“A surprise?”
“Considering that whenever Borte and Yeran are together, they’re at each other’s throats, yes. But also a surprise to Borte. She played it off, but I saw them arguing in the hall later. Whether or not she even knew about it, or wanted it revealed that way, she still won’t say. But she has not disputed the betrothal. Though she hasn’t embraced it, either. No day has been claimed for the wedding, even though the union would certainly ease our … strained ties to the Berlad.”
Nesryn smiled a bit. “I hope they sort it out.”
“Perhaps this war will do that for them, too.”
Kadara swept closer and closer to the wall of the Fells, the light turning thin and cold as clouds passed over the sun. They cleared the towering lip of the first peaks, soaring on an updraft high above as all of Dagul spread before them.
“Holy gods,” Nesryn whispered.
Dark gray peaks of barren rock. Thin pine trees crusting the vales deep below. No lakes, no rivers save for the occasional trickling stream.
Barely visible through the shroud of webbing over all of it.
Some webs were thick and white, choking the life from trees. Some were sparkling nets between peaks, as if they sought to catch the wind itself.
No life. No hum of insect or cry of beast. No sighing leaves or fluttering wings.
Falkan poked his head out of her pocket as they surveyed the dead land below and let out a squeak. Nesryn nearly did the same.
“Houlun was not exaggerating,” Sartaq murmured. “They have grown strong.”
“Where do we even land?” Nesryn asked. “There’s barely a safe spot to be seen. They could have taken the hatchlings and eggs anywhere.”
She combed the peaks and valleys for any sign of movement, any flicker of those sleek black bodies scuttling about. But saw nothing.
“We’ll make a pass around the territory,” Sartaq said. “Get a sense of the layout. Perhaps figure out a thing or two regarding their feeding habits.”
Gods above. “Keep Kadara high. Fly casual. If we look like we’re hunting for something, they might emerge in force.”
Sartaq whistled sharply to Kadara, who indeed soared higher, faster than her usual ascent. As if glad to rise a little farther from the shrouded territory below.
“Stay hidden, friend,” Nesryn said to Falkan, her hands shaking as she patted her breast pocket. “If they watch us from below, we’d best keep you secret until they least expect it.”
Falkan’s tiny paws tapped in understanding, and he slid back into her pocket.
They flew in idle circles for a time, Kadara occasionally diving as if in pursuit of some eagle or falcon. On the hunt for lunch, perhaps.
“That cluster of peaks,” Sartaq said after a while, pointing toward the highest point of the Fells. Like horns spearing toward the sky, two sister-peaks jutted up so close to each other they might have very well once been a single mountain. Between their clawed summits, a shale-filled pass wended away into a labyrinth of stone. “Kadara keeps looking toward it.”
“Circle it, but keep your distance.”
Before Sartaq could give the order, Kadara obeyed.
“Something is moving in the pass,” Nesryn breathed, squinting.
Kadara flapped closer, nearer to the peaks than was wise. “Kadara,” Sartaq warned.
But the ruk pumped her wings, frantic. Rushing.
Just as the thing in the pass became clear.
Racing over the shale, bobbing and flapping fuzz-lined wings …
A hatchling.
Sartaq swore. “Faster, Kadara. Faster.” The ruk needed no encouragement.
The hatchling was squawking, those too-small wings flailing as it tried and failed to lift from the ground. It had broken from the pine trees that flowed right to the edge of the pass, and now aimed for the center of the maze of rock.
Nesryn unslung her bow and nocked an arrow into place, Sartaq doing the same behind her. “Not a sound, Kadara,” Sartaq warned, just as the ruk opened her beak. “You will alert them.”
But the hatchling was screeching, its terror palpable even from the distance.
Kadara caught a wind and flew.
“Come on,” Nesryn breathed, arrow aimed at the woods, at whatever horrors the hatchling had escaped, undoubtedly barreling after it.
The baby ruk neared the broadest part of the pass mouth, balking at the wall of stone ahead. As if it knew that more waited within.
Trapped.
“Sweep in, cut through the pass, and sail out,” Sartaq ordered the ruk, who banked right, so steeply Nesryn’s abdomen strained with the effort to keep in the saddle.
Kadara leveled out, dropping foot by foot toward the hatchling now twisting about, screaming toward the sky as it beheld the ruk rushing in.
“Steady,” Sartaq commanded. “Steady, Kadara.”
Nesryn kept her arrow trained on the labyrinth of rock ahead, Sartaq twisting to cover the forest behind. Kadara sailed closer and closer to the shale-coated pass, to the grayish fuzzy hatchling now holding so still, waiting for the salvation of the claws that Kadara unfurled.
Thirty feet. Twenty.
Nesryn’s arm strained to keep the arrow drawn.
A wind shoved at Kadara, knocking her sideways, the world tilting, light shimmering.
Just as Kadara leveled out, just as her talons opened wide to scoop up the hatchling, Nesryn realized what the shimmering was. What the shift in angle revealed ahead.
“Look out!”
The scream shattered from her throat, but too late.
Kadara’s talons closed around the hatchling, plucking it up from the ground right as she swept up through the pass peaks.
Right into the mammoth web woven between them.
42
The hatchling had been a trap.
It was the last thought Nesryn had as Kadara crashed into the web—the net woven between the two peaks. Built not to catch the wind, but ruks.
She only had the sense of Sartaq throwing his body into hers, anchoring her into the saddle and holding tight as Kadara screamed.
Snapping and shimmering and rock; shale and gray sky and golden feathers. Wind howling, the hatchling’s piercing cry, and Sartaq’s bellow.
Then twisting, slamming into stone so hard the impact sang through her teeth, her bones. Then falling, tumbling, Kadara’s restrained body curving, curving as Sartaq was curled over Nesryn, shielding that hatchling in her talons from the final impact.
Then the boom. And the bounce—the bounce that snapped the leather straps on the saddle. Still tied to it, they were still tied together as they soared off Kadara’s body, Nesryn’s bow scattering from her hand, her fingers clasping on open air—
Sartaq pivoted them, his body a solid wall around hers as Nesryn realized where the sky was, where the pass floor was—
He roared as they struck the shale, as he kept her atop him, taking the full brunt of the impact.
For a heartbeat, there was only the skittering trickle of shifting shale and the thud of crumbling rock off the pass walls. For a heartbeat, she could not remember where her body was, her breath was—
Then a scrape of wing on shale.
Nesryn’s eyes snapped open, and she was moving before she had the words to name her motions.
A cut slashed down her wrist, caked with small rocks and dust. She didn’t feel it, barely noticed the blood as she blindly fumbled for the straps to the saddle, snapping them free, panting through her teeth as she managed to lift her head, to dare to look—
He was dazed. Blinking up at the gray sky. But alive, breathing, blood sliding down his temple, his cheek, his mouth …
She sobbed through her teeth, her legs at last coming free, allowing her to roll over to get to his own, to the tangled bits of leather shredded between them.
Sartaq was half buried in shale. His hands sliced up, but his legs—
“Not broken,” he rasped. “Not broken.” It was more to himself than her. But Nesryn managed to keep her fingers steady as she freed the buckles. The thick riding leathers had saved his life, saved his skin from being flayed off his bones. He’d taken the impact for her, moved her so that he’d hit it first—
She clawed at the shale covering his shoulders and his upper arms, sharp rock cutting into her fingers. The leather strap at the end of her braid had come free in the impact, and her hair now fell about her face, half blocking her view of the forest behind and rock around them. “Get up,” she panted. “Get up.”