It was a defense, a barrier—a locked gate deep in a cave that barred the only way into Mirrowen that mortals could travel. A shaft that connected both worlds. The umbilical cord of the worlds. How to summarize those meanings in a single word? Tyrus had stared at the page for days, thinking thoughts so deep that he desired neither food nor drink. He was just a young man, of course. And he had stumbled upon a great secret that seemed to shout in his ear. Poisonwell was the lost gate to Mirrowen, a land beyond the grasp of death. There was a way to get there, to be free from death after all. Poisonwell was not just the cause of the Plague. It was also the cure.
And no one knew where that word was inscribed except for Tyrus. If only he had shared that knowledge with someone else—like Possidius.
He looked up at the others, who were each staring at him with looks of hopelessness and despair. They could see nakedly that he had no answers for them. He had no plan that would guarantee their survival. He had led them into death itself.
His heart began to shrivel.
He stared down at Declan, who seemed surprisingly lucid for a man bleeding to death.
“What do you advise?” Tyrus whispered to his friend Mathon, a friend he had known since their shared days in an orphanage.
Mathon swallowed hard. His face was full of sadness and despair. “We thought you knew, Tyrus. We believed in you.”
It was the first crack in the eggshell. The rest of it crumpled around him.
He had failed. The despair of that knowledge hurt worse than the claw marks ravaging his face.
“Our best chance is to flee these woods,” he heard himself saying hoarsely, as the sadness nearly unmanned him. “If we separate and go our own ways, our enemy will hunt us separately and some of us may survive.” He licked his bleeding lip. “I’m not certain any of us will make it out of here alive.”
Looking down, he watched Declan Brin shut his eyes, and an expression of peace crossed the Preachán’s face. He would lie there, still, and wait to die.
It was the hardest decision Tyrus had ever made in his life. He was twenty-five years old.
“Over the years, I have periodically, though seldom, received requests to understand the lore of the Scourgelands. There is very little in the records about that forbidden place. I ascribe the lack of history to the fact that it is so lawless and dangerous that few who venture there have ever survived. Some menace lurks in those woods, a cunning menace that even the Boeotians fear. The only man I know personally who has survived a journey there is Tyrus Paracelsus. And even he rarely speaks of it without shuddering.”
- Possidius Adeodat, Archivist of Kenatos
II
The fire snapped and spat out a cluster of glowing sparks into the night air. Even the wind was timid. Phae glanced surreptitiously at the faces surrounding the camp, all eyes fixed on her father. She could see her own feelings mirrored in most of their expressions—horror mingled with dread. Only two seemed impervious to the emotional tale, namely Kiranrao and Baylen.
On the other side of Tyrus sat Annon, a Druidecht. He was Aeduan and only slightly older than Phae, but his eyes were haunted and his clothes showed the scorch marks and stains of his rough journeys. The talisman and a torc around his neck gleamed in the firelight and he absent-mindedly stroked the fur of a spirit cat, Nizeera, nestling beside him. By Annon, she saw his twin sister, Hettie. Both were the children of Merinda, the only other person who had barely survived the Scourgelands journey with Tyrus, but who had lost her mind overusing the fireblood’s magic. Hettie wore leather hunter garb and smoothed her hair over her ear as she watched. She had been abducted by a Romani as an infant, though she had eventually renounced her Romani heritage and begun Bhikhu training under the man seated next to her.
Paedrin had the dark skin and slanted eyes of the Vaettir and he was an outspoken Bhikhu. His hair was shorn short and he wore stained gray robes that were spotted with blood. His eyes were always expressive as he had listened to the tale, eager to learn more. There were several other Vaettir in the party as well. Prince Aransetis wore the black tunic of the Rikes and his cousin, Khiara, wore paler colors, clad in the formal robes of her order—the Shaliah, the healers of Silvandom. The last Vaettir was the Romani lord Kiranrao, who had listened to the tale with a curl of derision on his lip. He dressed like shadows and his very presence reminded Phae of smoke. Baylen was slightly apart from the others, a hulking Cruithne warrior from Kenatos who had multiple blades strapped to his back and wore armor and battle gear. He showed little emotion on his face or in his eyes, and had listened to the tale with only small coughing chuckles to mark his surprise.