She flashed to doing the same with Bashaliia but shoved that sorrow deep.
Not now.
Instead, she reveled in the taste of blood on her tongue, the tremble of muscle. She studied the crouch of black fur, yellow claw, and slashing fang. She heard the hissing song of the cat, sibilant, savage, full of rage at everything and anything—but she also detected the pained misery of the harshly bridled.
She tried to draw that leonine song into her, while sending threads of the same toward it—only to run into a dissonance of steel that fought her.
Through Aamon’s eyes, she saw the helm fastened to the scyther’s head.
Ah …
The cat crouched, preparing to leap.
Kanthe appeared at Nyx’s side. He had his bow raised, an arrow already nocked.
“No,” she warned him.
Frell reached to her from the other side. “We can wait no longer. We must retreat to the cellars.”
Instead, Nyx stepped farther into the square. She was afraid Frell’s touch would make her lose the tempo and rhythm of the entwined song. She knew she would need every note.
Earlier in the day, when she and the others approached the Golden Bough, she had caught the first faint strands of this chorus. The song had sounded distant, far off in the woods, but as she listened, it drew steadily closer. Her group had tried to drag her through the inn and down to its wine cellars, but she balked, afraid to lose those notes. She only allowed the others to draw her as far as the cellar stairs. Posted there, she could flee from any threat, yet still remain attuned to that approaching song.
As that chorus drew abreast of the inn, the song dimmed momentarily—then burst forth with an urgency that could not be ignored. She had been drawn to it as surely as any bridled beast. Still, what drew her wasn’t any command in that song. It was a pleading, a melody of entreaty and hope.
She could not ignore it.
The others had tried to stop her, even Jace, but Aamon snapped them all back, leaving them no choice but to follow.
As she stepped now out into the square, the massive cat tilted its gaze toward her. She met those yellow eyes. Its haunches bunched as a yowl built in its chest.
Before it sprang, she drew the other women’s songs into her—the silver, the fire, the bronze, even the strands of a lullaby—and cast a net at the beast. She did not seek to capture or bridle it. She let her threads drape over the steel helm and probe the dissonance that blocked her.
She had been taught about such alchymies. She knew how the metal of such helms was forged. A bridle-master sang to the cooling steel, infusing his or her unique pattern into it as it hardened.
Knowing this, she closed her eyes and brought forth one last song, the first one she had learned. From her throat, a soft keening rose, straining the cords of her neck. She tasted warm milk as she sent those reverberations out. She remembered when she had last sung this song, fueled by the force of a thousand bats. Back then, when she had unleashed that power, she had been able to discern the vein of every leaf, even the bones of her companions. While she didn’t have that force now, its song remained inside her, etched into her, a part of her.
She gathered the strength of the others to her and sang forth with new vigor. A familiar second sight opened inside her. She could now see every facet of the helm’s metal, every angle of iron patterned into its carbon. It was not unlike discerning the veins of a leaf. She read the unique lock buried in the steel and used her threads like a key. Once it opened, she sent her strands through the steel’s pattern—to reach the tortured, furious creature nestled inside.
Jace called to her, nearly shattering her control. “Horses are coming.”
“Knights,” Kanthe corrected.
She kept her eyes closed and sang with enough force to shift the pattern in the enslaving helm, to turn the bits of iron, like lodestones in a thousand wayglasses, forever changing the lock. Freed now, the cat was no longer under anyone’s thrall, not even her own. She remembered the fury of the Reach tyger from days ago, how it had attacked to keep anyone from subjugating it.
I will not be this cat’s master.
Instead, she imparted a last gift.
She let it see who had subjugated and tortured it.
She opened her eyes and faced the cat’s fury. But that savageness was no longer directed at her. Past its shoulders, a trio of horses thundered toward them. Knights in armor rode low on their backs. Behind them came trackers and bridle-masters, mounted double on their steeds.
The huge cat yowled one last time, spun around, and bounded toward the legion’s forces. A leonine scream became a chorus of blood, ripped flesh, and screams torn from throats.
As Nyx’s own song ended in the square, the threads of power wisped out of her, leaving her empty and weak. She sagged, exhausted. Her vision darkened, as if she were falling back into her formerly near-blind state. The world became pools of lights and shadows.
Kanthe caught her.
Aamon dashed over to her, too, brushing against her, holding up that side.
Her vision slowly returned but remained foggy.
As she was turned from the slaughter, she saw another was equally afflicted. The strange painted woman stumbled, having to lean heavily on the women around her. Two more men rushed to her aid.
Kanthe tried to draw Nyx toward the inn. “We must get down to the cellars.”
“No!” A voice called to them from across the square. A figure separated from the cluster of women, leaning on a cane. Through Nyx’s glazed eyes, her white hair looked to be shimmering around her shoulders, as if still suffused with power.
Xan …
The elder’s voice carried easily to them. “That tree’s roots are not deep enough,” she warned. She pointed her cane at Oldenmast. “But those are.”
Behind the elder, the others began helping the strange woman toward the ancient tree.
Frell urged them forward. “She may be right. And if there’s a safe place under that ancient tree, she would know it.”
Any choice in the matter was stripped from them as a huge fiery burst exploded overhead. They all ducked, while looking up. The pall of smoke was blasted apart, revealing a patch of blue sky far overhead—and the keel of a huge warship hanging there.
* * *
WRYTH KEPT HIS face pressed to the eyepiece of the farscope. The instrument’s mirrors and lenses allowed his vision to extend past the hole through the layer of black smoke.
The view would not last long.
The gap was already closing.
He searched around the bower of the ancient alder, what had to be the revered Oldenmast of Havensfayre. He had been drawn to this spot from the town’s mooring field.
Earlier, upon arriving here in the Pywll, their warship had discovered the Tytan tied down and grounded at that field. The ruins of its balloon still smoked. Luckily, a good portion remained intact, and repairs were underway. To aid in patching up the other warship, Brask shuttled men and supplies down. Skrycrows flew back and forth between the two ships. The Pywll had been warned about the shark lurking in the mists, a cunning swyftship who had ambushed the larger craft.
And it’s still out there.
Even now, Wryth kept this in mind as he searched the ground through the farscope. Brask had told him who was aboard that other ship, a ghost from the past. Graylin sy Moor. Apparently, Haddan had the accursed knight momentarily trapped on the Tytan’s deck, only to lose the bastard at the last moment. Knowing that and suspecting whom Graylin was protecting—a girl who could be the Klashean’s prophetic Vyk dyre Rha—Wryth had instituted his own measures to deal with this change in circumstance.