Bloodline Awakened: Rise Of The Nameless Knight

The Voice Beneath The Mountain

Ryn surfaced the way a drowning man breaks through ice, all at once and gasping.

Smoke and ash on his tongue. The sour stink of burning canvas and the copper taste of blood. He lay on his back in a churned ditch, and above him the sky was black and strung with drifting embers.

He tried to move his hand. Nothing answered.

"Perrin?" The word came out as a rasp. "Anyone?"

Only the crackle of the dying wagons replied.

*Do not try to rise yet, little spark.*

Ryn went rigid. The voice hadn't come through his ears. It rolled up through his spine, slow and enormous, like a bell struck at the bottom of the sea.

"I'm dead," he whispered. "I'm dead, and I'm hearing things."

*You were dying. That is not the same. The curse struck your heart, and it should have stopped it. Instead, your blood woke and ate the curse whole.*

"My blood doesn't do anything. I'm a Null. The Spire's stone stayed dark when they tested me."

*Their stone measures borrowed light. It was never built to see the sun.*

Heat flooded him. It was not the fever of the road but something deep and slow, as though a furnace door had swung open in his chest. Gold light crawled beneath his skin, tracing his ribs, his wrists, the curve of his throat. The pain in his body didn't fade so much as get burned out of him, and where the curse had struck, the flesh knitted itself shut in a pulse of molten color.

Ryn stared at his own hands. They were glowing.

"What are you?" he breathed.

*Names are for those who still have someone to say them. Though I have kept a few. Vaelthor will do.*

"Vaelthor." He tried the word, and it tasted like smoke and old stone. "That's a dragon's name. The Spire teaches that the last dragon died a thousand years ago."

*The Spire teaches whatever keeps its masters comfortable.*

Ryn laughed, a cracked and disbelieving sound. "Then why are you talking to me?"

The silence that followed was so long he thought the voice had gone. When it returned, it was quieter.

*Because I have been calling for a thousand years, boy. To the north, to the south, over every sea and mountain. Do you know what I heard in answer?*

"What?"

*Nothing. Not one human heart that could hear me. And then, tonight, one that could.*

Ryn pressed his palm into the mud. His voice shook. "I was rejected by four houses. Four. They looked at me and said I was unlucky. Do you understand? I'm nobody. I'm nobody's anything."

*I heard every one of those doors close. I heard them in your blood, as clearly as I hear the mountain breathe.* Something like grief moved through the voice. *You were never nobody, Ryn. You were the last thing the world forgot to bury.*

His eyes burned. He blinked hard and looked away, as though the dark could see him. "Why did you wait?"

*Because I made a promise before your grandfather's grandfather was born. I swore I would not die until the blood of the Dragon God rose again. I have been very tired for a very long time.* A pause. *Now I may rest. But not yet. First, a choice.*

"What choice?"

*Answer me, and I will bond with you. Your life will become mine, and mine yours. You will hear the dragons that still hide in the world's deep places, and they will hear you. And when the time comes, I will ask you to let me go.*

Ryn swallowed. "Let you go?"

*I am very old, little spark. I have outlived my own kind's laughter. I wish only to give what I carry to someone worthy of it before I sleep.* The voice softened. *But I will not take you without your word. I have done enough taking from your people. Will you answer?*

Ryn thought of the sand, and Perrin's grin, and the wooden sword cracking his ribs. He thought of Bram saying *louder* until his own voice broke. He thought of every closed door.

Then he thought of a thousand years of calling into the dark with nobody to hear.

"Yes," he whispered. Then, steadier: "Yes. I'll answer."

*Then say my name, and let the fire in.*

"Vaelthor."

The world turned to gold.

It wasn't pain. It was recognition, like finding a room in his own house he had never known was there. The heat poured through every part of him, and with it came sound: the pulse of the earth, the slow turning of the stars, and beneath it, scattered and faint, a hundred other voices. They flinched from him like startled deer, then lingered, listening.

*They are afraid,* Vaelthor murmured. *They have been hunted for a long time. Be gentle.*

"I will," Ryn said, and meant it.

When the light faded, he was on his feet. He had no memory of standing. His ribs were whole, his breath was steady, and when he looked down, a pattern of gold lines glowed faintly along his forearms, then dimmed, as though shy of the open air.

*Hide it,* said the dragon. *Always, for now. Humans cannot see it unless you allow them. But they will know something is wrong if they look too long.*

"Why would they—"

A scream cut across the hill.

Ryn spun. Below, the prince's golden carriage lay on its side, wheels still spinning. Soldiers lay scattered around it, and among them a cloaked figure stalked forward with violet fire curling from his fingers. The assassin had come to finish the work. A young man in a torn blue coat sprawled before the wreck, dragging himself backward through the mud, one arm hanging uselessly.

"Please," the prince said. His voice shook but didn't break. "Whoever paid you, I can pay more. Name it."

"There is no price," the assassin said softly. "I'm sorry."

The violet fire gathered.

Ryn didn't decide to move. He simply was there, crossing a hundred paces of broken ground in a handful of heartbeats, and as the assassin's hand came down, he flung out his own. Gold flame tore from his palm like a living spear. It struck the curse mid-air, devoured it, and kept going.

The assassin didn't even have time to scream.

Silence, smoke curled from a smear of ash on the grass.

The prince stared up at him through the haze, wide-eyed, his face streaked with soot and blood. Ryn saw himself reflected there: a shadow against the fire, a pair of eyes burning molten gold.

"Who are you?" Prince Aldric whispered.

Ryn opened his mouth. *Stay low,* Bram had said. *Whatever you hear, stay low.*

Far down the road, hooves thundered. Shouts rose, and torches flared between the trees. The royal guard, finally returning.

"Someone who was never here," Ryn said.

He stepped back into the smoke and was gone.

He lay flat in the tall grass of a ridge, heart hammering, as the survivors swarmed the wreck below. Their voices carried clearly in the dead air.

"The prince lives! Gods be praised, he lives!"

"Who did this? What happened to the assassin?"

"Never mind that. Count the rear guard. Quickly."

A pause. Then Perrin Hale's voice, high and brittle with a performance of grief. "The Null's dead. I saw him go down in the first volley. Fell off his horse like a sack of turnips."

"A pity," someone said, in a tone that suggested nothing of the kind.

"Leave the body. We ride at dawn."

Ryn pressed his forehead to the cold earth. It should have hurt. It would have, an hour ago. But the ache he'd carried for nineteen years had gone quiet, and in its place sat something steady and bright.

*They think you are dead,* Vaelthor said.

"Yes."

*That is a gift, little spark. A man who is dead cannot be hunted.*

Ryn smiled slowly, the first real smile of his life, and it was not a kind one. "Then let them keep thinking it. For now."

Above the ridge, a shadow slid across the moon, vast and silent, wings spread wider than any cathedral. It circled once, lazy and watchful, and was gone.