Yorga helped up Bargo. Fire burned in both men’s eyes. Tylar had caught them by surprise. That was over. Together the Ai’men approached, stepping to either side to flank him.
“Hold!” The voice froze them all.
It came from farther up the street.
Bargo and Yorga parted to reveal a single figure in a black surcoat trimmed in silver, with a matching cloak, standing still. No chain, no armor, no shield. Only a sheathed sword hung at his waist. The black diamond on the hilt’s pommel glowed with its own light. That was all the protection needed here. The figure had been blessed in Grace.
A Shadowknight.
The same light from the diamond shone in the eyes of the warrior.
Tylar could not match that gaze. He turned askance.
A wind caught the edge of the knight’s cloak, willowing it out. Maybe it was a trick of moonlight, but as the cloak swept across the knight’s form, darkness consumed the figure, vanishing him half-away.
Tylar knew it was not a trick of the light . . . but a blessing of shadow. The Grace of such knights: to move unseen, to shirk into darkness and away. At night, there was no greater foe.
Bargo and Yorga knew this and bowed out of the way, heads lowered, backs bent. Yorga dropped to a knee as the knight stepped past him.
“What is the mishap here?” the knight asked, his heavy gaze settling on Tylar.
Rather than looking up, Tylar maintained a focus on the knight’s boots. There was much to tell from a man’s boots. Calfskin and mullerhorn. Fine tooled leathers from the Greater Coast. Worn well at the arch from riding hundreds of reaches in the stirrup. Since none of the Summering Isles were more than five reaches across, the knight must be an outsider to this sea-locked realm. Perhaps a blessed courier from another god-realm. Or perhaps a new conscript called in service to the god here, Meeryn of the Summering Isles.
Either way, he’s new to his cloak, Tylar concluded, or he wouldn’t scuff his boots on such a petty street brawl.
Bargo finally coughed loose his tongue. “This scabber were a’beggin’ in Goodly Master Rind’s tavern house. We were bending his arm a bit to send him back down to Punt.”
“Is that so?” the knight asked. Tylar heard the wry amusement in the other’s tone. “From my vantage, I’d say he was the one doing the bending.”
Bargo blustered.
The boots Tylar had been studying stepped closer. “Your name, sirrah?”
Tylar remained silent. He didn’t bother to look up. There was no need. The knight’s features would be hidden behind a wrap of masklin, a facecloth cut from the same blessed material as the knight’s cloak. All that was ever seen of a knight’s face were the eyes and the triple stripes that blended into the masklin.
“Is what they claim true?” the knight continued. “You are aware, sirrah, that begging of coin is not allowed after sunset.”
As answer, Tylar reached into his pockets and tossed the pair of brass pinches on the cobbles before the knight’s toes.
“Ah, so it seems the scruff here has a coin or two. Sirrah, perhaps your pinches are better spent in a tavern of the lower city.” A toe nudged the bits of brass back toward Tylar.
Such rare kindness earned a curious glance toward his benefactor. The knight was tall and lithe, a willow switch in a cloak. His face was indeed wrapped in masklin. Eyes glowed at him. Tylar saw them pinch in surprise. A step was taken back.
“He’s a stripped knight,” Bargo said. “A shiting vow-breaker.”
Tylar pocketed his coin and gained his feet. He stared the knight up and down, anger burning away shame. He read the disgust in the other’s stance. He met the other’s gaze fully for the first time. “Fear not. Disgrace is not contagious, ser.” He turned swiftly away.
But not swiftly enough . . .
“Ser Noche . . .” The knight spoke his name with raw shock. “Tylar ser Noche.”
Tylar’s step faltered. A thousand reaches from his home-lands and he still could not escape his cursed name.
“It is you, ser, is it not?”
Tylar kept his back to him. “You are mistaken, ser knight.”
“Curse my blessed eyes if I am!” Boots scuffed closer. “Face me.”
Tylar knew better than to disobey a Shadowknight. He turned.
Beyond the knight’s shoulder, he spotted Bargo and Yorga slinking back to the Wooden Frog, happy to escape the knight’s attention. They knew their game had ended, but Bargo stopped at the threshold. He wiped blood and snot from his lips and cast a murderous stare toward Tylar, a promise of pain to come, a debt he meant to collect. Then the brawlers pushed back into the tavern.
Tylar’s attention focused back to the fellow before him. “As I was saying, you mistake me for someone else, ser.”
As rebuttal, the knight reached to the clasp at his throat. A shadowy waft of masklin fluttered free.
Tylar instinctively glanced down. Only a knight was allowed to see another knight’s features.
“Face me, ser.” Command lay thick on the other’s tongue.
Tylar trembled and obeyed.
He found a familiar countenance framed within the cloak’s hood. Tylar knew those features: high cheekbones, white-blond hair, amber eyes. The young knight was all sunlight and autumn fields, in contrast to Tylar’s stormy and dark countenance. Time sailed backward. Tylar recognized the peach-faced boy behind the bearded man who stood before him now.
“Perryl . . .”
The last time he had seen this face there had been only two stripes. Perryl had been one of his three squired lads back in Tashijan, under his tutelage before . . . before . . .
He glanced away, his heart aching.
The Shadowknight dropped to one knee before him. “Ser Noche.”
“No,” Tylar refused. “No longer Ser Noche. It is simply de Noche.”
“Never! To me you will always be hailed as ser.”
Tylar twisted and stumbled away. “Get off your knees, Perryl. You shame yourself and your cloak. It seems even in this small task I have failed the Order . . . training you so poorly for your station.” He continued down the street.
A scuffle sounded behind him as his former squire gained his feet and fled abreast of him. “All that I am, I owe to you.”
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 see
k 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. She 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 ch
est, 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.