Brask frowned at the horns. “The Tytan. They’re summoning us back. Something must be wrong.”
Wryth clenched a fist. “But we can still—”
The commander turned from him, already dismissing him. He called to his brother and waved to the forest. “Ransin! Take two men and follow the trackers and the cats!”
Wryth tried to intervene. “We may need all those men and horses.”
Brask swung toward the ramp. “Not until we know the fate of the Tytan. I’ve given forth enough on this matter, even lending my brother to your Iflelen cause.”
He spoke the name of Wryth’s order like a curse.
“I can spare a horse for you,” Brask conceded, pointing back. “But that is all.”
The commander headed up the ramp, drawing a majority of the hunting party with him. He bellowed orders all around, readying the ship for a fast departure.
Wryth weighed the best course: to accompany Ransin or try to pick up the artifact’s trail from the air. He stared toward Havensfayre and the wall of fire burning along the lake’s edge and made his decision.
He swung around and followed in Brask’s wake.
Ransin and the others did not need his help, but if those thieves should make it to Havensfayre, Wryth intended to be there to meet them. He gripped Skerren’s orb, praying to ?reyk that he could latch on to their trail again.
Behind him, a savage leonine scream rose from the forest.
The noise firmed his resolve.
Maybe I don’t need the blessing of Lord ?reyk after all—only the ferocity of a pair of hunting cats.
* * *
RHAIF STIFFENED AS something fierce yowled through the mists behind them, loud enough to be heard above the clatter of the wagon. It was answered by another throat.
He searched back, fearful of what he knew haunted these forests. “Is that a Reach tyger?”
Xan still knelt with the other four Kethra’kai women. She nodded for them to keep their song strong and turned to him. “No. The cry is wrong. And tygers always hunt alone.” She faced ahead. “We must hurry.”
She leaned to the wagon’s drover and spoke rapidly in Kethra. The guide nodded and whistled sharply to those ahead. The scouts on horseback continued forward, but the other Kethra’kai sped off to the east and west on foot, likely trying to lure away the hunters on their trail.
But will it buy us enough time to reach Havensfayre?
The wagon bounded fast through the forest. Shiya’s bronze form rattled in the bed. The singing of the women stuttered and jostled. Rhaif cringed, fearing their masking might break. He stared toward where the warship had descended to the lake, but he could no longer discern its dark shadow.
Is it still there? Or is it already in the air, hunting us?
Another blare of horns rose from ahead, drawing Rhaif’s attention forward. It blasted three times, each sounding closer than the last. Ahead, the mists glowed a fiery orange, a hopeful sign that they were approaching the outskirts of Havensfayre, but also unnerving.
How much of the town is already on fire?
He feared they were racing toward their doom, but a pair of bloodthirsty screams reminded him that death lay as surely behind them. He tried to judge if those cries were separating, maybe being drawn aside by the false trails of the others. He could not tell.
He swallowed, trying to unstick his fear-dry tongue from the roof of his mouth.
Danger lay in every direction.
He stared over at Pratik. Though the man’s brow shone with sweat, he seemed to be ignoring all the threats. Instead, he focused on Shiya, as if trying to discern some last answers from her before he died.
The Chaaen lifted his eyes to Xan. “The Shrouds of Dalal??a…”
The name of those jungled highlands drew the elder’s attention from the fiery mists ahead.
“Dalal??a is a word from the Elder tongue,” Pratik said. “It means deathly stones. Does that portend some connection to the Northern Henge?”
Rhaif could not fathom why the Chaaen pressed such matters, especially now. Only then did he note the man’s shaking shoulders, the way his fists knotted in his silks.
He’s just as terrified as I am and likely trying to focus elsewhere.
Rhaif realized that seeking such a place of refuge in the face of terror and horror must have been ingrained into the man. It was how Pratik must have survived all those years of brutality at Bad’i Chaa, the House of Wisdom. He remembered the map of white scars across the man’s naked skin back at Anvil’s gaol. And then there was the cruel castration that had stripped him of his manhood, in all measures of that meaning. Back at that school, Pratik had likely sought solace in his studies, burying all that pain and terror under a pile of books.
Xan lifted her hand and placed her palm on Pratik’s cheek. She leaned closer and whispered to him. His eyes grew wide, his mouth parting with a silent gasp. Then she dropped her hand and turned away. Pratik looked again at Shiya, only now with a measure of awe. Even his shoulders had stopped shaking.
Before Rhaif could ask what Xan had told him, Llyra appeared out of the mists. She slowed her mare to draw alongside the wagon and shouted, “We’ve reached the outskirts of Havensfayre!”
* * *
IT TOOK ANOTHER quarter league before Llyra’s statement was proven true. Rhaif kept his gaze fixed forward, hardly breathing—both due to the tension and the choking smoke.
All around them, the white mists had been replaced with a black smolder. Fires raged all around. The heat grew to that of a furnace. Huge trees rose to either side. Some burned like torches, swirling with fiery ash. Others remained dark and shadowy.
People had begun to appear throughout the woods, fleeing the town on horseback, atop wagons, and on foot. The group forged through them, slogging onward.
Another burst of horns welcomed them to Havensfayre.
Rhaif stared to the east, searching for the dark shadow of that other warship. But the entire town was shrouded in smoke, making its presence impossible to discern.
Xan leaned forward to the drover, who nodded and whistled to the two scouts. Their path shifted to the west, away from the mooring fields. The scouts shouted ahead, stamping their horses, clearing the way for the wagon as the fleeing townspeople grew thicker.
Homes appeared to either side, built into the boles of giant alders or stacked alongside them. Bridges crisscrossed overhead, several of which burned, carrying the fire deeper into the town. As they rushed under one of those flaming spans, ash and embers rained down. Several stung the flanks of the wagon’s muskmules. They brayed and swished their tails angrily. The drover sang to them, trying to calm them. Still, the mules kicked and fought their traces.
Llyra kept alongside the wagon, seated atop her mare. “Where do we go?”
Rhaif glanced to Xan.
The elder kept to the drover’s shoulder, adding her voice to his. The mules slowly succumbed to the soothing bridle-song. The pair clomped along more steadily, though their cooperation might have had less to do with the singing and more to do with the wagon having cleared the fire’s edge. Ahead, the center of Havensfayre lay under a layer of smoke, but so far, it had been spared the flames.
Still, the air burned the lungs with every breath.
“Where?” Llyra pressed.
The necessity of her inquiry was punctuated by a chorus of rising screams behind them, sharp enough to cut through the roar of the fires. The source of that fresh panic announced itself with savage yowls of bloodlust.