The Fall (The Seventh Tower 1)

"Hide your light!" Milla commanded. She pulled at Tal's arm to make him crouch down.

Tal quickly focused on his Sunstone, dimmed its light, and slipped the chain back under his coat.

"What is it?" he whispered.

"Merwin," Milla whispered back. "A big one. It was on our trail, but I have thrown Selski meat to lure it aside. We must move away from here as quietly as we can, with as little light as possible."

Tal remembered Milla telling him back on the ship about the Merwin. It seemed like years ago.

"Hold onto my belt," Milla murmured. Tal gripped it, and they started off slowly. Milla shuttered the lantern down still more, pulling the handle at its base that closed the weave. Tal could hardly see at all, but somehow it didn't bother him half as much as it would have even a few days before. He was getting used to the dark.

And, he had to admit, he'd kind of gotten used to Milla, since she obviously did take the blood ritual thing seriously and would do her best to get him safely to the Castle. That was a huge improvement to when she'd just wanted to kill him. Not that she was anything more than the descendant of an escaped Underfolk or something.

Milla suddenly stopped. Tal almost ran into her. They both stood there silently, in the dark. They could hear each other breathing, cold rasps coming through their masks, no matter how quiet they tried to be.

Tal could sense Milla staring out at something, but it was too dark for him to see which way she was looking. He moved his own gaze slowly, looking for anything that stood out in the darkness.

When he did see something, it took him a second to remember what it must be. A long, thin light of surprising brightness that seemed to be moving by itself, slowly meandering from side to side.

A Merwin's horn.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The glowing horn, three times as long as Tal, slowly came closer and closer. Tal felt rather than saw Milla draw her knife. Her spears had been broken in the crash of the sleigh.

A short piece of sharpened bone did not seem like much of a weapon against a hunting beast with a horn that could ram through Tal and Milla and still have plenty left over.

Slowly, trying to make the movement as hidden as he could, Tal reached into his coat and began to pull out his Sunstone.

He had it half out when the Merwin finally worked out where they were. A terrible, whistling screech filled the air, and the luminous horn suddenly rocketed forward.

Milla shouted something and pushed Tal away. She ran, too, but forward, toward the Merwin. Tal could see it clearly now, illuminated by its own terrible horn.

The picture he saw then would be etched in his mind forever.

The Merwin was even bigger than Milla's description - at least twenty stretches long. It looked like a Kralsnake from the Beastmaker game, all thin and sinewy. Except it had four long, clawed flippers instead of legs, and shiny black hide instead of scales.

It had only one eye - a huge golden eye, long and slitted, with a lid that kept flicking open and shut several times a second. The other side of its narrow head showed an empty, scarred eye socket, clearly a wound from long ago.

The horn grew from a ridge of bone between the Merwin's eyes. Under it was the creature's mouth, big enough, with its many shining teeth, to eat Tal in a single gulp.

As Milla charged toward it, the terrible horn struck. It came straight at the Icecarl and for an instant Tal thought it would go right through her.

But she dodged and almost got past. The Merwin flicked its head, and the ferociously sharp point of the horn sliced across her chest, the force of it throwing her to the ice. She did not get up.

The Merwin hesitated. It started to move toward the motionless body of Milla, its horn scraping the ice. Once again Milla's words went through Tal's brain.

they stick their horn through whatever they're after, and then they bash it up and down on the ice . .

The Merwin reared back to strike at the defenseless girl.

"No!" Tal screamed. He rushed forward with his Sunstone raised in his hand.

Faster than Tal's eye could catch, the Merwin changed targets. It lunged forward, extending its body, the luminous horn coming straight at Tal. He threw himself to one side and would have fallen, but his shadowguard was there to prop him up. Somehow he also managed to keep his Sunstone trained on the creature's one golden eye.

Tal knew he would only have time for a single blast of light before the sharp horn struck again. He focused all his thought on the Sunstone, drawing upon every fragment of power it possessed - and unleashed it at the Merwin.

The flash was so bright that Tal was blinded. The

Merwin shrieked, an awful, high-pitched sound that seemed all too close, but Tal didn't know whether he'd just annoyed it or burned out its one remaining eye.

He cursed himself for being so stupid and not closing his own eyes. He could hear the Merwin thrashing around and could imagine that horn stabbing toward him. He started to run, then stopped, disoriented. Maybe he was running toward the Merwin!

"Shadowguard!" he called, and he held out his hand. Something tingling and soft touched his fingers and jerked him to one side. Tal fell and felt the swish of air as something passed him, followed immediately by the sound of the Merwin's horn striking the ice.

Either it could still see or its other senses were good enough to find him. Tal rolled aside, then crawled as his shadowguard pulled at his hand. His sight was slowly coming back, the darkness becoming a mixture of floating blobs and fuzzy light.

The Merwin struck again, its horn skittering off the ice near Tal's feet. He turned to face it, his vision coming clear again. It was blind, at least temporarily, its golden eye closed and weeping. But it could hear or smell, or sense, for its head was pointed straight at him, as was the horn.

It would eventually get him, unless Tal did something first. But his Sunstone was finished, completely used up, and his shadowguard could not fight something like this.

Even if he did somehow manage to get away, he would be lost in the dark, without a light of any kind. Without light his shadowguard would dissipate. Without the shadowguard, he had no way of finding the Castle.

Perhaps h

e could get Milla's lantern and knife. Tal started to edge around, back toward the faint green glow where Milla had fallen. He was surprised to see that his blind escape from the Merwin had taken him so far from her body.

He was even more surprised when Milla suddenly leaped out of the darkness, onto the Merwin's neck. She wrapped her legs around it, locked her ankles together, and plunged her dagger deep into its head.

The Merwin screeched and reared up, its bright horn pointing directly at the sky. Milla stabbed it again, and it flung its head back down, smashing her legs into the ice. But she hung on and stabbed it again and again, despite its writhings and desperate banging against the ice.

Finally, it stopped moving, and the light from its horn began to dim. Milla let go and crawled a short distance away. Tal could see the blood on her fur, and trails of Merwin ichor upon the ice.

Tal gulped. He had stood mesmerized while Milla fought the creature. Now he ran forward.

Milla lay on her back. Her hood had fallen down, and her mask was nowhere to be seen. In the fading light of the Merwin's horn, Tal saw that her face was even whiter and her lips were turning blue. The whole front of her coat was ripped to shreds and her fur leggings were rent in many places. As Tal watched, blood began to pool beneath her. Dark red blood, not the blue ichor of the Merwin.

"I die," said Milla, her voice soft. Clumsily, she wiped her wrist across her chest and held it up, all bloody to Tal. "By this blood that we share, blood of the clan, bone of the ship, the Quest must…"

Her voice trailed off and she seemed to see something that confused her. Her forehead furrowed, then her eyes slowly closed.

For a moment Tal thought that she was dead. But as he knelt by her side, he saw that she still breathed, though shallowly.

Taking great care, Tal peeled back her torn furs. He had to force himself to take slow breaths as he saw the wound that stretched across her left side. Having seen it, he didn't know what to do. His Sunstone was dead, and even if it wasn't, he didn't know enough to use it for healing.

Then he felt a soft touch at his arm. His shadowguard was plucking at his wrist, the wrist marked with the three cuts of the Icecarls.