She nodded. Pointed at Lord Silas. “Is he…?”
Lord Silas vomited what seemed like a whole bucketful of black liquid onto the street. Spat a few times. Then stood up. Looked around at the sky, which was filling with Blackjacks.
“We need to get out of the city right now.”
“You sure you don’t want to take a minute?” Felgor asked.
“Can’t. The Blackjacks are riled. They’re going to swarm Deepdale.”
66
BERSHAD
City of Deepdale
The first score of Blackjacks started swooping into the streets and snatching up corpses just as Bershad and the others were moving through the main gate of Deepdale. Bershad led everyone to a high hill, and they watched as the dragons took over the city. He thumbed the familiar, worn grip of his dragontooth dagger, which Felgor had given to him once he was healed.
He was glad to have the weapon back, but he’d lost something far more important.
His connection to the Nomad had been completely severed by the injection. He couldn’t feel anything beyond his own senses, which made him feel like he was carved from a block of stone. The world around him seemed quiet to the point of being lifeless.
“You gave me too much of Jolan’s crap,” he said to Felgor.
“Oh yeah?” Felgor asked. “Well you can politely go fuck yourself, Silas. You were halfway done turning into a tree person. I saved your life.”
“It wasn’t that close.”
“Wasn’t that close?” Felgor turned to Nola. “What do you think, kid? Did that situation appear to contain a casual amount of urgency?”
“That’s not the word I’d use.”
“Would a complete goatfuck be more appropriate?”
The girl hesitated. “I’m not sure what word to use, if I’m being honest.”
“You lied to me!” Grittle pressed.
“What?”
“You said you couldn’t talk to the dragon, but you obviously can. And she does give you magic powers. You lied.”
“Sorry.”
Bershad looked out over the forest.
“Any Wormwrot out there?” Felgor asked.
“I don’t know, Felgor.”
“Huh? What do you—” He paused. “Oh. Right.”
They all looked around for a few moments, each person regrouping in their own way.
“Did a man named Elondron find you?” Nola asked him.
“That’s right.”
“Is he alive?”
“I’m not sure. He was in rough shape.”
Nola nodded. “I wanted him dead so badly. But he saved us all.”
Bershad didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. Nola went quiet.
Eventually the older warden cleared his throat.
“So, what happens now?”
“Felgor and I need to go back to Dampmire. Meet up with Ashlyn.” He scanned the sky. “Sun’s almost up. We can cover a lot of ground between now and nightfall if the weather holds.”
“Can we come with you?” Grittle asked him.
Bershad shook his head. “There’ll be more fighting. A lot more. It’s too dangerous.”
“But what are we supposed to do, then?” Nola asked.
“Head into the Gloom with the others.”
“Into the Gloom?” Nola repeated. “And what? Just … try to survive?”
Bershad sighed. “These days, surviving’s difficult enough to be your sole focus. Find a spot with good water where the fruit hasn’t been picked clean by Blackjacks, and hunker down until summer’s over. They’ll clear out of the city by then, and you can come back. Rebuild your tavern, maybe.”
Bershad turned around. Started walking down the hill.
“You were wrong,” Nola said.
That stopped him. “About what?”
“Back in that manse. You said that our souls have nothing to do with this. But we do,” Nola said, voice quivering with emotion. “All of this happened to us, too. We don’t just disappear when you walk out of a room or march back into the jungle. And now you’re telling me to just hunker down? I tried that already.”
She stepped toward him.
“While you and the wardens fought your war, I scraped and scrapped and made a demon’s bargains to keep the Cat’s Eye open. And what came of it? Men with painted red faces dropped out of the sky and took a hot shit over the whole thing. They killed Trotsky. Shelley. Cuspar. So many others.” She choked back tears. “They turned us against each other. Turned us into animals. I don’t want to rebuild the tavern. Are you fucking insane? I want to fight them. I want to kill them. All of them.”
Bershad looked at her for a long time. It burned him up inside, to see so much fresh hate in such a young girl.
“You’re right. I was being an asshole. Sorry.” He knelt down so they were at eye level. “I know what it’s like to feel nothing but rage. You want a place to pour all that anger. But running blind and furious into a new fight doesn’t work.”
“You seem to do it all the time.”
“And look at what’s happened to me because of it. Most of my friends are dead. Most of my enemies are still alive. I have nothing to show for my life except a head full of nightmares, a body covered in scars, and a trail of corpses left in my wake.” He paused. “You and your sister need to survive this war. Keep the parts inside that are good and soft. That’s your revenge. You don’t need to turn yourself into someone like me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m still alive. And I’m going to kill everyone responsible for what happened to you.”
“Is that a promise?” Nola whispered.
“Yes. So long as you promise me that you’ll rebuild the Cat’s Eye.”
Nola nodded. “Okay.”
He turned to Grittle. “And you promise me you’ll serve up that rain ale that isn’t watered down.”
Grittle sniffed. “Are you gonna come back to drink it?”
“I’ll try.”
67
VERA
Lysteria, Above the Frutal-Kush Valley
“Some view,” Decimar said, looking east.
The valley was deep and vast, with high peaks on all sides. The green bowl was dominated by birch and pines, mostly.
“Yeah,” Vera said.
“Any idea where the witch is?” Entras asked.
“Caellan’s an alchemist, not a witch.”
“Once, maybe. But if she really is that Lysterian woman we heard stories about, then she’s clearly adopted some witchlike tendencies. Remember what the village people said? All the business with dead frogs in her belt and bubbling tonics that stop your cock from working.”
Vera shrugged. “Might be she has one to get a cock working again, too.” She glanced at him. “Something you could use.”
Entras smiled and shook his head. “More than you know, Vera. More than you know.”
“Where do you want to start looking for her?” Decimar asked, changing the subject. Unlike Entras, he had a low tolerance for conversations about cocks.
Vera consulted the alchemist map, then compared it to the valley. The reversed topographic lines aligned with what she saw, so this was the place. She took a long time studying the ground below. Eventually, she smiled.
“That copse of goat willows,” Vera said, pointing to a group of trees that were blooming with purple leaves.
“You’re pretty confident.”
“Goat willows bloom naturally in early spring, then lose all their petals a month before the solstice. Seeing as we’re two weeks past that, the fact they’re still purple might belie a witch’s presence, don’t you think?”
“Ha! You think she’s a witch, too.” Entras frowned. “But I have to say, making a tree bloom out of season seems a little light in terms of sorcery.”
She gave Entras a look. “I’m sure she has plenty of cock-shriveling potions bubbling as we speak. We just can’t see them from the sky.”
Again, Decimar s
topped the conversation by pointing to the south. “We could put the Sparrow down in that meadow. Approach along the gully that runs north.”
Vera followed Decimar’s finger. That would mean covering almost two leagues of forest on foot before reaching the willows.
“This is Caellan’s territory, and we are showing up uninvited. I would rather not cross through so much of it before speaking with her.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s no reason for her to think of us as anything but enemies, and Salle said that Caellan was also well versed with poisons. She may have rigged the area with traps.”
“See?” Entras said. “Witch.”
Vera ignored him. “I want to get as close as possible, as quietly as possible.”
“Oh, no. Not again.”
“What?”
“You want to do a sling drop.”
“You don’t like sling drops?”
“Nobody likes the sling drops except for you. You know that more than half the people who have tried your little trick never walked again? I’ve ordered the men to stop telling stories about it.”
“It’s not that hard. The key is timing the roll so you disperse the load on your joints.”
“Tell that to Ulric Bant.”
“Who’s that?”
“One of my idiot bowmen who tried a drop back in the jungle and separated himself from his kneecaps by about a league.”
“Look, I’m not asking you to do it with me. I’m only asking you to swoop the ship down into the valley.”
Decimar squinted. “Still not in love with the idea.”
Vera looked at him. “When was the last time you were in love with anything we had to do, Decimar?”
Decimar cracked his knuckles and looked away, out over the valley. “Don’t remember.”
Vera nodded. Then pointed. “We’ll come in from the east, riding that ridge.”
“Now?” Entras asked.
“No. We’ll wait until nightfall. For now, take us to the next valley over so we’re out of sight.”
“You’re gonna do it in the dark this time?” Entras asked. “By Aeternita, you truly are crazy.”
“I’ll be fine. Just make sure you get a good look at that ridge. I do not want my landing fouled up because of a bad approach.”
* * *
Entras fouled up the approach.
That, or Vera screwed up her landing, but either way she hit the ground at an off-kilter angle and careened ass-first into a willow trunk hard enough to drape the ground in purple petals.
“Black skies,” Vera muttered in Papyrian. She limped to the nearest shadow. Tried to regain her bearings. The Blue Sparrow continued over the next ridge, carried on the wind in near silence, and was only visible if you were already looking for her.
Vera didn’t move for ten minutes. Just waited. The forest was quiet, but it was an eerie and unnatural silence. No birds. No squirrels in the pine trees or rabbits rustling the ferns.
Vera stalked forward.
She moved slow—dropping down on her belly to cross areas with poor cover. Rising to a crouch only when she was certain she could stay hidden from view.
The first trap was obvious. Just a simple trip wire. Vera spotted the steel fiber reflecting in the moonlight like a fishing line drawn by a midnight sailor. She stepped over it, and traced it back to a metal case full of poisoned needles. Moved on.
The wilderness changed as she moved closer to the center of the willow grove. It didn’t become clearer, exactly. But there was an order to it. Vera found herself moving without hesitation to her next spot because the best line of stealth approach was so obvious.
She stopped. Glared at the next patch of shadows she was going to slink into: a fallen tree that created an overhang against a boulder. It was too perfect. Nature didn’t offer such obvious paths to protection. You had to hunt for them. Sacrifice something to reach them.
Instead of crawling into the shadow, she wormed her way to the left of it, even though the maneuver left her more exposed. When she came up on the far side, she found a metal claw half-covered in leaves. The fangs of the claw were made from Balarian steel—screwed in place with the same style bolt that Osyrus Ward used for his automatons. There was a tension lever keeping the device in place, which was connected to a pressure plate located in the middle of that tempting shadow.
Clever.
Instead of forging ahead into the dangerous blackness, Vera decided to readjust her strategy. She might have avoided two traps, but she had no idea how many more were out there, and she only had to screw up once.
She drew Owaru and carefully used the tip to unscrew one of the fangs. Then she dug around in the undergrowth until she found a decent-sized rock. Threw it into the shadow. The metal claw snapped forward. There was a loud impact, followed by a spray of mud and leaves.
Vera wailed in pain. Then released a lower, gurgling murmur.
Then she scaled a nearby pine tree with good cover and waited.
For several minutes, nothing happened. Vera was concerned her gambit hadn’t worked, but she couldn’t try another howl and risk giving away her position. Then a soft, chemical-blue light illuminated farther ahead in the forest. It had the dim glow of light being refracted through a window.
Caellan’s hut.
The light died a moment later, and a door opened. Closed again. After that, the alchemist moved without a sound as she traveled toward the trap, but Vera could make out little flickers of her in the moonlight. She was shrouded in some kind of cloak with a ragged outline. Too dark to see clearly.
When Caellan was about ten strides from the trap, she froze. Clucked her tongue.
“I see we have a clever intruder in our midst,” she said in Papyrian. Her voice was sultry and smooth. “A welcome change. Grakus was getting tired of eating morons.”
Vera didn’t say anything. She did not believe the woman knew where she was.
“Trying to keep your position secret? Also smart. But a fool’s errand. Grakus can find anyone.”
Caellan opened her hand. A green puff of smoke rose from her palm.
“He just needs a little incentive.”
Again, Vera kept still. But a few moments later, the ferns to her right started thrashing. A beast was charging through the undergrowth, heading directly at her. What was it? Seemed to be about boar-sized. She tightened her grip on the poisoned fang, got ready. But it wasn’t a boar that came careening out of the forest.
It was a Yellow-Spined Greezel.
The dragon had a dozen yellow spikes jutting out from his back. Glowing yellow eyes and a scarred maw. The lizard bolted forward and rammed his head into Vera’s tree at speed. The shock vibrated up the trunk and into Vera’s palms, forcing her to shift her weight and grip. At the exact moment that her fingers were grasping for a better hold, the Greezel slammed both his front claws against the trunk, sending Vera falling toward his waiting jaws.
She grabbed a lower branch just as the dragon was jumping up to snatch her, tucked her legs to avoid his razor-sharp teeth, and swung herself through the air. Landed behind Caellan. Pressed the poisoned fang against her throat.
The dragon spun around, glaring at Vera but not advancing. He dug his claws into the ground, instead, tearing long marks in the earth. Nostrils dilated. Eyes angry.
“Call that thing off,” she whispered.
“Why?” Caellan asked. Her breath smelled of strong liquor, but there was no sloppiness to her words or movement. “Right now, Grakus is the only thing keeping that poison outside my veins.”
“No,” Vera said, pushing the fang closer. “My arm is the only thing keeping that poison out of your veins. Call. Him. Off.”
Now that she was pressed against her, Vera realized that Caellan’s cloak was made from raven feathers. They shimmered purple and black in the moonlight.
“Kill me, and that dragon kills you a heartbeat later,” Caellan said, voice calm.
“I’d rather avoid bloodshed entirel
y.”
“Then you should not have snuck into my valley.”
“I found this valley because of the map you left behind, Caellan. You must have wanted to be tracked down by someone.”
“Not by a Papyrian widow. As I recall, there is only one reason for a widow to travel without her charge.”
“My charge is Kira Malgrave, one of the last members of Okinu’s line. She suffered a catastrophic spinal cord injury. Complete severance of the fifth vertebrae. I came to you for help getting her to walk again.”
“Walk? If what you say is true, then she is already dead.”
“She’s a Seed.”
That gave Caellan pause. When she spoke again, there was a hint of fear in her voice. “How do you know that word?”
Vera swallowed. “Osyrus Ward has been helping me keep Kira al—”
Vera’s words froze in her mouth. She tried to take a breath. Couldn’t. Looked down.
Each raven feather in Caellan’s garb had a copper needle running down the middle of it. And three of them had suddenly pricked up and stabbed through her armor—filling her veins with ice.
Vera fell over—her limbs frozen like a woman who’d been dead for a day. She couldn’t move her arms. Couldn’t shout. Couldn’t even blink.
“I do not bargain with Osyrus Ward’s dogs,” Caellan said in that smooth, silky voice.
Vera’s vision blurred as her tear ducts stopped working. Everything went dark.
68
CASTOR
Castle Malgrave, Level 77
Osyrus Ward removed the sword hilt from Vergun’s chest with a grunt. Dumped it into a metal basin. Examined the damage that the Flawless Bershad had done.
“Ruptured stomach and spleen,” he said. “Collapsed lung. And a rib cage that is essentially splinters.” Osyrus pressed on part of Vergun’s stomach and a large stream of blood sprayed from his wound. “This is a substantial injury.”
“Can you fix him?” Castor asked, not really sure which answer he wanted to hear.
“Yes, yes,” Osyrus said with the confidence of a parent who’d just been asked by their child whether the sun would rise the next day. “But I fail to see the concrete value in doing so. You have failed every task to which you have been assigned, Commander Vergun.”
Fury of a Demon Page 36
