CHAPTER FOUR
The souls of departed seers linger in the Waters of Ascendiel, their messages rare and obscure.
—Journal of Khato, Master of Spells.
Twenty miles of sparsely wooded space spread below us. Small, cramped huts of brown rickety branches dotted the shaded greenery. The Rising soldiers shared the Gulley and its handful of amenities with some of the less-fortunate Lotrennians. A couple of taverns, shops, and sparring rings had been erected to keep them occupied. The space was dismal and crowded, shadowed under the magnificence of the queendom.
Ti’s hooves slammed into the dirt as he cantered into the small town the Gulley had become. My mind drifted to the slums of Aedrialis as measly, gaunt-faced elven children darted in between the huts, chasing each other with sticks. A raven-haired boy paused a few feet from me, eyes wide with fear as he took in Ti’s wings and large form before they darted to me, and he hissed.
Foal,Ti murmured, his ears pinned in the direction of the young boy, who bared his teeth before running off.
He’s half-starving,I replied as I rushed to Van’s hut.Stop scaring him.
All of the elves in the Gulley were starving. There was something wrong. Not just in the Gulley, but in Lotrennia. Bayne and Nerissa could feel it the moment we made landfall. Life was disappearing, the sacred Lotrennian wolves along with it. Harvests had dwindled in the past hundred years. It left the less-fortunate elven families hungry… and feral.
Kresida had returned to Van’s hut. She drew her blade, crossing it in front of the entrance as Ti’s massive black wings flung to the side to slow his momentum. I hopped off his back and shoved the queen’s correspondence in her outstretched hand.
Her eyes narrowed on me as she sliced the seal open.
She bristled, reluctantly removing her blade, and I strode through the opening of Van’s small hut. The dry scent of death met me as I stepped inside.
Unlike the shimmering, gold and silver art-like branches that made up the Gilded Fortress, the huts in the Gulley were drab. Brown and broken branches knotted together to form a small living space. Light peaked in from the gaps in the branches on the roof, casting streaks of shadows across the dirt floor.
Two menders stood at the center of Van’s hut, hunched over a long, slender body that lay beneath a cream, silken shroud. The gaunt form revealed her flesh had already been removed—a spell I had no interest in learning.From flesh to foliage.
I cleared my throat. The elder of the two raised her gray, withered eyebrows as I offered her the queen’s correspondence. She must have been ancient. As best as I could determine, the elves aged roughly eight times slower than humans. Which made Bayne appear as if he were only in his late twenties, even though he’d been in this world for more than two centuries.
She pursed her lips and gave a silent command to the young elven mender at her side, who eyed me with distrust. They left the hut without a word, an eerie silence filling the space as the door scraped shut.
My eyes scanned the silken shroud covering the skeletal remains before me. As it always did, the weight of life pressed down on me. As if the soul of the departed hovered nearby, eyes narrowed and watching, waiting.
I tugged my leather gloves off and slowly approached the body. I had no tools. No journal.
Kneeling in the dirt, I lifted the silk off the Lady of Tomorrow. Her clean bones were bright in the dim light. So new. So fresh. So unlike Enya’s remains I examined last year.
I closed my eyes for a heartbeat, granting her a moment of reverence, of respect, before allowing my scholar eyes to take over and begin my examination.
Tynan’s Hell.
So much trauma.
A quick look-over revealed so much. A broken femur. Triangular nicks on her second and third left ribs, likely a stab wound. A fractured left wrist, matching fractured ankles. A broken jaw. A fractured left cheekbone.
Kresida was right. She had been brutalized.
My brows furrowed as I ran my fingers over her skull, where ringed divots adorned the top. I placed my thumb in a small ring. Illness could sometimes warp bone, leaving them deformed or showing changes in density, but this was different.
My mind drifted to the fire pox that ravaged Aedrialis years ago. That often left a small stamp of disease on bone, like it’d been struck with stones of fire. This was different, like the same stone had struck the bone multiple times. Something twisted in my stomach. I memorized the damage and moved on.
My lips pursed as the trauma became strange. Her left femur, the largest break, appeared to have been healed, and thenrebroken. I shuddered, taking a step back and eyeing the entire body.
My gut sank.Allof her breaks had been healed and rebroken. As if she’d been forced to suffer through each injury more than once. But the breaks were recent, fresh. This all happened in the last day.
But it didn’t make sense. If Vanhadkilled her, had done all this, how could he have known about these old injuries? We’d arrived in Lotrennia just recently. The first breaks… The first time she’d been stabbed… Based on its density and new bone growth, it happened years ago. She had years to heal before she was reinjured less than a day ago. Even if Vander was a psychotic sadist, intent on literally reopening old wounds, he couldn’t have been this exact.
Frustrated, I stood and cracked my neck. While the elves may be biologically different from humans, the basic principles of Death Scholar analyses still applied. But this death made no sense. Maybe it was the disease? There’d been no word about illness in the Gulley or Ayla. And it didn’t explain the brutality or the fact that none of the injuries seemed a likely cause of death.
My molars scraped against each other.Shit. Drystan should be here. He’d figure this out. My time was running out, and I had nothing to show for it.
