Some of the houses had serpent sigils like the one that had protected Mallow and Lain in the mountains the night she’d been attacked by the Veinwright tracker. But most citizens had never had reason to fear an attack from within the city walls.
Lain walked behind the captains, half supported by Mallow’s hand. Sena had offered herself as aid to the medics, and while they had been given no order to assist injured citizens, they’d done so anyway, sneaking them out the southern gate or treating them where they lay.
The bond tore across Lain’s flesh like an open wound, constant and pulsing with each flicker of Morgan’s will. Morgan rode among the bloodwyrms like a prophet gone mad with revelation, his armor streaked black and red. He gave no orders now; he didn’t need to. The wyrms understood him. Their hunger was his hunger.
Rhalir’s voice rose somewhere ahead, sharp over the roar of the wyrms. “Fall back! Keep the torches high! Spire’s wards are active – get the beasts clear of the oil!”
Men obeyed without question. The square before the Dawn Spire blazed with the light of burning pitch, reflected gold against the tower’s marble skin. The sigils carved in its base flared red-white each time a wyrm came near, forcing them back with bursts of heat and the chime of enchanted bells.
The Dagorlind had sealed themselves inside. Every gate was barred, every window shuttered. Arrows glinted from the parapets, but the defenders wasted few shots. The Ashborn would not climb tonight.
Morgan pulled his horse around the edge of the firelight, watching the Spire with something like worship. He looked fevered, luminous, his hair unbound and shining with sweat. The light of the wards painted his face in stripes of red and gold.
Rhalir approached, soot streaked across his cheek. “My lord, they’ve poured oil around the base. We cannot breach without burning. We’ll need time –”
“We’ll give them time,” Morgan said. “Too much of it. There are plenty of wards to clear.” He turned away, walking his horse toward the steps that led to the council hall. There he dismounted and left his horse with an Ashborn. The air trembled faintly as he passed – what glut of power he must be carrying, that the very ground itself seemed to answer. Lain could feel it, swaying with it like a lush after a bottle of spirits.
Morgan vanished through the great doors of the hall. His shadow stretched impossibly long across the square in the moonlight.
The streets shimmered with red from flame and blood. Here and there, surviving citizens watched from shuttered windows, faces pale behind glass. A small group of the younger Ashborn men hooted as they ransacked a house; Rhalir, catching sight of this, roared with fury, and directed them to other tasks. Another group was sent to fetch citizens from their hiding places and guide them to the exits. Lain wondered if Morgan had ordered this, or if they worked in quiet defiance of him.
A crash sounded from the next street as a door was ripped from its hinges.
Three Ashborn thundered inside before Rhalir could shout for restraint. Lain followed them with her eyes as far as she could. The house had a serpent sigil painted above the lintel. It repelled the wyrms, but did nothing against the Ashborn.
A shout rang from within, steel on steel.
Two Brighthand and one Ashborn burst out onto the step, one of the Brighthand missing his helm, blood streaming from a cut over his brow. He swung wildly at the Ashborn soldier that had entered, striking a blow to the neck and taking him down at once. He spun to the next Ashborn but the other soldier parried, knocked the blade clean from his hands, and threw the Brighthand to the ground. The second Brighthand fell to her knees, hands raised, sobbing that she yielded, that she would lay down her arms if they spared her family.
A third figure – a young boy no older than twelve, wearing a Brighthand tabard two sizes too large – tried to bolt past them and reached for his kneeling mother. One of the bloodwyrms surged forward, jaws yawning wide with a predatory hiss.
“Back!” Rhalir’s bellow cracked across the street like a whip.
The wyrm’s feathers flared. It hesitated, but only just. Its hunger thrummed in Lain’s bones through the bond, drawn by Morgan’s will even though he was nowhere nearby. It lunged again.
Lain threw out her hand.
Something strange happened, then. Through her connection to Morgan, she felt the threads of the many wyrms he’d summoned. At once the connection landed on this one, and she held fast to a command that struck not unlike a blow. The wyrm jerked as if yanked by an invisible chain, slammed sideways into the wall, and shrieked with frustration.
It turned its furious golden eyes on Lain. For a moment Lain feared it would attack her, but her authority held.
Rhalir stepped between it and the huddled family inside the doorway. “You will not feed here,” he growled. “Not on children. Not on those who yield.”
The wyrm crouched, smoke curling from its nostrils. Another tried to nose past him. Lain flung out her other hand, forcing that one back as well. Sweat broke along her brow from the effort.
“Help him,” she whispered to Mallow. She watched helplessly as two Ashborn dragged the surrendered Brighthand aside, binding their hands but sparing their throats. A third Ashborn knelt next to the boy, checking him for injuries. The child shook all over, eyes wild.
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Rhalir’s voice shattered again through the street. “Check every house!” he shouted to his men. “Thoroughly. But harm no one who yields. And keep the beasts clear – clear, I said!”
The wyrms snarled but obeyed, slinking back into shadow, their tails lashing the cobbles in irritation.
A scream rose from farther down the lane, cut short, but then another followed it, sharp and angry. A Brighthand attempting to fight rather than surrender. Lain could feel the struggle through the bond, Morgan’s remote thrill each time a wyrm sank its teeth into fleeing armor.
More Ashborn flooded the street, some disciplined, others drunk on victory and the promise of the siege. The sigil-marked houses were no longer refuge.
Morgan’s will tore across the city like stormwind, whipping the wyrms into obedience where he walked, leaving chaos where he did not.
“They’ll tear the city apart,” she whispered.
Mallow curled a hand around her wrist. “Not if Rhalir can help it.”
But Rhalir was only one man.
And now he was circling back to them, to search houses they had already passed. She reached out again to stop the lunging of a bloodwyrm, and swayed horribly, her head spinning with the work of it. She couldn’t carry on.
Rhalir caught Lain’s arm as she wavered. “Get her out of the smoke,” he said to Mallow. “Find somewhere quiet. She’s spent.”
“She’s more than spent,” Mallow said.
Rhalir’s gaze flicked to where Morgan had vanished inside the hall. His voice lowered. “Then hide her before he decides he needs her strength.”
He left them before they could answer.
Lain looked toward the Spire again, toward the locked windows and barred doors and the ragged shapes of defenders watching from above. She wondered how many still lived in the lower wards, how many children cowered behind locked doors praying to sigils that would not save them.
“Where can I take you that’s safe?” Mallow asked.
“There’s a chapel behind the hall,” she said quietly. “It’s not much used. Saint Fillan’s.”
Mallow nodded. “Lead the way.”
They slipped off while the rest of the Ashborn shouted orders and pulled back the wyrms from the Spire’s light.
By the time they reached the lane behind the hall, the noise had dulled. The chapel’s door was dust-caked, ivy hanging in strands from its lintel. Lain pushed it open. The hinges resisted until whatever rust held them broke.
“This is it,” Lain said. Her voice sounded too large in the stillness.
Inside, the world shrank. The air smelled of wax and long-extinguished incense. A small altar stood at the back, and before it was the golden statue of Saint Fillan, bent with hands cupped as if catching light that no longer shone. The statue was old, and damaged, rubbed rough at the Saint’s head and back, her feet lost long ago to some move or another, or perhaps removed by thieves in search of gold. She was a rather neglected statue, all things considered.
Mallow moved first, checking each corner, then pulled down several lengths of faded curtains to spread across the floor. He found a few unbroken candles near the altar and lit them. Their glow gentled the rough stone into warmth.
“You knew this place,” he said, approaching the small fireplace, where several cords of wood sat gathering dust.
“I used to come here to sing,” she murmured. “When I was younger. The first time I had my Heat, I didn’t really understand…” she glanced at him, but he was busy setting the fire, so she continued. “I thought I was ill, or possessed by spirits, maybe. I came here to pray.”
The first time her Heat came was four years prior. The Underserpent had writhed violently in her Tuning. The resonance had nearly split her in half. Tanel had found her bent over a copper basin in this chapel, weeping, her mouth full of a wordless song she hadn’t meant to sing. When he’d put a hand on her back in comfort, the Heat had come awake so ferociously that it pulled Tanel upon her. They writhed together on the floor of the chapel in a near frenzy, Tanel grasping at her flesh, Lain’s teeth at his collar for only moments before he was able to tear himself away long enough to understand. It was a miracle they hadn’t bonded then, on the floor of the chapel of Saint Fillan.
She was grateful Tanel had always made himself her keeper.
She wondered if he was hiding in the Spire, or if he’d left to guide citizens out of the city. She hoped for the latter, but feared the former. He was no Elder David; he would not walk away from the Dagorlind.
She stared at the statue once more. “Saint Fillan is for the failed and the weary. The keeper of the bell.”
He nodded. “Seems fitting.”
“She was said to carry light in her palms,” Lain went on. “To heal madness, to guide the lost. They buried her beneath a mountain spring so her light would keep flowing into the world.”
Mallow knelt by the hearth and coaxed a small fire to life. “Well, with all this madness, we’re closer to her than anyone’s been in a long time.”
Lain gave a tired smile. She hoped it was true.
“So what other miracles make Fillan saint-worthy?”
She could tell he was trying to distract her. She appreciated the effort.
“Supposedly Saint Fillan was ploughing her fields, singing the earth song to encourage the plants to grow,” she said. “But the song drew the attention of a hungry wolf, who first killed her ox, then knocked her to the earth, intending to eat her. She was so furious she used her bell to trick the wolf into thinking she was a she-wolf. Confused, the real wolf backed away, tamed, and vowed to guard Saint Fillan and all her oxen. The bell song lasted three whole weeks before the wolf shook itself back to its senses and fled to the woods.”
“A she-wolf?” he said. “Surprised that story doesn’t end with wolf pups.”
“Mallow!”
“You never know with those saints.” He gave her a wink and she laughed. He gestured toward the blankets he’d made from the curtains. “Sit. Rhalir’s orders.”
She obeyed, lowering herself until the stone pressed cool through the fabric of her skirt. Her limbs trembled with the effort. There was a mirror behind the statue, and in it she saw her reflection. The light caught the antlers above her head and painted their tines gold. For a moment she looked almost like the statue itself – hollowed, half divine, half undone.
Mallow crouched near her, his shadow falling across the edge of her cloak. “You should sleep,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“Then close your eyes and pretend.”
Somewhere outside and far away, a wyrm bellowed, the sound rolling through the ruins like thunder on the sea. Shadows danced across the saint’s face, giving her the illusion of breath.
Lain sat unmoving for a long time, listening to the crackle of the wood and the hush that followed each spark. Her hands were clasped in her lap, fingers white against the dark cloth. Curious now, and dizzy with Morgan’s power, she dipped into the bond, and found him pleased to feel her coming willingly. Again she was surprised by his affection; he seemed grateful, even, for the way her song had granted him such power. He nuzzled against her like a viper warming itself on a hot stone.
She withdrew as much as she could, shuddering at the image, growing colder with his presence once more in the quiet dark of the chapel.