James Clemens - Shadowfall

There was no doubt what had bitten off the god’s hand.

The dred ghawl.

Balger roared back to his feet. He cradled his severed wrist as guards swooped into the room like a flock of black crows, capes billowing, swords ready.

Balger crossed back to Tylar, destruction in his eyes.

Rogger attempted to step in the god’s path, but Balger shoved the thief aside.

The god leaned over Tylar, baring his mutilation. Already the blood had stopped flowing as the wounded wrist healed with a speed of a god. The hand, too, would grow back in the thickness of time. But for now, Balger’s entire bearing flamed with fury. His skin smoked with Grace, his eyes flashed with fire, his breath seared with the winds of a pyre.

A bellow of rage formed words. “You think to kill me, Godslayer!”

Balger drew a dagger and wiped its blade across his anger-damp brow. Steel, blessed now by the god’s fiery sweat, turned as ruddy as a branding iron. Balger touched the tip of the knife to his seeping wound, gracing it with his own blood. The god’s eyes narrowed as he cast a specific blessing. The blade went white-hot, more flame than substance.

“A bale dagger,” Balger said, holding up his handiwork.

Tylar struggled in his bonds, sensing his doom.

“Milord! No!” Rogger struggled to elbow through two guards.

Balger raised the dagger high, then plunged it into Tylar’s belly.

Searing pain shattered outward.

Balger dragged the knife up from groin to rib cage, gutting him.

Tylar cried out, but agony throttled him, turning wail into gurgle. His body arched off the rack, on shoulders and heels, writhing as the room went black. His innards blazed with molten fire.

He fell backward into darkness.

For an untold time, Tylar balanced on the razor edge of agony, sightless and witless. The pain refused to relent, to let him escape. It held him in claws of fire, ripping and tearing.

Then the torture ended. Abruptly.

The sudden cessation of pain woke him like a frigid dive into a snowmelt stream. Gasping, blind still, Tylar collapsed back to the rack. He blinked back his vision, damp with tears.

He watched Balger step from his side, smoking blade in hand.

Tylar stared down at his body, expecting to see intestines spilling from a gaping wound. But his skin lay unmarked. Only the thin course of hair across his belly smoldered, marking the path of the blade.

Balger leaned over him again. He lifted the blazing dagger. “Ripe with my fiery blessing, the bale blade cuts and heals at the same time. I can slice you all day and all night and you will never weaken or expire.”

He raised the blade again and plunged it into Tylar’s shoulder, striking clean through to the wood beneath.

Tylar screamed, unable to help himself.

Balger straightened, abandoning the impaled dagger. “Or I can leave it here. Cutting and healing continually in one place, leaving only pain, a pain that never dulls, but always remains fresh.”

Tylar writhed. He had been struck by arrows and blades of all manner. The sting of impact was always intense, but it dulled as severed nerves retracted. Not now. This agony never relented.

Movement by his toes drew his narrowed vision. Rogger appeared and grabbed his bound foot. “I’m sorry, Tylar.” The thief’s deft fingers snatched his littlest toe, met his eyes, then snapped his digit cleanly.

Tiny bones snapped.

The pain was small compared to his shoulder, but in a single breath, it spread outward in a growing wave of agony: up his leg and out over the rest of his body. Bones, healed by Grace before, broke anew, shattering his form. The dagger’s bite disappeared under the assault, overwhelmed.

Through this agony, Tylar felt something shake loose from the broken cage of his body, snaking out. In the wake of its passage, fractured bones drew back in place, malformed and misaligned, fusing and callusing anyway. His body twisted and joints stiffened, back into his old bent form.

The pain receded, except in his shoulder. Fire continued to blaze outward from the impaled dagger.

In the torchlight, a font of black smoke, darker than shadow, billowed from his chest as if from a baker’s chimney. Eyes opened in the darkness, ablaze with lightning.

Guards scattered to the four walls. Several dropped swords in fright.

Balger kept his post. The god’s gaze followed the column of smoke to where it pooled like spilled ink across the cell’s low roof.

From the black sea, a sinuous column snaked out and downward, forming head and neck. Wings swept out as a pair of flanking waves. Silver eyes blazed brighter with white fire. Hanging upside down from the roof like some shadowy bat, the daemon studied the room. The dred ghawl ’s wings lowered protectively to either side of Tylar. A keening wail, beyond hearing but felt on every hair on the body, echoed off the stone walls.

A humpbacked guard stabbed a lance at the shadowy creature. Its steel head melted and splashed back at the attacker’s toes. Its haft caught fire, falling away to ash. The guard dropped the cursed weapon and fell out the doorway and away. Others followed. Balger’s loyalty was earned by fear. A greater fear now overwhelmed his retinue.

In moments, Lord Balger was alone.

The god’s eyes narrowed upon the daemon. “I know you, creature. Spawn of the naether do not belong in this world of sinew and bone.”

The dred ghawl ’s mane of smoke bristled, and its muzzle sharpened. It stretched toward the god. Balger backed up as the daemon snaked out to meet the god, eye to eye. The white-fire blaze of the daemon’s gaze flashed. The keening in the room focused to a hiss that pained the ears and drew cold sweat from pores.

Tylar recognized that voice, having heard it before, on the streets of Punt, from Meeryn’s dark attacker. It was not easily forgotten. Tylar knew what he heard-both then and now.

The voice from the naether… the voice of the naethryn.

Balger’s eyes grew wider as he listened to the naether daemon. He stumbled back to the far wall. “No!” the god gasped out with a sharp shake of his head. “Not possible… Rivenscryr was destroyed!”

Tylar felt a tug on his ankle. He glanced down to see Rogger slicing his leather bonds with a dagger. His right leg was freed, then his left. Rogger shied forward and worked at his left wrist. “Be ready to run.”

Tylar’s suspicion of the thief flared, but as long as he was being freed, he kept silent. Pain still flamed his right shoulder.

“The bale dagger,” Rogger said, moving to his last binding. “Can you free it?”

As answer, Tylar reached to the hilt of the dagger. He grabbed the bone hilt. He felt the Grace fired within it. It helped steady his grip. With an explosion of pained breath, he tugged it from his shoulder. A wisp of smoke trailed the blade’s tip, taking the agony with it. Bathed in the brightness of the blade, Tylar’s shoulder was unmarred, healed and hale.

Rogger helped him sit up.

The daemon kept the god pinned to the wall.

But Balger’s shock waned. The disbelief in his voice hardened to anger. “You lie, naether-spawn!”

Tylar dragged himself off the rack and crouched on the far side. He fell easily into his old form, back bent, left leg stiff as a walking stick. The ache of his joints was as familiar as a warm cloak. It helped center him, despite the horror.

The dark umbilicus flowed out from the black print over his heart, coiling and twisting. Tylar waved his hand through the channel, but found nothing but smoke. He recognized the billowing darkness now. While fleeing out of the depths of Tangle Reef, he had witnessed the same. What the seafolk named the Gloom. A penetration of the naether into this world. Only this black font leaked from his own chest. A conduit for the naether-spawn, the naethryn undergod.