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

by Bryce O'Connor

  And he saw fear, saw the same terror that ripped at her as she woke up screaming every night, thrashing and kicking until he came running to sooth her and hold her until she fell back asleep.

  He knew what she was going to say before the words left her mouth.

  “When you leave,” she told him, not as a request or question, but almost rather as a demand, “take me with you.”

  Raz said nothing for a time, looking down at her, considering. After a while he reached around her and pulled her to his chest.

  Then he bent his head down, pressed the end of his reptilian snout against the top of her head, and answered.

  EPILOGUE

  “The greatest empires in the history of any world have always been built by bound hands.”

  —Azzeki Koro, Third Hand of Karesh Syl

  “AAAWWOOOOAAAHHH!”

  Karan Brightneck woke to the sound of Abir’s moaning scream as one wakes when falling in a dream, jolting and shuddering. At once she pushed herself up onto her hands and knees, scurrying with a clatter of iron on iron between the bodies laying and curled up on the worn wood around her, ignoring their muttering and groans as they, too, were pulled from what little sleep they were allowed.

  “Abir!” she hissed in a hushing tone, reaching the old man’s spot along the far wall of the shack and seeking his hand in the half-darkness of the room. “Abir, hush! Hush now!”

  But there was no helping the man. Sweat sheened his face as he lay on his back, dripping along the tanned skin of his bearded cheeks and balding head. His eyes were shut tight, and he squirmed and writhed in the thralls of the dream. He had claimed, when Karan had first met him some dozen-years ago, that he had been a seer in another life, a fortuneteller that men of wealth and prestige once called upon from all over the realm. He had said that he had made the mistake of giving a Tash a fortune he did not like, and that his punishment had been the stripping of his name, home, and freedom.

  But in all the time she had known him, Karan had come to realize that Abir’s “fortunes” were nothing more than the ramblings of an aging man clinging to sanity, and that more often than not they just led to nightmares that kept the rest of them all awake at night.

  “Abir!” she said more urgently as angry voices began to rise behind her, shaking the man. “Wake up! Wake up!”

  Finally the man’s shuddering quit, and he opened his eyes.

  His gasps and groans, though, only barely lessened.

  “He comes!” he moaned, his maddened, fevered gaze falling upon Karan. “He comes! He comes!”

  “Who?” Karan asked him in a whisper, trying to sooth the man. “Who comes?”

  “The dragon!” Abir hissed, his body beginning to shake again. “From sand then snow then sea, the dragon comes! He comes to rip the irons from their pegs, to free those who have been shackled! He comes from fire, then from ice!”

  “Enough!” someone grumbled from behind her in a different, harsher tongue, and Karan felt a thrill as she recognized Brahen’s throaty growl. “Shut him up, female, before I do.”

  “Abir,” Karan pleaded, starting to panic. “Please! You’re waking the others! Please!”

  At last, the old man began to calm. Much less than hearing reason, though, he looked rather to be fading back into delirium, dropping once more into sleep as his words faded away.

  “He comes,” he said in a wavering voice, his eyes fluttering. “He comes with a one… who wields the power of the gods… He comes… The… dragon…”

  And then he was gone, fallen back into the peace of dreams, his breathing coming soft and slow.

  Karan sighed in relief, still kneeling beside the man, one hand on his chest. Light, clear and bright, fell down upon her from an open window set in the wall above Abir’s section of the floor. It shined off the iron manacles that had encircled her wrists for almost as long as she could remember, glinting off the scrapes and blemishes in the chains that ran between them. Checking one last time to make sure the man was asleep, Karan got slowly to her feet, intending to return to her own space.

  Before she did, though, she looked out over the sprawl of the city beyond their little room, taking in the glow of the roads and the noise that echoed up at them even this late at night. She pondered, for a moment, what Abir had said, wondering at the life she would have if she was allowed to walk free among the shops and quarters and raised palisades.

  Wouldn’t that be something, she thought, turning her back on the light of Karesh Syl, her clawed feet clacking lightly against the dusty wood as she returned to her little corner of the floor.

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  SNEAK PEEK: PROLOGUE

  862 v.S.

  “There is little to document the rise and fall of the last šef of the Miropan Mahsadën, due in large part to the brevity of his reign. Spanning hardly the breadth of two years, I have had a troublesome time producing credible records of his period presiding over the most vicious and secretive underworld society the South has ever suffered. Outside of what one might traditionally deem ‘credible,’ however, there is plenty to be learned. Compiling rumors and tales, drawing out of everything from the tattered journals of the Mahsadën’s lesser officers to stories passed down as fables through generations, I have managed to come to several conclusions. Foremost among these: this last bastion of darkness ruled by more than the standard fare of respect and fear with which every šef before him had governed the society. Every recounting and myth I can dredge up from that time speaks of something greater within him, some dark power which he used to hold fast the chains of his lessers in a fist wreathed in white flames.”

  —As Death Rose from the Ashes, by Kohly Grofh

  The man’s hands trembled slightly as he clung to the fragile parchment of the letter, doing his best to clear his mind long enough to take in the words scrawled in hasty lines across the page. He wondered briefly if the paired couriers before him, kneeling to either side below at the base of the raised dais upon which his throne sat, could sense his trepidation. He doubted it. For one, their heads were bowed, half out of respect and half out of fear.

  For another, enough deception had been sown into the ranks of the Mahsadën already to ensure the men were like to interpret his shaking as something altogether more wrathful.

  “What is it, my love? What news has been brought to you?”

  The voice, gentle as silk fluttering in a desert wind, dug into the man’s ear like a nail. He did not jump—as he had done for the first few months the woman had sat in the smaller seat to his right—but he couldn’t help himself from tensing or his fingers from twitching the slightest bit away when a slim hand reached out to settle on his wrist, the figure beside him leaning closer to read the letter as well.

  “News from the North,” the man said in a strong voice that had taken a long time to steady—it would never do for his subordinates to find more weakness in him than his crippled form already proved, after all. He handed the letter to the woman as she reached for it, then let his grey eyes settle on the two couriers once again. “You may go.”

  The men dipped their heads reverently, then scurried away like rats outrunning a flood. He couldn’t blame them. He’d dismissed them deliberately, knowing the contents of the letter would not please the woman at his elbow.

  And her anger was always a terrible thing to behold.

  Indeed, even as he thought this, the man felt an unpleasant heat begin to radiate from his right, thickening the already dusk-choked air and chasing away what little coolness the throne room provided. It was early summer, and the cruel gaze of the Sun had begun its ravaging of the South, searing eyes and any flesh that dared expose itself to its hunger. The room, once the receiving hall of a former šef by the name of Imaneal Evony, had been designed to thwart—or at least minimize—this oppressive hotness of the summer days. Thin, spiraling columns held up a high, ribbed ceiling that t
rapped the rising air and funneled it through hatches in the top of each vaulting. Arched windows made up a majority of the walls on every side, their blue-green silk curtains pulled away now to coax in what little breeze made it through the streets of Miropa and the bustle of the main square outside. The floor was fashioned of white quartz, streaked with greys and blacks, and did not sting the bare soles of the feet as one made their way across it.

  And yet, despite these measures taken, the heat continued to rise until the man could feel the sear of it on his cheek, radiating as the woman’s wrath built up with every line read of the letter clutched now in her delicate hands.

  “Months,” she finally hissed. “Months I wait for the freeze to end and the paths to clear, and this is all the news I receive?”

  “We know where he is,” the man said evenly, not looking at her. “A temple in the mountains, north of the great forest. Secluded like that, he won’t be able to—”

  “I don’t give a damn where he is, fool!” The woman cut him off with a snap, altogether abandoning the pretense of the calm lover she’d portrayed in front of the couriers. “I care about where he’s been, what he’s been doing. Your cousin’s story grows with every passing moment, and with it the unrest in my city. Almost a year since he made a fool of you and your šef before fleeing, and more than half that since he made a fool of every man we sent to Azbar. And now this.” There was the crunch of paper, and he could imagine her clutching at the edges of the parchment.

  “In single combat, as well,” the man said in a musing tone, careful to hide his underhanded delight. “It’s my understanding this ‘Kayle’ must have been something of a formidable opponent, too…”

  It was his little rebellion, his only outlet to shift even the slightest bit out from under the claws of the woman. Being the puppet of her uprising had its uses. In a way, he was untouchable, free of the threat her anger posed to so many of the lesser men within the Mahsadën.

  At least for the moment.

  “Look at me, Adrion.”

  A shiver ran down his spine at the words, and it was a moment before he could obey. Slowly, like a man attempting to delay his fate, Adrion Blaeth turned, his eyes finally meeting the lightning-blue irises of the woman beside him. She was a beautiful creature, as he’d always thought her. Her hair, which he suspected had once been a pure blonde some time ago, had been bleached to near-white after years in the Sun. Her smooth skin, still several shades lighter than the darker complexion of a true Southerner, seemed to glow like gold in the relative shade of the chamber. Even the curious scar, radiating out from her right eye in perpendicular lines to create a perfect X-shape across her face, did little to mar her comeliness, and there had been a time Adrion had felt equal parts pleasure and lust when he looked into those thunderous eyes.

  Now, all he felt was nausea and a strange, quavering cold.

  “Play your games while you can,” the woman whispered in a deadly murmur, bringing a hand up to stroke his cheek as something like a smile teased her lips. “Enjoy what freedoms you are allowed. But consider, on the day you serve me no purpose, what things I might learn from your corpse when the time arises.”

  There was a crackle and a flash, and Adrion barely kept himself from crying out as pain seared up the left side of his face, making him jerk away. When he felt his cheek, of course, there was nothing, no visible mark, and the pain vanished in an instant, winking out without leaving so much as a hint of its passing. Still, his fingers rubbed at the place hers had lingered over, his mind convinced he could feel the tingle of magic still palpable on his skin.

  “We know where he is,” Adrion repeated angrily, not looking away from the blue eyes that continued to bore into his. “Whatever else, that carries value. The North is a great realm, with what cities it has left scattered across its forests and mountains. It took us this long to find him, though, which means you have to act quickly. If word gets out that we know… How long do you think it would take us to hunt him down again?”

  That gave the woman pause, the heartless smile shifting slowly into a frown of annoyance as she heard the wisdom in his words this time.

  “Too long,” she admitted, straightening and tilting her head back against the throne behind her, fingers stroking at her neck pensively as she thought. “He can’t be allowed to disappear again. We have trouble enough as it is without the common rabble hearing that he managed to slip through our fingers again.”

  Adrion sat in silence, knowing better than to say anything more even though he thought he could guess what the woman would do long before she made the choice herself. In that way he was much like their former master. Ergoin Sass had always been the even-headed one, the šef of sharpest wit and quickest thought, apart from perhaps Imaneal Evony himself. Adrion had learned much in his years of servitude to the man, and it was amusing to see that his fellow apprentice had not absorbed that keenness despite the pair’s apparent closeness.

  The skills she’d learned in its place, on the other hand, certainly had their uses…

  Here we go, Adrion thought, seeing the woman settle on a decision, her eyes returning to the present before looking once more to the ground. Putting an elbow on the arm of her seat, she rested her cheek against her fist.

  “Na’zeem.”

  She spoke the name quietly, like the one she wished to summon were standing over her shoulder, waiting for her call. Instead, there was a shift in what little shadows survived the beating of the Sun through the windows, and a figure stepped out from behind the back right-most pillar of the hall. Adrion tensed once more, as he always did when the man appeared, unsettled by the unnatural stillness of his form within the plain tunic that hung loose over his body. Pale grey eyes gleamed in the space between the maroon turban wrapped about his head and the black veil that cut across his face, hiding his nose and mouth from view. One hand hung at his side, the other wrapped expectantly around the well-worn leather grip of the saber sheathed across his lower back. He said nothing, nor did he so much as glance at Adrion. His eyes were fixed on the woman, dutifully awaiting her command.

  “Approach,” she said after a moment, and it seemed no more than an instant before the man stood at their feet, his clothes settling around him quietly as she held out the letter. “Read it.”

  Accepting the parchment carefully, Na’zeem did as he was told with dutiful efficiency. Adrion watched the man’s eyes skim the contents once, then again, seeing what might have been the slightest presence of surprise in the subtle shift of his brow.

  “‘The High Citadel’,” Na’zeem spoke at last. His voice was as soft as his master’s as he handed the page back to her, if made heavy by the accents of the lower fringe cities across the Cienbal. “I do not know this place.”

  Beside him, Adrion felt the woman shift in what could only be excitement.

  “But I do,” she said smoothly. “Very well, in fact. Summon your shadows. You are about to depart on the greatest hunt of your lives.”

  Adrion—who had turned in disbelief at her words—did not see the shift in Na’zeem’s eyes, the thrill bordering on bloodlust. A moment later, the man was gone, stepping away and vanishing behind his pillar once more.

  “You know the place?” Adrion asked once he was gone.

  For a long time the woman said nothing, the little finger of the hand she leaned into tracing the line of the scar that ran down across her cheek. After several seconds, she finally lifted her head, bringing the hand up before her and spreading it, as if presenting some gift to an invisible visitor.

  There was a flash of light, and the now-familiar flames, white as the carved ivory sold as trinkets in the markets, bloomed to life within the cage of her digits. It flickered, exuding a cheerful glow that so harshly contradicted the violent nature of the magic the woman had ripped from the corpse of the woman she had once so efficiently pretended to care for. Adrion watched it apprehensively, nervous in its presence, hating the memories he held of the sorcery. He had nightmares, sometimes,
of the screams of the men that fire had consumed before his very eyes. Failed soldiers, captured spies, often even just unfortunate messengers. It was a savage thing, hunger and rage made pure, and it devoured so cruelly and efficiently that no other soul except Na’zeem and his contingent—men the woman had taken under her wing directly and trained in the same arts Sass had so efficiently instilled in her—had ever witnessed it and lived to speak of the event.

  As a result, it was Adrion, in the mind of his men and lessers, who so wickedly wielded the powers of a demon.

  “The High Citadel,” the woman answered finally, speaking so quietly he had to strain a little to hear. “Cyurgi ‘Di. Yes… I know it.”

  “How?” Adrion pressed, still watching the flames in her hands. At his words he saw the woman’s arm spasm, and the fire sparked and grew, encircling her fingers in a layer of flickering white tongues.