Shadowfall

  Had the same been intended for her? She pictured Chrism and Mistress Naff sneaking from her room and shuddered.

  “You’ll never escape,” Paltry continued, drawing back Dart’s gaze. “There’s nowhere you can hide for long.”

  A sudden knocking proved his words, firm and hard, shaking the door.

  “Open the way!” a voice commanded, ringing with authority.

  Laurelle clutched Dart.

  Paltry smiled. “It’s already too late.”

  Yaellin crossed to the door. He pulled up his hood and hooked his masklin back in place, completing his disguise as a Shadowknight. “One word,” he spat at Paltry, “and it will be the last to fall from your lips.” Yaellin bared a throwing dagger. He held it with deadly competence.

  The pounding repeated. “Open for the injured! A great mishap has struck the river!”

  Dart glanced to the open window and back to the barred door. Of all the times for broken men and women to fall at the Conclave’s door. They couldn’t refuse care. But how could they untie Paltry to ministrate?

  They were trapped.

  Paltry’s grin widened.

  Yaellin reached the door and slid back a tiny spy hole to peer out into the hall. Dart saw him stiffen in surprise. Shadows, quiet a moment ago, billowed out anew about his form in agitation. Yaellin turned his masked face back to Paltry. His eyes narrowed. The blade was lifted higher, the threat plain.

  Not a word.

  Yaellin nodded to Dart. “Help me with the bar.”

  Dart hesitated, legs locked in terror. Then she hurried forward. Laurelle hung back, a fist clutched to her throat. Dart lifted the stoutoak bar with both hands, then stepped aside at Yaellin’s urging.

  She crept back, still holding the bar. She would use it if necessary as a club.

  Yaellin slipped the latch, then pulled the door open a short space. He spent a moment searching the hall, blocking the way.

  Dart heard Matron Grannice’s voice.

  “Healer Paltry will take good care of your man,” the matron promised.

  “Thank you most kindly,” a woman answered, sounding strained.

  “It is an honor, Castellan Vail.”

  Yaellin opened the door wider, plainly having waited for Matron Grannice to step away and return below. A motley group pushed into the room.

  Dart fell back.

  In the lead, a man of solid bronze entered the room. A soft purring accompanied his every step. The torchlight ran over his form like liquid fire. He led another Shadowknight, cloaked and masked, but obviously a woman. She wore a diadem at her throat, bright as a star in the night sky.

  But Dart’s attention fell more upon the man whom she carried in her arms like a babe. He wore a simple brown servant’s robe, the hood thrown back. Blood soaked both arms. His wrists were tied with soiled red rags. His face, pale as soap-stone, looked like that of a porcelain doll: fragile, drained. The only assurance that he still lived was the ragged, wet rattle of his breath.

  Yaellin followed her. “Kathryn . . . what happened?”

  Dart noted the last two figures to enter the room. Opposites in the extreme. A young woman and a bearded older man, one tall, one slight, one fierce and stolid in countenance, the other hiding an edge of wry amusement.

  The bearded stranger closed the door. His eyes fell on Dart. He held out a hand.

  She didn’t know what he wanted.

  “The door’s bar, little lass. We mustn’t let anyone wander in here.”

  Dart jumped and passed him the length of stoutoak. He secured the door with a wink toward Dart. She found herself warming to the man, surprised at herself.

  Voices drew their attention to the room’s center.

  The woman lowered her charge to an empty bed. He sprawled boneless on the down mattress. “We need the healer’s attention,” she said. “He’s lost most of his blood.”

  The woman stepped back and revealed a strange sight. The man’s robe had a blackened hole in the center, down to the bare skin. Centered in the hole, tattooed on the man’s chest, was a black handprint. A strange glow marked its edges. And if Dart stared long enough, she could almost see the surface of the print stirring, as if something rippled past, under the dark surface, disturbing the black well there.

  Dart found it hard to look away. Her feet drew her closer. One of her hands even reached out.

  “Who is he?” Yaellin asked.

  The woman’s answer stayed Dart’s hand.

  “He’s the godslayer.”

  “Firebalm won’t stop the bleeding from a slash this deep,” the healer said darkly, plainly reluctant to touch a man with such a dreaded reputation.

  Kathryn shoved the man. “Do it.” She’d already heard a threadbare account of Healer Paltry’s crimes and duplicity and had no time for his hesitation or tongue.

  He stumbled to Tylar’s bedside. He bore a pot of firebalm in one hand. Yaellin kept a sword to the man’s back. Rogger had cut away Tylar’s old bandages, exposing the raw wounds. Blood again flowed from them, but pumping weaker than before. Tylar’s heart had fallen to a fluttering beat.

  Paltry scooped a dab of balm.

  “More,” Rogger said from across the bed. “Like you said, this is no scratch.”

  The healer glowered, then dug a more generous amount. He cradled Tylar’s gaping wrist in one hand, then smeared the balm with the other. With its touch, a fierce glow erupted, shining with familiar Grace.

  Paltry jerked his hands away in surprise. A soft moan escaped Tylar, sounding more pleasurable than the usual reaction to the sting of firebalm.

  The glow quickly faded, vanishing away as the peeled edges of skin, muscle, and tendon drew together like so much molded clay. In a moment, the wrist had closed without even a scar.

  “The other,” Kathryn said.

  Paltry grabbed more balm, no longer reluctant. His eyes shone with natural curiosity. Monster or not, he was still a healer.

  “Impressive, is it not?” Rogger said as the other wrist mended. “The gifted Grace in his blood does much to protect him. But it can’t replace what he left behind at the flippercraft.”

  “Blessed bloodroot,” Gerrod said, straightening after studying the miraculous healing with keen eyes. “Its curative Grace will flush the bone’s marrow and encourage new humour to fill his heart and veins.”

  Paltry nodded. “But it will only—”

  Yaellin silenced him with a poke of his sword point. The healer needed no other encouragement. He crossed to the apothecary cabinet mounted along one wall of the circular healing chamber. He lifted the crystal lid and shook free a few dried stalks into a glass crucible.

  “Where did you obtain this bloodroot?” Yaellin asked.

  Paltry set about grinding the root with a glass pestle. A faint bluish glow rose along with a scent of copper and mint. “It comes from the Eldergarden. I harvested it myself.”

  “Where?”

  “From the healer’s garden. In the shadow of the sacred myrrwood.”

  Yaellin knocked aside the crucible with the back of his hand. It shattered against the wall.

  Kathryn frowned. “What?”

  “It might be corrupted, like the tree in the garden. I don’t think it would be wise to expose the godslayer to it.”

  Yaellin had already given an abbreviated account of his escape with the girls . . . and of Lord Chrism’s corruption. The world seemed to grow darker with each breath. Kathryn waved the healer away.

  “Fine,” Paltry said. “I have some older vine from the Ninth Land. Is that far enough away from the Eldergarden?”

  “Fetch it,” Yaellin commanded. “And be quick about it.”

  As the healer set to work again, using a smaller set of wan-looking vines, Yaellin explained. “The corruption in Myrillia is more deeply rooted than any suspected, even my own father.”

  Gerrod joined them. “Maybe we’d all best discover what each knows. It seems multiple threads are woven to this same spot. But where to begi
n?”

  Kathryn nodded to Yaellin. “I think your story is the oldest, the closest to the beginning.”

  He sighed. “Yes, my story may be the oldest . . . with threads that stretch even farther, back to before any of us. But what I know personally started twelve years ago.”

  “What?”

  “An emissary arrived in Tashijan, sent to my father in secret. Sent from the hinterlands. A call for help.”

  “From whom?” Gerrod asked.

  “From one of the rogue gods that roam that unsettled land.”

  “A rogue?” Kathryn stirred. The gods of the hinterlands were little more than raving beasts, committing horrible acts upon those who should cross their paths. Few lived who ever met a rogue god. The Shadowknights themselves had first been established as border guards to keep the taint of the rogues from passing out of their lands and into the settled realms. Why would a rogue be contacting their enemy?

  Yet even this curiosity could not keep Kathryn from watching the healer crush the root to a powder, then pour it into a cup of water. Her concern for Tylar weighed too heavily on her heart. With the elixir prepared, Eylan helped lift Tylar up while Paltry poured the contents down Tylar’s throat.

  He did not resist. Half the elixir spilled over Tylar’s chin and down his chest. Once finished, Tylar was laid back to his bed.

  Kathryn settled to the cot’s edge.

  The talk had quieted. All watched.

  “I can’t help more here,” Paltry said after there appeared to be no response. The miracle of the firebalm did not seem to be shared by the bloodroot. “He’ll have to be moved to the main physik in the Cobbleshores district. They have blessed swine in their pens for blood drafting. That’s where he should be.”

  Kathryn watched Tylar’s chest rise and fall. At some point, she had taken his hand, but she couldn’t say when. Was he breathing slightly more deeply? Did his lips have a touch more color? Or was it merely her heart wanting it to be true?

  “While we keep watch,” Gerrod said, turning back to Yaellin, “tell us more about this visitor to your father.”

  Yaellin nodded. “The emissary came to my father’s room in the dead of night, bearing disturbing tidings. Three pieces of information that would set my father on a course that I believe has led us all here.”

  Everyone gathered closer. Even the two young girls watched from the room’s corner.

  “First, the rogue’s emissary was one of the Wyr,” Yaellin said, nodding to Eylan. “They of all people still occasionally made contact with the maddened ones. She came with a secret kept hidden for millennia, a secret known only to the rogues. Unlike our settled gods who are bound to their realms, unable to leave their lands, rogues still roam. It is such lack of rooting that leads to the raving found among the rogues. Their Grace burns through them. They have no outlet for release. No land in which to ground their Grace. It maddens them.”

  Kathryn nodded, still focused on Tylar.

  “But what the rogues have kept hidden deep in their hinterlands is a secret none suspected. Free to roam, both male and female gods, they have borne children.”

  Kathryn glanced hard at Yaellin, attempting to read the man. “Impossible. Grace destroys such seeds in the womb.”

  Yaellin shook his head. “In a coupling between god and man, yes. But not so with two gods. Such children do sometimes survive, though it is a rarity. Only a couple times each millennia. The last child was born over four hundred years ago. And that is the crux of the problem. Most of these children were slain at birth, first in fear, then in envy.”

  “Envy?” Rogger asked.

  “Such children are not like the other Myrillian gods. They are born, but they were never sundered. They are purer than either sire or dam. They are of flesh, but also carry with them those parts all others lost to the naether and aether. They are whole . . . in a manner.”

  “Unsundered,” Gerrod whispered, dread and awe in his voice.

  “Almost,” Yaellin said. “But it was enough for all such offspring to be slain. Savaged and hacked beyond healing. Then four hundred years ago, one of their children, a boy, was stolen, kidnapped, before it could be slain. It took the rogues a full year, as maddened as they are at most times, to discover the child’s fate. The boy’s desiccated and mummified remains were discovered in the hinterlands of the Fourth Lands. His heart was missing.”

  “Who did this?” Kathryn asked. “Who performed such a black rite?” She could not help but picture the young knight sprawled in a circle of his own blood, his chest cleaved open.

  “All the hinterland rogues could discover was a name: the Cabal.”

  “What did they want with the boy?” Gerrod asked.

  Yaellin shook his head. “It was never discovered for certain. But the rogue who sent the emissary had a suspicion. She believed the boy’s murder was tied back to the Godsword.”

  “Rivenscryr,” Rogger said.

  “The old Littick name for the sword,” Yaellin agreed. “The emissary revealed a second black secret concerning the Godsword. The weapon that shattered their world had been forged in their own blood. According to the rogue, the sword, once wielded and spent, needed fresh blood, the blood of an intact god, a god from their original kingdom, someone unsundered. Blood from a sundered god lacked something vital to enliven the sword. So after the Sundering, when the gods came to Myrillia, the weapon proved useless. No sundered god could whet it back into existence. It became a weapon without substance.”

  “A sword of light and shadow,” Gerrod intoned, repeating the words Pryde Manthion used to describe and name the great weapon.

  Yaellin nodded. “The rogue who sent the warning believed that the Cabal had stolen the infant godling in an attempt to forge anew the Godsword. The boy’s body had been drained of all blood. Such blood could bring Rivenscryr back into this world, a weapon that could shatter worlds.”

  Silence settled over the room.

  “But there was a last warning from this rogue god,” Yaellin continued, voice lowering. “A new babe had been born to the rogues, a babe born to the same god who sent the emissary. She could not see her child slain. Although half-maddened by wild Grace, she was still a mother. She feared for her infant’s safety. So she asked my father to come for her baby. To steal the child away before anyone knew of its existence. To keep her baby safe among the settled god-realms of Myrillia.”

  “And he did that?” Kathryn asked, aghast.

  “He took a cadre of knights and a woman who knew the hinterlands well, my own mother, the mistress of this school. They had a harrowing journey. It seemed word had leaked to the Cabal. My father and mother barely escaped with the child, losing all their guards to the fell beasts of the Cabal.”

  “What became of the child?” Gerrod asked.

  Yaellin turned and faced one of the two girls, the smaller of the two, with straw-colored hair. Her eyes were wide with dawning horror. “My father hid her here.”

  Dart stared back at Yaellin. No . . . it was all a lie . . . impossible .

  Laurelle stepped from her side, stumbling back.

  “I’m only a girl,” Dart answered in a squeaky tight voice.

  Yaellin came to her, dropping to a knee. “Yes, you are.” He took her hand. She barely felt his touch. “You are flesh like any other girl.” He squeezed to emphasize it. “Never let anyone tell you otherwise. But I’m afraid you must know deep in your heart that you’re different. Not worse, not better even. Just different.”

  She attempted to pull her hand free—not so much to escape him as his words. But she couldn’t so easily escape her heart. He was right. She had always known she was different. And it wasn’t just the presence of Pupp, her ghostly companion. She always felt the outsider, the girl looking in through a window at the simple lives of the other girls. Still, how could she be a god?

  Yaellin continued his explanation. “Dart was hidden at the school, in plain sight. Only two folks ever knew about her. My father and mother. I don’t know
when they were planning on revealing her true heritage to her.” He glanced at Dart with sorrow. “Ser Henri did not reveal himself to be my father until I was about your age. I suppose he was not very good at . . . revealing difficult truths. I’m sorry you had to learn of your own parentage in such an ill manner as this.”

  Dart simply shook her head, still denying, waiting to wake up from this unending nightmare. A tear rolled down her cheek. Then fingers wrapped around her hand. She turned. It was Laurelle, returned to her side. Fingers squeezed. She drew great comfort, but the tears flowed heavier.

  Yaellin continued, facing the others again. “Knowledge of the girl’s identity and location died with my mother and father. But when I heard of the explosion of the illuminaria during the testing of Dart, I knew the girl must be someone special. None but a god could cause such a reaction. So I investigated with dream alchemies and discovered the truth.”

  Master Gerrod stirred from his station. “And I suspect you were not the only one investigating the incident.” He glanced to Healer Paltry. “Another’s curiosity was aroused.”

  Paltry had been standing near the back, watched by the tall swordswoman. He seemed to shrink in on himself.

  The bronze figure stepped toward the healer. “You sent her blood to Tashijan, to Castellan Mirra. You came in the thick of the night, in secret. Why?”

  Paltry had a sick pall to his face by now. “I . . . I made inquiries after what happened here. I dared not be too bold because . . . because . . .”

  “Because of your complicity in raping young children,” the master said bluntly.

  Dart felt a surge of raw fury, drying the flow of her tears. One hand still held Laurelle’s, but her other fell to the hilt of the dagger Yaellin had given her.

  Paltry looked away. “After the girl was chosen, I sent word to the Council at Tashijan, asking the masters a theoretical question about what might have happened. I was surprised to hear back from the castellan. But then again, she was once a master herself. She asked me to bring a test of the girl’s blood. So I stole one of her soiled undergarments. The girl claimed she was bleeding from her menstra, but . . . but . . .”