James Clemens - Shadowfall

He stared in horror at the figure of flaming bronze, spiked and razor edged. Flames glowed in Pupp’s eyes and lapped from his muzzle.

Paltry stumbled away.

Dart waited.

Finally, Paltry met her gaze.

Dart did not smile. She said one last word. “Fetch.”

Tylar heard the scream from a full two flights away. He rushed up the last of the steps, followed by Eylan and Kathryn. Rogger, Gerrod, and Yaellin remained below, plotting some strategy to escape, pinned as they were between ilk-beasts and castillion guards.

Above, the scream changed pitch into a wail of horror and pain. It was not a child’s scream. It ripped from the throat of a man.

Ahead a door appeared.

Tylar rushed to it.

“Careful,” Kathryn warned. “It could be more ilk-beasts.”

Tylar’s fingers fought the latch, but it was secured from inside. “Dart! Laurelle!” he called out as the wail died to a moan.

There was only one last place the girls could be hiding.

Behind this door.

Tylar pounded on it.

A small cry answered, full of horror, but plainly a girl’s voice this time. “We… we’re here.”

A flutter of footsteps sounded. The latch inside was thrown back. Before Tylar could even touch the door, it was flung wide and the black-haired girl flew out. She collapsed into Tylar’s arms, hugging him tight, clinging, sobbing.

Inside the dark chamber, plainly a rookery from the smell, a pool of light lit the center. It illuminated the wreck of a body on the floor, torn limb from limb. Blood reflected the light, spreading into a wide lake.

The source of the illumination climbed from the wreckage of the body. It glowed with a fierce light, standing shorter than a man’s knee. It was bulked and spiked, muzzled and flamed, covered in gore. It seemed to meet Tylar’s gaze. An intelligence shone there, a match to what he saw in the flaming gaze of the naethryn inside him.

“Pupp…” he said, naming the beast and knowing it to be true.

It shook its spiky mane, flared brighter for a breath, then vanished away, taking its glow with it. Darkness closed over the center of the room. A hundred ravens suddenly took wing, screaming and flying for all the open windows, leaving shadow behind.

A second figure stepped out of the deeper gloom. It was the other girl.

“Dart,” Tylar mumbled.

She trembled, plainly unable to move farther.

Tylar passed Laurelle to Kathryn. “Watch her.”

Unburdened, Tylar hurried into the room. Dart didn’t seem to see him. Her eyes were glazed. Bending down, he took her into his arms and pulled her to his chest. “You’re safe,” he said.

Something like a laugh escaped the child. It was a sound too old for one so young, full of mirthless disbelief. And she was right. They were far from safe.

Still, she burrowed into him. He felt the tears through his thin shirt. He let her cry, rocking her slightly. He could guess what had happened here. He had noted the shirt on the macerated body. Soaked in blood, the hatching of oak leaf and acorn was still evident in silver thread.

The healer must have trapped the girls here, threatened them. Dart had defended herself with the only weapon at hand.

“I… I… killed him.”

“Hush,” he whispered. “I know you didn’t mean it.”

She glanced up from his chest. Her eyes reminded Tylar of the gaze of Wyr-lord Bennifren, a babe with ancient eyes. But this was no Grace of longevity. It was simply the gaze of a girl who had seen too much.

She shook her head. “I wanted him dead. I… I sent Pupp.”

Tylar remembered her story. Before, Pupp had killed in her defense, coming to her aid unbidden. But this time, Dart must have been more directly involved. Now she was waking to the horror of such a committed act.

Still, she kept her feet. Her sobbing slowly settled to intermittent quakes. Tylar knew the brutality perpetrated upon her. She might be a godling, but the flesh and heart was that of a young girl. Though she was stricken by the bloodshed, he suspected it also helped return a part of what was stolen from her. Blood for blood.

“Come,” he said softly. “We must clear from here.”

She nodded. She kept one hand in his. But her eyes were on his chest. She pointed to the black print there.

“You also carry something with you,” she said. “I can see it stir.”

Tylar stared down at the mark. It seemed no more than tattooed flesh. Plainly her eyes saw more than his did. As she could see Pupp, her sight must also allow her to peer more deeply into him. Uncomfortable with that, he shifted his shirt to cover his mark.

She glanced to his eyes. “Does it make you any less a man?”

Tylar met her gaze, knowing she wondered the same of herself. He again saw the age behind those young eyes. He knew they deserved an honest answer, rather than one that falsely comforted.

“I don’t know.”

Dart kept behind the others on the stair. The occasional crossbow bolt struck the stones and rattled at them.

“It’s not much of a plan,” Tylar said.

“And we’re not much of an army,” the bearded man answered.

Tylar sighed. Dart watched him, sensing an odd connection to him. She remembered his arms around her, his sweat. She had feared the godslayer when she had first heard about the murder in the Summering Isles. Now she wanted him close. Even Pupp sniffed at his heels, hovering around him.

Dart sat on a step, arms tight around her knees. The terror of the rookery had ebbed with each step down from above. She knew the slaughter was justified, but she had yet to balance the horror of the act with the gut-level satisfaction she also felt.

Laurelle also remained quiet, staring without a blink. She kept to Dart’s side, but she did not offer her hand as before.

Dart knew her friend was still seeing Paltry torn asunder by the fiery Pupp. Though the act saved them both, the blood was hard to clear from one’s eyes.

“We must open the stairs,” Rogger repeated. “It’s the only way.”

“Fine. Let’s try it. But it still seems too simple to work.”

“The more complicated a plan, the more likely it will fail,” Master Gerrod countered.

With no other argument, the group retreated up the stairs, winding around a bend and out of direct sight from the lower landing. Only Rogger remained below.

The bearded man cupped his mouth and shouted. “Dark knight,” he called. Dart was startled by the bass tenor bursting forth from his thin frame. “Retreat to the healer’s cell! We’ll hole up there until nightfall!”

With those words and much clatter of boots, Rogger ran several steps down the hallway in the direction of Paltry’s room, then kicked his boots into his hands and ran barefooted back to the landing and up to them.

Tylar simply shook his head at the simple diversion.

Rogger kept a watch at the bend in the stairs.

A few more crossbow bolts cracked up to them.

Rogger ducked back around. “Here they come,” he mouthed.

Whispers and the tread of boots sounded.

“Door’s shut at the other end,” one of the guards called from the landing.

“Get those axes up here,” another answered. “Now’s our chance to flush the bastards.”

More commotion and the trot of boots followed. Guards raced from the landing and down the hallway. Upon reaching the far door, one of the men shouted back, “I can hear them inside!”

A final rush of guards pounded past the landing below. After a moment of silence, Rogger and Tylar both peeked around the bend.

“Way’s clear,” Tylar said, sounding vaguely bothered that the plan had succeeded. “There’s sure to be a few strays on the stairs, but nothing we shouldn’t be able to handle. We push all the way to the streets and away.”