Novels by Wem's pen 🖊️

Tarn would not let go of his sleeve."I have to go back," Ryn said, for the third time. "Only for a little while."*...you said you would stay...*"I did. And I will. But if I vanish from Greywatch, they'll come looking, and I can't have them looking here."They stood at the edge of the Silverwood in the amber light of late afternoon. The elven healers had cleaned the iron burns from Tarn's flanks and wrapped her ribs in pale herb-poultices, and some of the storm-gray color had come back into her scales. She still pressed against Ryn like a child afraid of being left in a crowd."She will be safe here," Sylwen said gently. "The Elders will not argue with a dragon at the gate.""And if the Spire comes?""Then they will meet nine hundred years of arrows." Sylwen's mouth curved. "We have been waiting for an excuse."Ryn crouched in front of Tarn and put his forehead against her snout. Her breath was warm and smelled of rain."Listen to me," he said quietly. "I'm not leaving you. I'm goin

"Another dragon," Sylwen repeated."Young, frightened. North of here." Ryn paced the narrow room, still wearing yesterday's dust. "I can't explain how I know. I just do.""You do not need to explain." Her face had gone pale as birch bark. "The Council believes the last hatchling died in the Sundering. If you are right, you have just overturned a thousand years of grief.""Then help me find it.""The Elders will want to debate this for a week.""A week is too long." Ryn stopped. "Sylwen, it sounded like it was crying."She studied him. Then she slung her bow across her shoulder. "I have spent nine hundred years being told to wait for permission. I find I am tired of it. Come, we ride before the Elders wake."*Careful,* Vaelthor murmured. *A frightened young dragon is not gentle. Let it come to you.*"I will."*You say that like a man who has never been bitten.*They rode north through mountain passes while the sun climbed. The voice grew louder with every mile, a thin, trembling thread

"Two days," Lucan said.Ryn blinked. "Ser?""You'll have two days. Officially, you're scouting the northern treeline for corpse-beast tracks." Lucan didn't look up from the map he was pretending to study. "Unofficially, I don't want to know where you're going. If Tobias asks, you've gone to relieve yourself in a very remote location.""That's a long way to go to relieve myself.""Then I suggest you hurry."Ryn almost smiled. He bowed his head. "Thank you, Ser Lucan.""Don't thank me." The knight's voice dropped. "Just come back. I've grown used to having one person in this squad who tells me my left side is open."***The Silverwood began without warning. One moment Ryn was riding through scrubby pine, and the next the trees rose around him like the pillars of a drowned cathedral, trunks pale as bone and branches woven so thickly that the sunlight fell in coins.*Stop here,* Vaelthor said. *They are watching.*"I can't see anyone."*That is the point of elves.*Ryn dismounted and held

Lucan's squad had four members, and every one of them looked at Ryn as though he'd been assigned by mistake."Ash is a Null," said Ser Tobias Reen, a scarred veteran with a sour mouth, as they saddled horses in the gray dawn. "A Null with a crate lid. I don't care how many gravehounds he burned.""Nobody asked you to care, Tobias," Lucan said."Someone should.""Then someone can do it quietly."Ilsa, the squad's mage, gave Ryn a small, nervous smile. She had the Common-rank's pale blue glow around her fingertips and the haunted look of someone who'd been told too often she wasn't good enough. Beside her, Wick, a lanky archer barely seventeen, was too busy fussing with his bowstring to notice anyone.*They are afraid,* Vaelthor observed. *You can smell it on them. Fear that has been taught.*"I know the smell," Ryn murmured.Lucan swung into his saddle. "Hollowfen has gone silent. Four days now, no smoke, no traders, no word. The Spire sent a message that the matter requires 'further a

Three weeks at Greywatch Keep taught Ryn that there were exactly two kinds of recruits: those who carried swords, and those who carried everything else. He carried everything else."Ash! Another barrel!""Coming, Sergeant."He hauled it up the muddy slope and stacked it behind the mess hall. Down in the yard, the noble-born recruits drilled with mana-forged blades, steel flashing blue and green in the thin morning light. The Nulls scrubbed pots and dug trenches under the cold northern wind.*You are very good at carrying,* Vaelthor observed."Thank you."*It was not a compliment. You hide so well that I forget you are anything else.*"That's the point." Ryn wiped his forehead on a filthy sleeve. "A man nobody looks at gets to watch."And he had watched. He'd seen the veteran lieutenant whose sword-light sputtered halfway through a drill, so that the man slipped the blade behind his back and pretended to adjust his grip. He'd seen two mages stop for a rest after a single ward-spell, gr

Dawn found Ryn on the ridge, trying very hard not to set the world on fire."Breathe," Vaelthor rumbled in his skull. *You are gripping the flame like a drowning man grips a rope. It is not a rope. It is a river.*"It's burning my hands."*Because you are fighting it. Let it pass through you.*Ryn exhaled. The gold light in his palm trembled, then steadied into a small, patient flame, no bigger than a candle. A nearby pine, already scorched black along one side, creaked in disapproval."There," he whispered. "Is that it?"*That is a beginning. You nearly killed that tree three times.*"Four, I think."*Four,* the dragon agreed, and something in the vast voice sounded, impossibly, amused.Ryn let the flame die and sat back on his heels. His whole body hummed. The gold lines had sunk under his skin again, leaving only his ordinary arms, pale and scarred and thin from years of barracks bread."They'll look for my body," he said. "Eventually."*Then give them no reason to look for a live