No… it couldn’t be true…

Tylar watched the poor girl sink into Yaellin’s shadows, saw the horror in her eyes. He understood what she must be feeling. He had only to glance to his own chest. Could it be true? Were they both just pawns in a greater war?

Gerrod covered his eyes. “For four thousand years, the two sides of the ancient war have been held in check. All that kept them apart was this vanished sword.” He waved to the empty ground between the pillars, to the ghost blade. “But if a way to forge the sword again was loosed, and both sides knew of its existence, then both could no longer stay idle.”

“Blood dripped into a skorpion’s nest,” Rogger said. “Stirring all into a frenzy.”

“All the dire happenings across Myrillia,” Tylar said. The rise of strange beasts, the spat of skirmishes along the hinterlands, the increases in dark rites, the disturbing behavior of some gods…

“Stirrings of the coming war,” Eylan said.

“And Meeryn’s death…”

Tylar remembered Darjon’s words as they fought aboard the flippercraft. The first to fall. But she will not be the last! At long last, the War of the Gods is upon us.

At last, Tylar began to fathom Meeryn’s death. The resurgence of old enmities. No one spoke as the rain continued to patter atop the bower’s roof. Streams of drizzle tinkled too brightly in the darkness. It seemed suddenly much colder.

“And Chrism?” Gerrod asked. “It was he who brought the sword to Myrillia. Now it’s planted here. Why? What role is he playing?”

Tylar shook his head. “Only one person can answer that.” He stared in the direction of the dark castillion, lost behind the branches of the corrupted myrrwood. “We’ll have to ask him.”

“And how do you propose doing that?” Rogger asked. “Knock on the front door and ask him to tea?”

Tylar turned to Dart. He hated to ask this of her, but he had no choice. None of them did. They had a role to play. Sword and sheath. And even if they were both pawns in some greater game, it didn’t mean they could not make their own choices.

“Dart,” he began, “I’m sorry. I must-”

“I know,” she said with surprising firmness. She stepped out of Yaellin’s shadows and peeled back the bandage that bound her clawed shoulder. Wincing, she tugged the dried cloth, tearing away scabbing and causing blood to flow fresh. She dabbed her fingertips in it. “I don’t know how much blood…”

“Touch and see,” Tylar said. “That’s all I ask.”

She nodded and moved forward. Tylar accompanied her, keeping to her shoulder. It was much to require of one so young. Then again, he had seen her eyes up in the rookery. She was a child no longer.

After a final glance up to him, she reached out to the empty air. Her fingers quested-then something ignited her fingertips, glowing so brightly that the bones of her hand could be discerned through her flesh.

She yanked her arm, tripping back into him.

He caught her and hugged her to his waist, but his eyes were on the ground ahead of them.

Gasps rose around them.

A handspan above the leaf-strewn loam floated the golden hilt of a sword. But there was no blade. Tylar bent down. The hilt simply hovered in the air. It seemed made more of sunlight than metal. Tylar waved his hand under the hilt. “Nothing,” he said.

“It’s still there,” Dart said. “The blade.”

“It must take more blood,” Gerrod said. “The hilt and blade must be two pieces of a whole. I suspect the entire blade’s length must be smeared in blood.”

Tylar reached for the hilt. “I’ll pull it free.”

“Wait!” Gerrod urged. “It was planted here for a reason, at the site where Chrism poured his own blood and settled this realm. So intimately connected to this plot of land, he may know if anyone removes the sword.”

“Then so be it,” Tylar said. “Let him fear for once.” He reached again for the blade.

“Wait!” This time, the command came from Dart.

“What is it?”

“Master Gerrod says all the blade needs blood.” Dart wet both palms with the blood dripping from her left shoulder. She then sprawled atop the leafy loam and positioned a palm on either side of the hilt.

“You tell me when,” he said.

Dart nodded and settled her hands. She took a rattling, deep breath. “Grab the hilt.”

Tylar obeyed, though he heard the terror in her voice. He gripped the hilt. It felt warm to the touch, almost as if he could sink his fingers into its surface. But it wasn’t a pleasant warmth, more like sticking your hands in a raw belly wound. There was a sickly fleshy feel to the grip, as if the hilt were trying to hold him. “I… I’ve got it.”

“Pull!” Dart said, bringing her palms together. Again a brightness erupted, limning all in silver, shoving the myrrwood shadows far away. He drew the blade up between her palms.

She cried out but held her place, hands pressed.

Tylar watched the blade unsheathe between her palms, ablaze with the same silver light. It blinded the eye. He drew it to its full length from her hands. It stretched the length of his arm, solid moonlight, in contrast with the hilt’s sunlight.

Tylar gaped at the sword. He suddenly recognized what he held. He had seen the weapon before. On the streets of Punt. Wielded by the black naether beast, the assassin of Meeryn. The same blade had plunged through Meeryn’s breast and heart.

“It killed her,” he gasped. He felt the certainty stir deep inside him, smoky and black. Meeryn’s naethryn knew the weapon. Tylar faced the others. “Here is the blade that slew Meeryn.”

At his feet, Dart again cried out. She rolled away. Her hands smoked as if seared… but her flesh appeared untouched.

Then something ranker welled through the air, coming up from below. It reeked of black bile and the rot of poisoned flesh.

Kathryn grabbed Tylar’s shoulder. “Get back.”

Tylar stumbled away with her. The others retreated in all directions.

Up from the wound in the soil, where the blade had been planted, a black snake of smoky darkness coiled upward.

“Gloom,” Tylar said, recognizing the steaming stack.

The naether bled into this world, substanceless but deadly. The stench worsened. Distantly, heard in the bones rather than the ear, a sound issued forth, not of this world. It keened with a piercing cry that threatened to shatter teeth.

Ears were covered. Feet fled.

But the font of darkness slowly dissipated. The land closed over the rent. The wound, free of the sword, healed.

Still no one spoke.

Tylar held the Godsword, feeling its oily embrace of his palm and fingers. He wanted to toss the sword and run… and keep running. Instead, he squeezed his fingers tighter. He was the sword.

“What was that?” Rogger finally asked, the first to find his tongue.

“The naether,” Gerrod mumbled. “The sword pierced clean through from our world to the other.”

Tylar pictured the blade doing the same to Meeryn. Had she been pierced, not just through the heart, but all the way down to the naether? If so, perhaps it was a stream of Gloom, rather than the sword, that burned away her heart.

Reaching up, Tylar placed a hand to his own chest. Had Meeryn used the last of her dying Grace to reach into that same naether and drag forth her naethryn undergod and bind it to Tylar? Was it all she could do? Some way to continue her own battle in this war? Had she marked Tylar as her avatar and set him loose with a piece of herself?

He gripped the sword. If so… so be it. He had seen what killed Meeryn. And at the point of an ordinary sword, he had witnessed the corruption that turned ordinary men and women into ilk-beasts, the humanity burned from them. He lifted the blade. He knew which side of the war he wished to lend his sword, this sword… and himself.

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