Bloodline Awakened: Rise Of The Nameless Knight

Where The Elves Kneel

"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 out his empty hands. "I'm Ryn!" he called, feeling ridiculous. "You left me a message. I came."

Silence. A breeze stirred the leaves.

Then a woman stepped out from behind a tree he'd have sworn was too narrow to hide a child. She was tall and silver-haired, with a bow slung across her back and eyes the green of deep water. She stopped three paces away and studied him from head to foot.

"You are smaller than I expected," she said.

"People tell me that."

"Show me."

"Show you what?"

"The mark." Her voice was cool and formal, with a faint music beneath it. "Do not make me ask twice, boy. We have waited a very long time."

Ryn hesitated. Then he pushed back his sleeve and let the gold rise, the way Vaelthor had taught him. Lines of molten light spiraled up his forearm, brightening until the shadows of the Silverwood glowed with them.

The woman went absolutely still.

And then she knelt. She did it slowly, one knee at a time, and bowed her head until her silver hair touched the moss. Behind her, a dozen shapes slid out of the trees, archers and scouts with long faces and unreadable eyes. One by one, every one of them knelt.

"What are you doing?" Ryn whispered. "Stand up. Please, stand up."

"I am Sylwen Veyra, scout-captain of the Third Watch," the woman said, without raising her head. "I have served nine hundred years. In all that time, I have never knelt to a human. I wish you to understand that this is not a small thing."

"Then why—"

"Because you are not only human." She lifted her eyes at last, and they were bright and fierce and strangely wet. "My grandmother told me that one day the sky would split and the Dragon God's blood would walk the earth again. I thought it was a bedtime story."

Ryn's throat tightened. "I'm just a farm boy. I was a Null. I was nobody."

"So was the first Dragon God," Sylwen said softly. "That is what the stories forget to mention."

They led him deeper, through halls of living wood, past bridges strung between trees and lanterns that burned without flame. Wherever he walked, conversation stopped. Elves emerged onto balconies and stood silent, and the older ones pressed a hand over their hearts.

"They are staring," Ryn murmured.

"They are remembering," Sylwen said. "Your line was the last ally we had."

"My line?"

"You do not know." She stopped beneath a great arch of woven branches and turned to face him. "Your people call it the Sundering. The year the dragons were hunted. You were told the kings of Aldermere did it out of fear."

"That's what the Spire teaches."

"Then the Spire is wrong." Her jaw tightened. "The kings were guided. A house of the Dragon God's own blood, the Valdraer, opened the first gate. They sold the dragons for power, and when the world burned, they were the first to vanish."

Ryn stood very still. In the back of his skull, something enormous and ancient did not make a sound.

"Vaelthor," he whispered. "Is that true?"

The silence stretched so long that Ryn thought the dragon had left.

*Yes,* Vaelthor said at last, very quietly. *I did not tell you. I wanted you to have a name that was yours, before I handed you the weight of theirs.*

"You knew."

*I knew. And I have been ashamed of it for a thousand years.*

Ryn pressed a hand against his mouth. He thought of Bram and the stable and of a family tree he had never been permitted to see. He had wanted a bloodline his whole life. And now that he had one, it came with a crime.

"I don't want it," he said hoarsely. "If it's theirs, I don't want it."

"Then you misunderstand why we knelt," Sylwen said.

He looked up.

"We did not kneel to the Valdraer," she said. "We knelt to the one who answered when no one else would. Blood is not a verdict, Dragon-born. It is a door. What you do with it is your own."

Ryn let out a long, shaky breath. For the first time in a long while, someone had said something kind to him without wanting something in return.

"Thank you," he managed.

"Do not thank me." A faint, rare smile touched her mouth. "Thank me after you survive the Council. The Elders are not always as gentle as I am."

"You're gentle?"

"Compared to my grandmother, I am practically a lamb."

Despite everything, Ryn laughed.

They gave him a room high in a tree, with a bed of moss and a window that looked out across the valley. He did not sleep. He sat on the sill with his knees drawn up, watching lanterns drift between the branches like fallen stars.

*You are angry with me,* Vaelthor said.

"Yes."

*That is fair.*

"You should have told me."

*I should have.* The vast voice sounded very tired. *I was afraid that if you learned what your ancestors did, you would refuse the bond. And if you refused, I would die in that cave, and the world would die with me.*

Ryn was quiet for a long time. Down in the valley, a night bird sang.

"I won't refuse," he said at last. "But no more secrets. If we're going to do this, we do it honestly. Both of us."

*Agreed.*

"And Vaelthor?"

*Yes, little spark?*

"Whatever they did, whatever my family became. I'm going to be the one who fixes it."

A long, slow warmth spread through his chest, like a hand settling on his shoulder.

*I know,* the dragon said. *That is why I chose you.*

Ryn leaned his head against the window frame and closed his eyes. Beyond the glass, the Silverwood hummed softly in the dark, as if the whole forest were holding its breath.

Then, from very far away, from the north, from somewhere beyond the mountains, a second voice answered.

It was faint, and frightened, and young.

*...who is calling...?*

Ryn's eyes flew open.

*Another,* Vaelthor breathed, and for the first time in a thousand years, the old dragon's voice trembled with hope. *Little spark. There is another.*