“It never spills over,” The Singer didn’t face him as she spoke.“Never fully cools.Just a perfect circle, ever restless, ever angry.”
“We betrayed the elements,” the Liam recited.“In their wrath, they lashed out, and the Plains of old became the Firelands in truth.”The pain knotted in his chest.“The land remembers and waits for our amends.”
“Just so,” The Singer said.“But in all of our songs, in all of our stories, we do not speak of how we can amend the actions of our ancestors, who have long since gone to the snows.”She looked at him then.“How long must we be punished?”
“I have no answer,” the Liam responded.“And no Liam before me found one either.”
“Just so,” the Singer nodded.“Nor can you expect to do so.You serve as the Liam, who uses his truth to guide us.”
“Even if I am no longer sure of my truths?”the Liam looked down at his hands, browned and wrinkled and tired.“I am the Liam, they look to me for answers, and yet, I have no answers and no hope.”He rubbed his face, feeling the grit on his skin.“Vren told me of the Warborn,
Xylara, Daughter of the Blood, Daughter of Xywellan and Queen Kara.”He looked out, over Heart, as the lava leaped in the air as if to burn the stars.“Vern left her with Orval, but then Orval was exiled to the Black Hills, where I have no eyes and no ears.I have no information and no answers and no hope.”His eyes stung, at the heat and the sulfur and the tears.“I do not know what to make of any of this.”
“We are sworn to the Blood,” the Singer started softly.“We struggled after the Betrayal.We tried to walk a middle path between.The Wyverns rejected us long ago.The Airions trust us, to a degree.Yet here we are.”She gave him a side glance.“How do our guests?”
“Jillia tends them.She says that the healing will be long and difficult.”The Liam sighed.“Jillia questions my choices.”He winced at the whine in his voice.“Jillia also says our people do not thrive.”
The Singer snorted.“Jillia predicts that the sun will not rise, yet it does and it will.”
She rose and brushed off her trous.“Jillia questions your decisions, and yet, the elements preserved Dust and the blood memories.And yet, the Heart writhes in heat and fury, but does not spill beyond.And yet, none have cried ‘challenge,’ to fight you for your position.”
“And I sit here, the fount of wisdom and authority, and I am uncertain and lost.”The Liam looked back down at his hands.
“Answers I have none,” The Singer said above him.“Answers, like the winds, they will come when they come.For now—” she stopped.
The Liam looked up at her.
She put her hands on her hips.“Get off your ass and out of your own head.We will hunt until we are weary, eat until we are full, then we will sleep through the hot of the day.”
The Liam opened his mouth to argue but the Singer shook her head.“The Singer has spoken.”
The Liam obeyed.
Chapter Three
The Keep of the Black Hills
The crack of wooden practice swords resounded, echoing against the ruined stone walls of the Keep of the Black Hills.
Orval, reluctant Lord High Baron of the Black Hills, lifted his head to see Yfin and Roth back away from each other, each taking a defensive position.They circled each other, focused and intent.
“Watch your footing, elder.”Yfin, hair plastered with sweat, grinned like a madman.They’d used grit and stones to rough out a sparring circle in front of the old stables.The ugly barn cat perched on the collapsed roof in the sun, eyes half open.
Roth was certainly enjoying himself, Orval knew, but he made no reply to the taunt, just leapt forward with a feint and back swing.For a man of his age, he moved fast, but he also used patience as a weapon, something Yfin had yet to learn.
Stones rattled and fell deep in the Keep as their wooden swords clattered against each other.
Orval glanced down at his daughter Lara, seated on the blanket at his feet, next to the wooden practice daggers.She was staring at the fighting, eyes wide, chewing her fist, curly black hair tossed in the breeze, echoing his own.The air was cool but she seemed warm enough in the sun, with her tiny tunic and thick nappy, her bare legs curled before her.
Orval sighed, adjusted his scarf, shifted his bad leg, and returned to staring at the copy of theEpic of Xysonin his hands.This was a rare moment of quiet, at least as quiet as it got, with all of them crammed into the guardhouse.Small and cramped, it was the only part of the Keep that had survived the ravages of the rebellion of the Black Hills.
“Wo-Wo,” Lara babbled, waving tiny, damp hands toward Roth.
“Just a minute, little one,” Orval said absently.He needed this chance to think, to try to remember the history of the land he supposedly ruled.
With no books, it wasn’t easy to recall the past, when his aunt and uncle had been the Lord High Baron and Baroness of this region.That had been before the rebellion in Edenrich, but he couldn’t recall if it had been in the reign of Xykahn or if Xywellan had already been on the throne.
Not that it mattered.His fingers itched to make notes, but without ink, without paper he couldn’t make notes, trace lineages, or draw maps.They’d been banished to the Black Hills, honored with the Barony over a war-torn land and a hostile people who wanted nothing better than to see his bloodline ended.His library seized, he, his family, and the others had been stuffed in a carriage, ripped from home, brought here with the barest of supplies, dumped in the ruined Keep, and abandoned.
