He sighed. “Yes, my story may be the oldest… with threads that stretch even farther, back to before any of us. But what I know personally started twelve years ago.”
“What?”
“An emissary arrived in Tashijan, sent to my father in secret. Sent from the hinterlands. A call for help.”
“From whom?” Gerrod asked.
“From one of the rogue gods that roam that unsettled land.”
“A rogue?” Kathryn stirred. The gods of the hinterlands were little more than raving beasts, committing horrible acts upon those who should cross their paths. Few lived who ever met a rogue god. The Shadowknights themselves had first been established as border guards to keep the taint of the rogues from passing out of their lands and into the settled realms. Why would a rogue be contacting their enemy?
Yet even this curiosity could not keep Kathryn from watching the healer crush the root to a powder, then pour it into a cup of water. Her concern for Tylar weighed too heavily on her heart. With the elixir prepared, Eylan helped lift Tylar up while Paltry poured the contents down Tylar’s throat.
He did not resist. Half the elixir spilled over Tylar’s chin and down his chest. Once finished, Tylar was laid back to his bed.
Kathryn settled to the cot’s edge.
The talk had quieted. All watched.
“I can’t help more here,” Paltry said after there appeared to be no response. The miracle of the firebalm did not seem to be shared by the bloodroot. “He’ll have to be moved to the main physik in the Cobbleshores district. They have blessed swine in their pens for blood drafting. That’s where he should be.”
Kathryn watched Tylar’s chest rise and fall. At some point, she had taken his hand, but she couldn’t say when. Was he breathing slightly more deeply? Did his lips have a touch more color? Or was it merely her heart wanting it to be true?
“While we keep watch,” Gerrod said, turning back to Yaellin, “tell us more about this visitor to your father.”
Yaellin nodded. “The emissary came to my father’s room in the dead of night, bearing disturbing tidings. Three pieces of information that would set my father on a course that I believe has led us all here.”
Everyone gathered closer. Even the two young girls watched from the room’s corner.
“First, the rogue’s emissary was one of the Wyr,” Yaellin said, nodding to Eylan. “They of all people still occasionally made contact with the maddened ones. She came with a secret kept hidden for millennia, a secret known only to the rogues. Unlike our settled gods who are bound to their realms, unable to leave their lands, rogues still roam. It is such lack of rooting that leads to the raving found among the rogues. Their Grace burns through them. They have no outlet for release. No land in which to ground their Grace. It maddens them.”
Kathryn nodded, still focused on Tylar.
“But what the rogues have kept hidden deep in their hinterlands is a secret none suspected. Free to roam, both male and female gods, they have borne children.”
Kathryn glanced hard at Yaellin, attempting to read the man. “Impossible. Grace destroys such seeds in the womb.”
Yaellin shook his head. “In a coupling between god and man, yes. But not so with two gods. Such children do sometimes survive, though it is a rarity. Only a couple times each millennia. The last child was born over four hundred years ago. And that is the crux of the problem. Most of these children were slain at birth, first in fear, then in envy.”
“Envy?” Rogger asked.
“Such children are not like the other Myrillian gods. They are born, but they were never sundered. They are purer than either sire or dam. They are of flesh, but also carry with them those parts all others lost to the naether and aether. They are whole… in a manner.”
“Unsundered,” Gerrod whispered, dread and awe in his voice.
“Almost,” Yaellin said. “But it was enough for all such offspring to be slain. Savaged and hacked beyond healing. Then four hundred years ago, one of their children, a boy, was stolen, kidnapped, before it could be slain. It took the rogues a full year, as maddened as they are at most times, to discover the child’s fate. The boy’s desiccated and mummified remains were discovered in the hinterlands of the Fourth Lands. His heart was missing.”
“Who did this?” Kathryn asked. “Who performed such a black rite?” She could not help but picture the young knight sprawled in a circle of his own blood, his chest cleaved open.
“All the hinterland rogues could discover was a name: the Cabal.”
“What did they want with the boy?” Gerrod asked.
Yaellin shook his head. “It was never discovered for certain. But the rogue who sent the emissary had a suspicion. She believed the boy’s murder was tied back to the Godsword.”
“Rivenscryr,” Rogger said.
“The old Littick name for the sword,” Yaellin agreed. “The emissary revealed a second black secret concerning the Godsword. The weapon that shattered their world had been forged in their own blood. According to the rogue, the sword, once wielded and spent, needed fresh blood, the blood of an intact god, a god from their original kingdom, someone unsundered. Blood from a sundered god lacked something vital to enliven the sword. So after the Sundering, when the gods came to Myrillia, the weapon proved useless. No sundered god could whet it back into existence. It became a weapon without substance.”
“A sword of light and shadow,” Gerrod intoned, repeating the words Pryde Manthion used to describe and name the great weapon.
Yaellin nodded. “The rogue who sent the warning believed that the Cabal had stolen the infant godling in an attempt to forge anew the Godsword. The boy’s body had been drained of all blood. Such blood could bring Rivenscryr back into this world, a weapon that could shatter worlds.”
Silence settled over the room.
“But there was a last warning from this rogue god,” Yaellin continued, voice lowering. “A new babe had been born to the rogues, a babe born to the same god who sent the emissary. She could not see her child slain. Although half-maddened by wild Grace, she was still a mother. She feared for her infant’s safety. So she asked my father to come for her baby. To steal the child away before anyone knew of its existence. To keep her baby safe among the settled god-realms of Myrillia.”
“And he did that?” Kathryn asked, aghast.
“He took a cadre of knights and a woman who knew the hinterlands well, my own mother, the mistress of this school. They had a harrowing journey. It seemed word had leaked to the Cabal. My father and mother barely escaped with the child, losing all their guards to the fell beasts of the Cabal.”
“What became of the child?” Gerrod asked.
Yaellin turned and faced one of the two girls, the smaller of the two, with straw-colored hair. Her eyes were wide with dawning horror. “My father hid her here.”
Dart stared back at Yaellin. No… it was all a lie… impossible.
Laurelle stepped from her side, stumbling back.
“I’m only a girl,” Dart answered in a squeaky tight voice.
Yaellin came to her, dropping to a knee. “Yes, you are.” He took her hand. She barely felt his touch. “You are flesh like any other girl.” He squeezed to emphasize it. “Never let anyone tell you otherwise. But I’m afraid you must know deep in your heart that you’re different. Not worse, not better even. Just different.”
She attempted to pull her hand free-not so much to escape him as his words. But she couldn’t so easily escape her heart. He was right. She had always known she was different. And it wasn’t just the presence of Pupp, her ghostly companion. She always felt the outsider, the girl looking in through a window at the simple lives of the other girls. Still, how could she be a god?
Yaellin continued his explanation. “Dart was hidden at the school, in plain sight. Only two folks ever knew about her. My father and mother. I don’t know when they were planning on revealing her true heritage to her.” He glanced at Dart with sorrow. “Ser Henri did not reveal himself to be my father until I was about your age. I suppose he was not very good at… revealing difficult truths. I’m sorry you had to learn of your own parentage in such an ill manner as this.”
Dart simply shook her head, still denying, waiting to wake up from this unending nightmare. A tear rolled
