How far had they come? Not even half a league, he imagined.
Krevan whispered with Calla.
“Already lost?” Rogger asked as he stalked up.
“No,” Krevan answered and nodded to the pinnacle of granite. “This is the right place. This is where Bennifren said to meet.”
“Have they moved on?” Tylar asked.
The answer came from above their heads. A rope sailed down the side of the nearby pinnacle. A shape quickly slid along it, dropping from some hidden perch. The figure was cloaked in hunter’s green and black boots.
Krevan drew his blade. Tylar slipped Rivenscryr free, not taking any chances with the malignant Grace of this land.
Alighting without even a crackle of twig or dry leaf, the newcomer strode toward them, tall, back straight, unperturbed by their raised blades. The hood was shaken back, revealing dark hair, skin the color of bitternut and cream. Familiar eyes studied them.
“Eylan…” Dart said, also recognizing the woman.
The woman failed to respond, but Dart was correct. She was a match to Eylan, from boot to crown. Even her movements were the same: the way she leaned on a hip as she stopped, how her eyes took in a situation in a single sweep to the right, then back again more slowly and warily to the left.
Only then did Tylar realize his mistake. The woman didn’t recognize them-and it couldn’t be Eylan. They had all seen her die.
Was she a twin?
“My name is Meylan,” she said, confirming his thought. “You will come with me.”
Though they’d never met, Tylar felt a strange affection for the woman, as if she were his own sister. But with it came a twinge of guilt. Did she know of her sister’s death? She would have to be told.
But not now…
Meylan turned as if there was no brooking any defiance. Her words were reinforced by the appearance of more figures, similarly attired, hoods up. They appeared from behind the boles of trees and lowered themselves out of branches.
Lorr stepped to Tylar’s side. “They use Grace to hide their scent and even their breath.”
They did indeed move silently. He had yet to hear a single footfall or snap of a broken branch. He counted a full score of them, all women.
Meylan touched the rocky side of the pinnacle, and flames burst from its tip, flickering sharply above. Rounding the outcropping, Tylar found a break in the foliage. Ahead, the lands continued to drop away. Atop another pinnacle a good league away, flames burst.
Signal fires.
Meylan had passed on word of their arrival.
Krevan paced Tylar. “I should have guessed Bennifren would not have simply told me the location of his hinterland camp. Secrets run through his veins, more than blood.”
Rogger came up on his other side. “Wise to remember that. The Wyr make pacts that are unbreakable, sealed with a word. But all else is suspect.”
They followed Meylan, but Rogger was not done. He nudged Tylar and pointed back. “Watch as they pass under the firelight.”
Brows pinching, Tylar glanced at the women that trailed the group. They made no move to threaten them. But he spotted daggers on their belts, and he did not doubt more blades were hidden on their bodies. He was not sure what Rogger intended him to see.
Then one of them stepped past the pinnacle. Shafts of firelight flickered and danced shadows from above. The woman’s face was momentarily illuminated in its ruddy glow.
Tylar stumbled. She looked indistinguishable from Meylan-as much as Meylan looked like Eylan. Another woodswoman slipped through the same light, revealing again the same face. Then another.
“Just so you know who you are dealing with,” Rogger said.
Tylar held back a shudder as he looked across the score of women. The warmth he had felt toward Meylan went cold. For centuries, perhaps millennia, the Wyr had sought to breed godhood into human flesh. Their practices were as arcane as they were heartless. No manner of manipulation of the flesh was beyond them, resulting in abomination, mutilation, deformity.
But this?
It seemed so much worse. Beauty and horror. Maybe it was that this abomination wore the face of a woman he had come to know, to appreciate, even to value as a friend.
Affection and guilt shifted to anger.
Tylar stared as the women spread through the forest.
He would remember Rogger’s warning. He was also mindful of what the thief had said about the unbreakable pacts with the Wyr. Tylar had his own oath to honor, a debt that perhaps he could no longer delay in settling. The Wyr had collected his other humours-but he owed them one more.
His seed.
Tylar knew that before he was allowed to head deeper into the hinterland, Bennifren would demand that he satisfy their old deal. Tylar also knew he needed the Wyr-lord’s cooperation. To gain it, there would be little room to maneuver.
Ahead, Meylan glanced back, perhaps sensing his reluctance.
He stared back at her, a woman wearing the face of a friend.
He read no friendship here.
Only a reminder of what was owed…and the danger of its corruption.
Dart stayed close to the giant as they entered the camp.
She had heard tales of the Wyr for as far back as she could remember, tales meant to scare one to hurry to bed, to finish one’s chores, to keep one’s word. The one common element of these stories was that bad children ended up in the Wyr’s clutches, dragged away and never seen again. But as she grew older, the tales grew both more truthful and more frightening. The Wyr were a cadre of Dark Alchemists, buried within their subterranean forges, concocting all manner of Grace in their pursuit of godhood. The ends to which they’d go to achieve this were both monstrous and pitiless.
Dart followed the others into the camp, staying close to the giant.
The Wyr had made their home on the bank of what appeared to be a wide lake but was in truth a flooded forest. Here was where all the trickling creeks eventually ended, becoming a slow shallow river several leagues wide, flowing westward toward the distant sea. Twisted trees corkscrewed out of the flood, raised up on tangles of roots, as if trying to crawl out of the black water. Great slabs of rock tilted out, too, strangely barren, along with more pinnacles.
The closest of these spires rose near the bank, shadowing a collection of ramshackle tents. Its pinnacle bore a crown of fire. The beacon had led them here, escorted by Meylan’s band. Its flames lit the camp below with a foreboding glow, all fire and shadow.
Faces watched their approach: spying from behind flaps of tents, lifting up from some labor, wafting smoke from their eyes. Dart, in turn, studied them, expecting beastly countenances. Instead, most of these folk looked as normal as their group-and when compared to Lorr and Malthumalbaen, maybe even more normal.
A few forms, though, were plainly tainted. A bare-breasted woman hauled wet clothes from the creek. She had arms and legs as thick around as the giant’s but was hardly taller than Dart. When she turned, her eyes were shadowed by heavy brows that sloped steeply back. They watched dully as the group passed.
Then there was a boy, far younger than Dart, who approached their party with the simple doe-eyed curiosity of all youth, shyly but still drawn. From his eyes, it was plain he was full of questions, but they would never come.
He had no mouth-only a gaping hole at the base of his throat.
She had to look away. But he must have noted the horror in her face, for he turned away, too, in shame. That more than anything disturbed her. She had her own secrets, but they were hidden well, hidden deep. Not like the boy’s.
