Tylar bent his one good knee.
Perryl must have comprehended the danger and surged forward, his indecisiveness burnt away by fear. Tylar reached out and slammed the hilt of his sword atop the stone. He felt the pommel open and bite into the stone.
As the contact was made, all the air in the room blew outward, rattling hide walls and roof, sucking the wind out of Tylar’s chest. Perryl was blasted back, cloak whipping.
Rivenscryr blazed for a heartbeat in that airless moment.
Then all the weight and substance collapsed back.
Walls and roof sagged. Air fell atop them. Tylar felt as if the world had grown smaller, squeezing tighter around him. He remembered Miyana’s description when she held the stone, a gathering back of what was sundered.
Tylar felt an echo of it. He gained his legs, less aching. The hand that had gripped Rivenscryr had straightened its bones, allowing him to hold tighter, more certain. He wasn’t cured. His knee was still frozen in scarred bone. His side still burnt with fire. But somehow the stone in the sword had gathered Meeryn’s aethryn closer to its naethryn, the two remaining fractions of the god of the Summering Isles. And in that moment, like Miyana, the naethryn found comfort enough to rally, to stave off the spreading poison a little longer.
Straightening and raising the brilliant sword-Rivenscryr whole and united-Tylar faced the daemon lord. He took a step forward, but Perryl sensed the change in balance here. Already shaken by whatever had flickered through him, the daemon swept up his cloak and spun into the back shadows of the tent.
Tylar pursued him, but his leg remained hobbled, slowing him. By the time he reached the back, he found only darkness.
The daemon had fled.
A scream burst from outside.
The others…
Tylar turned back to the tent flap and dodged through it. He almost tripped over Krevan’s body, sprawled in the mud, soaked by rain and blood. Tylar knelt long enough to check for signs of life. He placed a palm on the man’s chest. He breathed. Alive. No ordinary man would have survived, but Krevan was Wyr-born, possessed of a living blood. It sustained him, but barely. He would need some attention.
But not now.
Tylar surged up, drawing more shadows. One of the ghawls unfolded out of the darkness with a screech. Perryl had fled, but he’d left his dogs behind. Tylar easily blocked the thrusting black blade and parried to the attack. He slid the newly forged Rivenscryr through the creature’s gut.
It was like shoving a red-hot iron into cold swamp water.
Flesh exploded with a sickening wash of foul steam and corruption. For a moment, as Tylar yanked his sword out, a tangle of black tentacles followed, bursting out of the wound, writhing in the air. But they did not belong in this world and shivered into a sludging collapse, taking the cloaked body with them.
Tylar spun away. He aimed for a glow beyond the edge of the rock pinnacle, where he had left the others. With a speed born of shadow, he reached the others in two breaths. They clustered around a dying fire, a pack of ghawls nestled tight about them. But like Perryl, these seemed directionless, still held off by even this feeble fire.
Such caution would not last forever.
Tylar swept up to them and through them, cleaving a swath of death. Bodies fell in a wash of fetid steam, tentacles flickered like black flames, then died away. A pair of ghawls fled in opposite directions, mindless with terror, plainly intending to lose themselves forever in the hinterlands. All others lay dead around the fire.
Except Perryl.
Where had he gone? Off to the rogues?
Tylar stared out at the spread of black water. Rain pebbled the surface, but the downpour was already ending.
Calla appeared at his side, her face a mask of worry. “Krevan?” she managed to ask, though she feared the answer.
Tylar nodded. “Alive. By the tent. But he needs help.” He pointed. “Grab the giant and get him to carry Krevan back to the fire.”
Calla ran to obey.
Rogger came up to him. “So you fixed your sword.”
Tylar glanced over to him.
“We sent Pupp with the diamond,” Rogger explained. “Figured his fiery form would pass unmolested through those skaggin’ ghawls, while we didn’t dare.”
Tylar turned the blade, examining its brilliant length. The deaths of the daemons had failed to douse the blade. It required no replenishing blood. Made whole by the diamond, the blade now abided. The stone held it firm in this world.
“But how…?” Tylar finally muttered. “The diamond…”
“You can thank Brant and Dart for that,” Rogger said. “Dart for her special eyes, Brant for his insight. Those two make a nice pair.”
Tylar noted them standing hand in hand. Then counted the others. Someone was missing.
“Lorr,” Rogger said, noting his search. “He was slain protecting the young ones.”
Dart stumbled closer to the water. “But he fell right there,” she said, pointing to the shallows near the bank. “Now he’s gone. Could he still be alive?”
Hope rang in her voice.
But in answer, something dark surged up in the water, humping black scales, then vanishing back into the depths.
“Taken,” Brant said, coming up and putting his arm around Dart. He understood what was written in the ripples. “Nothing goes to waste in the forest of the world. It is the Way.”
Dart covered her face, but Brant plainly found comfort in such an end. And maybe he was right. Lorr had been a creature of the forest. It was only fitting he should return to it again.
A scrape of leather on stone drew their attention around.
From the nearby pinnacle, a handful of women descended on ropes, landing lightly. They were all that was left of Meylan’s tribe. One stepped forward. Tylar could not say if this was Meylan or another.
“Wyrd Bennifren,” she said dourly. “We spied him falling.”
She swung around and headed toward the camp.
Tylar had forgotten about the Wyr-lord. Bennifren had gone off to fetch a repostilary for Tylar’s humour. He had no idea of the strange man’s fate, and normally he wouldn’t care-but there were the promised maps.
“Keep the others by the fire,” Tylar ordered Rogger.
The thief nodded, adding wet wood to the fire.
Tylar set off with the women. They led the way into the nest of tents. Bodies were strewn everywhere, blackened by the burn of the ghawls’ swords. It had been a slaughter.
They found Bennifren’s milk mare collapsed face-first in the mud, just as blackened. One of the women knelt down and heaved the body over. Beneath the charred remains, still swaddled, lay Bennifren, pink and hale, sheltered and hidden by the dead woman.
One arm lifted weakly. He gasped and sucked air, plainly only moments from suffocation. His eyelids flickered open, wet with tears. He breathed deeply for several breaths, then coughed a meanness back into his eyes.
His gaze found Tylar.
“Find the rogues…” he seethed sibilantly.
“I’ll need the maps.”
His eyes flicked to the woman who freed him. “Meylan, fetch them for him.”
So the woman was Meylan. How the Wyr-lord could tell the women apart was a mystery to Tylar. Meylan ran off, while another gathered their lord up into her arms.
“And what about our bargain?” Tylar asked.
The Wyr-lord turned to him. Perhaps he was still rattled, or perhaps it was a generosity born of fury, but Wyrd Bennifren finally relinquished a debt. “It is forgiven…” A hand reached out and tiny fingers clutched the edge of Tylar’s cloak. “But only if you free those rogues. Make the Cabal suffer…make them pay.”
It was a bargain Tylar accepted gladly.
“Bound and done,” he promised.
Dart stared at the strange craft, lent to them by the Wyr.
She stood on the bank, chewing on the back of her thumb, nervous. It looked like a small flippercraft cleaved open through the middle, leaving only the bottom half intact. The flitterskiff was a shallow-keeled boat lined on each side by six long bronze paddles, but these required no oarsmen to row. It was a mekanical craft that ran on alchemies of water.