“Leave these people alone. Strip them of your curse, now, and we will grant you a merciful return to the realm of the dead.”
“It’s not a curse. They have been reborn.”
Fire raged in Meli’s cheeks. “You monster!”
“I have certain desires to fulfill,” Gynoth said. “Things that I did not accomplish before the Twin Sisters hunted me down. I’m afraid you stand in my way, so I’ll ask you kindly—and only once—to leave.”
“Shoot him,” Meli said.
Gynoth swerved behind the corner of a house. He heard a fwhip and poked his head out. “That was not the correct response, I’m sorry.”
In the minds of every villager, there was a snakelike whisper that threaded itself through the cavity of their skulls and echoed endlessly. It said this: Kill them all. Except that one.
Arrows were shot, but they were not shot fast enough. Their bows were snapped in half, wooden splinters dusting the air.
Hammers and claws, pitchforks and hoes, scythes and dull knives—the villagers had them all, and they used them all.
The Daughters screamed as rusted iron plunged inside them. They grunted an almost lifeless response as the blunt heads of hammers struck their faces, shattered their cheekbones. When it ended and the villagers retreated as they’d been ordered, only one Daughter remained breathing. In fact, the only blood she had on her was that of her fellow Daughters.
She tried scooting away, slithering to safety like a wounded animal as Gynoth approached. She failed.
Gynoth brought with him a village horse. He patted the saddle and said to Meli, “Get on.”
Her teeth shivered. She got to her knees, then to her feet.
“Do not make this more difficult than it has to be,” Gynoth said.
Quivering, Meli put a foot into a stirrup and lifted herself onto the saddle.
“You ride back to Silderine and you tell your enforcers and your Daughters they will forget about me. All I wish is to go home. Do you understand?”
“Your way home,” Meli said, swallowing, “is sealed. There is no going back.”
Gynoth shrugged. “I’m well aware, but don’t fret. Death could not stop me; do you think sorcery will? Go on now, ride home.”
Meli looked at the slain Daughters. She closed her eyes and wept. “You monster. You… monster.” She listlessly clicked her heels, sending the horse into a slow trot.
And now, Gynoth said to the resurrected, you sleep. Your god is finished with you.
Chapter Eleven
Some men and women enjoy attractive and glamorous clothes to impress others. Oriana Gravendeer was not one of these women. She didn’t care if people thought she was beautiful so long as she felt beautiful. But even in her turquoise dress cut off at the shins, matching emeralds around her neck, and amber earrings that blended in well with her auburn hair, she did not feel quite so beautiful today.
Given that she was in the midst of buying sixty pounds of raw meat, this was understandable.
She stood in the shadows beneath a stone bridge and playfully plucked at the shamrock-colored bangles around her wrist as Jin “The Butcher” Cramon approached her. Or rather, as his cart, dragged by a lethargic and inexpressive mule, approached her.
“Miss Oriana,” Jin said excitedly. He said all things excitedly. He was rather short and lean, had curly red hair and a face of freckles. He looked at her with only one eye, having lost his other in a tragic dart-throwing accident. “If Krammer here moves a little faster, I might get to shake yer hand before the bloody sun sets. C’mon, Krammer! Let’s get a move on, eh?”
Krammer the mule snorted, his pace neither slowing nor speeding up. When he finally reached Oriana, he stopped and stomped one foot, as if to say it was break time and if you wanted this cart to move another inch, you’d best go find yourself another mule.
“All righty,” Jin said, climbing down. “Sixty pounds in there, weighed it meself. Good mixture of fowl, deer, rodent, goose. Is goose fowl? Nah, I don’t think so. Fowl’s only chickens and turkeys.”
Oriana smiled at his childlike innocence. “I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask Bowright. He’s the resident bird watcher, you know.”
“Might I ask what all the meat’s fer?” Jin said. “Ya use’ta buy only a couple pounds here and there, but boy oh boy, sixty?”
Comers and goers of the Yellow Petal Festival taking place in Haeglin made for tight crowds and loud mouths all around Oriana and Jin.
“It’s personal,” Oriana said. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no,” Jin said, throwing up his hands, “I shouldn’t have even asked. None my business. Only job is to pervide ya meat. Want me to haul it over to yer estate for ya?”
“That’s quite all right,” Oriana said. “I’ll—”
The crowd—no, the entire city—erupted into panic. Not surprise or elation or rabbling, but panic. There’s a certain chaos to panic that sets it apart from all else, a sense of dread that lingers in the air like repugnant body odor.
Also, panic tends to make people run. And that’s exactly what everyone was doing.
“What’s happening?” Oriana said, head swiveling this way and that.
“She’s bloodied!” someone screamed.
“Is she dead?” cried another.
“I see her eyes! Her eyes are open!”
Haeglin was built like a plump spire with jutting discs of rock for arms, of which it had four—two near the base of the city and two at the top. The city was split into five levels called rungs. Oriana stood at the top disc of the fourth rung. A fat crowd gathered at the edge, hemming and hawing, pointing and pontificating.
“Stay here,” she ordered Jin. She hurried over to the massing crowd, twirling herself around and between elbows and knees. She stood on the tips of her toes, but could see nothing over all the people. Shortness has its pitfalls… many of them.
She grabbed a taller gentleman by the arm. “What’s happening?”
He glanced down at her and went to speak but found himself tongue-tied. “Are you… Oriana? I mean, Lady Oriana! Please forgive me.”
She hated being recognized. Worse yet was when the people treated her like royalty. “Can you see what’s happening down there?”
“The, er, the Jackals, my lady. They’re—”
Rumors and gossip exploded through the crowd. One man wondered if a failed hunt was to blame, while another suggested the wound looked like it was made by an arrowhead. There was talk of barbarian clans, of nefarious plots. Of war.
Oriana yanked the man’s arm to grab his attention back. “They’re what?”
“They have your sister, my lady. She’s hurt real bad, it looks like.”
Sisters are supposed to love one another. That’s one of the unwritten rules of the universe. Oriana and Olyssi Gravendeer did not love one another. Oriana was twenty-eight and Olyssi twenty-four, and not in all their years could they remember enjoying one another’s presence. In fact, they rather hated one another.
But Oriana never wished to see her sister hurt—well, perhaps at times she wished that, but she didn’t actually want to see that wish come true. And anyone being brazen enough to attack a Gravendeer meant something very bad had happened and worse things would follow.
Oriana shoved herself through the gawking horde. She sprinted back to Jin, almost crashing face first into the belly of a man who hadn’t gone hungry for several decades and likely wouldn’t for several more.
“Jin,” she said, breathing hard, “my sister—she’s hurt.”
Jin responded with a gaped mouth and a hand on her shoulder. “My goodness. How, I mean is she—”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Just stay here. Please. Can you do that while I check on her?”
Jin nodded. “Would you prefer me to take the meat to your estate?”
Oriana quickly shook her head. “No. Please just stay here.”
“Right. Go see your sister.”
She hiked up her dress and tore off for the
steps leading off the disc. In hindsight, had she known she’d be running down the entire spiral of Haeglin after her bloodied sister, she’d have put on something more practical.
She pushed that thought out of her mind, replacing it with hopes and prayers that her sister was okay—for political reasons. And, er, you know… sisterly love.
Throngs of children and women and men gabbled and prattled, offering this theory and that on why and how one of the Gravendeer sisters had been attacked. While it couldn’t be certain that an attack had taken place, Oriana thought it a fair assumption. Olyssi wasn’t the type to go on hunts where a boar’s tusks could plunge through her belly or climb mountains and risk grievous injury.
She hurried down the sloped paths of Haeglin, thinning herself between the crowds when she could, shouting that she was Oriana Gravendeer when she couldn’t. The latter always made people move, whether out of respect for her name or fear of disrespecting her father.
She reached Olyssi as the Jackals were escorting her up to the middle rung. At least she’s walking on her own.
“Olyssi!” Oriana cried, hurrying to her sister’s side.
Olyssi scowled. “What are you—ow.” She missed her step and came down hard and awkward, twisting her ankle. She pressed a firm hand into her belly, over a section of dried blood.
“Were you attacked?”
“Just—” Olyssi grimaced. “Make sure no one touches me!”
“No one wants to touch you,” Oriana remarked. Then, under her breath, “For more reasons than one.” She saw no reason to be amicable any longer. Her sister wasn’t on the edge of death, and—as always—was being a bitch.
“They’re lucky,” Olyssi said, continuing to climb the spire. “If they had punctured an organ…”
“Who? You still haven’t told me what happened.”
A Jackal swiped a gold-plated arm across the jaw of a nosy citizen. He fell backward against a shelf of rock, unconscious.
“Make way!” the Jackal hollered. “Get yourselves out of the bloody fookin’ way, now.”
Oriana heard the clacking of hooves. She looked up, shielding her eyes from the sun, which always seemed to perch itself on the summit of Haeglin, and squinted. A mule trotted toward them, hauling an uncovered wagon bed. A Jackal was driving.
“Move! Goddamnit, I said—”
A panicked woman in a bonnet felt the wrath of an angry and overly judicious Jackal. He grabbed her by the throat, lifted her up and threw her deeper into the crowd.
Oriana put herself in front of the elite guard. “Touch one more woman or man or child and I’ll personally see that your next destination is the gulag.”
The Jackal responded with an incredulous turn of his head, eyes narrowing between the slit of his helmet. “If your sister dies because these fucking gawkers won’t get—”
Oriana lifted her chin. “Careful. I’m not one of your whoreshack playthings.”
The Jackal backed down. He wheeled around and helped the others lift Olyssi into the bed of the wagon.
Oriana disliked using her status as a way to get what she wanted, but disrespect could not be tolerated. You gave the Jackals a strand and they’d take the whole damn spool. They were unrivaled protectors of the crown, but inside those brushed gold helmets lay heads that had gotten far too big.
She climbed onto the rear rim of the wagon. It began moving as the mule made its arduous journey upward.
Oriana figured they were going to the third rung, where Master Savant Freda and her small army of apprentices sewed, sawed, injected, lathered, cleaned, and cured. But the mule climbed right on past the third rung, toward the fourth.
“Where are we going?” Oriana asked.
“To see my father,” Olyssi snapped.
“Our father. And unless he’s been practicing medicine while you’ve been gone, I don’t see why—”
Olyssi jerked her head around. “Of course you don’t understand. Because you weren’t assaulted by”—she closed her eyes and shook her head—“forget it.”
“By who?”
“I said forget it.”
Oriana looked to the heavens and counted silently. This was the only method she’d devised that would prevent her from smacking her sister upside the head when she got into one of her moods. Olyssi’s refusal to enlighten her sister didn’t come from a place of selfless secrecy in which one might keep facts hidden and obscured to suppress drama and fear. Oriana knew this. She knew precisely what her sister was up to, which was keeping everyone in the dark until she got center stage—which in this case involved standing before their father—then she’d blurt it out in the most dramatic way possible. That was, without doubt, the most Olyssi Gravendeer thing to do.
The mule brought them to the fourth rung. It looked like a vast pancake upon which sat the kingdom’s towering keep, immaculate cobblestone roads, illustrious fountains, statues carved from the finest stone in the deepest quarries—it was the residence of grandiosity.
Several children frolicked in the fountains, their parents lords or ladies of some sort. Your average citizen didn’t have the “right” to step onto the fifth rung. Oriana despised the idea of becoming queen, but if she did, she promised herself that certain aspects of her father’s rule would become obsolete as outdated things ought to become.
The Jackal serving as coachman idled the cart before the intricately designed stone keep. Most keeps throughout Avestas kept things simple. They were squat and squarish with watchtowers rising above them. Haeglin’s keep looked like it’d been designed by a very ambitious architect who worked for a king with deep pockets.
The keep had been built with an emphasis on verticality, with various structures rising over one another and topped with cone-shaped roofs. Sweeping staircases wound up and up and met with bridges. There were empty balconies and flying buttresses, faux windows and real ones. Banners had been unfurled down many of the walls, featuring the Gravendeer coat of arms: a silhouetted wolf howling within a setting sun—hence their nickname, the sunwolves. Oriana hated that name, but as anyone saddled with an unfortunate epithet knows, you don’t get to pick and choose them.
Two guards were posted at a single door massive in stature. It had a green tint to it, having been constructed from a hard greenish wood known as emerald wood. Emerald trees thrived only in small, secluded thickets, the nearest to Haeglin nearly a hundred miles east.
Decorative iron rivets adorned the door, along with steel bands for reinforcement. Plenty of other doors and entrances existed around the keep, but this one gave you immediate access to the throne room.
Olyssi nearly jumped out of the wagon, eschewing concerns from the Jackals.
She must not be hurting that badly, Oriana thought.
The younger Gravendeer sister stomped right up to the guards and demanded they open the door.
“My lady,” one of them said, “Lord Gravendeer is holding court with his advisers.”
“I don’t care,” Olyssi said. “Open the door.”
The guard’s mouth twitched. Permitting entry to the throne room while the king was holding court was not, in any sense of the word, kosher. But defying Olyssi Gravendeer had few desirable outcomes.
Oriana sighed, climbing out of the wagon bed. “Go on, Haren. Open it. I’ll take responsibility.”
Olyssi smirked as Haren nodded and, with the help of his fellow guardsman, opened the heavy door.
There’s a saying in Avestas that if you’ve seen the inside of one castle, you’ve seen them all. This is partly true but also a rather pessimistic view of things. Sure, there’s standard fare—pillars and carpeted floors, candelabra suspended from the ceiling, probably banners hanging on the walls. There’ll be a throne and possibly some tables, maybe a window or two. But each castle has its own distinct characteristics, which have a direct correlation to the size of the kingdom’s coffers.
Haeglin did not hurt for money, and the inside of its keep showed it. Prismatic bands of inlaid gems coiled around fat pil
lars supporting a sixty-foot-high vaulted ceiling. Chandeliers glittered, sparkling like crushed diamonds as the flames from hot candles reflected off them. Olyssi and Oriana walked straight down a thick black carpet with gold trimmings, not a speck of dirt or a strand of hair present.
Against the far wall of the room, upon a dais, stood an empty throne. It sat empty for two reasons. First, thrones are bloody uncomfortable and no one but the most narcissistic lord would sit in one all day. Secondly, Raegon Gravendeer, lord of the Gravendeer family and king of Haeglin, sat in the middle of a long table, opposite eight advisers.
He looked up, bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows rising in surprise at the sight before him.
“Olyssi, Oriana,” he said, booming voice echoing throughout the throne room, “see yourselves out. Court is in session.”
“No,” Olyssi said. “We need to talk. Now.”
Raegon drew a heavy breath, seemingly sucking in all the air in the room. His face turned red.
You’d better have a good strategy for dealing with this, Oriana thought, looking at her sister.
“The Valiosians tried to kill me!” Olyssi cried, withdrawing her hand from the wound on her belly.
And with that declaration, all advisers stood and promptly left, knowing that was precisely what Raegon would have ordered them to do.
Raegon hefted his arms onto the table. “Come here. What do you mean the Valiosians tried to kill you?”
“I was at Craw’s Hold,” Olyssi said, approaching her father. “And—”
Her father reached out, touching the tips of his fingers to her stomach. “Stitches. It was that deep?”
Olyssi nodded. “There was a savant there, fortunately.”
“Did he give you herb of the mother?”
“No. He didn’t have any. It doesn’t smell and the redness hasn’t spread, but I’ll get some from Savant Freda.”
“Lift your shirt up.”
Olyssi licked her lips. “Father, I—”
“Lift your shirt up.”
She did as she was told.
“Thrust wound,” Raegon said. “You’re lucky it didn’t rupture an organ. Why were you at Craw’s Hold?”
The Dragon Thief (Sorcery and Sin Book 1) Page 9