“A moment, Castellan Vail,” Argent said formally. He accepted the thick parchment from Master Osk, set it on the table, and shoved the roll loose down the table’s length. A schematic of Tashijan revealed itself.
Intrigued, Kathryn stepped to the table.
“It’s been a long time,” Keeper Ryngold greeted her on the right side with a genuine smile. He was the only person present whose head was not adorned by tattooed sigils or stripes of knighthood. Still, he was well respected by all, head of the entire house staff and laborers. If matters of security were to be addressed, he would orchestrate the underfolk of the Citadel.
On her left, she received no greeting and expected none. A knight of few words, Symon ser Jaklar needed no shadowcloak to cast a pall of gloom around him. He strode under thunderclouds even on the brightest days. His hair, shaved to a coarse black stubble, matched his eyes. Formerly squire to Argent, he had continued his duty as knight under the leadership of his former teacher.
Kathryn studied the ancient map of the halls, levels, rooms, and courts of Tashijan. Spread out on the table, the vast Citadel seemed a city unto itself with byways and alleys, crowded places and lonely ones, all centered round the central Stormwatch Tower that stretched as high as the masters’ catacombs delved low. How would they stop one man from breeching the vast domain unseen? It was a daunting challenge, but one the new warden seemed ready to handle, having served in dozens of sieges from both sides of a wall.
Argent placed his palms flat on the parchment. “As I was saying, I know the godslayer is on his way here. Perhaps he’s already in the First Land. But over the centuries, Tashijan has grown lazy with its fortifications, weakened its foundations. We can’t keep the godslayer out.”
“Then what can we do?” Master Hesharian asked.
“We can be smarter. What walls can’t stop, strategy can.” Argent straightened, sweeping his gaze around the room. “We must guide the godslayer to where we want him to go. The best trap is one the victim walks into willingly.”
Hesharian frowned. “And how do you propose to accomplish this?”
“By controlling what he most desires.” Argent’s sweeping gaze settled upon Kathryn.
All eyes turned in her direction.
Argent addressed her directly. “Castellan Vail, I’d like you to meet the man set as your personal guard in the days to come.” He lifted his arm. A signal.
A scrape of boots sounded behind her and to the left. She turned as a tall man stepped from between a set of the Stacks. She had walked right past him without even noticing his presence. But it was not Grace that hid him. He wore no shadowcloak. Instead, the man was outfitted in furred breeches, knee-high brown boots, and a mud-brown half cloak with hood. All looked well worn and scuffed.
A wyld tracker.
But it was not the clothes that identified the man. Wyld trackers were blessed at birth with alchemies of air and loam, making them preternaturally keen to scent trails and changes in winds. This blessing was plainly apparent from the prominent protrusion of nose and jaw. Half muzzled, as it was called, a beastly appearance, made more so by the lack of white to their eyes, leaving them a solid amber.
Argent spoke at the head of the table. “Tracker Lorr has served at my side since before the Bramblebrier Campaign. There is no finer hunter in all of Myrillia.”
He offered a half bow toward the warden, arms crossed. Despite the play at civility here, Kathryn sensed a feral edge to the man. His face bore testimony to past battles, rippled with scars, eyes hard as fieldstones. His lanky brown hair, worn past the shoulder, was shot through with gray. But he showed no signs that age had touched him further. His belts, at waist and crisscrossed over his chest, were decorated with sheathed blades of every shape.
“I’ve informed Tracker Lorr of his duties,” Argent said. “He will not leave your side or your door until the godslayer is subdued.”
Kathryn rounded on the warden. “And when does his duty commence?”
“At this very moment. I thought it best you both become acquainted with your new routines as soon as possible.” His gaze turned to the tracker. “Lorr, are you ready to introduce Castellan Vail to your . . . ah, what do you call them . . . very colorful as I recall? Ah yes, your right and left hands.”
With another half bow, the tracker turned toward the door.
Kathryn hesitated. Was she being dismissed from the meeting already? A hard stare from Argent answered her. Clearly he meant to keep her in the dark on further details. Did he distrust her, think she would betray their secrets to Tylar?
With black clouds about her shoulders, she swung away and followed the tracker. He opened the door and continued through, not bothering to see if she kept pace with him. Perhaps it wasn’t necessary, armed as he was with his Grace-sharpened senses.
Out in the hall, the two young knights stirred as the pair stormed out. Kathryn imagined the tracker was no more keen to be relegated to mere guard than she was to be kept under guard. He continued down the hall, turned down a side passage, and crossed to a barred room.
Turning to her, he spoke for the first time. His voice was surprisingly soft coming from such a gruff exterior. “Best take care a moment. They’re easily spooked.”
He lifted the bar and pulled the door open, blocking the opening with his body.
Kathryn felt something large stir beyond the door. A shift of boulders.
The tracker growled deep in the back of his throat. He kept his post for another long breath. The door bumped as something heaved against it. Lorr reached a hand inside. “There’s a good laddie,” he mumbled in his soft voice. “You, too, you big kank.”
He straightened and opened the door wider, revealing a sight to horrify even the stoutest heart.
Two massive beasts filled the doorway, standing shoulder height, heads as large as shields. A pair of bullhounds. Meaty, thick necked, ropes of drool hanging from slavering lips. Where such humour dripped, stone etched with a poisonous hiss. Out in the field, the drool was used to wear heavy bone while gnawing. The beasts, native to the most remote areas of the hinterlands, were known to bring down giant sarrians and battle the massive myrlions.
“Barrin and Hern,” the tracker said as introduction.
Kathryn could not tell them apart. Both were maned in black, a tad short of shaggy, and striped in thin bands of copper. She backed away as the pair of bullhounds slunk into the hall: snuffling, breaths steaming, crouched low on bellies, stumped tails sticking straight up.
Creatures of black nightmare.
Lorr stood between them. “We’ll keep you safe, Castellan . . . even from a godslayer.”
13
THE DELL
“WELCOME HOME.”
Tylar scowled at the thief. Rogger crouched in the reeds with Delia. Dawn broke to the east, a cheery rose that did nothing to warm the chill from their bones. All three of them were soaked to the skin, muck-deep in mud and boggy silt. Clouds of gnats and bloodsuckers buzzed and whined about the trio. A few surly marsh frogs, as large as platters, croaked their passage from atop a half-sunken log. A king-wader strode past, its head and speared beak taller than a man, spying above the reeds, regal and aloof.
With the rising sun, they had decided to make landfall here, in the Foulsham marshes, where no one would note their approach and where there was plenty of cover to hide the Fin from both the shipping lanes of the Straits of Parting and the few villages that lay ashore. They had selected an empty stretch of coastline and watched for the glow lights from early-morning giggers and fishers.
Once the skies lightened enough to see by and most of the nocturnal marsh predators had slunk back to their lairs, Rogger had led Tylar and Delia toward the shore. The thief promised that he knew some paths through the marshlands, knowledge gained from the time he spent here in Foulsham Dell.
They planned to steer clear of the god-realm itself, edge past its eastern border, and head overland for Tashijan. They had originally thought to make a more direct app
roach, landing somewhere along the Steps of the Gods, the ancient series of lofty bridges connecting a series of small islands to form a road between the First and Second Lands. But upon arriving among the islands, they found all the shores heavily guarded. Word of the godslayer’s escape from the corsairs had flown ahead of them.
So they had kept their craft submerged and passed between two of the islands, sailing into the Straits of Parting that separated the First and Second Lands. Over another full day, they had glided along the southern coastline of the First Land, debating where best to make landfall.
It was Rogger’s idea to go through the marshes.
“So when’s the last time you placed a foot here?” the thief asked as they slogged toward more solid ground.
“On the First Land?”
Rogger nodded.
“Five years.” The thought had been on Tylar’s mind since abandoning the Fin. Five years. A long time to be gone. But it seemed too short, especially when measured against the span of his pain and hardship. It seemed an entire lifetime had passed, not just five years.
And now he had returned, come full circle. To what end? To clear a name long abandoned? To right a wrong? Despite the stripes on his face and his healed body, he was no knight.
“Of course, I’m not sure this is exactly making landfall yet,” the thief continued, dragging a foot from the muck with a slurping sound. “More like making mudfall.”
Delia slapped her arm, squashing a winged sucker. Both Delia and Rogger bore red welts from their bites on arms, face, and neck. Only Tylar was spared.
Delia caught him staring as she flicked away the offending insect. “It’s your blood,” she said. “Even the suckers smell the Grace flowing there. Like smoke from a fire. They know better than to sip from such a font.”
Rogger scratched a bite on his neck. “And you were grousing about being Grace blessed. I’ll take your burden ’til we’re out of these skaggin’ marshes. Or even for—”
“How much farther?” Tylar asked, cutting him off.
“Not far.” Rogger climbed a hummock, shoving between bushes of spiny sedge. He stood with his hands on his hips. “Not far at all.”
Tylar helped Delia up. The two had spoken little since the night she had revealed herself to be the estranged daughter of Argent ser Fields, the man who had sent Tylar into slavery.
Delia nodded her thanks as she climbed out of the marsh.
But she did not meet his eye.
Tylar followed. As he hauled himself up, he still felt like he carried the swamp with him: dripping water, caked in mud, sand and silt trapped in every crack and crevice. He had at least managed to keep his bandaged wrist dry, but the motion and exertion had set it to seeping blood again.
Joining Rogger, Tylar spotted a thin path through the marsh grasses, no more than an animal track, but it led away. The hummock they stood on was connected to others in a maze-like chain.
“Do you know where we are?” Tylar asked.
“More west than I’d hoped. This is the Middens, if I’m not mistaken.”
“The Middens?” Delia asked.
Rogger picked a leaf from his beard. “The eastern border of Foulsham Dell. We’ll have to move quickly. Skirt the edge. In these wilds, there’s a good chance we’ll be long gone before ol’ Balger sniffs us out. Follow me.”
They dared not venture too far into Foulsham Dell. Through the morning mist, Tylar could see the shadowy silhouette of the mountains of the Middleback Range to the north. The Dell lay in the crumble of land where the mountains tumbled into the Straits. It was a landscape of steaming bogs, dark marshes, sudden sinkholes, craggy slopes, misty highlands, and in the center of it all, the sprawling, ramshackle city of Foulsham Dell.
The city was the realm of the god Lord Balger. Its western border dissolved into the wilds of the untamed hinterlands that shadowed the far side of the Middleback Range. In the Dell, such boundaries blurred. It was said that the border between settled land and hinterland was as unreliable as Lord Balger’s moods.
The god’s stormy temper was as legendary as his debaucheries. He reveled in the pleasures of the flesh without restraint. He ate to a belching fullness, growing rotund. He drank to a blackened stupor, pissing from the towers of his castillion, “blessing” passersby with his streaming Grace. He whored with his own men in low places, accompanied by a Hand who would collect his spilled seed. But worst of all, he found pleasure in cruelty. Screams flowed from his castillion as often as song.
It seemed even the lowliest of Myrillian scum needed a god, a land to call their own. Balger offered them such hard shelter.
Tylar paced Rogger as they followed the thin path through the hummocks and hillocks. “Why risk the Dell? Why not wade back into the marshlands and head due east?”
Rogger waved a hand to the left. “The waters around the Middens are treacherous with quicksand. A misstep and all would be lost. We’re lucky to have gotten here as it is. To set off in another tack, we’d have to retreat all the way back to the Fin, then circle back in again. I know the Middens. We’ll be fine.”
Tylar didn’t argue. Here at least was dry, solid land.
As they hiked through the thick marshlands, the sun climbed into the sky, visible through the boles and fronded limbs of swamp palms and the skeletal forms of fennwood trees. The day wore warmer, steaming away the layers of fog and mist. The stench of the bog grew, a pungent smell of sulfur gasses and decay.
Still, they marched onward, occasionally leaping from one hummock to another. Frogs plopped away to either side of their path, marking their passage with tiny splashes. A loon called across the waters, a haunted, forlorn sound.
“You’re limping again,” Delia said softly after a long spell of silence.
Tylar noted how he had assumed the posture and gait of his formerly broken body: right leg stiff, short hobbled steps, back crooked. He forced himself straighter, his step more assured.
Delia moved closer. “Why do you still do that?”
He shook his head.
“Is it that you don’t trust this hale form you wear now?”
“What is there to trust?” Tylar said. “The only reason my bones have been mended is to cage the dred ghawl inside me. Once I’m rid of the daemon—if we’re victorious—then my body will revert to its broken posture. So why lose the reflexes honed from years of crippling? I may need them again.”
Rogger grumbled ahead of him, “Cursed with the daemon . . .broken without it. A real corker there.”
As they continued marching, the sun climbed directly overhead . . . and still there appeared no end to the marshlands. Tylar searched around him. Hadn’t they passed this way already? Wasn’t that the same stump of fennwood?
Hadn’t he already pushed through this bramblebrier tangle before? He searched the mud for the telltale print of his boots. Nothing.
Still, he felt as if they were circling and circling.
Delia voiced a similar concern. “I thought you said it wasn’t far to clear the swamps.” She dabbed her brow with a pocket kerchief.
Rogger scowled back at her, dripping sweat from nose and brow. “Far . . . near . . . it’s all relative. I’ll get us—”
With his attention turned, Rogger failed to see the trap. His foot stepped into the snare, it sprang with a sharp thwip, and the thief flipped into the air with a cry of surprise. Bouncing a bit, he hung upside down by one ankle.
Tylar crossed under him. Deer snare. During their long hike, he had spotted a few long-legged fawns and even an antlered buck, bounding from hummock to hillock and away. Fleet-footed . . . more so than Tylar’s thieving companion. He freed a dagger to cut him down.
Rogger caught his winded breath, still bouncing. His eyes were wide, clearly still panicked. “Trap . . .” he gasped out.
Tylar froze, dagger in hand.
He heard the twang of the crossbow and turned to see Delia struck in the shoulder and spilled into the water. Before he could take a step, he felt something
crack against the back of his skull—then the ground rushed up at him and struck him in the face.
He heard Rogger cry out.
Then darkness.
Awareness came slowly. But no sight. He heard distant sounds: the clank of an iron door, the rattle of a chain, echoing words, even the drip of water. But closer, by his ear, a voice spoke from out of the blackness.
... BE AWARE . . . BEWARE . . .
Tylar had no sense of himself. He hung weightless in a black sea, between consciousness and oblivion.
But he was not alone.
He felt the stir of current around him, something swimming past, under him. He sensed the immensity of its size, a leviathan of the deep. Its scrutiny drew all warmth from him.
. . . THE CABAL . . . HUNTS . . .
The words were not at his ear, but in his head. Tylar found no tongue to express his confusion, but it was understood.
A more frantic stirring spun him in the dark sea. He sensed urgency, a press of time like a lead weight. What did the speaker want of him?
. . . RIVENSCRYR . . .
Tylar shivered in the darkness. He caught the barest scent of spring blossoms, dried and burned on a brazier, sweet but smoldering. A shadow of Meeryn, the scent of her funeral pyre . . . only this was not death. Again the presence swam beneath him. Tylar sensed who spoke to him now. He felt a writhing where his heart once lay, deep within his chest, past bone and blood.
It was the dred ghawl.
Awakened inside him.
A single word arose from the darkness:
. . . NAETHRYN . . .
Tylar inwardly shivered. He remembered Fyla expressing her belief that such a being, a naethryn, slew Meeryn. Was this further proof? That one of the dread undergods, the dark shadows of their Myrillian counterparts, had broken into this world?