“Eitur lies to the immediate north of Havensfayre,” Mikaen said. “It seems a small diversion that could promise a far larger reward. Is that not true?”
Haddan answered with a begrudging frown.
Mikaen continued, “Surely the Tytan can handle anything at the forest town. And with the Pywll still close at hand to the north, it could be summoned back upon the swift wings of a skrycrow or the signal blare of a horn.”
Wryth withdrew his hands from his robe’s sleeves. Though stoic, the Shrive was clearly pleased with the direction of these winds.
Mikaen tempered such pleasure. “What about the other weapons you promised us, Shrive Wryth? Have those been loaded?”
“They were being stored below as I boarded.”
Mikaen nodded. “You will leave them here and ensure they are properly secured before you depart for the Pywll. Such weapons will be of little use on your quest, but they may prove vital to ours.”
“Of course. I don’t disagree.”
Mikaen looked between the two men. The pair nodded to one another, resolved on the matter for now. As the two departed in opposite directions, Mikaen stepped to the empty rails. Behind him, men bustled with final preparations, shouting and bellowing. All around, the draft-iron cables ground a mournful wail. Overhead, gusts snapped the balloon’s taut fabric.
The prince ignored everything.
He focused instead on the calming billow of clouds atop Landfall, knowing such peace would not last. Not here, not across the Crown.
A storm was coming.
And I will be its lightning.
* * *
AS A FINAL horn sounded, Wryth hurried toward the cabin buried deep within the Tytan. The weapons stored inside were too sensitive to the Father Above’s glare to risk storing them higher. Ahead, two massive Mongers stood to either side of the cabin door. The Gyn’s heavily browed eyes, further shadowed under iron helms, watched his approach, but the pair knew him and said not a word as Wryth reached the cabin and knocked on its door.
A thumping of a cane sounded from the other side, and the way was unlocked with the rasp of a key.
Wryth opened the door on his own and passed inside. The windowless room was sparsely furnished, just a narrow bed, a lamp on a hook, and a door on the far side.
“I do not have long,” Wryth said as he entered. “I wrested the Pywll away from Haddan, but I must be swift.”
Shrive Vythaas backed his gaunt body to the side and leaned on his bane-alder staff. His voice was a rub of stones. “Any further word from Skerren?”
“No, but if anything changes, he’ll send a crow.” He touched the heavy pouch hanging from the leather sash of his Shriven cryst. “Skerren also gave me a tool to trace those energetic winds back to our target. But it will only work once we’re close.”
“Then best you be on your way to the Pywll.” Vythaas crossed to the bed and settled his withered frame atop it. His gaze swung toward the far door, one banded and latched in iron. “I will attend to the weapons here and aim them at our greatest threat.”
Wryth remembered the final words ripped from Prioress Ghyle’s throat. He whispered them now. “Vyk dyre Rha…”
Vythaas continued to stare at the other door. “The ancient name of the Klashean dark goddess. The Shadow Queen who is carried on wings of fire.”
Wryth knew this god was not one of the thirty-three that made up the Klashean pantheon, but a creature far older. Her name was written only one time, in the most sacred text of the Dresh’ri, secured in the Abyssal Codex of their order, a vault buried far beneath the Imri-Ka’s bright gardens. She was the daemon of the Dresh’ri, the god the Klashean order worshipped as devoutly as the Iflelen did Lord ?reyk. But unlike the Iflelen god, the Klashean daemon was never mentioned aloud, not even by the Dresh’ri. She had no symbols or sigils. She was worshipped in total silence and darkness.
Until now.
Ghyle’s scream still echoed in his head, especially her final words: Vyk dyre Rha se shan benya!
Vythaas seemingly read his thoughts and translated them aloud. “‘She is the Shadow Queen reborn.’”
“The Klashean prophecy…” Wryth muttered with an icy chill.
Vythaas’s gaze turned from the door and recited the prophecy aloud. “She who would be reborn one day, in flesh and form. Burning away all that She possessed, leaving only darkness and savagery behind. A dread being who will spread fiery ruin in Her wake, until all the Urth is consumed.”
Wryth remained silent for a breath, then voiced what he knew concerned them both. “Could it be true?”
He remembered fifteen years ago he had listened to the words of a soother, a witch who cast bones at the feet of a serf with a swelling belly. She predicted that a girl would be born to Marayn, which was all that Wryth had wanted to know at the time. He needed to be certain the child was not a boy who might obscure or challenge the Massif lineage. Then the soother had scooped up her bones far too quickly, her face ashen. Suspicious, he pressed the witch, who finally admitted a portent of doom and ruin shadowing the babe.
Back then, Wryth had not placed much weight upon the truth of these claims. Most witches and bone-readers were no more than charlatans. Still, her words were of great use. He used the witch’s prophecy to sow fear and frighten a reluctant king into killing both mother and child. This ruse also served to rip Graylin sy Moor away from the king’s ear, a knight who tempered Toranth’s spirit toward a kinder aspect, which little suited a kingdom with a hostile neighbor.
But in the end, the knight’s damage was done. Even after the betrayal by Graylin, Toranth waited too long to kill the mother, showed too much mercy toward an oathbreaker. Recognizing this, Wryth and Haddan had turned to the prince instead, a son under the liege general’s thumb at the Legionary. They had spent the past eight years forging Mikaen into a harder leader.
Yet, now the bones of a witch have found new voice in the screams of a prioress.
Vythaas matched Wryth’s concerned gaze. “It is truth or raving?” the man asked the room. “I do not know, but we cannot risk such a creature ever rising to power. When we cross to Cloudreach, you see to our lost talisman, and I will attend to this potential Vyk dyre Rha and make sure she is destroyed.”
“And those weapons you’ve forged against her?”
Vythaas turned to the other door. “All is ready.”
Wryth wanted reassurance before he left. He stepped to the back of the cabin and lifted the latch. He opened the door enough to let lamplight flow into the dark cell beyond. Two figures stood there, with heads bowed, their bodies wrapped in chains—but that iron was not what truly bound them.
The glow of lamps reflected off the rows of copper nodes shining across their shaved scalps, marking the site of a dozen needles, twice the number as had been used on the prioress. Vythaas wanted to ensure their wills were fully destroyed, leaving them shells who would do the Iflelen’s bidding. The pair had been secured by Anskar back at the swamps and dragged here with Prioress Ghyle.
Wryth stared at the two men’s slack faces and sent them a silent command.
Ablen and Bastan … you will be our dogs, to hunt and kill your sister.
THIRTEEN
FIRE IN THE MISTS
Fyre is a fikel ally; kindle it towardes a foe,