Page 161 of Silverbow
A smile that made his heart stutter lit her face. “I think I can find the time somewhere between embroidering pillows and picking out ribbons.”
Renley watched her melt back into the crowd and turned his gaze back on his queen.
He’d been retreating to his dreams more and more. They were where he lived now. Not in the shredded body in the dark cell beneath Peytar’s palace. Here, in the dreams he could conjure from memory, was the life he had loved.
“She’s lovely,” the man with the golden topknot said at his shoulder. Renley wasn’t sure if he meant Rhiannon or his queen, but on that night, it had been true of both women.
“Is Enya…” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the question. He’d been waiting endless nights and days for the demi-elf to reappear to him.
“In Tuminzar,” the man who called himself Andril answered. “She’ll be granted sanctuary.”
Renley sagged back against the column.Thank the gods.
“She knows who she is,” he added. “Is there anything you’d like me to tell her?”
Renley heaved a shuddering breath. “When she needs it, remind her that she was loved. Remind her, no matter which name she chooses, she will always be my daughter.”
thirty-nine
Enya
Up and up they climbed until the air grew thin. When the path was smooth, Enya let go of her reins and stuffed her hand inside the warmth of her fur cloak. Where the sun did not reach the shadows beneath the pines, crusts of snow clung stubbornly to rock and root. The trail sometimes hugged the edge of the mountain with nothing but a thin strip of rock between them and a deadly plummet. In other places, it cut deep into the stone as if worn by infinite footfalls, and the rock shelves pressed close enough Enya had to train her eyes on the sky above.
A lantern with two casks of oil, flint and steel, her belt knife, a spare bowstring, a waterskin, a tin cup and bowl, a small kettle, a blanket roll, towel, bandages, a salve, a needle and thread, sewing scissors. A brush, hoof pick, feed bag, a sack of oats. A hair comb and a bit of soap. Honey and tea. Silver. Arawelo. My bow and quiver. My wits. The dust scarf. The fur cloak. Three dragon eggs.
It was gazing upward that she caught a flicker of motion in her periphery, but when she whipped her head to the little crevice it came from, there was nothing there. She scanned the rock again. There were little pockmarks and holes everywhere she looked, hidden in the rough hewn recesses.
“Arrow slits,” Oryn muttered behind her. “Well spotted.”
Liam whipped his head around in an admission he hadn’t noticed the camouflaged defenses.
“Are we close then?”
Oryn didn’t have to answer. As Bade rounded a narrow bend and the pass opened in a hollowed out little landing, a party of dwarves in finely worked plate and mail stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking the way. Behind them, a boulder had been shoved aside from a stone door crafted to blend into the rock wall.
Like the dwarves in Wayforge, they stood a head shorter than Enya, with wild beards and busy brows in varied shades of flint, russet, and ochre. In contrast to the fine, smooth plate, there was something rugged about their features, as if the elements had not smoothed the stone they had been carved from. Her gaze swept up to the pennants that lolled on a long pole in the breeze: a mountain with a star over the peak, a bear, and a war hammer.
As the mounted party crammed into the little space, the dwarves drew themselves up to full height and pounded fists to chests, the sound rattling off their breastplates and echoing around them. Arawelo tossed her head nervously, but Oryn returned the greeting with one thump against his own chest.
“We received word of your approach, Prince Brydove,” a dwarf with a wild tangle of mahogany beard said formally. “We’ve come to escort you and your companions the rest of the way to the palace.”
“An honor, Lord Smeltmeyer,” Oryn intoned. “Lead on.”
The dwarves turned and marched through the pass. Oryn heeled Kiawa forward to ride at the front of their party.
“Do they think we’ll get lost?” Liam whispered as he fell into step behind her. “There’s only one possible way to go.”
“Quiet, boy,” Bade snapped, falling back to the rear.
Enya suppressed a grin as Liam gave her a bewildered look. She noted other guard towers sculpted into the mountain as they plodded on and here and there, she saw eyes peering out at them from behind the peep holes. When they crested a rise, the land seemed to fall away, making her suck in a breath that sent a twinge through her chest. A deep valley carpeted in emerald pines stretched as far as the eye could see. She let that breath out in a gasp at her first sight of Drozia.
“Holy gods,” Liam blurted.
A great stone bridge that spanned a perilous drop to the valley below connected the peak they stood atop to the hulking mountain that rose up ahead. Into the southern face, the façade of a palace had been carved directlyinto the stone. Pillars propped up sweeping archways. Atop them, layers of latticed windows looked down upon a sprawling plaza cut into the mountainside. Turrets and towers adorned by rough-hewn gargoyles stretched to challenge the snow capped peak.
Their escort thumped fists to chest once as they passed the guards flanking the foot of the bridge. A bugler raised a horn to his lips and let out three long blasts. The bodies moving about the plaza like ants in the distance seemed to pause at the sound.
Enya’s insides clenched as their escort led them out onto the smooth stone bridge. It was wide enough for three wagons to pass abreast, but nothing but a knee high wall stood between her and the deadly plummet on either side. She nudged Arawelo a step closer to Kiawa.
