mekanicals gasped with a thick wheeze of steam.
The pilot hauled on his controls, leaning back, as if by muscle alone he could pull the nose back up. But it wasn’t just muscle that powered the flippercraft now.
Grace slammed through the mekanicals.
A tubing exploded with a spat of flaming alchemies.
Horas rushed to aid the mate. Tylar kept his post by the rail.
The hills continued to rise toward them, snowswept waves ready to accept the keel of their craft. The army of wraiths vanished behind them, along with the globes of lightning.
The flippercraft raced across the frozen landscape.
Slowly…slowly…the nose lifted to an even keel. They flew no more than the height of a man over the hills. Then began to climb. Caught by surprise, the dark forces were sluggish in bringing their Dark Grace to bear. The churning alchemies remained steeped in the air aspect.
The pilot tilted their nose up, shooting back into the skies. The land dropped away, vanishing into the swirling snow.
Then in one breath, they were through the clouds and shot out into open air, like a bile-streaked arrow. The world opened and stretched ahead of them. Moonlight and starlight cast the world with a silvery gloaming.
“We made it,” Captain Horas said, making it sound more like a question.
“We did,” Tylar mumbled.
He turned to stare toward the stern of the flippercraft, but his eyes did not see the ship any longer. He pictured the wraith army-and the towers lost in the heart of the storm.
But mostly, he pictured two women’s faces.
Despite his fear for them, he turned his back on the storm. He had no choice. He had his duty.
Off to the east, the night sky purpled, heralding dawn and another day.
“Head south,” he ordered the captain.
“Aye, ser.”
The flippercraft swung toward the open sea. They would stop at Broken Cay, to wash their ship and freshen their alchemy. Tylar would send ravens flying in all directions. The First Land must rally, but he knew it would not be his war.
The skies continued to brighten to the east as the world turned, oblivious to the struggles of man and god.
Another day.
It was all a man could truly hope for in life.
One more day to make it all right.
Tylar stared south, beyond the curve of the world. He had escaped, but it was only a small victory. Saysh Mal and the hinterlands awaited. There were battles yet to be fought.
Still, something troubled Tylar.
Something he had forgotten.
Far below Tashijan, she sat in a stone chair. A spider, blanched white by a life beyond the sun, crept across her veined hand. Its legs suddenly curled, its body dried to a husk, and it rolled from her flesh.
Mirra did not move. She remained very still until a thin smile stretched her lips. Then she slowly rose to her feet.
“So he has slipped our noose,” she said to the darkness that surrounded her. The only illumination came from her stone seat, a melted drape of volcanic flowstone. It shone with a soft sheen of putrefaction and decay. She trailed one finger along its arm as she stood, sensing the whispers of her naethryn masters.
“No matter. Tashijan will fall all that much faster.”
She crossed to where the putrefying glow met the darkness. In that border, her creation abided, her last and most perfect. Twelve others circled this margin between corruption and darkness. They would serve their new master.
“Perryl,” she whispered, naming her finest creation.
No reaction. Eyes stared into nothingness.
“You know what you must do,” she whispered to him.
He lifted his sword in acknowledgment and stepped back into the darkness. He drifted into the shadows, his white face fading as if he were sinking into a black sea.
The others followed.
Her black ghawls were creatures of Gloom. They flowed through more than mere shadows. Just as these few had drifted between the glow and the darkness, they could also sail between the world of substance and the naether, spaces misted with Gloom, slipping between the cracks of the world.
Into one and out another.
No place was beyond their reach. Throughout Myrillia, such dark cracks existed, where Gloom seeped and leached into this world: down in sunless caverns, in the midnight depths of the sea, beyond sealed doors of forgotten crypts, even under the roots of ancient forests. Wherever Gloom bled and trickled, her legion could travel.
“Go,” she whispered to the fading figure. “Hunt them all down.”
As the ghawls slipped away, Perryl’s sword was the last to vanish, sheathing slowly into the Gloom. She reached for its tip, lanced through with malignant green fire. The Godslayer thought he had escaped-he remained blithely unaware of his own doom.
Her smile widened.
Though his naethryn had avoided the full kiss of Perryl’s blade, it had not remained unscathed. A nick was more than enough.
As the blade sank into the darkness, whispering with emerald fire, she named the poison within the sword, a venom without cure, already instilled in naethryn and man.
“The blood born of hatred…the blood of Chrism.”
FOURTH
RUIN AND A SHES
Farallon Jeweled Bloom
Alchemical Preparation of Dreamsmoke ::: The petal of the water lotus must be soaked in brine for three days under the full heat of the sun. Once bathed, each petal must be dried to a crisp between baked bricks of yellow sandstone and then ground under a granite pestle. Powder is dissolv’d in yellow bile bearing the Aspect of Water, then said waters are boiled off. The caked ash should be aged a full year under opaque glass. Only then will it prove potent when smoked.
A TRAIL OF SMOKE
As dawn broke, Brant had the wide chamber to himself. He laid a palm on the curving wood of the portside hull. If he leaned close, inhaled deeply enough, through the varnish and the trace of black bile, he could still catch a whiff of a familiar spice.
The resin of pompbonga-kee.
The scent of home.
