The flickers of light coming over the wall and through decorative gaps in the gate gave her the ability to take off the too-large riding cloak and wind it about her blanket bag, which she then retied. Thanks to the wet, it made a heavy burden. The bag’s rope would hold, but even doubled as she’d been taught, it dug into her shoulder painfully. She checked her knots. She had quit the Captain’s Lodge with few happy memories but a certain amount of practical skill, and one was some knowledge of lines, loads, and knot work. A poor knot even around a sack of potatoes could tip the Captain into a rage.
She glanced one more time at the three faceless silhouettes. She grudged them the knowledge of her decision. She considered walking up the road and then circling back just so they’d wonder, but let the notion go. There was always the chance that they were more sympathetic to an unchaperoned girl than their orders allowed. Perhaps one would arrange for a better reception at the side door.
The path was there, just as the older man said, matching another one going in the other direction along the base of the wall. It wasn’t much used, just a stretch of muddy gravel. She reached out and touched the fortress wall, its stones beautifully cut, laid, and finished. Nothing in Freesand had anything like these great carved boulders.
The cool, smooth stone settled her, drawing out some of the sting of finally arriving at the Serpentine and being refused entry. The wall—solid, tangible, cool—reassured her. She’d reached her destination. The dragons she’d risked much for and come far to be among lived on the other side of it. The stones made her feel less like a gambler who’d potted her entire purse on a throw only to see the dice come up blanks.
A dissonant chorus of voices who’d advised her against this journey repeated prophesies of failure:
You think those silk-sashes will let you join them?
They’ll smell the gutter on you like gamehounds.
No family of a decent name would have a trip-tongued fool like you as a maid—you think they’ll give you a dragon to ride?
The wall followed the contours of the peninsula, in this case a slight downslope. She sensed the vastness of the bay ahead and could see the lights of Vyenn, the town on the lakeshore, through the fog as a ragged spiderweb of yellow smears.
The wall of the Serpentine bulged out here and the track she walked narrowed to the point where she would hardly dare to herd mountain goats along it. Below, the Skylake produced no surf; it just seemed a vast emptiness beyond the cliff. Keeping her hand on the wall now for physical comfort rather than emotional, she negotiated the fortress corner. Her hand found a rope tied to a series of ring-bolts set into the stone, and she happily made use of the guideline.
Once around the tower the guideline ended and the path widened again but became harder to walk, as the ground sloped away from the wall sharply. The wall here wasn’t quite as high as on the side of the gate but still formidable. The wind blew against this side of the fortress, bringing with it a low susurrance of the big lake lapping against rock below.
The lights of the Serpentine gave her some idea of the peninsula’s size. From this outlook she could see the famous lighthouse beacon at a high point of the peninsula, supposedly the brightest light in the Vales. It rested on a dome built on living rock. It was a famous outline; Radiia the printing-house used it as their sigil on their books. Under better conditions, the Serpentine would be starkly beautiful, set high between blue water and white-capped mountains across the lake. She’d once seen a painting of it hung on the wall of a priest’s house on one of the Captain’s rare social calls.
It was two hundred paces or more before she made out a sort of knob growing off the fortress like a tree root sent down the hill. The path headed down to it. She guessed it to be the location of the door.
Ileth shifted the pinching rope of her blanket-bundle and approached the threshold, telling her sore feet to be patient for just a few more steps.
* * *
—
Whoever designed this fortress didn’t care for visitors or much want to impress them. The doorstep was unsheltered and unmarked, lit by a single blue gas-flame. She looked in vain for a bell. The walls seemed placed to channel the mountain lake-wind across the threshold; the cold and wet passed untroubled through her layers of wool and linen and went straight on through to her bones.
The wooden door, painted with a dull red color made duller by rain and dark, felt like a cheat to Ileth. Though wet right to her sheath and tired, she still had enough perspective left to appreciate the irony of a fastness of famous heroes and infamous dragons closed off by planking more fit for a toolshed.
The flickering blue flame, a little brighter than a candle, hissed in an unfriendly manner as it illuminated the threshold. She reached up and warmed her hands by the flame. She’d heard of such innovations, but this was her first experience with a gas-light. The flame muttered at the mouth of a bent iron tube, crude as a share-farmer’s pipe, indifferent to the wind, the weather, and her presence. But her fingers were grateful for its warmth.
It cast just enough light for her to make out the device on the center of the door, a sort of arrowhead design that she recognized as a dragon scale. A large and thick one, in a dull red that matched the door. It was hinged, and she realized it was a door-knocker.
She paused on the threshold to arrange her blanket-roll and dab the blood from her face. It had finally stopped bleeding. She took a deep breath, preparing to knock, but the chill mountain air drew forth a rattling cough. She prayed it was just her lungs cleaning themselves of the damage inflicted by that last, long run to the gate. This was not the time or place for illness.
The watchman had told her to knock. She explored the rugose surface of the dragon scale for a moment, thrilled again in the connection to the great creatures she’d come so far to live among. She lifted it, saw an orb of what was probably lead that matched a socket on the door, and let it drop. It gave a distinct but hardly impressive tap; a man with steel-shod boots would probably make more noise stamping on the step.
“Stranger at the door,” a watchman called from a corner of the fortress wall above. It bulged out in such a way that it had an excellent view of the threshold below. No doubt he’d seen her long before she knocked but waited for her to trigger Serpentine routine.
A light glimmered and grew on the other side of the door. The door didn’t need a peephole. The gaps in the planking were such that they afforded an adequate view of arrivals. She didn’t know fortifications, but the door didn’t look as if it would hold up long to an experienced axeman, never mind a team of attackers with a battering ram.
She heard a strange, dragging step inside.
“State your business,” a raspy voice said from the other side of the door, somewhat muffled.
“My-My name is Ileth,” she said, letting the words out slowly. “I-I w-wish to-to apply to the Academy as a . . . as a dra-dragoneer.”