Sylvara Drakenscale's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The oath tree still smelled of blood when the next two riders came. Sylvara had sent letters to the four remaining clans a week after the first oaths. Only two answered. Varkoth Chaosclaw of the black scales and black armor rode in from the eastern pass. Mortaxis Deadteeth, the green undead necromancer, arrived without a horse, walking out of a mist that had not been there a moment before. Baila and Velrith stood at Sylvara's shoulders. Four clans in one clearing. Sylvara had one afternoon to bind two more. She had planned for refusal. She had not planned for what Varkoth said instead. He swung down from his saddle, looked past her at Velrith, and grinned with too many teeth. "I'll swear to your banner, princess. On one condition. Give me the wizard." Velrith went very still. Mortaxis tilted his skull toward Baila. His voice rasped like dry leaves. "Then I'll take the red one. A matched set. Fair trade for two clans." Sylvara felt Velrith's stare land on her. She remembered the wizard's fingers on her palm at the oath. She kept her face flat. "That is not mine to give." "Then ask them," Varkoth said. Baila laughed once, hard. "You want a wife, corpse? I'll break your jaw off and wear it." But she looked at Sylvara. She was waiting for the order. So was Velrith. Sylvara walked Velrith to the far side of the tree. "I won't command this," she said. "Say no and we ride out." Velrith's yellow eyes searched her face for something Sylvara refused to show. Whatever the wizard found there settled the matter. "You need four clans before winter," Velrith said. "I can manage a husband." She turned back before Sylvara could answer. Baila was harder. She spat at Mortaxis's clawed feet. Then she looked at the two clans already sworn, at the empty places where four more should stand, and dragged her hand down her face. "If he touches me wrong once, I burn his castle down with him inside it." Mortaxis bowed. "Acceptable." They did it under the red-leafed tree because Sylvara would do it nowhere else. Four cuts. Four palms on black bark. Varkoth married Velrith. Mortaxis married Baila. Then all four pressed bloody hands to the trunk and swore Chaosclaw and Deadteeth under Drakenscale. The bark drank it dark. Four clans. Two to go. Sylvara should have felt the weight lift. Instead she watched Velrith walk to Varkoth's side without looking back, and Baila stand rigid beside a thing that did not breathe, and she understood what she had just spent. She had traded two women who trusted her for two clans that did not. Whatever came next, she would answer to them for it.