Jerad saw the city of Argent grow on the horizon. It was his first sight of the city since he fled with the rest of its defenders, routed by the traitor's magic. He watched the familiar outline of the walls rise from the plains. Behind them were the forests and hills of the wildlands, which had once been populated by farms, villages, and market towns, all connected to Argent. Remove the heart and kill the body. The Traitor had broken the city’s defenders and then unleashed the Veil. Those who had not fled were trapped inside. Over time, the land had emptied, its people spilling south in a flood to Fearnot and Ghoul’s Creek. He had roamed those dying lands for a while, first in a company of grim warriors determined to fight on. Then among fewer and fewer and then alone.

A whistle sounded near his chest. A speaking tube was tied there. Lucas held the other end and whistled into it to catch his attention. Jerad lifted the tube to his ear.

“How do you want to approach?” came Lucas’ voice as though from a great distance.

Jerad lifted the tube to his mouth. “Go high above the clouds, head out over the sea, and then double back.”

Beyond Argent, there was nothing but ocean to the north and east. Jerad hoped that the Traitor would have his attention focused on the approach from the land to the south. He reached back to confirm the bundle he had packed was still secure behind his saddle. It contained their shields, short swords, and spears, as well as his bow. Underneath the thick leather flying jackets, each wore chain mail vests. They began to climb, reaching for the clouds.

“Do you think there are any people left alive in there?”

“Not everyone escaped. We could not hold long enough to get everyone out.”

“Would they have been killed?”

“No, they would have been enslaved. Atramen wanted the gateway and a workforce to bring out whatever came through it. And for other things.” Jerad did not want to consider the other reasons the traitor would have for keeping prisoners alive. Still, Lucas had the morbid fascination of one who had never faced death.

“What reason?”

Jerad hesitated. They were flying into deadly danger, and Lucas did not know half of it. He had agreed to this mission without needing to be asked. When Jerad recounted what Eoife had seen, including the True Voice Prophecy, the young man volunteered with shining eyes. He would have been much the same at his age—he had been the same—but Lucas needed to know the depths of the Enemy.

“Atramen was once a member of the Higher Hundred. Have you heard of them?” He did not wait for an answer. “My wife was also a member. He was ejected from the Hundred when it was discovered what direction his studies had taken him. Atramen was changing people…”

The shuddering disgust in Jerad’s voice must have been communicated along the tube because Lucas turned in his saddle to look at him for a moment.

“We realized what he had been doing to our prisoners when we saw inside the face plate of a Mute…”

“He turned captured men into…”

Jerad did not answer, feeling the familiar sickened horror that he had felt every time his thoughts returned to the men, women, and children caught under the Veil when it fell. Clouds engulfed them. A fine moisture soaked his skin and clothes.

“We will head for the temple. Once we are below the clouds, you will see it. We will make circles towards the gateway and then out again. We will look for a trail if we do not see her.”

Not for the first time, Jerad wondered exactly how they were supposed to find one lone woman in a city this size. He hoped the city was dead; one person moving in empty streets would be easier to find but easier for the enemy too. He would have brought more men from Fearnot, as many as would come, but only Lucas could fly the giant stormbird. If we ever survive this, I will remedy that, he vowed fervently.

Lucas guided the bird through the blinding clouds, his instinct for direction keeping them on course. The bird’s instinct keeps them flying level. Before long, Lucas was steering them down, and when they broke through the clouds. A sudden sense of vertigo overtook Jerad. Beneath them, waves twinkled in the sunlight. He clutched the metal hook embedded in the harness before him. The harness was a thick leather strap that would have been heavy for a carthorse. It secured a massive saddle atop the back of the stormbird. Lucas rode further ahead, straddling the bird’s neck and steering with deft movements of his heels. His hands were clamped to reigns, secured with pitons to a bony crest around the eagle’s eyes. Ahead of them, rushing towards them rapidly, was the city.

Once called Argent by its human builders, the city lay still and silent.

Buildings large and small were gutted and ruined. Its once tall, resolute walls were pockmarked and scarred, reduced to mounded slopes of rubble in several places. It rose on hills curving around the city’s vast harbor, forming three half-circles facing the sea. The innermost circle rose higher than the others and sprawled across the top was the Silver Towers, the former royal palace. It was the only intact building that Jerad could see. Its walls were daubed with inscriptions written in blood. He wondered if Alyssa’s blood was there. They were runes of power, making the palace a fortress impenetrable from a magical attack.

They were approaching from the north, now hugging the coastline, and using the contours of the land to hide themselves from observers in the city. The temple, whose crypts housed the gateway, occupied a lone peak that rose from the outermost ring of hills. They circled in towards it, the palace and its monstrous adornment lost to sight. As they continued to sink towards the land, the bird Cullain was the first to see them. Mutes swarming through the streets, streaming from the palace. They spread from the palace in all directions, a black flood. Hunting something or someone, Jerad thought. And they have yet to find them.

They circled into the temple, both men scanning the ground. They had reached the valley between Sovereign Heights, the outermost hill from the sea where the merchants had built their houses. Lucas noticed a shift in the movement of the Mutes below. They were all moving in the same direction, purposefully making for the same point, invisible to Jerad and Lucas. He pointed to them. Jerad followed his gesture and nodded.

“Down!” He bellowed, not bothering with the speaking tube. Lucas nodded. Cullain banked, wings dipped, and his flight slowed. His talons scored a path across a rooftop, sending tiles and timbers showering to the ground. The Mutes had seen them, but they were still a distance away. Jerad looked to either side as they flew for any sign of the creature’s prey. Suddenly, the air was filled with a sound born of hell itself. Cullain shrieked, and his wings spasmed. He stopped dead in mid-air, rearing and twisting in pain. Jerad momentarily glimpsed a figure standing in the middle of a street, another behind, running. The standing figure held a box before it and turned a handle on the side. The box was open, and a cacophony of pain and suffering came from within.

Lucas fought for control as the bird’s wings twitched uselessly, carrying them up and down in jerks that spanned a dozen feet. The great beast was vertical for a moment, beak open and screeching. Then it was falling back. Lucas tumbled back from his harness, bouncing from a wing to the ground. Jerad freed himself an instant before Cullain hit the ground and rolled. He fought to recover the breath which had been punched from him in the fall. He looked through swirling stone dust at the cowled figure, which had used blood music to bring them down. The sounds had stopped, and the figure was darting away. A woman’s voice called to her, and Jerad sought the source of the voice. He saw a strangely garbed woman, wearing trousers instead of skirts and a garment that left her arms bare and hugged her upper body tightly. For a moment, their eyes met, and Jerad’s heart stopped. Even through the swirling stone dust, through eyes clouded with pain, her beauty sang to him. The glimpse lasted a handful of heartbeats, and then she was running.

Jerad wanted to cry out, but all his stunned lungs could manage was a breathless croak. His racing heart had nothing to do with the fight for his life. She was the one. Surely, she was the one. He could not believe it had been the other, the figure that had used such a vile weapon against them, the Enemy’s weapon. But they were together.

They were both gone. Jerad scrambled to his feet as Cullain screamed in rage. A Mute flew through the air. Hurled by a hooked beak. The great bird regained its feet, turning to meet more of the creatures emerging from the buildings through which they had tracked their prey. It launched at them, screaming a battle cry, and laying about itself with claws, beaks, and wings. Mutes were swathed in insect-like armor that was constantly in motion. One moment, configured to batter through shields and spears like a charging ram. The next unleashed long limbs to carry them three to four times their height skyward. Sparks flew as beak or claws scraped off, shifting armor where flesh had been exposed a moment before.

Jerad winced as the Mutes began unleashing their blood music. The bird fought back instinctively, its cry countering the unnatural magic of its adversary. Nature fought sorcery.

“Lucas, no!” Jerad saw Lucas staggering towards his steed as it fought. One of the feeding Mutes turned as Lucas screamed Cullain’s name. Jerad lunged for his long bow, scooping it from the ground and knocking an arrow in a smooth, practiced movement. He whistled once, long, and high-pitched. The monstrous head turned towards him, giving him a brief glimpse of its nightmarish face under the open face plate. Then he released the arrow. It took the Mute square in the face, dropping it. The wind whistled through carefully carved fluting on the shaft, making its own high-pitched whine as the arrow flew. It turned more heads towards him, and Jerad picked off each in succession. The tactics for fighting Mutes seemed to come back instinctively.

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“Get back behind me, you fool!” He barked in a battlefield roar.

Lucas came to a halt by the snap of command in the older man’s voice. “We cannot just leave him, Jerad. They will tear him to pieces.”

“He is going wild, man! Do you think he would see you any differently from them?”

Cullain was airborne now, three Mutes hanging from his talons, tearing at him. He smashed them against a building and then to the ground, gaining height.

Jerad turned to his young companion, grabbing the front of his leather coat.

“We must go now while they are still drawn to the noise he is making! Move it!” He shoved the younger man ahead but not in the direction he had seen the two women going. If one of them had been the one he sought, he had no intention of leading Mutes after her. It is better to draw them away and then try and pick up their trail. A grim, gallows smile cracked the dirt plastering his face. His blood surged. How long since he had commanded men on the field of battle instead of organizing the lives of villagers?

Lucas obeyed, and Jerad followed and quickly overtook him. He knew these streets well and, as he ran, was mapping the best escape route through the city. As they ran, they caught sight of a feline creature darting in the same direction, body stretched to a full sprint. He hoped it would go away.

“Do not look back!” He yelled as he sprinted past Lucas. “Follow me, keep your footing, and do not look back no matter what!”

Down Sovereign Heights to the Sunlight Quarter, permanently shaded by the hill and its crown of stone status symbols. Along Silversmith Street, through the Lanes, across the Perfumed Bridge, and into the smithies of the House of Stars. Mutes like to be high to track their prey from above. In the Sunlight Quarter, which would be impossible with the narrow streets and overhanging buildings, even run-down as they were. They dashed through the gloom of the smithy, a large, high-ceiling room dominated by its iron forge. Jerad looked about him for anything that could be used as a weapon. If it came to hand-to-hand fighting against a Mute, the outcome was all but foretold, but he would rather have something more than his bare hands.

He heard the hunting cries behind them, up the hill. They were getting closer but off to the east. Not on them yet. He hunted amongst the debris left behind when the smithies owner fled or was killed. He extracted two spears from a pile of scrap metal, rusted and pitted but serviceable enough.

“Lucas!” he hissed, handing him the weapon. He had trained all Fearnot’s non-disabled men to fight with spear and shield, drilling them on how to hold the earth walls of their village and form a shield wall should the earthworks fall. Lucas hefted the spear confidently. Jerad moved closer, whispering.

“I know a place. This is one of the smithies for the House of Stars. They were one of the merchant houses in the silver trade. They built their smithies over the Blackwater River to run coal barges from the mines under them.”

“We are going to swim out?!” Lucas protested.

“No, we are going to hide. If we are lucky, there will still be an ore barge moored down there and a clear channel to sail it through. At the very least, we can let them pass by overhead and then double back.”

“Back!” Lucas’ eyes were wide, and panic rode him. “Why are we going back, for crying out loud.”

“Because I need to pick up the trail of those women. They are the ones we are after. One of them anyway.”

He clamped a hand over Lucas’ response as he heard a sudden noise. He hustled him behind the forge, crouching and waiting, hardly breathing. There came the long, low, ticking growl of a stalking Mute, then another. Two of them right outside. The streets out there were muddy; he would not hear any footsteps. Then silence. Jerad waited a long moment, then waited some more before peering out from behind the forge. Nothing. They had passed by.

“Look, Jerad. Greyhame was the river we followed when we flew in, yes? If we can get onto it, we follow it right out into the Wildlands, and I can try to call Cullain back. I have my whistle. If the Silence is after those two…”

“Then we are all that stands between it and its goal. And that is reason enough even if we had never heard of the True Voice. But we have, haven’t we?” Jerad’s stare had dropped the gaze of hardened soldiers, and Lucas looked away.

“They did not exactly seem defenseless, Jerad.” He mumbled. “God’s scream!” He swore. “One of them used blood music on us. How do you know they are not with the Silence?”

“Because the Mutes were after them,” Jerad replied. But it troubled him. Blood music was the weapon of the Enemy. Prisoners were tortured and kept alive in agony for months, even years, to extract the essence of their pain through their screams. He remembered the scarlet-cloaked Shriekers, with their pain boxes, unleashing the raw energy of a thousand tortured prisoners to break the minds of the musicians who had gathered to defend Argent. Alyssa had been one of those defenders.

“Is it worth it, Jer?” Lucas’s voice was small and filled with fear. “I mean, the running, the fighting, the...the…”

“Fear?” Jerad asked gently.

Lucas nodded. He looked ashamed. “I thought this would be an adventure. I thought the Veil had been lifted, and we were flying in to rescue the great heroine and...and…I am scared, Jer.”

“You would be stupid not to be Lucas. Use your fear. It can make you faster and stronger. It can keep you alive. There is no shame in feeling fear in battle.”

“But I do not want to fight. I am not a warrior.”

“You are now!” Jerad cut him off sharply. “You are because now, you have to be.”

“Why? Why are we doing this, Jerad? I know you were a soldier, but we have never been threatened in Fearnot. You make us learn to fight and build walls, but the Silence does not even know we exist…”

“And how long do you think we will be ignored? How long before the Mutes begin to hunt beyond the wildlands? We are living on borrowed time. If the True Voice has come, the world is about to be set afire, and no one will be spared the flames. We can fight or give up and die, and the world with us. And everywhere will be like this. Dead, silent.”

Lucas could not meet his gaze. He hunched his shoulders as though Jerad’s words were blows.

“I am just so scared. It is like us carrying a dead weight around inside me.” Jerad reached for the leather cord that Lucas wore around his neck, pulling out the tin whistle he used to train the stormbirds. He clasped Lucas’ hands around it, holding it up before his eyes.

“Hold on to what is most important to you, son. For me, it was what Alyssa was prepared to fight and die for. And I have put that aside for too long.”

Lucas’ eyes focused on the whistle. Jerad knew how much the boy loved the birds he had trained, some of which he had raised himself. He hoped he had chosen the correct symbol. Then he saw the change in Lucas’ face and knew he had been right. Lucas nodded, jaw set.

“We are going to get back to where we saw those women, and we are going to follow them. Only one of them attacked us, and whatever she was, I knew that she was not a Shrieker. Now, come on. We need to get down to the basement.”

They moved cautiously through the deserted smithy until Lucas found stone steps set into the floor, obscured by shadow. As they began to descend, Jerad caught a glimpse of movement at the entrance to the smithy. A feline was padding across the open doorway, stopping momentarily, and looking at him. It looked the same as the one he had seen running beside them. He shook his head, foolish to think nonsense when danger was so close.

At the bottom of the steps was a long, vaulted room strewn with coal spilling from rotted sacks. They could hear the sluggish lapping of running water. Ahead, the Blackwater coursed between manmade banks of rough stone. A shaft of square light fell onto the river through an opening in the ceiling. When they reached it, Jerad could see other shafts along the tunnel through which the river entered and left the chamber.

A broad walkway followed the river into the tunnel to allow barge ponies to walk alongside the ore boats, pulling them along. Jerad led Lucas into the downstream tunnel, squinting in the poor light to make out the shape of a ship moored or adrift on the water. He lost track of the time before finally hearing the thump of timber bumped against stone by the current. A long, low craft was before them. It did not appear tied but was trapped by the jutting prow of a sunken boat. It had drifted downriver until the wreck had stopped it.

Lucas and Jerad clambered aboard. It was a hull. A small, covered area at the rear of the boat enabled bargemen to shelter. Still, the remaining vessel was given over to storage for whatever it needed to carry. The boat was empty, and after some effort, bracing themselves against both the wrecked boat and the stone walkway, they managed to free the barge. The current took it immediately, carrying it downriver surprisingly quickly. Lucas and Jerad huddled in the small cabin, hunching to keep out of sight as daylight played over them from the light shafts. Then, the darkness overhead lifted, and the river flowed under the open sky. Peering out, Jerad could see the tall shapes of warehouses on either side of the water. He kept an arrow knocked, and following his lead, Lucas grasped the spear grimly. He jumped as shadows flitted across them from above.

Mutes, leaping across the river from rooftop to rooftop. None appeared aware of them or even curious about the vessel that the river was carrying. They saw an empty boat, and it did not occur to them that their prey might be hiding inside. Lucas and Jerad would have to stand in plain sight to pay attention. He tried to determine which part of the city they were in and where along the Greyhame they would come out.

“There are too many of those things for me to call Cullain down here,” Lucas muttered softly. “Do you know where the river is taking us?”

“I think so. The market is over there.” Jerad pointed to the right. “The harbor is somewhere in front of us. The Blackwater runs around the base of the crown before it joins the Greyhame and runs out to the sea. So, if we follow until…”

He stopped as he saw the feline standing on the stone harbor, watching the barge slide slowly past. It was the same animal he had seen twice before; he was sure of it. It just sat there watching and then moved away from the river towards a gap between two warehouses. It stopped again and looked back at them. It was waiting.

“I’ll be a son of a…” Jerad whispered. His soldier’s instinct cried out that he could not risk the success of their mission on a foolish whim. Felines were dumb animals; he would not let this one set his path. It would probably lead him to some rotted fish it had found. But another part of him, who had been husband to a musician who had wielded magic, told him that there were strange things in the world and not all monstrous.

“We are getting out here.” He told Lucas. He scanned around, stood, and reached over to a concrete mooring post.

“Are you sure, Jer? Why here?”

Jerad almost laughed aloud. It was too ridiculous, but the feline still stood waiting patiently, and he was increasingly convinced.

“Just trust me, Lucas.”

He hauled the boat against the stone bank, holding it against the current long enough for Lucas to scramble up, then pulling himself beside him. He ran for the nearest warehouse wall, trying to look in all directions at once. Lucas followed.

“That way.” Jerad pointed after the feline, whose tail was disappearing around a corner. He was relieved that Lucas appeared to have fallen into the habit of automatically obeying, glad the old officer’s tone had not left him. He led the younger man across a wider street along the alleyway through more alleys until they climbed uneven stone steps out of the warehouse district. He realized that they must be climbing the Ramparts, the outermost circle of hills atop which were the Sovereign Heights. Always, the feline darted ahead, but not so far that it was lost to sight. The steps leveled out when the voice boomed from the sky like a thousand thunderclaps.