The remains of many a tent and farm still burned out on the fields, and a wildfire ran amok through the Dunnwood, blown now by the easterly winds, two miles from the castle.

For a while the flames had squirmed more like a living thing—tendrils shooting out in odd directions, plucking a tree here, exploding a haycock there, consuming a home with greed.

The blazes within the castle had extinguished, for Raj Ahten’s flameweavers drew the power from them. And though Raj Ahten sent men among the streets to seek the murderer of his flameweaver, his beloved pyromancer, he did so to poor effect. The elemental had consumed most of Market Street, destroying any trace of the identity of her murderer.

In the charred and smoking ruins outside the gates of Castle Sylvarresta, one could see many signs of destruction. A thousand nomen had burned near the moat, where they’d sought to make their stand against Orden’s mounted knights. One could count Orden’s fallen knights among them, too—two hundred or so blackened lumps that had once been men in bright armor, clustered in smoking heaps along the battle lines.

Hundreds more nomen lay strewn at the edge of the woods, where the battle must first have raged fierce and heavy. The trees there were now nothing but blackened skeletons.

Three dozen frowth giants littered the battlefield, strange-looking creatures, with their hair burned off. Iome had never envisioned them thus—each with pink skin and a long snout like a camel’s, the hugeness of their claws. From atop the Dedicates’ Keep, they looked like misshapen, hairless mice, dotting the battlefield. Some dead giants still held knights and their horses in their paws.

Raj Ahten’s horses were dead, cut down with many of the guards who’d been stationed at the edge of the wood.

Yet now his men celebrated a victory, a battle won.

Iome did not know if she should rejoice at Raj Ahten’s victory, or weep for Orden.

She was a Dedicate now to Raj Ahten. Rather than fear Raj Ahten, Iome now had to fear assassination at the hands of other kings, or from the Knights Equitable who battled the Wolf Lord.

Chemoise stood at Iome’s side, gazed over the blackened fields, weeping as Raj Ahten’s troops rode to the castle. Smoke still crept over the ash, and stumps burned all the way to the hill and into the woods.

Why does Chemoise cry? Iome wondered. Then she realized that she, too, had eyes filled with tears.

Iome understood. Chemoise cried because the world had gone black. Black fields. Black woods. Black days ahead. Iome drew her hooded robe more tightly around her, hiding her face. The heavy wool seemed thin protection.