James Clemens - Shadowfall

“Leaving me crippled again until it returned,” he added sourly.

“There’s always a price… I seem to recall you saying that to young Delia earlier.”

Tylar shook his head. So much remained a mystery. Again silence settled around them. The deepwhaler caught a stiffer breeze, sails swelling. The islands faded behind them, sinking into the horizon.

After a long while, Tylar quietly asked, “Do you think we’ll make it?”

“Not a chance,” Rogger answered, pulling a pipe from a pocket.

Tylar turned, leaning an elbow on the rail.

Rogger filled his pipe from a pouch of blackleaf. “Don’t look so surprised. The Summering Isles will never let you rest. That Shadowknight, Darjon ser Hightower, will hunt you throughout the Nine Lands. And then there are all those other gods out there. Ninety-nine, at last count. They’re not going to let the murder of one of their own go uncontested. They’ll pool all their Graces into finding you. But even they’re not the worst threat.”

“What do you mean?”

Rogger paused to light a taper from a lamp on the deck, then set the flame to his pipe, puffing in and out until he had a good fire to the leaf.

“What could be worse than vengeful gods?” Tylar asked.

Rogger perked one brow. “Whoever really slew Meeryn, of course. The true godslayer. He’ll need you dead lest you prove your innocence. And whoever could kill a god…?” He shrugged and chewed on his pipe, leaving the obvious unsaid.

He could surely hunt a lone man.

“So what do you plan to do?” Rogger finally asked, eyeing him.

Tylar rubbed his brow. “The only thing I can, I guess.”

“What’s that?”

“Follow the one clue left to me. Meeryn’s final word.”

Rogger glanced to him. “Rivenscryr?”

He nodded. “Meeryn healed me, gave me a daemon to protect me. All to deliver one word, a riddle I must solve if I ever hope to prove my innocence.”

“So where are we headed first?”

“To a place where I’m even less welcome than those cursed islands.” Tylar turned his back on the Summering Isles and stared far to the north, half a world away. “To Tashijan… the Citadel of the Shadowknights.”

She had never thought to hear his name again.

Kathryn ser Vail stood near the mooring docks that topped the highest tower of Tashijan. Though it was mid-morning, the light remained a twilight gloaming. Black clouds stacked to the horizons on all sides, whipping and rolling in from the seas to the south.

Tylar…

As she waited, cold winds flapped her cloak and tugged at the masklin pinned across her face. As a Shadowknight, she had to keep her face hidden from the laborers here. Her breath blew white into the frigid, thin air. Ice frosted the parapet stones and made the mooring ropes crack as they were run across the stones by line handlers and dockmen.

Clutching her arms around her, she fought to trap the fleeting warmth carried up with her from the bowels of Tashijan. The mooring tower of the Citadel thrust fifty floors into the sky, a thin spire built three millennia ago under the guidance of Warden Bellsephere. Aptly named Stormwatch, it took the humours of a hundred gods to build this one tower.

“There she is!” her companion shouted into the teeth of the wind.

Gerrod Rothkild was encased in bronze from head to toe, oblivious of the wind. He was squat of form, typical for a hill-man from Bitter Heap. But unlike his barbarous, uneducated countrymen, he was of sharp intellect and even sharper wit. Under his helmet, he bore the tattoos of fifteen disciplines, all masterfields. “That tub’d better have a skilled pilot to strike the docks in this gale.”

Kathryn watched the salt-scarred flippercraft lower out of the sea of clouds overhead. It was a wooden whale, blunt at both ends but flaring into a wide keel at the stern. At the prow, a thick window of blessed glass stared down at the mooring docks. Shadowy movement could be seen behind the glass: the ship’s frantic landing crew.

On the port and starboard sides, the score of balancing paddles battled the winds, some turning, others stationary, some extending out from the ship, others retracting. It took an experienced pilot, one ripe with air, to finesse the craft.

“He’s burning blood,” Gerrod commented.

Kathryn saw he was right. From the top of the flippercraft gouts of smoke choked into the skies from the exhaust flue, furthering the craft’s image of a flying whale. “Why does he hazard the storm? Why waste humour on such a risky landing?”

“His need must be urgent,” Gerrod answered gruffly. “And such urgency seldom heralds fair tidings.”

Kathryn suspected the same. Could the news be anything but foul, especially as of late? The sudden death of Ser Henri, the warden of Tashijan, had left a hole in the Order. And like a drain plug pulled from a tub, the warden’s vacancy had created a maelstrom of opposing factions seeking to fill it, whirling and churning the once calm waters.

And now worse tidings still: the slaying of a god. An impossible death. And tied to such a tragedy, a name from her past, a name that both stirred her and quickened a pain long since buried.

Tylar…

She shuddered and concentrated on the skies, pulling her cloak tighter about her shoulders.

Overhead, the ship foundered in the crosswinds that swept around the tower. Its bulk rocked and teetered, lowering toward the waiting mooring cradle, paddles flapping frantically. The stern planks glowed from the overworked aeroskimmers. Kathryn could imagine the mekanism’s brass pipes and mica-glass tubes shining as bright as the sun, channeling and pumping raw humour through its belly, an alchemy of blood from one of the air gods. She watched the tortuous twist of inky smoke from the stern flue.

“It’s madness,” she whispered.

Steel fingers touched her hand. “There must be a reason-” Suddenly those same fingers clamped on her wrist and tugged. “Down!”

Overhead, the ship dropped like a stone. It heeled over on one side, paddles sweeping toward the tower top. The line handlers and dockmen dove and scattered.

Kathryn and Gerrod flattened to the ground.

The flippercraft righted with a scream of wind and crack of wood as one paddle struck a parapet and shattered into splinters. The ship tilted nose first, plunging for a sure crash into the granite mooring cradle.

Then miraculously it bucked up at the last moment, and the ship’s keel slammed roughly but securely into the cradle. The jarring impact popped a few rib planks and a tracery of fractures skittered across the glass eye of the wooden whale.

Immediately the mooring crews were back on their legs, yelling into the winds, tossing ropes and tethers about the grounded flippercraft. A few cheers of appreciation rose from the workers.

Kathryn rolled back to her feet smoothly and quickly, sharing no such appreciation. “Nothing is worth such a risk of vessel and folk.”

The rear hatch of the flippercraft winched open. A single figure leaped out before the hatch even thudded against the stone. He was a swirl of darkness, a shred of shadow cast into the wind.

“I believe that would be young Perryl,” Gerrod said at Kathryn’s side.

Perryl hurried toward them. His eyes were sparks of fury, his manner full of wildness. He reached them as the first mooring line was secure-and didn’t stop.