Krevan grabbed his shoulder. “This way.”
His cloak billowed out to either side, sweeping out to encompass Tylar and Delia. Corram reappeared on their other side, offering the same protection to Rogger—but not before flinging out a dagger from a wrist sheath. The blade flashed in the misty starlight, slicing through the fog. It struck the lead rider in the eye.
The bronze mekanical faltered as its pilot fell back, dead in the riding sling. The crawler’s front legs crumpled, no longer fueled. The mekanical toppled. The second man tossed his crossbow and struggled to escape his own sling.
Tylar never saw the man’s fate as he was guided away. A crash and clatter of bronze echoed after them.
They fled back down the misted vale.
A new pair of crawlers blocked their retreat, moving in tandem, half-climbing the walls to either side, legs digging into the flinty hills. More movement stirred behind them.
Krevan led the way off to the side, to a narrow gorge between two hills. They had to proceed in single file. Corram kept to their rear.
“What about the other knights?” Delia asked.
Cries answered her, coming from behind them. The bronze spiders were finding these flies had teeth.
Still, Tylar knew that Balger had sent a full score of crawlers after them. Too many for the Shadowknights to handle. The others were only providing them breath to escape. But how much breath?
Already the baying of hounds carried to them. More hunters. The dogs’ keepers would not be far behind, armed with flaming swords and oiled fireballs in leather slings, capable of incinerating entire patches of forest to the ground.
“I guess those hounds weren’t interested in my fine rabbit stew,” Rogger mumbled.
Krevan suddenly grabbed Tylar and Delia and dragged them to one wall of the gorge. Corram did the same with Rogger against the far wall. Both knight and thief vanished under a wave of shadowcloak.
Overhead, bronze legs crested over the top of the gorge. Another crawler. It stopped, perched above them.
Krevan pulled Delia farther behind him. Tylar felt the tingle of Grace flowing through the Raven Knight’s cloth, keeping them hidden.
The seat lowered into the gorge, suspended by the legs. The pilot worked the controls, swiveling the cabin. The archer kept his crossbow fixed to his shoulder and scanned the gorge. He mostly concentrated back toward the valley.
The pilot settled the crawler in place. It looked as though they were staying. They must have been sent here to block this pass, pinching off retreat in this direction. Other crawlers were probably blocking other escape routes. The noose was tightening.
Krevan stirred. If any alarm was raised, they were doomed, trapped between the walls of the gorge.
Tylar closed his eyes, calculating in his head. He felt Krevan begin to step away. Tylar reached out and grabbed his elbow, warning the knight from rash action. Then Tylar slipped a hand to Krevan’s belt and relieved him of one of his daggers. He slid the blade through a fist, slicing skin. As blood and sweat anointed the blade at the same time, Tylar pictured flames, the sear of flesh. He felt the blade heat up in his fist.
Balancing the dagger in his fingers, he pushed from the wall, rolled out under the crawler’s cabin, and threw the dagger straight up. The blade struck where one of the legs joined the seat.
He dashed back to the wall, enveloped again by shadow and cloak.
“What . . . ?” Krevan asked.
Tylar silenced him with a hiss.
Overhead, the crawler began to spew smoke from its flues. He prayed the strike of the dagger would be mistaken for a burp in the mekanicals. He watched the pilot struggle to hold his crawler. Its movements grew jerky and labored. More smoke billowed, followed by a cough of flame. The crawler lost its footing, tumbling forward. The pilot fought his controls. The cabin seat struck one of the gorge walls, jarring like a struck bell.
“Go,” Tylar urged and pointed deeper down the gorge.
With the hunters distracted by their foundering craft, Tylar and the others fled unseen up the gorge and away. Finally, Krevan spoke. “What did you do back there?”
“I cast a blessing upon their crawler. Using blood and sweat.”
Delia glanced back over her shoulder. “You cast heat?”
Tylar nodded. “Crawlers are fueled by fire alchemies. They steam hotly. It takes only a little extra heat to push the mekanicals beyond their limits, burning them out. The same can happen if you overwork them. I hoped that flaming out their mekanicals would be taken as simple bad luck.”
Krevan nodded. “And now those same hunters will guard our own path. They’ll hold their position and swear no one passed them.”
“Changing hunters into guardians,” Rogger said. “Not bad, Tylar. You’re becoming a right good alchemist.”
“I had a good teacher.” He nodded toward Delia, who shyly glanced forward.
Corram pointed ahead. “Where to now?”
Krevan forged deeper into the narrowing gorge. “Off to strike a bargain.”
“Where?” Tylar asked.
Krevan simply scowled.
Rogger answered, struggling a few steps ahead of Corram, his voice thick with distaste. “The Lair of the Wyr.”
As the sun rose, Tylar found the dawn brought little light. The cliffs were high and narrow, shrouded in mists, trapping them in eternal twilight. It seemed they had been marching for days. Tylar trudged after Krevan, Delia behind him, followed by Rogger and Corram. All sounds of battle had long grown silent.
No knight had returned, but Krevan had expressed no worry. “They know to lead the hunters astray, away from our path. We’ll regroup in Muddlethwait across the border.”
“That is, if we ever get out of these hills,” Rogger added.
Tylar glanced to the high walls. He was thoroughly lost. Even Krevan seemed to be losing his faith in his sense of direction, slowing their pace, pausing at crossroads among the maze of gorges.
“How much farther?” Delia asked. “Where is this Lair?”
Rogger moved closer, his voice an edgy whisper. “Child, we’ve been among the Wyr for the past full bell.”
Tylar tightened his grip on his sword’s hilt.
“They watch us even now,” Rogger said.
As if hearing his words, a rock crumbled from the cliff edge and skittered down the wall.
Krevan ignored it all and continued forward.
Tylar now eyed the crevices and side chutes with plain suspicion, sword pointed and ready. He had, of course, heard of the Lair, an assembly of Wyr, those who practiced arcane alchemies upon themselves, seeking some measure of corrupted Grace. It was whispered that an ultimate goal was sought by the Wyr: the creation of a perfect abomination, to birth a god from human flesh, to bring new divinity into the world from mortal union.
But in this quest, they created misshapen creatures, some raving, others wise beyond measure. And ultimately theirs was a mad goal, an impossibility. Even when gods lay down with a man or woman, no child was ever born from such a union. As Grace foreshortened the lives of the Hands who served their gods, such strong emanations destroyed this earliest spark of life. No child could be born into Grace. It could only be granted by a god.
Still, the Wyr-lords persisted, producing abomination and deformity. Their ilk, while mostly hidden away in the depths of the hinterlands, could be found throughout Myrillia.
And the true heart of all the Wyr was rumored to be hidden here.
The Lair.
At last the narrow gorge opened into a wide hollow, framed by the tallest of the mounds. In the center, a small pond shone in the thin light, rimmed in red algae and as dark as oil. It bubbled slowly and stank of sulfur that burned the nose.
A woman awaited them, carrying a baby in her arms, swaddled in a blanket. Flaxen haired and pale of complexion, the woman was tall, lithe of figure, generous of bust as was fitting a new mother. She seemed unsurprised by the visitors, but her face was uninviting.
“Leave your weapons
,” Krevan said. He met Rogger’s eyes for a moment longer. “All your weapons.”
Corram tugged free his sword belt and rested it atop a boulder. He shook back his cloak’s sleeves and undid a series of wrist sheaths, each housing three daggers, then did the same at each ankle.
And while this was an impressive array of weaponry, Rogger proved to be a regular armory: short sword, throwing daggers, razored stars, a flail, even a blowgun down one pant leg. It was surprising the thief could even walk upright.
Delia had only a single dagger, Tylar the one short sword.
Krevan was the last to disarm, pulling free his diamondpomelled sword and holding it before him, blade resting in his two palms as if offering a gift.
Tylar stared at the blade, seeing it for the first time. Along its silver length, a winged wyrm had been traced in gold, filigreed and detailed.
“Serpentfang,” he whispered in awe. He remembered Rogger’s claim that Krevan was actually Raven ser Kay, the Raven Knight of lore. Any attempt to question Krevan earlier had been answered by a cold stare. And Rogger refused to say more after his initial revelation.
Tylar had assumed Krevan was a descendant of that infamous Shadowknight, a man said to have died three centuries ago. But here was the very blade once said to have been borne by the Raven Knight. Serpentfang had been described in song and fable, depicted in tapestry and in oil.
While the blade was polished, any Shadowknight could recognize its age, its steel folded a thousand times. This was no replica given to some young lord upon a birthing day.
Without mistake, here was the very blade that slew the Reaper King.
And if this was indeed Serpentfang . . .
Tylar watched Krevan approach the lone woman by the lake. Halfway to her position, the Raven Knight dropped to one knee, lowered the blade to the chalky soil, and stepped past it, abandoning a prize that could ransom an entire god-realm.
Only then did the woman stir, stepping into Krevan’s shadow. The knight towered over her, blocking the view but not her words.
“Raven ser Kay,” she said, her voice sibilant and high, full of malice and amusement. “What brings you into the Lair again? Last we met, you swore to kill me.”
Krevan kept a wary stance. “Your memory is long, Wyrd Bennifren.”
“Eighty years is not long to either of us, now, is it?”
Krevan remained silent.
“Again, what brings you here?” she asked.
“We wish to buy passage through the Lair’s burrow.”
A long silence answered his request. Then slowly she spoke. “For you . . . and the godslayer.”
Krevan attempted a lie. “Don’t tell me you believe such nonsense?” He punctuated it with a harsh snort.
“Perhaps not, but Lord Balger certainly does. We know the Downs are overrun with crawlers, scent hunters, and worse. Two of your knights met their ends among the hollows. The rest are hotly pursued. Yet you bring the true prize to my doorstep.”
Krevan had not moved, yet a dark cloud of cloak and shadow seemed to swell from his shoulders. “You bear no special love for Lord Balger . . . or Tashijan. To keep this godslayer as a prize would bring the full wrath of both upon the Lair.”
“No doubt of that, but I would see this godslayer for myself,” the woman finished, “before we settle on a price.”
Krevan glanced back to Tylar. He was waved forward.
Rogger hissed at his ear as he stepped away. “Speak with a cautious tongue. Deals among the Wyr are struck upon one’s word.”
Tylar moved to join Krevan. Stepping around the large knight’s billowing form, he again spotted the woman. She leaned her weight on one leg, throwing out her hip, carrying her swaddled babe there. She wore a bored expression.
“So this is the godslayer?”
Tylar’s brow pinched. The woman’s mouth had not moved as she spoke. In fact, her entire manner—from slack lips to glazed eyes—struck Tylar as dull and mindless.
“Bring him closer.” Pale movement drew his eye. He spotted a tiny white arm beckon to him. It was the baby boy. The infant’s eyes were fixed on his face. “Tylar de Noche,” the babe said, thick with disdain. “Your reputation precedes you.”
Tylar found no words, mouth agape.
Krevan covered for him. “May I introduce Wyrd Bennifren, Lord of the Lair and free leader of the Wyrdling clans.”
“Be welcome, Godslayer.” The baby smiled up at him, a horrible toothless visage, eyes wizened with age. “Let us strike a bargain for your life.”
Tylar paced the confines of the small cave. Their accommodations were surprisingly pleasant. Flames crackled in a small hearth carved into the wall, the smoke fluming away through a buried chimney. Underfoot, thick sheepskin rugs warmed the natural stone floor. Torches blazed on all four walls, illuminating the tapestries of Kashmiri silk woven with gold-and-silver thread. He could easily be in the greeting chamber of some lord’s manor house, rather than deep beneath the chalk hills of Kistlery Downs.
“How much longer must we wait?” Tylar finally blurted.
“The Wyr will not be rushed,” Krevan said. He sat hunched on a bench. The room had no shadows in which to hide or draw strength, and clearly this made him ill at ease and seemed to age him.
His fellow knight, Corram, simply leaned against one wall, rubbing a wrist where his sheathed daggers once rested.
Seated on a chair by the hearth, Rogger chewed a stubby briar pipe, puffing out clouds of redolent smoke through his beard. “Bennifren is actually treating us—or rather should I say you”—he glanced pointedly at Krevan—“much more courteously than I would have imagined.”
“What past do you two share?” Delia asked. She also sat by the fire, but in a deep, cushioned chair. She had sunk gratefully into it. Tylar had almost forgotten Delia’s past as a handmaiden to Meeryn, where such luxuries were easily at hand. She had abandoned so much, a life of comfort and grace, to accompany him on this hard road.
Krevan stared at her, then away. An imperceptible movement of his wrist toward Rogger indicated it was permissible to speak of this matter.
The thief took up the mantle with aplomb. “Now that’s a tale.” He stood up to warm his backside by the fire. “But before that one could be told, one must tell the story of the Raven Knight. One not sung by minstrels, nor written in the great recountings of history.”
Tylar stopped his pacing and gave Rogger his full attention. “And we should begin such a story at the beginning—with the death of Raven ser Kay. Some three hundred years now, is it not?” Rogger glanced to Krevan, who only glared back, eyes flashing with Grace.
“Yes,” Rogger continued. “Raven ser Kay did not die a noble death on some battlefield, but instead met his end in bed, of an affliction of the heart. Or more specifically, a dagger to the heart, wielded by a concubine who shared his sheets. A comely lass of great beauty, I’ve heard, but one whose family ties could be traced to the Reaper King. An unfortunate discovery made after she used that same dagger to slay herself.”
Delia sat straighter. “Such is the tale sung by balladeers.”
“A truly tragic end, one embellished with details over the centuries, making it a grand tale of love, revenge, and honor. But where such ballads end, the true story begins.” Rogger paused to puff on his pipe, then continued. “For Raven ser Kay was not like other men . . . There was a reason he survived so many battles. He had a secret he kept from the wardens and castellans of Tashijan. A secret that a comely assassin revealed upon the point of her dagger.”
“What secret is that?” Tylar asked as Rogger paused again.
“He has no heart.”
“What?”
“There is a reason he is titled Krevan the Merciless. It comes from his much older but truer name: Krevan the heartless .”
Tylar shook his head. “What foolishness is this?”
“He speaks the truth,” Krevan grumbled from his bench. “I was born with no heart.”
“How . . .
?” Delia asked, growing paler.
Rogger explained. “Exposed as a babe in the womb to black alchemies, his blood was corrupted. It is a living thing, flowing on its own through his flesh and organs, needing no muscled pump. It is this same corruption that allowed him to survive the assassin’s blow. You can’t stab what isn’t there.”
Tylar stared at Krevan with new eyes.
“But such a wound could not be hidden. His secret was laid bare. He was given a choice by the warden at that time. Be stripped and humiliated . . . or allow the Raven Knight to die.”
Rogger glanced again to Krevan. “So he walked away, leaving his past to the balladeers and historians to pick and chew over like dogs on bone. He started a new life—not unlike you, Tylar—among the low and forgotten. Out of the seed of his pain grew the Black Flaggers.”
Tylar sensed corners of the story left untold, but he did not press.
“But how did he come to be corrupted in the first place?” Delia asked. “To be born without a heart?”
The answer came from the doorway. Wyr-lord Bennifren entered, carried by the same woman. “Because he was born here . . . in the Lair.”
Delia covered her mouth in shock.
“This is his true home,” the ancient baby said in that sickly sibilant tone of his. “He is born of the Wyr.”
Krevan gained his feet. “One does not choose a birthplace, but one can choose a life thereafter. I renounced this place long ago.”
“Blood is always blood.”
Krevan spat on the floor. “And shite is forever shite.”
The knight’s outburst only amused the Wyr-lord. Dark laughter flowed. Krevan seemed to sense he had been drawn deliberately out. He straightened and glared. “What of the bargain? Will it cost me more of my blood?”
“That bought Allison’s freedom eighty years ago. You struck a hard bargain. I still miss your mother.” He reached up and squeezed the breast of the woman who carried him. There was no reaction. “She had the sweetest milk of all my cows. Whatever did become of her after you left here? Died I heard. Drowned. Was it an accident or did she still have a bit of will left in her? Perhaps she missed her former life.”