Bloodline Awakened: Rise Of The Nameless Knight

A Dead's Man Name

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 one.* The voice gentled. *Where will you go, little spark?*

Ryn looked south, toward the faint gray smudge of Highmere on the horizon.

"There's someone who thinks I'm dead," he said. "I won't let him keep thinking it."

***

Master Bram's stable was dark when Ryn slipped through the back door past midnight. A single lantern burned low on a barrel. The old man sat beside it, hunched over a cup he hadn't touched, staring at nothing.

Ryn's boot scraped the floor.

Bram's head snapped up. The cup hit the ground and shattered.

"No," he said hoarsely. "No, no. I'm drunk. I haven't even had the drink yet, and I'm drunk."

"Bram—"

"You're dead." The old man stumbled to his feet, hands shaking. "Hale's boy came back this afternoon crowing about it. Said you fell in the first volley. I sat here and I—" His voice cracked clean in half. "I told you to stay low."

"I know."

"I told you."

"I know, Bram. I'm sorry."

Bram crossed the floor in three strides and seized him by both shoulders. His hands were rough and trembling, and he gripped hard enough to hurt. He looked at Ryn's face, then his ribs, then his face again, as if checking each piece against a ledger.

"You're warm," he said, stunned.

"I'm alive."

"By the gods." Bram's grip tightened, and the old man's eyes went wet and furious. "You stupid, stubborn boy. Do you have any idea what these last hours have been? I buried you in my head. I picked out the words."

"What were they?"

"Never mind what they were!" Bram dragged a sleeve across his face. "Sit down. Sit. Tell me everything."

Ryn told him. Not everything, since some things were too large to fit in a stable at midnight, but enough. The ambush. The curse that should have killed him. The voice, and the dragon, and the gold. He held out his hand, and a small, steady flame bloomed in his palm, humming like a lit forge.

Bram stared at it for a very long time.

"The old stories say the Dragon God's line was wiped out," he said at last, very quietly. "Hunted to the last child."

"Apparently not."

"Apparently not." Bram let out a breath that shook. "Ryn. Listen to me carefully. If the Spire learns what you are, they will not call you a miracle. They will call you a threat. Every house that rejected you will remember the doors they closed. And the Marshal—"

"I know."

"Do you?" Bram gripped his arm. "They tried to execute you for being useless. What do you think they'll do to you for being dangerous?"

Ryn closed his fist, and the flame went out. "That's why I came. I need to disappear, Bram. Properly. I need a new name, and a place where nobody has ever seen my face."

Bram was quiet for a long moment. Then, slowly, he began to smile. It was a hard, crooked, dangerous smile Ryn had never seen on him before.

"The Royal Knights are holding a muster at Greywatch Keep," he said. "Open call. Frontier recruits, no questions about blood, no records sent to the capital. The border is bleeding men, and they'll take anyone who can hold a sword. Even a Null."

"A Null who can't be a Null."

"A Null who was never registered as one," Bram said. "A farm boy from the western provinces, say. Where records burn in every flood." He rummaged in a chest and came out with a battered leather satchel. "Sealed papers, forged by a friend who owes me four favors, which I'd been saving for something worthwhile. I can't think of anything more so."

"Bram, if they catch you—"

"Then they'll have caught an old fool who did one honorable thing before he died." Bram pressed the satchel into his hands. "Take it. And pick a name, boy. You can't walk into Greywatch as Ryn."

Ryn turned the satchel over, thinking of everything he had been called. Null, unlucky. *The furniture.*

"Corvin," he said slowly. "It was my mother's family's word for crows, I think. The only thing she left me."

"And the second half?"

Ryn looked at his hands. At the ashes still clinging to his sleeves, from a field where a boy called Ryn had died.

"Ash," he said. "It's what's left of him."

Bram nodded once. His voice came out rough. "Corvin Ash. Aye. It'll do." He set a hand on Ryn's head, the way he must have done to a hundred fumbling squires, and held it there. "You swing like you mean it, lad. Every day. Whatever happens."

"Every day," Ryn promised.

***

Greywatch Keep squatted on a windswept ridge, gray stone and black banners. By the time Ryn reached it, three days of hard riding later, the recruitment yard was already half full: farm boys with callused hands, runaways, would-be heroes with cheap blades. A bored clerk sat under an awning, scratching names into a ledger.

"Name?"

"Corvin Ash."

"Province?"

"Westmarch. Near Hollowbrook."

"Never heard of it." The clerk didn't look up. "Bloodline?"

"None to speak of."

That earned a glance. Then a thin, dismissive smile, the one Ryn knew by heart. "A Null, then. Wonderful. Go stand over there and wait for the Stone."

A grim old mage stood at the far end of the yard beside a waist-high pillar of black glass, testing each recruit by palm. The line shuffled forward. A tall boy flushed it faintly blue and was waved aside with approval. A girl made it flicker green. Others went dark and were sent off to the stables or the mess, to dig latrines or haul water.

Ryn's turn came last.

The mage barely glanced at him. "Palm on the Stone, boy."

Ryn pressed his hand flat against the glass. It was ice-cold. Deep within him, very faintly, Vaelthor chuckled.

*Go on, little spark. Let them measure the sun with a candle.*

The Stone stayed dark. Not a flicker or a breath of light.

"Null," the mage said, bored. "Frontier detail. Latrines and baggage, until we find a use for you."

"Understood, sir."

"Next!"

Ryn stepped back into the line of the unwanted. Around him, the other rejects muttered and sneered, and a boy with a broken nose smirked at him. Ryn lowered his eyes, hiding the flicker of gold that rose, unbidden, behind them.

*Patience,* the dragon murmured. *They have laughed at you since the day you were born. Let them laugh a while longer.*

Ryn smiled into the dust.

Let them. He had a thousand years of fire behind him now, and all the time in the world.