Chapter 47
47
N YX SANG TO the beasts in the square. As she did, she added her voice to the chorus of women outside, while drawing their strands back into her. She cast herself out along those threads, like a spider dancing across a web. She did so delicately, unsure, still tentative about such a talent.
She recognized Xan by the silvery threads in her voice, Dala by the fire of her youth. The other Kethra’kai added their strength with every note. Somewhere she even sensed the faint chords of a lullaby.
Yet, wound through them all were thin cords of bronze, so ancient that they seemed to glow with tarnish and verdigris. From the corner of her eye, she spotted the source, a woman with painted bronze skin. She appeared to be wounded and fading. Yet, there was also something unnerving about her. With no moment to spare, Nyx shied from such strangeness for now.
Instead, she settled where she felt the most familiar, into the heart of a feral beast, tamed only by the warmth of a shared pack.
Aamon’s challenge flowed across the square. His low growl, commingled with a high-pitched chittering, shivered the hairs on her arms. Still, his was a song in its own right, as beautiful in its savagery as any sweet melody.
Recognizing this, she added her song to his. In a breath, her heart became his, and his lusts were now hers. She stared through his eyes and her own.
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.
W RYTH 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.
Then all that had been set aside when Skerren’s orb had begun to vibrate in Wryth’s palm. After leaving the shores of Eitur, he had never set the crystal globe down. His gaze seldom strayed from it. His frustration grew as the orb’s tiny copper-wrapped lodestones refused to stir again to those unseen winds. He had almost given up hope—until the globe shivered with warning in his grip.
He had lifted it and saw the lodestone slivers pointing west of the mooring fields. The orb had trembled in his hand, as if it could barely withstand those forces. Still, it had taken the intervention by Haddan via skrycrow to convince Brask to drift the Pywll along the trail of those unseen winds to their source.
Skerren’s orb had led them to a tall golden crown jutting out of the smoky pall, belonging to a tree far larger than any other. It looked like a gilded island in a black sea. To spy below those dark waters, Wryth had suggested the judicious placement of a firebomb to blast the smoke away.
Through the farscope now, Wryth studied the grounds below as the warship circled that island. He saw people scurrying to and fro, panicked by the blast. Then near an open square, he spotted a bloody slaughter of horses. Amidst the ruins were bodies bearing the livery of the legion.
He stiffened, guessing who they were.
Brask’s brother and the other knights.
What had happened?
He started to pull back, ready to alert Brask, when movement in the square drew his eye. A clutch of people scrambled toward the bower of Oldenmast. He was ready to dismiss them as panicked townspeople—when a shaft of sunlight pierced the same smoky hole and glinted off a patch of bright bronze.
He grabbed the farscope with both hands and pulled the eyepiece closer. A group half carried, half dragged a bronze sculpture. His heart clenched in his chest.
At long last…
Without looking away, he called to Brask. “It’s down there!”
This was the first time since the mines of Chalk that he had laid eyes upon the ancient talisman. He held his breath.
“What do you want me to do?” Brask strode over to him. “We’re too high and the trees are too thick for us to lower the Pywll. ”
“It matters not.” Wryth’s fingers trembled as the smoky pall resealed the hole under him, erasing the sight. “We cannot risk that weapon ever being wielded against the realm.”
“Then what should—”
Wryth turned to the commander. “Unload a firestorm below. All around that tree. Burn it down to its roots.”
S UPPORTING N YX UNDER one arm, Kanthe fled across the open square. Aamon tracked her other side. A continual growl flowed from the vargr’s throat. The beast’s ears lay flat against his skull after the thunderous blast overhead.
Jace stumbled alongside them with Frell. They all fled toward the group of Kethra’kai. The other party hobbled more slowly, burdened by a strange woman, who appeared to be in armor, which baffled him.
But such quandaries had to wait.
More thunderous blasts erupted all around, bursting with flame and smoke. They all ducked from the concussions and ran low. Then behind them, one of the bombs struck the doors of the Golden Bough, exploding with enough force to throw them all forward.
Kanthe glanced back. The blast had torn a gaping hole into the commons, and flames were quickly spreading.
“C’mon.” He helped Nyx off her knees.
By the time they overtook the others, the Kethra’kai had rounded the giant bole of Oldenmast. The tall, pointed doors in the trunk appeared ahead, along with the round window of painted glass above it.
A tribesman was already there, hauling open one side.
Another rushed to Xan and helped her move faster.
They all fled toward the open door. As they reached it, Kanthe heard a heavy cracking of branches overhead. He looked up—as a huge fiery barrel came smashing through the tree limbs, toppling straight toward them.
“Move!” he screamed, pushing Nyx ahead of him.
They piled through the door.
He urged them deeper. “Keep goin—”
The explosion tossed them all across the dark interior. Kanthe hit the floor hard and tumbled, tangled with Nyx. A fireball rolled over them, trailed by searing smoke. Shattered glass rained all around.
As soon as the worst passed, Jace scrambled to them and helped haul them up. Aamon growled, dancing a protective circle around the group. Across the dark chamber, the others gained their feet.
Kanthe glanced behind him. Both doors had been ripped off. A body remained on the floor, crushed under a shattered section of the giant door. Kanthe recognized the dead woman. With a wince, he tried to draw Nyx away.
But Nyx balked and stepped in that direction, rubbing her eyes, as if struggling to see.
Xan forced her back. “No,” the elder said.
“Who…?” Nyx gasped out.
Xan urged her onward.
“Who?” Nyx pressed more firmly.
Kanthe frowned, knowing Nyx would not budge. “Tell her.”
Xan’s eyes met hers. “Dala.”
Kanthe pictured the tribeswoman, a youth who could never seem to stop smiling.
Except no longer.
Nyx wove on her feet, her face dazed and heartbroken. Jace helped get her legs moving deeper into the hollow of the ancient tree. Behind them, more blasts and explosions drove them onward.
Kanthe glanced one last time through the broken doors and shattered windows.
Fires raged past the threshold.
He swore vengeance on whoever wrought such damage.
I will make you suffer.
W RYTH SHOVED THE farscope away from his face. It took him several hard blinks for his sight to readjust back to the forecastle of the Pywll —but his fury could not be so easily dispelled.
“Well?” Brask asked.
He snapped at the commander, wanting to lash out at anything near at hand. “Your brother is dead.”
“What?” Brask lunged at the farscope. “Why didn’t you tell me—”
Wryth blocked him. “It’s no use,” he said, forcing a note of sympathy. “The smoke of the bombings has washed away any view below.”
“Then we’ll blast open a new hole.”
“It’ll do no good. Those new flames are pouring smoke across the ground.” He faced Brask. “But I can tell you this. It was those thieves who killed your brother.”
The Vyrllian’s crimson features darkened into a storm.
Wryth turned to the bow windows, toward the golden crown of the ancient alder. During the bombardment, he had caught brief fragments of the view below, lit by the blast of flames. He’d had to watch impotently as the group dashed the bronze woman into that ancient woodland sanctuary, Oldenmast.
To make matters worse, through the farscope he had spotted an upraised face running across the square. Just for a breath. He couldn’t be certain, but the dark features stood out among a sea of pale Kethra’kai faces.
Plus, the conspicuous bow across his back…
It had to be.
Kanthe.
Wryth clenched a fist.
How did the prince end up with the artifact? Was this some further plot of insurrection? Did the bastard plan on wielding the weapon against the king?
For the sake of all of Hálendii, Wryth had to put a stop to it, even if it meant destroying the treasure, or at least burying it for a time. He returned to face the fury in Brask’s face and pointed to the gilded crown of Oldenmast.
“Your brother’s murderers fled into that tree,” he said. “They must be brought low.”
Brask turned away, his voice a clenched knot. “Then I’m done casting stones.”
Wryth followed, worried he might have pushed the commander too far. Brask’s next words confirmed this.
“I’m going to drop a Hadyss Cauldron atop them. When I’m finished, there will be nothing below but a smoking crater.”
W ITH HER HEAD still ringing, Nyx stumbled through the cavernous expanse hollowed out of the alder’s trunk. Jace kept to one side of her, Aamon on the other, both panting hard. She had regained most of her vision and some of her strength, enough to be able to move on her own.
Behind her, smoke rolled into the dark chamber and rose to smother a dome swathed in glowing mosses and fungi. The only other illumination came from tiny lamps that revealed tall figures at the cardinal points of the room. They appeared to be carved out of Oldenmast’s trunk.
Dala had told her how they represented the Kethra’kai gods. To honor her friend, Nyx glanced all around, setting it to memory before it was lost.
As she crossed the sacred chamber, she identified each god. Vhatn of the waters stood with her hands cupped, from which the trickle of a hidden spring flowed into a basin near her bare feet. The heavy-browed Jarevegur, of loam and rock, looked more boulder than man. Vyndur, of the air, held clouds over his head, inset with silver lightning bolts. Then Eldyr, she who was fire, stood entirely cloaked, with only her eyes glowing from under a hood, lit from within by a secret flame.
Nyx shivered as she passed the last. That fiery gaze seemed to follow her, to accuse her. Past the ringing of her ears, she heard the flames roaring outside.
Xan kept alongside Nyx, thumping with her cane near Aamon. The elder noted her attention, maybe her shiver. “Fire can also be cleansing. It is flame that clears a forest and burns cones to cast new seeds.”
A resounding crash echoed from outside, marking one of the mighty Reach alders toppling somewhere in town. Nyx could not imagine how any of this ruin could serve a useful purpose.
Frell drew up to her, with Kanthe at his side. The prince’s face was a dark shadow of fury. “Where do we go?” the alchymist asked.
Xan pointed her cane toward a pair of Kethra’kai scouts who had run forward and swiveled open a round door that looked like a knot in the trunk’s wood. The pair also carried lamps.
“Down to Oldenmast’s deepest root,” Xan explained. “It’s why I brought her here.”
The elder glanced over a shoulder to the clutch of Kethra’kai who supported the bronze-painted woman. The shadows and smoke made it hard to discern her features. It looked like she wore a metal mask. The woman’s presence still made no sense. Nyx remembered the ancient filaments, glowing a tarnished bronze, that had flowed out with the woman’s song.
Nyx also noted the other strangers who helped or hovered at the woman’s side. One, from the finery of his clothes and dark skin, appeared to be a Klashean tradesman. The other’s shorter stance and thicker limbs marked him as Guld’guhlian, same as the hard woman with chopped blond hair and a perpetual scowl.
“Quickly now.” Xan drew them all to the door that stood swiveled open, pivoting around a pin down its center.
The elder climbed over the threshold and took the lead. Even the two scouts fell back, as if knowing this was her place.
They all followed Xan down a winding stair carved out of the center of what must be a thick root—maybe the taproot of the alder. The grain of the wood was gold against a silvery white. As they continued, round and round, the veining vanished and left only a snowy wood that felt as ancient as the rock of this land.
As they continued, the roaring fires overhead faded to a solemn quiet, disturbed only by their footfalls, hard breaths, and the pad of Aamon’s paws. Other doors and dark passages led off the main stairs, heading in all directions.
Xan spoke into the thickening silence, maybe to dispel their discomfort. She waved to one of the side tunnels. “The Oldenmast may seem like one tree, but in actuality, it makes up all the trees of this grove. The Oldenmast’s roots extend outward in every direction. From this tree’s ancient suckers, all the other trunks of this ancient grove sprang forth.”
Nyx tried to picture that spread of roots and trunks. She stared up and around with amazement. This entire grove is one tree.
Kanthe took a more practical view of Xan’s words, peering down a dark passageway. “Does that mean we can use those same spread of roots to go anywhere in this town? Maybe even slip past the fires above?”
“And escape those who hunt us,” Jace reminded them.
Frell turned to Xan. “Is that why you had us come down here?”
“No.” The elder waved her cane. “These cellars and passages grow thinner and scarcer the farther out you go. I fear you’d still end up within that trap of fire and ash above.”
“Then where can we go?” Frell asked.
“To an even more ancient root, one belonging to the old gods,” Xan answered cryptically. “We should—”
The world jolted all around with a crack of thunder that deafened and crushed chests. They all tumbled or fell across the wooden steps. A great ripping accompanied it, as if the very ground was being torn asunder.
Before Nyx could stand, a wall of fiery smoke, wretched with sulfurous brimstan, blasted over them. A rumbling accompanied it. Then a torrent of rocks came rattling down, bringing with it a flow of sand and dirt.
Kanthe grabbed Nyx, hauled her up, and hollered to everyone, “Go! Keep going!”
The scouts ran forward. Ignoring their earlier obeisance, they scooped Xan up and hauled her bodily down the stairs. The rest of the group raced after them, with Aamon loping and growling at Nyx’s side.
Dust and grumbling rock chased after them. Then a loud splintering boom shattered above. The stairs bucked under her, nearly tossing Nyx back down. She caught herself on Aamon’s flank to keep her footing and continued downward.
Still, she stared back up, picturing the great golden-boughed breadth of Oldenmast crashing across Havensfayre.
We should’ve never come here…
Finally, the rumbling and rattling settled to groans that fell farther behind them. Dust still hung in the air, but it thinned as they fled deeper. The spiral of the stairs also grew narrower, pinched as the taproot thinned around them.
Frell noted a disconcerting detail. “We’ve not passed any side tunnels since the blast.”
Jace looked back, his eyes huge, his face streaming with sweat. “That means we’re trapped down here.”
“Still,” Kanthe added, “that also means those hunters can’t reach us. If that’s any consolation?”
From Jace’s aghast expression, it was not.
After several turns of the stairs, the way grew so tight that they had to continue single file. Xan freed herself from the scouts’ help and stamped the last of the way down on her own. Finally, the stairs exited the giant root and entered a domed chamber. Overhead, an arching vein of burnished white wood cut across the roof. The rest of the room was polished black stone.
Nyx stared up. She recognized the vein of wood was actually the trailing end of Oldenmast’s taproot, the one they’d been climbing through. It dove past this chamber, as if avoiding it, and vanished back into the rock. It was as if this room was a stone lodged in a dark river.
Nyx saw why.
Across the chamber, the obstruction around which the taproot passed stood on the chamber’s far side.
Xan crossed toward it.
Nyx and the others gathered behind the elder.
Ahead of them, an oval copper door bulged into the space. Tangles of bronze and gold filaments delved outward along its edges, digging into root and stone. None of it appeared to have been crafted by any hand. It was all flowy, with no straight edges. She imagined it slithering down here and lodging in place, intent on sucking strength and sustenance from the base of the sacred tree.
To Nyx, it looked like the coppery maw of a great beast.
Or maybe a god…
Xan bowed her head before it, leaning on her staff with both hands. She began to sing to it. The chant rose low in her thin chest, as if she were trying to draw something from deep in her heart.
Nyx listened with an ear cocked. She sought the rhythm and melody, but it was unlike anything she had heard before. She took a step forward, but Aamon growled next to her, shifting in front of her, as if warning Nyx that this was not meant for her.
He’s right…
From behind her, the painted woman limped forward. She shed those who had been supporting her, revealing herself fully for the first time as she stepped into the lamplight.
Nyx fell back from the sight.
Jace tried to draw her farther away, while Frell gasped and Kanthe swore.
The Guld’guhlian stretched an arm toward her. “Shiya…”
The Klashean grasped his arm, keeping him from following.
Nyx gulped down her initial shock and studied this strange woman sculpted of metal. Her limbs moved stiffly, as if the bronze fought the intent inside.
As the figure joined Xan, she began to sing, easily finding the rhythm that had escaped Nyx. The fragility of each note awakened the sadness and grief inside her. Still, in that moment, she knew her loss was but a drop compared to the ocean within this living statue.
As the two sang toward that coppery door, shimmering threads flowed outward from the women. The strands wafted toward the door, tangling into a complicated knot, then vanished into the metal.
Without being told, Nyx understood. She remembered her confrontation with the scyther, how she had undone the lock within the helm’s steel by forging a key to open it.
It’s the same here.
A deep atonal note responded to their twined song—and the copper door swiveled on a pivot down its middle, opening like the wooden door far above.
Beyond the threshold lay only darkness.
Xan sagged, exhausted from the effort. The bronze woman—Shiya—stumbled back, only to be steadied by the Guld’guhlian, who rushed forward. The Kethra’kai, along with the man’s two companions, helped him.
Nyx drew closer to the door.
One of the scouts lifted his lamp higher, casting its shine past the threshold. A long tunnel, made of the same copper, extended into the darkness. She remembered Xan’s description of what awaited them below.
An even more ancient root, one belonging to the old gods.
Frell joined her, possibly remembering the same. The alchymist turned to Xan. “This tunnel… where does it lead?”
Still tired, Xan breathed heavily but answered. “To the Shrouds of Dalal?ea.” She turned to the bronze figure. “To her home.”