Chapter 604: unraveling

A long crack opened in the middle of the processional path, twenty feet from where he stood. The great grey flagstones that had stayed joined for two centuries simply drifted apart, the grout between them turning to white powder as a three-inch gap ran straight through the courtyard and disappeared into the brush.

A blast of dry heat came up from the split earth, smelling of scorched tin and old lard. And with the heat came the noise—the grinding of the world’s gears that he had felt in his teeth down below.

But the rhythm had broken. It would run smooth for three strokes, then stop with a dull thud, then catch up with a double click, like an old mill wheel with three teeth missing from the axle.

In the reddish woods beyond the stone wall, the silence had broken too. The fire beasts weren’t staying still in the shadows anymore.

He could hear them crashing through the dry scrub, their heavy tails whipping against the trunks, their small, hot breathing coming fast from twenty places at once.

They weren’t hunting him. They were running in short, blind circles, their heads tossing as they tried to find a signal that had suddenly changed its tune.

The sky above the ruins turned the color of an old bruise, the dark purple thickening where the mountains met the clouds.

Three hundred miles away, in the clean stone courtyard of the palace in Solmire, Caelen stood near the low fountain with his son in his arms.

Rael’s small hands sticky from fruit, but he had gone entirely still against his father’s chest. He had stopped babbling, his small face tucked into the wool of Caelen’s coat because he could feel the sudden stiffness in the big arms holding him.

Caelen didn’t look down at the boy. He was staring straight at the northern horizon.

The sky above the trees looked wrong.

A thin, dark line, no thicker than a horsehair but completely black, ran across the purple clouds from east to west.

It looked like a seam in an old cloak, a straight join where two pieces of different cloth had been sewn together by a careless hand, and the thread was starting to rot out.

He couldn’t have named what it was if a priest had asked him. He didn’t know anything about the great mages or the chains under the earth.

But he could feel it in the soles of his boots, the knowledge that something huge and silent had been running beneath the dirt for his whole life, and it had just missed a step.

In the winter palace of Nevareth, the same black line cut across the southern sky.

Aldwin stood by the high window of Eris’s room, his hand resting on the latch while the young woman slept behind him. He watched the seam widen slightly against the grey clouds, his old eyes dull.

"When the seam shows in the sky," he muttered to the empty room, his breath fogging the pane, "the cloth is already torn. What remains is only the unraveling."

He didn’t explain the words to the guard at the door or the maid by the fire. He simply turned his back on the window and walked back to the side of the bed, where Eris’s breathing sounded thinner and more ragged than it had when the sun rose.

The grand steward found Caelen still standing by the fountain, the little boy now asleep with his chin resting on his father’s shoulder. The steward was carrying three sheets of thick paper, the wax seals cracked and hanging from the ribbons.

"Your Majesty," the man said, his breath coming short from the stairs. "Another report from the eastern villages near the border line. It came by rider an hour ago."

Caelen didn’t turn his head from the northern sky. "Tell me."

"Three more places were hit in the past six days," the steward said, reading from the ink lines. "The fire beasts are coming out of the red woods in dozens. They aren’t looking for sheep, sire. They’re moving in regular lines, like infantry companies, burning the barns first and then staying in the fields until the fire goes out. The casualties from the farms... the numbers are double what they were last month."

Caelen reached out and lifted the sleeping boy, handing him carefully to the nurse who had been waiting by the screen. He waited until the woman’s skirts had vanished down the hall before he looked the steward in the eye.

"Send the relief wagons to all three locations tonight," the king said, his voice dropping into the flat, heavy tone he used for campaigns. "Food from the secondary stores, wool blankets, and timber for the roofs. And send forty horsemen from the garrison to each village. Tell them to shoot anything with scales that comes within a mile of the wells."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"And tell the old scholars in the library to be in my room before the morning bread is baked," Caelen added, his jaw tightening. "I want every scrap of parchment they have about how the beasts move when they are directed, and what kind of hand can make forty of them walk in a straight line."

The steward bowed until his nose touched his chain of office and hurried away, his leather shoes loud on the terrace.

Caelen stayed by the stone wall, alone in the massive yard. The air smelled of woodsmoke from the town below, but beneath it was that new smell... the sharp, copper tang of an old forge that had been left out in the rain.

This has been growing for weeks, he thought, his fingers trailing over the carved stone of the rail. And it isn’t a natural thing. A beast doesn’t burn a barn to clear a line of sight.

He turned toward the high wing of the palace where the private rooms were built away from the noise of the court.

Ophelia, he thought, his brow furrowing. I haven’t seen her since the morning bread.