Shadowborn. Katie MacAlister

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      Chapter 3

      “Any news, Lord Israel?”

      Israel Langton, leader of the Fireborn, turned from where he had been staring out into the night, his eyes on the bonfires that dotted the town of Abet, and cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at the woman before him.

      “I saw your headman return earlier,” explained Sandorillan, head priestess at the temple of Kiriah Sunbringer. Although her brown eyes were downcast, and her demeanor was suitably placid and contemplative as befitted her profession, Israel was not deceived. He’d known Lady Sandor for several hundred years, and a fiercer protector of her people—short of Queen Dasa herself—he had yet to find.

      “Marston traveled as far as the Neck,” he answered, glancing back at Abet. He and his handful of men and women were all that remained of his company. They were camped on one of the three heavily forested hills ringing the east side of the capital city, ostensibly to await further members of his force, but in reality he feared it was more a matter of licking their wounds. The battle that his arrival at Abet had triggered had been quick and decisive, leaving him well aware that Jalas had not been idle during the time Israel had spent in Eris rescuing the queen and their son. “He found none but the infirm and elderly, those unable to raise a sword, or indeed, even to sit upon a horse. Crops lie untended, houses are abandoned, and the towns are empty of all but those who are least able to care for themselves.”

      “Jalas has taken them for what purpose?” Sandor asked, disbelief and horror in her eyes. “Do not say he has put to death all of the Fireborn?”

      Israel returned to the small camp table at which he’d been sitting, writing messages. “Not slaughtered them, no. Marston said that great trains of people, horses, oxen, and other such beasts were reported to have passed through the Neck and onward north, to the High Lands.”

      Sandor’s eyes widened. “Jalas has taken prisoner all of Aryia? How can he do so? What does he intend to do with everyone?”

      “Put them to work as slaves is my guess.” Israel spilt the wax of a candle onto one of the messages, sealing it with his signet ring. “Which makes it much harder for us to retake Abet.”

      “Is it hopeless, then?” the priestess asked, her stillness making Israel feel twitchy.

      A veteran of many battles, most of them against the Fireborn’s long-held foes, the Starborn, Israel was well aware that times of inactivity were as necessary as those when fighting exhausted his body and mind. And yet, the fact that he had been denied entry into his own city, the one he had built over the course of the last two hundred years, grated on him. He felt restless, driven to action, but knew that until his small company received reinforcements, it would be folly to try to drive Jalas from Abet.

      The last such attempt had cost him two men and Idril.

      “If it was hopeless, I would have withdrawn immediately,” he answered after giving one of the men-at-arms the sealed parchments to pass along to the messengers. “Marston told me that it is rumored several towns along the west coast escaped Jalas’s tribesmen; the people hid in the caves that dot the shoreline. If that is true, and Marston can convince them that Aryia has need of their service, then all will not be lost.”

      “I will pray to the blessed goddess that is so,” Sandor murmured, bowing and withdrawing almost silently to her tent.

      Israel’s gaze flickered back to the dots of yellow and orange light that were visible along the parapets of his beloved home. “Let us hope Kiriah hears that prayer. We desperately need her help.”

      Sandor, pausing at the flap of her tent, turned and gave him an odd look, opening her mouth to speak, then with a little shake of her head entered her tent instead.

      * * * *

      The next two weeks passed with tedious slowness. Israel, driven by the need to be doing something, anything, spent his days hunting, both for game to feed the company of twenty-two who had followed him to Eris and back, and for any survivors of Jalas’s purge.

      On the fourteenth day, he arrived back at camp with a handful of his men, hauling the carcass of a buck they’d taken down, only to discover a messenger just setting off to find him. Marston had returned at last, and with him another score of men and women.

      “You are a most welcome sight,” Israel said, clapping Marston on the shoulder and greeting the newcomers. “You all are, for we have sore need of strong sword arms.”

      “Lady Idril has not been released, I take it?” Marston asked when Israel ordered the newcomers be given food and places to sleep, and for the mounts to be fed and watered.

      Israel frowned as he turned back to Marston, gesturing for his old friend and first in command to take a seat at his table, pouring them both goblets of wine. “She has not. Jalas might find his daughter’s tongue sharper than an adder’s bite, but I doubt if he would be foolish enough to simply turn her out. Holding her as a hostage guarantees Deo’s good behavior.”

      Marston rubbed the whiskers on his chin, the lines of strain and exhaustion on his face revealing the speed at which he’d traveled from the other side of Aryia. “That is curious, most curious, my lord. One of the women I found upon the road was a handmaiden to Lady Idril. She said that she’d received a message a sennight ago that Lady Idril had need of her aid. I thought that meant she had escaped the hold her father had on her.”

      “A sennight ago?” Israel cast his mind back. “There was no action then that we witnessed. Yesterday there was a great coming and going of men. Mostly coming, but enough men patrolled outside the town that our scouts made note of it. That is the only sign we have seen of Jalas stirring.”

      “Surely Lady Idril would come here, to you, should she make her escape?” Marston asked.

      Israel was slow to answer, his mind turning over the question. Though it was on the tip of his tongue to answer that Idril would naturally turn to her nearest allies, his familiarity with her stubbornness—rivaled only by that of his son—had him qualifying that statement. “She would if she had need of our protection. But it has been many years since I have understood the paths that Lady Idril’s mind walks.”

      Marston shared a rare grin. “She is well matched with Lord Deo in that regard.”

      “Aye. And the less said about the sort of half-mad children they will have, the better. Tell me of what you found on your way to the coast.”

      The next hour was spent hearing of Marston’s journey, of the fields left fallow and others filled with crops consumed by birds, of empty villages, and the old and infirm who were slowly starving.