Brant’s chest sighed down.
The master waved Dart back. “Now we’ll see. That’s all we can do.”
They all stared.
Brant still lay unmoving, but slowly his body seemed to relax, muscles sagging, as if he had been slightly clenched, holding death away by stubborn will.
“Is he-?” Dart began to tearfully inquire.
The master held up a hand.
Brant’s chest suddenly swelled and collapsed with a contented sigh.
Malthumalbaen let out a whoop that scattered a pair of skipperwings from their canopy nest. The resulting frowns quickly silenced him, but they failed to dim the relief shining from his eyes.
“What manner of alchemy was that?” Rogger asked, stepping to them with Harp.
The boy answered for the master. “Dreamsmoke, from the Farallon lotus petal.”
Sheershym nodded. “When smoked in water pipes, it brings a sense of peace and giddiness, but in its purest alchemy it also bears great healing Grace. We’ll have to carry the boy from here. The smoke will have him dozing for a good three bells. He’ll rise from his bed with no worse than a pounding in his head.”
“Better that than rising from his grave,” Rogger mumbled.
Sheershym stood with a groan, supporting his old back, and rolled an eye at Rogger. “It is said there were once alchemies even for that. Hidden in a tome, scribed on leathered human skin. The Nekralikos Arcanum. Written by the tongueless one himself.” He shrugged. “But who can say if it’s true? If you look long enough into the past, memory becomes dream.”
“Or so says Daronicus,” Rogger said.
Sheershym’s left eyebrow rose in surprise. “You know Harshon Daronicus?”
Rogger shrugged. “I’ve read his work in its original Littick. A long time ago. Another life.”
“Truly? Where-?”
“Master Sheershym,” Harp said, interrupting, “perhaps we can leave this talk until we’re beyond the burn.”
He nodded. “Certainly. We should be off. The Huntress will be upon our heels like a ravening dog at any moment.”
They quickly broke down the small camp. Krevan carried one end of the litter and the giant the other. Several boys vanished into the forest to either side, barely stirring a leaf.
“They’ll clear our back trail,” Harp said. “And lay false ones.”
Tylar walked with the boy and the master near the front of the band as it snaked through the woods. “How long have you been hiding out here?”
“Since the winnowing,” the master said grimly. “Beginning of the last full shine of the lesser moon. Some forty days.”
Tylar pictured the mass of skilled hunters that had circled the Grove and ambushed them. He remembered the unerring flight of their arrows. “And you’ve dodged capture all this time? How?”
“Not without losses,” Harp said grimly. “Especially when her hunters started poisoning their arrows. Her madness grows worse with each setting sun.”
“What happened here?”
The boy haltingly told the story of Saysh Mal, of the Huntress’s ravening, of her slaughter, how she began with only a hundred hunters, bound and burned to her, then spread her wickedness.
“Wells were poisoned with her blood, binding all to her will,” Harp said. “Her corruption spread. Mothers and fathers shaved the stakes used against their own children. Those weak of limb were cut down. What you saw back in the Grove is only the barest glimpse of what lies rotting under the canopy.”
“Only the strongest were allowed to live and serve her,” Sheershym finished.
Tylar’s voice was driven soft by the horrors described. “How did you all escape such slaughter?”
“We fled. Three score of us. The master had old maps of the hinterlands. We sought to flee Saysh Mal, to escape into the hinter.” He made a quiet scoffing sound and shook his head.
“A sorry state when the hinterlands offer better succor than your own settled realm.”
“And still we wouldn’t have lived. Not without her help.”
“Whose help?”
Harp waved a dismissive hand, done with reliving the nightmare. “You’ll see soon enough. Best save your breath.”
Tylar didn’t argue. He was finding it harder to match even the elder’s pace. His side throbbed, shortening his breaths, and his knee remained locked up painfully. He could barely move it.
“How long have you been crippled up?” Sheershym asked him, nodding toward his gait.
Tylar shook his head. Now it was his turn to prefer silence. He didn’t understand the growing ruin of his body. Why had he failed to summon the naethryn back on the balcony? Had it become permanently imprisoned? Was the cost of its release more than a single broken bone? He recalled when all this had first started, down in the cellars of Tashijan. The finger that hadn’t healed.
What had gone awry?
“Once we reach our main camp,” Sheershym said, “I’ll attend your injuries. See what I can do to help.”
Tylar merely nodded.
“We had such hope,” the master mumbled.
Tylar glanced at him, hearing the pain.
“When we spotted your flippercraft, we believed it marked the end of the Huntress’s reign. And if not that, then at least rescue.”
Harp snorted. In the end, it had been Tylar’s party that had needed the rescuing.
Sheershym pointed ahead. “Once safe, you’ll have to explain how the Godslayer ended up in Saysh Mal. I wager it wasn’t a chance visit.”
Tylar nodded. “I’m afraid we may need more than your hospitality. Do you still have those old maps of the hinterlands?”
The master’s brow crinkled as he looked over at Tylar. He slowly nodded. “Our camp is secure. It is madness to think to venture out there.”
“Madness seems rampant of late across Myrillia,” Tylar mumbled darkly. He ended any further discussion by drifting back along the line, favoring his knee. He settled next to the litter bearing Brant, still borne by Krevan and Malthumalbaen.
Dart walked on the far side. “He continues to slumber,” she reported. “Though I heard him mumbling in his sleep. I thought he was asking for my help. But then he seemed angry, mumbling about letting someone burn.”
Tylar frowned, recalling a similar cryptic utterance. The words had stayed with him.
HELP THEM…FREE THEM… LET THEM ALL BURN
He also remembered Mirra screaming at him. Kill the boy…before he wakes them! What did any of it mean? What was it about Brant? He found his gaze drifting to the one thing that tied him to all this.
The stone rested at the hollow of his throat.
Dart noted his attention. “It is pretty-”
Tylar glanced to her.
Her eyes remained on the stone, then slowly shifted to him. “Do you think it’s true? That the stone came from the home of the gods.”
Tylar realized the weight of those words to Dart, a child of these same gods. If the Huntress was correct, the stone was also a piece of her lost home, a world she’d never seen.
Until now.
Her gaze returned to it, her face worried yet frosted with wonder.
Rogger broke the spell, ambling up to them, nose crinkled. “Do you smell something burning?”
Dart gaped at the swath of ruin ahead. It cut through the jungle, a river of black rock, steaming, cracked in places to reveal its molten, fiery heart. They gathered on one bank, still green, though tributaries of burnt forest stretched outward. They had edged along one such tributary to reach this place. The firestorm, ignited by the molten flow, had burnt the jungle down to the loam, leaving stretches of forest charred to trunks, blackened spires spreading in great tracks, eerily reminiscent of the stakes back in the Grove.
At least there were no bodies here.
“What happened?” Tylar asked, voicing aloud the question for all.
Harp stood beside Dart. He pointed to the south, to the headwaters of the black river. A mountain rose into the sky, far taller than the peaks across the river. Snow crowned its summit, glinting in the sun.