The words cut like poisoned daggers. Tylar hurried on, knowing he could never flee a blessed knight, but perhaps he could escape his own memories.
Perryl kept beside him. “I would speak to you, ser! Much has changed back at Tashijan. If you will meet with me on the morrow-”
Tylar stopped and swung toward Perryl. His chest heaved on swells of shame and misery. “Damn your eyes! Look at me, Perryl.” He held up his crooked arm. “The knight you knew is gone, long buried. I’m a scabber out of Punt. Leave me to my hole and seek me out no more.”
His outburst thrust the other back a half step.
In the knight’s face, he saw the boy again, wounded and at a loss for a response. The young man stared up at the lesser moon’s glow. “I must be away,” he mumbled apologetically, fixing his masklin back in place, then met Tylar’s eye firmly, a knight again. “Whether it bring you pain or humiliation, I would still speak with you.”
“Leave me be, Perryl,” he begged with all his heart. “If you ever loved me, leave me be.”
“For now… only for now.” He swung his cloak and backed into shadow, blending away. Only a pair of eyes glowed back at Tylar. “A dread and perilous time is upon us… upon all of us.”
Then Perryl was gone, moving with the speed born of Grace.
Tylar stood a moment longer. His fingers clutched the pair of brass pinches in his pocket. Would that he had a silver yoke to drown away this night. But he doubted that even a pouch of gold marches would wash this pain away.
He let the pinches slip between his fingers into his pocket as he continued down the street. He skirted around the darkest alleys of Punt, aiming roundabout for the docklands and his lone bed.
On the morrow, he would seek a boat to another island. He did not want to be known or remembered. He would lose himself again, sinking into the solace that came with anonymity.
Still, Perryl’s words stayed with Tylar as he hobbled along. A dread and perilous time is upon us all. A streak of dark humor cut through his pain and shame. A dread and perilous time? That fairly summed up his state of affairs since he was stripped five years ago. How was any of this a new tiding?
With a shake of his head, he shut out such thoughts.
It was none of his concern.
As the night wore thin, Tylar walked from streets lined in cobbles to those simply worn from the natural sandy rock. Here the houses were shuttered and dark, hiding their faces.
Off to his left, the alleys and narrows of Punt echoed with cries, shouts, and sounds to which it was best to be deaf. But one could not escape Punt’s smells. It shat and sweated and pissed like a living creature, ripe with corruption, pestilence, and decay.
One never developed a nose for it. It was too changeable-by day, by season, by storm, by fair weather.
Tylar kept his shoulders hunched, skulking through pockets of gloom. One learned the value of being inconspicuous in the lower city. He crept along shadows. Though now Graceless, he was not without skill at moving unseen.
He rounded past Gillian Square with its empty gallows and cut through Chanty Row with its tanners and dyeworks.
Still, he could not fully escape Punt’s gaze. It leered at him as he crawled home. It screamed and laughed and watched him from a hundred dark windows.
He hurried over Lumberry Bridge as its stone spanned the stagnant canal that drained the upper city, carrying away its refuse and bile. Beyond the bridge, the canal dumped into Lower Punt, the island’s chamber pot.
Past Lumberry, Tylar had his trickiest traverse. Here the boundary between Lower Punt and the more stable dock-yards blurred. Taverns and wenchworks occupied every corner. Dark alleys crisscrossed blindly.
Tylar entered the gloom, and while shadows had always been his home, here there was no safety. The very air was heavy and thick, moving sluggishly, a fetid exhalation from Punt. It was a common lay for thieves seeking a quick slice and run or hard-pricked roughers looking for a bit of alley rutting, willing or not. Neither was much threat to Tylar. He seldom carried enough coin to be worth the effort, and his bent, scarred form hardly fired anyone’s loins.
So he hurried through these last alleys, already picturing his straw-filled bed. But as he rounded the darkest patch, entering a small square of derelict buildings, his feet suddenly stopped as surely as if he had run into a wall. A waft of scent had almost dropped him to his knees. Not foul, but the sweetest bouquet, lavenders and honeybloom, bright against the darkness.
It was silk and a child’s laugh.
Tylar stood, planted on the sandy stone of the square. How could he walk away? He doubted he could even be forced away. Tears welled in his eyes. The darkness scintillated with the sweetwater scent. All he could do was search for its source. What beauty could bloom in such shite?
Then a scream shattered the night, startling him back to the dangers that lay in the shadows of Punt. It was a man who cried out, and Tylar had never heard such terror, not in all his years.
There followed the bright sound of sword on stone. Shouts accompanied in chorus. Panicked. Close. The neighboring alley. Footfalls echoed, running away-
No… toward him.
Tensing, Tylar twisted around. He was momentarily unsure where to flee. Then a figure unfolded from the darkness before him. A silvered sword, held aloft in his hand, split his dark form like lightning. Above the blade, eyes matched the shine.
A Shadowknight.
Instinctively, Tylar knew it was not Perryl. The form was too broad of shoulder. The man dropped to his knees-not in supplication as Perryl had moments ago, but in prostration.
Tylar stepped toward him, a hand rising in aid. But he was too late.
As the knight’s body struck the street, his head rolled impossibly from his shoulders, bouncing obscenely to Tylar’s toes.
Slain…
Gasping, Tylar stumbled away.
Other bits of darkness fell out of the shadows. More knights, wrapped in masklin and cloak, appeared. They fared no better than the first, seeming to come apart at the seams. Limbs dropped away, bloodless but dead. Innards burst, pouring in tortuous loops from bellies. One knight collapsed in on himself as if his bones had suddenly jellied.
Horrified, Tylar fell back. What deadly Grace was at work here? He found his back pressed to the mortared stone of a burned-out structure. He huddled into a doorway’s alcove, seeking refuge inside, but the entrance was boarded tight.
Trapped, his eyes widened, seeking any clue, any answer to the slaughter. Something shared the shadows with the knights-but what?
Across the alley, a fog of light swelled between two soot-painted buildings. A glowing vessel flew into the square. It was a mekanical flutterseat, an open carriage held aloft by a pair of blurred wings. It bore a lone woman, crouched on the single seat. Other knights flanked the carriage and trailed it.
But one after another, they fell, afflicted like the others, until there were none.
Alone and unguarded, the carriage canted, struck the cobbles, and spilled over. Broken wings shattered against stone. The passenger, a wisp of a woman, flew free of the wreckage and landed spryly. She twirled in the center of the shimmering mist. A dance of panic and wildness.
Tylar was again struck by a swell of sweet-water scents, stretching from some distant spring. But now it held a touch of winter’s frost, too.
Fear.
Tylar knew the woman was the very bloom of this bouquet. She was also the source of the glow, a living lamp. The cold sheen of terror on her skin cast its own light. She must be richly blessed in Graces to shine with such power. Perhaps a noblewoman, or someone of an even higher station… Her dress was snowy finery and lace, her hair loose to the shoulder, as dark as her skin was pale.
Somewhere deep inside, he knew he should go to her aid. But he remained in place. He was no longer a knight, but a broken man. Shame burned as bright as his fear.
The woman fled to the center of the dark square, still dancing warily, eyes flashing with glowing tears. S
he was indeed powerfully blessed, rich in humoral Graces. The blessing of the gods flowed from her every pore, misting from her body as she whirled. But with whom was she dancing?
The answer was not long in coming. Darkness took form at the edge of her glow, coalescing out of shadow.
It stood upright like a man-but was no man. It was scale and snake and shattered teeth. A crest trailed from crown to whipping tail. As it approached, a mist of Gloom steamed from its skin, a contrary Grace to the bright glow of the lone woman.
She faced her enemy, stopping her dance. “You will not win,” she whispered.
As answer, a hiss of fire licked from its burned lips. There were no words, but a sound accompanied the flame, distant, yet still reaching clearly to Tylar in his hiding place. It pierced and ate at his will. His legs shook. He knew it to be a voice, but no throat could utter such a noise. It was not a sound that belonged anywhere among the Nine Lands, nor anywhere across all of Myrillia. It was a keening wail, crackling with lightning, laced with the scurry of dark things under the ground.
Tylar covered his ears, but it did not help.
The woman listened. Her only response was a paling of her snowy skin. Bone shone through. Her eyes dimmed. She uttered one word: “No.”
Then the beast lashed out, moving faster than the eye could follow. Darkness crested like a wave over the bright well of Grace that shielded the woman. Lightning flashed across the darkness, lancing out and striking the woman.
She fell back, arms outstretched, momentarily impaled between her breasts by the stroke of brightness. It was not lightning, Tylar realized, but something with substance… yet at the same time not completely of this world.
Pierced through the chest, the woman cried out, a wail of a songbird, sharp and aching.
The beast pursued, leaping. Darkness swallowed the woman away, rolling over her. Both vanished in the steaming gloom of the creature’s shadow.
Tylar held himself clenched.
Then like storm clouds roiled away by swift winds, the blackness swirled outward, becoming a tempest trapped between stone walls.
It struck all around, tearing at mortar. Glass shattered.
Tylar clutched the walls of his alcove, nails digging for purchase. He fought to hold himself in place, but he also felt a tug on all that held his spirit in place. His sight was taken from him-or perhaps it was the world that had been stolen away. He teetered at the edge of an abyss. His skin both burned and iced. His heart stopped beating in his chest. He knew his death.
Then he was let go. He fell back against the boarded-up door. Before him in the square, darkness roiled into a great vortex as if draining away down some unseen well. The darkness whirled, growing smaller-then it swept down and away.
Across the ravaged square, the beast was nowhere to be seen.
All that was left was the woman’s form sprawled in the center of the square. Her limbs still glowed, only weaker now. Rivers of brightness ran and pooled out from her form. Blood, shining with the richness of powerful Graces, flowed from her. She did not move.
Dead.
Tylar stumbled from the alcove. He sensed in his bones that whatever had entered Punt had vanished away. Still he dared approach no closer. He headed away, past the bodies of the slain. Sprawled in their blessed cloaks, the knights seemed like ghosts, blending with the shadows. Though the wearers were dead, the cloth still maintained its Grace, working to hide its owner even in death.
As Tylar skirted the square, the scent of flower petals and warm sun swelled around him. He turned, knowing the source. The pale, misty beauty remained unmoving on the stone. From this angle, he spotted the black hole pierced through her chest, as wide as a fist, blackened and wisped with curls of smoke.
He sensed it was down that hole that the darkness had vanished away, the well through which the enemy had escaped.
Though the forces at work here had nothing to do with a fallen knight, nor a broken man, he found his feet walking him toward the woman.
As he approached, he attempted to keep his feet from her glowing blood, but there was too much. He moved into her light, careful of the slick stone. She surely was a noblewoman of high stature. It was seldom someone was blessed with such a degree of Grace. Perhaps she was even one of the eight handservants to Meeryn, the god-made-flesh of these islands. Such servants dwelled in the god’s castillion, harvesting and preserving the humours from the god they served.
Tylar eyed the castillion blazing atop the isle’s highest point, Summer Mount, the seat of Meeryn. If he was right, if the lass had indeed been in service to this realm’s god, he pitied the hand behind this attack. A god’s vengeance knew no pity.
He reached the woman’s side. He stared down into the wan beauty, brought low here. She was young, no more than eighteen. Her face glowed with a fading brilliance, gone to embers. The blank eyes, as blue as the seas, stared skyward.
Then those same eyes twitched in his direction, seeing him.
Tylar clenched back a step in shock.
She did indeed still live! But surely not for long…
“Child,” he whispered, not knowing what words he could offer at this last moment.
He crouched, soaking his pant leg in blood. As the dampness reached his skin, he realized his mistake. The blood burned his flesh-not like fire, but like spiced wine on the tongue, as much pleasure as pain. It was a burn to which he was well familiar.
Crying out, he fell backward.
Fingers latched onto his wrist, holding him, squeezing like the iron manacles that had bound him for five years.
He gaped in horror. The woman was not dead. Then again, how could she be? She was not a woman at all.
Tylar knew who lay before him now, who clutched him.
It was not a handmaiden.
It was Meeryn herself… the immortal god of the Summering Isles.
Fingers squeezed and drew him closer. Her other arm rose and reached toward him. The palm was bloody. Tylar had neither the strength nor the will to fight.
The reaching palm struck his chest as if to push him away, while the clutching fingers pulled at him. The blood on the outstretched hand blazed through both the rough-spun cotton of his shirt and the soft linen of his underclothes. It touched the flesh over his heart. This was no spiced wine. He smelled the smolder of seared skin. The pain was excruciating, but at the same time, he never wanted it to end.
It didn’t.
The god at his feet pushed deeper, stretching for his heart as it fluttered, a panicked bird in a bony cage. He gasped out fire as burning fingers entered his chest. The stone of the square vanished from his eyes, snuffed away like a pinched candle. The small sounds of the night blew out. The hard grind of stone fell away under his legs.
Only now did he understand the lack of substance behind reality.
Yet sensations remained.
A palm pushing at his chest, a hand dragging him down by the wrist.
He spun in these contrasts, but here, where there was no substance, both were possible. He felt himself shoved up into a brilliance that blinded, while dragged down into a darkness that was somehow just as bright. Where a moment ago he had stood at the edge of a bottomless abyss, now he hung over the same. But as he spun, he recognized his mistake. There was not one abyss, but two — one above and one below.
Both stared at him as he hovered between, his bones burning like a torch.
This was more than death.
I am undone, he thought, knowing it to be true.
Then a wash of coolness drenched his form, drowning him, driving him back to the slaughter of the square, back into his own body. He struck it like he had the broken cobbles outside the Wooden Frog: hard and abrupt.
Sensations filled him again-but the palm on his chest no longer burned. From the god’s hand, a chilled wash spread out and through him.
He knew this sensation, too.
In a different life, he had bent a knee to the god Jessup of Oldenbrook. Then, too, he had been fill
ed with Grace. And like Meeryn, Jessup had borne the aspect of water. To many, this aspect was the weakest of the four. Most of his fellow knights had sought out gods of fire, loam, or air. But not Tylar. He had been born as his mother drowned aboard a sinking scuttlecraft off the Greater Coast. Water was his home as much as shadow.
So he knew what filled him now.
“No!” he gasped. Grace flowed into him, drowned him, a hundredfold richer than when Jessup had ceremonially blessed him. He didn’t deserve this honor. He could not face it. But he also could not escape it.
Grace swelled in him, stretching him.
No… too much…
His back arched. He remembered his birth, shoved brutally and lovingly out of the warmth of his mother’s womb and into the cold seas of Myrillia. Then, too, he had breathed water, momentarily one with the sea-until salt burned and lungs fought to cry. He would have died had not the net of a lobsterman hauled him from the waves.
But who will save me now?
Water surged through him. He could not breathe. He craned, stretching for air.
Too much…
Something gave way deep inside him. The swell of water spouted up and drained down, spewing from him in racking spasms. He felt part of himself given away with it, released, stolen, shared-and at the same time, something entered, swimming up the flowing channel and into his chest, settling there, coiling there.
Then the water finally emptied from the broken vessel that was his body. Tylar collapsed in on himself, spent and drained. The momentary blessing was gone.
The hand on his chest fell away. His wrist was released.
He stared down again into Meeryn’s face.
Her soft skin no longer glowed, but her eyes still stared at him as dawn finally broke over the island, taking the edge off the gloom. Meeryn would recover. Like all the gods, she was immortal, undying, eternal.
Her lips moved, but no words were spoken. He thought he had read the word pity on those perfect lips, but maybe it was just something in her eyes. What did she mean?
“Lie still,” he urged, leaning closer. “Help will come.”
A small movement. A tiny shake of the head and a sigh. Her lips parted again. He cocked his head, bringing his ear closer. Her breath was cherry blossoms on a still lake.
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