Argent’s eye brightened. Together they hurried toward the fieldroom. “That’s the first fair news in many a bell. Maybe we can hold out yet!”
They reached the fieldroom to find Delia and Gerrod by the shuttered window, peering out the small opening.
Gerrod turned to them. There was something grim about his stance. He lifted an arm, urging them to join him.
Kathryn stepped around one side of the map table, Argent the other. They met again at the window. Argent touched Delia’s shoulder to make room. She slid back.
Bending, Kathryn peered out into the dark stormswept night. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but it appeared that the winds had subsided.
“Lord Ulf has pulled back his wraiths,” Gerrod said. “At least those loose out there.”
“Is he retreating?” Argent asked.
Gerrod remained silent.
Kathryn saw why. The shield wall was coated with ice. As she watched, black rock grew white with hoarfrost, spreading out in a crystallizing pattern, consuming the wall.
All hope went cold.
Her voice dropped to a dry whisper.
“The ice is coming.”
A CROWN OF AN ANCIENT KING
Perryl’spoisonous blade pressed against Tylar’s chest, pinching through his cloak. He held the blade off by sheer trembling muscle. Rivenscryr crossed against the daemon’s sword.
Pinned against the wall of the hide tent, Tylar could not maneuver. His legs shook. Even the hand that bore Rivenscryr had begun to gnarl as the venom inside him spread. The exertion only sped the corruption.
“Perryl…” he begged.
If he could somehow reach him…
But the pale face remained impassive, no anger or fury, simply certainty. The face of a predator in a dark sea.
Then a momentary flicker passed through the fire in the daemon’s eyes, like a brush of wind. Tylar shoved with his remaining strength.
Perryl went stumbling back, plainly disoriented.
Something had happened.
Free, Tylar lifted Rivenscryr. He judged how to use the moment. Flee or attack. Overhead, rain pelted the tent, beating against it like a hide drum. With his body weakened, he could not match swords with Perryl.
In that moment of hesitation, a splash of fire nosed under the tent flap and wiggled inside. Pupp’s molten form hissed with rain. Fiery eyes took in the scene, and he trotted blithely to the room’s center.
The ghawl retreated another step, spooked by the appearance. Pupp’s fire and light stripped some of the shadows from Perryl, revealing cloak and pale skin. Again Tylar saw the strange translucent oil that was his new skin, squirming beneath with dark snaking muscles.
Revulsion filled him anew.
Perhaps with Pupp’s help…
But the creature seemed to have come with another purpose. Pupp trotted to Tylar, molten spikes bristling. He carried something in his mouth. It shone brilliantly, lit by Pupp’s fiery tongue.
Once near, Pupp spat it at his toes-then vanished away.
Tylar stared at what lay at his feet. A black diamond, not unlike those that adorned a shadowknight’s sword. His own knightly blade lay on the floor, abandoned after cleaving off Krevan’s arm. And in that one breath, he understood. Only one stone brought Pupp to life.
Brant’s stone.
He stared between the diamond and the abandoned sword and understood. The stone was somehow meant to adorn Rivenscryr. But it wasn’t by wits alone that he came by this insight. In his grip, the sword’s hilt seemed to ooze tighter around his fingers. It grew warmer. He had felt such stirrings before in the sword, but never such a muscular spasm as this. Tylar sensed the sword’s lust for the stone-to complete itself.
Tylar bent his one good knee.
Perryl must have comprehended the danger and surged forward, his indecisiveness burnt away by fear. Tylar reached out and slammed the hilt of his sword atop the stone. He felt the pommel open and bite into the stone.
As the contact was made, all the air in the room blew outward, rattling hide walls and roof, sucking the wind out of Tylar’s chest. Perryl was blasted back, cloak whipping.
Rivenscryr blazed for a heartbeat in that airless moment.
Then all the weight and substance collapsed back.
Walls and roof sagged. Air fell atop them. Tylar felt as if the world had grown smaller, squeezing tighter around him. He remembered Miyana’s description when she held the stone, a gathering back of what was sundered.
Tylar felt an echo of it. He gained his legs, less aching. The hand that had gripped Rivenscryr had straightened its bones, allowing him to hold tighter, more certain. He wasn’t cured. His knee was still frozen in scarred bone. His side still burnt with fire. But somehow the stone in the sword had gathered Meeryn’s aethryn closer to its naethryn, the two remaining fractions of the god of the Summering Isles. And in that moment, like Miyana, the naethryn found comfort enough to rally, to stave off the spreading poison a little longer.
Straightening and raising the brilliant sword-Rivenscryr whole and united-Tylar faced the daemon lord. He took a step forward, but Perryl sensed the change in balance here. Already shaken by whatever had flickered through him, the daemon swept up his cloak and spun into the back shadows of the tent.
Tylar pursued him, but his leg remained hobbled, slowing him. By the time he reached the back, he found only darkness.
The daemon had fled.
A scream burst from outside.
The others…
Tylar turned back to the tent flap and dodged through it. He almost tripped over Krevan’s body, sprawled in the mud, soaked by rain and blood. Tylar knelt long enough to check for signs of life. He placed a palm on the man’s chest. He breathed. Alive. No ordinary man would have survived, but Krevan was Wyr-born, possessed of a living blood. It sustained him, but barely. He would need some attention.
But not now.
Tylar surged up, drawing more shadows. One of the ghawls unfolded out of the darkness with a screech. Perryl had fled, but he’d left his dogs behind. Tylar easily blocked the thrusting black blade and parried to the attack. He slid the newly forged Rivenscryr through the creature’s gut.
It was like shoving a red-hot iron into cold swamp water.
Flesh exploded with a sickening wash of foul steam and corruption. For a moment, as Tylar yanked his sword out, a tangle of black tentacles followed, bursting out of the wound, writhing in the air. But they did not belong in this world and shivered into a sludging collapse, taking the cloaked body with them.
Tylar spun away. He aimed for a glow beyond the edge of the rock pinnacle, where he had left the others. With a speed born of shadow, he reached the others in two breaths. They clustered around a dying fire, a pack of ghawls nestled tight about them. But like Perryl, these seemed directionless, still held off by even this feeble fire.
Such caution would not last forever.
Tylar swept up to them and through them, cleaving a swath of death. Bodies fell in a wash of fetid steam, tentacles flickered like black flames, then died away. A pair of ghawls fled in opposite directions, mindless with terror, plainly intending to lose themselves forever in the hinterlands. All others lay dead around the fire.
