After all the pickets this night, there remained only one more line to hold. "Sound the Shield Gong," she said.

Gerrod nodded and headed out to pass on the word.

It was their only plan.

All of Tashijan would gather in the Grand Court, in the heart of Stormwatch. The central Hearthstone was already aflame with alchemies. Pyres burnt at every door. They would make their last stand there.

All around, stone crashed and mortar moaned.

Kathryn turned to Argent and Delia. "Get to the Court," she said. "I will keep vigil for as long as possible."

"It is my place to be here," Argent said.

"Your place is at the last picket, Warden. With your people."

Argent's eye shone toward her, once again seeking some argument. Argent to the end. But a hand touched his shoulder.

"Fatheralet's goa"

The fire dimmed to something warmer as he turned. He touched the fingers on his arm and nodded.

"Be swift," Argent said to Kathryn.

She bowed her head in acknowledgment.

They departed, leaving her alone in the fieldroom.

Kathryn crossed to the window. She peered out at the fall of Tashijan, as stone and ice fought. She remembered the offer Lord Ulf had set before her. To escape with the heart, to flee and not look back.

Well, I'm looking, she said silently. But never back over my shoulder. I will face you full on.

And though she saw what swept toward her, she did not despair.

She still held out one hope.

23.

A NECESSARY MERCY.

WEIGHTED BY DESPAIR, TYLAR MOVED BACK TOWARD THE stern of the boat.

The daemon had settled to the island, vanishing among the flames and structures. Plainly Perryl had been ilked to protect the island, a ravening guard of Dark Grace.

How could he hope to defeat the daemon?

Tylar hobbled to the middle of the boat and sat down heavily, earning a complaint from his side, sharpening his breath. The others followed.

He motioned for the giant to pull the skiff farther back out of sight.

Dart settled to a bench opposite him. She was staring as he rubbed his knee. "You'll be killed," she whispered, voicing his own worry.

"The lass is right," Rogger said. "You could barely drive the beastie off last time. Now that ghawl is wraithed and has the full might of the enslaved rogues feeding it."

"But I have the sword," Tylar said. "Forged anew."

Dart met his eyes. "But a blade is only as strong as its wielder."

Tylar recognized an old adage drilled into every page and squire. It was probably one of the first lessons Dart had been taught by Swordmaster Yuril. He reached out and patted her knee.

Leaning back, he faced the others. "It's not like this is a battle we can walk away from."

Brant's voice was grim. "Maybe Tashijan has already fallen."

Tylar shook his head. "Until I know otherwise, we must hold in our hearts that it stands."

He read the defeat in all their eyes as he stared across the boat.

"I'm not saying I wouldn't prefer a stronger body, but here is the weapon I must wield. If I could pull the naethryn from my body and cure it of the poison, I would. Until then, the stone helps."

Tylar remembered Perryl's threat. You are riddled with the blood of Chrism. Nothing in Myrillia. Nothing in the naether can burn this poison away.

"But why?" Rogger asked, drawing back.

"Why what?"

"Why does the stone help?"

Tylar shook his head. "I don't knowa" He remembered how it felt when the stone ignited the sword, a sense of the world tightening and sharpening around him. "I think the stone rallies aethryn and naethryn together. Returning what was sundered. Meeryn's aethryn must somehow support its naethryn."

"But not completely," Rogger said, scratching his beard.

"Not while it's inside me. Like I said, if I could pull the naethryn outa""

Rogger lifted a hand. "What if instead of pulling it out of you, we went inside of you? Right through that black palm print of yours."

Tylar frowned.

Rogger met his eye and said one word. "Balger."

Tylar flashed back to being imprisoned in Foulsham Dell. The fire god of that realm, who had been curious about his mark, tested it with his hand. Instead of finding flesh, his fingers had fallen through the blackness. Balger had reached far enough in to get his hand bitten off by the naethryn inside him.

"A god could take that stone," Rogger continued, "and hand it to your naethryn. Then perhaps aethryn and naethryn could join more fully and burn the poison away, breaking its hold, like the stone did to the seersong in Miyana."

Tylar considered this possibility. Perryl's words echoed. Nothing in Myrillia. Nothing in the naether. But what about something in the aether?

Finally he shook his head. "Unless I can get one of those rogues to cooperate, we have no god to attempt it."

"No," Rogger said, "but we do have a godling. And she is able to see farther into our mark than any of us."

Dart sat straighter, eyes wide as moons. "But I've touched his mark before. Nothing happened."

Rogger nodded. "But what about Pupp? He already walks between worlds. He delivered the stone to Tylar. Why not to his naethryn, too?"

Dart shifted in her seat, slowly nodding. She patted her thigh, plainly calling her companion. "I think I can get him to do it."

Tylar held out little hope of success, but it would not cost much time to attempt it. For the plan he intended anyway, he wanted the flitterskiff pulled back a fair distance, back to the clear channel. So he had a few moments. He directed the giant to haul them back far enough until Rogger could ignite the mekanicals.

While the two men worked, Tylar stripped open his cloak and parted the shirt beneath to expose the mark on his chest.

"Let's be quick about this," he said.

Dart held out her hand. "I'll need the stone."

He nodded. He already had the sword pulled. Grabbing the hilt in one hand and the diamond in the other, he twisted them in opposite directions, popping the stone from the pommel. He felt the snap deep within him. Pain lanced out from his core and shocked through to the tips of his limbs. His sword hand spasmed, tightening again into a knobbed grip.

Dart looked on with concern.

Tylar passed her the stone, gone dull again. The sword's blade had also blown itself out. She nicked a finger and daubed the stone. It flared again from rock to gem.

She motioned with her other hand. "Lie across the bottom of the skiff."

Feeling slightly foolish, Tylar obeyed.

Off to the side, blocked by the solid bench, Dart leaned down, reached out, and whispered. Tylar saw a ruddy glow flare up beyond the bench, bright in the darkness.

Pupp.

Over the bench's edge, the creature rose into view, all molten armor and fire. He clambered to the top and stared down, the gem brilliant in his jaws, lit by inner fire.

"Lie still," Dart told him. "He's not very comfortable about this."

Tylar remembered the burned stump of the squire's arma"Pupp needn't be the one worried here.

Pupp lowered from the bench to Tylar's shoulder. The nails of his paw sliced through cloak to skin, steaming hot. Tylar winced. Pupp crawled, belly low, toward the black handprint on his chest.

Beyond Pupp, the others all gathered around.

"You all might want to step back farther," Tylar warned. He felt it inside him. A stirring down deep.

Pupp lowered his fiery muzzle toward his mark. Somehow Tylar knew before the nose reached him. He tensed. He felt the naethryn writhe inside him, rising as Pupp lowered.

Then the molten muzzle sank through his mark as if through shadow.

Dart gasped behind him, echoed by the others.

Then Pupp vanished from his chest, weight and burn gone.

Everyone glanced at Dart.

She pointed down to her legs. "Something spooked Pupp. Probably the naethryn. He's hiding behind my cloak."

"But where's the stone?" Brant asked.

"He dropped it." She pointed to Tylar's mark. "Down there."

Tylar reached to his chest, to his mark, but found only skin and breastbone. He lay his palm atop it. The stone was inside him.

Fallinga He sensed the rock tumbling into a deep well.

Then something rumbled even deeper inside him, a rushing up, a monstrous pressure building behind his rib cage. "Everyone! Get flat!"

When the rising pressure struck the falling rock, the impact shattered through him. Tylar's body leaped full off the boards, back arched, balanced on head and heels, arms out.

Pain and pleasure trapped him in a clenched breath.

He filled, swelling up, leaving no room for himself.

Too largea Vision dimmed.

Then finally, like a popped cork, the pressure broke through into this world. From his chest, smoke flumed with the force of a gale out of his body. Bones broke with the passage, unmoored, torn loose.

He collapsed to the planks.

Beyond pain.

From his chest, more smoke sailed high. A storm of black and white, churning, mixing, coiling one to the other. Tylar noted wing and snaking neck, one black, one white, like two wyrms mating or fighting in midair.

Aethryn and naethryn.

Between them, a flickering lick of green flame danced and lashed, as if this were the fire that smoked them into existence. But Tylar knew it to be the burn of poison, Chrism's hatred given form. The two wyrms writhed around this core of flame.

At the very top of the column, a star glittered, reflecting the flame from a thousand facets.

The black diamond.

Slowly, as the two wyrms writhed, they smothered the fire between them, squeezed and strangled. The flame lost its brightness, the fierce flickering slowed, and in another few moments, it expired with a final waft of putrefaction.

With the fire gone, the smoke swirled with less violence, and the two creatures, both lost parts of the same whole, coiled and churned, trying to become one againa"and failinga"forever missing the third.

Tylar heard two voices in his head, two expressions of grief, more thought than word.