Long Fiction

These are excerpts from The Pain Bearer, a novel in the Eldros Legacy shared universe. Originally published 2022. 

Chapter Three

Rowan

After the digging crew was fed the next morning, Rowan gathered a sheaf of parchment and slipped it into the folio she’d made and hung it from her belt. Next came her quill and the bottle of ink, both she tucked carefully in their own places. As the diggers began filing into the ruins, following Jannik’s excited voice, Rowan stopped by one of the crates near the far end of camp.

“What’s that?” Darryn asked when Rowan cracked open the lid of the crate. Jannik had asked him to clean up the breakfast dishes, and while Darryn had rolled his eyes, he hadn’t dared complain to his employer.

“Never you mind, Little Beast,” Rowan said. Little clay disks inscribed with three concentric circles filled a small compartment of the crate. Rowan slipped a couple of the fire charges into the pocket of her apron and replaced the lid. It didn’t fit well and slid home with a loud thump.

Darryn frowned and cast a quick glance at the retreating backs of the other workers. “Don’t call me that. Just because I ruined your doll picnic once when I was three.”

Rowan hid a smile. “I’m sorry. It was just for fun.”

“I know. But I don’t want to be known as Rowan and Esrell’s little brother, here. I just want to be Darryn.”

She bit her lip and patted him on the head. “All right, Darryn.”

He batted at her hand and went back to his dishes, completely forgetting about the crate—as she’d intended.

She wasn’t likely to need the disks. But if she happened to find anything, the small Land Magic blasting spells would help her exhume it. Because it wasn’t like she could swing a pickax, and her fine-haired brushes and the chisel on the other side of her belt might not be enough.

She left Darryn puttering over the cook pot and Esrell yawning over her crates, and Rowan climbed into the ruins. This early in the day, the hike to her vantage at the top of the hill wasn’t so hard on her back. She’d slept well enough that she’d woken without pain, and she quickly scaled the peak to look out over the dig site. From here she could see well enough to draw a new map, but this one was different from the rest. This time she sketched landmarks and marked the places she thought were the most promising.

She could see the facility laid out below her with its open rooms and half-tumbled walls. The long hallway led to the central chamber where Jannik directed the diggers, and the sun picked out lighter bits in the stones of the outer rooms. She could imagine the facility and the Giants who had once walked between them. The place was bigger than her village, but overall, there couldn’t be more than ten chambers.

At least on the surface.

To the east of Jannik’s now-concentrated efforts in the central chamber, stood the stairwell they’d found. It led down into the earth but had been blocked when the ceiling collapsed.

How much of the complex stretched under their feet, hidden and waiting?

Rowan climbed down the other side of the hill and headed for the stairs. That stairwell nagged at Rowan like the beginning of a toothache. Maybe if she poked at it enough, something significant might happen.

It could just be a basement for storage. Maybe they’d find some rotting barrels of ancient mead or root vegetables. That’s what their mother had kept in their cellar.

Or it could be something more, the rooms above serving as an antechamber to what was below. An entry hall for the more important underground chambers.

She started from the collapsed stairwell and worked her way out. At first, she’d thought she might be able to blast her way through with the fire charges. That was what they were for after all, used in mines or quarries to break apart rock, but Jannik’s patron had sent a few along to expedite the digging in certain places. Obviously, they wouldn’t be useful anywhere there might be delicate artifacts, but for clearing rubble, they were ideal.

Except who knew how far the blockage extended down the stairwell. As soon as she drew even with it enough to peer through the cracks, Rowan realized there was an entire hill’s worth of rock in her way. She wouldn’t be getting through that with what was in her pockets, and the blast would bring the rest of the workers, plus Jannik, before she even knew what was down there.

No, she needed to find another way down.

She moved in concentric circles, marking off the areas she’d already searched on her map so she didn’t backtrack by accident. She looked for anything that might lead downward. Stairs, drainage pipes, air holes. She even looked for collapsed tunnels or rooms where the roof had caved in.

No such luck.

The sun had started descending toward the opposite end of the ruin when she paused to rest her hip against a moss-covered stone. She scrubbed her sweaty forehead with the back of her hand and spat stray curls out of her mouth.

Well, she’d learned one thing today. How to feel foolish in just a few hours. Had she really expected to find Jannik’s great-grandfather and his famous artifact on the very first day she’d been looking? Jannik was a seasoned antiquarian and had been searching for years, exhausting site after site before finally arriving at this one. Rowan had only been his assistant for three months.

The sounds of digging lessened over at the other end of the ruins and Rowan could imagine they were taking their lunch break, a chance to rest against the stones and pass around some bread and cheese. Her mouth watered.

She straightened up with a groan and stepped across the lumpy ground, avoiding the obvious rubble covered with moss and grass. Ahead, the walls fell away and the ground smoothed a little between her and the next ruined wall, leaving a much easier path. She gravitated that way, but the moment her boot fell on the slightly depressed ground, it seemed to give a little under her feet.

Her heart plummeted. Soft ground at a dig site signaled danger to anyone with an ounce of sense.

Rowan threw herself backward, but not before the ground fell out from under her feet. She plummeted fast enough she couldn’t even scream.

* * *

For three full heartbeats, Rowan thought the earth had swallowed her, boots, belt, and all. Then she landed with a bone jarring thump, and all the breath raced from her lungs. She didn’t have the time—let alone air—to scream.

Pain radiated out from her spine, and her fingers clenched involuntarily at the soft, sifting dirt beneath her. Even more alarming were the sparks flitting across her vision, like fireflies across the sun.

Finally, she sucked in a breath. She blinked away the flashes of light until she realized that she was staring up at a Rowan-shaped hole in the ground.

Up. Not down. Ground was not supposed to be above anything. That was kind of the point.

Rowan groaned and tried to roll, finding that her body still worked, and she hadn’t actually broken anything. A huge blessing considering how she’d blundered into an excessively stupid mistake. She’d guessed there were underground chambers, and she hadn’t waited for the workers to make sure the site was stable before tromping around looking for a way down.

Well, she’d found a way down all right.

She stifled a moan and pushed up on her elbows, ignoring the new twinges in her back. Then she put a hand to her head and peered at her new surroundings.

She’d fallen into a long, narrow hallway, and from the looks of it, the ceiling had collapsed long ago, leaving only a deceptively thick carpet of moss and grass to cover the gaps.

The hallway stretched in front of her and behind in an unbroken line, and the walls rose above her, smooth and twice as tall as Darryn.

There was no way she was climbing out by herself. She opened her mouth to yell for help and hesitated.

The hall led from the same direction as the stairwell she’d been surveying, and the afternoon sun streamed through the hole she’d made, providing light. The hall continued on behind her, an unknown portal that could lead to anything.

This was what she’d wanted. She’d found what she was looking for, even if it had been by accident. Surely it wouldn’t hurt if she explored just a bit before she called for a rescue.

Rowan climbed out of the dislodged dirt and grass and faced the open hallway. With one hand on the wall to steady herself, she crept forward. Her shadow stretched long ahead of her, disappearing into the gloom beyond.

She counted thirty steps before her shadow blended into the darkness around her and she had to squint to see anything ahead of her.

Just a little bit more, she told herself. Why didn’t I think to bring something as simple as flint and tinder?

Thirty more steps, and her eyes had adjusted enough to see the edges of the hallway.

Rowan bit her lip. Hallways usually led somewhere. They had rooms leading off them, or they opened onto other passageways. But this one remained straight, as if leading to one place.

It ended in a door of stone, tall enough to admit a draft horse.

Rowan’s heart thumped. This had to be important. Someone had built this hallway to lead to this room for a reason.

The door sat in its frame, a solid piece of rock set perfectly flush with the wall.

Rowan ran her hands over the polished surface, looking for a handle or latch, but it was unbroken and unyielding. Pushing on it did nothing, though that wasn’t surprising given her lack of strength. Her seeking hands found a panel beside the door, as smooth as glass, but it didn’t seem to mean anything. There was no etching on it, and the door remained firmly shut no matter what she did.

She ran her fingertips along the joint between the door and the door frame and didn’t even find a crack.

This door was sealed. Not like rubble had blocked the stairwell. This seemed sealed on purpose.

Just like a hallway had to lead somewhere, a sealed door had to be sealed for a reason.

Now she really should call for help, but something stopped her. Something more than just the curiosity she’d been following. A feeling tugged in her gut, uncomfortable and compelling. She needed to see what was behind the door.

She drew the little clay disks from the pocket of her apron. The fire charges carried a blasting spell laid there by a Land Magician. The most expensive equipment at the dig, but if the door really was guarding something important, it would be well worth it.

She hadn’t used one before, but the concept was simple enough even for the workers. And Rowan had been on track to become a mage, even if she’d failed.

She shook her head, and before she could think better of it, she broke the first disk in half, severing the bonds on the magic inside.

Then she dropped the two halves at the bottom corners of the door and ran for it, each step jolting in her spine.

Halfway down the hall, she crouched and covered her head, and a second later a bang echoed up the corridor as the magic arced between the two halves of the fire charge.

The spell resulted in a disappointing hairline crack across the otherwise smooth door.

She’d give it one more try. And if it didn’t work it would be time to call for help. Perhaps patience and pickaxes would work better.

She broke another fire charge and sprinted down the hall again.

This time a crack and a muffled thud followed the bang, and she returned to the door with her heart in her throat.

A chunk had fallen out of the door, leaving a hole large enough Rowan could squeeze through.

She took a deep breath and ducked her head, sticking her shoulder and one leg through the hole, shimmying through until she spilled out on the other side.

Only when she straightened did she realize she could see better than in the hallways.

A steady glow came from the back of the small room, through another hall. It illuminated the walls and rubble piled in the corners of the antechamber. The remains could have once been barrels or furniture, but now it was just burned and blackened debris. An ancient fire had stained the walls dark with soot and left a coating of ash over the floor at her feet.

She shuffled forward, holding her breath as she moved into the hallway beyond. The tug in her gut turned into a knot of anticipation.

Another room opened before her, lined with stone tables and benches, all built for someone taller than even her brother. The fire hadn’t reached here, but tools lay scattered across the tabletops and floor as if blasted back.

It looked like a workroom or maybe a mage’s laboratory, left spotless except for the dropped tools.

Her boot stirred a pile of ancient dust strangely incongruous in the otherwise stark room.

Against the far wall, a black, metal arch framed a pedestal which held a gold and silver lantern glowing with a cold, white light. Where the sun painted the world in yellow and gold hues, this washed the room in a sickly silver unlike any lightstone she’d ever seen.

Hanging beside it in midair, as if floating in a spell, was a young man.

Stefan had told them stories at bedtime of princesses cursed to sleep for a hundred years until someone woke them.

But no one would be waking this young man. His lips were blue with death, and one blemish marred his skin, an open sore on his neck. His chest had certainly been still for years, decades, maybe centuries, but he looked like he’d died yesterday.

Rowan had to swallow several times to clear the lump in her throat. Then she turned around, squeezed back out through the crack in the door, and made her way to the jagged hole in the ceiling.

Only then did she start yelling.

Chapter Six

Jannik hadn’t returned from the dig by the time the sun started its descent, but Rowan couldn’t imagine he was making a ton of progress with just Darryn digging for him. She hoped the two of them didn’t run into any more problems like she had with the collapsing tunnel.

But Jannik had already proved he was experienced with Giants’ strongholds. He knew better than to stumble around places where the ground was soft.

Rowan stared at the cloth-covered bundle standing on Esrell’s table, her lips thin. She’d finished all the busy work around camp, plus she’d finished packing the crates Esrell had left undone.

There was nothing left except the lantern. And she’d never figure out why it was so important if she kept it all wrapped up and never looked at it again.

She took a deep breath and steadied her hands against the table. “You’d better be worth something,” she said.

In one swift move, before she could think better of it, she yanked the blanket from the lantern. The light sprang out, throwing her misshapen shadow across the canvas walls of the nearby tents. The lantern squatted there, like a beautiful mistake.

But she’d already made her decision. Wavering now was just cowardice.

She rubbed her hands together, preparing herself for the worst and placed her palms on the lantern.

The voice speared short and sharp and still jumbled into her head. Fragments of words and sounds raced through her, concentrating in the pain behind her eyes.

Rowan couldn’t help yanking her hands back again. What was this? Some side effect or leftover piece from my vision earlier? Is my gift growing? Or is it being corrupted?

She hauled in a deep breath and glared at the lantern. “This isn’t going to work if you keep yelling at me,” she said as if it could listen to her. “Now, behave.”

She gritted her teeth and placed one hand on the handle.

This time there was an entire breath before the voice came again, and when it came, it was the barest thread weaving through her thoughts. Like a whisper just too faint to catch.

“…pleassse…mmmeee…gainnn”

She leaned closer. That had sounded closer to actual words.

“Wait, can you actually understand me?” She crouched so her gaze was level with the constant flame inside the lantern. “Try it one more time”

“Please don’t put me in the dark again.”

Healer’s Ghost, that was an actual sentence. But what did it mean about the dark?

Rowan’s gaze slid to the blanket pooled on the dirt beside the table.

She gasped and stumbled back, a chill traveling down every inch of her twisted spine. Her fingers went to her cheeks.

It was talking. The lantern was actually talking to her. It wasn’t a figment of her imagination or a fragmented memory left over from her gift. It was talking to her, reacting to her actions and words.

Her heart raced in her chest. What had she pulled out of the ground? What magic gave life to gold and silver and glass? More than ever, she wished she hadn’t failed as a mage. She’d have a much greater chance of knowing the answers to all her questions.

The voice had died away the moment she’d pulled her hands from the lantern. Clearly, she could only hear it when she was touching it.

Much less reluctantly, she grasped the handle again.

“Are you… Are you actually talking to me?” The voice sounded inside her head, but she spoke aloud, feeling absolutely ridiculous.

“I think so,” the voice said like a thought that wasn’t her own. “I mean you could be a… a hallucination. That would be… new. But you don’t feel like a hallucination. Do you think you’re a hallucination?”

The voice had a tinny, far away quality, and she had a hard time placing its gender. It spoke in fits and starts with strange pauses between words, as if thinking in a foreign cadence.

“No, I’m not a hallucination.” Hopefully no one would walk by and see her talking to herself. “I’m sorry, I’ve never spoken to an inanimate object before.”

“Inanimate object?” The voice barked a laugh. “No. I’m not that… stupid hunk of metal. The lantern isn’t nearly so e-eloquent. It mostly just sits there and shines.”

Rowan’s brow furrowed, and she cast a furtive glance around her, but she was still alone. She could hear Jannik and Darryn deeper in the ruins. They must have been on their way back, but they hadn’t come into camp yet.

“Then, what are you?”

“Trapped!” the voice said. “Sorry, I’ve had loads of time to think up bad jokes. I’m inside the lantern. I’m Human. Was Human. Now I’m a lot… a lot less than that. A collection of thoughts and a name. I had a name. What was it? Gav—Gavyn! Yes, I’m Gavyn.”

Rowan rubbed her eyes. On a scale of run-of-the-mill to strange, this had fallen off the other end into surreal, but the manners her mother had drilled into her long ago surfaced.

“Hello, Gavyn. I’m Rowan.”

“Pleased to meet you,” he said, his tinny voice tinged with palpable irony.

A person inside a lantern. She fought to control the hysterical laughter bubbling its way up her throat. Was this the sort of thing she’d have learned to deal with as a mage? It seemed out of the realm of normal, even for people who spent their lives steeped in magic. Or maybe she just lacked imagination.

“How did you get in there?” She tilted the lantern to peer at the light inside. It burned as steadily as it had been for the last day and a half.

“I can see you, you know. I have a… a fabulous view up your nose when you look at it like that.”

Rowan glared at the lantern. “Hey, less about my nose and more about your problem, please.”

“Sorry, it’s just been ages since I had anyone or anything to look at but that laboratory. Even the inside of your nose is preferable.”

“Gavyn, answer the question.”

“Fine. How did I get trapped in here? A combination of stupidity and… cleverness.”

“That doesn’t actually answer my question.”

“Fair. But the problem is I don’t know the answer myself. Believe me, I… I’ve spent years—decades maybe—coming up with theories. Impossible to tell how long really. I couldn’t exactly count the days underground.”

Rowan tried to imagine a lifetime underground, trapped in a body that couldn’t move or talk or even blink. How sane would she be when someone finally dug her up and carried her into the sunlight? She shuddered.

“Start at the beginning then. Who were you before?”

“A Land Mage. We were trapped for over a month,” Gavyn said, his voice gone soft with memory. “Some madman captured eighteen—no twenty?—of  us. He… wanted the lantern and made us work on it to make it safe for him. I figured if there wasn’t a lantern anymore, then he wouldn’t have a reason to hurt anyone ever again. So, I tried to destroy it.”

“And it didn’t go well.”

“Absolutely awful.”

Rowan bit her lip. “I’m sorry.”

“The only good part is that the madman is no longer around to torment anyone else. Even if it means I spent… however long stuck in that basement.”

Rowan’s breath escaped with a soft sound as she made the connection between the voice and everything they’d found. “Oh.”

“What?”

“Well…” She hesitated. “I’m not sure how to tell you this, but I think you might be dead. We found the body of a young man next to the lantern, trapped in a preservation spell.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” he said, sounding weary. “I knew that part. I can see, remember? My body died but the rest of me didn’t. Just out of curiosity, what did you do with me?”

“We gave you a decent burial.” She dug in the pocket of her apron. “I did keep this. I thought it might tell me who you were.” She held up the simple, wooden ring so that the worn material gleamed in the lantern light.

“A gift from my mother,” he said, and she didn’t think she was imagining the wistfulness. “She gave it to me when I went to study with my master. It won’t tell you anything about me though.”

“Well, that’s the thing. I have this gift that can sometimes show me a memory of someone who touched something.”

“Life Magic!” he exclaimed, the words spearing through her head. “I knew I felt Life Magic when you touched the lantern.”

Rowan shook her head. “No, no. It’s just a little useless gift. I’m not any kind of mage.”

“Even little gifts come from one of the major disciplines. You sense memories?”

“I get tiny little glimpses if someone has touched an object.”

“And what did you see when you touched the lantern?”

Her lips thinned. “A sword. I think. But more than that was the feeling of something horrible. It was like I knew I was going to die. There was panic and terror and just an awful sense of ending.”

“Ah,” Gavyn said, voice quiet. “That would have been me. There was definitely a sword and lots of panic and terror and death. Mine and the man who kidnapped us. Sorry you had to see that. But I think it connected you to me. You couldn’t hear me before that, could you?”

“No.”

“Ha, I guess that means I’m not exactly dead. Not exactly alive either, but halfway to life is better than no way. Maybe…” He made a noise like an intake of breath, but since a disembodied soul in a lantern didn’t actually have any breath, it must have been habit. “Maybe you can help me get out of here. Life Magic might be able to give me new life so to speak. Or—” Now his voice fell. “No, actually that’s a bad idea. You should put me back and forget you ever saw this thing.”

She’d opened her mouth to argue that her gift would never be strong enough to create a new body. Did magic even do that? But the sudden change in the direction of his thoughts left her reeling.

“Wait,” she said. “Why? At least with me you’d have someone to talk to.”

“It’s not worth it. I would have told you right away, but you started to actually talk back to me, and it was just so good to hear someone and actually be a person again.”

“Gavyn, what are you talking about?”

“Right. The lantern. It’s dangerous, Rowan. It’s a weapon. It kills the people who touch it.”

Chapter Seventeen

Rowan

Rowan walked alongside the wagon, keeping one hand on the side and one on the lantern. The placid donkey wended his way up the path and hardly needed Rowan to keep the rig steady, but there was a steep drop on the other side, and she felt better with her hand on the wagon.

Snowflakes mixed with freezing rain pattered around them, and Rowan pulled her cloak tighter. Tonight would be a lot colder than the last couple of nights they’d spent in the mountains.

“Penrill?” she called toward the donkey’s head where her guide walked. “Are we going to have to sleep in the wet?”

Penrill cast a glance up at the clouds and then peered ahead of them at the path winding up the side of the mountain.

“Hopefully not,” he called back. “There’s a good chance we’ll be under the mountain by nightfall. But only if you don’t slow us down.”

Rowan rolled her eyes. She could walk faster than this tired old donkey could run, and after the last few days Penrill knew it.

Just like she in turn knew that his favorite pastime was complaining.

She’d spent the first day in his shop organizing his goods into categories, and he’d spent the next day arguing that he couldn’t find anything anymore. As soon as he’d realized she knew how to read and write, he’d set her to cataloging his books and then complained that her writing was too cramped.

“I think it’s his way of saying thank you,” Rowan told Gavyn the third night. “He can’t bring himself to say the actual words, so he makes sure you know he noticed by making a big stink about everything you do.”

“Or maybe he’s just grumpy you do things better than him,” Gavyn said.

“Probably both.” It didn’t matter to Rowan. She just smiled at him sweetly whenever he grumbled, and by the end of the week, he was using her system to do things twice as fast.

And despite Penrill’s attitude, hiding out in the shop was considerably better than trying to dodge all the people looking for her. She hadn’t seen any sign of Jannik yet, but she knew he couldn’t be far behind, and she’d had to avoid Lord Karaval’s woman three times that week.

It had been a relief to get on the road, even if the road was little more than a gravel path up through the peaks.

Rowan pushed ahead so she could walk on the other side of the donkey’s head. “You make this trip every few weeks?” she said, squinting into the sleet. “It’s so long.”

Penrill glanced at her. “The Delvers like their privacy. You don’t bother them, and they don’t bother you, you know?”

“Are they that unfriendly?” Rowan bit her lip.

“Well, they put up with me, so that should tell you something.”

“Ah, that makes me feel better.”

He shot her a quizzical look.

“Anyone who puts up with you has the patience of a saint.” She grinned at him.

He snorted. “Or a sense of humor.” He looked at her sidelong. “So, are you finally going to tell me why you want to find them so bad?”

She blinked at him. “I told you, my father—”

“That’s what you keep saying, but it’s not everything is it? If it was just meeting your old man, you could have waited till spring. It would have been more comfortable.” He gestured to the sleet. “And that wouldn’t have come with the risk of annoying them. There’s some reason it has to be right now. Something important enough to extort innocent traders into doing your bidding.”

Her teeth clenched, and she stared down at the path in front of her feet. She trusted Penrill—to a degree—but there were too many rumors circulating Monclaren about the lantern Lord Karaval was looking for. None of them got very close to the truth, but all of them featured a valuable magical lantern.

Penrill was frenetic. Not dumb.

He humphed when she took too long to answer. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

She winced. “I’m sorry.”

“Does it have anything to do with the way you talk to yourself constantly?”

Her mouth dropped open.

“He has you there,” Gavyn said in the back of her head. “I knew that would come up someday.”

Rowan would have snapped back at Gavyn, but that would have just proved Penrill’s point. As it was, he glanced at where her hand rested on the lantern cap.

She let it drop abruptly.

“How did you—Why would you say that?” she asked Penrill, mind racing.

He smiled and turned back to the path. This was the sort of wet snow that sheeted straight down instead of swirling around in drifts.

“I know a lot of Delvers who talk to their devices when they’re working,” he said.

“I’m only half Delver,” Rowan said. “And I don’t have any devices.”

Penrill shrugged and kept trudging. The path had gotten steep, and the soles of Rowan’s boots slid against the wet rock.

She liked Penrill. And she did trust him. But she’d also trusted Jannik.

Every time she pulled out the blasted lantern and its light shown across someone, things changed. Things got harder or more complicated. People became entirely different.

The sting from Jannik’s blow had long since faded, but her fingers crept to her cheek anyway.

She pulled her cloak tighter around herself. Would the light change things when she got to the Delver city too? She didn’t want to coerce anyone into doing something they didn’t want to, but wouldn’t a father be willing to help a daughter? Lynnock was her best chance at convincing the Delvers to manage the Grief Draw.

Rowan tried to think of something to distract Penrill, some story about why she talked to herself, but the merchant’s gaze darted across the path in front of them, his mouth a tight, little line of worry, and she kept quiet. The next bend of the path had disappeared behind the shifting gray wall of sleet and ice.

“Careful now,” Penrill said. “This is going to get slippery.”

“Should we stop?” Rowan pulled her hood up to keep the sleet out of her eyes.

Penrill looked back at the wagon and then up at the path. “I try not to come this way when the weather’s bad. But at this point, I think it would be better to get to the other side before it gets worse.”

Rowan shivered, her back starting to cramp in the cold, but she tried to pick up the pace, her boots sliding with every step.

The path grew narrower, falling away into a rocky gully on the left and rising too steep to climb on the right. Without needing to be told, Rowan fell back behind the wagon as Penrill stepped out front to lead the donkey.

Rowan put one hand on the back to push. She might not have been making a whole lot of a difference, but it made her feel useful, and the wagon helped steady her too.

“It’s barely fall,” Gavyn said in the back of her mind. Even with the sleet hissing down, she could hear him clearly. “Is this normal?”

“We get early storms down in the foothills sometimes,” she said through her teeth. “It’s not unheard of.”

“I hope Penrill knows what he’s doing,” Gavyn muttered.

Rowan did too.

As if in answer, she heard his voice from over the wagon. “We need to get off this slope,” he said. “Then we’ll find shelter where it’s not so steep.”

He had to yell over the wind now. It lashed at Rowan’s cloak and spat freezing rain into her face, making it sting. She kept her head down and concentrated on her feet.

Ahead, Penrill swore.

A rock slid under Rowan’s boot, making her stumble, and she slipped when she tried to catch her balance. Her heart lurched as she wobbled toward the deep gully. Her hand clenched on the back of the wagon, and she hauled herself upright with a yank, then checked the lantern was secure.

“Careful,” Gavyn said.

She was too winded to tell him how stupid that sounded. At least now she was upright again.

There was a snaky, slithering sound, and Penrill cried out. The wagon shifted under Rowan’s hand.

“Get back,” Gavyn called.

Rowan gasped and straightened as the path slid out from under the wagon. Like a river of rock and gravel, the ground itself shifted and tumbled downward. Her feet skidded, and she threw herself backward.

Penrill screamed, and the wagon fell away from Rowan, down toward the gully. A rumbling followed, and Rowan looked up to see the steep slope above them plummeting, as if the earth itself folded toward the path. Stones as big as Rowan’s head rolled past.

Rowan scrambled back, out of the rockslide, but not fast enough. Her legs went out from under her, and she slid, the gravel and rock tearing at her hands and clothes as she reached to stop herself.

A boulder bounced an arm’s length away like a pebble against the ground, and Rowan winced. She stopped trying to break her fall and flung her arms over her head.

Finally, the rumbling died away, and Rowan lay still, waiting for the world to stop spinning. She opened her eyes and found herself curled up among the rocks with her heart pounding hard enough she could hear it in her ears.

“Rowan!” Gavyn called. In the slide, her elbow had ended up wedged against the top of the lantern. “Rowan, are you all right?”

Rowan took a deep breath and tried to take stock. Her arms and hands stung, feeling raw and bruised. Her back was a knot of misery, and her legs were sore. But there was no shattering pain of broken bones. She could breathe, as long as she ignored the panic that threatened to seize her lungs.

She blinked and pulled her arms from her eyes.

Sleet obscured the world, shrouding everything in gray mist and white curtains. Tumbled rock and stone lay at a steep angle, covering the slope of the mountain and destroying any trace of the path they’d been following. Rowan squinted upward. She had no idea how far she’d slid.

“I’m all right,” she told Gavyn. “I think.”

He made a relieved noise in the back of her head.

A quick survey told her she’d been extremely lucky. She lay at the back edge of the slide, her cloak caught between stones, but she was mostly unharmed.

She saw no trace of Penrill.

“Penrill?” she called.

There was no answer. All she could hear was the wind and the deafening hiss of the sleet.

“Penrill? Keep a look out,” she told Gavyn. “Tell me if you see anything.”

“I doubt I can see more than you at this point,” Gavyn said as she climbed carefully from the rocks that had cradled her. But his voice strained as if he tried anyway.

Rowan placed her feet carefully, terrified she’d start another slide. Some of the smaller pebbles and gravel shifted and skittered down the slope, but the bigger boulders stayed put. She had to clamber on hands and feet across the steep, rocky terrain.

“Penrill?” Sleet stung her eyes, and she blinked, forcing down the black feeling that climbed up her throat.

“There,” Gavyn called. “To your left.”

Down the slope from her, a wheel lay crushed between two rocks.

Rowan’s jaw clenched, and she scrambled down toward it, trying to gauge how far Penrill had been from the wagon when they’d slid.

Here and there she found shattered wood and the broken curve of a barrel.

She kept going, her face freezing and her hands leaving bloody marks on the stones as she climbed.

Finally, she found an arm and then a shoulder and cleared away enough debris that Penrill blinked up at her.

“Rowan?” he said. Then he grimaced.

Rowan blew her breath out. He was alive.

“Hold on.” She cleared away the smaller rocks that she could fling down the slope and then started in on the stones that pinned him to the mountain. She wiggled her fingers into the cracks between, heedless of the pain and heaved until they rolled away.

She cleared his torso so he could lay there, breathing heavily, but his legs remained trapped under boulders she couldn’t budge.

Rowan fell back to catch her breath.

“This isn’t going to work,” Gavyn said when she brushed the lantern.

“What would you rather I do?” Rowan snapped. “Leave him? I’m not doing that.”

Penrill blinked at her. Then his eyes closed.

“Penrill, stay with me.” She slid over to him to pat his face. Sleet froze to his eyelashes and the ends of his hair. “Wake up.”

Penrill groaned. “But my bed is so comfortable,” he said and cracked a grin.

Her lips thinned in a pained smile. Her breath came in shuddering gasps, and she stared up the slope toward the hidden path, then back down at Penrill and the shattered pieces of the wagon.

She swallowed.

“Penrill, how far to the Delver city?”

His head lolled, and she caught it gently in her hands.

“Penrill.”

“I don’t know… maybe a few hours,” he gasped.

Every time he closed his eyes, she held her breath, convinced he’d never open them again. “How do I get there?” she said, giving him a gentle shake.

He tried to raise his arm and point up the slope and the rest of the mountainside. “North,” he grated. “You come around the point of the mountain and—they might like to stay out of the way, but they have a flair for the dramatic. There’s an entrance in the side of the cliff. Can’t miss it.” He lay back, blinking up at the clouds, his chest laboring for breath.

Her jaw ached from clenching her teeth so hard.

“What are you going to do?” Gavyn asked.

“I’ve only got two options. Stay here and try to dig him out.” She kicked at the boulders keeping his legs pinned to show how futile that was. “Or try to find the city and bring back help.”

“Alone? Without a guide? In this weather?”

“What else am I going to do, Gavyn?”

“I don’t know,” he said, voice quiet. “I just want you to know what you’re up against.”

She huffed a laugh. “Believe me, I know.”

Penrill stared at her, eyes a little bleary but still following the one-sided conversation.

Rowan clambered across the rocks to sift through the wreckage of the wagon, looking for anything useful. Very little was accessible. All the dried fruits were buried. And the tools which might have helped her could have been anywhere under the stretch of rock and stone. But she did find a bolt of bright red fabric.

She scrambled back to Penrill and unwound the cloth so she could drape it around him. It might keep him warmer and hopefully would help her find him again.

“Penrill, I’m going for help. Don’t you dare die on me, all right?”

His lips twisted in a desperate smile. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” He craned his neck around to peer through the sheets of ice and snow which fell even faster now. “Rowan, I hate to say don’t do this, but it’s going to be dark soon. You can barely see now as it is.”

“Don’t worry.” She gave him a grim smile and pulled the lantern from its case. The light sprang out, illuminating the rocks around them, casting jumping shadows across the slide.

Penrill’s eyes widened, and his gaze flickered between the lantern, with its alien workmanship, and her face, which she hoped reflected her resolve. Questions and speculations lined up behind his eyes, but she didn’t have time to address any of them.

“Darkness won’t be a problem,” she said.

Chapter Twenty-nine

“Your aunt mentioned that you talk to the lantern a lot.” Lord Karaval leaned on the fence beside her.

Rowan stiffened in surprise and nearly fell off the top rail.

Lord Karaval held out a hand to steady her, but she caught her balance before he could actually touch her. “I talk to Gavyn, not the lantern. There is a difference.”

“I’m sorry,” Lord Karaval said with a little nod to the lantern. “My mistake.”

“You’ve made a lot of those,” Gavyn said.

Rowan bit her lip.

“What did he say?” Lord Karaval said, catching her expression.

“Gavyn is angry at you,” she said, wondering if she should pull the punch at all.

“He’s not alone,” Lord Karaval said. “I’m angry at myself. Let him have his rage. It’s justified.”

Rowan cleared her throat. “We were just talking about how to avoid accidents in the future. And how to traverse the noktum. We need to understand what we’re doing.”

“You mean understand the lantern. You know more than most people so far.”

Rowan looked down at her knees. “It’s not enough. I don’t know how well any Human or Delver can understand something the Giants made, but we have to do better. Otherwise it might end up killing us too.”

“We can start by finding the other pieces,” Gavyn said.

“Yes.” Rowan raised her chin. “Keinwen seemed to think we’d need them.”

Lord Karaval raised an eyebrow, too polite to keep asking her “what?”

Rowan steeled herself and pulled the lantern out of its case. “Lynniki said these slots on the outside of the glass were made to hold extra panes. We know there are more pieces to the lantern that will make it work the way it’s supposed to.”

“But there weren’t any other pieces in the laboratory where we found it,” Gavyn said.

Rowan repeated for Lord Karaval’s sake.

“So where are they?”

Rowan’s brow furrowed. “Somewhere there’s darkness during the day and teeth on a hill?”

Lord Karaval sighed. “I feel like I’m following half of a conversation.”

“No, no. That one wasn’t Gavyn. I was just remembering. There’s this nursery rhyme about the lantern. Gavyn’s friend Keinwen left it as a message for him. We know what the first verse and the last verse are talking about, but there’s another verse in the middle that talks about darkness and teeth on a hill as if it’s a place.”

“‘Healer, Healer?’” Lord Karaval said.

“You know it?”

“We sang it to Mellrea when she was little, but we always thought it was just nonsense.”

“Not nonsense. Just a message meant for someone over a hundred years old, talking about an object no one else had ever seen.”

Lord Karaval sang the verse, his voice far steadier than Verner’s had been, though the rhyme sounded strange coming from a grown man.

“Healer, healer, where do you go?

Dark in broad daylight will bring only woe.

Teeth on the hill, bells silent and still.

Healer, healer, black hides your foe.”

Lord Karaval cocked his head. “You think it’s talking about where the rest of the pieces are hidden?”

“Well, it definitely talks about the healer going somewhere and this place hiding something. Then the last verse is about the missing pieces making a whole so…”

Lord Karaval started nodding. “So it stands to reason. Yes, yes, I get it. It’s a riddle. Only it doesn’t look like a riddle until you’re close enough to see the meaning between the lines.”

“Yes, but what meaning.” Rowan hopped down from the fence to pace. “What’s dark in broad daylight? And how are there teeth on a hill?”

Lord Karaval tapped the top of the fence. “Where did you find the lantern again?”

“In one of the old Giant ruins.”

“There’s a fair few nuraghis scattered around the valley and more probably hidden in the mountains. It’s likely any Giant artifacts would be found in another Giant ruin. Damn. Mellrea would know this in a heartbeat.”

“Are there any you can think of that might match the description?”

He gave her a twisted grin. “It could be any one of them depending on how we interpret the rhyme…” He trailed off, his gaze going distant.

“You’ve thought of something,” Rowan said, straightening.

Lord Karaval held up a finger, asking for patience.

Rowan bit her lip.

“There’s a hill to the east.”

“And there are ruins?” Rowan asked. He was going so slow.

“I wouldn’t exactly call them ruins. The walls are still standing, at least as far as you can tell from a distance, but I’ve always thought the crenellations looked like teeth against the sky.” He met her gaze. “It’s made entirely of black stone that seems to soak up the light until it’s just a shadow on the hill. We call it Blackfall.”

Rowan’s breath caught.

Lord Karaval knelt and began sketching a rough map in the dirt as if he were a village boy.

“Did someone lose something?” Lynniki asked, stepping up beside Rowan.

Rowan shushed her. “Lord Karaval thinks he might know where the rest of the lantern pieces are.”

“It’s a possibility,” he said from his position on the ground. “But it sounds like we have little else to go on.”

“It sounds like it matches the description,” Gavyn said.

“I agree,” Rowan said. “It’s pretty close.”

“The ‘bells’ part still doesn’t make sense,” Lord Karaval said.

“No,” Rowan said. “But you mentioned you hadn’t been close to it?”

Lord Karaval shook his head. “The place is like a noktum without the darkness. It’s infested with a myriad of creatures, each more deadly than a wounded wolverine. An order of knights from around the countryside guards the place to keep them from overrunning the valley.”

Lynniki knelt beside Lord Karaval to study the lines in the dirt. “Are you talking about that big place on the hill all done up in black stone?”

“Blackfall,” Lord Karaval and Rowan said together.

“Yes, only we don’t call it that.”

“What do you call it?”

“Forbidden?” Lynniki shrugged. “We catalog most of the nuraghis we know of, if only to know how to avoid them.” She tapped the map. “This one is at the top of the list of places Delvers are forbidden to go. Lots of Kolossoi influence and potential for corruption.”

“So naturally you’d know all about it,” Rowan said.

“Naturally.” She tossed her thick braid over her shoulder. “You can’t say ‘avoid this deadly poison,’ and then never tell someone what that poison looks or smells like. They’ll just drink it by accident.”

Lord Karaval frowned at his drawing. “I don’t think anyone’s going to wander into Blackfall by accident. The knights will keep people out as well as they keep the monsters in.”

Rowan ran her fingers around the rim of the lantern, ignoring the burn so she could feel the ridges of the slots. “They would let someone through if you told them to, right?”

“Rowan,” Gavyn started. “You’re not actually thinking of it? You really want to help this guy?”

“You think we could find the rest of the panes for the lantern on our own?”

“They might not even be there. It might just be a misleading reference and we’re grasping at straws.”

“Then we get closer and check out the fortress. See if it matches the rhyme. We have to at least look.”

Lord Karaval met her eyes. “Rowan, these are not the ruins you’re used to excavating with Jannik. These are not tumbling walls and exciting discoveries underground. This is a place designed to kill you.”

Rowan gulped but she didn’t lower her gaze. “Like the lantern is designed to kill?”

Lord Karaval winced.

“You think I want to do this?” she said quietly. “You think I wanted any of this? I’d rather go home, but you want your daughter back. Lynniki wants Giant magic to transfer Gavyn. And I need to know how to use the Grief Draw so it doesn’t hurt anyone else. We need all the pieces. We need to make it complete, like the rhyme says.”

“I don’t like sending you into more danger than I’m already asking,” Lord Karaval said.

“Too late. I’m already in danger just by carrying it, and I’ll be in danger when I go into that noktum to find your family. The best way to lessen that danger is by understanding what I hold and how to use it.”

Lord Karaval’s nostrils flared like he didn’t like what he was hearing but didn’t have anything he could say.

“The best way to protect me would be to help me understand the Grief Draw.”

Unexpectedly his lips tilted up in a rueful smile. “You’re right.”

Rowan blinked. “I am?” She cleared her throat. “I mean, I am, but why did you change your mind.”

“I hear my daughter’s voice in yours. She, too, had the most reasoned arguments for the most harebrained things.” He stood and brushed his knees off. “Captain Tera.”

The captain stepped up from the wall where she’d been lingering. Rowan hadn’t even registered her presence.

“We will prepare an expedition to Blackfall to see if this is the place referenced by your friend.” He nodded to the lantern. “Captain, send a message to Commander Verence. Tell him I’m coming with a group, and we’ll require access to the fortress.”

“You’re coming too?” Rowan asked.

“My lord,” Captain Tera said. “You are not.”

Lord Karaval met her gaze. “I would walk into Blackfall naked and unarmed and alone if it meant having a hope of finding Patessa and Mellrea. I do this for them.”

Chapter Thirty-one

Rowan

As soon as Rowan could see Blackfall in the distance, she knew why Keinwen had passed down the words “teeth on the hill.”

A solitary peak rose out of the low foothills. The mountain range behind it stood taller, but they were set apart far enough to make them seem tiny in comparison. A jagged fortress stood atop the hill, as black as a moonless night, the crenellations along the top wall stabbing the sky like the bottom jaw of some slathering monster.

Rowan gulped and followed Lord Karaval through the thin trees that did nothing to hide the monstrous fortress.

The road didn’t go directly up the hill to Blackfall. It circled the place, swinging around nearly a mile to avoid it. On the western rim of the circle, they found a semi-permanent encampment. Six tiny tents waited in a neat line beside a firepit dug out of the rocky earth and lined with cut stones. Beside it stood a table of rough-hewn planks.

The knight commander stood beside the road, back straight and shoulders thrown back, with his six knights arrayed behind him, as if they’d been waiting since they’d gotten Lord Karaval’s missive.

Lord Karaval swung off his horse and gave the commander a nod. “Commander Verence.”

Verence wore a full set of plate armor, well cared for and polished to a high shine, but it had also clearly seen hard use with deep scratches no amount of polishing would remove.

His men wore much lighter leather with metal pauldrons and shin guards, but they were just as worn as Commander Verence.

“How are things, Commander?” Lord Karaval asked.

The armored knight pushed back his helm, revealing a young face seamed with lines beyond its years. “We’re in a lull now, my lord. Afternoons are fairly quiet, until it gets dark, but I have to strongly protest your plan to proceed into Blackfall. This is an extremely bad idea.”

“I understand.” Lord Karaval gave him a firm nod. “But know that it is necessary, and we’ll take every precaution to stay safe.”

“What exactly do you guard against?” Rowan asked. She didn’t get down from her pony. “Lord Karaval said creatures but…”

The knight commander gave her a once-over from where he stood. Even astride, she wasn’t that much taller than him. To his credit, his lips only thinned in response to whatever it was he saw. He didn’t bother bleating about cripples or godsblighted.

“That’s all we know to call them. Creatures. Monsters. They live and breed in the fortress and try to make their way out at night. We keep them from overrunning the countryside.”

“What kind of creatures?” Lynniki asked.

She actually got a raised eyebrow, but Commander Verence was too well disciplined to let the sight of a Delver out of the mountains faze him.

“Nothing normal. Giant lizards that spit venom. Cats as large as a horse. Something I swear was a boar before someone gave it horns. We’re lucky none of them have wings, or they’d have hopped right over us.” Commander Verence swiped at his face. “They remind me of the creatures you find at the edges of a noktum sometimes. Except not quite the same. Most of these are smaller, and there’s no noktum here, so we have no idea where they’re coming from.”

Lynniki stared up the hill, tapping her teeth with her metal fingertip. “This used to be a Giant’s laboratory. One of the big ones. The Delvers have strict instructions to stay away because it was a place where they created and experimented with magical constructs.”

“What’s a construct?” one of the knights asked.

His fellow elbowed him. “The things you’ve spent the last few weeks fighting, idiot.”

“If you know where they are coming from, why wouldn’t you storm the place and exterminate them all?” Rowan asked. “There must be a reason you haven’t.”

Commander Verence grimaced. “There isn’t. We have done exactly that. We do it every couple of years, but the things keep coming back. We’ve scoured the surface fortress, but I fear there’s another deeper section we’ve never been able to access.”

“You’ve done admirably, commander,” Lord Karaval said. “We’ll need your exp—”

“Incoming,” one of the knights screamed, and a dark shape barreled out of the thin line of trees. Rowan had a split second to register four long legs and a mouth full of teeth before chaos erupted.

The knights surged into motion. Three rushed forward to plant the butts of their spears into the ground while three fell back to form a line in front of the visitors.

Commander Verence drew his sword and widened his stance, but the creature—a massive wolf with the shoulders and weight of a bear—went down under the first line of knights’ spears.

A shriek split the air, and another shape charged the line, this one low and sleek, moving with a boneless slither. The three forward knights were slow this time, untangling themselves from the previous assault, and the new creature sped past them.

Rowan’s pony rolled its eyes at the approaching threat and reared. Rowan cried out as her grip slipped, and she crashed to the ground.

She caught a flashing glimpse of black scales and thick digging claws before the long lizard leaped for the neck of her pony.

Rowan scrambled out of the way as the pony thrashed and tried to dislodge the creature. But the lizard’s jaw clamped tighter, a thin line of blood spurting from the pony’s neck. It fell to its knees with a groan.

Rowan gagged and rolled further to escape the thick claws.

Shouts rang against the rocks, and Rowan had the brief, blurry impression that more creatures had come out of the trees. Commander Verence was a bright flash to her left, his sword swinging to cleave a great snake in half.

Lynniki leapt from her pony to grab Rowan’s arm. “Get up. Get away.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Rowan snapped.

Tera stalked past Lynniki, her sword drawn, and her expression fixed on the lizard.

The lizard raised its blood-covered muzzle, and its long tongue flicked out as it faced this new threat. It hissed and drew back its head to spit a line of gray liquid at the captain. She dodged, but the ground sizzled where the liquid struck.

She swung her sword, a short blade curved through the middle. Her blow had enough force to slash through a normal animal.

But rocky plates armored the lizard’s shoulders and flanks, and Tera’s blow clattered off them to strike the ground. She stumbled past it, her momentum taking her an extra step.

The lizard spun and drew back its head to spit again.

“Look out!” Rowan called. Her hand closed on a fist-sized rock, and she hurled it at the lizard. It connected with a meaty thunk, and the spray of venom went wide.

Tera recovered her balance, and she lunged at the lizard while it swung its head in pain. Her blade bit deep in its less armored throat, and she struck again for good measure.

The lizard collapsed in a pool of black blood and bile, its chest caving until it looked oddly flat. Like a terrible rug someone had thrown across the ground.

Tera stared at it for a long moment before glancing at Rowan. “Are you all right?” she asked, voice rough.

Rowan nodded because she didn’t trust her lips not to tremble.

Around them, the knights beat back the last of the creatures. Lord Karaval followed Commander Verence, a longsword in one hand as the commander swept across the campsite, making sure no more creatures remained.

The captain joined them.

“You’re welcome,” Lynniki yelled at her back. Then she hauled Rowan to her feet. “You probably saved her life, you know.”

Rowan winced. “There’s no honor in being saved by a godsblighted.”

Lynniki snorted. “Sure. Whatever you say. Humans can be so stupid.”

“Hey, I’m half Human.”

“And that’s the dumb half.”

Gavyn chuckled in the back of her head.

“I suppose you agree?”

“Hey, I was Human once, but I’m not really in a position to argue. My worry is about finding the pieces of the lantern. And also not getting smashed the next time you fall off a horse.”

Rowan winced and avoided looking at the sad remains of the pony. “Poor thing.”

Commander Verence prodded the back half of the snake he’d severed earlier. “If they’re attacking during the day now, we’re getting closer to another extermination run. They always get bolder the more there are. If you’re intent on proceeding…”

Lord Karaval lifted his chin. “We are. I don’t want to wait here for anyone to creep up behind us.”

“Then our best bet is to go now, before the creatures gather their strength for another foray. My men and I will come with you as far as the fortress.”

“I was hoping to have more time to regroup and prepare, but you’re the expert.” Lord Karaval surveyed the rest of them, including Rowan and the downed pony. “Are you all right?”

“I’m ready.” Her back hurt from the fall, but that wasn’t anything new.

They approached Blackfall on foot, and Rowan took the time to draw the fortress the way she had drawn the ruins for Jannik. She mapped the space both as they saw it and how she imagined it would look from above. She would have loved to have time to shade the map and check her proportions, but they reached the black stone walls atop the hill far faster than she had expected.

Huge gates hung crooked, their hinges bent and broken. Rowan reached out to touch the black stone, wondering if it was similar to the black metal arch in the laboratory where they’d found Gavyn. This was just rock polished smooth.

“Basalt,” Lynniki said. “Lava rock. From volcanoes.”

“What’s a volcano?” one of the knights asked.

“A fiery mountain. It’s made when the heat under the ground reaches up to the sky and it spews fire and melted rock. I think there’s one on an island along the southwest coast somewhere. Clearly the Kolossoi had some way of cutting and moving it.”

Commander Verence indicated the gates. “We would have hung them back up and locked them, except the damn creatures go right over the walls. At least this way we can get in and out easier.”

Lord Karaval kept his sword drawn as he stepped through the broken gates and peered around the corner into the fortress itself. Past his shoulder, Rowan could see the afternoon sunlight filtering down to light up black walls and doors. Buildings and rooms had been jumbled together in a veritable maze of ruination. All infested with the magical constructs the Giants had left behind.

Rowan could hear a scritch-scratching sound, like claws against stone and dirt. She did not like how closed in this place felt compared to the open space of the Grief Draw’s ruins.

“I think we will have to start your extermination pass early,” Lord Karaval said with a reluctant smile at Commander Verence. “In order to learn if this is even where we should be looking.”

Commander Verence scowled. “Except when we go through for an extermination, we bring at least twenty knights.”

As they pressed into the fortress, Gavyn sang the nursery rhyme in the back of Rowan’s head. A litany of images that only made her heart pound faster.

“Healer, healer, where do you go?

Dark in broad daylight will bring only woe.

Teeth on the hill, bells silent and still.

Healer, healer, black hides your foe.”

The fortress brooded dark in the middle of the afternoon sunlight. The crenellations seemed to swallow them like a massive creature. And the threat here had certainly brought plenty of woe in its lifetime. But what about the rest? Was this really the place where Keinwen said the panes were hidden?

How would they be able to tell?

Lord Karaval took the lead, longsword ready in his hand. Rowan followed close on his heels. They came around the corner into a room open to the sky, and a black shape lunged at them.

Rowan swallowed a scream as Lord Karaval lunged. He ducked under slashing claws and used the thing’s own momentum to stab the massive cat-creature through the heart. He twisted his body and let the heavy mass of fur slide over his shoulder and off his blade.

Lord Karaval eyed the dead cat and then turned to give Rowan a look, eyebrow raised in silent question, and she scanned the room.

The walls were more intact than the laboratory where they’d found Gavyn, creating more rooms, but they were all open to the sky. Thousands of years of weather hadn’t left much of anything intact. If the panes were here, would they have survived all these years?

But Keinwen’s rhyme was only a hundred years old. Why would she have directed them here if there wasn’t anything to find?

“I don’t know yet,” she said, answering both his question and hers.

Lord Karaval gave her a tight-lipped nod, and they moved on.

Nightmarish shadows dogged their steps, stretching up the walls in grotesque mimicries of nature. Each corner hid an ambush, and every room became a risk. Rowan left the fighting to the others and filled in her map, trying to get an idea of the shape of Blackfall. If she could see how the rooms were laid out, maybe she could glean what it was the Giants had done here and where they would have hidden their work.

The maze of rooms didn’t give her many clues. The buildup of debris and the plant matter that had grown up between the cracks in the floor and the walls obscured everything. Her map grew, but it didn’t let her see any clearer.

In the center of the fortress, they came out into an open space. A courtyard stretched between the walls. Or maybe it had been a huge room now open to the sky after centuries of weather.

A yowling, growling sound surrounded them combined with the spine-tingling scratching. Something wasn’t happy they’d disturbed this place.

Lord Karaval set his back to the group, facing the threat. Or at least as much of it as he could. Tera, Verence, and his men arrayed themselves around the courtyard, keeping Rowan and Lynniki in the center of their circle.

“Rowan,” Lord Karaval said. “We’re going to have to make a decision.”

Rowan’s teeth clenched, and her fingers tightened on her sheaf of parchment. Even Jannik would have needed days and a full team to make a survey of this place to determine its worth as an antiquity site. Rowan alone had had maybe an hour.

But the sounds were getting closer, and she couldn’t help remembering the trail of beastly bodies they’d left behind.

Here in the courtyard, the dirt and debris of years wasn’t so thick. It piled around the edges but not in the center where an intricate tile floor lay cracked under the bare sky. At first glance, it was circular, but as Rowan took it in in its entirety, she realized the edges were straight. Five sides. Mirroring the five outer walls of the fortress and the five corners.

Five? What a strange number? Why not a square with four?

She raised her eyes, seeking out the corners. Squat towers rose at the five points of the fortress. From afar, they’d blended in with the crenellations, looking like the teeth from Keinwen’s rhyme.

Rowan squinted. The tops of the towers were open under their roofs, letting afternoon sunlight shine through, but something blocked the openings, creating a dangling shadow.

“Bells,” she whispered.

A stiff breeze must have been blowing above them, blocked by the surrounding walls, because the bell in the northern tower swung back and forth, soundless.

“They don’t have clappers,” Lynniki said.

Lord Karaval looked back at them and then up at the towers. His eyes widened.

“Teeth on the hill, bells silent and still.”

“The missing panes are here,” Rowan told him. “Keinwen was talking about Blackfall. They have to be here somewhere.”

“But where?” Lord Karaval said.

Commander Verence kept his eyes on the walls around them, but he said over his shoulder, “What are we looking for?”

“Glass panes,” Lynniki said. “For a lantern. About this big.” She held her hands a few inches apart. “They probably wouldn’t be out in the open though. They’d be in a sealed room like the one in the laboratory Rowan found.”

Commander Verence shook his head. “We’ve been all over this place during the exterminations. I’ve never found anything as obvious as glass and metal artifacts. Or even a locked room.”

Rowan glanced at her feet. “You said the creatures had to be breeding somewhere underground in a hidden part of the facility you haven’t accessed yet. We have to go down.”

An armored lizard bigger than Rowan’s poor dead pony climbed over the nearest wall. Its tongue flicked between wicked teeth, and black stone shifted in plates over its muscles, like it had taken the basalt of its home as its armor.

Lord Karaval started to turn toward it.

“Keep your eyes to your side,” Commander Verence called. “Don’t let us be flanked.”

The lizard slithered down the wall. Instead of dodging, Commander Verence lunged forward and caught the creature against his shield. He heaved, and the lizard rolled away only to spring to its feet and charge the knight again.

Three cat-creatures swarmed over the walls, converging on the group.

“Rowan, how do we get down?” Lynniki cried. “Where are the stairs?”

Rowan flinched away from the fighting, flipping through her drawings. “I don’t know. We haven’t found any yet.”

“Then guess,” Tera snapped.

“Based on the shape, that way.” Rowan pointed to the north corner. It was a wild guess with no basis except a gut feeling, but that was all she had to go on right now.

The fighters pushed back the creatures, leaving three bodies bloody on the ground, and followed as Rowan and Lynniki raced through the maze of half-tumbled walls.

“Where?” Tera asked.

Rowan came up against the north wall and spun in a desperate circle. There was nothing. Not even a collapsed stairwell like in the laboratory. Nothing seemed to point toward a basement. It was like the whole fortress had been built on one level.

“I don’t—”

A huge shape, as big as a bear but with the sloped back and curving tusks of a boar, charged through the nearest wall, showering them with powdered rock.

The group scattered out of the way.

Rowan ducked behind another wall and clutched her maps to her racing heart. This boar didn’t just have tusks. Spikes traveled down its spine, and a pair of horns rose out of its skull. It swung its head around, looking for a victim to trample or gore.

It lowered its head with a snort and headed for the knight nearest Rowan.

She flung herself away as the man cried out and leaped out of the creature’s path. There would be no meeting its bulk or momentum with a shield this time.

Rowan fetched up against the outer wall of the fortress, the stone smooth under her fingertips. Her fingers flexed against it.

The boar had gone straight through one of the inner walls, but the outer walls were thicker. She’d gotten a pretty good look at them on their way in.

She spun to put the wall at her back.

The monstrous boar pawed the ground and swung its head back and forth, its beady eyes fixing on each of them in turn.

Lynniki lay sprawled nearby, as if she’d tripped while she fled. Tera scrambled to place herself between the boar and the Delver.

The boar grunted and swung around, attracted by the movement. It lowered its head to charge Tera and Lynniki.

“No!” Rowan cried. “No, over here, you great brute!” She grabbed bits of basalt that had landed at her feet and flung them at the boar.

The creature spun, faster than anything that size had any right to move, and charged for Rowan.

She sucked in a breath and leaped aside at the last minute. The creature’s tusk ripped through the hem of her tunic as she dodged.

But as fast as it charged, it didn’t have time to correct when she lunged out of the way.

It struck the outer wall headfirst with a sickening crack.

The creature staggered, shaking its head. Its horns had left two huge pockmarks in the stone, but the wall still stood.

Unfortunately, so did the boar.

Tera darted in and swept her short sword up and through the thing’s throat. Its head might have been as hard as basalt, but at least its hide was soft underneath.

Rowan gritted her teeth but didn’t turn away from the spray of blood as the creature slumped and finally lay still.

“Rowan,” Lord Karaval called. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Rowan said and started to push to her feet.

A hand stretched out to help her.

Rowan raised her eyes to Tera.

The captain’s expression remained hard and implacable, as if she hadn’t just saved them all.

Rowan took her hand and let the captain help her to her feet, but when she tried to pull away, Tera kept hold of her hand.

Rowan’s brows came down. “What—?”

She drew a long dagger from her belt and pressed the hilt into Rowan’s palm. “Here.”

Rowan blinked as her fingers curled around it. She had to clear her throat. “I thought it was a waste to give someone like me a weapon.”

“You fight pretty hard to protect someone you have no reason to love. Do you promise to fight like that to find Mellrea?”

Rowan raised her chin. “Of course.”

“Then I’m going to give you every chance I can.”

“What happened to being godsblighted?”

“Oh, I still think you’re blighted. But now I’m wondering if the gods did it to make you stronger.”

Rowan screwed up her nose. “That’s a pretty poor reason.”

Tera’s lips twitched like she suppressed a smile. “They’re gods. Their reasons don’t have to make sense to us.” She thrust her chin at the dagger. “That’s better than a sword for someone who doesn’t know how to use one. It’s lighter and faster.”

Rowan lowered the blade, knowing she looked awkward doing so. “Thank you. I’ll have to practice.”

“I’ll work with you. For now just make sure the sharp side goes into the other guy.”

“This lull isn’t going to last,” Commander Verence said, clambering over the wall the boar had broken through. “I can already hear them rallying. What are we trying to find?”

“A door?” Lord Karaval. “Or a stairwell? We have to go down.”

“It’s locked,” Lynniki said. She pushed to her feet, shaking out her wrists with a wince. “I don’t think we’ll be able to find a way down until we unlock it.”

Commander Verence shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. You can still see doors that are locked.”

“This isn’t a Human-made door,” Lynniki snapped. “This is Kolossoi work, and they were tricky at the best of times. If this facility was made during one of their wars in order to house dangerous weapons stolen from their enemies, then I think we can all say it wasn’t the best of times.”

“Then how do we unlock it?” Rowan said. “Whatever it is?”

Lynniki planted her hands on her hips. “We have to meet certain requirements. Kolossoi wouldn’t have wanted anyone else getting in unless they had the key.”

“Well, I hope we don’t actually have to be Kolossoi,” Lord Karaval said. “I’m tall, but I’m not that tall.”

Lynniki ignored him, placing her hands on the stone walls. “This whole place was built to resonate, but with what?” she muttered.

“Resonate?” Rowan said. “Like with sound?”

They all looked up at the bells in their silent towers.

Lynniki sucked in a breath. “Of course.”

“They’re coming!” one of the knights screamed.

“Get to the bells,” Lynniki called. “One to each. They don’t have clappers, but there must be some way to ring them.”

Lord Karaval, Lynniki and Commander Verence took off toward the south. Captain Tera met Rowan’s eyes before she raced for the northern bell, so Rowan took the one closest.

No one asked if she was capable or if she needed help. They trusted her to get there without them.

It would have been refreshing if there weren’t creatures swarming over the walls again.

Commander Verence’s knights ducked between Rowan and the creatures, as she raced for the foot of the nearest tower. She plunged inside the black hole in its base.

Her sudden appearance surprised one of the cat-creatures at the foot of a set of steps. Without thinking, she lunged at the beast with a cry and plunged her new dagger in its side. It snarled and snapped, but Rowan kept her head down and shoved.

The cat rolled off the step, away from Rowan. She slashed as it tried to climb to its feet, and it fell back with a hiss. Rowan stumbled back up the first couple of steps and brandished her blade. Then she spread her arms wide and yelled, making herself look as big and mean as possible.

The cat-creature shied away, dripping dark blood, and it slunk out of the opening, back toward the rest of the fortress.

Rowan breathed hard. “I can’t believe that worked.”

“So you’re a warrior now?” Gavyn asked.

“At least I can defend myself without the lantern’s light,” she said and started climbing the stairs.

“We’re going to have to use it if we want to find Lord Karaval’s daughter, you know.”

“Not until we understand it better.”

“Then get to the bell. I have a feeling a lot of the answers are at the bottom of this place.”

Rowan didn’t bother answering, saving her breath for the climb. The stairs were steep and taller than her legs were used to stretching, and it wasn’t just because she was short for a Human. These had clearly been made for Kolossoi.

The stairs opened onto empty space. No convenient railing to help her pull herself forward. She kept pausing to gaze up and make sure there were no more surprises on the steps.

Something rang in the still air, more than a sound. This was a feeling that traveled through the stone and up her legs until she could feel it gathering in the base of her skull.

“Someone got to their bell,” Gavyn said.

Rowan picked up the pace. The tower seemed to have doubled in height since she’d started.

Another bell rang, making her feet buzz through her boots.

And a third. This one rattled her bones. The sound grew, pressing in on her from all sides even as it threatened to shake her apart.

She hoped Lynniki was right. If not, then they’d just activated some sort of defensive magic.

Light spilled down the last few steps, and the air grew fresher as the fourth bell tolled.

The sound of it pressed on her lungs, and she dropped to her knees under the pressure.

“Rowan!” Gavyn’s voice seemed to come to her from the end of a long tunnel. “Rowan!”

Rowan reached to grasp the top step and pulled herself forward with her hands.

Here, at the top of the tower, hung a great black bell. Lynniki would know what sort of metal it was, but Rowan could only guess that it was lighter than normal, for it swayed gently in the breeze. She craned her neck, her head pounding with the combined sound of the other four bells.

There was no clapper inside, just an empty, yawning darkness.

She couldn’t stand. She rolled onto her back and stared up. A hammer hung far above, nearly against the roof of the tower. If she stood, she might be able to reach the lever that would release the hammer and ring the bell.

She tried to raise her arm, but it shook with the effort. The sound thrust against her ears and her chest, a constant building crescendo that would never end until it burst her eardrums and turned her inside out.

She had to reach the hammer. But she couldn’t stand, couldn’t pull herself up, couldn’t even push onto her elbows.

Rowan heaved in a deep breath, defying the sound that tried to cave her chest in, and with a scream, she swung her dagger hilt first at the bottom edge of the bell.

The moment it connected, all sound ceased.

Rowan lay on the floor of the tower gasping in the sudden absence of pressure. Healer’s Ghost, the sound was gone. It wasn’t just that her bell had not rung; the others had ceased just as suddenly.

She waited, heart in her throat, taking in the stillness and the silence. Then, long moments later, a rumble shook the roots of the tower, traveling all the way up its walls to vibrate the floor under Rowan’s back. She rolled over and crawled to the open edge of the tower.

Below, she could see the maze of ruined rooms and the creatures which made their home within the walls.

They’d all stopped, frozen in place, turned toward the center courtyard, watching.

The five-sided circle of tile shifted and dropped, one tier of tiles after another until a set of steps led down into the earth in the middle of the fortress.

Chapter Thirty-five

The journey to the edge of the noktum took longer than the journey to Blackfall, but Lord Karaval was much more reserved for this ride.

He remained tense until the valley flattened out and a dark smudge spread across the horizon, obscuring everything from the northern range to the ruins beyond Lannasbrook.

Rowan’s throat grew drier, and it was harder and harder to swallow as they approached the shadow. The inky blackness draped across the landscape like a curtain.

Her hands clenched on the reins. Had a cloud gone across the sun, or had the looming noktum sent a cold shiver down her spine?

Instead of riding straight for the sheet of darkness, Lord Karaval traveled for another mile south before stopping.

Rowan’s gaze swept the edge of the noktum, and her breath stuttered. Black tentacles crept from the surface of the darkness and wavered in the air as if reaching for the people it could sense just out of reach.

“This is about where Patessa and Mellrea disappeared,” Lord Karaval said, voice flat. “I suspect Lord Hax drove them into its clutches. Whatever happened, they haven’t been seen since.”

Rowan bit her lip and raised her chin. Lord Karaval’s mouth was pressed thin and hard with grief and worry.

If it was Esrell or Darryn in there, Rowan would have thrown herself at the waiting tentacles. She couldn’t imagine the pain he must be hiding.

She unhooked the lantern from her belt and dismounted. Lord Karaval swung a leg over the pommel of his saddle and slid to the ground.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“My lord?” Tera raised her hand to shield her eyes as she peered back the way they’d come. “Someone’s coming. A lone rider.”

Lord Karaval stiffened, glancing between the dust rising in the distance and the edge of the noktum. Then he blew out his breath and stepped back to wait for the rider.

As the horse drew closer, Rowan could see Lord Karaval’s colors.

“My lord,” the rider called as he reined his horse in.

“Benni. What is it?”

“Lord Hax moves. We’ve had word from your spies.”

Lord Karaval threw back his shoulders. “He is too late. He can’t stop us from entering the noktum now.” He raised his fist to signal the rest of his men.

The rider shook his head. “Not here. Lord Hax isn’t following you. He moves on your keep, bringing troops and siege weapons.”

Lord Karaval froze, his mouth falling open.

Captain Tera swore. “Coward. We thought he’d come after the lantern. Instead he slips in behind to attack the town while we’re away.”

Rowan swallowed. “You have to go back.” She didn’t want to say the words. She’d counted on having Lord Karaval with her for this, but she could see the choice that would tear at him.

Lord Karaval’s lips thinned and his eyes darted frantically to the edge of the noktum. “Patessa and Mellrea—”

“We’re not abandoning them, either.” Rowan straightened as much as her spine would let her. “I’ll find them.”

“I’m not letting you go in alone.”

“Not alone,” Lynniki said. She stepped across the ground, the construct following her. Its movements were still jerky, but somehow its back stayed level and smooth across the terrain. It looked like an animal but moved like nothing alive, making Rowan’s stomach twist in barely suppressed disquiet.

“I don’t doubt your cleverness or bravery, but neither are a substitute for skill. I was supposed to be there to defend you while you worked the lantern. I need to be there. And I need to be here.”

His nostrils flared and a muscle in his jaw jumped as if he clenched his teeth.

“My lord.” Captain Tera swung down from her horse.

They exchanged a long look with no words and then Lord Karaval’s shoulders sagged.

“Take care of them,” he said, voice quiet and rough. “Find Patessa and Mellrea, please.”

“We will. Now go. You’ll need time to evacuate the lower town to the keep.”

“I’ll leave some men here to guard the edge of the noktum,” Lord Karaval said, climbing back into his saddle. “I don’t want Hax sending a contingent to trap you in there.”

Rowan stepped to his side. She reached to put her hand on his, almost out of reach on the pommel of his saddle, and she squeezed.

Lord Karaval squeezed her fingers back before turning his horse to watch them.

Rowan stepped back toward the others. “Thank you, Captain Tera.”

“You can just call me Tera. Unless you feel like saluting.”

Rowan cocked an eyebrow. “Is there a first name that goes along with that?”

“No,” Tera said shortly.

Rowan suppressed a smile and settled her pack on her back before she faced the undulating edge of the noktum.

Fingers of darkness stretched and reached, grabbing for them even as they stood out of reach.

Rowan took a deep breath and held up the Grief Draw. She half expected the tentacles to pull back at the light, but they kept reaching and grasping.

“Here goes nothing,” Rowan whispered to Gavyn.

Tera drew her sword. The naked blade and Tera’s fierce look made Rowan feel a lot better. She stepped forward into the grasp of the reaching darkness and let it fold her inside. The shadows sank cold hooks into her skin, and the sky disappeared.

Chapter Thirty-six

Rowan

Black crowded Rowan on all sides, flooding her with panic. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t hear anything other than her heart thudding in her ears.

Healer’s Ghost, what if the lantern doesn’t work the way I thought? What if something essential burned out in the centuries since the Giants used it?

“Rowan?” Gavyn said into her mind. “Rowan, say something.”

His voice steadied her. “I’m here. I—I can’t see yet.” Her own voice rang in her ears, proving she wasn’t deaf.

She gritted her teeth and raised the lantern.

A glow grew in her grasp, and she blinked fiercely until the glow spread and she could make out her arm. She sucked in a breath, relief pouring through her like warmth, and she swung the lantern to and fro trying to peer into the dark.

Gradually the black faded like ink bleeding from a piece of parchment, leaving the ground awash in a cold, white light that revealed gray terrain.

Grass crackled under her feet, but it stayed an unhealthy shade of gray. How did it grow without sun? She squinted up, and the sky remained a near-black, studded with clouds of a lighter gray.

The edge of the noktum undulated like a sheet of dark water, and Lynniki stumbled through, followed closely by Tera, her blade drawn.

Rowan grabbed Lynniki’s hand and pulled her closer to the light. Tera held her sword point down so she didn’t accidentally stab anyone, but Rowan could tell from the way her shoulders tensed and her free hand shook that she was dying to swing it.

“It’s all right,” she told them. “I’m here. Give your eyes a chance to adjust.”

Lynniki blinked rapidly, spinning one way then another, pulling against Rowan’s grasp as she tried to see. Tera waited, frozen, only her eyes darting in rapid movements.

“Oh, I do not like that,” Lynniki said, rubbing her face.

“Can you see?”

“Yes? Where did all the colors go?”

“This appears to be it. Welcome to the noktum.” The light extended out in a circle around them, and Rowan could now see all the way to the horizon. The very gray horizon. The valley continued down, stretching on either side away from the barrier that led back to the sunlit world.

“Not very welcoming. I don’t think I’ll be setting up a workshop here,” Lynniki said.

“I don’t know. It might be homier with some flowers.” Tera’s lip twitched as she peered around them.

Rowan stared at her. “Did you… did you just make a joke?”

“They’d probably just be gray,” Lynniki said, kicking at the grass.

Rowan squinted. “Where are the monsters? Noktums are supposed to be full of them.”

“Maybe don’t second guess a gift of gears,” Lynniki said.

Tera pointed. “There are your monsters.”

Far off, over the rolling hills, black shapes wheeled against the dark sky. From this distance, Rowan only got the impression of wings and dark, sinuous bodies.

Behind them, Lynniki’s construct stepped through the edge of the noktum. Its movements were as jerky as ever, but it didn’t seem to mind the dark, sidling up next to Lynniki.

She gave its head an idle pat. “So where do we start?” She raised her hand to shield her eyes, as if there was any sun to blind her, as she gazed at the featureless landscape.

Rowan bit her lip. She hadn’t expected the area behind the edge of the noktum to be so open. It meant nothing could sneak up on them, but she had no idea how to track someone across a featureless plain.

She glanced at Tera, but the captain gave Rowan a little shake of her head before she went back to surveying the landscape, keeping watch.

“This is about where they disappeared,” Rowan said to herself. “This is where there would be any signs, if there was anything to find.”

Tera flinched, just enough for Rowan to notice before the captain hid her reaction.

Rowan touched the top of the lantern in the pattern that called up the map. Light sprang out in front of her, the shadows crawling into rolling hills just like the ones where they stood. Bits of colors flickered, but only at the very edges, far enough away that she didn’t immediately worry about them.

“What do you think?” Tera said.

“I think we should travel along the edge and find the exact place they might have entered. If I was alone and afraid in the dark and I couldn’t get back out because of Lord Hax’s men, I think I would stay as close to the edge as I could.”

“If they could even see.” Lynniki planted her hands on her hips.

“Mellrea is smart,” Tera said, and her voice wobbled on the word “is” as if she had to think twice about the present tense. “She’s her father’s daughter. She had all that book-learning with Jannik, not to mention a ferocious curiosity. She trained with me while she was young.” She glanced at Rowan, mouth hard. “She’s resourceful, and Patessa wasn’t exactly delicate either. They would have fought to survive.”

“All right,” Rowan said quietly. “Let’s try north.”

They set off, keeping the edge of the noktum on their left and a wary eye on the creatures flying in the distance. So far it didn’t look like they’d been noticed, but Rowan was carrying a lit beacon, so that wasn’t likely to last long.

Lynniki’s construct ranged out further into the noktum, weaving back and forth, sometimes closer, sometimes almost out of sight.

“What’s it doing?” Rowan asked.

“Looking for more material made by Giants,” Lynniki said.

Rowan’s brow furrowed. “It can do that?”

“It can follow simple commands. Run, fetch, follow. That sort of thing.”

“You think it’ll find one of those preservation spells?”

Lynniki shrugged. “That, or I figured anything left behind by Giants would be a great, big landmark to someone who’s lost. We might find Patessa and Mellrea there.”

“Good thought.”

“Rowan,” Gavyn said in the back of her mind. “Look.”

Rowan returned her attention to the map, and there in front of them, she could see a break in the featureless landscape. Something ragged and lumpy rose against the smooth rise of the hill.

“I see it,” she said. “Just ahead.”

She quickened her pace, and the others followed.

Rowan turned her focus to the real ground passing by under the floating overlay of light and shadows. It was hard to concentrate on both at once, but she tried to keep the map in the corner of her eye, watching those colors flickering at the edges.

Five more minutes of walking, and Rowan finally saw what the map had been showing her. The spearing ribs and lonely skull of a dead horse lay just inside the noktum, surrounded by the debris of a burst saddlebag.

They stood, staring for a long moment.

“Something ate it,” Lynniki said.

Tera’s throat bobbed, and she turned her back to the mess.

Rowan wouldn’t have expected a seasoned soldier to show even that much emotion over this mess, but maybe Mellrea had been a closer friend than Tera had been willing to admit.

“You were looking for monsters,” the captain said. “They must have taken care of the carcass and left the bones here.”

Rowan glanced at her, lip between her teeth, but Tera’s profile didn’t reveal anything deeper than worry.

Lynniki knelt while her construct jerked its way around the edges of the debris field. “Clearly something attacked them. These are claw marks.” She held up the tattered remains of a saddle.

Rowan touched the top of the lantern to get rid of the map so she could see better, but she kept hold of the handle, gritting her teeth against the pain.

“I don’t see anything that looks Human,” Rowan said. “That might be good news.” Or it meant that something had dragged off the bodies they were looking for.

There’d been books in the saddlebag. A couple lay open on the ground, tattered pages waving in a slight breeze. Metal glinted in the lantern light, a couple of buckles and the hilt of a broken dagger, the blade sheared off.

She didn’t see any tracks or marks to show something big being dragged.

“What happened here?” Tera said under her breath, and Rowan wasn’t sure she meant for them to hear her.

“Let’s find out.” Rowan reached for the dagger hilt.

Rowan ran her fingers down the hilt. Nearly everything but the pommel was covered with the warmth of memory, and Rowan let the spark behind her eyes reach for the past.

The dark that crowded her vision reminded her too much of that first touch from the noktum, and she shuddered, but then colors coalesced into an image. The taut, anxious face of a middle-aged woman. She was caught in the middle of a spin as she turned away from Rowan. She raised her arm to point into the distance.

Rowan drank in every detail before the vision could fade, imprinting them on her memory to examine and analyze later.

The woman’s face reflected a warm, yellow light. The horse lay freshly dead at her feet and something large and hulking prowled just out of the corner of her eye.

Rowan blinked the vision away. She still knelt on the ground amid the debris of a broken saddlebag.

“What did you see?” Tera said. She glanced over her shoulder, her blade still out in a guard position.

Rowan’s brow furrowed as she thought. “I saw a woman. Middle-aged with dark brown hair and a long face. She wore blue riding leathers.”

Tera let out a breath. “Patessa. So she was alive then at least. Was Mellrea with her?”

Rowan let the dagger hilt roll down her hand a little so it caught Tera’s eye. “Was this hers?”

“Yes.”

“Then I think so. I think it was her memory.”

“How could they see?” Lynniki asked. “The only way we can see anything is with the lantern.”

Rowan shook her head. “They had some sort of light, but I couldn’t see its source.” She stood up and tried to line herself up with the memory. Then she peered into the distance, in the direction Patessa had been pointing. “I think they were headed that way.”

“What’s over there?” Gavyn asked.

She couldn’t see anything beyond the rolling gray of the plains. Rowan raised the lantern with a wince and called up the map.

“It looks like… a wall?” Rowan said. “Maybe they thought it would shelter them.”

Tera jerked her chin. “Let’s move.”

Lynniki snatched up a couple of things from the saddlebag. Rowan couldn’t see any immediate use for discarded buckles and straps, but then she wasn’t the one building new bodies from scratch. Lynniki’s construct sniffed around them before pointing its nose in the direction they were heading.

Rowan could no longer tell north from south, but she trusted the map to get them back out of the noktum when the time came.

When they finally reached it, the waist-high wall stretched from their left to their right, but no other details stood out.

“What is it?” Lynniki asked. “Why have a wall in the middle of nowhere?”

“It looks like the ones back home that separate two fields,” Rowan said.

Tera frowned. “This was once farmland?”

“Maybe a long, long time ago, before there was a noktum here?”

“I guess I assumed the noktum was forever.”

“Heads up,” Lynniki said, voice quiet and intense. “Our grace period is over.”

Tera’s head snapped up, and Rowan turned to follow her gaze. Several sinuous shapes swam through the air as if it were water, and Rowan got the impression of long, sleek bodies with ripping talons and fangs.

She realized with a start that the monsters didn’t cast shadows over the grayed-out grass.

“At least we can see them coming,” Tera said, placing herself between Rowan and Lynniki and the approaching threat.

Lynniki whistled to her construct. It came tumbling over the wall, and she drew a hammer from her pack.

Rowan tightened her grip on the lantern despite its pain and drew her dagger. The hilt slid in her sweaty palm.

Her breath stuttered as the creatures approached. In this wide-open plain, they could see for miles. This turned into a curse, as it seemed to take the creatures forever to get there.

The map shimmered over the ground, and Rowan’s eyes narrowed. It wouldn’t do them much good when they could see everything coming. She reached for the cap to switch it to a more general glow but hesitated.

The lens facing her had swirls of gold swimming through the glass, forming intricate starbursts with dead areas in between. Rowan bit her lip, an image of a wall undercut with red coming to her mind.

“Here they come,” Gavyn called. “Rowan, what are you doing?”

The first of the flying, slinking creatures with their long sleek bodies dove for them, fangs bared.

Tera gave a fierce yell and threw herself at the creature. She dodged its lunge and swept her blade around to strike it in midair. It tumbled away but then rolled and righted itself with a hiss as if she’d only angered it. It certainly didn’t look like the blade had even split its fur.

Lynniki swung her hammer, striking a creature square on the snout. It swerved around her, landing on the other side of the wall. In one smooth motion, it planted its feet and twisted back on itself to come at Lynniki from behind.

Rowan grabbed Lynniki’s collar and pulled, yanking the Delver out of the way at the last second. Neither creature seemed to care about the blows that had been dealt.

Rowan reached for the lantern cap, already recalling the pattern that would activate the starburst lens.

Light shot out in front of her in a white arc, bathing the attacking creatures in a clear glow.

The one that crawled half over the wall turned black eyes on her and bared its fangs. Rowan gulped, but her gaze was caught by the stripe of red down the center of the thing’s chest, a flickering bit of color among the white light.

What’s the lantern telling me? All those images she’d seen back at Lord Karaval’s keep swam through her head, a jumble of puzzle pieces she’d only just started assembling. The crumbling wall appeared and over with that spot of red underneath it, nudging her with a possibility. To one side, Tera was caught in a fragment of the light. Her sword arm glowed blue, and red shone in the spaces between her armor.

Rowan swung the lantern at the creature’s snout, a feint to make it jerk away. As it batted at the light, Rowan lunged in close and low, gambling everything on her hunch, and slashed her knife along its underside from neck to hip.

Its thick fur parted along its belly, and it screamed in pain as Rowan’s dagger struck home. Hot blood coated her hands, and she rolled away, avoiding the creature’s death throes as it flopped against the wall. Her breath rasped in her ears, but a swelling heat rose in her chest, a feeling she didn’t recognize.

“Underneath,” she called to Lynniki and Tera. “Strike them in the belly where they are weak.”

Lynniki nodded, but Tera didn’t even pause. She dove forward, her blade slashing as she kept the worst of the swarm from reaching Rowan and Lynniki.

The Delver took the right side, sweeping her hammer to knock the sleek creatures off their feet and then landing the final blow against their chests. Her pile grew, each one sporting the caved rib cage of a hammer victim.

Rowan kept her dagger in front of her, letting the lantern illuminate the creatures coming after her from the left. She ducked around the swiping talons that glowed blue and followed the red streaks, showing her the vulnerable bits of her enemies.

Her heart hammered, but it never drowned out Gavyn’s voice in her head.

“Behind you—another one on the left—Duck! Strike now!”

The flurry of claws and teeth and furry bodies seemed endless, Rowan’s lips pulled back unconsciously until she realized she was grinning. Was this how people like Tera felt while fighting? This fierce surge of heat that beat in her pulse. Like pride, only brighter and steadier.

I control this place! Terror still tried to drown out the confidence, but Rowan clung to the feeling that for the first time in her life she knew what she was doing.

The creatures kept coming until, all at once, Rowan looked up to find the next target and there was none.

She sucked in a breath and checked her companions. Tera winced and touched her neck where a long scratch bled freely while Lynniki pushed her way through the pile of bodies that threatened to swamp her.

“Here,” Rowan said, reaching for her pack. “I think we brought bandages.”

Tera pulled her hand away to examine the blood. “How did you know they were weak underneath?”

“The lantern,” she said. “It has different lenses that do different things. The map is only one of them. I’m trying to figure out the others.”

“Being able to see an enemy’s weaknesses is certainly helpful.”

Rowan dug for the long rolls of linen, and Tera didn’t bother protesting when Rowan tried to wrap her wound and ended up with a sloppy mess that barely staunched the bleeding.

“I’m sorry,” Rowan said. “I’m usually better at that.” She couldn’t keep her hands from shaking, even now when there was nothing attacking.

Tera shook her head. “Good enough. We need to move. If the noise didn’t attract more enemies, the smell of blood certainly will. Which way?”

Rowan pointed. “Past the wall. That is if they kept going in the same direction after reaching this point.”

“We have nothing else to go on.” Tera grimaced and climbed to her feet once more. “Let’s go.”

Rowan exchanged a worried glance with Lynniki before they clambered after Tera. Rowan pulled the map up again so they wouldn’t be surprised by anything.

The plain wasn’t so featureless now. There were bits of tumbled stone where walls had crumbled, and at one point, the square foundation of a ruined outbuilding interrupted the wide-open space.

Rowan kept her attention divided between the map and the skies around them, watching for more creatures. Lynniki concentrated on the remains of civilization they found, examining each stone and ruin for something only she would recognize. Tera watched their rear, making sure nothing snuck up on them.

Rowan’s gaze sharpened on the horizon. Off to the right of their trajectory, a dark smudge marred the gray landscape. She didn’t adjust their course right away, keeping them moving forward, but as they hurried ahead, the bit of darkness grew clearer and clearer, becoming a mass of bodies.

Wings flapped over the sleeker forms of the creatures they’d just fought. As if giant bats competed with the flying fanged monsters.

“They’re swarming,” Rowan said quietly, pointing into the distance.

Lynniki’s mouth tightened. “Yes. Like they’ve found something.”

Rowan exchanged a look with Tera.

“Better hurry,” the captain said. “Before there’s nothing left of whatever it is they’ve trapped.”

Rowan didn’t stop to wonder if it was a good idea or not. At this point, anything that was an enemy of the creatures and had them in that much of a frenzy was a friend, in Rowan’s book.

Rowan’s back ached, and her left arm burned all the way to the elbow, but she kept her feet moving and her dagger drawn in the other hand. As they ran, she touched the cap so the map disappeared and the starburst lens activated.

Giant bats with talons as long as Rowan’s forearm swarmed the crumbling walls of a house. A villa to go with the fields they’d spent the last few hours crossing. It held wide windows, boarded over with debris, and makeshift barricades, and Rowan couldn’t even see where the ancient door had stood.

More sleek creatures ducked and wove through the bats, scrabbling at the ancient tile roof, making horrendous screeching noises as they struck. The fliers reminded her of the ones in the depths of Blackfall, except these were much larger, as if the Kolossoi had taken those first attempts and improved them.

Several large bodies littered the uneven ground leading up to the villa. Some were fresh, while others had been picked over for a time. Whoever was trapped had been here a while.

Tera didn’t stop to plan or issue orders. She charged up the broken path, silent and ready with her blade already drawn.

“So cut a path through, then knock on the door,” Lynniki said, racing after her. “I guess that’s simple enough.”

“Go for the undersides again,” Rowan called to them. Several creatures spun at the sound of her voice, but she was already moving into position behind the other two. “The bats are weak in the neck and along the wings. Ground them, and we should have a chance.”

Lynniki yelled, racing up a fallen pillar. She leaped from the top, swinging her hammer, and a bat met her in midair. Her blow cracked against the base of its wing, and it screeched in pain. The Delver followed it to the ground to cave its head in.

Tera screamed at a bat diving for her. She fell to her knees to slide under it, and Rowan caught the startled creature across the neck with her dagger.

One of the sleek ones with the fangs fell on her, and Rowan stumbled with a yell.

Talons scrabbled at her torso, cutting into the leather of her tunic, and she swung her arm around so the lantern connected with the thing’s thick skull.

It winced away, its black eyes narrowing, and Rowan got the impression it hated the light more than the blow.

Red crawled up its belly like before, but another streak caught her eye from its shoulder. Under the revealing light, its sleek fur was seamed, as if it hid an old scar.

Rowan twisted to slash at the seam.

It hissed and ducked away, long enough for Rowan to scramble to her feet. She didn’t wait for it to pounce again, following her movement up with another slash. The creature scrabbled back a step.

The pathway opened before her, and Rowan darted for the villa. Lynniki was already there, clearing a space with her hammer.

Tera darted after her, then spun to catch Rowan’s attacker with a thrust from her short sword.

“Now what?” Lynniki panted. “There’s no door.”

Rowan backed up against the wall and waved the lantern at the bats stooping from above. One veered off course when the light struck its eyes, and the other screamed. It wove, as if partly blinded, and Rowan struck for its wing.

As it fell at their feet, Lynniki bashed its head in.

Rowan sidled along the wall to the nearest boarded window and hammered at it with the pommel of her dagger. “Hey! Is anyone in there?”

Wings fluttered above her, and the sleek creatures hissed through their fangs, but Rowan thought she heard a muffled voice through the cracked wood.

A creature raked claws down the tile roof, and Rowan winced back under the eaves.

Tera pushed through Lynniki and Rowan and pounded on the boards. “Mellrea. It’s Tera. Let us in.”

A surprised cry pierced the barricade, and something began attacking the boards from the other side.

Rowan raised her dagger and faced the bats that lined up for another dive. “If that’s not Mellrea…” She slashed at a bat and ducked as Tera finished it off.

“Or if she takes too long to let us in…” Lynniki added.

“We’re dead, I know,” Tera said. “We’re dead anyway. Inside is our only hope of survival.”

Rowan bit her lip and ducked back, panting. The eaves provided a little cover, but there were still at least twenty creatures up there. Only three of them, and they were already wounded and exhausted. Tera was right.

“Here come more,” Lynniki said.

Under the flutter of chaotic wings, Rowan made out the stalking shadows of large cats creeping up on the villa from afar. Again, these reminded her of the ones from Blackfall. Only bigger and worse.

Tera squared her shoulders. “All right.” She blew out her breath and then said a little stronger, “All right. Keep your blade up. Don’t let them get behind you. Watch your heads and stay under the eaves.”

Lynniki brandished her hammer, Tera flicked blood from the tip of her sword, and Rowan resettled her grip on the burning lantern. The dagger hilt was sticky against her palm.

Three bats wheeled above and dove in concert, falling on them at the same time.

Rowan raised her dagger.

The boards fell away from her back, and hands dragged her through the window.