“Garrett,” Athan wanted to argue, but he felt as lost and afraid as Garrett looked. “I have to try.”
“I know.” Garrett took in a slow breath to calm himself. “But, you can’t go run off and save the girl until you save yourself, so we are going to Orynthis. Once you are no longer on the brink of death and can walk five steps without collapsing, I swear to you, Athan, I will do everything in my power to help you get Dnara back.”
The conviction in Garrett’s voice gave Athan little room to argue the man’s intent. In all honesty, Athan knew he had little chance of getting into the Red Keep, even if the room wasn’t spinning around him and he didn’t have to fight for every breath. Left with little choice, Athan sank back against the pillows as tears stung his eyes and threatened to fall.
Dnara was once more alone, imprisoned by stone walls and trapped within a collar, and he was on his way to Orynthis. “Why Orynthis?”
Garrett fussed with one of the pillows behind Athan’s head then dabbed a rogue tear from Athan’s cheek with a silk handkerchief. “Phineaus says he knows someone who can help, someone who knows about how magic used to be before the blight began devouring it along with everything else.”
“What do you mean, the blight is devouring magic?” Athan asked with an unsuccessful attempt to sit back up, but Garrett shushed his question and slipped an object into his gasp.
His fingers felt along an embossed leather cover and a soft woven scarf. Holding it up, he found a book in his hand, around which was wrapped Dnara’s scarf. The cover had an embossed design, a rune he’d never seen before, and script in a langue he couldn’t read.
“I don’t understand,” he said, looking to Garrett for answers.
“We found it in your pack. Phineaus says the script is a dead language, not spoken in over a thousand years. So, of course, being a man of many talents,” Garrett rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, as if it pained him to admit as much. “He could decipher enough to know that this word on the cover, here, is Dnara, and it was written by her keeper, Ishkar.”
“Ishkar.” Just saying the name made Athan’s blood heat and the knife in his chest slither in more sharply. Athan sucked in a deep breath to calm himself, and as he did, the knife settled back near a rib in a position that at least allowed him to breathe.
Athan touched the scarf, smiling at its embroidered green leaves and yellow sunberries. “If it’s hers, then perhaps we shouldn’t let Phineaus decipher any more of it.”
Garrett set his hand on the book, then gently turned it over vertically in Athan’s grasp. “It seems, my friend, Ishkar didn’t just write it for her.”
Athan stared at the back cover, now flipped so it became a new front cover. The rune on it was the same, but inverted, with the joining point in the circle on the bottom instead of the top. Written at the bottom below the rune, in the script of common Carnathian, were two words. Athan Ateiros.
With shaking fingers, Athan opened the cover, and Ishkar’s words were waiting in handwritten ink.
‘By all accounts, you should despise my name by the time this book finds its way into your hands. My pen wishes so desperately to spill ink across the page in all it wants to tell you. But, as with all stories, I believe it is best to start at the beginning. So, please, be patient, and allow me to tell you a tale that begins well before your birth, before the blight began devouring magic from this world, and before a dragon made an ill-fated deal with a raven.’
41
“Stop!”
After riding silently behind Serenthel for what seemed like an eternity, unable to think, to speak or loosen the tight hold around his waist, Naomi’s shout burst from her chest with surprising command. Serenthel startled at the sound, and his great elk, Forfolyn, slowed to a trot before stopping completely. Naomi took in a deep breath of road dust and forced her fingers to untangle from the grip they held on Serenthel’s clothing. With ungraceful effort, she slid off Forfolyn’s high back and stumbled to the ground. On shaking legs, she began walking in the direction from whence they came, back towards Ka’veshi.
“My lady?” Serenthel called after her, his Elvan elegance striking the wrong chord up Naomi’s spine and quickening her pace along the narrow dirt road. Behind her, his boots lightly touched the soil as he dismounted the elk. “Where are you going?”
Naomi’s fist clenched the strap of the bag she’d been given by her only one true friend, Adibe, before he’d sent her away. “Home.”
Serenthel pursued. “But, Adibe said-”
“I don’t care what that old fool said!” Her legs pumped harder as Serenthel’s long strides effortlessly caught up to her angry march. “Most of what he said didn’t make any sense!”
“But, you saw the state of Ka’veshi as we left,” Serenthel argued.
Naomi hadn’t seen much, truth be told, as she rode behind Serenthel through the streets of Ka’veshi in a rush for the city’s north gate. She’d hidden within the confines of her cloak’s hood, shying away from a reality spiraling out of her control and denying the tears as they’d blurred her vision. She’d heard the yelling, though, and the explosions. She’d smelled the smoke, even if she’d been too afraid to look back at the fire.
Her fear turned into self-directed anger at having been such a coward. “So? I’ve survived in Ka’veshi just fine for sixteen summers. Guild spats come and go. They are part of life in the city, but
