Shadowfall

13

“Welcome home.”

Tylar scowled at the thief. Rogger crouched in the reeds with Delia. Dawn broke to the east, a cheery rose that did nothing to warm the chill from their bones. All three of them were soaked to the skin, muck-deep in mud and boggy silt. Clouds of gnats and bloodsuckers buzzed and whined about the trio. A few surly marsh frogs, as large as platters, croaked their passage from atop a half-sunken log. A king-wader strode past, its head and speared beak taller than a man, spying above the reeds, regal and aloof.

With the rising sun, they had decided to make landfall here, in the Foulsham marshes, where no one would note their approach and where there was plenty of cover to hide the Fin from both the shipping lanes of the Straits of Parting and the few villages that lay ashore. They had selected an empty stretch of coastline and watched for the glow lights from early-morning giggers and fishers.

Once the skies lightened enough to see by and most of the nocturnal marsh predators had slunk back to their lairs, Rogger had led Tylar and Delia toward the shore. The thief promised that he knew some paths through the marshlands, knowledge gained from the time he spent here in Foulsham Dell.

They planned to steer clear of the god-realm itself, edge past its eastern border, and head overland for Tashijan. They had originally thought to make a more direct approach, landing somewhere along the Steps of the Gods, the ancient series of lofty bridges connecting a series of small islands to form a road between the First and Second Lands. But upon arriving among the islands, they found all the shores heavily guarded. Word of the godslayer’s escape from the corsairs had flown ahead of them.

So they had kept their craft submerged and passed between two of the islands, sailing into the Straits of Parting that separated the First and Second Lands. Over another full day, they had glided along the southern coastline of the First Land, debating where best to make landfall.

It was Rogger’s idea to go through the marshes.

“So when’s the last time you placed a foot here?” the thief asked as they slogged toward more solid ground.

“On the First Land?”

Rogger nodded.

“Five years.” The thought had been on Tylar’s mind since abandoning the Fin. Five years. A long time to be gone. But it seemed too short, especially when measured against the span of his pain and hardship. It seemed an entire lifetime had passed, not just five years.

And now he had returned, come full circle. To what end? To clear a name long abandoned? To right a wrong? Despite the stripes on his face and his healed body, he was no knight.

“Of course, I’m not sure this is exactly making landfall yet,” the thief continued, dragging a foot from the muck with a slurping sound. “More like making mud fall.”

Delia slapped her arm, squashing a winged sucker. Both Delia and Rogger bore red welts from their bites on arms, face, and neck. Only Tylar was spared.

Delia caught him staring as she flicked away the offending insect. “It’s your blood,” she said. “Even the suckers smell the Grace flowing there. Like smoke from a fire. They know better than to sip from such a font.”

Rogger scratched a bite on his neck. “And you were grousing about being Grace blessed. I’ll take your burden ’til we’re out of these skaggin’ marshes. Or even for-”

“How much farther?” Tylar asked, cutting him off.

“Not far.” Rogger climbed a hummock, shoving between bushes of spiny sedge. He stood with his hands on his hips. “Not far at all.”

Tylar helped Delia up. The two had spoken little since the night she had revealed herself to be the estranged daughter of Argent ser Fields, the man who had sent Tylar into slavery.

Delia nodded her thanks as she climbed out of the marsh.

But she did not meet his eye.

Tylar followed. As he hauled himself up, he still felt like he carried the swamp with him: dripping water, caked in mud, sand and silt trapped in every crack and crevice. He had at least managed to keep his bandaged wrist dry, but the motion and exertion had set it to seeping blood again.

Joining Rogger, Tylar spotted a thin path through the marsh grasses, no more than an animal track, but it led away. The hummock they stood on was connected to others in a maze-like chain.

“Do you know where we are?” Tylar asked.

“More west than I’d hoped. This is the Middens, if I’m not mistaken.”

“The Middens?” Delia asked.

Rogger picked a leaf from his beard. “The eastern border of Foulsham Dell. We’ll have to move quickly. Skirt the edge. In these wilds, there’s a good chance we’ll be long gone before ol’ Balger sniffs us out. Follow me.”

They dared not venture too far into Foulsham Dell. Through the morning mist, Tylar could see the shadowy silhouette of the mountains of the Middleback Range to the north. The Dell lay in the crumble of land where the mountains tumbled into the Straits. It was a landscape of steaming bogs, dark marshes, sudden sinkholes, craggy slopes, misty highlands, and in the center of it all, the sprawling, ramshackle city of Foulsham Dell.

The city was the realm of the god Lord Balger. Its western border dissolved into the wilds of the untamed hinterlands that shadowed the far side of the Middleback Range. In the Dell, such boundaries blurred. It was said that the border between settled land and hinterland was as unreliable as Lord Balger’s moods.

The god’s stormy temper was as legendary as his debaucheries. He reveled in the pleasures of the flesh without restraint. He ate to a belching fullness, growing rotund. He drank to a blackened stupor, pissing from the towers of his castillion, “blessing” passersby with his streaming Grace. He whored with his own men in low places, accompanied by a Hand who would collect his spilled seed. But worst of all, he found pleasure in cruelty. Screams flowed from his castillion as often as song.

It seemed even the lowliest of Myrillian scum needed a god, a land to call their own. Balger offered them such hard shelter.

Tylar paced Rogger as they followed the thin path through the hummocks and hillocks. “Why risk the Dell? Why not wade back into the marshlands and head due east?”

Rogger waved a hand to the left. “The waters around the Middens are treacherous with quicksand. A misstep and all would be lost. We’re lucky to have gotten here as it is. To set off in another tack, we’d have to retreat all the way back to the Fin, then circle back in again. I know the Middens. We’ll be fine.”

Tylar didn’t argue. Here at least was dry, solid land.

As they hiked through the thick marshlands, the sun climbed into the sky, visible through the boles and fronded limbs of swamp palms and the skeletal forms of fennwood trees. The day wore warmer, steaming away the layers of fog and mist. The stench of the bog grew, a pungent smell of sulfur gasses and decay.

Still, they marched onward, occasionally leaping from one hummock to another. Frogs plopped away to either side of their path, marking their passage with tiny splashes. A loon called across the waters, a haunted, forlorn sound.

“You’re limping again,” Delia said softly after a long spell of silence.

Tylar noted how he had assumed the posture and gait of his formerly broken body: right leg stiff, short hobbled steps, back crooked. He forced himself straighter, his step more assured.

Delia moved closer. “Why do you still do that?”

He shook his head.

“Is it that you don’t trust this hale form you wear now?”

“What is there to trust?” Tylar said. “The only reason my bones have been mended is to cage the dred ghawl inside me. Once I’m rid of the daemon-if we’re victorious-then my body will revert to its broken posture. So why lose the reflexes honed from years of crippling? I may need them again.”

Rogger grumbled ahead of him, “Cursed with the daemon… broken without it. A real corker there.”

As they continued marching, the sun climbed directly overhead.. and still there appeared no end to the marshlands. Tylar searched around him. Hadn’t they passed this way already? Wasn’t that the same stump of fennwood?

Hadn’t he already pushed through this bramblebrier tangle before? He searched the mud for the telltale print of his boots. Nothing.

Still, he felt as if they were circling and circling.

Delia voiced a similar concern. “I thought you said it wasn’t far to clear the swamps.” She dabbed her brow with a pocket kerchief.

Rogger scowled back at her, dripping sweat from nose and brow. “Far… near… it’s all relative. I’ll get us-”

With his attention turned, Rogger failed to see the trap. His foot stepped into the snare, it sprang with a sharp thwip, and the thief flipped into the air with a cry of surprise. Bouncing a bit, he hung upside down by one ankle.

Tylar crossed under him. Deer snare. During their long hike, he had spotted a few long-legged fawns and even an antlered buck, bounding from hummock to hillock and away. Fleet-footed… more so than Tylar’s thieving companion. He freed a dagger to cut him down.

Rogger caught his winded breath, still bouncing. His eyes were wide, clearly still panicked. “Trap…” he gasped out.

Tylar froze, dagger in hand.

He heard the twang of the crossbow and turned to see Delia struck in the shoulder and spilled into the water. Before he could take a step, he felt something crack against the back of his skull-then the ground rushed up at him and struck him in the face.

He heard Rogger cry out.

Then darkness.

Awareness came slowly. But no sight. He heard distant sounds: the clank of an iron door, the rattle of a chain, echoing words, even the drip of water. But closer, by his ear, a voice spoke from out of the blackness.

… BE AWARE… BEWARE…

Tylar had no sense of himself. He hung weightless in a black sea, between consciousness and oblivion.

But he was not alone.

He felt the stir of current around him, something swimming past, under him. He sensed the immensity of its size, a leviathan of the deep. Its scrutiny drew all warmth from him.

… THE CABAL… HUNTS…

The words were not at his ear, but in his head. Tylar found no tongue to express his confusion, but it was understood.

A more frantic stirring spun him in the dark sea. He sensed urgency, a press of time like a lead weight. What did the speaker want of him?

… RIVENSCRYR…

Tylar shivered in the darkness. He caught the barest scent of spring blossoms, dried and burned on a brazier, sweet but smoldering. A shadow of Meeryn, the scent of her funeral pyre… only this was not death. Again the presence swam beneath him. Tylar sensed who spoke to him now. He felt a writhing where his heart once lay, deep within his chest, past bone and blood.

It was the dred ghawl.

Awakened inside him.

A single word arose from the darkness:

… NAETHRYN…

Tylar inwardly shivered. He remembered Fyla expressing her belief that such a being, a naethryn, slew Meeryn. Was this further proof? That one of the dread undergods, the dark shadows of their Myrillian counterparts, had broken into this world?

The scrutiny of the daemon grew more intense, swelling into him, through him. Such language was beyond it, but still it struggled.

NOT DAEMON…

It sought to clarify, putting all its efforts into one last thought.

NAETHRYN… I AM NAETHRYN…

Shock shattered away the darkness. Firelight flickered in the cracks and drove the dregs of the black dream away. Still Tylar felt the slither of the daemon behind the bones of his rib cage, fiery with anger.

Not a dream…

I am naethryn.

Could such a thing be possible? Did he bear some aspect of an undergod inside him, a creature a thousandfold more foul than any daemon? And if truly a naethryn, could it be the very monster who murdered Meeryn?

Before he could ponder further, awareness of his surroundings finally struck through his shock. He was in a stone cell. Another dungeon. He lay on his back, naked except for a loincloth, strapped spread-eagle on a rack, lashed in rope that stank of shite. Black bile. The ropes had been blessed by bloodnullers, protecting the hemp from Graced enchantments.

He sensed a presence in the cell with him.

“He wakes,” a slithery voice said.

Tylar turned his head, making the room spin and his stomach churn queasily. A black-robed figure huddled near an open door, bent in shadow, face cowled. A hand, smeared in filth… black bile… pointed to him. The stench off the bloodnuller filled his nostrils, gagging him further.

With the nuller’s words, a figure stepped into the doorway, limned in torchlight. A tall man of wide girth and broad shoulders. He wore a beard, forked to the middle of his swollen belly. His clothing matched his hair, as black as a crow’s tail: boots, leggings, surcoat. Only his shirt seemed woven of silver thread, reflecting the torchlight, like the finest wrought chain mail.

Dark eyes stared down at Tylar’s sprawled form. Fire glowed in them, the shine of Grace, fiery Grace. Here stood one of the fire gods of Myrillia.

Tylar needed no introduction.

“Lord Balger…” he mumbled.

The god nodded ever so slightly, a strange courtesy considering their situation. “So you are the godslayer.” His voice was the grumble of a log crumbling in a stoked fire.

Tylar felt the room grow warmer as the god stepped closer. Grace, heated with the aspect of fire, seeped from the god’s pores.

“Not much to look at,” Balger said.

“I slew no gods,” Tylar choked past his sickened stomach.

“So you have claimed, but many disagree.” Balger reached a finger to one of his bound hands. The fingertip burned like a brand. Flesh blistered and smoked.

Tylar cried out.

Balger bent and sniffed the charred flesh. “I do smell Grace in you. Water, if I’m not mistaken.” He straightened and glanced to the bloodnuller. “It seems even the skagging touch of one of that ilk does not wipe away all your blessing. Now why is that?”

A voice answered from the doorway. “He carries the full Grace of a god in him, milord. Meeryn’s Grace.” Rogger leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, freshly bathed from the look of his damp hair. “It’s in all his humours. He walks like a god himself, only perhaps slightly weaker, a paler shadow, yet still not without potency. You saw how his wounds healed with a mere slather of firebalm.”

Balger frowned through his beard. “You’ve brought me quite the trophy from your pilgrimage.”

Rogger shrugged. “I knew it would take such compensation to buy back my freedom.”

Tylar stared at the thief, aghast. Had he been betrayed? Surely this was some ruse on Rogger’s part.

Balger folded his arms across his ample chest, fingers entwined on his belly. “Well done indeed. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen such strangeness with my own eyes. A human godling. When you sent that message to expect you in the Middens, I thought it a foolish trick.”

“No trick. I’ve learned better than that.” Rogger rubbed one of the branded tattoos from his interrupted pilgrimage. “It took a bit of time and pain. The overheated tubes of the Fin stung like a salted whip. I needed most of a morning, while the others slept, to tattoo that new message into my flesh.”

Rogger pulled up a sleeve of his starched shirt, fingering a crude, blackened and blistered scrawl on the underside of his arm. “Firebalm is not healing my wounds as quickly as it does your prisoner.” He eyed Tylar as if he were some dried-and-pinned specimen in an alchemist’s lab and shook his sleeve back over his betrayal.

Despite the dawning horror, Tylar had to acknowledge the thief’s cleverness. Of course Balger would know any words burned upon Rogger’s flesh. The god had cursed him with the pilgrimage, requiring the sigils of each realm’s house to be branded into his flesh. A pilgrim’s progress was overseen by the very god who placed the curse, to ensure the pilgrim continued his journey. Rogger had used that blessed link to carve a message upon his own flesh, to deliver word to Balger, knowing the god would sense every brand pressed into him.

Tylar stared at Rogger. Had this been his plan all along? To buy his freedom? Tylar stared hard at the thief. “What have you done with Delia?”

“Safe,” Rogger answered. “It was only a sandbag that tipped the crossbow’s arrow. Meant to stun. As I warned in my message. The same as struck you in the back of the head. No broken bones.” He eyed the bindings. “We can’t have you loosing that daemon of yours.”

Tylar’s head ached. “Where is she? What have you done-?”

“She’s being well treated by the bevy of ladies in Lord Balger’s private wenchworks. Scrubbed, combed, and sweetened. It’s not every night the Hand of one god will lose her maidenhead to another god. She’ll be entertaining Lord Balger this very evening.”

“You bastard…” He struggled in his bonds, but only managed to choke himself against a leather strap securing his neck. He could barely move a finger.

During this discussion, Balger slowly circled Tylar, studying him, rubbing his upper lip with a finger. “No one knows he is here?” the god asked.

“No, milord.”

“He would make for an excellent source of Grace, an ever-flowing font of riches. A golden cow to be milked daily.”

“Milord, what of the call from Tashijan? Is he not to be delivered to them? The reward for his capture-both in gold and goodwill-would surely be substantial.”

A wave dismissed his words. “Such payment would come but once. A living godling would be a treasure without end.”

“But there is also the danger. A chance mishandling, a lowered guard, and it would take but the snap of a finger or toe to unleash the dred ghawl inside him.”

Balger’s eyes both narrowed and brightened. “I would see this daemon, fathom its aspect. Surely there is profit to be found in such a creature.”

“Be wary. I believe, as does the handmaiden who accompanied us, that this dred ghawl somehow maintains this font of Grace. For its own preservation in a man’s form. A cocoon of Grace inside a cage of bone.”

Through his anger, words echoed in Tylar’s head: I am naethryn.

Balger leaned closer. “I’ll have my alchemists study his body from crown to toe, from mouth to arse.” The god reached across Tylar’s bare chest. He splayed his hand above the blackened print atop Tylar’s heart, hovering, matching his fingers to Meeryn’s.

Tylar smelled the fire flaming from the god’s pores.

It was said that a god’s aspect reflected his or her character. Gods of loam were as patient as a budding seed, as solid as rock and hard-packed soil, while gods of the air were aloof and farseeing, ethereal in mind and grace. Gods of water, like Meeryn and Fyla, varied the most, fickle in temperament and spirits, as changeable as water itself: solid ice, flowing water, misty vapor. Then there were the fire gods, who were as quick to anger as a lick of flame, as volatile as a woodland blaze, as passionate as the heated embrace of lovers. They were the best and the worst of all the gods.

And Lord Balger smoldered among the worst of them.

He lowered his hand to Tylar’s chest. Tylar remembered the burning touch of the god’s finger a moment ago, the sear of flesh. The smoke of Tylar’s charred skin still tinged the air.

Balger pressed his hand down atop Meeryn’s palm print.

Tylar winced but found no burn.

Instead, it was Balger who gasped. The god’s fingers vanished into the black print as if Tylar’s flesh were mere shadow. He probed farther, wrist deep, into Tylar’s chest.

Rogger moved closer. The thief, like Tylar, had examined Meeryn’s palm print. The print had been no more than a tattoo on his flesh.

“I think you should be wary, milord,” Rogger intoned.

Balger’s brow pinched. “What is this strangeness here?”

His gaze found Tylar’s. He opened his mouth to question further, but then suddenly the god jerked like a fish on a line. A cry burst from the Balger’s lips, spittle flying, landing like molten wax on Tylar’s skin.

Balger fell backward and yanked his hand from the shadowy pit in Tylar’s being. Only his hand did not reappear. The stump of his wrist sprayed blood in a fountain of fire, pumping with the beat of the god’s panicked heart.

Balger roared, a noise that threatened to bring the roof down atop them. Alarm spread among the guards beyond the cell door.

Tylar writhed in his bonds. His skin burned from the splashes of blood. A crimson pool of fiery humour poured down his breastbone and vanished into the inky blackness over his heart, as if down a stone well. He felt the Grace flowing into him as warm as mulled ale. The daemon inside swelled, pressing against his rib cage, threatening to shatter through.

There was no doubt what had bitten off the god’s hand.

The dred ghawl.

Balger roared back to his feet. He cradled his severed wrist as guards swooped into the room like a flock of black crows, capes billowing, swords ready.

Balger crossed back to Tylar, destruction in his eyes.

Rogger attempted to step in the god’s path, but Balger shoved the thief aside.

The god leaned over Tylar, baring his mutilation. Already the blood had stopped flowing as the wounded wrist healed with a speed of a god. The hand, too, would grow back in the thickness of time. But for now, Balger’s entire bearing flamed with fury. His skin smoked with Grace, his eyes flashed with fire, his breath seared with the winds of a pyre.

A bellow of rage formed words. “You think to kill me, Godslayer!”

Balger drew a dagger and wiped its blade across his anger-damp brow. Steel, blessed now by the god’s fiery sweat, turned as ruddy as a branding iron. Balger touched the tip of the knife to his seeping wound, gracing it with his own blood. The god’s eyes narrowed as he cast a specific blessing. The blade went white-hot, more flame than substance.

“A bale dagger,” Balger said, holding up his handiwork.

Tylar struggled in his bonds, sensing his doom.

“Milord! No!” Rogger struggled to elbow through two guards.

Balger raised the dagger high, then plunged it into Tylar’s belly.

Searing pain shattered outward.

Balger dragged the knife up from groin to rib cage, gutting him.

Tylar cried out, but agony throttled him, turning wail into gurgle. His body arched off the rack, on shoulders and heels, writhing as the room went black. His innards blazed with molten fire.

He fell backward into darkness.

For an untold time, Tylar balanced on the razor edge of agony, sightless and witless. The pain refused to relent, to let him escape. It held him in claws of fire, ripping and tearing.

Then the torture ended. Abruptly.

The sudden cessation of pain woke him like a frigid dive into a snowmelt stream. Gasping, blind still, Tylar collapsed back to the rack. He blinked back his vision, damp with tears.

He watched Balger step from his side, smoking blade in hand.

Tylar stared down at his body, expecting to see intestines spilling from a gaping wound. But his skin lay unmarked. Only the thin course of hair across his belly smoldered, marking the path of the blade.

Balger leaned over him again. He lifted the blazing dagger. “Ripe with my fiery blessing, the bale blade cuts and heals at the same time. I can slice you all day and all night and you will never weaken or expire.”

He raised the blade again and plunged it into Tylar’s shoulder, striking clean through to the wood beneath.

Tylar screamed, unable to help himself.

Balger straightened, abandoning the impaled dagger. “Or I can leave it here. Cutting and healing continually in one place, leaving only pain, a pain that never dulls, but always remains fresh.”

Tylar writhed. He had been struck by arrows and blades of all manner. The sting of impact was always intense, but it dulled as severed nerves retracted. Not now. This agony never relented.

Movement by his toes drew his narrowed vision. Rogger appeared and grabbed his bound foot. “I’m sorry, Tylar.” The thief’s deft fingers snatched his littlest toe, met his eyes, then snapped his digit cleanly.

Tiny bones snapped.

The pain was small compared to his shoulder, but in a single breath, it spread outward in a growing wave of agony: up his leg and out over the rest of his body. Bones, healed by Grace before, broke anew, shattering his form. The dagger’s bite disappeared under the assault, overwhelmed.

Through this agony, Tylar felt something shake loose from the broken cage of his body, snaking out. In the wake of its passage, fractured bones drew back in place, malformed and misaligned, fusing and callusing anyway. His body twisted and joints stiffened, back into his old bent form.

The pain receded, except in his shoulder. Fire continued to blaze outward from the impaled dagger.

In the torchlight, a font of black smoke, darker than shadow, billowed from his chest as if from a baker’s chimney. Eyes opened in the darkness, ablaze with lightning.

Guards scattered to the four walls. Several dropped swords in fright.

Balger kept his post. The god’s gaze followed the column of smoke to where it pooled like spilled ink across the cell’s low roof.

From the black sea, a sinuous column snaked out and downward, forming head and neck. Wings swept out as a pair of flanking waves. Silver eyes blazed brighter with white fire. Hanging upside down from the roof like some shadowy bat, the daemon studied the room. The dred ghawl ’s wings lowered protectively to either side of Tylar. A keening wail, beyond hearing but felt on every hair on the body, echoed off the stone walls.

A humpbacked guard stabbed a lance at the shadowy creature. Its steel head melted and splashed back at the attacker’s toes. Its haft caught fire, falling away to ash. The guard dropped the cursed weapon and fell out the doorway and away. Others followed. Balger’s loyalty was earned by fear. A greater fear now overwhelmed his retinue.

In moments, Lord Balger was alone.

The god’s eyes narrowed upon the daemon. “I know you, creature. Spawn of the naether do not belong in this world of sinew and bone.”

The dred ghawl ’s mane of smoke bristled, and its muzzle sharpened. It stretched toward the god. Balger backed up as the daemon snaked out to meet the god, eye to eye. The white-fire blaze of the daemon’s gaze flashed. The keening in the room focused to a hiss that pained the ears and drew cold sweat from pores.

Tylar recognized that voice, having heard it before, on the streets of Punt, from Meeryn’s dark attacker. It was not easily forgotten. Tylar knew what he heard-both then and now.

The voice from the naether… the voice of the naethryn.

Balger’s eyes grew wider as he listened to the naether daemon. He stumbled back to the far wall. “No!” the god gasped out with a sharp shake of his head. “Not possible… Rivenscryr was destroyed!”

Tylar felt a tug on his ankle. He glanced down to see Rogger slicing his leather bonds with a dagger. His right leg was freed, then his left. Rogger shied forward and worked at his left wrist. “Be ready to run.”

Tylar’s suspicion of the thief flared, but as long as he was being freed, he kept silent. Pain still flamed his right shoulder.

“The bale dagger,” Rogger said, moving to his last binding. “Can you free it?”

As answer, Tylar reached to the hilt of the dagger. He grabbed the bone hilt. He felt the Grace fired within it. It helped steady his grip. With an explosion of pained breath, he tugged it from his shoulder. A wisp of smoke trailed the blade’s tip, taking the agony with it. Bathed in the brightness of the blade, Tylar’s shoulder was unmarred, healed and hale.

Rogger helped him sit up.

The daemon kept the god pinned to the wall.

But Balger’s shock waned. The disbelief in his voice hardened to anger. “You lie, naether-spawn!”

Tylar dragged himself off the rack and crouched on the far side. He fell easily into his old form, back bent, left leg stiff as a walking stick. The ache of his joints was as familiar as a warm cloak. It helped center him, despite the horror.

The dark umbilicus flowed out from the black print over his heart, coiling and twisting. Tylar waved his hand through the channel, but found nothing but smoke. He recognized the billowing darkness now. While fleeing out of the depths of Tangle Reef, he had witnessed the same. What the seafolk named the Gloom. A penetration of the naether into this world. Only this black font leaked from his own chest. A conduit for the naether-spawn, the naethryn undergod.

He waved his hand again.

Though it caused him no harm, he knew its touch to be as deadly as the marine Gloom. He had witnessed how the guards had died back at Meeryn’s castillion in the Summering Isles, left boneless or broken as he and Rogger fled the keep.

Rogger kept low and hissed at him. “Let’s go.”

Guards shouted beyond the dungeon cell. The alarm spread quickly. Like all gods, Balger had his own Shadowknights… though such men who bent a knee to the lord of Foulsham Dell were of low ilk, disgraced knights whose crimes did not warrant full stripping. They, like their counterparts among men, found themselves washed up on these hard shores, lost and without futures. The knights of this realm were as likely to be found in bed with a sell-wench as snoring under a table at a low tavern.

Still, Tylar knew it was best to be away before pieces of shadow sprouted swords and men. He hobbled after Rogger to the door. The daemon continued its guard upon Lord Balger, sensing the greatest danger lay with the god.

Only once they vacated the cell did the daemon flow back with them.

Balger made no move to follow. Only his voice chased them. “If Rivenscryr is here, we’re all doomed!” Cruel laughter followed. “One man and one undergod cannot stop the end of all.”

Rogger led the way to the end of the short hall. Empty now. An iron door clanged shut ahead of them. The screech of a sliding bar echoed to them. “The cowards are trapping us here.” A snort of derision punctuated his words. “Locking a godslayer with their god.”

“What can we do?” Tylar asked as they reached the doors.

From its post behind them, the naethryn daemon snaked its neck over their heads and flowed to the iron… through the iron. Metal poured in rivers of molten slag. Hinges and locking bar melted away. The door toppled and crashed into the far room.

Bale dagger in hand, Tylar led the way, careful to step on the solid iron, using it to ford the pools of fiery slag. The last of the guards vanished out the other side of the dungeon’s anteroom. In their haste, no one bothered to bolt the far door.

In the larger room, the daemon streamed fully forward with a billow of smoke and reformed its wolfish silhouette, wings folded to its back, long neck questing up the stairwell beyond.

Rogger collected an abandoned short sword, while Tylar donned an oversized pair of leggings and boots found beside a cot. He kept his chest bared for the sake of the daemon’s umbilicus. Once ready, the daemon seemed to sense their desire and flowed up the stairwell.

Rogger and Tylar followed. As they wound up out of the subterranean warren, Tylar confronted the thief. “You sought to sell my life for your own.”

Rogger scowled. “So we wanted everyone to believe.”

“We?”

“Delia and I. We concocted this ill strategy while you slept these past days. We guessed word would’ve spread after our escape from the corsairs. Ravens graced with air can outrace any sputtering Fin. We needed a way to make landfall. A way to get you to Tashijan alive. With blessed wards, far-seers, and Graced armies spread along the shores and borders, it would take the protection of a god to keep your skin on your bones.”

“And you chose Balger?”

“What better god to know the value of a godslayer? Balger may be vile, but he is no fool.” Rogger shook his head. “I must say even I underestimated his cunning. I thought he’d be satisfied with the price on your head.”

“So the entirety of your plan was to have me captured by Balger and delivered trussed up and nulled to Tashijan?”

Rogger tugged his beard. “Just about.”

“And you couldn’t forwarn me of your plan?”

“We couldn’t risk you being soothed. You had to be unaware.”

“What about you and Delia being soothed?”

Rogger shrugged. “When you have a godslayer in tow, few look elsewhere. As we imagined, we were ignored.”

Tylar frowned. Ahead, a warm breeze blew down to them. It smelled of swamp and sea, salt and weed. Sunlight reflected off the sweating stone walls. With each step, the air grew hotter.

They cleared the last flight and found a doorway of rough-hewn squallwood planks. An open iron grating let in the slanting sunlight. Again the daemon pushed through the door. Wood turned to ash. The iron grating dropped and clanked against the top stair.

Out in the yard, muffled screams and shouts grew louder and clearer as the door fell away. Tylar ducked after the daemon. Rogger kept to his shoulder.

With their appearance, arrows and crossbow bolts rained around them, but the daemon’s wings spread out, a shield of shadow. Feather, wood, and steel all burned away or were deflected aside.

Rogger kept low. “Seems Balger’s men are braver from a distance.”

“What of Delia? We can’t leave her here.” Tylar slowed. He would not abandon her.

“She’s already gone. Two bells ago. Her escape was easy to arrange. I am not unknown among the wenches who serve… well, let’s say under Balger. Though sometimes on top, too, I’ve heard.”

Gongs clanged, raising the alarm.

Rogger pointed to the open gate to the courtyard. They fled across the weed-strewn yard.

It wasn’t far. Balger’s castillion was no larger than a manor house, a graceless jumble of blocks built of stone and wood. It sat in the middle of the Dell, atop a small outcropping of bedrock, a toad on a mound. The township itself was only so much flotsam and jetsam washed up against its rocky flanks: tumbled, chaotic, broken, waterlogged, bloated, rotted. A miasma of woodsmoke and swamp gasses cloyed the air and turned the sun into a continual glare. Beyond the city lay the only bits of arable land. Wheat, barley, and oat grass formed a fringed patchwork around the ramshackle town. And beyond the farmlands stretched endless marshes, bogs, and fens.

Where could they go?

They cleared the gates and spanned a moat that appeared more of a sewer than a defensive perimeter. Rogger led the way into the alleys and streets of Foulsham Dell. Shutters slammed all around. Cries raced ahead of them.

Rogger finally tugged him by the elbow into a cramped alleyway. He waved a hand at the daemon hulking half in shadow with them. “From here, mayhap you’d best rein in your friend there. That beastie of yours attracts too many eyes.”

Tylar licked his lips. The daemon seemed to read their intent. Its head snaked back, framed in a mane of smoke. Its fiery gaze burned brighter, angry. Here crouched one of the naethryn.

“How?” Tylar asked warily. “It took Meeryn’s blood last time to drive the beast back inside.”

“According to Delia, you bear Meeryn’s blood. At least the Grace of it. She thinks you’ll be able to reel the daemon back into you with a touch of your own blood.”

Rogger held out his short sword.

Tylar pocketed the dagger stolen from Balger. Such a dread weapon could not draw blood, only pain. Tylar ran the edge of his hand along Rogger’s pocked sword. It was a shallow cut but stung like an adder’s bite. Blood immediately flowed.

The scent of it drew the attention of the shadowbeast. The naethryn craned back, muzzle sniffing, eyes shining silver.

Tylar cradled his weeping wound with his other hand. Blood pooled in his palm. Tylar smeared his hands together, coating his fingers in wet crimson. He reached out to the smoky column and throttled it with his hands.

He expected his fingers to pass harmlessly through the smoke again. But shadow gained substance under his bloody palms.

It felt leathery, yet warm.

From his fingertips, a crackling rush of cold flames burst forth. The wildfire flushed out and over the naethryn’s form. In a heartbeat, it reached the tip of its muzzle and rebounded back. On its return, the daemon’s form vanished, burned away by the retreating fire. The flow of fire fled back along the umbilicus, back over his hands.

Tylar took a hurried breath as the rebound struck him in the chest. A mule kick. He was knocked against the alley wall. A flash of whiteness blinded him, then winked out. The alleyway lay in full shadow again. Darker than a moment ago.

Rogger searched the shadows for the daemon, making sure it was gone. “That’s better. I was sure one of those smoky wings was going to brush through and melt the bones from my body.” The thief shuddered.

By the wall, Tylar straightened both his legs and his back. He stared at his arms. Hale once again.

Rogger motioned to him. “Let’s get moving. Best keep to the shadows and we should be safe.”

His words immediately proved false.

From the shadows at either end of the alley, black shapes folded out of darkness. A dozen. Cloaked, swords in hand. Shadowknights all.

Tylar backed into Rogger. Another trap.

The leader of the knights stepped forth, plainly fearless, sword still sheathed. A mountain of shadow. He was too tall and too wide to be Darjon. His eyes glowed with Grace, swinging from Tylar to the thief.

“Again in trouble, Master Rogger?” The gruff voice, though muffled by masklin, could not be mistaken. “Why is it that your plans always go astray?”

Rogger grinned through his red beard. “We’re out of the dungeons, are we not? I count that an improvement.”

Tylar glanced between thief and knight.

“Here stands the other part of my original plan,” Rogger said as introduction, turning back to Tylar. “If Lord Balger had played along, these knights were to have been your border escorts from Foulsham Dell to Tashijan, in service to our cause. Now it seems they must be our rescuers, too.”

The knight bowed. “Your handmaiden brought us rumors of Balger’s intent to keep the godslayer imprisoned here. It seems ol’ Balger speaks too freely among his wenches.”

Tylar sensed the flow of hidden forces at work here. He eyed the tall knight. The last time he saw the man, his face had been blackened by ash, as was the manner of the Black Flaggers. In fact, he was the leader of the Black Flaggers. Krevan the Merciless. Now he had replaced ash for blessed masklin. The tattooed stripes of his former life as a Shadowknight were plain.

Tylar remembered Rogger’s earlier words about the man. Not every knight breaks his vow… Some simply walk away.

Tylar faced the knight-turned-pirate. “How are you here?”

Krevan shifted, stirring shadows like oil. “We don’t have much time for such tales. Suffice it to say, we will get you to Tashijan. Our cloaks will help hide you. We have horses waiting in Fen Widdlesham.”

Tylar refused to budge. “Why… why are you helping? What has all this to do with errant knights and the Black Flaggers?”

Krevan’s masked features were unreadable, but his words grew frosty. “All of Myrillia is in danger. It has been for a long time, out in the fringes, where few but the low know. I had thought never to don cloak and sword again, but some duties surpass personal desire.”

“What do you mean by-?”

Rogger touched Tylar’s shoulder. “Leave it be for now, Tylar.”

Something silent passed between the elder knight and thief.

“You’ve not told him,” Krevan said.

Rogger shook his head. “It was not my place.”

Eyes narrowed above the masklin, pinching the black stripes tighter. “I bore a name before earning the title Krevan the Merciless. A knight’s name. I was once called Raven ser Kay.”

Tylar glanced to the thief in disbelief, but only found confirmation there. “The Raven Knight?”

Krevan swung away. “We must go.”

“But Raven ser Kay died over three centuries ago,” Tylar mumbled.

Rogger stood at Tylar’s side, watching the knight disappear into shadow. “Yes… yes, he did.”