The silence was deafening. Crackles of the small torchlight were the only indicator that there was life in the room. Wrena fought to keep herself from breaking the prolonged stretch of it. This was her lord father’s way. A man who let the air speak for him. She had seen him do this with others during the westlands lord's assembly—the Summit—when she’d spied on one a few months ago from a moon window on the roof of the great hall. Her father had told his children that weaker men broke beneath such silence. That a man who bore guilt or ill intentions in his heart could not handle the weight of it. The bulk of the weight was in his gaze, Wrena now realized. It was severe, cold as the Quiet Sea that sprawled beyond their shores. As though ice was splicing through her thoughts, like he could read them if he stared long enough. All the while the firelight of the small chamber pranced and flitted in his eyes—a dance of fire and ice. To be on the receiving end of it was unendurable. She was close to giving in, her tongue ached with the burden of her voice pounding on it for release.
The Path is Bright, Words of House Glidehave, ruling house of the South. A shining sun and silver sword, she busied her mind on anything other than the elemental storm in her father’s eyes. Let the Harpies Come, Words of House Cressane, ruling house of the North. A fox with a dove in its mouth. If Lori was as close as she was to crumbling she didn’t know, she couldn’t spare a glance. But it was just as difficult to keep her eyes forward.
“I would speak with my daughter alone,” he finally said.
A puff of air escaped Lori’s mouth and his shoulders dropped. He nodded once, turned, and left Wrena to bear that gaze on her own. Her swallow was loud.
What small reprieve the break in silence had brought was forgotten to the chamber. High-pitched ringing sounded in her ears. She thought she could hear the blood running through them if she tried hard enough. The room was spinning from the effort to remain steadfast, but she and her father remained deadly still, eyes on each other.
“Your mother would have me send you to the southern or eastern courts for refinement,” he said. “She feels I’ve been too lenient with you, that I’ve watered the wild roots of the westlands in your heart. I cannot say she’s wrong.”
The thought of being shipped off to a foreign court sent a spike of panic through Wrena’s chest. She knew little of the south kingdom, only that the sun beat viciously there and the boiling black sand could burn through plate and steel if a man fell to it. The east kingdom was the home of her lady mother, where House Lynhart presided. They called it the lion’s den. She saw enough of the lion in her lady mother to know she did not want to go there. The westlands were her home, with its wild hills and gilded Stillwood forest, the misted rain and moss-covered castle, the people she loved. Her father wouldn’t send her away. Would he?
“I have a mind to heed her after what you and Lori have conspired,” he said.
“Please, Father,” she said, almost a whisper. “I’ll be good. I’ll be better. Please, don’t send me away.”
Her lord father looked on at her, his face unreadable. Would that she was a mage of the forgotten gods and could cast a spell to release her from those eyes and this prison. She didn’t know if she could bear the punishment that fit the crime, but she also would not pass the sole blame to Lori. Death would claim her before she turned into a rat.
“Do you understand who you brought to our court?” He asked.
“Aye, I do,” she said and dropped her chin to her chest. “Though I did not know it was he who was the wandering sword before my eyes laid on him, Father. I swear it.”
“My daughter will show strength when she speaks. Bring your eyes up, child. Stillhours do not fear justice,” he said. “Now, whether or not you knew who he was before you brought him here holds no meaning to me other than a total lack of forethought on your and Lori’s part. I know you did not send for him, Bynor confirmed the dove was issued from Lori. What I would know is what you wanted with a wandering sword. I’ll have the full truth or you can be assured your lady mother will have her wish.”
The threat hung in the air as Wrena weighed her options. There weren’t many. Gods, what a day of dread this was.
“I wished to learn the sword. He was to teach me.”
Her father sat back in his chair and sighed. “All this for a trainer, Wrena.” It was not a question. “I allowed Ser Eviyn to humor your presence in the yard for as long as I dared. I’ve turned a blind eye to you and the lads congregating in the Stillwood at dawn to practice. Perhaps I am a fool. Perhaps my lady is correct when she says that my heart is too soft for my wildling daughter of the West.” He spoke more to himself than to Wrena, so she held her tongue.
Quiet stretched between them anew as the lord of Westermin considered his daughter, the daughter he called his wildheart. Wrena’s heart felt wild in the present moment, pounding on her ribs in the frantic rhythm of her prayer that he not send her to the south or eastlands.
“Your lady mother is of the east and understands not the ways of the westlands. I would not like to see the known spirit of the West wrested from you. There’s more of the West in you than any of my children; I see it in the misted storms of your eyes and the Quiet Sea’s sand of your hair. You are as fierce and unyielding to the rain and winds of life as I once was. As true folk of the westlands are. I would not have you lose that for all the gold or silver in the five kingdoms, my wildheart. But it must be tamed. I admit I have done a poor job in containing your spirit, for duty has never sung in your ear so sweet as honor has.”
Wrena’s eyes were wide, her jaw dropped behind faintly parted lips. She had never heard such words from her lord father in her life. All she had known was the admonishments of her lady mother, the dinna, and the girls of the keep. The mocking snickers and whispered jibes of Westermin’s men and servants as they saw her slashing the padded wooden practice swords in the heavy rains when all else stayed inside. The feeling of her lord father’s sword hand around her dream as he choked it and stuffed the duty of their house down its throat to silence it. A weight felt lifted from her, his hands had softened their grip and she could breathe. Yet she was wary of how he meant to tame her nature. The westlands people’s idea of harnessing a strong spirit could be brutal, to say the least.
“Don’t look so troubled, Wrena. I think you’ll favor what I have in mind for you,” he said. A smile played across his lips. “I won’t be sending you to the eastern or southern courts.”
“Oh, thank the gods,” she said, her shoulders sagged and her body leaned forward with the urge to run and jump in his arms in her relief. She held back when she saw the look in his eye.
“Aye,” he said. “Instead I’ll be bringing the South to you.”
She furrowed her brows. “What do you mean?”
“What do you know of the sandwalkers?”
“They practice an unusual style of sword fighting. They’re said to move like the wind over the sands of their deserts,” she said. “Masters of their style are called Sandwalking Swords of Stygia, and some say they are the best fighters in all of the realms. Ser Drydin Lorne of Rhone traveled to the Wastes to find them and learn their art to defeat Pryzn’Raa the Usurper.”
“You’ve always shined in your histories,” her father said.
“It’s my favorite subject,” she said and lifted her chin, smiling.
“Do you know of the differences between the fighting styles of what they view as the North and the South?” He asked.
“All kingdoms north of the southern kingdom fight in a strength-focused combat style, prizing efficiency, and brute force,” she said, recalling the lesson with Vitasan Marsun. “The sandwalkers of the South emphasize the art of fluidity, stealth, and swiftness of their fighters. They believe one should become the wind that blows the sand in their movements. It seems silly to me.”
“It seems silly because you have not seen it, wildheart. The style of the sandwalkers favors smaller, leaner fighters who can dodge and dance through the strikes of their opponent while sending their own at maddening speeds. It does not rely on strength in the way the men of the other four kingdoms do. That does not make it any less lethal,” he said.
“So…you would like me to be like a sandwalker?” She asked, confused.
Her lord father leaned forward, a serious look in his eyes. “I will send for a Sandwalking Sword to train you if you swear an oath to me that you will cease your open talk of becoming a lady knight, and will never breathe a word of this to your lady mother. You will continue your feminine studies alongside, and I’ll not hear a breath of protest when you’re of an age for betrothal and the training comes to its end. We will think only of this as practical self-defence training, not of me blessing your dream of knighthood.”
Stranger’s hells. Stranger’s hells. He really meant it. The Justiciar of the West, who seldom let dreams eclipse the duty of the realm and known lands, was going to give Wrena her dream. She ran and leaped into his arms. She wrapped her own around his neck as she buried her face in his neck and breathed in the smell of the salted sea in his hair.
“Thank you, Father. Thank you,” she chanted into his neck like a dinn in his temple. He held her in his large, herculean arms and stroked her back once over.
“I would hear that oath, little one,” he said.
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Wrena pulled herself out from his neck and kissed his cheek, looked straight into his eyes, and said, “I vow it, Lord Father. I will do all that you ask of me from this day, until my last day. And I will be the best Sandwalking Sword Ileth has ever seen.”
Her father barked a laugh. “That wasn’t part of your oath, child, but I’ll take it all the same. You will be a harpy in a dove’s feathers. Of that, I have little doubt.”
Wrena smiled to herself. “I already am.”
“Aye,” he said. “But you should save your celebrations for later as the matter of your punishment remains.”
Wrena looked at him aghast.
“Surely you did not think me that soft of heart,” he said. “Fetch Lori and tell him to get two water skins.”
“Water skins?”
“You’ll both be climbing the Path of Pain this afternoon. If you start now you may make it back before supper. See that you do, otherwise I’ll instruct the kitchens to be closed to you both tonight.”
Wrena stood there in a state of shock at her and the Path of Pain and the word ‘climbing’ being strung together in one sentence. The unknown realms take her but she hadn’t seen this coming after being blinded by the gleaming rays of her triumph.
“I see the ways of men are falling hard on your shoulders. Best you get used to it if you’re to be a knight,” there was humor dancing hand-in-hand with the fire and ice in his eyes. “You may take your leave, Wrena.”
There was nothing left to do but to do as her lord father bade, so Wrena relayed the order to Lori and donned her wool coat. Before she knew it, she was walking towards the cliffs and the infamous Path of Pain.
?
Ominous grey clouds burdened with the promise of a storm rolled overhead. Lori called up at her to pick up her pace, worried that the storm would roll in and they would be trapped, or worse, slip from the slick rock face and plummet to their deaths. She was slowing him down, she knew she was. Her feet bled in her boots at the heel and the sides of them near her toes, along with her palms which were raw from catching her in a slide or clutching jagged stones when she lost her footing. Her thighs burned with the fires of the Stranger’s hells from effort to stay crouched in the descent on the impossibly steep and perilous pass. In front of her and miles out, she could see a wall of rain descending from the shadowed heavens to meet the churning waters of the Quiet Sea. Many, many miles out, she hoped.
This was just the descent. Known and forgotten gods, this was just the descent. Only one-quarter of the Path remained, and below it, the serenity of the sanded and pebbled shores awaited her. The final leg of the Path was a series of outcropped stone shelves that could only be leapt from one to the other. She now had a full understanding of the incredibly apt names of both the Path of Pain and the Cliffs of Unrest. To the right of them, the cliffs formed in a cruel point leading straight down to a rocky bed where the shoreline ended. Waves were slamming in force against the rocks and spraying the frigid salted water to ridiculous heights in its power. Her heart thundered as loud as the breaking waves in her ears as she slid a few feet toward the lip of a shelf and grabbed blindly for a purchase. Her hand met the razored edge of another damnable stone protruding from the surface, she winced in pain as it dug into her raw and weeping palms. Her feet almost slid off the ledge and she could not see how far it dropped to the continued path. Lori’s shouts fell on deafened ears that were overwhelmed with the violent breaking of those waves and the howling of the winds that smashed her to the side of the cliff. She was lost in the unknown realms, almost longing for her needle and thread and the fire of the hearth.
“Wrena,” Lori yelled over the wind. His breath was labored as he came up to where she clung to the rock. “We have to keep going. The storm is coming.”
“How will we get back up?” She asked. Panic threatened to freeze her there, she didn’t know if she could move even if she wanted to. And she desperately wanted off this gods forsaken cliff. She had never had such a stark fear of heights as was present in this descent. She loved to climb, to feel the crisp air at the top of a turret. This path was too steep to find anything other than pain and dread.
“We won’t until the storm passes, the rock will be too slick to get purchase on and these winds are too strong. We can shelter in one of the caves,” he said. “We’re almost there. You’re the best climber in Westermin, this is old hat for you. And I’ll be right in front of you. I’ll catch you if you fall.”
Wrena nodded her head as she shook from terror and the cold of the winds and seawater that drenched her right side where the spray had reached her. She slowly let go of the rock and continued her descent with Lori staying right in front of her, like he’d promised. When she jumped from the final six-foot-high rock shelf and her blistered feet hit the earth, she nearly wept with joy and kissed the sand. Lori urged her forward along the left side of the beach as the tide was rising and the rain had reached them. They ran along the shore for a few hundred yards until he indicated they were upon the destination he sought. They would have to climb.
Pain such as this was foreign to Wrena, her palms and fingers so raw and slick with blood and water she could barely hold a steady grip as they climbed the twenty feet toward the mouth of the cave in the cliffside. She had seen plenty of caves at sea level in their dash but understood why this one was necessary. They would be flooded out or drowned in the swelling tide in the lower caves while waiting out the storm. A calloused hand reached down to hoist her up to the lip of flattened stone. They panted on their backs in the pitch of the cavern as the storm began to rage beyond.
“You and Wes do this as a regular punishment?” Wrena asked in between breaths.
Lori laughed. “Aye. It’s not normally so bad as today, though, what with those storm winds. Ser Eviyn is a glutton for torturing little lords in the yard. He says it's a tradition of the westlands. I say he’s not been properly bedded and takes it out on us instead of the missus.”
Lori picked himself up and started looking around the cave, feeling the walls and ground in the nearly complete darkness. He let out a small whoop of victory, and Wrena heard steel striking flint. The flame caught and ignited a small torch in his hand. He found another one, lit it, and handed it to Wrena.
“Why are there torches here?” she asked.
“Wes and I got caught in a storm like this once and had to sit in total darkness of the bloody cave for hours. It was enough to have us bring these and some other supplies the following day. Wanted to be prepared for the next time we got caught with our breeches down around our ankles,” he said. He had stacked some sticks and kindling between them as he talked. A touch to the bundle with his torch brought fire, and as the flame grew, he fed it more wood to nurture its growth. She was grateful for the added warmth and shrugged off her boots and outer layers to dry them a bit before they headed back out.
“What a sorry lot you two are,” she said. “To get punished so often you have to prepare a pack with supplies for your home-away-from-home in the stinking cliffs.”
Lori threw a stick at her. “And you’ll be grateful for it! Our suffering is your gain, you little wildling.”
“Aye, I imagine I’ll enjoy reaping the rewards of your blunders for years to come,” she laughed. He dug in the bag and produced a cloth with twine around it and tossed it to Wrena. She unwrapped it and found salted venison. “Wouldn’t happen to have any lemon cakes in there, would you? I could use a sweet right about now.”
“You and your sweets,” Lori said. “It’s a wonder you’re not the size of Big Ubba.” Lucio’s son was a gentle soul, but his love of sweets and the ladies of the kitchens had made him rather rotund—and the butt of many jokes in Westermin, to Wrena’s dismay. “Sadly for you, no sweets are lurking in any corners of this pack or cave. The salted meat will have to do, and I would eat now if I were you. We’ll have a slog of it getting back up the Path.”
The rumble of her stomach grew loud at the mention of food. The last time she ate was before dawn that morning, and her hunger stirred powerfully inside of her. She yanked at a piece of the meat from between her teeth and strained to bite a piece off. It wouldn’t budge. “Stranger’s hells, Lori, how old is this meat?”
“Come to think of it, it may have been down here for a year…or so.”
“Naturally,” she said. The damned meat wouldn’t break off. She sucked on it to soften it, which for the added wait time her stomach wasn’t particularly cheerful with.
“Let’s see those hands,” he said. She held them up to him in the firelight. “Gods, Wrena. Those are bad. It looks like you’ve been flayed by a devil.”
“They hurt like a devil, all right,” she said around the venison. In truth, she hadn’t realized how bad they truly were, nor felt the full extent of the wounds during the frenzy of survival on the beach. Now that she was settled, they were beginning to throb something fierce.
“I can’t find any bandage cloths. We’ll have to wash your hands in the sea and wrap them in that venison cloth until Vitasan Marsun can take a look at you.”
She nodded. A chunk of the meat finally broke free and she chewed it for what felt like centuries. Kingdoms could have risen and crumbled in the time it took her to get that piece of meat ground enough to swallow.
“I’m sorry, Wrena,” Lori said after some time had passed.
“The meat is bad, sure, but I won’t spill blood over it.”
“No, you twit. I mean…I got you into this mess. If I hadn’t brought the Torment to Westermin you wouldn’t be here, and your hands wouldn’t be in that state,” he said. “Gods, they look dreadful. I might be sick.”
“I thought you Wilburns were supposed to be tough westlands men—made of fire and all. Wouldn’t have expected you to be a little prickling about some bloodied palms.”
“Wrena!” Lori let out a shocked laugh. “Your tongue grows sharper by the day. Though, I suppose I deserve it right about now,” he paused. “With fullness of heart, I’m sorry. You shouldn’t be here. I never would’ve thought Lord Terryn would send his own daughter on the Path. Strange, that.”
Wrena smiled to herself. Lori didn’t know that he had ultimately given her a gift. “He gave me the same punishment because he wants me to understand the violence and pain of men.”
“That man makes no sense at all. He and the lioness have been pushing for just the opposite this past year,” Lori said. “‘Lady Wrena of House Stillhour has a duty to wed into a great and noble house in some forgotten corner of the realm. She must be a perfect lady! With perfect needlework! No lord will have a woman who cannot embroider his bulge in impeccable resemblance!’”
Wrena and Lori’s raucous laughter bounced in echoes down the tunnel of the cave. His impressions were her favorite, especially as they were always a stretch more exaggerated and silly than the subjects themselves. He had a way of making things feel lighter than they had been, or could be. Like the flame in this cave. The sound of the fading storm returned in the ebb of their laughter.
“This day may have ended up being the best day of my life, Lori,” Wrena said.
“That’s downright gut-wrenching if this is to be the best day of your life. This is shit,” Lori said.
“No, you’re right. Second best day.”
“Still depressing. But then what’s the first best to be?”
“The day a Sandwalking Sword of Stygia comes to Westermin,” she said.
“What in the unknown realms would a Sandwalking Sword come to Westermin for?” Lori asked.
“For me,” Wrena stuck her chin up and grinned.
“You’re talking out of your arse. That old meat’s gone straight to your head,” Lori said.
“Father is to send for one, and the sandwalker will teach me. He believes their style may be best suited for me, being that I’m so small and vicious and deadly.”
Lori leveled a flat look at her. When she didn’t admit to a ruse, his jaw went slack. Then he flashed the widest, cheek-splitting smile Wrena had ever seen and held out his hand to her. “Off your arse, little harpy. We’ve a celebration to commence at the castle.”
