Part I
Call: What is the number of the gods?
Response: The gods are five in number. Four are friends to the world. One betrayed it.
Call: What is their nature?
Response: Poram rules the wild, the sea, the world in the raw. Sitha is the weaver, the Golden Lady, mistress of crafts and civilization. Tinival, their son, the Silver Wind, governs justice and wisdom. Letar is the Dark Lady, the Threadcutter, the patron of death and healing, love and vengeance.
Call: What is the nature of the fifth?
Response: Treachery. Subjugation. Greed. The dagger in the back, the poison in the cup, the fetters locked unjustly. All of these are Gizath’s domain.
—The Catechism of the Temple of Sitha, Part I
Know, Your Grace, that the downfall of the world as it was once known began in the shining city of Heliodar. There Lord Thyran, fancying himself betrayed by his common-born wife, came to see the world and all within it as corrupt. There, in the course of a single night of horror, he spilled the blood of his bride, her paramour, and his servants, a dedication to Gizath unlike any the Traitor God had ever known, and from there he fled into the north. His power summoned some of his minions from the places outside the world. Others swarmed to his banner. Many were changed. The lands of the south paid little heed until the day he and his armies came forth…
—From the Letters of Farathen, scribe to the young Duchess of Bethal
Chapter 1
Blood soaked the stones of Klaishil.
Some—too much—was as red as Amris’s own. It didn’t quite blend with the darker, viscous ooze that spilled more in blobs than in rivulets and ate into whatever was beneath it. Both pooled around crumbled stones, abandoned possessions, and bodies of all sorts.
Those still moving, living and otherwise, fought above the corpses of their comrades without looking down. Amris knew his soldiers couldn’t chance the distraction. He suspected—or knew, in the cases of the undead and the beasts—that Thyran’s troops simply didn’t care.
Trapped with his back to the burnt shell of a house, he ducked a massive blow from a scaled fist. Jazmin, his last living lieutenant as far as Amris knew, seized the moment, sprang onto an abandoned cart, and fired a crossbow bolt into the single eye of the creature menacing him. Her aim was keen, despite days without rest: the monster grunted and fell backwards.
Amris followed it forward a few steps, spun, and cut through the dead arms reaching for Jazmin.
She smiled her thanks from a soot-smeared face and leapt down to his side.
“Have we any others?” he asked.
“Blaise, Vada, and the Pine are coming up from the southwest. Or were. Edan and ten of us are getting the last of the priests out of the temples. Nadusha and her squadron are dead. Building collapse.”
Amris made the sign of the Four Gods with his free hand, wearily, wishing them peace. Compared to the last few years, they’d have it anyhow. “Damos’s squadron? Lady Winthair?”
“I’ve seen nothing of them today.”
The previous sign of the Four would have to cover them too. Amris needed both hands on his sword and all his focus at the other end, for coming down the street was a squad of twistedmen: Thyran’s shock troops, redly and wetly skinless, with curving black talons on their huge hands and faces that were mostly sharp-toothed mouths.
Amris had killed a score or so of them since the sun rose, and it was near noon now, but there were always more.
Creatures with wings of tattered flesh circled overhead, riding icy winds below black clouds. One raised its eyeless head and screamed, and a building near it shivered. Another dove, exhaling a purple cloud, and vanished behind a row of still-standing buildings. Amris couldn’t see its prey, which was just as well: he and Jazmin were too far away to aid in time.
A month ago, he’d been in front of a fire with Gerant in his arms.
They’d had no illusions of peace then. Thyran had been burning a path across the world for years. They’d both heard what had happened to Vylik, the first city he’d attacked, whose baron had tried to surrender. Some said that baron and a few score of his citizens still lived, after a fashion. Amris had already beaten Thyran to a standstill twice, forced him to retreat once, and knew it was only a matter of time until the next attack. Their last, desperate plans, based on months of magic on the part of Gerant and the High Priestess of Sitha, had even then been going forward.
But for a few weeks, they’d been safe, warm, together, as they’d been before either of them had heard the name Thyran of Heliodar.
Now as Amris felt claws scrape against his armor, he stabbed, cut, and thrust mechanically, and didn’t even feel the creature’s ribs breaking beneath his blade. He registered them, which was a different, much more abstract matter. The world was action and response, mission and path, and much else to be ignored, like screams beneath the sky and how much colder it was than it should have been in June.
Another storm was on its way. The last had been a nine-day blizzard. If patterns held, this would double it in strength and duration. After that? Even Amris, not half the scholar Gerant was, could see the arc rising and cringed, fearing it as he’d feared few things in battle. If Thyran couldn’t “purify” the world with his armies—or if he simply felt the process was taking too long—he’d evidently try other ways.
The final twistedman fell, twitching. Amris and Jazmin moved forward into the clear alley beyond them, and on toward where it opened onto what had once been the Plaza of Winds. The crumbling walls blocked much of Amris’s view of the plaza, but he could still see the huge, pillar-flanked staircases that led to the duke’s palace.
His Grace, well into his old age, had gotten out, along with his bride and his eldest son’s family. Amris had made sure of that, perhaps the only triumph he’d had in the last three days. Lord Bauspar himself had stayed behind to defend the city he would have one day inherited, and had been devoured the evening before by one of the winged creatures. His sister, as far as Amris knew, lived and fought yet.
There, running toward the steps of the palace, Amris saw the remnants of the army he led, the soldiers that hadn’t already retreated to guard Klaishil’s fleeing citizens or stayed to hold Thyran off a little longer and given their lives in the process. The spiked helmet of the Pine towered above the shorter forms of stocky Vada with their spear and shield and Blaise, his dark braids loose since his helm had broken the previous dawn. Amris noted their presence, but his heart didn’t lift the way it would have done at such a sight when the war had begun.
Too much weighed it down now.
Sword in his hands, Gerant’s rose—an enchanted weapon no one would think to suspect—secure in his belt, he dashed toward the meeting place. To one side, he saw Jazmin, crossbow up: she could fire while running, at need, and with wicked aim.