But he didn’t have to finish. The name clicked into place, echoing up in the ripples of realization.

  “Amherst al’Dyor,” Declan heard himself say, his voice soft with shock.

  Beside him, Ryn nodded.

  Amherst Sehren al’Dyor, First Prince of Viridian, whom his friends fondly knew simply as ‘Herst’.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  At first, Declan couldn’t help angry suspicion from boiling over, wondering if this was yet another realization Ryn had suppressed “for his own good”. Almost at once, though, he let the notion drop, seeing clearly that—for once—the dragon had nothing to do with this missing piece of the puzzle.

  Amherst.

  He’d heard the name before. Twice at least, in fact. Dia had mentioned it at the Rest, but it was Ester who had granted him the greatest clue, who’d actually managed to give him most of Herst’s name before Ryn had cut her off, that first morning waking up in the home of the yr’Essels. Considering it, he thought it likely he’d only failed to register the information under the pressure of the myriad wash of the other realities which had been pressed upon him, at the time.

  Amherst. Amherst Sehren al’Dyor.

  “What?”

  Disbelief was the only concept that held firm in Declan’s voice. It wasn’t that he truly couldn’t fathom the idea. He’d spent too long around Ryn and Bonner to so much as blink at the incredible, by now. It was more that the sheer heft of this illumination was enough to make his hands tremble so badly Ester had to reach up and close his fingers around the firestone just to keep it from tumbling to the ground. Her touch lingered there, reassuring.

  “Listen to them, Declan,” she said in a soft voice before looking at Ryn and her father and speaking more sharply. “It’s past time you explained everything, I think.”

  Neither made any sign of denying this. On the contrary, Ryn nodded. Tell us again what you know of mankind’s war against my race, Declan. What have you been told?

  Declan, far from recovering, nonetheless didn’t allow himself to hesitate. He spoke of how Brohn and Dia had recounted the tale for him, speaking of the dragons’ attack on the capital, seven hundred years ago, of their kidnapping of the crown’s heirs after the murder of the King. He repeated how innkeepers had told him the story of the Alethan nobility gathering the city’s armies to lay siege to the Reaches, desperate to save the crown princess, Elysia al’Dyor, as well as her brother, Amherst. They’d rescued Elysia, but the prince had been lost to the war.

  It was here that Declan stuttered and stopped, more pieces settling into place.

  “He wasn’t killed by the dragons…” he said slowly. “Amherst—Herst—he wasn’t killed…”

  Ryn shook his head in confirmation. No. Quite the contrary, if anything.

  “But… Then what happened? I still… I don’t understand why the dragons would have attacked Aletha in the first place…?”

  “There’s a very obvious answer to that, all things considered,” Bonner spoke up bitterly, eyes on his clasped hands, elbows resting on his knees. “Put simply: they didn’t.”

  Declan wasn’t sure what to make of this statement, once more struggling to sieve out the truth from the muddle of history.

  Ryn, kindly, came to his rescue. I very much doubt those two had any intention of deliberately leading you astray. If anything, they very likely believe their version of events as accurate as any, given the time that has passed. But Bonner has the right of it, Declan: there was never any attack on Aletha. At least not by my kind. The tale that lingers in this age was spun a long, long time ago, and revolves around a single dragon. He pulled a hand away from the fire for a moment to rest it against his corded chest. Me.

  Declan stared at him, not for the first time grateful for Ester’s stabilizing touch on his hand. Before he could voice his confusion, Ryn kept on.

  Have you ever heard of the Accord of Four?

  Declan frowned at the question, considering his limited knowledge of world lore, then shook his head unsteadily. “No… Should I have?”

  “Damn well you should have,” Bonner grumbled, irritation still thick in his tone, though Declan didn’t think it directed at anyone in particular.

  Ryn ignored the old man. I would have been surprised otherwise. It’s a relic of another time, buried along with the truth of those years. The reality of the war. The nobles’ assault of the Reaches. The Endless Queen. The Accord, however, is where it all began.

  He reached out to grasp a narrow twig lying half-out of the fire, pulling it smoking from the flames to watch the grey haze twist and turn up into the darkness of the open sky by the stream.

  Seven hundred years ago, these lands were a different place. Our races were not as segregated as they are now, and infinitely more aware of each other. Relations were good—between man, dragon, er’enthyl, and er’endehn alike. A balance was struck, in a way, one which had lasted for as long as the al’Dyors had held the throne in Viridian, some three hundred years already. Their rise marked the new age, in fact, your ‘post-founding’. Man, with your plentiful populace and a command of magic rivaled only by my own kind, was the dominant power. But—penned in as you were, with the elves to the north and south and the dragons to the west—your strength largely allowed for no more than your security. To summarize it more dramatically than I would like: the world was at peace, and had been for centuries.

  Ryn’s expression changed, his reminiscent gaze on the wafting smoke hardening abruptly. Then, in the year 309, she appeared.

  “The Endless Queen?” Declan guessed tentatively.

  Ryn grunted in ascension. The Queen. Sehranya. Taken in by man decades earlier for her education in the magical colleges of Aletha, only to vanish before she returned to the lands of her own people. Her disappearance—as powerful a presence as she would have been among the armies of the dark elves—corrupted relations for many years between the er’endehn and man, but the bad blood faded eventually. Even then Karn’s Line—the mountains you now call the Mother’s Tears—made for a dangerous passing, and Sehranya had long since been written off as lost to the ranges—a foolish traveler who’d insisted on returning home unassisted and without aid, overconfident in her own abilities. Time healed that wound.

  “For all the good it did us in the end,” Bonner put in sourly.

  Ryn made no effort to refute this. When the witch reappeared, the first nation she fell upon was that of her own people. She’d spent the years gathering her strength, using her power as the strongest mage in living memory to create herself an army. The Tears were a graveyard—they still are. It’s the reason they’ve been so dubbed. Failed expeditions to find safer passages through the mountains. Vigil patrols fallen prey to the perils of the ranges. Settlers who strayed too far into the foothills. She even had the bodies of the animals and beasts at her disposal. Thousands of corpses lost to the cliffs and snow over as many years, and she’d very clearly taken her time gathering as many as she could. She stitched together her own soldiers, crafting them from the dead of men and animal to form an army of creatures the likes of which the world had never seen. Savage, cruel things, and her magic was so potent many of the resulting monstrosities even regained the ability to breed. Ryn pointed west, back through the woods, in the direction they had come. You fought some of the bastard descendants of those corrupted beings tonight.

  This time, even Ester seemed taken by surprise. “The wereyn?” she demanded, her fingers tightening unbidden about Declan’s hand. “The Queen created the wereyn?”

  “And more.” It was Bonner who answered, then. “There had been necromancers, mages who ignored the laws of the land to sate their dark curiosities, but Sehranya went further—much further—than any before her. She supplemented her ranks with those defeated as she swept across the city-states of the er’endehn. Ghouls were easy enough to raise, I’m sure, but the witch went beyond even that. Wights—faster and far more intelligent than their lesser draugr brethren. Liche—undead capable of wielding a portion of their master’s magics. And later—when she had the bodies for it—” he glanced at Ryn, whose reptilian features were motionless in disgusted recollection “—she began to weave her spells into the fallen of the dragons, stitching them together with other beasts as she’d done with the wereyn, until the true terror of her armies took control of the skies.”

  “The drey,” Declan said, understanding dawning on him.

  Ryn took up the story, again, then. They came later, however. At first, Sehranya struck with every ounce of force and speed she could into Eserysh, likely hoping to seize control of her own people with the advantage of surprise. The er’endehn are a martial race, though, and what the Queen had in power she lacked in strategy. After the first few cities fell, the others realized they could do little to withstand the assault on their own. They evacuated, nearly one and all, making for the greatest of their collective stronghold: the city of Ysenden.

  In his mind’s eye an image formed for Declan, of a vast empire rising among the winter trees, like the tales he’d heard tell of the brighter metropolis of the er’enthyl, to the south.

  There, the standstill took hold, a siege that lasted the greater part of two years and gave the other races opportunity to answer. Igoric al’Dyor, King of Viridian at the time, was the first to rise to the need. He foresaw the disaster of the coming decade, anticipating the eventual fall of the dark elves if nothing was done, and did not assume that the Sehranya would be satisfied with the subjugation of nothing more than her own people. With no small effort the royal mages—including Igoric’s own court mage—Ryn glanced at Bonner, who grinned ruefully—offered him an opportunity: the Accord of Four.

  Here, the dragon paused, still watching the old mage, who recognized the opportunity he was being offered.

  “The Accord was—is, rather—a weave of immense proportions,” he told Declan. Ester had returned her attention blankly to the fire, having clearly been privy to this explanation too many times before. “It’s a binding magic derived from the minds and talent of a hundred of Viridian’s greatest weavers of the time, myself among them. It was a covenant, of a kind. A contract, meticulously layered and crafted with a single purpose in mind: peace at any cost.”

  Declan waited for several seconds, following this, but once more Bonner demonstrated an almost-willful lack of understanding that his explanation was less than adequate.

  Fortunately, as the pause started to grow awkward, Ester sighed and took matters in hand. “The Accord was intended to bring the four races into a state of ‘enforced alliance’,” she said, finally letting go of Declan’s hand and the firestone grasped within it. “It was a magic designed to work itself into the sovereign lines of the elves, dragons, and men—a conditional binding that each kind would help the others if the need ever arose, and none could attack any of the Accord. It was a balancing act, specifically designed in response to the greater threat that was the Endless Queen. Igoric read the writing on the wall, and he wanted a way not only to raise a force sufficient enough to crush her, but also prevent the like from every threatening the balance of the four races again.”

  Declan’s brow furrowed. “What was the condition? What would happen if one attacked another?”

  “Death of the line,” Bonner said with a casual shrug. “And not an altogether pleasant one, at that.”

  Declan blinked, taking this in. “The entire line?” he demanded. “Isn’t that extreme?”

  “Every eldest child, and any of their siblings,” Bonner confirmed, his voice still even. “The Accord is thorough. It even binds those joined in wedlock and shifts priority of its weaves to the next oldest if the elder passes without an heir. And extreme was what was needed, Declan. You don’t yet understand the implication of Sehranya’s strength. To meet her in battle was to strengthen her forces. Even if she wasn’t present on the frontlines herself, she had tricks to summon the fallen to their feet for her own purpose. Her liche. Amulets woven with dark power. The only way the dark elves weren’t wiped from the world was by holing themselves up in Ysenden, hiding behind walls so well-defended even the drey were of little use in the siege. What was needed was an army that could overrun such power. Overrun it, and bull itself through to the very heart. Only by cutting off the head did the four races stand a chance of surviving. Sehranya herself had to be defeated, and in one single, fell swoop.”

  Declan followed, now, though it still made him uneasy. What was more, something still itched at the back of his mind. It took him a moment to place the thought.

  “Was this… Accord… signed? Was it enacted?”

  Ryn and Bonner exchanged a gloomy look, then nodded together.

  Have you ever wondered why the strain between Viridian and the Vyr’en has only ever been limited to minor scuffles and border disputes? the dragon asked. It’s because all-out war would spell the end to the ruling line of the aggressors, either the al’Dyors or the house ehn’Vyr’en, of whom the sovereigns of the wood elves have been progeny for as long as their forest is old. It took time, of course. The politics of dragons are only slightly less tedious than those of man, I’m afraid, and the elves’ arguably more so.

  “But then… If the dragons didn’t attack Aletha… Does that mean mankind never assaulted the Reaches, either? If they had…” He hesitated, then waved his empty hand at himself in an empty, bewildered manner. “If Herst was what you say he was, and I’m what you say I am… I wouldn’t be here, correct?”

  If King Igoric or Elysia or Amherst had been the one to command the siege, that’s correct. But that wasn’t the case. Igoric was already dead by the time the nobility gathered the Vigil against the Reaches, and the heirs were long on their way to those same mountains, carried in my own claws.

  This had Declan take pause. “Yours?”

  Ryn nodded again, resuming the story where he’d left off. After the Accord had been presented to him, Igoric called on the royalties of the other races to gather, to negotiate the pact, and plan assistance for the er’endehn. The dark elves themselves lacked a presence, obviously, to-a-one trapped behind the defenses of Ysenden as they were, but the er’enthyl came with a little coaxing. They sent a small delegation, the eldest son of their Matriarch, Elnaryl ehn’Vyr’en, and his personal retinue, which included a member of the Aveer al’En—the elves’ High Knights—by the name of Arathia yr’Essel.

  Declan started, then looked between Bonner and Ester in understanding.

  The mage’s mood appeared a little mollified as he smiled. “My wife,” he confirmed, motioning to the half-elf, “and Ester’s own mother, yes, though it would be many years yet until such miracles came to be.”

  Before Declan could voice his astonishment, Ryn pressed on, which was all well and good because his next words struck Declan utterly dumb.

  Of the dragons, he said evenly, only I attended.

  Once more Declan began to feel the weight of too much. Too much. He was fighting again, gaping at his friend, struggling to cope with Ryn’s words.

  “You?” he got out after a few seconds battle to form the word. “You’re… royalty?”

  For the first time in what might have been Declan’s entire life, Ryn looked discomfit. No, he said too firmly, then hedged himself. Well… of a sort, perhaps. It’s not so simple as—

  “It’s simple enough,” Bonner interrupted with a roll of his eyes before turning his attention to Declan. “The ways in which dragons interact with and view magic are different from mankind’s—well… most of mankind, anyway.” There was some of his old twinkle in his eye as he said this. “They have an innate capability for it, as do we, but their connection is… more substantial. Dragons are hatched with an intimacy of the ley lines, of the arcana, requiring only example and direction to master their abilities, much like you, Ester, and I needed only guidance to learn to walk. You could say they were born more of magic than with magic, I suppose.” He glanced at the dragon for a moment, pondering in a distracted sort of way for a few seconds. “More importantly, parents don’t treat their young with the same intimacy of that of man and elves.”

  He means we aren’t seen as younglings of a pair, but rather as the responsibility of the race as a whole. It was Ryn’s turn to clarify warily, noting Declan’s look of incomprehension. I don’t have a ‘mother’ or ‘father’, as you might think of them. I was born to a female, of course—Thareneat was her name—but I didn’t look upon her with any more or less affection than the other adults, my egg and my earliest years tended to by them all as a whole.

  This fascinated Declan, who had never so much as conceived of the idea of children of any kind being raised in any other way than by their own parents. Still, he kept his mouth shut, listening to Bonner again.

  “For these reasons, dragons do not pass along the responsibilities of their leaders as we or the wood elves do, from child to child. Nor as the dark elves do, who—in Ysenden, at least—I believe elect a High Chancellor to their seat every half-century, and their lesser representatives every decade. Among dragons, those duties are tasked according to affinity and ability, the gifts of each of the Reaches’ subsequent rulers passed along to a chosen successor directly, so that the next generation might bear the burden when the former is gone.” Bonner waved a hand at Ryn, grinning. “Don’t be fooled by this winged lug, boy. You’re seated in the very presence of a sovereign of his kind: one of the primordial line.”