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 filled 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.
“Rivenscryr,” she whispered. It was not a fragment of thought, but a simple command.
Tylar’s brow pinched at the strange word. Rivenscryr? He faced her, a question on his lips. “What—?”
Then he saw the impossible before him. It took all breath from him.
Meeryn lay as she had a moment before, but now all light faded from her—not just the glow of her Graces, but all that separated the living from the dead. Her eyes, still open, went empty and blind. Her lips remained parted with her last word, but no breath escaped them.
Both as a Shadowknight and as a slave, he had come to know death.
But here it was not possible.
Gods do not die.
A strident burst of horn startled him, driving him to his feet. He twisted around to find a dark shadow sweeping at him with the swiftness of a black gale. He fell back, fearing the beast had returned.
But glowing eyes stared down at him; shape took form, a familiar one. The cloak billowed out, then settled to narrow shoulders.
“Perryl,” Tylar said, relieved that his former squire had not been a part of the slaughter here. In the distance, the horn blared again. Shouts now could be heard. The castillion guards were closing in.
The young knight took in the scene. “What have you done?” he asked in a rush.
Tylar frowned at such a strange question. “What do you mean?”
Tylar glanced down at himself. He was covered in
blood—Meeryn’s blood. In the center of his chest, a perfect palm print had been burned through his shirt and linens. The skin beneath was as black as the scorched edges of his clothing. He touched the flesh. No blistering. Just a black stain.
He was marked.
Tylar lifted an arm. “You can’t think I—?”
“I saw you earlier.”
“And I you . . . so?”
Perryl eyed him from head to toe. “Look at yourself.”
“Why—?” Further words died as he finally understood. Perhaps he had been too numbed by the events. Or perhaps it was like a pair of well-broken boots, easy to forget once donned. Either way, he finally noted the straight hold of his back, the breadth of his shoulders, the strength in his arms and legs.
“You’re healed.”
Before he could react, castillion guards pounded into the square, bearing pikes and long swords. Cries arose as the bloody sight struck them. Many fell immediately to their knees; the stronger fanned out to shield the square and attend to the night’s victims.
A full complement surrounded Meeryn, driving Tylar away at the point of a blade.
“Do not say a word,” Perryl hissed in his ear, staying at his side.
Tylar stared at the many drawn weapons and obeyed.
A fresh cry erupted from the crowd around the fallen god. “She’s dead!” one man shouted.
Another, bearing the oak sprig of a healer, stumbled free of the group. His face had drained of all color, his eyes bright with shock. “Her heart . . . her heart is gone . . . ripped away!”
All around, guards stared hard at Tylar, many weeping, others swearing. He knew how he must look: the lone survivor, covered in Meeryn’s blood, her palm print burned into his chest as if she had attempted to thrust him away.
And on top of it all, he was healed, cured, made new again.
A cadre of castle guards approached with swords drawn, murder in their every step.
Perryl stepped before Tylar, facing the men. “Under the edict of the Order, this man is arrested under my name.”
Shouts met his words, angry.
Perryl yelled to be heard. “He will not be harmed until the matter here is attended and the truth be known.”
The guards stopped, hesitant. Swords remained drawn.
Their captain took another step forward and spat in Tylar’s direction. He uttered one word, both curse and accusation: “Godslayer.”
2
DART AND PUPP
SHE NEVER LIKED CABBAGE.
Half a world away from the Summering Isles, Dart stared at the plate covered in a soggy bog of boiled leaf. She fingered through the pile, searching for a bit of carrot and maybe, if she were lucky, a chunk of raven’s egg. She liked raven, believing the keen senses of the aerial hunter would flow into her if she ate enough eggs.
As she bent to stare under an especially large leaf, something slapped the back of her head, bouncing her nose into her meal. She yipped in surprise.
“Enough!” the matron of the Conclave screeched at her, sounding like one of the feathered residents of the rookery at the top of the tower. “Eat or I’ll boil you into the next batch!”
Dart straightened, wiping cabbage drippings from her nose. “Yes, mum . . .”
The other girls seated along the two tables of the third floor commons laughed behind their hands. Fingers pointed.
Dart kept her face lowered. She was the youngest of the thirdfloorers, barely thirteen birth years, but she already stood a head taller than the eldest. In fact, Dart had been named after the dartweed, a hardy plant that sprouted stubbornly between the cobbles of the courtyard, growing fast enough for the eye to follow, shoving its yellow head up after the sunshine. Even her unruly thatch of straw-blond hair matched the weed’s hue. And like her namesake, she was considered a nuisance here, an eyesore, something to be trampled underfoot.
The Conclave of Chrismferry was one of the most distinguished schools for training gentle boys and gentle girls in the art of proper service to a god’s household. The finest families from the Nine Lands fought, bribed, and prayed for one of their offspring to be granted admittance.
Dart, on the other hand, came here by chance. She was not even from the blessed Nine Lands. The prior headmistress had discovered her among the hinterlands, where only rogue gods roamed, an unsettled and barbarous country. Dart, as a newborn, was to have been sacrificed to one of the rogue gods. But the headmistress, a willful and pious woman, had stolen her away, whisking her out of the hinterlands and into the Conclave. And though the woman died only three years later, Dart had been allowed to remain out of respect for the memory of the esteemed headmistress.
Unfortunately none of that respect had rubbed off on Dart.
“Finish your breaking fast!” the matron said, stalking away. “By the time I pass through here next, your plate had better be empty. That goes for all of you!”
Murmurs of dutiful assent followed in the woman’s wide wake until she left the room.
Dart pinched a leaf, studying its limp form with resignation. Sighing, she glanced under the table to where Pupp lay curled at her feet. “How about helping me with this?”
Pupp stirred. He cocked his head in her direction.
Dart frowned, knowing he couldn’t help. She popped the cold wet leaf into her mouth, attempting to chew without breathing. Every fiber in her being fought her valiant effort, but at last she succeeded and swallowed the slimy lump.
With a renewed determination, she set upon her plate, working down through the mountainous pile of boiled fare. Almost finished, she stared at the remaining leaves, disappointed.
Not even a sliver of raven’s egg.
Movement drew her attention back across the table. Sissup and Jenine shifted and allowed Laurelle to push between them. The eldest of the thirdfloorers reached over and dumped her load of cabbage atop Dart’s plate.
“What are you—?” Dart began to complain.
Laurelle straightened. “Did anyone see me do that? I’m sure they didn’t.”
Laughter followed from the other girls.
With a flip of her long ebony hair, freshly washed and oiled by her family’s servitors in residence, Laurelle glanced back to Dart. “Eat up, Dartweed. Maybe you’ll fill out that boy’s body you’re wearing.” Laurelle leaned a hand on the table and stuck out her chest, posing like some harlot.
More laughter met her antics.
At fourteen, Laurelle was already rounding into a woman. Boys in the school dogged her footsteps, pining for a nod from her, a wink. All the girls worshipped her, too. Laurelle was from a well-to-do family out of Welden Springs. She had her own servitors and showered small presents of honeycakes and cloth dolls to those in her favor. But of even more significance, rumors abounded that Laurelle would surely be hand-picked at the next full moon’s gathering, only eight nights away.
It was an honor they all craved: to be chosen as a handmaiden to one of the hundred gods of Myrillia. The best the remainder could hope for was to be assigned in some small measure to the court of a god, to bask from afar in such Grace. Yet worst of all, many would simply be sent back to their families, humiliated and rejected. This was the worry they all shared.
And even more so for Dart—she had no family and no other home. All that she possessed, her only family, lay curled at her feet.
Still, the Conclave of Chrismferry lay in the very shadow of the elder god’s castillion and, of all the Conclaves, this school produced the most handmaidens and handmen. The teachers stressed this fact daily, imposing hard rules and firm teachings. The matrons and masters were proud of their school, the foundation stone of which had been blessed four thousand years ago by Chrism himself.
Laurelle straightened with another flip of her flowing black hair. Dart smelled the sweet-water oil in it. She truly felt like a weed before a flower.
Suddenly Laurelle yelped. She danced from the table.
“What’s wrong?” Sissup asked. Jenine was already on her fe
et.
Laurelle shifted up the hem of her skirt, revealing an ankle in white stockings. A bloom of red spread out across the white lace. “Something scratched me!”
Sissup fell to her knees, searching under the table. “Maybe a nail?”
“Or a sliver!” Jenine said. “These cruel benches are as old as the stones.”
Dart knew better. Though no one could see Pupp, she motioned her secret friend closer to her. She ducked lower, pretending to search for what injured Laurelle. “Bad dog,” she whispered.
Pupp lowered his head, wincing, glancing back toward the bloody ankle. He gained his clawed feet and shoved between Dart’s legs, passing ghostly through the flesh of her thighs as he sought a place to hide under her skirt. The only sign of his passage was a slight chill on her skin. His face appeared from her hemline, poking through the fabric as if it were air. His head cocked up toward her, eyes mournful with shame.
She felt bad scolding him. He was simply too ugly to be mad at for long. His features were dreadful, all hard planes of beaten copper, with iron spikes in a mane around his face. His eyes were faceted jewels above a muzzle filled with sharpened blades; his tongue was a lap of flame. The rest of his body, squat and bulky, was a mix of armor and chain mail, with four thick limbs ending in steel claws. All of it glowed ruddily and seemed to flow and melt in swirls, subtly reforming her friend at every moment. Pupp was like a sculpture fresh from the forge, still molten from the flame’s touch.
She reached down to reassure him, but as always her hand passed through Pupp. He wasn’t real. Still bent over, she glanced to Laurelle’s bloody ankle. Dart knew Pupp scratched her. At odd times in the past, he had done such things, affected the real world. Dart didn’t understand how this could happen. In fact she had no idea what Pupp was. Only that he was her friend, her companion for as far back as she could remember. She had long given up trying to convince others of his existence. Only she saw him, and no one could touch him.
“It looks like a deep scratch,” Margarite said, coming to the aid of her best friend. Though Margarite’s family was from the opposite end of the Nine Lands, she could have been Laurelle’s twin with her sleek fall of black hair, snowy skin, and full lips. She even dressed in the same finery of blue velvet and white stockings. “We should fetch Healer Paltry.”