Tylar’s blood went cold. He knew the truth. So were these children . They’d been birthed in the same Wyr’s forges, identical songstresses.
Why?
Dart stepped deeper into the room, a warning tone in her voice.
“Tylar-”
He turned his back on the horror here and hurried back to her side. She pointed, drawing him down so he might see better.
All around the ring, they crept out of doorways, many on hands and knees, others sliding on bellies, others hunkered into beaten postures. Had they sensed the winged guard was gone? Or was it just Tylar’s trespass?
They came out of their stone dens, naked, covered in mud and their own filth. Hair caked in bile, limbs starved to bone, and many of those broken and healed crooked. But all their eyes, staring up, staring over, staring at nothing, glowed with Grace.
Here were the rogues.
What was left of gods treated brutally.
Twelve in all.
They clawed from their warrens, chained at the ankles. One began to wail at the sky, then another. One woman sat outside the doorway, tugging her hair out by the fistful. Another man rocked on his knees, digging at the stone underfoot, tearing nails and flesh in his urgency.
Though freed from the seersong, they were bound even tighter now by madness, beyond even the ability to use their Grace to break their chains.
Tylar remembered Rogger’s description of tanglebriar, how if you yanked the weed, its roots only dug deeper and spread wider. How long had these been rooted with seersong? With the loss of the songstresses, something worse than raving was left behind-mindless agony and an imprisonment far worse than chain and stone, locked forever in your own horror. He had seen what such madness had wrought in Saysh Mal-not just to those around them but to the gods themselves.
He pictured Miyana stepping into fire. The same as her brother.
I want to go home.
Tylar stepped out. No one noted him. He had come to free these rogues. And so he would.
Lifting his sword, he stalked out.
“Faster!” Brant yelled.
Rogger cursed and raced the flitterskiff around another bend. The daemon had closed upon them again. They were burdened by tangle and choke. The ghawl had open air.
Their only advantage lay in dense cover and darting turns.
But they were rapidly losing even that slim lead.
Rogger had taken the last turn too sharply and sheered three paddles off on a shoulder of rock. The skiff jostled, and Rogger had to fight the wheel to hold them steady. And now they were heading into a familiar section of the wood, less dense with areas of open canopy.
Malthumalbaen knelt in the boat’s stern, balancing one hand on the rail, holding aloft a thick branch, more a log, with the other. And Brant appreciated the giant’s skill with it. They had already come close to death a few moments back. The daemon had dropped like a diving hawk at them, crashing through a sparse section of canopy.
A quick swing of that log, and he’d batted it aside. It had crashed into the muck and weed. They had cheered-but in a storm of wing and claw, it had burst up, showering filth, climbing and leaping back into the air to continue its hunt.
And it was upon them again already. It flapped above the canopy, closing the distance with a savage screech of triumph.
Rogger did his best. The flitterskiff raced but in a rattling limp compared to its effortless flight. It was over for them. Had they bought Tylar and Dart enough time? Once the beast ravaged them, it would discover the ruse and return to the island in a furious rage.
They had run out of ways to confound the daemon.
They were too few, too limited.
Too few?
An idea dawned. Maybe not.
Brant twisted back to Rogger and told him where to go.
The thief nodded. “You have a deliciously evil streak, boy. That’s why I love you.”
Brant faced around. He grabbed his longbow, supplied by the Wyr, and readied his arrows. The giant came next to him.
“You want me to just throw my log?”
“When I tell you.” Brant worked fast, fighting the jostle as Rogger swung the boat toward the new target. It was time the daemon learned how all life in the wood was connected by a dance of predator and prey. Heartless and hard-but nonetheless perfect.
This was what Brant had been taught as a boy.
The Way.
“Here we are!” Rogger said.
And not a moment too soon.
The daemon appeared in a break in the canopy overhead, turned on a wing, ready to dive.
“Now!” Brant bellowed and arched back. He pulled hard on his bowstring. Oil dripped from his arrow’s shaft to his fingers.
Malthumalbaen threw his log at the neighboring tree, then leaned down and touched Brant’s arrow with a burning piece of straw.
The shaft ignited as Brant let loose the string. The arrow shot high, arcing a fiery trail up through the hole in the canopy. The daemon wraith had begun its final dive.
Brant’s arrow struck true.
From the neighboring tree, woken by the giant’s log crashing through the limbs of their roost, a thousand white bats took to wing, searching for the attacker. Malthumalbaen wisely threw his piece of flaming straw into the water.
The bats noted the only other flame, honed from centuries of hunting.
In their skies.
In their territory.
Impaled upon a winged trespasser.
Brant’s arrow did nothing to discourage the daemon, but the thousand bats did, churning up like smoke through the hole in the canopy.
The daemon’s dive tumbled as wings struck bats, and thousands upon thousands of fangs tore at skin and eyes. It twisted in midair, plagued at every turn, unable to escape the swirling white cloud. It fled higher, shedding the cloud for a moment. The rush of air fanned the impaled arrow’s flame.
In that moment, the daemon hesitated, turned once on a wingtip. Then with a wail of fury, it swung away.
Back toward the island.
Rogger watched it leave. “It knows about Tylar’s trespass.”
Brant stood next to Rogger, shouldering his bow. “We did all that we could.”
Rogger looked above. Overhead, the swirl of bats chased after the slower-flapping daemon, following its flame. A cry of rage flowed back, tinged by pain.
“And those little buggers will slow it down a bit more for us.”
Malthumalbaen sank to the bench. “I could almost like those bats now. Especially fried in pepperseed oil.”
Tylar stood amid the carnage.
The fire at his back had dimmed to flickers of green flame. With each rogue he slew, more fuel for the pyre died. Somehow each god’s lifeforce was forged to the flames, some dread blood alchemy, forced upon them by the song. And like the chains that bound their ankles, they were unable to escape-not while they lived.
It was up to Tylar to break that curse, too.
In the only way he knew how.
Their bodies lay where they fell. He made each of their deaths swift.
He felt the tenth no less than the first-especially as he finally learned the truth of Rivenscryr.
He stepped to the eleventh rogue and lifted his sword. It was a woman of fine bone, revealed by her sunken skin. A god might not die, but they could eternally starve. She stared up at him. She did not wail. She had bitten off her tongue some time ago, and in the horror of godhood, it had yet to grow back. How many tongues had she bitten off? Had she done it to silence her cries or out of hunger?
He met her gaze and found nothing there, a burned shell, waiting to be released. Like all the others…or at least those who still had eyes.
Tylar heaved back his sword and swung it sharply.
Graced steel cleaved flesh and bone with hardly a shudder of the hilt.