With a final swipe of oiled cloth over the enchanted blade of her dagger, Wren had run out of things to occupy herself. She slid the weapon back into the sheath at her hip, packed away the oil and cloth both, and rolled to her feet. She hadn’t paced across the length of the tent twice before Miina said something.

“What’s got you all twisted up?” the blue-haired Elden woman asked. She had a small pot of ointment in her lap, which she was carefully massaging across the scar on her neck.

“I just don’t like having nothing to do,” Wren grumbled, though that wasn’t the whole truth.

“Are you afraid your father is going to be at one of the barricades?” Arjun asked. He had a notebook open in front of him, along with a vial of ink, and a quill. If there was one thing Wren had learned about mages, it was that they all constantly were filling up their spellbooks with notes about new magic.

Wren frowned, and turned to face the healer. “I want to fight him myself,” she said. “I want to see if there’s anything left, or if he’s just her slave.” In fact, she’d hesitated to come along on this particular expedition for just that reason.

“Why aren’t you there, then?” Miina asked, closing her pot and then wiping her fingers off on her shirt.

“Because as angry as I’d be if someone else gets a shot at my father first,” Wren said, “I’d hate it if something happened to Liv and I wasn’t there.”

Miina crawled over the bedroll and furs where she’d slept the night before, found her pack, and tucked the jar of ointment away safely. “Why?” she asked, swinging her legs around to have a seat again. “I know why I’m here. She’s family, even if we haven’t known each other long. But you’re like a guard dog on a chain. I’m surprised you aren’t growling, sometimes.”

Lina, the guard who had remained behind while Kaija, Akseli and Ghveris accompanied Liv around the ruins, rolled over so that she was facing the interior of the tent, rather than the outer wall of canvas, and Wren realized that everyone in the tent was waiting for her to answer. Arjun, at least, had an amused smile – he’d heard the story before.

“Go ahead,” the dark-haired mage urged her. “If Liv didn’t trust them, they wouldn’t be here.”

Wren blew out a breath. “I was in Whitehill to steal something,” she said. “A statue of Ractia to bring back to my father and the blood-letters. They were having this festival, out on the frozen river. I was just wasting time until nightfall, so I could get into the castle. I’d paid one of the servants to leave a window open. I thought I’d get something to eat and listen to what people were saying. The last thing I wanted to do was get attention.”

“So this little girl goes skating over to where the ice is thin,” she continued, finally returning to her own bedroll, where she sunk down to sit cross-legged. “The ice cracks, she goes in.”

“And that was Liv?” Miina guessed. “She was getting into trouble, even as a little girl?”

“No.” Wren shook her head. “No, it was someone else. What Liv did was go running over to try to save the kid. She reached out an arm, and then a hand of ice scooped the girl out of the water. Of course, Liv had no idea what she was doing – she froze herself too, and I had to use the pommel of a dagger to break the ice so we could get her out.”

“So you saved her life,” Lina said, speaking up for the first time since she’d come back to the tent.

Wren nodded. “Carried her over to the carriage and everything,” she admitted. “Which is how she recognized me later. It was a really stupid thing to do, but –”

“You couldn’t let her die,” Arjun finished, for her. “Because you’re a good person, Wren, and a good friend. Even when Liv was a complete stranger, you watched out for her.”

Wren shrugged, and looked down at her furs.

“Well that all tracks,” Miina exclaimed, rolling over so that she was lying on her back, rather than sitting up. “Saving people with no thought for herself, and just about dying? At least she’s consistent.”

“I’m going to go see how they’re doing,” Wren said. She grabbed her cloak, one of the heavy, fur-lined winter garments they’d brought just for the tomb, and then left the tent. The difference in temperature, between the interior, heated by enchanted stones, and the throne room at the heart of the tomb, was immediate and bracing. Her breath puffed out in front of her face as she made her way to the docks where the Antrians had been kept.

Akseli was standing sentry outside, but the guard only exchanged nods with Wren when she approached and ducked into the corridor. Inside, Ghveris turned at her approach, and nodded his armored head. Beyond, Kaija stood at Liv’s shoulder while the girl worked.

When they’d come to the Tomb of Celris the first time, Wren hadn’t made it to this part of the ruins. She’d come in late, separate from the rest of the party, and only managed to link back up with them after Keri and Arjun had come through this corridor, on their way to the dock at the end where Ghveris had slept twelve hundred years away.

Here, Wren’s boots echoed with every step on the thin metal walkway at the center of the long corridor. To either side, the same sort of metal caskets they’d seen empty at the Well of Bones – in fact, the same sort that Wren had first encountered at Nightfall Peak, when she was still with Ractia – stood to either side, in neat, orderly pairs, each occupied by an ancient war-machine.

“How’s it going?” Wren asked Ghveris, once she’d reached him. The walkway wasn’t wide enough for the two of them to stand side-by-side, and his bulk made it difficult to get a good look at what Liv was doing. Wren could only see that she had one of those glass control panels, the kind the Vædim had always seemed to use, active and lit up with scrolling sigils in multiple colors. Propped up on a metal rail to one side was Liv’s notebook, and she occasionally paused to scrawl something down in it.

“She seems to have found what she needs,” the juggernaut rumbled. There was a small part of Wren that worried the sound would rouse the machines to either side of them, even though she knew that Liv had full control of the ruins, through the crown.

“Conditional language,” Liv called back, her voice echoing through the hallway. “The enchantments that keep these machines waiting, or activate them, use conditional language. Cveia, for instance. ‘While.’ I’ve got if, when… I want to make certain I see how it all works, as part of a larger command.”

Wren blinked. “That sounds a lot more complicated than I want to think about,” she said. “So we’re going back soon?” She could tell the mana here in the rift had put Liv at ease, just by looking at the way she held herself. There was a looseness to her shoulders, to the way she held her neck, that wasn’t present when she was trying to hide the pain of being in a place that was mana-dead.

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“Soon enough we can probably tell the others to start breaking camp,” Liv answered, though she didn’t stop writing. “I think this has the last pieces of everything I need.”

“I’ll send Akseli back to let them know,” Kaija declared, and then maneuvered herself past Ghveris to head out of the cramped storage area. The Antrian had to turn sideways to let her pass, and even then Wren was surprised that they managed to make it work.

“It’s too bad we can’t take all of these things with us and throw them at Ractia,” Wren commented, looking into the shadows, where the slumbering war machines waited. “Would they listen to you, Liv, now that you have the crown?”

“I’m not certain.” Liv paused in her writing, and looked back to Ghveris. “I don’t feel a connection with them the same way I do the rest of the rift.”

He shook his head. “It would not be safe to make the attempt. Antris did not give the lesser war-machines the ability to think. Only those who had once been living soldiers, such as Karis and I, could do that. These perform specific tasks, as commanded by those set over them. It would be a great risk to attempt to activate them, and I would wish to do so only one at a time.”

“Another thing to add to the list once this is all over.” Liv sighed, blew on the open pages of her book, and then began packing her things up. “There’s so much. People were afraid to even try to go into these rifts for generations. Now that Ractia’s pushed us to take a look, we could spend years – decades – just trying to understand everything we’ve found. Can you imagine if we could use Antrians for mining, Wren? You’ve been in Bald Peak. The men who worked there all knew they’d die of mana sickness eventually. But Antrians wouldn’t.”

“We have to win, first,” Wren said.

“So we do.” Liv picked her book up, holding it open so as not to smudge the ink, and together the three of them set off back toward the tent.

☙

They used the waystone beneath Celris’s ancient dias, upon which the Vædic Lord’s throne had once rested, to return to Feic Seria. At Kaija’s insistence, they went in two waves, with Akseli and Lina going first, to secure their arrival.

While they waited, Liv stepped to the middle of the dais, right above where the center of the waystone was exposed. While she could use it blind, Ghveris had spent an hour breaking stone to clear away any obstructions so that everyone else could see the sigils.

“What?” Wren asked.

“I’m going to attach a tether here,” Liv admitted. “And the more I think about it, the more I think it would be better to attach one each to the stones we captured. That way, if she flees, I can follow her.”

“You’d better make sure the other elders do something similar, then,” Kaija pointed out. “Or you’ll be facing her alone.”

Liv nodded, and then she, Miina, Arjun and Kaija shared the burden of taking them all to the desert. As Wren understood it, the two guards who had gone first had used up the magic which had built up from the rift, so that they wouldn’t be exhausted in the event they found a threat on the other side.

They didn’t linger long in the high desert – only pausing to check in with Silica, who had been overseeing the baggage trains which snaked across the dry land between the rift and the plateau where the allied army had made camp.

From the painted desert, Liv led them by waystone first to the rift where she’d destroyed a crystal, then to a floating tower, and finally to a cenote. At each location, they checked in with the elder guarding the waystone, and Liv set a tether. Only when it was all done did she shape them three gyrfalcons of shining blue mana, to fly across the desert.

Wren ranged out ahead in her bat form, and so it was she who caught first sight of smoke rising from a skirmish halfway up the mountain. She flew in close to Liv, who rode a conjured bird alone, now that Rose had left. Wren landed behind her, wrapping her arms around her friend, and leaning in close to her ear to speak.

“There’s fighting somewhere around the fifth barricade,” she shouted, over the roaring of the wind. “I can see smoke. You want me to check it out?”

“Take a look, but don’t get involved,” Liv shouted back. “Meet us at camp.”

Wren slapped her on the shoulder, then threw herself off the gyrfalcon and shifted forms, catching the air with her outstretched wings. While the gyrfalcons began to circle lower and lower, Wren continued on toward the fighting.

She dipped down into the trees, to get herself a bit of cover, and approached by flitting from branch to branch. The last thing Wren wanted to do was get mobbed by half a dozen of her former tribesmen before she could carry word back to Liv of what was happening.

Once she got in sight of the palisade, Wren nearly threw herself into the battle anyway.

Four wyrms, only two of them ridden by Elden warriors, were rampaging through the allied forces. If Wren knew Manfred, he’d let the fourth choke point fall with only a token resistance, so that he could spring a trap using overwhelming force at the fifth. An Elden woman with an enchanted lance – Seija – was leaning down out of her saddle to impale an Eld with the coloring of House Asuris through the belly. The other wyrm with a mount was spitting yellow-white venom all over a group of Whitehill crossbowmen, and from their screams, Wren didn’t expect them to survive.

The largest of the wyrms, and the smallest, fought together. Of the two, the greater had red eyes – eyes that Wren had last seen before she’d left Nightfall Peak for Soltheris. But from the way he moved, she would have recognized her father, anyway.

When Wren had been a little girl, and Nighthawk Wind Dancer had taken her on her first hunt, he’d hovered around her just like that. Always close enough to reach out with one strong arm and get a hold of her, always ready to step in if something went wrong.

To see an enormous wyrm giving the same care to her abomination of a half-brother made Wren feel sick.

Noghis – it could only be Noghis – lashed out, lightning quick, and sunk his fangs into the armor of one of the Kerian bowmen. Even though the boy’s wyrm form was the smallest, those fangs were still the size of arming swords. When a Mountain Home soldier tried to flink a burning ray of light at the juvenile wyrm, Nighthawk lashed out with his tail, the sudden motion making a deafening crack, and flinging the Elden warrior back through one tree trunk and into a second. The tree creaked, tipped for a moment, and then fell, while the brave man remained motionless, crumpled off to one side of the fighting.

It would be so easy, Wren thought. The battle was utter chaos. She could fly straight over most of the fighting, drop down on the boy’s head, and put an end to him with her knives. His stolen scales might be tough, but they wouldn’t stop the enchanted blades Jurian had given her. And then, she could finally face her father. She’d look into those eyes, those horrible red eyes that meant Ractia had enslaved him, and…

Wren tried to picture fighting that wyrm in her cougar form. Fighting three of them. As much as she hated to admit it, she needed her friends. With Liv and Ghveris to take the other two, and Arjun to support them – then, she thought that she could win. But not alone.

She spread her wings, but just before she dropped off the branch she’d been clinging to, Wren’s father looked directly at her. He saw her. She held that disgusting gaze, those pools of red blood with no love behind them, for just an instant. Then, she let go of the branch and flew off through the trees, headed down to the plateau.

☙

Wren found Liv with her father in the command tent; the guards who had accompanied them to the Tomb of Celris must have been given a chance to rest, because the two standing watch outside were both human. They let her in without objection, and she found Liv, Valtteri, Ghveris, Miina, and Bryn Grenfell clustered around the table.

“We’ve got a problem at the fifth ward,” Wren said, the moment she’d ducked inside. “Manfred must have decided they’ve bled us enough. They hit our people with four wyrms at once. My father, Noghis, and one of them’s ridden by Seija.”

“How bad?” Valtteri asked.

“I’ll be amazed if our people don’t break and run,” Wren admitted. “I thought about trying to help, but I don’t know what I could do against that many wyrms. One – maybe two. But I can’t fight four.”

“No, you did the right thing to come back,” Liv said. “It’s better we know what’s happening than you get stuck up there.” She turned to her father. “Who’s in command of the attack?”

“Soile,” Valtteri said. “There’s a group waiting at the fourth ward she can fall back to, and we have healers waiting there. But if the enemy commander has decided to stop us at the fifth, we’re going to need to send a force powerful enough to break them, and push the rest of the way to the peak. We’ve taken our time until now. No longer.”

“A full assault,” Ghveris rumbled, with evident satisfaction.

Liv nodded. “I’ll be ready to leave in the morning.”

Wren moved over to stand at her friend’s side, and placed a hand on Liv’s shoulder. “We’ll fight them together,” she said.

Liv’s father shook his head, and his white braids slid along his chest, neck and back, the charms and pieces of bone fixed to the ends jangling and clinking. “You and the elders will wait in the rear, at the fourth ward,” he instructed. “We need you all to be ready to face Ractia when she shows herself. I will lead the van myself.”