The creature bulled through the break in the circling men.

Kyllan grabbed the fallen man's spear and tossed it with all his strength. The pike pierced clean through the creature's shoulder and jammed into the first plank of the dock, pinning it in place.

Tylar hurried forward. The beast appeared more oil than form, amorphous of shape, pale as milk, streaming with ripples of ink. There was something disturbingly familiar about the pattern.

The creature yowled with a final tug. Its flesh flowed around the impaled pike, slowly freeing itself.

Kyllan led his remaining pikemen to renew the assault.

The molten beast's face swung toward its pursuers. Thick-lipped, toadish, it growled and spat, etching stone with its slobber. Its snarl revealed a jagged shoal of black teeth as it reared up.

"Now!" Kyllan yelled.

A torch rose among his men and set to blaze a single pike, dripping with tar. Kyllan accepted the fiery weapon by its haft.

Tylar reached his side. "Hold youra""

Too late.

Kyllan twisted at the waist, and drove the pike's flaming tip through the beast's belly.

Where it touched, skin sizzled and blackened. The beast yowled, neck stretched back. A coiling curl of flame flicked from its lips. Still, it tried to escape its death, stumbling toward the icy canal.

Kyllan kept hold of the pike's butt end. Pinned by the fiery spear, the creature could not reach the waters. Flames spread, more skin blackened, as if some tinder had been ignited deep within the ilk-beast. With one last scream, it writhed, then collapsed, still smoking, to the planks of the dock.

Death seemed to add solidity to its watery form, as if whatever Grace had imbued its fluidity evaporated with the smoke, leaving only twisted flesh.

Tylar joined Kyllan. "There are more beasts about," he warned the sergeant. "One took wing a moment ago. Keep your pikes high."

Kyllan searched the dark skies. "Aye, another one lies over here. It was dispatched quick enough."

The sergeant led Tylar to a tumbled pile of boulders. Once closer, Tylar discerned that stone was actually flesh, a rocky monstrosity of calcified plates and pebbled skin.

"A skilled thrust by your Wyr-mistress," Kyllan said, nodding to Eylan, who stood off a step, sword in hand. "Nicked through a weak spot and pierced something vital. But before we could appreciate her skill, we were attacked from behind, from the canal. That skaggin' beast was harder to kill. Figured what steel couldn't kill, fire might."

Tylar nodded. But something still nagged him. He glanced back to the smoldering ruin of the other ilk-beast. Somethinga Kyllan continued, "We must have stumbled on a nest of ilk-beasts roosting here in the Blight. Left over from the last battle. We'd best gather everyone and get clear."

The pikemen closed around them, wary, spears held at the ready.

"I'll send a full squad in the morning to flush out this skaggin' place."

Tylar had stopped listening. He drew closer to the smoking body of the other beast. He remembered shouting out against the slaying of the creature. It had been reflexive. What had he sensed?

He returned again to the dock. He studied the pale flesh. Something familiar abouta"then it struck him.

Gods aboveanoa He knelt to the planks and reached out.

"Ser," Kyllan warned him. "Best to be away from there."

Ignoring him, Tylar gripped the misshapen jaw and turned the head. He searched the throat, running a gloved finger across the flesh. Flaps of tissue fluttered under his touch, revealing the pink beneath.

Gill flaps.

Tylar stared into the dead eyes, knowing who lay before him.

"Kreela"

He shoved up and searched the ice-choked canal. A dark hummock lay seven steps upriver. He hurried toward it, followed by Kyllan and his guards.

Beached against the canal wall, lolling on its side, was the watercraft used to transport Rogger here. The tall fin was broken, its keel sundered as if something had shattered out, like a newborn chick from an egg.

Tylar glanced at the body on the dock. Kreel. It was the pilot, the head of Fyla's Hunters. Realization iced through him. This was no nest of old ilk-beasts. These were freshly cursed men and women, ilked just now and sent against them.

Proving this, a screech again rose from the sky. The winged creature had not fled. It attacked once again, diving upon a pair of guards near the shipwright's shop. But the men were prepared this time. Pikes staved off the beast, slicing through wings.

More guards closed to do battle, including Eylan, a sword in one hand, an ax in the other.

Kyllan shouted orders but remained at Tylar's side. "Stay back, ser. My men can handle the creature."

A claw lashed out and razed to bone the side of one guard's face. He fell back with a scream. The creature moved with the swiftness of the wind.

Then it struck him.

With the swiftness of the wind.

Tylar lunged forward, dragging Kyllan with him.

"Ser!"

Tylar hurried, certain of the truth. He ticked off each in his head: the woman's wings, Kreel's flowing form, the first beast's stony armor. Each of the beasts bore one aspect of Grace: Air, Water, and Loam.

But one was missing.

Fire.

As he ran, he heard a new scream, a woman's cry, muffled from within the shipwright's shop.

Delia.

Tylar had not been the target of the attack. None of the beasts had set upon him directly. They were after the talisman, the cursed god skull. Even now, the winged creature fought at the entrance, struggling to get inside the shipwright's shop.

But something was already there.

Skirting the battle at the front door, Tylar entered through a broken window. Kyllan followed him into what must have once been an old kitchen, judging from the collapsed stone hearth, now a nest to a pack of rats, and the broken pottery underfoot. Though sheltered from the wind, the room was far colder than the outside.

Tylar knew why.

The ilk-beast, cursed with fire, must be drawing to itself what little warmth there was in the space. Tylar silently signaled Kyllan. He had already instructed the sergeant on his duty. Though reluctant, Kyllan headed out the back door to the kitchen, aiming for the rear.

Tylar stepped toward the other door, one that led to the center hallway.

As he leaned out, a dagger flew past the tip of his nose. He ducked backa"but the blade had never been aimed at him. The dagger flew down the hall and struck a black shape crouched at the threshold to the rear workspace. It stood limned against the campfire back there, bathed in its glow.

The fourth ilk-beast.

Rogger's dagger flew true and struck the figure square in the chest, but the hilt instantly burst into flame. No blood flowed; flesh seared instantly. The steel blade dripped in molten rivulets from the wound.

Tylar retreated to the other end of the hallway, where Rogger guarded Delia.

Delia moved closer to him, seeking shelter. "It burnt right through the back of the shop and came at us."

Drawn by the campfire, Tylar thought.

The beast growled, flames licking from black lips, its eyes aglow with an inner fire. It stalked toward the trio.

Tylar raised his sword against it. Though probably as innocent as Kreel, forged unwillingly, the beast had to die. At their back, the screeching battle with the winged beast continued. Any retreat that way was blocked.

Rogger took up Tylar's other side. "Ruined four good daggers. I'm not sure any blade can stop ita"not even your Godsword."

Tylar had no choice but to risk ita"but that didn't mean he couldn't better his odds.

He lunged toward the approaching beast and shouted, "Now, Kyllan!"

Beyond the creature's shoulder, he spotted the sergeant racing to the campfire in the back room. He flung out a scrap of sailcloth and swept it over the fire.

Tylar reached the beast as the sergeant smothered the flames and stamped them out. As Tylar had hoped, the beast had been drawing strength from the flames, siphoning heat and power from the pyre. With the sudden interruption of this fiery font, the beast was momentarily lost.

In that moment of confusion, Tylar stabbed his blade into the neck of the beast. A backwash of feverish heat struck him, along with the gagging reek of brimstone and burnt flesh. Tylar twisted the blade and drove the sword to its hilt.

He felt no satisfaction from the kill, picturing Kreel.

The ilk-beast fell from his sword, toppling back with the last sigh of its corrupted Grace. Like Kreel's, the body that struck the floor seemed smaller, drained of power, mere flesh again.

Kyllan hurried toward them, his own sword raised.

Behind them, a small cheer rose from the guards outside the shop, announcing their own victory over the winged ilk-beast.

Delia stepped to Tylar's side. "Your bladea"

As expected, Tylar held only a hilt in his hand. The sword's blade was gone. Not melted away. Vanished. It was the curse of the Godsword. The blade was allowed only one blessed strike, then it vanished, needing to be whetted back into existence by a rare source: the blood of an unsundered god.

But for the moment such a rebirth would have to wait.

Tylar turned to Rogger. "We have to get that skull of yours out of Chrismferry as quickly as possible."

"Why's that?"

"Someone knows you brought it here. The attack was not random." Tylar explained about Kreel. "They had to be after the skull."

Rogger blanched. "But how did they discern my arrival so quickly? I've just touched soil for the first time in days."

"I don't know."

Tylar glanced at Delia. As a servant to the gods for many years, she had been schooled in all matters of Grace, far better than either of them. But she merely shook her head. This was beyond even her knowledge. Only one place could possibly unravel this mystery.

"We need to get the skull to Tashijan," Tylar said. "For study, for answers."

Rogger's brows drew together warily.

Tashijan, while home to the Order of Shadowknights and the esteemed Council of Masters, remained a place of divided loyalties. The warden, Argent ser Fields, still bore strong animosities toward Tylar's regency and for the man himself. But they had fierce allies there also: Kathryn ser Vail, the castellan of Tashijan, and Gerrod Rothkild, one of the most learned of the subterranean masters. The skull would be safe in their care, behind the towering walls of Tashijan.

But how to get it there?

"I must travel to Tashijan myself in seven days' time," Tylar said. "To regain my knighthood and my place among the Order. But I fear waiting so long before investigating the meaning of this cursed skull. It would be well to have answers by the time I reached there."

"I can travel overland," Rogger said. "I still have many friends in shadowed corners. Best I disappear again. Let no one know my path except my own ears. I can send a note by raven once behind those stout walls."

Tylar nodded. "And we'll meet again in seven days."

Rogger still hesitated. "My whole story will have to wait 'til then. It is too long to tell as the night wanes. But I must tell you of one other concern."

Tylar nodded for him to continue, but Rogger drew him aside first, away from Kyllan, even away from Delia again.

"What is it?" Tylar asked once they were alone.

"The skullaI told you I found it in Saysh Mal, but what I didn't have time to tell was that someone else sought the skull. Someone only a step behind my own."

"Who was it?"

"That's just it. It makes no sense."

"Who?"

"I only saw his face from a distance. At night. A shadowy face painted in ash."

"One of the Black Flaggers?" Such was the custom among the pirates and brigands who trafficked in all matters that shunned the light of day. They blackened their faces with ash to hide their features.

Rogger nodded. "I was able to capture a message, one sent by wing, but it was cursed. Burned in my fingers before I could read it fully. All I had time to discern was to whom it was addressed."

Tylar waited.

"The letter had been intended for Krevan."

Tylar was stung by the words. Krevan was one of their closest allies. A former shadowknighta"the famous Raven ser Kay of olda"he had been fiercely loyal to Tylar and their cause to free Chrismferry. But the knight had vanished after the Battle of Myrrwood, disappearing back into obscurity. Tylar had suspected he had returned to his role as leader of the Black Flaggers. But what new subterfuge was this? Why would Krevan be looking for the skull, too?

Judging by Rogger's expression, he had no answers either.

Tylar ached to hear Rogger's full story, but such tales would have to wait.