Those thoughts trouble me for another several minutes as we pound around the rocky outcropping of the mountain and then press on to the Eighth House, for that’s surely where I’m going. The mountain is already shrouding the manor in gloom as we approach, and I squint up at it, my eyes affronted by the strange, misshapen form that I vaguely remember from the night before. “What is?—”
“Eyes straight ahead,” Fortiss orders. “Don’t look at it full-on until I tell you.”
He sounds so happy that I’m willing to do what he asks—really, anything he asks in this moment, if it keeps that lightness in his tone. And I don’t have long to wait. Fortiss leads me all the way up the graded causeway, which I notice with some surprise looks different as well. “There’s no way these walls were this high,” I point out. The walls that border the long path up to the Eighth House are now easily as tall as a man, with wide, cut-out holes allowing easy sightlines to either side—or access to arrows if a bowmen was particularly skilled. But they didn’t exist before. I know they didn’t. “They couldn’t have been here,” I insist.
Then I realize— “They’re illusions. Blood andstone,the illusions of the skrill are still this vivid? Are you seeing this?” I turn in my saddle to stare at him. “You see it too, right? It’s not just me?”
He grins at me. “It’s not just you. Look up, Talia.”
Belatedly, I recall the oddly bulky form I’d glimpsed from a distance, and I turn again to look at the gates of the Eighth House.
My mouth gapes open. “What isthis?”
A statue now stands before the open gates, as tall as the keep’s mighty wall—easily the size of ten men standing on each other’s shoulders. But it’s not a man depicted here, but a woman. She stands with her left arm held high, her right hand curled at her chest. Her cloak billows around her, and she’s dressed in a long tunic, breeches and boots. But that’s not the most distinctive feature.
On her brow sits a heavy circlet, flanked on either side with jagged flourishes. Even from this distance, there’s no mistaking it.
“It’s the winged crown.”
It takes me a moment to register that Fortiss is speaking again, and I wheel toward him, my wide eyes searching his face in complete and utter disbelief.
He only grins at me. “It’s you, Lady Talia, and you’re wearing the crown of wings.”
“But, Fortiss…” I shake my head, equal parts horrified and amazed. “This isn’t real, right? This can’t be real. This—this is an illusion we see because we’re bonded to our Divhs—even if I broke that bond for myself?”
He turns to stare up at the intricately carved stature. “Ordinarily, I’d be the first to agree with you on all counts. Both about the wall and the statue. But I’m not the only person who sees it, Talia. Everyone does, the Savasci who are banded and those who were not. Miriam and Nazar, and the other banded warriors.”
“But this…This is bad,” I say, turning my gaze back to the statue. “What is this even made of?” I know the answer of course before he even responds. It’s the only answer that would be possible.
The ashen cement of the Western Realms, grooved with the sinuous bodies of the skrill.
“It rained at the Eighth House as they passed through,” Fortiss says, as if tracking my thoughts. “Not for very long. We both know it doesn’t need to be for long. But I think the skrill reinforced the short walls along the causeway because we nearly died going over the edge of them, remember? We went flying.”
“I remember,” I say, my voice shaky, “but…”
“And they somehow pushed enough ash together and built this statue as a testament to who you are to them now. You wore the crown of wings, you connected with their realm, and you balanced the light and the darkness.”
“Ididn’tthough,” I protest. “As soon as I put that crown on, I lost my connection to Gent, to my other Divhs. And then I turned on the skrill. I fought them, I burned them, I pushed themback. I’m no leader to these creatures—I tried todestroythem.”
“I said as much to Nazar. I figured as a priest of the Light, even if he came to that path as a warrior, he would have the answers perhaps when no one else would.”
I wince. “Let me guess. He told you that the way of the warrior was to flow like water.”
He barks a laugh. “To flow like water and adapt your strategy for the battle thatis, not the battle that you wish to be. He was very clear on that point.”
“He always is.” I squint up at the statue. “We’re going to have to knock this down, though. Get a Divh if we need to but knock this down. The last thing we need is for people to think that you have some sort of sorceress among your warriors, commanding an army of darkness.”
Fortiss tilts his head, looking up at the statue as well. “I’m not so sure. Are you willing to set up your house here, Lady Talia, replacing the Eighth with the Thirteenth? We can build another Eighth House—I doubt quite sincerely any of their holding would want to return to this place.”
I stare at him, aghast. “And you think I would? This is a place of horror, Fortiss. Peoplediedhere.”
“It’s also the guardian of the great pass into the Western Realms. It needs to be defended by someone the skrill respect.”
“No,” I say definitively. My heart has turned to lead. “No. Absolutely not. And even if I did—that statue has to go. Knock it down.”
“Mm.” Fortiss continues looking up at the statue. “As unobtrusively as you can, turn and glance through those cutouts the skrill have so generously provided us in the border walls of the Thirteenth House causeway and tell me what you see.”
I exhale in disgust and shift slightly right, glancing through the walls. And then I stop.
