Still, Tylar knew it was best to be away before pieces of shadow sprouted swords and men. He hobbled after Rogger to the door. The daemon continued its guard upon Lord Balger, sensing the greatest danger lay with the god.
Only once they vacated the cell did the daemon flow back with them.
Balger made no move to follow. Only his voice chased them. “If Rivenscryr is here, we’re all doomed!” Cruel laughter followed. “One man and one undergod cannot stop the end of all.”
Rogger led the way to the end of the short hall. Empty now. An iron door clanged shut ahead of them. The screech of a sliding bar echoed to them. “The cowards are trapping us here.” A snort of derision punctuated his words. “Locking a godslayer with their god.”
“What can we do?” Tylar asked as they reached the doors.
From its post behind them, the naethryn daemon snaked its neck over their heads and flowed to the iron . . . through the iron. Metal poured in rivers of molten slag. Hinges and locking bar melted away. The door toppled and crashed into the far room.
Bale dagger in hand, Tylar led the way, careful to step on the solid iron, using it to ford the pools of fiery slag. The last of the guards vanished out the other side of the dungeon’s anteroom. In their haste, no one bothered to bolt the far door.
In the larger room, the daemon streamed fully forward with a billow of smoke and reformed its wolfish silhouette, wings folded to its back, long neck questing up the stairwell beyond.
Rogger collected an abandoned short sword, while Tylar donned an oversized pair of leggings and boots found beside a cot. He kept his chest bared for the sake of the daemon’s umbilicus. Once ready, the daemon seemed to sense their desire and flowed up the stairwell.
Rogger and Tylar followed. As they wound up out of the subterranean warren, Tylar confronted the thief. “You sought to sell my life for your own.”
Rogger scowled. “So we wanted everyone to believe.”
“We?”
“Delia and I. We concocted this ill strategy while you slept these past days. We guessed word would’ve spread after our escape from the corsairs. Ravens graced with air can outrace any sputtering Fin. We needed a way to make landfall. A way to get you to Tashijan alive. With blessed wards, far-seers, and Graced armies spread along the shores and borders, it would take the protection of a god to keep your skin on your bones.”
“And you chose Balger?”
“What better god to know the value of a godslayer? Balger may be vile, but he is no fool.” Rogger shook his head. “I must say even I underestimated his cunning. I thought he’d be satisfied with the price on your head.”
“So the entirety of your plan was to have me captured by Balger and delivered trussed up and nulled to Tashijan?”
Rogger tugged his beard. “Just about.”
“And you couldn’t forwarn me of your plan?”
“We couldn’t risk you being soothed. You had to be unaware.”
“What about you and Delia being soothed?”
Rogger shrugged. “When you have a godslayer in tow, few look elsewhere. As we imagined, we were ignored.”
Tylar frowned. Ahead, a warm breeze blew down to them. It smelled of swamp and sea, salt and weed. Sunlight reflected off the sweating stone walls. With each step, the air grew hotter.
They cleared the last flight and found a doorway of rough-hewn squallwood planks. An open iron grating let in the slanting sunlight. Again the daemon pushed through the door. Wood turned to ash. The iron grating dropped and clanked against the top stair.
Out in the yard, muffled screams and shouts grew louder and clearer as the door fell away. Tylar ducked after the daemon. Rogger kept to his shoulder.
With their appearance, arrows and crossbow bolts rained around them, but the daemon’s wings spread out, a shield of shadow. Feather, wood, and steel all burned away or were deflected aside.
Rogger kept low. “Seems Balger’s men are braver from a distance.”
“What of Delia? We can’t leave her here.” Tylar slowed. He would not abandon her.
“She’s already gone. Two bells ago. Her escape was easy to arrange. I am not unknown among the wenches who serve . . . well, let’s say under Balger. Though sometimes on top, too, I’ve heard.”
Gongs clanged, raising the alarm.
Rogger pointed to the open gate to the courtyard. They fled across the weed-strewn yard.
It wasn’t far. Balger’s castillion was no larger than a manor house, a graceless jumble of blocks built of stone and wood. It sat in the middle of the Dell, atop a small outcropping of bedrock, a toad on a mound. The township itself was only so much flotsam and jetsam washed up against its rocky flanks: tumbled, chaotic, broken, waterlogged, bloated, rotted. A miasma of woodsmoke and swamp gasses cloyed the air and turned the sun into a continual glare. Beyond the city lay the only bits of arable land. Wheat, barley, and oat grass formed a fringed patchwork around the ramshackle town. And beyond the farmlands stretched endless marshes, bogs, and fens.
Where could they go?
They cleared the gates and spanned a moat that appeared more of a sewer than a defensive perimeter. Rogger led the way into the alleys and streets of Foulsham Dell. Shutters slammed all around. Cries raced ahead of them.
Rogger finally tugged him by the elbow into a cramped alleyway. He waved a hand at the daemon hulking half in shadow with them. “From here, mayhap you’d best rein in your friend there. That beastie of yours attracts too many eyes.”
Tylar licked his lips. The daemon seemed to read their intent. Its head snaked back, framed in a mane of smoke. Its fiery gaze burned brighter, angry. Here crouched one of the naethryn.
“How?” Tylar asked warily. “It took Meeryn’s blood last time to drive the beast back inside.”
“According to Delia, you bear Meeryn’s blood. At least the Grace of it. She thinks you’ll be able to reel the daemon back into you with a touch of your own blood.”
Rogger held out his short sword.
Tylar pocketed the dagger stolen from Balger. Such a dread weapon could not draw blood, only pain. Tylar ran the edge of his hand along Rogger’s pocked sword. It was a shallow cut but stung like an adder’s bite. Blood immediately flowed.
The scent of it drew the attention of the shadowbeast. The naethryn craned back, muzzle sniffing, eyes shining silver.
Tylar cradled his weeping wound with his other hand. Blood pooled in his palm. Tylar smeared his hands together, coating his fingers in wet crimson. He reached out to the smoky column and throttled it with his hands.
He expected his fingers to pass harmlessly through the smoke again. But shadow gained substance under his bloody palms.
It felt leathery, yet warm.
From his fingertips, a crackling rush of cold flames burst forth. The wildfire flushed out and over the naethryn’s form. In a heartbeat, it reached the tip of its muzzle and rebounded back. On its return, the daemon’s form vanished, burned away by the retreating fire. The flow of fire fled back along the umbilicus, back over his hands.
Tylar took a hurried breath as the rebound struck him in the chest. A mule kick. He was knocked against the alley wall. A flash of whiteness blinded him, then winked out. The alleyway lay in full shadow again. Darker than a moment ago.
Rogger searched the shadows for the daemon, making sure it was gone. “That’s better. I was sure one of those smoky wings was going to brush through and melt the bones from my body.” The thief shuddered.
By the wall, Tylar straightened both his legs and his back. He stared at his arms. Hale once again.
Rogger motioned to him. “Let’s get moving. Best keep to the shadows and we should be safe.”
His words immediately proved false.
From the shadows at either end of the alley, black shapes folded out of darkness. A dozen. Cloaked, swords in hand. Shadowknights all.
Tylar backed into Rogger. Another trap.
The leader of the knights stepped forth, plainly fearless, sword still s
heathed. A mountain of shadow. He was too tall and too wide to be Darjon. His eyes glowed with Grace, swinging from Tylar to the thief.
“Again in trouble, Master Rogger?” The gruff voice, though muffled by masklin, could not be mistaken. “Why is it that your plans always go astray?”
Rogger grinned through his red beard. “We’re out of the dungeons, are we not? I count that an improvement.”
Tylar glanced between thief and knight.
“Here stands the other part of my original plan,” Rogger said as introduction, turning back to Tylar. “If Lord Balger had played along, these knights were to have been your border escorts from Foulsham Dell to Tashijan, in service to our cause. Now it seems they must be our rescuers, too.”
The knight bowed. “Your handmaiden brought us rumors of Balger’s intent to keep the godslayer imprisoned here. It seems ol’ Balger speaks too freely among his wenches.”
Tylar sensed the flow of hidden forces at work here. He eyed the tall knight. The last time he saw the man, his face had been blackened by ash, as was the manner of the Black Flaggers. In fact, he was the leader of the Black Flaggers. Krevan the Merciless. Now he had replaced ash for blessed masklin. The tattooed stripes of his former life as a Shadowknight were plain.
Tylar remembered Rogger’s earlier words about the man. Not every knight breaks his vow . . . Some simply walk away.
Tylar faced the knight-turned-pirate. “How are you here?”
Krevan shifted, stirring shadows like oil. “We don’t have much time for such tales. Suffice it to say, we will get you to Tashijan. Our cloaks will help hide you. We have horses waiting in Fen Widdlesham.”
Tylar refused to budge. “Why . . . why are you helping? What has all this to do with errant knights and the Black Flaggers?”
Krevan’s masked features were unreadable, but his words grew frosty. “All of Myrillia is in danger. It has been for a long time, out in the fringes, where few but the low know. I had thought never to don cloak and sword again, but some duties surpass personal desire.”
“What do you mean by—?”
Rogger touched Tylar’s shoulder. “Leave it be for now, Tylar.”
Something silent passed between the elder knight and thief.
“You’ve not told him,” Krevan said.
Rogger shook his head. “It was not my place.”
Eyes narrowed above the masklin, pinching the black stripes tighter. “I bore a name before earning the title Krevan the Merciless . A knight’s name. I was once called Raven ser Kay.”
Tylar glanced to the thief in disbelief, but only found confirmation there. “The Raven Knight?”
Krevan swung away. “We must go.”
“But Raven ser Kay died over three centuries ago,” Tylar mumbled.
Rogger stood at Tylar’s side, watching the knight disappear into shadow. “Yes . . . yes, he did.”
14
WHISPERS In THE DARK
DART KNELT ON A SMALL GOOSE-DOWN PILLOW AND SLOWLY unrolled the linen scarf across the stone floor. She then placed the small wyrmwood box onto its center. All the while, she felt the two pairs of eyes scrutinizing her every move.
Matron Shashyl stood with her hands folded behind her back, her lips pursed as she oversaw Dart’s preparation for her first bloodletting.
Lord Chrism merely sat upon a chair, his face turned toward the open window of his chamber. He smelled of hay and freshly turned soil. His hair was oiled and combed straight back, making his green eyes seem larger, shining brighter than the afternoon sunlight.
With trembling fingers, Dart opened the small wyrmwood box. Lord Chrism’s sigil was inlaid in gold on the lid. Inside, brown velvet protected the contents: a line of silver instruments, a ribbon of tightly braided silk, and a fresh repostilary. The crystal receptacle had been blown by the glass artisans only two days previous. Dart had toured the Guild’s shops across the courtyard and watched this very repostilary being crafted.
Her first.
“This will be a full draw,” Matron Shashyl said. “So which lancet will you choose?”
It was not a difficult question. Shashyl had schooled her vigorously over the past two days.
Dart reached and pointed to the leaf-shaped lancet. To create a flow rich enough to fill an empty repostilary to the brim, she would need the largest of the silver blades. It was filigreed with gold inlay, again the sigil of Chrism. Dart knew it was an ancient instrument, dating back to the second millennia following the Sundering. Yet the tool was maintained in such delicate fashion that the silver shone without a single pox of tarnish. Its honed edge looked sharp enough to slice through darkness itself, its tipped point so fine it was hard to discern the end of the lancet without squinting.
“Very good,” the matron said. “Let us not keep our Lord of the loam waiting any longer.”
Chrism sighed with a ghost of a smile, his attention drawn back upon student and teacher. “Mayhap, dear matron, you should leave my Hand and I alone for this first bleeding.”
“But, my Lord, she is—”
The garrulous old woman was silenced with the lifting of a single finger. “She’ll do fine,” Chrism said in consolation. “This is a private time between god and Hand.”
Matron Shashyl quickly bowed, then retreated toward the exit to Lord Chrism’s chambers.
Dart kept her eyes upon the floor, upon the spread of her tools. She found it hard to breathe, as if the air had gone suddenly too thick. Pupp lay on the stones, his stumped tail wagging slowly. His fiery eyes were fixed upon the tools, like a dog eyeing a soupbone. She had warned him off with a firm gesture when she first knelt down.
Chrism stirred in his chair by the window. “As much as the good matron may press upon you the import and weight of your duty, it is truly a matter of no great concern.”
Dart glanced up at him. His eyes shone with emerald Grace, framed in soft brown curls, a slight stubble of beard shadowed his cheeks and chin. She found comfort in the warmth of his soft smile. She remembered his tears on the night of Willym’s murder, shed without collection, a treasure spent in memory of the god’s former servant.
“Every man bleeds,” Chrism said. “A god is no different. I can’t count the times this past winter alone that I’ve pricked a finger while working out in the Eldergarden.”
Dart found such a concept impossible to imagine, but she recalled her first encounter with Chrism among the gardens, mistaking him for some common groundskeep. Looking at him now, she could not fathom how she made such a mistake.
“While my blood may have value in trade and stock, it flows from me like any other man’s. Be not afraid. Master Willym and I were beyond ceremony.”
Chrism rolled back the sleeve and exposed his arm. His skin was tanned the color of red loam, while soft hairs, bleached blond by the same sun that tanned his skin, curled up the length of his forearm. He turned his arm to expose his wrist. Here the skin shone paler, appearing tender, as smooth as a woman’s cheek.
“You must simply stab deep and quick. My beating heart will do the rest of the work.”
Dart nodded. She took up the length of braided silk. Pupp lifted his head, tail wagging more vigorously. She waved him down with her free hand. She did not want him interfering—especially not when blood was involved.
Pupp lowered his head but maintained his vigil.
Dart knelt by Chrism’s chair and tied the ribbon above the god’s elbow. She worked rapidly, having practiced all night. She snugged it, careful not to touch his flesh.
“Tighter,” Chrism said. “You can cinch it more firmly.”
Dart swallowed hard and did as he instructed. The silk pressed deeply into his flesh. For some reason, she had thought a god’s flesh would be more unyielding, more like stone.
“Very good.”
Dart sat back and gently lifted the silver lancet from the scarf. Now came the hard part. To stab the god she served.
“Can you see the vein at the edge of my wrist?” Chrism asked. “Wil
lym preferred that one for a deep bleeding.”
Dart reached up and cradled Chrism’s wrist. His skin was warm, almost hot to the touch.
“A quick jab is all it takes.”
She hesitated.
“Be not afraid.” His voice purred with patience and concern.
Dart bit her lip and drove the point into his flesh and out again. A ruby drop of blood immediately welled upon his pale flesh, a jewel more precious than any mined from the heart of Myrillia. Here was a treasure mined from the heart of a god.
“The glass . . .” Chrism said with a smile.
Dart stumbled back, realizing she had frozen in place, mesmerized. She reached blindly for the repostilary, knocked it over with her fingertips; its crystal stopper rolled free of the scarf, tinkling on the stones. She grabbed the tiny decanter.
“Calm yourself. There is no hurry.”
Blood welled on the god’s wrist into a pool. Dart held forth the repostilary, needing both hands to hold it steady. Still the crystal receptacle tremored with each beat of her own heart.
Chrism leaned forward and tilted his wrist with a skill honed over millennia. The pool of blood became a channel, rushing from his flesh into a thick stream. The repostilary caught the flow as it poured forth.
Dart kept her gaze focused on keeping the wide mouth of the receptacle positioned to accept the god’s gift. Her trembling continued to bobble the jar a bit, but not a drop was spilled. The repostilary filled.
Chrism studied the flow. “That should do nicely, Dart.” She flicked a gaze in his direction. His lids lowered slightly. A glow bloomed softly on his wrist, moonlight through a break in clouds. Chrism had cast a blessing upon himself. The blood stopped flowing, dripping away, healed.
“The bit of linen, please,” Chrism said.
Dart let go of the repostilary with one hand and reached for a folded slip of green Kashmiri linen. She snatched it up and held it out.
Chrism turned his wrist toward her. She dabbed the blood from his skin. No sign of her stabbing wound remained.
Shadowfall Page 29
