Glyphbinder (16 page)

“Enough.” Jyllith looked away. “This scout has reported nothing. Boulderfist, with me. Stoneclaw, hold our captives until I return.”

She walked away with the gnarl chieftain in tow, leaving Aryn and Sera alone with two Windwalkers and one Rockeater. Jyllith was off to report to her master, whoever that might be. Now was Aryn’s chance. He had to convince these beastmen to release them.

No one had seen humans and gnarls together since the All Province War, when the gnarl tribes joined Metla Tassau to attack the Northern Alliance. Aryn had learned about that from his tutors in Locke. Despite his peril, the arrangement intrigued him.

Had these gnarls now joined with rebels in Rain? His father would dearly like to know. Such information would increase the standing of Locke’s nobility with the crown, and Dupret might finally see Aryn had worth — if he survived to bring the news.

Aryn searched his memories for what was written of gnarls. As they multiplied, they had come to worship the Five Who Had Made the World, just like humans. They had tribes: Rockeaters, Windwalkers, Firemakers, Watertakers, and Ruiners. Could he turn two tribes against each other?

“Rockeater.” Aryn stood slowly, the arm he could still move raised. “You let her treat you like that? A human?”

The brown gnarl bared yellowed teeth. “Prey squeaks.”

“And Windwalkers,” Aryn said. “What of the stories I’ve heard of your great campaign against the Firemakers? Are you slaves now?”

The gnarls all started wheezing, repeatedly, and it took a moment for Aryn to realize they were laughing. Aryn kept his face grim, but his heart sank. It ached like his broken arm.

“We have not Hand of Breath,” the remaining Rockeater growled, “but we silence you.” It held its hand up and clicked sharp claws together. “Keep that tongue? Stop squeaking.”

These beastmen were loyal to their mistress, and Aryn could not glyph. The morning’s carrow root still afflicted him. Yet he could not let Sera die. There had to be a way out of this he had missed, some alternative he had yet to consider. Something.

Aryn remembered advice his father had once given Tamen.
Listen and think. Learn your opponents’ vices and offer them when he is weakest.
Dupret had never shared that with his youngest son.

Aryn only then noticed the wounded Mynt soldier eying him. The man was awake. The Rockeater had not noticed, perhaps because the man’s face had so much blood and dirt on it.

The soldier blinked his eyes once, then twice. Imperial code! Just like in Solyr’s histories.

The blink was a count. Three rapid blinks meant something was going to happen. Aryn did not know what, but anything was better than letting Sera die tonight. He tensed his legs.

On the soldier’s third blink, the man thumped his foot sideways on the earth. A blade tip snapped from his leather boot. He jammed that blade into the ankle of the Rockeater standing over him. The beastman howled. Aryn threw himself into the gnarl’s back as the soldier locked legs around its thick calf.

This time, the gnarl went down, and the man’s boot tip flashed across the monster’s neck. Then he spun his legs up and around like a windmill, flipping to his feet. Quite the acrobat.

The two Windwalkers holding Sera snarled. Sera cried and kicked one of them. She might as well have kicked a rock, but in another moment Aryn and the soldier were on their feet, staring down the two Windwalkers. One gnarl had its axe out, pressed against Sera’s throat.

The soldier used the blade sticking from his boot to cut the rope on his wrists, then slid a real dagger from inside his boot. Aryn wondered how many daggers he had hidden on him. He eyed the gnarls and wished he had his quarterstaff. Or a really big rock.

“Tarel Halen,” the man said, “scout to the Leader of Armies.” He kept his eyes on the gnarls and on Sera. “Can you glyph?”

“Not right now.” Aryn tried to ignore the gnarl at his feet, gurgling and clutching its throat. “What do we do?”

“Run.”

“I’m not leaving Sera.”

“Go, you idiot!” Sera thrashed in the gnarl’s grip. “Don’t let them kill us both!” She twisted and kicked like an animal in a trap.

Tarel thumped Aryn’s shoulder. “Two gnarls are too much for me. Mynt’s going to war if I don’t tell them what I saw in Taven’s Hamlet, and I have to put our province first.” He pressed his dagger into Aryn’s hand. “Good luck, kid.”

With that, he ran.

Aryn stared after him, mouth open. How could he just abandon them? Abandon Sera? Then a massive gust slammed into Tarel from the side, bowling him over. When the man landed, his legs bent wrong under him. Aryn heard bone snap and then Tarel, screaming.

Jyllith rushed into their camp, stared at the dead Rockeater, and spit on the ground. Her narrowed eyes found his. “Well.”

Aryn dropped the dagger and raised his hands. “We had to try. You’re going to kill us.”

Jyllith glanced at Tarel, who was still trying to crawl away. Still fighting. She drew a glyph in the air. “I suppose you did.” Air swept out and gripped Tarel Halen, dragging him back as he grunted and swore. Her gnarls stared at him with bared teeth.

“I’m not going to kill you.” Jyllith altered her glyph, pulling Tarel into the air by his broken legs. She hung him upside down like a cut of meat. “Let me show you what’s going to happen instead.”

Jyllith raised one hand and sliced each finger with the nail on the other. She held her hand out, four fingers and a thumb bleeding. She advanced on Tarel’s floating body with her eyes closed.

“Get away from me, you bitch!” Tarel shouted.

Jyllith opened her eyes. They were stark black. Her flat palm slapped into the center of Tarel’s chest and seared his flesh with a loud hiss.

Tarel screamed again, thrashing against the air that held him. Jyllith pulled her hand free. A charred handprint with five points of open blood remained. Tarel sputtered and coughed.

“The gnarl you murdered was named Stoneclaw,” Jyllith told them quietly. “He has a packmate and four pups waiting at home. Two years ago, he saved my life.”

Tarel twisted and thrashed. Aryn realized why, and it made him tremble. A demon was inside Tarel now, shredding his body from the inside out. Jyllith was not just an Aerial. She was Demonkin!

A mist rose around Tarel’s contorting body, dark and clinging. Bones snapped and twisted. Aryn watched the demon glyph Jyllith had seared into the man’s chest bubble and grow. It turned Tarel’s body inside out.

Blood spewed from Tarel’s mouth. His lips burned away and the cries that burst from his throat were far from human. Black scales popped from beneath his skin and ate his flesh away.

Sera shrieked as they watched deep red pools swallow Tarel’s eyes. When the contorting, screaming, and bursting finally ended, an apelike demon with a huge snout crouched on all fours before them. Discarded skin, blood, and bone surrounded its crouched form.

The demon corpse snorted. Steam rose from its nostrils as it sniffed at the air. Hardened black scales covered it from toes to claws, and its red eyes blazed. Drool dripped from rows of long, jagged teeth that could tear a gnarl in half.

It was a davenger, a demonic tracker and hunter. A killer. Aryn had read stories about them from the darkest days of the All Province War. It was only when the combined forces of Mynt, Tellvan, and Rain began to drive the Metla Tassauns back that they unleashed their most potent weapons. Demons made from flesh.

A Demonkin mage could bring a davenger into the world by scribing the demons’ possessive glyphs on a captive. When Tarel’s corpse glared at him with its red eyes, Aryn knew he was looking into the face of Davazet, the Ripper. A brutal demon that lived to kill.

“I asked if we could spare you.” Jyllith turned on Sera with narrowed eyes. “The answer was no.” She raised her bloody hand. “I know it doesn’t help, but I am sorry.”

Sera stared at Aryn with wide eyes. She crushed herself against the gnarls as they forced her forward, forced her toward Jyllith. Aryn’s heart leapt to his throat as Jyllith once again drew her four-fingered glyph. She was going to send Sera to the Underside.

“Wait!” He stepped forward. “I’ll give you a harvenger!”

Jyllith jerked as if he had struck her, her bloody hand dropping to her waist. “What?”

Aryn had found her vice. “A harvenger.” He knew that because Jyllith had not crushed his lungs.

“What are you doing?”
Sera thought.

“Ending this.”
Aryn winced at the fear in her thoughts.
“Trust me. Everything will be all right.”

He knew Sera had no experience with demon glyphs, just like everyone else who trained at Solyr. Yet his father’s personal library in Locke had several forbidden and priceless books on the subject. During his summers away from Solyr, Aryn had studied them all.

Demon glyphs had been forbidden since the end of the All Province War, a conflict that had erupted after demonic darkness swallowed Metla Tassau. Dupret’s forbidden tomes had done little but provide knowledge Aryn dared not use, until now.

“I know what you just did, though I cannot do it myself.” Aryn’s memory of Balazel’s hate had his heart pounding fast. “I will join you in making a harvenger, a master of death, and in return you will set Sera free. You will not harm her.”

Jyllith’s eyes rolled back in her head and she wavered as if in a trance. Conferring with whoever pulled her strings. Aryn suspected that wasn’t entirely her idea.

Sera jerked in the Windwalker’s grip.
“No. I won’t let you do this. I don’t know what you plan, but it’s wrong.”

“Be brave,”
he thought back.
“And survive. Warn Kara.”

Jyllith’s eyes opened. “How would you do it?”

“I will scribe myself to Balazel.” Aryn fell to one knee, trying not to tremble. “Then you will shape his form.”

Sera stared at him with her jaw clenched. Then she turned to Jyllith. “Don’t you dare do it. Don’t listen to him. He’s mad.”

Jyllith glanced between the two of them, and for the first time she seemed truly lost. New sweat glistened on her brow as she stood stiff as a board. Did she know what she was doing, that by making Tarel Halen into a davenger she had bound herself to the Mavoureen forever? Did she know they would devour her soul?

Jyllith looked away. She looked at the ground, and Aryn found his answer. Jyllith knew what waited for her in the next few weeks. The rack, the fire, the spikes. Her drawn face said it all. She knew, and she had scribed that glyph anyway.

What could possess someone to do something like that?

“Take it back,”
Sera pleaded.
“You must take it back.”

“I can’t.”
Aryn wished he had found the courage to kiss her just once.
“This isn’t about us. It’s about our families, our friends. Someone has to stop this woman from taking us to war.”

Jyllith’s eyes focused and narrowed. She had dealt with whatever bothered her. Aryn stared at her and waited for her to speak. When she didn’t, he spoke for her.

“I’ll have your word and offer you mine.”

“Very well.” Jyllith frowned. “Give us our harvenger, and I swear on my mother’s soul we will set your woman free.”

“No!” Sera’s shout made Aryn jump. “I refuse—”

Jyllith painted a blood glyph with impressive speed. Sera went limp in the Windwalker’s arms. Aryn glared at them both.

“What did you—”

“She sleeps, Mynt, nothing more.” Jyllith looked to the Windwalker holding Sera. “Leave her here.”

The two remaining gnarls inclined their heads, and even the red-eyed davenger managed a bow. A Windwalker carefully settled Sera’s limp body on the rocky ground, surprisingly gentle. It seemed even beastmen could be gentle when they wished to be.

“Food and water,” Aryn rasped, throat suddenly dry. “She’ll need both.” Sera slept now. He was alone with the monsters.

“Do it,” Jyllith ordered.

Her gnarl threw down both pack and canteen and stood up, backing away. It seemed sacrificing its pack was a small price to pay for keeping its skin. Jyllith’s patience was obviously frayed.

Jyllith approached Aryn, eyes calm. “It’s time for us to leave now, if you plan to keep your word. If you truly want her to live.”

Aryn managed a weak nod. Again he thought of going back on his claim, of offering her money, of prostrating himself before Jyllith and begging her mercy. Yet Sera slept peacefully now, as the davenger that had once been a man eyed her with open jaws. He had saved her life. Saved her soul. What else could he accomplish?

“You have my word,” Aryn whispered. “You have your harvenger.”

Jyllith glanced at Sera as her shoulders sagged. “You never told her you loved her, did you?” She looked back at Aryn. “Would you like to?”

Aryn watched Sera’s chest rise and fall, memorized the way her long dark hair fell across her shoulders. “She already knows.”

This felt like a dream, some horrible dream, but Aryn could not convince himself of that. He was going to go somewhere very dark, and he was going to hurt for a very long time. He couldn’t move.

“Here.” Jyllith slid an arm beneath his shoulders and supported him. “Lean on me. One step at a time.”