Brant eyed the knight more closely as he swept up to them.
“Ser Knight,” Laurelle said, a bit stiffly. “We are on our way to speak to Castellan Vail. On matters of some importance. Would you be gracious enough to escort us?”
He bowed his head, swept through them, and headed up without a word.
Liannora plainly found some offense at his silence, especially as he displaced her glorious Sten as their protector. But she remained quiet.
They climbed the last three levels in strained awkwardness. At last, they vacated the stairs for a wide hall. Here the roof’s arched supports stretched taller than on other floors. The knight led them forward.
They passed a wide door flanked by shadowknights. The Warden’s Eyrie. Their guide failed to nod toward his brethren, even turning his face slightly away. Brant wondered at it, but then they reached another tall door. It had to be the castellan’s hermitage.
He knocked.
Laurelle stepped up to him, half-blocking the way. “I believe the castellan wishes to see only myself and Master Brant here.”
Liannora overheard. “If Master Brant is to attend Castellan Vail, then I should be present as senior Hand to Lord Jessup.”
The knight studied Liannora over his black masklin. The door opened behind him, limning him in firelight. His voice was a low growl, thick with command. “You will be summoned at the castellan’s pleasure. Until then, you will wait without.”
The gaunt man named Rogger pushed through the doorway, but not before making a bit of sweetbrittle appear in his fingertips and offering it to the mouse-haired maid who bowed at the door.
“Sweet for the sweetest,” he said.
The knight bustled the rest of them inside. Before the door closed, Brant captured the look of raw fury in Liannora’s face. To climb so far, only to be thwarted at the very last step. He knew there would be a cost to all this, but he didn’t have time to worry about such matters.
Especially as the knight shook back his cloak’s hood and shed his masklin. Brant recognized the face with a startled shock.
The castellan, wearing a matching cloak, appeared from a back chamber and hurried forward. She confirmed Brant’s appraisal. “Tylar…where have you been?”
Brant gaped at the man. Tylar ser Noche. Here was the Godslayer…and regent of Chrismferry. In disguise. But why?
“The storm,” the castellan said. “Gerrod believes there is something wrong with it.”
Tylar nodded. “We’re under siege. Eylan has been stolen by seersong. But worst yet, the hand that drives the storm-”
Laurelle cut him off, her voice strident with worry. “Dart is in danger!”
They all glanced to her.
“She’s been captured by the warden’s men. She is to be soothed as we speak!”
Her words drew glances all around, but their eyes settled on Brant. He felt like an intruder, as if he had walked into a private tryst.
Rogger was the only one wearing an amused expression. “It seems we all bring such happy tidings. What about you, young man?”
He blinked, unsure where to start. “I-I bring a message from Tracker Lorr. Something foul hides in the bowels of Tashijan-and has begun to rise.”
The thin man sighed with a shake of his head and mumbled under his breath. “So much for glad tidings this day.”
Tylar stepped closer. Brant had to resist stepping away. The man seemed a thundercloud clenched in a cloak. “Tell us of this danger.”
Brant quickly retold his tale, starting from his discovery of Dart being attacked and ending with the wyld tracker setting off to discover more about what lurked beneath Tashijan.
“Danger from without and within,” Kathryn said.
“It must be the Cabal,” Tylar said. “Seeking to strike at the heart of the First Land. As Tashijan stands, so does Myrillia.”
“We must rally the towers.” Kathryn headed toward the door. “The warden must be informed of the threat. He’s down in the adjudicators’ chamber, attending the soothings.”
“Dart-” Laurelle reminded everyone.
Kathryn nodded. She had not forgotten. “We can use the crisis to help delay her soothing. Even Argent will set aside such matters when all of Tashijan is at risk.”
Rogger scratched his beard with a single finger. “If we’re not too late already…”
Brant followed the others, wondering if the strange man was referring to Dart-or to all of Tashijan.
Dart stood under guard at the edge of the adjudicators’ chamber, under an arched threshold, awaiting her summons. She had a clear view into the oval room-and of her accuser.
Squire Pyllor sat atop a wooden chair, painted crimson. It stood in the room’s center. Before him rose the high bench of the adjudicators, those men and women who settled matters of dispute and justice for Tashijan. It filled the back half of the oval chamber, while behind him rose three sets of tiered seats. But most of those seats were empty.
Not so the high bench.
Warden Fields sat in the centermost seat, flanked by a pair of adjudicators, an elderly man and a younger woman, dressed in gray suits, with the silver rings of their station adorning each finger and ear.
Behind Pyllor stood a figure cowled in a bloodred robe, a soothmancer. A second of his caste knelt nearby, dribbling drops of fiery alchemy into a silver bowl. The first mancer had his fingers spread, touching Pyllor at forehead, temple, and angle of jaw.
Dart read the pain from the squint in Pyllor’s eyes and the thin stretch of his lips as he answered the questions. The soothmancer, his fingertips anointed in the alchemy, read the truth of his words. Dart had never been soothed before, but she had heard tales of the flaming touch of the mancer’s alchemies, born from the blood of gods rich in the aspect of fire. It burnt away all deceptions.
“And you intended great harm to the page?” the elderly adjudicator said.
Pyllor trembled under the mancer’s touch. His severed arm was bound to his chest and wrapped in numbing salves. But the pain of telling the truth could not be so easily numbed.
“We only wanted to scare her,” Pyllor mumbled through a gasp.
A small shake from the soothmancer dismissed his words.
“Do not make us ask you again,” Warden Fields said gruffly. “Out with it. The entire story.”
Pyllor squirmed. “We were only looking for a bit of mischief. It was the ale. We drank too much. Talked too boldly. Dared too fiercely. We went out looking for mischief…not truly expecting to find it. Then…then Page Hothbrin appeared. I owed her.”
“For what?” asked the woman in gray. Her eyes were flint and steel.
“Swordmaster Yuril took me to task for being too hard on her during sword practice. Shamed me.”
“So you sought to do the same to Page Hothbrin.”
Pyllor attempted to hide his face, but his head was firmly gripped by the soothmancer behind him. “Yes.”
Under further inquiry, he went on to describe her abduction and the aftermath of his attempted attack. Though Dart had come too late to hear the other two squires’ stories, most of what Pyllor related seemed only to corroborate the others’ statements.
She found her knees trembling with the telling. Circumstance and chance more than malicious forethought had brought her here. Now she was moments from being exposed, her secrets laid bare before the burning touch of the soothmancers.
“Describe this daemon who took your arm.”
“It-it came out of the darkness. Fiery and fierce. It struck me and knocked me back. I didn’t see it well. Bloodred eyes-that’s all I saw.” Pyllor shook his head, almost dislodging the soothmancer.
Dart knew Pyllor had been panicked, in tears, eyes squeezed closed at the end. Even now terror seemed to leach away any further details.
“Calm yourself,” the elderly adjudicator said with a tempered measure of compassion.
The three at the high bench leaned together, heads bowed in private.
Dart missed most of their words. Only a brief snippet reached her from the younger adjudicator. “Their stories stand together…but they strike out wildly when it comes to this daemon.”