Hinterland

A REGENT IN BLOOD

Cloaked in black, Tylar Ser Noche waited on the docks. The stars shone and the greater moon had set. It was the darkest point of the night, when both moons were gone and the sun remained only a rumor. It was also the coldest part of the night. Ice crusted the edges of the sludge canal and made the planks of the ironwood dock treacherous underfoot.

His party had been waiting for a full turn of a bell. All were buried in woolens, furred boots, and heavy cloaks. Their breath steamed the air.

“Perhaps he won’t come,” Delia whispered through a scarf about her mouth. She stood close, a head shorter and a decade younger, wrapped in an oiled black cloak lined with fox fur, its hood fringed in snowy ermine, a perfect complement to her pale skin and exacting contrast to her shadow-dark hair. The only color about her rose from the shine of her eyes, a warm hazel, green-tinged in the torchlight. “Or perhaps the letter was a forgery, one meant to lure us where there are few witnesses.”

“It was no forgery,” Tylar assured her.

The missive had arrived a fortnight ago, urging secrecy. It had been coded properly and signed with the proper sigil.

Ancient Littick for thief.

Tylar had first seen the same sigil branded on the letter-writer’s buttock. Plus a few telltale drops, richly crimson, had stained the white parchment. Not blood. Wine. Testament enough to the verity of the letter’s author.

“Rogger was never one to mind the precise ringing of a bell,” Tylar said, urging patience with a slim smile.

“Let’s hope he was precise enough about the turning of the day, then,” Sergeant Kyllan said, stamping his boots to warm his toes. The master of Chrismferry’s garrison did not like this moonless rendezvous. He scratched the tortured scar across his left cheek, scowling slightly. Kyllan had refused to allow Tylar to cross the city alone, especially in the middle of the night. There were still many who wanted Tylar dead.

And the numbers were growing daily as this endless winter stretched on. Rumbles and rumors spread through alehouses and wenchworks of a curse upon his regency. Though Tylar had slain the daemon that had attempted to usurp the god-realm of Chrismferry, the city’s gratitude was as short-lived as a bloom after the first frost. And as winter’s hardships grew, it seemed even the change of seasons had become the responsibility of the city’s new regent, a mantle Tylar wore with ill comfort.

For Tylar’s security, Kyllan had ordered ten of the garrison’s pikemen to accompany him on this dark journey across the city. But Tylar suspected it was an unnecessary escort. He had more than enough protection from the party’s one other member.

Wyr-mistress Eylan stood at the foot of the docks, dressed in deerskins and fur, a sword in hand, a half ax at her waist. Her cloak had a hood, but she did not bother pulling it up, seemingly impervious to the frigid breeze that swept up the crumbling canal from the distant Tigre River. Her skin glowed with a flushed ruddiness, a shade darker than her tanned leathers. Her black hair trailed to mid-back in a thick braid, decorated with three raven feathers.

She seemed to note his attention, glancing over to him, appraising him coldly, then looking away again.

Bound by an oath, Eylan seldom strayed far from Tylar’s side, not so much in concern for his safety as to protect a debt sworn to her lord. A year ago, Tylar had promised his seed in trade for his life and the lives of his companions, a humour of significant Grace that Wyr-lord Bennifren intended for the forges of his Black Alchemists. Tylar was determined to avoid paying that debt for as long as possible, preferably forever.

’Til then, he had gained, in Eylan, a second shadow.

Tylar returned his attention to the stagnant canal.

Nearby, a small single-sailed trawler, long abandoned, lay stripped and on its side, half-beached, hull burst, locked in ice. Tylar was surprised to find it here. The long winter had taxed the city of Chrismferry, especially the underfolk too poor for the rising cost of coal and wood. Scavenging had become commonplace. The planking of the old trawler would heat a hearth for a good turn of the moon. Yet here it remained, untouched.

Of course, here was the heart of the Blight, one of several sections of the great city long gone to seed, as abandoned and broken as the old trawler. Chrismferry spread across both sides of the Tigre River. Founded four millennia ago, it was the oldest and greatest of all the cities of the Nine Lands of Myrillia. It would take a man on a horse two days to cross from one end of the city to the other. The world was the city, the city was the world. Such was said about the first city of Myrillia.

But if true, what did the Blight signify?

The city seemed to be decaying from the inside. The borders continued to extend along the Tigre River and out into the surrounding plains, but in the past centuries, sections of the inner city had fallen into ruin. Canals filled with silt, houses fell under the rotted weight of their roofs, cobbled streets were stripped of stones, leaving only muddy, pitted tracks that daunted all manner of wheel. Soon the only inhabitants of the Blight were those seeking to lose themselves, but even these low dwellers seldom stayed long. Easier prospects could be found at the edges of the city.

Why did Rogger insist on returning to the city under such strange circumstances? The former thief had left Chrismferry a year ago under the guise of a pilgrim, to discern what he could of the state of the Nine Lands and to seek any thread or crumb about the Cabal. Since Tylar had freed the city, nothing more had been learned about the faction of naethryn-the daemonic undergods of Myrillia-who sought to kindle a new War of the Gods. Nothing until Rogger’s cryptic letter had arrived by raven. What had the thief learned that required such a dark place to meet?

The answer was not long in coming.

From the depths of the canal, a tall black fin split the waters and rose, steaming, into the frigid air. The bulk of the underwater vessel splintered ice as it surfaced, one of Tangle Reef’s undersea crafts. It appeared like a small wooden whale, fueled by the blood of Fyla, the god of the watery Reef.

A hatch behind the wood fin pushed open and was thrown back by an arm scarred by branded sigils. The owner of those brands climbed out next and balanced on the wet back of the vessel. Tylar stepped forward, recognizing his old friend. But it seemed Rogger’s time abroad had wrought ill changes in him. His scraggled red-gray beard framed a face gone gaunt. Bony cheekbones poked from beneath green eyes, his lips were cracked and split, and his skin shone with a yellowish tinge. Tylar prayed this last was just the reflected sheen of the flickering torchlight.

Rogger shivered and huffed into the night. “Curse me black, it’s cold enough to freeze my arse cheeks together.”

Tylar lifted an arm in welcome.

But Rogger ignored him and bent back to the open hatch and called below. “Oy, careful with that, you overgrown dogfish.”

Another figure, scowling sourly, half-climbed up through the hatch and hauled up a roughspun satchel. He passed it to Rogger, who swung it over a shoulder.

“Much obliged, Kreel,” the thief said.

At the hatch, Tylar recognized the leader of Fyla’s elite Hunters. There was no mistaking his fishbelly pallor, his smooth skin, and the throat lined by gill flaps. Like all the denizens of Tangle Reef, Kreel had been forged in his mother’s womb by an alchemy of Graces. Kreel’s presence concerned Tylar. What was so important that the god Fyla would send her personal bodyguard to deliver Rogger safely here?

Kreel’s gaze settled on Tylar. The man’s eyes, usually stoic and cold, flashed with a mix of worry and relief, as if glad to be rid of Rogger…and whatever burden his presence entailed.

Without even a nod, Kreel dropped away and hauled the hatch closed after him. Rogger barely had time to leap to the dock before the watercraft sank under him. The tall fin slipped back beneath the dark waters.

On the dock, Rogger joined them, looking rangier than ever. He bowed deeply toward Delia and took her hand, kissing it with exaggerated pomp. “Ah, to allow my unworthy lips to grace the knuckles of the regent’s Hand of blood.”

Delia shook her head as he rose, but she still hugged him warmly. “I missed you,” she said in his ear.

“Truly?” He feigned shock. “And I thought I had experienced all manner of miracles during my pilgrimage. But this is indeed the most wondrous of all.”

Tylar gripped him next, by the hand, then in a full embrace. Tylar was surprised by how glad he was to have the man at his side again. It was as if a missing limb, long gone, had returned. But Tylar also noted how wasted of frame his friend had become; the embrace was like hugging a stack of bones. Concerned, Tylar broke the contact.

Rogger quietly shook his head, silencing the question on Tylar’s lips.

Tylar read something behind the usual amused warmth, something dark with dread.

“We need a place to speak in private,” Rogger said, shedding his easy banter and glancing warily around him.

“We are far from the castillion,” Tylar said. “It will take us the better part of a bell to return.”

“I’d as soon unload what I must now.” Rogger nodded toward an old shipwright’s shop turned crow loft, windowless, with windblown refuse for a door.

Rogger strode off down the dock toward it, drawing Tylar after him. He kicked his way inside, scattering a few nesting rats. Tylar collected a torch from one of the pikemen and waved Kyllan and Eylan to stand guard.

Delia made to follow them, but Rogger held up a hand. “Only Tylar for now,” he said apologetically.

Frowning, Tylar climbed into the dilapidated shop after the thief. Rogger marched them past the front entry room, through a narrow hall, and into the wright’s workspace. It was empty and stripped, except for the broken-keeled frame of some abandoned project. Wings flapped up in the open rafters. The hay roof had long rotted away, leaving only the old ribbed joists. Between the beams, a few stars glinted down at them.

Tylar propped his torch between two boards. “What’s this all about, Rogger? Why all the secrecy?”

Rogger turned and shrugged off his satchel. Judging by the sag in the cloth, only one object weighted down the bag. Rogger hefted it in his palm and deftly fingered the satchel’s knot. Once it was undone, he shook the satchel, shedding the cloth and revealing the content within.

Tylar caught the whiff of black bile.

Rogger noted the crinkle of his nose. “Needed to shield it with bloodnuller shite,” the former thief said, confirming Tylar’s thought.

All the various humours of a god bore special Graces, but black bile, the excremental humour of a god, nullified any blessing. Why such a ward here? Tylar also noted how Rogger was careful never to allow what he bore to touch his bare skin.

“What is the meaning of this?” Tylar finally asked, brows pinched as he examined the strange talisman, the yellowed skull of some beast.

Empty bony sockets stared back at him.

The skull was missing its lower jaw and most of its teeth-except for two prominent fangs, glinting silver. It looked like some beast, except that the brow rose too high.

Tylar’s lips settled into a sneer of distaste.

This was no animal’s skull.

Tylar met Rogger’s eyes over the crown of the skull. “Is it an ilk-beast?” he asked.

Though the Battle of Myrrwood was a year old, city patrols still rooted out the occasional ilk-beast. The poor creatures had once been men, but had been forged by Black Graces into daemons.

“Aye,” Rogger said, “you are right to recognize the taint of Dark Graces, of a form twisted and corrupted.”

Tylar read the unspoken behind Rogger’s words. “But what?”

Rogger bent down to the ground and gathered a pinch of windblown dirt from the floor. Rising with a stifled groan, he sifted the dirt over the crown of the skull. Where the particles touched bone, tiny spats of fire erupted. Rogger lifted the skull and blew upon it, dusting off the dirt and thus dousing the flames.

Tylar’s eyes widened at the demonstration. The very soil of this land burned the bone. The implication iced through Tylar’s veins. Chrismferry was a settled land, imbued with the blood of the god Chrism. And like all other god-realms, its soil was a bane against the trespass of all other gods.

“It was no man that was corrupted here,” Tylar mumbled, watching the last of the flames waft away.

Rogger nodded, confirming his worst fear. “It’s the skull of a god .”

Tylar fed a broken chair leg to the crackling fire that now burned in the center of the shipwright’s workshop. Rogger had returned the skull to his satchel and carried it over his shoulder, keeping it from touching the ground. Even though the skull was coated in black bile, they dared not let it come in contact with the land here.

To the side, Delia warmed her fingers over the fire’s flames. At Tylar’s bidding, she had joined them in the shop. The three gathered around the fire. The others kept guard out in the streets.

Delia stared at Rogger’s shouldered satchel. “The skull must have come from one of the rogue gods out in the hinterlands,” she said.

Rogger nodded. “Aye, my thought, too. With Myrillia as tensed as a maiden on her wedding night, I’d have heard if any of our illustrious settled gods had gone missing. But at last count, all of the gods were secure in their castillions.”

“But secure for how long?” Tylar asked.

Better than anyone, he knew Myrillia was no longer safe-not for man, nor for god. Tylar fingered the buttons over his chest. Beneath the wool and linen, he bore a black handprint, the dying mark of Meeryn, goddess of the Summering Isles. He had gone to the god’s succor as she lay dying, the first to fall in this new War of the Gods. In her last breath, Meeryn had imbued Tylar with her Grace, healing his scarred body while granting him a sliver of herself, that sundered dark shadow that lived in the depths of naether, her undergod.

As if aware of his attention, Tylar could almost feel the smoky daemon shift inside him, trapped behind his healed ribs, waiting for a break in his bones to free it again. Tylar had refused its release since the Battle of Myrrwood. Still, its presence served a purpose. As long as Tylar bore Meeryn’s naethryn, his humours flowed like those of a god, rich in Graces.

Delia noted Tylar’s fingers at his chest. He forced his arm down. Too often, she had urged him to explore the bond with the naethryn inside him. He was loath to do so. He would rather be rid of it.

Still, it was such a gift that allowed him to wield the sword at his belt.

His hand settled upon its gold pommel, but he found little comfort there. Rivenscryr. The infamous Godsword.

Four millennia ago, the blade had ended the first War of the Gods, sundering their lost kingdom and raining the gods down upon Myrillia. Their arrival here heralded three centuries of madness and destruction until the god Chrism chose this first god-realm and imbued the land with his Graces, sharing his powers to bring order out of chaos. More gods followed, carving out various god-realms, forever binding gods to their individual lands. Beyond these settled territories lay only the hinterlands, spaces wild and ungoverned, where rogue gods still roamed, unsettled and untamed.

But the gods had not come whole to this world. As the Godsword had sundered their former home, the blade had done the same to the gods themselves, splitting them into three. One part was driven down into the darkness below all substance, into the naether, where they lived as undergods, shadows of those above, while another part sailed high, vanishing into the aether, never to be seen again, unknowable and aloof. And between them both strode the gods of Myrillia, beings of undying flesh and ripe with powerful Graces.

Now, after four millennia, this balance among the gods was threatened. Among the shadowy naethryn, a secretive Cabal plotted and lusted for Myrillia, reigniting the War of the Gods. Was the Cabal responsible for the corruption of this rogue god? If so, why?

Tylar turned his attention from the flames to Rogger and the strange skull. “Where did you find such a cursed talisman?”

“Down south. In the Eighth Land.”

“What were you doing in the hinterland down there?” Delia asked.

Rogger shook his head. “I didn’t go into any blasted hinterland. I know better than to traipse those wild lands alone. No, I found the skull in Saysh Mal, the cloud forest of the Huntress, the latest stop on my pilgrimage.”

He hiked his leggings out of his boot to reveal the sigil of that god freshly burnt into his flesh, representing his completion of that part of his journey.

Rogger tucked his leggings back in with a sour set to his lips. “Something is not right about that realm.”

“How so?” Tylar asked.

“Can’t exactly focus on anything you can grab. Just something off-kilter. A ragged edge. A loose thread waiting for a hand to pull it. But I’ll tell you what-I’m skaggin’ glad to be rid of that place.”

“Doesn’t that god-realm, Saysh Mal, border one of the largest hinterlands in all Myrillia?” Delia asked.

“Aye,” Rogger agreed. “And maybe that’s it. Like something seeped out from there and tainted the blessed land.”

Tylar nodded to the satchel. “How did you come upon the skull there?”

“Now that’s a story best told over a flagon of your best-”

A flapping of wings silenced him.

All eyes glanced upward. The noise was too loud-too leathery -for any crow or raven. Something dark swept low over the bare joists, blotting out the stars, then away again.

A cry rose from the street.

Tylar’s sword slid from his sheath as he turned, rising unbidden to hand with a ring of silver. The gold hilt warmed with a feverish welcome, seeming to clasp his fingers with as much certainty as his own will. The length of blade trapped the starlight into a single shaft of brilliance.

More shouts from the streets.

Kyllan’s voice bellowed. “Hold your ground!”

“Stay here,” Tylar said and headed for the front of the shop.

Rogger ignored him and followed, drawing Delia with him. “If there was a roof up there, maybe, but as we’re bare-arsed to the sky and something up there has wings, I’ll stick with the man with the big sword.”

Tylar led the pair into the front hall. “There’s a roof here. Keep with Delia. You still have your knives?”

As answer, Rogger parted his outer heavy cloak, revealing the crossed bandoliers weighted with daggers.

“Keep hidden,” Tylar said and headed away.

Chaos greeted Tylar as he reached the shipwright’s broken door.

He heard Kyllan shout from around the corner, out of sight. A pikeman raced into view, panic-footed, weapon clutched to his chest. His eyes were on the nearby canal as he fled.

A mistake.

From the sky, a spindly creature dropped out of the air, appearing half spider, half bat. Its limbs were skeletal, stretched as long as the creature was tall, webbed between forearm and back. Its body was hairless. Head misshapen, face split in the middle as it screeched, revealing a gnash of shredding teeth.

It fell upon the man before he could bring his weapon to bear, wrapping him in a cocoon of leathery wings, tearing into his throat.

A single scream, then the creature ripped away just as quickly. Its talons dug into the guard’s belly and pushed off again, wings snapped wide. Trailing gore, it climbed again into the dark sky and twisted away beyond a roofline.

The pikeman tumbled to the stone, bowels roiling out his rent belly, blood still pumping from his ruined throat.

Tylar edged out the door, back to the wall. It was too late to help the man. He watched the skies. The creature had moved with unnatural speed. Tylar had noted the swirl of refuse as the beast lit back into the sky. As if the winds themselves aided its escape.

Tylar had also noted one other detail, revealed as the wings snapped wide: a pair of breasts. The bosom of a woman-or rather, she was a woman, one ilked into a beast.

Scowling, Tylar reached the corner and checked past the edge.

Kyllan and a knot of pikemen had something trapped amongst them. It thrashed and screamed as spears plunged repeatedly into it. Yet it refused to die. One man was knocked off his feet, his left leg severed at the knee by a scything blow.

“Don’t let it reach the waters!” Kyllan shouted.

The creature bulled through the break in the circling men.

Kyllan grabbed the fallen man’s spear and tossed it with all his strength. The pike pierced clean through the creature’s shoulder and jammed into the first plank of the dock, pinning it in place.

Tylar hurried forward. The beast appeared more oil than form, amorphous of shape, pale as milk, streaming with ripples of ink. There was something disturbingly familiar about the pattern.

The creature yowled with a final tug. Its flesh flowed around the impaled pike, slowly freeing itself.

Kyllan led his remaining pikemen to renew the assault.

The molten beast’s face swung toward its pursuers. Thick-lipped, toadish, it growled and spat, etching stone with its slobber. Its snarl revealed a jagged shoal of black teeth as it reared up.

“Now!” Kyllan yelled.

A torch rose among his men and set to blaze a single pike, dripping with tar. Kyllan accepted the fiery weapon by its haft.

Tylar reached his side. “Hold your-”

Too late.

Kyllan twisted at the waist, and drove the pike’s flaming tip through the beast’s belly.

Where it touched, skin sizzled and blackened. The beast yowled, neck stretched back. A coiling curl of flame flicked from its lips. Still, it tried to escape its death, stumbling toward the icy canal.

Kyllan kept hold of the pike’s butt end. Pinned by the fiery spear, the creature could not reach the waters. Flames spread, more skin blackened, as if some tinder had been ignited deep within the ilk-beast. With one last scream, it writhed, then collapsed, still smoking, to the planks of the dock.

Death seemed to add solidity to its watery form, as if whatever Grace had imbued its fluidity evaporated with the smoke, leaving only twisted flesh.

Tylar joined Kyllan. “There are more beasts about,” he warned the sergeant. “One took wing a moment ago. Keep your pikes high.”

Kyllan searched the dark skies. “Aye, another one lies over here. It was dispatched quick enough.”

The sergeant led Tylar to a tumbled pile of boulders. Once closer, Tylar discerned that stone was actually flesh, a rocky monstrosity of calcified plates and pebbled skin.

“A skilled thrust by your Wyr-mistress,” Kyllan said, nodding to Eylan, who stood off a step, sword in hand. “Nicked through a weak spot and pierced something vital. But before we could appreciate her skill, we were attacked from behind, from the canal. That skaggin’ beast was harder to kill. Figured what steel couldn’t kill, fire might.”

Tylar nodded. But something still nagged him. He glanced back to the smoldering ruin of the other ilk-beast. Something…

Kyllan continued, “We must have stumbled on a nest of ilk-beasts roosting here in the Blight. Left over from the last battle. We’d best gather everyone and get clear.”

The pikemen closed around them, wary, spears held at the ready.

“I’ll send a full squad in the morning to flush out this skaggin’ place.”

Tylar had stopped listening. He drew closer to the smoking body of the other beast. He remembered shouting out against the slaying of the creature. It had been reflexive. What had he sensed?

He returned again to the dock. He studied the pale flesh. Something familiar about-then it struck him.

Gods above…no…

He knelt to the planks and reached out.

“Ser,” Kyllan warned him. “Best to be away from there.”

Ignoring him, Tylar gripped the misshapen jaw and turned the head. He searched the throat, running a gloved finger across the flesh. Flaps of tissue fluttered under his touch, revealing the pink beneath.

Gill flaps.

Tylar stared into the dead eyes, knowing who lay before him.

“Kreel…”

He shoved up and searched the ice-choked canal. A dark hummock lay seven steps upriver. He hurried toward it, followed by Kyllan and his guards.

Beached against the canal wall, lolling on its side, was the watercraft used to transport Rogger here. The tall fin was broken, its keel sundered as if something had shattered out, like a newborn chick from an egg.

Tylar glanced at the body on the dock. Kreel. It was the pilot, the head of Fyla’s Hunters. Realization iced through him. This was no nest of old ilk-beasts. These were freshly cursed men and women, ilked just now and sent against them.

Proving this, a screech again rose from the sky. The winged creature had not fled. It attacked once again, diving upon a pair of guards near the shipwright’s shop. But the men were prepared this time. Pikes staved off the beast, slicing through wings.

More guards closed to do battle, including Eylan, a sword in one hand, an ax in the other.

Kyllan shouted orders but remained at Tylar’s side. “Stay back, ser. My men can handle the creature.”

A claw lashed out and razed to bone the side of one guard’s face. He fell back with a scream. The creature moved with the swiftness of the wind.

Then it struck him.

With the swiftness of the wind.

Tylar lunged forward, dragging Kyllan with him.

“Ser!”

Tylar hurried, certain of the truth. He ticked off each in his head: the woman’s wings, Kreel’s flowing form, the first beast’s stony armor. Each of the beasts bore one aspect of Grace: Air, Water, and Loam.

But one was missing.

Fire.

As he ran, he heard a new scream, a woman’s cry, muffled from within the shipwright’s shop.

Delia.

Tylar had not been the target of the attack. None of the beasts had set upon him directly. They were after the talisman, the cursed god skull. Even now, the winged creature fought at the entrance, struggling to get inside the shipwright’s shop.

But something was already there.

Skirting the battle at the front door, Tylar entered through a broken window. Kyllan followed him into what must have once been an old kitchen, judging from the collapsed stone hearth, now a nest to a pack of rats, and the broken pottery underfoot. Though sheltered from the wind, the room was far colder than the outside.

Tylar knew why.

The ilk-beast, cursed with fire, must be drawing to itself what little warmth there was in the space. Tylar silently signaled Kyllan. He had already instructed the sergeant on his duty. Though reluctant, Kyllan headed out the back door to the kitchen, aiming for the rear.

Tylar stepped toward the other door, one that led to the center hallway.

As he leaned out, a dagger flew past the tip of his nose. He ducked back-but the blade had never been aimed at him. The dagger flew down the hall and struck a black shape crouched at the threshold to the rear workspace. It stood limned against the campfire back there, bathed in its glow.

The fourth ilk-beast.

Rogger’s dagger flew true and struck the figure square in the chest, but the hilt instantly burst into flame. No blood flowed; flesh seared instantly. The steel blade dripped in molten rivulets from the wound.

Tylar retreated to the other end of the hallway, where Rogger guarded Delia.

Delia moved closer to him, seeking shelter. “It burnt right through the back of the shop and came at us.”

Drawn by the campfire, Tylar thought.

The beast growled, flames licking from black lips, its eyes aglow with an inner fire. It stalked toward the trio.

Tylar raised his sword against it. Though probably as innocent as Kreel, forged unwillingly, the beast had to die. At their back, the screeching battle with the winged beast continued. Any retreat that way was blocked.

Rogger took up Tylar’s other side. “Ruined four good daggers. I’m not sure any blade can stop it-not even your Godsword.”

Tylar had no choice but to risk it-but that didn’t mean he couldn’t better his odds.

He lunged toward the approaching beast and shouted, “Now, Kyllan!”

Beyond the creature’s shoulder, he spotted the sergeant racing to the campfire in the back room. He flung out a scrap of sailcloth and swept it over the fire.

Tylar reached the beast as the sergeant smothered the flames and stamped them out. As Tylar had hoped, the beast had been drawing strength from the flames, siphoning heat and power from the pyre. With the sudden interruption of this fiery font, the beast was momentarily lost.

In that moment of confusion, Tylar stabbed his blade into the neck of the beast. A backwash of feverish heat struck him, along with the gagging reek of brimstone and burnt flesh. Tylar twisted the blade and drove the sword to its hilt.

He felt no satisfaction from the kill, picturing Kreel.

The ilk-beast fell from his sword, toppling back with the last sigh of its corrupted Grace. Like Kreel’s, the body that struck the floor seemed smaller, drained of power, mere flesh again.

Kyllan hurried toward them, his own sword raised.

Behind them, a small cheer rose from the guards outside the shop, announcing their own victory over the winged ilk-beast.

Delia stepped to Tylar’s side. “Your blade…”

As expected, Tylar held only a hilt in his hand. The sword’s blade was gone. Not melted away. Vanished. It was the curse of the Godsword. The blade was allowed only one blessed strike, then it vanished, needing to be whetted back into existence by a rare source: the blood of an unsundered god.

But for the moment such a rebirth would have to wait.

Tylar turned to Rogger. “We have to get that skull of yours out of Chrismferry as quickly as possible.”

“Why’s that?”

“Someone knows you brought it here. The attack was not random.” Tylar explained about Kreel. “They had to be after the skull.”

Rogger blanched. “But how did they discern my arrival so quickly? I’ve just touched soil for the first time in days.”

“I don’t know.”

Tylar glanced at Delia. As a servant to the gods for many years, she had been schooled in all matters of Grace, far better than either of them. But she merely shook her head. This was beyond even her knowledge. Only one place could possibly unravel this mystery.

“We need to get the skull to Tashijan,” Tylar said. “For study, for answers.”

Rogger’s brows drew together warily.

Tashijan, while home to the Order of Shadowknights and the esteemed Council of Masters, remained a place of divided loyalties. The warden, Argent ser Fields, still bore strong animosities toward Tylar’s regency and for the man himself. But they had fierce allies there also: Kathryn ser Vail, the castellan of Tashijan, and Gerrod Rothkild, one of the most learned of the subterranean masters. The skull would be safe in their care, behind the towering walls of Tashijan.

But how to get it there?

“I must travel to Tashijan myself in seven days’ time,” Tylar said. “To regain my knighthood and my place among the Order. But I fear waiting so long before investigating the meaning of this cursed skull. It would be well to have answers by the time I reached there.”

“I can travel overland,” Rogger said. “I still have many friends in shadowed corners. Best I disappear again. Let no one know my path except my own ears. I can send a note by raven once behind those stout walls.”

Tylar nodded. “And we’ll meet again in seven days.”

Rogger still hesitated. “My whole story will have to wait ’til then. It is too long to tell as the night wanes. But I must tell you of one other concern.”

Tylar nodded for him to continue, but Rogger drew him aside first, away from Kyllan, even away from Delia again.

“What is it?” Tylar asked once they were alone.

“The skull…I told you I found it in Saysh Mal, but what I didn’t have time to tell was that someone else sought the skull. Someone only a step behind my own.”

“Who was it?”

“That’s just it. It makes no sense.”

“Who?”

“I only saw his face from a distance. At night. A shadowy face painted in ash.”

“One of the Black Flaggers?” Such was the custom among the pirates and brigands who trafficked in all matters that shunned the light of day. They blackened their faces with ash to hide their features.

Rogger nodded. “I was able to capture a message, one sent by wing, but it was cursed. Burned in my fingers before I could read it fully. All I had time to discern was to whom it was addressed.”

Tylar waited.

“The letter had been intended for Krevan.”

Tylar was stung by the words. Krevan was one of their closest allies. A former shadowknight-the famous Raven ser Kay of old-he had been fiercely loyal to Tylar and their cause to free Chrismferry. But the knight had vanished after the Battle of Myrrwood, disappearing back into obscurity. Tylar had suspected he had returned to his role as leader of the Black Flaggers. But what new subterfuge was this? Why would Krevan be looking for the skull, too?

Judging by Rogger’s expression, he had no answers either.

Tylar ached to hear Rogger’s full story, but such tales would have to wait.

“How long will it take you to reach Tashijan?” Tylar asked.

“Two days-if I follow the most circumspect route.”

“I will send a raven to Kathryn to tell her to expect you then.”

“Maybe it would be best if I just surprise her,” Rogger said with a raised brow. “Ravens have a way of being lured astray.”

Tylar quickly gathered everyone outside the shop. He turned to Rogger for one last word, but the thief was already gone, vanished into the Blight without even a farewell.

Tylar shook his head as Delia slipped to his side.

“Will he be safe?” Delia asked, worried for their friend.

Tylar took her hand. Once again he had no answer. And a greater fear loomed in his heart. Would Rogger be any safer once he reached Tashijan?

Would any of them?