is fieflord in a way that Barren wasn’t.”
“You can say that again.”
Fair enough. “Barren didn’t hold the Tower. Tiamaris does.”
“And?”
“Holding the Tower at all should prevent your one-offs from getting through.”
Morse shrugged. “The Ferals get through.”
“I know; they get through everywhere. I’m not sure why.”
“Time to find out?”
“Well past.” Kaylin turned toward the discussion that was even now taking place without them, and as she did, Tara froze. It was a very particular stillness, and it reminded anyone who happened to be standing close by that Tara’s physical form, the form of her birth, was made of stone.
It was warning enough for Kaylin, but if it hadn’t been, there was another one that followed less than thirty seconds later: the strangers began to shout, and weapons began to catch sunlight and reflect it in a way that spoke of movement.
Morse swore. Loudly. But her brief word wasn’t equal to the task of carrying over the cries and shouts—directed, not panicked—of the strangers. “Kaylin!” she shouted.
Kaylin turned.
“Incoming!”
Sanabalis’s eyes turned instantly orange as Tiamaris swiveled his head and roared. Kaylin’s ears were still ringing when the fieflord spread wings, bunched legs, and pushed himself off the ground; it was a miracle of grace and movement that prevented those wings from knocking anyone else flying. Tiamaris roared again as he rose above the heights of the standing structures erected along the border—they were few, and they were clearly meant as lookouts and not living quarters.
Severn had already unwound his weapon chain; Morse had a sword in hand. But Morse remained close by Tara, rather than running to join the giants. After a brief glance at Severn, Kaylin headed toward those giants, her own daggers still sheathed. Severn joined her; Sanabalis did not. But Tiamaris’s shadow passed above them as the drums began their rolling thunder.
What kind of people carried drums into a war zone anyway?
Kaylin noticed, as she approached the main body of the strangers, that there were no children here. There were men—and women—who looked as if they’d left youth behind, but they carried their weapons with the same grim determination that the younger men and women did. If any of them had ever survived to be elderly, they were also nowhere in sight.
They noticed her, but they were accustomed to a lack of clear communication from the humans and made no attempt to question her; they did, however, let her pass into their midst. She briefly regretted her armor; it was hard to shove it out of the way, and as she couldn’t, she couldn’t expose the marks on her arms with any ease. Those marks, the strangers did recognize in some fashion.
But Severn spoke a single curt word. “Bracer.”
Her reply was less civil. She shed splints, exposing the heavy golden manacle, and she crushed gems in sequence to open the damn thing. It clicked, she removed it and tossed it over her shoulder, remembering after it had left her hand that there were enough people behind her that it might actually hit someone. No one, however, shouted in outrage, and better yet, no one attempted to remove her head from her shoulders, so she moved in the direction of the drumming itself.
The drummers were standing behind a line of men and women who faced the interior of the fiefs; there were four drums in total that Kaylin could count. The men who beat them had weapons at their feet, but they were otherwise intent on stretched skin, not incoming danger. The four drums circled three people, however, and Kaylin recognized one of them: Mejrah. She was the oldest stranger present, she was about a foot shorter than the People standing beside her, and her eyes were all whites.
CHAPTER 4
Mejrah was not a door ward, but the hair on the back of Kaylin’s neck began to rise, and the marks on her skin began to ache in their usual protest at the presence of magic. Her exposed arm was also, damn it, glowing softly; the runes were a pale blue. At the moment, however, the visible marks gave her one solid advantage: no one stood in her way, and anyone who happened to be there moved.
Severn crowded her back to take advantage of the brief openings; he moved, as he often did, like a cat.
“Kaylin, twelve o’clock.”
Twelve o’clock, like positions ten to one, was occupied by large, weapon-wielding men; it was also briefly illuminated by bursts of angry, orange flames. The flames were close enough that Kaylin could feel their instant heat, and far enough away that she didn’t burn. But in the wake of fire, she could see the shape of something dark and ungainly rising above a horizon composed of tall warriors. Whatever the creature was, it was not small.
Size, in Shadows, wasn’t necessarily directly proportional to their power. But appearance was often an indicator. The creature was not being helpful in this regard: it didn’t seem to have a form. Instead, Shadow rose and fell, like black snowdrifts in a very bad storm. Like snow, the blackness accreted. Dragonfire seemed to cause it some damage—but not enough to stop it or destroy it.
The men spoke in short, sharp bursts; they were clearly giving orders in harsh, guttural syllables. Mejrah’s voice soared above them, twining as it did with the two voices of the men who stood on either side of her, as sightless as she. Their voices formed words, and these words were tantalizingly familiar to Kaylin; she couldn’t understand them, but she felt as if she should. She glanced at Mejrah, and from her to the air just above the old woman’s hands; it was wavering, as if it had substance and texture.
Kaylin expected to see words form in that air: ancient words. True words. Instead, light grew, curling in on itself as if it was a trapped, compressed cloud.
The creature drew closer and closer to the boundaries, and as it did, it opened what might—might—have been a mouth, and it began to speak. To Kaylin’s surprise, she recognized some of the language. Not enough to understand it, of course—that would have been too easy. It wasn’t the ancient tongue, though—it was the tongue that the strangers spoke, and were speaking even now.
They were shouting at the creature, and from their stances, it appeared that they were taunting it. Had she not been so much on edge, her jaw would have hit the ground and bounced. Every instinctive reaction she’d developed over the course of her life screamed in protest: this was suicide. Then again, so was standing still, which they were notably all doing.
Had they been anyone else—in particular, people who would understand a word she shouted—she would have started to shout orders of her own. As it was, she reminded herself, firmly, that they had spent most of their lives fighting Shadows in one way or another. If they were standing there while Mejrah was doing a complicated form of magic that would have had the Imperial mages looking down their noses in contempt, they had to have a reason for it.
Tiamaris roared and the men on the ground took up his cry; she thought they were attempting to repeat what he’d said. The timbre of their voices suited their size; it wasn’t Dragon, but it had enough strength behind it not to make a mockery of the word itself. The drumbeats began to pick up speed until all sound was a collision: Mejrah, Tiamaris, the warriors on the ground, and the pounding beat of the skins themselves.
And
