Jace looked between the two men. “What do you mean? What ambush?”
Frell quickly explained all that had befallen the pair. As he did so, fear began to replace Nyx’s despair. It centered on the two men still missing.
“What about Ablen and Bastan?” she asked.
Frell sighed. “We do not know. We saw no sign of Bastan on our route here. And as far as we know, Ablen escaped before the bats attacked. As I understand it, both your brothers know these swamps far better than any in the king’s legion. We must trust that they can follow us from here.”
Nyx balked. “What do you mean follow us from here? Why do we not wait for them?”
Kanthe answered, “The Vyrllian Guard are as pernicious as your little brother’s horde. With the assassination failed, they will seek to correct that mistake—and to avenge their fallen.”
“No doubt they already suspect what happened.” Frell pointed to Gramblebuck, who had finished his grazing and snored contentedly within his traces, his large head hanging low. “We must continue to add distance from the force that follows. Not only do they seek the prince, but if they discover you here, lass, you will be dragged to Highmount.”
Frell stared hard at her, silently reminding her that more than her own freedom was at stake. In the back of her head, she heard the grind of war machines and the screams of the dying, all ending with a resounding crash that erased everything.
Moonfall …
Jace gripped Nyx’s arm. “We can’t let them take you. We must go.”
Nyx wanted to argue. Her brief time here—wrapped in fond memories—had been a balm on her grief. She had even felt the stirring of the first embers of hope, imagining a reunion with Ablen and Bastan.
She stared across the Scour. As she watched the king sink back into the black depths, his radiance vanishing, those hopeful embers inside her died. She knew she could not stay here and would likely never return home.
But that didn’t answer a larger worry.
She turned to Frell. “Where do we go?”
“Before I left the Cloistery, the prioress had instructed me on a course, a path to take if matters turned sour and these lands became too dangerous for you.”
Kanthe looked to his toes—but not in time to hide the strange sadness in his gray eyes.
He knows … Frell must’ve already told him.
“Where?” she asked, her heart pounding harder. “Where am I supposed to go?”
Frell swallowed, then answered, destroying all she knew about herself. “We must find your true father.”
EIGHT
THE FORSWORN KNIGHT
KNIGHT: What dare we hope to gain from such a tryst when my heart is twice forsworn to another—to my betroth’d and to my king?
WOMAN: Whiche of the two do you hold in the heyest esteem?
KNIGHT: Neither—when I look into your eyes.
—A duologue from the third act of The Brokyt Oath, by Galiphaestii
26
GRAYLIN HUNTED THE Rimewood with his two brothers.
He had been following the frost-elk for most of the day, passing deep into the eternal twilight of the far western forest. He stepped with care, settling each hide-boot into the litter of dry needles without a rustle. His fingers reached high to test a deep scrape in the bark of a silver cedar. He felt the sticky fresh sap. He brought his hand down, smelling pitch and the musk of the bull’s mark.
Close now …
He had not planned to travel this far into the forest. Few dared to risk the western ranges of the Rimewood. While the eastern edges, closer to the sea, were green and bright, the western forests remained forever locked in twilight. Forbidden the warmth of the Father Above, the trees sapped what strength they could with wide splays of dense needles and survived due to roots that dug deep, lined by large sulfurous galls that fed them. And despite the lack of His grace, the ancient heartwoods of the western Rime grew into giants. Some were so large that it would take twenty men with outstretched arms to encircle their trunks.
Only once had Graylin dared venture into those huge woods. It had been a decade ago, shortly after he had been banished here, back when he was too foolish to know better. He never intended to trek that far again.
Not that there weren’t enough dangers in this deep wood.
With a grind of his teeth, he concentrated on his current hunt. The shred of claws on a black pine reminded him to take heed. The ironhard bark had been gouged deep. It was the mark of a knoll-bear, whose sows grew to the size of black-furred boulders twice his height, and the boars even larger.
He ran a hand over the scrapes.
Mayhap it’s best if I abandon this trail …
His gut-sense warned him that he had traveled too far. Still, the mark in the pine was an old one, crusted with stony sap, and in the distance a mournful lowing drew him onward, rising from the throat of the frost-elk. He had picked this particular bull after watching a herd move through the valley near his cabin. From the spread of the bull’s antlers—with broken points and covered in fringes of moss—it was an old one. He had watched it hobble on one hindlimb. The leg had been scarred long ago from what looked like an old lion attack.
Graylin related with this noble beast, as he bore many scars of his own. He also knew, come winter, how the frigid cold would pain the creature. He imagined this was the bull’s last summer, a summer already half gone. With the first snows, the hobbled bull would not keep up with the rest of the herd as it moved to warmer pastures. Abandoned, the beast would starve or be savagely mauled.
Then this morning, as Graylin spied upon the herd from a deadfall, the bull elk had headed away from the herd, drifting west on its own. Maybe it would’ve eventually returned, but Graylin sent his two brothers to further divide it, to drive it farther away.
With the choice made, Graylin had tracked after it. Though the elk was old, the bull proved its craftiness, honed from its decades in the bitter Rime. Even with his two brothers tracking it, he nearly lost the bull’s trail twice. Graylin also suspected the frost-elk’s path toward the ice-fogged bowers of the deeper wood was intended to shake off the hunters behind it, as if daring them to follow. But Graylin continued his pursuit, feeling a responsibility for separating the bull from the herd.
As he stalked deeper, he came upon a heartwood. It was a small one, maybe a century old, still white-barked, a lone outcast from the greater forest to the west. He kissed a thumb and placed his palm against its trunk, feeling an affinity with this lonely sentinel. He also took it as a signpost and read its meaning.
Pass no farther.
He stopped and eyed an open glade ahead, split by a silvery stream. He whistled like a woodthrush to his brothers. He knew the pair had already ventured far ahead, circling past the old bull. He rushed forward, still minding dead branches and brittle needles. From off his shoulder, he rounded his ash bow into his hands. As he closed on the misty glade, he slipped an arrow from his quiver and placed its haft between his lips. In the meadow, a large antlered shadow drank from a stream whispering over polished stones.
He crossed to the tree line and stayed in the shadows, keeping downwind.
The elk lifted its head with no sign of panic. Still, its ears stood tall, facing toward the dark woods ahead. Velvety nostrils flared as it huffed. It surely scented the danger but remained in the open, only roughing a forehoof in the grass. It shook its antlers, challenging what hid in the forest’s shadows, ready for one final battle, too proud to run any farther, showing no fear, only a tired resignation.