Even as Trell said that, it made insidious sense. Elder Halde had not said a word about Aryn’s death, asked her how it happened or how she was dealing with it. He had not mentioned her mother. He had asked only where she was and then ordered her not to move.
“Drown me, Trell. I told him everything. I’ve betrayed us all.”
“You can’t think like that. You couldn’t have known and we can’t be sure. Regardless, with Byn missing, we can’t wait for Halde. If your hunters did capture him, they will know their doppelganger failed, soon. When that happens, Byn loses his value to them.”
“You mean they murder him.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Not happening.” Kara focused on her goals, her friends. “We won’t let it and we’re done running. It’s time to hunt our hunters.”
Trell nodded. “I think that’s a good plan.”
Kara glanced back down the length of the pass as they walked, half expecting to see someone or something dogging their steps. She saw no sign of the spirit who had warned her about Malkavet. Had it been Life? No. Life was a maiden. That spirit had been a crone.
Whoever the spirit was, it had saved her life by warning her of Malkavet’s attack. Someone, somewhere, still watched over her. She whispered a thank you to the dark.
BYN MERIS WAS TIRED of scrambling up narrow mountain paths. After escaping the dead of Highridge Keep’s moat with the help of Porus the Seal, he had hiked all the way to Highridge Pass to find the entrance gone, covered in rock and debris. Someone had dropped an avalanche, and Byn was pretty sure it was Kara.
He had taken a game trail into the Ranarok mountains, thinking to find the open pass and rejoin his friends by another route, but then he had smelled gnarls on the wind and run without a care for anything. He couldn’t let them capture him! By the time he was free of pursuit he was deep in the Ranarok and thoroughly, horribly lost.
Byn had wandered for more than a day now with no real food. His stomach grumbled and twisted like a writhing snake. On the upside, his hunters hadn’t found him yet, so he still had that.
The mountains of the Ranarok surrounded him. Pine and snow-covered slopes cut into each other in an undulating mass as far as he could see. He followed a narrow game trail overlooking a chasm filled with a shallow, clear stream. One of dozens he had traveled.
The thin tree trunks around him sported spindly branches with slim leaves that rustled in the chill wind. The distant snow-covered peaks were identical to those he had seen this morning, and it seemed like he hadn’t made progress at all. He was so
hungry
.
He had scrounged up a few roots, sampled a mushroom or two, but none of it sated him. The Ranarok’s water also left a coppery taste in his mouth. Starving was not the way he wanted to die.
His memory of his last meal at Solyr taunted him. Crisp golden bread. Succulent honeyed ham. Apple slices and fresh red wine. He could almost taste it, and his empty stomach plagued his chest with stabbing pains. He missed Sera and he missed home.
The fight in the moat had taken everything he needed now, including his warm torasel cloak and his quarterstaff. Yesterday night had been cold but this day was already colder, and he knew he would have to light a fire tonight. It was a risk, but freezing to death wouldn’t help anyone.
Worse yet, the Ranarok was a maze. Byn’s legs ached and his feet swelled inside his thick warm boots. Clouds had moved in this morning and turned the day as dark as dusk. He had tried hunting, using Rannos as his guide, but nothing lived up here a wolf could hunt. He couldn’t live on bugs and mushrooms.
“Sera.”
Byn tried mindspeak again for what seemed like the hundredth time.
“Can you hear me? Can anyone hear me?”
He could feel Kara, Sera, and Jair at their dyn disc’s remaining points, but they were too far away for mindspeak. They could be fifty paces distant or ten leagues away, and it would all feel the same to him. It made him want to scream.
Sera could tell distance within a few hundred paces and think even further, but Byn had never mastered the intricacies of such communication beyond that required by his studies at Solyr. All that mattered is they were alive. He would find his own way back.
Uneven ground betrayed him. Byn barely avoided twisting his ankle and cursed loud enough to startle anything nearby. As he lurched forward, he scented something on the wind. More gnarls.
Their fur smelled like imported perfume, or some type of lantern grease. He debated only a moment before turning toward the smell. He was too tired to outrun them, and if they weren’t hunting him, they might lead him back to Highridge Pass. It was risk that, or wander the wilds for another day.
As he climbed higher Byn found an increasingly comfortable view of the surrounding terrain, jagged clefts and distant peaks. When he pulled himself over the cliff summit, he held back a triumphant shout. Highridge Pass sprawled just below, less than a hundred paces down the opposite side of this rise. Finally!
Stunted black trees huddled among tall shoots of grass that twisted in the wind. This portion of the pass, a wide break between mountains, was flat, hard packed stone, big enough to allow a carriage to pass. The gnarls he smelled waited below.
Byn felt Rannos snarl. Gnarls were a perversion of wolf and man, and Rannos despised them like nothing else. This must be the same tribe that worked for Jyllith, the same that had tried to feed Sera to Davazet. Byn wanted to rush down the rise and tear them apart.
He didn’t. He pressed himself low on the summit and watched, counted. Six gnarls were in sight, and more could be hiding around the distant curve in the pass.
Byn scribed Theotrix’s glyph on his forehead. Rannos offered impressive hearing, but even the great wolf couldn’t offer the sight he needed now. He had to learn what these gnarls planned. Were they still hunting him, or were they out here looking for Kara?
Two gnarls had fur of deep brown while others had fur of a lighter gray. Rockeaters and Windwalkers. The brown gnarls were pacing while the gray ones sat, raised ears flicking. All wore the expressions of a lonely mutt who had come upon a much bigger dog.
Byn eased forward, trying for a better vantage. He was cautious not to dislodge any rocks. A lone figure strode from the turn in the pass. Byn focused with Theotrix and found a young red-haired woman in fine, artfully cut leathers. He wanted to rip her head off.
“We move,” Jyllith said.
Rannos made her words audible and Byn was grateful for that, even if it sounded like they came through muffled cloth. Jyllith remained too far away to hear or see him. He listened close.
“Kara has destroyed the doppelganger, but the elder assured me she is still in Highridge Pass. She hopes to find Byn, the real Byn, and won’t leave until she does.”
A brown gnarl spoke up. “Hunt boy?”
Byn smiled. If the gnarl was asking about that, it meant they
weren’t
hunting him. That was very, very good.
“The boy means nothing. We’re after Kara. The elder’s on his way, and I don’t fancy another failure this close to the end.”
Byn carefully crept over the rise, staying low. He would let the gnarls move on, slip in behind them, and follow them to Kara. The perfect plan. Jyllith’s gaze snapped up.
Byn froze against the rocks. Jyllith was too far away to make him out, yet she stared right at him. Was she a Beastruler too? How many glyphs did this madwoman know?
“It seems the boy is hunting us,” Jyllith said quietly. “Now he’s going to die.”
A flash of movement caught Byn’s eyes. Theotrix found the dark outline of a davenger on the opposite ridge, eyes wide and red. It charged down, dashed in front of Jyllith, and clawed its way up. Toward him. The steep, uneven terrain barely slowed it down.
Byn scrambled down the rise, cursing and slipping and windmilling his arms. Too slow. Pebbles clattered as the davenger charged after him. Byn spun to find it coming down fast. He drew on Kermodo as the davenger dropped with a mill saw shriek.
Byn slammed a clenched fist into the descending davenger, channeling all of Kermodo’s strength into the blow. He felt something pinch his arm just as he hit it, saw red blood spray across the muddy ground. The davenger went crashing down the slope.
The rolling demon bounced off rocks, splintered trees, and splattered black blood. It flipped off a high rock and slammed into a high ridge wall. The impact echoed through the pass like a board snapping in half. Finally, the demon tumbled out of sight.
Byn heard himself laughing, whooping, as his lungs and his muscles screamed in pain. Still alive. Then he felt the sticky wet covering his arm and stared with wide eyes.
The davenger had left several bloody gashes all the way through his bicep. He could see bone, torn muscle, and his own blood, pumping out in rhythmic spurts. Dizziness hit him in a wave.
Byn focused on his training and scribed the only healing glyph Sera had ever managed to teach him: Osis. He could halt the majority of his blood loss by forcing Osis to constrict itself around his arm, Solyr’s version of a tourniquet. He had time. Jyllith and her gnarls couldn’t scale that rise as fast as the davenger had.
Byn descended the rise at a slow but respectable pace until something scrambled into view from the chasm. The davenger. Byn’s heart sank and he almost surrendered, almost dropped to his knees and waited to die. He was so tired. So hungry. So alone.
He remembered Sera. He remembered Kara, his need to warn her, and pushed up. He wasn’t dead yet!
The davenger drove its claws right into rock to gain purchase on the steep slope. It twisted its head around like an owl, taunting him with an upside down smile. It scrambled toward him, drool flying from its open mouth like a feral dog.
So Byn drew on Rannos and ran for his life.
They sprinted together along narrow game trails running between a maze of treacherous cliffs, kicking aside pebbles and slipping in mud. Thin trees whisked by as branches slapped Byn’s face. He could hear raspy demon breaths growing closer.
Byn sprinted on until Rannos sensed all was not right in the pass ahead. All smells terminated less than fifty paces ahead, and his footsteps echoed oddly. Byn took the dream world and gasped.
Ahead was a pit filled with towering needles of rock, mage made and not natural. Engineered stone. An impossible trap.
During the All Province War, Torn had set many traps for Metla Tassaun soldiers in the mountains. Enough soldiers had fallen victim that both sides had soon taken to calling his insidious traps “Torn’s Teeth”. Not all had been removed after the war.
At the last possible moment Byn halted and spun, baring his teeth. The davenger stopped just behind him, baring its teeth back. Nothing stood between them but rocks matted with lichen.
“You want my blood?” Byn pounded his good arm against his chest. “Here I am! Let’s finish this!”
He channeled Olden’s Shell and backed a step, heel finding cold air. The High Protector had always made terrifyingly clever traps, but if the demon realized what Byn had…
The davenger lunged. Byn fell on his face and visualized Olden’s Shell. Gripped it hard. He felt and heard the demon corpse slam into the shell. It shrieked as it bounced off, sliding in midair. It shrieked as it fell through the insubstantial ground behind him.
Byn fell flat, sucking in the earthy smell of rock and mud. He breathed and blinked. Eventually, he summoned enough strength to push up and crawl to the edge of the pit.
The davenger writhed just below. Impaled. Black blood bubbled over its yellowed teeth as it thrashed its limbs. A towering chisel of rock jutted almost six hands from its ruined chest.
Similar spiky protrusions lay in wait all around the first, but Byn saw no ground in the chasm. Only fog. He felt new awe as he stared at work as frightening as it was beautiful.
The rocky spikes were huge, perfectly shaped and needle sharp. Byn had never seen any Earther work like this, on this scale and with this precision. Torn had been the only battlemage in all Five Provinces who could construct such an impressive trap.
Byn collapsed at the edge of the pit. He was safe. The High Protector, the Savior of the Northern Alliance and the Five Provinces, had reached beyond his death to help a child of Mynt one last time. Now all he had to do was find Kara.
As soon as he could walk again.
The davenger went still as its blackened scales crumbled to leave ruined pink flesh. When that ended, a dead woman with dark eyes and frazzled brown hair stared at the gray sky. An empty shell.
Byn knew her soul was still trapped in the Underside, still being tortured there. That was an eternity she could not escape and did not deserve. Demon glyphs were evil, and those who scribed them even more so. People like Jyllith.
Thinking about Jyllith and how much he hated her roused the last of Byn’s strength. He had to warn Kara! He pushed up but his ruined arm betrayed him, dropped him onto bloody dirt. Byn realized blood was everywhere. Was this all his?
Byn shuddered, now freezing. He managed to roll onto his back. He stared at low hanging clouds and recognized his fatal mistake. In scribing Olden’s Shell, he had lost all grip on Osis.