The last was said pointedly at the giant.
Malthumalbaen took a threatening step forward, but Tylar held him back with a raised palm. “Remain here,” he said. “Keep a guard on our weapons.”
The giant seemed to barely hear him, glaring down at Marron. Lorr slipped between them. “I’ll keep my eyes open and ears up,” the tracker said.
From the way Lorr studied the hunters, he plainly intended to seek some weakness in those who stood guard, to find a breach through which they might break.
Marron also made Rogger pause. “What’s that you carry?” he asked, nodding to the satchel.
“A gift for the Huntress. I heard she lost something. Thought she might want it back.”
Marron’s brow furrowed. He waved for Rogger to show him.
With a shrug, the thief revealed what he had stolen. He flipped back a bit of bile-caked cloth to reveal yellow bone. An empty socket and corner of upper jaw leered out.
Brant gasped, slipping slightly, fingers clutching to his neck. Dart still held his other hand. She knew his stone responded to the skull; now she felt it, too. His palm burned with a feverish touch. He squeezed tight, almost crushing bone.
Satisfied, Rogger flipped back the cloth, covering it again. The heat in Brant’s palm immediately extinguished, like a flame blown out. His legs firmed under him. As he was half-hidden by the giant, no one seemed to note his faltering. All attention had been on the skull.
Marron’s brow remained furrowed. “Give it here,” he said warily.
Rogger shoved the skull inside and held out the laden pouch.
“I’ll take it to her,” Marron said in a slightly petulant tone.
In those words, Dart heard the boy behind the man. She suspected the hunter sought to secure the skull less from caution than from a desire to please his mistress if the gift should be truly appreciated.
With matters settled, they proceeded inside. Led by Marron and surrounded on all sides, the party entered the tree and began the long climb up into the mists.
After a few turns of the stair, Dart searched below. She sought some reassurance. Though they had left all their blades below, they were not without weapons. Tylar carried his naethryn beast inside him, along with all the Grace in his humours. And Brant still bore his stone, a gift of another god, rich in a Grace that might untwine the roots of seersong from the mind of the Huntress.
And there was one last weapon.
Dart faced forward to spot Pupp dancing among the legs of Marron’s party. They remained unaware of his presence. A splash of her blood and the others would soon learn that they had let something worse than a stray dagger past their guard.
But would it all be enough against the raving might of a full god?
Dart wished Tylar had not abandoned his sword.
She also noted a limp in his gait. It slowly grew worse until he seemed barely able to bend his knee. A hand rubbed, but failed to warm whatever stiffness hobbled him.
Rogger mumbled something beyond Dart’s hearing, but Tylar waved him off.
After a full quarter bell of climbing, the steps finally emptied out upon a wide balcony. Mists wove across the planks and between the railing posts. Below, the flippercraft shone like a second sun, ringed in black smoke, glowing through the mists. Above the face of the sun was no more than a glare. The terrace hovered between the world of sunlight and the death below.
Oddly, the reek of rot seemed richer here, though there were no staked heads. Only a single figure waited, as stiff as any sharpened pole.
Her head swung toward them as they were led forward.
Marron dropped to his knees. His obeisance announced who stood before them better than his words. “I am yours to command, mistress.”
The Huntress stepped farther out of the mists, revealing a dark-skinned woman of stunning features, eyes aglow with Grace. She was dressed in green leathers, cross-strapped in black across her breasts and tied around waist and down her thighs, like some twining vine. Her boots were black also. She seemed as strong as the tree that supported her castillion. It was no wonder she showed no fear in inviting a godslayer into her midst.
Dart studied her.
There was no sign of ravaging in her calm features, no tick of insanity nor waste of condition. Even her ebony hair was meticulously braided into a looping coil at her shoulders.
She came to the edge of her guards and stopped. Her eyes seemed to see only Tylar.
“Godslayer,” she said, as if testing the word.
“Huntress,” Tylar acknowledged, stepping forward, favoring one leg. “What is the meaning of such a greeting? What dark corruption have you wrought here?”
Marron swung toward him, still on his knees, prepared to order his death at such an abrupt affront. Arrows were already nocked to strings. Their poisonous points glinted wetly.
But the Huntress stayed them all with a finger and merely cocked her head. “Of what corruption do you speak, Tylar ser Noche?”
He lifted his arm toward the railing. “The slaughter of your own people.”
She smiled, warm and kindly. “Ah, you mistake my actions. What I have done was only to make Saysh Mal stronger. Dark times are upon us. I have heard it whispered in my ear better than most. All the realms must be prepared, to gird our loins and ready for the great war to come. Saysh Mal will not fail Myrillia.”
“How do murder and cruelty make you stronger?”
“Murder and cruelty?” She raised her palms in confusion. “Does a gardenskeep murder when he trims away the sprouted sapling that taps strength from the main trunk? Is it cruelty to pull the weed so the fruit may grow that much heavier on the neighboring vine?”
Tylar kept his features a calm match to the god’s. “You cull the young and the old.”
“And the weak and infirm.” She agreed. “So all may grow stronger. I’ve readied a great army, and braced them with my own blood.”
“You’ve Grace-burnt them. Stripped their wills.”
She shook her head-not disagreeing, only dismissing. “What is will? It is weakness. I’ve taken away indecision, doubt, hesitation, disloyalty.” Anger threaded her words now. “So as to better serve Myrillia.”
“You’ve forced them. Given them no choice to serve or not.”
“It is my right. Do not other gods allow their Grace to be mixed in alchemies and fed to women freshly taken to seed, so their offspring might be stronger in ways that the natural born are not? How is what I do any different? Is the babe in the womb any less stripped of his choice in such matters, forged into the unnatural? All I burn away is one’s hesitation and doubt. The body is left pure.”
“Pure for what?”
“For the war to come! Have you not heard the drums in the night? Have you not seen the shadows shift on their own?” She stepped back as if to encompass more of the world as she gazed skyward. “Once ready, once stripped of all weakness, Saysh Mal will rise against the darkness. We will not let hesitation and doubt weaken us.”
Her voice keened higher.
“Not like your brethren of the cloth,” she continued. “They were not of Saysh Mal. They sought to stop me, cloaked in the same shadows as those that wait in darkness to claim Myrillia. They were no different than the voices who whispered to me in the night and sought to loosen my resolve with terrors and promises. Whispers out of bone.”
Seersong, Dart realized. Her father’s bones had started this song that ended now in a chorus of slaughter and screams. The Dark Grace had driven the Huntress into some realm of terror where cruelty could be justified in the name of security.
The Huntress spread her arms high. “The ravens had to be silenced before they spread word of my preparations. Ravens in the night…and their wings had to be clipped!”
Dart finally followed her gaze. It had not been directed skyward to encompass the world. The Huntress’s mind was still tangled here, landlocked, and bound in pain.
All their faces turned upward.
