A guard rushed forward and unhinged the hook. As the manacles slipped free, Tylar’s body felt tenfold heavier. He collapsed, facedown, into the bloody mud under the post.
The healer dropped to one knee. “I could put some firebalm on his wounds. It stings mightily, but it’ll staunch the bleeding.”
“Do it! I won’t have him dying on us… at least, not yet.”
The healer rummaged in a satchel.
Darjon twisted a fist in Tylar’s hair and pulled his face up. Limned against the full moon, his countenance was entirely shadow. Only his eyes glowed with Grace. “Before this night ends, I will discover what you did to Meeryn.”
Tylar sensed Darjon’s ferocity. And something darker. There was more to this man’s determination than mere vengeance. While punishments could be cruel, torture was not the way of the Order. But Tylar was too tired to curse the man, so he told him the truth in his heart. “You… You disgrace your cloak.”
Darjon shoved him away.
The healer pulled free a tiny clay pot. “This will sting,” he said under his breath.
Tylar steeled himself, though it had done him little good so far.
The healer’s shadow fell over him. Fingers touched his shoulder. The spread of balm on his flesh did not burn. Not at all. Instead, it was like the sweetest nectar on the tongue, a soothing caress on a fevered brow.
Tylar moaned in relief, unable to keep it bottled in his chest. It was as if every scrap of torture-inflicted pain was being repaid in kind by rapturous pleasure. It rippled over his flesh.
A small surprised gasp escaped the healer. “By all the gods!”
“What?” Darjon asked, stepping around.
“He heals with just a touch of the firebalm.” The healer slathered his back with more salve as proof and demonstration. “Look how the lash wounds glow under the balm, and the skin closes over.”
As Tylar shuddered with the pleasure of the balm, Darjon stumbled back a few steps. “The glow…” He swept out with his shadowcloak to command attention. “It is Grace… the Grace stolen from Meeryn! Here is the proof we’ve sought all night! He heals with Meeryn’s own dying Grace!”
Despite the soothing touch of the balm, Tylar groaned.
Figures closed in to witness the miracle. Guards held off all but those who had been in the hall earlier. The adjudicators watched as the healer repeated his demonstration, treating the last of the lash marks. Sounds of amazement rose from those gathered.
A black-gowned figure fell to her knee beside Tylar. She raised her hands to her face, lifting her veil. She was ashen-skinned, her lips daubed black. “It’s blood Grace!” she gasped. “I would know it anywhere…”
Another of the entourage spoke, a man dressed also in black. He placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder and explained, “Delia was the maiden who handled Her Brightness’s blood.”
Tears rose in the young woman’s eyes. “It is indeed Meeryn!”
“Can there be any doubt of his guilt now?” Darjon said boldly. “I say we put him to more vigorous tests. Grind the truth from his very bones.”
Fervent agreement met his words. Only the kneeling woman looked confused. “Why does he bear her blood?” But no one heard her.
She was helped to her feet by the man who had spoken on her behalf. The crowd dispersed, making room.
Tylar turned.
Darjon led two men. One hulking fellow carried a stump of wood. The other, even larger than the first, carried an immense iron hammer.
As the stump was dropped in the mud at his feet, Darjon bent closer. “There is more than one way to break a man, Godslayer.”
In this instance, the knight was speaking literally.
“Undo his manacles. Drag his right hand onto the wood.”
Tylar balked, understanding what was intended. They meant to pulp him. He fought the guards as his manacles fell away. Not my sword hand. He had regained his dexterity only days ago. He had not even the chance to hold a hilt again.
“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.