beast with blade and darkness. She was surprised to hear words whisper at her ear. She heard Tylar’s voice ring out clearly.
“Make for the terrace! We’ll hold them there, then at the door!” Screams and shrieks drowned the rest.
Dart lowered the glass to study it. The din of battle diminished.
“Air blessed,” Tracker Lorr said. “The lens brings both sight and sound closer. Great for hunting dark woods.”
Dart nodded, lifting the glass again.
The woman who had hugged Tylar earlier joined them. Lorr turned to her. “This child here is not much older than you were, Delia, when your father sent you away.”
“He may regret that now,” she answered. “The soothmancers will be running their bloody hands over him for days before they’re done with him.”
Dart followed none of this. Instead, she concentrated on the fighting. Sounds again reached her. Strangled cries, death rattles, and the clash of steel. But it appeared Tylar and the others had broken through the ranks. A clutch of knights burst from the writhing bulk of ilk-beasts, flying up the steps to the terraces below the southeast tower. They were a ragged bunch compared to the orderly wedge of before-but they had escaped. The group reached the door.
“Krevan!”Tylar again shouted. “Hold here! Let none pass!”
The party filtered through the door, leaving behind a knot of shadows at the threshold.
The others vanished away.
“They’re inside,” Lorr said.
Dart glanced to him, lowering her spyglass. The tracker had watched without the need of a lens.
The woman Delia stared, too, but Dart sensed she watched more with her heart than her eyes. Her embrace with Tylar had been a close one.
“I expect the castillion has been emptied out,” Lorr said to Delia. “They’ll make for the High Wing.”
Dart lifted her glass again. She searched the castillion. She sought out the centermost tower, the one over the river.
The High Wing.
Dart wondered what had befallen the other Hands: the rotund Master Pliny, the diminutive Master Munchcryden, the twins Master Fairland and Mistress Tre. Not to mention Matron Shashyl. Had they all been ilked? Were they among the legion?
She heard the cries of the beastly army, punctuated by racking booms of thunder. The storm fell worse atop the castillion. Rains spattered into their shelter now, whipped up by growing winds.
The flippercrafts were forced to retreat, drifting away to settle in neighboring fields or elsewhere in the Eldergarden. The storm drove them to ground.
Droplets struck her lens, sparkling and watering her view of the highest tower of Tashijan.
Still, a voice reached her, dreadful and familiar. “The godslayer comes with the sword,” Mistress Naff said.
“You know what you must do.” The voice still sounded as warm as sun-baked loam. It invited one to listen. It reminded Dart of when she first met Chrism, here in the same gardens, mistaking him for a groundskeep. And though she had witnessed it with her own eyes, she could not balance that memory with what had transpired off in the myrrwood. “Is all in readiness to welcome the godslayer?”
Dart heard the hard smile behind Mistress Naff’s next words. “The trap is set. There will be no escape. For any of them. It will end here.”
Tylar climbed the stairs of the center tower. They approached the High Wing. He led the way with Kathryn at his side. Eylan followed with Gerrod and Rogger. Krevan and Corram guarded their rear.
The only sound was the tread of their own steps. Even the cries of battle in the gardens had disappeared, swallowed by the heavy stone. All that interrupted their footsteps was the occasional hollow rumble of thunder.
Where were the folk of the keep?
Surely not all had been corrupted into beasts.
Yet not a single person moved in the halls. The entire keep had become a crypt, haunted and empty. Torches hissed in sconces and braziers crackled. The castillion seemed to be holding its breath, waiting.
The tension dragged their steps. Each crack of thunder stopped them until it echoed away. They had slowly traversed the lower halls from the southeast tower. In the lower holds, they discovered sections of the floor had fallen away, into the river below.
“Our flippercraft must have ripped through some of the castillion’s old underpinnings as it crashed through here,” Rogger had said, peering down into the river. The waters below had churned and roiled with the storm.
But such damage was slight compared to the true blow struck here.
The corruption of a god, the heart of an entire realm.
Tylar stared upward, toward the High Wing.
They climbed another four flights, moving in silence. None dared speak. Tylar rounded the last bend in the stair. The main double doors to the High Wing were not only unguarded, they lay open.
He stopped, suspicious.
They waited, listening for any sign of an ambush.
All that was heard was the rumble of thunder.
Tylar met Kathryn’s eyes. He sheathed his ordinary blade and slid free Rivenscryr. The snick of metal sounded loud on the stair.
He stepped around the bend, hugging the wall, his blade held ready.
He moved up one step, then another.
The rest followed.
In this steady manner, they climbed to the top of the stairs. Tylar tried his best to scan the hall beyond the open doors. Like all the halls, the High Wing appeared deserted. Had Chrism fled?
This worry drove Tylar over the threshold and into the great hall.
Windows lined one side, doors the other. Halfway down the hallway, the central brazier still glowed in the dimness. The crack of a log in the great furnace startled Tylar. It sounded like the break of a bone. A sound he knew too well.
He pushed farther into the hall.
Nothing.
He waved the others to check the closest rooms. All the doors were open, as if they had been left ajar in a mad rush to escape. Kathryn and Gerrod tried the first chamber. Eylan and Rogger the next. Tylar led Krevan and Corram to the third.
Kathryn and Gerrod were already returning. “Empty,” whispered Kathryn, wearing a deep frown of worry.
Rogger appeared at his door. He waved. “Come see this.”
Tylar, Kathryn, and Gerrod followed the thief into the chamber. The air in the room smelled of burned rye and something sickly sweet, like honey gone bad.
Eylan waited for them in the back bedchamber. A figure lay atop the bed, arms folded over the rise of an ample belly. He looked to be in gentle repose, eyes closed. His chest rose and fell evenly. A brazier smoldered in one corner, the source of the room’s reek.
“Master Pliny, one of Chrism’s Hands,” Rogger introduced.
“He won’t wake,” Eylan said.
“Spellcast,” Gerrod said. “Thralled by black Grace.”
A stern voice interrupted them. “Another lies in the same state in the next room,” Krevan said.
They backed out to the main hall.
“Apparently Chrism spared his Hands from the ilking,” Rogger said. “I guess he’s too lazy to train new ones. Good Hands are hard to find.”
The other rooms were quickly checked. Two other Hands were discovered enthralled and slumbering.
“Mistress Naff is still missing,” Gerrod said. He stared around at the others.
All had heard Dart’s accounting of the ceremony in the myrrwood, the chosen few. The remainder of the
