The Archbishop of Egliad stank with sudden terror.

His Grace had hidden his fear well behind a façade of snooty displeasure when confronted in his private chambers by an armed intruder. That changed in a blink after Ryn introduced himself by name. Sweat blossomed on His Grace’s piggish features with impressive speed and volume. He stumbled back and tripped over his bulky vestments to land in an overstuffed armchair.

The Holy Clerisy’s Guardian of the Faith for all who lived within a hundred miles, left ready to piss himself. Ryn should have expected it. The warrants for his arrest, carried by pigeon and dispatch rider to every corner of the Kingdoms by now, would have him painted worse than a babe-eating grenlich.

Still, the archbishop’s reaction soured Ryn’s throat with a sorry need to smash something. Too many days without sleep had left his eyes burning like smoldering lumps of coal. His hollowed gut twisted in fitful knots. But he didn’t dare sleep. To sleep meant to dream, and to live again the horrid feeling of lives slipping through him—the lives snuffed out at Sarenepra to feed the Sword. 

Whatever expression Ryn wore at the memory bleached the archbishop’s face even more, to a whiteness any laundress with stained linens would envy. His Grace cowered in his chair, pressing deep into the oiled leather as though he expected it to cocoon him. 

“I don’t mean to harm you.” Ryn cleared his throat to replace the hoarse growl with something less threatening. “But all things considered, I am going to tie you up.”

His Grace swallowed and eyed the door of his private chamber. Beyond it lay the salon where guests were received and entertained. It was empty. The nearest help waited in the hallway outside a second door. Two palatars on guard duty, if regular protocols were being observed, each wearing mail and plate, armed with sword and dagger and a brace of pistols. A dozen more would be only a shout away.

Ryn put his hand to the longsword of plain steel that rode on his left hip. “Don’t. I will harm you if I must.”

His Grace looked to the other sword Ryn wore at his right hip, slipped under his belt without a scabbard. “That . . . that is the Sword of Aegias—Mordyth Ral, Gods Bane.”

Ryn gave the Sword a glance. Its leaf-shaped blade caught the morning light that streamed through the arched windows with an odd yellow gleam that wasn’t gold, or bronze, or brass. Even now, the wretched thing teased his eye with wicked charm. “Yes, it is.”

“Then the reports are true.”

Ryn allowed himself the luxury of a sardonic smile as he got busy with the rope he’d brought. “I’m sure there’s some truth to them.”

The archbishop didn’t resist as Ryn quickly bound his wrists and ankles. A moan sounded from the closet, followed by a muted thump—likely an awkward strike at the door with a boot heel. The noise gave His Grace a start. “What the—”

“That’s your valet. He’ll be fine with a bit of thanesglory to dull the headache.” Ryn had slipped in from the balcony before dawn, intent on rousing the archbishop with time to spare before Martyrsday Mass, then slip away as the sun rose. Instead, he had found His Grace absent—already up and out for a walk—and almost been caught by the valet.

Ryn had been forced to hide in the closet and bide his time. His Grace returned, dressed for Mass, and left again. The valet remained, to plump cushions, sort correspondence, and supervise the arrival of His Grace’s breakfast cart. With the Mass nearing its end and the archbishop’s return imminent, Ryn had been left with no choice but to jump the valet and knock him senseless.

His Grace heaved himself up in the chair into as dignified a position as his bonds would allow. Sunlight sparkled from the Tetraptych embroidered with silver thread on his vestments—a circle quartered, each quarter bearing the sigil of one of the dead gods. Dead, but not gone. What would His Grace say if Ryn told of how he’d spoken with one of the Four just a week past?

Scorn it as the worst kind of blasphemy, no doubt. The Four’s spirits dwelled in Paradise beyond the call of mortals, the Clerisy taught. Ryn knew better. 

“I don’t suppose you’ve come to repent, Ryn Ruscroft,” His Grace said, speaking the name as if it granted him some power to ward evil.

“Not today, Your Grace.” Not ever. Ryn helped himself to a biscuit from the breakfast cart. He wasn’t really hungry, hadn’t been in days, but he needed something to ease the ache in his gut.

“Then why have you come?”

Ryn drew a ragged breath and let his fingers tease Mordyth Ral’s goose egg pommel. The strange metal stirred under his touch. A hot metallic pressure flared in his mind. The sudden need to wrap his hand around that hilt threatened to get the better of him: his senses swelled beyond anything human; the sudden stink of the archbishop’s sweat made him snort, his ears rang with the drumbeat of the man’s rampant heart. 

Ryn pulled from his belt the witch iron gauntlet that he’d scavenged from one of the dead palatars in Sarenepra and shoved it on. The pressure in his mind eased before the inferno could erupt and scorch away all reason. His senses returned to normal, feeble and human. 

“Is . . . is this burden of the Sword as toilsome as the Codex tells us?” His Grace asked.

 “It’s worse.” Ryn clenched his fist and savored the bite of the mail links in his flesh. “Witch iron helps, but I can’t wear it all the time. I have to let the Sword test me, to toughen my will against it.”

“Might it not be better to be free of it?”

“Death is the only freedom,” Ryn said. “I will let my soul burn before I allow the Sword to fall into the wrong hands.” Man and Sword, bound till the end—his end. 

“You have such regard for yourself—a man who was sentenced to the Claw?” His Grace asked.

“I’m a penitent man, Your Grace, not a conceited one.” Ryn touched Mordyth Ral’s hilt again. “This is my penance, as it was for Aegias.”

His Grace’s eyes narrowed. “If you rank yourself equal to the Prince Messiah then you do presume too much.”

Ryn closed quick on the archbishop with a snarl that made the man flinch. “Do I? What does the Clerisy teach if not that all of us should be like him? The struggle to be better, to fight our darkness, defines our quality. That defined Aegias. It’s why the Virtues exist.”

He leaned closer, forcing the archbishop to slouch in the chair. “What kind of man are you? Do you honor the Virtues?” He gave that big belly a jab with stiff fingers that provoked a grunt. “Or are you just another hypocrite grown fat and corrupt?”

Ryn spat the last few words with a growl that left his chin wet and his body shaking. The air in the room had turned stifling. He went to the balcony doors and yanked them open. Fall had come even later than usual this far south, but the morning air still bore enough crisp coolness to sooth his tattered soul. He knew his chief flaw lay not with conceit, as His Grace accused, but anger.

It had begun after that night in Sablewood, when he’d been lauded the hero while his friend Quintan, killed by Ryn’s unfortunate hand, had been condemned to the unmarked grave of a traitor. It had deepened from there, as Ryn had learned of how the Clerisy had rewritten Aegias’s story to suit the ambitions of lesser men. And then Ryn had met Anton Bucardas, the High Lord Inquisitar, and seen how easily evil could wear a mask of virtue. His anger had only ripened in recent days, knotting into a rage he could endure no longer without doing something.

Ryn stuck his head out the balcony door and gave a sharp whistle before looking back over his shoulder. His Grace hadn’t moved, still slouched in his chair at the risk of sliding out and cracking his tailbone on the floor.

“There must be at least a few good men and women leading the Clerisy,” Ryn said. “Have they the guts to make a difference if they get the chance?” The end of a rope dropped from above and slapped his shoulder. “The High Lord Inquisitar wants the Sword to commit genocide. He’s resorted to sorcery to hunt me down, using outlawed relics of Lost Pandaris—relics enchanted by demons.” Ryn wrapped his hands around the rope. “He’s violating Aegias’s injunctions and the Clerisy’s law. I would think a man in your position, if he truly honors Aegias, would be outraged enough to do something about it.”

Ryn didn’t give the archbishop a chance to answer. He gave a tug on the rope and held on. Powerful clawed hands hauled him up and over the edge of the roof. Eyes of creamy jade regarded him from a big face that might have been beautiful if it weren’t split by a maw distended by rows of serrated teeth. He wrinkled his nose at the blast of hot breath tainted with a rotting meat stench.

Oma plunked him down behind a chimney so he wouldn’t slide off the roof’s smooth tile. The martichora hunkered her tawny lion hindquarters down, leathery wings flattened, scorpion tail wrapped around another chimney for purchase. “You’ve tarried much too long, man-child,” she said, as she coiled the rope. “Your kind are milling about now, and the sun makes us an easy target.” 

“Couldn’t be helped.” Ryn peeked over the edge of the roof. His Grace’s apartments lay in the seminary wing of Egliad’s sprawling cathedral complex. The cathedral reared up before them, a sculpture of stained glass and airy stonework that would have crumbled under its own weight if not for ranks of flying buttresses, topped by twisting spires of blackened iron. 

Three stories below, the Clerisy’s faithful continued to trickle through the cathedral’s double doors and down the steps to mill about in the square. Laborers and tradesfolk. Merchants and artisans, many of them rivaling the nobles they courted for business with their finery, despite the Clerisy’s caveat that pious modesty should rule the day. Brothers and sisters of the cloth looked like beggars by comparison—scalps shaven to topknots easily distinguished the fully ordained from their juniors. Palatars in white, dress uniform half capes stood fully armed with pistols and muskets as if expecting trouble—the Clerisy, in all things, never missed the opportunity to remind commoner and lord alike of its might.

The high-pitched wail of a fussing babe cut above the murmur of a hundred conversations. “We need a distraction to draw attention,” Oma said. “A horse, I think.”

“Do it,” Ryn said, though he loathed to inflict suffering on a hapless equine. 

Oma’s big, clawed hands held her recurve bow of laminated wood and horn with an arrow nocked. The bow must have had a draw weight of a hundred-and-fifty pounds. She drew it with little effort to its maximum, then eased some of the tension to reduce the lethality of the shot. 

Ryn eyed the golden glisten of Oma’s venom on the arrow’s head. “Just enough to bring on a fit and a faint?”

“We will see,” she said.

Voices sounded from the archbishop’s balcony below.

Across the square, a draft team waited patiently as the cathedral’s kitchen staff unloaded foodstuffs from a wagon. To Ryn’s right, a line of fine carriages waited on their employers. Oma fired. The arrow whined as it streaked through the air. Before it had even found its target, she had fired another.

The first arrow buried itself a few inches into the shoulder of a horse two carriages back in the line. It flinched and heaved in its traces, startling its companion. Then it screamed out of sheer terror as the venom sabotaged its nervous system. Ryn grimaced at the sound. Within seconds, the horse’s legs failed. It fell sideways, hooves flailing with spastic kicks. The other horse shied away and tried to run. Their driver fought to keep control and shouted for the footmen’s help. Oma’s other arrow had stricken another team in the line with the same fate. The horses’ fear and confusion were contagious. Other teams snorted, stomped, and reared to paw the air. Soon the whole line of carriages convulsed like a giant worm with a fit if indigestion.

Oma stowed the bow in her leather harness, grabbed Ryn under the armpits, and hoisted him onto her back. He ground his teeth as her grip bit into various wounds still not fully healed and clutched handfuls of her golden mane. She scrambled up the roof’s pitch, wings out for balance, hind claws rousing gritty shrieks from the tile. Ryn still found riding bareback in the sky without interfering with her wings the most awkward, gut-wrenching experience. He flattened down on his chest and gripped with both legs and arms, contrary to the lessons of twenty years of horsemanship.

Oma grabbed the roof peak and heaved herself into the air. Faint cries sounded from below, followed by the sporadic echo of gunfire. Egliad spread out beneath them, sprawled around the northern point of Jade Lake. Stately manor houses roofed with red tile and gardens groomed to perfection passed below, surrounded by parks where troubadours sang of romantic love and acting troupes promoted their latest tragedies. Ryn caught the fragrant sweetness of roasting beans from lakeside cafes. Cargo barges and pleasure craft with sails unfurled to catch a soft westerly breeze crowded the harbor and headed upriver to Berisford.

And the Sword, Mordyth Ral, could render it all lifeless in minutes, should need compel it to do so and Ryn surrender to it. Leave this a land of corpses without even a maggot left to hasten their decay. No remorse, no regret, no hesitation if the wretched thing deemed it necessary. 

He felt that metallic pressure again despite the witch iron gauntlet. The Sword’s genderless voice singed his thoughts. I take nothing without purpose. You know this, Heir of Aegias. Should we have let Xang survive Sarenepra?

Oma took them over open water to reach the far side of the lake, directly into the rising sun to blind anyone on the ground trying to track their flight. The fertile lands of the Eskenar unfolded around the lakeshore. Its orchards and vineyards produced some of the finest wines and ciders in the Four Kingdoms. 

Stands of trees on the eastern shore cast shadows and morning mists still rose from the shallows. Oma dove into the cover, flying so low and tight her wingtips slapped cattails on one side and tree branches on the other. They needed all the cover they could. It had been a risk to come at all, not because of the Clerisy, but Xang’s worshippers. Ryn doubted those sorcerer-priests would be kept at bay by the threat of the Sword for long. They wanted their dark messiah’s skull, to attempt again his resurrection, and would stop at nothing to retrieve it.  

“Do you feel better?” Oma asked. 

“Not particularly.”

“Did you make a difference?”

“No idea.”

“So, a foolish errand.”

“You did agree to bring me.”

“In the hope it would leech this canker that afflicts your spirit,” Oma said. “The Clerisy is not where your focus must be right now.”

Ryn snorted. “The High Lord Inquisitar is hunting us with outlawed magic—and forcing palatars to be accomplice to his crimes.” The men of the Orders were still Ryn’s brothers, even if their oaths to serve and obey the Clerisy now made him their prey. Until he figured out a way to free his brother palatars of the Clerisy, the least he could do was unmask the High Lord Inquisitar’s hypocrisy. “I’ve put the truth in this archbishop’s hands. Now it’s up to him to find the decency and the courage to act on it.”

“Will you focus now on the greater matter before us?” Oma asked.

Ryn conceded with a pat of her shoulder. “Yes. We can’t suffer Xang’s skull to exist.”  

Hundreds had died at Sarenepra to feed the Sword and stuff Xang back into the abyss where he belonged. Horgrim, perhaps the noblest man Ryn had ever known, had died to see it done. So too had Oma’s sister, Astrig, and another of their kin, Ashavinx.

Still, Xang’s spirit persisted. Ryn and his companions had managed to retain Xang’s skull while the demigod’s worshippers had made off with the rest of his bones. While it was rather difficult to be resurrected short a head, all Xang’s bones defied any natural means of destruction. The skull could be hidden by the Earthborn in Gostemere. Ryn had considered it but couldn’t shake his mistrust of the Earthborn. He could see only one alternative—find some distant place far from civilization, where Mordyth Ral could draw the power it needed to destroy the skull forever without costing innocent lives.

There was just one obstacle—Josalind had ideas of her own about using Xang’s skull as bait for a trap, and she had a stone giant and a dragon on her side.

“You must still convince her,” Oma said.

Ryn took a deep breath and let it out slow. “I know.”

Josalind aside, Ryn needed the clear victory of the skull’s destruction to find some peace. He didn’t expect such a victory to come without a price. Even if he found a place where the skull might safely be destroyed, Ryn couldn’t guess what deeper grip the Sword might gain on him if he gave it the free rein necessary to see the job done. His remorse and self-loathing for what had happened at Sablewood had barely been enough so far to keep Mordyth Ral in check.

He would need another anchor, a stronger one, if he continued to use the Sword. But the only options he knew of were lost to history, and likely to kill him or drive him mad.

It struck Ryn then, how he hadn’t really acknowledged Oma’s loss of her sister at Sarenepra, too consumed with his own demons. Oma had kept her grief hidden for the most part. Maybe martichora didn’t grieve their dead as humans did. But that was no excuse. These martichora, who had first come to his and Josalind’s aid at the Four’s behest, had been as steadfast as any comrades-in-arms Ryn had ever known. And they had remained so, even after learning for themselves the Four’s intentions could not be trusted.

He patted her shoulder. “I haven’t said enough about Astrig’s death.”

Oma reached back and squeezed his hand. It surprised him, how much the expression of affection warmed his heart. “You just did,” she said. “We will honor her and the others through action, not words.” 

They reached the campsite by mid-morning. It lay where the furthest reach of the lake skirted the edge of untamed forest, some eighty miles south of Egliad. Ice-capped mountains reared up in the distance. Ryn cursed when he saw a column of smoke. He’d said no fires. His annoyance turned to alarm when he realized the dark cloud billowed far too large for a simple campfire.

Mordyth Ral thrummed at his hip. The hunters have come.

Next Chapter: The God Whisperer and the Skull