He didn’t answer for a long moment. “I also scent something…a faint trace…” His hand tightened on hers. “Blood.”
Laurelle felt her stomach clench.
“Stay here.”
“No.” Her answer was immediate and certain. Her fingers clamped onto his.
He didn’t argue, only edged forward. In another turn, darkness turned to a deep twilight. Ahead, a body appeared, sprawled on the floor, unmoving. Even in the gloom, Laurelle noted the unnatural twist to the body.
She bit back a sob, feet slowing. She didn’t want to see.
“It’s not Delia,” Kytt assured her and led her forward.
In another two steps, she saw he was correct. The body wore a guard’s livery. One of Sten’s men.
Kytt dropped to a knee and placed a hand on his neck. “Broken.” He straightened and stepped over the body. He touched something on the floor. “Drops of blood.” He sniffed at his fingers. “Mistress Delia’s scent.”
Could she still be alive?
Hope rising, they hurried forward. The trail led to a closed door. They hesitated-but even Laurelle could see the wet blood on the floor. She tentatively reached for the latch, but Kytt suddenly placed his hand over hers.
“Wait. There’s someone-”
“Get in here,” a voice barked, startling them both back a step. “Quit skulking and help. Before it’s too late.”
Though Laurelle recognized the voice, she pulled on the latch. She refused to abandon Delia again.
Inside, the room held scant furniture. Only a small lamp rested on the stone floor, dancing with a tepid flame. But it was enough to illuminate Master Orquell crouched beside Delia’s limp form, sprawled across a small plank bed. One side of the woman’s face was bloody, hair soaked and matted. The old master wiped her cheek with a wet cloth, then pointed an arm toward the lamp.
“Bring that closer,” he ordered.
Laurelle obeyed, reacting to the command in his voice. She picked up the lamp and carried it nearer.
Master Orquell slipped a tiny leather bag from inside his robe and dumped a gray powder into his palm, then held it before the lamp’s flame. The powder turned a rosy hue.
“You broke that guard’s neck?” Kytt asked, equally unsure.
“Before he could break hers,” Orquell answered sourly, weighing the powder in his palm, studying it closer. “Lucky I was down here. Then again, the flames guide us where we’re best needed.”
“The flames…?” Laurelle echoed, suspicions piqued again.
The master glanced up at her. His eyes appeared less milky in the close light of the lamp. They pierced through her, questioningly.
“We followed you,” she explained. “Earlier in the morning. Into the back of the master’s quarters.”
His eyes narrowed in confusion, then brightened with understanding.
“You saw me cast a pyre.”
She nodded.
“Ah…no wonder you are suspicious.” He reached again to the wet cloth. “Then perhaps this will steady your hand so you stop shaking the lamp.”
He sat back and wiped his forehead. Face paint, a perfect match to his yellow parchment skin, smeared away. Beneath the paint rose a hidden crimson mark, bright on his skin, resting in the center of his forehead like an awakening eye.
Laurelle gasped at the mark, knowing it well.
It was no eye. It marked where the bloody thumb of the fire god, Takaminara, had been burnt into his flesh, branding him as one of her true acolytes.
“I am rub-aki,” Orquell said quietly.
“One of the Blood-eyed seers.”
She pictured him rocking before his tiny pyre, sprinkling alchemy, and speaking to the flame. His fire had not been born of some forbidden Grace, but of something much older, a seer’s rites ancient and rare. His mistress was not the daemoness below, but a god in a distant land, the reclusive Takaminara.
But why the disguise, the face paint?
Before she could inquire, Orquell returned his attention to his ministrations of Delia. “We don’t have much time. We must get her back on her feet and moving.”
He leaned over and puffed his fistful of powder into Delia’s face. She inhaled it sharply as if it burnt. Her eyes fluttered open. She gasped, steam rising from her lips with some alchemy of fire.
She jerked as if startled awake, flailing an arm.
“Quickly now, boy,” Orquell said to Kytt. “Help me get her up. We must be away. They’ll be drawn by the smell of blood before long.”
Delia fought them, still dazed, but Laurelle reassured her and drew the focus of her eye. “You’re safe.”
Or so she hoped.
“Laurelle…?”
“I’m here. We must get going. You have to help us.”
Orquell met Laurelle’s gaze, nodded his thanks, and then he and Kytt helped Delia up. In a couple more steps, she was strong enough to need only Kytt’s support.
Orquell hurried ahead to the door. “We must get back to the others. Into flame and light. They’re already on the move. The blood and the dead will draw them.”
“Draw who-?”
A scream answered her, rising out in the hall to a curdling wail.
“Too late.” Orquell turned to them, his crimson eye blazing in the lamplight. “The witch is loose.”
A RIVER OF FIRE
“The poison of the Jinx bat stops both heart and breath,” the old man said as he leaned over Brant’s body, ear to the boy’s chest.
Tylar stood to the side. They gathered in a glade, not far from the Huntress’s castillion, but the forest lay dense around them, keeping them well cloaked and hidden. He was relieved to find Lorr and Malthumalbaen already here, somehow escaped.
And with their weapons.
Tylar strapped on his swords, belting Rivenscryr to one hip, the knight’s sword to the other. He straightened, aching and sore, near to crippled from their mad flight. He had already wrapped his hand and bound the ache of his broken rib. Still, he limped carefully toward the boy on the litter.
They had already broken the poisoned arrowhead, pulled the shaft, and packed the wound with healing firebalm. But there was a greater concern.
Dart knelt on Brant’s far side, shadowed by Lorr and the giant. All their faces were grim. Krevan and Calla checked their glade’s periphery, eyeing the motley-dressed young hunters, some who probably hadn’t seen ten summers.
Rogger stood off to the side, talking earnestly with Harp, the leader of the band, if only by sheer height. Tylar recognized that the boy was probably younger than Brant.
The only elder here worked on Brant.
“Lucky for us,” the old man said as he straightened, “our giant jungle bat likes its meat fresh after it has laid up its prey. Its venom slows rot and decay, holds it at bay for a time. But that time’s about run out.”
He snapped a finger at one of the boys, who hurried forward with two hollowed stems of a whiskerpine. The lad had been packing the stems with a downy powder.
The man accepted the pipes and leaned over Brant.
He had introduced himself as Sheershym, one-time scholar and master at the school here. No longer. He still wore a master’s robes, but they were shabby and stained. Stubble covered his bald pate, obscuring the tattoos of his mastered disciplines. It was rare to find a master who didn’t keep his head shaved proudly. Tylar read one of his sigils, designating skill in the healing arts, but the mark looked nearly faded. The freshest tattoos concentrated on histories, scholariums, and alchemies of mnelopy, the study of dreams and memory, fitting for one who delved into the deep past of Myrillia.
Not so useful for healing.
Still, he seemed to know what he was doing.
The man placed the end of each stem into one of Brant’s nostrils. He nodded to Dart. “Lass, would you mind covering his mouth and pinching his nose closed around the pipes?”
She nodded and did as he instructed, her face pale with worry.
Sheershym bent and slipped the other ends of the pipe into his own mouth. He exhaled sharply through the stems, blowing the powder deep and puffing up Brant’s thin chest with his own breath. He held that pose for a long moment, face reddening. Then he straightened, drawing the pipes out Brant’s nose.