Dragonoak: The Complete History of Kastelir

by Sam Farren

  The axewoman writhed throughout the whole process, brief as it was, and didn't stop moving once she was healed. Her breath came harshly and she choked on the blood left in the back of her throat, and I was covered in all she'd been drained of, just like the ground beneath us.

  “Thank you, thank you—” she whimpered, sobbing.

  She must've thought I was a healer.

  Michael clamped his hands on my shoulders and I came back to myself. I didn't realise I'd drifted, but he said, “It's done, it's done,” and everything shifted back into focus. Claire stood in front of me, ready to hoist the woman to her feet, and the forest was full of sounds again; the rustling of leaves and small creatures scurrying.

  I brought a hand to my mouth and traced a smile.

  I sprang to my feet, clenching and unclenching my fists to ease the sharp stab of power out of my system, and watched Claire kick the woman in the ribs. The axewoman froze, terrified of what Claire would do next, making it easy for Claire to drag her through the dirt and pin her against a tree.

  Michael remained by my side, fussing under his breath, far too jittery to make sense of anything.

  And Rán wasn't there.

  “Who sent you?” Claire demanded, placing her forearm across the woman's collarbone.

  She didn't answer. She wasn't holding her tongue; in spite of the way she'd swung her axe with the intention of killing me, she was too frightened to speak. Her eyes were wide and watery, pleading for me to help her, and I brought up a hand, rubbing my knuckles between my ribs.

  Claire gestured towards one of Rán's bags.

  “Rope,” she said, and Michael almost tripped over himself in an effort to comply. He was doing all the panicking I didn't yet have the chance to.

  Claire tied the axewoman to the tree. She didn't consider struggling, but dug her heels into the ground when Claire began to pace in front of her, eyes fixed on her discarded sword.

  “Now,” Claire said, taking a deep breath. “We have no intention of hurting you. Not again. Whether or not you answer my questions, you shall remain here until such a time as someone comes to collect you, or happens upon you. Do you understand?”

  Michael brought the fire back to life. The woman's uniform was unfamiliar, dark greys without an emblem or distinct patterning, but when I saw her in the light, I started.

  “I know who she is,” I blurted out. I'd been standing there silent and motionless since Claire dragged the axewoman away, and everyone turned to face me. Narrowing her gaze, Claire stepped over, standing close to me. I got the hint and pushed myself onto tiptoes, whispering in her ear. “In the tavern, that time we had to run away, because a soldier came in. I told you I'd seen Sir Luxon—she was with him.”

  “You're sure?” Claire asked, straightening.

  “I am,” I said, and Claire nodded to herself, heading back over to the woman.

  “You know who I am, I see,” Claire said to her.

  “Yes,” the woman said, one heel and then the next pushing into the dirt. “... Sir.”

  Claire paced back and forth on the other side of the fire. It was far from cold, but I'd started to shake, and wrapping my arms around myself did nothing to help.

  “I understand how it is,” Claire said eventually. “Luxon sends you here to assassinate me – the man always was a coward, he must've known that you'd barely succeed in slowing me down, let alone stop me – but my squire wakes up, spots you, and you make an attempt on her life. Yet she is far better than I can profess to be and opts to save your life.”

  The woman stopped squirming, slumped against the tree and stared off to the side.

  It wasn't the time for her to sulk.

  She stubbornly nodded her head and Michael breathed out a gasp of surprise, getting himself into a state all over again.

  “Why?” Claire asked.

  “I don't know!” the woman declared, words practically bursting from her throat. “Sir Luxon gave me the assignment. He said... he said he couldn't say why. Just that the pressure had got to you, that you'd gone rogue and killed half a dozen citizens!”

  Michael, who'd been marching back and forth behind me, clung to my arms, fingertips digging in. Claire wasn't given the chance to respond to the allegation, had no time to defend herself; we were interrupted by Rán lumbering through the trees, pushing back low branches as she went.

  She froze, saw the axe on the ground and the woman tied to the tree, the blood soaking my clothes and smearing my skin, and pieced it all together. She rushed over to me and I wanted nothing more than to sink against her chest.

  “Yrval, what happened, are you—” she started, but Claire marched over, knocking Rán's hands off my shoulders.

  “Where were you?” Claire demanded, and her voice was not quiet. “You were supposed to be keeping watch.”

  “I—” Rán started, faltering. Claire advanced on her and she actually stepped back. “I had to get away for a moment, that's all...”

  Her words came out weakly. Rán didn't have an excuse for herself; her gaze kept darting towards me, ears drooping. She thought we'd be safe.

  Any other night and she would've been right.

  “Not good enough,” Claire snapped. She was doing a good job of seeming more terrifying with her words than she had with a blade in her hand. “Look—look at what happened. At what could've happened.”

  “I was—” Rán tried, snarling in frustration. She leant close to Claire's ear, murmuring something in Svargan.

  Claire's face paled.

  “Ah,” she said, looking as though she might relent for a moment. Splaying a hand against Rán's chest, she pushed her back and said, “Watch her. Pack up our things. We need to move on.”

  Rán made no reply. She looked over as though she wanted to reach out and wrap her arms around me, and I desperately wanted to tell her that it was alright; this wasn't her fault.

  Claire stopped me before I could do as much. She gestured for me to follow her deeper into the forest and I moved on legs that were too light to be my own. The fact that I'd nearly had an axe embedded into my skull was doing what it could to catch up to me, and I was distantly numb, as though I'd witnessed something I wasn't a part of. Michael's fussing barely grounded me and Rán's guilt was already distant, but Claire was something solid for me to focus on.

  I followed her between trees growing so closely together that I couldn't imagine Rán navigating the forest, until we came to a lake that was barely deep enough to drown in. I stared at the dim surface, wondering why we'd stopped until I remembered the blood on my shirt, on my hands and arms.

  And only then, alone with Claire in the depths of the forest, did I recall what the axewoman said.

  That she'd been sent after Claire because she'd killed innocent people.

  Claire turned to face me. She was far from unaffected by what happened and the even nature of her expression slipped; her face was almost something I didn't recognise. I expected her words to be sharp, for her to reprimand me for what I'd done, yet she reached out to me, two fingers pressing beneath my jaw.

  “Your eyes were—” she began softly, and I lifted my head to meet her gaze. “When you saved that woman, your eyes were bright. Not eerily so, but... it was unusual.”

  I didn't know anything about that, but I knew Luxon had lied to the axewoman to make her do as he wished.

  Claire continued to look at me, fingertips brushing against my neck, and that iciness in my chest twisted deeper.

  “Clean yourself up,” Claire said, abruptly retrieving her hand.

  I worked my knuckles against my chest and Claire took a seat on a rock, back to the lake, sword draped across her lap. It took me a moment to wade into the water. I was trembling worse than ever, seeing flashes of the blade each time I blinked, arms wrapped too tightly around myself to get my shirt off.

  Every time I glanced back, Claire was staring into the black of the forest. She wasn't going to turn, not unless I called for help. She wasn't going to see the scars
that weren't scars riddled across my body.

  I pulled my shirt off, plunging it into the water along with the rest of my torso. Any rage or fear I ought to have been at the mercy of fizzled away and my stomach became heavy, filled with all the muck and mire bloated at the bottom of the lake. I scrubbed at my arms, washed blood from between my fingers and cleaned my face and shoulders as best I could, sure I'd missed at least half of it.

  All the while, Claire remained silent and still, staring and thinking.

  I stopped shaking, but the water caused the night air to cool against my skin. I wrung my shirt out and hooked an arm through the neck in my hurry to put it back on. I noticed things around the lake I hadn't before: the croak of a frog, a deep, scraping sound, the buzz of grasshoppers gathering where the grass grew high, up to our knees, a breeze idly trying to steal the leaves from their branches; the dank smell of moss and peat, where the water had forgotten how to take form without any rainfall in weeks.

  Carefully, I made my way over to the rock and sat with my back to Claire's, not quite touching. My shirt was still far from dry.

  “I'm sorry,” Claire said. Whatever made me tremble had rushed out of my system and was doing all it could to creep into her voice. “I ought not to have been sleeping. Had I been awake—”

  “It was Rán's turn to keep watch,” I said quickly, swivelling to face her. In the dark, I could make out the line of her jaw and little more. “You already sleep less than you need to.”

  “That doesn't matter. You could've been killed,” she said roughly, but all the scorn was directed at herself.

  “Claire...” I said, placing a hand on her shoulder. She tensed, but didn't shrug me off. I kept my hand there, wondering how she could think that when she'd just witnessed what I could do. “I don't think I could've. I think I would've... would've healed.”

  My teeth dug into my lower lip. Surely she'd rise to her feet, now that I'd reminded her of what I was.

  “You could've been hurt,” she corrected herself, and there was no arguing with that.

  A faint feeling of nausea webbed up in the pit of my stomach, in my throat, and though I'd been torn from sleep, the idea of closing my eyes for more than a moment made me tense; the woman was tied to a tree but it wasn't over. It couldn't be.

  Heaving a sigh, Claire leant back, resting against me. Her back pressed to mine and I had no idea what to do with my hands. I bundled them in my lap, fingers digging between the creases of my trousers.

  “You were right to let her live. I have killed before – I have killed more than anyone should have to account for – but I have never done so in cold blood,” Claire murmured. “Had I watched her die today when I knew what you were capable of doing, I wouldn't be able to answer for that.”

  In spite of what she was saying, a sense of calm overcame me on our world of a rock. I tilted my head back, resting it where the curve of her neck met her shoulder and closed my eyes. It didn't become much darker, for the stars barely broke through the canopy, but it let me imagine that we wouldn't return to the camp to find a bloodied woman tied to a tree, her axe discarded by the fire.

  “I wish you'd tell me more about yourself. I know there's a lot you can't talk about,” I said, hands relaxing. “But there's plenty you can. I want to know about your life, about your family. Anything.”

  She didn't answer. She'd already said enough, and when she rose to her feet and nodded back towards the camp, I knew it wasn't a no.

  CHAPTER IX

  Rán and Michael argued as they shoved pans into bags and loaded up the horses.

  “What do you mean Agados is still viable?” Michael asked, throwing his hands out to the sides. “We have a would-be assassin tied to a tree! What part of the plan is still going smoothly?”

  Rán grunted, jabbing a claw against his chest.

  “Oh? And you're thinking that we have time to turn around and scamper off to Canth? We keep moving. There's nothing else for it.”

  Michael let out a frustrated snarl that rivalled Rán's and stomped off, mounting his horse and racing off into the night. The three of us followed, and the dark of the forest behind us enticed me to look back. I hoped the axewoman would be tied to that tree for hours to come, but not for too long. I hadn't saved her in order to let hunger and thirst claim her.

  I tried to make sense of Agados as we rode. I'd heard mention of it before, but wasn't certain whether it was a town or city or something more. The next time we stopped, as late in the evening as it had been early in the morning when we'd left, I asked Claire where it was. She took out her map of Asar and traced her finger along Kastelir, stopping when she reached a patch of land half the size of Felheim on the very edge of the continent.

  “It's a small, wealthy country with a thriving trade,” she explained, folding the map back up. “But hardly the most welcoming of places.”

  I didn't ask her why no one had mentioned it before, why Michael was privy to the plan and I wasn't. Three days later, I was glad of it; Rán made an off-hand comment about Isin creeping ever closer, and I realised that our destination hadn't changed. They'd only wanted the axewoman to overhear them and report back to Sir Luxon.

  A little more than a fortnight into our journey, we were given no choice but to pass through a city. Orinhal had grown wealthy for the bridge crossing the ravine it boasted. The next crossing would've added at least three days onto our journey, and though Claire had taken minutes to mull it over, Rán rolled her eyes and said, “Come on, dragon-slayer. It's just one city, and we'll be passing through in a matter of minutes.”

  Orinhal was a city of intricacies. It was built from white stone dragged from the bottom of the ravine, and each spire, arch and walkway had been treated as though they were a piece of art. Swirls and far-reaching patterns were carved into the stone and vines crept along carefully planned paths, flowers blooming from every window and lamppost. A tower in the centre of the city rose high above all else, bringing it all together, and I had few doubts that the eagle adorning the peak was cast from gold.

  “Definitely pre-Kastelirian architecture,” Michael said, for all the Kastelirian architecture he hadn't seen. It was his way of calling it old. “Amazing that they managed to get anything done with all that senseless fighting, let alone something that's held up as well as all this. Look at that! Fantastic! Wait—is that a shrine?”

  I absent-mindedly followed his gaze, not expecting much. The shrine in our village was little more than a weathered rock by this point, and might not have actually been anything religious to begin with. Fifteen hundred years ago, my ancestors fled the Bloodless Land and left their gods behind. When those native to the lands south of the mountains saw that they weren't struck down for their heresy, religion slowly fell out of favour.

  But what I saw was beautiful. The shrine was made of something different than the rest of the city; the stone was sandier, and though meticulously carved, it had its own distinct shape. It was as though it had been placed there long before or long after the rest of Orinhal had been built. It wasn't large – the size of my farmhouse, perhaps – but the murals on the side stood out from a distance.

  The goddess Isjin with her burning eyes, arms spread out to encompass the world.

  And then, scrawled across that, graffiti. I didn't need to be able to read to know that none of the words were kind.

  “Some still revere the gods,” Claire explained. “There's one in Thule, as well—a little bigger, perhaps. The Priests attempt to preach at the castle, sometimes.”

  “I'd heard whisperings, but I'd never imagined...” Michael murmured, rubbing his chin. “Oh. But I did once hear something about one of the Kings still worshipping the gods. It isn't a stretch to believe that Isin was derived from the name of the creator.”

  “Really, now?” Rán asked. “Seems a little strange to me, for a human around these parts.”

  His face twisted into an expression of distaste. We were standing firmly within Kastelir, but Michael was still stuck in
his stories, and they were entirely unlike the rendition he'd told in Riverhurst.

  Rán and Claire walked ahead, making it easier for us to guide our horses through. I fell back and stood close to Michael, hooking my arm around his and bumping against his side until he looked down at me, sighed, and asked, “What is it?”

  “That story you told in Riverhurst—the one about Queen Kouris. You changed it. Whenever you told it to me, you always said that... they'd allied with Kouris in order to scare off anyone who might challenge them. You said that life wasn't much better once the territories were Kastelir, because how can a country thrive under four rulers with four different ways of life? Things like that,” I said, and Michael seemed pleased that I'd paid enough attention to him to notice the differences. “You changed it because of the audience.”

  “Right,” he said, waiting for me to make an actual point.

  “How come you never did that for me? After you found out what I was, all the stories about...” I lowered my voice. “About Kondo-Kana and the Bloodless Lands were the same.”

  “Ah. Well, talking about Kastelirian history to Kastelirians is dangerous, don't you think? I'd hate to make assumptions and have an angry mob of a country after me. But when it comes to all else – the Bloodless Lands, the Necromancy War – that's too far in the past to offend anyone. Our ancestors might've been from Myros, might've had to leave their homeland behind, but we've been here for countless generations. As for Kondo-Kana...” He looked down at me, smiling with one corner of his mouth. “Necromancer or not, you aren't like her. She played her part in the war and came to suffer for it; you're hardly about to annihilate half a continent, are you?”

  He was right, but I wished he had stories about nice necromancers to tell. About good necromancers, necromancers who used their powers to wipe out plagues and bring back people's loved ones, and hadn't once considered abusing their abilities.

  As I was turning this over in my mind, someone ahead of me cried out, “Necromancer—!”