He fell backward into darkness.
For an untold time, Tylar balanced on the razor edge of agony, sightless and witless. The pain refused to relent, to let him escape. It held him in claws of fire, ripping and tearing.
Then the torture ended. Abruptly.
The sudden cessation of pain woke him like a frigid dive into a snowmelt stream. Gasping, blind still, Tylar collapsed back to the rack. He blinked back his vision, damp with tears.
He watched Balger step from his side, smoking blade in hand.
Tylar stared down at his body, expecting to see intestines spilling from a gaping wound. But his skin lay unmarked. Only the thin course of hair across his belly smoldered, marking the path of the blade.
Balger leaned over him again. He lifted the blazing dagger. “Ripe with my fiery blessing, the bale blade cuts and heals at the same time. I can slice you all day and all night and you will never weaken or expire.”
He raised the blade again and plunged it into Tylar’s shoulder, striking clean through to the wood beneath.
Tylar screamed, unable to help himself.
Balger straightened, abandoning the impaled dagger. “Or I can leave it here. Cutting and healing continually in one place, leaving only pain, a pain that never dulls, but always remains fresh.”
Tylar writhed. He had been struck by arrows and blades of all manner. The sting of impact was always intense, but it dulled as severed nerves retracted. Not now. This agony never relented.
Movement by his toes drew his narrowed vision. Rogger appeared and grabbed his bound foot. “I’m sorry, Tylar.” The thief’s deft fingers snatched his littlest toe, met his eyes, then snapped his digit cleanly.
Tiny bones snapped.
The pain was small compared to his shoulder, but in a single breath, it spread outward in a growing wave of agony: up his leg and out over the rest of his body. Bones, healed by Grace before, broke anew, shattering his form. The dagger’s bite disappeared under the assault, overwhelmed.
Through this agony, Tylar felt something shake loose from the broken cage of his body, snaking out. In the wake of its passage, fractured bones drew back in place, malformed and misaligned, fusing and callusing anyway. His body twisted and joints stiffened, back into his old bent form.
The pain receded, except in his shoulder. Fire continued to blaze outward from the impaled dagger.
In the torchlight, a font of black smoke, darker than shadow, billowed from his chest as if from a baker’s chimney. Eyes opened in the darkness, ablaze with lightning.
Guards scattered to the four walls. Several dropped swords in fright.
Balger kept his post. The god’s gaze followed the column of smoke to where it pooled like spilled ink across the cell’s low roof.
From the black sea, a sinuous column snaked out and downward, forming head and neck. Wings swept out as a pair of flanking waves. Silver eyes blazed brighter with white fire. Hanging upside down from the roof like some shadowy bat, the daemon studied the room. The dred ghawl ’s wings lowered protectively to either side of Tylar. A keening wail, beyond hearing but felt on every hair on the body, echoed off the stone walls.
A humpbacked guard stabbed a lance at the shadowy creature. Its steel head melted and splashed back at the attacker’s toes. Its haft caught fire, falling away to ash. The guard dropped the cursed weapon and fell out the doorway and away. Others followed. Balger’s loyalty was earned by fear. A greater fear now overwhelmed his retinue.
In moments, Lord Balger was alone.
The god’s eyes narrowed upon the daemon. “I know you, creature. Spawn of the naether do not belong in this world of sinew and bone.”
The dred ghawl ’s mane of smoke bristled, and its muzzle sharpened. It stretched toward the god. Balger backed up as the daemon snaked out to meet the god, eye to eye. The white-fire blaze of the daemon’s gaze flashed. The keening in the room focused to a hiss that pained the ears and drew cold sweat from pores.
Tylar recognized that voice, having heard it before, on the streets of Punt, from Meeryn’s dark attacker. It was not easily forgotten. Tylar knew what he heard-both then and now.
The voice from the naether… the voice of the naethryn.
Balger’s eyes grew wider as he listened to the naether daemon. He stumbled back to the far wall. “No!” the god gasped out with a sharp shake of his head. “Not possible… Rivenscryr was destroyed!”
Tylar felt a tug on his ankle. He glanced down to see Rogger slicing his leather bonds with a dagger. His right leg was freed, then his left. Rogger shied forward and worked at his left wrist. “Be ready to run.”
Tylar’s suspicion of the thief flared, but as long as he was being freed, he kept silent. Pain still flamed his right shoulder.
“The bale dagger,” Rogger said, moving to his last binding. “Can you free it?”
As answer, Tylar reached to the hilt of the dagger. He grabbed the bone hilt. He felt the Grace fired within it. It helped steady his grip. With an explosion of pained breath, he tugged it from his shoulder. A wisp of smoke trailed the blade’s tip, taking the agony with it. Bathed in the brightness of the blade, Tylar’s shoulder was unmarred, healed and hale.
Rogger helped him sit up.
The daemon kept the god pinned to the wall.
But Balger’s shock waned. The disbelief in his voice hardened to anger. “You lie, naether-spawn!”
Tylar dragged himself off the rack and crouched on the far side. He fell easily into his old form, back bent, left leg stiff as a walking stick. The ache of his joints was as familiar as a warm cloak. It helped center him, despite the horror.
The dark umbilicus flowed out from the black print over his heart, coiling and twisting. Tylar waved his hand through the channel, but found nothing but smoke. He recognized the billowing darkness now. While fleeing out of the depths of Tangle Reef, he had witnessed the same. What the seafolk named the Gloom. A penetration of the naether into this world. Only this black font leaked from his own chest. A conduit for the naether-spawn, the naethryn undergod.
He waved his hand again.
Though it caused him no harm, he knew its touch to be as deadly as the marine Gloom. He had witnessed how the guards had died back at Meeryn’s castillion in the Summering Isles, left boneless or broken as he and Rogger fled the keep.
Rogger kept low and hissed at him. “Let’s go.”
Guards shouted beyond the dungeon cell. The alarm spread quickly. Like all gods, Balger had his own Shadowknights… though such men who bent a knee to the lord of Foulsham Dell were of low ilk, disgraced knights whose crimes did not warrant full stripping. They, like their counterparts among men, found themselves washed up on these hard shores, lost and without futures. The knights of this realm were as likely to be found in bed with a sell-wench as snoring under a table at a low tavern.
Still, Tylar knew it was best to be away before pieces of shadow sprouted swords and men. He hobbled after Rogger to the door. The daemon continued its guard upon Lord Balger, sensing the greatest danger lay with the god.
Only once they vacated the cell did the daemon flow back with them.
Balger made no move to follow. Only his voice chased them. “If Rivenscryr is here, we’re all doomed!” Cruel laughter followed. “One man and one undergod cannot stop the end of all.”
Rogger led the way to the end of the short hall. Empty now. An iron door clanged shut ahead of them. The screech of a sliding bar echoed to them. “The cowards are trapping us here.” A snort of derision punctuated his words. “Locking a godslayer with their god.”
“What can we do?” Tylar asked as they reached the doors.
From its post behind them, the naethryn daemon snaked its neck over their heads and flowed to the iron… through the iron. Metal poured in rivers of molten slag. Hinges and locking bar melted away. The door toppled and crashed into the far room.