“Longer than you’d believe,” he said.
Elloven turned to check on Jesstin and Sesto in the back, but they were both glued to their windows.
The carriage lurched and then pulled onto a flat road again. They’d entered a broad courtyard that led to the gleaming gold dome she’d seen from afar. Branches of gnarled, majestic trees swept the ground, branches one could sit on, daydream on, and more lumens hung from the highest ones.
Elloven craned her neck back to take in the mesmerizing steeples of the sept scraping the skies. She gripped the seat when the carriage came to a halt. Taven was already off the bench, though she hadn’t seen him move. A man appeared in the same, disorienting suddenness, standing near her side of the carriage. He was tall, with a chiseled but placid face that reminded her of the way stoneworkers carved images of the Guardians, beautiful and out of reach of mere mortals.
He held out his hand. Experience told her not to take it, not to trust so easily, but her hand obeyed another side of herself, one just awakening.
The preternatural man smiled. “Warmest welcomes to Rivenholde, Aelloven. I’m your uncle, Estelar, and I have been waiting a long, long time for you.”
Chapter 10
Act Like Pigs, Die Like Pigs
The Resplendent Reliquary of the Guardians, a kingdom-renowned feat of iron and stone, looked like a rural monastery compared to the grandeur of the Sept of Rivenholde.
Even in the darkness, the golden domes emitted ethereal light. Jesstin counted four from the courtyard, but from farther back, it had seemed there were dozens ascending the hills, marked by spires that looked like swords scraping the skies. Up close, he could see the gold was not solid but etched with nearly invisible designs of a light red. Lines, swirls, shapes he’d never seen... None of it was familiar.
Taven’s explanations to Elloven filtered back to the coach, but he refused to listen to a liar. He’d decide for himself what to think.
The only thing he was sure of was that he’d been under direct and unrelenting assault from the dead since passing into Rivenholde. Thousands of them—more. There were too many to consider counting. Their whispers followed him, climbing over one another, but he heard one word repeated over and over in the melee.
Necromancer.
Sesto watched with concern from the other bench until the carriage stopped.
The entrancing man led Elloven away, Taven following like a sycophant. Except he hadn’t called her Elloven. He’d called her something else, something that sounded like her name but wasn’t.
She turned back and pointed at the carriage, after which Estelar, who was also the pretor, seemed to say ahh with a dawning look of understanding. They waited.
Jesstin’s head pounded with the insistence of the dead’s messages. He wouldn’t last the night if he couldn’t get ahold of it.
“Tell me,” Sesto said, leaning in.
“It’s the dead. They’re...” Jesstin trailed off when the door opened, and they were ushered out. The stones felt smooth and welcoming, and the night air was refreshingly clean and crisp. More of those macabre lanterns decorated the trees, but there were also some strung on lines running across the top of the courtyard, forming a canopy.
The dome ahead gleamed so brightly, it almost seemed like daylight.
“Come, come,” Estelar said. “It’s quite chilled, and you’ll be hungry.”
Until Estelar said it, Jesstin hadn’t noticed that the horrible heat had gone away, but he wasn’t cold either.
Elloven was shivering ahead, as was Taven. Sesto had a hand fisted at his mouth.
Just me then.
Jesstin followed the group inside. His balance dithered when his boots struck the interior floor with a muted clang—a floor made entirely of tightly woven wrought iron. Steam billowed through the tiny gaps.
The walls were made of stone, but they shone as though regularly polished. And the colors... some stretches were gray, others white. Red stones were checkered through in no particular pattern. The mortar was chalky, crumbling in spots, congregating in small piles of dust on the floor below.
Sesto sucked his teeth. “Oh my. We did not ask nearly enough questions, I’m afraid,” he said from the corner of his mouth.
“You’ll get accustomed to the floors. Everyone does,” Estelar said, loud enough for them all to hear. “Our atelier will outfit you with our own clothing and boots, which will make your experience here feel more natural.”
The dead continued their offensive but had faded into the background. Jesstin didn’t believe they’d stay there for long though. They’d hit him the instant they’d left the forest, and there were too many competing for his attention for it to be an accident.
They followed Estelar around a corner and up a long, steep flight of stairs. When they reached the top, they were standing in a solarium of sorts. A clear dome was all that separated them from the night sky. In the center of the room sat a long dining table, where people were already seated.
