James Clemens - Shadowfall

Fingers squeezed and drew him closer. Her other arm rose and reached toward him. The palm was bloody. Tylar had neither the strength nor the will to fight.

The reaching palm struck his chest as if to push him away, while the clutching fingers pulled at him. The blood on the outstretched hand blazed through both the rough-spun cotton of his shirt and the soft linen of his underclothes. It touched the flesh over his heart. This was no spiced wine. He smelled the smolder of seared skin. The pain was excruciating, but at the same time, he never wanted it to end.

It didn’t.

The god at his feet pushed deeper, stretching for his heart as it fluttered, a panicked bird in a bony cage. He gasped out fire as burning fingers entered his chest. The stone of the square vanished from his eyes, snuffed away like a pinched candle. The small sounds of the night blew out. The hard grind of stone fell away under his legs.

Only now did he understand the lack of substance behind reality.

Yet sensations remained.

A palm pushing at his chest, a hand dragging him down by the wrist.

He spun in these contrasts, but here, where there was no substance, both were possible. He felt himself shoved up into a brilliance that blinded, while dragged down into a darkness that was somehow just as bright. Where a moment ago he had stood at the edge of a bottomless abyss, now he hung over the same. But as he spun, he recognized his mistake. There was not one abyss, but two — one above and one below.

Both stared at him as he hovered between, his bones burning like a torch.

This was more than death.

I am undone, he thought, knowing it to be true.

Then a wash of coolness drenched his form, drowning him, driving him back to the slaughter of the square, back into his own body. He struck it like he had the broken cobbles outside the Wooden Frog: hard and abrupt.

Sensations filled him again-but the palm on his chest no longer burned. From the god’s hand, a chilled wash spread out and through him.

He knew this sensation, too.

In a different life, he had bent a knee to the god Jessup of Oldenbrook. Then, too, he had been filled with Grace. And like Meeryn, Jessup had borne the aspect of water. To many, this aspect was the weakest of the four. Most of his fellow knights had sought out gods of fire, loam, or air. But not Tylar. He had been born as his mother drowned aboard a sinking scuttlecraft off the Greater Coast. Water was his home as much as shadow.

So he knew what filled him now.

“No!” he gasped. Grace flowed into him, drowned him, a hundredfold richer than when Jessup had ceremonially blessed him. He didn’t deserve this honor. He could not face it. But he also could not escape it.

Grace swelled in him, stretching him.

No… too much…

His back arched. He remembered his birth, shoved brutally and lovingly out of the warmth of his mother’s womb and into the cold seas of Myrillia. Then, too, he had breathed water, momentarily one with the sea-until salt burned and lungs fought to cry. He would have died had not the net of a lobsterman hauled him from the waves.

But who will save me now?

Water surged through him. He could not breathe. He craned, stretching for air.

Too much…

Something gave way deep inside him. The swell of water spouted up and drained down, spewing from him in racking spasms. He felt part of himself given away with it, released, stolen, shared-and at the same time, something entered, swimming up the flowing channel and into his chest, settling there, coiling there.

Then the water finally emptied from the broken vessel that was his body. Tylar collapsed in on himself, spent and drained. The momentary blessing was gone.

The hand on his chest fell away. His wrist was released.

He stared down again into Meeryn’s face.

Her soft skin no longer glowed, but her eyes still stared at him as dawn finally broke over the island, taking the edge off the gloom. Meeryn would recover. Like all the gods, she was immortal, undying, eternal.

Her lips moved, but no words were spoken. He thought he had read the word pity on those perfect lips, but maybe it was just something in her eyes. What did she mean?

“Lie still,” he urged, leaning closer. “Help will come.”

A small movement. A tiny shake of the head and a sigh. Her lips parted again. He cocked his head, bringing his ear closer. Her breath was cherry blossoms on a still lake.

“Rivenscryr,” she whispered. It was not a fragment of thought, but a simple command.

Tylar’s brow pinched at the strange word. Rivenscryr? He faced her, a question on his lips. “What-?”

Then he saw the impossible before him. It took all breath from him.

Meeryn lay as she had a moment before, but now all light faded from her-not just the glow of her Graces, but all that separated the living from the dead. Her eyes, still open, went empty and blind. Her lips remained parted with her last word, but no breath escaped them.

Both as a Shadowknight and as a slave, he had come to know death.

But here it was not possible.

Gods do not die.

A strident burst of horn startled him, driving him to his feet. He twisted around to find a dark shadow sweeping at him with the swiftness of a black gale. He fell back, fearing the beast had returned.

But glowing eyes stared down at him; shape took form, a familiar one. The cloak billowed out, then settled to narrow shoulders.

“Perryl,” Tylar said, relieved that his former squire had not been a part of the slaughter here. In the distance, the horn blared again. Shouts now could be heard. The castillion guards were closing in.

The young knight took in the scene. “What have you done?” he asked in a rush.

Tylar frowned at such a strange question. “What do you mean?”

Tylar glanced down at himself. He was covered in blood-Meeryn’s blood. In the center of his chest, a perfect palm print had been burned through his shirt and linens. The skin beneath was as black as the scorched edges of his clothing. He touched the flesh. No blistering. Just a black stain.

He was marked.

Tylar lifted an arm. “You can’t think I-?”

“I saw you earlier.”

“And I you… so?”

Perryl eyed him from head to toe. “Look at yourself.”

“Why-?” Further words died as he finally understood. Perhaps he had been too numbed by the events. Or perhaps it was like a pair of well-broken boots, easy to forget once donned. Either way, he finally noted the straight hold of his back, the breadth of his shoulders, the strength in his arms and legs.

“You’re healed.”

Before he could react, castillion guards pounded into the square, bearing pikes and long swords. Cries arose as the bloody sight struck them. Many fell immediately to their knees; the stronger fanned out to shield the square and attend to the night’s victims.

A full complement surrounded Meeryn, driving Tylar away at the point of a blade.

“Do not say a word,” Perryl hissed in his ear, staying at his side.

Tylar stared at the many drawn weapons and obeyed.

A fresh cry erupted from the crowd around the fallen god. “She’s dead!” one man shouted.

Another, bearing the oak sprig of a healer, stumbled free of the group. His face had drained of all color, his eyes bright with shock. “Her heart… her heart is gone… ripped away!”

All around, guards stared hard at Tylar, many weeping, others swearing. He knew how he must look: the lone survivor, covered in Meeryn’s blood, her palm print burned into his chest as if she had attempted to thrust him away.

And on top of it all, he was healed, cured, made new again.

A cadre of castle guards approached with swords drawn, murder in their every step.

Perryl stepped before Tylar, facing the men. “Under the edict of the Order, this man is arrested under my name.”