Tylar cast a sharp look at the thief.
“Not every knight breaks his vow,” Rogger said firmly, staring Tylar in the eye. “Some simply walk away.”
With his brow pinched in thought, Tylar left the room, bearing more questions than when he entered. He had thought himself wise, but now he felt like a swaddling babe, new to the world.
As the sun rose over the Summering Isles, Tylar stood at the rails of the deepwhaler. The ship had ridden the tide out and now swept toward the deeper seas. At midnight, they were to change ships in the waters off Tempest Sound, then again at Yi River, hoping to shake any hunters from their trail.
A scrape of boot heel sounded behind him. Rogger stepped to the rail. He looked a new man, in the fresh clean clothes of a whaler and his beard neatly trimmed.
He noted Tylar’s attention and ran a hand through his clean beard. “That Delia knows a thing or two about brushes and shears. Makes me almost want to lead a better life.”
In silence, the pair watched as the ship escaped the morning fog and sailed under open skies. Behind them, the misty isles appeared ghostly, more a dream of land than real.
“What now?” Tylar asked.
Rogger shrugged.
Delia was belowdecks, ill already from the roll of the ship in the swells. She had refused to remain behind, casting her fate along with Tylar, sensing in him a way to still serve her god. Tylar wasn’t sure why he had allowed her to come. It was something in her eyes, a pain and longing he could not deny.
Rogger’s motivation for accompanying them had been far simpler: “I have nothing better to do.” Sentenced as a pilgrim, he had been punished to wander the lands until he had collected all the branded sigils. But now, tied to the story of the godslayer, he figured his best chance of survival was to “walk beside the fellow with the big black daemon.” Still, despite his flippancies, Tylar sensed Rogger, like Delia, left much unspoken and unexplained.
Like that snippet in ancient Littick.
Tylar repeated it now, fingering his chest. “Agee wan clyy nee wan dred ghawl.”
“Break the bone,” Rogger whispered to the waves, “and free the dred ghawl, the dark spirit. I think that’s an apt enough description of the beastie.”
“What was it? A daemon? Some naether-spawn? Its attack was similar to the creature that killed Meeryn and her Shadowknights.”
“Outward appearances can fool the eye. As you well know, Godslayer.” He stressed the last word but offered nothing more.
The silence grew heavy between them.
Sighing, Tylar flexed his sword hand and held it up. “Break the bone,” he mumbled, switching to the first part of the phrase, to something easier. “What about that?”
“Aye, it seems I was right back in the dungeon. Clyy means bone, not merely body. The dred ghawl appeared only when the bones of your hand were crushed, not while you were whipped to the edge of your life. I find it interesting that Meeryn healed all your bones at the same time she blessed you with the spirit creature. It was as if she had made a cage out of your healthy bones, requiring only one crack, one broken bone, to set it free.”
“Leaving me crippled again until it returned,” he added sourly.
“There’s always a price… I seem to recall you saying that to young Delia earlier.”
Tylar shook his head. So much remained a mystery. Again silence settled around them. The deepwhaler caught a stiffer breeze, sails swelling. The islands faded behind them, sinking into the horizon.
After a long while, Tylar quietly asked, “Do you think we’ll make it?”
“Not a chance,” Rogger answered, pulling a pipe from a pocket.
Tylar turned, leaning an elbow on the rail.
Rogger filled his pipe from a pouch of blackleaf. “Don’t look so surprised. The Summering Isles will never let you rest. That Shadowknight, Darjon ser Hightower, will hunt you throughout the Nine Lands. And then there are all those other gods out there. Ninety-nine, at last count. They’re not going to let the murder of one of their own go uncontested. They’ll pool all their Graces into finding you. But even they’re not the worst threat.”
“What do you mean?”
Rogger paused to light a taper from a lamp on the deck, then set the flame to his pipe, puffing in and out until he had a good fire to the leaf.
“What could be worse than vengeful gods?” Tylar asked.
Rogger perked one brow. “Whoever really slew Meeryn, of course. The true godslayer. He’ll need you dead lest you prove your innocence. And whoever could kill a god…?” He shrugged and chewed on his pipe, leaving the obvious unsaid.
He could surely hunt a lone man.
“So what do you plan to do?” Rogger finally asked, eyeing him.
Tylar rubbed his brow. “The only thing I can, I guess.”
“What’s that?”
“Follow the one clue left to me. Meeryn’s final word.”
Rogger glanced to him. “Rivenscryr?”
He nodded. “Meeryn healed me, gave me a daemon to protect me. All to deliver one word, a riddle I must solve if I ever hope to prove my innocence.”
“So where are we headed first?”
“To a place where I’m even less welcome than those cursed islands.” Tylar turned his back on the Summering Isles and stared far to the north, half a world away. “To Tashijan… the Citadel of the Shadowknights.”
SECOND
god-realm, god-relm, n. [old Littick king-land] a region, domain, or land settled by one of the hundred Myrillian gods; a section of territory into which the unique Graces of a God are imbued and blessed; as the humours of a body course through a god, so they do its land.
6
She had never thought to hear his name again.
Kathryn ser Vail stood near the mooring docks that topped the highest tower of Tashijan. Though it was mid-morning, the light remained a twilight gloaming. Black clouds stacked to the horizons on all sides, whipping and rolling in from the seas to the south.
Tylar…
As she waited, cold winds flapped her cloak and tugged at the masklin pinned across her face. As a Shadowknight, she had to keep her face hidden from the laborers here. Her breath blew white into the frigid, thin air. Ice frosted the parapet stones and made the mooring ropes crack as they were run across the stones by line handlers and dockmen.
