He lowered his scope. “Thank you, Dart. That’ll be all.”
She nodded and scooted to the other end of the bed. Her friend sat down next to her. They leaned close to each other, like two frightened rabbits, eyes fixed and glassy. Tylar could only imagine such terror. His upbringing among the orphanages of Akkabak Harbor had not been easy, but it was nothing compared to the experiences of the two girls here.
Gerrod stepped over to Tylar. Kathryn sat straighter on the next cot.
The master shook his head. “Most strange. I can detect Grace in her blood, faint yet certainly present. But it is oddly and persistently inert. No alchemies can stir it or react to it. I’ve searched for any trace of quickening in her body, some faint glow at the back of the eyes, any sign that Grace manifests in the girl. But I’ve discovered nothing. It’s as if she has no ability to bless or utilize her Grace, not within herself and certainly not without.”
“So is she a god or not?” Kathryn asked.
“Not as we know a god to be. It is said that the gods, before the great Sundering of their own kingdom, bore no special Grace. That only after their naethryn and aethryn aspects were stripped from them did the remaining flesh quicken with humoral Graces. Masters have debated the reason for this over the many centuries. It is supposed that a god’s Grace manifests from some ethereal connection that persists between the gods of Myrillia and their torn counterparts, a bleeding of power that still flows through all three.”
“And the girl?” Rogger asked, joining them. He settled next to Kathryn on the cot.
“She is unsundered,” Gerrod said. “Whole. I think that is why she does not manifest with any significant Grace. But I would know more about this creature that accompanies her.”
“Pupp,” the girl, Dart, said from the neighboring bed. Despite her frightened countenance, she had been listening intently. “His name is Pupp.”
Gerrod shifted. “What can you tell me about him?” Tylar noted his calm demeanor and lack of condescension when dealing with the girl.
She licked her lips. “He’s always been with me.” She glanced over to Yaellin. He guarded the door, periodically checking the hallway, while Eylan kept a watchful eye on the healer. “Even as a babe, he was with me.”
Yaellin nodded. “I saw him in her dreams. Ugly fellow. Fiery eyes. All molten and barely formed.”
Dart’s eyes hardened.
“He’s not ugly,” the second girl declared, coming to her friend’s defense. “He’s… he’s… fearsome.”
“I thought no one could see this creature?” Kathryn said.
Dart glanced to Kathryn. The girl’s gaze was steady. There was certainly a well of strength in her small frame. “Only I can see him at most times. And even I can’t touch him then. Only stone seems to block him.”
“And he’s trapped in the Eldergarden?”Tylar asked, having heard their story.
The girl nodded with a pained look of worry.
“And when was the first time, this creature… this Pupp… revealed himself to other than yourself?” Gerrod asked.
The girl’s steadiness faltered. Her eyes sank to the floor. She seemed to collapse into herself.
Gerrod continued with reassuring tones. “You’re among friends, Dart. We wouldn’t ask this of you unless it was important.”
She kept her eyes down. Her voice was a whisper. “It was with Master Willet… up… up in the rookery.”
Dart swallowed. She let go her last secret reluctantly. Fury had given her strength before to accuse Paltry, to tell what had happened to her, but now she must reveal the end. “Master Willet…”
She spotted Healer Paltry leaning forward. His eyes were sharp, his lips thin. How long must he have wondered what had become of his cohort? His face shone with oil. How had she ever considered him handsome?
She turned away and took a deeper breath. “Pupp attacked him, protecting me.”
“I thought-”
She cut off Master Gerrod. If she stopped her words now, she might never finish them. “It was my blood… my virginal blood.” She choked on this last. So much had been stolen from her, more than she could measure. Would the pain ever end? “Pupp bathed himself in it. I think he knew the touch of my blood gave substance to his form. He blazed with fire and tore into Willet.”
Dart was drawn back to the rookery, to the blood, to the break of bone, to the sear of flesh, to the boil of blood… “All was consumed,” she said. “Gone. Not even blood stained the planks.”
No one spoke.
The silence drew Dart back to the room. She saw the look of horror on Paltry’s face. She found no satisfaction in it.
“And Pupp?” Gerrod asked.
Dart shook her head. “Once the blood dried from him, he became a ghost again.”
Yaellin spoke from the door. “My father, Ser Henri, knew of Pupp. Dart used to speak of her ghostly pet, before others ridiculed and chided her into silence and secrets. My father believed her companion might be some amalgam of Dart’s naethryn and aethryn selves. Born whole, Dart was not stripped of these parts. Yet they remain not fully of this world either. They cling to her.”
Dart listened, balanced between horror and understanding. She and Pupp had always been one, but she never suspected how much of a one they were. If the others were right, Pupp was as much a part of her as her leg or arm.
Gerrod nodded. “And her blood has the Grace to pull this part of her fully into our world.”
“Not just her blood,” Yaellin countered. Dart had already told him about the drop of Chrism’s blood striking Pupp, and the blood roots down in the subterranean passage. “ Any blood rich enough with Grace. Pupp just needs fuel to cross the barrier into substance.”
“Such strangeness abounds,” Gerrod concluded.
The castellan rose from the cot. “Which does not settle the matter of Chrism and what we might do about this Cabal. We cannot hide forever in this cell.”
Dart listened with half an ear as more discussions and plans were weighed, balanced, and discarded. She found tears coming again to her eyes. She could not say why. They rose from the hollowness inside her. She did not fully know who she was any more: girl, god, or monster.
She stared at her hands, blurred by her tears. They seemed a stranger’s now.
A second pair of hands covered hers, grasping. She lifted her gaze to find Laurelle close to her, staring back at her. “It doesn’t matter,” her friend said. There was no horror in her eyes. “None of this matters. I know you.” She squeezed her fingers. “This is the Dart I know. You’ve shown your heart in the past and now. The rest is just shadow and light.”
Dart sniffed and took Laurelle’s hand in her own. She so wanted it to be true. But she had only to hear the others discuss slaying a god to know that there were matters greater than flesh… even her own. And she had a role to play. Dart had no say in her birth, even her years in the Conclave were ordered and orchestrated by others. But no longer. From here, she would have to forge her own path. It was for her to decide.
Girl, god, or monster.
Kathryn shook her head. “This is madness. We must wait on others. Bring full forces to bear. We can’t lay siege on the castillion with just the handful here.”
Tylar stood. Kathryn noted the wobble in his knees, though Tylar tried to hide it with a wave of his arm.
“Chrism will not wait,” he argued. “He knows he’s been exposed. If he has not found us by sunset, there is no accounting of what he might do. He could unleash all manner of horror in the city. Or he could merely escape with his Cabal, hiding away, disappearing with the Godsword. He’d be a thousandfold more difficult to root out.”
“You propose going in on our own?” she said. “With no knowledge of what may lay in wait?”
“If we could only find the Godsword…” Tylar grumbled.
Yaellin spoke from the doorway. “I’ve searched everywhere for the weapon. It’s nowhere to be-”
Distant shouts silenced the man. All eye
s turned to the door.
Yaellin swung to the spy hole. “It’s coming from down the stairs. I’ll check.” He lifted the bar and pulled the latch. He vanished in a whirl of cloak and shadow.
With the door cracked, the heavy tread of boots on stone echoed up from below. Surely it was the castillion guard. Orders were shouted to search every floor. This was no random search.
“We’ve been found,” Tylar said.
Kathryn slid free her sword. Others did the same. There was no escape up the tower. They’d have to fight their way to the streets.
Kathryn called up the power in her cloak, billowing darkness around her form. They had to get Tylar safely away… and the girl. The child could not be captured, returned to Chrism’s reach. With such a source of blood, the Godsword would be Chrism’s to wield. That must not happen.
Glancing over a shoulder, Kathryn spotted the girl crouched with her friend. She had a dagger in hand and a fierce set to her eyes.
Shadows suddenly shifted behind the girl’s shoulders.
Oh no…
Darkness fell across Dart, drawing her eye to the sunlit window nearby. She had left the window open after watching the flippercraft crash earlier. A naked shape crept over the sill, claws digging into stone, eyes glowing with grace. Smoke steamed its form.
An ilk-beast.
The creature leaped into the room-toward Laurelle, the closest to the window.
Dart screamed as the creature struck her friend, knocking her to the bed. Another pair of creatures filled the window, crawling in from either side, misshapen horrors. At the same time, windows shattered around the room. More ilk-beasts boiled in from all sides.
Dart lunged toward the nearest, the one tangled with Laurelle. Her friend kicked and bit, turning as feral as the creature that attacked her. But a swipe of claws ripped her robe and drew bloody furrows across her chest. Laurelle cried out.
Dart already had her cursed dagger in hand. She plunged it to the hilt in the monster’s back. It reared up, tearing the blade from Dart’s grasp. The beast struggled for the impaled dagger, writhing to reach it. It screamed, but all that came out was fire. Its body stiffened with pain, a statue of agony.
Laurelle kicked out at it from the bed. Her heel struck its form and it shattered to ash, blowing outward. A reek of charred flesh whelmed over them.
Dart joined Laurelle, dropping behind the edge of the bed, ducking almost under it.
Around the room, a dance of blades held the ilk-beasts in check. The castellan swirled in and out of shadow, dealing death with swift skill. The tall Wyr-mistress had a sword in each fist, lunging and stabbing in all directions, seeming to have eyes in the back of her head. Even the godslayer wielded a blade in one hand and a dagger in the other, his back to the bearded man who fought with a broken chair leg, sharp as a spear.
But more and more beasts crawled and scrambled into the chamber.
Dart blindly searched the hot ash pile for her dagger. Despite her terror, she dug with care. It would not do to prick her finger on its black tip.
“Make for the door!” Master Gerrod called to them. His bronze form had sprouted sharp blades at elbows and knees. He held the legion at bay from Dart’s corner.
Laurelle grabbed Dart’s arm. She pointed under the bed.
Dart abandoned her search and belly-crawled with Laurelle beneath the bed to its other side. They waited for a clear moment, then shoved across the open space to the next cot, diving beneath it and crawling toward the far door. They waited until the fighting ebbed away from the entry.
“Now,” Dart urged.
The two girls rolled out and to their feet. Hand in hand, they raced for the door and through it. The hallway echoed with the fighting, but it was thankfully empty. They fled down its length, realizing that the clash of swords grew louder again only as they neared the stairwell.
Their feet slowed.
More fighting ahead. Yaellin must be holding the stairs. The scrape of claw on stone drew their attention behind them. Laurelle let out a small whimper.
Climbing down the corridor, a lone ilk-beast had followed them into the hallway, a cat chasing two fleeing mice. On all fours, it was massively muscled, naked of all clothing. Its skin ran with black mottles. Its muzzled face held a fixed snarl, revealing daggered fangs. Fiery eyes stared at them.
Trapped between the two battles-stair and chamber-there was nowhere to run. Dart pawed her belted sheath. They had no weapons.
The beast let out a growl and stalked toward them.
Tylar stabbed a beast through the eye. From the bared breasts, it was once a woman. But her skin had hardened to scale, her fingers to bony claws. Oil cast the nails in a poisonous sheen. But the worst was her face: slitted eyes aglow with a yellowish flame, nostrils flared for scenting, jaws shaped like an adder, full of fangs.
With a grunt, Tylar yanked his blade free. The beast fell, convulsing on the stone floor. A hissing wail flowed forth. Even in death, the creature remained a monster, its human self burned away forever by corrupted Grace.
Tylar felt a mix of sorrow and fury. What could drive someone to yield all of themselves to such a defilement? He remembered Darjon’s shout. Myrillia will be free! He stepped over the dead body. She was certainly free now.
The battle raged. The air reeked of burst bowels and blood. The room echoed with wails and shrieks of the raving.
But Tylar dared not call forth his daemon. With fighting in such close quarters, friend as well as foe could find themselves brushed with the deadly touch of the naethryn. So he fought, Rogger on one side, Kathryn on the other. Gerrod and Eylan were another island of resistance across the room.
“Make for the door!” he yelled. “We’ll hold them off better in the hall!”
But his order was understood by the ilk-beasts, too. Though the men and woman had forsaken themselves to this fate, some semblance of human cognition remained. The pack of beasts surged toward the door, cutting off their retreat. The way was slammed shut.
More beasts clawed and crawled through the windows. Was there no end to Chrism’s slavering army? How many had given themselves to this false god?
With a grunt, Rogger went down on one knee, his shoulder ripped to shreds by a lash of claw, his stave knocked from his fingers.
Tylar used a backhanded blow with the hilt of his sword to crack the ilk-beast in the face. It fell back.
Rogger gained his feet. Kathryn passed him a dagger.
“We can’t hold them,” she said. “We’re being swamped.”
With each death, the floor grew slicker with blood, each step more treacherous. And it was not only the beasts’ blood that stained it. They all bore cuts and scrapes.
Tylar found his vision narrowing. Fear and fury had helped fuel his fight, but there were limits. He had lost too much blood earlier, had had too little time to recover. His heel slipped in a pool of blood. He fell into the arms of one of the beasts, a squat toadish man with bony spines growing from his skin. Tylar felt himself speared across arms and chest.
As he struggled to free himself, the creature suddenly jerked, spasmed, and released Tylar. He fell to Tylar’s toes, a dagger hilt protruding from the back of his neck, impaled to the brain.
Tylar matched gazes with Eylan. Even while fighting her own host of monsters, she had thrown the dagger with unerring accuracy, protecting her charge, doing her duty.
He nodded his thanks and raised his blade as another beast lunged for his throat. He struck out with his elbow, catching the creature across the nose. Then stabbed upward with his other hand, fingers wrapped around his dagger. He shoved the blade under the beast’s rib cage, driving through to the heart. It gasped and choked. He kneed the beast away from him.
Enough.
“To the walls!” he called out. “Backs to the walls!”
The beasts could not block such a general order.
Tylar and the others cut a swath, retreating to the stone walls. Tylar, Rogger, and Kathryn found spots on one si
de of the room, Eylan and Gerrod on the other.
“I must loose the beast,” Tylar said to Kathryn and Rogger. “Stay as low as possible.”
“ ’Bout time,” Rogger grumbled.
Kathryn cast out shadows to shield them.
Working quickly, Tylar sheathed his dagger, grabbed his smallest finger with his other hand, braced himself, then snapped the digit clean backward. Agony flamed his hand like a hammer strike.
Nothing else happened.
Rogger looked on. “Only popped it out of place. Let me help.”
Tylar glanced up in time to see the hilt of Rogger’s dagger aiming for his face. He could’ve ducked, but didn’t. The iron hilt struck him square in the nose. He heard the crush of bone at the back of his skull.
It echoed outward, rattling through his body.
Though he was prepared, the agony was no less than before. Each break was fresh, each snap ripped flesh. He fell to his knees, which broke before even striking stone.
“Get clear!” he screamed as he felt the buildup behind his rib cage. Then those bones broke, too.
The daemon sailed forth, through the same hole it had burned in his clothes earlier. With its escape, bones reset and healed, callused and misaligned.
Tylar’s vision opened enough to see Kathryn and Rogger falling to the walls on either side. The naethryn smoked from his body, spreading wings and stretching its neck.
Ilk-beasts still had enough humanity in them to know terror. The creatures fled from the daemon’s path as it settled to the stone floor on smoky claws and legs. Fiery eyes scanned the room.
Across the way, even those beasts that had been attacking Eylan and Gerrod gave pause, backing in panic from the dark newcomer. Several fled back out the window.
Tylar straightened, sensing a change in the tide of battle. “Make for the door,” he urged.
They all began sliding along the walls.
Not all the ilk-beasts were cowed by the naether-spawn’s appearance. Several leaped with piercing shrieks. Tylar smiled grimly. Their deaths would not be pleasant.
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