Page 48 of Of Kings and Thieves
The thought hit me with the force of the winds we had left behind on the other side of the pass, and I hesitated. Was that his reason for asking me to leave? Was I a liability?
Maybe I was. If so, what would I do about it? I had trained hard, and though I was no master with the sword, maybe I could use it to protect myself and not get killed. But Col knew the limits of my ability better than I did. If he was concerned, I should be too.
It was all I thought about as we approached our camp for the night, the last stop before leaving the mountains—the ruins on this side of Ravenfell Pass. The ruins had been abandoned centuries ago, and most of what remained now was a single, tall black tower and the collapsed keep. The menacing wall surrounding it had mostly crumbled, but the fact that it was there at all was a testament to its onetime strength.
The ruins loomed over the road, as if they still had a quiet power to them, and I shuddered at the feeling of being watched.
“Why was it abandoned?” I asked nobody in particular.
Col was riding beside me now, our conversation hanging between us like an ugly weight, threatening to unravel all the good things we had started along Dead Man’s Road.
“Armies attacked it a few times over the years,” he said, “but the last time was dragons.”
I gaped at him. “Dragons come this far south?”
He smiled grimly. “We’re not that far south here. The dragon lands are just to the north of us, past the castle and over the mountains. But no, they haven’t come this way in a long time. The tower of Ravenfell stood for a thousand years before the dragons attacked.”
I looked at the stone again and realized that what I thought was blackened, through either weather or the nature of the stone, was the result of fire. “Why did the dragons attack?”
“Because they are righteous bastards who think they should own all lands north of the river,” Magnus said from behind. “At one time, they did. Now they mostly menace the kingdoms of the far north. Although there was a group of them that I think have learned to live with humans. But we don’t get much news from those lands, so it’s hard to distinguish rumor from fact.”
“After the dragons attacked this keep,” Col continued, “a powerful ward was placed on the main castle, the one we glimpsed earlier. For centuries, that ward has repelled its fair share of attacks by dragons and wyverns.”
I had never seen a dragon or known anyone who had, but I’d heard stories of their brutality, power, and cunning, and that was enough.
We finally came level with the ruins, which had been built into the mountain itself. A narrow road wound up the cliff, and I figured the only thing that could have brought down this fortress would have been dragons or magic. Simple men and their armies couldn’t use this road in numbers.
We had just turned to take the path upward when Killian, riding at the front, held up his hand. He was staring at the tower far above. I looked up and didn’t see anything, but Col rode up to Killian to confer with him.
“Something’s not right,” Killian said. “I sense magic here, and it is not the magic of Harrowfell or his pet. It feels ancient.”
“Can you tear it down?” Col asked.
“I don’t know yet. We’ll need to be cautious as we make our way up. Keep your eyes open.”
Col turned back to me. “Draw your sword, Samara. You may need it.”
That was all he said, and as we proceeded, I fought against the fear that brushed down my spine. Col had never told me to draw my sword unless for practice, and while I was glad of his confidence in me, I wasn’t ready for my new skills to be tested.
The road upward was eerily quiet; even the whistle of the wind through the crumbling walls seemed muted. I watched Sprite, who seemed to have a good sense about these things. She remained calm, and if she wasn’t bolting for cover, then neither was I.
At the top was a large gatehouse that was only half standing. The rest of it had fallen either into the ravine far below or directly into the gateway. Whatever doors or portcullis had been fashioned with the gatehouse were long gone, and there was just enough room to ride through the rubble single file. We passed through, and the bitter wind chilled my nose and stung my eyes.
Just inside the inner courtyard was a grove of grieving trees. The oldest I had ever seen, tall and wide with great boughs covered in heavy, white leaves. Despite everything, these trees had grown where nothing else had, perhaps for centuries. Noble, I thought as we passed under them, feeling the brush of their lowest hanging branches as the wind whipped through.
Their presence was comforting until a wind-whipped branch smacked me in the face.
I cried out in shock, and Col quickly fell back to my side. “What happened?”
Feeling foolish, I shook my head. “Just a branch.”
But there was blood on my cheek.
“We’ll get you patched up once we get inside,” he said, sticking beside me. “There’s an evil wind here, and I’ll be glad when we’re out of sight of any enemies.”
“Who would see us here?”
But Col didn’t answer, and as we passed under an archway leading through another wall, I wondered if there was something else about this place he wasn’t telling me.