Chapter 105. I Had Just Come Home, and the Walls Already Had Something to Tell Me

Chapter 105: 105. I Had Just Come Home, and the Walls Already Had Something to Tell Me

I closed my mouth.

She unwound the last strip and sucked her teeth. The palms were a mess, an angry patchwork of raw red skin and half-healed blisters from the burn of the pillar.

She muttered something under her breath. She fished a jar out of her apron, scooped out a handful of green, foul-smelling paste, and slapped it onto my left palm.

I yelped. "Narrgghh!"

"Hold still."

"It’s cold!"

"It is supposed to be cold... and you’re probably used to it since you travel a lot in frozen situations." She smeared it across my skin with surprising gentleness. "But still..."

"You are a great deal of trouble, boy."

"You are the most stubborn, foolish, ungrateful..." She stopped.

Her voice cracked slightly. "I heard about the girl... I am sorry."

I looked at her. And I didn’t say anything.

"The little rabbit," Marrow said gruffly, bent over my hand, not meeting my eyes. "She had good hands..."

"I taught her to pack a wound, and she was a quick learner about it." She sniffed. "Hold still."

I held still.

Warden Ysolde met us at the foot of the Covenant steps.

She stood very straight in her long gray coat, with the silver braid bright on her shoulders, her pale spotted ears pricked forward, and her hands clasped behind her back.

When she saw me, she tilted her head by a precise half inch.

"I see you have returned alive," she said.

"Disappointed, are you?"

"More like surprised." She looked me up and down. "You appear to have been dragged through a hedge."

"Several hedges."

"And the pit?"

I stopped. "Wait, is that a real question...? Is the pit finished?!"

"It has been repaired."

"Great! That’s great...! I’ll just, uh... avoid it, then."

Her mouth twitched, very slightly. It was the closest thing to a smile I’d ever seen on her face.

She turned to Sylvara and bowed her head.

"The chair is waiting," she said. "She has been waiting for some time."

Sylvara nodded. She had gone very pale.

She dismounted without a word, handed her reins to a groom, and started up the broad white stairs.

I followed.

The Hall of the Covenant was circular.

It sat at the very heart of Elarune, a vast round chamber of white stone beneath a dome of clear glass, so high that the daylight poured down in a single wide column.

The floor was polished marble, veined with pale gold. There was no furniture, except for five great chairs set in a ring at the center of the room, each one carved from a different stone and twice the height of a man.

Each had a banner hanging above it.

The first showed a single white horn on a field of gold.

The second, a black claw on white.

The third, two crimson horns.

The fourth, the silver head of a wolf.

And the fifth, a violet stag beneath a crescent moon, so faded that the cloth had gone gray, and so thick with dust that it hung like a cobweb.

I knew all five by sight. I’d seen four of them worn on armbands or sewn into coats.

I stopped in the doorway.

"Uhh... Where is everyone?" I asked.

Someone stood in the center of the ring.

She had been standing so still that I hadn’t noticed her at first. She was very tall.

Her hair was white with a silvery sheen, falling in a perfectly straight, shining curtain to her waist.

A single spiral horn grew from the middle of her forehead, long and slender, pearly white, and it caught the light from the dome and glowed.

She wore a plain white gown, without ornament. Her skin was fair, her face was smooth, and she looked like a woman of about thirty.

But her eyes were the color of a clear spring morning, and they held something very old.

She turned her head and smiled.

"Welcome," she said.

Her voice was soft and clear, like a bell heard across water. "I am Elysandra Valecourt... I have been waiting a very long time for you."

Nobody breathed.

"I see you are wondering where the rest of the Covenant sits," she said, in the same gentle tone.

She glanced from face to face, and the smile deepened. "The answer is simple... They are standing behind you."

I turned my head.

I hadn’t noticed them come in. They’d followed me quietly up the stairs, and now they stood in the doorway in a loose arc, shoulder to shoulder, filling the entrance with light.

I gulped, thinking that this was it... this is how I die. Surrounded by lots of divine Beastwomen.

Velora stood on the left, in her white coat, with her hand resting lightly on her sword. Her face was blank, but her eyes were wide.

Next to her stood Magnara, with her axe on her back and her arms folded, as still as a mountain. Beside her, tall and white-faced, stood Elsbeth.

And on the end, in her plain gray cap and her violet robes, with her hands knotted tightly together, stood Sylvara.

Four of them.

Four of the five.

I stared at them.

They stared at Elysandra. A cold, strange stillness settled over the room.

"Nightclaw," said Elysandra.

She nodded to Velora.

"Redhorn." To Magnara.

"Evershade." To Elsbeth.

"And Moonveil."

Her eyes rested on Sylvara. Her smile softened into something much gentler, something close to grief.

"Welcome home, Elder Sister," she said.

Sylvara took a step forward, and her mouth worked. She seemed to be trying to speak.

"I have kept your seat warm," Elysandra said, "for three hundred years."

"You might have woken me," Sylvara whispered.

"The seal would not have allowed it." Elysandra shook her head. "I tried... I stood at the foot of your hidden wood for a month, and I could not find the door."

Sylvara pressed her hand to her mouth. She didn’t say anything else.

After a moment, she nodded once, and her shoulders loosened.

Elysandra turned to Elsbeth and gestured to the great carved chair with the silver wolf above it. It stood a little apart from the others, its stone dark and cool.

"The seat of Evershade is yours, if you will take it."

Elsbeth looked at it. I watched the muscles in her jaw flex.

"I will sit," she said, "when the hearth is safe."

Elysandra bowed her head. "Of course."

She led me to the back of the hall.

There was a heavy curtain of woven blue cloth hanging behind the chair of Valecourt, so thick and long that I’d taken it for part of the wall. Elysandra took hold of the cord and drew it aside.

I forgot how to speak.

It was a mural.

It covered the entire wall, from floor to ceiling, three stories high, and it was the most beautiful thing that I had ever seen.

It had been painted in a shimmering pearly dust, something like crushed moonstone, that caught the daylight and held it so that every figure seemed lit from within.

The colors shifted as I moved. The lines were fine and sure, with a depth that I couldn’t explain, as if I were looking into a window instead of a wall.

"Nobody knows who painted it," Elysandra said softly, at my shoulder. "It was here before the city..."

"Before the walls have been built... and before the Covenant itself."

There were three panels.

In the first, ten enormous beasts knelt before a small group of humans in plain robes. They were more beautiful than I can describe.

A wolf of silver frost. A panther of living night. A bull with horns like red mountains. A deer, a unicorn, a rabbit, and four others whose shapes I couldn’t make out.

Light poured from the center of each one’s chest in a golden stream and flowed into the hands of the humans, who held them up to receive it.

"The First Bargain," said Elysandra.