Shiya rolled her hand under his. Warm fingers enclosed his hand. She turned the glow of her eyes upon him. Her lips parted with a whisper. “I know.”

  The door banged open behind them. Startled, he let go of Shiya’s hand and jerked to his feet. Llyra marched in without invitation. Out in the tunnel, shadowy figures stirred.

  “I’m leaving,” she said sharply to him.

  He stumbled around to her. “Already? You’ll not be coming for the…” He waved at the spread atop the table.

  Over the past weeks, their motley group—gathered from across the northern Crown—had slowly and somewhat warily grown into a makeshift alliance, united by blood, grief, and purpose, all centered on one word.

  Moonfall.

  Llyra eyed the table, as if reconsidering his offer to attend the meeting. Instead, she studied the spread and took what she wanted—like she always did. She grabbed one of the small casks of ale and tucked it under her arm. She scowled at the rest. “I have no interest in chattering and arguing. I know what I must do.”

  She glanced over to Shiya. Llyra’s eyes shone with no avarice, not even for the block of crystal sitting on the table. The guildmaster of thieves had also witnessed the doom to come. In that moment, Rhaif had watched the greed fade out of her. Llyra was nothing if not practical. If he had any doubt, he just had to remember how she had sold him off to the mines in order to firm the guild’s footing in Anvil. So, she certainly recognized that all the wealth in the world would not matter if the world was not here.

  “Do you think they’ll listen to you?” Rhaif asked.

  Llyra frowned. “I wasn’t planning on giving them any choice.”

  The guildmaster was headed out with a clutch of Darant’s men, to rouse as many of her ilk to their cause, to forge a secret army spread through whorehouses, thieveries, low taverns, and dark dens. With the drums of war echoing across the Crown, their group might need an army of their own before long—along with a certain cropped-hair Guld’guhlian to command them.

  Rhaif nodded. “I have no doubt you’ll earn their—”

  She crossed over, scooped the back of his head with her free hand, and pulled his mouth to hers. She kissed him hard, then maybe a bit tenderly in the end. She had never let him kiss her before—then again, she was the one doing all the kissing here. It was a heated reminder. If there was something she wanted, she took it.

  She let him go, wiped her lips. Her eyes glinted with dark amusement. “Just wanted to prove to you, flesh can be tastier than bronze.”

  He swallowed, his cheeks red hot.

  She swung toward the door. “Don’t get yourself killed,” she called back.

  He appreciated her rare concern, but mistook it, forgetting who he was talking to.

  “You have a magnificent cock,” she finished. “I may want to use it again.”

  Rhaif blinked as she slammed the door behind her.

  Well, for last words … those weren’t bad.

  * * *

  NYX FELT THE press of time, not just for this meeting, but also for the world at large.

  Still, she stood in the small cave far from the others. The floor was sand. A tiny spring-fed pool brightened a corner. Far overhead, an old collapse had opened the roof to the forest and sky above. The sunlight fueled a bounty of curl-leafed ferns and chains of climbing roses in blushes of pink. A few blooms had darker red petals, like sprays of blood.

  She tried not to look at those.

  Instead, she focused on the bright open skies, waiting. Then a shadow swept high and vanished. She held her breath. A moment later, the hole darkened with the passage of a large form. Black wings snapped wide once the bat was inside.

  The wind buffeted her, carrying with it the scent of a gingery musk, laced with a touch of carrion. Bashaliia was long past feasting on gnats and meskers of the swamp. His larger body needed more sustenance. Gnawed bones were piled to one side of the cave—but no more than one might find in a vargr’s den.

  She could not fault him for his new hungers.

  Bashaliia landed in the sand, beating his wings high, then tucked them.

  She crossed to him.

  He shifted on his legs, prancing a bit, as he would do when he was small. It was a reminder that despite his large size, he was still her little brother at heart. He keened to her in greeting, enveloping her in his song. As her sight flickered between their two sets of eyes, she sang back to him. She sensed his unease with this new place, maybe even with his new body.

  We both have much to get used to.

  Still, she knew what troubled him the most.

  As it did her.

  She reached him and opened her arms as much as her heart. Even song could not replace the reassurance of soft touches and shared warmth. He tucked his ears, snuffling her face, taking in her scent. A warm tongue tasted her salt. He settled against her, framing her and balancing on the knuckles of his wings.

  She lifted both hands and scratched his ears, rubbing the tender velvet in her fingers. She sang to him, entwining their strands, sharing his finer senses. Again—as she had noted upon arriving here—she could barely sense that greater mind any longer. It was still out there, like a storm on the horizon, just a whisper of distant thunder, but those winds could no longer reach her. The storm was too far off.

  Understanding pounded her heart.

  Bashaliia was losing his connection to his tribe across the sea. Their reach—as mighty as it was—had limits, distances they could not stretch.

  She felt Bashaliia’s sense of loss.

  Still, she had a greater fear. She considered where they would soon be headed. To icefields even farther away, on the other side of the world.

  She knew what that meant. There would be no resurrecting him; his memories would not be preserved with his brethren.

  If Bashaliia dies out there, he will be gone forever.

  It was why she had come down here. She lifted his chin and stared into his eyes. You must not follow. While her heart quailed at the thought of being away from him, the possibility of losing him forever was too much to bear.

  His eyes glowed back. He keened with sorrow, experiencing her fear and agony as much as she did his senses. Still, his strands wound tighter to her. He refused to leave her side, to abandon her again. She sought a way to convince him, to argue against his coming.

  But another had had enough.

  Up from within the dark well inside Bashaliia, a black wave struck out at them. Fiery eyes flashed from that shadowy darkness, clearly taking significant effort to reach this far. Still, the command was cold and resolute, veiled in threat.

  NO.

  Then that enormity vanished from them both, leaving a hollowness that chilled. Bashaliia pressed closer. She knew she could not ask this of him again. Instead, she leaned over, touching and singing him calmer, until her heart settled, too.

  Finally, the press of time squeezed them apart.

  “I must go,” she whispered.

  After a final few touches of reassurance, she left and headed back through the series of tunnels. She moved leadenly, weighted down by her worries and fears. Still, before long, she reached the proper door and heard voices behind it. She was clearly very late. She took another breath, then opened the door and pushed into the warm chamber.

  A stone hearth glowed in a corner. Atop a table in the center, a jumble of platters and mugs separated stacks of books and a spread of charts and maps. Everyone seemed to be talking at once.

  Graylin was bent between Frell and Pratik. “When you reach the Klashe, seek out the Razen Rose. Something tells me that secretive order knows far more than they let on.”

  Graylin straightened as she entered and waved to an open chair, then returned to his conversation with the group due to depart to the south. Kanthe caught her eye and shrugged with a shake of his head.

  From the neighboring seat, Jace shifted her chair back.

  She crossed to it and sank down.

  Her friend leaned closer. “You missed most of it,” he said. “I think everyone’s questions have been answered as best they could be.”

  She stared around the table, ignoring the cacophony. Shiya sat quietly across from her, with Rhaif on one side and Darant on the other. The two men leaned forward and spoke across Shiya’s nose as if she weren’t even there.

  Nyx knew what that felt like.

  Shiya’s eyes glowed at her, unblinking. Nyx sensed there was a question the bronze woman was waiting for someone to ask. As Nyx stared back, she heard a faint song, of distant drums.

  Shiya’s crystal cube sat on the table, framed by her fingers. It glowed softly, while above it shimmered a tiny globe of the Urth. Small crimson and azure blips shone more brightly across its surface. Nyx knew the blue dot deep in the Southern Klashe was where Kanthe and the alchymists were due to head. Angst at the prince leaving spiked through her.

  Their group had only recently been forged, but already it must break again. Still, she read the determination in each face. It united them all. While they might be separating in different directions, they all knew their ultimate goal, to stop what seemed unstoppable, to keep the moon from crashing out of the sky—which first required discovering a way to fire up the Urth’s forges and set the world to turning once again.

  Jace tried to say something more, but Nyx lifted a palm and waited. Slowly the room quieted. One by one, they noted her sitting silently, a hand raised.

  “I have a question,” Nyx finally said, and nodded to the cube, to the glowing globe of the Urth. She focused on the green marker shining deep in the ice on the dark side of the world. “Where exactly are we headed? Was there ever a name for this place?”

  Shiya’s eyes glowed brighter. She shifted higher and gave the smallest nod to Nyx. “Yes, it has an ancient name.”

  All eyes turned toward the bronze sculpture poised at the table.

  Shiya continued, “From a language older than the Elder tongue. The name is meaningless, perhaps, but it roughly means where the winged protectors gather.”

  Nyx pictured Bashaliia and the rest of the Mýr horde. Those winged guardians had looked upon the world for ages on end. Did that mean there were others out there like them?

  Ever the scholar, Frell drew a sheet closer and lifted a quill in hand. “I’m curious. What is that name in this ancient tongue?” he asked.

  Shiya looked across at Nyx, her eyes aglow.

  “The City of Angels.”

  63

  IN THE BOWELS of the Shrivenkeep, Wryth leaned over the shoulder of his fellow Iflelen brother. Skerren sat at a narrow table, its surface covered with rusted bits of arcana, twined copper, vials of caustic compounds, crucibles of both metal and stone, and items that defied Wryth’s own considerable knowledge.

  Skerren had summoned him here to reveal a discovery, something his brother believed was significant enough to interfere with Wryth’s own schedule this morning.

  Wryth glanced back into the depths of Skerren’s personal scholarium. It stretched off into a maze of chambers, closets, and sealed rooms. Wryth recognized a tall stack of curved copper sheets leaning high against a back wall. They were part of the copper shell that had preserved the bronze artifact deep in Chalk’s sunless tunnels. Skerren had spent the past two moons carefully dismantling and shipping it from the mines.

  The laborers had been killed afterward. None could know what the Iflelen had discovered, what they hoped to learn from it. Wryth suspected Skerren’s discovery came from that same collection.

  “Show me,” Wryth said.

  Skerren reached to a leather cloth that hid something beneath. He slid the covering away, revealing a wonder that drew a gasp from Wryth. It was a perfect cube of crystal, veined through with copper threads. But what squeezed Wryth’s breath was the mass of golden fluid at its core, pulsing and undulating.

  “I found it in a hidden chamber behind the copper shell,” Skerren explained.

  “What is it?” Wryth came around for a closer look.

  Skerren leaned possessively over it, his eyes narrowed. “I think it serves like a tiny flashburn forge. A source of unknown power. I’ve performed some tests with intriguing results.”

  “What tests?”

  Skerren waved absently at the two halves of a glass sphere resting atop his table. It was all that was left of the instrument that Wryth had used to track the bronze artifact. The cracked orb had been drained of the clear oil, and its tiny copper-wrapped lodestones were meticulously lined up in a row.

  Skerren explained, “I believe, with this tiny forge, I can build a more powerful version of the instrument that I gave you before. The new device should be capable of detecting emanations from the bronze artifact over a far greater distance.”

  Wryth breathed heavier, desire burning through him. He could barely speak. He did not know if anyone had escaped the ruins of Dalalæða, but he was plagued by the sight of a swyftship diving into the clouds as he fled.

  With such a new tool, I might learn the truth.

  “Do it,” Wryth ordered. “Set aside all other inquiries except for this.”

  Skerren nodded and glanced back. “How goes your own labors?”

  Wryth straightened, reminded of his schedule. “We are close,” he answered. That was all he would admit. “I must be off. There is another who wishes to confirm my progress, and his temper is foul at best, even when he’s not left waiting.”

  Wryth rushed off. He swept out of Skerren’s scholarium and headed toward another, one belonging to a dead brother. Once he was close enough, torchlight revealed two figures waiting in the hallway by the door. Wryth’s guest was accompanied by a tall Vyrllian Guard named Thoryn. The visitor stood stiff-backed. Torchlight reflected off his silvery armor. It was said he rarely removed it anymore, fearful of another attack.

  Wryth closed the distance and lifted an arm. “Prince Mikaen, thank you for coming all the way down here.”

  The prince turned, revealing the silver mask covering half of his face. Its surface was inscribed with a sun and crown, the Massif family sigil. When the light struck it just right, that sun would blaze like the Father Above. Right now, it reflected the angry flame of the torch.

  Wryth also knew what lay hidden behind the silver. He had seen it once, shortly after Mikaen’s face had been stitched together. Or at least the little of his face that was still salvageable.

  Mikaen grumbled, his voice still hoarse from all his pained screaming, “Show me why I came down here, so I can be gone from this wretched place.”

  Wryth slipped past the prince and keyed open the door to Vythaas’s scholarium. “Do not draw too close,” he warned, and entered first.

  The iron-walled chamber was as hot as a furnace. Chains jangled and snapped. Mikaen and his guard came behind him. Both gasped at the sight ahead. With his back to them, Wryth simply smiled.

  “How…?” Thoryn asked, speaking out of turn.

  Still, Wryth answered him, “Poison. It took more than you would imagine.”

  Mikaen stepped nearer. “Can you control it?”

  “Soon,” Wryth whispered longingly, unable to hide his raw desire.

  Skerren’s discovery might hold the promise to track any bronze artifacts, but Wryth now followed in the footsteps of Vythaas, the brother who rightly feared the Klashean Vyk dyre Rha. Wryth’s labors were intended to purge that threat, to forge a weapon against her, to plant a seed of corruption in her very garden.

  The chains thrashed and clanged in front of them.

  He stared across at the large bat, with its wings wrapped in leather, its body subdued with steel—but what truly bound it was copper.

  From its shaved skull, a score of bright needles stuck out, suffused with the alchymies extracted from Vythaas’s journals.

  Wryth stared silently at the creature. Soon you will be mine.

  Dark eyes glared at him, challenging him. It opened its jaws and screamed savagely, madly, at the world.

  Wryth smiled at that song, one of pure hatred.

  Yes, that’s a good place to start.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It has been well over a decade since I last forged a path across a fantasy landscape, so each step along this new journey has been tentative. Before starting this adventure, I looked for trail markers left behind by writers I had admired while growing up: Anne McCaffrey, Terry Brooks, Stephen R. Donaldson, Robert Jordan, Roger Zelazny, Gene Wolfe, Robin Hobb, Edgar Rice Burroughs, J. R. R. Tolkien, George R. R. Martin, and countless others. I also took note of the impressive new paths being created by authors today: Naomi Novik, Patrick Rothfuss, Brandon Sanderson, Brent Weeks, and N. K. Jemisin. I also leaned on the shoulders of a bevy of writers who have stood at my side for decades, who have traveled with me in the past to the lands of Alasea and Myrillia, and who helped me to polish this first entry into a new world: Chris Crowe, Lee Garrett, Matt Bishop, Matt Orr, Leonard Little, Judy Prey, Steve Prey, Caroline Williams, Sadie Davenport, Sally Ann Barnes, Denny Grayson, and Lisa Goldkuhl.

  Of special acknowledgment, I must cast a sweeping bow of thanks to the cartographer who crafted this world’s first map, Soraya Corcoran. Her work can be found at sorayacorcoran.com. And, of course, I can’t sing the praises loud or long enough to encompass my appreciation for Danea Fidler, the artist who sketched the handsome creatures found throughout the pages of this book. To view more of her skill, do visit her site: daneafidler.com.

  On the production side of this creation, I wanted to thank David Sylvian for all his hard work and dedication in the digital sphere.

  Lastly and most importantly, none of this would have happened without an astounding team of industry professionals. To everyone at Tor Books—especially Fritz Foy and publisher extraordinaire, Devi Pillai, thank you for taking a chance at opening this new chapter in my career. Additionally, no book would shine as well without a skilled team behind its marketing and publicity, so I was blessed by the talents of Lucille Rettino, Eileen Lawrence, Stephanie Sarabian, Caroline Perny, Sarah Reidy, Renata Sweeney, and Michelle Foytek. And a big thanks to the team who made this book look its very best: Greg Collins, Peter Lutjen, Steven Bucsok, and Rafal Gibek. Of course, a special acknowledgment must go to the editor who held my feet to the fire and pushed me to bring this story into its best and fullest light—a HUGE thanks to William Hinton. Plus, to those who furthered his efforts—editorial assistant Oliver Dougherty, copy editor Sona Vogel, and two astute authenticity readers, Dominic Bradley and Elsa Sjunneson—a big thanks for all your painstaking work and expertise.