Dragonoak: The Complete History of Kastelir (33 page)

The cabin lingered in the corner of my eye, but I couldn't begin to comprehend how I'd take steps towards it; how I'd take steps away from Claire. I brought one of my hands up, fiddling with the helm, but it wasn't enough of a distraction. I took it off and tried to keep my gaze on the shiny surface, but I knew that Claire was looking at me, and that I'd eventually have to look back up.

I wished we were around the fire. I wished there were pane all around us, and that I didn't want to do what Michael had accused me of. Overstepping lines. Rising above my station.

“Claire...” I started, lifting my head. I wanted to prematurely apologise, to make some excuse and disappear back into the cabin; but she placed both hands on my cheeks and I would've trembled, if I could've.

My heart pounded. It was a solid, strong thing, echoing in my chest, not about to crumble.

Claire bowed down to kiss me. It was only light, only brief, but my fingertips pressed to the top of the helm, trying to break through metal.

“Goodnight, Rowan,” she said evenly, stepping back.

She didn't linger for any longer. She turned, heading into the cabin, door swinging shut behind her as I stood in the street, clinging to my helm.

Sleep came easily, but when I awoke, a damp sort of realisation worked its way in. I laid still, staring at the ceiling. I wasn't the first one up; chairs scraped across the kitchen floor, and feet too heavy to be Claire's thumped through the corridor. I had two options. Either I hid away in my room, leaving Claire to inevitably seek me out, or I snuck out and risked running into her.

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and took my chances. I'd have to see Claire later on, no matter what happened, but I'd be braver by then.

Probably.

I eased the door open an inch, peered out and set off, determined to talk to Kouris before we were on the road; before Queen Kidira was ever-present. I was light on my feet but not light enough. Farsa, the woman in charge of the cabin I was staying in, stuck her head into the corridor and glowered at me until I dragged my feet into the kitchen.

“Sneaking out without a good breakfast, hm?” Farsa asked, clicking her tongue. A handful of younger pane lived with her, making the chairs easier to climb into. “What good is having human company if I don't get to
cook
meat for once!”

“Sorry,” I said, lifting the enormous pitcher from the centre of the table and pouring myself out enough water to wash in. “I was in a hurry to see a friend—I didn't want to trouble you.”

“Pshh!” She dismissed the notion of it being any trouble, accompanied by the sizzle of bacon. The two smaller pane huddled at the opposite end of the table crinkled their noses, unused to the smell of meat cooking. “Your friend already left. Said she had to speak with Queen Kidira.”

There was little point in telling Farsa I hadn't been speaking about Claire. It meant she wouldn't be joining us for breakfast. My shoulders relaxed at the thought, and I was very much aware that it wasn't that I didn't want to see Claire; that wasn't it at all. Rather, I wanted to spare her the discomfort of seeing me.

Surely she'd made some mistake last night. As much as I'd wanted to kiss her – wanted her to kiss me – I couldn't come to terms with the prospect that it might've been the same for her. She'd had too much ale at lunch, or some of the stranger spices in soup had got to her. That had to be it.

Farsa scraped bacon onto a plate, gently tapping the backs of the two pane who were staring, mouths agape. She said something that I expect was intended to relax them, but instead, their eyes widened. Farsa sighed and I ate as quickly as I could without distressing the others even more.

“The pane really should try cooked meat, sometime,” I said, chewing through the last mouthful. Farsa scoffed playfully, and after a moment's consideration, I said, “After we start eating it raw. That's a fair deal, right?”

There was a step placed in front of the sink, so younger pane could help with chores. But when I climbed on it, Farsa grabbed the plate from me, and said, “Go, go. Find your friend, now that your stomach's full.”

I thanked Farsa and waved to the younger pane, met with blank faces as I rushed out. Deciding that our horses would want breakfast as well, I bought more carrots and headed out in search of Kouris. She'd wandered but hadn't gone far; a pile of bones had been licked clean and left by the ashes of a fire, and I only had to wait a few minutes for her to appear over the crest of a hill.

She jogged over at the sight of me, as if I'd only be there if something was amiss. When it became clear that there wasn't anything wrong, she reached for the carrots without a word.

I pulled the carrots to my chest, stepping back. My teeth ground together, bringing about the start of a headache.

I hadn't thought this through.

I'd assumed I'd be brave because Claire believed I could be.

“... if you're planning on taking those down yourself, yrval, you might be wanting a guide,” Kouris gently suggested.

I nodded firmly, waiting for her to set off first. Two days ago, I'd been able to talk to her, yet I was rooted to the spot, teeth fusing together.

The trek down the mountain was worse than the journey up. It was difficult not to look down when we were heading that way, and at some points, the path seemed so steep I was certain I'd tumble straight down. My feet slid on the rocky path, and I kept my hand pressed to the side of the mountain where I could, heart in my throat. Kouris walked ahead of me, feet perfectly adapted for the terrain, moving slowly, that I might crash into her if I fell.

Once we finally reached the clearing with the horses, I crouched down, head buried in my arms. Charley wandered over, bumped his muzzled against the top of my head and sniffed, concerned. I groaned, and that was enough for him; he knocked my arms back and went for the carrots.

Kouris chuckled and I grumbled, “Stop it—I'm used to climbing trees, not mountains, alright?” in an effort to defend myself.

“No judgement from me, yrval,” she said. “Those feet of yours weren't made for this life.”

I tended to Charley, Calais and Patrick, telling them that they wouldn't have to be there for much more than a few hours. It was vital they knew Queen Kidira was travelling back to Isin. Vital I said so loudly enough for Kouris to overhear. She left me to fuss over the horses, pointedly not looking at me. She gave me all the time in the world to speak up, but time crept on and the words didn't come.

“Back to Kyrindval, aye?” she said when I gave Charley one last pat, murmuring my goodbyes.

I tilted my head back to take in the mountain we were going to have to climb, and said, “Higher—I want to go higher.”

The Bloodless Lands rested over the range, and blood pounded in my ears at the thought, some part of me being drawn closer and closer.

Kouris didn't ask if I was sure about it, though the urge didn't escape her. Her ears flattened against her head, and with a thoughtful nod, she said, “Alright, yrval. Reckon I know just the place.”

Scaling the path back up the mountain was no more fun the second time, but I felt less resistant to the idea of being caught by Kouris, should I stumble. She walked behind me, directing me on, but for all I could tell, we were heading straight back to Kyrindval. Our route only altered before the last turn came into sight.

“Here,” Kouris said, looking up at a sheer rock face. I thought she was teasing me, until she started pointing out the hand-holds, the protruding rocks I could dig my toes against.

“Don't be worrying yourself. I'll be right behind you,” she promised.

Well.

I was the one who wanted to go higher.

Climbing the side of a mountain was nothing like climbing a tree. I couldn't wrap my arms around it; I could only press flat against it, having to stop for minutes at a time with every few steps I took, every time I grasped a rock and it came loose. Kouris was endlessly patient, but having her beneath me didn't reassure me as it should've. I kept seeing myself falling back and knocking her off the rock face, onto the hard ground below.

You're a necromancer, I told myself. You'll be
fine
.

But treating injury and agony as a frivolous thing didn't spur me on as it ought to have. When I reached up and felt a cluster of grass beneath my hand instead of more jagged rock, I scrambled up the last few feet as though I was possessed, certain that the mountain would choose that very moment to tip over.

I crawled over the edge, clinging to clumps of grass, letting out a long, shaky breath.

Kouris poked her head over the ledge, arms folded in the grass, still pressed against the mountain face.

The area she'd brought me to was hardly expansive. My bed back at the cabin was bigger, and the view was about as good. All I could see was the side of a mountain, and I'd been able to see that all the way up the path.

“We're not quite there,” Kouris said, abating my disappointment.

She pointed to yet more rock face behind me, and I immediately regretted wanting to get a better view. I stepped forward, looking for hand-holds, and only then did I see what she'd been gesturing towards. Behind the shrubs and ivy, there was a gap in the mountain, big enough for a pane to crawl through, but not much more accommodating than that.

I reasoned that a dark, ominous tunnel through a mountain was better than another climb, and so I stepped in, doing what I could to ignore the spider webs that brushed against my face, the clatter of scurrying insects. Light wasn't far off. At the end of the tunnel, there was a second, smaller ledge, but the whole landscape opened up before my eyes.

We were perched along the inside of a ring of mountains, edges sloping down and down, to a lake that to me looked as an ocean should. It went on forever, reflecting the whole of the sky, and the surface only shattered when dragons flew out. Kraau shot in and out of the water, no bigger than dragonflies, from where we were, fish speared on the ends of their tails.

I couldn't bring myself to be disappointed that the Bloodless Lands were out of sight, sheltered by yet more mountains.

“Remember
that
being a lot easier to crawl through the last time I was here,” Kouris said, grunting as she straightened, rubbing the curve of her horns. “... ah. Here we are. Not so bad, is it?”

I shook my head, clinging to Kouris' arm as I slowly sat down, legs hanging over the edge.

“I thought dragons were scared of water,” I said, watching a dozen of them soar through the sky, throwing out rings of fire and darting through them before they faded into nothing; they were actually making a game of it. “I thought that's why they didn't go south—because they could smell the sea.”

“Humans are always saying the strangest things,” Kouris said from her place beside me.

As we watched the dragons hunt and play, scales gleaming from hundreds of feet away, I picked out other pane tribes amongst the mountains. There were ones smaller than Kyrindval, ones far larger, and while I took in as much of the landscape as I could for the first time, Kouris was counting all the ways it'd changed over the last three decades.

“Why did you do it?” I asked, now that there was nowhere left for me to run.

Kouris didn't consider acting as though she didn't know exactly what I meant.

“You've never lived through a time of war, yrval. If you lot thought praying to the gods did any good these days, I'd do just that, if it meant you'd never have to,” she said solemnly. “What you need to be understanding is that we were all murderers, back then. Me and Kidira. Jonas and Atthis. Our armies. No one came out of that looking good.

“I wish I could tell you that I wasn't like the other pane, growing up. That the elders always knew there was something off about me; that I'd stared into the Bloodless Lands for too long and was never the same after that. Truth is, I was just like everyone else. Spent a lot of my time working as a tailor, if you'd believe it.

“But the war, it wasn't just a human war. They were killing us, yrval. I know what they're always saying: a pane will never strike first, but they will strike hardest. Turns out that there's no chance to retaliate if you've got an arrow through your throat. And even then, even the ones that weren't knocked down straight away—not all of them fought back. It's not something we do.

“I was begging Zentha. Asking them to let us gather forces for a defence, if nothing else. To round up the pane who were travelling far from the mountains. Ever since people fled the Bloodless Lands, we'd been losing our territory, bit by bit. The humans
still
go on and on about what our dead were forced to do in the Necromancy Wars, and back then, it was worse than ever. They got so confused about what they were fighting for that they wanted to wipe us out. Thought we were their enemy, if we wouldn't side with them.

“So I did what I had to do, yrval. I marched down from the mountains and took matters into my own hands. I protected what pane I could, herding them back to the mountains. Letting the humans know that
I
would fight back, even if none of the others did. It took months, but it started happening. I started to gain followers. Human followers. I don't know if they thought having a pane at the front of an army would scare off the other territories, or if they were just that desperate, but before I knew it, I was a leader.

“I did what I thought was best. I went to them—to Kidira, to Jonas and Atthis. I didn't speak a word of Mesomium at the time, not really, so I surrendered. Handed myself over. Let 'em know that I didn't want to fight, not anymore, and trusted that they'd feel the same.”

Kouris kept her eyes on me the whole time she was speaking, while I stared out at the lake. It wasn't one of Michael's stories. It wasn't another tale about the ruthless Queen Kouris; this was the truth.
Her
truth, if nothing else.

“You killed people,” I said. “You still killed people, didn't you?”

“Aye, I did.” Kouris didn't miss a beat. I'd expected excuses, but she let her agreement linger in the air between us. “Never anyone that wasn't standing against us, though. And I never made banners out of human skin, never clawed anyone's eyes out—those stories were the doing of the other territories. A way to smear the name of the north. They drifted down through Felheim, and you lot really got some strange ideas into your heads.”