The Warring Son (The Wings of War Book 2)

by Bryce O'Connor

  By the time she reached the bottom, the woman was half-convinced her news would arrive too late to do anything about.

  The glow that greeted her at their base was semi-blinding to her sensitive eyes after the relative dimness of the tunnels. As she hurried forward into the room, Syrah had to block the blaze of the nearest forge with one hand while her vision adjusted. Despite this, even as her eyes watered in the light and heat, she looked around, trying to find Jofrey.

  The furnace room, while awe-inspiring in its own way, was possibly Syrah’s least favorite place in the Citadel. Her old classroom, where she’d spent hours every day in her youth, bored to the point of screaming with Reyn and two dozen other acolytes, was a close second, but the uncomfortable warmth and unbearable brightness did the furnaces in for her. Three great forges took up the colossal cavern, massive oblong things jutting upwards from the floor towards the curved ceiling high above. A plethora of copper piping spined outward from each one, some feeding water into the boiler that formed the top half of each forge, some pushing warm, humid air upward into the halls and rooms above, and some using the provided vacuum to drag fresh air in from outside.

  Once, when she’d first come to the Citadel, Syrah and a number of her new friends had snuck down into the furnaces on the dare of an older acolyte. They’d run screaming back up the stairs, yelling about the lost heads of three wicked monsters with glowing eyes and shining golden hair.

  It was estimated that—when the Cyurgi’ Di had been a fortress of war, before written memory—over a hundred men had been needed to keep the furnaces going. Coal had to be mined and hauled from great shafts in the back of the room that had since been sealed by the Laorin, and the forges had to be maintained and carefully overseen.

  Now, kept and conditioned regularly by magic, the furnaces needed only a half-dozen Priests and Priestesses per forge.

  It was one such woman, dressed in the simple cotton shirt and pants of the trade, that Syrah ran into first.

  “Jofrey al’Sen?” she asked, breathless after her run down the stair. “Is he here? Have you seen him?”

  The Priestess blinked in surprise, then nodded, pointing towards the backmost forge at the far end of the room. Peering through the haze, Syrah saw the white robes of someone not planning to spend all day in the heat.

  Suffering the blazes, Syrah made a line straight for him.

  “I think you’re right, Kallet,” Jofrey was saying as she reached them. “I don’t think we’ll have much of a choice. The residence halls will have to go without heat for a few days.”

  He was speaking to Brern, also in simple cloth clothes, who nodded.

  “I’ll talk to Petrük,” the forge master responded. “I’m sure she’ll enjoy informing everyone of their forthcoming misery, then playing the hero when she finds volunteers to keep the halls at least temperate overnight. I’m not looking forward to—Oy! Hello, Syrah!”

  Brern smiled at her, the motion crinkling his tanned, leathery face as he lifted a hand in welcome. Beside him, Jofrey turned at once to meet her. Surprise and concern etched the lines of his sweating face. He knew her well enough now to know that, if she was suffering the discomfort of coming to him down here, something was definitely wrong.

  “Syrah?” he asked. “What’s going on? What’s happened?”

  In response, Syrah held up the letter in her hand.

  “It’s a report,” she told him through heavy breaths as he took the parchment and unrolled it. “Ystréd sent scouts into the Woods as soon as they heard about the Kayle, trying to figure out where he might strike from.”

  Jofrey was scanning the letter quickly, but Brern’s face fell.

  “How many casualties?” he asked sadly.

  “None.”

  It was Jofrey who answered. There was a pause as he finished, then passed the letter on to the furnace master.

  “The scouts pushed north along the west border of the Arocklen, all the way to the lip of the Saragrias,” he summarized as the younger Priest began to read. “They encountered no resistance, but picked up the army’s trail heading east, keeping to the bottom of the ranges.”

  “East?” Brern asked, perplexed, finishing the letter himself and looking up. “Along the mountains? But what does that mean?”

  Jofrey frowned, the worry in his face deepening in the flicker of the forge before them.

  “It means that Petrük was right, even though I doubt she thought it at the time,” he mumbled.

  “Right?” Brern asked, confused. “Right about what? Explain. If Baoill is heading for Ystréd, why is he going east?”

  “Because he’s not making for Ystréd anymore, if he ever was,” Syrah explained without taking her eyes off Jofrey, watching him think. “There’s something he wants more.”

  “But what could he want more than another Northern town?” Brern sputtered, clearly frustrated with his own lack of understanding.

  “Cyurgi’ Di,” Jofrey said into the furnace fire. “Gûlraht Baoill is coming here.”

  Epilogue

  “It is among the gods’ great pleasures to ensure that a man dies in the same way he lived.”

  —SIGÛRTH PROVERB

  IT WAS Alyssa who found him.

  That she came across the man was pure happenstance, perhaps even the cruel humor of some deity or another. Whatever the reason, she almost missed him among the other lumps of the forest floor, thinking him just another log or misshapen boulder beneath the snow.

  When the lump shifted, though, her horse had nearly flung her off in fright.

  “H-here,” he said, hopeful voice broken by the cold. “H-here. P-please! Here!”

  She saw an arm extend towards her then, and she recognized the man for who he was. The fat hand, still bearing its heavy gold and silver rings, was familiar to her, shaking so violently as it stretched in hopeful desperation towards her horse.

  Shaking so violently it seemed the thick fingers, every one black and dead from the frost, might fall right off.

  For a long time Alyssa looked down at the man from atop her mount. Her breath misted the air through the dark cloth wrapped around the bottom half of her face, vanishing even as the animal shifted nervously beneath her. She searched the curve of his body beneath the snow until she found his eyes, wide and bloodshot as they bulged with relief that someone had finally found him.

  Those blue eyes that she had witnessed so often staring with insatiable desire down into the pit.

  Alyssa’s gaze traveled over his face. The loose, baggy skin of his cheeks wasn’t as far gone as his hands, but his nose and ears were beyond saving. She had no doubt, taking in the rest of the figure’s quivering bulk, now slowly shaking loose the snow that had piled over him in the night, that other parts of him were done for as well.

  Maybe even those pieces of a man one could hardly call himself a man without…

  “A-Alyssa?”

  Alyssa shifted her gaze to meet his eyes once more. Green met blue, and for a brief moment the woman saw a different face than the blackened one below her, ravaged by the winter night and still-falling snow. For a moment she saw older, kinder features, lined and aged by laughter and smiles.

  Then the face of the father was gone, and only what was left of the son’s remained.

  “W-What are you d-doing?” the man asked slowly.

  There was a sudden fear in his voice that had not been there before, an abrupt hesitation replacing the hope and relief. As she sat there atop her horse, looking down upon his shivering form as the icy morning wind cut through the trees to blow her black hair about her face, Alyssa made her decision.

  Wheeling her mount around, she heeled it into a trot back towards the road and the rest of the search party, through the silent pines, in the direction she’d come.

  “A-Alyssa?” the man called out in hopeless desperation from behind her. “A-Alyssa! Wait! P-Please! Wait! Wait! WAAAAAIT!”

  Pushing the horse into a gallop, Alyssa Rhen left the man and his screa
ms to the cold.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  [AKA: THE PLIGHT OF THE WRITER]

  As this chapter in Raz’s story comes to a close, I cannot accurately portray exactly how much your support and enjoyment of this book means to me, as there are no words grand enough to paint the picture. The Wings of War is a labor of love, a commitment to the creation of a story that will entertain, enthrall, and inspire, as so many other tales have done for me before. Your appreciation and enjoyment of my writing is a massive portion of the rewards of being an author.

  It is with this note that I move on to a more personal plea, a cry for assistance from all of you who got to the end of the book and were even just a little bit sad it didn’t continue on:

  Please, please, consider rating and reviewing The Warring Son on one or two major bookselling or book group sites.

  Many people don’t know that there are thousands of books published every day, most of those in the USA alone. Over the course of a year, a quarter of a million authors will vie for a small place in the massive world of print and publishing. We fight to get even the tiniest traction, fight to climb upward one inch at a time towards the bright light of bestsellers, publishing contracts, and busy book signings.

  Thing is, we need all the help we can get.

  Your positive input into that world, however small you believe your voice may be, makes the climb just a little bit easier. Rating and reviewing books you enjoy gives your favorite authors a boost upward.

  With that all out of the way, thank you again so much for picking up The Warring Son. If you’d like to give me feedback directly, have a question about Raz and his adventures, or just want to chat, drop me a message on Twitter or Facebook.

  It has been a pleasure entertaining you, and I vigorously hope you continue to follow The Wings of War series to see what becomes of Raz i’Syul Arro.

  Bryce O’Connor

  www.bryceoconnorbooks.com

  www.facebook.com/OConnorBooks