“I’m glad you’re back. We have to leave early—it’s my fault. I was caught stealing a waterskin. They’re probably looking for us now, so Ba’al said we should go while it’s dark. It’ll be harder for them to track us, and he said the Tsaazaari are superstitious. They might be too afraid to come after us during the night.”
“Where’s Magdalynn?” asked Adam.
“We weren’t going to leave you,” the half-blood continued as if he hadn’t heard. “We’d have to come back this direction anyway. He promised we’d sneak inside and find you after we return from Iisah.”
“Adnihilo. Where’s Magdalynn?”
The half-blood glanced toward the listless tent, then toward the ridge. There was a pattering, like the fall of a heavy rain.
“Adnihilo!”
He looked at the pile again. “I’m sorry.”
Adam dropped his purse, and the fifty-eight pieces of Mephistine silver clinked in the dirt, forgotten. He walked, quaking, to where the canvas cloth laid over her—a beggar’s grave—and peeled it back so as to see her face. He looked as long as he could, not long, then staggered aside and retched.
“I’m sorry,” Adnihilo recited. The storm-sounds were on top of them now. Three beasts reigned down from the ridge, led by Ba’al, calling out for them to mount. The guard was coming, and they were on horseback. Adam looked to Magdalynn, then to his friend, and made his decision. The three of them fled into the black horizon.
Eighteenth Verse
“In the names of the Lord who has born the sun, the earth, and the breath of life: Sol, Patrem, Ventus,” began Commander Pyke. Jael followed along with the prayer as best she could, as exhausted as she was. After five days ride through the northern winter woods, the Saint’s Cross had arrived at the pale citadel founded by Bishop Berthold, the western-border ward, the fortress known as the Watcher’s Eye. The clerics at the gatehouse had recognized them on sight, despite their disguises, and no sooner had they passed through the outer wall and into the bailey was a council called. And so, there they stood before the great whitewood round table on the sixth floor of the tower keep, freezing from the rain, still soaked to the bone in the late of the evening to hear the needs of the thirteen senior clerics. “May soon His kingdom come,” Pyke finished, then he looked to Trey. “Thank you for joining us, Captain Gildmane. I’m glad to see that someone in the capital still takes our borders seriously.”
Serious. Jael thought the word suited Rickert Pyke better than his maille and brigandine—an unnecessary formality at such a meeting, yet it conveyed his meaning. “This is life and death,” it said in so few words, as did the commander’s face. He looked every bit Sir Rillion’s brother, the same bulbous nose and jowls and weight, though in Rickert’s case it was all thick muscle and gray-white wisps about his cheeks. And his tongue was different, too—thicker with the west and more reserved. Every word fell with force of a hammer.
“As for why I called this council, do you recall the situation described in our message?”
Trey swallowed a yawn. “Pagan raiders and strange mist, if I remember correctly.”
“If it were just raiders, the Eye could handle it,” interjected a cleric with a face and frizzy tonsure the same shade as his scarlet tunic. Immediately, he spread a hand over the black thread eye upon his chest, looked to Pyke, and apologized, “Forgive me the outburst, Commander. It’s just that this lad is making a mockery of us.”
“Am I?” the captain shot back.
“Our brothers are being slaughtered, and you send us three men. What else is that but mockery?”
Trey smiled, but Jael could see the enmity coursing through the veins in his forehead. He was tired, getting sloppy, revealing pieces of his demeanor as he said, “Learn to count, cleric. There are four of us, not three, and there would be five if one of our squires wasn’t nearly killed by a brackdragon on our way to aid you.”
“Three was generous, paladin. I said, ‘men,’ not lads and lassies. I have a half a mind to write a missive to Lord Blackheart—don’t think we haven’t heard. Maybe he’ll send you back to take the oath with the next shipment of prisoners.”
Commander Pyke rapped his knuckles on the face of the great table, a single knock. At once, the senior cleric bowed his bald head and began orally flagellating himself for his indignance. The commander ignored this, and—expressionless—explained to Gildmane, “You’ll forgive Elder Frampt his belligerence. He is grateful for every extra sword at our disposal and would have shown you this gratitude if he were not still grieving the loss of our last party.”
“The whole party?”
“Fourteen men,” the senior cleric uttered. “May I tell him, Commander?”
Pyke nodded.
Elder Frampt met each of the Cross’s bloodshot eyes in turn: Brandon’s, Troy’s, Jael’s, then he settled on the Captain’s with his own—salty and brown as the Serpent’s Head. He cleared his throat. “Aye,” he said, taking a flagon from the table center and poured himself a goblet—water, Leonhardt noticed, though the cleric looked as though wine would have served him better. He began, “May the Lord bear witness that all I say is true. We were twenty men including myself that day, no more than an hour’s ride on the high road, just outside Cinnehollow. We suspected there’d been a
