“I enjoy cutting down warriors on the battlefield. I relish crushing my rivals, torturing my foes. But you . . . your suffering does nothing for me.”
“And what of the Dragonman you called your Sword? Did you relish his suffering?”
Draki’s face swam in my vision, his features beautiful and cold and cruel. “Do not speak of things you cannot understand.”
Before I could form a proper retort, my eyelids fluttered, my tongue too heavy in my mouth. I was half asleep when I heard it.
“I will break you, little warrior. So no one else can.”
Maybe he said it aloud, or in my head, or maybe I dreamed it and he’d not spoken at all.
The sickness left me a few days later, and I was finally able to get out of bed. My legs were still weak, but I managed to dress and make my way to the bone temple, a Dragonman guard trailing after.
Hilde was standing over a table lined with weapons, polishing a giant axe covered in runes. She smiled as I stumbled in. “Nice to see you without vomit coming out of your mouth.”
“You said sor mund was unpleasant.” I shook my head. “A thorn in your foot is unpleasant. A bee sting is unpleasant. Retching up my guts for four days was a bit more troublesome than you’d led me to believe.”
“But now it is over, and if all went well, Leggi has blessed you.”
I hefted one of the swords, picking at the rust on its blade. “What are these?”
“Treasures. Ancient, sacred weapons used by our ancestors, the warlords who built the first settlements on Iseneld. The first children of the Ice Gods.”
Gingerly, I put the sword back on the table. “I’m ready to test Leggi’s gift, Hilde.”
She pursed her lips. “Not yet. Give yourself another day or so to rest.”
“No.” I needed to gain the Ice Gods’ gifts as quickly as possible. I didn’t want to remain in Dragon’s Lair any longer than I had to. “I’m fine. I can do this.”
The priestess set the axe down and braced her knuckles against her hips, assessing me. She must have known what I was up to. “Who am I to stand between you and the will of the gods?” she said.
I wanted to return to Sjoglen and heal the man who’d given me his illness, but Hilde had already been to visit him and assured me he’d recovered. Still, in a place as large as Dragon’s Lair, with servants and soldiers mingling with one another and the villagers in the surrounding areas, we were bound to find a sick patient in the infirmary.
Sure enough, there was a stable boy of about fifteen lying in one of the beds, afflicted with some sort of ague not unlike sor mund. I approached the boy, explaining who I was and what I wanted to do, but in his feverish condition he couldn’t respond, could hardly keep his eyes open. I put my hand on his head.
Hilde’s books had detailed how to ask permission to use my gifts, but not how to wield them. I’d never healed anyone. It was different than soul-reading, different than summoning beasts.
Or perhaps it only seemed that way.
I opened my mind and sought the sickness inside him just as I would have searched for guilt in a soul. When I found the source, a pulsing sludge that coated his organs, I called to it as I would a horse or a hawk, and it came—viscous fluids leaking from his pores like sweat and tears, bile spilling from his mouth.
The boy cried out. Hilde grabbed a rag and cleaned his face. “What is your name?” she asked gently.
“Olaf.”
“And how do you feel, Olaf?”
“Sleepy. But better.” He grinned at her, at me. “Thank you.”
“Sleep, Olaf,” Hilde said, brushing the boy’s damp hair from his temples. “Leggi has granted you mercy. Tomorrow you can go home.”
The healer came to check on Olaf, confirming the boy’s fever had broken.
I walked with Hilde back to the temple. “I want to complete Jardun’s ritual. Today. Now.”
“Slow down, Lira. You’ll run yourself ragged. There’s no rush.”
“Yes, there is. I can’t wait. I can’t . . .” I can’t stay here, with him. “Please.”
She lifted her palms in surrender. “All right, I’ll get my book. But you should know—” She peered at my Dragonman guard strolling behind us and lowered her voice. “This plan of yours plays right into Draki’s hands. The Dragon is fickle, but he appreciates ambition. Your tenacity will only make him covet you all the more.”
“Draki’s desires are not my concern.”
Hilde linked her elbow with mine. “Careful. The god of lies will hear you, and it’s clear you have not been blessed by his grace.”
CHAPTER 31
REYKER
The Dragonmen stopped him at the edge of the lava field, and though he hardly recognized their faces, their expressions were familiar—suspicious, hostile, as most Dragonmen were to him. They barred him from entering the path cut through the lava. In the distance he could see Dragon’s Lair, a place that still haunted his thoughts. This was where he’d spent most of his days in the years after Draki razed Vaknavangur, where he and his mother had lived as prisoners. It was where she’d died.
He waited as a Dragonman rode to inform Draki of his arrival, waited as the warlord mounted his beast of a horse and came out to meet him.
If Draki was surprised to see him, the warlord didn’t show it. “Have you taken care of the Fjull Uprorsmund?” he asked.
“Taken care of them?” Surely Draki knew Reyker had been the Mountain Renegades’ prisoner for a time, the way he knew—through his goddess-mother or some unearthly means—so much of what happened, far and wide, on Iseneld.
“We had a deal,” Draki said. “You fight for me. You remain my Sword. Or do you wish to break the bargain, now that we are both home? Shall I send word to the remaining Dragonmen on the Green Isle to round up the Daughters of Aillira and bring them to me?”
“No.” Reyker gritted his teeth. “Look, I already convinced the Renegades to let me go, that I would ally with them. If you want more—”
“I want them all dead.” Draki eyed Vengeance, his brows lifting, and the mare eyed him in return, her glassy pupils throwing the warlord’s reflection back at him.
“I need time,” Reyker said, thinking, plotting, as quickly as his mind could spin. “If I kill Solvei, someone else will take her place. They’re more than an army—they’re an idea, a belief that the Dragon should not rule Iseneld. If you want me to quell this uprising, I must pluck it up by the roots, or another will rise behind it.”