“Perryl,” she whispered, naming her finest creation.
No reaction. Eyes stared into nothingness.
“You know what you must do,” she whispered to him.
He lifted his sword in acknowledgment and stepped back into the darkness. He drifted into the shadows, his white face fading as if he were sinking into a black sea.
The others followed.
Her black ghawls were creatures of Gloom. They flowed through more than mere shadows. Just as these few had drifted between the glow and the darkness, they could also sail between the world of substance and the naether, spaces misted with Gloom, slipping between the cracks of the world.
Into one and out another.
No place was beyond their reach. Throughout Myrillia, such dark cracks existed, where Gloom seeped and leached into this world: down in sunless caverns, in the midnight depths of the sea, beyond sealed doors of forgotten crypts, even under the roots of ancient forests. Wherever Gloom bled and trickled, her legion could travel.
“Go,” she whispered to the fading figure. “Hunt them all down.”
As the ghawls slipped away, Perryl’s sword was the last to vanish, sheathing slowly into the Gloom. She reached for its tip, lanced through with malignant green fire. The Godslayer thought he had escaped-he remained blithely unaware of his own doom.
Her smile widened.
Though his naethryn had avoided the full kiss of Perryl’s blade, it had not remained unscathed. A nick was more than enough.
As the blade sank into the darkness, whispering with emerald fire, she named the poison within the sword, a venom without cure, already instilled in naethryn and man.
“The blood born of hatred…the blood of Chrism.”
FOURTH
RUIN AND A SHES
Farallon Jeweled Bloom
Alchemical Preparation of Dreamsmoke ::: The petal of the water lotus must be soaked in brine for three days under the full heat of the sun. Once bathed, each petal must be dried to a crisp between baked bricks of yellow sandstone and then ground under a granite pestle. Powder is dissolv’d in yellow bile bearing the Aspect of Water, then said waters are boiled off. The caked ash should be aged a full year under opaque glass. Only then will it prove potent when smoked.
A TRAIL OF SMOKE
As dawn broke, Brant had the wide chamber to himself. He laid a palm on the curving wood of the portside hull. If he leaned close, inhaled deeply enough, through the varnish and the trace of black bile, he could still catch a whiff of a familiar spice.
The resin of pompbonga-kee.
The scent of home.
For three days, he had recuperated in the heart of a wooden whale, one built from the very trees of his home realm. He felt swallowed whole, unable to escape his past. And now, against his will, he was being dragged back home. Four years ago, he had left Saysh Mal in chains and now he returned just as bound-if not by iron this time, then by duty.
Alone, he crossed the room to a curved rail that overlooked a wide window in the lower hull. The space, though smaller, mirrored the captain’s Eye. The window opened a wide view of the passing landscape, the little that there was to see with dawn barely breaking.
But Brant had woken well before sunrise, knowing they’d be crossing into the Eighth Land this morning. Over the past days, tensions continued to mount within the craft as all wondered about the state of Tashijan. With the ship burning alchemies, they sped faster than any raven could wing.
The regent had been particularly short of mood, worn by the worry of it all, the responsibility. Even the roguish nature of Rogger and his ribald tales of his prior exploits did little to lighten spirits. Brant had also noted how Tylar had begun to limp over the past two days. No one commented upon it, but he had seen the regent, wearing a worrisome expression, kneading his left knee when he thought no one was looking.
But their confinement would soon end.
As Brant waited for sunrise, he felt a now-familiar warming of the stone at his throat. He searched around him, knowing Pupp must be near.
The door creaked open behind him. He turned to see Dart slip into the room. She wore the black boots and leggings of her station at Tashijan, though the shirt was untucked and worn loose. She had also left her half cloak back in her room. It was the first time that he had truly seen her free of cloak and hood. Her tawny yellow hair was longer than last he remembered, past the shoulder. She even looked taller out of her cloak, her eyes bluer. Still, the look she’d worn on her face when he first met her back at the school in Chrismferry remained. Anxious.
“Oh!” She startled back. “I didn’t know anyone was in here.”
“Just come to watch the sunrise,” Brant said.
She edged back, awkward with her intrusion. She would not meet his eye.
“I’ll leave you to your sunrise,” she said.
“No…please…” He waved to the rail.
She approached warily, as if she would rather be anywhere else.
“I appreciate the company,” he said, intending it as a balm for her, but was surprised at discovering it was also the truth. The realization suddenly dried any further words in his mouth.
Brant cleared his throat. He had heard about Dart’s connection to the rogue god who had wandered so disastrously into his life. A god named Keorn, son of Chrism. The rogue god gave birth to her, while his death took Brant’s life away. And it seemed now their lives were still linked: by the bones of the same god’s skull.
His hand drifted closer to hers on the rail-not touching, just closer. Not finding words, he stared below. The roll of the sea lay beneath their keel, black still with night, but to the east, the skies brightened rapidly with hues of purple and rose. The first light revealed a new world rising steeply out of the seas, a land of rock and jungle, cliff and creeping vine.
She spoke to the wide window. “Tell me about the Eighth Land.”
That, he could talk about. “Most of it is hinter-shattered rock, thick jungle, steaming vents of brimstone. There are few gentle beaches, few harbors. Only three gods made their homes there, each more isolated than the last.”
Out the window, the morning sun set fire to the highest peaks.
Dart made a small exclamation, struck by the raw beauty of the sunrise. An ember of pride for his homeland burnt within him.
“Duck down here,” he said and crouched below the railing.
As she knelt beside him, their shoulders touching, he pointed toward the brightening land rising from the sea. “The northernmost cliffs that lie ahead are the domain of Farallon, lord of the Nine Pools.”
“The Jeweled Pools,” Dart said with a thread of wonder. Five rivers flowed out of the highlands to form a cascading series of cataracts and waterfalls, captured on nine separate terraces, a great pool on each. “Is it true each pool is a different hue?”
“That’s how they got their name. Master Sheershym, a chronicler at my school in Saysh Mal, says it’s because of dissolved stone and water depth, but I’d rather think it’s Farallon’s Grace.”
“It’s probably both,” Dart suggested.
The rising sun now glinted off the falling water in the distance.
“What’s beyond the pools?”
Brant pointed higher, where the peaks glowed emerald in the first rays of the sun, shrouded in mists. “The highland mountains are split by a deep valley, all thickly forested.”
“Saysh Mal,” she said.
He only nodded. He had no wish to talk much about his home. They would be there soon enough. Instead, he crouched even lower and pointed to the curve of the horizon. There, almost directly south, was a shouldered mountain that towered above the others. Unlike the emerald glow of the highland peaks, the tip of that mountain turned the first rays of the sun into fire. But Brant knew the opposite was true. It was snow that tipped that mountain, an ice that lasted all the seasons, chilled by the thin air near the roof of the world.