The time for talk is done, and we move slowly as we head into the thick wall of trees. Within the first few steps everything is already so dense that I’m not sure I could find my way back out.
I could always climb a tree, I remind myself. It was how I made it through the forest last time.
I’m not the only one visibly nervous. The tension in Kyor is marked,and it makes my gut churn. He knows something, something that’s scaring him, and I need to find out what.
‘Stop!’ I call out, my voice escaping before I have a chance to second-guess what I’m about to say. ‘I’m riding with you,’ I demand of Kyor before twisting back to Caz. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
She shakes her head. ‘No, not if it’s what you want.’
It is. I think. Right now, in this, I need to be with him. But not for my sake. For all of ours.
If Kyor is surprised by my demand, he doesn’t show it, his face still carefully blank.
Elska lopes back to me, and I climb onto her back, settling in front of Kyor. The strength of his body eases some of my rising tension, but the rigidity in his frame is telling. He’s keeping something back.
‘What’s going on?’ I murmur to him when we’ve outpaced the others. ‘You’re clearly spooked. Tell me the truth.’
Silence meets my question.
‘Talk to me, Kyor,’ I insist. ‘If you want me to trust you ever again, then you need to tell me things. Tell me what’s got you so freaked out. Because I know you, and I’ve never seen you like this.’
He leans forward until his lips are just touching the shell of my ear, mirroring Ruben’s actions from earlier. ‘We’re being followed,’ he whispers.
All the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
‘By whom?’
‘Not who,’ he whispers back. ‘What.’
Well, that doesn’t sound good.
‘Well, what then?’ I ask, trying to steady my pulse.
He hesitates before the answer finally falls from his lips. ‘A Myrkr.’
My jaw drops only for a shocked laugh to break free. The Myrkr are nothing more than a child’s fairy tale.
Be good or the Myrkr will get you.Wasn’t that the line? I don’t really remember. My parents weren’t the type to buy into folklore. In fact, the last time I heard the word was probably when I interrupted poor old senile Rohan during one of his scribing sessions with Caz.
I wrack my brain, trying to recall the tales.
‘They’re no laughing matter,’ he mutters back, and the grimness – the fear? – in his voice makes my stomach lurch.
‘There were three, right?’ I say to Kyor, still struggling to believe this is real, but there’s not a hint of joviality in his tone. This is no prank. ‘Three servants of Mortidem?’
‘The strongest siphons in existence,’ he confirms. ‘They can drain the magic right from you.’ His use of the present tense causes that prickling to once again spread across my skin, but the words also stir a memory within me – of the book I found in my father’s study when searching for answers about Issen magic. I only flicked through the folklore book because the tales it told were irrelevant to me. Or so I thought.
Now, though, I’m clawing at my mind to try to remember any scrap of information about the monsters. My dim recollection is that they’re immortal, immune to all magic, and heralded by the cry of crows.
If the tales are true, even Kyor’s lightning wouldn’t so much as burn a hair on their heads … because he wouldn’t have his lightning to call.
‘You really think trying to scare me now is a great idea?’ I ask, because my guts are indeed quivering. He can’t be serious.
‘It’s good that you’re scared. You should be.’ I can hear him swallow. He’s scared too, and that … that terrifies me.
He faced the jötunn without blinking, the kraken without breaking a sweat …
‘Kyor, you’re not serious? A Myrkr? Really?’
