“Again, what brings you here?” she asked.
“We wish to buy passage through the Lair’s burrow.”
A long silence answered his request. Then slowly she spoke. “For you… and the godslayer.”
Krevan attempted a lie. “Don’t tell me you believe such nonsense?” He punctuated it with a harsh snort.
“Perhaps not, but Lord Balger certainly does. We know the Downs are overrun with crawlers, scent hunters, and worse. Two of your knights met their ends among the hollows. The rest are hotly pursued. Yet you bring the true prize to my doorstep.”
Krevan had not moved, yet a dark cloud of cloak and shadow seemed to swell from his shoulders. “You bear no special love for Lord Balger
… or Tashijan. To keep this godslayer as a prize would bring the full wrath of both upon the Lair.”
“No doubt of that, but I would see this godslayer for myself,” the woman finished, “before we settle on a price.”
Krevan glanced back to Tylar. He was waved forward.
Rogger hissed at his ear as he stepped away. “Speak with a cautious tongue. Deals among the Wyr are struck upon one’s word.”
Tylar moved to join Krevan. Stepping around the large knight’s billowing form, he again spotted the woman. She leaned her weight on one leg, throwing out her hip, carrying her swaddled babe there. She wore a bored expression.
“So this is the godslayer?”
Tylar’s brow pinched. The woman’s mouth had not moved as she spoke. In fact, her entire manner-from slack lips to glazed eyes-struck Tylar as dull and mindless.
“Bring him closer.” Pale movement drew his eye. He spotted a tiny white arm beckon to him. It was the baby boy. The infant’s eyes were fixed on his face. “Tylar de Noche,” the babe said, thick with disdain. “Your reputation precedes you.”
Tylar found no words, mouth agape.
Krevan covered for him. “May I introduce Wyrd Bennifren, Lord of the Lair and free leader of the Wyrdling clans.”
“Be welcome, Godslayer.” The baby smiled up at him, a horrible toothless visage, eyes wizened with age. “Let us strike a bargain for your life.”
Tylar paced the confines of the small cave. Their accommodations were surprisingly pleasant. Flames crackled in a small hearth carved into the wall, the smoke fluming away through a buried chimney. Underfoot, thick sheepskin rugs warmed the natural stone floor. Torches blazed on all four walls, illuminating the tapestries of Kashmiri silk woven with gold-and-silver thread. He could easily be in the greeting chamber of some lord’s manor house, rather than deep beneath the chalk hills of Kistlery Downs.
“How much longer must we wait?” Tylar finally blurted.
“The Wyr will not be rushed,” Krevan said. He sat hunched on a bench. The room had no shadows in which to hide or draw strength, and clearly this made him ill at ease and seemed to age him.
His fellow knight, Corram, simply leaned against one wall, rubbing a wrist where his sheathed daggers once rested.
Seated on a chair by the hearth, Rogger chewed a stubby briar pipe, puffing out clouds of redolent smoke through his beard. “Bennifren is actually treating us-or rather should I say you ”-he glanced pointedly at Krevan-“much more courteously than I would have imagined.”
“What past do you two share?” Delia asked. She also sat by the fire, but in a deep, cushioned chair. She had sunk gratefully into it. Tylar had almost forgotten Delia’s past as a handmaiden to Meeryn, where such luxuries were easily at hand. She had abandoned so much, a life of comfort and grace, to accompany him on this hard road.
Krevan stared at her, then away. An imperceptible movement of his wrist toward Rogger indicated it was permissible to speak of this matter.
The thief took up the mantle with aplomb. “Now that’s a tale.” He stood up to warm his backside by the fire. “But before that one could be told, one must tell the story of the Raven Knight. One not sung by minstrels, nor written in the great recountings of history.”
Tylar stopped his pacing and gave Rogger his full attention. “And we should begin such a story at the beginning-with the death of Raven ser Kay. Some three hundred years now, is it not?” Rogger glanced to Krevan, who only glared back, eyes flashing with Grace.
“Yes,” Rogger continued. “Raven ser Kay did not die a noble death on some battlefield, but instead met his end in bed, of an affliction of the heart. Or more specifically, a dagger to the heart, wielded by a concubine who shared his sheets. A comely lass of great beauty, I’ve heard, but one whose family ties could be traced to the Reaper King. An unfortunate discovery made after she used that same dagger to slay herself.”
Delia sat straighter. “Such is the tale sung by balladeers.”
“A truly tragic end, one embellished with details over the centuries, making it a grand tale of love, revenge, and honor. But where such ballads end, the true story begins.” Rogger paused to puff on his pipe, then continued. “For Raven ser Kay was not like other men
… There was a reason he survived so many battles. He had a secret he kept from the wardens and castellans of Tashijan. A secret that a comely assassin revealed upon the point of her dagger.”
“What secret is that?” Tylar asked as Rogger paused again.
“He has no heart.”
“What?”
“There is a reason he is titled Krevan the Merciless. It comes from his much older but truer name: Krevan the heartless.”
Tylar shook his head. “What foolishness is this?”
“He speaks the truth,” Krevan grumbled from his bench. “I was born with no heart.”
“How…?” Delia asked, growing paler.
Rogger explained. “Exposed as a babe in the womb to black alchemies, his blood was corrupted. It is a living thing, flowing on its own through his flesh and organs, needing no muscled pump. It is this same corruption that allowed him to survive the assassin’s blow. You can’t stab what isn’t there.”
Tylar stared at Krevan with new eyes.
“But such a wound could not be hidden. His secret was laid bare. He was given a choice by the warden at that time. Be stripped and humiliated… or allow the Raven Knight to die.”
Rogger glanced again to Krevan. “So he walked away, leaving his past to the balladeers and historians to pick and chew over like dogs on bone. He started a new life-not unlike you, Tylar-among the low and forgotten. Out of the seed of his pain grew the Black Flaggers.”
Tylar sensed corners of the story left untold, but he did not press.
“But how did he come to be corrupted in the first place?” Delia asked. “To be born without a heart?”
The answer came from the doorway. Wyr-lord Bennifren entered, carried by the same woman. “Because he was born here… in the Lair.”
Delia covered her mouth in shock.
“This is his true home,” the ancient baby said in that sickly sibilant tone of his. “He is born of the Wyr.”
Krevan gained his feet. “One does not choose a birthplace, but one can choose a life thereafter. I renounced this place long ago.”
“Blood is always blood.”
Krevan spat on the floor. “And shite is forever shite.”
The knight’s outburst only amused the Wyr-lord. Dark laughter flowed. Krevan seemed to sense he had been drawn deliberately out. He straightened and glared. “What of the bargain? Will it cost me more of my blood?”
“That bought Allison’s freedom eighty years ago. You struck a hard bargain. I still miss your mother.” He reached up and squeezed the breast of the woman who carried him. There was no reaction. “She had the sweetest milk of all my cows. Whatever did become of her after you left here? Died I heard. Drowned. Was it an accident or did she still have a bit of will left in her? Perhaps she missed her former life.”
“What you did to her…” Krevan’s reaction was not an outburst, but a coldly spoken promise. “I will still kill you for that.”
A tiny arm waved away his threat. “She let you flee the Lair. She had to be punished. But I’m surprised it took two centuries for you to finally come looking for her. Who’s to blame for that?”