“Where do they go?” Tennet has instinctively shifted forward as if he’s about to be called into battle.
“We don’t know, but we suspect that those are the winged ones. They’ve certainly shown they can travel along the edges of the Blessed Plane for long enough to reach the houses in the center of the Protectorate. How much farther they can get is anyone’s guess, but they’re out, and they’re exploring.”
“But how can they do that?” I ask. “I thought they had to be summoned?”
“From talonstone to grounding stone,” Fortiss says, and I make a face. He’s right. Of course he’s right.
Syril nods. “It doesn’t matter how, in the end. If we don’t return them beyond the barrier, we won’t have the luxury of figuring out how to destroy them entirely.”
“From the looks of things, we tried the barrier approach once before,” Tennet puts in. “Yet here we are.”
She shoots Tennet a scornful glance. “Here we are fully five hundred years later, yes. I’m willing to wait another six months with them safely shut away, so we can find a permanent solution born of wisdom and not of crisis.”
Tennet flushes, but says nothing more, and Fortiss gestures to the larger group. There’s no disputing his quiet command, and I struggle to keep my emotions in check, my face neutral. “You know what’s been happening here, Syril. Tell us what we need to know.”
Chapter 32
Those closest to us don’t take long to come closer as she begins to speak. This history is not so ingrained among them that the tale has lost its impact.
“Anyone standing here today didn’t see the first attack of the skrill, not firsthand,” Syril says. “Even those among the Savasci who weren’t directly attacked but who saw it occurring have left this place, at least for now, giving aid at the houses and villages along the border. They’re uniquely suited to the task because of what they saw during the attack on the Eighth House, because of what they now know and cannot unknow.”
She stares around at the group. “We believe that should a similar attack come again, our people will be ready, hardened, able to shepherd those they protect to safety in the mountains until sunlight comes again. But even that may be hopeful thinking. The warriors of the Eighth House and their Divhs were good, solid fighters. While it’s true that the best of them were given leave to travel to the Tournament of Gold, those who were left behind were well trained. They just weren’t well trained for this.”
There’s a murmuring through the group, which Syril waits out before she continues.
“First came the snakes, through and around and over the wall, which still looks solid, in case you’re wondering—at least to us. Maybe not to you.”
“What?” Fortiss demands, clearly surprised at this piece of news. “It has to have been breached.”
She shrugs. “I agree with you. As soon as I returned and understood what happened here, I organized a small team to investigate, but the wall appears to stand firm—the way it always has, to us. Like I said, skrill illusion magic can be directed at anyone who specifically needs to be deceived.”
“Blood and stone,” mutters Tennet.
“The wall was most likely compromised some twenty years back, we suspect, the only time that Lord Protector Rihad visited this house,” Syril continues. “He never came again and nothing ever happened, so his actions that day slipped into obscurity, not even worth being remarked upon five, ten years later. Only when we cast a view backward in the wake of the skrill attack, did we recall he’d even traveled up to the wall, and even then, there was only the slightest aside about it, the stuff of children’s tales.”
Fortiss leans in a little. “Lord Daggar…or the illusion we thought was Lord Daggar, spoke of that visit.”
“Lord Daggar.” Her lips twist. “There’s more you need to know about him and the warrior Nemeth. They were the only two who spoke to you, right? The only men who guided you into the Eighth House with actual words? There’s a reason for that.”
She exhales a gusting sigh. “The skrill didn’t just kill those two—we think they’ve been feeding on them.”
Beside me, Tennet goes very still. “What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what it sounds like. When we reached the Eighth House, bodies were everywhere—none of them scarred with more than a few teeth marks and stripes of burned skin. The poison of the skrill can cause hallucinations in small doses, but in large enough doses, it’s clearly deadly. Over the next fewdays, working fast and only in daylight, we emptied the Eighth of all its souls and burned them in a pyre. But there were two men we couldn’t find. Two men who had either been spared or, we quickly realized when a banded soldier came down from Merrivale to help us, were turned in some way. The banded warrior saw Nemeth and Daggar on the ramparts of the Eighth, even when a whole company of Savasci could not. It was only when he witnessed all the other bodies on the pyre that he accepted that what he saw couldn’t have been real.”
Fortiss rubs his hand over his face. “You think Daggar and this other warrior, Nemeth…they’re still in there? Somewhere in the Eighth?”
He studiously doesn’t look at me, but he doesn’t have to. There’s only one place the men could be, I think. Daggar’s prophecy chamber.
But Syril merely shrugs. “We don’t know. We didn’t search too deeply, for obvious reasons—but they were the only ones whose bodies we couldn’t recover. The only ones the warrior saw, and who you’ve now seen and spoken to. We’ve found no reference to the skrill creating shadow warriors of their victims in the books we’ve stolen over the years, so there’s no help there. Then again, we never could get close enough to raid Daggar’s inner chambers.”
She says this last to Fortiss, and he smiles grimly in return. “I was uniquely motivated.”
“And I’m glad of it. There’s doubtless more information in the books you recovered that will keep us alive. But for now, you have to know—while much of what Daggar likely told you was true—some of it may not have been. In the end, that illusion was simply a spider spinning a web to keep you in place until the skrill could attack again, like they did a month ago.”
“At the close of the Tournament of Gold,” Fortiss says.
“That’s what we think.” Syril nods. “While the Divhs were busy protecting their warriors at the Tournament of Gold during the melee, the skrill rose up and swept with dark intent to the base of the mountains. The only thing that people at the Eighth House heard the evening of the attack was a mighty screaming up in the mountains and a crash to the earth that rocked the entire region. Rocks fell, the Eighth House shook, but then—everything quieted. According to the guards who survived—because they left on errands of their own after the first event—there was some talk of going up to the Unlit Pass to ensure the wall held firm, but nobody got the chance. The snakes came later that same night with their poison-oiled bodies. They flowed through the Eighth House as a silent, killing force. Those who slept, died quickly, we think. Those who resisted, fought valiantly, but in the end two hundred men, women, and children were dead. Only the horses remained, along with the men who slept in their guard stations outside the castle walls.”
