Chapter 2

The Isle

Before the morning was bright or early, an insistent rapping woke them both. Vander looked to the window, the sky barely pale, and moaned. Maggy was up faster, throwing on a long shirt and opening the door. Orin and Halada stood there, already dressed. Wordlessly, Halada thrust a loaf of bread into Maggy’s hands. Vander smelled that it was warm and fresh, and this was enough to rouse him from the bed.

“We’ve been to the baker,” Orin announced in his lilting accent, and he chided them, “Come, dress yourselves, striplings. The day is rising, and the isle awaits!”

“We will meet you at the docks,” Halada said. Orin waved merrily as he went. They left Vander and Maggy to rush about, collecting their gear and accoutering themselves. Maggy pulled tight the buckles of Vander’s ring mail and tossed him his helm.

“I liked how you looked in your armor,” he said to her, though a reddening face belayed his smug grin.

She returned a teasing smile. “I liked you without yours.” Striding past Vander, she gave him a firm pat behind, then she grabbed her pack and rattled down the steps.

Vander chuckled and followed, though more slowly, stretching as he went. Before meandering into the morning, he stopped to speak with Idna, who was working her cauldron of gruel. After a minute’s haggling, he bought a half pound of coffee beans. It was true, Idna confirmed, she kept the beans for Sire Landon’s pleasure. She doubted he would miss it, though, as lately his taste for the drink had waned. Vander thanked her, departing.

When he emerged into Dulaman, he found the town bustling. Youths stumbled around groggily, preparing for fieldwork on the Melriar’s farther bank. Vander found Maggy already caught in a flow of grizzled villagers surging toward the docks.

By the time they arrived at the water’s edge, Halada and Orin had rejected two boats already. Most of the small vessels were ill-suited to carry four sellswords and their gear. Yet, being strangers in Dulaman, it proved difficult to find a willing captain. In the end, Orin offered several gold rings, the worth of many days’ catch, before a deal was struck.

So, when they piled into the creaky skiff, all but a few of the town’s fleet had slipped into the sound and begun casting nets. The little ship bobbed eagerly, knocking into the dockside as Vander wobbled along it. More practiced on the water, Orin and Halada divided the work of steering, he on the rudder, and she on the sails.

For Vander’s part, it was only his second time on a boat, and he quickly recalled why. It reminded him of riding an ill-trained horse, but the sea’s muscle and temperament were, if anything, worse. That was to say nothing of the shadow in the deep, ever-hungering, the terror of sailors... Better not to dwell on it, Vander decided, girding his stomach. It would be a short journey to the isle, after all. So, trying to stay out of the way, he and Maggy bundled with their packs into the skiff’s narrow bow.

This proved a poor decision. For with every dip toward the surf, saltspray streaked over the prow, soaking them. Still, the weather was fair, with a brisk and lively wind. They made good time, slowed only by a stretch of rocky shallows between the headlands and the largest island. While they found no landing on the nearest tip of the temple islet, Orin spotted a smoother approach in a small cove. It lay midway along the leeward side. Once near the shore, Halada leaped out, landing in swells that reached her shoulder, and she dragged the skiff onto a stony beach.

Afterward, she looked cold and damp. She might have hoped that the sun, which had been blazing down on Dulaman, would dry her quickly, but had no such luck. Despite the warm day and a steady wind, the small island was cloaked in a chill fog that clung to them and crept beneath their skin. Halada did not complain, of course, and soon they worked their way up a steep bluff to higher ground.

The island proved mostly bare, a bleak finger of stone, its soil scraped away by gust and gale. Strands of dry seaweed showed that the tides could all but swamp the narrow isle when storm-swells rose. Orin climbed a heap of smooth boulders, seemingly deposited by some great wave. Yet, even he could see little through the clinging fog.

Lacking a lay of the land, the party resigned themselves to searching southward methodically. They trudged back and forth across the island at intervals of ten yards, which Vander measured with a knotted rope.

The going was slow. Through a blanket of oppressive haze, the sun’s blurry outline neared its height before they had covered a quarter league. To Vander’s dismay, Maggy observed that if the ruin proved large, they might need to spend a night on the isle. He had hoped they would be riding northward with a sack of gold by morning, if not later that day.

His hopes dimmed as they traveled yard by yard across the island for another hour, perhaps two. At last, something of interest came into view. It was a standing stone, raised atop a granite bluff, though the stone itself was formed from something else, greenish with veins of purple quartz. Vander helped Orin up the rockface for a closer look. Though the gnome remained a nimble climber, the ascent was bedeviled by curtains of poison ivy, which flowed from every handhold. Eventually, Vander had to lift Orin to the top from a precarious ledge, before hauling himself up after.

The strange menhir was covered in pin-dots and trailing spirals, carved in deep relief. Meaningless though it appeared to Vander, Orin insisted that the symbols showed the patterned cadence of writing. Unable to decipher the glyphs, Orin nonetheless felt them familiar. They were reminiscent, perhaps, of scripts from among the Thulgrähbar, a sect of dwarves who had long warred with his people. But if some history connected this isle with his old foes, he could not say what.

He was confident, though, that the stone had been there a long time, for in places sea winds had worn the patterns almost smooth, despite the depth of their carving. As Vander began to weary of the old gnome’s ponderous examination, which yielded little more with time, he heard a merciful shout from Halada.

“Door here!” her voice came from the swirling fog below.

“Sort of a stone wedge, well hidden,” he heard Maggy add.

Vander helped Orin scramble back to the ground, and they worked their way to the other side of the bluff, following Halada’s voice. She had indeed found a door, of sorts. Really, it was no more than a tall rock blocking a fissure in the side of the stone crag. Peering beyond it, though, they could see the shadowed hint of a passage.

Halada was already at work with a hatchet, cutting away the strands of poison weed that shrouded the uneven slab. Finding some footholds to climb beside the stone, Vander endeavored to pry it down with his falchion. This was fruitless, and he dropped back down as he noticed his weapon starting to bend. Orin proffered a small but sturdy-looking pry bar from within his long coat. Halada took it and began to work it behind the tall stone, until Orin whispered, “Stop.”

They saw him raise a finger to his lips and wiggle his ear, then point westward through the fog. “A lot of seabirds, eating something,” Orin said. Vander could hear only the steady rush of waves, but he had traveled long enough with the gnome, and trusted him to hear a pin drop in a haystack.

So, they followed Orin’s lead, and after a few minutes’ hiking, Vander too could hear the din of shrieking gulls. A stunted tree loomed in the fog ahead, near the direction of the noise. It was a twisted ash, growing from a deep split in the islands’ granite. Just a little past the tree, that split was riven wider into a crevasse, so broad that only Halada might have bestridden it comfortably.

White gulls with reddened beaks were swarming over the rift. They scattered into the sky, calling and squawking, as the party strode through them. Still, another cluster of gulls was pecking at something down in the crevasse. The birds tumbled up and out, only after Vander threw a stone into their midst.

Several corpses were lodged midway down the fissure, as though tossed there. Death clung reekingly to the air, and Maggy wretched, looking away. He rubbed her back. The smell was bad, but he was no stranger to it. So, he lay prone on the ground, lowering himself partway for a closer look.

He spied at least seven bodies, mostly humans, though an elf was among them, and perhaps a half-elf too. The rot and scavenging made it hard to tell. At Vander’s asking, Halada lowered him farther, until he was able to grab one of the bodies by its armored shins, and she dragged them both up. Vander flipped the body onto its back.

His gaze jerked away instinctively from the dead face. But he forced himself to regard the corpse again, finding a woman of middle age, dressed in thin plate armor. The other bodies were similarly accoutered, their weapons and gear suggesting that they had been mercenaries. This woman was in better condition, though, having fallen head-down. Her position had sheltered her from the hungry birds.

Vander looked back at Maggy, whose face had a peakish tinge. “Can you tell what killed them?” he asked her gingerly. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. Then she took out a yard of gauze. She wrapped it several times around her mouth and nose, packing herbs between the layers. When this was done, she approached the body for closer inspection.

With her dagger, she cut away sections of armor and cloth to expose the flesh beneath. Vander and Orin waited patiently through her examination, while Halada wandered off to scout the area. At last, Maggie took a few steps back from the body.

“I think she drowned,” she said, muffled through layers of bandage, “But...” She trailed off.

“But?” Orin prompted.

“But only the head and the shoulders show signs of sitting in water,” Maggy elaborated.

“Like she...fell in a tide pool and drowned?” asked Vander, immediately feeling foolish.

“Or was held under, and left there,” said Orin. The gnome’s expression, usually animated by curiosity, had sharpened. He approached the dead woman with singular focus, seeming as unruffled as Vander by the stink of the corpses.

“Look,” he said mostly to Maggy, though he had Vander’s attention as well. “Well, first of all, I concur entirely. No wounds beside the sodden flesh, but here...” Orin pointed to a line of gouges on her chestplate, as though her armor had halted a series of stabs, each two inches from the next. There also appeared to be a claw mark on her pauldron. “Though whether this damage is old or new, I am unsure,” said Orin as he stood.

While they pondered this, Halada trotted back through the fog and shook her head. Nothing to report.

“They can’t be more than a week dead,” Maggy said, her arms folded tightly.

“I wonder,” began Vander. “Maybe some of the mercenaries Sire Landon wouldn’t hire came here anyway. It’d be a pain to travel all the way to Dulaman, where there’s no other work, just to be told your services aren’t needed. I’d sure think about checking the place for valuables, if it were me.”

“Perhaps...” said Orin. His sharpness of countenances had not faded, and his nose wrinkled in irritation. “Though I am beginning to wonder how honest Sire Landon has been with us. It would have been in his interest to claim we were the first, if other troupes had failed to return. He may not have wished to up his price to match the danger.” This was followed by silence among the party, which Vander eventually broke.

“Well... that could be. I can’t say I’d be thrilled. But it’s, uh, kind of an opportunity...” He rubbed his head awkwardly, “We can still do our work, sketch the place and make notes for him, then hold the papers until he gives us a better reward. What with circumstances being different from what he told us.”

“We don’t know what the danger here is,” Maggy said with concern. “There are more dead in that ditch than we have among us. Something on this island can kill well-armed people.”

“There’s that...” Vander conceded hesitantly. “But if we go back empty-handed to Landon, tell him we found some bodies, but we retreated at the first sniff of a threat...I’m not sure he’d be happy to keep employing us. Far as we know, there’s another company already arrived at the village, ready to do the work if we disappoint.” Maggy sighed, not disagreeing. “And, I mean, we have a professional reputation. I don’t want word getting out that we showed up here, took his advance, and then got spooked. Plus...three hundred gold pieces is a lot of money. We do this, we can do whatever we want for a while, go where we like.” He finished with a chagrined look.

“There’s something deadly here, no doubt,” Orin cut in. He was sitting cross-legged on a boulder, his chin in his hand. “If something can kill armed people like these, it can hurt the villagers too. What if another fisher washes up here? What if Sire Landon sends more people, who aren’t as capable as we are?” He looked to Maggy.

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She leaned her head back, closing her eyes. “You had to put it that way?” She sighed, “Very well. If someone is to fall here, better it be me than an innocent fisher.”

“Better yet, let’s survive?” Vander suggested.

Halada, who had been silent, spoke. “I do not shrink from danger,” she said with finality. So, they gathered their packs and weapons, and they wound back through the fog to the blocked gap beneath the standing stone. Halada hooked in Orin’s miniature pry bar, straining for only a moment before the vertical slab of rock toppled down, and she leaped clear of it.

They saw, then, that the natural fissure opened to a stonework passageway, descending by a staircase of precipitous incline. Orin peered down, past where the darkness obscured Vander’s sight. “Fifty feet to the bottom,” he said.

As they entered, they found the passage too narrow to walk abreast, indeed barely wide enough for Halada’s shoulders. Vander went first, stowing his spear, with his falchion and dented shield raised in front of him. Maggy followed, pole-mace hefted on her shoulder. With a whisper, she held out her pendant, and it illuminated the long stairway. With Orin ensconced between them, Halada took up the rear, her tall bow nocked and ready.

In the light cast by Maggy’s pendant, Vander examined the stonework around him. The passage wasn’t just bedrock. Rather, stone blocks had been set here, of the same kind as the menhir above. They were dark green with veins of purple, smooth but lusterless. The walls seemed, if anything, to drink away the glow of the amulet. Soon, he noticed too that the steps were subtly uneven, inspiring an uneasy vertigo as he descended the stair.

Approaching halfway down, Orin hissed a warning to stop and be still, but he need not have. Vander held up a hand to his companions behind him, signaling that he had heard the same. He could tell that Halada and Maggy had heard it too. There was movement from below, like the shuffling of slippered feet. Then the grinding of a heavy stone echoed up to them, followed by silence.

They stood frozen in the cramped stairway for what felt like minutes, before Vander called down, “Anyone there? We don’t mean harm.” No answer came. The element of surprise was lost already, after all. Even if those below were peaceful, the intrusion of armed visitors might provoke them to violence. “Hello?” Vander called again into the darkness, but with no more reply than he had received before.

Nothing left to do but continue, they worked their way down haltingly. Vander noticed, as they reached the landing, he had not breathed since last he spoke. So, he sucked down a deep breath, but it brought little comfort, and he gripped his blade, knuckles whitening around the hilt.

Moving farther through the passage, they came out into a wide, long room. At its center, Vander could see some short structure. Though the chamber was broad, its ceiling hung low. Stranger still, it lacked any vaulting or pillars to support its weight. Vander had worked beneath the ground before, and the thought refused to leave his mind of the whole room collapsing in one slab. But that was beyond his power to fix, so he focused on what he could do.

By Maggy’s lighted amulet, he saw a passage at the room’s far end, and another on the right. And there were three corpses, propped slack against the left-hand wall as if they had fallen asleep there.

Softly, and without a word, the party encircled the bodies, weapons ready. Halada’s bow was half drawn back. A curved knife danced between Orin’s hands. Vander kicked one of the bodies. Nothing happened. Just a corpse. He crouched further, coming face to face with the dead man.

The skin was drawn and parched, brittle almost, and pulled tight across the slain man’s rictus. The body looked as though it had been interred in a desert for centuries. Prying his attention away from the face, he took stock of the corpse’s raiment, a tabard of blue and black, alike to the guards they had seen in Dulaman. It wore a kettle helm, fallen lopsided across its desiccated cheek, while a shield remained strapped to its arm.

“I really don’t think Sire Landon was truthful with us,” Maggy said from behind him. Vander shook his head silently in reply.

As Vander looked over the other corpses, similarly dressed, Orin moved to the center of the left-hand wall. The gnome ran his dagger vertically along a crack in the stones, and up another hairline a few feet down. “A false wall,” Orin muttered. “There is a door here.”

“Can you open it?” Vander asked. Orin had begun to search for a mechanism already. From behind them, Halada spoke.

“See this?” she said, facing toward the center of the chamber, where there sat a low, round structure. While Orin searched the wall, Maggy and Vander moved to see what Halada had found.

It appeared to be a well, seven, maybe eight, feet wide. Its rim came up to Vander’s hips. Around its edge were hooked blades, the length of a finger, spaced every two inches or so. Maggy leaned over the lip of the well, and Vander followed suit. By her light, he could see that it was not deep. He might have stood inside it without the water reaching his chin.

He dipped in his hand and tasted the water. “Salty,” he said, and he stared at the odd thing, hair rising on his arms. “Is there magic here, Orin?” he asked.

Orin tutted at the interruption but ambled over, and with his right hand made a sequence of arcane gestures. His irises flashed like a cat’s, and he bent low over the well, sniffing it and running his hand over the rim. He brushed his fingers together as though feeling dust between them.

“There is magic,” he said. “On the well, and on the water. Some kind of summoning, perhaps. I would say, if it didn’t seem so peculiar, that the water is what’s being summoned into the basin. Quite curious...” he muttered, wandering away from them and back to the wall, engrossed.

Vander felt Maggy’s hand on his arm. “This isn’t good,” she said.

“Yeah. We shouldn’t have come here,” he agreed. But he added more reluctantly, “We should check the other rooms.” She squeezed his arm again.

“Yeah,” said Maggy. She let the brilliant amulet fall to hang at her chest and took her club in two hands. Halada lit a candle and set it on the floor beside Orin, keeping watch as Maggy led Vander down the side hallway.

It opened shortly to a chamber smaller than the first, centered around a looming, unsettling statue. It was a gaunt, tall figure. One arm held a spindly candlesnuffer skyward. Whether it was meant to be human, elf, or something else, they could not tell. For it seemed to wholly swallow the light that fell on it, obscuring its features. They took a step back from the statue.

On the walls to its sides were four embossed carvings, accented with silver strands. There was a bulging eye set in a wider circle and a bat-winged monstrosity with a yawning maw. On the opposite wall was a creature with four human feet, covered in voluptuous mouths. Its many arms held twisted lyres. Finally, carved beside it, was a kindly old man of dwarven features, leaning on his cane.

Swiftly, eager to move on, Vander felt over the walls for another hidden door, while Maggy examined the carvings. Finding nothing he turned back to her. She was staring at the carving she had begun with.

“What is it?” he asked, coming to stand beside her and looking himself. It was the old man with the cane.

There was something reassuring about it, a friend who would gently show him the truth, who would comfort him once he knew. As his gaze lingered, the figure seemed to smile, wider and wider, with teeth that grew longer until they were as tall as the little man himself. Yet, truly, it was a friendly smile. If he stayed only a moment longer, Vander was sure, all of his hurts would be healed, all troubles quieted. There was nothing then, but the stooped figure’s kindly smile.

A sharp tug brought him stumbling back to the corridor. Maggy had pulled him out of the room and was leaning on the wall of the passage, taking long breaths. “What...?” Vander mouthed. “By the cursed moon.” He spat onto the floor, as though to purge a taste from his mouth, but something lingered. He looked back toward the gentle old man, longingly. Maggy patted his pack twice.

“The other room,” she said. “We need to check.”

He nodded, glancing backward one more time before they returned to the central chamber. Orin was still working on the wall, lost in thought, muttering to himself. Halada stood beside him with an arrow nocked and half drawn back.

Seeing their companions still engaged, Maggy and Vander proceeded to the farther passage, opposite the stair by which they had entered. This was a longer hallway, by Vander’s estimate at least ten yards. The floor felt more uneven, and twice he shouted in frustration as he stumbled. When at last they arrived at the end of the passage, they found the smallest room yet.

In the middle stood a pillar. The smooth column was set with short-chained manacles, facing the back wall. There on the wall hung a stone shelf, reminiscent of an altar. On it sat a phial of clear liquid. Above the altar was another carving, hard to make out in the shadowed chamber.

Indeed, as Vander peered closer, the carving’s aspect seemed to shift. He made out a mouth and flowing tentacles before nausea forced him to look away. He noticed on the altar, beside the glass phial, a bundled piece of fabric, which he shook open. It was a blue and black coat, finely tailored, with tears and bloodstains marking the left side.

“Hey Orin!” he called down the long passage. Struggling to elaborate, he followed up, “There’s weird shit in here.”

He heard, in the echoey ruin, Orin swearing to himself and collecting his tools. A minute later, with Halada still watching the main room by candlelight, Orin shuffled in.

“The door’s mechanism is well hidden,” Orin said testily, before his gaze came to rest on the altar and the carving above it. Vander couldn’t think of another door Orin had failed to open. He had also never seen Orin look afraid before, but as the gnome’s eyes locked with the altar, he grew paler than pale, any hint of color leaving his already grayish face.

“Get out of here. Run,” Orin said quietly, and he turned and fled.

Vander and Maggy rushed to follow him, running headlong down the corridor toward Halada’s candle. The tall woman was standing at the edge of the light, when something came from the darkness and grabbed her, dragging her from view. They burst into the central chamber, illuminated again by Maggy’s amulet.

Halada fell to the floor, pulled down by a pair of withered corpses, which set on her, punching and biting. The third sprinted at Orin, spreading its arms in a grim embrace. Vander lunged in front of Orin, bashing it back with his shield. As it fell, he plunged his falchion into its chest and tore the blade out in a plume of powdered flesh.

Halada dragged the dead men up with her as she rose again. One she hurled away. The other she kicked a yard back. In a fluid motion, she grabbed her fallen bow, nocked an arrow, and loosed it into the creature. With an arrow in its chest, well through the spine, it staggered. Then it surged again toward Halada, as the second climbed back to its feet.

Maggy ran into the fray, bashing the closest creature down with her pole-mace, then dashing its skull on the floor over and over. As Vander glanced back toward the dead man he had shield-checked, it barreled into him, biting his cheek. Blood spattered into his eyes and flowed down his neck. He grabbed the creature and held it off by its shoulders as it bit the air, scrabbling and gnawing toward his face.

Then came a splintering sound, like breaking glass, and it fell away backward. Vander wiped the blood from his eyes. Orin stood panting, with clouds of frost above his outstretched hands. On the ground beside the fallen creature lay its foot, the ankle frozen and shattered.

But it was not done. The dead thing crawled forward over the floor, trying to climb Vander’s legs. He brought his shield down, smashing its arms, then sliced them away. Orin had already rushed toward Maggy and Halada. Vander did likewise.

Halada was wrestling with one creature. The other was downed, but struggling to stand, as Maggy brought down her mace on it. Her weapon rose and fell, but for every shattered bone, the thing would not be still.

Orin slid behind the dead man that held Halada. Twin daggers spun in his hands, slashing through its tendons and spine. The air around him seemed to flash with blades, as if he had a thousand ghostly hands, each with a shining dagger. Vander raised his shield, ready to leap forward, curling himself to strike. But he stopped. At the edge of his vision, something moved, and he turned toward it.

The well at the chamber’s center rippled. The shallow water, which had been clear as glass, grew black. A shadow erupted from the pool and clung to the ceiling. Then it propelled itself at Vander, striking in a flash of claws and muscle. He fell, bracing himself on his elbows. His head snapped back to the stonework. The monster’s weight pinned him down. Links of ringmail popped, the creature’s foreclaws digging in his chest. Gray tentacles whipped out to strangle him and grasp his sword-arm.

Losing air, he clung to consciousness. Then it was off him, tumbling in a blur with Halada. As Vander tried to stand, the dead man he’d cut down heaved onto him. Its forehead slammed into his nose, and it opened its jaws for another bite. He pulled up his falchion, lodging it between the thing’s teeth.

They were locked there, its champing mouth grinding on the edge of his blade. Then he pulled the falchion across, slicing clean through. The top of its head fell away as Vander lurched upright. He watched, shocked, as his foe still pushed itself toward him with its remaining leg. It was slow now, though.

He searched for Halada and found her beneath the monster that had pinned him. She was struggling to shove it away, pushing with her longbow. Throwing down his falchion, Vander pulled his spear and threw it. The weapon embedded up to the shaft in the monster’s flank. In the creature’s moment of pain, Halada scrambled away. She drew a hatchet and stood beside Vander as he snatched up his sword.

One of the tentacles wrapped around the spear and yanked it free, tossing it aside. Vander got a clearer look at the beast. It was alike in shape to a panther, though it had no tail. From pockets of flesh along its sides, muscular gray tentacles slithered out. Its neck was short and thick. The head was a blunt stump, its only feature a single, lidded eye encompassing the face.

Slowly, the lids of the eye opened to reveal curved teeth, long and thin as needles. Not an eye at all. A sound flowed from its lolling maw, like a child humming some alien tune, and Vander heard it speak in his mind.

Come food. Come toys. Be still. Know peace. The words repeated. If Vander could have silenced them by slicing away his ears, he might have. It was as if the thing were in his thoughts, studying them with amusement. Looking at Halada, he knew she had heard it too.

The refrain changed, Coward. Know peace, coward. Know peace, coward.

The lidded mouth opened wider, and it walked with luxuriant slowness, while Halada and Vander stood transfixed. Then Maggy was in front of them, and she slammed down her club. The monster deflected her blow with its claws, but she spun the weapon about, ramming the pole into its head.

It stumbled. Maggy ran. Vander followed. Halada and Orin were already dashing toward the stair. He scrambled up the uneven steps, sometimes on all fours.

They came out into the fog-bleared day, and Vander turned, staggering, to look back.

The abomination from the well stood at the fissured opening of the passage, at the sunlight’s edge. Coward. Food. Know peace. Vander heard its thoughts once more. Then it faded into the shadows and was gone.

Heedless of their injuries, they fled over the stony island toward their boat. His breath burned, and blood still flowed from the wound on his face, but Vander did not slow. Halada was carrying Orin, and Maggy ran nearby. Vander fell and got up. He fell again, and Maggy heaved him from the ground.

In the skiff, Halada unfurled the rigging, and Orin pointed the rudder up the channel between the islands. The little boat pitched in the riptides as they worked against the current, making haste from the shore. Vander’s head spun, and nausea overtook him. He vomited over the side, into the churning waves. Settling back in the boat he heard Orin speaking, as though from another world.

“We can’t go back to the village. We don’t know how much Sire Landon knew. We don’t know his intent.” That made sense to Vander. He tried to agree, but his vision narrowed, and the world pirouetted around him. He blacked out.