Nee’lahn spoke up. “The d’warf captain seemed especially interested in you, Lord Tyrus. He called you ‘marked by the griffin,’ suggesting some importance in your capture.”
Tyrus sat straighter, his strength slowly returning. “I can imagine. As the last living prince of the Wall, my magick would be a boon to the raiders.”
“Magick?” Nee’lahn asked.
“Scrying,” Tyrus explained. “Tellings of the future. The Wall speaks with the will and knowledge of all the Land.” Tyrus attempted to stand but needed Kral’s help. He limped to the rear wall of their cell and laid a palm on the glassy surface—black granite, like all the castle. “I will not let them have me. I’ll not let the Land’s gift to my family be twisted.”
“We’ll protect you,” Kral said.
Tyrus smiled, cracked lips splitting and bleeding fresh. “I don’t doubt your honor, Kral, but honor can be outnumbered—as was proven on the battlefield three days ago.”
“So what do you propose?”
“To vanish.”
“How?” Mogweed asked.
“There’s a magick in the Northwall that is known only to members of the royal family—something more than scrying.” Tyrus glanced at them.
Kral’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What?”
Tyrus paused, then took a deep breath and spoke softly. “As Castle Mryl is a part of the Wall, so are its kings and princes. Granite runs in our blood. We are as much the Wall as the castle itself.”
“I don’t understand,” Kral grumbled.
“Then watch.” Tyrus turned and placed both palms on the wall. He closed his eyes.
Kral felt the flow of the Wall’s energy shift, like a river changing course. The rumble of elemental magick swept down upon the cell, swirling through the walls in torrents.
At his side, Nee’lahn gasped.
Kral’s attention returned fully to the prince. The man’s pale hands slowly blackened, matching the granite. As Kral watched, the transformation flowed up the prince’s arms, turning limbs to stone, polished and smooth. And still the magick spread, consuming chest and legs, swamping over the man’s head. In a matter of breaths, his entire form had become living granite.
Stone lips moved. “We are not called the Blood of the Wall for no reason. We are one with the Land’s heart. It is our true home.”
Tyrus stepped forward, merging into the stone wall. He stopped—half in, half out. He turned to them. “Fear not. I’ll watch over you. But in the Wall, I can walk the castle unseen and learn the foul purpose of those who roost here.”
Nee’lahn reached and touched the man’s cheek. “Be careful. Even the strongest stone can shatter.”
“So I have learned.” He sank deeper into the wall, his clothes ripping and falling to the straw. Soon there was no sign of the prince, only bare wall.
Mogweed touched the stone, disbelieving his eyes.
Lord Tyrus’ face reappeared above Mogweed’s fingers, growing into a stone mask hanging on the wall. Torchlight glinted off his glossy eyes. Granite lips smiled mischievously. “Be ready.”
Then he was gone.
AS DAWN ROSE, Meric stared over the bowsprit of the Stormwing. Overhead, the morning breezes swelled the sails, ropes snapping taut. This close to the colossal wall, the winds blew in cold gusts, threatening to toss the ship against the looming cliff of granite. It took all Meric’s skill to keep the ship gliding beside the Northwall, edging along the misty heights, hiding from the hostile eyes far below.
Meric stood bundled in a thick-furred cloak. At this height, ice frosted the smooth rock, and the air was almost too thin to breathe. He craned his neck. Even from the deck of the Stormwing, Meric could not spy the Northwall’s summit. It was too tall, higher than even the Stormwing could fly.
After rescuing Mycelle and Fardale from atop the Stone of Tor, Meric had flown his ship directly north, pursuing the trail discovered by the wolf’s keen nose. There was no doubt where their captured friends were being taken—to Castle Mryl.
By air, it had taken only a day to reach the Northwall. Once here, they were forced to wait, well out of sight of the castle. Only at night did they dare risk drifting nearer, spying upon the encampment around the castle. A pair of elv’in sailors had drifted on long lines below the keel, bearing spyglasses. Maps were quickly drawn of the castle grounds and surrounding forces. But so far, there was no sign of the others. As Meric and Mycelle waited, worry had begun to worm into their talks. What if they were wrong? What if the captives weren’t being taken here?
Something bumped Meric’s knee. He glanced down and found Fardale settling to his haunches. He touched the wolf’s flank in reassurance. “We’ll find your brother and the others. If they’re out there, we won’t leave without them.”
Fardale leaned a bit against the elv’in’s leg, silently thanking him.
Together, the pair watched the sun rise over the mountains of the Teeth. As the first rays reflected off the upper heights of the Northwall, Meric tacked the Stormwing slowly backward, putting distance between them and the castle. He slipped back along the Northwall to sit out another long day—another day of interminable waiting and worry.
Fardale whined at his side. The wolf’s nose was pointed toward the cliff of granite. At first, Meric failed to see anything, then spotted movement. Something swept toward them, a shadow on the rock. Clutching the rail, Meric leaned out, eyes squinted.
A great bird shot along the cliff face, diving from heights higher than the Stormwing could fly. Meric stepped back as the creature arced toward the deck of the ship. The elv’in, his blood tied to all things of the air, recognized the bird: a great roc. The huge black bird swept toward their ship. Its wings were wider than Meric was tall. With a piercing cry, it tucked its wings and dove toward the deck, a deadly black bolt.
Meric stood his ground. When the beast was a span from the deck, its wings snapped open, braking its fall. Talons dug into the deck as the bird landed. It held its wings wide, a crown of feathers flaring up. Its beak stretched open as it panted from its flight. Glowing amber eyes stared back at him.
Fardale padded up to the bird, sniffing at it.
Meric spoke to the majestic beast. “What have you learned?”
As answer, the bird drew its wings down, ruffling its feathers with a shake. Black pinions withdrew back into pale flesh. Bones stretched. Blond hair sprouted to replace black feather, and wings rejointed into arms. In a matter of moments, bird became woman. The only feature shared between the two forms were the deep amber eyes.
Naked, Mycelle pushed up from her crouch, gasping slightly, still out of breath. “Th-they arrived during the night. They’ve been taken to the dungeons.”
Meric slipped off his fur-lined cloak and draped it over her bare shoulders. “All of them?”
She snugged the cloak tight, shivering against the cold. “All of them. But Lord Tyrus appeared unconscious. Kral was carrying him. I could not judge the extent of his injuries from where I was perched.”
“Then we proceed as planned,” Meric said.
She nodded. “Tonight. Under the cover of darkness.”
“Will they be safe for that long?”
“They’ll have to be. Our only hope is stealth. There’ll be no victory without the advantage of surprise.”
Meric guided her toward the hatch. “Then you’ll need to warm up and rest. With winter nearing, the days are shorter.”
Mycelle scowled. “Not short enough.” She stared at Fardale, eyes growing briefly brighter as the two shared private thoughts. Afterward, the wolf nodded his head once, then swung away.
Meric followed the pair. At last, the waiting was over.
As the others disappeared through the hatch, Meric closed the doors, remaining on deck. He returned to his post by the bowsprit, shivering in the thin air. Mycelle still had his cloak. Ahead, the high mists thinned.
A quarter league beyond the bowsprit, the sheer face of the granite cliff lay shattered and broken.
Distracted by Mycelle’s reappearance, he had let the Stormwing drift farther than he had intended. He slowed the winds in his sails. It was the first time the Stormwing neared the place where the great wall had been sundered. Meric had considered it too dangerous.
But now, with the wound in sight, he found himself drawn to it. Boulders the size of small villages lay tumbled into the meadows and forests of the Western Reaches. The trough of devastation stretched leagues to the south: gouged tracks, acres of broken trees, shattered hillsides. The horrendous fall of the Stone of Tor was a broken twig compared to the devastation here.
Meric extended his sight toward the Northwall. From summit to base, the wall was split completely. But as the ship drifted nearer, Meric saw the breach itself was quite narrow, no more than a hundred steps. It was as if a giant ax had cleaved the wall.
Both curious and appalled, Meric allowed his ship to sweep forward. As the Stormwing glided over the destruction below, Meric’s eyes remained fixed on the sundered cliff face. He held his breath as the view beyond the wall opened up. A thin slice of the dark forest appeared.
The Dire Fell. The twisted home of the wrathful Grim.
Meric stared. The trees of the Fell were nothing like the pines and aspens of the northern Reaches. These trees were monsters. The giants reached as high as the summit of the Northwall itself, their upper branches crowned with ice. The boles were as thick around as farmhouses, each mounted atop a tangle of knotted roots. But worst of all, their branches, rather than sprouting straight, were twisted and curled upon themselves, appearing more like vines than tree limbs. Adding to this appearance was the lack of leaves. Not a single green tuft of foliage marked this skeletal forest.
Staring, not breathing, Meric shuddered. It was as if the word tortured were given living form in these behemoth trees.
He tore his eyes away, glancing below. Extending from the forest into the breach, a tangle of roots slowly writhed. Blind, woody worms shuffled and dug at the edge of the wound. To be seen from this height, Meric knew each root had to be thicker than a horse’s flank, powerful enough to chew into stone. Meric knew he was looking at the cause of the wall’s sundering. As at the Stone of Tor, the Grim must have directed their enslaved trees to tear this breach in the granite.
But why? What control did the Dark Lord exert over these wraiths? What had caused them to break free after countless centuries and leave their own trees to hunt the Western Reaches?
Over the past two days, Meric had learned the wraiths’ patterns. Only at night did the Grim flow out of the Fell to hunt the forests of the Reaches, creating an unnatural barrier around Castle Mryl, protecting the encamped d’warves. But again—why? What dread pact had been forged between the mindless wraiths and the furtive d’warves?
Meric had no answer. He swung the Stormwing around. Tears froze on his cheek. Though there was so much unknown, Meric knew one truth, one secret. Something he had not shared with anyone, not even his own men.
He turned his back on the Fell. “Oh, Nee’lahn . . . maybe it would’ve been better if you’d stayed dead.”
“YOU DON’T LOOK well,” Mogweed said.
Nee’lahn opened her eyes. She leaned against the cold wall of the cell, huddled in her cloak. Mogweed crouched before her. “I’m fine,” she lied, turning away and pulling the hood of her cloak higher.
The mousy-haired man settled beside her. He picked a strand of long blond hair from the shoulder of her cloak. “What’s wrong?”
Nee’lahn remained silent. Though she strove to hide it, this cry of stone threatened her rebirth. While in the vast Western Reaches, the woodsong had helped sustain her, but now, cut off, surround by spans of hard granite, she could barely hear a whisper of the endless song of the great forest.
“You need your lute, don’t you?” Mogweed whispered, keenly perceptive. “A nyphai cannot be far from her bonded tree spirit.”
“No more than a hundred steps,” she answered quietly. Years ago, as the last koa’kona tree of her ancestral grove, Lok’ai’hera, had succumbed to the Blight, a skilled woodcutter had carved Nee’lahn a magnificent lute from the heart of her tree, freeing the tree’s spirit, preserving it. With lute in hand, Nee’lahn had been able to travel across the lands of Alasea to search for a cure, to return vitality to what was now Blighted.
But no longer. She did not have her lute, and in its absence, she needed the strength of the vast forests of the Reach to keep her from unraveling. And now, imprisoned in granite, cut off from the forest, Nee’lahn felt herself weakening, fraying around the edges. Her lips were dry and cracked, and no amount of water could quench her thirst. Her hair hung limp, and strands fell like autumn leaves.
“How long can you hold out?” Mogweed asked with concern.
“Not long. Maybe a day.” Closing her eyes, Nee’lahn reached outward, concentrating on the whispers of song wending down through the passages and stairs. As she strained, she heard another song, a darker melody. It came not from before her, but from behind, from the Fell. She knew that black song.
“No,” she mumbled dully. “I won’t listen. Not even to sustain myself.” That path only led to madness and twisted lusts.
“What was that?” Mogweed asked.
Nee’lahn shook her head. “Sometimes even life costs too steep a price.”
Mogweed frowned, clearly confused. He leaned away from her. “Don’t give up. Lord Tyrus has promised to help us.”
Nee’lahn huddled deeper, praying Mogweed was right, praying for the prince to hurry. As she sat, she listened to the hushed whispers of woodsong: one bright, one dark. Two sides of the same coin.
She squeezed her eyelids tight but failed to keep tears from flowing down her cheeks. Lok’ai’hera. Memories of green life and bright flowers. All gone. Nee’lahn winced, closing her ears against the call of the darkling song.
Hurry, Prince . . .
THE PRINCE OF Castle Mryl had borne many names during his short lifetime. His mother, long dead, had named him Tylamon Royson, after his great grandfather. The pirates of Port Rawl had named him Captain Tyrus, caste leader and bloody tyrant. His first lover during his thirteenth winter had proclaimed him Sweetheart and considered him both tender and kind, while the last woman in his bed had cursed him Bastard and swore to gut him for the cruelties of his heart. In truth, the prince was all of these men, the sum of his past. No man bore a single name.
But now, swimming through the stone of the Wall, Lord Tyrus shed the vagaries of his past and became one man, one purpose, forged in granite. This was his home, his birthright—and he would see it returned and its dead avenged.
Tyrus moved through the rock of the Wall as easily as a fish through water. He felt currents in the stone, eddies and streams, all aspects of the flow of magick in the granite. Swimming upward, carried on a wellspring of energy, Tyrus aimed for the loftier heights of the great Wall. He stared around him. His sight stretched through the watery granite to the world beyond, so he viewed wavering images of the Western Reaches and the d’warf encampment. He turned his head and dimly viewed the murk of the Dire Fell.
But his destination was neither right nor left, but up and ahead, to where the central keep of Castle Mryl grew from the granite wall. He flowed toward the upper terraces, to the chambers that had once been his father’s, King Ry’s. He suspected that whoever held sway over these d’warves would be found there—as would answers.
Once Tyrus was high enough, he twisted and glided into the buttresses and walls that grew out of the Northwall to form the castle proper. Here the thickness of the granite was thinner. His sight grew more acute, like that of a diver surfacing from the depths of a dark lake. He now had to be careful that he remained within the confines of the narrowing walls. It would ruin his spying if a limb should be seen jutting from a wall. He sidled down a long passage, coming at last to the proper door. Slowing his pace, he glided to a stop, twisting away from the corridor to spy inside the neighboring room.
The royal antechambe
r was oval in shape, a bubble in the granite. Across the way, other hallways led into the king’s private suite of chambers. But the main room here had been his father’s greeting and conference room. Shelved books lined the walls, and a fireplace as tall as a man opened on the right, now cold and disused. A thick wool carpet, embroidered with the family icon of the snow leopard, covered the granite floor.
Tyrus frowned. The room was empty, dark except for a single torch.
As he floated in the stone, frustrated, he heard a sharp voice sound from deeper in the warren of chambers.
Following the sound, Tyrus stepped from the stone wall, willing the magick to stay with him. Black limbs sprouted from the stone as he pulled himself free. He hurried across the carpet to the far wall and dove back into the stone, merging completely without a ripple. He sped along the crisscrossing walls, delving deeper into his father’s private suite. He aimed toward the muffled voices.
At last, he reached his father’s bathing chamber and found the speakers. The chamber was steamy, blurring where the granite wall ended and the room began. Tyrus moved with great care, squinting.
A large sunken tub occupied the center of the room. At its edge, a broad-chested d’warf knelt on one knee, cap in hand. His splayed nose and wide lips made him appear some squat toad perched before a lake. “All is in readiness. The shaft under the Citadel has been mined and the chamber completed under the lake of Tor Amon.”
“And what of the griffin statue, Captain Brytton?” The speaker floated in the hot waters of the tub. It was hard to make out any features through the steam, but the voice sounded distinctly feminine, lilting and sweet, but with a deeper undercurrent of menace. “What of the Weirgate?”
“It has been returned to its roost at the Citadel. We await only the next full moon to finish the last step.”
“Good.” The figure settled deeper in the tub. “I thought it foolish of the Dark Lord’s lieutenant to mount the griffin and hunt a few stray elementals lost in the wood, especially at this critical time.”