“Dualayn will have returned to the estate by now,” Avena muttered.
“No, he hasn’t. He’ll be sick with worry over you!”
Embarrassment flushed her. She hadn’t thought at all about Dualayn when she’d gone after Ōbhin. He was right. Dualayn would be worried.
She grabbed the arrow shaft and pulled. Bones rattled as Ōbhin snarled out his pain. Terror skittered up her spine as she threw the missile to the ground. He staggered. She slipped beneath him to support him. Her legs buckled beneath his weight. The oil of his armor and the metallic scent of his blood filled her nose.
“You can’t collapse on me,” she whispered, the rattling coming closer. A woman shrieked. Footsteps raced in the fog. “They’re closing in on us.”
“Right,” he grunted and pushed from her. He jogged up the street, a long trail of crimson running down his chainmail. She gripped her binder and rushed after him, the throbbing pain of her scratches pulsing with the terrifying beat of her heart.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Niszeh’s Black Tone!” snarled Ōbhin as he whirled around. Pain screamed in his lower back, the severed muscles flexing as he swung his body around and slashed his resonance blade.
The leaping horror flying out of the eddying fog met the humming streak of his sword. The tulwar sliced through the jackal’s black muzzle, sheering through rotted flesh and bone. It passed through the skull and cut deep into the torso before bursting out at the bottom of its ribs. A third of the beast, including the left foreleg, slammed into Ōbhin’s knee while the remainder hit his sword arm.
No flash of orange, shouted through Ōbhin’s mind.
Though he’d severed the abomination’s muzzle in half, it still fought. Its enchanted gem was still active. Sharp teeth slammed into the meat of his arm before he stumbled back. He snarled, his back a mass of agony. He crashed into Avena, sending her reeling in a gasp.
“Mongrel beast!” Ōbhin snarled and pivoted. He slammed the beast’s torso into the pavement.
Teeth snapped.
The beast came free. It rolled, three legs thrashing. Putrid lungs flopped out. A black lump which may have been its heart tumbled across the wet cobblestones.
He slammed the point of his blade into its head with his full weight. The tulwar slammed through the animating jewel. The viscous orange burst around his tulwar as it drove deep into the paving stones. He fell to his knees beside it, panting.
“Ōbhin,” Avena gasped, scrambling to her feet.
Sweat poured down his brow. His armor weighed at him, strangling his chest. He struggled to breathe as he leaned on the pommel of his sword, emerald light bleeding around his sable-clad fingers. He needed to stand. To move.
The puncture in his back sapped his strength.
“You’re making the wound worse by fighting,” Avena muttered.
“Alternative?” he asked, the fog flooding around them. A deathly chill gripped the night. People were indoors early. They could feel it. Death stalked Kash.
“I know. Come on. What if he can track them and knows where they’re at?”
It was the second time a jackal had found them since they’d cleared the streets around the Gray Pillar. They worked their way south and west to the hospital. The silvery fog choked Kash, reducing the diamond streetlamps to bobbing lights in the distance, pinpricks that offered false solitude.
He wrenched his sword out of the cobblestones and turned it off. He panted as he sheathed it. He staggered after her. She tugged on her torn dress, her scratched skin peeking through the rents. Dried blood clung to her injuries, some still oozing and staining the white cloth of her chemise.
“How much charge does your sword hold?” she asked.
“Not much,” he said. “It’s a small emerald. They’re not supposed to be used for more than a quarter-hour or so.”
She nodded. “We’re almost there. I think.”
He grunted. “Or we could be on the far side of Kash.”
“We’d have to cross the river for that,” she said. “We crossed Rainbow Way not long ago. We should be working our way west to the hospital.”
“Lead on,” he said and then followed her, his steps heavy.
“Do you think one of those . . . things was Carstin?” she asked him.
He grimaced. “Raleth’s Honest Tone, I hope not.”
“Mejooli raureth nyafoog,” she said, butchering his language. “What did you say?”
“Just praying for one of the Tones that it isn’t true. Raleth, the White Tone. The Tone of Truth.”
“White is Elohm’s Colour of Honesty,” she said, flashing him a smile, the cut across her forehead wrinkling. “Interesting, no?”
“That some truths can even penetrate a Lothonian’s headstrong skull?” he grunted.
She giggled. “That’s almost blasphemous. I mean, if you weren’t a heathen who worships music notes.”
“Revere,” he said.
“What’s the difference?”
“Respect versus servitude.” He glanced at the fog. “I hope Carstin isn’t one of those corpses, but why else did Dje’awsa want him? He intimated he could do dark things with that obsidian wand.”
A noticeable shudder ran through her. “Obsidian. What madness would drive anyone to use the forbidden jewel? It’s full of Black.”
“We call it Niszeh. The Black Tone of Disharmony. The one who ruins the melody.”
“Stains the soul,” she said. “What else can Dje’awsa do with obsidian beside bring back the dead?”
Her question chilled him more than the wet fog eddying around them. “I don’t know, but he made some sort of agreement with Ust.”
*
What else can he do . . . ? That thought itched at Avena as she led them through the streets. The fog made everything so surreal. The buildings loomed around them, the upper floors lost to the oppressive vapor. It obscured and concealed. Several times, she’d realized they were heading the wrong away.
It both hindered and helped them. If it was a clear night, they never
