Once his shoulders cleared the hall, Kathryn spotted a gathering of others, hanging back, plainly curious for news. She also saw the Oldenbrook guard who had accompanied Tylar into the cellars. He stood next to a lithe woman in a silver nightrobe.
“Back to your rooms!” she ordered them.
There was a small motion back, but she was mostly ignored. She had no time to argue and turned to the giant, ready to give him the same instructions.
Rogger, though, touched her arm. He whispered. “That is the twin brother of the giant that died below.”
Kathryn let her angry breath sigh out of her. Only now did she note the watery pain in the giant’s eyes, still angry, needing something to do. Apparently the Oldenbrook guard had brought word of his brother’s demise.
She waved to Krevan. “Let him come.”
He took the boy up in his massive arms with surprising gentleness.
Brant stirred, jostled. His eyelids opened. “Mal…” he said hoarsely.
“I got ya, Master Brant.”
A feeble hand rose and touched the giant’s chin. “Dral…”
“I heard…I know, Master Brant.” The giant nodded for them to continue. “We’ll get our blood from them yet. Then we’ll mourn.”
They wound the rest of the way to the top of Stormwatch, reaching her hermitage again. The remainder of Krevan’s Flaggers still guarded her door. All had been quiet, they reported.
Such seemed impossible after all the chaos below, but she took them at their word and led the others inside. Dart and Laurelle shared chairs by the hearth, while the young wyld tracker napped against the curled bulk of the bullhound.
They all rose, one after the other as the party pushed inside.
Dart’s eyes widened as she saw the giant carry in Brant’s weak form. A hand rose to her throat with concern.
“He’ll live,” Kathryn promised her. “Can you show him to the healers? He might have to share the bed with Lorr.”
“Not this night, my lady.” A form hobbled in from the back room, drawn by their arrival.
“Lorr-what are you doing out of bed?”
Though barefooted, he had donned his breeches and had a loose shift open. His left arm was swathed with bandages, but his face was uncovered, baring his burns. The blistered flesh had already settled to a pinkish hue across his cheek and in a goathorn curl up the side of his head.
“The work of your fine healers…masters of Grace, they are.”
A grunt discounted his words as Healer Fennis rounded behind him. “Stubbornness of this prickly tracker, more like it.” He waved the giant over to him. “And a fair amount of quickened healing due to his Grace-blessed nature.”
Lorr shrugged.
Healer Fennis followed the giant into the next room, calling to his wife. “Don’t put away the whistlewort yet, my dear.”
“They’ll have to manage as best they can,” Tylar said. “Weak or not, we must be gone with the boy in the next quarter bell.”
Kathryn understood.
“We leave so soon?” Dart said.
Kathryn turned to her. “Do you have your bag ready?”
“I helped her,” Laurelle said and nodded to a stuffed sack-cloth beside the hearth.
Tylar turned to Krevan. “Can you send Calla above? Have her check with Master Gerrod on how long until the flippercraft is ready?”
Krevan obeyed, then returned. He knew of their plan, plotted before they’d ever ventured into the cellars, but he did not know everything. “How can we hope to pierce the storm? Won’t the storm suck the air alchemies from the ship?”
“Tylar and Gerrod have worked something out,” Kathryn said. “The better question is what to do after you make it through?”
The plan had been simple before. To get Tylar and Dart out of Tashijan. They could not risk Rivenscryr falling into the Cabal’s hands, especially with Dart here, too. And once through the storm, Tylar could rally the gods of the First Land and whatever forces could be brought to bear.
But now matters had become more complicated, with the skull, with the boy, with the dying words from Eylan.
“We must find the rogues,” Tylar said. “We knew the storm out there had to be fed by more than one god. Ulf alone could not wield such forces from Ice Eyrie. We assumed he had the support of a cadre of gods, more of the Hundred who sought my downfall.”
“It was a reasonable assumption,” Kathryn said. “No one considered rogue gods might be involved. They are wild and raving creatures, beyond such masterful manipulation of vast amounts of Grace.”
“Unless they were enslaved,” Tylar said. He glanced to Rogger, who had the skull wrapped up in his satchel. “Like Keorn must have been, trapped in seersong. Somehow he was able to escape, to flee into Saysh Mal, sacrificing himself to bring a warning out.”
“And carrying with him a means to free his trapped brethren.” Rogger nodded toward the next room. “The stone…bonded to the boy.”
“I’m not sure that all is so simple,” Kathryn said. “There is more going on. But either way, does any of us doubt the Cabal is behind the enslavement of these rogues?”
No one voiced a dissent.
“Then that answers my earlier question. Mirra’s forces and the storm were brought against us as a unified strategy. A coordinated attack to capture Tylar and gain the Godsword. Mirra may even know about Dart. And once they gained such power, Tashijan would surely be torn apart, not only destroying the bastion for all of Myrillia, but murdering a good portion of the Hands that serve the gods around here. In one move, we could lose this entire Land.”
“Artful strategy,” Rogger said. “You have to respect that. They must have been planning this for years.”
“Or even longer,” Krevan said. “I fear that, like the Wyr, the Cabal’s plots are stretched over centuries.”
“And if the castellan is correct,” Rogger said, “it’s all the more reason to get Dart and Tylar free of here.”
“And what of the rogues?” Krevan asked.
Tylar rubbed at the corner of his eye, almost tracing his tattooed stripes. Kathryn recognized it as a gesture of intense concentration. She also noted the wrapped digit of the same hand. She had heard that it had not healed. Tylar had dismissed it earlier, but Kathryn feared that the Dark Graces flowing through here threatened the complicated spell that bonded naethryn to man. Yet another reason to get him clear of Tashijan.
Tylar finally spoke. “If the enslaved rogues are fueling this storm, then we can end this siege by finding and freeing them. As Eylan warned.”
“Simple enough,” Rogger said. “But that depends on two things.”
All eyes turned to him.
He held up a finger. “First, Tashijan must hold out that long.”
Kathryn nodded. That was her duty. To remain behind and rally the towers as best she could. To hold firm until Tylar could bring in additional forces-or find some way to free them. It wasn’t only rogues that were ensnared by the Cabal.
Rogger held up a second finger. “And more importantly, we must find this coven of song-cast gods.”
Tylar nodded. Here was his duty. “Eylan has offered us one clue. Hinterland.”
“Not exactly a map, now, is it?” Rogger said. “Half of Myrillia is still unsettled hinter. We can spend a lifetime or more to find them.”
“Maybe not,” Krevan said. “The skull came from Saysh Mal. The Eighth Land’s hinter is the trickiest maze of them all, and the most wild and dangerous.” The pirate glanced to Tylar. “Not one shadowknight has ever set foot in there and returned to tell about it. If you’re going to hide something from Tashijan, that would be a good place to begin.”
“And it was in that hinter that Keorn was captured,” Tylar said.
Krevan nodded. “The Wyr had tracked him there, then lost him. Only to have him appear again in Saysh Mal.”
“Then that’s where we’ll begin our search,” Tylar said.
“We may have one other ally to aid us,” the pirate said. He pointed to Rogger’s burdened satchel. “Wyrd Bennifren waits just outside of Saysh Mal, in the neighboring hinterland, for the skull. The trade still stands. We can ransom it against the Wyr’s knowledge.”