April 25, 2025 9:42 AM PDT
More Than Shadows, Part 1
Tov Dyos labored under the weight of his young daughter Gichi as the rains of a coastal storm drenched them both to the marrow. Volleys of thunder echoed off the rocks around the narrow path; lightning disoriented his eyes with splinters of false daylight. On any other night, Tov would have seemed a fool to ascend this dark summit. Doubly so beneath such a furious storm. His convictions sparked and faded like the streaks of fire that fell from the sky, moments of certainty amidst minutes of doubt as he crawled up a stone face. He would have turned back long ago, yet on this night the child and the path were all this lonely villager possessed.
Once over the cliff face, Tov found himself on a walkable path. To his right, the jagged teeth of the cliff face descended into luminous pools of brackish, emerald water. Those idyllic pools were pleasant to wade in when warmed by the sun, Siros. But it was a dead fall from this height, as a body would plunge through the shallows of the pool and collide with the rocks below. To his left was the faceless expanse of ocean, a much deeper pool but with no greater odds of survival. These were only a few of the dangers that made the Daedrym Ascent a foolish place to travel alone, much less in the throes of a storm. For Tov, it could only be made worse by having his only child tethered to his weary body.
Gichi was 8 years old. Her arms and legs were folded in a swaddle at his back, her spine aligned with his inside a sopping, priceless cocoon. The girl had fallen asleep beneath a system of linens and knots that his wife, Raedya, had fitfully woven around them that evening. The pack was taken from a “picker’s ferry”, a wearable basket that allowed a farmer to be his own porter by carrying the crop as he harvested it. Twin curved rods pressed against Tov’s muscular back with a third bent out and fitted up to the height of Gichi’s chest, keeping her head and eyes free beneath a leather hood. The rest of the carriage was made from woven reeds and linen wraps, fastened with loops and knots up Tov’s abdomen and chest. In this way Gichi learned to work with her mother and wander with her father, sleeping peacefully through many a storm. It didn’t matter what the curious thing looked like, to Tov and Raedya it was a way for their daughter to see the world as they did.
Though his family were the most capable healers in the isolated Human settlement of Nesthaven, neither Tov nor his parents could drive out the affliction Gichi was born with; a disease that kept her muscles weak and her body underdeveloped. Thus, while she had an imagination that soared high as a gryphon, she was always frail of frame. Even at eight years of age she was still small enough for her father to carry on his back and humble enough to let him.
With each step, Tov felt the stones stabbing into the soles of his boots. They had never truly fit his feet and the modest enchantments worked into the leather had long since faded. But they were a gift from Raedya, so he never had them replaced. Somehow this knowledge was stronger than any enchantments she could have invested in the material. From personal misfortune, Tov knew that some of the stones were covered in the viscous scat of the large krune birds. These stones turned especially slick under the rain. Even with the finest boots, this added a threat more perilous than cutting stones: falling. Despite this, Tov dared not risk the light of a torch or illuminated stone. His father once told him that there are journeys that need only be walked once to mark their path on a soul. Though Tov had reached the summit of the Ascent just once before, he knew the way.
“You can rest in the morning,” he whispered to himself. From the moment they left the village, a primal certainty pushed him to climb, like a hare escaping a coming flood. Tov knew that staying near the valley meant death. He didn’t let himself dwell on why it was so. Suddenly his leg kicked out from under him as the rocks beneath his right boot gave way, cascading into the pools far below. He froze in place, alarmed at how quickly their journey could have met its end. Unaware but rested, Gichi began to stir. Tov pressed on, resuming a pace that balanced the risk of speed against the greater risk of slowing down.
Gichi’s movements tightened the bonds around them both. “Father,” his daughter yawned. Tov did not respond. There came a few moments of silence, only footsteps and rain, before Gichi began to shriek.
“Father… father! Mother! Is she at home? Is she with us? Where is the village, is that it… down in the valley—” her questions faded into a wordless cry of pain, no different than that of a snared, wounded animal. Tov winced as his child was flooded with terrifying memories that he himself was desperately trying to avoid.
Under the burden, Tov stopped his march. He turned toward the valley, facing Gichi away from the sight and beholding it with his own eyes for the first time. Far in the distance, the scattered fires of their village were coalescing into one massive pyre. Tov was familiar with this view from the cliffs. With little effort he could imagine each structure where it ought to be. Farms, stables, a tavern, and the temple. His and Raedya’s home. Buildings that stood since he was a boy, now eaten down to the bones of smoldering timbers.
Smoke rose in waves that were darker than the night sky, drifting past the monoliths of ancient ruins before settling at the foot of this very mountain. Tov almost thought he could see the creatures mingling amidst the flames of Nesthaven. Dark figures that appeared less than men, but more than shadows. He didn’t know what they were or even if they were there, only that they had torn his world apart.
“Father,” Gichi whispered, in a voice so soft it was barely louder than the rains. “Everyone in the village. Everyone. Mother… she, they… are gone?”
The drops of rain made little sound as they fell upon Tov’s brown hair. They gathered in pools, ran down his cheeks and over his bare shoulders. Against the cascade upon the rocks that surrounded them, the softening of flesh and fabrics made Tov and Gichi almost disappear into the storm.
“They are gone,” Tov replied, before letting himself breathe again. “Yet we are still here. Unless we stop moving.”
He could sense a shift in Gichi’s silence, from mournful to contemplative, the swift emotional change that was magic in a child and madness in an adult. The small girl laid the back of her head against his, resting with only the woven ferry between them. “Where are we going,” she asked from her perch. He was aware she already had a thought about this, and he used this excuse to stay silent.
“Perhaps the giants could help us? They went across the sea once before, maybe there is a ship left for us?”
“They are all ghosts now, Gichi.” Tov’s words were cold, but not irritated. “Ghosts don’t need ships.”
“Then they won’t mind us using one, father.” There was a playful lift in her words, a tune of humor that, were it not so unexpected now, Tov realized he would’ve missed entirely.
“Do you not recognize this mountain?” His reply was louder than he meant it to be. As was her nature, Gichi was already a step further in her investigation.
“Are we going to find the Daedrym, father?” Tov did not reply, and Gichi did not wait for him to do so. “The other children say… or said, well, no one has ever seen the cult and returned alive. They steal your eyes and make necklaces out of them. Their wizards cast you into stone and their summoners send you into the belly of a dragon. Rykos Ballen said his cousin was enchanted into thinking he was a bird and jumped off a cliff.”
Tov nearly smiled. “The other children said these things?”
“Yes,” Gichi replied. “Perhaps not all of those things. But a fair few of them.” He let the silence resume until he sensed his daughter could no longer bear it. They reached the most tenuous stretch of the climb, a narrow arch of stone no wider than his two feet, with no terrain on either side. There would be no shelter from the wet, the wind, the lightning, or his own weariness. At this point, Tov wanted Gichi’s mind working instead of her eyes, so he chose his words for greatest effect.
“One of those stories is true,” Tov began, as he took the first steps upon the arch. “And one is a lie.” Silence from Gichi meant he had her attention, which no storm could wrest away. “The lie is that that their words can enchant you, for the Daedrym do not speak. Not to you, not to me, not to Rykos Ballen’s cousin.” He inched across the arch, not even aware that the thunder had abated. “The truth is that no one has seen them and returned alive. No one, save your father.” Tov let his words rest, giving Gichi time to chew on this fresh morsel of knowledge. Yet with every step his mind began to stray into a memory of his youth and he found himself comforted by his own words as much as Gichi was.
“The Daedrym owe me a debt that I will ask them to repay.”
As a boy, Tov rarely saw a boulder he did not try to scamper over, a tree he did not try to climb up, or a creature he did not try to tame. In the early days of the village known as Nesthaven, he and his companions would run through the lush valley that Humans from elsewhere on Terminus ignorantly called The Dead Foot. One dim yet still humid morning, young Tov left even his most ambitious companions behind. His mind was set upon exploring the myth-laden Daedrym Ascent, a mountain said to be the habitation of a fanatical dragon cult. Despite his age, Tov was seasoned enough to pack supplies, bringing food, water, and tools for the journey.
Just as Siros was rising above the waters of the sea, he reached the base of the mountain, pushed on by an enthusiasm that outpaced even the wisest of fears. Throughout the hours of the morning and into the day, Tov cut a path over jutting rocks and between narrow clefts, higher and higher, pausing only to drink in the beauty of the valley the lain between the Ascent and hills far beyond Nesthaven. Small plumes of smoke drifted up from his village, its buildings reduced to freckles in an elbow of the terrain. Everything Tov had ever known of the world was before his eyes, in a cradle between the mountains and the sea.
The towering Ulon trees stood like ageless citadels, born hundreds if not thousands of years before his people came to this planet. The swooping majesty of the Krune, draconic birds whose wingspan could block out the rays of Siros, yet now gliding small as insects from his vantage. Even in the golden daylight, Tov could see ghosts of the ancient giants amidst their ruins, blueish hues radiating somberly as they drifted alone to the songs of their departed people.
Thereafter he came to the infamous arch, in the noon of his childhood he remembered nearly sprinting across it, lifting his hands to feel the winds rushing up from seas below. On the other side he rested, drinking from a waterskin, his throat parched from heavy breathing. Just as he fastened the skin to his side, he heard the cries of a creature echoing from up ahead.
In a cleft around the bend, Tov came upon a krune sheltering itself beneath its own wings. Yet this was unlike any krune he’d seen nesting in the valley, or even those he’d spied soaring over the seas and out from the lower cliffs. This creature was of greater size, with silvered feathers and a twin crest that curved out from either side of its head like a crown. Its cry was a melodic echo, utterly unlike the squawking caws of its lesser kin. This beast was the king of krunes, and it was bleeding, badly.
At first Tov could only see patterns of bloody feathers marking the rocks around him, but soon he saw a pool of blackened blood sticking to the creature’s taloned feet. There he saw the culprit: a terrific sea serpent, far larger than he’d ever seen before, coiled around the krune’s leg. Its fangs were buried into the bird’s breast, tearing great, gaping holes as the krune wrestled to end its life. What had once been a waterfall of blood had slowed to twin trickles, but the beast was no better for it. It was dead unless treatment was swift and powerful.
The krune acknowledged Tov’s approach with a pained shriek. Whatever its normal course, the creature seemed to understand it had few choices left to make. The serpent was on the edge of death as well. Yet Tov could see it following his movements with one glassy eye, even as it kept its fangs dug into the flesh of the krune. The bird moved closer to Tov and he raised his hands as if to grasp something, anything, of the bird. He would pray over it with the incantations of Korcera, the few he could remember. Yet as he searched his mind for those words, the serpent released its death bite on the krune and sprang at Tov with a hideous hiss. Before Tov could move, the krune bit down and sliced off the serpent’s head, finally able to access her foe’s vulnerability. The bird gave a victorious cry, then fell silent upon the stone cliff.
Tov rushed to the bird’s wounded side, pressing his hands into the flow of blood and fumbling over the incantations. He wept and cursed as he failed to recall the scriptures, failed to know if they even pertained to birds and beasts such as this.
“No, Korcera!” he cried in agony to the Keeper of the Holy. “No, please, help me remember! Help me remember!” His adolescent voice cracked in desperation, a wave of despair falling with the last few breaths of the kingly krune dying beneath his impotent hands.
Then it came to him, the voice of his mother, the words of the holy book. Not spoken but sung. Sung over and around him all his life, in words he still barely understood. Yet he knew them, he knew them and believed in their virtue. Before he could wipe his eyes or hands from blood and tears, the words flowed through him in a trembling song, and a power beyond his plight mended the beast before his eyes.
There was a flash of lightning, filling Tov’s eyes with white before returning his mind to the night of his climb with Gichi. He had passed over the stone arch only just before the strike had occurred. He turned back to look, as if needing assurance that he’d truly done it. Whatever fearlessness lived in that boy of his youth, the man in him had become all too accustomed to living with fear.
“Father,” Gichi pressed. It was evident from her tone that the girl had called to him more than once. It was then he saw the figure on the other side of the stone arch. Motionless, eyeless, yet facing directly at him. Everything about the creature was dark, even the flashes of lightning seemed unable to illuminate its form. It was as if its shadow disobeyed the light, dimming the air around its form so it could not be seen.
“Father?” Gichi pleaded, blind to what he could see. Tov was frozen in place. Whether by charm or terror he could not say, his arms and legs may as well have belonged to another body. Then he perceived a change in the figure. Amidst the consuming darkness of its form, somehow he knew: the thing was grinning at him.
“Quiet,” Tov whispered to Gichi. “Be quiet and close your eyes.” Then he began to run.
More Than Shadows, Part 2
Tov’s face pressed against the edge of a rock, his limbs cold from lying hours upon the stone plateau. Surrounded by streaks of dried blood, the boy looked long since dead, save for a softly heaving chest and one cheek that rose and fell in slow, peaceful breaths.
The krune spread its wings with a suddenness that tore Tov from his sleep. Wiping spittle from around his mouth and panting from surprise, his neck ached and his jaw seemed to no longer fit in the sockets of his skull. He saw that Siros had begun to dip into the horizon, setting the sea and sky ablaze, but otherwise his eyes were slow to recognize features in the dusk. His ears had no such trouble, however, as the howling winds and scraping of the krune’s claws reminded him of what his rest had begun to erase. Tov felt something like kinship that the creature had not abandoned him while he slept.
At his back there was a strange warmth in the fading light. A magenta hue outlined the krune, framing its crest in a gleaming aura. Still seated, Tov slid his feet around and traced the glow to a series of stark lines in the cliffs behind the giant bird. There, etched into the impervious stone, were streaks of color as bright as flames. He rose to inspect the lines, observing that the light seemed to bleed in smaller veins that trickled out of the original cuts. Tov had never seen anything like this in his life, nor could he recall a pattern in nature so distinct – save for claw marks from an oggrym on an Ulon tree. Yet these cuts were far wider than any bear could mar, nearly as deep as his forearm. The stone of the ascent was famously strong, resisting pick and spell alike, yet the power that had marked the cliff face treated it like soft wood. Tov felt weak at the thought.
The krune was behind him now, and Tov noticed the beast had lowered its head nearly to the stone floor. He thought it was a reverential gesture, befitting a family hound more than a regal bird of prey. He presumed the gesture was for himself, but noticed that the bird did not lift its head at his approach. The krune’s spine was arched in a majestic descent, eyes fixed on the ground in a way that made Tov realize it was bowing. The bird’s head was not just near the ground, it was pressed flatly onto the stone. It was then Tov saw one of the few remaining shadows on the plateau move, ever so slightly.
Turning slowly, he froze at the sight of a cloaked figure standing at the very edge of the plateau. It wore a silver helm and a cloak of deep magenta, a color nearly matching the lines in the stone. The helm was unmistakably familiar, a militarized and less elegant version of the twin crests on the krune’s head. The edges of the helm were bathed in Siros’ last lights, a metallic shimmer that looked so sharp he imagined it would cut his skin if he lay his hand upon it. The edges of the helm were adorned in a series of peculiar scales, each prismatic and feathered, but unlike anything Tov had seen on a beast before. Though the figure was as tall as any man he knew, the cloak flowed from its back to the ground, with fabric to spare. It was woven in a pattern he did not recognize, neither braided nor stitched, a resulting texture that appeared regal and yet durable.
The krune stayed bowed as the figure turned to face them, its frame casting a shadow over Tov’s rigid form. The boy slid his foot back, boot scraping on the loose stones, unsure if he was steadying himself to attack or preparing to run away. He did neither.
The figure moved toward Tov and his skin flashed with heat, limbs growing heavy with fear. The figure grew taller with each step, blocking out the horizon in a sun-wreathed eclipse. Tov could not tear his eyes away as it peered down at him, terrified and curious to look upon the face of this figure. He saw pale, grey-green skin, with purple markings written under cheek bones as sharp as flint. A mouth not unlike his own sat above a pointed chin, but the nose was hard to see beneath the shadow of the helm. Yet none of these features mattered to Tov, for it was the eyes of the figure that held him in place. Where he expected the stark white of a Human iris there was pristine black, flecked with lines that glistened like mineral. This melted into a jagged, golden ring around the pupil. The pupil itself was vertical, not round, and there was a radiance within it that Tov knew could not be a reflection, for the face was under too great a darkness.
“The eyes of a dragon,” Tov thought, though he did not know why. He’d never seen a dragon, few alive had since the Abdication hundreds of years earlier. Yet he knew those eyes belonged, at least in part, to something else, a thing other than Humans, Elves or Dwarves. A thing older than them all. “This figure,” he realized with frostbitten dread, “is a Daedrym.”
The purple cloak seemed to grow rather than drag as the Daedrym moved toward Tov, its gait so steady he could not perceive one step from another. He’d never felt so small in all his life, helpless yet not entirely afraid. Without taking its eyes off him, the Daedrym reached behind its own head, up to one of the upright crests of the helm. With a sharp scraping sound, it pulled out one of the prismatic scales in a single motion that was swift but unhurried. It placed the scale in the palm of its own hand and held it out toward Tov, as if it were an offering. The Daedrym did not stoop, and though the draconic eyes blinked once, the face was otherwise still as stone through it all. Urgency seized Tov, his feet slipped and he stumbled back, but the krune was still there. The creature balanced the boy with its head, pushing him back toward its master. The Daedrym had not moved at his clumsiness, its eyes ever fixed upon him, the scale still in the open palm.
Tov bowed, or rather, curtsied, as he did not know what to do. He stared at the scale then took it with a deliberate slowness, his fingers brushing against its palm. The skin was hard, calloused, but so warm as to be hot. The scale emanated that heat as Tov stepped back, lowering his head in a bow, clasping the object against his chest. When he raised his head back to the Daedrym, it was looking up toward the peak of the mountain. Tov followed its gaze, astonished at how much further the summit was from their already terrifying height. It made the boy’s legs quiver. He turned back to the Daedrym once more, but there was no relief to be found. Those gold-rimmed eyes were burning into his own with an intensity that began to feel like his soul was looking at Siri’s itself. All Tov could manage was a blink.
When his eyes opened, the Daedrym was gone. Tov looked around the plateau and saw nothing of the cloak or the crested helm. Before he could exhale, the mighty krune screamed melodically into the air and leaped off the edge of the plateau. Its wings unfurled in a declaration of power, soaring around the dark expanse of the night sky. The beast vanished like its master a few moments earlier, then flew over Tov’s head with terrific speed, toward the peak and forever out of sight.
Tov stood in the silence of the night, his breath, the wind and the waves all melting into a single rhythm. He ran his fingers over the scale in his hand, the surface smooth as glass, yet its weight light as cloth. The scale reflected more of the glowing magenta light than he thought possible, and the longer he held it in his hand the deeper the significance he felt the gift possessed. Tov watched it as he might a fire dying in his palm, staring longer than he intended to, before the sound of distant thunder told him he ought return to the village.
Lightning split the air as Tov felt around his neck for the hundredth time on their journey. He knew the scale was there, wrapped in leather so tight that no light was visible, even in the darkness of the storm. In all the years since that night as a boy, the scale had never lost its magenta glow.
Though she hadn’t taken a single step of the journey herself, Gichi was out of breath. Tov could hear her dry, open-mouthed panting, though just as telling was that she was saying very little. By now she’d seen the dark figures hunting them. Either from that sight, or her father’s maddened pace up a narrow mountain path, or the near constant lightning strikes, or her mother’s presumed death, she was in a wordless state of panic. Well, nearly wordless.
“We will rest in the morning,” Tov heard Gichi repeat the same phrase he’d muttered to himself throughout their flight. “In the morning we will rest. We will rest in the morning, in the morning we will rest.” He felt solidarity with his daughter, sharing the same words but each having to find their own way up the mountain.
On the far off horizon, Tov spied the first lovely thing he’d seen since they left the village: a dim sliver of dawn, turning the night to grey. It was the loudest dawn he’d ever seen, and with it came a breeze upon the coals of hope that remained in his heart. A thousand thoughts flooded into his mind, but each faded before the memories of the morning before.
The morning he left Raedya
Dawn came to Nesthaven under its usual blanket of fog. In a barn outside the village, Tov had finished praying over a lamb with an injured leg. He loosened a splint that one of the village children had crafted, a well-intended mess that had likely done more harm than good. He lifted the frail creature into the air and watched it kick awkwardly but without pain, before setting it down to scamper outside. Tov wiped his brow, the art of healing always made him perspire, though he felt it gave him an excuse to never become a priest.
Tov threw the splint into a small fire. He followed the lamb out of the barn, when the first sounds of trouble echoed through the valley. Kasta Vall, a youth no older than 16, came sprinting into the clearing outside the village. The boy was quick, even for his age, so that few other youths would challenge him. Yet as he ran this morning, his arms were flailing above his head as if he were drowning. Kasta’s voice cracked with terror, calling out in broken screams. The boy’s father was in a watchtower at the edge of the village, and that seemed to be the target of his sprint. Tov looked at the lamb, idly chewing grass with its flock, ignorant and thankless. He tapped the little creature in the leg with his boot and started toward the tower.
It was then something like a spear but the size of a small tree stuck through Kasta, driving him into the ground and forcing the last breath out of his lungs in a bark. The villagers who’d gathered at his earlier screams now loosed cries of their own, horror and confusion mixing into an alchemy of panic. Tov ran toward the boy, preparing to push through a crowd to retrieve the splinters of his life that might remain. Yet as he neared Kasta’s body, the massive spear that had driven him into the ground started to change. Specks of black fell from the shaft like ashes, swirling with increasing speed around the lifeless body. Tov felt a hand grasp his wrist, pulling him back into the crowd. Tov realized he hadn’t slowed at the sight like the rest of the village.
And Raedya was not letting his arm go.
Tov turned back to the spear, just as the shaft dissolved into a thickening cloud that fully obscured Kasta. In an instant the ashes of the spear condensed like a swarm of insects and flew back through the air, returning to the form of a spear and leaving nothing but a small crater in the ground. Tov stared alongside his companions in astonishment. Kasta’s body was gone, and the village broke into a new round of terror.
“What is this,” he whispered to Raedya. “What sort of magic can do this?”
His wife dodged the question. “Gichi is in the forest with some of the children,” she replied. “They took her to the Ulon grove, to the stream.” Tov looked in that direction, but said nothing.
“Do not let them find her first,” she finished.
“Them?” Tov answered, shaking his head. “Raedya, we need to find Kasta, I could –”
“He is gone, Tov” his wife broke in, her voice wavering for a moment. “Find Gichi, they could already be in the forest!”
There was a fear in his wife’s hazel eyes that startled him. Raedya was a true child of the wilderness, a light-haired, brown skinned adventurer, much like him. He’d seen her ride giant brauna’tau and stare down valley krune as they swooped in for a meal amongst the village flocks. Raedya had seemed to ignore the voice of fear nearly all her life, but this morning it was as if it were the only one she knew.
“What do you know about these men,” Tov asked, taking each of her hands in his own.
“Nothing, my love.” She looked up to the height that the spear had flown from. “Only that these are not merely men.”
On the edge of the rocky cliff there stood a towering, armored figure. The fabled black spear that had slain Kasta, which had seemed so massive moments ago, was a mere staff in his hand. Flanked on either side of the spearman were several smaller but no less ominous figures, who each held weapons of similar size. Tov went to get their child without another word.
When he returned with Gichi near midday, the village was still griped by fear. The black spear, or perhaps there were more than one, had struck several times. Whenever the village gathered in numbers for defense, it would fall, pining and dissolving its prey without warning. Tov found Raedya near the village center, now with a staff and a cloak of hand-woven inscriptions. The cloak was ill-fitting, in need of repair or perhaps even replacement, but it had been her father’s garment. Gichi was on Tov’s back, her hands knotted at his neck, his elbows locked at her knees.
“We think there are more than twenty of them,” Raedya said breathlessly to Tov, “but perhaps double that number. The party sent to Havensong was discovered. Wiped out.”
“Mother, what is happening,” Gichi barely let her finish, but the poor girl was ignored.
“Havensong?” Tov replied. “Why? We do not need their help.”
“Tov,” Raedya cautiously began, “That is where you must go. At least where… I had hoped you would go.” Tov stared at her a moment before shaking his head.
“You cannot stay in the village. You must take Gichi and flee. These things are toying with us, they are going to –” the terror in her daughter’s eyes finally caught Raedya’s heart. “It will be alright, sweet girl. You and father will go on a lovely adventure and all will be well.” Gichi reached one hand toward her mother and mouthed the word “stay”. Raedya took her daughter’s hand and swallowed hard, eyeing back to Tov “The ferry is ready,” Raedya continued, “along with some bread. It will last awhile.”
“Why must you remain?” It was clear from Tov’s tone that nothing had been decided. Raedya tilted her head and lifted her arms as if to suggest the answer was self-evident. Though she was slightly older than himself, for a moment all Tov could see was a little girl in her father’s robes, holding a stick that he valued as highly as the splint that he’d thrown in the fire that morning.
But that image did not reflect the truth. He knew that Raedya was among the few capable villagers who could cast a spell with efficacy, slowing the attackers and perhaps giving others a chance at escape. Tov knew that once he had gone to find their daughter, all of Raedya’s latent bravery had come rushing back like a tide. He slid Gichi off his back, her weakened legs only just able to stand against her mother’s side, and left once more without a word.
Raedya was winded by carrying Gichi when she arrived at their home. She helped Tov fasten the ferry, moving quickly as the clamor in the village rose. When Raedya had finished, Tov turned and looked at their daughter as she sat on a bench they’d made together. Gichi had spoken only a few prayers during the wait, but otherwise was silent.
“Time to fly, my gryphon,” Tov said, his voice wavering.
“I love to fly,” she replied, raising her thin arms out to be lifted by her mother and in through the door of the basket. Once secured, Raedya whispered a few words into Gichi’s ear, at which the girl reached her hand out in protest.
“Mother,” she begged, “not this time!”
See Siros fly into his nest
“Let me stay awake, please!”
The day is won, as is our quest
“I want to stay… I want to stay… awake.”
Until the morning, we will rest
“I… love you.”
I love you, dear, you are my best
Gichi fell helplessly into a deep, steady sleep, as she had a thousand times since she was an infant. Tov felt her resistance fade by the end of the lyrical spell, and Raedya reaching into the ferry, likely brushing tears off Gichi’s cheek out of habit. He had never thought the rhyme was well written, but Gichi loved it and Raedya made it effective. For the first time he wondered if his criticism hampered his ability to use it on Gichi.
“You won’t make me do the same to you, will you?” Raedya asked him.
Never in all the hours he’d spent staring into his wife’s eyes had he seen them so colored with desperation. Tov did not doubt that Raedya would place a spell on him if he forced her hand. She’d done it before, playfully, with simple enchantments to distract him so she could pull off a surprise. Of course, there were occasions that his stubbornness led her to threaten to send him walking off into the sea. But Raedya preferred to be known as a wife, a mother, and a sister, not an enchantress or a wizard. Magic was a tool in the village, a means of survival, nothing more.
“Nothing you have is strong enough for me,” he lied. Raedya looked over his face, as if pulling the proper response off him like a harmless insect.
“Nothing but my love,” she replied, smiling. Tov did not smile back, he was barely breathing at this point.
“I cannot abandon you, Raedya. I could never —“
“If we did not have Gichi, I would have you die with me.”
“I cannot abandon you, Raedya.”
“You are not abandoning me, Tov, you are preserving her. As our parents preserved us, as I am preserving you, and anyone else who may escape. If it makes any difference at all, we both know that I could not carry her the distance or the speed that you will need to have a chance.” The ferry never seemed so heavy as that moment. Raedya placed her hands on his face and looked him in the eyes, a last smile brightening up the tears running to the corners of her mouth.
“If truly you believe this is wrong,” she whispered, “then I will not ask you to go. But you must believe it.” She gritted her teeth as she said it, striking Tov’s chest with each word.
At this, the last threads of resistance in Tov unraveled. He looked away, defeated, weary, but resigned. Raedya turned his head back and pressed her lips to his, then withdrew. Unsatisfied, she tried again until he came back to life in her hands. She squeezed his face until his jaw ached.
“Were this life the end of all things,” he said, “I would stay.”
“Were this life the end of all things, I would not ask you to go,” she replied, wiping away the last tears clinging to her chin.
There were calls for her in the village square, but they embraced for several moments until she stepped away. Then she was gone, and everything Tov had in this world went with her. Everything but Gichi.
Tov took sharp, violent breaths as he sprinted and franticly studied the stones ahead. His back was beyond burning, the skin beneath the ferry supports had long since rubbed away. Then he spied what he’d been hoping for: a step that was more shaped than a natural stone could be. He had reached the final climb up the Daedrym Ascent.
“Father, they’re close!” Gichi had tried to whisper, but her words came out in a screech. “They’re so close, just behind those rocks. Faster, faster!”
Tov grunted like an animal as the path turned into steps, the steps into a landing, and the landing into the summit of the mountain. There, like the finest floor in a palace, lay the wide plateau of the Daedrym’s home. Expertly carved uprights ran along a triangular expanse, every piece seemingly carved from the same stone as the mountain. In its own way, it was more stunning than anything he’d seen in Havensong or heard of in Faerthale. But it was also vacant.
Tov slowed to a careful, cautious walk. “Father! We must go, they are here!” He could feel her head snapping to and fro, desperately searching for a glimpse of their pursuers.
“We must tread carefully,” he spoke, more to himself than Gichi. “For we are between dangers now.”
The light of Siros’ dawn had bathed the plateau of the ascent in shimmering pools of rainwater, to the naked eye they almost looked like lights of their own. Yet Tov spent no time on the scene, scouring the stone floor just before his feet. Gichi borrowed some of his calm, no longer rocking the ferry side to side.
Tov stopped, studying a nondescript line in the path. He stooped, slowly sliding his boot to push away a thick patch of moss. Underneath, painted over with a grey mud, were a collection of pristine runes etched into the floor. Tov picked up two stones, feeling the weight in his hands. Stooping once more, while eliciting a sharp complaint from Gichi, who did not appreciate being tilted yet again, Tov slid the first stone over the runes. It passed harmlessly over the inscription, as ordinarily as anywhere else on Terminus. The second he gripped in his fist, before rearing back throwing as hard as he could across an unseen threshold of the air.
The stone shattered in the sky as if impacting a wall of rock. The air around the impact rippled, the fragments of the stone slowed and hung suspended for a moment before dissolving into dust. Tov exhaled in vindication, the ripped the scale from around his neck, pulling off the leather binding and raising it aloft in his hand. “Daedrym!” He shouted into the empty air. “When I was a boy, I saved the life of one of your krune. It had been bitten by a sea serpent and was as near death’s door as I am to your own. In return, one of you gave me this scale!”
There was no movement in the heights. No answer to his cries. Nothing, but the emptiness of an ancient ruin. Tov felt the wind carrying his words away. He felt his weariness draining him of hope. He felt his father’s hand upon his shoulder, Raedya’s kiss upon his lips, Gichi’s weight upon his back. He pressed his hand against a wall he could not see, and pleaded one last time. “I know you are there,” he accused the empty air. “I know you can hear me. I have brought my only child. We are being hunted. I ask you to save what is precious to me, as I once saved what was precious to one of you.”
“Father!” Gichi’s voice broke through. “They are here!”
Tov stiffened. The worn out parts of his body that he’d ignored since they’d left the village began to chew on his nerves at the same time. The bones in his spine seemed to lock in place, blood that had been pooling in one of his boots felt thick as mud. And as he looked out from the cliff and over the water far below, he thought of Raedya, and that Havensong may have been the better choice.
There were now three figures looking down at him from a boulder on the side of the mountain. The spearman, covered in jagged armor and not only taller, but thicker than any man he’d ever seen; the lighteater, with its black, eyeless head and a body that was still more suggestion than solid form; and the third, a bald but feminine figure, her skin as tight as a skull and without a nose. Her eyes flickered with a yellow-green light, a color that looked sick and decayed. She was wearing a silver garment from head to toe that from a distance looked like an armored dress.
Tov recognized the spearman and the lighteater from the day before, but the third had chosen this moment to reveal herself. Something about her poise and secrecy made Tov think she was their leader. When the spearman jumped off the bolder and he obeyed her command to halt, it confirmed that she was. The spearman pointed his weapon at Tov, holding it against his forearm before raising it above his head.
“Father, they are here,” Gichi’s voice was so composed it sent a shiver down her father’s spine. “The Daedrym, they are here.” The very words he had hoped to hear, spoken from the weary voice of his stricken daughter. Tov felt strength in his legs and, despite the pain, turned his body to the side so he and Gichi could look at plateau together. He heard her fingers dig into the woven strands of the ferry, pulling her face as close to the barrier as possible.
In the middle of the vast stone floor there stood two Daedrym, against a backdrop of an endless blue sea and an even bluer sky. Then two more became visible, appearing without a glimmer or sound, then two more, and two more. Dozens filled the space in a matter of moments, with all but one of their stoic faces staring past Tov and Gichi, directly at their pursuers. All but one stood still as stone, save for their magenta cloaks whipping in the seaborne wind. The one who broke ranks stepped toward Tov with an effortless grace, such as he’d seen only once in his life. This solitary Daedrym set its eyes upon him, an uncomfortable but familiar intensity reaching out from its gold-rimmed iris. Tov stood expectantly, painted in a grime of sweat, dirt, and blood, his outer cloak torn and his hair no longer tied back. He observed an open space in the helm where one scale was missing. This Daedrym had neither replicated or replaced it through the years since they’d met. Whatever meaning Tov attributed to the gift, it was clear that it had meant more. He offered the scale to the Daedrym so quickly that it paused in surprise.
“A life for a life,” he said, placing the scale into the palm of his more regal counterpart. He then noticed that the exchange had transpired directly over the runes in the carved stone floor, but the barrier had not interfered. As soon as the Daedrym withdrew its hand, Tov began to release the fastenings on the ferry. As he let the basket down gently, a second Daedrym approached and they each took a side, carrying Gichi away. She did not go quietly.
“Father! You are coming?! Father, father — don’t leave!” Tov watched her, helplessly, but could not find the words to speak. His eyes darted to the runes, mind racing at the risk of crossing over them. But before he could decide, Gichi disappeared, her voice swallowed up with all the Daedrym. From his vantage, the plateau was empty once more. Tov swallowed and placed his hand where the barrier should be, feeling the invisible wall had returned as solid as the cliff beside him. He slumped against it and fell to the ground, exhaustion numbing his mind and body.
The dark trio appeared to have moved very little while the exchange with the Daedrym occurred. Yet the spearman, eager from the moment he’d laid eyes upon his prey, was less and less interested in being restrained. He paced back and forth, eyes fixed in Tov’s direction. The lighteater had sunk into one of the shadows behind the boulder, and the leader’s eyes were closed in some kind of dark meditation. Then Tov saw the spearman wind his muscle-bound arm back, twisting his chest to unleash a volley that seemed too powerful for the short distance between he and Tov. Yet as the spearman unwound his body and released the weapon, Tov realized the creature was not aiming for him, but for the barrier and what lay beyond it. Gichi was visible again, calm and being carried by one of the Daedrym toward him. Tov moved toward the spearman, just as the smoke-wreathed projectile streaked over his head, toward where the Daedrym stood with Gichi. He shot his arm as the spear approached, the trail of smoke falling on his skin and singeing it as if it were coals. Tov ignored this pain, his red-rimmed eyes fixed on Gichi’s helpless face, reaching for her and opening his mouth to yell.
The spear shattered in the air behind him with a peculiar quiet, no different than the stone Tov had thrown into it. There was only a strange vibration in the air, and for a moment Gichi and the Daedrym flickered in and out of sight. The barrier seemed to drink in the smoke, small waves perceptible to Tov only because of the pained intensity with which he was watching for his daughter. He heard a strange groan come from the dark figures, and saw tendrils from the lighteater holding the spearman aloft. Something like terror was welling within the brute, but before he could do more than writhe in the air the lighteater threw him against the invisible wall. His body crumpled, bone and armor snapping like a set of massive knuckles.Though dead, the spearman’s plight was not over. The leader raised an open palm and his corpse was lifted from beside Tov. She forced it’s lifeless face into the wall, over and over again, each collision sounding less like bones breaking and more like water sloshing in a skin. The dispassionate leader seemed to study the interaction, while from Tov’s vantage his villain was folded against the sky itself. At last she flung the mass that was once his body into the seas far below.
Tov unclenched his fist in the sudden silence, awakening to the searing pain of his hand and forearm. He looked for Gichi, saw her standing beside his Daedrym, then felt a slick, cold pressure on his ankle. A tendril of the lighteater was pulling at him, sliding his body over the ground toward itself. Tov heard an echo of Gichi calling his name as his body was lifted into the air. Then he was thrown back toward the barrier with terrific force, far faster than he could brace for the impact.
Tov collided with the ground on the other side of the barrier, his head striking the stone floor. He rolled several times before stopping, lying on his back with his eyes pointed to the sky. His ears were ringing and he felt his body fighting to stay awake. Gichi was with him now, as were the dozens of shadowed faces, scores of gold-rimmed eyes under silver helms, and folds of magenta cloaks that flowed together in one unending curtain. The sky was clear and Siros bright, though darkness was closing in around Tov’s eyes.
“We can rest now, father.” Gichi laid her head on her father’s chest, placing his arm over her back. “It is morning now, we can rest.
