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Corayne’s mouth dropped open, shock pulsing through her. “What?”
“I have a story to tell you, my lady,” he murmured. “If you would hear me tell it.”
4
IMMORTAL COWARD
Domacridhan
The horse was dying beneath him, foam blowing from her mouth. Her shoulder was scarlet, caked in blood.My blood,he knew. The wounds had barely closed despite the long days. He tried not to think about his face, clawed and cut open by thosethings, those abominations. An army ofsomething, from a realm he could barely fathom. He still felt their fingers, broken nails and exposed bone beneath rusty armor. They were far behind him now, hundreds of miles away. But Domacridhan looked back, emerald eyes wide.
How he’d escaped, finding one of the Companions’ horses, he could not say. It was a blur of noise and color and smell, a ruin of memory. So the days passed as he raced on, one kingdom bleeding into another, hills into farm and forest and hills again, until the ground turned familiar. He cut through the mountains of the Monadhrion and the Monadhrian, the Star and the Sun, to the hidden glen. It stretched, filled with mist and yew trees, divided by the winding silver ribbon of the River Avanar. He knew this land as its son and prince.
Calidon.
Iona.
Home.
Not long,he told himself, willing the horse to last.Not long.
He could hear the horse’s heartbeat, thunderous and failing. He kicked her again.
It is her heart or your own.
Mist peeled back to reveal the Vederan city of Iona on a stony ridge, perched where the Avanar met Lochlara, the Lake of the Dawn. Rain and snow stained the castle city gray and brown, but it remained magnificent through the ages. It was home to thousands of immortals, hundreds of them Glorianborn, older than Iona herself. Tíarma, the palace, stood proudly at the knife-edge of the ridge, with only cliffs below.
The mossy walls of the city were well defended. Stoic bowmen stood the length of the ramparts, near indistinguishable in their forest greens. They knew him on sight, their vision perfect even at a distance.
A prince of Iona returned, bloody and alone.
The mare carried him up the ridge and through the gates, galloping as far as the Monarch’s palace. Dom leapt from her back when she fell to the ground. Her breath came heavy and slow, and then not at all. He flinched as her heart beat its last.
The guards flanked their prince without a word. Most were golden-haired and green-eyed, their faces stark white in the mist, their leather armor embossed with the crest of Iona. The great stag was everywhere—in wall carvings, in statues, on the tunics and armor of his fellow Ionians. It loomed over all things, proud and distant, eyes all-seeing.
My failure laid bare before it,he thought.
Ashamed, Dom entered the palace of Tíarma, passing beneath the yawning oak doors. Someone pressed a cloth into his hand, and he took it, wiping at the dried blood on his face. His wounds bit and stung, some splitting open again. He ignored the pain in the immortal way.
But he could not ignore the feel of his own torn flesh.
I must look like a monster.
After five hundred years living within Tíarma, Dom knew it well. He strode rapidly past halls and archways branching off to different wings of the palace and fortress. The feasting hall, the rose garden at the center of the palace, the battlements, and living quarters. They all blurred in his mind’s eye.
Only once had he wept upon these stones. The day he became an orphan and ward to the Monarch.
He did his best not to weep a second time.
Cortael, my friend, I have failed you. I have failed Allward, failed Iona. And failed Glorian too. Failed all things I hold dear.
He reached the throne room too soon. The doors were twice his height, carved from ash and oak, intricately made by immortal hands. The sigils of the many enclaves intertwined through the wood, fluid as water. There was Ghishan’s stoic tiger; the black panther of Barasa; a wheeling hawk for Tarima; Hizir’s lithe stallion with Sirandel’s clever fox underfoot; a Syrene ram crowned in spiral horns; Kovalinn’s great bear on its hind legs, the sand wolf of Salahae, and Tirakrion’s shark bearing rows of daggered teeth. Twin stags reared over them all, chests thrust forward, their antlers impossibly large. Dom had left these doors weeks ago, Cortael at his side, his stern face pulled in resolve, his heart still beating.
I wish I could go back. I wish I could warn them.His teeth ground, bone on bone.I wish I believed as mortals do and felt their spirits here with me.
But the immortal Vedera did not believe in ghosts, and Dom was no exception. When the guards pushed open the doors, he entered the great hall alone, with nothing and no one but his grief.
It was a long walk to the throne, over green marble polished to a mirror shine. Columns rose on either side of the floor, framing alcoves and statues to the gods of Glorian. But their deities were far away, beyond the reach of any immortal left on the Ward. Any prayers whispered in this realm went unanswered, as they had for a thousand years.
