Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 205594 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1028(@200wpm)___ 822(@250wpm)___ 685(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 205594 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1028(@200wpm)___ 822(@250wpm)___ 685(@300wpm)
I stare at it, numb, half-expecting to see people spilling forth from the crevasse in the walls, like blood flowing from a wound. But it’s empty.
Everything is just…empty.
It’s been a miserable day and a half since we left the manor house. We spent half the day in bed, eating horse meat and gathering our strength. Then, when everything was cooked and we could delay no longer, we stepped back out into the endless rain and continued on our way to Lios.
It feels like the gods themselves are crying as the rain washes over me.
My city is gone.
I thought Lios would always be here. That even though the world has gone to pieces around us, surely Lios would remain. Lios would be safe, and we’d push in with all of the other refugees hungry for food. We’d collect my potion, enough to last us as we traveled to Darkfell, and I’d see my sister again. I’d say a mental goodbye to my people.
I’d be prepared to leave them behind.
I’m not prepared for this. Nothing could prepare me for this.
I’ve ignored all the signs up until now. That every village and city deserted and empty meant nothing. That the wreckage that dots the shoreline and covers the beaches is irrelevant to the war and the fleet of mighty ships commanded by King Lionel. That the rain won’t be affecting my home like it is the outlying towns and people. Lios would be fine. Lios would be there.
I cling to the wet horse, feeling drained and hopeless, and I stare at the enormous hole to the left of Lios’s thick gates. “What makes a hole like that?” I ask Nemeth, my voice unsteady.
“A ballista. One with enchantments upon it.”
Of course. Fellians do love their enchantments. “You could have just flown over the walls,” I point out, numb, as the horse plods ever forward, up the muddy road. “Why destroy the walls?”
“Because the way to win a battle is to give the enemy nowhere to hide.”
Ah. Of course. And thus they must destroy the walls so the humans can’t huddle behind them. I think of Lionel, how smug he was when he forced me into the tower. So impatient, as if I was the only thing holding him back from his Great War, a war that would let him fill Lios’s coffers with Fellian riches. It was a pissing stupid war. No one in Lios needs Fellian land. No one wants to live under a mountain.
Lionel just wanted to fight. He wanted a battle. Glory.
And now my home, my beautiful city, is empty. Everyone is gone. No one comes out to see a Fellian and a human on a horse limping up the mud-slicked roads.
I suspect Lios is as empty as everywhere else. Empty…and everyone is gone.
At least the other places were just deserted. It was easy to assume everyone had simply fled in search of food or safety. As we approach the broken wall of Lios, a different story unfolds. The signs of war are everywhere. The grasses have been trampled and are gone. With nothing to anchor to, the horse slips and slides up the muddy path towards the city. Alongside the road I see discarded bits of armor and used arrows. There’s a helm here, with a massive hole upon the back, and over here a broken shield. A pretty altar to the gods has been destroyed and knocked over, the bushes uprooted and cast aside. As we head up the cliffs to Lios itself, I can look down in the harbor and see the broken remnants of a ship bobbing in the bay, and another one farther down.
The road leading to my beautiful city is covered in the detritus of war, and I suspect it’s not a war we won. If we’d won, someone would be here, right? There would be flags of victory. There would be people. There would be something other than this painful emptiness.
“You don’t burn your dead, do you?” Nemeth says suddenly, breaking the silence.
“No. We bury them so they can return to the earth that we were made from. We wait for the Absent God to return and call our spirits forth. Why?”
He gazes at what is left of the walls. “We have not seen graves. Perhaps that is a good sign?”
“If there are dead, they would be buried at the far end of the city,” I say. “On the sacred grounds behind the temple.”
“We can head there first, if you like? To see if there’s a reason no one is here?”
I shake my head. “I want to go to the palace first.”
The only inhabitants of Castle Lios are rats.
They scurry across the detritus-covered floors, bold and unworried, as we step into the halls of the castle. The banners here that hung showing the proud bloodlines of the nobility have been torn from the walls, and the tapestries are cut to ribbons. Lionel’s golden throne is gone entirely, and my sister’s elegant wooden one has been chopped to pieces and left on the dais. The massive feasting tables in the dining hall are broken, the benches scattered, the fragile dishware a thousand pieces upon the ground. They crunch under my feet as I instinctively head towards the kitchens.