by Graham Robert Scott

For Gods Dethroned
A Tale of Arethkayn, Last of the Gale Lords
by Graham Robert Scott
A
murmuring of blackbirds whorled in great dark arcs
over the water, darting among a hundred bony, barren
trees poking through the lake’s surface.
Of the two riders skirting the edge of the lake, only one
watched the spinning birds.
Unlike the sort of sturdy, Avantine, stone-work road one
encountered near Runerock, their path had been worn into the
ground by frequent ancient traffic, and then through years of
neglect and flood, it had renewed its relationship with nature,
becoming uneven, rocky, and weed-choked. One might not
suspect a path at all unless one were looking for it—or unless
one spotted its intermittent, eroded, and often plant-shrouded
stone waymarker posts.
Long ago, the posts had appeared every league, but many had
since gone missing, having drowned in the mud or been
confiscated as trophies by passing caravans.
The first rider—armored in brigandine, face masked with a
high scarf, and carrying a
long glaive like a knight
might a lance—stopped
her horse. After a
moment’s thought, she
dismounted to hike up a
short hill at the side of the
lake. The woman, who
called herself Arethkayn,
kept her long hair out of
her face and somewhat
tamed against the breeze by
keeping it coiled and anchored by
crossed silver spikes.
At the top of the hill, Arethkayn stood in the footprint of what
had once been a great battlement, a crumbling, low stone wall
testifying to where it had once controlled passage along the
skirt of the lake. After tapping the butt of her pole-arm against
one of the few flagstones peeking out from under the soil and
listening to its sound, she returned to her horse and mounted.
“An anchor-stone,” she said to her helmed companion.
“Vormirian. So the place should be near here.”
Her gaunt companion, slouched in his saddle, said nothing.
Holding his reins loosely in great, tough gloves sewn from the
hides of several giants, he carried no visible weapons and
never appeared to shift in discomfort. A helmet concealed any
expression he might have had.
Arethkayn, neither surprised nor offended by his silence,
urged her horse forward. Her quiet companion followed.
Grim Architects
About a mile past the lake, Arethkayn spotted what she was
looking for. Over a distant cliff’s edge loomed a great
hill. Atop that hill, a silent, ivy-clad stone ruin of a
fortified town overlooked the drop. From her
crest, she could make out arches, walls,
pillars, tilted flagstones, and trails of
rubble where edges of its
structures had
collapsed.
By Vormirian custom, the hill would be artificial—a mound of
earth and corpse, burial ground for the settlement’s founders.
Grim architects, the Vormir had liked to build on familial
bones, thinking the limbs of ancestors would reach
out, grasp the earth, and keep it from shifting out
from under them. Centuries after the last tongue of
the Vormir had uttered the last native word of their
language, nothing had disproved their hypothesis.
Near a waymarker at the base of the hill, four people
rested on foot while their tethered mounts grazed
on whatever poked up out of the soil.
Trapping her pole-arm against her knee, Arethkayn
drew from a pouch a folded sheet of paper, jagged
along one edge. She checked it one last time before
putting it back. She knew what it said, of course, and
knew every jag along its edge.
What she didn’t know was this: Would the people at the
base of the hill try to kill her immediately, or would they
wait awhile and do it later? As a result, she was stalling.
Finally, steeling her resolve, Arethkayn urged her horse
forward. Whatever hesitation gripped her now, she had
made her decision long ago. Her companion, who had no
choice at all, followed quietly.
Spying her approach, the others muttered to each other
briefly. One swiftly remounted, though the others stayed
afoot. They spread out into a semi-circle. When Arethkayn
came to a point where she might be considered part of the
same circle, she stopped. Behind Arethkayn, her companion
stopped, too.
For a moment, the four figures held their positions silently,
two of them clearly studying Arethkayn and her companion.
She studied the four right back:
A silver-bearded man in plate armor, visor up, drank from
a flask (of what smelled even from a distance like grave ale)
without taking his eyes off Arethkayn. He was the only one
of the four who had remounted. The shield on his horse
bore the sigil of the Falconer’s Legion, a fraternal order that
had long ago forgotten that it once had anything to do with
birds. An image of crossed spears below the sigil indicated
he had been knighted on a battlefield.
A dark-haired, sharp-nosed woman in the red robes of
the Cophe eyed Arethkayn’s mailed companion with a
studious frown. Aside from a dagger, she seemed
unarmored and unarmed.
A grinning, broad-shouldered swordsman in jackof-plate watched everyone studying everyone else.
He wore his rust-hued hair in an Northclan
braggart’s braid, nine knots long. From what she
understood, the knots testified that nine times, he
had boasted to a camp full of warriors and had
backed up his boast when challenged.
Finally, a clean-shaven youth in a high-collared,
charcoal cloak and drooping, wide-brimmed hat
studied his fingernails. Through gaps in his
overgarment, Arethkayn could see hints of cuir
bouilli, and the end of a long hilt.
Eventually, the woman of Cophe addressed Arethkayn.
“What brings you to this edge of the Forlorn Hide?” she asked.
Arethkayn nudged her horse slowly closer, drew her stolen
paper gingerly from her pouch, and extended it to the woman
of Cophe.
The woman’s eyes narrowed and her mouth quirked, her
expression an alloy of trepidation and suspicion, mingled with
a hint of amusement. She took the paper with two gloved
fingers, rattled it until it had unfolded, tilted the page slightly
to glance at its contents.
“Malecibe, let’s see yours,” the woman called. The young man
in the hat came forward, and, plucking a similar contract out
from under his brim, handed it to the Lady of Cophe.
The latter held the two pieces next to each other, jagged edges
aligned. The two pieces fit together perfectly.
“A contract-holder, then,” said Malecibe, eyeing Arethkayn
warily as he spoke for the first time. “How did you navigate
the edge of the lake?”
Odd question. By not stepping in it? No, that wouldn’t do.
“Easily,” she said.
Again, Arethkayn caught a ripple of conflicting emotions on
the faces of the young man, the lady, and the knight. Surprise,
wariness, curiosity. Only the swordsman with the braggart’s
braid showed no change in expression. Arethkayn felt a flutter
of nerves, the sort she often had before a battle.
Had she missed something important there? Yes, I have, she
realized suddenly. Those were challenges, and I didn’t reply with a
password.
She replayed the questions in her mind. Edge. Both had used
the word edge. They had expected Arethkayn to use a
predetermined word in her response, to show she belonged.
But she hadn’t.
“Our sources didn’t say you’d have a companion,” the other
woman said. “Who is he?”
So they were playing along—for now. Fine. Arethkayn would,
too.
“I’m Brijiene,” she lied. “His name is Toltus. He’s a ... family
guardian. He doesn’t speak.”
That last bit was true enough. Although a voice sometimes
emerged from inside the helmet or from his mouth, it was
never Toltus’s voice that emerged. Toltus himself had not
spoken in more than a year, though on one or two occasions, it
looked like he might have tried.
Malecibe tilted his head, attempting to make eye-contact with
the helmet’s low gaze. “Is he expecting a share?”
“I’ll give him part of mine,” Arethkayn answered.
Malecibe shrugged, snorted, and turned back. As he did so,
Arethkayn spotted a tiny reptilian head, eyes like black pearls,
peering at her from within Malecibe’s high collar. A pocket
wyvern. Rare pet. By all reports, it would be highly venomous,
and by most reports, it probably couldn’t fly; the wings of
pocket wyverns were supposedly vestigial. She hoped so.
“Here arrives the last of our company,” announced the knight.
Along the edge of the cliff came a final, hulking figure on foot.
Though bipedal and allotted two muscled arms like a human,
its coat of thick, russet fur and toothy, predator’s snout
betrayed an inhuman nature.
carried a serrated bardiche, a boros spear-thrower, and a
quiver a throwing spears.
“Do you trust it?” Arethkayn asked. Even as she asked it, she
recognized the irony of the question. She’d stolen a contract
and lied to get into this company.
“No,” said the woman in red, with a look that suggested she
had caught the irony as well. Then she called out to the
bhargeist, “Mind the edge of the cliff!”
Edge, again.
“A bhargeist,” Arethkayn realized aloud.
The inhuman warrior stopped. It stretched its intimidating
jaws, lips peeling back far enough to reveal gums. When it
finally spoke, its voice was a rasp—and peculiarly doubled, as
though two beings spoke at once.
The woman in red nodded, clearly not surprised.
“I will not fall,” it replied, with some difficulty.
A species of brilliant ferocity when provoked, bhargeists had
been fighting and killing human beings for centuries. Few
were seen now in civilized areas, though, having been driven
into the unmapped areas of the world, of which there seemed
to remain a great many.
So the password was ‘fall,’ Arethkayn thought. She filed it away,
though almost certainly the information would do her no good
now.
The new figure’s crude armor had clearly been stitched
together from a variety of toughened and layered hides.
Arethkayn had heard that each bhargeist warrior made its
own armor from the skins of its fallen enemies. If that were
true, then some of the skins were likely human. The creature
“Corumet of Cophe,” the woman said, introducing herself
after checking the bhargeist’s contract. “These are Brijiene,
Toltus, Malecibe, Trent” indicating the knight, “and
Rhurrinore,” indicating the braggart-tailed swordsman.
The bhargeist inclined its head slightly, but otherwise showed
no response.
“And you are?” called Rhurrinore, speaking for the first time.
“Zuuduun,” it replied.
Although bhargeists were mammalian, the mammary glands
of their females were less pronounced than in humans. And
Zuuduun was wearing armor. Without obvious tell-tales,
Arethkayn couldn’t be sure of its sex.
Sinister Spirals
“Now we’re introduced, I see little reason for other
preliminaries,” Corumet said. No one disagreed. “The gate lies
above us and storms may come. We should begin at once.”
They did so. Circling to a side of the hill with a gentler slope,
the company found a switchback trail and took it up the
mound toward the ruin at its crown. By the time they reached
the top, the sky had dimmed perceptibly, edging toward
nightfall.
Two columns, neither now supporting a roof, loomed before
them, each carved so as to depict a snakelike lizard wound
caduceus-like around it. The heads of the lizards extended
from the columns high above, peering down at incoming
guests. Behind and to the sides of the columns, the rest of the
ruin seemed to be shrouded in a light mist not visible from the
base of the hill.
The next step required someone savvy about the arcane lore of
cardinals, as arcanists called those strange, high-energy,
geographic points that were prone to slipping between realms.
Arethkayn knew enough to step in, but instead she watched
the others, resolved to wait them out. If she waited long
enough, she might learn who else in the company knew spellwork. It wasn’t always obvious, and she fully expected their
arrangement to turn violent.
An awkward, extended silence developed. No one moved, nor
spoke.
Finally, Corumet cleared her throat at Arethkayn. “Priest, I
think we’re counting on you for this part.”
“Right,” Arethkayn said. “Apologies. We’ll need to circle the
ruin nine times.”
“Sinister? Or dexter?” Corumet asked.
Corumet was invoking old shield terminology for left and
right. If sinister, they would turn right to circle the ruins,
keeping the ruins always at their left. If dexter, they’d go the
other way.
“Dexter,” Arethkayn lied.
Take the bait. Take the bait.
“Sinister,” Malecibe corrected.
Rhurrinore shot Malecibe a nasty look. He shook his head
almost imperceptibly.
Hah! Got you both, Arethkayn thought.
So at least two of her companions knew something of magic,
then. Of the two, Malecibe had been the more obvious
candidate. Rhurrinore, appearing on the surface to be an
everyday merc, was the more subtle companion—and likely,
then, the more dangerous.
“‘Beware the back-necked leader,’” he said. “‘Who must see
where others are going to know where she should lead.’”
“My mistake. Sinister,” she conceded.
The quotation, from an anonymous ancient treatise on
spiritual leadership, stung more than it should have. She had
deliberately played things a little dumb, yet the rebuke still
found a mark. Smarting and red-faced, Arethkayn faced
forwards again, hating herself for this sudden vulnerability.
The others studied her again. Arethkayn ignored them and led
the way, directing her horse to the right, so that the ruins
would be on her left. At a subtle gesture, Toltus filed in behind
her, creating a buffer between her and the
others. Deprived of a moment to plan a
marching order, the remaining members of
the party jostled a bit. Rhurrinore led them,
followed by Corumet and then the others.
Subtle Wounds
Rhurrinore laughed to the others. “Even
wearing armor, some people are easily
skewered by truth.”
She felt that one, too. Hard, like a blow to the
lungs. Toltus, of his own accord, raised his
head and looked at Rhurrinore.
When one hikes through unfamiliar
grounds, the senses heighten. One peers
into shadows, keeps ears attuned to
subtle shifts. And so it was that on the first circle, they marked
and gingerly avoided several places where the gap between
the ruin and a steep incline grew treacherously narrow.
Although no one said anything about it, each member of the
group also thought he or she had heard something shift in the
growing shadows of the old town they circled.
Arethkayn spurred her horse into a faster,
admittedly unsafe, gait, her ears ringing
and breath shallow. Behind her, she could hear Toltus keep
pace, and glancing back she saw he’d returned to his usual
posture. It took a full lap around the ruin before she felt at all
recovered.
As they approached their starting point for the first time,
Arethkayn glanced at the ornate columns and saw the change
she had expected there. She glanced over a shoulder to check
on the others and saw Rhurrinore observing the columns, too.
The Northclansman saw her looking back.
“How many heads did those lizard statues have before?”
Corumet asked, indicating the carvings on the columns, now
each with three heads.
It wasn’t until the third pass that Malecibe and Corumet
noticed the oddity about the columns.
“Not that many,” Malecibe said.
“They started with one each,” Arethkayn called back. “No
need to count the laps. The dead Vormir are doing it for us.”
She waited for Rhurrinore to try another barb, but he held his
tongue this time.
The heads on the columns weren’t the only changes. With each
pass, breaks in the walls healed, though the stones still seemed
quite weathered, and overgrown rubble came to be replaced
with mended walls swaddled in ivy.
When the column’s hydras had seven heads each, the group
stopped at a new sound—a great, whorfing snort from within
the garrison. They traded glances, readied weapons. A boar? A
dog? Whatever it was, it sounded larger than either of those
possibilities. Much larger.
“Two more sinisters to complete,” Arethkayn said. Even as she
said this, though, she felt weary and battered, as though she’d
already been in a bruiser of a fight. She wasn’t quite sure why.
Trent, the knight, regarded the slope to his right nervously. “I
wonder if we should leave the horses behind.”
He had a point. If a large beast attacked from within, horse
and rider might tumble down the slope. Zuuduun, with no
steed to worry about, made a noise like a laugh.
“We could leave them,” Arethkayn granted. “But we might
not find them again, seven sinisters into the transition.”
At Corumet’s suggestion, all of the riders dismounted.
Arethkayn passed the reins of her horse to Toltus, who led
both their steeds. She kept her glaive, a spear-shaft with a
wicked, curved sword blade at one end, in hand, using its butt
like that of a walking stick. In the deepening twilight and with
the terrain shifting at every pass, she would need to probe the
ground ahead. The others followed. Arethkayn saw that
Malecibe’s weapon of choice, now in hand, was a long-gripped
espada—an unusually long, narrow blade, double-edged, with
a guarded hilt long enough to accommodate two hands,
though he held it in one for the moment.
On the eighth sinister, the horses became agitated and the
company took several minutes to calm them—and their own
nerves.
Finally, after a final pass under cloak of night, the company
came to stop in front of a looming portal, an edifice above
supported by eighteen interlocking heads and necks from the
column lizards, nine from each side.
Through the open entryway between the columns and past
drifting fingers of mist, they could still see where the
moonlight grazed flagstones and interior walls. Even this
version of the ruin was missing much of its roofing and upper
structure, Arethkayn observed.
“Going first,” said Arethkayn, “is someone else’s job.”
Normally, it would be Toltus’s, but she didn’t volunteer him.
Zuuduun stepped through the arch, feet nearly soundless on
the flagstones, body in a crouch as it kept close to one wall.
Several feet in, Zuuduun became difficult to see, and then
impossible.
Zuuduun shook her head, looking relieved to finally hit a
question that could be answered yes or no.
“Zuuduun. A he, she, or it?” asked Trent, voice low.
A hushed, brief debate erupted then about whether to hunt the
beast before taking the next step, or to continue with their task,
stay on guard, and hope to avoid a confrontation.
“A she,” Rhurrinore answered without elaboration. “Silence.”
Minutes later, Zuuduun returned. Her voice an eerie doublewhisper, she said, “Large prints. Bones. Scat.”
It was hard to say for sure, but Arethkayn received the distinct
impression the bhargeist found human-style speech physically
uncomfortable and would not be friendly if asked to repeat
herself.
“What kind of scat?” Rhurrinore asked.
“Something like a bear. Big. Big bear,” Zuuduun replied.
Malecibe smirked. “You can tell how big it is from feces?”
Zuuduun made an angry rumbling sound from within her
chest that might have been a sigh, or might have been the
rattle of a snake poised to strike. Malecibe backed off an inch.
“Yes,” she said, straining. “Cow hair in scat. Moose hair. Big
prey, big predator. And from prints. And from claw marks on
walls, this high.” She indicated a point slightly above
Rhurrinore’s head.
Trent had drawn his broadsword and was braced against the
darkness, in case the beast came charging out.
“Did you see it?” Corumet whispered.
Since no one knew where the beast was, the team eventually
settled on the second option. They grounded the horses. Then
alert and armed, the company filed into the ruin’s murk, each
member about ten feet from the next. Zuuduun led the way,
marking the path with a phosphorescent hunk of chalk.
Cloaked in mist and creeping alone through the ruin with
Toltus at the rear, Arethkayn whispered, “Hazzumkigh, hear
me.”
A low voice croaked forth from within Toltus’s helm,
“Hazzumkigh answers.”
“Shroud me in Theryn’s Veil. I may need to be overlooked.”
“As you wish,” Hazzumkigh rasped, using the dried vocal
cords of its silent host. “Did those wicked barbs sting you, my
flower?”
It took Arethkayn a second to realize what Hazzumkigh was
referring to. The entity, seneschal to the Storm Court and the
chief liaison between the House of Ruoud and the four gods of
the Covenant, could be oblique at times.
It was referring to Rhurrinore’s insults.
“I’ve recovered.”
“Have you?” Hazzumkigh chuckled. “You’re still bleeding, I
think.”
Still bleeding? she thought.
“You noticed him. You saw. He knows some art,” Hazzumkigh
prodded.
“Yes, he does,” she muttered.
“Which arts?” it asked.
Good question. Then it hit her.
“The poetical arts. So... Harpsire’s Tongue.”
“Yes.” In that single syllable, she could hear Hazzumkigh’s
alien smile.
So Rhurrinore wasn’t just a Northclansman. Whether by
fostering or by some other means, he’d also spent some time
among the Eastclans. And among them, he’d become a
harrowskald, able to deal injury with words alone.
Arethkayn had expected violence but hadn’t realized it had
already begun. No wonder her ribs hurt. She had the means to
heal the subtle wounds, but if she did, Rhurrinore might notice
and realize she knew about the Harpsire attacks. Then things
would get worse.
So for now, she’d hold off.
The Draugarbjorn
Ahead, the narrow and claustrophobic lane that Arethkayn
had been navigating opened into the ruin’s central
amphitheater, where she could see the others gathering,
forming an outward-facing ring. Trent was lighting torches
and dropping them around the group.
Crouched by some fallen masonry, Malecibe had his pocket
wyvern out and was milking its venom into a small vial.
As Arethkayn approached, Corumet nodded to her, “You’re
up again.”
With the others watching the perimeter, Arethkayn examined
the ground. Debris, soil, weeds, and vines had invaded the
site, but here and there a flagstone from the original flooring
peeked through. On an occasional stone, she could see carved
runes. She poked the point of her glaive under bits of the ivy
carpet, hooked them, and lifted. As beetles scurried for shelter,
she noted more markings there.
Conclusion: Although it looked as though the runes formed a
ring, in three places, equidistant from each other, the ring was
broken by featureless stonework. Arethkayn removed from
her pouches a small jar of paint and a brush.
“Souls of Vormir, please guide my hand,” she muttered. “Help
me retrace old patterns, repair the circle, and recall your
power.”
Arethkayn had had to consciously resist rhyming. The Vormir
aesthetic mocked rhymes as tools for lazy poets, and she
needed their cooperation.
puff of misty breath. The creature there was much smaller than
the beast they watched for. Zuuduun, watching the same
direction, had seen it too.
She heard a faint echoing whisper from within Toltus’s helm –
“Trouble soon,” Zuuduun said. “Cub nearby. The beast we
face is a mother.”
– and then she was somewhere else.
Like her previous location, the new one was an amphitheater
in an old town on a high hill. But the walls were upright here,
ivy and weeds in check. Hooded, cloaked figures stood in a
ring, like her own companions, but these new figures faced
inward, each at a different point on the circle of runes. One of
the hooded figures gestured to her with a thin finger, crouched
by one of the gaps in the circle, and began completing the
pattern with red paint.
Arethkayn watched carefully. The figure pointed to a key
detail, a tricky bit of work, and turned its head up toward her.
The face looking up at her was rotted, with empty sockets. Her
mouth dried. She nodded, tried not to insult her host. It
showed her the other two gaps and how to close them
– and then she was back where she had started.
Before her memories faded, she used her own red paint to
close the first gap, mirroring what the Vormir guide had
revealed.
Glancing up from her work as she hurried to the second gap,
Arethkayn spotted something moving out past the torches, in
the triangular space below a fallen slab. The glint of eyes, a
Trent cursed in two languages.
And that’s when the horses back near the entrance started
screaming. From where the companions were, they could hear
the sounds of ripping flesh and meaty weights slamming
against stone.
With a third curse, Trent broke from the party and sped back
toward the sounds.
“Why the horses?” Corumet asked, holding her place in the
circle.
“Hungry?” Malecibe said, raising his wyvern back to his cowl,
where it scrabbled back into its old perch.
“No,” said Zuuduun.
“It’s strategizing,” said Rhurrinore. “It’s trying to draw us out.
Get us to break the circle.”
Malecibe dabbed a cloth with his milked venom and wiped it
on his blade.
“But it’s just a bear,” Corumet said.
“No,” said Zuuduun again.
Arethkayn could no longer see the cub under the slab. Now at
the second gap in the ring of runes, she whipped aside some
errant vegetation and closed the space with new red lines,
almost fumbling one of the arcs.
The cub had reappeared in the open, at the mouth of the very
lane its mother was roaring down, but even as Arethkayn
watched, it vanished from sight again. It hadn’t moved at all.
One second it had been there; the next, it was gone.
That step completed, she moved to the third and final gap,
racking her memory. Uncertainty crept in about one of the
details. With every second and with every
distraction, the chances increased that she
would forget how to close the last pattern.
She doubted the Vormir would tell her
again, at least not honestly. She began
painting, carefully.
“Gods shield us,” Arethkayn said. “It’s a draugarbjorn.”
“You said it was a bear,” Corumet
said.
“Like a bear, yes. A bear, no,”
Zuuduun replied.
From the other side of the ruin came the ring of steel striking
stone. Then a human scream, pain and fury. Trent. A scuffle, a
roar, a thud. A shout of surprise, then suddenly the sound of
something heavy and metal being dragged at high speed –
toward them. Louder still than the scrape of dragged metal
was the dull, lumbering rhythm of something heavy and
meaty.
All members of the company now faced that direction.
Arethkayn halted, mid-design.
The great beast charged then into
the amphitheater, Trent tumbling
ahead of it, pummeled by paws
and headbutts. Resembling a
great bear aside from a pair of
sharp horns, the beast leapt over
the knight and bulled toward the
company, whose flickering torches and pointy
weapons now seemed feeble deterrents.
Still, Rhurrinore thrust his sword at its head.
At the last second, the draugarbjorn vanished only to reappear
several feet past the Northclansman, momentum preserved.
There it slammed into Toltus and skidded perhaps five feet
with the armored figure dragged like a ragdoll under its paws.
Malecibe spun, whipping his blade in an arc that had
Arethkayn yanking her head out of the path. The point sliced
through a layer of the beast’s hide, drawing blood.
With a roar, the beast rose, batting Malecibe to the ground and
sending his sword clattering. Then it spun to face away from
the party and vanished, reappearing behind Rhurrinore.
Before the swordsman could turn to face the beast, it wrapped
its trunk-thick arms around him, squeezing.
Trent lurched from the ground, onto one knee, and jammed
his own sword into one of the beast’s arms. At the same time,
Rhurrinore reversed his blade and drove it back into his foe’s
leg. It released him and he scrambled forward.
I’m forgetting the runes, Arethkayn realized. With an internal
curse, she bent and resumed painting, trying to tune out the
fight.
“Toltus,” she commanded. “Defend
me.”
Toltus rose from where he had fallen.
Elsewhere in the amphitheater, Corumet
had found a wall to put her back against.
Zuuduun, beside her, had set her spears
on the ground and dug deep into her
quiver. The bhargeist pulled forth a
small pot.
Arcana suggested that the draugarbjorn favored breeding and
raising cubs in magical locations like cardinals and ley-line
intersections, and perhaps as a result of its exposures at such
sites could step at will among the several worlds, appearing to
those gathered here as though it were teleporting from point to
point.
Still more time passed. Except for Arethkayn, the members of
the company formed a semicircle around Corumet’s wall.
Malecibe recovered his blade and coated it
again in venom.

The beast sniffed her. She stayed
motionless. It nudged her with a wet
nose. She dared not breathe. Work,
spell. Work.
“Brijiene!” Corumet called to her.
“Busy,” Arethkayn snapped, still trying to
recall the last details of the final arc.
Behind her, she heard—and felt—a snort,
the blow of wet air against her neck
raising goosebumps along her spine.
Risking a slow glance over her shoulder,
she saw the draugarbjorn looming directly behind her now,
unmoving. Arethkayn held perfectly still and waited, hoping
the Theryn’s Veil that Hazzumkigh placed on her would hold.

At which point, the draugarbjorn vanished again.
Seconds passed, the members of the company turning in
position, wondering where the beast and gone – and from
whence it would strike next.
Sages had long debated where the draugarbjorn went while it
was gone from view. The beast was rare enough, of course,
that most of those debates were theoretical. Nath’s Fauna
The beast sniffed her. She stayed motionless. It nudged her
with a wet nose. She dared not breathe. Work, spell. Work.
Then the beast stepped past her and charged the others, as
though she were nothing more interesting than lichen on a
stone.
Zuuduun hurled the small pot. Its lid fell free mid-way before
the pot hit the beast in the head, erupting in a cloud of
powders. The beast roared, eyes reddened and blinking with
sudden tears. Lashing out, it drove Trent to his knees again.
Malecibe lunged in from the side, stabbing it again with his
envenomed blade.
Arethkayn recalled a detail of the rune and, turning back to
her painting, missed part of the fight, raising her head only
when Malecibe sped through her circle to snatch up a cub and
hold a knife to its throat. The cub mewed, more like a cat than
like anything else.
onto the back of the beast with a wet crunch. Dust billowed
out from under the impact.
Eyes turned to the base of the fallen pillar, where Toltus
removed his hands from the collapsed column, hunched, and
slowly walked back to rejoin the group.
“Well,” said Malecibe. “Glad that’s over.”
And then he killed the cub.
With a roar, Zuuduun lunged forward, spear in hand, forcing
Malecibe back. Rhurrinore jumped between them.
“No!” hissed Zuuduun.
“Cease this!” Corumet cried.
The draugarbjorn glared at the youth, its front paws pinning
Trent to the ground. Rhurrinore’s blade had in the interim
been ripped from his graps to lie upon the stones beneath the
beast, so the harrowskald held back, waiting for an opening.
Zuuduun paused, lungs heaving, barbed spear tip hovering
steadily inches from the youth’s neck.
The beast roared in defiance. It blinked, eyes still red and
swollen. Then it roared again at Malecibe, climbing off of Trent
and shuffling toward the young man.
A few steps later, it flickered. Malecibe flinched. But the beast
only jaunted forward a foot or so, and when it reappeared, it
wobbled, unsteady from wounds and venom. One of its
forelegs gave out.
As the creature found its footing and pushed itself back up, a
thunderous crack sounded, and a wave of air rolled over them
all. A leaning stone column had suddenly toppled, and it fell
“You can,” Corumet said, “cheerfully settle all of your
grievances, with interest, once this task is over. Until then, we
need each other.”
The comment startled Arethkayn, in part because it struck her
as an ironic thing for the lady of Cophe to say, but mostly
because the remark had so perfectly augured her own agenda.
After shaking her head to clear her mind of those odd
thoughts, Arethkayn finished the last few details of the circle,
then examined her work for errors. She didn’t find any,
though one never knew for certain.
On the Conservation of Suffering
Rhurrinore quietly tended his own wounds while the rest of
the party recovered from the attack. Trent was in particularly
bad shape: unconscious, with black-and-blue limbs so swollen
his companions couldn’t safely remove his armor.
“Are you schooled in Galenean arts?” Corumet asked
Arethkayn.
Arethkayn hesitated. She knew something of that
craft. But healing Trent now would drain some of
her resources and might increase the number of
enemies she would deal with later. Corumet’s
family might well have knighted him, and he
might owe the woman of Cophe his allegiance.
Still, if she healed him, maybe he might feel
indebted to her.
“I might be able to help him, at least enough to lift
him to consciousness and reduce the swelling,” Arethkayn
said.
“Please do,” said Corumet, who then moved on to check on
the rest of the group. Malecibe, returning from checking the
horses, reported two still lived, unmolested. He had with him
a large pack of recovered gear they might need later.
Arethkayn knelt by Trent, inspecting his wounds. Adding
ointment to his open wounds and bandaging them would be
easy enough. But beneath those surface traumas and his suit of
armor, she suspected he had broken bones and pulverized
muscle. With a pang of guilt, she removed a large coin from
her pouch. One side featured the four symbols of the Ruoud
Covenant—symbols she could not afford for Corumet to see.
Quickly, she spun the coin and watched it. It slowed, wobbled,
and eventually landed symbol-side up. She snatched up the
coin, tucking it into her pouch. Having determined it would be
better to heal the knight than not to do so, she called on Toltus
to drag over the body of the draugarbjorn. Even after levering
the column out of position, it took both of them, as well as
Zuuduun, to do the job.
Eventually, Arethkayn was able to
simultaneously reach both Trent and the beast
that had wounded him with her hands. She
borrowed the knight’s belt, carving into it
symbols invoking the Warden of Wastes and
Waters, then put the belt in her mouth, clenched
between her teeth. Inhaling deeply through her
nostrils, she laid one hand on the knight, then placed
her other hand on the draugarbjorn.
The shock ripped through her in a current. She could feel
every injury in that moment, and had never needed the strap
more. She could feel her teeth grinding together through it, a
trivial discomfort compared with the sensations of compound
fractures, dislocations, and internal ruptures suddenly racking
her body.
When the pain subsided, she was covered with a sheen of
sweat. The draugarbjorn body had erupted in new
deformations. In some places, bones protruded through
freshly broken skin.
“How does the gate work?” Corumet asked, interrupting her
thoughts.
Trent moaned as he woke, shifting awkwardly, though his
own wounds should have been reduced proportionally.
Arethkayn rubbed her eyes, stood. All eyes were on her. With
a shrug, she moved to the edge of the great rune circle. She
was pretty sure Rhurrinore and Malecibe could answer
Corumet’s question, but at this point, she needed them
oblivious to how much she had deduced out about them.
Arethkayn let the strap fall from her mouth, staggered to her
feet, and found a rock to sit on while she recovered. She
retained none of the injuries she had just experienced. They
had passed through her to the beast. But she’d still felt all of
them. Even with her head buried in her hands, she could
vaguely hear Trent finding his footing and answering
Corumet’s inquiries about his condition.
Someone crouched before her: Zuuduun.
“You could feel that?” the bhargeist asked. The irises of her
eyes were so dark it was difficult to see where the pupils left
off.
“Each Vormirian gate ports to two destinations,” Arethkayn
said.
“Three,” corrected Malecibe.
That man cannot help showing off, she thought.
“Two genuine destinations, and one trap. Always, the third is a
trap,” she said.
“That’s what I meant,” Malecibe said.
Arethkayn nodded, weakly.
“Shut up,” Corumet told him.
Zuuduun mulled this silently. It was easy to forget how large
the bhargeist was until one was immediately adjacent.
Arethkayn idly wondered whether the nonhuman was as
strong as Toltus. Or stronger. Without another word,
Zuuduun rose and began looking around the site, peering
under slabs and behind piles of rubble. Arethkayn suspected
the bhargeist was looking for other cubs. Why it cared so
much for the animals was a mystery to her, but it complicated
the received lore about bhargeists. Or about this one, at least.
“We will need to stand, all of us, in the heart of the circle,”
Arethkayn continued. “Each of the parts I painted indicates a
direction through which we can step, with each direction
leading to a different location.”
Nodding, Corumet inspected the three spots in question.
Arethkayn added, “And there’s an invocation. We’ll need to
speak it to trigger the gate. The glyphs of the circle spell it out,
now that the circle is complete.”
“What’s the invocation?” Corumet asked.
Arethkayn told her. The woman frowned, then asked again.
Arethkayn told her again. This happened a few more times.
“Why can’t I remember the damned thing?” Corumet finally
asked.
“No one can. I can’t remember it right now, despite having
uttered it. Each time you asked me, I read it off the stones, and
then I forgot the phrase, too,” Arethkayn answered, adding,
“If I were to write it down, the ink would erase, I suspect.”
“The real question is, which way we need to go so we don’t all
die?” Trent grumbled.
“That bit of information,” Corumet answered, “our employer
has kindly provided.”
Still standing in the circle, Corumet flipped open a small book
filled with handwriting, opening to a dog-eared page. Then
she pointed out in the direction of the cliff’s drop.
“We’ll step that way,” Corumet said.
“Are we sure?” Malecibe asked.
Arethkayn had to agree with him. Taking an answer on faith
was tougher than trusting one she had figured out on her own.
Particularly in this case. She had little faith in the House of
Cophe.
“Yes,” said Corumet. “We are sure.”
The group gathered in the middle of the circle. Arethkayn read
the incantation. Immediately upon the last syllable, the world
seemed to shift and she felt light-headed.
As Arethkayn wondered who would step through first, an
unexpected sound emitted from near their feet: a half-purr,
half-growl. All looked down to see a second draugarbjorn cub
there, yarping at them from the middle of the circle.
Malecibe aimed a boot at it, but Zuuduun grabbed him by the
neck. For a second, they looked as though they might
struggle—and possibly fall through the wrong gate. Rhurrinore,
positioned between the struggling pair and the edge of the
circle, would go with them.
The Northclansman made a quick gesture –
– and mouthed a roar.
No sound came from his mouth, but at the same time, the
deep, rumbly sound of a draugarbjorn mother sounded from
behind the pup, though nothing was there to make the sound.
Yarping in surprise, the cub spun about and darted toward the
illusory sound—straight through the gate Corumet had
indicated. Zuuduun immediately released Malecibe and
jumped through after the cub.
Everyone else waited for Corumet. Interesting, thought
Arethkayn. They don’t trust her either.
Corumet gestured at the knight, and Trent stepped through,
fading from view before he hit the ground on the other side.
Okay, Arethkayn thought. Some loyalty there.
Another pause.
“Fine,” Corumet sighed, and stepped through.
Rhurrinore and Malecibe followed. Arethkayn ordered Toltus
through and then, finally, stepped across the threshold herself.
It was not without reservations.
The Fall of the Gale Lords
Eleven Years Earlier
When Ivaraine charged onto the Highwalk to announce the
demise of House Ruoud—lungs brimming with news and eyes
wide with alarm—Arethkayn had been reading The Twelve
Faces of the Scepter, trying to distract herself from thoughts of
the siege at Ith-Illum.
“The Duke of Eyes has shattered the Hailgate,” Ivaraine
gasped. “They’re inside the palace.”
At the time, Arethkayn was just fourteen. Years later, she
would have trouble remembering any of the morning before
this moment.
Arethkayn dropped the book, its myths forgotten and her
pulse hammering. Ivaraine tugged over a chair and sat as
Arethkayn found her voice.
“The slain?” she asked, mouth dry.
“Vorance. Mabaques, too, I’m told,” Ivaraine said.
Arethkayn’s uncle and cousin, neither of whom she had liked
much. But still, they belonged to House Ruoud, like her. The
house of the Gale Lords, ruling house of the Yithallic
Imperium.
At the start of the Truce of Scions four years earlier, the two
girls had gotten off to a rough start. It had been expected,
really. Ivaraine’s adored younger brother had been fostered to
the capital. In exchange, Arethkayn, a child of the unpopular
ruling family, had come to foster with Worenen House, full of
entitlement and
just a few months
younger than its
native daughter.
The Truce of Scions, of course, was
Still, neither had
hardly a novel experiment. The idea had
had anyone else to
been, as with all such arrangements,
play with, and
that the houses would be less likely to
war against each other if each one held
over time, they
someone else’s child hostage.
had shrugged off

their differences,
evolving into
friends.

The Truce, of course, was hardly a novel experiment. The idea
had been, as with all such arrangements, that the houses
would be less likely to war against each other if each one held
someone else’s child hostage. A lovely idea, one that had
crumbled with the masonry of Foster Tower when an
earthquake struck Ith-Illan a year ago. In the weeks after the
quake, with the capital’s forces distracted by looting and more
immediate issues, houses hostile to the crown re-abducted
most of their surviving fosterlings.
Both girls’ brothers had died in the same week: Ivaraine’s in
the tower collapse, and Arethkayn’s in a fit of hostage
stabbing. That week, the girls had mingled blood and sworn to
be each other’s sisters. Arethkayn had started calling Ivaraine
“Ivy,” and Ivy had, in return, started calling her “Ares.”
With House Ruoud deprived of its accustomed leverage, the
old civil war had reignited. For the past two months, the
capital had been under siege. Several of the Empress’s allies
had declined to come to her aid. Their children were still
hostages in rebel houses untouched by the disaster, after all.
“I haven’t heard any word on the Empress, or her
immediates,” Ivy added. “All I know is the mood of the
victors.”
“Which is?”
“Jubilant. And dangerous.” Ivy swallowed, then added: “Your
father is here.”
As Arethkayn shot from her chair, Ivy grabbed her arm.
“He’s wounded, and pursued,” Ivy warned. “The Matriarchs
of the House of Cophe have demanded that we hand him over.
And you as well.”
Arethkayn, stunned, flared with anger. “But he supported
their rebellion!”
Arethkayn had never been sure whether her father had done
so out of principle (he’d never agreed much with the Empress,
Matriarch of Ruoud, a cruel and bitter old tyrant) or whether
he’d done it to guarantee his daughter’s safety. But he’d
turned against his own house nonetheless. House Warenen,
her foster family, had remained neutral during the rebellion, a
safe position during a struggle, but a dangerous one
afterward. Arethkayn felt a pang of guilt, as she was pretty
sure they’d stayed out of the fray because of her.
“I know,” Ivy said. “Follow me.”
The girls raced through the halls of the manor’s East Wing and
down the Sweeping Stairs.
But as they neared the Ninth Gallery, they slowed. From the
gallery below them, they could hear the clash of metal on
metal and grunts of exertion. Warily, they crept to a point
along the rail with a view of the gallery, then peered down.
A handful of red-cloaked soldiers, each wearing the skeletal
dragon sigil of House Cophe, had trapped four adults against
the gallery wall. The redcloaks had trained loaded quillshots
on the four defenders: Ivy’s parents, Kane and Biselle; Idlan,
the Housecarl; and Arethkayn’s father, Ormic. Idlan had
deployed his shield and a spear, squaring off against the
aggressors. Still, his shield wouldn’t be very effective against
the quillshots, for each crossbow-like device fired a cloud of
needles, or quills, and they’d probably be drugged or
poisoned.
Barely visible from the stairs because they were directly below,
two dark-headed, sharp-nosed youths of House Cophe—one
woman, one man, both in their twenties—watched the
cowering defenders from behind the footmen.
“Yes, normally. But he is sought for treason,” Nalathambra
said, walking around the gallery as only someone not held at
weapons-point could. She paused to admire a portrait.
As the girls watched, an older woman, calm and plainly
dressed, stepped into the room, passing between the two
youths of Cophe. Unlike the other aggressors, the older
woman didn’t wear the skull-dragon-sigil of Cophe.
“Aside from the regicidal activities he has committed with you,
Ormic has committed no treasons,” Biselle said. “He helped
you get through the Hailgate. He agreed publically with all of
your complaints against the crown, despite his blood. The only
betrayal here is yours.”
“Suspend the weapons-play, gentlemen,” the new woman
said, “so that I may chat with the lady of the house.”
Nalathambra shrugged, bored. “You should speak for the
defense at his trial.”
The soldiers stopped pressing, but kept their weapons trained.
Idlan remained poised with spear and shield. Biselle, Ivy’s
mother, stepped from behind the shieldman, shoulders
squared.
Ivy’s father interjected for the first time: “Will there even be a
trial?”
“Nalathambra,” she said, addressing the new woman. “Thank
you for halting them, but with all due respect, their second
move should be to leave through our gates. The Cophe twins
can follow them.”
Next to Arethkayn, Ivy leaned over, put cupped lips nigh
against her ear, and whispered so faintly that even Arethkayn
had to strain, “Nalathambra, Spymaster of Grainflower.”
“We could do that,” Nalathambra said. “Might. But at a bare
minimum, we require the fugitive you are unlawfully
guarding, Biselle.”
“He is being treated for injuries. By common law –“
“I don’t see why there wouldn’t be,” Nalathambra said.
“Unless, of course, he resists arrest, tries to flee, or takes up
arms...” The way she trailed off implied there might be sundry
other reasons.
A tense moment passed. Biselle exchanged glances with the
fugitive.
“We will surrender him peacably,” Biselle said, “but only to
Uthurn of House Salbe.”
Salbe, one of the other rebelling houses, had written the
rebellion’s Declaration of Grievances in part because it had an
international reputation for honorable behavior.
“Deceased, I’m afraid,” Nalathambra said with a smile and
tone of false apology. “Killed by defenders of House Ruoud
this morning.”
“Anyone else from House Salbe, then,”
Biselle said.
“Do you know...,” Nalathambra said, in
a new tone, one of Isn’t this interesting?,
“...Quite a lot of intended captives back
at the palace – higher ranking captives
than your guest here – had exactly the
same idea. As an unfortunate result,
House Salbe appears to be ... overcommitted at the moment. “
“We can wait until they are available
and tend to his wounds in the
meantime,” Biselle said.
Appearing out-of-step on matters of the divine might not be
healthy for your family.”
The rebellion had been as much a religious war as a civil one.
Although the Court of Masks had overthrown the Storm Court
in the heavens centuries earlier, House
Ruoud had remained faithful all that time
to the toppled Storm Court gods. That fact
“You remember the reasons we
had been blamed by many for the
exchanged children, right? It wasn’t to
empire’s late waning.
protect her.
Biselle snorted. “You know we don’t
“It was so that you could slit her
stand with the Court of Storms.”
throat if the occasion demanded it.”
Nalathambra shrugged. “Oh, I know that,
dear. Certainly. But my powers of
persuasion are quite limited.”


Below, Arethkayn’s father glanced up at the stairs behind the
spymaster. His eyes flickered with recognition and emotion
and then moved on, so quickly that his moment of alarm and
hope might have passed unnoticed. No one remarked on it,
but Arethkayn thought for a moment that her heart had
stopped. He saw me.
“We could do that, Biselle, but I worry – I truly do – how this
will look to the new regime. It may appear as though you have
loyalties to the old power. Or worse, people might wonder if
you’re still loyal to the Ruoud Covenant gods of the Storm
Court, instead of the Barrow Dragon or the King of Tomes.
“Your powers of persuasion are legendary,” Biselle scoffed.
“Yet unable to affect you, so far.”
Another tense moment passed.
Nalathambra said, finally, in a new tone, cold enough to raise
gooseflesh: “We will also require his daughter.”
“No.”
“You remember the reasons we exchanged children, right? It
wasn’t to protect her. It was so that you could slit her throat if the
occasion demanded it.”
“The reason, as I recall, was to keep the peace.”
“Very well,” Nalathambra said with a sigh. “I concede you
win the oral arguments. Gentlemen, fire.”
dark, damp tunnel below, one for which the only light was
streaming through the door they’d just opened.
The guards opened fire with the quillshots, peppering all four
adults with quills.
“Your parents...” Arethkayn began.
Ivy’s hand clamped hard on Arethkayn’s mouth, yanking her
back.
As Ivy dragged her in full retreat back up the stairs, Arethkayn
heard Nalathambra say to the twins, “Corumet. Sutlot. Find
the daughter. Unless you want to learn later what it feels like
to be on the other side of a coup.”
The two girls raced up the stairs and across the Northwest
bridge to Groom’s Tower. Arethkayn’s first instinct was to
move slowly, in stealth, but Ivy pushed for speed. “Faster,”
she hissed. “We have to get down the stairs before they get to
them.”
The girls took the tower’s stairs down several at a time, each
nearly stumbling at points. Arethkayn took the second turn
too wide and slammed against the wall. As they reached the
base of the stairs, they could hear the clanking of fastapproaching armor from outside the tower. Moving swiftly,
Ivy pulled Arethkayn through the open Groom’s Door and
shut it behind them.
Seconds later, from the other side of the door, they could hear
muffled voices and boots on stone. Again, Ivy pulled
Arethkayn away, through the stables, to a trapdoor under
some hay. Arethkayn helped her raise the door, revealing a
“Drugged. I think. I hope. Their odds will be better if no one
can use us as leverage. Keep running.”
Arethkayn climbed down. Ivy followed, closing the door
above them. Dark enshrouded them, pitch and unyielding.
Arethkayn felt Ivy push her, and began fumbling her way
down the tunnel. She’d heard these tunnels connected some of
the property’s old wells for some forgotten purpose. She could
feel damp in the air, puddles at her feet, and accumulating
wisps of spiderweb in her hair and on her arms as she
proceeded. The tickling sensation of something scurrying
down her neck caught her off-guard and she swatted at it.
More, similar sensations came, and she wondered how many
of these were real spiders and how many were phantoms of
her imagination. She pushed forward, faster.
After perhaps fifteen minutes, Ivy grabbed Arethkayn by a
shoulder, halting her. Ivy pushed up on the roof above them
and a crack of light appeared. Getting it, Arethkayn helped her
open the trap and they emerged into a clearing in the nearby
Feywood. Ivy paused then for a long, uncomfortable moment,
unmoving, listening.
After a minute, Ivy began dragging Arethkayn along a
wooded path, until they came to a set of reeking hutches. The
muskpoachers inside the hutches bounded about their cabins
in alarm, rocking the structures back and forth and whipping
up a racket by rattling the gates.
Arethkayn froze, certain the sound would attract soldiers. Ivy,
however, grabbed her by the hand and dragged her toward
the hutches.
“Touch them,” she said. “Rub their fur with your hands.
Hurry.”
In addition to the shouts of men, they could now hear the
barking of dogs. Hurrying, Arethkayn rubbed her hands deep
into the muskpoacher’s fur, then yanked open its gate, freeing
it. “Yah!” she barked at it, kicking in its direction and sending
the creature fleeing into the wood.
Ivy had done the same with another muskpoacher. In short
order, both girls rubbed and freed three
more.

Arethkayn nodded with belated
“That’s enough,” Ivy said, sniffing her
Muskpoachers [...] would pick up the scent
understanding. The plan made sense.
hands. “This way.”
of a wolf to drive sheep toward an ambush,
Muskpoachers, cunning if small
where other muskpoachers, smelling of
predators, were so-named because they
As they rounded a nearby, wooded hill,
sheep,
would
pounce.
imitated scents of creatures they
Ivaraine uncovered another trapdoor,
encountered. They would pick up the
larger than the others. She pulled it open,
scent of a wolf to drive sheep toward an
revealing a deep well, and kicked a stone
ambush, where other muskpoachers,
in. A muffled splash sounded from
smelling of sheep, would pounce. Hunters used muskpoachers
below.
to train dogs.
“In we go,” Ivy whispered.
In the distance, they could hear men’s voices. Shouts, tinged
Arethkayn lowered herself into the well and began
with curiosity and fatigue.
chimneying down, Ivy following. As Arethkayn’s feet found
Arethkayn opened a small door for feeding and shoved her
the water, Ivy dropped the door back on the well, shuttering
hand through it, clenching her teeth in anticipation of a bite
them in darkness.
and willing her arm to stay put even as the wild,
Above, they could hear the soldiers and dogs milling about the
undomesticated occupant of the hutch flared back its hair and
Feywood, chasing false leads.
peeled its lips back to expose rows of sharp teeth.

But instead of biting her, the muskpoacher sniffed her hand,
then ran itself along her arm like a cat.
“Ivy,” Arethkayn said.
“Yes?”
“I think we should go back.”
Ivy was silent a moment. “That’s suicide.”
“I’m not sure of that,” Arethkayn said. “They just found our
scent in the woods – going six directions. Even after they
realize we’re using muskpoachers, they’ll know we were in the
Feywood and will keep looking there.”
“And?”
“So these woods will be crawling with soldiers for a long time.
But if we double-back along the well-lines, following water,
we might cross through the manor and escape out the other
side. Run up the coast to the village?”
After a pause, Ivy said, “Hah! That makes sense. Let’s move
now before they think of it, too.”
As Arethkayn fumbled for the opening to the well-tunnel, she
felt a slap between her shoulder-blades.
“It’s about time you carried your weight on this escape, Sis,”
Ivy teased. “It’s good to have you back!”
They found the passage and followed it back, with Arethkayn
crushing two spiders by the time they reached the exit for
Groom’s Tower and the stables. This, they passed, continuing
to follow the tunnel now in the other direction, away from the
forest. They passed two more trapdoors, one which Arethkayn
knew would open into the kitchens, and one just after, which
Ivaraine whispered led to the gardens. They continued past
both of these. But then they found the way blocked, sealed up
with brick, a few minutes past the main manor.
“Now what?” Arethkayn muttered.
“We could try to take apart the wall, but I think we’d make too
much noise, and it would take too long,” Ivy said.
“I say we double back again,” Arethkayn voted.
“We might encounter dogs and men coming back the other
way, if they’ve caught onto us,” Ivy warned.
“Not all the way. Just to the last exit. The gardens.”
“You have a plan?”
“Maybe.”
The garden was unoccupied, and though someone peering
through a manor window might have spotted either girl
scrabbling out from the well-line, none did so. As a result, both
girls quickly vanished into the denser parts of the garden,
where the maze and grounds of the Old Temple.
It was toward the latter that Arethkayn pulled Ivy, taking a
path through the garden’s maze toward its heart. Eventually,
they arrived at the Old Temple, which, at this point in its
history resembled little more than a ring of rock slabs wellsuited for sitting. Around the clearing and the stones, a high,
maintained hedge provided some privacy, though it had been
generations since the site had last been used for worship. By
legend, the stones dated back to the time of the Titanic Court,
before the Storm Court, or the Court of Masks now in power.
She rubbed the coin. She didn’t need to think hard to
remember the name to call.
On either side of the entrance through the hedge, into the Old
Temple, two oversized topiary knights, trimmed from yew,
stood watch. At a few points—an elbow here, an eye there—
they appeared to require fresh trimming.
“Hazzumkigh, hear me,” she said.
Gesturing at Ivy to stay patient,
Arethkayn moved to the firepit at the
center of the ring. The firepit probably
had not existed during the old Titanic
Court days, but it had been in the
clearing a long time nonetheless.
Ivy took a step back from Arethkayn, looking around.
Silence.

Arethkayn went stock still. One of the
two topiary knights had turned its head
and was talking to her through a mouth
of leaves.
Arethkayn dug into the earth there with
two already-dirty hands, probing for
something she had cached there more
than a year earlier. She could feel ash
and soil pressing under her nails, could smell the lichens on
the air and a hint of smoke from forgotten fires. Some distance
down, her fingers found the edges of a metal tin, which she
tugged at until it pulled loose from the dirt. This, she opened,
revealing an odd, tarnished coin with a diameter the length of
her thumb, almost black with age. One side blank. The other
with four symbols in four quadrants—symbols of the four
gods of the Ruoud Covenant and the ousted Storm Court.

“Arethkayn!” Ivy hissed, seeing the coin and recognizing its
significance.
“I need options,” Arethkayn said back.
“Hazzumkigh, hear me,” Arethkayn
repeated.
“Maybe he’s stopped answering,” Ivy
speculated. “Your family’s Covenant
doesn’t have many people left alive to
observe it.”
“Just one,” cracked a voice on the wind.
At the sound of the S, both girls thought
they heard the crackle of leaves.
Arethkayn shuddered.
“Who’s there? What do you mean, just one?” she said, looking
about for the source of the voice.
Arethkayn went stock still when the voice answered, for she
could see the source then: One of the two topiary knights had
turned its head and was talking to her through a mouth of
leaves.
“Your father is slain,” it said.
Arethkayn’s vision blurred. A second later, she found herself
sitting awkwardly on her knees. Father!
The thing stared at her, unblinking, its only movement that
begotten by a passing breeze. It waited.
She wasn’t sure how long it was before her haze cleared
enough to remember Ivaraine was there, or that she had
pressing issues to resolve.
“What about Ivy’s—Ivaraine’s parents?” Arethkayn asked.
“I do not know. They are not sworn to our covenant.”
“Do any other Gale Lords live?”
“Again, my little hurricane. You are the sole scion of House
Ruoud, and the last of the Gale Lords. If any older Gale Lords
existed, I would not have answered your call,” it said.
“I need your help.”
“You do not love us,” it said. It was not a question.
“I do not know you,” Arethkayn replied.
“But you do not love the four gods of the Ruoud Covenant,
and you do not love the Storm Court. You buried the coin your
grandmother gave you,” it said.
“Things have changed. Today, I need you,” she replied.
The pause lasted some time.
“It would seem to be mutual. I have no purpose, but as
seneschal to a covenant, and you are the last of its signatories,”
it admitted.
“I thought as much,” Arethkayn said.
“Still, it would be better if you loved the gods you hope will
aid you.”
“Help me now, and you’ll have no cause for complaint.”
“No?”
“I will restore our house.”
“Your house was complacent,” it said.
“A restored house means more Gale Lords—and a living
reminder of what the old gods can do.”
“We will see. But I think you will be disappointed.”
“Why?”Arethkayn asked.
“Because the miracles I work must draw on your power.
Yours. And you have so very little. What did you have in
mind, my flower?”
“Theryn’s Veil,” she said. She’d read of it, once.
“I could do that for you, but you only have the strength for
one person. Your poor sister would be left behind,”
Hazzumkigh said, its voice not quite sad enough to be
reassuring.
“I don’t want the veil for myself. Put it on Ivaraine,”
Arethkayn said.
Ivy uttered a startled exclamation that somehow managed not
to be a word at all.
“Do it. Find your parents while the soldiers are in the wood,”
Arethkayn said to Ivy. “Escape. You have done more for me
than I had any right to expect. I will try
to find you once it is safe.”
Below, at the base, Corumet had deployed a mariner’s
chalklamp. The bullseye-styled lantern used mirrors to focus
its light, all of which came from a hunk of phosphorescent
seachalk similar to that Zuuduun had used to mark their path
earlier. With no fire or oils, the chalklamp was safe in ways
often appreciated by non-swimmers who made a life clinging
to wooden vessels. The two lights, one above, one below, cast
weird shadows about Malecibe as he
moved gracefully up the column’s face.

“Then we part forever. You know it will
never be safe,” Ivy said.
In virtually every direction, they could see
clouds, their drifting edges traced in
moonlight. When the clouds parted, that
light revealed a surface so far below them
that it defied comprehension.
Arethkayn said nothing. She motioned at
the seneschal, the wind whispered,
leaves fluttered around Ivaraine. When it
was done, Ivaraine of Warenen, though
still visible, suddenly seemed
unimportant. It took an act of will for
Arethkayn to remain focused on her, to remember that she
was there. Ivy took a deep breath, kissed Arethkayn on one
cheek, and then slipped out of the garden to find her parents
while the Veil lasted.

The Pillars of Ossilegium
Malecibe clung to the side of the monolith nearly forty feet
above their heads by fingertips and bare toes, illuminated by
the bright, full moon of a Lucent Night. His cloak fluttered in
cold winds.
The group had arrived an hour earlier
through the gate to find themselves in a
peculiar setting, and while Zuuduun had
searched for the draugarbjorn pup, the
others had taken in the scene: Another
abandoned ruin on the edge of another
cliff.
But this time, they were much, much
higher up.
In virtually every direction, they could see clouds, their
drifting edges traced in moonlight. When the clouds parted,
that light revealed a surface so far below them that it defied
comprehension. The cliff shot straight down, without ever
once encountering foothills or shoulders to the landmass they
were on, as though they were at the top of a massive pillar the
height of a mountain. The wind at this height was unrelenting.
Bas relief carvings on the ruins around them depicted human
beings in familiar activities. However, in one eye-catching
image, the people had gathered to pay tribute to some sort of
unfathomably large bird of prey—large enough to dwarf the
ruins or blot out the heavens. A team of men in the carving
had mounted some sort of bellows-like device over the mouth
of a massive, vertical, stone horn that cut through the
mountain, its flared bell jutting into the sky.
“A Skyking,” Rhurrinore had explained to Corumet, pointing
to the bird, as Arethkayn listened. “We appear to be in
Ossilegium, a chain of plinth-like mountains like this one. Far
apart. Very high. And once upon a time, settled. They would
call a Skyking by sounding that horn. By paying tribute to
Him, they could fly from one plinth to another.”
“Are any birds really so large?” Corumet had wondered.
Rhurrinore had shrugged, his lore exhausted.
After Zuuduun had fed some scraps to the draugarbjorn, the
company left it behind, heading inland. Corumet’s map
guided them through a labyrinth of pathways carved into the
top of the rock, winding around and between crags, to a spot
where a ring of chipped and worn artificial columns rose still
higher from the surface of their plinth. About 50 feet above
their heads, the columns connected to one another by bridges.
Heaps of stone at the base, where stairs might have once been,
testified that any practical way up to that level must have at
some point been sundered. Someone would have to climb up
to the bridges and lower a rope for the others.
In brisk, high-altitude winds.
Malecibe had volunteered.
After prepping rope and other climbing gear, and after tying a
long thread—an entire spool—to the end of his rope, Malecibe
and drawn from under his shirt and armor a strange object on
a simple, leather cord. A mummified hand.
Touching it and muttering, Malecibe had then flexed his
fingers, turned toward the nearest pillar, and grasped at it
from a distance. A chunk of stone where the pillar had been
chipped had suddenly come away, tumbling to the floor at
their feet.
Malecibe had probed again with phantom fingers, and from a
different deformation in the column he had raised a small
cloud of dust, though the stonework itself held.
Zuuduun had crept up behind Arethkayn by this point. “What
sorcery is this?” she rasped.
“The Hand of Thieves,” Arethkayn had muttered back over a
shoulder. “A simple spell I have never seen used this way
before. It gives him a third hand. Ghost-like. Much better reach
than either of his natural arms. “
Working carefully, patiently, Malecibe had used the Hand in
this way to test hand- and foot-holds as far up the column as
he could see under their light, charting a path. Then, and only
then, had he started climbing.
Despite herself, watching Malecibe climb, Arethkayn had had
to admire his grace and skill. He moved smoothly, stretching
here to grasp a hold with just fingers, dangling briefly before
swinging his feet up to a foothold, then pushing off from there
to get both hands around another hold.
Zuuduun had leaned close to Arethkayn’s right ear, then,
breathing out a faint, double-whisper: “Then he might wield
two weapons, maybe three.”
Arethkayn had pursed her lips, tilting her head to whisper
back, “Unlikely. The Hand isn’t very strong. Nor is it deft.”
“Good. You and I may have to fight together, back-to-back,
before this is over,” the bhargeist had said.
Arethkayn nodded to this, mutely.
The bhargeist continued: “I claimed this mountain when we
arrived. Used all my senses: Saw the rock, heard the wind cut
around it, smelled its growing things, felt it beneath my feet,
tasted the stone.” The bhargeist paused. “I can do nothing
with this claim, and so I give it to you.”
Arethkayn looked at Zuuduun in surprise. Only skilled spellworkers knew how claiming worked or that anyone at all
could do it. Zuuduun, then, was unusually savvy. Moreover,
Zuuduun had just given Arethkayn an advantage that could
be used against the bhargeist. It was the equivalent of handing
a potential enemy a loaded crossbow. She trusts me more than I
trust her, Arethkayn realized.
Above them, they could see that Malecibe had reached an
overhang near the top – a point where the column flared out to
support the roof above. That roof came out
another five feet behind the climber, and
Arethkayn had no idea how the man
planned to navigate it.
Malecibe anchored himself in place. For a
while, nothing else seemed to happen, until
a glint of moonlight caught something
subtle, almost invisible from where they stood: The
Hand was carrying one end of the climber’s
prepared thread up past the overhang.
Arethkayn went to Malecibe’s abandoned pack of
tools, retrieved a spyglass, and trained it on the
scene above: Malecibe held the end of his rope in
his right, natural hand, his left hand securing him to
the column. The ghost Hand was dragging the
thread, meanwhile, above the overhang and around
the base of a column from that level.
When the Hand returned to Malecibe with the end
of thread, he took it, releasing the end of his rope,
and began pulling on the thread. The rope followed
the thread’s path, then, their courses literally bound
together.
The rope chased the thread around the upper pillar
before returning to Malecibe, who took it and
attached it to itself using some sort of sliding noose
knot.
Then Malecibe sprang out, into the great open space above
them—above nearly everything, really.
They could hear the rope whistle through the knot as it
tightened, and Malecibe dropped nearly 20 feet before the knot
hit the upper pillar, snapping to a dead stop and whipping
Malecibe back toward the columns.
Now, with the rope fully extended and its knot tightened, the
lowest point of the rope dangled perhaps 10 feet above them.
As Malecibe climbed to the level above them, the rest of the
company dragged over large stones and chunks of collapsed
masonry to form a pile under the dangling rope end. Standing
on the mound, Zuuduun, the tallest of them, tied a second
rope to the end of the first.
Then Rhurrinore, Zuuduun, and Arethkayn ascended, a stage
of the operation not without its own logistical challenges.
Arethkayn, unwilling to leave behind her glaive, had capped it
and attached it to a tether, letting it dangle below her while she
climbed. It was damnably heavy, a constant tug, urging her to
obey gravity.
Soon enough, though, the four climbers had reached the upper
gallery. Far below, Trent and Corumet waited with the silent
Toltus, for Cophe’s diviners had suggested only four fairly
specific types of people should go past this point.
The Riddle of King Param
On their side of the upper gallery, five columns (one now with
a rope about it) rose still further into open sky, supporting
nothing but firmament. The central column was the widest of
these, with the four narrower columns equidistant from it.
Beyond the furthest columns, a passage led deep into a stone
wall, vaguely illuminated from the other side by moonlight.
Malecibe, who had had more time to study his surroundings
than the others, drew their attention to bas reliefs on each of
the four outside columns.
“A king, a sealed vault, and five other people, each with
different tools. One has a scepter. That looks like an orb. A
drum. A horned mask. That girl appears to be holding a
book,” he said, pointing.
“It’s the same on all four pillars?” Arethkayn asked.
Malecibe shrugged. “Slight differences. Haven’t noted them all
yet.”
Rhurrinore had been inspecting the images closely. “I think
they’re referring to the Five Advisors of King Param. And I’m
starting to get a sense of why the diviners thought each of us
should be here. We should look at the other three pillars.”
Arethkayn had heard of the King Param story, but didn’t know
any details. She sensed she wasn’t the only one. But
Rhurrinore had already bolted to the next pillar to make notes.
The differences among the pillars, in turned out, were both
cosmetic and substantive. Cosmetic, in that each seemed to be
depicted in a slightly different style, with one more angular
and abstract, another simple, still another exquisitely detailed
(and probably, at one point, painted). Substantive, in that the
order in which the Five Advisors stood changed in each
version—and in that each pillar had a different decorative
motif: animal faces for one; crossed, flanged rods for another;
circles and spheres for yet another; ornate holes like flute stops
in the fourth; scrolls for the central pillar—which was also the
only pillar without any climbing handholds leading to its top.
“Okay,” Rhurrinore said. “First, the easy stuff. Each pillar’s
depiction of the story is from a different culture and time
period. Each of those cultures tended to present the advisors in
a different order. The motif on each pillar seems to correspond
to the advisor who appears first in its sequence.”
He unstopped a scroll case, unrolled some parchment, and
wrote notes in a simple grid:
Pillar
1
2
3
4
Center
First Advisor
Woods-elf
Poet/Musician
Magician
Priest
None depicted
Motif
Animal faces
Flutes
Orbs/spheres
Rods/scepters
Scrolls
“How does the story go, briefly?”
Arethkayn asked.
After a pause, Rhurrinore nodded,
realizing he’d have to back
up. “As with many
old myths, this one
has competing
Culture
Littic
Avantine
Saddat
Vormir
Uncertain
versions depending on the culture that tells it. The earliest
comes from the Saddat. Conquest and immigration spread
versions of the tale later to other cultures. The Vormir. The
Avantine. Others. The original version of the tale is this: A
widower king, called Param, was courting a widow queen,
Idla, in the hopes they could join their two kingdoms. As the
women in such stories do, she created a test for him. She
would agree to his proposal if he could win his way into her
secret vault.”
Malecibe snickered.
“Yes, I’m aware of the metaphor. They were a frank people.
Back to the story: So, Queen Idla hints that the vault can only
be opened by the type of power she most respects. Armed
with this clue, Param gathers his best, most-powerful advisors:
a magician,
a priest,
a poet,
and a woods-elf.
“The magician claims he knows sorcery that can open any
lock, but his spells have no effect.
“The priest claims he can learn the
secrets of the lock from his gods, only
to be told by them that the
door cannot be opened.
“The poet claims his music can charm even inanimate objects,
but his efforts are for naught.
“The woods-elf claims that the forces of nature can sunder
anything made by the hand of Man or Woman. He transforms
into a mighty boar and cracks his skull against the door.
“The king is about to give up hope when his daughter, who
likes to read stories but knows no magic at all, puts her book
away. ‘Father,’ she says to him. ‘If I can win you entry to this
vault, will you grant me my own request?’
“‘What is your wish, my dear?’ he asks.
“‘When I marry,’ she says, ‘I want to marry a person of my
choosing, and on my own terms.’
“He thinks about this, for there would be political costs
involved, but because he loves her, and because he desperately
wants to join his kingdom with Idla’s, he agrees.
“At that point, the girl reveals to him that the door is fake. It’s
just a large plaque of ornate metal mounted on a wall of stone.
She then leads him around the corner to a small door in an
adjoining hall, opens it, and shows him what lies on the other
side of that vault wall: the queen’s library. There, she returns
her book.”
There was a long pause.
“So,” said Malecibe eventually, “We just learned that all four
of us are useless here, and what we really needed was a little
girl. Or did I misread that?”
Arethkayn pulled back from the others. Making a show of
studying the depictions, she put a pillar between herself and
the others.
“The diviners said we were necessary, so we probably are,”
Rhurrinore said. “I think maybe the Vormir are using the story
as a ... kind of map. Or maybe a key. Maybe both.”
Arethkayn crouched and spun her coin again. The spin caught
moonlight, creating a flicker she hoped the others wouldn’t
see.
Rhurrinore was still speaking: “For instance, it looks like the
motifs on each pillar tell us who should stand where. The
magician represents arcane power. Malecibe, I would think
that’s you. That pillar with the orbs and spheres is probably
yours, then. To open whatever vault we face, I suspect we’ll
each have to tap into whatever power we command at the top
of those pillars. Hopefully with more luck than Param’s
advisors had.”
The coin’s spin slowed.
“What remains a mystery,” Rhurrinore continued, “is why
there are different versions of the story on each pillar, each
with a different order to the advisors. The girl is last in every
version, but otherwise they vary.”
The coin stopped.
It was standing straight up, on its edge, neither heads nor tails.
A knife’s edge result, then: Their lives were in the balance.
They faced a life-and-death decision.
pausing, then gazed into space, thinking hard, apparently
reviewing what he had just said.
Malecibe snorted. “You may be thinking too much, Rhurry.
Have you considered that those details might be a
distraction, like that metal door in the story?”
“What did I say? That the order is important?”
Avantine
(flute stops,
leads with
poets)
“Sure. Yes, I’d thought of that.”
The coin fell, blank side up. They’re starting to move
toward a bad decision.
Arethkayn scooped up the coin.
Coming around the pillar, she
said, “We know the Vormir trap
their gates. What are the odds they
would trap the vault we seek?”
Vormir (rods,
leads with
priests)
“Pretty good,” Malecibe said with a shrug.
“Right,” Rhurrinore said, nodding. “So we might get
hurt if we’re wrong. We were thinking that maybe the
fact they gave us four versions is a red herring—“
Central
Pillar
(scrolls)
Saddat (orbs,
leads with
magician)
“It isn’t,” Arethkayn said.
Another pause. Rhurrinore studied her carefully.
“Okay, then,” he said, finally. “Not a red herring. Meaning
that the order is important.”
Zuuduun looked up suddenly and grunted, as though he’d
just said something noteworthy. Rhurrinore glanced at her,
Zuuduun nodded.
“Order, order, order. Order of the advisors... No,
tautological. We already know about that. Order of
something else. Order of – oh! Are you thinking that we
have to demonstrate our powers in a particular
order?”
Littic (animal
faces, leads
with woodself)
Again, the bhargeist nodded, once.
“Makes sense,” Arethkayn said.
“So, we’ve got four pillars. Each one depicts a
unique sequence of powers, using the ordering of king’s
advisors as a code. And we have to follow the correct
sequence to avoid setting off something nasty,”
Rhurrinore said.
Malecibe shrugged. “Well, the Vormir built this place. So
maybe we should follow the sequence from the Vormir
version of the story? What order did they put it in?”
“Priest, Magician, Poet, Woods-Elf, Daughter,” said
Rhurrinore.
“Yeah, daughter. Anyone else bothered that we don’t have a
little girl--” Malecibe said, eyeing the central pillar and its lack
of hand-holds, “—who can fly?”
Rhurrinore replied, “A little. But that tower doesn’t look like
anyone intended us to climb it. And, again, our diviners said
we need four people. So I don’t think we need a little girl.”
“What’s the point of the story, then?” Arethkayn asked.
“My guess? That we, the first four advisors, need to think like
the king’s daughter.”
“Fine,” said Malecibe. “Simple truths, then. The Vormir built
this place, so the Vormir sequence is the one we follow. When
we get to the top, Brijiene goes first. Then me. Then
Rhurrinore, then Toothy the Bear-Cuddler.”
Rhurrinore nodded passively. Zuuduun scowled. Arethkayn
chewed on her lip. The plan called for her to go first, and
possibly set off any traps. And Malecibe’s logic seemed too
obvious. Why go through the trouble of building a trap only to have
the answer be something that any intruder could easily guess?
She reached into her clothes to grip her coin, but found it hot
to the touch. Probably unreliable at this point.
When she looked up, Malecibe was already heading toward
the magician’s pillar, and Rhurrinore toward the poet’s,
though he did so hesitantly, still clearly in thought. Zuuduun
stayed where she was, watching Arethkayn carefully.
“Hold on,” Arethkayn said.
Rhurrinore stopped, looking over a shoulder.
“The pillars have another order, another kind of sequence.
One we haven’t considered,” she said.
Malecibe sighed and leaned against his pillar.
“Go on,” Rhurrinore said.
“Chronological,” she said. “By date of composition.”
It took a second, but then Rhurrinore nodded. “I see where
you’re going.”
Arethkayn pointed to the Saddat version, which appeared on
the magician’s pillar. “The Saddat version is the oldest. It has
the orbs and leads with the magician, so, if I’m right, then our
master of personal magic should go first,” she continued.
“We’d then go in chronological order by date of composition
from there.”
Rhurrinore mulled this over. “That’s a compelling alternative.
Malecibe?”
Malecibe shook his head. “Too abstract. I think the story calls
for a simple solution. We’re going to overthink our way to an
early grave.”
“Zuuduun?”
Zuuduun said nothing, but stepped closer to Arethkayn.
“Well,” said Malecibe. “She was going to disagree with me no
matter what, wasn’t she?”
Rhurrinore walked the hall, looking at the motifs, the
scrollwork, the depictions of the advisors. When he came back,
he seemed resolved.
“Vormir is third-oldest,”Arethkayn interjected. “The Vormir
pillar leads with the priest and is decorated with rods. I’ve got
that one.”
“I’m with them on this,” Rhurrinore said, gesturing at
Arethkayn and Zuuduun. “We should go by chronology.”
That left the Avantine story—last to be composed and leading
with the poet—for Rhurrinore the harrowskald.
“Bet your life on that?” Malecibe asked. “Or, rather, mine?”
They all exchanged looks, checking a final time for agreement.
Rhurrinore nodded. “I realize the chronological perspective
looks obscure or abstract to you. But the real message isn’t to
think simply. And I was wrong earlier about the daughter. The
real message is to think like the queen. The queen values
knowledge above all. That was the power she wanted the king
to display, and it’s what she had in her vault. The folks who
built these columns valued historical and cultural knowledge,
or else they wouldn’t have had the knowledge or inclination to
make something like this. Those other cultures and the history
of the legend mattered to them. I think the chronology would
be obvious to the casual, native user of this place but obscure
to invaders.”
“Enough stalling,” Malecibe said. “Let’s get me killed.”
“Okay,” said Malecibe. “You put some thought into that. Very
well, I’ll go first, and be your trap-tester. Heck of a way to test
an hypothesis, though.”
“Excellent. That means you get the magician’s tower,”
Rhurrinore said. “Littic is second. That’s the tower with the
beast masks and the woods-elf. Zuuduun’s pillar, I’m
guessing?”
At that, all four set to climbing once again. Sixty more feet,
straight up.
Arena of Cloud and Stone
Vertigo and cold. As Arethkayn pulled herself up onto the top
of her pillar, her arms and knees were shivering from both.
She found the pillar’s scant five-foot diameter unnerving,
given the bitter gusts at this altitude, where all the world
appeared to be below them. The weather was her friend, most
of the time. But only a fool approached such a precarious
position without fear. Accordingly, the stance she adopted on
reaching the top was low and defensive, with arms out, ready
to hug the pillar or grab an edge if necessary.
Zuuduun and Malecibe had reached the top of their pillars
already, she discovered. It was another minute before
Rhurrinore reached the top of his, and she wondered briefly
what had slowed his ascent.
To her right, Malecibe stood upright, cloak fluttering, swaying
with each gust without ever toppling. Zuuduun and
Rhurrinore both adopted half-crouched positions like
Arethkayn had.
howl, full of discomfort and protest, became a roar of defiance,
louder than the wind.
In the center of their array, the unoccupied and wider scroll
pillar was topped by something resembling a fountain with
statues of two figures. A large winged humanoid was trying to
fly away; a smaller human, however, had grabbed it by an
ankle and was chaining it to the
fountain’s base.
The figure across from her had become larger and clearly
ursine, its short ears, broad forehead, and stunted snout clearly
bear-like.

Rhurrinore shouted over the whistling
gusts, “Malecibe, you’re first!”
Nodding, Malecibe whispered a
message to his hand and then gestured
to the top of his pillar.
And it looked like the weather would soon
get worse. Black rolling clouds had already
blotted out parts of the sky to Sunward,
and they were closing in quickly.

Arethkayn couldn’t be sure what he’d
done, but when he was finished, a deep
grinding sound emerged from the central pillar. The statues
began to turn, as did the base of the false-fountain . Soon, they
stopped.
The group looked to Zuuduun, not at all certain what she
would do—or even whether she understood what was
expected of her. Zuuduun crouched more, put fingers to the
stone, and arched her neck back. Her flesh and muscles
rippled. Claws elongated.
She’s a therianthrope! Arethkayn realized, though the term
wasn’t quite accurate. A shapeshifter, at any rate. A pitiable
A bear-shifting bhargeist. Now we know why
she was so pissed about the dead cub.
Malecibe’s eyes had gone wide, and
Arethkayn thought she could detect some
signs of reflection in his look. He hadn’t
known either.
The false fountain turned again, this time
in a direction opposite to before. When it
was done turning, its figures had turned
past their starting point.
Going third, Arethkayn called under her breath on the Storm
Court and set the top of the pillar aglow, a simple trick that
she hoped would be sufficient. She wasn’t about to expend
significant resources that she might need in a fight.
It was enough. The base and figure turned again, for much
longer than it had either of the previous two instances.
Rounding out the set, Rhurrinore sang an ancient Vormir
drinking song that somehow instilled in Arethkayn the sense
of an alcoholic heat running through her blood. No, no, no, she
thought. She couldn’t afford to be drunk up here. Tuning out
the song, she listened instead to the wind and tried to hear
Zuuduun’s breathing.
When Rhurrinore was done, she still felt mostly sober. The
false fountain finished turning, revealing an opening in its
base—a small recess containing a small urn.
“The Godcatcher,” said Rhurrinore, needlessly.
The object seemed humble and unremarkable. Arethkayn
found it difficult to associate what she was seeing with the socalled Vormirian Ark of legend. But if it was the Godcatcher,
then it was a find of terrible significance.
And they had, near as any of them could tell, no way to get to
it from the posts they stood upon.
The four exchanged looks and studied their surroundings, but
unless someone was willing to do a standing broad jump in
high wind, at high altitude, and then jump back, the urn
appeared unapproachable.
Moreover, it looked like the weather would soon get worse.
Black rolling clouds had already blotted out parts of the sky to
Sunward, and they were closing in quickly. As metal-clad and
metal-carrying people and the highest points in the sky, the
four adventurers would run some risks if they stuck around
too long.
Time passed as each of the four tried to think of a way to close
the distance, but no one spoke. With the Godcatcher exposed
now, Arethkayn felt her heart hammering away in her chest.
At any second now, one of her erstwhile allies might figure out
how to close the gap – and, upon doing so, might well attack
the rest of them. Or perhaps just her.
Looking at the others’ pillars, Arethkayn noticed the edges
around the tops each had a decorative pattern to them that
she’d overlooked when she had been focused on climbing.
And that’s when the epiphany struck: The pillar tops are gates,
like the one we came through earlier.
Having failed to pay attention to the rim of her own platform
when she’d had the chance to, Arethkayn had no idea where
the exit points on her circle were or what its invocation was.
Worse, she couldn’t study the rune-circle without giving
things away to her uncertain—and probably temporary—
allies.
So she watched the others. Malecibe was sizing up the central
pillar for an odds-defying leap while his pocket wyvern
scampered about his feet, checking out the edges of his
platform, somehow avoiding being hurled from its top by
gusts from the incoming storm.
Rhurrinore studied his own pillar, though not its edges.
Zuuduun paced, coming close enough at times to the edges of
her space that Arethkayn got vertigo.
At that point, Rhurrinore glanced up to find Arethkayn
watching them. Suddenly alert and intrigued, he stood
straighter and studied her. Too late, she realized she had made
a mistake. By watching them instead of pretending to work on
a puzzle, she had given away that she’d thought of something.
A foolish error.
Arethkayn gave it her best, but she felt a lash, like the tip of a
knife, against her thigh. Damn, she thought.
Arethkayn deliberately avoided looking at the edges of the
platforms, but Rhurrinore, watching her eyes closely and more
skilled at this game, seemed to read that cue easily. He glanced
down at the edge of his pillar, crouched and traced a finger
along it. Then he looked over at her pillar, before raising his
gaze back to her eyes.
Behind Rhurrinore, a strobe of lightning heralded the
oncoming storm.
“It’s too bad we don’t have some kind of divine guidance –
that we can trust,” he said, voice crisper than the wind.
Another Harpsire attack, though subtle. Arethkayn attempted
to deflect it, but such a thing is easier said than done.
The Eastclan Harpsires had come up with a devilishly sneaky
sort of magical attack—one that exploited a clever loophole in
the Laws of Claiming governing what a practitioner could affect
with magic. Harpsire insults were never direct, never named
their targets, always came at the target obliquely. But that was
by design: If you recognized the insult was about you, then
you implicitly claimed the insult as yours – and then suffered
the physical harm that had been wrapped up inside it. By
swallowing the bait, you took the poison.
And that was the trick: How do you pretend an insult isn’t
about you if you’re also trying to be alert to attacks or aware of
enemies? Defending against the Harpsire strategy required a
weird kind of double-thinking: Recognize you’re under attack,
but believe the attack isn’t about you. At the same time.
Unable to reach Rhurrinore with her glaive, Arethkayn flung
out a hand. Claiming static from the surrounding air and heat
from her body and molding it, she hurled a mote of fiery sun
at a point right behind the harrowskald—on a path that would
take it through him.
It was up to Rhurrinore whether he wanted to retain
ownership of that space while the burst shot through it.
Rhurrinore abandoned the space. He dropped low and
grabbed the edges of his pillar near his ladder, falling several
feet as the mote streamed above him.
Thunder pealed through the ruin, chasing the earlier strobe of
light but destined never to catch up.
“Malecibe!” yelled Rhurrinore.
In a fluid motion, Malecibe crouched, drew a dagger in each
hand, and hurled both of them in a whiplike, underhanded,
simultaneous motion across the gap at Arethkayn. She
deflected one dagger by interposing her glaive while diving
for low ground to duck the second. But she dove too far and
her control evaporated. Releasing the glaive, Arethkayn
grabbed at the top of her pillar with both hands and slipped
over the edge, hanging by fingertips. To one side, her glaive
tumbled, vanishing into the darkness below.
briefly, how much of Malecibe’s sometimes thick behavior was
a calculated act.
From behind his own pillar, to which he was clinging with one
hand and his feet, Rhurrinore brought up a hand-crossbow
that Arethkayn hadn’t known he owned, aiming it at her and
firing. Mercifully, the lightweight bolt was buffeted by an
errant gust and spanked off the stone of Arethkayn’s column.
Using his pillar for cover, Rhurrinore tucked the urn in his
pack, then dropped straight down at a startling speed that
only made sense when Arethkayn heard the faint whistle of
rope through a harness. He wasn’t falling. He was abseiling.
Above and across from her, Zuuduun roared in Malecibe’s
direction and leaned into a spear-throw with her throwingstick. The flexible spear bent into a bow-shape as her arm
drove the stick forward—and then shot toward the poisoner at
the speed of an arrow.
Malecibe shouted a term and jumped backwards, off his pillar
and into the sky, much too far to grab onto anything – but then
he disappeared, reappearing in motion on the central platform.
Damn! How did he know where the gate was? And the invocation?
Arethkayn thought.
Malecibe grabbed the urn, spun, and tossed it across the gap to
Rhurrinore. Back on his pillar, the pocket wyvern spread its
wings and dropped from the edge, gliding into the darkness
below.
Arethkayn momentarily cursed her shortsightedness. She’d
thought of it as a pet, not as a fetch—not as a witch’s familiar.
He could see through its eyes, if he so wished—and clearly
had done so, using it to study the runes on his pillar while
pretending to think about a daring leap. She wondered,
He’d taken extra time on the way up to fasten a rope.
Back on the central pillar, Malecibe studied its runes in a rush,
checking for a proper exit. Arethkayn’s second mote blazed
into his shoulder, rocking him back. With a hiss, he jumped
again into the void—
– and reappeared on Rhurrinore’s pillar, where he
somersaulted over its edge, latched onto the rope, and slid
after Rhurrinore.
Thoroughly outplayed and in more trouble than she cared to
think about, Arethkayn looked for Zuuduun and found the
bhargeist already heading down her pillar.
Probably started down right after her spear throw, Arethkayn
thought. Then Arethkayn had a more sobering thought. Only
one rope exists between the mid-level and the ground—I am about to
be stranded up here.
She started to lower herself over the edge over her pillar, feet
fumbling for the climbing holds carved into it, when she
realized that descending that way would almost certainly
prove fatal. Her enemies knew she’d ascended by that pillar.
They might very well arrange for a nasty surprise.
Losing precious seconds, she pulled herself up onto the pillar
again. Another strobe of lightning put the world to Sunward
in sharp relief. She peered over the edge at the rim of her
platform, studying it by flashes of lightning. From far below,
between peals of thunder, she thought she heard the ring of
metal on metal and shouts of combat.
The pillar gates were, as one might expect, tricky. Her pillar
had two exiting jumps: one facing inward, toward the central
pillar, and one facing outward, toward the sky and apparent
death. Each exit had been labeled in Old Vormirian, but the
inner gate used an older grammar that would have seemed
quaint at the point this site was constructed. The outer gate
used grammar that had spent some time being condemned
before it became trendy, then commonplace, then accepted
practice. So it appeared she needed to decide whether the
makers of this site were slightly behind their times or slightly
ahead of them. Malecibe had jumped outward, but Arethkayn
couldn’t see his platform clearly enough to see how his own
gates had been coded.
Rain began to pelt her.
Arethkayn made an uncertain decision and resolved to stick
with it. Taking a deep breath, she read the incantation aloud,
stood, and jumped back, away from the center, as Malecibe
had done.
Vertigo, buffeting, disorientation. Then, with relief, the
sensation of solid stone beneath her feet. She was on the center
pillar. A quick scan of the runes along the edge of this
platform revealed four exits, each set of runes mentioning one
of the four advisors. An easy decision. She invoked, then
jumped through the woods-elf gate to Zuuduun’s pillar. Either
the bhargeist’s pillar was trapped by their enemies, in which
case her alien ally would trigger it before she did, or else the
bhargeist’s speed down the pillar would mean this one was
safe. She hadn’t dared try the other two, realizing either man
was clever enough to sabotage his own pillar behind him.
As Arethkayn climbed, she cursed with the realization that
incoming rain was slicking the grips of her pillar. She willed
her fingers to grip the stone harder; they responded by
protesting both the pressure and the cold.
Below, she could hear Zuuduun roar, and after another halfminute of descent, she could smell smoke.
Then, finally, she reached the bottom. At the base of the
woods-elf pillar, she stuck close to the pillar for cover and
examined the rest of the level. She could see no one. The scent
of earthy smoke had infected the storm fog drifting through
the ruins, so that as Arethkayn passed through mist, she could
taste soot and ash on the water. She found her glaive, intact.
Reaching the edge of the middle tier, she discovered the source
of the smoke: The men had coated the rope with something
inflammable on the way down and then ignited it upon
reaching the bottom. Ember-like rope-threads drifted on
eddies in the local airspace, and scorching ran from the edge of
the level to the pillar Malecibe had used as an anchor.
Below, Arethkayn could hear the sounds of conflict. A grunt, a
roar, scuffling, a gasp for breath.
She peered over the edge and took in the scene below.
Zuuduun, clearly singed, clung to the pillar about halfway
down, having apparently made a last-second switch from rope
to pillar when the former caught fire. Although Malecibe and
Rhurrinore might be working together, below was clear
evidence that they weren’t allied with Corumet and Trent. The
latter, wounded anew, had moved to block the two rogues
from the footbridge leading back to the main gate. Corumet,
nursing a slash across her left arm, and holding her dagger
awkwardly in her right, was hanging back from the fray as
Malecibe lunged at the knight, with Rhurrinore aiming
distracting blows at the knight with his broadsword.
Trent fell, suddenly, slipping in his own blood, and Malecibe
darted in to finish the job, failing on the first two stabs, but not
the third.
“Damn,” Corumet said, more in frustration than in grief.
Zuuduun leapt then from the pillar to the top of the pile of
assembled rocks. As she hit the first stone, she mitigated her
lateral momentum by bounding immediately to the ground,
curling into a shoulder roll that brought her up only ten feet
behind the two rogues now racing across the bridge.
That looked painful, Arethkayn thought. She turned, then, and
looked back at the as-yet unexplored tunnel on the other side
of the pillars. Coming from different directions, moonlight and
lightning created a dance, a duel, of different shades and
intensities of light on the other side of the tunnel, revealing
stone and shadow.
Behind them all, Toltus lay unmoving on the ground, bellydown, a dagger between his shoulder blades.
It was her only viable exit. She ran through it – and found, on
the other side, what looked like a giant dry dock carved into
the side of the mountain.
“Give up the urn!” Corumet shouted at the two men pressing
Trent. “You do not want our house as your enemy!”
Highharbor
Rhurrinore laughed. “How telling. You threaten in the name
of your house, instead of in the name of your empire.
Nalathambra was right. You are too ambitious. And you
thought she wouldn’t notice?”
At Arethkayn’s level, a wide gallery of stone formed a Ushaped frame around three-quarters of the dock, which itself
was deep enough to hold a ship and was bridged at its
midpoint by a crumbling and possibly unreliable skyway. The
dock was built into a harbor-like space in the cliff wall, which
ascended on this side of the plinth another thirty feet, rising
almost as high as the gate-pillars she’d just descended.
Against the other side of the wall she’d just emerged from,
Arethkayn found clear signs of the function that this place
once served. Near the wall, only feet from where she stood, the
“mouthpiece” of the massive stone horn from the drawing
rose from the floor. The rest of the horn, she presumed, cut
through a large swathc stone in the mountain below her, its
bell jutting out into space some distance below her.
In addition, carved in Vormirian script into the flagstones at
her feet were two words meaning, roughly, “High-Harbor,”
which Arethkayn took to be the name of this space. She
concluded the place was probably a dock for summoned
Skykings, the massive birds depicted around the main gate.
With disappointment, Arethkayn noticed that the bellows-like,
team-operated organ for blowing the horn, depicted so clearly
in the bas relief, was nowhere to be seen. She assumed that,
not being built of stone, it had been destroyed and washed
away by the elements.
Arethkayn approached the mouth of the titanic horn and
peered deep into it.
This might be a way out.
“Hazzumkigh, hear me!” she cried.
A strange thunder sounded then, unrelated to any sort of
lightning, reverberating in the dock until it became a steady
hum, then trailed off.
He had no mouth near her, but he had a storm and could
answer with it.
“I require service from the Wind-Hounds of the Gale Lords!
Send them to me!”
The natural winds in the dock had already been hammering
the walls fiercely, as winds do around surfaces at such
altitudes. But they suddenly intensified, as though the local
winds had invited a throng of relatives. Rowdy, elemental,
howling relatives. Soon, too, all of the gathered winds were all
circling the interior of Highharbor in sinister direction, and
Arethkayn found herself at the eye of a hurricane.
“Hazzumkigh! I call on the Wind-Hounds to sound this horn!
Once they have blown through it, they may count their muster
complete!”
A whisper traveled then through the ring of winds, and with a
rush, they funneled into the mouth of the horn and into its
bowels.
The mountain sang a deep, deep song.
And somewhere behind the stormclouds, something else
answered.
Shadow of the Skyking
Rhurrinore could see the ruins of the main gate site perhaps a
hundred yards away, silhouetted against the sky by a moon
not yet fully eclipsed by the storm from Sunward.
He still had the urn, tucked under one arm, his sword lying on
the stone beside him. He had had to do a bit of repair work on
himself, thanks to the bhargeist and her impressive spearthrowing. One of her javelins had run straight through his leg.
Removing it and wrapping the wounds with bandages had
taken time, and despite those measures, he still was uncertain
whether he could reach the gate.
The bhargeist had proven to be a proper challenge, and
Rhurrinore had quickly resigned himself to the possibility of
partial success: If he could get off this rock and reach safety,
with the urn, he could live with that result. By the rules of
harrowskalding, he could not compose verse in tribute to an
enemy until he had killed her. This meant that, regrettably, the
formidible Zuuduun’s exploits might go unsung and he would
lose a chance at a tenth knot. But he was willing to pay that
price. He owed himself more than he owed his adversaries—or
his reputation.
Nevertheless, Zuuduun might thwart even his escape plan.
His best hope resided in the fact that Malecibe and the
bhargeist were hunting each other in the maze of paths
between the gate site and the Shrine of the Godcatcher.
Somewhere close behind him, too, was Corumet, but she
seemed unwilling to close in on him, even while he was
yanking a javelin from his leg. Nalathambra had encouraged
him to kill her, but she hadn’t seemed worth writing about so
he had held off so far.
After retrieving and sheathing his sword, he stood, unsteady
and light-headed, and limped toward the gates. Behind him,
he heard a faint scuff as someone, presumably Corumet,
resumed treading at his hobbled pace.
The ground ahead rose steadily, and soon he was able to look
back at the maze of furrowed walkways behind and below
him. Furtive movement caught his eye to his right—something
small, moving along the top of a ridge between two paths,
perhaps a spear’s throw away. He paused. After a second, he
recognized it as Malecibe’s pocket wyvern. It had climbed up
to gain a better view of one of the long, major pathways.
Malecibe often used the eyes of his pet to stalk targets, letting
him know where to place himself for greatest advantage.
An inopportune flash of lightning revealed the bhargeist
creeping up the observed path, low and in the shadows. If
Malecibe was monitoring the wyvern at the time, then he had
seen her, too. Rhurrinore swallowed a temptation to warn the
bhargeist. If Malecibe killed her, Rhurrinore’s opportunity to
compose a tribute to his foe would be forever lost, but at least
he would have a clear run to the gate.
The wyvern scurried along the way, slipping below its crest to
remain out of sight of the bhargeist, a move that Rhurrinore
thought odd. The bhargeist advanced, rounded a corner, and
entered an area that the wyvern could not see from its
position. The wyvern leapt forward, jumping the gap between
walls, to look down another path that it had to know Zuuduun
wasn’t on. Clearly, it was looking for something else.
What is it looking for?
The wyvern then began to move with purpose and focus,
following something Rhurrinore could not see. Malecibe
appeared then, running along the same wall, past the wyvern,
and dropping into the path they had been following. A sound
like a muffled rar! erupted –
– and at that sound, Zuuduun sprang up onto the tops of the
walls, in a four-points-of-contact crouch, weapons slung and
stowed. She charged
across the top of the
maze toward the sound
of what Rhurrinore
realized must be the
draugarbjorn cub.
Malecibe stood then on a prow of rock,
cub caught in the crook of his elbow and held
to his chest, knife to its throat.
“Stop!” Malecibe yelled at the bhargeist.
The bhargeist stopped.
Rhurrinore realized he hadn’t moved for some time—that,
unconsiously, he was probably trying to avoid the
pain of it. Wrenching himself from the scene, he
again started
closing the
distance to the gate, which seemed, if anything, further away
now, as though he had lost ground while not moving. In
figurative ways, he supposed, that might be true.
“Kill yourself and I’ll spare the cub!” he heard Malecibe cry,
answered by a defiant, ursine roar.
Rhurrinore shook his head. Malecibe’s style was always to go
for the jugular.
“Stand back, or I kill it!” Malecibe insisted.
A glance over the shoulder showed that Zuuduun had
stopped, though she looked murderous as ever. The same
glance revealed Corumet had closed half the distance to
Rhurrinore, dagger in hand. She halted. Still too far to strike
with his sword.
Rhurrinore concentrated on moving forward.
And that is when something larger than the sky rose up from
behind the ruins, from beyond the cliff, beating wings of
unfathomable size, each slow flap a thunder clap of its own. It
loomed over them, wings battering them with wind.
And from its back, a rider cried out, “Hazzumkigh! I claim
this storm on behalf of the Storm Court and the Sceptered
King who rules it! I claim the thunder and the lightning!”
Rhurrinore knew that at this point he should feel panic, alarm.
Instead, he felt mostly a detached curiosity.
If the Eastclans had known of her, that imposter priest would be
worth a knot as well, he thought.
Then lightning struck.
Matters of Light and Death
Bartering with the Skyking had consumed half of Arethkayn’s
remaining magical resources, partly because she was in a
hurry and not in a position to haggle much, and also partly
because the Skyking’s traditional service was to carry, by
talon, large gondolas that had long ago rotted away. The
Skyking had recoiled when she made it clear she hoped to ride
on its back.
Much of Arethkayn’s remaining power had gone into claiming
the storm, a feat that would be beyond most thaumaturgists
without an alliance with the Court of Storms.
The next part was trickier: Zuuduun had passed to Arethkayn
a superior claim on the entire plinth—the monolith they had
been exploring since first gating to this site. And that gave
Arethkayn considerable power in this situation. But that claim
couldn’t trump Rhurrinore’s inherent claim on his own person
or on anything he was touching. In those places, his claim of
possession was superior to hers of inheritence.
Arethkayn could, however, smite the ground near Rhurrinore
and then count on heat, overpressure, and rocky shrapnel to
do her work for her. So she did.
The white-hot stroke found home maybe eight feet from the
harrowskald, detonating the earth and hammering the
surrounding area with rings of overpressure, the first of which
threw Rhurrinore onto his back.
The urn tumbled from his arms, rolling downhill from his
position—at Corumet. The woman in red threw herself into
the mud to intercept the relic, hugging it to her.
Rhurrinore rose to his feet and hurled an insult at Arethkayn
that she could not quite hear over the ringing of her ears. Yet
she knew it was directed at her and so she still felt its lash
across her forearm.
Arethkayn thrust her glaive into the air, commanding the skies
to charge for another strike. Rhurrinore reached out with his
sword, driving its point into rock a few feet from him, and
spun, claiming a broader swath of the rock around him.
A new strategy came to Arethkayn: She could try an inversion.
With a thought, she released all claims on any land contested
by Rhurrinore.
“Elements, through my herald, hear me! Hurl your power into
the Earth—but leave unscathed any land I have claimed!”
Rhurrinore grasped his predicament immediately. To stand his
ground now would doom him. He dropped his head and
charged toward the gate, abandoning the urn and foes and
allies behind him.
Arethkayn could feel the storm above and behind her, its
power building and looking for release as, momentarily
confused, it searched for a spot on the ground she didn’t claim.
And now, with Rhurrinore on the run and outside his circle,
the new strategy wouldn’t work anyway.
She called for the elements to smite the ground before his feet,
hoping he would run into – and thus claim – the space.
But she miscalculated, or perhaps Rhurrinore picked up speed,
or perhaps the elements, confused by the changing
instructions, delayed too much. Whatever the cause, the bolt
struck behind him, the concussion hurling him the rest of the
way into the gate circle, where he sprawled on the ground.
“Elements, smite the circle!” Arethkayn called.
Again, the storm paused.
Something, somewhere, clearly had a stronger claim on the
circle than she did. Its builders? The circle itself, if sentient?
Thinking quickly, Arethkayn ordered the storm to strike the
ground immediately outside the claimed circle. As the bolt
tore into the Earth, Rhurrinore cowered, shielding his eyes
during the strike. Crawling inside the circle, he found the
incantation and shouted it.
Then Rhurrinore lunged through a gate—and vanished.
Shrugging off a nagging concern that he might return, healed
and better prepared, Arethkayn scoured the field for Corumet.
Instead, she finally noticed Zuuduun and Malecibe’s
stalemate, and the cub’s predicament.
A quick internal inventory ensued, in which Arethkayn
determined she had just a sliver of power left. She could wield
it if she released her claim on the storm. She did so –
– and cast Theryn’s Veil upon the cub.
The result surprised her, though in hindsight it shouldn’t
have: With a gleeful yelp, the cub swallowed the spell and
vanished.
Deprived of his hostage, Malecibe backpedaled. Zuuduun,
roaring, closed the distance between them in a second,
grabbing him by crotch and neck in two great bear-paws.
The bhargeist lifted Malecibe over her head, and without
slowing, charged to the edge of the cliff, hurling him from it.
Zuuduun staggered then, falling to her knees. Arethkayn
could see several nasty cuts into her chest, bleeding. Probably
envenomed. Zuuduun, she suspected (hoped!), might live, but
would have little fight left in her.
“Hazzumkigh!” called a voice that wasn’t Arethkayn’s. “I
hereby call you! I claim you! And I bind you!”
Corumet stood below, out in the open, urn aloft and its runecarved lid removed.
The winds eased. The rain gentled. And something else
changed, harder to pin down, as though some background
noise that had always been there had suddenly ceased, leaving
a hole in the world and a silence deeper than what had passed
for silence before it.
Hazzumkigh, Arethkayn knew with certainty, had been
trapped by the Godcatcher. That is what the urn—a relic of an
ancient civil war among the divine Courts—did. By
imprisoning the seneschal of a god, or a Court, one could
watch the power of its followers wither, for the gods
themselves could no longer directly affect affairs in the Mortal
Realm. Without their intermediaries, they were nothing more
than myths and rumors. For any religious war, the Godcatcher
was a prize of a weapon.
Corumet glared at Arethkayn defiantly.
“I know you now!” she called up. “You’re no routine storm
cultist. You’re that Ruoud whelp who escaped from us. You
should never have called upon your seneschal in front of me!
Now I have swallowed him whole!”
Arethkayn coaxed the Skyking toward Corumet, addressing it
in the Weird Tongue: “You may take her as tribute, if you can
catch her.”
The Skyking shrieked and closed in, battering the landscape
with gales from its wings. Hair and robe whipped into a
frenzy, Corumet responded by ducking deeper into the maze,
darting into its deepest troughs, where the Skyking’s talons
could not reach.
Arethkayn whispered gently to the Skyking and then slid
down its mighty wing, glaive held up in both hands to avoid
sawing the creature. She hit the ground on her feet and
dropped into a trench, glaive at the ready.
Above her, powerful winds briefly renewed as the Skyking
lifted itself into the sky.
Ignoring the departing Skyking, Arethkayn hurried through
the maze, following a path she had noted when they had first
navigated the site. Corumet, she suspected, would be making
for another cardinal on another corner of the monolith, where
a second circle and gate supposedly waited. Arethkayn aimed
to cut her off.
And several turns later, discovered that indeed she had.
She came around a corner to find Corumet standing stock still
in the trench ahead, back to Arethkayn.
that even the person catching the clue would struggle to
identify what it was.
Waiting at the other end of the trench was Toltus, blocking
Corumet’s way. He had, at some point, removed the dagger
from his back.
Corumet, suddenly struck by that sort of intuitive leap,
abandoned thoughts of a climb and, as if in a trance, stepped
hesitantly toward Toltus. Toltus let her. She raised her hands
to his visor and lifted it.
Corumet glanced over her shoulder to see Arethkayn blocking
her retreat. She eyed the sides of the trench, clearly gauging
whether she might climb out of this trap.
“You’re responsible, I’m afraid, for what is about to happen,”
Arethkayn said. “I merely sought to live, and for those I loved
to live as well. I had abandoned the old gods of the Storm
Court. But you made me desperate, and in that desperation, I
bound myself to the Old Court. I pledged to rebuild House
Ruoud, when, unmolested, I would have followed my father
in bringing it down. This is the situation you have created for
yourself. As you know, House Ruoud had strict penalties for
crimes against the Storm Court. Penalties my father had
denounced as barbaric.”
Toltus strode forward in measured, patient steps. Corumet
backed perhaps two feet before she realized she was getting
closer to the point of the glaive.
It’s strange how a person can be confronted with something
that ought to be familiar, and yet miss the most obvious clues.
For instance, a name that has been flipped around, back to
front. And stranger still that one can miss those clues, then
pick up on something so subtle, so subliminal, so ephemeral,
A sob burst from Corumet’s lips.
“Sutlot,” she cried to the long-dead face within.
The creature had once been of her blood. He had been present
at the death of Arethkayn’s father. He now served his killer,
Arethkayn, as thrall and revenant.
Toltus reached up and took Corumet by the neck.
“Sister,” it croaked.
And then it squeezed. 
Here ends the tale of how Arethkayn acquired the Godcatcher; how
Zuuduun first encountered her companion draugarbjorn, Bruggero;
and how Rhurrinore the harrowskald went deaf.
Copyright Notices
 Vormir Serpent Columns incorporates elements of Dezign with a
Z’s Columns Vinyl Wall Art.
Story
 The Draugarbjorn incorporates Piotr Siedlecki’s Bear Silhouette.
 “For Gods Dethroned” (text)  2015 by Graham Robert Scott. All
rights reserved.
 The Skyking (elements of which appear on the cover and the
entirety of which appears in the text) incorporates elements of The
Seventh Seal and Eagle Silhouette 5 by SeriousTux. 
The story’s setting, The Vorago, has been created by Graham Robert
Scott as part of a fictitious universe called alternatively The Vault or
Shroud, designed by Wallace T. Cleaves and Graham Robert Scott 
2014, and is used with permission. All rights reserved.
Artwork
 The Coin, The Five Advisors of King Param, Malecibe Aloft, and
the pillar diagram are all  2015 by Graham Robert Scott. All rights
reserved.
The remaining silhouettes and artworks are creative, secondary
transformations, combinations, and alterations of existing works
listed below following fair use as defined in Cariou v. Prince, 714 F.
3d 694 – Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit 2013 and Blanch v. Koons,
467 F. 3d 244 – Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit 2006. All
transformations here are also  2015 by Graham Robert Scott. All
rights reserved.
 Blackbirds and Trees of Bone incorporates elements of the wine
label for Blackbird Vineyards’ 2012 10th Anniversary Paramour
Napa Valley Proprietary Red Wine and Halloween Large Dead Tree
by cgbug.
 Arethkayn’s Glaive incorporates an element of Glaives by
Wendelin Boeheim.