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R HAIF CURSED AS the shadow of the warship settled to a stop overhead. He hauled Shiya toward the waiting wagon. He gripped one of her stiff arms. The bronze was deathly cold to his touch. He could not fathom how there could be any life inside this shell.

Pratik supported her other arm, while another four tribesmen bore her legs and torso. The Chaaen’s face was pinched as he stared up toward that dark cloud of the warship. “Somehow they must know Shiya is here.”

“All the more reason to get her into the wagon,” Llyra said, dancing her mare behind them.

Pratik looked little encouraged by this plan. “If they traced us here, they could do the same with Shiya on the move.”

“We’ve no other choice,” Rhaif grunted.

He pictured a rain of firebombs blasting this area.

Still, they made it to the wagon, and with much effort, slid and hauled her stiff form aboard. Rhaif climbed in after her. As he did, he flashed back to a corpse being dragged out of an alley in Anvil. The poor man’s throat had been cut, but his limbs were rigored and held forth stiffly, as if he were still trying to ward off his attacker.

Shiya reminded him of the same, a figure frozen in death.

Xan climbed into the wagon with the help of a tribeswoman, someone named Dala. She and another three women followed Xan. Pratik was the last to clamber in. They all crowded around Shiya’s bulk.

Shouts and whistles spread through the Kethra’kai, and the entire group set off through the woods. Rhaif winced at the clatter and rattle of the wagon. He knew warships had sharp ears. He prayed that the bombing had deafened the ship above.

As if the gods heard this thought, a fresh series of booms erupted to the south, in the direction they were headed. From the sharper staccato of those blasts, it was not bombs this time.

Pratik looked across Shiya’s body. “That was cannon fire.”

It was easy to read the worry in the Chaaen’s face.

Did that bombardment herald the presence of another warship ahead?

As they fled through the woods, they tracked alongside the green glow of the nearby Eitur. They aimed toward the only destination in that direction—Havensfayre—that might offer a measure of shelter.

But not if another warship was already over there.

Rhaif called to Xan, waving east. “We should turn and make for the deeper woods.”

The elder ignored him, lifting her palms over Shiya’s face.

Pratik argued against Rhaif’s plan. “If they’ve tracked Shiya here, they’ll continue to do so through these woods. Our only hope is to make it to Havensfayre and seek a way to bury her somewhere safe, where they might not be able to discern her presence. And if we hurry, maybe they won’t know we’ve fled there.”

Rhaif looked doubtfully above. They still hadn’t escaped the warship’s shadow. It looked to be drifting closer to the Eitur. He pictured it descending and offloading a hunting party. Before long, he and the others could be pursued by air and by land.

He stared down at Shiya.

And what about her?

He knew Pratik was right. Plainly those aboard the warship had a means of tracking her, as surely as Xan had done in leading their group to Shiya’s broken form.

He looked over to the elder, who sat back on her heels in the rocking wagon, as if she had already given up on Shiya. Instead, Xan lifted an arm. The other four women in the wagon did the same. The elder started singing, which was picked up by the others. It was a wordless melody, just a lyric of resonance and chorus, rising from throats and fashioned by lips into something even grander.

As he listened, the old lullaby sung by his mother rose again in his head, as if stirred forth by the women’s chanting. Around him, all the Kethra’kai lowered their palms to the bronze form of Shiya. Where each hand touched, the dark bronze melded into lighter hues of copper and gold. The magick spread outward from their fingers, pooling across Shiya’s chest.

It was as if the women carried sunlight in their touch, but Rhaif knew the power wasn’t so much in their hands as it was in their singing, raised by voices that were strong enough to pierce bronze skin and burnish the cold forges inside her, to warm them back to life.

Thin, strong fingers—Xan’s—grabbed his wrist and drew his hand to the center of the swirling pool. She lowered his palm between Shiya’s breasts, as if inviting him to feel a heartbeat he knew was not there.

As his skin touched bronze, the singing grew louder, heard not with his ears, but with his own heart. His mother’s old lullaby echoed there, too, rising and falling, finding home in that greater melody. Then something new arose. It was a golden strand of warm bronze that threaded through all, joining everything together. But it wasn’t entirely new. It was more like his mother’s lullaby, there but nearly forgotten. Only this song existed within him and without. It shone brightly enough for him to follow its threads down into Shiya and back into his own heart.

He remembered wondering why he was so connected to this bronze woman. Back in Anvil, he questioned whether she had bound him up in some silent version of bridle-song. He now recognized he was right—but also wrong. What tied them was not a song of command and entrapment. It was a melody forged as much by his own loneliness and despair as it was by Shiya’s solitude and displacement. They had needed each other and found each other. Here was not a song of bridling, but one of companionship, of two spirits sharing one another.

Warm fingers found his hand and pressed his palm more firmly to Shiya’s chest.

While he was still lost in the song, it took him a breath to see that it was not Xan who held him.

He stared at the bronze fingers resting atop his.

“Shiya…”

He turned to find glassy eyes upon him. They were still cold but with the barest flicker of warmth there now.

“I’m here,” he whispered.

The tribal song rose around him, but he sensed the others weren’t trying to revive Shiya further. He suspected their singing did not have the fiery power of the Father Above. It only had enough strength to stir her, to sustain her for a time.

Instead, the new crescendo served another purpose. The combined voices swelled higher, slowly hiding the brightness beneath their greater song.

Soon Rhaif could barely discern those golden threads any longer. But he knew such masking was not meant to blind his eyes. He stared up as the wagon cleared the warship’s giant shadow and rode back into sunlit mists. He squinted against the glare, watching that dark moon setting toward the glow of Eitur’s green waters.

He understood.

It is those eyes that must stay blind.

S TANDING ON THE shore of Eitur, Wryth shook Skerren’s orb, then held it steady again. He studied the jostling spin of lodestones, waiting for them to stop, to point where he should go. But they just wobbled and twirled in the oil, some even going in opposite directions. He tried rotating the globe and turning himself in a circle.

Still nothing.

Brask watched his frustration from the end of a ramp that extended from the hovering mass of the Pywll. The commander’s crimson features had darkened. Wryth had urged him to lower the warship over the lake and drop a ramp to shore. A trio of trackers with chained thylassaurs had already left, scouting the forest ahead. But the main hunting party, which consisted of a dozen knights on horseback, led by Brask’s second in command—his brother Ransin, another Vyrllian—awaited instructions from Wryth.

“Do you have any further guidance?” Brask asked, his impatience worn thin. “I can’t have my brother and the others traipsing in circles out there.”

Wryth lowered the orb, ready to admit defeat. Maybe I need to be in the air to pick up those winds again. Perhaps this close to the forest, some natural emanation masks the artifact’s location.

He faced Brask, prepared to leave the search on the ground to the trio of trackers and their thylassaurs. Until he could reestablish contact, he feared he would be wasting resources and further irritating the Pywll ’s commander. But before he could admit as much, a commotion drew their focus back to the woods.

One of the trackers burst out, winded, clearly having run all the way back, leaving his beast with the others. “We… We found some encampment. An area scuffed by a great number of feet, rutted with wheels, and trampled by hooves. The mud there is fresh.”

Brask looked to Wryth.

But the tracker was not done. “It appears whoever was there fled to the south.”

“Toward Havensfayre,” Brask mumbled.

Wryth breathed harder.

It has to be them.

If so, he realized it might explain his loss of the signal. Maybe the thieves took the artifact beyond the reach of Skerren’s orb. He stared off into the mist-shrouded forest, anxious to follow that trail. He dared not lose it again. More importantly, he had to stop the others from reaching Havensfayre, where it would be much harder to root them out.

He turned to Brask and told the commander what he wanted done, what else he needed for this hunt. The man scowled but passed on his instruction. In short order, a low hissing growl rose behind him. He turned as two massive black-furred scythers stalked down the ramp. The steel-helmed cats, each the height of a Gyn, bared fangs longer than their jaws. They came with a pair of bridle-masters, the rare songsters who could control such massive beasts.

Wryth turned to the tracker. “Take the cats to the encampment you found.” He then faced the bridle-masters. “Have your charges pick up the scents there, then loose them on the trail. They’re to run down and slay anyone they find.”

He had no fear for the bronze woman. She cast no scent of sweat and blood, and her metal body could certainly withstand the ravaging of such beasts.

With nods all around, the others took off.

Wryth turned to Brask. “I will accompany your brother and his men.”

Brask looked happy to oblige, plainly ready to rid his forecastle of an overbearing Shrive. But as the man turned to his brother, the blasting of a horn cut through the mists, coming from the south. It blared three long notes of distress.

Brask frowned at the horns. “The Tytan. They’re summoning us back. Something must be wrong.”

Wryth clenched a fist. “But we can still—”

The commander turned from him, already dismissing him. He called to his brother and waved to the forest. “Ransin! Take two men and follow the trackers and the cats!”

Wryth tried to intervene. “We may need all those men and horses.”

Brask swung toward the ramp. “Not until we know the fate of the Tytan. I’ve given forth enough on this matter, even lending my brother to your Iflelen cause.”

He spoke the name of Wryth’s order like a curse.

“I can spare a horse for you,” Brask conceded, pointing back. “But that is all.”

The commander headed up the ramp, drawing a majority of the hunting party with him. He bellowed orders all around, readying the ship for a fast departure.

Wryth weighed the best course: to accompany Ransin or try to pick up the artifact’s trail from the air. He stared toward Havensfayre and the wall of fire burning along the lake’s edge and made his decision.

He swung around and followed in Brask’s wake.

Ransin and the others did not need his help, but if those thieves should make it to Havensfayre, Wryth intended to be there to meet them. He gripped Skerren’s orb, praying to Dreyk that he could latch on to their trail again.

Behind him, a savage leonine scream rose from the forest.

The noise firmed his resolve.

Maybe I don’t need the blessing of Lord Dreyk after all—only the ferocity of a pair of hunting cats.

R HAIF STIFFENED AS something fierce yowled through the mists behind them, loud enough to be heard above the clatter of the wagon. It was answered by another throat.

He searched back, fearful of what he knew haunted these forests. “Is that a Reach tyger?”

Xan still knelt with the other four Kethra’kai women. She nodded for them to keep their song strong and turned to him. “No. The cry is wrong. And tygers always hunt alone.” She faced ahead. “We must hurry.”

She leaned to the wagon’s drover and spoke rapidly in Kethra. The guide nodded and whistled sharply to those ahead. The scouts on horseback continued forward, but the other Kethra’kai sped off to the east and west on foot, likely trying to lure away the hunters on their trail.

But will it buy us enough time to reach Havensfayre?

The wagon bounded fast through the forest. Shiya’s bronze form rattled in the bed. The singing of the women stuttered and jostled. Rhaif cringed, fearing their masking might break. He stared toward where the warship had descended to the lake, but he could no longer discern its dark shadow.

Is it still there? Or is it already in the air, hunting us?

Another blare of horns rose from ahead, drawing Rhaif’s attention forward. It blasted three times, each sounding closer than the last. Ahead, the mists glowed a fiery orange, a hopeful sign that they were approaching the outskirts of Havensfayre, but also unnerving.

How much of the town is already on fire?

He feared they were racing toward their doom, but a pair of bloodthirsty screams reminded him that death lay as surely behind them. He tried to judge if those cries were separating, maybe being drawn aside by the false trails of the others. He could not tell.

He swallowed, trying to unstick his fear-dry tongue from the roof of his mouth.

Danger lay in every direction.

He stared over at Pratik. Though the man’s brow shone with sweat, he seemed to be ignoring all the threats. Instead, he focused on Shiya, as if trying to discern some last answers from her before he died.

The Chaaen lifted his eyes to Xan. “The Shrouds of Dalal?ea…”

The name of those jungled highlands drew the elder’s attention from the fiery mists ahead.

“ Dalal?ea is a word from the Elder tongue,” Pratik said. “It means deathly stones. Does that portend some connection to the Northern Henge?”

Rhaif could not fathom why the Chaaen pressed such matters, especially now. Only then did he note the man’s shaking shoulders, the way his fists knotted in his silks.

He’s just as terrified as I am and likely trying to focus elsewhere.

Rhaif realized that seeking such a place of refuge in the face of terror and horror must have been ingrained into the man. It was how Pratik must have survived all those years of brutality at Bad’i Chaa, the House of Wisdom. He remembered the map of white scars across the man’s naked skin back at Anvil’s gaol. And then there was the cruel castration that had stripped him of his manhood, in all measures of that meaning. Back at that school, Pratik had likely sought solace in his studies, burying all that pain and terror under a pile of books.

Xan lifted her hand and placed her palm on Pratik’s cheek. She leaned closer and whispered to him. His eyes grew wide, his mouth parting with a silent gasp. Then she dropped her hand and turned away. Pratik looked again at Shiya, only now with a measure of awe. Even his shoulders had stopped shaking.

Before Rhaif could ask what Xan had told him, Llyra appeared out of the mists. She slowed her mare to draw alongside the wagon and shouted, “We’ve reached the outskirts of Havensfayre!”

I T TOOK ANOTHER quarter league before Llyra’s statement was proven true. Rhaif kept his gaze fixed forward, hardly breathing—both due to the tension and the choking smoke.

All around them, the white mists had been replaced with a black smolder. Fires raged all around. The heat grew to that of a furnace. Huge trees rose to either side. Some burned like torches, swirling with fiery ash. Others remained dark and shadowy.

People had begun to appear throughout the woods, fleeing the town on horseback, atop wagons, and on foot. The group forged through them, slogging onward.

Another burst of horns welcomed them to Havensfayre.

Rhaif stared to the east, searching for the dark shadow of that other warship. But the entire town was shrouded in smoke, making its presence impossible to discern.

Xan leaned forward to the drover, who nodded and whistled to the two scouts. Their path shifted to the west, away from the mooring fields. The scouts shouted ahead, stamping their horses, clearing the way for the wagon as the fleeing townspeople grew thicker.

Homes appeared to either side, built into the boles of giant alders or stacked alongside them. Bridges crisscrossed overhead, several of which burned, carrying the fire deeper into the town. As they rushed under one of those flaming spans, ash and embers rained down. Several stung the flanks of the wagon’s muskmules. They brayed and swished their tails angrily. The drover sang to them, trying to calm them. Still, the mules kicked and fought their traces.

Llyra kept alongside the wagon, seated atop her mare. “Where do we go?”

Rhaif glanced to Xan.

The elder kept to the drover’s shoulder, adding her voice to his. The mules slowly succumbed to the soothing bridle-song. The pair clomped along more steadily, though their cooperation might have had less to do with the singing and more to do with the wagon having cleared the fire’s edge. Ahead, the center of Havensfayre lay under a layer of smoke, but so far, it had been spared the flames.

Still, the air burned the lungs with every breath.

“Where?” Llyra pressed.

The necessity of her inquiry was punctuated by a chorus of rising screams behind them, sharp enough to cut through the roar of the fires. The source of that fresh panic announced itself with savage yowls of bloodlust.

Rhaif glanced back to the flames and smoke. The Kethra’kai must have failed to draw off the cats, or at least not for long enough. The tide of people flowing out of the town around them slowly drew to a fearful stop, miring their progress forward—then slowly that current reversed, fleeing from those screams and hunting cries.

“Faster!” Rhaif hollered.

Their wagon and horses followed the receding tide around them. They sped quickly through the streets. Llyra fought to stay abreast, kicking and whipping people around her. But the press became too much. Her mare suddenly toppled under her, tripping over bodies that had been trampled.

She leaped from the saddle and sprawled headlong toward the wagon bed. Rhaif caught her and drew her around.

She panted in his arms. “I knew you’d end up killing me one day.”

“I can only hope. But let’s still pray that’s not today.”

Llyra rolled free and stared ahead. “Where is she taking us?”

The answer appeared ahead as the scouts expertly rounded their steeds near the base of an ancient alder, so old that most of its bark had been shed, leaving only age-polished wood. Its girth was as wide as one of Anvil’s huge chimney stacks. So far, the tree had remained untouched by any flame, spreading a golden bower above, as if trying to hold back the smoky sky.

The wagon ground to a hard stop between the two scouts.

“Why are we stopping here?” Llyra asked.

It was a fair question.

Pratik craned at the massive tree. There appeared to be no doors in it. Still, the Chaaen seemed to recognize it. “Oldenmast,” he mumbled.

Xan allowed no other inquiries and offered no explanations. “Out! Quickly!” she commanded them, then turned to the tribeswomen and spoke in a blur of Kethra.

Nods answered her. They stopped singing to Shiya and reached to her shoulders, preparing to lift her out. Rhaif went to help, but Shiya rose on her own, weakly, trembling. The tribeswomen helped guide her to the back of the wagon. It seemed the singing of the Kethra’kai must have filled a well inside of Shiya. Maybe like topping off an oil lamp, allowing her to move on her own. Still, from the shaking in her limbs, that strength would not last long.

One of the scouts came around and helped Xan out of the wagon. She then supported herself with her staff. Rhaif saw that her cane’s polished white wood was the same hue as the trunk of giant alder. He also spotted a line of sculpted seashells imbedded along the cane’s length, representing the faces of the moon.

He felt a chill, remembering Shiya’s fixation with the same.

Xan joined the bronze woman as Shiya dropped from the wagon and teetered on one leg. The other limb, bent crooked at the knee, served as no more than a crutch. The women gathered around her, bracing Shiya’s arms and back.

Rhaif clambered out with Pratik and Llyra.

Xan guided Shiya a few steps away, keeping their backs to the massive tree.

“Where do we go?” Llyra asked, searching around.

To the right, another huge alder climbed into the smoke. It rose from a sprawl of timbered structures with tiled roofs. At its base, tall doors stood open under a sign of a gold-leafed tree. Despite the chaos, firelight beckoned within. A scatter of fleeing townspeople ran for those doors, seeking shelter inside.

Even Xan hobbled with Shiya in that direction, accompanied by the four tribeswomen.

Rhaif followed. “I think we’re supposed to—”

All the women stopped in the center of the square. Xan leaned on her cane and lifted her face. She began to sing. The others joined her—even Shiya. She raised her bronze features to the smoky skies, her cheeks shining with a coppery brilliance. Her eyes flashed, and a piping flowed from her throat.

The chorus grew and spread like wings through the air, wafting high and wide. It seemed impossible that so few voices could raise such a volume. The air appeared to shiver around the cluster, pushing the traces of smoke away, as if trying to open space for another.

Their call was answered by a leonine howl.

Into the square, a massive shadow stalked. A huge paw swiped at a fleeing man, sending him cartwheeling through the air in a spray of blood. The cat hissed and loosed a bollock-icing scream. Its lips curled high, slavering with drool, exposing impossibly long fangs. Its yellow eyes glowed from under a steel helm.

Rhaif knew about those alchymical-crafted caps. Each helm was attuned to its master’s unique pitch and voice. They limited another from using bridle-song to ensnare their beasts.

Still, the song in the air seemed to hold the beast at bay for now.

Or maybe it was simply waiting.

A second scyther sidled around the first’s haunches, assuming the same threatening posture, shoulder to shoulder with each other.

Rhaif edged away, backing into the wagon.

Those gathering around Shiya remained standing, still singing, as if oblivious to the threat.

What are they waiting for?

One of the scythers had enough. It bunched its haunches and leaped with a scream of fury. It flew with its forelimbs wide, paws outstretched, extending bloodied claws.

Before it crashed into the women, a dark shadow sped out of the inn’s tall doors. It struck the cat’s flank and sent it rolling to the side. The two tumbled across the packed dirt. When they finally stopped, a muscled beast with striped fur crouched atop the scyther. Its jaws were clamped to the cat’s throat. It ripped back its muzzle, tearing out fur and flesh. Blood flew high as it leaped away.

The cat on the ground writhed and mewled, coughing out gouts of its life.

The attacker ignored those death throes and faced the other cat. Its entire form bristled with challenge.

Llyra gasped, “What’s a vargr doing here?”

Rhaif squinted at the women around Shiya.

Had they somehow summoned this beast to their defense?

The answer to Rhaif’s question arrived. A young woman, flanked by oth ers, stepped from the firelit shadows of the inn. She sang out at the square, her melody joining the others, falling into perfect harmony.

Rhaif struggled to understand who she was.

Pratik seemed to know and mumbled with awe, “Du’a ta.”