Dragonoak: Gall and Wormwood, page 47
I went to Kouris. When Kastelir was lost to us, she’d carried me from the rubble. When the unfamiliar sway of the sea turned my stomach inside out, she rubbed my back and gave me bitterwillow to chew. When I spent two long years thinking Claire dead, she held me throughout the endless nights. When Katja cut away at what I was, she sat on my bedroom floor and waited for me to hold my hand out to her.
She would be there for me now, too.
I caught her on the way out of her chambers. The door swung open when I meant to knock and I ran into her, hands grasping her wrists.
“Yrval,” she said, easing me back. “I didn’t think anyone else had heard yet.”
My fingers slackened and she pressed a hand to my cheek.
“Heard?”
“Aye,” she said, eyes narrowing. “Unless you… didn’t. Reckoned Akela or Claire had told you, with a face like that.”
Dropping her hand from my face, she glanced around and scratched the back of her neck with her claws.
“I haven’t heard anything. I haven’t seen Claire since this morning and Akela since…” I stopped, blinking hard. Kondo-Kana’s story had almost made me forget I lived in the present. In Felheim, not Myros. “A few days, I guess. What’s happening?”
Ignoring my confusion, Kouris knelt in front of me and said, “What’s wrong? You’re not usually this pale unless you’re glowing.”
“Nothing. I was talking to Kondo-Kana and… never mind. What’s happening, Kouris?”
Only the look in Kouris’ eyes could take my mind off Kondo-Kana’s revelations. Apprehension, guilt and a little dread all mixed into one. My hands moved to her shoulders and we were close, almost close enough for our noses to touch, and rising to her feet to break my gaze was all she could do. She stared down the corridor, seeing wherever she had been headed in her mind, but tilted her head towards her room.
“C’mon. Sit down.”
I sat in a chair with its cushion pressed flat, arms and back stretched to their limits. The whole thing groaned as I did my best to settle down. Had Kouris been the one to take the seat, it would’ve been nothing but splinters and torn seams.
She fetched me a drink I hadn’t asked for and busied herself arranging the cushions on the sofa, putting off whatever it was she had to tell me. I brought the drink to my lips but didn’t take a sip. Akela and Claire weren’t hurt, which didn’t rule out anyone else having been injured in some way, but why was that an issue when I was there? I cleared my throat, caught Kouris’ attention, and she sat opposite me with twitching ears.
“It’s Rylan’s army. They’ve made it to Felheim a damn lot faster than any of us were expecting,” Kouris said. “No one knows exactly how they’re so far ahead, but I reckon Rylan’s still got plenty of people working for him in Felheim and all the rest. Plenty of our scouts were bound to be in his pocket, letting us think we had more time than we really did.”
“Oh,” I said, uncertain why she made it sound as though this was about me, not all of Felheim. “How?”
“You’re remembering that hole in the wall, aye? It’d been built back up, but it wasn’t ever gonna be as structurally sound as it had been. Add an explosion or two to that…”
“Gunpowder?” I asked. Kouris nodded gravely. “In Asar? Yin Zhou said that Agados had been trading with Canth, but I didn’t think to say anything…”
“Doesn’t matter now. Not like it would’ve made any difference,” Kouris said. “Point is, they’re here and we ain’t ready. Not that we would’ve been in another fortnight or even a month.”
I nodded. We must’ve been the only two people sitting still. Claire would be bringing together fragmented plans from long, sleepless nights, while Akela and Kidira dressed for battle and Ash and Goblin roused the troops. Horses would’ve been brought to the outskirts of Thule in their hundreds and there we were, not looking at one another.
“Why didn’t you want to tell me? We knew this was going to happen, even if not this quickly,” I said. “What else is there…?”
“It’s a necromancer,” Kouris blurted out, fangs grit together. “They’re saying there’s a necromancer at the front of the army.”
“Halla?” I asked, leaning forward. Kondo-Kana’s story was at the forefront of my mind: necromancer against necromancer taking centre stage once more, separated by nothing more than centuries.
“We don’t know that.”
“We don’t… of course we do! Who else could it be? There weren’t any other necromancers in Soldato. And Halla, the King kept her like he did because he didn’t have anyone else.”
“C’mon, yrval. I know she stayed behind and I know it wasn’t because she wanted to. It’s because she felt she had no other choice. That doesn’t make her your enemy, or ours. Maybe this is all one big misunderstanding.”
“You don’t get it. You haven’t been to Agados, have you? It’s… there’s nothing wrong with it. But everything’s wrong with it! Halla was so close to being my friend but I scared her off. Because of Claire. Because I love Claire and she… she thinks there’s something wrong with that,” I said, only truly understanding what had unfolded between us once I said it out loud.
“Why? Because you’re a farmer and she’s the Queen? Plenty of people here are having a problem with it too, but that doesn’t mean that—”
“No! Because Claire’s a woman. And I am too. Look, I know it doesn’t make sense but not much does, to Halla. She really believes that the King of Agados gave us our powers. It doesn’t make sense. But neither do the reasons Akela had to leave, either,” I said. Kouris’ lips curled into a snarl at the thought of what Akela’s life had once been. “It doesn’t make sense to us but it makes sense to them. It’s real to everyone in Agados. And Halla, she’s probably been convinced that Rylan should be King, by now, and she’ll do whatever her King tells her is right, and…”
“Breathe, yrval. Breathe. It’s not gonna come to that.”
She moved to my side. I looked up at her, at the black of her eyes. Halla was with the army. If Halla was with the army that meant that Katja had got to her, too. If Katja professed to believe in the King and the powers he could bestow, there was nothing to stop her from claiming that she had only just received her powers. That she needed Halla’s help in honing them. In becoming worthy of what the King deigned to let her do.
I didn’t care if Halla hated me. I didn’t care if the thought of me turned her stomach.
I only cared that Katja might hurt her, too.
“I’m going. I’m going with the army,” I said, but Kouris caught my hand before I could reach my feet. “Don’t tell me that I can’t go. Don’t tell me I’ll get hurt. I have to do this, Kouris, even if you’re not going.”
Her grip didn’t loosen, but she stilled. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath, wishing I could inhale the words I’d spoken. After a moment she let go of me, and I heard the sofa creak as she fell back into it.
“Yeah. I’m not going. And not because I don’t wanna help,” Kouris began without needing to ask how I knew. “I took up arms a long time ago. A lifetime ago. More than that, if we’re going by you. It was a different world back then, yrval. I had no choice but to pick up a blade and cut my way through the humans slaughtering the pane. It wasn’t like this. It wasn’t one side marching against another, with plenty of time to sit around and draw up plans. This was everyone against everyone. Roaming bands of bandits taking up the flag of whoever was paying the most, that day. Not fighting for anything in particular because all the world knew was strife. No one was expecting there to be an end to things. To us, it was the way of the world.
“The fact that we changed that, the fact that we made Kastelir, no matter what problems it had, is a testament to the idea that humans do want peace after all. The things we did… hell, the things I did, there’s no going back from them. But I don’t regret it, either. Like I said, there was no choice. But now? Things are different.
“The world’s moved on, but one thing’s for damn sure: humans still ain’t happy with the pane. And them thinking that all pane are monsters just because I’m willing to pick up a sword makes me wanna go out there and cut through half of Rylan’s army just to spite ‘em. But this can’t be about me. I’m not doing this because I’ve gotta act in a certain way to earn human’s limited approval. I’m doing it for the pane. For my people.
“If I could get an army of humans behind me when I didn’t speak a single word of Mesomium then I reckon I can get the pane to march down from the mountains. We’ll let everyone know that it’s our land, too. Even if we’re just there, even if it’s nothing more than making a stand… that’s gotta count for something, right? Now, I might never be let back into Kyrindval until Zentha’s bones are spread across the mountainside, and that’s on me. But there are plenty of other tribes, plenty of others who might listen.
“Even if it’s just a hundred of us, standing together, that’ll be damn more than there’s been on the flatlands in centuries. We’ll do our part, if nothing else.”
With that, I was grateful for Kondo-Kana’s story. The dragon and pane, risen from the mountainside, were fresh in my mind. All that had started this, all that had driven Kouris to become what she had, was clear to me. There she was, perfectly aware of how easily she could swing a sword and be done with any who opposed her, choosing to turn her back on a battle and pursue peace.
She was not a warrior. She was not the general she’d been or the Queen she’d become. She was a leader and her bravery came not only from her willingness to earn peace, but in being able to admit that just because hurting people was the only way in the past, that didn’t mean it was the right thing to do.
“You’re making me want to come with you,” I said.
She exhaled heavily, as though there was some way I could’ve told her to stay. The army didn’t need her. The pane did, and she needed them.
“I’d love to have you. I could show you so much more of the pane than Kyrindval and me. I could actually show you around,” Kouris offered. “I’m gonna have Sen with me, though. She’ll get ‘em to listen. You’ve gotta stay and worry about Halla, huh.”
“Yeah,” I murmured. “If she’s here, if she’s confused… I should be there to deal with it. Claire’s trying to push this idea that necromancers are people too, and there are already rumours about one being in the castle and influencing her. A necromancer turning up and wiping out our army isn’t going to help.”
“You think she’d do that?”
I wished I could’ve said no.
“If she did, she wouldn’t understand what she was doing. Not really. When she came to me, when she escaped from Soldato and the tower, she said she’d got out by making the guards stop. That’s how she put it. They stopped. It’s almost like she didn’t understand, or that’s what she’d been told had happened.”
Kouris hummed and glanced guiltily at the bag in the corner of her room.
I thought we’d say our goodbyes and I’d be able to slip out of the room without another word, but it finally occurred to her to say, “What was wrong when you turned up, yrval?”
It was ridiculous to want to keep it all in when I’d been so desperate to talk to her barely half an hour ago. But what was about to unfold had numbed me to the weight of Kondo-Kana’s confession, and in the scheme of things, talking about myself suddenly felt petty.
“Yrval,” Kouris said, dragging the word out as though she could read my mind.
She raised her brow, not demanding an explanation, but letting me know she’d listen to one.
“It’s Kondo-Kana. She told me a lot of things. She told me everything she could remember about her life, and how the Necromancy War happened. Not that it was much of a war, but…” I paused, looking down at my hands. Light flickered and faded. “I know it wasn’t all true. I know I can’t expect her to remember everything and that’s she probably forgot a lot of it for a reason, but some things. Some things she told me about necromancers had to be true. Because, I—it’s happened to me. I’ve seen it. Even if I don’t hear it.”
“Hear it?” Kouris asked gently.
“Can I ask you something?”
She nodded when I looked back up at her.
“You were dead, right? For a few months,” I said, and she nodded again. More slowly, this time. “And when you were dead, you went to the Forest Within? You were there, weren’t you?”
“Aye. Though I’d call it more a feeling than a forest,” Kouris murmured, bringing her fingers to her throat. “What I remember of it, anyway. It was there, I’m not doubting that, but it’s like one of those dreams that you know everything about, until you focus on it and try to remember a single detail.”
“But it wasn’t a dream. Because you were dead,” I said.
“What’re you getting at, yrval?”
“I’ve died. Lots of times now. From Katja, from the mountain… I died on the way down every time my head hit a rock and I died at the bottom. And I would’ve kept dying, if it wasn’t for Kidira. But every time it happened there was nothing. Between all the pain from healing and being hurt again, and there was… nothing, nothing,” I said, and rubbed my palms against my temples. “Just silence.”
Kouris put an arm around me and scooped me into her lap.
“Kondo-Kana said that’s what it’s called. The silence. That you hear it, one day, and that’s all you can hear. Because you know that when you die, when you’re dead for good, there’s nothing else. The reason we keep healing and coming back is because all we have is this life.”
I tucked my head under her chin.
“Now, yrval. Kondo-Kana says a lot of things, from my understanding. Talks herself in circles. It doesn’t make it true, just because she said so.”
“But I’ve seen it. And Iseul, he knew what it was too. He’d never met Kondo-Kana, had he?”
Kouris said nothing. I hadn’t expected her to be able to explain away all that Kondo-Kana had said, all that she’d believed, but the weight of her silence gnawed at me in a way Kondo-Kana’s words hadn’t managed to. What was the point of this, of any of this, if I met these people and came to love them, only to be torn away from them at the end? Throughout all of our lives, the thought of the Forest Within had been the only thing that took the edge off of death. It was greater than death; greater than all living things.
I had believed myself greater than death, too. Perhaps that was why the Forest Within didn’t want me.
“We’re both right here,” Kouris eventually murmured. “We’ll be figuring this out together, alright? Give Kondo-Kana a week and she’ll be singing another tune.”
My agreement fell flat. Her hearts were beating unevenly and it was almost a relief when she eased me to my feet. It wasn’t the time to be sitting there in uneasy contemplation when the world was still turning beyond the room full of the two of us and our heavy thoughts.
“Was on my way to see you,” Kouris said, hoisting her bag onto her back. “But that’s that. No loose ends.”
“Why’d you wait so long to tell me?” I asked.
“I’m too good at waiting and waiting,” she said, sighing. “I was worried about what you’d think. That I might be running away again.”
“You were worried about what I’d think?”
“Of course I was, yrval,” Kouris said, surprised I’d even had to ask. “You’re my… heh. ‘course I was worried.”
In spite of the clamour building outside, our goodbye was slow and drawn out. Neither of us knew what was about to unfold, and both of us ever felt better about facing the unknown together, but there came a point where we had to let go of each other.
I kissed her, tusks cool against my face, and walked her to the back of the castle. There was more movement in the castle than there had been on my walk to Kouris’ chambers; either that or I was only now paying real attention to my surroundings. Word had spread beyond Claire and Akela, and rumours were bound to be biting at their heels.
After saying my goodbyes to Sen and wishing her luck, I headed straight for Claire and Akela, glad in some selfish, twisted way that something so overwhelming had happened at that exact moment to distract me from all else the day had thrown at me. People were rushing through the corridors as though the army had gathered in one of the courtyards and half of them clipped my shoulders as I went against the current. I knew where Claire and Akela would be, more likely than not with Kidira in tow, but fell short of opening the chamber door.
Fewer people were permitted into this part of the castle and the guards only grudgingly let me up the stairs and into the restricted areas. Maybe the woman I’d told I was a necromancer had decided to believe me for the sake of having something to use against Claire, and the rumours had reached this part of the castle. Or maybe the guards were still loyal to Aren and I was putting too much thought into it.
I stopped outside of the room and rubbed at my chest. It was hot up there. Hotter than it had been in the public part of the castle, with dozens of people swarming around me. My heart beat fast and my breathing came heavily, and I wished that there was something to it but missing Katja. I slumped against the wall, barely listening to the buzz of conversation within.
I took a deep breath and could’ve laughed at myself for thinking that not knowing where Katja was at any given time was somehow worse than her being right there. She was in Felheim, marching towards Thule. Towards me.
I breathed into my hands.
Inside the chamber, Kidira said, “Stop fretting. This will not be our defeat.”
I pretended the positivity was meant for me, but it did nothing to make me any more grounded. Frost bit at the window and still, I was sweating.
I waited until the room was emptied. I didn’t realise I was sitting on the floor, back pressed to the wall, until Akela lifted me by the waist and said, “Northwood, if you are knocking, it is not loud enough! I know, I know, we are meeting and it is boring, with all the politics and strategies and having to listen to me being better than any of the other council members, it is truly a burden, but falling asleep before you are even getting into the room is rude, yes?”
