The Road of Bones Plot Summary
Demi Winters launches her Viking romance fantasy series, The Ashen with the first book, The Road of Bones in June 2023. It has everything from found family to secret identities, betrayal and enemies to lovers.
Farmhand Silla has no idea why she has been on the run for so long but she now knows the stakes are higher than ever when Queen Signe kills her father who isn’t even really her father. Burning with secrets and the promise of shelter in Kopa, Silla must journey the dangerous Road of Bones.
With a murderer prowling about, dangerous dark creatures and the Queen’s assassin set to find her, Silla sneaks into the wagon of the Bloodaxe Crew. Her ruse doesn’t last long but the only way to get them to take her to Kopa is to convince the brooding leader, Rey. It doesn’t help that she keeps getting distracted by the charming crew member, Jonas.
The first book’s ending leaves us with more questions than answers and we’ve taken it upon ourselves to figure out the ending as much as we can while we wait for book #2, Kingdom of Claws.
Who is the Slátrari?
The Slatrari (Slátrari) literally means butcher or slaughterer and is first introduced as a Galdra burning people from the inside out while they are alive and tying them to pillars or trees. He stalks the Reykfjord area. Later, Magnus brings him while talking about how the Klaernar’s berskium powder is destroyed. As The Road of Bones continues, coincidentally, every place that the Bloodaxe Crew reaches is somehow attacked by the Slatrari.
Finally, when Rey sneaks into Kopa to rescue Silla, it is revealed that he is the Slatrari. He burns the Klaernar inside out with his Gladra which is Ashbringer, the magic of fire. It seems that when the Crew rests for the night, he goes ahead and kills his targets. Hanging them on pillars or trees is a message – he is enacting revenge in the same way that the Klaernar kill Galdra, by stringing them up on pillars and stoning them alive.
There may be more to his motives since he hides his family name which happens to be Galtung and has a Galdra brother who died of Skold poisoning. He also seems to have a connection to Matthias, Silla’s foster father. However, in the bonus chapter, even Rey refers to the murderous title as “the Slatrari,” which could also hint that it could be a group of Ashbringers including him.
What is Saga Volsik up to?
In the epilogue of The Road of Bones, it shows that Saga, Silla’s sister is doing her best to stay out of Queen Signe’s way. After a tense meeting with her foster mother, Saga hides in one of the passageways of the castle. While she contemplates her next course of action, she overhears that her sister, Eisa aka Silla is very much alive and Signe is after her. Of course, since the royals had claimed that they had killed Eisa, Saga is furious. She decides to escape and find her sister.
Why is Queen Signe after Silla?
At the beginning of The Road of Bones, there are hints that Queen Signe is after Silla because she is Princess Eisa Volsik. According to the lore, After Signe and her husband, Ivar took over the kingdom Iseldur, they killed the ruling king, Kjartan Volsik and his family except for his child, Saga. Saga is kept hostage and betrothed to Signe’s son. But that is not the case. When Ivar’s men come for the sisters, Tomas takes Eisa and hides her.
He changes his name to Matthias, Eisa’s name to Silla and raises her in secret with his wife. But it is soon revealed that Signe is also after Silla because she is Galdra. While Ivar has no tolerance for those with magic, Signe experiments on Galdra and uses the strongest as her own personal assassins.
She sends the Galdra, Skraeda after Silla since she happens to have two powers. One is the cold version of Ashbringer where she can sport cold white light from her forearms. The second one is not shown clearly but Skraeda guesses she has it since Galdra twins have two powers. It may have something to do with how Silla throws Rey just by touching him.
Will Rey take Silla with him to Istre?
Since the Bloodaxe Crew has the Istré job, Rey does not take Silla with him. After he helps her escape from Kopa, he plans to get her to Kalasgarde, a resistance town of the Gladra.
He decides to get his contacts to take her to a shield-house there, run by Harpa who can help her with a Cohesion Rite which would possibly help her harness her Gladra. However, the blurb for book 2, Kingdom of Claw suggests that the surviving Klaernar links Rey to the Slatrari. This is probably why Silla and Rey are stuck together in the shield-house at the beginning of book 2.