The scrutiny of the daemon grew more intense, swelling into him, through him. Such language was beyond it, but still it struggled.
NOT DAEMON . . .
It sought to clarify, putting all its efforts into one last thought.
NAETHRYN . . . I AM NAETHRYN . . .
Shock shattered away the darkness. Firelight flickered in the cracks and drove the dregs of the black dream away. Still Tylar felt the slither of the daemon behind the bones of his rib cage, fiery with anger.
Not a dream . . .
I am naethryn.
Could such a thing be possible? Did he bear some aspect of an undergod inside him, a creature a thousandfold more foul than any daemon? And if truly a naethryn, could it be the very monster who murdered Meeryn?
Before he could ponder further, awareness of his surroundings finally struck through his shock. He was in a stone cell. Another dungeon. He lay on his back, naked except for a loincloth, strapped spread-eagle on a rack, lashed in rope that stank of shite. Black bile. The ropes had been blessed by bloodnullers, protecting the hemp from Graced enchantments.
He sensed a presence in the cell with him.
“He wakes,” a slithery voice said.
Tylar turned his head, making the room spin and his stomach churn queasily. A black-robed figure huddled near an open door, bent in shadow, face cowled. A hand, smeared in filth . . . black bile . . . pointed to him. The stench off the bloodnuller filled his nostrils, gagging him further.
With the nuller’s words, a figure stepped into the doorway, limned in torchlight. A tall man of wide girth and broad shoulders. He wore a beard, forked to the middle of his swollen belly. His clothing matched his hair, as black as a crow’s tail: boots, leggings, surcoat. Only his shirt seemed woven of silver thread, reflecting the torchlight, like the finest wrought chain mail.
Dark eyes stared down at Tylar’s sprawled form. Fire glowed in them, the shine of Grace, fiery Grace. Here stood one of the fire gods of Myrillia.
Tylar needed no introduction.
“Lord Balger . . .” he mumbled.
The god nodded ever so slightly, a strange courtesy considering their situation. “So you are the godslayer.” His voice was the grumble of a log crumbling in a stoked fire.
Tylar felt the room grow warmer as the god stepped closer. Grace, heated with the aspect of fire, seeped from the god’s pores.
“Not much to look at,” Balger said.
“I slew no gods,” Tylar choked past his sickened stomach.
“So you have claimed, but many disagree.” Balger reached a finger to one of his bound hands. The fingertip burned like a brand. Flesh blistered and smoked.
Tylar cried out.
Balger bent and sniffed the charred flesh. “I do smell Grace in you. Water, if I’m not mistaken.” He straightened and glanced to the bloodnuller. “It seems even the skagging touch of one of that ilk does not wipe away all your blessing. Now why is that?”
A voice answered from the doorway. “He carries the full Grace of a god in him, milord. Meeryn’s Grace.” Rogger leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, freshly bathed from the look of his damp hair. “It’s in all his humours. He walks like a god himself, only perhaps slightly weaker, a paler shadow, yet still not without potency. You saw how his wounds healed with a mere slather of firebalm.”
Balger frowned through his beard. “You’ve brought me quite the trophy from your pilgrimage.”
Rogger shrugged. “I knew it would take such compensation to buy back my freedom.”
Tylar stared at the thief, aghast. Had he been betrayed? Surely this was some ruse on Rogger’s part.
Balger folded his arms across his ample chest, fingers entwined on his belly. “Well done indeed. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen such strangeness with my own eyes. A human godling. When you sent that message to expect you in the Middens, I thought it a foolish trick.”
“No trick. I’ve learned better than that.” Rogger rubbed one of the branded tattoos from his interrupted pilgrimage. “It took a bit of time and pain. The overheated tubes of the Fin stung like a salted whip. I needed most of a morning, while the others slept, to tattoo that new message into my flesh.”
Rogger pulled up a sleeve of his starched shirt, fingering a crude, blackened and blistered scrawl on the underside of his arm. “Firebalm is not healing my wounds as quickly as it does your prisoner.” He eyed Tylar as if he were some dried-and-pinned specimen in an alchemist’s lab and shook his sleeve back over his betrayal.
Despite the dawning horror, Tylar had to acknowledge the thief’s cleverness. Of course Balger would know any words burned upon Rogger’s flesh. The god had cursed him with the pilgrimage, requiring the sigils of each realm’s house to be branded into his flesh. A pilgrim’s progress was overseen by the very god who placed the curse, to ensure the pilgrim continued his journey. Rogger had used that blessed link to carve a message upon his own flesh, to deliver word to Balger, knowing the god would sense every brand pressed into him.
Tylar stared at Rogger. Had this been his plan all along? To buy his freedom? Tylar stared hard at the thief. “What have you done with Delia?”
“Safe,” Rogger answered. “It was only a sandbag that tipped the crossbow’s arrow. Meant to stun. As I warned in my message. The same as struck you in the back of the head. No broken bones.” He eyed the bindings. “We can’t have you loosing that daemon of yours.”
Tylar’s head ached. “Where is she? What have you done—?”
“She’s being well treated by the bevy of ladies in Lord Balger’s private wenchworks. Scrubbed, combed, and sweetened. It’s not every night the Hand of one god will lose her maidenhead to another god. She’ll be entertaining Lord Balger this very evening.”
“You bastard . . .” He struggled in his bonds, but only managed to choke himself against a leather strap securing his neck. He could barely move a finger.
During this discussion, Balger slowly circled Tylar, studying him, rubbing his upper lip with a finger. “No one knows he is here?” the god asked.
“No, milord.”
“He would make for an excellent source of Grace, an ever-flowing font of riches. A golden cow to be milked daily.”
“Milord, what of the call from Tashijan? Is he not to be delivered to them? The reward for his capture—both in gold and goodwill—would surely be substantial.”
A wave dismissed his words. “Such payment would come but once. A living godling would be a treasure without end.”
“But there is also the danger. A chance mishandling, a lowered guard, and it would take but the snap of a finger or toe to unleash the dred ghawl inside him.”
Balger’s eyes both narrowed and brightened. “I would see this daemon, fathom its aspect. Surely there is profit to be found in such a creature.”
“Be wary. I believe, as does the handmaiden who accompanied us, that this dred ghawl somehow maintains this font of Grace. For its own preservation in a man’s form. A cocoon of Grace inside a cage of bone.”
Through his anger, words echoed in Tylar’s head: I am naethryn.
Balger leaned closer. “I’ll have my alchemists study his body from crown to toe, from mouth to arse.” The god reached across Tylar’s bare chest. He splayed his hand above the blackened print atop Tylar’s heart, hovering, matching his fingers to Meeryn’s.
Tylar smelled the fire flaming from the god’s pores.
It was said that a god’s aspect reflected his or her character. Gods of loam were as patient as a budding seed, as solid as rock and hard-packed soil, while gods of the air were aloof and farseeing, ethereal in mind and grace. Gods of water, like Meeryn and Fyla, varied the most, fickle in temperament and spirits, as changeable as water itself: solid ice, flowing water, misty vapor. Then there were the fire gods, who were as quick to anger as a lick of flame, as volatile as a woodland blaze, as passionate as the heated embrace of lovers. They were the best and the worst of all the gods.
And Lord
Balger smoldered among the worst of them.
He lowered his hand to Tylar’s chest. Tylar remembered the burning touch of the god’s finger a moment ago, the sear of flesh. The smoke of Tylar’s charred skin still tinged the air.
Balger pressed his hand down atop Meeryn’s palm print.
Tylar winced but found no burn.
Instead, it was Balger who gasped. The god’s fingers vanished into the black print as if Tylar’s flesh were mere shadow. He probed farther, wrist deep, into Tylar’s chest.
Rogger moved closer. The thief, like Tylar, had examined Meeryn’s palm print. The print had been no more than a tattoo on his flesh.
“I think you should be wary, milord,” Rogger intoned.
Balger’s brow pinched. “What is this strangeness here?”
His gaze found Tylar’s. He opened his mouth to question further, but then suddenly the god jerked like a fish on a line. A cry burst from the Balger’s lips, spittle flying, landing like molten wax on Tylar’s skin.
Balger fell backward and yanked his hand from the shadowy pit in Tylar’s being. Only his hand did not reappear. The stump of his wrist sprayed blood in a fountain of fire, pumping with the beat of the god’s panicked heart.
Balger roared, a noise that threatened to bring the roof down atop them. Alarm spread among the guards beyond the cell door.
Tylar writhed in his bonds. His skin burned from the splashes of blood. A crimson pool of fiery humour poured down his breastbone and vanished into the inky blackness over his heart, as if down a stone well. He felt the Grace flowing into him as warm as mulled ale. The daemon inside swelled, pressing against his rib cage, threatening to shatter through.
There was no doubt what had bitten off the god’s hand.
The dred ghawl.
Balger roared back to his feet. He cradled his severed wrist as guards swooped into the room like a flock of black crows, capes billowing, swords ready.
Balger crossed back to Tylar, destruction in his eyes.
Rogger attempted to step in the god’s path, but Balger shoved the thief aside.
The god leaned over Tylar, baring his mutilation. Already the blood had stopped flowing as the wounded wrist healed with a speed of a god. The hand, too, would grow back in the thickness of time. But for now, Balger’s entire bearing flamed with fury. His skin smoked with Grace, his eyes flashed with fire, his breath seared with the winds of a pyre.
A bellow of rage formed words. “You think to kill me, Godslayer!”
Balger drew a dagger and wiped its blade across his anger-damp brow. Steel, blessed now by the god’s fiery sweat, turned as ruddy as a branding iron. Balger touched the tip of the knife to his seeping wound, gracing it with his own blood. The god’s eyes narrowed as he cast a specific blessing. The blade went white-hot, more flame than substance.
“A bale dagger,” Balger said, holding up his handiwork.
Tylar struggled in his bonds, sensing his doom.
“Milord! No!” Rogger struggled to elbow through two guards.
Balger raised the dagger high, then plunged it into Tylar’s belly.
Searing pain shattered outward.
Balger dragged the knife up from groin to rib cage, gutting him.
Tylar cried out, but agony throttled him, turning wail into gurgle. His body arched off the rack, on shoulders and heels, writhing as the room went black. His innards blazed with molten fire.
He fell backward into darkness.
For an untold time, Tylar balanced on the razor edge of agony, sightless and witless. The pain refused to relent, to let him escape. It held him in claws of fire, ripping and tearing.
Then the torture ended. Abruptly.
The sudden cessation of pain woke him like a frigid dive into a snowmelt stream. Gasping, blind still, Tylar collapsed back to the rack. He blinked back his vision, damp with tears.
He watched Balger step from his side, smoking blade in hand.
Tylar stared down at his body, expecting to see intestines spilling from a gaping wound. But his skin lay unmarked. Only the thin course of hair across his belly smoldered, marking the path of the blade.
Balger leaned over him again. He lifted the blazing dagger. “Ripe with my fiery blessing, the bale blade cuts and heals at the same time. I can slice you all day and all night and you will never weaken or expire.”
He raised the blade again and plunged it into Tylar’s shoulder, striking clean through to the wood beneath.
Tylar screamed, unable to help himself.
Balger straightened, abandoning the impaled dagger. “Or I can leave it here. Cutting and healing continually in one place, leaving only pain, a pain that never dulls, but always remains fresh.”
Tylar writhed. He had been struck by arrows and blades of all manner. The sting of impact was always intense, but it dulled as severed nerves retracted. Not now. This agony never relented.
Movement by his toes drew his narrowed vision. Rogger appeared and grabbed his bound foot. “I’m sorry, Tylar.” The thief’s deft fingers snatched his littlest toe, met his eyes, then snapped his digit cleanly.
Tiny bones snapped.
The pain was small compared to his shoulder, but in a single breath, it spread outward in a growing wave of agony: up his leg and out over the rest of his body. Bones, healed by Grace before, broke anew, shattering his form. The dagger’s bite disappeared under the assault, overwhelmed.
Through this agony, Tylar felt something shake loose from the broken cage of his body, snaking out. In the wake of its passage, fractured bones drew back in place, malformed and misaligned, fusing and callusing anyway. His body twisted and joints stiffened, back into his old bent form.
The pain receded, except in his shoulder. Fire continued to blaze outward from the impaled dagger.
In the torchlight, a font of black smoke, darker than shadow, billowed from his chest as if from a baker’s chimney. Eyes opened in the darkness, ablaze with lightning.
Guards scattered to the four walls. Several dropped swords in fright.
Balger kept his post. The god’s gaze followed the column of smoke to where it pooled like spilled ink across the cell’s low roof.
From the black sea, a sinuous column snaked out and downward, forming head and neck. Wings swept out as a pair of flanking waves. Silver eyes blazed brighter with white fire. Hanging upside down from the roof like some shadowy bat, the daemon studied the room. The dred ghawl’s wings lowered protectively to either side of Tylar. A keening wail, beyond hearing but felt on every hair on the body, echoed off the stone walls.
A humpbacked guard stabbed a lance at the shadowy creature. Its steel head melted and splashed back at the attacker’s toes. Its haft caught fire, falling away to ash. The guard dropped the cursed weapon and fell out the doorway and away. Others followed. Balger’s loyalty was earned by fear. A greater fear now overwhelmed his retinue.
In moments, Lord Balger was alone.
The god’s eyes narrowed upon the daemon. “I know you, creature. Spawn of the naether do not belong in this world of sinew and bone.”
The dred ghawl’s mane of smoke bristled, and its muzzle sharpened. It stretched toward the god. Balger backed up as the daemon snaked out to meet the god, eye to eye. The white-fire blaze of the daemon’s gaze flashed. The keening in the room focused to a hiss that pained the ears and drew cold sweat from pores.
Tylar recognized that voice, having heard it before, on the streets of Punt, from Meeryn’s dark attacker. It was not easily forgotten. Tylar knew what he heard—both then and now.
The voice from the naether . . . the voice of the naethryn.
Balger’s eyes grew wider as he listened to the naether daemon. He stumbled back to the far wall. “No!” the god gasped out with a sharp shake of his head. “Not possible . . . Rivenscryr was destroyed!”
Tylar felt a tug on his ankle. He glanced down to see Rogger slicing his leather bonds with a dagger. His right leg was freed, then his left. Rogger shied forward and worked at
his left wrist. “Be ready to run.”
Tylar’s suspicion of the thief flared, but as long as he was being freed, he kept silent. Pain still flamed his right shoulder.
“The bale dagger,” Rogger said, moving to his last binding. “Can you free it?”
As answer, Tylar reached to the hilt of the dagger. He grabbed the bone hilt. He felt the Grace fired within it. It helped steady his grip. With an explosion of pained breath, he tugged it from his shoulder. A wisp of smoke trailed the blade’s tip, taking the agony with it. Bathed in the brightness of the blade, Tylar’s shoulder was unmarred, healed and hale.
Rogger helped him sit up.
The daemon kept the god pinned to the wall.
But Balger’s shock waned. The disbelief in his voice hardened to anger. “You lie, naether-spawn!”
Tylar dragged himself off the rack and crouched on the far side. He fell easily into his old form, back bent, left leg stiff as a walking stick. The ache of his joints was as familiar as a warm cloak. It helped center him, despite the horror.
The dark umbilicus flowed out from the black print over his heart, coiling and twisting. Tylar waved his hand through the channel, but found nothing but smoke. He recognized the billowing darkness now. While fleeing out of the depths of Tangle Reef, he had witnessed the same. What the seafolk named the Gloom. A penetration of the naether into this world. Only this black font leaked from his own chest. A conduit for the naether-spawn, the naethryn undergod.
He waved his hand again.
Though it caused him no harm, he knew its touch to be as deadly as the marine Gloom. He had witnessed how the guards had died back at Meeryn’s castillion in the Summering Isles, left boneless or broken as he and Rogger fled the keep.
Rogger kept low and hissed at him. “Let’s go.”
Guards shouted beyond the dungeon cell. The alarm spread quickly. Like all gods, Balger had his own Shadowknights . . . though such men who bent a knee to the lord of Foulsham Dell were of low ilk, disgraced knights whose crimes did not warrant full stripping. They, like their counterparts among men, found themselves washed up on these hard shores, lost and without futures. The knights of this realm were as likely to be found in bed with a sell-wench as snoring under a table at a low tavern.