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I glanced back at Malyr, who sat behind me in the saddle, his hair put into a single braid along his scalp. “How much longer until we reach the Winged Keep?”
He reined Liual, his black gelding, around a corpse with one hand, his other hand fixed at the shadows ahead. “I want us to go to the Perch first.”
“What’s there?”
“Naya and my mother. My father, too.” A beat of silence. “I want to give them a proper funeral before I dare step into the keep.”
That explained the shadows writhing quicker against my back the deeper we ventured, those black tendrils so often a visible extension of Malyr’s emotional state. He was… anxious.
“I understand.”
“If I remember correctly, the stairs should come up to our right soon,” he said. “Asker? You patrolled the Tarred Road nearly every day. How far are we?”
“Another two hundred steps, perhaps more.” Asker, who rode a few paces behind us, assessed the vibrant red banners that wafted from balconies, and wooden signs that hung over shop doors seemingly untouched by time. “Valtaris is as beautiful as I remember.”
“If you say so,” Sebian said from where he rode beside us on Pius, and not even the cloth covering his mouth and nose could hide that disgusted curl of his lip. “The buildings are in good condition, yes, but the land…? It’s completely dead.”
“It will recover,” Malyr said. “All it needs is sun and rain. Nature will do the rest. Perhaps some good seed that we can cart from Hanneling Hold.”
“If Aros feels so inclined to give it up,” Sebian added. “I told you we should have slit his throat instead of let him walk away.”
Askertsked.“Not advisable. Lord Aros—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Sebian groaned. “He has a title, a stronghold, commands a devout army of humans and Ravens, and politics, blah-blah-blah… Not to mention that,apparently,he’s holding seeds hostage.”
“He knelt and returned home with his mate’s remains with no further incident,” Malyr added. “There might be bad blood between us, but he’s a Raven. He’s loyal to our cause.”
“Good. The last thing we need is a bannerman not easily replaced going sour somewhere in the south,” Asker said and glanced over one of the city’s lower-lying plateaus. “Much of the borderlands that weren’t so terribly blighted are occupied by humans.”
“I want them gone,” Malyr said. “Send pathfinders out to inform them to pack up and leave. We will require the land by the first thaw if we want to avoid food shortages.”
“They’re nothing but the poorest of farmers who couldn’t afford the tenancy on Dranadian soil.” I raised my hand to the shadows before us, my shoulder, elbow, wrist… every single damn sinew I possessed along the limb burned in pain. “Please tell me you won’t just… chase them off.”
“You are too kind for your own good.”
“Says the deathweaver who needs me to suck out his darkness.”
“You and I are symbiosis, little dove.” He reached his hand beneath my arm, supporting the heavy limb and allowing me some reprieve. “As much as your void brings me light, my shadows bring you darkness. Balance.”
My stomach clenched, but I couldn’t deny the logic, and neither could I come up with a smart retort. “Just give the farmers notice and time. If not for them, then for me, please?”
There was an awfully long pause. “For you.”
“Thank you.”
Around us, other deathweavers worked in grim unison, their hands weaving intricate patterns in the air as they wrestled with the shadows. Keeping my open palm pointed at the shadows, I absorbed their wild swirl into a void filled to the brim, their excess tendrils scraping at my insides. So far, I hadn’t been able to wield them again, which was beyond frustrating.
“What in the name of the goddess is this?” Asker asked as he brought his brown mare to a stop, his stare fixed on… something within the lifting shadows.
A corpse? An… animal?
A chill settled against my nape at the sight of the grotesque figure before me. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen, barely resembling a human form with how it distorted into nightmarish shapes, like a broken reflection on a river’s rippling surface. Black limbs stretched and contorted into wings and talons, yet remained partially human in a way that defied nature. Black flesh melded with feathers in utter chaos, with no semblance of order or reason, held together only by swirling shadows that felt… different.
“Those are not Malyr’s shadows,” I said under my breath so the soldiers and deathweavers around us wouldn’t hear. “Should I absorb them?”
“The fuck you will.” With a tug on the reins, Sebian brought Pius to a stop. “Neither am I going to ride past that thing without knowing what it is.”
Sebian reached behind him for his bow. An almost spectral whisper hummed through the air as he conjured a shadowy arrow, its fletching nothing but midnight tendrils. He nocked it, his body a picture of taut concentration. He let the arrow fly.
