Glyphbinder (23 page)

“Sera. Please.”
There was no answering thought, no comforting touch on his mind. He was going to die here, alone in this pass, and he would never see his family or home again. He thought of his parents, his brothers, and hoped they wouldn’t grieve too long.

A shadow loomed over him. Death in human form. It wore a long brown cloak, and its thick hood hid all features of its face. Byn had always imagined the specter of death was a tale told to frighten children, a legend, yet here Death stood. Staring at him.

“Please,” Byn begged. “I don’t want to die.”

Death was the soul glyph of the first Soulmage to walk the Five Provinces. It guided souls to Order and Ruin. Droplets splattered Byn’s cheeks and he realized it had started to rain. His lids grew heavy as Death knelt over him.

“I love you, Sera,”
Byn thought, one last time.

Then he died.

THE THOUGHT WAS FAINT, its words more so.

“I love you, Sera.”

Then Byn dropped off their dyn disc. Then a peal of thunder rumbled over Highridge Pass. Kara was the first to gasp at what this meant, but Sera was the first to scream.

Trell put his hand over Sera’s mouth and held her firmly. Sera trembled in his arms, shaking violently, her tiny sobs muffled and wrenching. Kara felt like she was drowning.

Her dyn was decimated. These past four days had taxed them greatly, and each time Sera had given the horses another few hours of strength or eased her friends’ exhaustion, she had lost even more of her own blood. It was a wonder Sera could still walk at all, and with Byn’s loss now added to Aryn’s…

Kara dropped to her knees. Chilling rain beat down on her neck and hair. Her stomach clenched and her chest heaved. She blinked at tears that would not come.

Snatches of Boon memories taunted her. Byn hanging from a tree limb just above, daring her to climb. Byn howling as waves lifted their tiny schooner, and Kara steered it into the choppy sea. She remembered Byn growling, laughing, as they wrestled in his mother’s backyard. Amazed at how much fun mud could be.

Kara saw Byn’s ruddy face blistering and peeling like the dead Sentinels. She would never hug him again, never tell him what a jerk he was or fall victim to one of his childish pranks. The boy she had grown up with — the man she had loved like her own brother — was dead. Byn was dead, and nothing could make that right.

Kara pushed up. She forced herself to stop trembling. This was on her. She couldn’t give up, ever, no matter how much she hurt. If she did that, Aryn and Byn would have died for nothing.

“Jair. You and Sera must head on to Tarna. Warn our king.”

Sera fell against Jair, sobbing quietly. Jair watched them and held Sera. His eyes were narrow but not wet. He likely knew enough of the afterlife to believe Byn was in a better place.

“We’re not leaving,” Jair said. "We’re going to help you finish this. If we all stay calm, together we can—”

“I’m not losing anyone else!”

“Kara?” Trell touched her shoulder. “This isn’t your fault.”

She wrecked herself into his warm arms because she needed that strength, his strength, for just a moment. The rain felt cold and she couldn’t breathe. She managed a few weak sobs and allowed nothing else. She pushed away and stared into Trell’s eyes.

He watched her without judgment, focusing on her like she was the most important thing in his world. Perhaps she was, and it did not matter if that was the influence of the Five or him alone. He would fight when she fought, die when she died, and he would never leave her no matter what happened. It was something, at least.

Kara squeezed Trell and turned to her friends. “This isn’t an argument. I lead this dyn, and you’ll follow my orders as you would an elder’s. Warn Tarna about the fake attacks. We’ll finish Jyllith.”

“No!” Sera broke from Jair’s grip with force that sent Jair stumbling. “This madwoman killed Byn, Aryn, countless innocents.” Her lips were curled, her eyes narrow. “I’m not letting her murder anyone else. Especially not you!"

“I know you loved them. I know it hurts. But I need you to warn Tarna. If you stay, you'll only be—”

“In the way? No. I’m done letting others die for me.”

“You aren’t a killer. You haven’t the heart—”

“Heart has nothing to do with it!” Sera marched to the nearest Sentinel corpse, paces up the pass. A gnarl had killed him.

She slashed her fingers open with her thumbnail, one by one, as she knelt before the rotting body. She pressed all four bleeding fingers to the corpse’s still chest. She twisted her hand, just once.

Kara only then saw what Sera had done. “Stop!”

Sera’s bloody fingers seared a glyph on the corpse’s chest. Sera’s head jerked up, her eyes rolling back in her head. This was a Shifter illusion. A horrible prank. It couldn’t be real.

The glyph Sera had seared into the corpse hissed. The corpse twitched and rose as scales burst from its long-decayed flesh. Those scales rippled and covered its leathery skin. Moments later, an ape-like demon crouched where a corpse had once been.

Sera had just scribed a demon glyph. Byn’s loss had been almost more than Kara could bear, but to see this grim sight piled on top of it — it was a dream. It was a nightmare. It was real.

Sera was now Demonkin.

“How could you?” Kara trembled in the cold rain. “Everything the elders taught us, everything the Tassau treaties decreed, everything we swore to honor at Solyr—”

“That doesn’t matter anymore! I won’t let Jyllith murder any more people, destroy any more lives. This is how we stop her and if you can’t handle it, stay out of my way!”

The battered davenger stood, baring its yellowed teeth. Its scales were imperfect, cratered and weakened by its considerable decay, but it would serve its purpose. It would serve Sera until the Mavoureen devoured her soul.

Mages possessed by the demons were incredibly powerful, and even a Solyr adept would have trouble taking one down. After Torn closed the gates at Terras, hundreds of mages died hunting down the remaining Demonkin. The only realistic way to stop the Demonkin was to murder them before they were possessed.

“I know I have to die,” Sera said quietly. “But not yet. First, we’re going to use this demon to stop Jyllith.” She glared at her davenger. “A harvenger waits nearby. Find it. Now.”

The davenger loped off, sniffing the air with its obscene nostrils. Sera went after it and Kara dashed after them, Trell and Jair beside her. What else could she do? Sera had sacrificed herself for all of them, and denying that would only make that sacrifice meaningless.

Sacrifice. That was her life now, the life into which she had pulled those she loved. This was the cost of her journey to Tarna. Aryn. Byn. Sera. She was the reason they were dead, or soon to be.

She wondered how she could possibly live with that.

The davenger led them into a narrow break in the surrounding rock, a claustrophobic split that led off road into the wild part of the Ranarok mountains. When it found a path they could not follow it scurried back and took a different tack, snorting and huffing like a feral dog. Thunder rumbled and rain poured, soaking Kara even through her thick torasel cloak.

As Kara followed Sera’s davenger, the tiny part of her that was not numb knew she would never have found this path without the davenger to guide her. If the harvenger escaped, with Jyllith, she would feed many more people to the Mavoureen.

Sera had not sacrificed herself simply to save Kara. She had sacrificed herself to save villages like Taven’s Hamlet, children like Ranna and Cho. One way or the other, Jyllith had to be stopped.

Pass and undergrowth merged into a gray, wet blur until the davenger paused below an overhang of brown rock. The cave conjured an image of a gaping skull, and Kara shivered. They would need to build a fire after this was done, warm themselves, but not inside that cave. There was something very
wrong
inside that cave.

Kara could sense the evil inside, a stagnant feeling of death and decay that pressed upon her shoulders. It was like what she had felt from the Thinking Trees — a palpable aura of menace — only this was stronger, thicker. Stalactites and stalagmites were visible in the dusky light, but the cave went in further than she could see.

The davenger bounded right into the cave, almost prancing, then twisted its head backward like some sort of freakish owl. “There.” Its speech was hoarse and dry, like an old man speaking between bouts of a terrible cough. “There is—”

A massive black fist whipped from the darkness and bashed the demon corpse into the stalactites. The davenger howled as the fist impaled it on sharp spears of rock. Sera screamed, clutched her head, and dropped to her knees.

The harvenger. Kara took the dream world and scribed, fast and calm, drawing on Solyr training. Those glyphs sucked the blood from her body, sweeping every bit of cold from her bones.

First came the Hand of Life, a great wave that froze the harvenger’s legs. Next the Hand of Heat, searing the harvenger’s torso with flames hotter than any made by man. Ice crackled below as heat boiled above, one from each of Kara’s outstretched hands. Her blood floated before her in glyph form, glowing bright.

She maintained her glyphs as the maelstrom of fire consumed drop after drop of her own blood. She was killing herself and it would not take long, but this demon could not survive. If it defeated them here, hundreds more would die.

Kara’s eyes blurred and her heart pounded as wave after wave of ice hampered the harvenger’s steps. Its scales popped, cooking off one by one. The harvenger waved its fists and battered the cave walls, angry and not at all afraid. Then foreign blood flowed alongside hers, bolstering Kara’s power just before she collapsed.

Sera gripped her shoulders, and Jair gripped Sera’s. They channeled their blood through her. It was only three-fifths of the power of a full dyn, but it was far more than she had before.

She no longer needed to freeze the harvenger’s legs. Kara pushed the harvenger back with flame alone. She scribed the Body of Heat for the first time in her life and buried it inside the harvenger. The three of them would melt it from the inside out.

Searing air rushed from the cave like heat from a kiln. Kara even fancied she felt Heat inside her, chortling at the destruction one of the Five could wreak through human hands. He would savor this.

“Look out!” Trell slammed into all three of them, knocking them into a shallow dip.

For a moment, Kara lost everything — her pain, her consciousness, her will. Then it all came screaming back.

Blasts of jagged rock whistled by on either side of Kara, continuing the destruction that Heat’s potent flames had begun. Trees splintered as the tiny missiles pitted the mountain and the harvenger. The demon collapsed.

The separation from her dyn and blood magic shocked her. Kara could scarcely move, scarcely think. Those had been sharp missiles of rock, propelled by air. Only an Aerial could make such an attack. Jyllith had come to her demon’s aid, and she did not plan to kill Kara today. Jyllith had come to murder her friends.

Kara was suffocating. Her limbs felt heavy, her world a blur of brown and gray. Her body trembled, from cold or blood loss or both, and she knew then she was not getting up. She had poured all her blood into defeating the harvenger, and now she would die.

The harvenger barreled from the cave, coming for Kara with fire still clinging to its scorched flesh. It would trample her and that would be the end of it, the end of her pain and grief and this nightmare journey. She was almost glad. She almost wanted that.

Trell leapt into the harvenger’s path, sword free of its sheath. He shouted and stabbed, ducking under the harvenger’s feeble swipes and jabbing away at its blistered side. Each cut went deep.

The harvenger screamed and shrank from Trell’s stinging sword, stumbling away. Kara saw then that she and her dyn had burned every last scale from its body. The naked harvenger fled down the hill just as two more red-eyed davengers came bounding up.

The davengers took no notice of the flaming harvenger, rushing past it without even a bow, and that insult was their last mistake. Even blinded, bloodied, and burning, the demon king Balazel could not allow such disrespect to go unpunished. It reversed course.

The harvenger caught the first davenger and splattered it all over the ground with a blow from one massive fist. It caught the other by one leg and spun it about like a child’s toy. Bones snapped and scales crunched. The harvenger tossed that davenger into the night.

Kara stared as the harvenger stumbled into the woods, a living torch tearing spindly trees apart. She could not chase it, but without its scales it would be easy prey. She wondered if some part of Aryn still hated these demons as much as he hated her.

Jair stepped between her and another storm of rock, smashing it all away. The Adynshak had come to his aid, five sword-wielding specters tearing a path through the oncoming storm. The Adynshak rarely took physical form. Jair had more power than anyone knew.

Sera hugged Kara close and whispered in her ear. “Kill her for me. Kill her for Byn.” Then she transfused all the blood she could.

Kara screamed. It felt like her veins were splitting inside her body. Sera’s face turned pale, then stark white. Finally the burn inside Kara faded, replaced with a dull ache. New energy. Sera’s blood was Kara’s now, and she felt drunk and dizzy.

Moving blood in such quantity required thinning it, and no mage could thicken blood that was thinned in such a manner. She and Sera might both die when Sera’s flash heal faded, but that left them plenty of time to stop Jyllith. To stop the monster that had hurt Aryn, and Byn, and the people of Taven’s Hamlet.

Sera’s eyes fluttered shut. Kara caught her and set her down, staring at the long streak of white that now split her dark hair. What had that flash heal cost her? Was she even still alive?

Kara stood and took the dream world. She focused on the slender orange silhouette in the distance. Jyllith stood on the other side of the rise, separated from Kara by a large divide that was even now filling with gnarls. If Sera was dead, it was a kinder fate than the Underside.