“My family belongs to a very severe sect.” They were both whispering now. A few of the baron’s men looked over at them, but without curiosity. “Water—Aedon’s Ale, as we call it—is our only drink.”

“Good news, that. We will take turns watching, then. I have an ill feeling about what goes on here.”

“Something is strange,” Evan agreed. “One of them said they are the protectors of this tower until the Rimmersmen come, but I have never seen such a lax garrison.” He looked around the room. “They act as if they are waiting for something.”

“You are right.” Aelin’s heart beat faster. Until now, he had not been able to give his uneasy feeling a name, but the young soldier had done it. The baron’s men seemed to be expecting something . . . or someone. “I will take first watch. Sleep now. I drank very little wine myself, and only from the baron’s own jug.”

“Do not let them know you are awake, Sir Aelin,” the young man whispered. “I think they expect us all to sleep soundly tonight.”

“I could not sleep now if I had to,” Aelin told him. “Rest while you can.”

He lay back and closed his eyes, feigning sleep, but his heart was rabbiting and his thoughts were chaotic. Outside, the storm bellowed and hissed like some monster that the gods might have fought at the dawning of the world.

•   •   •

In his dream a forest had grown over him as he slept. He could feel the clutching roots, ancient and cold, as they tangled his limbs and dragged him ever deeper into the ground.

“Ours,” the trees whispered, though he could barely hear them because he was surrounded by dark, damp earth, which crept not only into his ears but his mouth and nose and, somehow, even beneath his skin. He was becoming soil, a man-shaped clod of dirt that would fall to pieces beneath the blade of the first plow. “All this is ours.”

He tried to fight loose, to dig his way toward the surface, hoping that in the world he imagined outside the forest the sun would still shine, that he would be able to see to make his escape. But as he surfaced, pulling back the roots like stiff curtains, he felt the slap of freezing wind. Darkness was all there was, darkness and the moaning of the air, stirred to madness.

Then a face came to him through the tangled roots, a pale, corpse-like face. It was his own. He was not digging upward, he was digging down, and he had found his own grave.

•   •   •

Aelin lurched up, fighting against the strangling clutch of the forest floor, only to discover the heavy taproot that held him down was a hand across his mouth, and the face he had thought his own belonged to the young soldier Evan, eyes wide, cheeks fishbelly white with fear. He was moaning, too, or was that just the wind . . . ?

“Sir Aelin!” the youth whispered. “Wake up! Do you hear that?”

The sound that rose to his ears was not made by any wind, or if it was, it was the strangest gale that had blown since Brynioch made the skies. The high, pulsing moan seemed to have words, almost, or at least the sound of them, regular patterns that rose and fell, woven into the howling winds and thunders of a real storm but unmistakably something else. “Bagba’s Herd, what is that?”

“I don’t know, sir.” The young soldier’s face was slack with fear. “All the guards but that one have gone upstairs to see, I think.” He gestured to one of the Silver Stags, who sat with his chin on his chest not far from Aelin’s other soldiers, fast asleep and snoring.

“Then we follow them up,” said Aelin, slipping his knife from its sheath as quietly as he could, though in truth, with the storm howling outside and the men nearby sawing and buzzing in their sleep, it would have been hard to hear a tray full of plates and cups dropped on the stone floor.

Evan drew his own blade, then followed Aelin upward past the drawing room where they had met Baron Curudan. The great room was empty now, not even a single soldier on guard, so they continued upstairs. As they made their way past rooms meant as living space and storage for the tower’s usual garrison, the noise of the storm outside grew louder, not just the screech of winds but also those odd sounds threaded through the clamor, a dim sense of words and melodies, neither of them natural, neither of them familiar in any way. Aelin thought the singing in the storm felt more dreamlike than even his dream had been.

As they neared the uppermost story and the viewing gallery that commanded the entire Inniscrich valley, Aelin heard the more familiar sounds of men’s voices, specifically that of Sir Samreas, Curudan’s hawk-faced lieutenant. As Aelin and Evan stepped out of the stairwell the roil of wind and wet smacked them across the face.

“Shut your mouth,” Samreas was telling someone. “The baron knows what he’s up to. The king chose him careful.”

“What if the storm just rides him down?” asked one of his men.

“Don’t worry about what you don’t understand,” Samreas said.

Most of the Silver Stags were on the northeast side of the gallery, pressed together against the battlement as if for warmth or comfort, staring down across the mouth of the valley and the great ford that the tower protected. Because the soldiers were on the opposite side of the chamber with their attention directed outward, Aelin signaled for Evan to follow him. He stayed as much as possible in shadow as he edged toward the closest part of the battlements to try to see for himself what the Stags were watching.

It was hard to see much of the valley below—the sky was so clotted with storm that the stars were invisible, and the moon appeared and disappeared behind the streaming clouds like a winking eye. The strangest thing, though, was that the thickest part of the storm seemed to have settled on the ground, filling the river valley with tendrils of darkness like mud in a puddle of water. But not all was darkness: at the edges and in the hidden center of this ground-hugging storm, lightning flickered. During one such flash Aelin had a momentary glimpse of a single armored rider and his stamping mount, revealed on the headland above the ford. Was that Baron Curudan wearing the antlered helmet of the great god Hern? And if it wasn’t him, then who was waiting there for the storm as though it were a living thing?

Evan stole silently forward, leaving the shelter of the stairwell for a better view. Aelin wanted to stop him, but dared not make a sound. Lightning raced along the top of the storm like a stone skipped on a lake’s smooth surface. The lone rider did not move, but waited as the darkness seethed and loomed and at last, closed him in.

“Yes, there is a man!” shouted Samreas as he watched, his voice barely audible above the sharp whining of the wind. “Ah, by Murhagh’s bloody wounds, is it any wonder that King Hugh loves him? Curudan!” he yelled, waving his fist in the air. “Hail to the baron, master of the Stags!”

Aelin could only stare, dumbfounded. What was going on here? Had the Silver Stags all lost their minds? He turned to Evan to suggest a tactical retreat, but realized after a dumbstruck second that it was not Evan at all, but one of the Silver Stags who had just come out of the stairwell. For a moment Aelin and the Stag only gaped at one another, then Curudan’s man shoved hard against Aelin’s chest, sending him stumbling back against the battlement so that for a moment he actually feared he might fall over into the swirling, windy black.

“Look!” cried Evan, who had not realized what had happened. He waved his hand excitedly and whispered loudly again. “Those are more than clouds! There are men in that storm . . . Men or demons!”

“Trespassers!” shouted the Stag who had shoved Aelin, loud enough to be heard above the wind. “The strangers are here!”

“Strangers!” Even as he struggled with the soldier, Aelin felt a swift flush of rage. “This is Hernystir’s tower—the High Throne’s border station! It is you and Curudan who are strangers and criminals!”