“Nedley said you told him a lot of new people are coming this way?” Sarette asked as she accompanied Cenric south of the village to the new barracks to show him around. He, his wife, and his sister had found lodging at the boarding house, then he’d come looking for her.

  “More than I saw over the summer,” he said. “I was living farther north, though, so I’m not sure what it was like closer to Four Roads.”

  “We thought it would slow down once news got out about the battle.”

  Cenric shrugged. “The story going around is that Corec, his mages, and a few dozen soldiers defeated the armies of Larso and sent them fleeing back home. I’m not so stupid as to believe that’s how it went, but … you’re still here and Larso isn’t. The freelanders are taking it as an omen.”

  Sarette wasn’t sure how to reply to that so she changed the topic, pointing out the activity ahead of them. “Georg is Armsmaster now, so he’s handling most of the weapons training, but he may ask for your help on the things you’re more familiar with.”

  At the moment, Georg and Ral were teaching the newest recruits how to use the captured ballistae the knights had abandoned. Most of the invading force’s siege weapons had been destroyed during the fighting, but some of the sabotaged devices had been far enough away to survive. The knights had left them behind as part of their surrender—and to speed up their return to Hightower. Corec had laid claim to them, ordering repairs and then replacing most of the ballistae on the fortress walls with catapults.

  Siege weapons wouldn’t normally be part of the Armsmaster’s duties, but Georg had more experience with them than anyone else, so he supervised the training when he could. The former knight noticed Sarette and Cenric approaching and came over to greet them, leaving Ral to finish the session.

  “You’re back,” Georg said to Cenric.

  “I am,” the other man replied.

  That was all they said. Cenric had never been much for talking, but Sarette suspected she’d missed an unspoken conversation in the few words the two Larsonian veterans had exchanged.

  “He’ll be a sergeant again,” she said. “We were just discussing his duties.” She turned back to Cenric. “What I really need is for you to train up new sergeants and corporals. Nedley’s joining the knights and Ral is old enough to retire. We’re spread too thin on people who can actually lead a squad.”

  She figured that was the best way to use Cenric’s skills for as long as he decided to stick around. The dour man had come looking for work because he’d run out of other choices, but after his time as a red-eye, he’d lost his will to fight. There was a good chance he’d quit again once he’d saved up a bit of coin, and she wanted to take advantage of what he could offer in the meantime.

  “Teaching?” he said, looking thoughtful. “I can do that.”

  Georg snorted. “Sometimes I don’t know why we bother with all this, if mages are just going to do all the fighting for us,” he said, giving Sarette a pointed look. “How am I supposed to train people for a job you can do better by yourself?”

  “We didn’t do all the fighting,” she said. “The soldiers played their part well.”

  “I was there, remember? I saw what happened, and I don’t care to see it again.” Georg didn’t seem to have the Order of Pallisur’s typical hatred for magic, but the piles of dead bodies left behind by the mercenaries had been a disturbing sight. Sarette wouldn’t want to repeat that day either.

  She considered his words, trying to figure out what he really meant by them. Georg could be an antagonistic bully when no one stood up to him, but if he’d actually wanted to leave, he’d have done so already. And he wasn’t entirely wrong.

  “If you’re worried about the soldiers not having enough to do, then we’ll have to teach them a new way to fight,” she said. “We worked together against the dragon. We can do it again.”

  Georg frowned. “Just how are we going to do that?”

  “That’s something the three of us will have to figure out.”

  #

  The lively chatter in the Great Hall of the Four Roads chapter house brought back a lot of memories. Treya had spent four years here before Mother Yewen sent her to Tyrsall, and not much had changed since then. Most of the same teachers were still around, looking a little older now. The students were different, but that was normal—girls were always coming and going from the chapter houses.

  Treya accepted a plate from one of the girls assigned to serving duty for the evening, then sat down near Shana.

  “Feeling better after the bath?” the other woman said.

  “I healed myself,” Treya admitted. Her legs had been sore and her feet numb after running the entire distance from Hilltop Village to Four Roads, but they’d managed the trip in just two days, far outpacing the speed of traveling by horseback. “I can heal you too, if you want.”

  Shana shrugged. “I’m fine. You get used to it if you run as much as I do.”

  “Do you really have to go?” Treya asked. They’d had this conversation already, but she would miss having another mystic around to practice with.

  “There’s not much left I can teach you that you can’t learn on your own,” Shana said. “And your friends certainly don’t need me to do their fighting for them. I can’t stay here forever—there’s always someone who needs help somewhere.”

  Mother Yewen joined them then, along with Treya’s old friend Liese, a shy, dark-haired girl who had to wear spectacles to see five feet in front of her face. Liese had trained with the Order of Scholars and now kept books for the chapter house.

  “I hear you two made quite the entrance, almost running over the girls cleaning the courtyard,” Yewen said.

  “I’m sorry, Mother Yewen,” Treya replied. “We didn’t see them until we came around the house of healing.”

  “Don’t apologize—you’ve got them interested in the Order now. And I was a mystic once too, remember. Sometimes you just have to see how far you can take it. Speaking of which, I’ve heard back from the senior Mothers. They’ve agreed to grant permission for you to move forward with your idea, on a trial basis only.”

  “My idea?” Treya asked.

  “To start a new Order for the trades and crafts, and to require mystic and concubine candidates to learn another skill so they have something to fall back on if their plans don’t work out. I excluded the scholars from that, of course, since that’s a trade in itself. I didn’t mention anything about putting less emphasis on the Order of Concubines. One thing at a time.”

  “But I never told you …” Treya started, then noticed Shana’s big grin.

  “I may have passed along a few notes,” the other woman said.

  The idea was important, Treya was certain, but it was only an idea. She’d never considered having to implement it herself.

  “I’m not sure what to do,” she admitted.

  “I can help!” Liese offered, then looked embarrassed at having spoken up in front of the others.

  “Perhaps that would be for the best,” Yewen said. “In truth, Treya, you’re not the best person to build it—you’re not a tradeswoman yourself, and Liese is. But if you want the idea to catch on, someone will have to champion it, and that should be you. After the dragon, your name is known across all the chapter houses. They know you’re close with Corec Tarwen as well, and his name is on the rise too. Now is the best time to use your influence.”

  “I can do that, I think,” Treya said. She wasn’t sure what it meant, exactly, but she could write letters or get Leena to take her around to the different chapter houses.

  “Good,” Yewen said. “And since you’re here, you and Liese can talk about your ideas for the new Order, then start reaching out to the trades and guilds in town to see what they can offer in partnership.”

  Treya nodded. It seemed Mother Yewen had put more thought into the planning than she herself had, but it was sound advice.

  “You’ll let us start the new Order here, then?” Treya asked.

  “I’ll have to. Unless you’re ready to build your own chapter house?”

  “I … what?”

  “With the number of people moving into your region, you’ll need one eventually.”

  “I don’t think we’re ready for that yet,” Treya said. “We don’t even have any orphan girls, unless you count Ditte.” Four Roads was already the smallest of the chapter houses, and that was in a town of thirty thousand people. The population surrounding Hilltop Village couldn’t be growing that fast, could it? Bobo and Carn Tammerly were still trying to get a better estimate from the more distant settlements.

  Yewen nodded. “It can wait until it’s necessary. Until then, I’ll take any girls you need homes for. But start thinking about who you’d want running your chapter. Will you allow the Orders to assign an outsider, or should it be someone who’s already there? Between you, Berit, and Nallee—and Kimi—which one of you is best suited for managing things … and keeping the good will of the local lord?”

  “Another distraction,” Shana murmured. “But that’s the life you’ve found for yourself. You’ll manage.”

  #

  Leena studied the image on the page as she idly twirled the jade bracelet around her wrist, trying to puzzle out the meaning of the map Bobo had given her.

  In two days, she was scheduled to collect her new students—Yelena’s two new bondmates—from Sanvar to take over their training. That training would pull her away from other tasks, yet in the weeks since she’d retrieved the bracelet from Pavan after the battle, she’d barely made any progress at all on the map. Other than a second trip to the diagonal world, this time without meeting any of its residents, there’d just been a series of failed attempts to reach the more distant lines.

  The lines did represent worlds—she was certain of that, even if the demonic realm appeared different every time she went—but how was she supposed to use that knowledge? They were just lines drawn out on paper. They didn’t provide enough information to reach any one particular spot, much less indicate which location she was meant to find. Surely this had to do with Snake somehow, but how?

  She stared again at the lower half of the map, the four lines representing the worlds she’d been able to reach—the three parallel worlds with which she was most familiar, and then the diagonal line which crossed through her own world, barely missing the other two.

  She straightened up in sudden realization. The lines themselves might not be distinct enough to represent specific locations, but the point where they crossed had to mean something.

  Leena scrawled a quick note to Ellerie, explaining what she was attempting, then Traveled to the point where the lines crossed, keeping her focus on the middle of the three parallel worlds. She wanted to see the intersection from her own side.

  She appeared in the middle of a heavy rainstorm, and it took her a moment to get her bearings. Peering up at the rocky ridges surrounding her, she found she was partway down the sloped side of a massive crater. The center of the crater was another five hundred feet west from her position and a hundred feet lower in elevation, the lowest point marked by a jagged, inky black crevice in the ground. The weak light of the sun through the clouds didn’t seem to shine inside like it would with a cave. It was more like a hole ripped in paper and held up against a dark night.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Rough trails had been carved throughout the crater, then worn down by time and erosion. The rainwater gathered in rivulets that trickled down the slope, gradually washing away dirt and stone to cut gaps in the pathways in the spots where the water flowed. The rivulets joined together in tiny streams near the bottom of the crater, draining into the dark hole.

  A flicker of motion at the corner of Leena’s eye warned her that she wasn’t alone. Scattered figures trudged along the trails at distant points around the crater. At the far side of the bowl, a wider, sturdier road led from the top of the ridge directly down to the crevice. As she watched, a figure reached the bottom and climbed down into the dark hole, disappearing from sight.

  There was something wrong with the way the figure had moved, something unnatural, and Leena was suddenly wary about standing in the open. She didn’t want to be seen by anyone until she’d learned more. No one was looking her way so she hurried up the side of the crater, taking the closest trail that would lead her to the top. The slope grew steeper as she went, and she had to crawl the last few feet, pulling herself up and over the ridge and tearing her dress around the knees as she braced herself on the rocks.

  At the top, she discovered that the whole area was surrounded by a dense jungle, not much different than those in Sanvar. Crouching behind an outcropping of rock to hide from view, she peered back down into the crater.

  The nearest figure, wearing a brown robe, was slowly approaching her position as it traversed a horizontal trail fifty feet down. Every so often it stopped to bend down and pull something from the ground. Vegetation, Leena realized—with the jungle so near, the crater must have required regular maintenance to keep from getting grown over.

  Like the other figure she’d observed, this one also moved oddly, its steps longer but slower than a human’s. As it drew close, she recognized it as a type of creature she’d encountered on her first visit to the diagonal world. It walked upright on two legs, about the same height as a tall man, but it had four arms. The upper pair were larger and more muscular, ending in hands that were almost like talons, with claw-like appendages. Over one arm, it carried a leather bag where it deposited the plants and weeds it was pulling from the trail. Its lower arms—unoccupied at the moment—were slender and shorter, with human-like hands and fingers.

  Had the creatures crossed from one world to another through the hole? Where could this place be that no one had noticed their presence?

  Leena’s gift couldn’t tell her precisely where she was, and she was too far from home to try Seeking, but she could make a rough guess by comparing to other locations she’d Traveled to in the past. She was west and south from where she’d started. Too far west to be in Aravor, or even in the seaborn homeland she’d only seen on maps. Not quite as far south as Sanvara City. With the jungle blocking her view, she couldn’t get a sense of how large the landmass was. Was she on an island in the ocean? Or was it a continent she’d never visited before?

  An eerie, metallic voice from behind startled her.

  She whirled around to find another of the creatures watching her. This one wore a vest of animal hides, and close up, she could see that its dusty gray skin was covered in scales. Its eyes were dark orbs.

  It repeated the same phrase, then pointed northeast and rattled off a sequence of words Leena couldn’t understand.

  Despite its strange appearance, the encounter wasn’t as frightening as being silently watched by the creatures in their own world.

  “You can talk?” she said, holding out her hands to show she wasn’t armed. “I don’t mean any harm. Can you understand what I’m saying?”

  It spoke again. To Leena, it sounded like the seaborn tongue, which she’d never learned to speak, and the creature’s harsh tone contrasted with the melody of the language enough that she wouldn’t have recognized any words even if she knew them.

  When she didn’t respond, the creature pointed one arm straight up and let out a loud cawing sound.

  A dot in the sky, which Leena had assumed to be a bird, grew rapidly in size as it descended, landing with a whumph of air. It was a smaller, skinnier version of a dragon, still tall enough to tower over her as it stood on its rear legs. Was this a drake? It matched the stories Corec and Treya had told of the two they’d fought.

  The creature she’d been speaking to uttered another sentence, its tone more urgent this time. It was growing agitated.

  When it bared its pointed teeth and turned to signal to the drake, Leena teleported, returning to her quarters in Warden’s Keep. She fell into a chair, her strength suddenly leaving her as she realized how much danger she’d been in.

  She wasn’t sure what to make of the encounter. The presence of an unknown people in the world was certain to be important to someone, yet she couldn’t see how that knowledge would help her stop Snake.

  But the creatures weren’t her only discovery.

  There should have been two locations where the two worlds intersected—one on her world, and one within the world of the six-limbed creatures.

  There should have been two, but when she’d Traveled to the crater, she’d sensed three.

  #

  The tall, wide cave mouth stood midway up a craggy hill.

  “How do you like this one?” Shavala asked Risingwind.

  They’d spent three days searching for caves large enough for the dragon to nest in as he grew larger. He was nearly the size of a horse now, and when he stretched his long neck up, his head towered over hers. His wings were the real problem, though. He liked to snap them open to catch the wind, and he didn’t pay much attention to his surroundings when he did so. It had become apparent that he wouldn’t be able to stay around the villages much longer.

  Though his mother had made her lair within the fortress walls, most dragons settled for natural caves. The rocky slopes leading to this one weren’t the best spot for building a hut, but Shavala was used to living in homes that hung off the side of a tree. She’d figure out a way to make it work. She could live inside the cave with Risingwind if she had to, at least until he was old enough to take care of himself, and they were only seven miles from the keep.

  But while the site was a good match for one of her pressing needs, could it handle another? At the rear of the cave, there was a tunnel leading farther back and down. The light was dimmer there, and Shavala proceeded cautiously, testing the ground in front of her before putting her full weight down. Risingwind let out a questioning coo, then followed her in. The width allowed him through if he kept his wings folded.

  They continued through a few twists and turns, finding themselves in pitch-black darkness. Elves could see movement in the dark, and Shavala’s elder senses allowed her to identify differences in her surroundings, but with nothing moving and nothing but stone surrounding her, all she could detect nearby were the walls of the cave. Below her were pockets of groundwater connected in an intricate web leading to the nearest underground stream, and above the hill was open sky, but there was nothing closer than that besides the tunnel itself.

  Risingwind bravely stayed with her, but he began letting out little whining noises—dragons weren’t known for flying at night. Shavala summoned a flame in her cupped palm, allowing her to return to using her normal vision, however dimly. Risingwind sniffed the tiny fire, losing interest when it didn’t smell like smoke or food, but he calmed down once he could see again.

  “Let’s just go a bit farther,” she told him. She sensed a cavern ahead, below ground level and large enough for her needs.

  The opening was tight, and Risingwind had to scrape against the sides to fit through. That was fine—Shavala didn’t want him coming here on his own, and once he hit his next growth spurt, he wouldn’t be able to fit.

  Moisture coated the rocks along one side of the cavern, dripping down in rivulets, but the air was dry. That seemed the appropriate mix. The last two caves she’d looked at had been too humid.

  Bones of long-dead prey animals littered the ground, none of which appeared recent. Predators wouldn’t be much of a concern here—the dragon would scare away any that attempted to inhabit the cave system.

  Shavala set her little ball of flame on a stalagmite with a flattened top, then took her foraging sacks from where they hung on her belt and scattered their contents throughout the cavern. Taking up the staff, she sent it an image of what she wanted. It was sluggish to respond—funguses weren’t plants—but she knew from the visions the staff had shown her that it could do what she wanted.

  Slowly, new mushrooms sprouted in place of the dead pieces, then began glowing with their familiar green luminescence. A carpet of mosses grew between them, and then lichens formed, spreading over the rocks.

  Risingwind watched Shavala work, fascinated, his gaze drawn to ripples of elder magic that weren’t visible to the naked eye.

  “Can you see that?” she asked him. If dragons used elder magic to fly, it followed that they would have their own version of elder senses, but he hadn’t paid much attention to her work in the past.

  He didn’t respond. With the tree bond, he was starting to get a feel for whether she expected an acknowledgement of her words or not.

  With one part of her task out of the way, Shavala grabbed the last of her foraging sacks and carefully placed the mushroom stalks with the cocoons around the cavern in spots with an abundance of living mushrooms. The creatures within the cocoons seemed to still be alive, and she thought she could see a faint purple glow coming from some of them.

  That was as much as she could do for now. The next step was to wait for the moths to hatch and see how well they fared, then start crafting the cavern to match their needs. By bringing the creatures here, she’d be able to watch over their health, giving herself time to experiment with creating a self-sustaining environment.

  When she and Risingwind returned to the surface, the dragon perked up at the steady autumn wind blowing past the hill. He charged to a ridge overlooking a rocky escarpment, unfolding his wings to catch the breeze. Then he leapt off, and Shavala’s heart caught in her chest. She dashed to the ridge in time to see him gliding to a landing at the bottom of the hill. He hadn’t attempted to flap his wings, but he’d gone a good forty yards from where he’d started.

  He looked up at her, a sense of impatience coming through the tree bond as he wondered why she hadn’t followed.

  She scrambled down the steep slope, hugging him around the neck in celebration at his first flight. Stepping back, she saw little curls of smoke drifting up from his nostrils, though he hadn’t attempted to breathe fire. To her elder senses, it appeared he’d lit a tiny flame deep within his chest. It seemed dragons used fire magic to fly the same way Sarette used lightning magic—the process Ariadne called infusion.

  “Well,” Shavala said, “I guess it’s time to teach you to hunt for real.”

  #

  “I’ve never heard of any Lord Odwins. By what right does a Matagoran hold that title?”

  Ansel was standing with his wife and Branth in the small courtyard in front of their home. They were flanked by four of their own armsmen, who’d been instructed to appear defiant yet fearful. Ansel suspected they hadn’t needed to be told that last part. His guards were good men, trustworthy, but they weren’t elite soldiers and they were facing down two squads of mounted royal guards. Another squad of royal guards milled around in the street, not enough room in the courtyard to hold them all.

  “His Majesty King Rusol has granted me a barony outside Telfort for my services,” said Odwins, a skinny man with a long, waxed mustache.

  “What services would those be, Lord Odwins?” Ansel asked.

  Odwins looked like he wished he could be anywhere else, but he seemed to take comfort from how few of Ansel’s soldiers were in view.

  “Lord Ansel, you’re under arrest for treason. Two of your sons have attempted to assassinate the king. You’re to come with me immediately to stand trial.”

  Isabel grasped Ansel’s forearm but he shook her off. The worst was still to come and he couldn’t concentrate on his wife and Odwins at the same time.

  “None of my sons would do anything of the sort,” Ansel said. “Where is Toman? What have you done with him?”

  “Toman Tarwen was tried and executed for his crimes.”

  Isabel shrieked—a slow, wordless wail—and Branth had to grab her in a tight hug to keep her from falling.

  Ansel had been preparing for bad news for weeks, but now that it was here, he found he still wasn’t ready for it. Yet he couldn’t show weakness. Not now.

  “Murder!” he shouted before getting his reaction under control and returning to the words he’d practiced. “Rusol Larse is a mage and a false king! He’s broken the laws of Church and kingdom! By now, Cardinal Aldrich has already renounced him, and you no longer have any authority here.”

  None of the royal guards showed even the slightest reaction to those words. What was wrong with them?

  “Aldrich is dead,” Odwins said. “And if you won’t come peacefully …” He trailed off, then started muttering under his breath.

  “Now!” a voice shouted, and then all the wooden shutters along the front of the manor house were flung open at once, the glass window panes having been carefully removed earlier. A dozen Knights of Pallisur aimed crossbows through the openings and launched their bolts at the royal guards, then quickly traded their spent weapons for loaded ones and fired again. More crossbowmen and some of Ansel’s own archers joined the fray, springing out from the stables and other outbuildings and catching Rusol’s forces in a crossfire.

  Odwins was hit three times, the last bolt taking him through the eye. His body slumped off his horse and fell to the ground while the royal guards who’d lived through the initial assault attempted to turn their horses in a panic, crowding through the narrow gate or trampling over the ornamental fence.

  Out in the village, more knights, mounted and hidden along the side streets, charged the remaining royal forces. The knights—clad in heavier armor, bearing lances, and well trained in this sort of combat—made short work of their opponents.

  Ansel’s cousin Sir Jesson strode out of the manor’s front door, an empty crossbow in one hand and a sword in another. His scouts had been tracking the king’s forces through the mountains for the past three days, preparing for the worst.

  “Get the horses, we’ll need them!” Jesson yelled to his men, then turned to Ansel’s guards. “When they start whispering nonsense like that, that’s when you strike,” he told them. “It means they’re casting a spell. Wizards, anyway. Witches are more dangerous—you can’t always tell when they’re using magic. We have to be prepared for either.”

  After their defeat at Corec’s hands and their return to Hightower, the knights had splintered into factions. Some had pushed onward to Telfort immediately, intending to pressure the Church to issue a proclamation against the king. Others had remained at the fort, taking up their post again and refusing to abandon it a second time.

  The largest group had gathered under Jesson, who’d found himself in a position of leadership for having been the first to stand up to Sir Barat. He’d argued for consolidating their forces and building a defensive position before making contact with the capital, and had led his men north into the Black Crow Mountains. Not only were the Crows known to be loyal to the Church, but they were also a place of twisting mountain roads and hidden valleys, where the land itself would protect from any direct assault, especially with winter coming on.

  Ignoring the aftermath of the short battle, Isabel and Branth slowly sank down to kneel on the grass, Isabel letting out gut-wrenching sobs while Branth held her. Ansel wished he could join them, but with others present, he had to stay focused.

  “Send messengers to Duke Edmond and the eastern border barons,” he ordered. “Use men they know—men whose word they’ll trust.”

  “And the message?” Jesson asked.

  Ever since the knights’ arrival, Ansel had been among those urging caution, waiting for Cardinal Aldrich to take the first action. He’d hoped against hope that Toman would return home before any fighting broke out, or that Corec would arrive and somehow force the world to make sense again.

  But the time for caution had passed. Rusol had murdered one of Ansel’s sons. He’d sent an army against another. There would be no simple answers, no peaceful transition to a new king. Ansel had no legal right to do what he was about to do, but the barons would back his decision. As for the duke, he’d be dealt with—one way or another.

  “Tell them the Crows ride to war.”

  Get early access to chapters through my . I will try to keep patrons about three to six chapters ahead (one to two Patreon releases, since I usually include three chapters in each release).

  The final, fully revised version of Book 1 is as an ebook and paperback.

  *** If you like the story, please consider rating or reviewing it. Thank you! ***

  Boost The Eighth Warden on Top Web Fiction! (boosts expire after seven days, but you can renew them)

  The list of important names and characters has been updated through Book 5. You can find it on my website .