She sped past the lone thylassaur, who tried to give chase but was swiftly left in the breath of her dust. It howled its frustration after them, echoed by the others.

  Ahead, the last wagon of the caravan grew before them.

  She chased after it, but even her considerable pace was not enough. With the last wagon only a few dozen steps away, the caravan gained more speed. The wain began to pull away.

  So close …

  Then Rhaif’s stomach lurched as she leaped high, bounding like a desert hare from the poisonous strike of an adder. She sailed across the last of the distance and hit the wagon’s rear with a jolting impact. He would’ve been knocked loose, if not for her kidney-bruising grip. Her other hand latched on to the wagon’s top frame.

  She did her best to push him upward, almost dropping him, but he caught hold and scurried into the wagon. Once on top of the ore pile, he sprawled on his back, spent and exhausted, oblivious to the shards poking and cutting. He didn’t care. Right now, it was the most comfortable bed in the world.

  She climbed up and settled next to him on her knees. She cast her gaze back toward Chalk.

  “It’s all right, lass,” he gasped. “They can’t catch us now.”

  He didn’t even bother looking for any sign of pursuit. He felt the trundling wheels of the caravan roll ever faster. Few creatures were faster than a sandcrab. They could even outrace a skrycrow. At such speeds, the caravan would reach Anvil long before any message could be sent. And once there, he could quickly lose himself in the tumult and chaos of the port. Maybe even take a ship abroad if need be.

  “We’re safe,” he sighed out, assuring the woman and himself.

  He patted her thigh, again noting the strange pliancy of her bronze, as if it were merely tanned flesh.

  She ignored him. Her gaze aimed skyward, but not toward the sun. She stared toward the low horizon, where a half-moon sat. He remembered his earlier assessment of her, how her countenance reminded him of the Huntress. Both the dark Daughter and silvery Son made their home in the moon. It was said the two continually chased one another, round and round, leading to the moon’s waxing and waning. But such a chase remained a great phylosophical argument. Did the Daughter pursue the Son? Or was it the other way around? Wars had been fought over such a religious quandary.

  But at this moment, he couldn’t care less.

  I’m free …

  He laughed up at the sky.

  It seemed impossible. Joy swelled through him, calming his hammering heart and breathless panting. He finally sat up. He stared as the caravan crossed over a sea of black glass, where the sands had been fused by some fiery cataclysm. The reflection of the sun off its surface was blinding.

  At the same time, the day’s heat grew steadily. He searched around him. They needed to get out of the direct sun—or at least, he did. He considered how best to dig a shelter in the broken rock.

  Seems my mining duties are not yet over.

  Despite the burn of the sun, he returned his attention to the mystery kneeling beside him. What exactly had he stolen from the Shriven? What manner of spirit was trapped in that bronze? He recalled the archsheriff mentioning a coming war, how such a creature could turn the tide. Rhaif now understood. Any army led by such a miracle—or, for that matter, a legion of the same—would be unstoppable.

  Still, he sensed such an abuse of her would be wrong.

  It was not her nature.

  He tried to read her face as she stared at the moon. Her features were now sculpted in an expression of sorrow, as if mourning a great loss. He reached again to her, then lowered his arm. He owed her, this spirit who had bought him his freedom, who saved his life. He wanted to ask her how he could repay such a debt, but he feared she could not speak. Or maybe she simply needed more time to fully settle her spirit into the bronze. Either way, there was nothing he could say.

  In their shared silence, she continued to look at the moon. As the caravan continued its course north, Rhaif settled back. A lethargy spread through him after the day’s many terrors. He listened to the driver’s song trailing back to them, to the steady rumble of wheels. He knew he should get started on that shelter, but his eyelids grew heavy and drooped closed.

  After a time, a low moan rose from beside him, stirring him back awake. He turned and looked at the woman, her gaze still on the horizon. He could not say if the sound was a mournful exhalation or her first attempt to speak.

  Still, Rhaif’s skin pebbled with cold bumps.

  Her lips parted again, and the sound firmed around a single word, whispered to the moon.

  “Doom…”

  THREE

  POISONED DREAMS

  What are portents but dremes of the morrow.

  What are dremes but the dai’s hopes cloth’d in dark shadows.

  —From the poem “Allegory of a Scryer,” by Damon hy Torranc

  8

  THE SUDDEN PLUMMET startled Nyx awake. She flailed, scrabbling for any handhold to keep herself from falling. As her heart leaped to her throat, a part of her recognized this feeling. Many times in the past, half-asleep and adrift, she had felt the world shatter under her. In such moments, she would jerk in panic as she fell—only to wake a moment later and find herself safely back in her own bed.

  Not now.

  As she continued to plummet, she thrashed at the blackness around her—not to beat it back, but to hold it closer. Darkness was as familiar to her as her own skin. Below, a strange brightness grew. Kicking, gasping, she tried to stay in the comfort of the shadows. But there was no halting her fall into that light.

  She attempted to cast an arm across her eyes, to ward against the brilliance, but something gripped her wrist and would not let go.

  Words reached her, sounding both distant and at her ear.

  Is she having another convulsion?

  The answer calmed her panic with its familiarity. No, I don’t believe so. Nyx recognized Prioress Ghyle’s calm but certain voice. This is different. It’s as if she fights against waking back into herself.

  With those words, memory flooded into Nyx, like a dam bursting, letting loose a roiling whitewater of terror.

  —a flight up steps.

  —a threat of violation and banishment.

  —the wash of hot blood through her dread-cold fingers.

  —a headless body.

  —the mountainous shadow looming through the smoke.

  —bone-crushing weight.

  —fangs and poison.

  —a violation unimaginable.

  —then darkness.

  One final memory swelled through her, pushing all else aside. Thousands of screams and cries filled her head, her body—until it was too much and finally burst out her throat. The world quaked inside her again, growing ever more violent. Still, beyond it all, she sensed the cresting of a silence without end. She cowered from its immensity and inevitability.

  Then a cool hand rested atop her feverish brow. Words whispered in her ear. “My child, calm yourself. You’re safe.”

  Nyx fought back into her body, not so much heeding the words of the prioress, but to argue against them. “No…” she croaked out.

  Even that pained protest exhausted her. She breathed heavily, drawing in a scent of acrid tinctures, of steeped teas, of dusty sprigs of drying herbs. Still, the agonizing brightness refused to wane.

  She tried to lift an arm—then the other—but her wrists remained gripped. She squeezed her eyelids shut and turned her head away, but the blaze was everywhere. It was inescapable.

  “Unbind her,” Ghyle ordered.

  A man responded, “But if she convulses again, she could hurt—”

  “We must help her wake now, Physik Oeric, or she may never do so. I fear she is too weak. She has slept near onto a full turn of the moon. If she sinks again into her poisonous slumber, she will never escape it.”

  With a tug, then another, Nyx’s wrists were freed. She lifted her trembling arms against the brightness. The prioress’s words settled to her chest. A full turn of the moon. How could that be? Nyx could still feel the crush of monstrous knuckles, the fangs piercing her flesh. She was certain no more than a bell had passed since the attack. Instead, if Ghyle spoke the truth, most of the summer was already gone.

  Nyx’s hands reached her face and discovered a wrap already in place, bound over her eyes, around her head. She fingered its edges. Another tried to pull her hands away.

  “Leave it be, child,” the school’s physik warned.

  Nyx had no strength to resist him. Not that she truly tried. By now, darkness ate at the edge of the brilliance. She welcomed its return, its familiarity amidst all the confusion. She let her arms fall back to the bed. She was suddenly so tired, a stony torpor that weighted down her bones.

  “No,” Ghyle snapped sharply. “Raise her head. Quickly now.”

  Nyx felt a palm cradle the back of her neck and lift her head off of the pillow. Fingers unraveled the wraps around her eyes. Though it was done gently, her head lolled listlessly with each unwinding of the cloth. She grew dizzy from the motion. With it, the darkness coiled ever closer toward the brightness at the center.

  “I thought you warned us to leave her eyes wrapped,” Physik Oeric mumbled. “To make it easier on her.”

  “A precaution born of hope,” Ghyle said. “Now such caution presents too great a risk. She swoons even now back toward oblivion. We must do what we can to stop that from happening.”

  With one final tug, the wrap fell from her face. The end brushed her cheek before being lifted away. She found the strength to shift an arm higher, to ward against the blinding light. She squeezed her eyes even tighter. Still, the radiance stabbed into her skull, driving the darkness back, burning it away.

  Then fingers gripped her chin, and a damp cloth smelling of almskald softened the sandy crusts sealing her eyelids.

  “Don’t fight it, child,” Ghyle urged. “Open your eyes.”

  Nyx tried to pull her head away, to refuse, but those fingers tightened on her chin.

  “Do as I say,” the prioress demanded in tones that underscored her lofty position at the Cloistery. “Or be lost forever.”

  Nyx wanted to balk, but her dah had taught her too well, to always respect her betters. She peeked her lids open and gasped in agony. The light—as blinding as the darkness she had known all her life—stung with a nettle’s burn.

  Hot tears burst and flowed, flushing away more grime and crusts from her eyes. The tears also melted the hard brilliance into a watery brightness. Shapes swam through the haze, not unlike shadows on a bright summer day. Only with each painful blink, the shapes grew sharper; colors she had only imagined bloomed into brilliance.

  Her heart fluttered in her chest like a panicked flutetail in a cage. She scrabbled backward on the bed—away from the impossibility of the pair of faces staring back at her. Physik Oeric squinted at her, his countenance wrinkled like a marsh plum left too long in the sun. Her gaze traced his every line. With her vision always clouded in the past, any colors—the little she could see even on the brightest days—were always muted and muddy.

  But now …

  She stared, mesmerized by the shining blue hue of the man’s eyes, far brighter than any clear sky she had ever experienced.

  As the physik turned to his neighbor, his bald pate reflected the sunlight through the room’s lone window. “It seems you were correct, Prioress Ghyle,” he said.

  Ghyle kept her focus on Nyx. “You can see us. Is that not true, child?”

  Dumbfounded, Nyx simply gaped. The prioress was darkly complexioned, her skin far darker than Nyx had imagined. She knew the prioress had been born to the south, in the lands of the Klashe. The woman’s hair, though, was white as chalk and bound up in a nest of braids atop her head. Her eyes were far greener than any sunlit pond.

  The prioress must have noted Nyx’s attention. A smile played about the corners of her lips. Relief softened the prioress’s eyes. Though, in truth, Nyx could not be sure of any of this. Having never witnessed the subtlety of expressions, she could not know for certain if she was interpreting them correctly.

  Still, Nyx finally answered the prioress’s question with a nod.

  I can see.

  While Nyx should have been joyous at such an impossibility, she now only felt dread. Somewhere in the darkness she had left behind, she could still hear screams rising from those shadows.

  As if the prioress sensed her inner terror, the smile faded on the woman’s face. She patted Nyx’s hand. “You should mend well from here. I believe you’ve finally found your path out of the poison’s oblivion.”

  Ever obedient and not wanting to appear ungrateful, Nyx nodded again.

  But it was not how she felt.

  Though she could miraculously see, she felt more lost than ever.

  * * *

  THE NEXT DAY, Nyx sipped at a thin porridge, cradling the bowl between her palms. Still weak, she needed both hands to hold the bowl steady.

  Her dah sat on a stool beside her cot, leaning his chin atop his cane. He gazed at her with an encouraging grin, but his eyes and brow remained pinched. “It’s a broth of hen bones mixed with oat grindings.” He glanced to the door and back again, then leaned closer. “With a few splashes of wine cider. Should square you off right quick, I just knows it will.”

  Hope rang in his last words.

  “I’m sure it will.” To reassure him, she drew in another long sip before turning to set the bowl on a nearby table.

  As she straightened around, she took in the small cell in the physik’s ward, with its lichen-crusted stone walls, its high narrow window, and rafters hung with drying herbs. A lone flame danced wanly atop a tarnished oil lamp. She still felt overwhelmed by the very sight and details of the room: the wavering strands of spider silk in the corner, the dust motes floating in the sunlight, the whorled grain of the wooden rafters. It was too much. How did one cope with such an overload of details all the time? She found it dizzying and wrong.

  Instead, she turned and concentrated on her dah’s eyes. She tried to soothe the worry shining there. “They’re taking good care of me here. Nearly the entire horde of the school’s physiks, alchymists, and hieromonks have traipsed through here.”

  In fact, they had barely let her sleep.

  Perhaps they fear I will never wake again and dared not lose this opportunity.

  They hadn’t even let her dah visit until this morning. Once allowed, he had spared not a moment. With the day’s first bell, he had hobbled his way up to the fourth tier—where the Cloistery’s wards were housed—accompanied by Nyx’s brother. Bastan had carried a huge pot of porridge, resting in a bucket of coals to keep it all warm.

  Her brother had already returned home to join their older brother in taking care of their duties at the paddocks. Apparently even someone returning from the dead did not slow the pace of the busy trading post. Still, before leaving, Bastan had hugged her in his beefy arms, grabbed her cheeks in his palms, and stared deeply at her.

  “Don’t go a-scaring us again,” he had warned her. “Next time you go about tangling with a Mýr bat, you fetch your brothers first.”

  She had promised to do so, trying to smile, but his reminder of the attack had stoked the terror inside her. At least, the constant attention by the parade of physiks through her small cell had kept her distracted. The curious visitors had poked and pinched her all over, often leaving her blushing. Others had spent time examining the healing punctures in her throat, measuring the scabs, picking the edges, taking pieces with them. One pair—bent-backed with age—had placed leeches on her wrists and ankles, then whisked off excitedly with their blood-bloated slugs.

  Prioress Ghyle sometimes appeared with the others, but she rebuffed any attempt by Nyx to get answers, to fill in the holes since that dreaded day. Still, Nyx knew word had spread throughout the Cloistery. Occasional faces would appear at her room’s high window, requiring a leap to the sill to get a quick peek at the miracle inside.

  She knew the reason for all the attention—both in the room and beyond.

  No one had ever survived the poison of a Mýr bat.

  It was a mystery that the alchymists sought to solve, and a miracle that the hieromonks wished to attribute to the correct god. To distract herself, she had eavesdropped on the conversations of those who trotted through here. She listened to their speculations and fascinations. They spoke as if she weren’t even in the room.

  She could not have been properly poisoned. I wager it was the slightest envenomation at best.

  Or likely some trickery, some feigned debilitation.

  Or perchance the Daughter smiles darkly upon the child.

  Or it could have been the Son’s bright blessing. Didn’t I hear that in the depth of her slumber, she cried out to the moon and—

  This last conversation had been cut off by the arrival of Prioress Ghyle, who sent the pair of monks out with an exasperated roll of her eyes and a stern frown at Nyx—as if she had done something wrong.

  But Nyx’s survival was not the only miracle hidden away in this room.

  She rubbed her tender eyes, knowing her lids were bruised from the constant attention paid to her returned sight. Every time her eyelids drooped in exhaustion, someone would pry them back open.

  Nyx had paid extra attention to any attempts to explain this particular miracle, a wonder that had still left her unmoored. It was as if she had come out of the darkest cave into the brightest day. While she should have been grateful, a part of her still wished to return to the comfort and familiarity of that cave. Even her first attempt at walking this morning, supported on the prioress’s arm, was as if she were a babe new to this world. She wanted to attribute it all to the weakness from being bedbound for so long, but she knew part of it was her adjusting to her eyesight. After so many years, her shadow-riven blindness was writ deep upon her spirit, on her bones, on how she moved through life. Now her mind struggled to balance who she was in the past with this newly sighted person today.