It was well put. An eye, dimming. “There’s still time,” he said. “Things are not so hopeless as they might seem.”

“And when Drulgar comes again? When he comes after me? It won’t matter where I am or who I have protecting me. He’ll kill us all, Ranulf.”

“Drulgar the Dread is his own master. He might not care even if he knew of you. More likely he would relish the challenge of facing the Heart Remade. Once all his enemies lie dead at his feet, what else is there? I do not think you need to worry about him. Not yet.”

She gave a huffing laugh, shaking her head at how absurd it all was. “I’ll take your word for that. But those blades have to be reforged first, and…”

“And that’s why I have to go,” Ranulf said.

She looked at him. “Go? But you’ve only just come back.”

“I know.” He took her hand. “I don’t want to. I have to. I’ll return as soon as I can.”

She looked at him, and saw the truth. “The secret,” she said. “From the stolen page. You know where you have to go?”

He nodded, remembering the day he’d torn that page from the Book of Thala. How he’d finally translated King Godrin’s words and found a coded message sent to him through time. He’d been instructed to burn the page, and he had, memorising its contents, writing it out every night and burning it anew before he slept to make certain he recalled it. It was the lost formula to combining the blades, the key to reforging the Heart. And for a long while it existed only in the head of Ranulf Shackton. Until the day he finally came to Aram and passed that knowledge to the Grand Duchess as well.

She told me she would memorise it herself, he thought…but that could no longer be trusted. She said she would keep the written copy safe…but he could not rely on that either. For many moons he had wondered where the knowledge would take him, and to whom it would be delivered, but he need wonder no longer. The First Elder had seen it, the awakening in the distant north. He had told Ranulf where he must go.

And now I have a dragonto bear me there. He wished he could take Saska with him, but he couldn’t. She would have to remove her armour, and that would make her vulnerable, and besides, he knew she’d never leave her friends behind. Leshie, Sir Ralston, her brother Del. Even if she could wrench herself free of them, what of her starcat Joy? No. She would have to remain with the company for now, and continue by sail and saddle and sole. We’ll find you again, he thought in silent vow. When we’re done, we’ll fly back and find you.

Ranulf Shackton reached into his pocket and removed a piece of parchment, folded to make a neat square. “Take this,” he said, handing it to her.

She took it, brow furrowing. “What is it?”

“The formula. Written out again in my own hand.”

She looked up. “But why?”

“Insurance. In case I don’t make it.” He had no intention of dying along the way, but it always served to be careful. “Just keep that tucked away somewhere safe. When I come back, we can burn it together. How about that?” He smiled.

She didn’t. “You’d better come back, Ranulf. Find me. Promise me you will?”

“I will. I promise.”

“You’d better.” She hugged him, hard, and then let him go. “So where? Where are you going?”

“North,” he said. “Far to the north. Talasha has kindly volunteered to fly me there to see him.”

“Him? The person who’ll reforge the Heart? Who is it, Ranulf. Who?”

“Oh, no one special.” He smiled, eyes twinkling in anticipation. “Just a demigod,” he said.

49

“Tell me again what he said,” Borrus Kanabar demanded. “Again, Emeric. Tell me again.”

He had told him a dozen times over almost half as many days, and it wasn’t getting easier with each repetition. “Your father is being held in the heart of the Agarathi warcamp, chained at the ankles and neck to a post. An iron cage has been erected around him. He has grown thin, his beard has been shorn, and he looks old and frail. The Agarathi mock him daily. He suffers as you did, during your time in Eldurath. He…”

“Enough.” Borrus cringed, barely able to hear it any longer, recalling the torments he’d suffered. “Enough Emeric, gods. The way you speak…with such dispassion.”

“That isn’t fair,” Sir Rikkard Amadar said. “You’ve asked Emeric to tell that tale a dozen times, Borrus. He does as you ask without complaint.”

“Complaint? Complaint, you call it?” The Barrel Knight slammed a hand down upon the table. “I’m the one who has the complaint here, Rikkard! My father…the idea of him being abused and starved and debased…such a man as he? Such a great bloody man as he!”

“We all agree he is a great man,” Rikkard said calmly. “And it pains us all to know that he has been a captive of the enemy for so long. But shouting and screaming will not help. Pull yourself together, Borrus. You are acting like a child.”

The Barrel Knight could hardly have looked more furious. A shade of deep red was rising up his neck and a vein the size of a small grass snake pulsed angrily across his temple. “I should throttle you, Amadar! The gods know I should bloody well throttle you! I’m the Lord of the Riverlands, damnit, and Warden of the East.”

“No,” the heir of Amadar said, giving a neat shake of his head. “You were the Lord of the Riverlands and Warden of the East…until we found out your father was still alive. Now Lord Wallis still holds those titles.”

“Blast you, Rikkard! You and your bloody semantics. You know what I meant. Lord or heir, it matters not. My father is incapacitated!”

“Yes. We know. And we are trying to figure out how to change that.”

They had been at it for days, though were going around in circles. Any plan they had conjured to try to steal Lord Wallis and the other hostages back had run into a brick wall as thick as the Last Bastion. The Agarathi camp was vast, a day’s march from here, and there was no way to get to them without stirring up the hornet’s nest. Or the dragon’s lair, Emeric thought. If they attempted to free them, the hostages would die, and so too their would-be rescuers. The only sure option was to engage in diplomacy. But so far that had failed as well.

“Send another rider,” Borrus said, to anyone who would listen. He looked across the council members gathered in his pavilion. “Sir Karter. One of yours. Send an envoy with a mounted guard.”

Sir Karter Pentar hesitated.

Sir Rikkard spoke for him. “They’ll only send back their heads. It would be a waste of time and men.” He had the right of that, Emeric knew; their previous attempts to parley with the dragonlord had all gone much the same. Horses and riders went out. Horses and heads came back, stuffed in their own saddlebags.

“Then what? What do you suggest, Rikkard?” The pain was clear on Borrus’s ruddy face. “We cannot free him by force. Ven won’t agree to parley. So what? What am I to do?”

“March on them,” said Lord Rammas of the Marshes. “We have no other choice.”

Borrus shook his head at once. “They’ll kill him if I do.” He hit the table again with his fist, but it was weaker, disconsolate. That was Borrus Kanabar. He blew hot and cold and he was cooling again, sinking into despair. “I should never have let you go, Emeric. I’d made my peace with my father’s death. Now I find out he’s still alive, suffering, dehumanised. I know how the Agarathi are. I know how they like to treat their prisoners, and my father…my father…”

“We should march,” repeated Lord Rammas. Emeric wondered how many times he had said those words, or some version of them, during their long encampment here. According to Rikkard it was many times daily, and he barely said anything else. ‘He’s like a trained raven, that one, always quorking the same thing,’ the knight had said. “We cannot let your father’s suffering continue,” the Lord of the Marshes went on. “Nor the others. Death would be better.”

“He’s right,” declared Mooton Blackshaw, standing from his stool. He towered above all but Borrus in the room. “I loved your father the same as you, Borrus, but we have to accept that he’s dead. The longer he suffers, the worse it will be. Lord Rammas is right. We should march.”

Once more, Sir Rikkard was the voice of reason. “Amron ordered us to stand fast, I’ll remind you all,” he said. “He is our king. His word is absolute.”

“His word is old,” came back Mooton Blackshaw. “It might as well be sprouting mushrooms it’s been rotting so long.”

“King Daecar isn’t here,” put in Prince Raynald Lukar. He looked around the room to make sure he had been heard and had their attention. “How long do we submit to his ruling when he does not know what is happening here? And Elyon…who knows where he’s gone. I saw his eyes, my lords. The Windblade may have led him astray, and there’s no knowing when he’ll be back. I say we decide upon our own fate. We cannot be led by a man a thousand leagues away.”

Rammas and Mooton both nodded agreement. Others murmured their own doubts, and the debate went on. It would lead nowhere, Emeric knew. Much the same had been said the day before, and over the days before that as well, and for all Borrus’s bluster, he did not want to risk the sacrifice of his father without exhausting all attempts to save him.

“I need to think,” the Barrel Knight said, after they’d gone around in circles a few more times. “We’ll reconvene later once something new comes to light.” He waved them away, and off they went, streaming from the tent and into the rain. Rammas stepped in for a private word, but Borrus flicked a wrist and said, “Not now, Rammas. I know what you’re going to say. Not now.”

The rest filed out until only Torvyn Blackshaw and Emeric remained. Borrus sagged down into his seat, hooking a cup of wine in his grasp, drinking deep. “Go on then, Torv. You’ve got something to say, I can smell it.”

“Nothing that hasn’t already been said.”