And yet he lived. Oedandus raged within him, healing his body, making those foul shards of bone part of him, healing his flesh around them.
During the short time Medophae had housed his god, he’d been stabbed, his arms broken. His throat had even been sliced and healed. Each of those wounds had been excruciating, but the spikes of Dervon’s body burned like they had been coated in poison. And there were so many, piercing him everywhere, pinning him so he couldn’t move. All he could do was scream at the pain. His mortal mind couldn’t comprehend how he was alive and, as the excruciating seconds continued, he didn’t want to.
He begged for death.
That was when he heard his friend’s voice in his mind.
“Easy, my friend,” Zilok said. “You are stopping him. You are holding him back.”
“It hurts!”
“Bands is down. Tarithalius is losing. If you do not let Oedandus loose, we all die here,” Zilok said.
“I can’t move. I can’t think. It hurts! Please, let me die.”
“Not today, my friend.” Zilok whispered something, and suddenly, Medophae couldn’t feel his arms or his legs. He couldn’t feel his cracked head or skewered chest. He was falling down a deep well away from the pains of his body. Above him was one circular hole of light, the last of what his remaining good eye could see, rising above him as he fell: Dervon’s twisted, tentacled face hovering over him.
He didn’t feel the pain anymore.
“What have you done?” he asked.
“You’re safe now,” Zilok’s disembodied voice said. “You’re safe. Stay there.”
And Oedandus raged forth as though Zilok had unlocked a gate that the god had been trapped behind. Golden fire rushed past Medophae, shooting out of the narrow tunnel above him, shooting into Dervon’s slimy, misshapen face. The dark god screamed, lurching backward as the fire roared into him, burning into his head.
No, Medophae thought, shutting away the horrible vision. This isn’t happening. I already lived this. I already survived this.
“Yes,” Avakketh said in his deep, rumbling voice. “You survived, but they had to save you. That weak mortal had to peel back your weak mind to let your true power free. Dervon would have peeled your flesh.”
The blasted plateau of black rock vanished. Medophae wasn’t pinned to the ground with Dervon’s appendages anymore. He wasn’t sunk deep down the well of his own soul. He stood on the docks of a harbor. Ships bobbed gently in their berths, waiting to take on cargo, or to offload.
A great crunching sound made him spin around, and Avakketh was there, looming just like Dervon had, but Avakketh’s vast bulk was larger. He stood over the buildings of this familiar city. Medophae felt he should know this place, but he couldn’t remember. He’d been in so many cities in his life, and he didn’t know which this was.
Avakketh lowered himself down, crushing shops and houses. People screamed, dying beneath the falling stones and timber. Others ran.
Avakketh blew fire at them, and more people died screaming.
“Stop it!” Medophae leapt forward. The godsword burst to life in his hand.
Avakketh turned his enormous head, horns jutting from his brow and the top of his scaled head, and stopped breathing fire.
“This is your last chance,” the dragon god said. “Save the ones you love. Leave the rest behind.”
“I won’t!”
“Then watch them die!” He swung his great head around. To his right, Bands perched gracefully on the top of a house in her dragon form, tiny compared to Avakketh, like a squirrel next to a horse. Avakketh leapt into the air, blasting her with fire. Bands roared, engulfed. She tried to get away, beat her wings to take to the air, but they burned up like paper. She crashed to the houses, and Avakketh leapt on her, raking her open her with his claws.
“Bands!” Medophae ran at the dragon god, but the fire turned toward him, burning into him. His flesh melted and healed as Oedandus kept him alive, and Medophae kept running, screaming through the pain. Avakketh flapped his great wings, rising higher, sending flames farther outward to consume anything that would burn: wagons, houses, ships, horses, people... Behind him, above the flames, Medophae saw the towers of Teni’sia.
Avakketh flew toward the palace, setting everything alight along the way. Medophae tried to catch him, but he was too slow. The flames melted him, and he fell to his knees, watching as Avakketh’s claw cracked into the side of the nearest tower.
A black horse with a curling black horn stood at the top of that crumbling tower, unafraid that it was about to plunge to its death. The unicorn reared, and her dark hooves shone in the sun as she kicked and came back down. She tossed her head, then pointed her horn at Medophae.
The castle crumbled, and the unicorn was lost. Fire rose over Medophae’s head as Teni’sia fell around him....
31
Mirolah
Mirolah jolted awake when Medophae thrashed in his sleep. She was disoriented for a moment. Then it all came to back to her. She had exhausted herself trying to find Orem last night. And now, the sun was high in the sky. It was close to noon, and they were still in Denema’s Valley.
Medophae thrashed again, and she sat up. She shook him, but he wouldn’t wake. His lips parted, his teeth clenched. Golden fire flickered across his chest. He growled, and his arms tensed.
“I won’t!” Medophae murmured. “Bands!”
Bands...
Mirolah felt like the breath had been swept from her body. He was dreaming about her. She hesitated, then shook him.
“Wake up,” she said.
He stopped breathing. His back arched, and the golden fire flared so that she had to shield her eyes. The flames, as ferocious as they looked, weren’t hot. They didn’t burn, but she could feel their power. The flames blotted out her ability to see the threads all around her.
He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His hands curled into claws, and he stayed that way, completely still, as if he’d died in this ghastly position.
“Medophae!” She shook him again.
He gasped and fell flat. His muscles relaxed. He drew a deep breath and suddenly sat up, blinking. He was sweating, and his eyes looked wild.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Where are we?”
“Denema’s Valley.”
“Denema’s Valley,” he whispered, blinking and looking around. “Yes. We’re searching for Orem.”
“Medophae, what happened? What...” she paused, then pushed forward. “What did you dream about?”
“Just...nothing,” he said. “It was just a nightmare.”
“Hardly nothing,” she said.
She’d seen him face living nightmares without flinching. What could he possibly dream that would make him like this?
“You called out for Bands,” she said softly.
“I...” he said. “I was...reliving something from the past.”
“Okay,” she said, and her heart hurt. The open book was closed. He was lying. She didn’t need to feel his emotions to know it. He was hiding the dream from her, and it stung more deeply than she would have thought. He knew everything about her, but he was an immortal man who had seen more in his life than she could imagine. He couldn’t possibly tell her everything about himself even if she had a year to listen. He had secrets, and some of those would haunt him. She had no right to expect him to tell her everything....
But he had called out Bands’s name.
She had looked into his eyes on that beach in Calsinac, and he had seemed free of her. He had put her behind him, had acknowledged that she was gone forever. He’d turned to Mirolah while he cried. But now he was dreaming about Bands, and he wouldn’t tell Mirolah why. If there was nothing to hide, why not just tell her?
You didn’t tell him about the voice from Daylan’s Glass. You didn’t tell him about that, did you? Why don’t you tell him about the voice?
Medophae stood up. Stavark waited a short distance away, watching them. Elekkena was
on the beach, sleeping, but she roused.
What did you dream about? All unanswered questions were an itch she couldn’t scratch. But this was far worse. This wasn’t an itch, it was a bowel-twisting nausea. Medophae’s love for Bands was legendary. Mirolah had been a fool to think he could let her go.
“I found!” Sniff barked.
Mirolah twisted to see the skin dog running toward her. He sent sand flying as he churned to a stop.
“I found!”
She jumped to her feet. “What did you find?”
“Mistress looks for bad GodSpill. Mistress looks and looks in house of bad GodSpill, but mistress cannot sniff,” Sniff yipped.
“Sniff—”
“This one sniffs the GodSpill,” he barked.
Hope wafted to her as she realized what he was trying to tell her. “You found a trail to Orem?”
“Bad GodSpill.” He lunged away, spun back and crouched, butt in the air and head low over his front paws like he was ready to play.
“We must follow him right away,” Elekkena said.
“You think he can track Zilok Morth?” Mirolah asked, daring to hope.
“That is what vyrkiz do,” Elekkena said.
“That’s what they were used for during the GodSpill Wars,” Medophae said. “Quickly, let’s pack everything up.”
They left Denema’s Valley, following the skin dog east. Stavark and Elekkena rode one horse, and Mirolah rode behind Medophae. According to Sniff, he had followed the path for a long distance, sorting out the vague scents while Mirolah and Medophae slept. Mirolah craved to know how the skin dog could do it. She couldn’t find any trail at all.
She reached out and touched the GodSpill in the leaves and the grasses in front of Sniff, but she still couldn’t see anything. After nearly thirty minutes of trying to find what he was “sniffing,” she finally decided she had to look through his eyes.
Gently, softly, she pushed her attention into his threads, tried to feel what he was feeling, tried to see what he was seeing. For one flashing instant, she looked through his eyes, and on the air was the barest wisp of smoke, a thin, dark string that Sniff followed, barely the width of a human hair—
Sniff yelped and rolled onto the ground. He looked up at her, paws in the air, belly showing. “So sorry! How was this one bad? How was this one bad?”
“No,” she said. “You’re not bad, I was just—”
“So sorry!”
Mirolah dismounted and knelt next to Sniff, put a calming hand on his chest. He shivered, then went limp, turning his head to the side.
“What happened?” Medophae asked, hopping down. He looked around, trying to see the threat.
“I wanted to see how he was doing it, how he was following Zilok. So I probed him, and I...I think I hurt him.”
“I was bad. How was I bad?” Sniff whined.
“I’m so sorry, Sniff.” She put both hands on the pronounced ribs of his great chest, trying to soothe him. “I just wanted to see how you did it.”
“Not bad?” he asked.
“No. You’re doing great. It was my mistake.”
He nudged her hand tentatively with his long, bramble-toothed muzzle. She patted the flat top of his head. “It’s okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes.”
He rolled to his feet. “Sniff the bad GodSpill?” he barked.
“Please.”
He ducked his head, then turned and went to find the trail again.
“He’s actually following something,” she said to Medophae. “I don’t know what it is, but it is there.” It was odd that she could not track the GodSpill the way Sniff could. Seeing GodSpill and its effect had always come naturally to her, so why not this? Perhaps Sniff’s special abilities were akin to the flashpowers of the quicksilvers. She couldn’t do what Stavark did any more than she could do what Sniff did.
She and Medophae remounted their horses and continued on through the forest. After a time, she noticed a herd of deer following them. They were intensely curious, but they had smelled the big skin dog and kept their distance. Mirolah touched the light breeze that blew past her all the way to the deer. As a lark, she gently pulled the threads of the breeze, causing it to curve around the deer, then blow back this way, bringing a rush of wind that ruffled her hair.
“So,” Medophae said to Stavark, “now that we’ve got some time, how did you escape the darklings?”
“Ah,” Stavark said. “There were many. I tried to shield Orem, but they carried me away with their claws and teeth. I had to use the silverland many times to escape them. But finally, they caught me. They were about to eat me. I had many punctures from their teeth by then. But then they stopped and ran away.”
“They ran?”
“I thought their master had called them back, but I realize now that perhaps it was this spirit that we are chasing. I think he scared them away.”
Medophae nodded grimly.
“I was...hurt badly. But I had seen an old herb shop close by. I crawled to it,” Stavark said. “I was dying, but I knew of one herb that might save me. I hoped to find it inside. It was my only chance.” He paused. “But the door was locked. I could not get inside. I fought with the handle, but my strength had fled. I would have died, I think....” Stavark trailed off.
“What happened?” Medophae prompted him.
“I was saved by a vyrksikka,” he said. “A hollowskin.”
Medophae turned in his saddle. “A vampire?”
“You met a vampire?” Mirolah asked. She knew she shouldn’t be surprised by the strange and unusual creatures that kept popping up, but she honestly thought vampires were a fiction. “Are they even real?”
“Oh, they’re real,” Medophae said.
“She arrived from nowhere,” Stavark said. “I thought perhaps she had watched the battle, waited until she knew I could not fight her, then came to drain me of my blood.”
“White eyes. Black hair in a braid.”
“Yes,” Stavark said.
“Silasa,” Medophae murmured.
“How did you know her name?” Stavark said, incredulous.
“She is a friend. I visited her just before I came to Denema’s Valley,” Medophae said. “I had no idea she followed me. The question is: Why?”
“She was kind. There are no kind vyrksikkas, so say the elder syvihrk. Vyrksikkas live only to destroy,” Stavark said.
“Most do.” Medophae fell into deep thought.
Mirolah had never heard of Silasa. Was this one more secret that he had kept from her? Or was it simply one more experience in a long life that had no relevance to her before now?
“She acted as though she had been sent,” Stavark said.
“Sent?” Medophae asked. “Sent by whom?”
32
Silasa
Silasa never knew what woke her when night came. It was not the complete absence of sunlight. She had awoken often in time to see the purples and blues of the clouds at the end of a sunset. But never the sun. She never awoke in time to catch a glimpse of that blinding orb.
She looked down at her dirty clothes and frowned. She had bought new skirts and a new blouse only two nights ago, along with a new corset, and now they were ruined. Sleeping in caves was rough on clothing. Of course, she hadn’t been expecting to sleep in caves. She let out a breath and put her hand against the rough, porous rock wall. This was her home, at least for the next few days. And who knew where she would be after that? Well, Ynisaan knew. She was in Teni’sia because of Ynisaan.
Protect Mershayn, she’d said.
But Ynisaan never said more than the absolute minimum.
Silasa plucked at the dark lace of her sleeve, pulling it to length and letting it dangle from her cuff just so.
She sighed. She lived a shadow’s existence, a pale woman with black clothing slipping through the darkness, aiding those who could walk in the sun, who could have friends, who could laugh and talk and discuss their finery, which was not ruined from sleep
ing in a cave.
She walked to the cave’s opening and stared out at the Inland Ocean. She was almost as high up as the castle turrets here. It was a good hiding place. No one would accidentally climb to this height and explore this cave, and few mortals could do it at all.
The tips of the waves flashed blue in the twilight. The rest of the water was deep and murky. In mere moments, even the tips of the waves would succumb to the darkness, and the Inland Ocean would become a sea of black. For her, it was always a sea of black. She remembered her childhood in Belshra, not very far from here. She remembered running along the sandy beach of the northern shore. She had splashed in the ocean in new dresses. Oh, how her warden had chastised her for that. Baelifa, her dear sweet warden. Baelifa, who had died protecting her when the vampire Darva came for her...
“Mershayn did not come with you,” Ynisaan said quietly from behind her.
“He wouldn’t,” Silasa said as though she wasn’t surprised that Ynisaan had just appeared again. “He insisted on saving his brother the king.” Silasa continued to look at the ocean. Ynisaan never made a sound when she appeared or vanished. There were times when Silasa thought Ynisaan did not exist at all, that she just was some figment of Silasa’s imagination created by loneliness. Of course, Silasa really didn’t like the idea of being dead and insane at the same time.
“You bought new clothes,” Ynisaan said.
A long silence fell between them, but Silasa was not in a mood to break it. Finally, she said, “Silly, isn’t it? And now they’re ruined after visiting the dungeons of Teni’sia and a few nights sleeping in a cave.”
“It becomes you,” Ynisaan said.
Silasa turned at last, looking into depthless black eyes of the strange woman who had appeared to her out of nowhere, talking about Medophae’s certain death if Silasa didn’t intervene. Ynisaan had black hair, black skin, and black eyes, all as dark as obsidian. The dark eyes held reservoirs of memory. They brimmed with knowledge and pain.
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