“You of all people should not place so much confidence on the folk that banished you into slavery.”
Tylar shook his head, deeply troubled. Though he had been sourly treated, a part of him knew his punishment had not been unwarranted. He had bargained with the Gray Traders . . . and it had cost the life of an innocent family. Though it wasn’t his sword that slew them, he was still to blame.
“There are black tidings all across the Nine Lands,” Fyla said. “Corruptions and bouts of madness. Who can say if Tashijan has been spared?”
“That was where we were heading,” Tylar grumbled.
Fyla glanced at him. “Why journey there?”
“To seek answers from its libraries.”
Rogger nodded. “And now we have another reason to continue there. If someone at Tashijan betrayed Meeryn, then therein may lay your salvation, Tylar. Expose the scabber and prove your innocence.”
The pod shook more vigorously, striking the sides of the tunnel. Everyone fell against the walls.
“Before any journey can be undertaken,” Fyla said, “I must get you safely away. The naether is too strong down in these dark depths. You must escape to the sun, back to land.”
The pod bobbled again. Tylar sensed they were corkscrewing through a winding tunnel. “Where are we heading?”
“Even deeper,” Fyla answered. “To the bottom of the Reef.”
They continued their descent to untold depths, each lost to their own thoughts. But at least the quakes seemed to have subsided for the moment. Tylar finally spoke. “There’s a question I must ask you.”
“I will answer if I can,” Fyla said.
Before he could speak, the pod halted with a final shudder. A petal peeled open on to a curving hall, flooded to the level of their knees. Water rushed in—cold, but not icy.
“The wetdocks,” Fyla announced.
“Well named,” Rogger said glumly as Kreel waded into the water. The others splashed after him.
One side of the passage was honeycombed with large half-submerged alcoves. Some were empty, but most sprouted tails of strange-looking craft.
Fyla waved to one of the nearest occupied alcoves. “Here we dock the Fins, the bloodships of the Reef.”
The Fins appeared to be made of the same ubiquitous dark green material as the pods, but in this case, it was elongated and pinched at either end, surmounted by a prominent fin. Along the belly ran a pair of smaller fins, like runners on an ice sled.
Kreel showed them how to open the top hatch and climb inside.
“Looks like the inside of a tiny flippercraft,” Tylar noted, inspecting the four seats: two in front, under a crystalline dome, and two in back. The inside walls were lined with mica tubes, all leading to a central crystal sphere full of gently glowing crimson liquid.
“It’s fueled by a similar alchemy as the flippercraft,” Fyla conceded, still standing in the outer passage. “But rather than the Grace of an air god, this is fueled by my own blood. It will speed you through the seas faster than any ship.”
Kreel checked the levels. “There should be enough blood to reach Fitz Crossing.”
Tylar nodded. Fitz Crossing was a rim island in the middle of the Meerashe Deep, a god-realm of Dain, the domain of orphans and runaways.
Rogger sighed. “I know some folk in Scree, on the far side of the island from Dain’s castillion. From there, we should be able to book passage to the First Land.” He jangled a pocket. “I guess it’s lucky we still have Captain Grayl’s gold marches.”
“But the island is still a far ways off,” Fyla warned. “You must be wary of the Gloom. It will sap the ship’s reserves if you travel through the naether bloom for very long. Flee upward as soon as you leave, away from the deep.”
Tylar nodded. Kreel gave them a fast lesson on the Fin’s controls. They were simple enough. Tylar took the captain’s seat. Delia took the neighboring chair, guarding the spherical tank of alchemies. Rogger sat behind her. The Fin rested at a slight angle, nose aimed down a short flooded tube to the open sea.
Kreel climbed back out and prepared to seal the Fin’s upper hatch. Before he could lock it down, the Reef shook with a new quake, more violent than the others. Tylar was thrown from his seat. He stared back up at the hatch. A wall of water swept along the hall outside.
Kreel clung to the Fin’s tail. “We’re breached!”
Fyla stood on the far side, water climbing her form. “Be off! I must see to my city!”
“I’ll get the hatch,” Rogger said, swinging back to the stern.
Tylar remembered the question he had meant to ask before landing at the docks. “Wait! Fyla! Does the word Rivenscryr mean anything to you?”
She froze, half-turned. Her eyes flared with Grace, her whole manner hardened with fury. Ice formed over her body.
Before she could answer, seawater began to pour into the cabin from the flooding docks.
Delia opened the flow of alchemies. “We must go!”
“Fyla!”
She stirred. “It is a forbidden name, one known only to the gods.”
“What does it mean?” he asked frantically. “What is it?”
Rogger sputtered under the hatch, seawater flooding over him.
“Your people gave it a different name.” She stared through the rushing water.
“I must close the hatch!” Rogger choked, pulling it down.
Tylar pleaded with his eyes.
As the hatch clanged shut over the flood, her words reached him, “Though it is neither, you call it the Godsword.”
More confused than before, Tylar fell back to his seat. The water sloshed over his ankles. The only light came from the glow of the mica tubes as the alchemies raced through them.
Delia twisted the valves that controlled the flows. “Now, Tylar!”
He grabbed the wheel with one hand and pushed the plunger with the other. Grace surged out into the fins and the ship jetted forward, flying down the dark chute and out into the bright sea.
Once free, he concentrated on using the foot pedals and wheel to control the craft. The Fin raced through the water, carving a path beneath the Reef above. Against the city’s glow, the patches of Gloom were easy to spot as steaming columns of blackness. Scintillations of lightning crackled through their hearts.
Tylar sped around the trunks of tangleweed, many now blackened and leafless from the touch of the naether.
“Once we’re clear of the Reef,” Rogger said, “we should angle both up and away, make for the open water beyond the weed. We don’t want to get snarled up in the surface tangle.”
Tylar nodded. They were almost at the city’s edge, where the central corona cast off spiraling arms leading to sea plantations and hatcheries. Tylar aimed between two such arms.
As they shot upward, water sloshed to the back of the cabin. The shift threw off Tylar’s balancing of the controls. The Fin spun in a fast spiral as he struggled to rein it in. They crashed through some branches of tangleweed, jarring their ship.
“Maybe you should slow,” Delia suggested.
“Watch your starboard!” Rogger yelled from the back.
Tylar spotted it too late. What had first appeared to be shadow was a smoking column of Gloom. He slammed the right rudder. It was too much. The Fin spun completely around, sweeping through the cloud of Gloom. All the mica tubes flared to a bright fire, protecting the ship. Then they were clear of the Gloom.
Tylar straightened the Fin, raised its nose toward the sky, and sped away. The glow of the Reef slowly faded below them, disappearing amid the thickening forest. Soon, only the luminescent globes that dotted the tangleweed’s branches lit their path. Somewhere far above, the sun waited for them.
“How are the reserves?” Tylar asked shakily.
Delia measured the tank with her palm. “That single brush cost us a good fifth of our alchemies.”
“Let’s not do that again,” Rogger suggested.
“I wasn’t planning—”
The miiod
on attacked from above, dropping upon them like a fisherfolk’s net. Tentacles swallowed the Fin completely. The weight of the jelly shark rolled the ship. They were tossed about the cabin. Tylar sensed them dropping, tumbling back into the inky depths, to where the naether waited. The rolling stopped as the Fin stabilized, upside down in the clutches of the jelly shark. Tylar and the others lay sprawled upon the cabin’s roof, the controls overhead.
Delia spoke near the bow. She crouched with her face pressed to the crystalline dome. “There’s a space here between two tentacles. You can see through a bit.”
Tylar joined her. The Reef glowed nearby. They had fallen back to where they had started. He rested his forehead against the dome. A column of Gloom roiled off to the port side. Death lay all around.
“What about loosing your daemon?” Rogger asked. “Maybe it could slay the beastie before we’re crushed.”
Tylar shook his head. He remembered how back at Summer Mount the dred ghawl had turned the guard’s arrows to ash. He feared what it would do to their Fin if it tried to pass through the walls to the seas beyond.
“Then charm the miiodon again,” Rogger persisted. “With blood and piss like before.”
Delia leaned back. “We need to be able to touch it to charm it.”
“Maybe not . . .” Tylar had a sudden idea and swung around. “Delia, I need you to man the wheel and rudder. Hurry!”
She knit her brow, but climbed to her feet under the controls, arms raised in hesitation. “Someone has to push the rudder pedals by hand. I can’t man the wheel at the same time.”
“I’ll help,” Rogger said.
Tylar pressed his face to the dome, studying the landscape. “When I say now, I need you to burn as much alchemy as you can while pulling hard on the wheel and left rudder.”
“What are you—?”
“Get ready!” His target came into view. He held his breath. “Now!”
Rogger and Delia worked the controls. A vigorous trembling shook the ship. The mica tubes grew bright and hot as the craft fought the miiodon’s bulk. It proved too heavy. Nothing happened. They continued to drop into the depths, unimpeded.
“More power!” Tyler scolded.
“Hang on,” Delia gasped. “I’ll break the damper valve.”
Glass shattered with a small pop. The Fin jolted as if kicked by a loam-giant. The mica tubes flared with intense heat. Slowly the miiodon’s bulk, clasped around the Fin, began to slide horizontally through the water, dragged by the sputtering ship.
“A little farther . . .” Tylar begged.
As he held his breath, the edge of the jelly shark brushed into a neighboring column of Gloom. The reaction was immediate. Tentacles spasmed, fonts of venom spewed into the surrounding seas. Like the weed and the schools of fish, the miiodon was a creature of this world, not the naether. The Gloom ate through its bulk as it fell farther into the heart of the naether bloom, feeding its substance to the void.
The Fin was dragged with it.
Again the mica tubes blazed sun bright with protective alchemies. Tylar’s right hand brushed a cross tube, singeing his skin.
But they were free.
“Release the rudder!” he cried.
The Fin jumped forward, passing out of the Gloom and into clear waters. Shoving to his feet, Tylar took Delia’s place at the controls and rolled the ship back into proper position. They regained their seats, and he fought the Fin up at a steep angle.
“With the damper broken,” Delia said, “we can’t slow her down.”
They shot between the spiraling trunks of tangleweed, racing out of the depths, going faster and faster, cleaving through snarls and branches. No one spoke until the midnight waters lightened to twilight.
“The sun,” Rogger gasped.
High above, a pool of watery brightness promised fresh air and escape. As the waters brightened to aquamarine, they shot free of the tangleweed forest and into the clear seas. Tylar held white-knuckled to the controls, keeping the ship angled upward.
“Hold tight!” he called.
They breached the ocean, bursting forth from the waves like a monstrous fish leaping into the air. The Fin sailed high for an endless breath, then crashed back to the seas with a jarring splash. For a moment they sank again, but the Fin bobbed quickly back up, jostling and rolling in the swells.
The sunlight through the dome was blinding, even with the sun close to setting by now.
“We made it!” Rogger cheered. “Not that I didn’t think we would, mind you.” He clapped Tylar on the back.
Delia sighed, not as pleased. She pointed to the spherical tank of bloody alchemies. It was empty. “We ran dry a few fathoms ago. We were climbing on buoyancy alone.”
“Let’s worry about that later.” Rogger crossed to the stern, cracked the hatch, and threw it wide. A clean breeze swept into the cabin. “For the moment, at least we’re still breathing.” To demonstrate, he took a dramatic chestful of fresh air.
Tylar joined him, glad to face the sun. Still, a dark shadow remained around his heart. He considered what Fyla had given him, a name that revealed nothing but dread and mystery. “The Godsword,” he mumbled aloud to the setting sun.
Rogger grunted. “An ominous epitaph indeed.”
“Could it be real?” Tylar asked. “I’d thought the sword a fable.”
Rogger shrugged. “Maybe it is. But fables often have some seed of truth.”
Tylar still found it hard to believe. According to black myths told throughout the ages, the dreaded Godsword harkened back to the lost past of Myrillia, to the time of the Sundering itself, when the home of the gods was shattered. No one knew the true form of this dread weapon, though artists and storytellers dwelled upon this mystery, while philosophers debated its very existence. Only one detail was shared by all the tales: the Godsword was the weapon that shattered the gods’ realm and brought about the Sundering.
But what did Meeryn mean by uttering it in her last breath?
He remembered Fyla’s cryptic final words. Though it is neither, you call it the Godsword. He rubbed at the ache between his eyes. Though it is neither . . . What did that mean?
Rogger sighed, sensing Tylar’s internal turmoil. “There is only one way to find out more about this Godsword, Rivenscryr, and that’s in the libraries of Tashijan, where we are already headed.”
“And where, if you are right, Meeryn’s trust was betrayed.”
Delia called up from the cabin. “I see sails on the horizon!”
Tylar and Rogger swung around to stare across the bow. Off to the west, limned against the setting sun, a cluster of full sails climbed into the sky.
Tylar ducked down. “A spyglass!”
Delia found one secured in a cubby. She passed it to him.
Tylar popped back up and pointed the glass toward the ships. The horizon sprang closer. He read the flags at the top of a center mast. A black castle against a silver background. The flag of the Shadowknights. And beneath it flapped a blue flag with a yellow sun emblazoned on it. He had lived under that flag for the past year.
It was the fleet of corsairs out of the Summering Isles.
He shifted the spyglass lower. At the ship’s prow stood a figure draped in black. The distance was far, but Tylar knew who watched there.
“Darjon ser Hightower.”
Rogger groaned. “And we’re sitting in a floating milkweed pod. I don’t suppose we can hope for rescue from the Grim Wash?”
Tylar focused on something hanging below the corsair’s prow. “No,” he said with pained sorrow.
Dangling there, hung by his neck, was Captain Grayl.
10
BLOOD RITES
MATRON SHASHYL SMOOTHED DART’S GOWN WITH AN EXPErienced hand, pulling hems straight, tucking away a loose gather, ruffling her half cloak so it fell evenly from her trembling shoulders.
“Calm yourself, child,” she hushed in warm tones. “You’ll shake yourself right out of your petticoats.”
Dart
nodded, but her trembling worsened. Her knees threatened to betray her at any moment. She could not feel her toes.
Shashyl sighed. “Child, you’ve already met the Lord. You know he won’t bite.”
Laurelle stepped to her other side. She moved like a flow of moonlight in her silver dress. She had affixed a diadem of kryst jewels to her ebony hair. The priceless stones, also called God’s Tears, sparked in the light from the chamber’s lanterns. A single Tear could ransom an entire village, but Laurelle wore the diadem as easily as a crown of woven grass.
Dart’s friend touched her cheek. “You look so beautiful.”
The words startled Dart out of her terror of the ceremony to come. Her disbelief must have been plain on her face.
“Come see,” Laurelle urged, drawing her to the silvered looking glass.
Dart stepped in front of her reflection. She was draped in crimson high silk, a rich cloth that flowed like water. Her gown streamed from her buttoned neck to the stone floor beneath her slippered toes. A gold sash cinched the silk tight around her waist, while the sleeves billowed loosely at the wrist. A fire ruby rested in the hollow of her throat, seeming to flash with her own heartbeat.
Her hair had been scented with oils and combed back from her face, held in place by a gold net that sparkled with tiny fire rubies. Her cheeks blushed at the sight. Such richness could make a fatted sow beautiful. Still, she found herself staring at the image in the glass, wondering if this was truly herself. Pupp had followed her. He nipped at the trailing edges of her gown, his teeth passing harmlessly through the silk. She ignored him, focusing on the stranger in the looking glass.
“If you two lasses are done admiring yourselves, perhaps we could finish your primping.” Shashyl waved them over to her. “The horns will be sounding your summons at any moment.”
A knock drew all their attention. The door opened to reveal two figures dressed in similar hues to Dart and Laurelle: a man draped in crimson, a woman in moonlit silver. Blood and tears. They were attended upon the arm by two servants.
Dart and Laurelle bent a knee each in a hurried curtsy.
Shashyl simply placed her hands on her hips. “Mistress Huri and Master Willym, if you get my girls to soil their dresses on this filthy floor, I’ll not forgive you.” Her words were stern, but her face smiled warmly. The woman, Mistress Huri, the Hand of Tears, entered the room, assisted by her maid on one arm and leaning on a cane with the other. “We would not think to spoil such loveliness, Matron Shashyl.” Her eyes were milky, near blind, her back bent under the weight of ages. She was only fifty-six birth years, but appeared twice that. Such was the burden of Grace.