Hinterland

A NAME SCRIBED IN BLOOD

As the last of the evening bells rang throughout Tashijan, Dart waited with the others in the castellan’s hermitage. The fire from the hearth had been stoked to a wild flame in a vain attempt to hold back the dark worries in all their hearts. Gathered here, they awaited word from the castellan and the regent.

Back in the adjudicator’s chambers, Tylar had appeared shortly after the messenger, storming inside with claims of daemonic knights. During the ensuing chaos, Dart and the others were sent under guard-both knights and the gray-cloaked Flaggers-up to Kathryn’s chambers.

By the door, Krevan spoke with an ash-faced woman in a gray robe-then closed the door. His Flaggers would guard their privacy from here. His eyes drifted to Dart’s, then away again, almost embarrassed. Perhaps for the falsehoods he had spread to spare her further inquiry. Though untrue, this claimed relationship was an intimacy that had made the pirate suddenly awkward near her.

Or was it something more?

Elsewhere, off by the window, Barrin lay on the floor, head resting on his crossed paws. Kytt stood over him, one hand absently scratching the bullhound’s ear, his face lost in worry. Lorr had been taken into Kathryn’s private room, where a pair of healers were working on his burns with Grace-rich salves. He had yet to fully awaken, only occasionally mumbling in delirium.

Dart had seen Lorr when he’d been hauled inside, half his side a burnt ruin. He had sacrificed himself to save them. She prayed the healers had Grace enough to save him in turn.

At the threshold to the room, Rogger and Gerrod were bowed in quiet conversation. Rogger wore a stern look, so unlike his usual bravado. That worried Dart more than anything.

Closer, Laurelle sat on the chair opposite her, hands folded in her lap as if she were waiting for a servant to bring a platter of sweetwine and finger cakes. Brant had gone to check on his wolfkits when they had climbed past his retinue’s floor. He had mumbled some promise to return, but his eyes had been shadowed and hard to read. Perhaps he was just glad for an excuse to be rid of them all.

Dart couldn’t blame him.

Brant’s vacancy was in turn taken up by Delia, the regent’s Hand of blood. The dark-haired woman stood behind Laurelle’s chair and stared into the flames, one finger resting on her chin as if she were about to say something, but she never did.

Finally a muffled commotion sounded out in the hall, and the door swung open. Tylar and Kathryn entered. Both appeared flushed, angry, moving stiff-legged.

“I should still be down there,” Tylar said.

“Argent has the entire first three floors ablaze with bonfires and torches. All stairs from there are doubled with guards bearing torches. He has ordered barrels of oil to be stationed at landings, ready to be set to flame and rolled down.” Kathryn scowled. “I don’t know which to fear more-dark knights and cursed storms or Argent burning the towers down around our ankles.”

Tylar looked little mollified. He seemed to finally see the others in the room. He brushed his dark hair back behind his ears.

Dart noted he had taken a moment to restore Rivenscryr. When Tylar had first arrived in the adjudicators’ chamber, he had held only a golden hilt. It appeared like a broken sword. Only Dart’s eyes could see the silvery ghost of the blade. It would remain such until the blade was whetted again-whetted in her own blood. Before reaching here, Tylar must have anointed his sword from his stores of her humour, preserved in glass repostilaries. She knew he carried a small vial on a silver chain around his neck.

Dart was glad he had already performed such an act. When she had first seen the ghostly state of the sword, she feared he would ask her to cut herself and freshly bless the blade. She did not know if she had the strength for that this night.

As the two newcomers entered, Krevan, Rogger, and Gerrod gathered closer. Delia hung back with Dart and Laurelle. The woman’s eyes flicked a bit sharply between Kathryn and Tylar as if searching for some extra meaning.

Tylar spoke into the expectant silence. “Kathryn is correct. Argent has acted with a surprising swiftness to lay a fiery swath between the two halves of Tashijan. It should allow us some ground to maneuver.”

“But not farther than our own walls,” Rogger countered. “The storm closes us off from the rest of Myrillia. We’re trapped in these towers.”

Gerrod creaked a step closer. “There may be some reason for hope. Such a siege as this cannot sustain itself. The storm must eventually blow itself out. Even a blizzard whipped by a cadre of gods will eventually succumb to the turn and flow of our world. It is a dam that must eventually burst. If we could wait it out…”

Tylar shook his head. “I refuse to place the fate of Tashijan in the hands of chance and the turn of the world. Gerrod, how long would it take your masters to get the damaged flippercraft flying again?”

“If we had full support and rally of the dockworkers, perhaps as soon as daybreak.”

“Get started on it.”

“But the storm will still drain the Grace from any craft that nears it and-”

Tylar cut him off with a raised hand. “Just get it done.” Then he turned to Kathryn. “See if the healers can revive Lorr enough that we can speak to him. We must know more about what he saw down there.”

She nodded. “And you’re sure it was Perryl you saw below?”

“It was Perryl’s body-I fear there is little left of the man.”

Kathryn’s face clouded with a mix of anger and pain. She headed toward her private rooms.

“I’ll see if I can help,” Delia said. “Lorr was more a father to me than my own.”

The two left the room, though both would not meet the other’s eye.

Once they were gone, Krevan shifted to Tylar. “I would speak a few words with you in private.” He pointed a finger at Rogger. “And you.”

Tylar glanced around the crowded hearthroom. Barrin huffed a bit where he lay, as if offended at being excluded.

Dart stepped forward. “If you seek privacy, my garret is through that door.” She pointed to the low and narrow arch. “There is not much space.”

“It will do,” Krevan said brusquely and strode off.

Rogger met Tylar’s eyes and shrugged.

Dart walked them to her door, pushed it open, and stepped back.

Krevan waved her inside. “Mayhap you should attend this, too.”

Dart took a startled half step back. “Why?”

The pirate’s hard eyes fixed on her. His next words turned her knees to porridge. Tylar caught her with a reassuring squeeze, but even he glanced to Krevan with narrowed eyes as he answered her question.

“Because it concerns your father. Your real father.”

Kathryn approached the sickbed. The stench of burnt flesh, hair, wool, and leather stained the room. To combat this, one of the healers already had a brazier glowing and dribbled oil of gentled mint across the sizzling red iron. A mound of soaked llamphur sprigs warmed atop its grate.

“To help him breathe,” Healer Fennis said quietly, noting her attention. “Will open the lungs.”

The other healer, a slim woman and wife to Fennis, knelt beside Lorr’s sprawled form. She had bathed away the charred clothes, exposing the rawness beneath.

“There will be scars,” she said. “But the alchemy in the balms was newly concocted, devised by a physic in the deserts of Dry Wash. Using a Grace of loam and air. Who would have thought such a combination could be steadied?”

“Then he will live?” Delia asked. Her voice rang with relief.

“If you let us work in peace,” the woman answered.

Kathryn waved Tylar’s Hand back from the bed. It was an irritated gesture, more brusque than she had intended. She blunted the effect with softer words. “He’s a strong man, even for one late in his years.”

Stepping away, Delia stood with her arms crossed over her chest-not a stern pose, but more like she was hugging herself in a measure of reassurance. Kathryn studied her askance. There was a puffiness to her eyelids. She had been crying. Small lines marred a smooth brow. Still in this moment, Kathryn suddenly recognized the youth behind the worry. She had to remind herself that Delia was a full decade younger. Eternally serious, seldom smiling, she had always struck Kathryn as older in years.

But not now.

The girl shone behind the woman, worn through by grief and worry.

Delia caught Kathryn staring, with a flick of her eyes toward Kathryn, then down to the floor. A fleeting glimpse of Delia’s guilt.

For some reason, this only piqued Kathryn’s irritation again, setting her lips into hard lines. She fought against it, remembering the stolen kiss atop Stormwatch. There was no true blame here. She knew better than to fault the other woman. The man was equally to blame for any broken vows. And besides, what vows remained between Tylar and Kathryn? Whatever had once been sworn and promised had been broken into so many pieces as to be all but unrecognizable.

A groan from the bed returned Kathryn’s attention to the greater threat, reminding her of her responsibility, to Lorr, to everyone in Tashijan. Her face heated slightly, shamed at the momentary lapse into childish resentments. She was not a young girl to moon over lost love. Especially when all of Myrillia was threatened.

Lorr stirred on the sheets. His eyelids fluttered weakly open despite the squint of pain in his face.

“He wakes,” Healer Fennis said.

The woman glanced back at her husband. “We should draught him while we can. Willow bark and nettle wine.” She waved toward a side table.

The other nodded and deftly began working on an elixir.

“Two drops of poppy oil,” she reminded.

“Yes, my dearest.”

Kathryn stepped closer, shadowed by Delia. “Can you revive him enough to speak? We must-”

“I kin hear you,” Lorr croaked out. He lifted his good arm, but it fell back to the bed. “How can a man sleep with all this babbling?”

“Don’t stir,” Delia warned.

Lorr’s eyes finally focused on the two women. “Such a sight would wake any man…” His attempt at levity fell on worried ears.

Kathryn knelt to bring her face even with his. “Lorr, if you’re able, can you tell us what you saw below Tashijan?”

The false cheer drained from the muscles of his face, tightening his features with a pain beyond his burns. He attempted to rise up on an elbow but was scolded back down to the pillows. He lifted a hand, surprised to find an empty palm.

“Tylar found the diadem,” Kathryn said, reading his worry. “Castellan Mirra’s diadem.”

He nodded and sighed. “I went down that dark stair to lure whatever lurked away from the young ones. A stumbling, broken-stone maze it were down there. Almost got myself nabbed up.”

He coughed hard. Healer Fennis approached with his draught, but Lorr waved him away.

“Then I caught a scent. A familiar enough one. I’d been dredging the sewers looking for it long ’nough, so when it caught up in the back of my blessed nose, tasted on the tongue, I knew it right. I went back to look closer. And there she was among that black clot of shadow, whispering to them.”

Kathryn closed her eyes for a breath. So Lorr hadn’t found Castellan Mirra imprisoned or discovered her dead body. He hadn’t returned with the diadem as proof of either. It was much worse.

“These shadowknights-” she began.

“Not knights. Mayhap once. No longer. Ghawls, she called them. Black ghawls. Black-cursed to the bone.”

Kathryn remembered the stern woman who had been counsel to Ser Henri for many decades. Though hard, she had always been evenhanded and of wise sensibility. Kathryn had wished often of late that she could be half the castellan that the old woman was.

“So Mirra was tainted, too,” she said tiredly. “Cursed like the knights.”

Lorr sighed. “That’s just it.” The tracker’s amber eyes found Kathryn’s. “I smelled no corruption from her. She scented as she did when wrapped up here in her hermitage. But those ghawls…they listened to her, lapping about her like beaten dogs. They were hers. Flesh and bone. I drew closer-too close. They fell out of the shadows around me like scraps of darkness. Only escape was fire and light.”

He fell silent a moment, eyes lost in some unimaginable horror. Kathryn only had to look at his blistered flesh to know the cost of that escape.

He closed his eyes, and Kathryn was glad for it. “I fought through them…” he mumbled. “Grabbed for her throat, but they reached through flames and tore me off. All I could do…I fled…”

Healer Fennis again stepped forward with his draught.

Kathryn rose and backed, but her motion was sensed. Lorr opened his eyes and fixed her with a firm stare.

“She was not tainted…of that I am certain.”

Kathryn nodded and stepped back to allow the healer to minister to Lorr. Lorr sank more deeply into his pillows, as if unburdening himself had finally granted him some measure of peace.

Delia crossed to the other side of the bed. “I’ll stay with him.”

She nodded again, too shaken for words, not trusting her voice. Lorr’s words stayed with her as she headed away. She was not tainted. If the tracker’s senses read true, then what did that portend? Had Castellan Mirra been a willing participant, a member of the Cabal? Had she always been the enemy, hiding behind her ermine cloaks and lined face, at the very pinnacle of Tashijan?

Ice numbed her limbs and coursed through her heart. How many nights had she sat with Mirra, entrusted her with secrets? What about Ser Henri? Had he been duped as well?

Suddenly Kathryn had to reach to a wall to hold herself upright. All she had supposed, all she had believed shifted inside her. It was as if she had slipped through a dark mirror. But which side was she on?

The missing knights…the loss of Perryl…so many certainties and suspicions no longer made sense. She pictured again the slain young knight she had discovered last year, sacrificed in some dark rite. She had believed the Fiery Cross to be to blame, painted Warden Fields with the blackest of brushes. And though the warden lusted for power, Kathryn now knew whose hand truly pulled the dark strings of Tashijan.

Not Argent.

It had been Castellan Mirra all along. She must have purposely laid that false trail, instilling rancor and distrust throughout Tashijan, splitting them from within while crafting her own dark plots beneath their very towers.

Kathryn leaned against the wall, sensing a well of tears rising, a mix of frustration and something that bordered on grief.

Had Henri finally discovered Mirra’s secret? Was that why he had been murdered? It hadn’t been a plot by Argent, as Kathryn had always supposed; now she knew the black truth.

He had died because of trust.

And now all of Tashijan…all of Myrillia…faced the same fate.

“I must have the skull,” Krevan said.

Dart had retreated to her bed in the small garret. The hearth was cold, but Rogger had lit the small lamp on her table. The thief now leaned against the closed door. She stared between Krevan and Tylar, both cloaked, both their faces triple-striped, though neither was a true knight any longer.

What was this about a skull? she wondered.

Tylar frowned at the pirate. “I don’t think this is a time to worry about such a cursed talisman.”

“But it is more than mere bone…more than you could imagine.”

“We know about the trace of seersong. Gerrod has been studying it.”

The pirate’s gaze swept to Dart, then back to Tylar. Dart remembered his earlier words. It concerns your father. Your real father.

“You know nothing,” he grumbled.

“Then enlighten us.”

Krevan glowered. “The skull belonged to a rogue god that stumbled out of the hinterland into a realm of the Eighth Land. Such a trespass burnt the flesh. Even the bones should have been consumed, but someone preserved the skull, granted it to the god of Saysh Mal.”

Tylar nodded to the thief. “I gathered as much from Rogger. He stole it during his pilgrimage stop in that god-realm. But I hadn’t heard more of his tale, what with our rough landing and the cursed storm.”

Krevan’s brow darkened as he stared toward Rogger.

“Perhaps we should hear both your stories,” Tylar said.

Rogger shrugged. “My tale is not that rich. I continued with my pilgrimage last year as a way of skirting through the god-realms, looking for any evidence of the Cabal.” He pulled back a sleeve to reveal the scarred brandings. “Such punishment of the flesh was fair trade to hear the rumblings and rumors among the underfolk of the various lands. Tongues wag more easily when the only ears nearby are those of a ragged beggar on a stoop.”

Tylar waved for Rogger to continue. Even Dart knew that the thief’s pilgrimage was more than it had seemed.

“So there I was, running out of blank skin when I stumbled into the jungle realm of the Huntress. And up to then, not a peep nor peck from the Cabal. As soon as I set foot in that realm, it weren’t hard to tell something was amiss. The people of that land went about with their heads tucked low. I saw more brawls in the tavernhouses in one night than in a fortnight elsewhere. Bodies were left in alleys to rot. That is not what I had expected to find. Saysh Mal was not a high place, but it was fairly wrought from all I’d heard. Lived by some code of honorable conduct. No longer. What I saw there more reminded me of ol’ Balger’s Foulsham Dell, corrupted and low of spirit.”

“So what happened there?” Dart asked. She knew Brant hailed from that realm.

“I went to present myself to the Huntress in her treetop castillion. I did my proper obeisance, took her sigil to my thigh, and thought to move on. But word among the underfolk at the castillion suggested their mistress might be the source of the decrepitude. She had grown sullen, pulled away from her people, seldom showed herself. The flow of her humours slowed, then stopped. It was said she even had one of her own Hands imprisoned. Such strangeness warranted further inquiries. A few pinches spent on ale, a few silver yokes rolled onto palms, and I heard more. How the Huntress retreated often to a private chamber, spent days in there alone. The underfolk reported hearing her whispering in there…laughing sometimes, cursing at other times.”

“Who else was in there?” Tylar asked.

“That’s just it. No one. She was alone. She kept some treasure in there, a talisman, hidden behind lock and curse.” Rogger shrugged.

“So you had to take a look,” Tylar said.

“How could I not? It surely sounded like another incursion by the Cabal, another tainted realm. So I snuck in there and saw the talisman, a skull resting on a golden cushion. From its ilked shape, there was little doubt that it had something to do with the Cabal, a slow poison meant to corrupt yet another god. There was only one clear course.”

“You stole it.”

Rogger nodded. “Best to get it out of there, away from the Huntress and her realm, away from all the god-realms. And I guess I was right. Look what happened when I set foot in Chrismferry.”

“What happened?” Krevan asked, his eyes narrowing.

Dart listened in horror as Tylar described the attack by ilk-beasts. He explained, “Master Gerrod believes the seersong drew upon the taint left behind by Chrism and cast forth a curse.”

“So to keep it out of the god-realms, I finally brought it here,” Rogger concluded. “Tashijan lies nestled among the god-realms, but is not a god-realm itself. And with all the knowledgeable masters buried beneath these towers, here seemed a good place to have the skull’s secret plied from its bones.”

Krevan’s dark expression had not changed. “You meddle in matters beyond your understanding.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Rogger mumbled. “And probably not the last.”

Tylar lifted a hand. “Plainly the skull is some talisman of the Cabal. I don’t-”

Krevan cut him off, voice booming with authority. “The skull is not some Cabalistic talisman. Have you not been listening? The skull came from a rogue god who trespassed into that realm.” His voice lowered. “And it wasn’t just any rogue god.”

Tylar’s brow crinkled, but Dart understood. She’d known the truth from the moment Krevan first described the rogue’s trespass. From the glance he had given her. From his earlier words to her.

“He was my father,” she said, gripping her bed’s ticking with both hands.

Tylar gaped between her and the pirate.

Krevan paced a bit but did not deny it. “Eylan…the Wyr-mistress…it was she who brought word out of the hinterland, of this godling’s birth.” An arm waved to Dart. “Word carried from this one’s mother, begging for her child to be taken to safe harbors.”

Tylar nodded. “Ser Henri took her in, kept her hidden.”

Krevan continued as if he hadn’t heard, one hand on his brow. “For centuries, the Wyr-lords have had tenuous dealings with the rogues, trading in alchemies and humours. They know the true nature of the ravening creatures better than any. And after Dart was secured, their interest focused upon the parents.”

“Why?” Tylar asked. “Such births are rare. Only two in four centuries. And rogues slip in and out of ravings, spending more of their lives like beasts than gods. What did they hope to learn?”

“The Wyr-lords believed there was something special about this pair of gods. They were perplexed. What made this seed take root when so many other ruttings among the wild gods failed? So they watched and waited, spied and plotted. As you know, the Wyr are drawn to Grace of an unusual nature.”

Dart glanced to Tylar. The regent had personal experience with such interest.

“The dam fell into full rave after the child was taken, waging a swath of madness. She vanished into caverns beneath Middleback a decade ago and has yet to resurface. Perhaps dead, perhaps in some raving dream, perhaps even escaped out some other tunnel long ago. But the sire…he remained strangely grounded, whisking from hinterland to hinterland. The Wyr had a difficult time tracking him from place to place. It was like-”

“-he knew he was being hunted,” Rogger said.

Krevan nodded. “They lost him when he reached the Eighth Land. It is a maze of hinterlands.”

“How long ago was that?” Tylar asked.

“Going on seven years.”

“And the Wyr have still been hunting for him all this time?”

“They have strategies that cross centuries. A handful of years is nothing to them. They scoured the hinterlands across all of Myrillia, searching for some trace or sign of him.”

Of my father, Dart thought, still struggling with the revelation.

Rogger coughed with a trace of amusement. “And all this time he’s been locked under key in the Huntress’s castillion. Now that’s what I call a good hiding place. ’Course, there is a downside-you’re dead.”

“But what made him trespass into one of the god-realms in the first place?” Tylar asked. “Did he fear the Wyr’s hunters so much that he killed himself?”

“No. Unlike our thief here, I did some study of the skull’s history in Saysh Mal. The rogue entered the realm a full two years after the Wyr lost his trail among the twisted maze of hinterlands down there. Some other purpose drove the rogue into that realm.”

“And what purpose might that be?” Rogger asked, setting his shoulders a bit stiffly.

Krevan shook his head. “That I still don’t know. The Wyr refused to tell me more.”

Tylar frowned at Krevan. “Considering your hatred of Wyrd Bennifren, I’m surprised you are so well informed about all this.”

“They hired the Flaggers,” Krevan grumbled sourly.

“What? I thought there was great enmity between you and Wyrd Bennifren?”

“Yet, in this matter, there was also great urgency.”

“How so? What did they want?”

“To help find the missing rogue. Three seasons ago, they found the first crumb of a trail long gone cold. A wandering Wyr-lord was collecting alchemies and Grace-tainted herbs and stumbled into a hinter-village down in the Eighth Land. He discovered an old piece of hide, tacked in an elder’s home, a revered talisman. Upon the hide, inked in a blood that was rich in wild Graces, were words written in ancient Littick. None could read it, not even the elder, though he recognized it as God’s Tongue. The Wyr-lord deciphered it easily enough, but more importantly he read the sigil at the bottom, the mark of their long-lost rogue.”

“This sigil?” Dart asked. “It was his name?”

Krevan glanced to her, studied her a moment, then nodded.

Dart swallowed. When younger, she had wondered about her mother and father, fabricated elaborate stories for why she had been abandoned at the doorstep of a school in Chrismferry. Only after learning her true heritage did she allow those dreams to die away, strangled by the horror of the truth. Since then, she had tried not to dwell upon it. Easier to be lost in her training and duties than face her blasted birthright.

But now…

Krevan crossed to the cold hearth, dipped a finger in ash, and scrawled two Littick symbols on the stone wall.

Rogger stepped closer. “Keorn,” he read aloud with a frown.

Dart mouthed the name silently herself. The weight of it added substance to what was once only vague shadow. Her father. She held back a shudder-sensing that it might shake her apart.

Rogger turned his back on the markings. “It is rare for a rogue to hold his name. Usually the ravings burn away such memories. Even some of our esteemed Hundred-like the Huntress-had forgotten their names by the time they settled, lost in the burn of their initial ravings. Could this rogue simply have made up this name?”

Krevan shook his head. “Sometimes the memories will back up out of the past. But the Wyr believed it was more than that, that this one had always known his name. It went along with their belief that there was something exceptional about this rogue who birthed a daughter. It was why they approached the Black Flaggers. The trail was cold, much time had passed, and the Wyr were desperate.”

“And your rapacious guild is everywhere, from sea to mountain,” Rogger said. “Fingers and toes into all matter of trade. Who better to aid in this quest?”

“Why didn’t you warn us of this?” Tylar asked.

“At first, I was not sure where it would lead. To bind the deal required my sworn word. And even when I learned and suspected more, you were under the eye of the Wyr.”

“Eylan…” Tylar mumbled.

“Do not be so simple. The Wyr have more than just the one pair of eyes on you. Of that you can be certain. Any word sent to you would reach the Wyr.”

“So gold bought your tongue,” Rogger muttered with a scowl.

“No. Something more valuable than gold.”

“And what might that be?”

“Revelations,” Krevan said. “The Wyr promised that if I brought the skull to them they would tell me much more about the Cabal, the rogue, and the girl.”

The pirate’s eyes settled again upon Dart.

“How do you know you aren’t being played the fool?” Rogger asked. “Paid to fetch the skull with false promises.”

“Because they laid down a payment in advance. A tithing of secret knowledge. They knew more than just the name of the rogue who sired Dart. They told me who he was.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are aware of how the gods had relationships before they were sundered and their world broken. Before they arrived on the shores of Myrillia. Old pacts, old enmities. Remnants of the God War that sundered their kingdom.”

His listeners nodded. Even Dart had heard of such rumored relationships, like between Fyla and the murdered god Meeryn. The two gods had once been lovers before becoming locked into their Myrillian god-realms, doomed to be forever near, yet forever apart.

“The Wyr learned a secret about Dart’s father, one kept for the past four millennia. After Dart was born, her mother, near to raving and desperate to save her child, revealed her father’s true heritage.”

“And what might that be?”

Krevan turned full upon Tylar. “Keorn was Chrism’s son. Born before the Sundering.”

As the words struck her, Dart felt her vision narrow. The blood drained to her heels. She felt a scream building somewhere deep inside her. It was Chrism who had forged Rivenscryr. It was he who wielded the Godsword and shattered the kingdom of the gods, bringing ruin and chaos to Myrillia.

Rogger stood wide-eyed. “That would make…”

Tylar finished his thought. “Dart is Chrism’s granddaughter.”

Off by the hearth, Kathryn watched the small group tumble out of Dart’s garret. They all looked ashen, except for Krevan, whose countenance had, if anything, grown even darker.

Barrin lifted his head from a paw and disturbed the young wyld tracker who had been half-slumbering against his side. Laurelle stood up from her fireside chair.

“The skull is where?” the pirate boomed as he crossed into the room.

“Still down in Gerrod’s study,” Tylar said, following on his heels.

“We must fetch it.”

Tylar shook his head. “Argent has closed off the Masterlevels. He has fires blazing across all the lower tower floors. We dare not breach the cellars. For now, the skull is secure in Gerrod’s rooms.”

“Secure? In levels overrun by daemon knights? Someone might sense the taint of seersong in the bone, hunt it down. If we lose the skull, we lose any leverage to pry additional secrets from the Wyr.”

“Plus the Cabal might use the skull against us,” Rogger argued, siding with Krevan.

“We must attempt it!” the pirate insisted.

Kathryn stepped toward them. What new turmoil was this?

Tylar noted her approach and motioned her to his side, plainly expecting her support. She came, prepared to give it, then rankled at such assumptions. They were long past such easy alliances. Still, she was as irritated by her reaction as much as by Tylar’s.

“What is this all about?” she asked coldly.

“Krevan wishes to make an assault upon the Masterlevels. To retrieve the rogue’s skull. It seems it may be more important than just a cursed talisman. But to breach the cellars may lay all of Tashijan open to what gathers below. Even Gerrod-” Tylar glanced around the room. “Where’s the master?”

“Off to do your bidding. Gathering masters to repair the flippercraft.”

Tylar nodded. “That’s what we must do first. Secure the towers. Prepare for this siege. Then we can worry about an assault below.”

Kathryn turned to Krevan and Rogger. “This skull-I would hear its story in full, but tell me first, how calamitous would it be to have it fall into the clutches of the Cabal?”

“Ruin across all levels,” Krevan said. He turned to Tylar. “The Wyr have no allegiances. They would trade their secrets just as well to the Cabal.”

“And remember the ilk-beasts back in Chrismferry,” Rogger said. “The curse remains strong in those bones. If whoever created those daemons is down there with them…”

“She is,” Kathyrn answered, drawing their attention back to her.

Tylar frowned. “Kathryn?”

“Lorr awoke for a short time.” She explained all she had learned, of a deception that spanned decades, riddled throughout the tower’s history. “Castellan Mirra is down there. She has been plying treachery for decades, weakening Tashijan from on high, while corrupting its roots in secret. I’m sure even now she’s gathering a wealth of Grace from the masters’ alchemical labs, a well of power to taint and forge into dire weapons against us. Such malignant cunning will expose the skull, find recourse to use it.”

Kathryn noted Tylar had clutched the back of a chair as she related Lorr’s story. She read the growing horror in his face as he recalibrated the vast web of lies that had trapped them all here. Just as she had done earlier. She also saw the certainty firming in the gray storm of his eyes.

“Then we have no choice,” he said. “The skull must be retrieved.”

“It will be difficult,” Kathryn warned.

Tylar’s mind was already spinning. “We’ll bring fire-torches and lanterns. We can burn a path through to Gerrod’s study.”

Kathryn held up a hand. “That is all well and good, but that is not what I meant.”

Tylar stared at her.

“First, you’ll have to get through Argent. That will be the difficult part.”

Tylar opened his mouth to speak.

“No,” she said more firmly. “I know what you’re thinking. Bullying your way through. You can’t divide this house more than it has been already. Castellan Mirra has already succeeded in breaking the trust and fellowship of our Order. Do not serve her further by waging a war with Argent when the enemy is at our door.”

“What would you have me do?”

She sighed. “It is time we worked together to unite our Order. Argent was once a great knight. We’ll have to make him remember that.”

“Might be easier to pull a pig through a keyhole,” Rogger said.

Kathryn touched the man’s elbow and silenced him. She kept her eyes on Tylar. He slowly nodded his agreement.

A new voice interrupted from the narrow doorway. Dart leaned on the door’s latch, worn and haunted. She looked as if she had taken a beating, though not a mark marred her. Laurelle abandoned her place by the hearth and hurried toward her.

Dart held her off with a raised palm. Her arm trembled. “The skull. You said it came from Saysh Mal.”

Tylar nodded.

“Then perhaps you should talk to Brant. He was raised in that god-realm.”

Tylar frowned at Kathryn, not recognizing the name.

“It was the boy who helped rescue her,” she explained. “A Hand from Oldenbrook.”

“And he hails from Saysh Mal?” Rogger asked. Suspicion rang in his voice. “How long ago did he leave that realm?”

Dart shook her head, unsure.

Laurelle answered. “He arrived at the Conclave in Chrismferry some four years ago.”

Dart glanced to her, startled, but Kathryn knew the dark-haired girl was held in high esteem back at the school, both handsome of figure and of a rich family. Raised to such a station, little probably passed beneath Laurelle’s notice at the school. Especially a striking boy. But now she seemed slightly abashed by her knowledge.

Rogger mumbled to Tylar and lifted one eyebrow. “So he came about the time all fell to ruin in Saysh Mal.”

Nodding, Tylar turned to Laurelle. “Do you know how he came to be so far from home?”

She glanced to Dart and shifted her feet slightly. “Rumors only. You know the prattle that gets passed around school.”

“Tell us.”

Again a blushing glance was passed to Dart. “He arrived in chains. Exiled, I heard. Sent to the school to get rid of him.”

“Who sent him? Who banished him?”

“I heard tell it was the god of his realm.” Laurelle studied her toes. “She banished him, forbidding him ever to return.”