like a scar in the earth. It was at the edge of this embankment that Kareth sat, waiting, immune to the cold as a dozen Sigûrth warriors moved nervously about him, their torches held high enough to illuminate the other side of the stream.

  Kareth waited with less impatience than anticipation, eager for a sign of the men they were expecting. Elrös of the Grasses had been the one to bring the news of the imminent arrival, and what was expected of Kareth in response. The Kayle was legendary for his patience, among his enemies and allies both, but there was one thing which tested that restraint beyond its limits.

  And the men they were waiting on were coming to collect proof for which Gûlraht Baoill apparently couldn’t delay another night.

  “They come,” Elrös said quietly from where he was crouched beside Kareth, sharp eyes peering into the dark to his left, west along the stream bank.

  At once the men all about them shifted, every eye turning to follow the Gähs’. For another minute or so there was nothing. Only the wind, distant through the sheet of snow and ice high above their heads, made a sound as they waited. Kareth forcefully tempered his excitement, willing himself not to look up until Elrös shifted at his hip, subtly indicating their guests had arrived.

  When he lifted his eyes, he could make out little more than black ghosts melting out of the dark.

  Before Gûlraht had given him command of the vanguard, Kareth had never seen the Goatmen move as a pack. In truth, in fact, he had always thought little of the clan, even scoffing privately at his cousin’s penchant for using them as scouts and flankers. They had seemed weak, frail things, of little use except as hunters and foragers when game was scarce.

  It was an assumption Kareth had quickly discarded.

  The group of Gähs shifted out of the Woods as though they were a part of it, their mottled furs and bleached skulls all but indistinguishable against the brown vegetation, dark bark, and the thin layer of frost that patterned the ground in uneven patches. It seemed in one moment that nothing moved between the trees through which the Sigûrth’s torchlight permeated, and then al
l at once the Goatmen were there, standing in a staggered half circle some thirty feet away, just at the edge of the clearing.

  Kareth felt a chill of appreciation.

  “Tell them to come closer,” he told Elrös.

  Elrös nodded, standing up and raising a hand. Slowly the Gähs moved forward, almost cautiously, as though hesitant to step within the revealing boundary of the firelight.

  “Welcome, friends!” Kareth boomed, grinning wide but still not moving from where he lounged between the roots of the great tree. “How fares my cousin?”

  “The Kayle wishes you to substantiate your claims, Kareth Grahst,” one of the Goatmen said in response, ignoring the question. “He wishes we tell you that he hopes you understand the vastness of the rewards you stand to earn should you speak the truth, and the horror of the punishments you face if you are found a liar.”