The giant nodded.
Tylar turned away to find Krevan had already drifted off, shadowy in the mists. He limped to join him, drawing on a trickle of darkness into his cloak to steady himself.
Ahead, the pirate had stopped, his back to Tylar. A growling sound rose from him, angry, offended.
“What’s wrong?”
Krevan stepped back to reveal what his large bulk had hidden.
A shaft of peeled and sharpened wood rose from the ground, planted deep in the loam. Impaled upon it was the head of an old woman, her gray braid black with her own blood, tongue lolling out, skin mottled with rot. Flies and worms squirmed and crawled across her flesh. Her eyes had been pecked or gouged out.
Only now did Tylar note the reek hidden beneath the decay of leaf and a heavy dampness to the air. Details grew as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. To either side, he noted more burdened stakes.
Aghast, he backed a step toward the ship.
The mists slowly rose, swirling back up. Bits of dust and dried grass drifted down, cast high by their hard landing. The view opened. Tylar remembered the strange bristling he had noted as they fell out of the sky. He now understood what he had glimpsed. Climbing up the slopes in widening rings were hundreds of stakes.
All bearing aloft their ripe and rotted fruit.
“No…” Tylar mumbled.
This was far worse than any uncontested fire. A ravening darkness shadowed this realm fully. He recalled Rogger’s story of tanglebriar. He stared at the field of sharpened stakes. Seersong had indeed taken root-and here was the thorny growth that sprouted from that seed.
“Her own people,” Krevan said in disgust.
In step, both men retreated toward the flippercraft.
Then Tylar heard a whistling to the air. Flashes drew his eyes up. Streaks of flame shot through the mists like trailing stars in the night. They arced out from the shrouded forest, climbing high, then angled back downward. Score upon score blazed through the murky clouds.
“Arrows,” Krevan said, twisting to grab Tylar’s shoulder and pull him toward the flippercraft.
Too late.
Fire fell out of the sky and pummeled the flippercraft lying at the bottom of the sea of mist. The impacts sounded like hail on a wooden roof. But it was flame, not ice, that rained down upon the beached flippercraft. Not a single arrow missed its target.
Shouts arose from inside the ship.
But before Tylar could even call to the others, a second volley of flaming arrows filled the sky with their streaking brilliance. A moment later, amid the shocked cries of the others, another round of flame beat down upon the back of the craft, already aflame.
Again, not an arrow fell astray.
If it was madness that truly ruled here, it had honed its marksmanship.
The fires spread rapidly, sped by some alchemy imbued in the oil of the arrows. Flames ran like fiery snakes across the hull.
“Get the others out,” Tylar ordered Krevan. There was no use attempting to escape by air. The flippercraft would burn down to its mekanicals by the time they cleared the mists.
Unless he did something about it.
Tylar wiped his brow, then slid out a dagger. He drew its edge across his palm and drew a fiery line of blood.
Sweat to imbue, and blood to open the way.
He would fight the flames with his own humours. He pictured ice, as frigid as the cold that had stolen Eylan from them. He built the blessing in his bloody palm, prepared to use his sweat to cast it upon the craft. He would freeze the flames from his ship.
He raised his hand-but before he could slap palm to wood, an arrow struck exactly where he had intended to place his hand. The thunk of its impact startled him back a step. It was as if the arrow had sprouted out of the hull, rather than being shot from afar.
The feathered end quivered at his nose.
But that was not all.
Skewered on the shaft of the arrow was a raven, one of the messengers he had sent ahead.
Here at last had come his answer from the Huntress.
A threat by marksmanship.
At any moment, an arrow could be sent through his own heart.
He lowered his arm.
Krevan came dashing out, leading others from the ship.
“Run!” the pirate shouted and pointed an arm up the slope.
Before Tylar could even turn, the top of the flippercraft exploded away in a great gout of swirling flame. A wall of heat knocked them all off their feet. Krevan was the first back up, scooping Dart under one arm, dragging Brant by an arm.
“Go!” he shouted.
They were all running as fiery planks fell, raining down into the loam. It was sheer luck that no one was struck. Once clear, Tylar counted heads. Too few.
“Horas? his men?” he asked.
Krevan shook his head. “The arrows…bore a dark alchemy of loam, anathema to air. Captain tried to tamp the mekanical. Save the ship.”
The pirate turned to Tylar. Fire shone in his eyes, burning with the promise of revenge.
As if challenging this threat, laughter carried to them, floating out of the mists above, as if from clouds themselves.
Brant stepped to Tylar’s shoulder. “The Huntress,” the boy said, naming the true source of the amusement, hidden up in the mists, aloft in her castillion.
Her words echoed down to him, powered by Grace.
“Welcome, Godslayer…welcome to Saysh Mal!”
A SCRATCH AT THE WINDOW
“Are all the townsfolk secure?” Kathryn asked.
Keeper Ryngold nodded. “We’ve turned the Grand Court into a makeshift inn. The accommodations in the amphitheater will be nothing more than a stone bed and a blanket, but it’s warm and out of the winds.”
They spoke in private outside the door to a gathering room midlevel in Stormwatch. She heard the murmur of voices beyond the door. She was to meet this morning with representatives of the retinues from the various realms. It was her current role here in Tashijan. No more than innkeeper, settling disputes and addressing concerns of those under their roof.
Warden Fields had even banned her from the strategies in the fieldroom. If you see little reason to keep me abreast of your plots and plans, then there is little reason for me to do the same. Normally a castellan could not be so easily cast aside. As they usually arose out of the Council of Masters to fill that high seat, a castellan had the backing of all the masters with their alchemies and knowledge. No warden would dare treat a castellan so dismissively.
But Kathryn did not have the support of the Council of Masters. If anything, she had gained their enmity as well. Especially Master Hesharian. He had been more purple of face than even Argent, and had offered no objection to her being shut out of the fieldroom.
Still, it could have been worse. She could have been locked up for treason. After Tylar and the others departed by flippercraft, she had stood behind her decision. If the storm gods wanted the Godslayer, then better Tylar be sent away. His flight might draw off attention. She justified her secrecy by relating what Tylar had found in their cellars, evidence of some collusion between Tashijan and the daemon army below. It was beyond mere chance that Mirra nabbed the skull shortly after those in the fieldroom learned of its existence. Even Argent had glanced around the table then. He was no fool.
So she managed to keep herself free of bars and locks.
But little else.
In fact, she had been the last to learn about the emptying of the town that huddled outside Tashijan. Argent had sent a good portion of his knightly force beyond the walls to shepherd the people inside. The townsfolk swelled into Tashijan with stories of the storm closing down upon their homes, whispers of strange beasts seen behind swirls of snow, of bodies found frozen and ripped.
Upon hearing this, Kathryn had gone under cloak to see for herself. The storm had tightened down upon the shield walls of Tashijan, swallowing up the outer village. There was a savagery and fury in the winds, almost tasted on
the tongue. And despite the additional burden and loss of life, the raging uplifted her spirits.
The anger here could mean only one thing: Tylar and the others had escaped. The storm god tore into the town in his fury, closing tighter around Tashijan.
But so far that was the only change. Over the past three days, the siege had stretched with a deceptive calm. Argent had fires blazing again throughout the lower levels of the tower. He had even bricked up the tunnel behind the Shield Gong in the Grand Court as it stretched down into the Masterlevels. Yet there had been no further move by Mirra.
It was as if both sides were holding their breath, preparing for a final assault. But how would it strike? In what form? Or would they be merely starved out? Pondering this worry…
“How are we doing on food and fresh water?” she asked the keeper of the towers.
“Lucky the warden had planned a grand series of feasts for the regent’s knighting,” Keeper Ryngold said with a tired grin. “Our ice lockers and foodstores were heavily fortified prior to the attack. We’ll make do for the moment, but the townsfolk will stretch us thin.”
“We’ll have to manage.”
“Of course,” he said with a nod to the door, “you’ll have to convince our esteemed guests inside there that the heft and variety of their meal boards may be less than they are accustomed to enjoying.”
She sighed. “I’ll do my best.”
With a slight bow, Keeper Ryngold departed. She watched him move down the hall, admiring the man’s fortitude. In many ways, here was the true warden of the towers.
And at least he was still speaking with her.
She turned back to the door, took hold of the latch and her patience, and pushed into the crowd inside. The gathering room was one of the teaching halls, lined by two long tables, with an elevated stage at the front. Lamps flickered along the walls.
She spotted Delia near the front of one table and nodded. Kathryn still felt a certain discomfort around the younger woman, still picturing the stolen kiss with Tylar. She knew such resentments were petty and unfair, and over the past days, they had begun to fade as the two women were forced to work closely alongside each other. Delia had proven herself as adept as Keeper Ryngold in maintaining some degree of control over the various households of the gods. Kathryn had come to rely on her calmness in the face of strife, on her evenhanded decisions. She was surprised how relieved she was to find Delia already at work today. It was good to have one ally.
There certainly were enough here with complaints.
The leader of the disgruntled fronted the second table: the lithe, snow blond Hand from Oldenbrook. Alongside her sat a swarthy slug in purple, the sole Hand dispatched from neighboring Foulsham Dell. Despite their plain dislike for one another-and more disparate appearance and manner-they had joined forces to plague Kathryn for the past two days.
Filling the rest of the boards, divided almost equally into the two camps, were the other heads of the retinues trapped at Tashijan. With Delia sat the representatives from Mistdale, Snowfox River, Crooked Wood, Fitz Crossing, and surprisingly the embittered crook-backed Hand from Moor Eld. The other table bore the hard faces from Akkabak Harbor, Five Forks, Wintering Isles, and Martyrstone.
Liannora rose to her feet before Kathryn even reached the teaching dais. “Thank you for attending to our grievances.”
Kathryn mounted the single step to the raised stage. She ignored the woman.
“Castellan Vail,” Liannora continued, “we understand the dangers that have beset Tashijan, and we all here want to help in any manner we can. Toward that end, what we propose-”
“Propose?” Kathryn snapped as she turned. “What I propose, with all respect, Mistress Liannora, is that you take your seat. This meeting was not called to listen to your arguments but for you all to better understand the plight of your situation. While Tashijan values your knowledge and skills in regards to handling humours, there are no gods here. It is skill with sword, or mastery of alchemy, that is most needed.”
Liannora’s features brittled even harder. She kept her feet. Perhaps for no other reason than that she might snap in half if she sat. “Warden Fields has given me his word that we would be heard here.” She glanced down her table. “Is that not so?”
Murmurs of agreement acknowledged the same.
So the woman had been a plague not only upon Kathryn. Argent must have been equally assaulted, but the warden had somewhere to push the complaints-back at Kathryn.
“What is it that you propose, then, Mistress Liannora?”
“We believe that as representatives of gods that bless the First Land and its distinguished neighbors we should be more involved with the defenses here. Not left to languish in our rooms. We have no desire to hide, or worse yet, run from our duty to Myrillia…like craven cowards.”
She stressed this last word. Kathryn had heard the same word being spread by the Fiery Cross. Tylar’s flight from Tashijan was seen by many as abandonment, or worse yet, outright spinelessness. It was plain on which side of the fence Liannora had decided to stand. The woman had an uncanny ability to sense the flows of power and to bend them to her advantage. Kathryn remembered her earlier flatteries; those had turned to insolence at about the same time Kathryn had been banned from the fieldroom. Liannora had recognized the ascendancy of the Fiery Cross and sided with their arguments and slights.
“I have yet to hear your proposal,” Kathryn said. “Do you wish to take up swords yourself and defend the stairs?”
Liannora dismissed her words with a flutter of an arm. “Certainly not. Our strengths lie in our keen experience and expertise. We would wish no more than to be ready with a suggestion, to act as counsel to those that wage our defenses. To be represented and involved in the stratagems.”
Kathryn’s brow crinkled.
“I’ve discussed it with my fellow Hands,” Liannora continued, nodding to her table. “And we think it only best that we cast stones amongst ourselves and proffer one of our own to join those in the fieldroom who truly defend these towers.”
A slight cocking of the woman’s eyebrow accentuated the insult, directed at both Kathryn and the departed regent.
Kathryn did not rise to the bait. Instead, she found herself bemused by the woman’s posturing. Delia had warned her about the Hand, cautioned against underestimating her cunning and lust for power. If Argent had been born a woman, here he would stand.
Kathryn lifted her hand yet again. “I encourage you to cast your stones. I think it wise that you select one amongst you to represent all. It would certainly expedite matters of communication.”
Liannora bowed her head, accepting the compliment with poised humility.
“But,” Kathryn went on. “The warden certainly would not allow any but the heads of Tashijan to attend his meetings in the fieldroom.”
Kathryn offered a look of apology. Let Argent deal with the woman if her ire was piqued.
“Oh,” Liannora said, straightening with an arch glint in her eye, “I’ve already discussed the matter with Warden Fields. He concurs and invites our participation.”
Kathryn gaped for a moment, taken aback. Why would Argent allow-? Then she knew. What better way to further humiliate Kathryn? To be banished while the likes of Liannora were allowed entry.
Liannora stepped into her silence, addressing the others. “So with all in agreement, we will cast stones.” She glanced to Kathryn. “If you’d be so kind as to count the tally, it would be most appreciated.”
Kathryn had no choice but to concede, having been artfully manipulated into this position.
The Hand from Foulsham Dell stood up, clearing phlegm from his throat with a grousing hack. He teetered slightly on his heels, plainly soused. His purple cloak and shirt must have been selected to hide the spill of wine down his paunch of a belly.
“I think there can be no doubt who should represent us.” He bowed with exaggerated flourish. “Mistress Liannora has shown herself to be of ample skill and of quick m
ind. Hear, hear!” He called to his table, raising an imaginary goblet. “Bring on the stones!”
At the other table, Porace Neel of Moor Eld gained his feet with a groan, supporting the crook in his back. “And I propose Mistress Delia. All know her and hold her in genuine esteem. She is wiser than the whole lot of us.”
A few at her table rapped knuckles on the board, agreeing.
Not so at Liannora’s table.
“I’m sure Mistress Delia would prefer to avoid such a burden,” Liannora said. “All know the tension between warden and daughter. And dare I say, we must acknowledge here that Mistress Delia is not in fact the handservant of a god, but only a man.”
Delia stood. “For the good of Tashijan, I am more than willing to set aside such tensions.”
“And as we had all gathered here to honor that man,” Kathryn added, “to acknowledge his rightful place as both knight and regent, I certainly don’t think we can cast Mistress Delia in a lesser light.”
Liannora stared at Kathryn and read her resolve.
The woman dipped her chin. “Of course.”
With only the two names proffered, it did not take long to cast stones. Each Hand placed a stone into the bag: white for Liannora, black for Delia.
The bag was brought to Kathryn. In short order she tallied the count and announced the result. “We have an equal number of stones for each.”
Liannora hid her disappointment behind pursed lips. Delia merely kept her arms crossed.
“Are there any here who would wish to change the cast of their stones?” Kathryn asked.
No hands were raised.
“Then I see no other recourse as castellan of Tashijan than to declare it an even match. Since the warden has so wisely chosen to expand his council, then what better way to acknowledge his wisdom than to send him two from our assembly? Mistress Liannora and Mistress Delia.”
Liannora wore a momentary expression of irritation, but the look swept away just as quickly, replaced with a feigned smile of acceptance as the others congratulated her.
Delia met Kathryn’s eye, offering her own smile. For days, they had been cut out of the strategies waged in the fieldroom. Now Argent had unwittingly opened the door again.
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