Still on his knees, holding the stone aloft, Brant lowered his palm to the floor, leaning his weight. He blinked away tears, breathing heavily.
It was over. He knew if he touched the stone it would be cold again.
As he pondered the mystery, a creature flickered into existence before him-almost nose to nose with him on the floor. It sniffed at the outstretched stone, setting the talisman to wobbling on its braid.
Brant froze.
The daemon stood knee-high, flowing in molten bronze, half wolf, half lion, spiked at collar and hackle, black jeweled eyes lit by inner fires, maw lapping with flame, fangs forging and melting in a continuing eruption of savage barbs.
Its eyes stared into his for a half breath; then it pulled back-and vanished.
Released from the spell, Brant jerked like a snapped bowstring, falling on his rear and scuttling away like a crab on hot sand. But the beast was gone. He searched around. Nothing. Shaking, he forced himself to settle his center. Muffled laughter and conversation arose from the room behind him.
As he sat, he sensed a vague lessening of pressure inside his skull, something receding. Then in a moment, nothing.
Slowly he gained his feet, only now noting how his left fist clutched the black stone. It had indeed gone cold. He opened his palm and stared down. Had the stone somehow conjured the daemon and again banished it?
As he began to tuck the stone away, the door creaked open behind him. His free hand went for his knife.
But it was a familiar figure, a page cloaked in black.
Before Dart could say a word, a call reached them both, arising from Kathryn ser Vail. The Tashijan party was departing.
Dart glanced over her shoulder, back into the room. She retreated toward the castellan, but not before her blue eyes latched upon him again. She bowed her head as if they had just agreed to something.
A secret between them.
Then she also vanished, closing the door with a snap.
Brant remembered the word she had whispered with such urgency when first caught creeping into the High Wing.
As if she had been searching for something.
Pupp…
And the strange shooing motion at him a moment ago.
Had she been warding him away-or someone else?
Brant stared at the stone in his palm. Two stones had led him to this moment. One had been pressed into his palm by Lord Jessup’s Oracle, selecting him to serve in the god’s household. But before that, another god had gifted him with another stone, the one that hung around his neck.
Was this one also a call to serve?
He pictured the fiery figure on the jungle path, crumbling in flames and rolling the stone to his toes. What did a rogue god of the hinterland need from a lone boy out of Saysh Mal?
Brant tucked the cursed stone away.
To root out that answer would take a great hunter.
But at long last, Brant had finally found his first trail marker.
He pictured the girl’s blue eyes and mumbled a name to the empty hall, full of promise as much as curiosity. “Pupp.”
A REGENT IN BLOOD
Cloaked in black, Tylar Ser Noche waited on the docks. The stars shone and the greater moon had set. It was the darkest point of the night, when both moons were gone and the sun remained only a rumor. It was also the coldest part of the night. Ice crusted the edges of the sludge canal and made the planks of the ironwood dock treacherous underfoot.
His party had been waiting for a full turn of a bell. All were buried in woolens, furred boots, and heavy cloaks. Their breath steamed the air.
“Perhaps he won’t come,” Delia whispered through a scarf about her mouth. She stood close, a head shorter and a decade younger, wrapped in an oiled black cloak lined with fox fur, its hood fringed in snowy ermine, a perfect complement to her pale skin and exacting contrast to her shadow-dark hair. The only color about her rose from the shine of her eyes, a warm hazel, green-tinged in the torchlight. “Or perhaps the letter was a forgery, one meant to lure us where there are few witnesses.”
“It was no forgery,” Tylar assured her.
The missive had arrived a fortnight ago, urging secrecy. It had been coded properly and signed with the proper sigil.
Ancient Littick for thief.
Tylar had first seen the same sigil branded on the letter-writer’s buttock. Plus a few telltale drops, richly crimson, had stained the white parchment. Not blood. Wine. Testament enough to the verity of the letter’s author.
“Rogger was never one to mind the precise ringing of a bell,” Tylar said, urging patience with a slim smile.
“Let’s hope he was precise enough about the turning of the day, then,” Sergeant Kyllan said, stamping his boots to warm his toes. The master of Chrismferry’s garrison did not like this moonless rendezvous. He scratched the tortured scar across his left cheek, scowling slightly. Kyllan had refused to allow Tylar to cross the city alone, especially in the middle of the night. There were still many who wanted Tylar dead.
And the numbers were growing daily as this endless winter stretched on. Rumbles and rumors spread through alehouses and wenchworks of a curse upon his regency. Though Tylar had slain the daemon that had attempted to usurp the god-realm of Chrismferry, the city’s gratitude was as short-lived as a bloom after the first frost. And as winter’s hardships grew, it seemed even the change of seasons had become the responsibility of the city’s new regent, a mantle Tylar wore with ill comfort.
For Tylar’s security, Kyllan had ordered ten of the garrison’s pikemen to accompany him on this dark journey across the city. But Tylar suspected it was an unnecessary escort. He had more than enough protection from the party’s one other member.
Wyr-mistress Eylan stood at the foot of the docks, dressed in deerskins and fur, a sword in hand, a half ax at her waist. Her cloak had a hood, but she did not bother pulling it up, seemingly impervious to the frigid breeze that swept up the crumbling canal from the distant Tigre River. Her skin glowed with a flushed ruddiness, a shade darker than her tanned leathers. Her black hair trailed to mid-back in a thick braid, decorated with three raven feathers.
She seemed to note his attention, glancing over to him, appraising him coldly, then looking away again.
Bound by an oath, Eylan seldom strayed far from Tylar’s side, not so much in concern for his safety as to protect a debt sworn to her lord. A year ago, Tylar had promised his seed in trade for his life and the lives of his companions, a humour of significant Grace that Wyr-lord Bennifren intended for the forges of his Black Alchemists. Tylar was determined to avoid paying that debt for as long as possible, preferably forever.
’Til then, he had gained, in Eylan, a second shadow.
Tylar returned his attention to the stagnant canal.
Nearby, a small single-sailed trawler, long abandoned, lay stripped and on its side, half-beached, hull burst, locked in ice. Tylar was surprised to find it here. The long winter had taxed the city of Chrismferry, especially the underfolk too poor for the rising cost of coal and wood. Scavenging had become commonplace. The planking of the old trawler would heat a hearth for a good turn of the moon. Yet here it remained, untouched.
Of course, here was the heart of the Blight, one of several sections of the great city long gone to seed, as abandoned and broken as the old trawler. Chrismferry spread across both sides of the Tigre River. Founded four millennia ago, it was the oldest and greatest of all the cities of the Nine Lands of Myrillia. It would take a man on a
