Bale dagger in hand, Tylar led the way, careful to step on the solid iron, using it to ford the pools of fiery slag. The last of the guards vanished out the other side of the dungeon’s anteroom. In their haste, no one bothered to bolt the far door.
In the larger room, the daemon streamed fully forward with a billow of smoke and reformed its wolfish silhouette, wings folded to its back, long neck questing up the stairwell beyond.
Rogger collected an abandoned short sword, while Tylar donned an oversized pair of leggings and boots found beside a cot. He kept his chest bared for the sake of the daemon’s umbilicus. Once ready, the daemon seemed to sense their desire and flowed up the stairwell.
Rogger and Tylar followed. As they wound up out of the subterranean warren, Tylar confronted the thief. “You sought to sell my life for your own.”
Rogger scowled. “So we wanted everyone to believe.”
“We?”
“Delia and I. We concocted this ill strategy while you slept these past days. We guessed word would’ve spread after our escape from the corsairs. Ravens graced with air can outrace any sputtering Fin. We needed a way to make landfall. A way to get you to Tashijan alive. With blessed wards, far-seers, and Graced armies spread along the shores and borders, it would take the protection of a god to keep your skin on your bones.”
“And you chose Balger?”
“What better god to know the value of a godslayer? Balger may be vile, but he is no fool.” Rogger shook his head. “I must say even I underestimated his cunning. I thought he’d be satisfied with the price on your head.”
“So the entirety of your plan was to have me captured by Balger and delivered trussed up and nulled to Tashijan?”
Rogger tugged his beard. “Just about.”
“And you couldn’t forwarn me of your plan?”
“We couldn’t risk you being soothed. You had to be unaware.”
“What about you and Delia being soothed?”
Rogger shrugged. “When you have a godslayer in tow, few look elsewhere. As we imagined, we were ignored.”
Tylar frowned. Ahead, a warm breeze blew down to them. It smelled of swamp and sea, salt and weed. Sunlight reflected off the sweating stone walls. With each step, the air grew hotter.
They cleared the last flight and found a doorway of rough-hewn squallwood planks. An open iron grating let in the slanting sunlight. Again the daemon pushed through the door. Wood turned to ash. The iron grating dropped and clanked against the top stair.
Out in the yard, muffled screams and shouts grew louder and clearer as the door fell away. Tylar ducked after the daemon. Rogger kept to his shoulder.
With their appearance, arrows and crossbow bolts rained around them, but the daemon’s wings spread out, a shield of shadow. Feather, wood, and steel all burned away or were deflected aside.
Rogger kept low. “Seems Balger’s men are braver from a distance.”
“What of Delia? We can’t leave her here.” Tylar slowed. He would not abandon her.
“She’s already gone. Two bells ago. Her escape was easy to arrange. I am not unknown among the wenches who serve… well, let’s say under Balger. Though sometimes on top, too, I’ve heard.”
Gongs clanged, raising the alarm.
Rogger pointed to the open gate to the courtyard. They fled across the weed-strewn yard.
It wasn’t far. Balger’s castillion was no larger than a manor house, a graceless jumble of blocks built of stone and wood. It sat in the middle of the Dell, atop a small outcropping of bedrock, a toad on a mound. The township itself was only so much flotsam and jetsam washed up against its rocky flanks: tumbled, chaotic, broken, waterlogged, bloated, rotted. A miasma of woodsmoke and swamp gasses cloyed the air and turned the sun into a continual glare. Beyond the city lay the only bits of arable land. Wheat, barley, and oat grass formed a fringed patchwork around the ramshackle town. And beyond the farmlands stretched endless marshes, bogs, and fens.
Where could they go?
They cleared the gates and spanned a moat that appeared more of a sewer than a defensive perimeter. Rogger led the way into the alleys and streets of Foulsham Dell. Shutters slammed all around. Cries raced ahead of them.
Rogger finally tugged him by the elbow into a cramped alleyway. He waved a hand at the daemon hulking half in shadow with them. “From here, mayhap you’d best rein in your friend there. That beastie of yours attracts too many eyes.”
Tylar licked his lips. The daemon seemed to read their intent. Its head snaked back, framed in a mane of smoke. Its fiery gaze burned brighter, angry. Here crouched one of the naethryn.
“How?” Tylar asked warily. “It took Meeryn’s blood last time to drive the beast back inside.”
“According to Delia, you bear Meeryn’s blood. At least the Grace of it. She thinks you’ll be able to reel the daemon back into you with a touch of your own blood.”
Rogger held out his short sword.
Tylar pocketed the dagger stolen from Balger. Such a dread weapon could not draw blood, only pain. Tylar ran the edge of his hand along Rogger’s pocked sword. It was a shallow cut but stung like an adder’s bite. Blood immediately flowed.
The scent of it drew the attention of the shadowbeast. The naethryn craned back, muzzle sniffing, eyes shining silver.
Tylar cradled his weeping wound with his other hand. Blood pooled in his palm. Tylar smeared his hands together, coating his fingers in wet crimson. He reached out to the smoky column and throttled it with his hands.
He expected his fingers to pass harmlessly through the smoke again. But shadow gained substance under his bloody palms.
It felt leathery, yet warm.
From his fingertips, a crackling rush of cold flames burst forth. The wildfire flushed out and over the naethryn’s form. In a heartbeat, it reached the tip of its muzzle and rebounded back. On its return, the daemon’s form vanished, burned away by the retreating fire. The flow of fire fled back along the umbilicus, back over his hands.
Tylar took a hurried breath as the rebound struck him in the chest. A mule kick. He was knocked against the alley wall. A flash of whiteness blinded him, then winked out. The alleyway lay in full shadow again. Darker than a moment ago.
Rogger searched the shadows for the daemon, making sure it was gone. “That’s better. I was sure one of those smoky wings was going to brush through and melt the bones from my body.” The thief shuddered.
By the wall, Tylar straightened both his legs and his back. He stared at his arms. Hale once again.
Rogger motioned to him. “Let’s get moving. Best keep to the shadows and we should be safe.”
His words immediately proved false.
From the shadows at either end of the alley, black shapes folded out of darkness. A dozen. Cloaked, swords in hand. Shadowknights all.
Tylar backed into Rogger. Another trap.
The leader of the knights stepped forth, plainly fearless, sword still sheathed. A mountain of shadow. He was too tall and too wide to be Darjon. His eyes glowed with Grace, swinging from Tylar to the thief.
“Again in trouble, Master Rogger?” The gruff voice, though muffled by masklin, could not be mistaken. “Why is it that your plans always go astray?”
Rogger grinned through his red beard. “We’re out of the dungeons, are we not? I count that an improvement.”
Tylar glanced between thief and knight.
“Here stands the other part of my original plan,” Rogger said as introduction, turning back to Tylar. “If Lord Balger had played along, these knights were to have been your border escorts from Foulsham Dell to Tashijan, in service to our cause. Now it seems they must be our rescuers, too.”
The knight bowed. “Your handmaiden brought us rumors of Balger’s intent to keep the godslayer imprisoned here. It seems ol’ Balger speaks too freely among his wenches.”
Tylar sensed the flow of hidden forces at work here. He eyed the tall knight. The last time he saw the man, his face had been blackened by ash, as was the manner of the Black Flaggers. In fact, he was the leader of the Black Flaggers. Krevan the Merciless. Now he had replaced ash for blessed masklin. The tattooed stripes of his former life as a Shadowknight were plain.