“Warden Fields was convinced to listen,” Krevan said. The knight lifted his sword, Serpentfang. “Even someone as well regarded as Argent ser Fields is no match for the Raven Knight returned.” This last was spoken sourly.
Tylar stared up at the flippercrafts. Krevan must have used his notoriety to sway Tashijan to his cause. There must certainly be more story to tell, but it would have to wait.
On the far side of the gardens, screams pierced the low thunder, rising from both beast and knight.
“While we were flying here, a raven arrived from Lord Chrism,” Krevan said. “He warned of a curse that had transformed his troops into monstrous beasts. He claimed the guards were still loyal. Only their appearances had been altered by the curse. A curse placed upon him by the godslayer . . . and some daemon child.”
“No daemon,” a voice said behind them. Rogger stepped out of hiding. Plainly the thief had been trailing after them, abandoning his hiding place. He waved an arm, and the others appeared, too.
Tylar frowned at them all.
Rogger placed an arm around Dart. “She’s more like a god, actually. A very tiny god.”
Dart stared, gaping at the massive bullhound. It looked capable of swallowing her in one bite.
Krevan’s brow bunched. He studied the group for answers.
“There’s too much to tell,” Tylar said. “First, we must reach Chrism.”
“I have enough men and women to form a phalanx,” Krevan said. “We might be able to forge a path to the castillion.”
“Gather them,” Tylar ordered.
Krevan led them back to the flippercraft, trailed by the bullhound.
They met Lorr on the way back. The tracker bowed his head toward Kathryn. “The big kank still has a nose for you,” Lorr said, cuffing Barrin by the ear. “As soon as he got ground under his paws, he was mewling and drooling. I knew he had your scent.”
Krevan spoke. “When we saw the fire spreading in the woods, we figured you all were somewhere in the gardens. We had planned to land after off-loading our men and search for your group.”
“We landed a bit harder than we intended,” Corram said.
They reached the stoved flippercraft. Krevan sent Corram to gather a dozen knights. A sharp cry erupted from the lee side of the grounded ship.
Tylar turned.
A shape flew at him. He barely got his sword out of the way in time.
Delia threw her arms around him, hugging tight, all but climbing atop him. “Tylar . . . I knew you still lived.”
He carefully returned her embrace. He felt the tears on his neck . . . and her lips. Tylar met Kathryn’s eyes over the young woman’s shoulder. She glanced away.
Delia finally seemed to collect herself, shedding from him like water. She smoothed her cloak and backed away. “I’m sorry . . .”
Tylar had no words. He still felt her lips on his neck, the heat of her tears. He was saved from responding to Delia’s apology or Kathryn’s silence by Corram’s arrival with a shadowed mass of knights.
“The weakest flank is off by the southeast tower,” Corram said. “We may be able to break through there to the keep.”
Tylar prayed he was right. He stared across at the others. “There’s no need for all to go. The remaining knights here can protect you.” It was no surprise that Eylan stepped forward. The Wyr-mistress had an interest in his surviving . . . or at least part of him.
Rogger followed her. He pointed to a bare spot under his elbow, among the branded sigils of the gods. “I still have Chrism’s sigil to collect.”
Kathryn joined them. “Tashijan must be represented.”
“As should the Council of Masters,” Gerrod said, stepping up. “And I know the castillion well. It’s easy to get lost.”
The last stood alone, arms tight around her chest, trembling. “The sword may need to be replenished,” Dart said.
Tylar knelt down to meet her eye. “Brave words, but it’s best you and your friend stay here.”
“Mayhap we’ll need her,” Rogger said. “That sword of yours might need a bit more blood.”
He shook his head. “No. It’s risky enough to bring the sword near Chrism. If something goes wrong, I won’t hand him the girl, too.” He stared across the group. “I have Meeryn’s Grace and daemon. You have your swords and shadows. That will have to do until we reach Chrism. If I can’t take him out in the first stroke of the sword, I doubt I’ll ever have a chance for a second.”
Rogger slowly nodded.
“Dart stays here,” Tylar said. With the matter settled, he turned to Delia and Lorr. “Keep the girls safe. No harm can befall them.”
They both nodded.
Dart fell back with the others. Laurelle wrapped her in an embrace. They had seen too much horror. Tylar prayed it would end now.
He faced his knights and companions. “Let nothing stop us.”
Dart watched them set off, sheltered in the lee of the crashed ship. Its fires had been put out. For the moment, it offered security. But Dart knew how tentative such safety could be.
Across the way, the knights formed a wedge of shadow and sword. The godslayer and the others sheltered between, ready to aid with dagger and blade. They moved swiftly away, a black arrow sweeping low across the gardens, skirting ponds and walls, aiming for the southeast tower.
She followed their strike into the flank of the besieged ilk-beast legion. All that could be discerned were a few flashes of silver, like lightning on the ground.
The muzzled man, plainly a wyld tracker from his leather and double belts of knives and daggers, drew alongside Dart. He held something out for her. It was a spyglass. He had a second for Laurelle.
Laurelle shook her head, backing up a step.
Dart took the glass and raised it to her eye. She wanted to watch. It took a moment to center on the fighting. Though drawn closer to the battle, it was still difficult for her to see. Shadows obscured detail as knight fought beast with blade and darkness. She was surprised to hear words whisper at her ear. She heard Tylar’s voice ring out clearly.
“Make for the terrace! We’ll hold them there, then at the door!” Screams and shrieks drowned the rest.
Dart lowered the glass to study it. The din of battle diminished.
“Air blessed,” Tracker Lorr said. “The lens brings both sight and sound closer. Great for hunting dark woods.”
Dart nodded, lifting the glass again.
The woman who had hugged Tylar earlier joined them. Lorr turned to her. “This child here is not much older than you were, Delia, when your father sent you away.”
“He may regret that now,” she answered. “The soothmancers will be running their bloody hands over him for days before they’re done with him.”
Dart followed none of this. Instead, she concentrated on the fighting. Sounds again reached her. Strangled cries, death rattles, and the clash of steel. But it appeared Tylar and the others had broken through the ranks. A clutch of knights burst from the writhing bulk of ilk-beasts, flying up the steps to the terraces below the southeast tower. They were a ragged bunch compared to the orderly wedge of before—but they had escaped. The group reached the door.
“Krevan!”Tylar again shouted. “Hold here! Let none pass!”
The party filtered through the door, leaving behind a knot of shadows at the threshold.
The others vanished away.
“They’re inside,” Lorr said.
Dart glanced to him, lowering her spyglass. The tracker had watched without the need of a lens.
The woman Delia stared, too, but Dart sensed she watched more with her heart than her eyes. Her embrace with Tylar had been a close one.
“I expect the castillion has been emptied out,” Lorr said to Delia. “They’ll make for the High Wing.”
Dart lifted her glass again. She searched the castillion. She sought out the centermost tower, the one over the river.
The High Wing.
Dart wondered what had befallen the other Ha
nds: the rotund Master Pliny, the diminutive Master Munchcryden, the twins Master Fairland and Mistress Tre. Not to mention Matron Shashyl. Had they all been ilked? Were they among the legion?
She heard the cries of the beastly army, punctuated by racking booms of thunder. The storm fell worse atop the castillion. Rains spattered into their shelter now, whipped up by growing winds.
The flippercrafts were forced to retreat, drifting away to settle in neighboring fields or elsewhere in the Eldergarden. The storm drove them to ground.
Droplets struck her lens, sparkling and watering her view of the highest tower of Tashijan.
Still, a voice reached her, dreadful and familiar. “The godslayer comes with the sword,” Mistress Naff said.
“You know what you must do.” The voice still sounded as warm as sun-baked loam. It invited one to listen. It reminded Dart of when she first met Chrism, here in the same gardens, mistaking him for a groundskeep. And though she had witnessed it with her own eyes, she could not balance that memory with what had transpired off in the myrrwood. “Is all in readiness to welcome the godslayer?”
Dart heard the hard smile behind Mistress Naff’s next words. “The trap is set. There will be no escape. For any of them. It will end here.”
Tylar climbed the stairs of the center tower. They approached the High Wing. He led the way with Kathryn at his side. Eylan followed with Gerrod and Rogger. Krevan and Corram guarded their rear.
The only sound was the tread of their own steps. Even the cries of battle in the gardens had disappeared, swallowed by the heavy stone. All that interrupted their footsteps was the occasional hollow rumble of thunder.
Where were the folk of the keep?
Surely not all had been corrupted into beasts.
Yet not a single person moved in the halls. The entire keep had become a crypt, haunted and empty. Torches hissed in sconces and braziers crackled. The castillion seemed to be holding its breath, waiting.
The tension dragged their steps. Each crack of thunder stopped them until it echoed away. They had slowly traversed the lower halls from the southeast tower. In the lower holds, they discovered sections of the floor had fallen away, into the river below.
“Our flippercraft must have ripped through some of the castillion’s old underpinnings as it crashed through here,” Rogger had said, peering down into the river. The waters below had churned and roiled with the storm.
But such damage was slight compared to the true blow struck here.
The corruption of a god, the heart of an entire realm.
Tylar stared upward, toward the High Wing.
They climbed another four flights, moving in silence. None dared speak. Tylar rounded the last bend in the stair. The main double doors to the High Wing were not only unguarded, they lay open.
He stopped, suspicious.
They waited, listening for any sign of an ambush.
All that was heard was the rumble of thunder.
Tylar met Kathryn’s eyes. He sheathed his ordinary blade and slid free Rivenscryr. The snick of metal sounded loud on the stair.
He stepped around the bend, hugging the wall, his blade held ready.
He moved up one step, then another.
The rest followed.
In this steady manner, they climbed to the top of the stairs. Tylar tried his best to scan the hall beyond the open doors. Like all the halls, the High Wing appeared deserted. Had Chrism fled?
This worry drove Tylar over the threshold and into the great hall.
Windows lined one side, doors the other. Halfway down the hallway, the central brazier still glowed in the dimness. The crack of a log in the great furnace startled Tylar. It sounded like the break of a bone. A sound he knew too well.
He pushed farther into the hall.
Nothing.
He waved the others to check the closest rooms. All the doors were open, as if they had been left ajar in a mad rush to escape. Kathryn and Gerrod tried the first chamber. Eylan and Rogger the next. Tylar led Krevan and Corram to the third.
Kathryn and Gerrod were already returning. “Empty,” whispered Kathryn, wearing a deep frown of worry.
Rogger appeared at his door. He waved. “Come see this.”
Tylar, Kathryn, and Gerrod followed the thief into the chamber. The air in the room smelled of burned rye and something sickly sweet, like honey gone bad.
Eylan waited for them in the back bedchamber. A figure lay atop the bed, arms folded over the rise of an ample belly. He looked to be in gentle repose, eyes closed. His chest rose and fell evenly. A brazier smoldered in one corner, the source of the room’s reek.
“Master Pliny, one of Chrism’s Hands,” Rogger introduced.
“He won’t wake,” Eylan said.
“Spellcast,” Gerrod said. “Thralled by black Grace.”
A stern voice interrupted them. “Another lies in the same state in the next room,” Krevan said.
They backed out to the main hall.
“Apparently Chrism spared his Hands from the ilking,” Rogger said. “I guess he’s too lazy to train new ones. Good Hands are hard to find.”
The other rooms were quickly checked. Two other Hands were discovered enthralled and slumbering.
“Mistress Naff is still missing,” Gerrod said. He stared around at the others.
All had heard Dart’s accounting of the ceremony in the myrrwood, the chosen few. The remainder of the castillion had not been spared. Chrism must have blood fed the keep staff and guards in secret, drafting all in some hidden manner. Perhaps in wine, perhaps in food. Afterward, they all went about their duties unaware that at a moment’s call all would be lost: their forms, their minds, their humanity.
Tylar felt no real sympathy for those who went willingly to the torch, but so many others had had no choice. He stared up and down the hall. Even the Hands had become puppets.
Everyone gathered again in the hall.
There was only one room left to be searched.
The golden doors to Chrism’s chambers stood closed, lit by the glow of the brazier before them.
Tylar stepped forward, flanked by Krevan and Kathryn. He clutched the Godsword in hand, fingers squeezing the throbbing hilt. The blade seemed to eat the light coming off the brazier and shone brighter for it.
He reached a hand toward the doors’ latch.
Their surface was plated in gold. If locked, it would take time to chop their way inside. Perhaps the closed doors were a ruse. To distract them, while Chrism made his true escape.
Tylar’s fingers touched the latch and the twin doors fell open on their own, swinging inside.
A lone figure stood at the threshold.
She was stunning, slim of waist, generous of curve and breast, auburn hair trailing in lazy curves over one shoulder and down to midback. She leaned slightly to one side, a palm resting on a hip, an inviting glint to her eyes.
“The godslayer,” she whispered, her lips, rouged red and full, barely moving. “Welcome to the High Wing.”
Tylar froze, transfixed—not so much by her beauty, but her nakedness. She stood unabashed, her nipples bared. Below her throat, no hair marred her smooth white skin.
But it was not unmarked.
Centered on her chest, a black handprint stood out starkly.
A twin to his own.
“They must be warned,” Delia insisted.
“I can send a cadre of knights,” a cloaked figure said, “but that would strip our defenses. I was ordered to keep you all under guard.”
Dart listened to the exchange from the shadow of the downed ship. She had related what she’d overheard in the High Wing, of a trap being set, but nothing was being done. Nothing but talking. Her fists balled up.
She glanced back out into the rain.
She spotted one hope to break this deadlock. She turned to Laurelle. “Can you distract those others?” She waved to Delia and the clutch of bantering knights.
Laurelle stirred, her brows frowned. “Why? What are y
ou going to do?”
“I’m going to strike for the castillion.”
Laurelle’s eyes widened. “Are you mad? What about what Ser Tylar said? To keep you and the sword apart?”
“There are two daemons up there.” Dart remembered the kiss she had witnessed in the Eldergardens between Mistress Naff and Chrism. She remembered the smoky darkness that linked the pair’s lips. “The godslayer will need more than one strike. I’m the only one who can help him.”
Laurelle wrung her hands, but she nodded, her eyes firming with the plan. “I’ll do my best here. But how are you going to get there?”
She reached and hugged Laurelle tight. “Pupp is not the only dog here.” With those words, she set off into the rain.
Laurelle waited a moment, then headed in the opposite direction.
Dart rushed through the pelting rain. It stung now like bee stings, whipped by the winds. But she pushed on. She reached her only hope.
“Tracker Lorr,” she said.
The wyldman seemed unsurprised by her sudden appearance but confused for the reason behind it. “Child?”
She spoke in a rush. “Can your hound carry me to the castillion? I heard before . . . when you came . . . that he could smell Castellan Vail.”
“Aye, the big kank can, but that’s not a trip for a mite like you.”
Dart grabbed the edge of his buckskin coat. “I must get there.”
“Because of the trap?” Lorr asked. “Best leave that to your elders.”
Dart sensed time passing too swiftly. She filled her voice with firm conviction. A wyld tracker’s senses were supposed to be acute enough to tell lie from truth. “All will be lost unless I can reach them in time. I know it. Now is not the moment for caution or half steps. I know it’s risky for me to go. But I’m the only one who can help. If we lose now, we lose everything.”
He stared down at her, his eyes slightly aglow.
Dart met his gaze. “I must go.”
A commotion rose by the flippercraft. Laurelle was sobbing, panicked and throwing herself among the knights. They gathered about her, concerned.
“Turning the other’s noses, I see,” Lorr asked.
Dart nodded. “I can’t let them stop me. If you won’t help, I’ll do it myself.” She stalked toward the mountain of dog flesh.