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What Waits stared out from her husband’s eyes, all the black burned away, eaten by infernal scarlet.
“We must have a dragon,” Erida hissed. The air tasted like smoke through her teeth. “And we must have her head.”
20
City of Stone
Corayne
By the end of the third week in the mountains, Corayne forgot what warmth felt like. No matter how many cloaks she wore or furs she burrowed under at night, the chill never truly disappeared. She envied Charlie and Garion, who clung to each other by the campfire. She could not even think about the Elders, stoic against the snow and freezing cliffs, lest she dissolve into jealous rage. They seemed only inconvenienced by the weather, not completely incapacitated as she was.
At the last town on the western slopes, Garion was kind enough to go into the market, paying in Elder coin for more suitable clothing. He did not worry about spies among the small towns of the valleys and foothills. Calidon was a frozen country, isolated by the mountains, their cities few and far away on the coast. The people here feared the winter more than any Gallish queen, and knew little of the world beyond their hills.
It was enough to keep Corayne and Charlie alive as they climbed up the mountain pass.
“And so we cross the Monadhrian,” Garion said, his face barely visible below his hood. His breath steamed as they began the slow descent down.
“I thought we did that last week,” Charlie replied from Corayne’s other side, teeth chattering.
“That was the Monadhrion,” Corayne said for what felt like the thousandth time.
Not that she could blame Charlie for his confusion. The three mountain ranges in Calidon, drawn down the kingdom like parallel claw marks, were all similarly named. And annoyingly so. They were the Monadhrion, the Monadhrian, and the Monadhstoirm.We crossed the Monadhrion first, she knew, remembering her maps. The Mountains of the Star formed the border of Calidon and Madrence, as good as a wall between the kingdoms.
“These are the Monadhrian, the Mountains of the Sun,” she added, translating roughly from the Calidonian language.
“Whoever named them has a terrible sense of humor.” Charlie snickered.
On a clear day, the sight would be breathtaking, the line of mountain ranges stretching in every direction. But they had not seen the sun in many days, since they began the climb out of the long valley of the River Airdha.
“We should be grateful.” Garion raised a gloved hand and blew into it, warming numb fingers. “Even the Queen of Galland cannot send an army over this.”
He gestured to the heights of the pass, thousands of feet above the unseen valley floor. Mountains speared higher still on either side, their peaks shrouded by shifting cloud. Snow lay perilously deep, the path ahead painstakingly carved by Valnir’s Elders.
They would already be in Iona if not for us, Corayne knew. For all her days of travel, she felt like a child toddling after veteran soldiers.
But terrible as the crossing was, she felt safe through the mountains.The only danger here was the terrain. An avalanche, a bear, a sudden blizzard. Nothing compared to what already lay behind her.
Or what lies ahead.
The descent into the final valley took another two days, the air growing warmer by the hour. Even so, snow still lay thick and deep as they left the rocky crags of the Monadhrian. They broke through the cloud bank as they reached the tree line. Ancient pines and black yew trees gnarled together, impassable as the Castlewood, obscuring all but a glimpse of the River Avanar winding through the valley.
Shifting fog and mist streaked the landscape, like ink spilled over a page. As it shifted, Corayne caught a rare glimpse of a distant ridge, a long spit of rock thrust out of the valley. The river wound around its base, pooling to form a long lake between the hills.
There was a wall along the ridge, blending into the landscape, gray and white and green. Towers seemed to grow from the ridge itself, straight as granite fingers.
Iona.
Then the mist shifted, the yew trees closed in, and the Elder city disappeared again. Corayne heaved a cold breath, her heart pounding in her ears.
She tried to balance what she remembered from Domacridhan’s tales with what she saw now. Iona appeared to be more fortress than city, the entire ridge walled with gray stone, and a high-towered castle at its crown. It filled Corayne with equal parts relief and dread. Their long march was over, but battle loomed, black as a storm on the horizon.
Charlie lowered his furred hood, his breath steaming in the air. Since Gidastern, he always searched the sky first, his gaze sweeping through the clouds. Corayne knew why. She did the same, bracing herself for aflash of jeweled scale or an arc of flame. They could not predict the movements of one dragon, let alone three. The threat hung over them still.
“Dom called it the largest enclave on the Ward,” Corayne mumbled to him. She pointed her chin through the trees. “Certainly we will be safe among them.”
“I thought the same in Sirandel,” Charlie replied. “I only got a single night of peace.”
“That’s my fault,” she said, apologetic. “Like everything, it seems.”
