It was no eye. It marked where the bloody thumb of the fire god, Takaminara, had been burnt into his flesh, branding him as one of her true acolytes.
“I am rub-aki,” Orquell said quietly.
“One of the Blood-eyed seers.”
She pictured him rocking before his tiny pyre, sprinkling alchemy, and speaking to the flame. His fire had not been born of some forbidden Grace, but of something much older, a seer’s rites ancient and rare. His mistress was not the daemoness below, but a god in a distant land, the reclusive Takaminara.
But why the disguise, the face paint?
Before she could inquire, Orquell returned his attention to his ministrations of Delia. “We don’t have much time. We must get her back on her feet and moving.”
He leaned over and puffed his fistful of powder into Delia’s face. She inhaled it sharply as if it burnt. Her eyes fluttered open. She gasped, steam rising from her lips with some alchemy of fire.
She jerked as if startled awake, flailing an arm.
“Quickly now, boy,” Orquell said to Kytt. “Help me get her up. We must be away. They’ll be drawn by the smell of blood before long.”
Delia fought them, still dazed, but Laurelle reassured her and drew the focus of her eye. “You’re safe.”
Or so she hoped.
“Laurelle…?”
“I’m here. We must get going. You have to help us.”
Orquell met Laurelle’s gaze, nodded his thanks, and then he and Kytt helped Delia up. In a couple more steps, she was strong enough to need only Kytt’s support.
Orquell hurried ahead to the door. “We must get back to the others. Into flame and light. They’re already on the move. The blood and the dead will draw them.”
“Draw who—?”
A scream answered her, rising out in the hall to a curdling wail.
“Too late.” Orquell turned to them, his crimson eye blazing in the lamplight. “The witch is loose.”
18
A RIVER OF FIRE
“THE POISON OF THE JINX BAT STOPS BOTH HEART AND breath,” the old man said as he leaned over Brant’s body, ear to the boy’s chest.
Tylar stood to the side. They gathered in a glade, not far from the Huntress’s castillion, but the forest lay dense around them, keeping them well cloaked and hidden. He was relieved to find Lorr and Malthumalbaen already here, somehow escaped.
And with their weapons.
Tylar strapped on his swords, belting Rivenscryr to one hip, the knight’s sword to the other. He straightened, aching and sore, near to crippled from their mad flight. He had already wrapped his hand and bound the ache of his broken rib. Still, he limped carefully toward the boy on the litter.
They had already broken the poisoned arrowhead, pulled the shaft, and packed the wound with healing firebalm. But there was a greater concern.
Dart knelt on Brant’s far side, shadowed by Lorr and the giant. All their faces were grim. Krevan and Calla checked their glade’s periphery, eyeing the motley-dressed young hunters, some who probably hadn’t seen ten summers.
Rogger stood off to the side, talking earnestly with Harp, the leader of the band, if only by sheer height. Tylar recognized that the boy was probably younger than Brant.
The only elder here worked on Brant.
“Lucky for us,” the old man said as he straightened, “our giant jungle bat likes its meat fresh after it has laid up its prey. Its venom slows rot and decay, holds it at bay for a time. But that time’s about run out.”
He snapped a finger at one of the boys, who hurried forward with two hollowed stems of a whiskerpine. The lad had been packing the stems with a downy powder.
The man accepted the pipes and leaned over Brant.
He had introduced himself as Sheershym, one-time scholar and master at the school here. No longer. He still wore a master’s robes, but they were shabby and stained. Stubble covered his bald pate, obscuring the tattoos of his mastered disciplines. It was rare to find a master who didn’t keep his head shaved proudly. Tylar read one of his sigils, designating skill in the healing arts, but the mark looked nearly faded. The freshest tattoos concentrated on histories, scholariums, and alchemies of mnelopy, the study of dreams and memory, fitting for one who delved into the deep past of Myrillia.
Not so useful for healing.
Still, he seemed to know what he was doing.
The man placed the end of each stem into one of Brant’s nostrils. He nodded to Dart. “Lass, would you mind covering his mouth and pinching his nose closed around the pipes?”
She nodded and did as he instructed, her face pale with worry.
Sheershym bent and slipped the other ends of the pipe into his own mouth. He exhaled sharply through the stems, blowing the powder deep and puffing up Brant’s thin chest with his own breath. He held that pose for a long moment, face reddening. Then he straightened, drawing the pipes out Brant’s nose.
Brant’s chest sighed down.
The master waved Dart back. “Now we’ll see. That’s all we can do.”
They all stared.
Brant still lay unmoving, but slowly his body seemed to relax, muscles sagging, as if he had been slightly clenched, holding death away by stubborn will.
“Is he—?” Dart began to tearfully inquire.
The master held up a hand.
Brant’s chest suddenly swelled and collapsed with a contented sigh.
Malthumalbaen let out a whoop that scattered a pair of skipperwings from their canopy nest. The resulting frowns quickly silenced him, but they failed to dim the relief shining from his eyes.
“What manner of alchemy was that?” Rogger asked, stepping to them with Harp.
The boy answered for the master. “Dreamsmoke, from the Farallon lotus petal.”
Sheershym nodded. “When smoked in water pipes, it brings a sense of peace and giddiness, but in its purest alchemy it also bears great healing Grace. We’ll have to carry the boy from here. The smoke will have him dozing for a good three bells. He’ll rise from his bed with no worse than a pounding in his head.”
“Better that than rising from his grave,” Rogger mumbled.
Sheershym stood with a groan, supporting his old back, and rolled an eye at Rogger. “It is said there were once alchemies even for that. Hidden in a tome, scribed on leathered human skin. The Nekralikos Arcanum. Written by the tongueless one himself.” He shrugged. “But who can say if it’s true? If you look long enough into the past, memory becomes dream.”
“Or so says Daronicus,” Rogger said.
Sheershym’s left eyebrow rose in surprise. “You know Harshon Daronicus?”
Rogger shrugged. “I’ve read his work in its original Littick. A long time ago. Another life.”
“Truly? Where—?”
“Master Sheershym,” Harp said, interrupting, “perhaps we can leave this talk until we’re beyond the burn.”
He nodded. “Certainly. We should be off. The Huntress will be upon our heels like a ravening dog at any moment.”
They quickly broke down the small camp. Krevan carried one end of the litter and the giant the other. Several boys vanished into the forest to either side, barely stirring a leaf.
“They’ll clear our back trail,” Harp said. “And lay false ones.”
Tylar walked with the boy and the master near the front of the band as it snaked through the woods. “How long have you been hiding out here?”
“Since the winnowing,” the master said grimly. “Beginning of the last full shine of the lesser moon. Some forty days.”
Tylar pictured the mass of skilled hunters that had circled the Grove and ambushed them. He remembered the unerring flight of their arrows. “And you’ve dodged capture all this time? How?”
“Not without losses,” Harp said grimly. “Especially when her hunters started poisoning their arrows. Her madness grows worse with each setting sun.”
“What happened here?”
The boy haltingly told the story of Saysh Mal, of t
he Huntress’s ravening, of her slaughter, how she began with only a hundred hunters, bound and burned to her, then spread her wickedness.
“Wells were poisoned with her blood, binding all to her will,” Harp said. “Her corruption spread. Mothers and fathers shaved the stakes used against their own children. Those weak of limb were cut down. What you saw back in the Grove is only the barest glimpse of what lies rotting under the canopy.”
“Only the strongest were allowed to live and serve her,” Sheershym finished.
Tylar’s voice was driven soft by the horrors described. “How did you all escape such slaughter?”
“We fled. Three score of us. The master had old maps of the hinterlands. We sought to flee Saysh Mal, to escape into the hinter.” He made a quiet scoffing sound and shook his head.
“A sorry state when the hinterlands offer better succor than your own settled realm.”
“And still we wouldn’t have lived. Not without her help.”
“Whose help?”
Harp waved a dismissive hand, done with reliving the nightmare. “You’ll see soon enough. Best save your breath.”
Tylar didn’t argue. He was finding it harder to match even the elder’s pace. His side throbbed, shortening his breaths, and his knee remained locked up painfully. He could barely move it.
“How long have you been crippled up?” Sheershym asked him, nodding toward his gait.
Tylar shook his head. Now it was his turn to prefer silence. He didn’t understand the growing ruin of his body. Why had he failed to summon the naethryn back on the balcony? Had it become permanently imprisoned? Was the cost of its release more than a single broken bone? He recalled when all this had first started, down in the cellars of Tashijan. The finger that hadn’t healed.
What had gone awry?
“Once we reach our main camp,” Sheershym said, “I’ll attend your injuries. See what I can do to help.”
Tylar merely nodded.
“We had such hope,” the master mumbled.
Tylar glanced at him, hearing the pain.
“When we spotted your flippercraft, we believed it marked the end of the Huntress’s reign. And if not that, then at least rescue.”
Harp snorted. In the end, it had been Tylar’s party that had needed the rescuing.
Sheershym pointed ahead. “Once safe, you’ll have to explain how the Godslayer ended up in Saysh Mal. I wager it wasn’t a chance visit.”
Tylar nodded. “I’m afraid we may need more than your hospitality. Do you still have those old maps of the hinterlands?”
The master’s brow crinkled as he looked over at Tylar. He slowly nodded. “Our camp is secure. It is madness to think to venture out there.”
“Madness seems rampant of late across Myrillia,” Tylar mumbled darkly. He ended any further discussion by drifting back along the line, favoring his knee. He settled next to the litter bearing Brant, still borne by Krevan and Malthumalbaen.
Dart walked on the far side. “He continues to slumber,” she reported. “Though I heard him mumbling in his sleep. I thought he was asking for my help. But then he seemed angry, mumbling about letting someone burn.”
Tylar frowned, recalling a similar cryptic utterance. The words had stayed with him.
HELP THEM…FREE THEM…LET THEM ALL BURN
He also remembered Mirra screaming at him. Kill the boy…before he wakes them! What did any of it mean? What was it about Brant? He found his gaze drifting to the one thing that tied him to all this.
The stone rested at the hollow of his throat.
Dart noted his attention. “It is pretty—”
Tylar glanced to her.
Her eyes remained on the stone, then slowly shifted to him. “Do you think it’s true? That the stone came from the home of the gods.”
Tylar realized the weight of those words to Dart, a child of these same gods. If the Huntress was correct, the stone was also a piece of her lost home, a world she’d never seen.
Until now.
Her gaze returned to it, her face worried yet frosted with wonder.
Rogger broke the spell, ambling up to them, nose crinkled. “Do you smell something burning?”
Dart gaped at the swath of ruin ahead. It cut through the jungle, a river of black rock, steaming, cracked in places to reveal its molten, fiery heart. They gathered on one bank, still green, though tributaries of burnt forest stretched outward. They had edged along one such tributary to reach this place. The firestorm, ignited by the molten flow, had burnt the jungle down to the loam, leaving stretches of forest charred to trunks, blackened spires spreading in great tracks, eerily reminiscent of the stakes back in the Grove.
At least there were no bodies here.
“What happened?” Tylar asked, voicing aloud the question for all.
Harp stood beside Dart. He pointed to the south, to the headwaters of the black river. A mountain rose into the sky, far taller than the peaks across the river. Snow crowned its summit, glinting in the sun.
“Takaminara,” Dart whispered, naming both god and mountain. She remembered Brant describing it earlier, the sleeping volcano. It slept no longer.
“She saved us,” Harp said and pointed across the ruin. A bit of green forest could be seen on the far side, pinched between the western mountain ranges. “We fled toward the hinterland beyond the Divide, where the mountains fall into the lower wild lands. But the Huntress found us. She led two hundred of her best against us. Two hundred against three score. We were too young, too old, too weak. We would never make the hinter in time. Neither could we withstand such a force against us. So we kept running well into the night. First one moon rose, then the other. We helped each other as best we could, but as we reached the foot of the western mountain passes, the weakest, the oldest, the youngest began to falter on the steeper slopes. All seemed hopeless.
“Then in the darkest part of the night, the ground began to tremor. Leaves shook, trunks cracked. And behind us, the land split open in a thunderous crack. Fiery rock surged up, brilliant in the darkness. It separated our group from the hunters, raising a river between us, impassable. The hunters were driven off with flame and clouds of brimstone. The wound in her land sent the Huntress deep into seclusion.”
Harp stared toward the mountain. “She protected us, sheltered us.”
“Why?” Dart asked. “It is not her realm.”
“Takaminara might have sensed the corruption here,” Rogger said. “Probably had an eye turned in this direction. Perhaps she had witnessed enough slaughter, so lashed out as best she could to protect what was left.”
“Or shake the Huntress back to her sensibilities,” Tylar said. “The Huntress is a god of loam. To tear her realm must have struck her like the lash of a whip, one that cut deep. No wonder she retreated into hiding, to lick her wounds.”
Krevan overheard their conversation. “But why did Takaminara act at all? It is rare enough for a god to assault a neighboring realm. And that one, buried in her mountain, barely acknowledges the outer world as it is.”
Harp turned from his grateful gaze upon the mountain. “Whatever her reason, she saved us. The Huntress avoids this place. Refuses to let her hunters cross. Our camp on the far side remains secure. But we don’t know how long such fear will last. Or if Takaminara will act a second time to protect us. For days afterward, her volcano rumbled, yellow steam issued from a thousand cracks. But now the mountain sleeps again.”
Dart heard the worry in his voice.
“And it’s safe to cross now?” Malthumalbaen asked, carrying the rear of Brant’s litter, eyeing one of the glowing cracks.
“If you know the right path,” Harp said and started across the rock.
Dart followed. “Where are we going?”
Harp pointed to the two tallest spires ahead. The tips of the peaks glowed above shrouds of mists and smudgy smoke. “Our camp lies between the Anvil and the Hammer.”
Rogger squinted. “In other words, within the Forge?”
; Harp glanced back and nodded.
They continued in a stretched line across the frozen black river. Dart felt the heat of the rock through the soles of her boots. All around, thin vents wept steam, smelling of brimstone and staining the surrounding rock yellow, turning the cracks into festering wounds.
Pupp kept close to her side, sensing her unease, glowing a bit brighter as if challenging the heat with his own molten form.
On the opposite side of Brant’s litter, Rogger dropped closer to Tylar.
“The Forge,” the thief whispered to Tylar and nodded toward Brant. “Where the boy and his father found Keorn’s burning form. Seems we’ve just about come full circle.”
“But where from there?” Tylar mumbled. He held his wrapped hand over his left side, favoring it. His limp had grown much worse.
Behind them, a sharp trill of a jungle loon rose from farther out in the forest, as if calling to them, warning them.
Ahead, Harp glanced back, eyes narrowed with suspicion. He didn’t say anything, but he increased their pace.
Words died among them as the heat rose and noxious seeps tainted the air. Ahead, the green beach beckoned with a promise of shade and dripping canopy, but it grew too slowly.
With no choice, they marched onward as the sun sank before them. The twin peaks of the Forge—the Anvil and the Hammer—blazed ever brighter. Dart’s eyes ached at the glare, but she could not turn away. It was their destination.
At long last, the line of jungle swelled, and the rock under foot cooled as they left behind the deeper flows near the river’s center. They stumbled gratefully off the rock and into the welcoming embrace of shade and green leaf.
“The way is steeper from here,” Harp warned. “But it’s not much farther. If you look to that cliff, you can see one of our watchtowers, where we can watch the burn and spy for any trespass against us.”
Dart squinted. Half-blinded by the heat and glare, all she was able to discern atop the indicated cliff was a shroud of trees. She bit back a groan. They might not have far to go, but it was high.
For Tylar, it was both too far and too high.
He suddenly sank to a fallen log, half-collapsing. His black hair was slicked to his scalp with his own sweat. His face shone with exhaustion and was etched with deep lines by pain. Near the end of their fording of the black river, he had leaned heavily on the giant. His bad leg seemed to have twisted under him, bowing, turning his heel. He cradled his arm with the bandaged hand to his chest. His fingers poking from the wrapping looked as if they had already healed, but crookedly.
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