Wincing, he stopped. He remembered the daemon summoned by the stone when last it had flared. He searched all around him. Nothing.
At his throat, the stone began to cool.
No.
He sensed that whatever had been hunting him was now retreating. He could not lose it.
Brant took another step up, and the stone warmed ever so slightly. Encouraged, he hurried toward the next landing. With each step, the black stone responded, stoking higher with an inner fire. If he stopped or was slowed, it would cool again. He did not tarry, climbing two steps at a time now, caught in the flow of residents heading higher.
As he passed the next landing, Brant felt the stone suddenly lose its fiery edge. With each step farther, it cooled more.
Brant swung around and fought the tide again, heading back down, returning to the landing below.
The stone’s burn ignited again.
He left the stairs and entered the passageway.
It was nearly empty. He rushed forward, using the threaded rock like a lodestone, following the trail of heat. He was a quarter way down the hall when the stone flared to a roasting fire.
Brant gasped but knew he was close.
He yanked the cord from around his neck. He held out the necklace, letting the talisman swing. On one pass, the arc of the dangling stone suddenly stopped-halted by the backside of a molten bronze beast.
It appeared out of the air at his knees, facing away, toward a door. Its body seemed to melt and flow, constantly struggling to hold its beastly shape, half wolf, half lion. In its fierce churn, Brant sensed its fury. It wafted outward like the heat from an open forge.
Then the beast lunged away, vanishing from the touch of the stone, and through a solid door.
Brant straightened.
Then heard the scream.
Dart struggled to escape her own half cloak. It had been pulled over her head by the larger of Pyllor’s cohorts. She kicked and felt her boot strike flesh. A loud oof responded.
“Get’er legs, Ryskold!” Pyllor said.
Someone grabbed her knee.
Dart fought with a rising fury that grew to a blinding ferocity. A hand broke free of her cloak, and she raked her nails at whoever clutched her. She connected, digging deep.
A bellow of surprise erupted.
The grip loosened, and she twisted away, freeing herself-but only momentarily. Whoever she’d wounded lunged atop her, meaning to pin her with his greater weight. Dart held him off with an elbow and a hand. In the struggle, her fingers stumbled upon a familiar shape at the other’s waist.
She grabbed it and pulled.
The sword slid free of its sheath. Her attacker let loose a cry of pain, accidentally cut by his own blade.
Dart rolled to the side and to her feet. She lifted the stolen sword to face the three across the room.
In her hand was no wooden sword-this one was steel.
The bolder of Pyllor’s two friends clutched his forearm. His shirt had been cleaved and darkened with his blood. His eyes had narrowed with pain, but burnt with a fiery anger.
In the glow of the single brazier, Dart’s stolen blade shone brightly. As did Pyllor’s own blade as he pulled it free. A squire’s blade. No black diamond adorned its pommel, marking a true knight, for certainly no honor was to be found here.
“Leave her to me,” he called to the others unnecessarily.
His wounded partner’s sheath was already empty. The other had simply backed away, plainly refusing to be drawn further into the struggle here.
Pyllor sneered. “First I’ll bloody you, then we’ll get you branded up good-for all to see.”
Dart remained silent and took a warding stance. But this was no sparring match. Pyllor came at her with a brutal and heavy lunge.
She refused to be drawn into a block, not against the more muscled attacker. She simply turned her blade and let his steel sing along hers. She leaned her left shoulder back and Pyllor’s sword tip passed her harmlessly.
Surprised, her attacker was momentarily off balance.
And close.
Expressionless, Dart demonstrated how well she had learned Pyllor’s prior lesson, how sword fighting sometimes required more than a blade. As he stumbled near, she kneed out with her other leg, striking him square in the groin.
He cried out and fell back.
At that moment, motion stirred at the corner of her eye. Pupp burst through the latched door. He was a molten glow, a blur of impotent fury.
Though relieved, Dart kept her focus on Pyllor. He wobbled, clutching himself with one hand, but the other lifted his sword.
“You’re dead,” he hissed.
Pupp danced up to her, but she had no time to bloody him, to use the Grace in her most essential humour to call him forth.
Pyllor came at her again, more hobbled and more cautious. She read the cunning reflected in his eyes. She readied herself, but she knew he was the better swordsman.
He thrust, testing her this time.
She parried, but he smacked back her blade and came in with a feint, followed by a savage thrust. She barely nicked her hilt up to block the tip. Still, the blow reverberated up her arm and knocked her back a step.
Pyllor sneered and lowered his sword.
Dart took advantage of the satisfaction in his expression. She lunged out, sweeping into the opening. He dropped his hilt even farther, lowering his guard. Dart realized her mistake-but it was too late. She was committed. Her momentum carried forward her attack.
Pyllor suddenly shoved out his elbow and twisted his sword’s tip in the opposite direction. Dart recognized the opening maneuver. A perfectly executed Naethryn’s Folly.
And she had been drawn inescapably into it.
He looped his sword in a side-sweep, trapping her thrusted blade-then tugged his elbow to his side and turned on his back heel.
Dart’s sword sprang from her fingertips with a ring of steel. It sailed, hilt over tip, through the air, and clanged against the stone floor.
Pyllor did not wait-he drove his sword for her belly.
Dart had only one lesson left. One again taught to her by the squire. She grabbed bare-handed for his blade. Her fingers closed over the steel. She shoved with her palm.
Steel sliced with a painless kiss.
She would lose fingers.
Before she could react, a crash sounded to her right, and the door cracked open with a pop of its latch. Pyllor faltered in surprise. Dart pushed his sword aside and dropped back.
Light flooded the dim room from the hall outside. A dark figure stood limned in the doorway. In the stunned silence, he took in the scene before him.
Pyllor turned his sword toward the intruder. He eyed him, judging him. This was no knight, but someone in a rather plain cloak. Someone of no consequence.
“Begone! This is none of your concern!”
Ignoring him, the figure stepped inside. The blinding light fell from his shoulders and revealed face and form.
The bronze boy.
Brant.
How…?
“Let her go,” he said with a dread calm.
Dart glanced back to Pyllor. Surely this was over. Agony flared up her arm from her sliced palm. She clenched a fist against it, trying to squeeze it away.
Pyllor refused to back down. His fury, stoked by the thwarted attack, found a fresh target in the intruder, believing the younger man to be no more than one of the faceless underfolk, what with his worn leathers and scuffed boots.
Pyllor dropped his sword lower. But Dart knew this was another feint, a trick meant to dull an opponent’s guard. At his back, Dart spotted a dagger, hidden out of sight.
“Don’t-” she said and reached with her injured hand. Blood spattered from her fingertips and spilled from her palm.
But it never struck the floor.
The humour splashed upon the waiting form below.
Dart felt Pupp appear, blessed with blood, drawn fully into this world. He burst into solidity with a flare of ruddy fire. He leaped toward Pyllor at the exact time the squire twisted and flung his dagger toward the intruder.