‘There,’ she said, as the string finally came loose and the scroll fell free of its tiny casing. ‘That’s better.’
She unrolled it and lay it before her on the table. The small nub of a candle had long since burnt out, and had hardly offered a shred of light to begin with for how much it wavered in the wind that slid through the open window.
But Ezer had always seen better, clearer, in the dark.
It was one of her abnormalities.
Herstrangeties,as Ervos had called them. Things to keep secret, lest she become a prisoner in one of the cells just beneath her feet. Most of the poor souls had been turned over to the Redguard without a single shred of evidence from their accusers.
It was fear that had them locked away.
Fear that anyone who was different had aligned with the dark.
Ezer’s strangeties had first began to arrive at theage of thirteen. It was the age most Sacred – the powerful mages in the north – came into their own magic.
It was rare, though not entirely unheard of, for a Sacred Knight to break their strict laws of purity and leave the Sacred Citadel behind. If they were truly rebellious, they’d fall in love with anomage: a mortal without magic.
Sometimes, Ezer liked to imagine her past lingered in the pages of a romance novel. Perhaps her mother was a Sacred warrioress. Her father, a stable hand or a knight’s squire, and the two fell in love, breaking the laws of the Citadel, and the result was Ezer.
Ezer …
Who got only shreds of their forbidden, muddied magic.
‘They’re the things that make you special, Little Bird,’Ervos had told her when the birds began to follow her, and even gather to peck at her window until she opened it and let them in. When she began to find things in the dark without ever needing to light a candle. When she woke from nightmares of dark, dangerous things. Things that had yet to come to pass … until days, sometimesweekslater, when those nightmares suddenly came true.
Sometimes, she thought she saw a shadow of fear in Ervos’s eyes when he looked at her. But still, he took her hands and held them close, and whispered, ‘Never show your strangeties to anyone. Never forget to hide them and keep them close.’
She pushed the memory away and focused instead on reading the raven’s scroll.
30 dead.
Attack by shadow wolves.
There were bloodstains dried upon the parchment – fingerprints that had been smeared as the other Ravenminder had written it and tied it up and sent the raven south to her tower. It was not unusual these past manymonths to find a message covered in blood. Ravenminder towers were supposed to be protected by runed wards and kept safe by at least one Sacred squadron. It was the only means of swift communication. Wings were faster than hooves any day.
But the Acolyte was getting stronger. The casualties, more and more each week.
When darkness fell, the wolves always arrived.
And sometimes, the runes on Ravenminder towers wore away before the Sacred Scribes could return and carve their power anew. These days, more often than not … they never returned at all.
Ezer read the rest of the scroll, trying to decipher the shaky handwriting as best she could:
Send help to Carvist.
Ezer frowned. She had another three scrolls just like it tucked inside the small basket beyond her locked door, along with several that had scribbled the names of missing men, women and children.
People who’d either been eaten by shadow wolves … or disappeared, in the dead of the night.
Tomas Servain. Missing
Zerah Morvani. Missing.
Giuli Avantre. Missing.
All of them had come from messages earlier today, just like the others that came on the days before. The months before. So many had gone missing. Home one day, and gone the next after nightfall, and though their loved ones didn’t want to admit where they’d gone, most knew by now.
They were either dead …
