Page 13 of Silverbow (The Godsung Saga #1)

six

Liam

L iam would never need to hold the Testing rod again. Not even the fat raindrops that pelted Ryerson House could dampen his relief. His da peered over his shoulder at his papers, his own relief plain on his face as he clapped him on the back.

“Keep that close, son.”

Liam nodded, folding the parchment into the neat little square he’d watched his da fold time and time again, tucking it safely into his breast pocket.

Lord Ryerson stomped down into the cellar to retrieve a cask of cider, hard after a winter’s fermentation. His da tapped the cask and poured, beaming all the while as he doled out goblets. One sat untouched on the table. Lightning flashed, but still Enya hadn’t come in from the porch.

“Is she alright?” He asked no one in particular.

Lord Ryerson nodded, but a crease formed in his brow. “Just a bit rattled.”

Liam frowned at his cider. He’d never known much to rattle Enya. She usually took the Testing stoically, though he supposed Louissa Adler would haunt his nightmares for days to come. Terrifying woman. And that teapot. Liam wasn’t sure he could ever drink tea again.

The door finally opened in the hall, letting in a blast of damp air with it.

Enya shuffled into the drawing room, her face pale and pinched, but she gave him a smile that set his heart stuttering.

She sank onto the sofa and accepted the tea Mistress Ashill prodded toward her.

Enya, it seemed, did not share his new trouble with tea.

With grins all around, the Lord of Ryerson House raised his cup high.

“Never in my life have I been so glad to see the backs of men, as when these blasted wielders come. In just a year’s time, we’ll be celebrating another final Testing, with no need to ever see that gods forsaken rod again. This one is for you, lad.”

“Here here,” Marwar growled.

Griff and his da clapped. Enya said nothing. She just stared into her tea like it held an answer to some question he didn’t understand.

Liam bumped his knee against hers. “Wanna see it?” He asked softly.

She nodded, setting her cup aside and wrapping her arms around her middle.

Liam fumbled the parchment from the his pocket and smoothed the parchment open to show her.

In letters set by a press, the parchment declared the bearer possessed no wielding gift, granting rights to move freely about Estryia.

In a tidy hand below was written his name, his name day, and the color of his hair and eyes.

Stamped at the bottom of the page, beside Westforks No.

7, was the royal seal and the intricate stamp of the scribemaster, embossed with his initials.

“How did it start?” Enya asked suddenly. “People just let Pallas Davolier steal their children?” For the Testing was a creating of the king’s.

Liam looked up at his da, who paused thumbing tobacco into his pipe. Halos of blue smoke were already ringing the heads of the lord and his Master of Arms. A look passed between the men, but Lord Ryerson took the pipe from his teeth and leveled a long look at his daughter.

“The Testing rod was invented by a wielder at the school in Artelaia in the years after Ryland’s Rebellion.”

Liam leaned forward intently. No one ever spoke of the Testing rod.

“With the elves of Eastwood gone, the intermingling of blood stopped. Fewer wielders were born every year. It was designed to help them find the spark in students they might otherwise overlook. Of course, then, the students could choose whether or not to join one of the great schools, but most did.

“For two hundred years, it was a scholar’s tool, and children clamored to hold the rod. When Pallas Davolier seized the Haarstrond Throne, he decided he wanted the gifts contained . The collars were invented. He chose out his trusted few, and they set to work. ”

“The Silver Night,” Marwar muttered, the name sounding like a curse.

“A dangerous name. One never to utter where someone might hear.” He gave the Master of Arms a pointed look.

“They swept all three schools in one brutal, coordinated attack. The scholars were the first killed or collared, leaving their pupils mostly defenseless. By dawn, Pallas Davolier had an army of wielders no one would dare to challenge. And then they were lining us all up, taking our names, passing the rod, issuing papers, bah.” He waved his pipe, the smoke trailing off like his words.

“What happened to the schools?” Enya asked.

Her father shrugged. “Abandoned, I suppose. There’s no need for learning when what Pallas Davolier desires can be taught through the leash.”

“And what is it the king desires?”

“To build the greatest army on the continent, of course,” Liam said.

“A dragon isn’t enough?” Enya asked.

“To sit a throne that isn’t his?” Her father challenged.

Mistress Ashill hissed a warning. “Now who’s uttering things they shouldn’t?”

“Drulougan might be the biggest dragon in the world, but a single dragon is not enough to hold the Haarstrond Throne. Not if the people rose. But who will rise to face an army of wielders with no free will? Some of them, their own children?”

“What about the elves?” Liam asked. “Won’t they do anything to stop it?”

Marwar snorted. “Amiven didn’t even help his own brother when Eastwood called for aid.”

“The elves of Oyamor never thought well of mixing human and elven blood,” Lord Ryerson said levelly. “The gods chose the elves, not mortal men, and they thought no good would come of it. They are unlikely to save us from ourselves.”

“What about the elves of Eastwood?” Enya asked.

Liam scratched at his jaw. Even before the Dragon’s Dream, Eastwood had been a bastion of equality and peace, a dream of its own tucked in the forest beneath Tuminzar.

“Eastwood is nothing but ash.”

“But the demi-elves?”

Her father took a long puff of his pipe. “Too few, too scattered, and too broken. ”

When Mistress Ashill finally summoned everyone to the table, a feast as great as could be mustered short of a Harvest Day crop had been laid out. Over a hot meal and more cider, Ryerson House rejoiced as the rain cleansed away the turmoil of the Testing.

When they were sufficiently stuffed to bursting, they shuffled back into the drawing room as the storm raged outside.

Griff sat on a stool by the fire and pulled his flute from its worn leather case.

Gnarled fingers working the valves as he played The Ferryman’s Oar and Goodman Abel’s Wife .

Liam’s da tapped a foot along to the tune, and when Griff paused to catch his breath, the house clapped. Everyone but Enya.

“Perhaps,” Lord Ryerson said slowly. “Perhaps Enya would favor us with a tune?”

Liam knew Enya only suffered her rare piano lessons to appease her father, and she never practiced, but sometimes, with enough goading, she would play for them.

She’d likely skin him alive if she knew how much he enjoyed her playing, fumbled keys and all.

Especially the fumbled keys that made her scrunch her face in consternation.

“I…I can’t,” she murmured.

“Come on, En,” Liam pleaded.

She shook her head.

“Just one song.”

“No!” It was sharp, frantic, and it made Liam sit back. Her arms were wrapped around her middle like a vice, her face still pinched and pale. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” Her father’s question was as probing as his gaze.

“I…” Her jaw worked. “My hand. I can’t.”

Her hand was fine earlier. He’d held it in the yard. Liam grabbed for the wrist she tried to hide. She sighed and let him turn her palm upright. Mistress Ashill gasped. Where skin callused by long days in the stable had been this afternoon, now stretched a raw, red burn dotted with oozing blisters.

“What is that?” Liam hissed. “That wasn’t there before…”

Before the Testing.

Silver rimmed her eyes as she blinked up at him. “It wasn’t hot when you touched it?”

Hot? Light, it was cold.

She had hesitated when she passed it to him. Had she been afraid it would burn him, or that he would betray her? Liam suddenly wished he’d eaten less .

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Mistress Ashill snapped, bounding to her feet.

“I didn’t want to worry you.”

Too late for that now.

“What does it mean?” She asked her father, a note of desperation in her voice.

Liam looked at the faces that peered at her. They didn’t know. That was plain to see.

***

Arawelo pinned her ears as Liam let himself into her stall. He held his peace offering out in his palm and yelped when his whole hand disappeared into the mare’s mouth with a sharp scrape of her teeth.

“Demon spawn,” he muttered, wiping his hand on his trousers.

Arawelo watched him pointedly as she crushed the peppermint candy between her teeth. Any other time, Enya would have laughed, but she didn’t look up from where she sat with her face buried in her knees.

Liam sank down into the straw next to her and let his knee fall against hers.

When the quiet stretched long enough that Arawelo returned to her hay, he reached into his pocket and took out his knife.

He turned the piece of white pine he’d been working on over in his hand and set to whittling out the final details.

“What are you doing?” Enya finally asked, her attention drawn by the scratch of his knife.

There was a roughness to her voice that made him still. She’d been crying. Enya never cried. Liam suddenly found himself torn between wanting to close the distance between them and wanting to be far enough away he didn’t have to see.

“Carving. Griff’s been showing me.”

She squinted. “What is it?”

He held the rough hewn shape up to catch the flickering lantern light. “It’s Arawelo, of course.”

The mare snorted indignantly and Enya let out a hiccup that might have been a laugh. The sound eased something in Liam’s chest. It was a passable attempt at a horse’s head, he thought. It was far better than the first few things he made.

“Why? ”

He shrugged, his nonchalance feigned. “You’ve been so busy with your suitors lately, I needed something to do.”

Enya wiped at her face with her hands. “Liam…”

He bumped his knee against hers in a show of support. He hoped his own voice would not betray him. “Here I was declared a giftless goat, and you had to go and ruin the fun.”

He realized that was the wrong thing to say when she let out another hiccup, this one sounding dangerously close to a sob.

“I didn’t mean it, En,” he said frantically. “In truth, I’m glad you have a gift.”

“You are?”

Liam reached over and gave the end of her braid a tug. “I mean, it’s a little embarrassing to always be bested by a girl . But a goddess...a goddess I’m alright with.”

She punched his arm. “I’d still beat you any day, Liam Marsh.”

“Mayhaps. But we’ll never know for sure, will we?”

“Are you sure the rod was not hot?” She asked again.

He glanced at the bandage Mistress Ashill wound around her hand and shook his head. “It felt as it always has, En.”

She swallowed. “What am I going to do, Liam?”

The despair in her voice made his chest tighten. “They didn’t notice. And you only have to hold the rod once more.”

Elling Coblegh suddenly flashed through his thoughts and Liam suppressed a shudder.

For weeks, he had felt like he was losing her to the suitors.

Now, he swallowed thickly. Now he might lose her to a silver collar.

He suddenly found it too difficult to speak, so he turned his knife back to carve more lines in the horse’s mane.

“It’s that or turn myself in, I suppose.”

Liam’s hands stilled. “You can’t.”

Pure terror, raw and vicious rose in his chest. She couldn’t.

“Well I can’t run. They would punish the whole house.”

“We have a year before they come back, En. We can figure something out.” Liam didn’t know what, but he would not lose her. Not like that. “Don’t turn yourself in. Take your chances with the rod, at least. Promise me you won’t do something rash? ”

A slow smile spread across her face. “When have I ever done anything rash?”

Liam gave her a long, level look. Arawelo huffed. For once, the mare seemed to be on his side. He reached across the space to her unburned hand and closed her fingers around the horse head carving. “Keep it, for good luck.”

She turned it over in her palm and held it up to the light. “And if they take me, Liam?”

“I’ll find you,” he vowed.

“What if you can’t?” She asked. “They always move the Recruits somewhere else.”

Liam shrugged, hoping she did not see through his feigned confidence. “You’ll light me a beacon fire.”

Enya huffed another laugh and got to her feet. She brushed straw from her britches and tucked the carving into her pocket. He sat staring down Arawelo for a while and it wasn’t until the sound of Enya’s boots faded that he sagged against the stall wall.

“What are we going to do Welo?”

The mare only huffed.