“First the one hand, then the other, then we’ll start with your knees.” Darjon seemed to take particular delight in his prisoner’s thrashing, but Tylar couldn’t stop himself. It was not just the pain he feared.
“No!” he begged. “I’ve told you the truth.”
“Your own blood betrays you. What the whippings have hinted, the hammer will reveal.”
Tylar was too weak to resist. Two guards gripped his arm and thrust his hand atop the stump.
Darjon leaned closer. “Tell us how you slew her!”
“I didn’t-”
Even before he could finish, Darjon signaled the giant with the hammer. Swung from the shoulder, the fist of iron arced high and plunged down toward the stump and its pale target.
Tylar cried out. He heard Rogger do the same: “Agee wan clyy!”
The words made no sense.
Then the hammer struck. Tylar felt the rebound all the way up his arm. It shuddered past his shoulder and into his chest. A wave of agony followed on its heels. Blinding… a thousandfold worse than a single lash.
He screamed, arching back, his face bared to the moon overhead.
Then he felt something loosen deep inside. He had already pissed himself, and if he had anything to eliminate, he would have done it long ago. This was something deeper, something beyond bowel and flesh. He could not hold it back, even if he wanted.
From the black palm print on his chest, something dark wrested out of him and into this world. It gutted him, tearing out of his chest, taking all pleasure from him and leaving only pain.
The torment in his hand spread throughout his body. Other bones broke and reformed, callused, then broke again.
He screamed anew, as much in anguish as agony.
Somewhere far away, Rogger answered him: “Nee wan dred ghawl!”
In the heart of his torment, Tylar now remembered those words. Agee wan clyy… nee wan dred ghawl. Ancient Littick. Break the bone… and free the dark spirit.
His vision cleared somewhat. All he saw was the moon. His body was still arched back. Something rose from the center of his chest, a trail of black smoke against the bright moon.
Screams erupted around him.
The font of darkness climbed high, taking the last of his strength. Tylar collapsed back into the mud. The cloud took shape, still trailing a dark umbilicus to the black print on his chest, like some newborn babe to its mother.
The pain in his body ebbed. He tried to move, to crawl from the shadow above. He found his limbs uncooperative. One knee refused to bend, the other was slow to respond. His arms were no better. Tylar realized his state. He had returned to his broken form, unhealed. Even the freshly pulverized hand had returned to a mere claw of old, scarred bone.
He was back in his same crippled body.
A cry of despair escaped him.
He stared up at the apparition still linked to him. What had first appeared to be smoke now seemed more a pool of midnight waters, flowing and taking shape. Wings unfurled and a neck stretched out, bearing a beastly head of a wolf, maned in black flames. Eyes opened, shining like lightning, unquestionably Graced with tremendous power.
Those eyes glanced to him, narrowing dismissively, then away, out to the screaming folk fleeing in terror. The adjudicators and soothmancer had retreated under a phalanx of guards. Lords and ladies scrabbled with common folk to every doorway and gate. Several were trampled underfoot.
A squad of castillion guards, led by the same captain who had first named Tylar godslayer, rushed forward with pikes high and swords low.
“Kill the daemonspawn!” the captain yelled and chopped an arm through the air, a signal.
Archers let loose from the parapets, while longbowmen in the courtyard fired from bended knee. Bolts sliced through the air, passing into the beast and out the far side, aflame.
The burning arrows struck into the thatched barrack roofs and set straw to flame. Others shattered brilliantly against stone or hard dirt.
Tylar sought meager refuge behind the stump.
To their credit, the guards did not balk, continuing their headlong rush toward the shadowbeast. Swords flashed in the moonlight.
Black wings folded, and the beast, the size of a horse, settled silently to the yard to meet the attack. Pikes plowed into it first, but they fared no better than the arrows, spiking out the back of the creature, flaming like torches and crumbling to ash.
The shadow daemon reared up, snarling a spit of bright flame, and slashed out with its forepaws, catching the two nearest pikemen. With its mere touch, the men tumbled back, collapsing in on themselves, boneless yet still alive, mewling like misshapen calves born sickly.
Other guards fled from the horror.
Tylar had seen such foul work before… in Punt, upon the Shadowknights guarding Meeryn.
So had others.
The captain shouted a retreat. By now, those under the house guards’ protection had fled the courtyard. The captain’s eyes found Tylar, still hiding behind the stump. “Godslayer!” he shouted. “You show your true form at last!”
Tylar had no words to defend himself, not after what had ripped from his body, not after what now lay dying in the yard.
The guards retreated to the keep, forming a protective shield for those who had fled inside. In the center of the yard, the shadowbeast stalked before Tylar. Eyes afire with lightning watched all, wary.
It’s protecting me, Tylar realized. He stared down at the snaking black umbilicus that still trailed from Meeryn’s mark to the beast. I didn’t ask for this.
He waved a hand, trying to sever the connection, to push it away, but his fingers passed harmlessly through the cord.
“Tylar!” a new voice shouted, closer at hand. It was Rogger. The thief had freed himself from his ropes with a loose dagger. He pulled a muddy cloak over his bare shoulders while waving his dagger toward the main gates. “Tether your dog, and let’s get our arses out of here!”
Moving on instinct, Tylar gained his legs, hobbled as they were, and stumbled away from the castillion’s central keep. He headed toward the open gates. The few defenders still at their posts noted his approach and fled wildly, panicked, abandoning the gate. They had no desire to keep the daemon and its supposed master here.
As Tylar worked across the yard, the shadowbeast kept pace with him, only steps away, tethered in shadow.
One of the gate’s defectors loosed a lone arrow at Tylar, but the shadowbeast’s wing snapped out and turned the bolt to ash before it could strike.
Tylar hurried his pace, limping and shuffling across the yard.
As he neared the gate, a lithe form fled from the shelter of a doorway. A woman, draped in black, one of the Hands. Rather than running away, she fled toward Tylar and his beast, blocking his path.
“Stand back!” Tylar shouted, fearful of harm coming to the young woman. With her veil missing, Tylar had no difficulty recognizing her. It was the handmaiden who had knelt beside him earlier.
She came to a stop under the very shadow of the daemon. The beast hunched menacingly. Ignoring this threat, she slipped out a small glass jar, dark ruby in the moonlight and glowing with soft effulgence.
Tylar knew what she held.
A sacred repostilary.
She poured the humour from the jar into one hand and held it out toward the beast.
The creature reared up, wings sweeping out.
“Meeryn,” she whispered. “It is you, is it not?”
With a shudder, the daemon settled back down, stretching its neck toward the woman, seeming to sniff.
Tylar caught the faint whiff of summer’s bloom and bright sunshine. It was the bouquet of Meeryn, distilled within the repostilary.
