Page 48

I squint up toward them both, not trusting myself yet to sit up straight.

“I saw…I understand how the Divhs found us. Mirador summoned them, yes, but they were ready to be summoned. They’ve always been ready.

They’re tied to this land and to the people who occupy it—whoever they may be.

That’s where it all begins and ends, with the people who take ownership of the land.

We are their anchor and connection to the Fated Plane.

There was another society that lived here well before us, who made their homes in the same places where we eventually founded our current houses, at least in the middle of the Protectorate and to the north, south, and west.”

I swing my gaze to Tennet. “Our houses are newer, up in the mountains of the east, but there were people there before us, in the Shattered City.”

“That was destroyed in the Great Conflict.” He nods, but I shake my head.

“I don’t think so. I think it was destroyed long before then.

The explorers of the Imperium may have gone through that city, or they may never have seen it at all, at least not until after they began building the Protectorate.

But there was a reason why no one rebuilt there.

It had been ruined long before our original arrival in this place, its treasures lost or buried, waiting for someone to find them. ”

“Well, the army of the Imperium should have, surely.”

“Except they weren’t even an army.” I shake my head, seeing it all again in my mind’s eye.

“The scouting party that the Imperium sent out was maybe only thirty riders. Some men, some women. It wasn’t the grand army that we were led to believe.

It wasn’t an army at all, and some died along the way—though most of them survived, I think.

They kept pushing west, exploring, raiding, but it wasn’t like they were stealing from anybody who was going to object.

There was nobody here. Whoever had lived in this land before us had died out centuries before.

Maybe millennia. All that they had left behind were a few simple treasures. ”

I straighten a little more, scrubbing my face to order my thoughts.

“One of those treasures was a crown with two flaring sides. It’s got to be the crown of wings, Fortiss.

It did exist, a relic of some bygone civilization.

It existed and the Imperial party found it.

” I draw in an unsteady breath. “And once their leader put it on his head—that’s when they realized there was more to this land than they expected.

I think that’s what gave them the ability to call their first Divhs. ”

Tennet stares at me. “The crown of wings—that doesn’t actually exist.”

“Yeah, well…maybe it did at one point?”

“That’s not right, though.” Fortiss scowls.

“All the old records are consistent on this point. There were people here when the Imperial army rode in to conquer this territory—actual people , not some lost civilization. Holdings and villages that welcomed them and let them pass. There was no obstruction at all until the creatures of the Western Realms stopped them in their tracks. Then the Great Conflict took place, and our army protected those who were here and defeated their enemies, and power was gratefully, easily transferred.”

He grimaces as he finishes the recitation of history that’s been taught to all of us, even me, reaching up to rub his jaw.

“It doesn’t really hold up when you think about it, does it?

Even if Imperial riders were allowed to pass peaceably by, even if we did prove instrumental in protecting the locals from some enormous threat, that doesn’t translate into a small army suddenly being granted the right to rule the entire land. There has to be more to it than that.”

“More…or, more likely less,” Tennet agrees.

“If this traveling band was able to somehow connect with the Divhs and conquer the skrill or whatever in the blighted path they are, how much easier for them to do that if it was just a small band of warriors and a mighty army of Divhs? Nobody to protect, nobody to defend, nobody to corral into doing things your way. It’s literally like the Tournament of Gold all over again.

An exhibition match between two foes off in some separate space.

Whatever happens in that battle after it is done is a matter for the bards and historians to craft, because there’s nobody around to gainsay them. ”

“And if there’s only thirty people whose stories have to stay straight, then that’s easier too.

” I squint off into the empty plains that my mind keeps wanting to plant with grass and trees, a glimmering lake in the distance.

“But how could that be possible? How could we have grown so much so quickly? We are an enormous thriving country—all of that grew from thirty people?”

“That’s at least easier to explain.” Fortiss waves that away.

“We have well-documented accounts of the Imperium sending more settlers after they learned of the threat to the west and the need to create a Protectorate to ensure the safety of the Imperium. It wouldn’t take many settlers to build—a few hundred here, another hundred there, and so on, all of them loyal to the Imperium, all of them routinely sending back tithes and tribute. Self-sufficient but loyal.”

“And they would be loyal too,” Tennet says. “It would serve no one for the Imperium to explore too closely how good we had it here—or to learn that the crown of wings was real. Because if it was, it should have been sent to the Imperator at the beginning.”

“Well, fair,” I agree. “But the Divhs could have shared all of this a long time ago. They are the keepers of the Protectorate’s past; all we had to do is ask for them to explain it.”

“You say that, but not every Divh is as easily understood as yours,” Fortiss says with a wry smile.

“I…” I blow out a breath, but he’s not wrong. “I think it’s because I won the tournament. I, um, earned the winged crown. Because the things I saw…” I blink, suddenly recalling another image.

“There’s more, Fortiss,” I say, straightening, and his focus trains on me, sharp and earnest. He trusts me, I suddenly realize, maybe more than anyone he’s ever trusted in his life.

“Those talonstones that Daggar mentioned. They’re a real thing.

Each of the warriors had them, and each buried them in the bedrock of their new houses, from the First all the way to the Twelfth—in the villages, too.

We never use them this way, but in the beginning, they were sort of homing points for the Divhs, separate of their warriors.

And there’s a lot of them—or there were, anyway?—”

“From talonstone to grounding stone,” he murmurs.

“They’re the same thing. One you carry, one you bury in the ground or in a building.

Rihad didn’t have to put them anywhere to direct the skrill—they already exist in each of the great houses—and probably the cornerstones of the villages surrounding them as well.

All the skrill needed was for him to summon them…

which he did, it seems, though they took their time in answering. ”

“Or maybe they stole some of the talonstones from Daggar’s vault,” I point out.

Fortiss winces. “Or that. But for them to come to the First House, to attack the lords of the other houses…Rihad had to have been behind that somehow. Even if he never woke to do it.”

“You really think Rihad is that far ahead of us?” Tennet protests. “That he knows this much about what’s buried here at the Eighth?”

“Not all of it,” says Fortiss. “Not the Divhs’ part in all this, I don’t think.

Rihad never considered the Divhs to be any sort of partner in his path to glory, only an army of beasts to lead gloriously into battle.

This link between the talonstones, Divhs, and the crown—that’s true partnership.

It’s connection and communication, not domination.

Rihad may have figured out the piece with the talonstones as a directional tool for the skrill, but how Mirador originally used the crown to summon the Divhs?

I don’t think so. And if he doesn’t know that, there’s probably more about the crown he doesn’t know. ”

“The crown that doesn’t exist anymore,” I say, a little bitterly.

Fortiss’s gaze swings to me. “The Divhs would never have told us this if we didn’t ask. That rule seems inviolate. Yet nobody thought to ask. Nobody thought to rise up and challenge everything we thought we knew, not realizing that there was so much more out there than we could even grasp.”

“Some tried,” I counter, thinking of the Savasci. “But they couldn’t get far. We’re the ones with the army of giant Divhs. That would tend to shut down a lot of conversation.”

Fortiss nods. “Tennet—go wake up Nazar and Caleb. If we can find some of these talonstones and use them to help us travel, those two will be the ones make the attempt. Talia, come with me. Lord Daggar was pretty remarkably clear on where the vault was that houses those stones and some of the ancient books. We need to go there, now.”

I squint at him. “You really think he’s going to allow us to go roam around his house unaccompanied in broad daylight? Even if they don’t know exactly what they have?”

Fortiss blows out a heavy breath. “Well…fair. But we need to act soon. Tonight, I think. Something’s felt off since the moment we hit the plains in front of this house.

And if it’s simply this supply of talonstones and maybe the actual crown of wings sitting buried in a chamber somewhere, waiting for its rightful owner to claim it… ”

He meets our gazes steadily—first Tennet’s and then, for a longer beat, mine. “Then tonight, we begin a new dawn for the Protectorate.”