Page 227 of Of Empires and Dust

The shriek that left the Fade’s throat was an otherworldly, blood chilling thing that threatened to rip Calen’s skin from hisbones. Calen pulled his níthral free, and the Fade’s body hit the stone. The shadows retreated and the light of the baldír bloomed once again.

Calen stood there, panting, sweat dripping from his nose and brow. He stared down at the pulsing purple light of the sword in his fist. A níthral. A Soulblade. Therin had told him briefly of the legendary weapons, but Calen had only ever seen them in the hands of the Fades and the knights – and in his visions.

He stared at the monster’s pale, bloodless, face.

He’d just killed a Fade. Alone.

Valerys roared in his mind again, and the purple blade flickered from his palm.

Calen grabbed his sword from the ground, slid it into his scabbard, slung the egg satchels over his shoulder, and climbed into the ventilation tunnel.

Chapter 50

Death of What Was

18thDay of the Blood Moon

Aravell – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom

Ella walked without saying a word,the wolf prowling in the back of her mind. When they reached Alura, she dismissed Sennik and the Angan and was almost across the basin when Gaeleron called to her.

The elf wore a smooth suit of steel armour, decorated with gold leaves along the edges of the breastplate, the emblem of a white dragon on the front. Both his pauldrons were wrought from white steel, and tassets composed of small white scales protected his groin and hips. Ella’s dad would have marvelled at the craftsmanship.

“I would walk with you, if you’ll have me?” The elf gave Ella an overly formal bow, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword.

Ella would have preferred to walk alone, particularly to where she was going, but there was something about Gaeleron that put her at ease. The elf had been there from the moment she’d woken. He was forthright, and Ella knew she could trust him. She could…smellthe loyalty in his blood.

“I’m assuming you didn’t seek me out just for the pleasure of my company?”

“I would do as well seeking out a rose bush if that were the case.”

Ella burst out laughing as she ran her hand across the side of her head, feeling the long-healed scars left by the Urak. The elf had a dry sense of humour that she appreciated.

Gaeleron returned her smile and continued. “I sought you out because both Queen Uthrían and King Galdra sent emissaries directly to me, enquiring as to your availability. It appears they have sent multiple already who were refused at your door.”

“Where I come from, that would be understood as a lack of desire to speak.”

“Unfortunately, they are quite insistent.”

“I’m sure they are.”

Ella lifted her gaze as they walked along the path that connected Alura to the Eyrie. When she had first arrived in Aravell, before the battle, the path had simply been a long section of white stone with two sheer walls of rock on either side. But after she’d woken, she’d found Craftsmages working on the rock walls for hours at a time. She’d not seen the fruits of their labour until that moment.

Enormous statues of dragons now lined the walls on either side of the path. Where the statues that fronted the archway into the Tahír un Ilyienë were noble and stoic, these were fierce and proud. Each dragon was unique in its appearance, but they all stood facing forwards, roaring, forelimbs pressed into theground, the frills on their backs raised. As she walked, Ella realised she recognised some of them, knew their hearts, their souls.

One was larger than all the others, her shoulders broad, the horns around her jaw long and slender. Though all the statues were a pale grey, Ella could see Ithrax’s green scales in her mind, hear her mighty roar. How she knew the dragon’s name Ella had no idea, just as she had no idea how she knew Ithrax had once been bound to an elf by the name of Athír, and how, when Ithrax was barely a few years old, they once rode the length and breadth of all Epheria. She knew it as though the memories were a piece of her.

The statue opposite Ithrax was of Onymia. Her scales had truly been as pale and grey as the rock, her horns black as night, her eyes the blue of a distant sky. Onymia had been eight hundred years old when the lightning tore open her chest in the valleys of Aravell and ripped her from the world.

Thurial and Aradanil stood next to their kin, fierce and defiant. In her mind, Ella painted the soft pink of Thurial’s scales and the vibrant red of his wings. She shuddered as she remembered his head being ripped free, images flashing in her mind. Aradanil had been mighty and majestic, scales the colour of marigold, eyes green as emeralds. His belly had been sliced open in the sky.

Ella shuddered with each and every one she passed, these dragons who had allowed her to share their hearts, to share their bodies. She remembered that moment viscerally. The moment where those noble creatures had agreed to make one last stand, one last sacrifice, a sacrifice she would carry with her forever.

She passed more statues of dragons she did not know, dragons, she thought, who had made similar sacrifices.

As she stepped past the statues, wingbeats sounded overhead, and she looked up to see Varthear alight on the grassbefore Ella, spreading her ruby wings, the blended light of the sun and the moon shimmering through. The dragon dipped her head, eyes of liquid fire fixing on Ella.

Varthear was like something pulled from one of the oil paintings she’d seen in Berona. Scales of sapphire and horns of onyx. Not even the thick scars that ran along Varthear’s scales diminished her beauty.

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