“I signed with Vertigern when he announced he was coming here. But I’ve been in Grey Holt’s company for three years now. Aunt Mina didn’t tell you?”
She might have. Jeren’s mind was too numb with shock to recall, but Mina’s name sent a shudder through her. “Torvin, about your aunt…”
His face fell. Not into sorrow, but into a calmer, more sombre understanding of what she was trying to say. “I know. News reached us. But it’s worse than that, Jeren. Much worse.”
“Worse? How?” She pulled herself free and faced Vertigern. “What has been going on?”
The young lord lowered his gaze. Elayne was back at his side holding a roll of parchment tied with blue ribbon. An official River Holt decree. Vertigern took it without a glance to the bearer, though he hesitated as he pulled it from her hand. “My thanks, Elayne,” he murmured, before offering it to Jeren. His eyes did meet hers then. They were angry.
Jeren took the scroll and unrolled it. An official decree all right and signed by her brother. It declared every member of the Roh clan traitors, outlawed them and bade his loyal subjects kill them on sight. Every member of the bloodline, it stipulated. He wanted to wipe them out.
“This is monstrous.”
“Yes. And he did it too.” Torvin’s voice sounded hollow, broken. He gazed into the distance as if that was the only way to keep his emotions in check. Jeren handed the scroll to Indarin. The Shistra-Phail studied it briefly, his features like a rock.
“Did what?”
“Killed them. The ones remaining in the Holt. Rounded them up, into the main square—men, women, even the children. And then he unleashed…something. I don’t know what it was. Like a shadow, or a swarm of shadows. It tore through them. Not a single one remained. As if they had been chalk wiped off a slate. Only the members of my line outside the Holt, those posted elsewhere or able to flee in time remain. And he has ordered that we be hunted down like dogs.”
Her brother. The weight of shame sat like a rock in the pit of her stomach. Her brother had done this. The man she had stopped Shan killing, the man she had been too afraid to slay. “How many?” The words grated on her throat.
Torvin didn’t answer. His grief stole his voice, though he would not bend beneath that.
Vertigern replied, his own voice hoarse. “We can’t say for sure. Hundreds. All ages. Regardless of their circumstances. The first refugees reached us a week ago with the news. The official announcement is…as you see it. That came just before I set out here. Torvin asked to come as their representative.”
“Madness,” she whispered. “Sheer madness.”
Behind her, Indarin cleared his throat. The Feyna wanted the Holters gone. Especially since Ariah was on the way. But what could she say to those who had come in search of her, who were even now asking for her help? She was a Scion of Jern, after all. She had not taken the vow to protect her people as Gilliad had—standing in the Great Hall of River Holt while the Alviron Falls thundered away beneath him, as countless others of their line had done—but she felt its bindings nonetheless. Her father had always maintained that honour could not be shirked, that duty was all. They were her people, the people she came from, those who had cared for her and her family, who supported them, fed them, clothed them, and the same people who in return it was her duty to serve. The Scions of Jern protected the people of River Holt with their actions, from the diplomatic to the martial. The simplest of exchanges really, with the trappings of nobility, pomp and ceremony stripped away. She owed them.
She believed that. Just as Shan did.
But leave now and she might never see Shan again.
And if she did leave, she would have to do the one thing she dreaded—stand against her brother. To stop him.
The only way to stop him was to kill him. And if she killed him she might as well accept that she would become him, because the same magic which had driven him beyond sanity would seize her and potentially make her even worse. It had happened before. So many of her ancestors had been deemed insane.
But the shadow, the thing Gilliad had unleashed…it sounded like one of the Fell. She turned her back on the Holters and gazed directly at her teacher. She could see the same knowledge in his eyes, the same grief and shame.
“We have to help,” she said and slowly, so slowly, Indarin nodded.
“It is a matter of duty, I agree. But Ariah will be with us in a matter of days. We cannot leave until then. And with her blessings we will be stronger.”
“You cannot speak for the people, Indarin,” one of the Feyna warriors interrupted. Jeren didn’t know his name. He’d never deigned to tell her.
“I can, in Ylandra’s absence, and I will. But Ariah will decide. If Gilliad is in alliance with the Fellna—”
“We must discuss this.”
Glaring, Indarin nodded. “Then, if you will, Jeren, invite your guests to move their camp within our lands. They may come with us and rest near the Shistra-Phail encampment until Ariah arrives and the moot is called.”
Vertigern’s mouth opened a little wider than was politic—it showed his surprise. Not a politician, her former betrothed. But canny enough to realise what he was being afforded by Feyna standards. And wise enough to accept with grace.
“You do us great honour, Indarin,” he said with a deep bow.
Indarin just nodded and swept outside. Jeren followed, surprised to see him waiting for her. “You want them near?” she asked in a low voice.
“For all our sakes. We are juggling hot coals here, Jeren. The Holters do not love us, nor we them, and the prospect of war has not departed. If anything happens to them in our land, or if they commit any action deemed…inappropriate, that prospect will become a reality all too quickly.”
Chapter Seven
Shan awoke to pain throughout his body, riddling him like woodworm in a tree. There were no wounds. Nothing to cause this, but nonetheless, he burned with pain.
He shuddered in the darkness and tried to pull himself up from the floor, only to find himself bound there. His heart sped as he tried to wriggle free but to no avail. Leather bonds bit into his wrists and ankles. He was trapped.
“Shan?” Ylandra’s voice sounded out of the darkness, very faint, and afraid, not too far to his right.
“Where are we?”
“Below. In the nest.” Yes, her voice definitely trembled. She was afraid. Terribly afraid. “They dragged us down here when they swarmed. Are you…are you hurt?”
Part of him wanted to ask why she cared. She had brought this upon them. She had led him here, through her own pride and arrogance, right into the Enchassa’s trap. “No, but I’m tied down. Can you free me?”
She shuffled out of the shadows, her face very pale beneath the smeared mud. But that wasn’t the shock. Her braids had been untied, every single one. Her silvery hair spilled about her face like the fibres of an exotic plant, iridescent in the near darkness. She must have seen his expression for she stopped and tried to push it back from her face, her fingers knotting in the unfamiliar strands.
Eyes wide with terror, her body trembled. Her clothes were shredded and scratches covered her body, some caked with dried blood.
“How long?” he asked. “How long have we been here?”
“I…I don’t know. It seems like days. Like forever. It was a trap.” Tears welled up in her red-rimmed eyes, glittering before they fell onto his face, little cold splashes on his cheek. “I think…it was all a trap, Shan…I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault.”
Sorry didn’t cover it, an inner voice growled. And what place did a Shistra-Phail have sobbing out apologies, let alone a Sect Mother? His anger flared, hot and bitter.