“In that case, we should get you out as soon as possible. You’d die of thirst before the moon changes its face.”
“True…true…”
Despite their banter, there were no smiles. It was not humor that generated their words, but worry, both for themselves and for those they’d left behind. Tylar had especially grown anxious during the long climb down here. Another day ending and still no word of the state of Tashijan.
Stepping away from the others, Tylar spoke softly a fear that still plagued him. “What if we don’t even need to venture into here? What if the storm is already broken?” He nodded below. “Maybe all this is for naught.”
Tylar left unspoken his other concern.
What if it was already too late?
Rogger remained silent for a long moment, then spoke equally softly. “Raving or not, the rogues here are still enslaved. It wouldn’t be right to leave them in such a state. They’re still worthy of mercy.”
Tylar remembered the grief expressed by Miyana, of the horror of seersong. He knew Rogger was right. Besides, the Cabal were behind this slavery, cultivating a great source of power and Dark Grace. It had to end.
He glanced to the others, making sure everyone was ready. Brant bent down and untied his stone from around Pupp’s neck. They had attached it to him to draw Pupp into solidity. Malthumalbaen had carried him, with a look of pure adoration on his face.
“Who’s the fearsome cubbie?” the giant intoned. He was still bent on one knee, running thick fingers through Pupp’s spiky mane. Pupp’s tail wagged and a good portion of his rump.
Brant removed the stone, and Pupp vanished.
The giant’s hand fell through empty air again. “Aww…” He stood. “He was like a tin of coals in a cold bed. All warm and steamy.”
Dart hid a grin behind her own fingers.
With everyone gathered, Tylar waved Krevan to lead. They needed to get out of the open. The hinterland’s dangers were not all twisted Grace and raving rogues. There were men and women worse than any ilked beast, who were happy to prey upon those who ventured into their fringes. Such folk lived lives barely better than those of the beasts, harvesting wild Grace and plundering where they could, often across borders. Though rogues might not be able to cross into a neighboring settled realm, men were not forbidden to do so.
Before anyone noted their trespass, Tylar wanted to reach their sole ally in this strange land, even as untrustworthy as that ally might be.
“Can you find Wyrd Bennifren?” Tylar asked Krevan.
He nodded. “I studied the old maps of Sheershym. It should not be hard to find the Wyr encampment. If they’re still there.”
The Wyr-lord had hired Krevan to secure the skull of the rogue god, the one who had fathered Dart. According to their pact, Bennifren had planned to remain at the fringes of the hinterland, awaiting word until the new moon. That came this night. Tylar feared if they delayed too long that the Wyr might simply move on.
Krevan led the way. They descended the slope with care. The loose rock could easily twist an ankle, especially after the long climb down the cliff.
Tylar kept watch on the forest ahead. It did not look all that much different from the highlands above, except that the lowland trees grew taller, the canopies wider. They appeared true monsters of the loam. A few flickerflies flashed in the deeper wood, warning them back. Tinier wings buzzed ears and exposed skin. It remained the only sound, except a trickling of water.
They discovered a spring. Its waters spilled out of the bottom of the scree and flowed over broken shale toward the forest, vanishing into the darkness.
“According to the map, we should follow this,” Krevan said and set off.
But once they reached the jungle, it seemed impossible to enter, tangled with vine and bush, creeper and sapling. Anything that could stretch a leaf to the sun grew at the edge. They would dull their blades trying to hack more than a quarter-league through here.
Instead, Krevan stepped into the stream and scuttled down its rocky course. He had to crouch, but it was passable.
“Mind the moss,” he said. “It’s slick.”
They followed in a line. It was more like entering a cavern than a forest edge. The scent of wintersnap filled Tylar’s nostrils, its leaves ground under the tread of the pirate in front. They didn’t have far to go. The tunnel of brush slowly rose and thinned. Deeper under the canopy, away from the sunlit edge, the underbrush strangled away to vines and low bushes.
Tylar’s boots sank into the spongy layer of decaying duff.
All around, the march of tree trunks struck Tylar like the columns of a grand palacio. Ropes of moss streamed this woodland hall, softly aglow in the darkness. To either side, other creeks and brooks trickled through the forest, all flowing ahead, downhill. The combined babble and echo of water over rock sounded like a mighty river. This was how the highlands drained into the hinter, creeping in tentative dribbles, like their own approach.
“Don’t look so bad,” Malthumalbaen muttered.
Tylar agreed. The forest seemed no different from other dark woods. The depths of Mistdale, all black pines and dread wood, struck a more ominous demeanor.
“Don’t be fooled,” Rogger said. “We’ve barely crossed the border. The deeper you go, the more the landscape is warped and woven by wild Grace into maddening design.”
As if wanting to prove his point, a nesting winged beast took flight with a sudden burst of a flaming tail, streaking like a fiery arrow. It screeched, alerting others. More flames shot through the dark in fright.
“So much for a quiet approach,” Rogger said.
They continued onward, led by Krevan.
No one spoke, wondering what other strangeness and horrors might lay deeper in the hinterland. For four thousand years, rogues had wandered these lonely lands, maddened both darkly and brightly. Some rogues were burnt into dullness, others into a malicious sharpness. But all leaked wild Grace into this unsettled land-into loam, into water, into air-where it corrupted in both subtle and monstrous ways.
Tylar compared it with the settled lands. He remembered the daemon inside Chrism describing the first settling of a realm, how Chrism was chained and bled against his will, punished for his murder of children during his raving. What was done with vengeance proved the greatest boon to Myrillia. Chrism’s ravings faded as the wild Grace that had burnt his sanity bled into the land. The knowledge of this boon spread. Other gods followed his example, and the Nine Lands settled out of the centuries of raving and destruction into a long peace. Grace was harnessed, shared, and traded, blessing Myrillia into a new era, raising man out of its cycle of rule and ruin during the unending wars of its ancient human kings.
Tashijan itself rose out of one of those ancient keeps, ruled by the last human king, until the man swore his fealty and pledged his knights to the gods of the First Land, beginning the long line of shadowknights. The pact set by this ancient king protected the lands around the keep, free of any one god’s rule. Wards had been set up at the borders, to forbid even the trespass of wandering rogues.
The pact had been unspoiled for four millennia.
And now all was threatened.
Krevan stopped. A large outcropping of rock rose ahead. One of those bastions Tylar had noted up by the cliff. It looked like a crooked finger raised to the sky, perhaps warning against further trespass.
Tylar hobbled to Krevan’s side. He certainly could use a rest, but they dared not. Not yet. Tylar controlled his breathing as he joined Krevan, hiding his exhausted, rasping breath.
Still, the pirate stared him up and down. Krevan kept silent about what he found, but a crease between his brow deepened.
“How much farther?” Tylar asked.
Krevan frowned and grumbled. “I should check the map.”
Tylar didn’t like the worried tone to the pirate’s voice. Calla joined them, shrugging off a pack. The maps were unrolled.
Stepping clear, Tylar searched up between the canopy’s leaves. Clouds were blowing into view. But so far, the full face of the lesser moon shone down. It was called a Hunter’s Moon when full like this, casting enough glow to see but not enough to give away a hunter’s blind.
