“We all know our parts, Flawless,” Goll interrupted. “You focus on yours.” He winced. “It is not a pleasant one.”
“Yeah. All right.”
Bershad drew his sword and headed forward, following the ceramic pipe’s line.
He passed scores of Ghost Moth carcasses as he moved forward. Some were hatchlings, no larger than a white-tailed deer. Others were hulking matriarchs—their bodies rising out of the gloom like ragged hills.
All of them had pipes running out of their carcasses.
The landscape began to change again, but not in the way Bershad expected. Everything had been getting more infected the farther inland they went. But instead of more fetid puddles, corrupted creatures, and blackened mushrooms, Bershad started seeing clear pools of water full of blue-shelled snails. Brightly capped mushrooms began poking through the muck and pocking the ceramic pipes. Their colors reminded Bershad of Dainwood songbirds—yellow, pink, orange, green, blue.
The mushrooms became more and more frequent, until eventually Bershad couldn’t see the pipe at all, just a channel of fungal color. Their scent was so potent it almost felt thick in his nostrils, like honey. But the spiraling pattern of cap colors was too orderly and geometric to be natural. Someone had planted these individually. Cared for them.
The channel led him to a sheer wall of vibrant mushrooms that sprawled toward the sky, growing along a skeleton of metal beams and copper mesh. There was a circular hole in the barrier that Bershad stepped through. He bent down near the edge of the interior. Looked around. Ahead, the channel of mushrooms expanded into a spiraling garden, with hundreds of different types and sizes and colors. Looking up, Bershad caught his first glimpse of a clear blue sky since they crossed the bone wall. No fungal haze. Just a wisp of a cloud.
And then a flash of gray hide.
The Nomad.
When she passed overhead, a burst of sensation poured across Bershad’s skin. Sparked his senses. The rotten smell of the giant filled his nose. The sound of his lumpy, fungus-ridden heartbeat squelched in his ears. He could sense Wendell’s pulse, too, which was clear and strong but also hammering with panicked fear. And Kasamir’s, which was consistent and calm.
The Nomad began to circle the tunnel to the sky, giving Bershad the chance to focus his hearing on Kasamir. The sounds of his hands working rough dirt filled his ears like a mudslide. Beneath the sounds of moving earth, Bershad could hear Kasamir whispering under his breath.
“The boy will make a good crop,” he muttered. “Next to the Pargossian sailors, perhaps? No. No. Too acidic for his young flesh. The aged batch of Ghalamarian soldiers? Yes … yes, that is the spot. The Ionitian tendrils will treat him well.” He turned to the giant. “Clear off the top soil of plot seven.”
Bershad could just barely see the hulking, mushroom-festooned shoulders of the giant thrusting up and down through the undergrowth. The sound of dirt flying.
“Gently. Gently. We want to expose the tendrils, not sever them.”
The giant paused. Groaned. Resumed digging.
“That’s it. Much better.”
Bershad listened a while longer. Along with the digging and the whispers, he could hear the steady scrape of a sharpening stone against rough steel.
The Nomad dipped lower in the sky without warning. The proximity released a cascade of new sensations. Those three weren’t the only living creatures in this grove—suddenly Bershad could also feel hundreds more, all of them buried beneath the ground at various levels. For a moment, he assumed they were burrowing animals. Groundhogs and rodents and such. But their heartbeats all matched the same calm cadence of Kasamir’s. And they all had the familiar weight of a specific creature. Humans.
Bershad tried to pull the Nomad a little closer, but as a response she veered away, taking the burst of sensation with her.
“You might as well come out in the open, lizard killer,” Kasamir called. “There is no reason for the two of us to play games.”
“Fair enough.”
Bershad stood up. Dusted the loamy soil off his knees, and walked down a garden row. The mushroom caps in this row were blue and yellow—glowing with the iridescent and clean pallor of an oyster’s shell. He noticed that when his boots fell near a mushroom, the fungus recoiled from his foot the same way a startled rodent will scurry into the undergrowth when you surprise it.
Bershad stopped when he was about twenty strides from Kasamir and the giant. Wendell was hog-tied at their feet, drool leaking around his gag. Eyes wide with terror. Bershad could smell the boy’s urine drying against his pant leg.
There was a freshly dug pit in front of them that was about a stride deep. A tangle of purple roots sprouted from the open hole. They were wreathed in green fungus that smelled strongly of valerian root.
“So, you managed to cross my barrier,” Kasamir said. “I give you credit for perseverance, but you have made a very foolish choice. I built the wall to keep the corruption contained.”
“Uh-huh.” Bershad motioned to the boy and the pit. “And what’re we up to here?”
“Restoring the balance that Osyrus Ward tore asunder.”
“How’s that working out? ’Cause things still looked pretty chewed up on my walk in here.”
Kasamir’s pale lips curled. “Sarcasm. A blunt tool, clutched tight by morons. You know nothing of my accomplishments. My years of careful carving and craft. This garden used to be a pit of chemicals and acid and degradation, now look at it.” He raised his hands, and with them, every mushroom cap swelled and stretched. “The sky is clear once again. The ground clean.”
“Pretty sure the ground is full of people that you buried alive. Wouldn’t call that clean.”
“Ah. Of course. Your lizard came through here with her hunter’s senses. A Gray-Winged Nomad, yes? Interesting breed. Interesting implications.”
“Fuck your implications. I came for the boy.”
“But you did not come alone. Your three friends cannot hide from me. Tell them to enter my garden.” Kasamir gestured behind Bershad, where Ashlyn, Goll, and Vash had set up on the fringes, pretending to hide.
“They’re good where they are,” Bershad said, glad to hear Kasamir’s incorrect count. “Give me the boy and I’ll leave you to tend your fucked-up garden in peace.”
“The boy will join me in the yoke of equilibrium. There is nothing you can do to stop his journey.”
“Let’s test the truth of that notion.”
Bershad reared back and heaved his sword at Kasamir’s chest.
It was truly a beautiful throw. Moving with enough force to slice a plate-armored warden in half or puncture deep into a dragon’s heart. Problem was, the giant’s arm blurred with motion, and he caught the sword by the cross guard like a chameleon snatching flies from the surface of a bog. He glared at the blade as if a bird had just taken a shit on his palm. Tried to shake it off. But the edge had cut deep into the meat of his hand and gotten stuck there.
Kasamir hadn’t flinched. Hadn’t broken eye contact with Bershad.
“You keep getting separated from your sword, lizard killer. I’m not a warrior, but that specific tactic does not seem wise.”
Bershad shrugged. “Never been accused of wisdom with much regularity.”
“Well. Wise men and stupid men die in a similar fashion.”
Kasamir’s cloak twitched. The giant lumbered forward, gaining momentum and speed with each step. He raised the club over his head.
Bershad popped the rest of the Gods Moss into his mouth, which was a nugget about the size of a crow’s egg. Swallowed it with effort. Stood his ground as the moss’s strength coursed through his veins.
“This better work,” he muttered. Then closed his eyes.
The giant’s club caught him on the left side of his chest. As Bershad was lifted off the ground, he felt his rib cage and pelvis shatter. When he landed, a bunch of his ruined ribs speared into his lungs and liver. He stayed facedown, letting the Gods Moss work. When most of the dam
age was healed, he looked up from the soft, loamy dirt.
The giant was about fifty strides away. He’d already turned around, showing Bershad his back, which was covered with angry red mushrooms.
“That far enough?” Bershad groaned to Ashlyn. He’d landed about ten strides away from her.
“Not quite.”
“Figured.”
With an effort, Bershad got to his knees, then to his feet.
“Hey. Asshole.”
The giant stopped. Turned.
“Yeah. You. Asshole. Gonna take more than a tap to kill me.”
The giant’s jaw opened slightly, releasing a long, frustrated breath. Kasamir stepped forward. “So, you’ve learned what the moss does,” he said. “That explains how you survived a sword through your spine.”
“Naw, you missed my spine. Mostly caught stomach, which isn’t a big deal. I’ve regrown the old food bag dozens of times.”
“You don’t understand our curse, lizard killer. Ending your life is a kindness.”
Bershad shrugged. Ignored the implications of that statement. He couldn’t afford to get distracted.
“Get on with it, then. I like it when people do me favors.”
Kasamir smiled. “Very well. Let’s see if you can regrow your brain after we pound it to mush.”
The giant’s body twitched with irritation, then he twisted on his heels and rushed back to Bershad. Club raised.
This time, Bershad kept his eyes wide open.
The giant tried the same attack as before—a powerful uppercut. Kasamir was right—he wasn’t a warrior. A true killer stays unpredictable.
Bershad shifted to the right so the club whooshed past him in a rush of air. The giant brought the club down in a backswing as soon as Kasamir realized he’d missed, but there was a delay between realization and action. Not much—the skinny bastard could have been a master puppeteer in another life—but it was all that Bershad needed. The shadow of the club flickered, and Bershad ducked to the left. A spray of mushroom shrapnel splashed across his face.
“Little too slow there, Kasamir,” Bershad said, backpedaling. “C’mon. You wanna do me that kindness, you gotta move faster.”
The giant unleashed a havoc of club swipes—each one faster than the next. Low. High. Low. Low. High. Bershad dodged and wove, guiding the giant farther away from both Kasamir and Ashlyn. He heard the giant’s shoulder muscles tearing from the wild rage of his blows. Kasamir was running the show, not the limitations of this hulking bastard’s limbs.
But it turned out that Bershad’s reflexes ran out of luck right before the giant’s muscles ran out of strength.
Bershad skipped left of a killing blow, but the giant tore the club through the earth, dislocating his own shoulder and catching Bershad in the right temple. He went down. Dazed.
Before he could push himself up, the club slammed down on his back.
Again.
And again.
As the third strike pancaked his spine, Bershad had one final, lucid thought before the pain made him black out.
Don’t fuck this up, Felgor.
26
ASHLYN
Ghost Moth Island, Beyond the Bone Wall
It took every ounce of Ashlyn’s willpower to remain still while the giant beat Bershad deeper and deeper into the ground with his club.
“Where is the Balarian?” Goll muttered as he fidgeted with impatience. “Flawless is getting obliterated.”
“Just wait,” Ashlyn whispered, eyes darting between the giant and Kasamir. “He’ll move when the time is right.”
Or Silas will die in the next ten seconds.
Vash remained motionless. Didn’t say anything. But he was grinding his teeth hard enough to make Ashlyn cringe.
“Come on, come on, come on,” Goll muttered.
A clump of ferns behind Kasamir twitched. Felgor shot out of them—body still coated slick with dragon liver juice. He brushed up against the right side of Kasamir’s body and then darted away again, sprinting toward Ashlyn, who leapt from her spot and rushed to meet him.
Kasamir was so surprised that he did nothing but frown at the departing Felgor—not understanding what the blur of a man had done.
“I got it!” Felgor called, rushing toward Ashlyn, holding up the black lodestone. “I got it!”
Ashlyn glanced at the giant. He was still looming over Bershad’s broken body, but he’d dropped the club. His left arm hung slack and lifeless by his side. The lodestone controlling that limb must have been the one that Felgor stole from Kasamir.
“Balarian rodent,” Kasamir hissed, coming to the same realization. His hand started twitching beneath his cloak and the giant spun away from Bershad. Charged Felgor. His dead arm flailed wild and erratic, but the other was raised, palm tightening around Bershad’s sword, which was still stuck in the meat of his hand.
Ashlyn and Felgor met a moment later. He pressed the stone into her fist.
“You grabbed the wrong stone,” Ashlyn muttered. She’d wanted the one controlling the giant’s spine.
“There wasn’t time to peruse the selection,” Felgor huffed.
The giant was twenty strides away.
She squeezed down on the lodestone. Felt a charge ripple down her forearm and into the magnet.
Nothing happened to the giant. He just kept charging.
“Uh. Ashlyn?” Felgor asked.
She squeezed harder, which strengthened the buzzing resonance in her palm enough to make her teeth hurt, but still didn’t do anything to the giant.
“Are we fucked?” Felgor’s voice was high-pitched with panic.
“No,” Ashlyn said. Jaw clenched. Heart hammering. “We’re out of range.”
She hoped.
“What does that—”
When the giant was ten strides away from them, his left arm burst apart in an explosion of rotten flesh and mushroom gore. The force of the blast was strong enough to tear through his chest and limbs. When the fungal dust settled, there was nothing left except two big feet standing in a puddle of putrid goop and black, rotten bones.
Felgor puked.
Ashlyn stood up and looked around. She didn’t see Kasamir, but she could hear him laughing. The sound was unnerving. Throaty and maniacal. It was coming from a clump of heavy ferns.
Vash jumped from his place and ran over to his son. Pulled the gag out of his mouth and started talking to him in low tones.
Ashlyn got to her feet and started moving toward the laughter. To her left, Silas was up on his knees but seemed to be having trouble rousing himself further. The right side of his body was a mess—armor battered and broken and smashed inward in dozens of places.
“You all right?” she called.
“That’s a stupid question,” he replied, struggling for breath.
“Going to die?”
“Not right this moment, no. But it’d be nice if someone could help get this armor off me before I heal into the shape of a rotten fucking pear.”
“Goll,” Ashlyn called.
The Lysterian headed toward Silas at a trot. Drew a knife and started cutting the armor off his wounded body. “I’ll sort you out, Flawless.”
Kasamir was still laughing when Ashlyn reached him, which was odd because he’d been sliced in half at the waist. His entrails were spilled across the ground and his right arm was sheared off at the elbow. She looked for his hand but didn’t see it.
“How’d that happen?” Felgor asked, coming up behind her.
Ashlyn pointed to Silas’s sword, which was stuck point-first into the earth behind Kasamir. Still smoking.
“It must have been blown over here when the giant exploded,” Ashlyn said.
“Huh,” Felgor grunted. “Can’t tell if that’s a good or bad thing.”
“Bad for you,” Kasamir said. “Irrelevant to me.”
“Looks pretty relevant from where I’m standing,” Felgor said. “Don’t even see your legs…”
“Where did Osyrus Ward take the
other dragon threads?” Ashlyn asked Kasamir.
She’d examined scores of the preserved Ghost Moths on their way into the garden, looking for threads that Osyrus hadn’t ruined with chemicals. Aside from the carcass with the Papyrian soldier hung inside of it, every spinal column was empty, but showed evidence of surgery and extraction.
“Even if you found them, it wouldn’t matter. Like I said, Osyrus touched everything on this island. There’s nothing for you here.”
“All the same. Where did he take them?”
“To the Proving Ground. That is where he took everything, once he was done with me.”
“Where is that?”
“North. But you’ll die before you get there.”
Ashlyn ignored the vague threat. Kasamir wouldn’t survive much longer. He couldn’t. She needed to scrape as much information from him as possible.
“What did Osyrus do to you?” she asked.
Kasamir smiled. His teeth were coated in bile. “You’re the one who figured out the secret to the dragon threads. You can’t figure out me? It should be obvious.”
Ashlyn looked around. She hadn’t absorbed much of her surroundings because of the fight. But now that she could look around, she saw that all the ceramic pipes Osyrus had connected to the dragons converged around a metal pallet not far from where Kasamir had planned to bury Wendell.
The pallet was designed to restrain a human, and there were twelve rubber tubes—six on each side of the pallet. They all had frayed ends that funneled into the ceramic pipes.
Ashlyn looked back at Kasamir. Saw six metal sockets running down each side of his rib cage. The sockets on the left side had been sealed over with pink scar tissue, but the ones on the right side still had severed lengths of rubber tube connected to them. The ends were leaking a yellow bile onto the ground.
“Osyrus used you to preserve the dragon bones?”
“My blood.”
Ashlyn’s skin prickled.
“You’re a Seed.”
“I am Specimen 01. The first anomaly. The dried-up, putrid well.”
Ashlyn looked back at the pallet. There were teeth marks around the frayed ends. Kasamir had chewed his way free.
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