Page 30 of Wild Reverence

XXI

A Lord Who Dreams in a Tower

MATILDA

I traced the ink, touching the letter. I let it claim me.

Vincent of Beckett.

His name was a shiver in my bones, a whisper in my memory. Magic stirred, and, like an inner compass, began to pull me to where he dwelled. Dark, cold river water. A tangle of green blankets. A tapestry of red foxes on a stone wall.

He was home, at his ancestral fortress. A castle built by the river Wyndrift. A place I had visited only in his dreams.

And he was lord now. What had happened to his brothers? His father?

My throat went narrow as I tucked Orphia’s letter into one of my pockets, feeling the tug in my chest again. An urgent invitation to find him, quickly. To spare his life before Death came for him, etched in moonlight.

Orphia, satisfied that I had taken the assignment, now ignored me. She was transfixed on her weaving, keen to unravel whatever design Rowena had made, and it was just as well. I did not have any words remaining for her, and I rushed from the burrow.

I forgot about Bade and Adria, as well as Enva and Dacre’s wedding feast that night.

I emerged into the mortal world just as a late-afternoon rain began to fall.

The Bracken Door spilled me out like a yawning mouth, back onto the wild stretch of moors.

But I had chosen this threshold because it was close to the river.

It was here I had first seen Vincent, hiding with him in the ferns, sealing his mouth with a kiss of innocence.

It was here I had run from his brothers, flying over the hills until the wind took note of me.

How strange to be on such ground again, and I retraced those old footsteps to the banks of the Wyndrift—a river so wide and powerful that it churned up mist and foam like the sea.

I followed it upstream, knowing it would eventually lead me to him.

A boy who had often dreamt of drowning in these waters.

The rain fell.

It was Luz, the Skyward goddess, weeping for Enva’s departure.

The gloam soon made it difficult to see, even though I knew eventide was still a distance away.

I believed I should have plenty of time to reach Vincent before he was appointed to die, and yet my heart was pounding, as if I were late.

Cursing beneath my breath, I reached for the two chains that dangled from my moonstone belt, and the small orbs that hung from them.

A lunar disk that reflected the mortal moon phase, as well as a sundial, which read the mortal hour.

Gifts from my father, mainly because he wanted to compete with the belt my mother had crafted.

But they were a way for me to measure time, because it ran differently in the Skyward realm.

We were gods, and yet we lived by the sunrise and sunset of the mortal world. The wax and wane of their moon. The order of their time, and when the seasons were appointed to ebb and flow.

They did not realize the power they truly held over us, these humans who lived for a brief moment of time. But it was far greater than they knew.

I had one more hour of daylight, according to my sundial.

I let the disk fall from my palm, where it flashed on its chain, and I returned my attention to the riverbank.

It was autumn, when the Skyward goddess Demi spread her cloak over the land.

When she sang the trees to gold and crimson and umber.

The days were growing shorter, the nights colder, longer.

Soon, Phelyra would breathe frost over the grass, and Demi would bow to the ice and the snow.

I winced, pushing Phelyra from my mind.

It did not take long for me to understand why Orphia had said Vincent would be a challenge to reach.

I paused on a rock when I was still a good distance away, gazing through the rain at my assignment.

Based on the dreams, I had always envisioned the Beckett fortress as built upon the bank, but it rose up from the middle of the river, planted on a large, diamond-shaped island.

A bridge was the only way to reach the castle from either the western bank or the eastern one, upon which I stood.

The bridge on my side was a proud, intimidating structure, boasting three different towers.

I narrowed my eyes, feeling the rain soak through my dress, gradually turning it translucent.

I needed to get closer to examine the fortress better, to devise a way in, and I drew my cloak around me like it was armor.

The fabric was bright red and grumpy in this weather.

My father had warned me the weaving could be ornery when wet.

“Make me a shadow,” I whispered to it.

The cloak only billowed in the wind, pulling on the draws at my neck.

Of course it would fight me when I needed it most. But then I watched as the hem wavered, violet.

The hue crept upward, drinking the vermillion as if it were heart’s blood, until I seemed to become the evening storm light around me.

Invisible, I walked onward up the bank, but then I came across the second challenge that Orphia had conveniently failed to mention—Death was prone to leave out crucial details—and the likely reason that Vincent was doomed to die that night.

Sprawled before me on the eastern bank was a war camp.

Tents and staked banners spilled down the hill to where the bridge met the bank.

Knights milled about in chainmail, their destriers tacked and ready to be mounted.

Pages moved like ants, hustling from one tent to the next, carrying weapons and shields from makeshift forges.

There was a battering ram and a row of trebuchets, made portable by wagons and draft horses.

Foot soldiers stood in clumps, wearing dull leather armor, with spears in hand.

They were either on watch, practicing a drill, or simply waiting for command.

They would be the first to die, I knew, and I could almost feel Orphia’s watchful presence, hovering in the pooling fog.

The eastern bridge was cut off from me, then.

Even invisible, I did not want to walk through the camp, because then I would have the obstacle of persuading Vincent’s guards to lift the gate at the bridge, which would be impossible with an assault imminent.

But to reach the western bridge, I would have to swim across the river, which was so vast it made me feel small when I stood beside it.

I could not drown, but I could be dragged downstream, losing time I could not afford.

My gaze shifted from the river to the camp back to the bridge, and then to the fortress itself, flecked in firelight.

Again, I needed to get closer.

I turned from the shore and walked into a copse of hawthorns and alders, their molted leaves like a wet, decaying rug beneath my sandals.

But I found what I needed. A sleek, dark raven was perched in one of the tree boughs.

Even she could not see me through the cloak’s enchantment, but she sensed me, and that was enough.

Lend me your sight? I asked her, inwardly.

She heard my request, cocking her head as her shining eyes looked down. Our gazes met, and my sense of sight merged with the bird’s. The raven acquiesced to me, taking flight, and we soared over the river.

The Underlings may have their hidden doors, but the Skywards have their secrets as well.

We can merge our sight with any winged creature that welcomes us, and oftentimes even command them.

This was one of the first things my father taught me when I took shelter with him in his hall, and he made me vow before the entire Skyward court to keep this secret.

From my vantage point in the sky, I could see how dark the river was in the middle, betraying immeasurable depth. Gently, I prompted the bird to fly upstream, until the fortress and its bridge were beneath us.

Vincent’s castle claimed the river’s island. But even with its impenetrable stone walls, parapets, and iron-toothed portcullis, the castle was second to the bridge’s splendor.

It was a powerful structure divided into two portions—the east and the west—but they both belonged to Vincent and his people.

The rapids were only interrupted by the bridge’s foundations—pillars that vanished to the secrets of the riverbed save for the middle tower on the eastern bridge, which was rooted on another small rocky island.

My birdlike gaze traced the bridge’s overall length and width; it was built of basalt, bronze, and a slate-tiled roof.

The towers were freckled with windows—narrow slits for archers, which burned gold with firelight.

Each tower had a portcullis and gate, all of them lowered.

I understood, then, how formidable this bridge was.

It was strong and wide enough to let an army pass through, including knights and their shod destriers, rows of infantry and wagon-born trebuchets.

It was fortified in such a way that a warrior might spend their entire life within its walls, never setting foot on grass.

The lord of this bridge controlled who passed from one side to the other, halting conflicts or spurring them into being.

Such a lord could wield power like a divine.

Such a lord had Vincent become, then.

The raven circled above, but I could not sense Vincent’s presence within the bridge. The tug I felt came from the castle, from a turret of the highest tower.

I prompted the bird to glide closer, our united gaze snagging on the turret’s lone mullioned window, the glass panes open in defiance of the rain. The raven came to a smooth stop on the stone ledge, peering into the interior shadows.

It was a rather sparse circular bedchamber, with sheepskin laid over the floor.

A fire burned low in the hearth, its mantel covered in fresh-cut rosemary.

The only wall decoration was a tapestry of woven ivy and four red foxes.

I recognized it instantly, as it had often appeared in Vincent’s dreams.

Iron candelabras were stationed about the room like sentries, but only a few tapers were lit, the flames struggling to burn against the coming night.

There was a desk smothered with paper, glass inkwells, and goose quills, and a wardrobe with intricately carved doors.

Armor and chainmail hung on a wooden frame by the hearth, glimmering in the firelight.

My gaze flickered from one side of the chamber to the next, at last settling on the bed.

A man slept upon it, his chest rising and falling in a steady pattern.

His lean frame was supine on the green coverlet, his long hair, dark as the winter solstice’s night sky, spread across the pillow.

He was dressed in trousers and a simple but well-spun tunic, with leather patches at the elbows and an open neckline, loosely tied.

His knee-high boots looked worn but polished, his feet crossed at the ankles.

A single ring flashed silver on his hand, claiming his sinister forefinger.

His pale profile was cut sharp as the rock of his holding. Not handsome, but still arresting.

Vincent.

There he was, thirteen years older from when I had last seen him.

Only a trace of that boy remained within him, glinting like a very small gem, but I would have recognized him anywhere, even if he had drastically changed.

There he was, slumbering when Death was coming for him.

Sleeping, when an army had gathered at the foot of his bridge.

Wake up, I wanted to call to him, feeling the urgency of my mission, the dire position he was in. Wake up!

The raven cawed, startling from the ledge. My magic broke suddenly, untethering from the bird with a flap of feathers and needlelike rain.

My sight returned to my body with a jolt.

I was still standing beneath the dripping branches of the hawthorns and alders.

Twilight was staining the air; I was almost out of time.

My mark was Vincent in his tower, and I would not arrive by gate and bridge.

I would reach him by taking the fastest, clearest path, which meant I needed to go by river.

And who was the god of rivers these days?

I wanted to laugh at my luck, but I asked my cloak to shift to vermillion again, so that I could be seen. Then I walked to the bank and took a stone within my hand, skipping it over the water.

I called to the god of rivers, who was also the god of iron. The vicious god of spring.

Warin.