Tower of Dawn

“That is Arundin,” Sartaq said softly, as if fearful of even the wind hearing. “The fourth Singer amid these peaks.” The wind indeed seemed to flow from the mountain, cold and swift. “The Silent One, we call him.”

Indeed, a heavy sort of quiet seemed to ripple around that peak. In the turquoise waters of the lake at his feet lay a perfect mirror image, so clear that Nesryn wondered if one might dive beneath the surface and find another world, a shadow-world, beneath. “Why?”

Sartaq turned, as if the sight of Arundin was not one to be endured for long. “It is upon his slopes that the rukhin bury our dead. If we fly closer, you’ll see sulde covering his sides—the only markers of the fallen.”

It was an entirely inappropriate and morbid question, but Nesryn asked, “Will you one day be laid there, or out in the sacred land of the steppes with the rest of your family?”

Sartaq toed the smooth rock beneath them. “That choice remains before me. The two parts of my heart shall likely have a long war over it.”

She certainly understood it—that tug between two places.

Shouts and clanging metal drew her attention from the beckoning, eternal silence of Arundin to the real purpose of the space atop Rokhal: the training rings.

Men and women in riding leathers stood at various circles and stations. Some fired arrows at targets with impressive accuracy, some hurled spears, some sparred sword to sword. Older riders barked orders or corrected aim and posture, stalking amongst the warriors.

A few turned in Sartaq’s direction as he and Nesryn approached the training ring at the far end of the space. The archery circuit.

With the wind, the cold … Nesryn found herself calculating those factors. Admiring the archers’ skill all the more. And she was somehow not surprised to find Borte among the three archers aiming at stuffed dummies, her long braids snapping in the wind.

“Here to have your ass handed to you again, brother?” Borte’s smirk was full of that wicked delight.

Sartaq let out his rich, pleasant laugh again, taking up a longbow and shouldering a quiver from the stand nearby. He nudged his hearth-sister aside with a bump of the hip, nocking an arrow with ease. He aimed, fired, and Nesryn smiled as the arrow found its mark, right in the neck of the dummy.

“Impressive, for a princeling,” Borte drawled. She turned to Nesryn, her dark brows high. “And you?”

Well, then. Swallowing her smile, Nesryn shrugged out of the heavier wool overcoat, gave Borte an incline of her head, and approached the rack of arrows and bows. The mountain wind was bracing with only her riding leathers for warmth, but she blocked out Rokhal’s whispering as she ran her fingers down the carved wood. Yew, ash … She plucked up one of the yew bows, testing its weight, its flexibility and resistance. A solid, deadly weapon.

Yet familiar. As familiar as an old friend. She had not picked up a bow until her mother’s death, and during those initial years of grief and numbness, the physical training, the concentration and strength required, had been a sanctuary, and a reprieve, and forge.

She wondered if any of her old tutors had survived the attack on Rifthold. If any of their arrows had brought down wyverns. Or slowed them enough to save lives.

Nesryn let the thought settle as she moved to the quivers, pulling out arrows. The metal tips were heavier than those she’d used in Adarlan, the shaft slightly thicker. Designed to cut through brutal winds at racing speeds. Perhaps, if they were lucky, take out a wyvern or two.

She selected arrows from various quivers, setting them into her own before she strapped it across her back and approached the line where Borte, Sartaq, and a few others were silently watching.

“Pick a mark,” Nesryn told Borte.

The woman smirked. “Neck, heart, head.” She pointed to each of the three dummies, a different mark for each one. Wind rattled them, the aim and strength needed to hit each utterly different. Borte knew it—all the warriors here did.

Nesryn lifted an arm behind her head, dragging her fingers along the fletching, the feathers rippling against her skin as she scanned the three targets. Listened to the murmur of the winds racing past Rokhal, that wild summons she heard echoed in her own heart. Wind-seeker, her mother had called her.

One after another, Nesryn withdrew an arrow and fired.

Again, and again, and again.

Again, and again, and again.

Again, and again, and again.

And when she finished, only the howling wind answered—the wind of Torke, the Roarer. Every training ring had stopped. Staring at what she’d done.

Instead of three arrows distributed amongst the three dummies, she’d fired nine.

Three rows of perfectly aligned shots on each: heart, neck, and head. Not an inch of difference. Even with the singing winds.

Sartaq was grinning when she turned to him, his long braid drifting behind him, as if it were a sulde itself.

But Borte elbowed past him, and breathed to Nesryn, “Show me.”

For hours, Nesryn stood atop the Rokhal training ring and explained how she’d done it, how she calculated wind and weight and air. And as much as she showed the various rotations that came through, they also demonstrated their own techniques. The way they twisted in their saddles to fire backward, which bows they wielded for hunting or warfare.

Nesryn’s cheeks were wind-chapped, her hands numb, but she was smiling—wide and unfailingly—when Sartaq was approached by a breathless messenger who had burst from the stairwell entrance.

His hearth-mother had returned to the aerie at last.

Sartaq’s face revealed nothing, though a nod from him had Borte ordering all the onlookers to go back to their various stations. They did so with a few grins of thanks and welcome to Nesryn, which she returned with an incline of her head.

Sartaq set his quiver and bow on the wooden rack, extending a hand for Nesryn’s. She passed him both, flexing her fingers after hours of gripping bow and string.

“She’ll be tired,” Borte warned him, a short sword in her hand. Her training, apparently, was not over for the day. “Don’t pester her too much.”

Sartaq threw an incredulous look at Borte. “You think I want to get smacked with a spoon again?”

Nesryn choked at that, but shrugged into the embroidered cobalt-and-gold wool coat, belting it tightly. She trailed the prince as he headed into the warm interior, straightening her wind-tossed hair as they descended the dim stairwell.

“Even though Borte is to one day lead the Eridun, she trains with the others?”

“Yes,” Sartaq said without glancing over his shoulder. “Hearth-mothers all know how to fight, how to attack and defend. But Borte’s training includes other things.”

“Like learning the different tongues of the world.” Her use of the northern language was as impeccable as Sartaq’s.

“Like that. And history, and … more. Things even I am not told of by either Borte or her grandmother.”

The words echoed off the stones around them. Nesryn dared ask, “Where’s Borte’s mother?”

Sartaq’s shoulders tensed. “Her sulde stands on Arundin’s slopes.”

Just the way he spoke it, the cold cut of his voice …“I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” was all Sartaq said.

“Her father?”

“A man her mother met in distant lands, and whom she did not care to hold on to for longer than a night.”

Nesryn considered the fierce, wicked young woman who’d fought with no small skill in the training rings. “I’m glad she has you, then. And her grandmother.”

Sartaq shrugged. Dangerous, strange territory—she’d somehow waded into a place where she had no right to pry.

But then Sartaq said, “You’re a good teacher.”

“Thank you.” It was all she could think to say. He’d kept close to her side while she walked the others through her various positions and techniques, but had said little. A leader who did not need to constantly be filling the air with talking and boasting.

He blew out a breath, shoulders loosening. “And I’m relieved to see that the reality lives up to the legend.”

Nesryn chuckled, grateful to be back on safer ground. “You had doubts?”