Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass #3)(29)

As heirs, their foremost duty was to protect their High Witches, even if it meant sacrificing themselves. Manon glanced at the Yellowlegs Matron, who held herself just as proudly as the two Ancients as they walked into the shadows of the mountain. But Manon didn’t take her hand off her blade, Wind-­Cleaver, for a heartbeat.

The screams and wing beats and clank of metal ­were far louder ­here.

“This is where we breed and train ’em until they can make the Crossing to the Omega,” one of the men was saying, gesturing to the many cave mouths they passed as they strode through the cavernous hall. “Hatcheries are in the belly of the mountain, a level above the forges for the armory—­to keep the eggs warm, you see. Dens are a level above that. We keep ’em separated by gender and type. The bulls we hold in their own pens unless we want to breed ’em. They kill anyone in their cages. Learned that the hard way.” The men chuckled, but the witches did not. He went on about the different types—­the bulls ­were the best, but a female could be just as fierce and twice as smart. The smaller ones ­were good for stealth, and had been bred to be totally black against the night sky, or a pale blue to blend into daylight patrols. The average wyvern’s colors they didn’t care about so much, since they wanted their enemies to drop dead from terror, the man claimed.

They descended steps carved into the stone itself, and if the reek of blood and waste didn’t overwhelm every sense, then the din of the wyverns—­a roaring and screeching and booming of wings and flesh on rock—­nearly drowned out the man’s words. But Manon stayed focused on her grandmother’s position, on the positions of the others around her. And she knew that Asterin, one step behind her, was doing the same for her.

He led them onto a viewing platform in a massive cavern. The sunken floor was at least forty feet below, one end of the chamber wholly open to the cliff face, the other sealed with an iron grate—­no, a door.

“This is one of the training pits,” the man explained. “It’s easy to sort out the natural-­born killers, but we discover a lot of them show their mettle in the pits. Before you . . . ladies,” he said, trying to hide his wince at the word, “even lay eyes on them, they’ll be in ­here, fighting it out.”

“And when,” said Mother Blackbeak, pinning him with a stare, “will we select our mounts?”

The man swallowed. “We trained a brood of gentler ones to teach you the basics.”

A growl from Iskra. Manon might also have snarled at the implied insult, but the Blueblood Matron spoke. “You don’t learn to ­ride by hopping on a war­horse, do you?”

The man almost sagged with relief. “Once you’re comfortable with the flying—”

“We ­were born on the back of the wind,” said one of the coven leaders in the back. Some grunts of approval. Manon kept silent, as did her Blackbeak coven leaders. Obedience. Discipline. Brutality. They did not descend to boasting.

The man fidgeted and kept his focus on Cresseida, as if she ­were the only safe one in the room, even with her barbed crown of stars. Idiot. Manon sometimes thought the Bluebloods ­were the deadliest of them all.

“Soon as you’re ready,” he said, “we can begin the selection pro­cess. Get you on your mounts, and start the training.”

Manon risked taking her eyes off her grandmother to study the pit. There ­were giant chains anchored in one of the walls, and enormous splotches of dark blood stained the stones, as if one of these beasts had been pushed against it. A giant crack spider-webbed from the center. What­ever hit the wall had been tossed hard.

“What are the chains for?” Manon found herself asking. Her grandmother gave her a warning look, but Manon focused on the man. Predictably, his eyes widened at her beauty—­then stayed wide as he beheld the death lurking beneath it.

“Chains are for the bait beasts,” he said. “They’re the wyverns we use to show the others how to fight, to turn their aggression into a weapon. ­We’re under orders not to put any of ’em down, even the runts and broken ones, so we put the weaklings to good use.”

Just like dog fighting. She looked again to the splotch and the crack in the wall. The bait beast had probably been thrown by one of the bigger ones. And if the wyverns could hurl each other like that, then the damage to humans . . . Her chest tightened with anticipation, especially as the man said, “Want to see a bull?”

A glimmer of iron nails as Cresseida made an elegant gesture to continue. The man let out a sharp whistle. None of them spoke as chains rattled, a whip cracked, and the iron gate to the pit groaned as it lifted. And then, heralded by men with whips and spears, the wyvern appeared.

A collective intake of breath, even from Manon.

“Titus is one of our best,” the man said, pride gleaming in his voice.

Manon ­couldn’t tear her eyes away from the gorgeous beast: his mottled gray body covered in a leathery hide; his massive back legs, armed with talons as big as her forearm; and his enormous wings, tipped with a claw and used to propel him forward like a front set of limbs.

The triangular head swiveled this way and that, and his dripping maw revealed yellow, curved fangs. “Tail’s armed with a venomous barb,” the man said as the wyvern emerged fully from the pit, snarling at the men down there with him. The reverberations of the snarl echoed through the stone, into her boots and up her legs, right into her husk of a heart.