A Day of Fallen Night (The Roots of Chaos)

Blood was threading down her legs, but Glorian fought on. Since her first breath, she had been bound, fettered to something else – but no man could restrain her now, by no law, mortal or divine. Not now the holy toll was paid. Not now she was free of it. She was eighteen, and Queen of Inys.

In birthing, she was finally born.

Shieldheart, Shieldheart, Shieldheart.

A rage that was both hers and not hers pounded in her gut. She hefted a shield and swung with the sword, hacking at the beasts on Cenning Moor, still in her bloody shift. She slashed it away at the knee and kept fighting, barefoot in the mud and slaughter – daughter of bone and iron, born to be a warrior queen. When a monstrous cockerel ran at her, she mustered all the anger she had ever held, and she hacked off its head.

This was a battle to the death, yet she was utterly alive.

Shieldheart, Shieldheart, Shieldheart.

At last, a muscular arm came around her waist, wrestling her on to a horse. ‘Let me go.’ Her voice broke against her anger. ‘Let me fight—’

‘You are Glorian Shieldheart,’ a muffled voice told her. ‘You can’t die yet. Inys still needs you.’

Glorian writhed against the grip, but her body refused to be strong any longer. All she could do was cling to her sword as a helmed rider took her out of the battle, back to Hollow Crag.

Inside, the shadowed chambers wrapped her, and then she was laid in a fresh bed, blood seeping. Bourn was nearby, and her baby was gone. Wulf would get Sabran away, to chain the Nameless One again.

And so it went, on and on.

Glorian closed her eyes, her brow torching. Perhaps this was not a bed, but her bier. Inys had filled and emptied her. It was all done. Her purpose served. If she wanted, she could die.

She drifted again – in her dream, she was flying. Sister, cut your line and soar. The stream was churning, the figure in and out of sight. I wish I could. I wish I had. I wish I could wing all the way to your side.

If her sister replied, it was too quiet to hear – but another voice encroached in her stead, silencing all others. Glorian opened her eyes as it reached into Hollow Crag. The voice that had haunted her for two years.

The voice that had begun all this.

‘Shieldheart,’ it hissed, and she knew it was Fýredel.

****

Wulf rode like the Nameless One flew behind him. His horse galloped away from the thawing River Went, the hoofbeats as hard and fast as his heart. He gripped the reins with one hand and his daughter with the other.

Three wyverns were in swift pursuit.

They swooped low over the frosted grass. Wulf glanced over his shoulder and cursed. He had to lose them before he reached the barrow, or they would see him go into it.

He knew the tomb of the Inyscan princess. As a child, his family had made many visits to the Leas, and Lord Edrick had shown his children the barrow. We must know the secrets of our pasts, he had told them, to understand the future.

The drovers’ path was overgrown, passing under oaks and birches. As soon as the horse burst free of it, the wyverns were on top of them again, and when the barrow came into sight, he knew he had failed to save his daughter – not just her, but all of Inys.

Sabran was going to die in his arms.

Fog escaped his lips. His inner wrist suddenly hurt. Some force was building in his hand – a sharp point, like a shard of ice, numbing his fingers. Instinct drove that arm up, and a white bolt came forking from his palm, hitting a wyvern in the joint of its wing. Sabran went just as cold in his arms. He felt it even through her swaddling.

The wyverns screamed and swung away. Looking back at them, Wulf glimpsed it – a comet, high above Inys. Not a shooting star, but a queen of the heavens, with a long silver beam that streamed in its wake. It had appeared as if from nowhere.

Shaken, he rode on. In some tales, comets were a promise of doom, but nothing could be worse than what they had already suffered.

By the time the wyverns had wheeled about for a second attempt, only the horse remained, charging back towards the drovers’ path. As they soared after it, Wulf crawled into the barrow, the heir to Inys still snug in his arms, not knowing what in Halgalant had just happened to him.

****

Glorian dressed herself, for once. Her quilted red gambeson and dark breeches, with boots. Anything else would only make her die more slowly. Better to burn fast and bright.

Fýredel had made an offer, as she had known he would. If Shieldheart surrendered, he would lead his forces away from Hollow Crag, allowing those trapped inside to escape. They could find some other hovel to cower in. He would take the Queen of Inys as his trophy and be gone. There would be no more blood on Cenning Moor.

Glorian had always known a wyrm could bargain. Selinu the Oathkeeper had made a deal with the Nameless One. She belted on her scabbard and sheathed her sword.

‘I don’t want you to see,’ she told her ladies. ‘Stay inside.’

‘Glorian.’ Adela had not stopped weeping. ‘You can’t.’

‘I must. I have continued the bloodline of the Saint,’ Glorian said quietly. ‘That was my bounden duty as a Berethnet. The other, as a queen, is to protect my realm.’

‘You are not a wretched duty to us. You matter – for you, not just for giving us an heir,’ Julain said, her voice cracking. ‘Don’t you understand?’

Glorian set her jaw. ‘You have all been so good,’ she said, her voice a whisper. ‘The sisters a Berethnet cannot have. I will save you all a place of honour at the Great Table.’

Helisent embraced her first, with a muffled sob. They all clutched her close, and Glorian held them back, just as hard, before an ashen Florell led them away for the last time.

‘Glorian, let me go in your place,’ Marian said hoarsely. ‘Fýredel may not see the difference.’

‘It will.’ Glorian kissed her on the cheek. ‘I am so glad we reunited, Grandmother. Please take care of Sabran.’

Marian pressed a kiss to her hands, wordless with grief. Glorian hefted on her shield and turned to meet her fate.

She walked through the caverns of Hollow Crag. The survivors made way for her, some openly weeping, others grim and silent. Glorian looked straight ahead, trying to conceal her fear.

The moor was deathly in its stillness. A tomb for the unburied dead. Char and ash blew over corpses. Her remaining knights and soldiers were empty-handed, their weapons on the ground. They had all known the fight was lost when Fýredel arrived.

Glorian had almost forgotten the horror of Fýredel in the months it had been gone. Here was the very spit of the Dreadmount, waiting for her on Cenning Moor, to burn her as it burned her parents. Its creatures gave it a wide berth, heads bowed in submission.

‘You waged a fine war against Inys, Fýredel. Against the world, it seems,’ she said, trembling against her will. She prayed no one could see. ‘Let there be no more violence. Here I am.’

‘You come alone, with useless steel,’ Fýredel said. ‘No metal of the earth can stand before its purest fire.’ Its gaze flicked to the fullness of her belly. ‘You are with child. It will not live.’

Glorian mastered her expression, the way her manners tutor had trained into her. She could still feel herself bleeding.

‘If my house ends here, so be it. Kill me, if you will. Kill us both,’ she said. ‘Only leave my people be.’

‘You will not die, Shieldheart.’ Fýredel lowered its head, so its eyes looked straight into hers, two hot brands on her soul. ‘The flame of the deep earth that forged us lives in you, with your vile cold. The fire shall warp and work it. You shall bend to a new shape.’

Glorian could see her own reflection in its iron teeth. There was no divine protection. No sign from Halgalant. Fýredel was speaking in riddles, but they were a promise that she would suffer.

Mother, Father, give me courage.

All at once, Fýredel looked up. The creatures stamped and bayed. Too afraid to move so much as a finger, Glorian followed its line of sight – and saw the comet in the sky, wide and long, its tail splitting in two.

But I vow to you, this age of fire and smoke will end. A star will come at morning on the first day of spring.

Glorian jerked her attention back to the wyrm. Fýredel hauled in its breath and screamed at the sky. She dropped her shield to cover her ears, but her eyes were already back on the comet.

She watched as the second tail splintered apart. It was shedding countless spears of starlight, bright enough to see by morning, each charting a course towards the blazing world.

It will be a day of fallen night, when the heavens will part for a rain from on high.

This was it.

It must be now.

A high, wild laugh escaped her lips. Fýredel dropped its gaze back to her, as if remembering she was there. It reared for the kill, its jaws yawning wide as the neck of the Dreadmount – and then its flame died, withering back into its throat, and it blew only wind.

The wyrms will fall into a sleep, and storms will quench the embers.

‘Wretch of cold and ardent blood. Bearer of the star.’ Its eyes were still afire. ‘From the darkness comes a doom.’ A rattle of its cloven tongue. ‘We will return. Be certain, Shieldheart. When the fire rises anew, when our master stirs in the Abyss, when another wears your crown, we will return. Breathe in your ruin and your ashes. Live in fear.’

All across Inys, the creatures of the Dreadmount howled, their calls rising to fill a morn as blue as ancient ice. Fýredel opened its wings, the heralds of death. It returned to the sky.

And then it was gone.