The daemon dropped, kneeling upon its forelimbs, head bowed.
Delia reached with a hand, bloody and aglow with Grace. As her fingers touched the darkness, light flared out, coursing over the black surface of the beast like fire across an oily sea. The brilliant cascade crested over its body.
Tylar watched in amazement as the beast’s form lost focus.
As the scintillating wave finished with the beast, it fed along the only channel left open to it: the snaking umbilicus that led to Tylar.
It spiraled down the tether toward him. He stumbled away, trying to flee the fiery attack. But he could not escape.
The Grace-fed flames leaped the distance and struck him square in the chest. It felt like a mule kick. He flew backward, landing arse down on the dirt.
He rolled immediately to his feet, crouched, ready for another attack.
Delia remained where she was, eyes wide.
The daemon had vanished, vanquished with a touch.
Tylar stared down at his body. He flexed his sword hand. What was crushed under iron was new again. He was healed. Entirely and wholly. As if he’d never been injured.
He fingered the mark on his chest.
Something stirred deep inside, something too large to be held in a cage of bone.
The daemon.
It had not been vanquished, but simply returned to the hale body that was its roost.
Rogger reached them, panting. “I’d say from the looks of you that you’re fit enough for a bit of running. Something I think we should be testing ’bout now.”
Tylar glanced back across the courtyard. With the shadowbeast gone, the guards would not wait. Already shouts rose from the castillion guard. Tylar turned. Ahead the gate lay open and, for the moment, unguarded.
He pointed. “Off with us then!”
As they ran, the woman followed.
Tylar waved her off. “Begone. This is none of your concern.”
“No! Where you go, I go!”
“Why? What madness is this?”
“I don’t know how or why,” she gasped at him as she ran, “but you carry Meeryn’s blood in you. I saw it shining from your lash marks. And in the eyes of the winged creature, the glow of Grace… It was Meeryn, too!”
“And you would go with the man accused of her slaying?”
She countered, but less surely, “No man can kill one of the Hundred.”
Tylar shook his head and mumbled, “You could’ve voiced that sentiment earlier.”
Rogger laughed as he reached the gate. “That’s a woman for you. A fickle lot, the bunch of ’em.”
They passed under the empty archway, Rogger leading the way. The moonlit streets of the high city opened ahead. The thief pointed. “I have a few friends in Lower Punt who-”
Before he could finish, a fold of shadow fluttered from the archway to Tylar’s left. He caught a flash of silver slashing down toward him. He leaped headlong, reacting with old instincts. He landed in a roll and jumped back to his feet. He twisted around, now crouched in the cobbled streets outside the archway.
Rogger fled to one side, Delia to the other.
From the gate, a figure of flowing shadows stepped into the moonlight, forsaking its hiding place. The Shadowknight held a length of silver in his grip. His blessed sword.
Rogger swore. “It seems we bottled that beastie of yours a natch too soon.”
Tylar kept to the brightness under the moon, praying the knight’s shadow-borne speed would be dulled in the light. He waved the others back, but kept his eyes focused on the Shadowknight.
“Godslayer,” Darjon hissed, stepping forward. “At last the hammer revealed the truth you hid so well. You are no man! But I’ve seen you bleed-and what bled once can bleed again!”
Before Tylar could answer, the knight leaped with a fury-driven speed, fast even in the moonlight.
Tylar spun from the stroke. The stabbing blade passed under his arm, grazing his side with a slice of fire. He ignored the pain, continued to twist, and brought himself under the knight’s guard. He slammed an elbow into the knight’s midriff, knocking him back a step.
Darjon used the force of Tylar’s blow to fall backward, rolling cleanly in his shadowcloak and back to his feet, sword at the ready.
Tylar knew this was a battle he could not win. Though his bones had been healed, he was still weak from blood loss and fatigued from all that had transpired.
Darjon’s eyes narrowed above his masklin. His cloak billowed back to the waiting shadows. The edges of his form blurred as the Grace of shadow flowed into the knight, building toward a power that Tylar could not match.
Rogger noted the same. “Tylar! Here!”
From the corner of his eyes, Tylar spotted the flash of silver. The thief’s dagger. Without turning, Tylar lifted a hand and caught the flying knife. He flipped it to his other hand, keeping it low. A dagger was a poor weapon against the blessed weapon of a Shadowknight, but it was better than bare hands.
Tylar attempted to watch every muscle of his combatant, but shadowy Graces blurred lines and edges, fogging detail, making it difficult to anticipate an attack. Tylar had worn such a cloak for many years. It had been a second skin, as much a weapon as the sword.
But every weapon had a weakness.
Shadows built up behind Darjon, filling the archway. Beyond, shouts from the castillion guard grew louder. The stamp of boots hurried along the parapets, approaching fast. Darjon merely had to hold Tylar here for a few moments longer.
But the Shadowknight would not settle for such a victory.
Darjon leaped forward with a surge of shadows that made it hard to tell where darkness ended and form began.
Tylar squinted, aimed, and tossed the dagger with the full strength of his arm. It flew true, but shadows shifted out of the way, too swiftly. The flash of the small blade passed harmlessly over the knight’s shoulder and away.
Unchecked, Darjon continued his lunge, sword leading the way, propelled upon a wave of darkness.
A distant thunk sounded as the dagger struck wood.
Tylar allowed a grim smile to form as he hurdled straight back, the sword’s point scribing his chest.
Then the plunge of the blade simply stopped, jerked to a halt.
Darjon’s charge turned into an uncontrolled tumble. He landed hard on the cobbles, tangled in his own cloak, betrayed by the very weapon that served him.
His sword bounced from his fingers and skittered across the stone to Tylar’s toes. Bending, but never taking his eyes from the knight, Tylar retrieved the weapon.
Darjon twisted, staring back toward the archway as shadows collapsed around him, dissolving under the weight of moonlight. Impaled into the gate’s wooden frame was Tylar’s dagger-and pinned beneath the blade was a snatch of cloth, the edge of Darjon’s shadowcloak.
Still entangled, Darjon swore and tugged, attempting to free his cloak, but it held securely.
Blessed or not, cloth was cloth.
Horns blared stridently from the castillion walls and were answered from the courtyard.
Tylar backed away, carrying the knight’s sword. The diamond-hilted blade was granted to a Shadowknight upon receiving his third stripe of knighthood. It was bonded in blood to the wielder, a cherished emblem of the Order. Darjon would miss it as much as his own right arm. Tylar motioned with his stolen sword toward the empty streets. “The guards come swiftly. We must be away.”
Rogger and Delia closed the distance between them, and as a group, they fled the heights of Summer Mount.
Tylar led the way swiftly, slipping along alleys and narrows, heading down from the high city and into the lower. The night stretched ahead of them, but dawn could not be far.
