When his man returned with the horse, he swept me up from the wall, his hands tight on my waist, holding me away from his body. He lifted me to the saddle, and I clutched weakly at the reins as he jumped up behind me. He took the reins as he muttered an order to the other Sentinel. As we rode, he sat as far from me in the saddle as he could manage, which wasn’t very far at all. The simple reality of his size meant that I was forced to lean back on him even as he strained away from me. I tried to hunch over the front of the horse, but that only slipped the lower half of my body further backwards in the saddle, eliciting an unhappy sound from him. By the time we reached the Citadel, my body was thrumming with pain and exhaustion from attempting to keep my back so ramrod straight.
We cleared the final ridge, riding out from between a sparse stretch of wood. The closer we got to the capitol of Fyrio, the louder the water rushed by our road. All the streams and lakes of Hearthhenge flowed gradually toward the Citadel, converging into two wide rivers that wove down toward a passage between the monstrous mountains of the Wailing Crag. The road turned into a vast bridge as the rivers merged, the bricks making way for ancient stone. Tufts of moss and vine sprouted through the cracks, climbing over the thick, carved stone railing. Mist clawed up over the bridge, produced by the churning water below, and I thought back to the day before, when the mist had spirited me to the bank of Lake Enke. It was convenient to think that this was all the fault of the Weaver. He had approached me by the lake. I had been running from him when I tripped over the vevebre. I had been fighting off his enchantment when my ring began to falter. It was his fault that I had been cut and defiled; that my mother was dead and I was in chains.
I slipped a hand beneath my hood, feeling the slightly raised mark on my skin.
What could the Weaver demand of a prisoner?
As we approached the entrance, I found my head falling back, my eyes drawn to the rock figures protruding from the sides of the Wailing Crag. The statues faced each other over the vast divide below. A man and a woman, their arms weighed down by a giant stone orb. Time had textured the orb, forming ridges and valleys, carving out lines and hollowing sections for birds to nest within. Moss grew over it in some places, like painted grass upon a map of the world.
Something fierce pulled taut inside me, my hand flashing to the reins. I gripped the leather, ignoring the way the Captain jerked his hand away. A robed woman carrying a covered basket slipped to our side, continuing on ahead of us. I hadn’t even heard her on the road behind us.
“What is it?” the Captain asked, tension in his voice.
I pointed to the statues.
“You’ve never been to the Citadel?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“The first Fjorn,” he explained, reclaiming the reins.
We began to move again, but I kept my eyes trained to the statues. To the way they stared at each other. The way their hands clasped the globe. There was tension and fear there, vibrating from the stone. There was something fierce, too. Something unbreakable.
I pointed again, more insistently this time.
“You don’t know the tale?” The Captain sounded surprised. “Of the king of Ledenaether, ruler of the afterworld, of all dead things?”
I shot him a look.
There wasn’t a single living person who didn’t know about the king of Ledenaether.
“There was a prophecy foretold a long time ago that three women would be born, each of them three hundred years apart,” he told me. “They would have incredible power. Power to rival the ruler of the afterworld.”
A shiver crept up my spine as he spoke, and he slowed the horse as we stared up, his hand lowering absently to my lap, no longer holding the reins so stiffly. I could tell that he was also staring up, as his breath no longer stirred against the top of my head.
“The prophecy stated that these three women might be the only chances to overthrow the king of the afterworld, to take control of Ledenaether, to herald in a golden age of undiluted magic, fertility, and prosperity for our people.”
I twisted around, and his eyes immediately flicked down. He must have been able to see me partly through the hood, as he glanced from one of my eyes to the other, and then to the confused twist of my mouth. I gestured to the Wailing Crag and the statues carved from the rock, easily the size of seven great estates all clumped together, and then I motioned between the Crag, to where the water converged and fled through. It pooled into a natural rock basin, the edge of the Citadel marked by a great arched perimeter, seeming to curve from one side of the Crag to the other, walling in the water and the Citadel both. A large stone mound rose from the water in the center of the basin, richly dark in colour, like a strong pillar of a mountain whose imperfections had been chipped away and filled in with polished granite turrets and towers. It rose halfway up the Crag, rippling blue flags flying from several of the battlements, granite walkways curving upwards around the stone base, which met eventually with the bridge we had paused on.
My message was clear.
This was a golden age.
We were surrounded by grandeur at every turn. We were overrun by deposits of precious stone. Our soil was rich, our crops in excess. The magic of our people was strong, their strength in battle legendary.
He seemed to understand, his breath stirring my hair again. “It’s just a tale.” He coaxed the horse into a trot.
I took the reins again, pointing to the other statue. The man.
The Captain grumbled something, one of his hands yanking the chain attached to my manacles as he recaptured control of the horse. “That would be the Blodsjel. How can a silent girl have so many damned questions?”
Blodsjel. Soul brother.
It was a word in Forsan I hadn’t heard before, but it was easily translatable, comprised of two words that I was familiar with. A chill raced down the back of my neck, and I quickly looked away from the statues, spooked.
I left the Captain alone as we entered through the gap in the Crag. Sentinels stood guard atop two watchtowers I hadn’t noticed hidden within the mountain. Several of them glanced down at us moving past, and one of them noted something to the man standing beside him, causing them both to laugh. I pressed my teeth together, glaring down at my chains. The mist had dampened my dress, which was missing a corset and an overskirt, and still hadn’t been fastened properly. My feet were bare, my hair in tangles. I looked as disconnected with reality as I felt.
We rode into a small forecourt, where a stable boy rushed forward to take the horse. The Captain slid out of the saddle, his hands on my waist in an instant, lifting me down beside him.
I was already feeling a little stronger. I was able to walk without support as we made our way to one of the winding paths that wrapped its way up to the top of the Citadel. The air grew thinner the higher we climbed, but I refused to ask for a break, only stopping as we walked along the first battlement to a large tower at the far end of the rock. We were facing away from the entrance to the Crag, and I was able to peer over the wall to where the earth fell away from the mountain. If the Wailing Crag had seemed vast from the other side, it was nothing compared to what I was seeing now. The water that flowed through the Citadel passed between the arches of the curved dam wall, dropping into a vast waterfall that ended only in mist and echo.
My mother had been to the Citadel, but she had never told me of the statues or the waterfall. She had told me of the Wailing Crag: how people thought it to be a doorway to the afterworld, and how the wind would howl through the gap between mountains, carrying the tortured songs of the dead. She had thought Ledenaether to be a place of darkness and horror, the undead king a master of punishment and repentance. Others thought that he was wise and benevolent, or that the afterworld was an endless paradise.