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“With me,” he whispered back.
Valtik led them all through the city without breaking stride, her bare feet passing over wood, dirt, stone, and snow. Eyda and her immortals followed silently behind. The Lady of Kovalinn still wore her torn cloak and battered armor, the loss of Gidastern written all over the steel. Andry knew they made for a strange, if not threatening sight.
Many faces turned to watch their passing, pink-skinned or black, pale or bronzed. But all with the same cold flush. Though the native peoples of the Jyd were fair, the clans offered protection to any who took up the raider ax. Mortals from all over the Ward lived among the fjords and pines.
Andry did his best to put his faith in Valtik.
She knew Ghald well, navigating the streets into the heart of the city. The buildings grew more intricate in their adornment. More and more Jydi came to watch, and Andry’s skin crawled under the eyes of so many. He breathed a sigh of relief when they reached the top of the hill, leveled off into a square. The crowd of onlookers held back and they walked on alone.
Massive longhouses lined three sides of the square while a grand wooden cathedral loomed over the fourth. Andry marveled at the many-gabled church crowned in carved dragons, their jaws holding the sun and moon. Black tar gleamed on the plank walls. The church seemed a dragon too, its shingles glittering like scales.
Andry shivered, remembering what a true dragon looked like. He eyed the clouds overhead and prayed it had not followed them into the north.
“The eyes of Lasreen see all above, and all below,” Valtik murmured. “Sun and moon, eagle and crow.”
As she muttered, a flock of birds took flight from the church, their wings black against the sky. Andry shivered beneath their flickering shadows.
Without hesitation, Valtik led them through the doors of the church, the interior black beyond. It felt like being devoured.
Andry blinked fiercely, willing his eyes to adjust before he tripped over something.
The church was warm, at least. A fire burned in the center of the square chamber, open to the many angled roofs stacked above. The smoke smelled sweet, perfumed by an herb even Andry couldn’t name. The interior was just as intricate as the gables outside, every column carved with imagery. Andry knew more of Galland’s god Syrek and his mother’s chosen, Fyriad, than Lasreen. But even he recognized the carvings. Most told stories of Lasreen and her loyal ice-dragon Amavar, journeying through the land of the dead or wandering the Ward to collect wayward ghosts. After the dragon in Gidastern, Andry could hardly look Amavar in the face.
Bone witches stood in the shadows, most of them in gray shifts. One of the witches wore black, standing behind an ancient stone altar at the rear of the church. He watched them with blind, white eyes.
A few Jydi warriors stood among the witches, easy to pick out in their furs and armor. Many wore clan colors and collars of precious metal. All had some kind of weapon, be it an ax, sword, or spear.Chiefs, Andry knew, his heart leaping in his chest.
Valtik drew them around the hearth fire to stand before the altar. She dropped Andry’s arm and he expected her to kneel, or at least bow to the blind witch. Instead, she shrugged.
“This is all,” she said, sounding apologetic. “Those left in the fires are doomed, trapped under His thrall.”
A murmur went through the church, rippling between the witches and warrior chiefs.
“Doomed,” Eyda rasped behind them, her low voice cutting through the whispers like a knife. “So there is no saving the ones lost to Taristan’s necromancy?”
Behind the altar, the blind witch lowered his brow to the stone beneath his fingers. His lips moved without sound, speaking some prayer no one could hear. The chiefs did the same, offering prayers for the Jydi dead in Gidastern.
“A soul taken by What Waits is a soul taken forever,” the blind witch said when he straightened. Somehow, he knew where Eyda stood, and turned his face to her. “They are part of Him, with no tie to sever.”
“I thought the Elders knew all,” one of the chiefs grumbled. He pulled at his braided red beard, his bare wrist tattooed with the jagged ring of a mountain range.
Eyda eyed the chief as she would an insect. “It is not for us to know the depths of evil, in the hand of What Waits, or in Taristan’smortalheart.”
The redbeard all but growled. “Instead you led the Yrla to die.”
Andry stepped between the two of them, lest the Lady of Kovalinn cut the Jydi chief in half.
“The Yrla answered the call first, and bravely so,” Andry said sharply, with a grateful bow. He thought of the dozen or so survivors now roaming Ghald, the last remnants of their clan.
Another chief bowed her gray head. She wore a white wolf pelt around her shoulders.
“Indeed,” she said, cutting a glare at the redbeard. “We will remember their sacrifice.”
The redbeard ignored her and took a step down from the altar, his eyes on Andry. His lips pulled back from yellow teeth, halfway between a smirk and sneer.
“You are far from home,” he said, eyeing Andry up and down. “You look like our southern brothers, but you speak like the conquerors, like the dogs of the Green Queen.”
The Green Queen.Andry scowled and cursed Erida’s existence.
