Page 126 of The Queens and the Kings
Alone, she resembled Alma far more than the Ladylord.
They wound along the cobblestone path for a full minute. Stones slanted gradually across the top of the cliffs. Carts, beastsof burden, and people flowed freely along the lanes below. A market, cut into the cliffs, had cubbies and rooms and stores lining the interior of old caves. Despite the commerce, the noise was less intense here than in the meeting.
She paused at a rocky outcropping out of hearing, chin high, eyes canvassing the sea, the road, Klipporno. Lashed at the wharf far below lay Pedr’s rowboat, filled with power but ugly as an old dinghy. They were alone.
“Next week,” she said, “I shall leave my residence here to head east, into the interior. Before winter roads make it impassable.”
“The interior?”
“The mainland holds many lives, Henrik,” she said with amusement. “One can hardly expect the leader of the mainland to stay in one place all the time. Klipporno is my winter home, so I will return with cooler weather.”
“Even with aggression from His Glory?”
A fleeting smile broke across her lips. “When there is this much land to lead, a tyrant such as His Glory is not as frightening as you might think. There are other enemies for whom I must prepare. I won’t be gone long.” She turned to face him fully. “Here is the truth of the matter, Henrik. The Isles are important to the mainland for many reasons, but certainly not survival. Damma aside, if we never contacted the islands again, we might experience minor inconveniences, but nothing the mainland couldn’t very easily survive.”
He silently agreed. The weak positioning of The Isles relative to the mainland was nothing new.
“All that,” she continued in her distinctly conversational tone, “establishes the obvious flaw in my reasoning—the one that you have pointed out. Why is the mainland so willing to use our resources and dispose of His Glory?”
He tensed.
“My desire to help Stenberg is the direct result of a very real problem.” She paused. “The wyverns.”
The words shot ice water into his veins. Henrik cast a surreptitious glance overhead. No dark figure cloaked the sky, drawing his attention. A brewing suspicion told him that their lack of presence was a clue.
The Ladylord required no encouragement to continue.
“There is a great deal less fairytale behind the wyverns than what one might expect, and a stronger tie to Stenberg as well. The damma that His Glory refused to send? We used it to control the wyverns.”
Henrik’s mind raced to catch up. Britt had been dealing with the wyverns, not him, but he recalled the details easily. They knew the mineral had something to do with the wyverns, but he hadn’t anticipated control.
“Damma controls the wyverns?” he asked.
“Suppresses arcane in them, yes.”
“Because they’re the Wyvern Kings.”
Her eyes widened a little. Softly, she said, “Yes. How did you know that?”
“Tell me more.”
“The Teller and I have been working closely together since I came into power.” She paled and swallowed resolutely. “Without him, I may not have had the power to . . . anyway, the Teller asserts that the wyverns are here on borrowed time. A thousand years ago, the Ladylord who endured the terror of the Siren Queens’ reign agreed to host the captured wyverns on our land in order to prevent the Siren Queens from destroying us, too.”
“Isn’t their banishment a thousand years?”
She held up a finger. “Yes,ifthey are kept around damma, which prevents their reversion back into the Wyvern Kings. It suppresses the arcane in them, and is meant to keep the wyverns from returning to their natural state.”
“As what?”
She shrugged. “Presumably, rather powerful men. For the last one thousand years, we have mixed the damma with the wyverns' water, put it in their living quarters, dusted them with it. They live and breathe it, unable to summon enough arcane to return or evenremember. It’s dangerous, of course. When the damma is extracted from sealstone, it can be very toxic to people. But you know that already. You saw the results on the ship during your crossing to here.”
He scowled at the reminder. “The onded.”
“Onded,” she murmured.
“If the wyverns don’t receive the damma, then what?”
She lifted a hand to the sky “Their understanding and arcane awaken. According to the Teller, they will attempt to attack the Siren Queens and regain the landsand arcanethat they lost almost a millenia ago. The Teller believes that the resultant battle will destroy The Isles and much of the mainland. When the Siren Queens are challenged, they do not fight fair.”
