“Aye, the big kank can, but that’s not a trip for a mite like you.”
Dart grabbed the edge of his buckskin coat. “I must get there.”
“Because of the trap?” Lorr asked. “Best leave that to your elders.”
Dart sensed time passing too swiftly. She filled her voice with firm conviction. A wyld tracker’s senses were supposed to be acute enough to tell lie from truth. “All will be lost unless I can reach them in time. I know it. Now is not the moment for caution or half steps. I know it’s risky for me to go. But I’m the only one who can help. If we lose now, we lose everything.”
He stared down at her, his eyes slightly aglow.
Dart met his gaze. “I must go.”
A commotion rose by the flippercraft. Laurelle was sobbing, panicked and throwing herself among the knights. They gathered about her, concerned.
“Turning the other’s noses, I see,” Lorr asked.
Dart nodded. “I can’t let them stop me. If you won’t help, I’ll do it myself.” She stalked toward the mountain of dog flesh.
The beast turned its massive head toward her, tongue lolling. Standing full in the storm, he seemed oblivious to the wind and downpour. A pool of saliva had dripped between his paws. The matt of ivy at his feet had gone brown from the poisoned touch of his drool. Plainly the blood on the wind had the dog stirred mightily.
The bullhound shook his mane as she reached him, dousing her with dirty rainwater. The stench of wet fur welled.
Lorr came to her side and knelt down. His voice had grown gruffer, but somehow warmer, too. “I once knew a girl with your spirit.” He glanced to the others. His eyes seemed to fix on the woman Delia. “Back then I had been too cautious, taken half steps to stand up for her, to demand better for her. I knew better.” He shook his head. “I knew better.”
Lorr stood back up and turned to his bullhound. He grabbed him by the nose, pushed his face down, and stared into his eyes. A single nip could take off the tracker’s arm. But the bullhound responded to the dominant manner and dropped to his forepaws, submitting.
“Listen, you ol’ kank. You go find the mistress.” He leaned closer. Lorr’s eyes seemed to glow brighter. “Understand. Find Kathryn,” he said the name slowly. Lorr did not take his eyes from Barrin. “Child, climb on his back.”
Dart faced the hill of hound and balked. Even Pupp shied around the great beast, hackles raised.
“Hurry now,” the tracker urged. “Up on the bent knee, then over his withers. Before I change my mind.”
Goosed by his threat, Dart mounted the dog. It was like climbing a sopping rug. A growl flowed as she hooked a leg and pulled herself over. The rumble was felt in her belly.
“Quiet down, Barrin,” Lorr said firmly.
The growl lowered below hearing level, but Dart still felt it in the pit of her stomach.
“Grab his leather collar,” Lorr said. “And hold tight.”
Dart obeyed, clenching her fingers.
“All right, then.” Lorr backed, then dropped his arm. “Off with you! Find the mistress!”
Muscles surged under Dart. The hound leaped fully to his feet and bounded off. She was thrown high, hanging by her hands. She landed hard between the hound’s shoulders.
Barrin grunted and raced across the gardens.
Shouts erupted behind her.
Dart ignored them. She concentrated on her mount. Every one of her bones rattled, including her teeth, but the hound kept his gait even, allowing her at least to keep her seat. Dart pulled up enough to peer forward over the dog’s head. They raced through the gardens, splashing through shallow ponds, bounding over low shrubs. A hedgeline appeared, taller than she stood.
She lowered herself and closed her eyes.
She felt Barrin’s muscles harden under her. He sped faster. She waited for his leap or his plunge through the woody hedge. Which was worse?
A surge of muscle and they were flying. She opened her eyes. Barrin sailed over the hedge and landed in a smooth curve on the far side, catching her up.
“Good dog,” she said, bouncing only a little.
She stared ahead. They were almost to the battle line. It had mired to large patches of fighting. Barrin sniffed at the bloodshed. He was a war hound. His head stared longingly toward the battle. He slowed.
“Find… find Kathryn,” Dart reminded him, not knowing if he could hear her squeak.
But his ears were sharp. He focused back on the castillion. He bounded through the edge of the battlefield. Bodies were sprawled everywhere. Barrin simply padded over them and away. He avoided the patches of fighting, but the screeches and shouts kept his ears pricked.
“Kathryn,” Dart whispered. “Kathryn…” She was now repeating it over and over. Not so much to guide the dog, as to calm herself, to distract herself from the blood and torn bodies.
At last they reached the castillion. Barrin flew up a set of stairs to a wide terrace. The dead found their way here, too. The tiles were black with blood. Too much for even the storm to wash away. Ahead, the windows had been smashed during the fighting.
Barrin leaped through the widest.
Dart ducked low to his back to avoid the jagged shards poking down from the top frame. Then they were through, racing down empty halls. Dart stayed low, fingers crimped tight to the hound’s collar. Only now did she spare a worry for Tylar and the others.
Was she too late?
Tylar stared at the black handprint resting between Mistress Naff’s breasts. He found himself unable to move, gripped by shock. What did it mean?
That momentary pause proved his undoing.
From the dark print, a jet of oily darkness poured forth, too fast for the eye to follow. It struck him square in the chest. But there was no impact. The darkness shot through him-no, into him, through his own mark.
He felt the swell behind his rib cage. Bones snapped outward. Flesh tore. And as before, once one bone broke, the rest followed. Agony flamed through him. He knew it would end. The shadowbeast would rise and he would cripple again. But at least the pain would go away.
Until then, agony trapped his breath.
Cries rose around him, but they sounded far away now, muffled by an unknown depth of water. He felt himself sinking deeper.
The pain did not end. What was broken, stayed broken. There was no healing.
Through unblinking eyes, he watched smoky black tentacles sprout from the jet of darkness. They shot and coiled in all directions, flailing out. Some struck him, but to no effect. The darkness draped around them, tangling. He and Naff became caged at the heart of a weaving tangle of smoky tendrils.
Tylar knew what trapped him.
Gloom, a tangle of naether.
But as his own daemon’s smoky form caused him no harm, neither could this darkness. Still, he was caught, a fly in a web, a broken fly, unable to move.
Darkness continued to snake into him.
He swelled, filled from the inside.
Too much…
Finally, something woke in Tylar, lashing out. He felt his body wrenched deep inside. His daemon rose to fight the trespasser. He felt the clash, beyond blood and bone. They writhed and tore. Tylar could not breathe. If the fighting continued much longer, he’d be unmoored. Nothing would be left of him.
Perhaps sensing this, the naethryn inside him pushed outward, dragging the other daemon with it. Smoke billowed thicker between Naff and Tylar. Darkness boiled as daemon fought daemon. Vague shapes took form.
An edge of wing, a glimpse of muzzle, smoky claws.
All belonging to his own daemon.
But that was not all. Other apparitions stirred and roiled in the smoky storm: a lash of snaking tail, a tongue of forked flame, a maw of black teeth. Though caught in glimpses, Tylar recognized the shapes.
From Punt.
Here, fighting his own daemon, was the beast who had murdered Meeryn. It lived inside Mistress Naff.
Mirth seemed to rise like steam.