Hinterland

by James Clemens

  No god died truly and wholly.

  Until this night.

  As the stone of Rivenscryr drew all parts together for that fleeting last spark of life, the blade cut it short, ending all.

  The rogue god’s head rolled toward the fire. The body slumped.

  Truly and finally dead.

  “Lillani,” Tylar whispered.

  It was the other cruelty of the sword. What was it about a name? As all parts joined and the raving of millennia snuffed out with each death, a name rang through the blade, full of joy. Then gone.

  Tylar had learned all those names.

  He stepped toward the twelfth and final.

  A god who took the shape of an older boy, sixteen, seventeen. Now he was more a feral wolf than boy. He had rended his manhood to shreds with his nails, and he frothed at the mouth. One leg was broken, the one snagged in iron. He must have fought his chain with the same ferocity as he had fought seersong. But he had lost both battles. Forever trapped.

  Tylar lifted Rivenscryr, hating the sword in that moment.

  Across the woods, he heard a wailing screech of the daemon. He had heard it echo periodically as it hunted the forest for the flitterskiff, searching for Tylar’s blood. But now it came closer. Another call followed, confirming. It swept back toward the island.

  As he lifted his sword, a voice spoke behind him.

  It was not Dart. She crouched by the stone house where the songstresses lay cold on their stone beds. He should not have brought her here. She sat, knees up, face buried between them.

  She knew it was a mercy, too. But that didn’t mean she had to watch.

  The voice came from the flames.

  “You are an Abomination,” Lord Ulf said, whispering ice through the flames. “Here you prove it.”

  Tylar stared into the fire. “I do what must be done. Forced by malice and corruption.”

  “You kill all,” Ulf said, with a note of confusion and wariness, plainly unsure how Tylar had accomplished this.

  “I know.”

  “But why? When any blade can take a head from a god? Why kill all when madness has eaten only the one?”

  Tylar had considered the same after slaying the first rogue, realizing how deep Rivenscryr cut. Still, he had moved on with his Godsword. He had remembered the war between Meeryn’s aethryn and naethryn. Forever apart. Forever incomprehensible to the other. Such fracturing when the third was forever lost was not life. Let death be death.

  Also he had remembered Miyana, when the Huntress had stepped into the molten rock. Of full mind in that moment, all three, bringing back her name. She had tried to tell him, tell everyone, knowing it was denied her even then.

  I want to go home.

  And there was only one way to do that.

  Total release.

  Tylar turned his back on Ulf and stepped to the feral boy-god.

  Ulf spoke behind him. “You are an Abomination!”

  Tylar swung the sword, cleaving madness from the boy. “Jaffin,” he whispered to the night, naming him.

  “ABOMINATION!” Ulf wailed.

  Tylar turned to the fire. “No—just Godslayer.”

  With the death of the last rogue, the foul pyre expired.

  But not before a thread of righteous triumph sailed clear.

  “You are too late…Tashijan has fallen…”

  Tylar hesitated. Was it true? Was that why the songstresses were dead? Before he could weigh the words, a screech drew him full around. It dove toward the island.

  “Tylar!” Dart called out, rising and stepping toward him.

  “Run!” he commanded. “Inside!”

  Dart backed into the songstresses’ home but stayed near the door.

  Tylar gathered shadows to his cloak and shifted away from Dart’s hiding place, drawing the daemon’s attention by baring Rivenscryr, shining bright in the dark.

  The daemon crashed to the island’s center, scattering ashes of the dying hearth that had given birth to him. Wings raised as it faced Tylar. Frayed and torn, the wings bled a thick ichor. A feathered arrow, charred and black, sprouted from its ribs. With the fire gone and its font of Grace stanched, the wraithed ghawl had weakened.

  But like a wounded she-panther, such a beast was at its most wary, its most dangerous. Its neck lowered. It hissed at him from a fanged face that bore little resemblance to Perryl. Claws dug into stone underfoot. Wings batted at the air.

  It searched, as if unsure what stoked its fury. Its masters were gone, leaving it directionless, abandoned.

  Then Tylar noted something beyond the wary confusion.

  Pain.

  And not just from its injuries.

  “Perryl…”

  The word blew the creature back like a gust of wind. It landed across the cold fire in a crouch, hissing, spitting, wings held straight up. It looked ready to take to wing and flee.

  “Was that why you still came?” Tylar whispered, circling the fire, his blade ready. “The beast in you wants to run, but something holds you here.”

  It screeched, a note of frustration and agony, trapped in a tidal push and pull of instinct and memory.

  “Perryl…”

  An agonized whine streamed from somewhere deep inside the beast.

  He knew why his friend had come back. Tylar lifted Rivenscryr. The blade’s flicker ignited another hiss and snap of wing. Clawed hands ripped at him through the air, savage and raving.

  Still, it held back, ending its hiss with a slight mewling cry.

  Fearful on every level.

  Tortured and pained.

  Lost between beast and man, instinct and horror.

  Tylar knew what Perryl wanted of him. He saw it in his eyes. Perryl fought the beast’s instinct, to flee, to fight. But for how long? He used all the will remaining in his ilked form to hold firm, to hold steady for the blade, to beg for the same kindness Tylar had shone the rogues.

  The mercy of the blade.

  But Perryl could not hold out for much longer.

  Tylar knew Perryl needed his help, for one last battle, one last death, one last release. Still, after so much blood on his sword, he hesitated. And that proved the cruelest act that night.

  Behind Tylar, a whining and rattling erupted, the flitterskiff returning.

  The noise and sudden arrival startled the beast beyond Perryl’s control. With a spread of wings, it leaped with a screech of panic—ready to flee and lose itself in the hinterlands, trapping his friend forever in horror.

  Tylar swept forward, but the distance was too great even for shadow.

  He had failed Perryl one last time.

  But another did not.

  As the daemon leaped, a flaming form burst out its chest, skewering clean through, a fiery spike through the heart, gutting it.

  One last screech wailed with a lick of flame from pained lips—and the daemon fell to the stones in a tumble of wing and smoking flesh.

  Pupp climbed free of the debris. Steaming with black blood, shaking his spiked mane. His eyes glowed especially bright.

  Dart ran up to Tylar, one hand bloody. In the other, she held one of the songstresses’ obsidian knives.

  Tylar sank to his knees beside his friend.

  Suddenly all the grief whelmed through him, shaking up from a place deeper than where his naethryn swam. He dropped his sword and covered his face. The tears came in great racks of pain. Twelve names burnt into his heart. Or maybe it was because at least this one death did not bloody his hands.

  Not this one…

  And that was enough to save him.

  Dart lowered next to him. She reached to his shoulder. “Did…did I do all right? I wasn’t sure…”

  He touched her arm, swallowing hard. “You did fine, Dart…just fine.”

  24

  A KNIGHTING IN MIDSUMMER

  SADDLED HIGH, KATHRYN SWELTERED IN A FULL CLOAK OVER rich finery. She wore polished boots to the knee. Her horse was tacked in silver, a match to her cape’s clasp and warden’s b
adge. As the retinue would be traveling through Chrismferry’s main streets, she had her hood up and masklin fixed in place.

  Gerrod rode up beside her. “We’re just about ready to head out.” Even hidden behind his armor, he appeared ill at ease, shifting in his saddle, adjusting his reins. The castellan diadem shone brightly at his throat.

  Such were their new positions: Warden and Castellan.

  Of Tashijan in exile.

  Kathryn glanced behind her. They had made much progress over the past two moonpasses. Had it truly just been sixty days? Tylar had granted them the Blight, an empty and ruined section of Chrismferry’s inner city, not all that far from his castillion, to house and rebuild Tashijan. It proved a good place to set down new roots, land that had lain fallow for a long time. Already the Blight was a jumble of rebuilding, tearing down, mucking out, and clearing. And some shape was taking form—a skeleton of rafters, stone walls, and trenched fields. Tashijan was rising again.

  New land, new roots, a new foundation.

  Argent had proposed the original knighting of the regent as a way to bring Chrismferry and Tashijan closer together, to unite the First Land. Now their houses were closer than ever, by both distance and determination.

  A small blessing for all the blood spilled.

  Beneath her, Stoneheart shuffled his hooves, restless to leave.

  Kathryn patted the stallion’s neck to reassure him. Atop this same horse she had led the survivors out of the rubbled ruin of Tashijan. The journey was already being heralded in song. The Great Exodus. A trail of horses, folk on foot, and wagons that stretched thirty leagues. She could have taken a flippercraft, but she had wanted to be there, needed to be there, among them.

  Kathryn also remembered that last morning. The storm had broken at dawn. As rocks still rattled, unsettled and loose, they had found they had survived. Tylar had snuffed out Lord Ulf’s font of Dark Grace, and with it went his storm and ice. But as they pushed open iron shutters and stepped out into that cold morning, all lay in ruins: toppled and gutted towers, broken-toothed walls. Even Stormwatch had been held together only by the last of Ulf’s ice, and the melt of the morning sun threatened that precarious hold.

  Kathryn could still picture her last view of Tashijan, from atop the rise of a hill. The once-proud citadel lay in rubble and ruin. And as she watched, Stormwatch slowly gave way, its last alchemies fading, the morning sun melting crusts of ice, and down it came, rumbling like thunder, casting up a cloud of rock dust—then gone, crushing the Masterlevels under it. So she had turned her back, left Tashijan to the haunt of wraith and daemon. Someday they might rebuild, but for now they needed a new home.

  A horn sounded up ahead.

  “Are you ready?” Gerrod asked.

  She nodded. “We should not be late to a knighting that is long overdue.”

  She nudged the piebald stallion and walked Stoneheart down a lane lined by stacked planks and brick. Hammering and chiseling, shouts and laughter echoed all around.

  Gerrod clopped his horse beside her. “Yet another parade of Tashijan in exile through the streets of Chrismferry.”

  “Another parade?”

  He nodded ahead. “What with all the woodwrights and stonemasons flowing in and out our temporary gates, it’s like a daily circus around here.”

  She offered him a small smile, but it was hidden behind her masklin. He did not see how quickly it faded. As she led the bright retinue toward Chrismferry, she could not deny a cold worry that even the midday swelter could not melt.

  “What’s wrong?” Gerrod asked, shying his mount closer, ever knowing her moods. He touched her knee with his bronze fingers.

  She shook her head. It was too bright a day.

  “Kathryn…”

  She sighed, glanced to him, then away again. “Did we win?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She lifted an arm to indicate all the rebuilding. “Or did Lord Ulf? Back at the Blackhorse, he stated what he sought through all the death and destruction he’d wrought. ‘The steel of a sword is made harder by fire and hammer. It is time for Tashijan to be forged anew.’ Is that not what happened?”

  He motioned for her hand. She gave it. He squeezed her fingers.

  “We will be stronger. That I don’t doubt. Already the other Myrillian gods unite more firmly against the Cabal, pull more strongly in support for Tylar. Did you not see the number of flippercraft in the skies over the past days? Hundreds. The knighting today is not the small affair of Argent’s original design, a few Hands from the closest gods. There are retinues here from every land, from as far away as Wyrmcroft in the Ninth Land. That is proof alone.”

  He squeezed her hand even harder, almost painfully. “We will be stronger. Not because Ulf won, but because you did. He made an offer to you: to walk away, to escape with a few. But because you held fast, many more survived. And it is that victory that makes us stronger, not capitulation to the mad calculation of a cold god.”

  She took a shuddering deep breath and felt some of the ice inside her break apart, but still the shards hurt.

  “Even Lord Ulf knew he was defeated. Did he not leave his castillion and wander into the hinterlands to the far north?”

  Kathryn had heard the story of the god’s last steps. Just as it was forbidden for a rogue to enter a realm, a god was equally forbidden the hinterlands. Lord Ulf’s form was seen blazing like a torch as he strode north across the frozen wastes to his doom. At the end, the lord of Ice Eyrie gave himself over to the flame.

  Still, Gerrod was not done. “If we are going to forge Tashijan to a harder steel, then let it be in a fire born of our own hearts. And I know no heart burns brighter than yours.”

  Gerrod seemed suddenly abashed at his last words. His fingers began to slip from hers. “All know this,” he mumbled. “Did not every stone cast for our new warden bear your color? Not a single stone against?”

  Kathryn did not let his fingers slip so easily away. She gave them a firm squeeze. “You are kind. But the casting was so clean because Argent stepped aside.”

  Gerrod finally freed his hand and took his reins. “How is he faring?”

  “Stubborn—that’s the word Delia used. She came by early this morning. Arrived with the dawn flippercraft from Five Forks. She says he mends well and is slowly adjusting to his new leg, but he is quick to wrath and not willing to listen to his healer’s warnings.”

  “Little wonder there,” Gerrod mumbled. “One eye, one leg. The man is slowly being whittled away.”

  Kathryn smiled, a rudeness perhaps, considering his maiming, but she suspected even Argent would respect it. Back in Tashijan, Argent had survived by will and alchemy—but mostly by a promise to a daughter. Not to leave. And as always, he stubbornly kept his word.

  A commotion drew their attention to the side. A small figure ran toward her horse. “Warden Vail! Warden Vail!”

  She glanced down and recognized the youth in mucked boots and muddied clothes. She reined her horse to a halt. “Mychall?”

  The stableboy hurried to her stirrup. He held up a strip of black cloth. “I did it!” he shouted proudly and waved the strip. “I’ve been picked!”

  She smiled down at him, knowing what he held, remembering when she had been chosen, given a bit of shadowcloak, picked to join the knighthood.

  Mychall waved his bit of cloth and ran back down along her retinue. “I must tell my da!”

  She watched him race away.

  When she turned back to Gerrod, he stared at her. She knew he was smiling behind his bronze. “Still think we lost?” he asked.

  She rattled her reins to get Stoneheart moving again. Inside her, the last of Lord Ulf’s ice melted away.

  As the last morning bell rang over the meadow field, Brant whistled sharply. They were already late, and still needed to get attired for the knighting.

  Stalks of sweetgrass parted in a weaving pattern, flowing down the slight hill. The pair of wolfkits responded to his whistle, running low to the
ground, a hunting posture. They burst from the field together, bounding toward the small group gathered in the shade of a wide-bowered lyrewood tree, heavy with midsummer blossoms.

  Brant led the pair back to the lounging party.

  To the left, the meadows rolled into the green Tigre River, its waters reflecting the castillion of Chrismferry. Four stone towers rose from each bank of the Tigre, supporting the bulk of the castillion that ran like a bridge from one side to the other. A ninth tower, taller than the rest, rose from the center of the castillion, a beacon over the river, its white quarried stone blazing in the midday sun.

  Great festivities were planned for the day, but before that happened, they had all wanted a moment to enjoy the sunshine, away from the tumult.

  Buried in the shade ahead, Malthumalbaen rested against the twisted trunk. He chewed the end of a churl-pipe, a gnarled piece of wood as long as the giant’s arm. He puffed a trail of smoke as Brant returned with the cubbies.

  Resting beside the giant, the bullhound Barrin snored, nose on the giant’s knee. Malthumalbaen stirred with a crack of bone.

  “Ach, are we ’bout ready to head back, Master Brant?”

  He nodded.

  “Good thing that. All this dogflesh is making me hungry.”

  The giant slowly gained his feet. Barrin groused about being disturbed, then was pounced upon by the returning cubbies. The bullhound let out an irritated grumble of reluctant tolerance.

  “They’re getting big,” Laurelle said, packing the basket and stepping aside so Kytt could roll the blanket. “It was hard to tell when you were working them in the field.”

  The pair had arrived late to the gathering, returning from the adjudicator’s office in lower Chrismferry, where they had gone to attend matters in regards to Liannora and her attack on Delia. They had been summoned to give testimony to what they had overheard in a hallway. Since the fall of the towers, Liannora had languished in a cell in Chrismferry, claiming her attack on Delia was all the doing of Sten, captain of the guard, insisting that in the tumult and chaos of the siege, he had misinterpreted a jest.

  Unfortunately, Laurelle and Kytt could shed no more light on the foul act with certainty. They had never heard Liannora plainly order Sten to attack Delia. There were rumors she was to be set free.