She opened the door to the beat of wings. She stepped out and searched the narrow strip of sky between the tavernhouse and the stable. Snow swirled, but higher still, dark shapes sailed and flapped, all headed for one place.
Tashijan.
Kathryn flipped her cloak and borrowed speed born of shadow. She ducked back into the stable and leaped up into Stoneheart’s saddle. Her mount didn’t need heel or snap of rein. They had ridden too long for such necessities. The stallion knew her heart.
He twisted, half-rearing toward the door, bunched his haunches, and charged through the gate.
Kathryn ducked low to his neck as they flew outside. She remained low and gently urged him forward.
The stallion raced with a flowing gallop. She matched his pace, high in the saddle, floating above. They wended through the streets and alleys-then suddenly the town opened and fell behind them.
Rider and horse burst out into the field. She had guided the stallion to the same street down which they’d entered the town. Her path through the drifts stretched ahead. She had not wanted Stoneheart to have to plow a fresh track back home. Speed was essential.
She glanced past her shoulder. Snow filled the world behind her like a mighty wave about to crash, erasing the town street by street as it swept forward. Overhead, the front edge of Ulf’s corrupted legion rode the eddies and drafts.
A mighty screech sounded, splitting the howl of the growing winds.
One of the wraiths had spotted the fleeing horse. It dove toward them, drawing others in its wake. A flock of hawks after a lone mouse. Whatever protection had been extended by the parley was now over.
“Fly,” she urged her mount.
Legs churned faster, hooves cast snow higher. She felt the pound of the stallion’s heart in her thighs. His breath streamed in a continual blow of white.
Still, they would never make it. The walls of Tashijan were too far.
A screaming wail filled the world overhead. Kathryn pulled her sword, twisting up in her saddle.
The wraith plummeted, wings tight, claws out.
No sword would block such an assault. Even if she could strike a blow, the plunging weight alone would knock her from the saddle. And other wraiths followed, spiraling tightly down behind the first.
Then a flash of fire burst past and struck the wraith in the shoulder. A wing snapped out reflexively. The timbre of its hunting cry changed to a wail of pain. The flapped wing caught air and flipped the wraith’s dive into a wild tumble. It slammed hard into a neighboring drift. The flame sizzled and stubbornly refused to douse.
Then they were galloping past.
More arrows shot past overhead, oblivious of the gusts. Each arrow ignited with fire in midflight. Plainly the bolts had been Graced with powerful alchemies, loam and fire, doubly blessed to resist wind and ice.
A few more wraiths were struck and tumbled out of the skies.
The others fled higher, out of bow range.
Kathryn searched forward. She spotted figures atop the shield wall. Knights in black cloaks, barely discernible, and a few robed masters.
Lower, down where her path ended, a figure stood at the open gate.
His armor almost glowed.
Gerrod.
He backed up as she galloped through without slowing, tucked tight, an arrow of horseflesh and iron. She knew that Gerrod, though masked by his helmet, had noted what rose behind her, ready to crash into Tashijan.
Still, she screamed into the wind as he shouldered the gate closed.
“Strike! Strike up Tashijan!”
The gong echoed through the darkness, hollow and haunted.
“What is that?” Laurelle whispered.
“War,” Kytt answered in a hushed breath.
The two hid in a dark cell. They were huddled tight. It had been a full quarter bell since they’d last heard any sign of pursuit. But Laurelle knew Sten would not give up this hunt so easily. He could not tolerate witnesses to his assault on Delia. He would have all paths out of this area guarded. And surely if he had planned an ambush here against Delia, he had the region well mapped.
She shivered.
Kytt tightened his arm around her. “Whatever has roused the striking of the gong might draw away the hunters.”
As if hearing him, another ringing echo droned through the stones. Laurelle felt it in her bones, along her spine. She had never been so desperate. Her heart pounded in her throat. She wanted to cry, but nothing would break loose.
“We can’t stay here,” he whispered as the ringing faded. “And I think I might know a way to get us safely past the others.”
“How?”
“A wyld tracker has keen eyes in the dark. The guards are also unwashed, easy to smell from several paces off. With care, going slow, we might be able to find a weakness through whatever snare has been laid.”
She considered his plan. She did not have his senses. She would be blind, totally in his care.
“Laurelle?” he asked, noting her silence.
She felt his breath on her cheek, heated, worried. Again she was struck by his scent and she turned to him, followed the breath to his lips. She kissed him.
He pulled back, startled.
She followed, making sure he knew it was no accident. Then she spoke between his lips. “I trust you,” she said.
She gripped his hand and shifted to her feet. After a stunned moment, he rose beside her.
“Stay with me,” he whispered as they set off.
He guided them down black corridors, moving in fast steps and sudden stops. They crisscrossed, then backtracked when he scented something. Finally the darkness turned gray ahead, but he balked.
She saw enough of his silhouette to see him shake his head.
Back they went into the darkness.
“Stairs,” he whispered, guiding her by the hand. “An old servants’ stair, I think. Dusty and forgotten.”
She hoped so.
He headed down it. To follow, she searched with her toes for each step. It was narrow and frighteningly steep, more like descending a ladder than a stair.
They finally reached the bottom. He led the way again. They continued more cautiously, then he slowed even further. “I think…I think we’re not far from the stair where Mistress Delia was pushed.”
“Are you sure?”
He didn’t answer for a long moment. “I also scent something…a faint trace…” His hand tightened on hers. “Blood.”
Laurelle felt her stomach clench.
“Stay here.”
“No.” Her answer was immediate and certain. Her fingers clamped onto his.
He didn’t argue, only edged forward. In another turn, darkness turned to a deep twilight. Ahead, a body appeared, sprawled on the floor, unmoving. Even in the gloom, Laurelle noted the unnatural twist to the body.
She bit back a sob, feet slowing. She didn’t want to see.
“It’s not Delia,” Kytt assured her and led her forward.
In another two steps, she saw he was correct. The body wore a guard’s livery. One of Sten’s men.
Kytt dropped to a knee and placed a hand on his neck. “Broken.” He straightened and stepped over the body. He touched something on the floor. “Drops of blood.” He sniffed at his fingers. “Mistress Delia’s scent.”
Could she still be alive?
Hope rising, they hurried forward. The trail led to a closed door. They hesitated-but even Laurelle could see the wet blood on the floor. She tentatively reached for the latch, but Kytt suddenly placed his hand over hers.
“Wait. There’s someone-”
“Get in here,” a voice barked, startling them both back a step. “Quit skulking and help. Before it’s too late.”
Though Laurelle recognized the voice, she pulled on the latch. She refused to abandon Delia again.
Inside, the room held scant furniture. Only a small lamp rested on the stone floor, dancing with a tepid flame. But it was enough to illuminate Master Orquell crouched beside D
elia’s limp form, sprawled across a small plank bed. One side of the woman’s face was bloody, hair soaked and matted. The old master wiped her cheek with a wet cloth, then pointed an arm toward the lamp.
“Bring that closer,” he ordered.
Laurelle obeyed, reacting to the command in his voice. She picked up the lamp and carried it nearer.
Master Orquell slipped a tiny leather bag from inside his robe and dumped a gray powder into his palm, then held it before the lamp’s flame. The powder turned a rosy hue.
“You broke that guard’s neck?” Kytt asked, equally unsure.
“Before he could break hers,” Orquell answered sourly, weighing the powder in his palm, studying it closer. “Lucky I was down here. Then again, the flames guide us where we’re best needed.”
“The flames…?” Laurelle echoed, suspicions piqued again.
The master glanced up at her. His eyes appeared less milky in the close light of the lamp. They pierced through her, questioningly.
“We followed you,” she explained. “Earlier in the morning. Into the back of the master’s quarters.”
His eyes narrowed in confusion, then brightened with understanding.
“You saw me cast a pyre.”
She nodded.
“Ah…no wonder you are suspicious.” He reached again to the wet cloth. “Then perhaps this will steady your hand so you stop shaking the lamp.”
He sat back and wiped his forehead. Face paint, a perfect match to his yellow parchment skin, smeared away. Beneath the paint rose a hidden crimson mark, bright on his skin, resting in the center of his forehead like an awakening eye.
Laurelle gasped at the mark, knowing it well.
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.”
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 Ne
kralikos 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 the 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?”
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