Chapter 55
I rode Smoker east across the valley, leaving the Companions and their training exercise behind.
The day was bright, the kind of crisp morning where the air tasted clean and the sky stretched endless overhead. We made good time across open ground, Smoker's hooves eating up the miles with steady rhythm.
On the longer stretches of road, straight paths through meadows or the rare dirt road where I didn't need to focus on navigation, I tried to get into the right mindset to slip into Smoker's consciousness the way Arlan had been teaching me.
It still blew my mind how useful that boy was.
Someone who could see through the eyes of birds and draw what they saw with perfect accuracy. The military applications alone were staggering. Scouting enemy positions without ever being spotted. Finding safe routes through unknown territory. Locating ships at sea before they could locate you.
He'd been able to scout out and draw a complete map of the valley in just a few days after I had him sent ahead of us. Flying above it as a hawk, memorizing every detail, then putting it to parchment with those skilled hands.
It was incredible. No more home-field advantage for an enemy with him on my side. I'd bet all my gold the little bastard could make a map ten times better than whatever maester-made chicken scratches they had.
And he wasn't half bad as a teacher, either.
Arlan had explained that if I had any talent for skinchanging at all, I'd be able to feel some kind of pull in moments of deep connection with an animal. Especially if I already had a bond with it.
I definitely had that bond with Smoker. We'd been together since I was a child. He knew me better than most people did, and I knew him, his moods, his preferences, the way he'd test anyone new who tried to ride him.
As we rode, I tried to feel for that pull. To reach for it the way Arlan had described.
Sometimes I felt something. An itch at the back of my mind just begging to be scratched away. But it was slippery. Like a word always on the tip of your tongue that vanished the moment you tried to speak it.
Smoker would look back at me impatiently, his equine stare almost exasperated. As if he was thinking: Are you this stupid? Just do it, human.
But I could never manage that final grasp. Never quite slip over the edge.
We slept under the stars that night. I made camp in a clearing beside a stream, letting Smoker graze while I ate dried meat and hard bread. The night was clear, the stars impossibly bright without torch and candle lights to drown them out.
I thought about Morne and what I might find there. About blood magic and ancient duties and betrayals carved in stone.
Sleep came slowly.
xxx
We were up early the next morning, back on the road as the sun rose over the eastern mountains.
I passed through a small village around mid-morning. Just a cluster of houses around a dirt square, smoke rising from chimneys, chickens pecking at the ground.
At the edge of the village, I spotted four boys no older than fifteen taking turns shooting arrows at a tree some thirty paces away. Their bows were simple things, probably made by the village fletcher. Their form was enthusiastic but unpolished.
I smiled.
After the Weeping Town, when Father and I had still been on rocky terms, I'd suggested a policy to him of encouraging bow training for all the boys and men on the island. I had left the details mostly to him, but my one recommendation had been putting on small local tournaments sponsored by House Tarth as incentives, alongside a bi-annual island-wide competition to cap it off.
I'd been too busy and too at odds with Selwyn back then to follow up on it, but I'd recently gotten up to speed on the program. The lands under House Tarth and our main vassals had already started implementing it, with quotas for bows to be sent out for each village, or the coin for a local fletcher to make them as well as for arrows. Tourney had already begun as well, with the first big tournament to be held in Dawnrest in two months’ time.
Seeing these boys practicing brought a fire to my chest that had nothing to do with the morning sun. I hopped off Smoker and left him to graze on the grass beside the road.
The boys looked at me suspiciously as I approached. Taking in my height, my build, the way I carried myself. I didn’t think they saw many strangers around these parts. The oldest one—maybe fifteen, with the beginnings of a beard—spoke up. "You sum kinda’ knight for Lord Tarth?"
I had the look for it, probably. The build and bearing. But I was wearing simple leathers like the Companions, no visible sigil on my chest. Though I had proof of who I was in my pack if it came to that.
"You could say that," I answered. I pointed to the bow in his hands. "Want some help with that?"
The boys murmured between themselves. The older one studied me for a long moment, then offered up the bow. I took it, testing the draw. It was a decent weapon, if simple. Good enough for hunting and practice.
"Alright," I said. "First thing, you're not breathing right. You hold your breath when you draw, which makes you tense up. Instead..."
I showed them. Drew the bow smoothly, breathing out as I pulled. Aimed at the tree. Released.
The arrow struck the trunk with a solid thunk.
The boys' eyes went wide.
I nocked another arrow. "Watch how I'm standing. Weight balanced. Shoulders loose. And I'm not holding the bow in a death grip, that throws off your aim."
I loosed again. Another hit.
"Seven hells," one of the younger boys breathed.
I wasn't exactly a marksman. I was decent with a bow, better than most, but I'd probably never make the cut for something like Bloodraven’s personal guard of skilled archers, the Raven’s Teeth. Still, I knew enough to teach basics to village boys who were just starting out.
I spent maybe half an hour with them. Showing them proper stance, how to draw smoothly, when to breathe out. Then I let them try with my corrections and watched their shots improve incrementally.
When I finally felt like they’d got the basics of it, the older boy looked at me with something like awe.
"What's yer name, ser?"
I smiled. "You can call me Gal."
I swung back onto Smoker and rode off, their shouts of "Thank you, Ser Gal!" following me down the road.
xxx
Another day of easy riding brought me to a farmer's barn where I paid a few copper stars for the privilege of sleeping in the hayloft. The next morning I rode through a narrow mountain pass, the trail winding between steep slopes covered in pine and scrub. I camped on the eastern side that night, listening to the distant crash of waves against rocks.
The next day, around midday, I finally spotted the ruins of Morne.
The sun hung high and bright, but the wind blowing in from the ocean carried a sharp bite that cut through my riding leathers. I reined Smoker to a halt on a rise overlooking the coast.
The ruins sprawled before me like the skeleton of some great beast left to bleach in the sun and salt air.
Jutting stone arches rose against the sky, their supports long vanished, leaving them to stand alone like ribs picked clean by scavengers. Half-torn walls sketched the outline of what had once been buildings. I could make out what might have been towers, a great hall, courtyards. All of it built from dark stone that seemed to swallow light rather than reflect it.
Behind the ruins, the ocean stretched to the horizon. Waves crashed against the rocky coastline below, sending up spray that caught the sunlight in brief, shimmering rainbows. Seabirds wheeled overhead, their cries sharp and lonely.
It should have been beautiful. In a way, it was.
But there was something wrong about it too. Something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
As I rode closer, guiding Smoker down the slope toward the ruins, I started to notice the strangeness of it all.
The land had not swallowed the castle the way I'd expected. After six thousand years, or maybe even longer, you'd think nature would have reclaimed every stone. Vines creeping over walls. Trees growing through the foundations. Moss and grass covering everything in a thick green blanket. The whole structure slowly sinking into the earth as time and weather broke it down, layer by layer, until barely anything remained visible.
Instead, the ruins looked old and derelict, yes. No standing structures remained intact, with every roof having collapsed, every wooden beam and plank long rotted away to nothing. The walls were crumbling, stones missing like gaps in an old man's teeth.
But no undergrowth covered the stone. No trees grew within the footprint of the ancient castle. The ground was bare earth and exposed rock, as clean as if someone had been sweeping it clear every day.
Except I knew no one had set foot in Morne in years. Decades, probably. My father had been the last, and that was back when he was a newly made lord.
Smoker whinnied a complaint as we approached, his ears going back flat against his skull. His steps became reluctant, uncertain.
"Easy, boy," I murmured, patting his neck. His muscles were tense beneath my hand, coiled like springs. "Easy."
I dismounted about fifty yards from the nearest wall. "I'll be back soon," I told Smoker, giving him one more pat. "Just wait here for me."
He snorted and tossed his head, clearly unhappy with this plan. But he'd stay. Probably.
I walked toward the ruins alone.
xxx
The silence was the first thing that struck me.
No birds sang here. No insects buzzed. Even the wind seemed muted, as if the air itself was holding its breath.
My footsteps on the bare ground sounded too loud in the stillness.
Up close, the ruins seemed almost mundane. Just old stone, weathered and cracked by centuries of exposure to salt wind and rain. Nothing obviously magical or threatening about them. No glowing runes or eerie lights. Just rock and empty space.
I walked what I thought would have been the main bailey of the castle. The ground here was hard-packed earth, flat and level like it had been deliberately cleared and maintained. My boots left faint prints in the dust.
Broken walls rose around me on all sides, some barely waist-high, others reaching fifteen or twenty feet before ending in jagged edges. Empty doorways gaped like open mouths. Window spaces looked out over nothing.
I approached what might have been the main hall. A few walls still stood here, forming rough corners that suggested the outline of a large rectangular building. The ocean was visible through a gap, waves rolling endlessly against the rocks below.
Nothing stood out to me. No signs, no markers, no obvious place to start looking for whatever answers my father said I'd find here.
Just old stones and the constant wind.
Then I touched a wall.
The thrum hit me like being struck by lightning.
Something echoed in my ear, a deep vibration that shook my bones from the inside out like I was standing next to a massive bell as it rang, feeling it in my chest and teeth and skull. The sound wasn't sound, exactly. It was deeper than that. More fundamental. It resonated with something in my blood.
I jerked my hand away like the stone had burned me.
My heart hammered against my ribs as I stumbled back a step, breathing hard. What the hell was that?
I stared at my hand. It looked normal. No burns, no marks. But I could still feel the echo of that vibration thrumming through my bones.
Looking around, trying to orient myself, I saw it. Carved into a low stone wall maybe ten feet away, in letters that looked ancient and half-worn: Bloode on ye Stones
I blinked. Stared at the carving.
I could have sworn I'd already looked at that section of wall. Walked right past it. And there'd been nothing there.
My mouth was wide-open. I swallowed hard.
Father had told me only the lord of the island could find answers here. But was that the truth? Or simply what his own father had told him, continuing a tradition passed down through generations that might or might not be accurate?
Only one way to find out.
I pulled out my knife, the blade gleaming dully in the sunlight, then pressed the point to my fingertip and pricked the skin.
A tiny drop of blood swelled there, dark red against my pale skin.
I took a breath. Let it out slowly.
Then I touched my bleeding finger to the stone.
…
The world shuddered.
Then flickered, like a candle flame guttering in the wind.
Suddenly it was dark. Night instead of day. My finger was still pressed to the stone, but the surface felt different now. Smoother. Polished, not weathered.
Faint torchlight flickered around me, casting dancing shadows. I could see walls—intact walls—rising high overhead. Wooden beams supported a ceiling far above. The air smelled of smoke and salt and something else. Something sharp and metallic.
This wasn't a ruin.
This was Morne as it had been. Whole. Alive. Occupied. I heard voices in the distance. Shouting. The clash of metal on metal. Then, high above me, a roar that made my blood freeze.
I looked up sharply.
A dark shape flew across the night sky, impossibly massive, blotting out the stars. Moonlight gleamed off scales black as midnight, each one the size of a shield.
Then it opened its mouth.
Fire erupted. Not the orange-red of normal flame, but blue-white, so bright it seared my vision. The heat of it washed over me even from this distance, making my skin prickle.
A dragon.
A real, living dragon, flying over Morne as if it owned the sky.
Gasping, I fell backward. My hand came off the stone.
The world snapped back to normal like a rubber band released. Daylight. Ruins. Wind. No dragon.
I was on my ass in the dirt, breathing like I'd just run a mile uphill. Letting my head rest back on the ground, I let out a groan. Why was it always dragons trying to fry me like a chicken wing in these damned visions?
Pressing a hand to my chest, I felt my heart trying to break free of my ribs. My hands were shaking. I forced myself to breathe slowly, deeply. To think through what had just happened instead of panicking.
Beyond the obvious fire-breathing demon flying overhead, what struck me was everything else. The smooth stone beneath my fingers. The torchlight. The intact structure with its ceiling and walls. The sounds of battle.
Somehow, I'd seen Morne as it was before it became ruins. I'd glimpsed the world thousands of years ago, when dragons still flew and this castle still stood whole.
Before the Long Night. Before whatever catastrophe had reduced this place to rubble.
"Holy shit," I breathed.
Then I noticed new writing on the wall beside where I'd placed my blood.
Carved deep into the stone, in letters that definitely, absolutely had not been there a moment ago:
Go back, to go forwards
I stared at it for a good minute before my mind jumped to Quaithe's words. Her cryptic message in the glass candle vision: "To go forward, you must first go back."
It clicked into place like a key turning in a lock.
Go back—as in into the past. Into the world before Morne were ruins. Into the time before the first Long Night, when, apparently, dragons flew, and my ancestors walked these halls and made whatever terrible choice had damned our house.
The blood magic wasn't just showing me random visions. It was telling me something. Guiding me. Saying: if you want answers, you need to see what happened here. You need to walk through Morne as it was and witness the truth.
"Fuck me," I whispered.
I sat there in the dirt for a long moment, staring at the ruins that weren't just ruins anymore. They were a window. No. A doorway, into the past.
I felt my tongue dry out like a prehistoric lake bed. No way. I wasn't ready to step through this yet. Not fully. I needed to understand how this worked. What the magic wanted from me. Whether I could control the visions or if they'd control me.
For now, I'd learned enough. More than enough.
Standing, I brushed dirt off my clothes, took a last glimpse at stone walls which no longer showed me any carvings at all, and walked back toward where I'd left Smoker.
xxx
I found him farther away than I expected, hundred yards from where I'd left him, grazing nervously on a patch of tough grass.
He lifted his head as I approached, ears swiveling toward me. His eyes were still rolling slightly, showing too much white.
"It's alright, boy," I said softly. "Whatever you felt, it's over. We're leaving."
It took most of my remaining oats and the apple I'd been saving for myself to calm him down properly. I stroked his neck and murmured reassurances until his muscles finally relaxed.
When I swung into the saddle, he didn't protest. If anything, he seemed eager to put distance between us and the ruins.
I didn't blame him.
We rode back the way we'd come. My mind churned through everything I'd seen, everything I'd learned. Dragons. Intact castles. Blood magic that let me see the past. Cryptic messages about going backward to go forward.
The implications made my head hurt.
But then, on a long stretch of road where the path was clear and straight, where I didn't need to guide Smoker at all, I felt it.
The pull.
It was closer than it had ever been before. Close enough to actually grasp, like a rope dangling just within reach instead of frustratingly out of range.
Surprised by the sudden strength of it, I jerked slightly in the saddle, and the connection broke immediately, slipping away like water through fingers.
Smoker neighed loudly beneath me, his irritation clear even without words.
"Sorry, sorry," I said, excitement building in my chest despite everything else weighing on my mind. "Let's try that again, buddy. Please?"
I settled myself more carefully this time. Took a deep breath. Relaxed my body. Reached for that sensation again with my mind.
There.
Within just a minute of focusing, I felt it. Stronger and clearer than it had ever been before.
And it was easier than I would ever have expected. I didn’t have to barge down a locked door. Instead, I found it ajar. One moment I was reaching, grasping for something just out of range.
The next, I slipped through.
Suddenly I was Smoker.
The shift was disorienting. I felt the dirt-packed road beneath my feet—my hooves. Four legs instead of two, powerful muscles bunching and releasing with each stride. The world looked different through his eyes. Colors were muted, less vibrant, but I could see motion better. Could sense things behind me without turning my head.
The wind blew through my mane. I could feel it, really feel it, the way it caught individual hairs and pulled them.
I—we—wanted to go faster. And Smoker didn't seem to mind me taking the reins.
We broke into a gallop.
The forest went by in a blur around us, trees streaking past. The rhythm of the gallop was intoxicating, four beats, perfectly timed, eating up the ground. Pure movement. Pure speed. The simple joy of running flat-out with no constraints.
I wanted to laugh with the sheer exhilaration of it.
Instead, a loud, whinnying neigh escaped me.
Then I heard a thud behind us.
I almost didn't want to stop. The gallop felt too good, too right, too free. But Smoker, the real Smoker, the consciousness I was riding along with, bumped me mentally like he was flicking an annoying fly off his ear.
We stopped. Turned.
Through Smoker's eyes, I looked back down the road.
A form lay sprawled in the dirt maybe thirty yards behind us.
My form.
Galladon Tarth, lying on his back with limbs akimbo like a puppet with cut strings. His, my, eyes were open but completely white, pupils rolled back in his head.
I felt something through the bond with Smoker. An emotion that was distinctly like amusement. If horses could laugh, he was laughing at me right now.
All I could do was mentally shrug. Yeah, yeah. I probably should have thought this through before slipping into my horse's mind while actively riding him at speed.
Rookie mistake.
I blinked. The world shifted. I snapped back into my body with a jarring suddenness that made my teeth click together.
Pain. My back hurt where I'd hit the ground. My head throbbed. I'd definitely bitten my tongue because I tasted blood.
Groaning, I sat up slowly, checking for broken bones. Everything seemed intact, just bruised. Smoker stood over me. He reared slightly on his hind legs and stomped his front hooves, head tossing.
If I didn't know better, I'd thought he was laughing. And as I was just in his mind, I damn well knew better, so I could be certain of it.
"Yeah, yeah," I muttered, getting unsteadily to my feet. "Laugh all you want, you bastard."
But I wasn't discouraged. Not even close.
A little tumble—okay, a pretty hard fall that was going to leave spectacular bruises, wouldn't erase what I'd just accomplished.
I'd skinchanged. Actually done it. Slipped into another creature's mind and experienced the world through their senses.
And it had been so much easier than before too.
It had to be Morne. The blood magic there. Touching those ancient stones with my blood had awakened something in me, or strengthened something that was already there, waiting to be used.
Either way, I wasn't going to question it. I wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially not when said horse was currently giving me what I swear was a smug look.
I brushed dirt off my clothes and climbed carefully back into the saddle. Smoker didn't protest, though I could feel his amusement through our bond.
"Alright, boy," I said. "Now I just need to practice until I can actually keep my seat while doing that."
Horses weren’t exactly what came to mind when I thought about powerful skinchangers, but I hadn’t gone around befriending a long list of other animals out there. I wasn’t Snow White. With Stannis as a new squire, a hawk wouldn’t go amiss. Something to wash away the trauma with Proudwing. And Arlan would be better able to help me with the technicalities of going into a bird’s mind.
As if feeling my traitorous thoughts slipping through, Smoker threw his head beneath me and I chuckled. “Don’t worry buddy,” I told him. “If we get this right, we’ll sweep all the tourneys we enter. Think of all the attention you’ll get then.”
Through our bond, a connection I already felt growing stronger and stronger after just one skinchanging session, I noticed a thrum of satisfaction spread through him.
I snorted. Of course that’s what got to him.
We started riding again, heading back toward the valley where the Companions were conducting their training, and I did all I could to keep my mind on skinchanging and winning tourneys, and not on whatever the hell happened in Morne.