Chapter 1
Casidhe heard the stranger's approach. Louder than the rain that pelted the roof of Iverling manor. Quieter than the thunder that shook the very foundations beneath her.
She didn't descend the stairs as she heard the hoofbeats and the clatter of wheels on the cobblestones outside. No, Casidhe remained in the shadows of the landing, watching the darkened foyer below, anticipating the knock or the bang or the turn of the handle that she knew would soon come.
After nearly twenty years of this routine, she knew what would happen once the stranger had entered her manor. They would shut the door against the storm before realizing that they were surrounded by lavish beauty. Even in the dim light, it would be hard for him to miss the grand chandelier or the twin marble staircases leading to the second floor.
None of the intruders ever climbed the stairs. Maybe they shied away from the dense shadows of the high landing. Maybe the hair on the backs of their necks rose to alert them that somebody watched them. But every intruder opted to cross the foyer and try the handles of the double doors that opened onto the rest of the first floor. They never made it past those doors. Those doors were always locked.
And when they turned to finally brave the path up the marble stairs, she was always waiting.
The wheels of the cart stopped whining. The steady drumbeat of the rain was joined by the sound of hurried footsteps.
Casidhe rolled her neck and pushed her cascade of raven curls over a shoulder. She took a deep breath in and as she exhaled the door opened.
As the breath left her body, a gust of wind rattled the chandelier and rustled the skirt of her dress. Perhaps something less dramatic would have been a better choice for today. Oh well, she could make as much noise as she wished as soon as...there.
The young man that had stumbled into her foyer and shut the door behind him, unknowingly locking himself inside.
Perhaps this time would be different.
She was bored and, after all, the hour was late. Her time was running short.
She needed to make her move soon or she would trade this prison of marble and brocade and light for one of bars and damp and decay.
This young man now wiping the rain from his eyes could be her ticket back into the world. He could be her ticket back to the skies. If he didn't die of fright first.
Casidhe took a step forward, her dark slippers noiseless on the marble.
Then another.
Both eyes on the young man backing towards the door as those full skirts rustled with each assured step downwards.
Yes, now he was probably figuring it out. He wasn't alone. Now was a good time to introduce herself.
"The door is locked."
His eyes snapped up to the patch of shadows she still clung to.
He didn't reply.
Casidhe scented the air but could not find a trace of fear on the young man.
Peculiar.
"Who's there?" The young man asked, hesitant but still not afraid.
"Besides you?" Casidhe asked as she reached the foot of the stairs.
No answer.
She strolled forward from complete shadow into partial gloom, her eyes never left his face as he took her in. As he stared straight into the face of Killdalla's most ruthless spy and feared assassin(As he stared into the face of the ruthless assassin that Killdalla feared more than any other), the young man frowned.
And it was in that moment Casidhe knew he would be just like her other prisoners.
For his eyes went straight to the place all their eyes went.
Straight to the dark wings that had once been her pride and joy.
The wings that marked her as the killer she was.
Clang.
Clouds are blocking out the sun.
Clang.
He struck the anvil again.
Aamon left hours ago.
Hammer up.
Down.
Clang.
There's going to be a storm.
Clang.
He'll be trapped in the woods.
Clang.
There are wolves in the woods.
Clang.
Worse.
"I pay you to mend my hardware, not reduce it to scrap!"
Brecken nearly dropped the hammer. The piece of metal he'd been pounding was not reduced to scrap but beaten just enough that he'd have to heat it and start over.
"Mind's not on your work today," said the gruff blacksmith.
Brecken merely glanced out the window towards the ominous cloud [banks] now enshrouding the entire valley
The blacksmith nodded.
"He knows how to handle the woods, boy," he said and crossed to his work bench where he sat on a stool that should've collapsed under his bulk, unrolled a leather wallet full of tools, and began sorting through them.
"It's not the woods," Brecken said as his eyes landed on a wall of iron traps, "it's the things you find inside them."
That wall had been lined with traps since Brecken's first visit to the smithy. Traps for foxes, wolves, bears, and one much bigger than any bear trap Brecken had ever seen. He'd roamed the first mile or so of the woods as a child, mapping out the little creeks and gullies, planning excursions further and further in.
When he was twelve, his older brother Aamon had brought him to Teller's blacksmith shop and apprenticed him there. When Teller had explained what creature that trap was meant to catch, Brecken's woodland adventures had come to an abrupt halt.
He wasn't the only one in his little town who was kept out of the woods by the stories told at night around roaring fires.
Aamon was the only one who ever left. Once a year, for around two weeks, a cart of Brecken's finest creations in tow. He always returned from the city markets with an empty cart and a full wallet, so Brecken never bothered to question the safety of the trips.
Until this year.
The heavy autumn storms weren't meant to start for another month.
And once they struck, travel up into the foothills and crags that surrounded the little town of Loxos would be nearly impossible.
Thunder rumbled over the valley.
Brecken took a long look out the front window, let out a huff of breath, and undid the fastenings of his filthy forge apron.
"I'm going after him," he said.
Teller turned on his stool.
"You've still got an hour's work to do here. And you don't need to be running off into the hills before a storm. Your brother's sensible, he'll be fine. But you go out there and you'll only make his situation worse."
Brecken crossed to a rack by the door and hung his apron on one of the pegs. "Aamon's all the family I've got and I'm not leaving him alone in the woods."
The blacksmith huffed a sigh and shook his head.
Brecken searched wildly for a reply before saying "I'll work my next holiday if I have to."
A tense moment passed in which the blacksmith stared into Brecken's determined eyes.
"Your next holliday," he finally said.
Brecken just gave his instructor a curt nod, turned on his heel, and left the shop.
Outside, summer's warmth had given way to the brisk winds and biting chills of autumn. The shift was a relief after the stifling heat of the smithy, but it was still too damned early for this kind of weather.
He tried not to make eye contact with the shoppers and venders he passed on his way to the smallest store in the village. It was a long walk and he needed to make it without stopping to talk. He ignored the calls of "fresh bread!" "eggs, two pewter marks per dozen!" And "fresh goat cheese!" Although he did have to make a concerted effort not to gag at the mere mention of the third item.
The bookshop was tucked away into the farthest corner of the town square. Brecken passed it often and once, years ago, he'd been the place's most frequent visitor.
That was all before he'd started his apprenticeship.
Before the townspeople began to notice that the tools Brecken mended never broke again. The traps he made always caught prey. The knives and daggers he sharpened never dulled. When Brecken was fourteen, Aamon found the plans for a suit of armor and suggested he try to make it. Teller allowed him to use the smithy in exchange for working extra hours.
After several months of failed attempts, Brecken produced his first suit of armor. Armor that no blade could pierce.
If there was any doubt that Brecken possessed a magical talent, it was erased with the creation of that armor. Aamon had suggested that Brecken create another and another after that. When summer was coming to an end, Aamon took the armor to a market in a city four days ride away from Loxos. He returned with enough money to support their simple lifestyle for nearly the entire year.
In the following months, Brecken's designs became more intricate and the skeptics in the village raised their voices. A fifteen-year-old boy, with one foot in always in the bookshop and both eyes trained on the mountains was an oddity.
But a boy who was gifted with magic, a boy who used that magic to create tools of war...that was a danger.
Brecken knew something had to change. And he had taken one look at the sketchbook filled with designs for embossed scabbards and scrolled plating and decided that his visits to Greyson's little bookshop would have to end.
From then on, he kept his eyes away from the mountains, from the sky, and the people's opinion changed with him.
Brecken became a young man who "worked hard at his trade and just happened to have a talent for metal work." Safe.
The ring of a bell sounded in the shop as he opened the door.
The scent hit him like a hammer on an anvil. He'd forgotten how good the smell of parchment paper was. He inhaled deeply through his nose but kept his features impassive as he surveyed the familiar shelves filled with books of all shape, size, and material. The tapestry of the Great Battle that hung from an empty wall. The patchwork of paintings that lined the plaster walls above the book cases. Familiar.
And for his own safety, forbidden.
"Good choice."
Brecken heard the bright voice before he spotted its owner, curled up in her usual armchair, a book open on her lap and a cup of tea on the table beside her.
"And what choice would that be?" Brecken asked as the door shut behind him.
"Pretending you don't love it in here," she said, her eyes drifting back to the book.
"I haven't been here in years, Rhoe," Brecken said, "I was just looking around."
"And what might you be looking for?" Asked Greyson, the shop's longtime owner.
Brecken turned away from Rhoe to find the old man emerging from his back room with a stack of books in one hand and his opinions in the other.
Greyson was an outsider, a man from one of the eastern coastal cities.
Even thirty years after moving to Loxos, Greyson still dressed in the bright colors, rich fabrics, and crisp fashions of that city. Fashions shipped to him along with new books for the shop. Brecken had always liked Greyson, but when he stopped coming to the bookshop he'd also stopped speaking with the old man. When he spotted Greyson in public, he had a disappointed air about him.
And Brecken understood the bookkeeper thought him a waste of potential, but Brecken's choice to give up Greyson's books and maps wasn't just to keep his reputation with the people spotless.
He told the old man he just needed a map of the surrounding area and scanned the paintings above the bookshelves.
Paintings he'd memorized as boy.
He didn't have trouble finding the one he most hated. An army of humans, their array of armor and weapons paired with magic rods and spell books struck a discordant harmony with the field of darkness and ash they marched through. Sorcerers. Those who were not born with magic in their blood but who claimed it for themselves, who tore pieces of it from the world that had not given it to them freely. And the magic in their spell books was of death and decay.
After that army of sorcerers had assembled, marched as crusaders for justice, and fallen in a final battle, the practice of sorcery had been outlawed in settlements across the continent. And only twenty years since that great final battle, the people were overly cautious around magic of all kinds and in this isolated town, many were hesitant around books of any kind. Brecken had given up Greyson's shop for one reason and one reason only: that he would never be accused of sorcery because of a gift he had been born with.
"Why a map of the woods?" Rhoe asked, her question a blessed distraction from the mural.
"Aamon left this morning. Before the storm started," Brecken said, and turned away from the image completely as he tried to erase it from his mind.
Rhoe just raised an eyebrow and said "and you're going out into the woods?"
Brecken sighed and took a seat in an armchair across from her.
"I'm not going out of desire," Brecken said.
He watched Rhoe for her reaction.
"You would've, once," she said.
Brecken shook his head. They weren't having this conversation. Not today.
"You know the cities are different. Morah was different. People there understood that men and women are intellectual equals... and somebody gifted in magic could enjoy books without being labeled a sorcerer."
Brecken opened his mouth to say something but she cut him off.
"I know that's why you stopped coming here a year before I came to Loxos. Don't even try to deny it," she said.
Greyson crossed the shop and deposited the map on the table beside Rhoe's tea. He batted away Brecken's thank you with a "don't mention it," and disappeared into his back room.
Brecken collected the book and stood. He ran his thumb along its aging spine and shook his head.
"I had better go pay for this," Brecken said, gesturing to the map.
Rhoe nodded, her brown and gold waves of hair catching the light of the comforting candles that lined the shop walls.
"I'll see you tomorrow, then?" She asked.
"Of course," Brecken said, and with that he wove his way through the shelves towards Greyson's back room.
He made no attempt to speak to Greyson beyond the question of the book's cost and had already completed the transaction and turned to leave the store when Greyson said "I heard every word you and Miss Annendor exchanged just now."
"And our conversation is none of your business," Brecken said, and turned back to face the bookkeeper.
A smile tugged at the corner of his lip and a light danced in his eye. "You used to come running in here, dirt on your knees all scraped up because you fell from a tree or tripped into a ditch. Insisting you'd been on adventures and that you'd been wounded fighting dragons or kelpie or the gods know what else," Greyson said.
Brecken just stared.
He's mad. He lives in the same daydream I used to. I know who I am and there is no secret part of my childhood trying to get back out into the world again.
Aloud, Brecken said "I loved those games, but there's no place for them in any but a child's world."
With that, he turned on his heel and made for the door.
Once again, the old man's voice stopped him.
"What would you know of the world, when you cannot see beyond the walls of this village and the confines of your own temperament?"
Brecken didn't answer this time, he strode for the door and stepped out into the street.
The gust of wind that met him was strong enough that he had to pull the door shut behind him, rather than letting it close on its own. He looked down the street the way he had come and found that the ease of the late afternoon shoppers had turned to anxious hurry. The storm clouds had darkened tenfold and, on the horizon, he could see heavy rains begin to fall. Once that rain reached Loxos, it could have him trapped in the valley within an hour.
He didn't have time to give the book to Teller, it would have to wait until he got back.
Brecken turned towards the outskirts of town. His plan was simple: get out of town, find Aamon, bring him home.
They could survive on hunting and the small wage from Brecken's apprentiship until spring. Then Aamon could take the armor into the city. The gold marks weren't worth the risk of his brother's life. Not when Aamon had left home with minimal provisions and no winter clothing.
But as he jogged away from Greyson's shop, Brecken couldn't shake the old man's words from his head. He agreed that he knew little of the outside world. The world of Loxos was safe and familiar and it had been his home since he was just over a year old.
And now he was racing home to his cottage on the outskirts of town. Preparing to leave.
It's only for a short time. You get Aamon and you get home.
But despite his self-reassurance, the knowledge that he was leaving the valley unsettled something in his core.
And for the first time in years, Brecken's eyes turned upwards. Towards the sky, towards the mountains.
And he could have sworn they looked back.