Krevan stirred. If any alarm was raised, they were doomed, trapped between the walls of the gorge.
Tylar closed his eyes, calculating in his head. He felt Krevan begin to step away. Tylar reached out and grabbed his elbow, warning the knight from rash action. Then Tylar slipped a hand to Krevan’s belt and relieved him of one of his daggers. He slid the blade through a fist, slicing skin. As blood and sweat anointed the blade at the same time, Tylar pictured flames, the sear of flesh. He felt the blade heat up in his fist.
Balancing the dagger in his fingers, he pushed from the wall, rolled out under the crawler’s cabin, and threw the dagger straight up. The blade struck where one of the legs joined the seat.
He dashed back to the wall, enveloped again by shadow and cloak.
“What…?” Krevan asked.
Tylar silenced him with a hiss.
Overhead, the crawler began to spew smoke from its flues. He prayed the strike of the dagger would be mistaken for a burp in the mekanicals. He watched the pilot struggle to hold his crawler. Its movements grew jerky and labored. More smoke billowed, followed by a cough of flame. The crawler lost its footing, tumbling forward. The pilot fought his controls. The cabin seat struck one of the gorge walls, jarring like a struck bell.
“Go,” Tylar urged and pointed deeper down the gorge.
With the hunters distracted by their foundering craft, Tylar and the others fled unseen up the gorge and away. Finally, Krevan spoke. “What did you do back there?”
“I cast a blessing upon their crawler. Using blood and sweat.”
Delia glanced back over her shoulder. “You cast heat?”
Tylar nodded. “Crawlers are fueled by fire alchemies. They steam hotly. It takes only a little extra heat to push the mekanicals beyond their limits, burning them out. The same can happen if you overwork them. I hoped that flaming out their mekanicals would be taken as simple bad luck.”
Krevan nodded. “And now those same hunters will guard our own path. They’ll hold their position and swear no one passed them.”
“Changing hunters into guardians,” Rogger said. “Not bad, Tylar. You’re becoming a right good alchemist.”
“I had a good teacher.” He nodded toward Delia, who shyly glanced forward.
Corram pointed ahead. “Where to now?”
Krevan forged deeper into the narrowing gorge. “Off to strike a bargain.”
“Where?” Tylar asked.
Krevan simply scowled.
Rogger answered, struggling a few steps ahead of Corram, his voice thick with distaste. “The Lair of the Wyr.”
As the sun rose, Tylar found the dawn brought little light. The cliffs were high and narrow, shrouded in mists, trapping them in eternal twilight. It seemed they had been marching for days. Tylar trudged after Krevan, Delia behind him, followed by Rogger and Corram. All sounds of battle had long grown silent.
No knight had returned, but Krevan had expressed no worry. “They know to lead the hunters astray, away from our path. We’ll regroup in Muddlethwait across the border.”
“That is, if we ever get out of these hills,” Rogger added.
Tylar glanced to the high walls. He was thoroughly lost. Even Krevan seemed to be losing his faith in his sense of direction, slowing their pace, pausing at crossroads among the maze of gorges.
“How much farther?” Delia asked. “Where is this Lair?”
Rogger moved closer, his voice an edgy whisper. “Child, we’ve been among the Wyr for the past full bell.”
Tylar tightened his grip on his sword’s hilt.
“They watch us even now,” Rogger said.
As if hearing his words, a rock crumbled from the cliff edge and skittered down the wall.
Krevan ignored it all and continued forward.
Tylar now eyed the crevices and side chutes with plain suspicion, sword pointed and ready. He had, of course, heard of the Lair, an assembly of Wyr, those who practiced arcane alchemies upon themselves, seeking some measure of corrupted Grace. It was whispered that an ultimate goal was sought by the Wyr: the creation of a perfect abomination, to birth a god from human flesh, to bring new divinity into the world from mortal union.
But in this quest, they created misshapen creatures, some raving, others wise beyond measure. And ultimately theirs was a mad goal, an impossibility. Even when gods lay down with a man or woman, no child was ever born from such a union. As Grace foreshortened the lives of the Hands who served their gods, such strong emanations destroyed this earliest spark of life. No child could be born into Grace. It could only be granted by a god.
Still, the Wyr-lords persisted, producing abomination and deformity. Their ilk, while mostly hidden away in the depths of the hinterlands, could be found throughout Myrillia.
And the true heart of all the Wyr was rumored to be hidden here.
The Lair.
At last the narrow gorge opened into a wide hollow, framed by the tallest of the mounds. In the center, a small pond shone in the thin light, rimmed in red algae and as dark as oil. It bubbled slowly and stank of sulfur that burned the nose.
A woman awaited them, carrying a baby in her arms, swaddled in a blanket. Flaxen haired and pale of complexion, the woman was tall, lithe of figure, generous of bust as was fitting a new mother. She seemed unsurprised by the visitors, but her face was uninviting.
“Leave your weapons,” Krevan said. He met Rogger’s eyes for a moment longer. “ All your weapons.”
Corram tugged free his sword belt and rested it atop a boulder. He shook back his cloak’s sleeves and undid a series of wrist sheaths, each housing three daggers, then did the same at each ankle.
And while this was an impressive array of weaponry, Rogger proved to be a regular armory: short sword, throwing daggers, razored stars, a flail, even a blowgun down one pant leg. It was surprising the thief could even walk upright.
Delia had only a single dagger, Tylar the one short sword.
Krevan was the last to disarm, pulling free his diamondpomelled sword and holding it before him, blade resting in his two palms as if offering a gift.
Tylar stared at the blade, seeing it for the first time. Along its silver length, a winged wyrm had been traced in gold, filigreed and detailed.
“Serpentfang,” he whispered in awe. He remembered Rogger’s claim that Krevan was actually Raven ser Kay, the Raven Knight of lore. Any attempt to question Krevan earlier had been answered by a cold stare. And Rogger refused to say more after his initial revelation.
Tylar had assumed Krevan was a descendant of that infamous Shadowknight, a man said to have died three centuries ago. But here was the very blade once said to have been borne by the Raven Knight. Serpentfang had been described in song and fable, depicted in tapestry and in oil.
While the blade was polished, any Shadowknight could recognize its age, its steel folded a thousand times. This was no replica given to some young lord upon a birthing day.
Without mistake, here was the very blade that slew the Reaper King.
And if this was indeed Serpentfang…
Tylar watched Krevan approach the lone woman by the lake. Halfway to her position, the Raven Knight dropped to one knee, lowered the blade to the chalky soil, and stepped past it, abandoning a prize that could ransom an entire god-realm.
Only then did the woman stir, stepping into Krevan’s shadow. The knight towered over her, blocking the view but not her words.
“Raven ser Kay,” she said, her voice sibilant and high, full of malice and amusement. “What brings you into the Lair again? Last we met, you swore to kill me.”
Krevan kept a wary stance. “Your memory is long, Wyrd Bennifren.”
“Eighty years is not long to either of us, now, is it?”
Krevan remained silent.