“As the hour approaches, the Black Heart grows especially wary.”
“Or at least the one named Shorkan does. That burned fiend watches all the Gates, popping between them like some scalded rat, keeping an eye on everything. With my brethren on guard, there is nothing to fear in the north. Our site is secure.” The figure sighed. “Still, the discovery of the prince of the Wall was a fortuitous boon. And with the griffin returned to its roost, we remain on schedule. Nothing lost, everything gained.”
“But the prince remains mindless.”
“Then we must pray his will is strong enough to withstand his brush with the Weir. If the prince could be broken to our cause, his skill at augury would serve our master well.”
“Aye, but what of his companions in the dungeon?”
The figure shifted in the tub. “They’ll be kindling for our fire. We shall use their tortures to help forge the young prince. We will not lose him as we did his father.” The bather slid deep into the tub. “Though in truth, even that matter did not end entirely without gain; this body I wear has grown quite comfortable. I had forgotten the delights of the physical flesh. Like this bath . . . and fine wine.” A hand, barely discernable through the steamy mists, reached to a glass as red as blood. The bather sipped at the wine, savoring it, then lowered the glass and stood.
The sudden motion stirred the steam in whorled eddies. “When the prince wakes, we’ll break him to our will. Where we failed with the father, we’ll succeed with the son.”
The mists parted as the figure stepped from the bath, naked. The snowy beard that trailed over the broad chest belied the feminine voice.
Tyrus gasped, reaching out of the wall, unmindful of exposing himself. “Father!”
The room’s two occupants turned in his direction, startled.
Before he was spotted, Tyrus yanked his arms back inside the granite.
“Did you hear something just then?”
The d’warf nodded, his long ears twitching. “A muffled outburst. Maybe from the next room.”
“Go search!”
The d’warf captain fled.
The naked figure strode to the wall, standing before it. Hands rose to explore the surface. Tyrus hovered frozen in the stone, half an arm’s length away. He searched his father’s face, seeing a man he had spent a decade mourning. His arms ached to reach out and hold his father in his arms, but Tyrus knew King Ry was no longer there. The eyes before him were cold and glowed with cruel fires.
Fists clenching, Tyrus bit back a scream of rage.
The squat captain returned, ax in hand. “The rooms are empty.”
The figure turned savagely, his voice ice. “Check on our prisoners.”
“Aye, my lord.” Captain Brytton bowed out of the room.
Now only father and son remained—along with something foul wearing King Ry’s form. “I can smell you,” the demon whispered to the empty air. “The scent of blood in the walls.”
The figure moved back to the bath, voice raising, the feminine lilt growing hard and frosted. “I don’t know what trick of magick this is, but I’ll find whoever you are and twist you to our end. This I promise!”
As Tyrus watched, a darkness exuded from his father’s body, flowing from every pore. Tendrils of dark smoke probed the mists, hunting for him.
Tyrus dared not risk capture—not when the others were counting on him. He sank down the wall, dropping away. The movement must have been sensed. The demon sprang toward his hiding spot, clawed nails bared.
But Tyrus was already gone, sunk into the lower depths of the castle, wending his way back toward the main wall.
As he moved, tears flowed down his granite cheeks.
Father!
7
AS THE MOON climbed the night sky, Mycelle hurried down the woodland trail toward the glow of the encampment around Castle Mryl. She did not bother trying to hide. The trail ended at the forest’s edge. The Northwall and Castle Mryl loomed before her, a hundred paces away.
Taking a deep breath, Mycelle stepped out into the open and strode toward the sentry line of the outer camp. Around her upper arm, under her thick leather jerkin, the paka’golo snake curled in agitation. It must smell the magick given off by the Wall. Once Mycelle herself could have sensed the great well of power here; her ability as a seeker had been keen. But no longer. Risen from the dead by the small snake’s magick, she had traded one ability for another—seeking for shape-shifting.
Mycelle walked up to one of the outer sentries and lifted an arm in greeting. He just nodded at her, bored, leaning on a pike. She hurried past, eyes down.
Her deception had held. Earlier, Mycelle’s group had waylaid a trio of d’warf hunters. It had not been hard. Meric had lowered the Stormwing and dropped four of his kin into the trees, armed with poisoned crossbows. They had quickly dispatched the thick-bodied hunters, then signaled the all clear. After the attack, Mycelle had joined the archers. Choosing carefully, she had rolled the smallest of the dead d’warves, a female, on its back. Leaning over the slack form, she had studied the body and face, then shaped her own physique to match. Once satisfied with her appearance, she had quickly donned the target’s clothes and cinched her own weapons in place, hidden under an outer furred cloak.
The elv’in bowmen then clambered back up the ropes to the waiting ship, leaving Mycelle to traverse the trails alone back to Castle Mryl. Her goal: to reach the upper heights of the castle and eliminate any stray eyes so the Stormwing could moor.
“How was the night’s hunting?” a squat guard asked in the d’warvish tongue as she passed. He sat on a stool, honing his ax.
Mycelle swung around, quickly translating the words in her head. She shoved aside a cloak and revealed a trio of skinned hares hanging from her belt. “The Grim have left us little to hunt.”
The guard nodded, concentrating on his ax. “Damned ghouls. Shrieking and wailing all the time. Makes my skin twitch.”
Mycelle grunted and continued down the rows of tents and billets. She adjusted her cloak, nervous as she worked her way through the wide camp. With most of the host asleep in their tents, no others accosted her.
She soon reached the gates in the outer curtain wall of Castle Mryl. Two guards were posted. They straightened as she neared, pikes shifting in their grips.
Mycelle bit back a curse and kept her head down as she marched up to them. She did not want her amber eyes betraying her true heritage.
A long pike tipped with a steel blade lowered across her path, blocking the way. “What manner of business do you have here at this time of night?”
Mycelle again parted her cloak, revealing the trio of hares. “Late-night meal for the captain of the guards. He asked I bring him something tasty.” She let her cloak open farther to reveal her figure’s ample bosom, shape-shifting slightly to swell the fullness even more. “Are these tasty enough to pass inspection?” she asked with a lascivious grin, tilting one hip to make the rabbits sway.
Neither guard noticed the hares.
With a single finger, Mycelle reached and slid aside the pike. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve heard the captain’s grown quite hungry.”
There was no resistance as she sauntered past, only a mumbled protest. “That damn captain gets all the best—”
“—rabbits,” his partner finished.
Both guards guffawed and settled back to their posts.
Mycelle continued across the central keep. Though the night had grown cold, sweat pebbled her brow. Her limbs threatened to shake. She had to concentrate on walking slowly.
Climbing the stairs toward the main entrance to the castle, Mycelle found the way thankfully unguarded. It seemed the marauding force had grown complacent, content with the security of the entrenched encampment and the legions of Grim loose in the surrounding forest.
She moved through the broken stone doors and sped deeper into the keep. She strode with more assurance, knowing her way from here. Decades ago, she had trained in these very walls, lear
ning the way of the sword, and once done, she had sworn fealty to King Ry in the great feasting hall. But as she climbed the twining stairs and sped along the dusty passages, she barely recognized the place. The once neat and bright hallways were now dark and fouled. Broken furniture and refuse lay scattered. At the top of one stairway, she found the old bones of a defender tumbled in a corner, bits of leather and cloth still clinging to them. She turned her face away and hurried on, chased by ghosts, while rats and other vermin scurried from her path.
This was not the castle she remembered.
Still, though the insides had been defiled, the structure was the same. Mycelle followed the last of the winding staircases to the topmost level. She marched toward the terrace’s open parapet. At the door, she paused to check her weapons.
According to last night’s reconnoitering, there were two guards.
Leaning against the door, she braced herself. No alarm must be raised. She slipped out her pair of throwing daggers and palmed them, testing their weight. Satisfied, she pulled the door’s latch and rolled through. One of the guards swung around at the squeak of hinges. She flew toward them.
“What are you—?” The first d’warf’s words were sliced from his throat by the dagger now protruding from under his chin. Blood spouted as he coughed and bumped backward.
His companion was a moment too slow in recognizing his fellow guardsman’s distress. Before he could turn, Mycelle was there, jamming her second dagger into the soft spot where the spine met the skull. She slammed the heel of her hand against the pommel, driving its point deep into the brain. His body spasmed, his wide mouth opening and closing, silently gasping. Then his muscles gave out, and he slumped to the stone.
Mycelle did not witness the end of her handiwork. The first d’warf had ripped the dagger from his own throat and tossed it aside. In his other hand appeared a long-hafted ax. He tried to sound the alarm, but all that came out was a gurgle, his voice box a bloody ruin.
Backing a step, Mycelle took in the situation. The advantage of surprise was gone. The soldier spun his ax skillfully, fire and hate in his eyes. She did not like her odds. Twin-hearted, d’warves were hard to kill, and she wore an unfamiliar form—but she had neither time nor magickal reserve to shift.
The d’warf attacked.
Mycelle whipped out her twin swords, caught the ax’s haft in her crossed blades, and turned it away. The axhead struck the granite floor, casting sparks at her heels. Mycelle danced, spinning and thrusting her sword deep into her attacker’s belly.
With a growl, the d’warf heaved around, dragging the hilt from Mycelle’s hand.
Mycelle backed, reduced to one weapon. She cursed her current form. It was too slow, too thick-fingered.
The d’warf, her sword hilt showing under his rib cage, swung on Mycelle. Blood frothed his thick lips. The impaled blade had not fazed the creature, no more than a thorn in his side. His ax spun again.
The next strike aimed for Mycelle’s head. With no hope of deflecting the heavy weapon, she didn’t even try. Instead she lunged toward her attacker, bringing herself under his guard. The oak haft struck her shoulder, driving her to her knees. Using both hands, she drove her second sword up into his belly, then rolled away.
Shoving to her feet, she twisted around.
The d’warf had dropped to one knee, now impaled with two blades, the last of Mycelle’s weapons. Using his ax as a crutch, he pushed himself up and glared at her. He glanced to her empty hands, and a bloody sneer formed as he straightened.
Now what? Mycelle thought. She found her back against the parapet wall. Her left arm was almost limp, numbed by the blow to her shoulder.
With a muted roar of victory, he rushed her, ax raised high.
Reacting on pure instinct, Mycelle dropped to the stone floor, legs sliding out from under her, her back striking the granite hard. She ignored the blade aiming for her face and lifted her feet. She caught the d’warf in the belly.
He let out a loud oof, blood spraying from his lips—but still his ax fell.
She kicked out with her feet, driving his bulk a single step back. Thrown off balance, the ax struck the stone of the parapet just to the side of Mycelle’s head. She felt the jar of the impact in her legs.
Reaching past her knees, she grabbed the hilts of her twin swords. In a clean sweep, she unsheathed them from the guard’s belly.
He groaned and fell toward her, meaning to pin her.
Mycelle let him. In a flash of blades, she crossed her swords before her and kicked the guard’s legs out from under him, accelerating his fall atop her.
Surprised, he tumbled, his neck falling squarely between the crossed blades. The weight of his fall against the twin razored blades finished the work started by the first dagger. His neck was sliced all the way to his spine. He landed atop Mycelle, bleeding a hot lake across her face and upper chest.
Mycelle strained to move him, but he was too heavy. Blood filled her mouth and nose. She spat and choked on it, coughing, close to drowning. Then the twin pumps in his chest ceased their chugging beats, and the flow slowed enough for her to catch her breath.
Still, she was trapped. He was too massive, too wide. Giving up, she fumbled to a pocket and pulled free a silver coin, the prince’s coin: on one side, a leaping snow leopard, on the other, the visage of the prince’s father, King Ry.
She kissed the elder’s face, thanking him for her training, then closed her eyes. Xin, she silently willed. Xin, hear me.
Almost immediately, the coin grew warm in her hand. “I hear you.”
She signed in relief. Earlier, it had been decided to use the coin to signal the ship, a silent dispatch. Xin had been awaiting her call.
“The way is clear,” she said. “Bring the ship in.”
“It will be done. We come now.”
Mycelle pulled the coin close to her lips. “Hurry . . .”
KRAL STARED ACROSS the cell at Lord Tyrus. The prince was curled on a pile of straw. Ever since the man’s journey through the stone, Tyrus had grown ashen and sullen. Kral matched his mood.
Last night, the prince had popped back through the cell’s wall, startling them all. Grabbing up the shreds of his clothes, he had hurriedly draped his naked form and hissed for them to remain quiet, warning that Captain Brytton was on his way down to check on them. Settling to the floor, Tyrus feigned to be still lost in a mindless nightmare, while the others sprawled about the cell, looking tired and hopeless.
The prince’s warning quickly proved true.
Moments later, the squat captain had shouted his way down the row of cells, stopping at their cage. He had stared between the bars, studying each for any subterfuge. Satisfied that his prisoners were still secured, he had grunted angrily and swung away.
Later, Tyrus had explained what he overheard in the royal chambers—a foul plot unfolding in the north. He had also reported how his father’s body had been possessed by a demon. Since then, Tyrus had remained distant.
Hearing the news, Kral also withdrew. So the Dark Lord seeded some plot in the north—at the Citadel. He cringed at the thought. Whether he was a servant or not, Kral could not stomach his ancestral home being tainted and possibly corrupted by black magicks. Conflicting loyalties twisted inside his chest: one forged in darkfire, the other formed of stone. As the day wore on, the answer slowly dawned in Kral. He had already defied the Dark Lord by coming here, abandoning the hunt for the wit’ch. Having started down this path, he would see it to the end. The Citadel would be his people’s again, even if it meant thwarting his master’s plan here.
Mogweed spoke up from across the cell, drawing Kral back to the present, where he sensed that night had again fallen. Mogweed nudged Tyrus. “I still don’t see why you can’t just walk through the walls and get the keys. Free us. Why are we rotting here in these dungeons?”
Tyrus, his eyes shadowed with circles, shook his head. “And what then? There are over a legion of d’warves camped at the castle’s gates. We’d be
recaptured, and my secret would be revealed. As long as I feign unconsciousness, it’ll buy us time. I’ll hunt again this night when the guard here is lighter and see if I can learn more, something to free us.”
Mogweed slumped back against the wall. “I hate this waiting.”
“You’d hate more being in a d’warf’s stew pot,” Nee’lahn snapped irritably. It was the first time the nyphai had spoken all day. She looked sickly. Her skin was blotched, her lips dried and shrunken. Her hair hung lifeless to her shoulders.
Tyrus pushed to one elbow. “Enough squabbling. I’ll go search again. If the dungeon guard is light enough, I can try taking them out, giving you all a chance to escape, but I’m staying here.”
Kral grumbled. “If you stay, so do I.”
“And I,” Nee’lahn whispered hoarsely.
All their eyes turned to Mogweed. He sighed dramatically. “I’m not going by myself.”
Kral nodded. “Then it’s decided. Tyrus, you search for any means for us to leave here. I’ve heard tales of secret passages that run the length of the Northwall. What if we could make it to one of those?”
Tyrus frowned. “The passages are just myth. They don’t exist. There is only one secret path, a secret means of escape in case of attack. But I don’t think we want to tread that path.”
“Where does it lead?” Kral asked.
“To the Dire Fell, the dark wood beyond the Wall, to the forest of the wraiths. But there is no salvation in that wood. None may walk it safely. It would be better to die in battle than be a meal for the Grim. Growing up here, I never understood why this secret exit was even built.”
“I know,” Nee’lahn said in a dry rasp.
Tyrus glanced at her in surprise. “Why?”
She shook her head. “It no longer matters. You’re right. That path now only leads to a doom worse than death.”
The prince’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. She met his gaze, unblinking.
Kral broke the silence. “The night is full. Mayhap it would be best if you traveled the Wall again. See what you can learn. I wager our captors’ patience wears thin. I’ve seen how the passing guards have eyed our cell with hunger.”