Hinterland

A RUSTED HINGE

“We’ve lost the docks atop stormwatch!” Gerrod yelled down to Kathryn. He clanked down the central stairs. “The warden is abandoning the top five floors. We’re to rally below!”

Kathryn climbed through the line of cloaked knights as they surged downward. Many bore wounds. Others were slung between their brothers and sisters. In all their eyes, the same expression shone. Horror and hopelessness.

Alchemical smoke choked the stairwell.

She met Gerrod at the floor where her hermitage lay. She was returning from securing the entire populace of Tashijan-those not of cloak or robe-in the Grand Court, out of harm’s way, leaving the halls and stairs to the knights and masters.

The war had been going on for only four bells, and already they’d lost the shield wall and outer towers. They’d had to pull back into Stormwatch, the sole tower still holding. And its defenses were crumbling.

She reached him and together they headed toward her hermitage. More knights were emptying out of this level, cloaks torn, faces raked. A knight sat slumped a few steps past the stairwell, blood pooled around him.

“How many dead?” she asked.

Gerrod answered, his voice muffled by his armor. “At last tally…” He shook his head, voice cracking.

She glanced to him. He was her rock, and even he was breaking. She was suddenly glad he kept his helmet closed. His bronze countenance, while a false stolidity, helped hold her steady.

He found his voice, as if sensing her need. “Six score dead, thrice that injured. We just lost five barricading the door to the docks.”

Somewhere high above, a scream echoed. Human.

“And it’s not just the wraiths,” Gerrod said. “Blessing our blades with dire alchemies has offered us some measure of defense, but Lord Ulf’s forces also come with stormfire, balls of lightning. Only stone seems to stanch them.”

Crossing past the warden’s Eyrie, a shout called to her. “Kathryn!”

She turned to see Argent at the center of a flurry of activity, gathering scrolls and packing up all that was important. He shoved through a few knights, a storm in shadow. He limped toward her. She had heard of his defense of the Agate tower. His last rally had saved hundreds of underfolk who made their home in the outer tower. She had heard the tale of Argent’s ride against a storm of the wraiths, with only a dozen knights, splitting the winged legion enough to allow the tower’s escape, mostly women and young ones.

“Head below!” he yelled. “We gather in the fieldroom at the next bell!”

She nodded.

He reached the door, his one eye on her. She read the regret behind his stony face. “We’ll hold this tower,” he said in a quiet voice, fierce echoes behind it.

“To the last knight,” she said.

“And master,” Gerrod added.

It was no longer a tower divided. In the past bells, as their defenses fell, one after the other under Ulf’s ravening legion, they were all crushed together. Knight and master. Underfolk and townsfolk. The battle here was not one of victory but of survival. Their squabbles of the past seemed petty and churlish.

Kathryn noted the Fiery Cross on Argent’s shoulder. It was torn in half by a raked claw.

“I’ll see you at the bell,” she said with a nod toward the warden.

Their eyes held a fraction longer, just long enough to admit the fools they’d both been. And to forgive each other’s blind corners. At least for this one day. She prayed it would be enough.

A shout drew Argent back to his duty.

Released, Kathryn strode down to her own rooms. There were a few items she intended to secure, one in particular, the true reason she had forded up here against the flowing stream of their retreat.

She rushed to her door, found it ajar, and pushed inside. The hearth was cold. The heavy drapery had been torn down and the windows boarded and shuttered tight. There was still glass on the floor from where Ulf’s emissary had broken through from the outer balcony.

As she crossed the threshold, she heard a frantic scuffle from the next room. Her sword appeared in her hand. She held her other arm out toward Gerrod, warding him back.

Wraiths had been worrying themselves through cracks, finding every means to gnash their way inside. A bell ago, a pair had clawed their way down one of the kitchen’s chimneys, defying a roaring fire and smoke, and attacked a baker’s boy, ripping his head from his body. Four others had died. It had taken the head cook with a butcher’s cleaver and a lone scullery maid with a spitting fork to finally dispatch the beast. To such an extent had the defense of Tashijan fallen.

Stepping farther into the room, Kathryn noted a small and familiar squeak from the next room.

“Penni?” Kathryn called out.

Silence-then a flutter of footsteps and a bonneted head peeked around the corner leading to her private room. “Mistress!” The maid offered a trembling curtsy that was strangely reassuring in its familiarity.

Kathryn waved the girl over. “What are you still doing up here?”

Penni took a scatter of steps toward her, then stopped. “I heard…below…that all was lost up here. So I came in a rush.” She pointed to the servants’ door in back.

Kathryn realized she should have thought to do the same-it would have been quicker than fighting the tumult of the main stairs. She admonished herself for the narrowness of her vision, constricted by her own sense of place and caste.

“I knew you’d not want to lose this,” her maid said.

Penni held up a strap of black linen. Attached to it was a thumb-sized diamond. It was the diadem of the castellan, the symbol of her station. It was not the fake one, the artifice of paste, but the true diadem, the one stolen by Mirra and rescued by Lorr. The masters had already tested and cleared it of any Dark Grace. And despite its former bearer, it was an ancient jewel of Tashijan, the heart of the Citadel.

It was why Kathryn had come up here.

She stared gratefully at her maid, realizing how well the girl had come to know her mistress’s heart. Yet, in turn, Kathryn had barely noted her comings and goings. She did note her now: the firm heart in a trembling young girl’s body. Here was what they fought for in Tashijan. Here was what had ultimately made Kathryn turn her back on Ulf’s offer.

A loud crack shattered through the room.

One of the shutters at the back window tore away, followed by a tinkle of glass. Shards flew high. Penni turned and ducked, shielding herself with an arm. Kathryn was struck by the smell of burnt wood.

Gerrod grabbed her elbow.

Through the shattered gap, a blaze of azure scintillation swept into the room, a fiery globe as wide as her outstretched arms. It struck Penni, picking her off her feet. Her bonnet blew from her head in a wash of fire. Lightning crackled over her skin, burning her livery, arching her back, stretching her mouth in a silent wail.

Gerrod shoved Kathryn aside and pointed his other arm at the ball of stormfire. From the back of his wrist, a stream of muddy bile jetted and struck the globe. With the touch of the alchemy, the fires were blown out like a spent candle.

Penni collapsed to the rug. She shivered all over as if cold, despite her smoking skin and fiery-flailed clothes. Then she lay still. Eyes open, but no longer seeing.

The diadem she had come to rescue lay between them, flung as she was struck and consumed.

“I’ll get it,” Gerrod said.

Kathryn brusquely shoved past him. She crossed, stepped over the diadem, and knelt down beside Penni. She scooped the girl up in her arms. She was so very light, as if all substance had escaped with her life. Kathryn felt the heat of the char through her cloak. The maid’s small head hung slack over her arm, neck stretched as if baring her throat.

And so she had…to come here, to risk all.

Kathryn shifted her arms and rocked her small body closer, so Penni’s head came to rest against her shoulder. Kathryn cradled her.

“I have you,” she whispered.

Turning, she headed for the door.

Gerrod bent and collected the diadem from the floor and followed. But in her arms, Kathryn already carried the true jewel, the true heart of Tashijan.

Far below, Laurelle sat in a moldy chair, its ticking puffing out. It smelled of mouse bile and mustiness. But she had sunk gratefully into it a bell ago, as if it were the finest velvet and down.

To one side, Kytt rested cross-legged on the stone floor, leaning his back against a plank bed strewn with old hay. Delia sat atop the bed, supported by the wall. Her eyes were open, but her gaze looked far away. Her head had been bandaged deftly by Kytt, who was experienced with such minor care, since all wyld trackers were trained to attend injuries on the trail.

They had found the refuge, a room with a stout door, deep within the level where they’d been trapped. Their attempt to push into well-lit and-populated regions had turned into a mad flight from things hidden in the dark and shadow. Between the senses of Orquell’s crimson eye and Kytt’s sharp ears and nose, they found all their ways blocked.

They were forced to delve deeper into the abandoned sections of the aged tower. Until they were all but lost. Recognizing the futility, Orquell had finally pulled them into this room. He sat in the room’s center. He had raised a small fire in each corner, kindled from the beetle-riddled legs of a broken table and alchemical powder.

Warding pyres, he claimed.

He now seemed lost in his flames, eyes closed. He had remained like that for the past bell. Occasionally one of the pyres would spit with flame, hissing. And behind the sparks, Laurelle swore she heard thin whispers.

But more often she heard screams.

From above.

What was happening?

If she had been in her own rooms, she probably would’ve been locked up, shoulder to shoulder with other Hands of the realms, equally blind to the true state of the war. Still, she wished she was up there. Here she was truly in the dark, in more ways than mere shadowy halls. Her imagination filled in the gaps of the story above with a whirl of horrors. Even if the truth were more terrifying than any of her imagined scenarios, she’d still prefer to know. At least then she could focus on one tangible fear, rather than the multitude of phantom perils that swam through her head.

“She waits,” Orquell finally muttered, his eyes still closed.

“Who?” Delia asked, focusing back on the room along with the rest of them.

Laurelle felt a thrill of fear, knowing that their short respite was about to end. She sat straighter.

“The witch,” he said. “The flames chitter with her dark delight. She waits for the war above to tear and weaken. Then she will rise and sweep through what remains, consuming all in her path.”

“Then we must get word above,” Delia said, scooting to the edge of the bed. “Light more fires.”

“Too late. The warden has set plentiful flames, but he has forgotten the fundamental nature of fire.”

“What’s that?” Laurelle asked.

“Every flame casts a shadow.” He opened his eyes and stretched his shoulders, like a cat waking by a fire. “You can’t have light without darkness. And Mirra takes advantage of that. Just as she has slunk and lurked in secret passages wormed throughout Tashijan’s cellars, so she does now in the shadows cast by the warden’s pyres.”

“But the gates below were all closed,” Kytt said. “Sealed with iron and wyrmwood. All else bricked tight.”

“Bricks, iron, and wood. All cast their shadows when raised against the flame. And the more fires that are stoked, the darker those shadows become, and the more likely those dark paths will open for her legion. For Mirra does not move her legion through mere shadows. She moves her ghawls through places darker, through those trickles of Gloom found hidden in shadowy places.”

Laurelle pictured the many fires throughout Tashijan. They had been set to ward against the storm’s cold, but if the master here was correct, those same pyres had cast deep enough shadows for some Dark Grace to tease open a passage into their midst.

And now the witch waited.

Like them.

In the darkness.

Only unlike them, with every passing bell, she saw her position grow stronger, while theirs sapped weaker.

“She is about to strike. I sense it in the stanching of the pyres-a smothering swell of darkness.”

Laurelle perhaps felt it, too. A weight to the air. Or maybe it was simply her own terror.

“What are we to do, then?” Delia asked. “We’re buried among her forces here, trapped in the very shadows cast by those flames we need to reach.”

Orquell slowly stretched to his feet with a creak of his bones. “Since we’re already here, we might as well be of use to Tashijan.”

“How so?” Laurelle asked. Her hand drifted to her throat. She knew she wasn’t going to like his answer. And she was right.

“We might as well call the witch to us.”

“What?” Kytt squeaked.

“We’ll draw her eye here. Away from the others.”

He stepped to one of his pyres, the one set before the door. Powders appeared in his fingers, as if out of the very air. He cast the alchemy into the fire. Flames flared brighter, chasing sparks high. He leaned down and whispered into the fire. But whatever he said was consumed by the flames.

Then he straightened and rested his fists on his hips.

“Now we’ll see if she answers.”

“When?” Delia asked.

“It may take a while.”

Delia stood up, eyes glancing over the four pyres. “Who are you truly?” Her eyes settled back to him. “You are rub-aki. That I understand. But you come here with your crimson eye painted over, and I suspect you’ve equally hidden your true purpose for arriving at Tashijan in so timely a manner.”

Orquell ran a hand over his bald pate. “I am a master,” he said. “These tattoos were hard-earned. But my crimson eye-that I earned through a decade of toil and flame, long before I was ever tattooed in my disciplines.”

He crossed to the bed and sat down upon it. He tapped a finger on the crimson thumbprint. “Do you know how this inner eye is ultimately opened?”

Delia folded her arms, still suspicious, but Laurelle shifted in her chair to hear better.

“The eye is opened in darkness.”

“But I thought the sacred flames of the rub-aki were the source of your enlightenment,” Delia said flatly. “A Grace gifted by the god Takaminara.”

“There is much speculation about the ways of the Blood-eyed-clouded further by those charlatans who fake a crimson eye. Very little of it is the truth. Takaminara prefers to keep her ways secret. The true rub-aki respect that and do not speak of such matters.”

“Then why tell us?” Delia asked. Her eyes kept shifting to the pyre before the door.

“Because what I must ask will require great trust.”

Delia merely shrugged, noncommittal. “Tell us about the opening of your inner eye.”

“Like I mentioned, it requires darkness. Takaminara is well versed in the relationship between flame and shadow. She has buried herself in her mountain, never stepping under the sun or stars. Yet she is more knowledgeable of this world than any other god. She stands amid the molten flows that run beneath all. Her world is neither flame nor darkness, but the space between. In that fracture, she can see into the deep past and the trails into the future.”

This last was said with great reverence.

“And for those who earn her mark, who serve her, she lets us share the smallest fraction of her sight. But to that we must open our eye. And here is a truth that only a handful of people know.” He stared at each in turn. “There is no Grace involved.”

Delia straightened, loosening her arms, then tightening them again. “Impossible. I’ve heard stories of the rub-aki, great feats of fire and prediction. True stories, not charlatan tales.”

Orquell nodded. “Yet it requires no Grace. Some communing and pryre casting require Grace and blessings from Takaminara. But at its most basic, down deep, every man and woman has this eye, awaiting to be woken.”

“How does one open it?” Laurelle asked “How does darkness open it?”

“It is not just any darkness. Once properly trained, an acolyte descends deep beneath the volcanic peak of Takaminara. Into caverns of black rock, long gone cold, where sunlight has never touched. A darkness so deep that it strains the eye and blinds it, like staring directly at the sun. That alone is a lesson worth noting. That purest darkness and the brightest flame blind equally.” He stopped and his gaze seemed to drift for a moment. Then he began again. “And in that darkness, with the regular eye blinded, the inner eye can open with proper initiation.”

Delia stirred. “But how does this make us trust you? Why did you come to Tashijan during such a dire moment as this?”

He shrugged. “No mystery there. Master Hesharian requested my services to seek a cure for the stone-cursed knight. That is the truth.” He turned to Delia. “But it was Takaminara that sent me to Ghazal, to study the ways of the Clerics of Naeth. It was those same studies that drew the attention of Hesharian. And eventually drew me here.”

“So Takaminara knew you’d end up here? Why? Did she foresee what has befallen us?”

Orquell shrugged. “I do not know. We are her servants, submitting to her will as much as any Hand of a god. We go where the flame directs. Perhaps she saw it, but more likely she cast us out like petals on a flowing river. She can sense the current, but even she can’t tell where each petal will land. Portending is much different than the charlatans make it seem. More powerful in some ways, less in others.”

He must have read the disappointment in Laurelle and the doubt in Delia. Kytt just gaped at the revelations.

“Takaminara once described what portending was truly like. It was like seeing flames in the dark. Fiery pools of illumination, disconnected to everything around it. To place too much significance on what is revealed, without knowing what remains hidden in the dark, is a fool’s paradise. You’d might as well see nothing at all.”

“So then what do you see with your open eye?” Laurelle asked.

Before he could answer, the pyre by the door suddenly burst up with a flare of flame.

Orquell stood. “It seems someone’s come knocking.”

Kathryn faced the pair of wraiths in the room.

A dozen bodies of young boys were strewn among the stacked beds and floor like scattered dolls, broken and ripped. The far window, high on the wall, no more than a slit, seemed too small for any wraith to enter. The iron shutter was peeled back and teetered on a broken hinge, weakened by rust. Such was the sorry state of Tashijan: fallen into disrepair over the centuries as numbers dwindled and the space grew too large.

It shouldn’t have happened. For lack of a solid hinge, twelve boys had died.

One of the wraiths straddled a lad, his chest raked, throat torn. A fistful of claw was buried in his belly. It tore free, yanking out the most tender parts. The wraith’s face was covered in blood and gore as it spit at her, hissing and baring its teeth, protecting its meal.

The other was perched on the top of the stacked beds, also straddling something, but it was not slaking its hunger. It was satisfying another lust. It leaped up to the bed railing, claws digging into the wood. Its manhood swollen and bloody. Wings spread.

Kathryn held her sword up and gathered the room’s shadows to her cloak. She remembered Lord Ulf’s cold words, how he controlled his wind wraiths through seersong and will. Her lips hardened. Was this the manner in which he controlled them?

Behind her, fighting continued out on the stair. Screams, wails, and frantic orders echoed up and down the main spiral. Slowly they were losing levels, one after the other. Blood was spent in order to clear floors. Stormwatch was slowly being driven into ever smaller quarters.

The only advantage: The knights had less territory to guard, and the wraiths had fewer ways to strike them.

As a result, a balance was establishing. They had held this level for an entire half bell. The line was even firming. A glimmer of hope had started to sound in the growl and shout of the knights and masters.

It was such a feat that also allowed Kathryn to hear a scream behind this door. A squire’s lodging. She had opened the door to find this horror. How many other places in Tashijan suffered similarly?

The one atop the bed attacked first, screeching and diving at her, its wings wide. Kathryn shifted shadows in the room and vanished to its left flank. Her blade darted out, lightning out of darkness, blessed with dire alchemies.

The wraith noted her thrust for its heart. Though ilked, it was Grace-born, a creature of air. With the speed of a swirling gust, it ripped around, lashing out with a clawed foot.

Kathryn ducked between its legs, never dropping her sword. She shoved straight up, slicing open its belly, and rolled aside. It wailed and spun, spilling entrails and blood. It struck the wall, writhing, unable to gain its footing, wracked in pain, legs tangled in its own entrails. The more it fought, the more it gutted itself.

From the corner of her eye, movement stirred.

Kathryn swirled darkness and vanished away. The creature atop the table searched with one eye cocked, then the other. But it didn’t hunt on sight alone. Its head swung around, scenting her. It was ready when she folded out of darkness, sword swinging.

It lunged off the table-away from her, craven with the death cries of its partner. Kathryn chopped with her sword before it could fully escape. Her blade sliced through its leathery wing and bony shoulder, cleaving all away.

Now it was its turn to screech as it rolled off the table, off the boy, one wing flapping like a sail in a storm.

Kathryn vaulted the table and landed on the wing, pinning the wraith to the floor. Two-handed, she swung her sword low, cutting off its scream.

And its head.

The body convulsed once, then lay still.

Its head kept rolling.

Kathryn dropped her shadows. Her cloak fell about her shoulders like a death’s shroud, heavy with blood. She stepped back, stumbled away, over to the door.

A knight appeared at the entrance. His eyes above the masklin widened at the slaughter found inside. She pushed past him, sword still out. She clenched her fist on its hilt to control her trembling.

“Seal the door,” she ordered as she passed. “Bar it tight.”

Then she was out on the stairs. More calls and shouts echoed down from the main line. She ran the opposite way. Before hearing the scream from the room, she had been headed down to meet Argent. Now she had another reason to run below.

To escape the horrors of that room.

Around and around, she fled.

Finally she stopped, leaned a palm against the wall, and emptied her stomach on the stair. Her belly heaved again, sour and empty. She gasped for air. Her eyes ached with tears that refused to flow.

Not now…

She spat on the stone and wiped her mouth.

Not yet…

Straightening, she sheathed her sword and stumbled a step, caught herself, and continued down leadenly, a hundred stone heavier than when she had gone up to her hermitage.

She quickly reached the fieldroom’s level and headed down the hall to the open door. It was unguarded. There were no knights to spare for such duties. She entered to find the rally already under way.

She was surprised at how few were here. Argent held a dagger in his fingers and made deft instructions on the pinned map, cutting into the ancient vellum in his urgency and fury. He was instructing his second-in-command. Kathryn didn’t know his name. The former second had died during the third bell; there had been no time for introductions after that.

Hesharian stood against the back wall. Unmoving, eyes glazed.

Gerrod was at Argent’s other elbow, suggesting a few improvements with a bronzed finger. “They are particularly sensitive to loam. If we paint the stairs here…and here…with an alchemy of bile and loam, they should weaken before they hit the line.”

The warden nodded.

All their eyes lifted when she entered. Something in her face made them all straighten with concern.

“Did the line break again?” Argent asked.

“It holds,” Kathryn assured him, putting steel in her voice and hardening her face.

Argent looked relieved. Gerrod’s face was impossible to read, armored as it was, but he continued to stare at her.

She nodded to him, indicating she was all right.

It was a lie they all needed to believe for the moment.

There was only one other participant in the rally: the lithe and pristine figure of Liannora, Hand of Oldenbrook. Like Hesharian, she also stood to the side, her hands tucked into a snowy muff. For a moment, Kathryn could not make sense of it. Then she remembered the stone-casting among the Hands, the selection of a representative to the council.

Or rather two representatives.

Kathryn searched the room. “Where’s Delia?” she asked Liannora.

A flash of guilt wavered across her pale features before vanishing. The woman shook her head, indicating she didn’t know. Liannora must have been caught here when all fell apart. She must have felt safer here, leaving Delia to deal with all the Hands. No wonder the guilty demeanor.

Kathryn turned her back on the woman.

Argent spoke. “If the line is finally holding, then perhaps we have a chance.”

“We can’t win this war,” Kathryn said, not letting her steeliness drop, making it plain that it was not despair that prompted her words.

Argent, ever the campaigner, still bristled.

“She is right,” Gerrod said, supporting her. “We can hold out, but night will fall soon. The sun already sets.”

“So?” Argent turned his eye upon Gerrod. “Locked in our tower, what difference does it make if the sun is up or not?”

“You forget Eylan?” Kathryn asked. “What have we faced so far? Wraiths and stormfire.”

Argent frowned.

Kathryn continued. “Eylan came cloaked in an icy Dark Grace, impenetrable. Though the wraiths are fearsome, they can be struck down with steel and alchemy. What if he brings the same icy Dark Grace upon us again?”

Argent’s face grew troubled. She read the dawning understanding in the furrows of his brow. He was stubborn, but not beyond reason-if you could get him to listen.

“Perhaps Ulf weakens,” he said. “The storm must sap him greatly to keep it locked around our town for so long.”

“No,” Gerrod said and stepped to the window.

They followed.

The wide windows were shuttered tight. Gerrod pointed to an opening in the shutter, only a hand’s breadth tall but wide enough for all three to gather.

Kathryn searched outside. The day was indeed almost gone. The storm swallowed the world, but the gray clouds were darkening. They were losing the sun. Beyond the window, a sweeping view of fields and outer towers was shrouded in swirls of snow. Still, she saw shapes winging about and boiling and crawling amid the towers.

Still so many…

“Lord Ulf is not weakening,” Gerrod continued. “The wraiths were only the beginning. He’s been waiting for nightfall, for his wraith legion to drive us tighter and tighter together.”

“Why?”

“Whatever icy Grace protected Eylan, it must not be limitless. Or else he would have used it to shield the wraiths already. I suspect it is an arrow best shot with some marksmanship.”

Kathryn understood. “He intends to have us all confined to one place.”

“So to inflict a killing blow,” Argent said.

Gerrod nodded. “And when that ice comes and we lose the flames of our lower levels, it will open our other flank, where Mirra awaits. Wraiths above, daemons below, and ice all around.”

Argent stepped back, the fire in him kicked to ashes. “When?” he asked, knowing this was the most important question.

Gerrod merely turned to the window-and the setting sun.

Kathryn stared out the window as the darkness deepened.

“We’ll never last ’til dawn,” Argent muttered.

The pyre spit and hissed, scattering sparks toward the roof. The barred door glowed in the flames, revealing every grain in stark relief, as if the fire did not tolerate any shadows.

“To the center of the room,” Orquell ordered, waving his hand.

Laurelle shifted to obey, crowded by Kytt and Delia.

“Stay there until I tell you otherwise,” Orquell said, stepping toward the door.

The other three pyres in the room’s corners caught the excitement of the first and danced higher. Soon the room shone as brightly as a summer day.

Laurelle glanced at her toes, avoiding the flaring glare. She noted that none of them cast any shadows on the floor. With flames burning on all four sides, they were bathed in light from all directions.

She remembered Master Orquell’s earlier words.

Every flame casts a shadow.

Orquell reached to the door’s bar and lifted it free.

“What are you doing?” Delia asked harshly. Suspicion still rang sharply in her.

“We invited the witch here. It would be impolite to refuse her now.”

Orquell tugged on the latch and fought the stubborn hinges to pry the door open. Beyond the threshold, the dark hall waited.

The unnaturalness of the shadows was plain to all. The blaze of the pyre failed to penetrate the darkness, as if the hallway were flooded to the roof with black water.

Orquell stepped back and beckoned. “Castellan Mirra, please come inside. Your black ghawls will have to remain without, of course. The flames here will not let them pass.”

“What do you want, rub-aki?” a reedy voice asked from the darkness. “Your flames foul the hallways here.”

“Ah yes, my rys-mor, the living flames.” He waved to encompass the pyres. “Born from a powder of crushed lavantheum, bearing the blood of four aspects-it attracts them, does it not? Where ordinary flame chases them off with warmth and brightness, my flames are like the fresh beating and bloody heart of the most delicious prey. They can’t stay away. In fact, I wager they are being a bit stubborn about obeying your wishes. Of course, eventually they will, but it will take much effort and concentration on your part.”

“Why are you interfering? Takaminara has never meddled in the affairs of the outer world.”

Orquell took another step back, bowing slightly. “Exactly. So fear not my threshold. I swear your safety here.”

Laurelle heard Delia hiss under her breath.

The darkness parted and a gray-haired old woman slipped out and into the firelight, dressed in a robe, sashed at the waist. She seemed more a kindly great-mother, maybe a bit stern around the edges, but certainly no witch. She entered the room, leaning on a smooth cane. It was only once she stepped across that Laurelle saw her cane was actually some creature’s legbone, carved with Littick sigils.

“Again, what do you want, rub-aki?”

“A bargain for my safe passage. Nothing more. Allow me to reach the central stair, and I’ll douse my flames. You know the word of a rub-aki is inviolate. We cannot go back on our oath.”

“And I also know that the rub-aki are skilled at using their words to the fullest and in a most sly manner.”

“Then I’ll speak plain. I walk”-he mimicked a man walking with two fingers across his open palm-“and once I reach the stairs, I’ll douse all of my pyres. I will tell no one of your presence. But betray me and I’ll use my dying breath like a bellow to fan my four pyres. You won’t like that.”

Mirra studied Orquell, attempting to see a trap.

“To sweeten the deal,” he pressed, “I offer you these three to take.”

He waved over to them.

“What?” Delia snapped and lunged a step forward.

Laurelle grabbed her elbow, instinctively. The master had told them not to leave the room’s center for any reason. He had also asked for their trust. Delia fought her hold. Only then did Laurelle realize Delia was feigning her struggle, for the show of it. Still, Laurelle also read a vein of real suspicion in Delia’s eye.

Could they truly trust this one?

Orquell ignored them. “As you’ve said, servants of Takaminara have no concerns for the wider world. I have no use for these three-a wyld tracker and two Hands.”

Mirra’s eyes shifted closer to study them, stepping to the side to view them better.

Orquell leaned slightly, assuming a pose similar to Mirra’s.

“And not just any Hands,” he added. “But the Hands of Tylar ser Noche, regent of Chrismferry. I believe you are still searching for him.”

Delia swore, almost raising a blush on Laurelle’s cheek with her sudden and vitriolic vulgarity.

“And for assurance, I’ll cross to the stairs without raising any fire, so that you may feel safer. This I swear. I will trust your darkness to cloak us and seal our bargain.”

Mirra was plainly tempted, weighing the odds of just taking them. But there were risks in attacking a master of fire. Finally she spoke slowly, summarizing the bargain. “So if I allow you to proceed to the main stair, you’ll raise no fire against me, tell no one of my presence, and once you are free, you’ll stanch your pyres.”

He nodded.

“And I can take these three,” she added firmly.

“I will not stop you. All this I swear on my crimson eye.”

Mirra surveyed the room one more time. A bell echoed from some distance away, marking the passage of time. Finally, she nodded. “So be it. You are sworn safe passage.”

Orquell bowed. He crossed to each pyre, spread a bit of powder, and whispered over it. He returned to the door. “The flames will obey my will. Once safe, I will extinguish them.”

“Then let us be off. Sunset draws near.”

“I want my hostages kept close,” he said. “No slipping them off in the dark. I will know.”

She waved her arm impatiently.

Orquell raised a palm to the pyre by the door and lowered his hand. The flames died down, while the others still flickered brighter. With no light ahead, Laurelle saw their shadows stretch toward the open doorway. Once they crossed the threshold, the darkness surged inside, sweeping around with a rustle of cloth.

They were forced to follow Orquell. As soon as they stepped over the threshold, all light vanished. Laurelle gasped at the suddenness of it, as if someone had slammed the door on the firelit room behind them.

She reached out a hand and touched a warm body. Kytt found her hand and grabbed it. Delia bumped against her, then their hands were locked. Together they were ushered ahead, surrounded by a darkness that stirred.

They followed a zigzagging path that had Laurelle all turned around. She remembered Orquell’s description of a darkness so complete it strained the eye to the point of blindness. Her eyes ached, searching for light.

She heard Orquell whisper under his breath. So faint she could not make out his words. But they had been intended for sharper ears, those of a wyld tracker.

Kytt leaned forward, his lips finding Laurelle’s ear. He breathed so very faintly. “Be ready.”

Laurelle nodded and squeezed Delia’s hand, silently warning her.

Orquell spoke again, but this time loud enough for all to hear. “I believe I never answered your question, Mistress Laurelle. Before I go, I might as well satisfy your curiosity. You had asked what I see when my inner eye opens in the darkness.”

Laurelle swallowed to free her tongue. “What do you see?”

“Flames…”

Suddenly a door burst open to the right, yanked by Orquell. Firelight blazed out of the room, sealed so tight that not a flicker had reached the hall. The one who hid in the room had plainly not wanted to be found, but did not dare sit in the dark amid a legion of ghawls.

A cry rose inside.

Laurelle spotted a familiar figure cowering near the back of the room. A thick torch in hand, bright with flame. He held it toward the door like a sword.

“Sten…” Laurelle said.

It was the captain of the Oldenbrook guard.

His eyes widened at the sight of them-then he must have noted the surging shadows around the group. He suddenly sank to his knees in terror.

“No!”

Out in the hall, the firelight cast back the shadows, leaving Mirra standing only a few paces away, stripped of darkness.

Orquell cupped his hands toward Sten’s torch. The flame leaped like a deer from the end of his brand and flew to the master’s hands. At the same time, he turned and cast the fire at Mirra.

The flames struck her, bathing her face, lighting her gray hair like the driest grass. She screamed and fell back into the darkness of the deeper hall.

Orquell shoved them all in the opposite direction.

With the witch maddened by her agony, her ghawls were in disarray. They fled to the end of the hall and around the corner, where more firelight glowed at the end of the next passage. They had reached the habited sections of the tower.

They ran in a wild dash, fearful of what might be rallying at their back. But it seemed the ghawls had found another target upon which to vent their rage and their mistress’s pain.

Sten wailed behind them, the sound barely human.

Laurelle fled from his cry as much as from the ghawls.

Finally, they reached the light. Rooms to either side echoed with voices, moans. Some doors were open, blazing with light. The smell of blood and bile was heavy. They had reached some makeshift healing ward set up on this level. Passing through, they found a gathering of knights at the stair’s landing. The knights eyed the strange and breathless bunch, but recognized a master’s robes and parted the way.

Orquell stepped to the stairs and resoundingly clapped his hands. Laurelle noted a wisp of smoke sail between his palms. She eyed him inquiringly.

“To douse the pyres. As I swore-when I reached the stairs, I would put them out.”

Delia stared at him. “And you also swore not to raise a fire against Mirra.”

“And I didn’t. What burned her was not a flame I cast or kindled. It was borrowed fire, already burning. It didn’t need raising.”

Delia shook her head. “The witch was right. The word of rub-aki is as slippery as any lie.”

“Before we stepped into the hall,” Laurelle asked, “you already knew about Sten’s fire?”

Orquell tapped the mark on his forehead. “The inner eye is sensitive to fire. While communing earlier, listening to my pyres, I sensed a fire hidden near the edge of the witch’s darkness. I needed her cooperation as a bridge to reach it.”

Delia turned to the upper stairs. “Before Mirra heals and collects herself, word must reach the warden and Castellan Vail.”

Orquell remained where he was. “I cannot speak of it. This I also swore. But I know where I may prove of more use.” He took a step down the stairs.

“Where are you going?” Laurelle asked.

He pointed below. “With Mirra and her legion already above, her buried lair is most likely unguarded. If what I suspect is true, there may be something a rub-aki can accomplish that no one else can do.”

“You’re going into the cellars?” Kytt asked, taking a step after him. “Down into her secret passages?”

“If I can find an opening.”

Kytt took the other steps. “I’ve been down there. While chasing the wolfkits. I can lead you.”

Laurelle stared from Delia to the young tracker. Then she slowly took one step down, and another, almost disbelieving her legs. But she knew the truth. They would need her help more than Delia would, if only to carry another torch. And after all that had happened, she was not about to hole up in some room again, waiting for the end. She’d had enough of that.

“Get word above,” she said to Delia. “To your father. To Kathryn. They must know what lurks here and where we are headed.”

The woman hesitated-but she read the certainty in Laurelle’s eyes.

Turning, Laurelle found Kytt gaping at her.

“No,” he said firmly.

Laurelle simply strode past him, rolling her eyes.

Boys.

When would they learn?