“You think there may be spies or riders lingering?”
“Or assassins.” After another look around the courtyard, Fel gripped her arm, turning to lead her into the building, intending to keep her close.
That was fine. Assassins or not, Syla needed a guide until she found her spectacles.
Screeches came from the sky, and Fel swore and released her. He spun and sprang past her to return to the doorway.
“Wyverns?” Syla guessed, having heard the smaller cousins ofdragons before. But she’d never had to worry about them in the past. The shield had kept them away.
“The scaled scavengers have been circling.” Crouched in the doorway with his mace, Fel peered skyward. “At least a dozen of them. They must have been drawn by the scent of death, but they’ll happily kill and eat the living too.”
His hand strayed to the crossbow strapped to his back, but maybe he didn’t think its quarrels would be sufficient against scaled enemies. He stuck with the hefty mace.
“We’ll be safe inside, won’t we?” Syla rested a hand on the stone wall. “They’re too big to come through doorways, right?”
“I wouldn’t bet on that, but better inside than out.” Fel pointed his mace toward something.
One of the wyverns landing on the courtyard wall? All Syla could glimpse was blurry movement.
“As much as I’d like to drive them away so they can’t harass the dead, I don’t have any way to do that. Their scales are as armored as those of dragons, and they’re hard to kill.” Fel’s grim voice lowered as he glanced back at her and added, “Everything that survives in the wilds outside of the shields is.”
“A reason for us to get the shielder working again.” Syla lifted her chin and waved for him to guide her to her room.
Movement in the courtyard—something landing on the ground—made Fel turn away from her again. But the wyvern, if that was what it was, had found something to occupy it.
Fel lifted a hand, as if to shut out the death and danger of the courtyard, but the door was gone. Ripped from its hinges. If it lay somewhere nearby, Syla couldn’t see it.
Fel grunted and pushed something heavy in front of the doorway—one of the marble pedestals she remembered from the hallway?—to partially block the entrance. That done, he turned and guided her down the hall.
The sounds of flesh being torn from bone followed them andhorrified her. She’d known the staff all her life. If they and possibly even her kin were part of the wyverns’ feast…
Dear departed gods, she wanted to throw up.
“There were more wyverns landing,” Fel said quietly as they moved deeper into the keep. “We may have trouble leaving.”
“Let’s deal with one thing at a time.” The words came out sounding calm and reasonable, but Syla almost felt as if someone else had spoken them. Someone less numb and horrified.
Fel nodded and, when they reached an intersection, turned to lead her toward the royal suites. Now and then, he glanced down at rubble or maybe more bodies of the slain. Everything remained dark and blurry to Syla, and, for the first time in her life, she was relieved she couldn’t see better.
Despite her attempts to focus on what she needed to do, tears trailed down her cheeks as they walked, and her chest tightened with the need to break down and sob. She didn’t allow herself to but couldn’t keep from stumbling often. Each time, Fel was quick to steady her. What would she have done without him?
“How much can you see without your spectacles?” Fel asked after guiding her over a pile of stone half-covered by a smoldering tapestry that had fallen onto it.
“Very little.”
“The gods may have blessed you by taking away your eyesight tonight,” he said, maneuvering her past another obstacle.
A body that time, she feared.
“I was just thinking that,” she murmured.
“That one was stabbed. There must have been riders or other enemy agents inside the keep.” Fel gazed down a hallway and didn’t suggest that some of those enemies might remain, waiting to pounce on survivors. They both understood that without words.
As they neared the queen’s suite, an enormous pile of wood and stone from a collapsed ceiling blocked them. Fel found another route, leading Syla past a window, the shutters torn free,the sounds of screeches and squabbling entering from the courtyard. The wyverns fighting over who got what? When more ripping and tearing sounds followed, Syla stumbled a few more steps, then threw up.
This was too awful. She didn’t know if she could go on.
Fel rested a hand on her back. “That’s your room up there, isn’t it? The way is clear.”
