The Riven God

by F. T. McKinstry

  The raven perched in the tree above him. It had something attached to its leg. Lorth raised his arm and spoke a word, and the creature lifted up and flew to him. He noticed a white feather in its tail. “Nightshade, my friend. What have you?” A message from a wizard in a lower order; a high wizard would have used mindspeak. He set the crystal on his saddle, removed the message and uncurled it. At the top was a familiar sketch, the signature of Birch, a Raptor of the Order of Eagle who ran the Shining Star.

  News: Sirion has fallen. The woman has fled. Have men out searching. Make haste - Birch

  “Bloody hell,” Lorth muttered. Did I not say it, Eaglin! Another wizard might have wondered why the girl would refuse the help and protection of the Keepers of the Eye, but Lorth knew better. Not everyone trusted wizards; ironically, he himself had avoided them for the better part of his life. He reached into his pocket for a small woven ring of black and red, and slipped it over the raven’s claw. “There now, fair one. Fly swiftly.” The winged messenger made a soft gurgling sound and ascended into the trees.

  Lorth doused his crystal and sat there for a moment as his heart calmed and his eyes readjusted to the darkness. Then he moved Freya into a heavy gait into Caerroth.

  He didn’t report directly to the Shining Star. The woven ring he had sent, a message known only to the Raptors of Eyrie, said, I’m on the hunt. Wait for my orders. If he had more time, he would have sought out his acquaintances that lived on the fringes of order: thieves, witches selling poisonous herbs and rare animal parts, assassins, street musicians, dockhands, prostitutes, and the like. But this demanded an even more unsavory approach, and one the Aenlisarfon would most certainly frown upon.

  Still near the northern side of town, Lorth entered an area where the forest dominated the houses. At the end of a street densely planted with rowan trees, the woods rose up into a rocky height that overlooked the roofs, paths and the sea beyond. Locals called it Black Hill, and wouldn’t venture there, as it was believed to exist in the Old One’s domain. No superstition, this. A small clearing amid the boulders set off Lorth’s instincts with the chill of a ghostly touch. As dark to his perception as a woman in menses, nothing grew there and only Maern knew its identity.

  Freya grew skittish at the base of the rise. Lorth soothed her and left her tethered in an aspen grove. Then he climbed up, took a deep breath, and settled himself into the arms of Void. His mind turned blank, and his breathing slowed. The sounds and scents of the forest and the city below grew faint, as if muffled by a sweaty hand.

  A woman appeared, cloaked in a moonless sky. She drew back her hood, revealing the face of a wolf with pale green eyes. The hunter lowered his head and spoke in the Dark Tongue:

  “Mother. I ask for sight into the shadow.”

  He stood in a narrow alley between a tavern and a well-appointed house. A man knelt there near the opening, gazing into the street. He wore a dark cloak, hooded, with salt stains on it. He was fully armed beneath. A pattern of branches and thorns covered one sleeve. On the other, dark red flowed down, like dripping blood.

  Siocholt, Lorth whispered from the Otherworld. The man turned his head slightly, as if hearing the word. Then he returned his attention to the street.

  An assassin.

  Lorth opened his eyes as the image of a large white bird with black-tipped wings faded from his mind. “Silin en Maern tali,” he breathed, thanking the Old One as he rose and clambered down the hill. He drew Freya forth, mounted and rode down through the trees as he envisioned Caerroth to recall the location of the Snow Goose tavern.

  It stood a longbow’s shot from the Shining Star.

  Marked

  The Shining Star sat high above the sea, surrounded by steep paths and overlooks. Rhinne lay awake in a soft, comfortable bed on the third floor overlooking the street. The scent of rosemary filled the room. She had eaten well and been given fresh clothing, a soft gray dress the color of her eyes. A kind woman named Geeta had tended to her hurts with salves and tea, easing the pain and giving her some renewed vitality.

  Sirion slept one room down the hall, snoring softly. Rhinne hadn’t realized the Keeper would be staying with her. He had acted strange all evening. Warrior-strange. Watchful and protective, he had something dark on his mind.

  She rolled her head on the pillow and gazed at the moon hanging over the rooftops. Once more, she considered her options. Go out tomorrow to search for Bjorn? She didn’t think Sirion would let her do that. Escape him and do it anyway? Possible, but she had no coin, provisions, or weapons. If she didn’t find Bjorn or anyone who knew him, she would be forced to return here. Assuming she even got that far. It wouldn’t take a wizard familiar with the city long to track her down.

  If she didn’t try something, she would end up on a Keepers’ ship bound for Tromb.

  A voice rang out somewhere in the inn. Silence fell; then another voice answered in a strange tongue. Sirion had stopped snoring.

  A door slammed.

  Rhinne rose, crossed the room, and pressed her ear to the door. Low voices echoed up the stairs. She unlatched the door and cracked it, peering out.

  Sirion’s door closed. Rhinne stepped out into the hall. It was empty. A strange, pungent smell wafted on the air. “Sirion?” she called out.

  A chill shuddered up her spine from the depths of her belly. She returned to her room and closed the door without a sound. Her heart pounding, she slipped her dress over the smock she wore, pulled on her boots, and donned her cloak. It smelled like seaweed and mildew.

  Wincing as the floor creaked, she tiptoed to the window, which she had left ajar to feel the night air. She pushed it open. Nothing moved in the street. A steep gable roof hung directly below; another, to the right of it, farther down. Beyond that, the glinting leaves of a treetop stirred in the breeze.

  She withdrew. Stop being a fool, she chided herself. She had lived too long in Tromblast with warlocks, politics, rumors and secrets. Everything had become threatening.

  The chill had not left her, however. It gripped her in the gut like a fistful of thorns. She looked again at the door. It seemed farther away, somehow, fading, inaccessible.

  She jumped like a hare as heavy footsteps echoed in the stairwell at the end of the hall. Realizing she had forgotten to throw the bolt on the door, she hurried towards it—then froze in her tracks as the footsteps stopped in the hall outside.

  Someone barked an exclamation. Feet shuffled on the floor. “There’s a sealing spell on it,” a man said.

  “Sirion!” called out another. The door in the next room creaked open. After a moment, he returned in a hurry, his boots shaking the floor. “He’s dead.”

  Rhinne’s knees weakened as the blood drained from her face.

  “Go tell Birch.” He raised his voice. “Open up in the name of the Eye!”

  Sick with terror, Rhinne whirled around and fled for the window. She hiked up her skirt and cloak, threw one leg through, and squeezed her body out after it, twisting around to grab the frame as her soles slipped on the roof tiles.

  Somewhere in the inn, a woman screamed. The place came alive with running, cries and shouts. Rhinne let go of the window and slid down the gable roof, dragging her hands to slow her speed as she rattled off the edge and fell to the next roof. Grappling for the apex, she slung her leg over and let herself tumble down the second roof and into the top of the tree. She grabbed wildly at the branches, flailing her feet around for a foothold until she finally stopped moving.

  The tree grew in a yard sheltered from the street by the back of the inn. The air smelled of hay, leather and manure. Shouts rang out in the streets. Catching her breath, Rhinne climbed down and leapt to the ground. Staying low and close to the wall so that no one could see her from a window, she half-ran, half-limped to a narrow, unlit gap between the inn and a stable closed up against the night. She slid her body into the crack like a rat, inching along until she was well into the dark, and out of reach.

  Rhinne pressed her cheek agains
t the damp stone as men appeared. They moved across her narrow line of vision, swords drawn, searching. They entered the stable and moved between the stalls amid the sounds of nervous horses. After a time, they returned to the yard and then departed as quickly as they had come. No one had thought to thrust a torch into Rhinne’s hiding place.

  They had left two men to guard the stable, however.

  Rhinne turned her head and began to wriggle to the opposite end of the alley. When she reached the end, she leaned out into an empty courtyard. Breathing deeply, she yanked down her hood and shoved her hair beneath it. She emerged and fled through an opening on the far side. A rough path overgrown with wild roses wound steeply down. Wresting her cloak from the thorns, she descended and stepped onto the street at the end of the stable yard.

  The air was thick with the fragrance of the sea, and low fog formed along the stones. A burst of laughter flared out from a nearby tavern. Drawing on the fox-sense she had learned in Tromblast, Rhinne wandered along glancing furtively about for some place to hide until morning. Warriors and wizards roamed the streets. But Rhinne was adept at avoiding attention. No one noticed her.

  She quickened her pace. This was not what she had in mind when considering escape. The kindness and strength of the wizards who brought her here had given her more confidence in the Keepers than she had realized, now that they were hunting her.

  Sirion. Dead. Did they think she had done that?

  Rhinne hadn’t gone far when the chill in her belly returned, the same chill she had felt in her amulet in the presence of the oborom. She looked repeatedly over her shoulder, imaging a shape, a shadow, a figure that didn’t belong. A voice whispered in her ear; she didn’t understand what it said. She turned this way and that, taking random paths to elude the presence haunting her. It grew stronger, feeding on her fear.

  Rhinne turned onto a narrow way, passed a small mill yard and headed for a wooded area. Water flowed somewhere nearby. As she neared the tree line, she looked over her shoulder—then whirled around and stumbled back, ice flowing in her veins. A man stood before her, of medium height and build, cloaked in black. He gazed at the ground, his face hidden.

  The thorns in Rhinne’s gut bit like shards of shattered glass.

  “The Eldest told me you’d be hard to track,” the warlock said in a smooth voice; “dark as you are. But he paid me well to find you.” He lifted his chin, moved aside his cloak, and drew a blade. Thorny branches covered one of his arms; blood red draped the other.

  An oborom assassin. Probably the one who had sailed after her when she left Tromb. She recalled Wulfgar’s voice, low with care. A priest is bad enough, but an assassin is worse. These men don’t make mistakes. You’ll get no quarter in a fight and you’ll never see it coming.

  Evidently, this one liked to gloat. Shoving aside her brother’s warning, Rhinne said, “How kind of you to come all the way from Tromb just to bring me my sword.” The North Born blade shimmered in the moonlight. “Is that what Dore paid you with? It isn’t worth much.”

  “You will tell me,” the warlock said, “where the book is.”

  Rhinne recalled what her shining, imaginary warrior had said as he handed her the ancient book. The Riven God has returned to protect his secret. Ridiculous. “What book?”

  The assassin lifted her sword just so, revealing the patterns inscribed on the blade. “I’ll give you a choice, Princess. Tell me where it is, or I shall use this to carve it out of you. The blade will bind.”

  Rhinne snorted a laugh. “Oh will it, now. So my birth as a Sentinel doesn’t give me worth to wield that blade—but you can use it to torture me?”

  The warlock stepped forward, his eyes shadowed. “Where is it?”

  “Sod off.” She turned and ran into the trees. A foolish move, a dormouse running from an owl. The assassin struck her between the shoulder blades and sent her sprawling to the ground. Before she could roll over to defend herself, he gripped her by the neck and pressed her face into the dirt.

  The book doesn’t exist, she heard herself say.

  “Move and I’ll snap your neck,” he said. He uttered a strange word that tore into her heart like a claw. Suddenly, Rhinne perceived the presence of her sword, the sword she had sworn and broken oath by, the sword she would never have claimed but for Wulfgar’s confidence in her. The ancient script on the blade appeared in her mind: North Wind reins o’er darkness. Wormwood, ash and stone. North Wind destroys and renews.

  Rhinne stiffened as the warlock moved aside her cloak, exposing her back. The earth pays him homage. Beneath his grip on her neck, she choked on a scream. Something touched the small of her back above the base of her spine. A sharp pain followed. Then the assassin’s icy fingers ripped her dress and smock asunder. North Wind is the voice of Ascarion. A cry tore from Rhinne’s throat as the pain increased. “It doesn’t exist!” she choked, tears springing from her eyes. “Just a dream—”

  “The dream is real,” the warlock said, his voice as calm as the night. “Where is the book?”

  The blade will bind. Rhinne spiraled into a chasm of desolation as the sword cut into her flesh, awakening hatred as deep as the sea and as cold as the stones of her ancestor’s crypts. Frost spread over her chest as the waters rose, driven by the dark, sinuous coils of the serpent. She opened one emerald eye. From the depths of an ancient wound, Rhinne pleaded for something, anything. Death. Grace. Annihilation.

  Mistress!

  Silence fell. Suddenly, the assassin loosened his grip on her neck and moved away. He muttered something unintelligible. A second voice boomed through the trees in a rough, raw tongue that sounded like the earth itself uttering a curse. Shivers tingled over Rhinne’s body as a wind came up, clacking branches and sending up whirlwinds of ferns and leaves.

  Swords clashed nearby. Something growled like a mountain cat. Rhinne’s heart nearly stopped as her sword fell from the sky and stuck into the ground near her head. As it swayed in the fading breeze, a keening cry knifed out from the darkness.

  Something dark moved towards her. Aflame with terror, Rhinne got up on her knees, grabbed the hilt of her sword with both hands and swung it blindly around with a shout.

  It struck another blade. Tears streaming down her face, Rhinne dropped the sword to the ground. As she scrambled back, her torn dress caught on something, ripping it further. Her neck throbbed where the assassin had gripped it and her back was damp with blood and burning with pain. Tears bled from her eyes without mercy, an unholy deluge rending her from sense.

  The tall, shadowy figure spoke a word. Light sprang forth from his hand. A spectral, Otherworldly man towered over her, gazing down from intense gold-green eyes. He had pale weathered features and long hair braided and bound on the ends with leather. Fully armed and dressed for the wilds, his black cloak had the same blood-red trim around the edges as the one Sirion had worn.

  Power crackled around him like a passing storm. This could mean only one thing: the wizards at the Shining Star had called upon this warlock to capture her. And she wouldn’t escape this time.

  *

  Lorth strode from the back door of the Shining Star, in his Raven’s cloak, his solar plexus snarled into knots of thorns and rosemary. The assassin he saw in his vision had departed by the time Lorth arrived at the Snow Goose, and he was out of time. But he would need the information he now had, for this hunter had more on his mind than collecting a mark.

  Birch and Marsin stood near the stable doors. Marsin held Freya’s reins. The sailor’s energy was heavy with grief over Sirion’s death. “Master,” he said, out of breath. “Nightshade took a liking to Rhinne. She can find her.”

  Lorth mounted and swung the horse around, clenching his jaw as the Destroyer’s whispers slithered in his mind and ached in the lines of his spider scar. “Keep her here. I’ll find the girl.” Freya sidestepped in agitation as he turned to Birch. “Send for Ecthor. Tell him to assemble a company and keep his mind open to me for orders.”

  “Aye, Mas
ter.” The two men stepped back as Lorth pulled his hood and rode into the street.

  With the eyes of the Old One, Lorth followed the prickle in his nerves through the convoluted streets and alleys back towards the northern side of town. The thorn-clad hunter was not hard to track; he reeked of imbalance. As Lorth entered a narrow way with woods at the end, his heart turned a triple beat.

  He left Freya tethered to a willow tree growing up from the base of a mill yard wall. Then he settled into the earth and sky like a creeping mist and headed for the trees. The moonlit darkness exuded evil. At the end of the path, he stopped, grew still as death, and extended his mind.

  A woman stifled a cry.

  “Faels airtc,” Lorth breathed in the Dark Tongue. He moved into the darkness beneath a cloak of black feathers, calling on the forces of wind and bough to guide his steps. A figure rose from the ground and vanished. Lorth uttered a complex command that stripped the assassin’s will from natural forces, exposing him. The man’s teeth flashed in the moonlight as he drew a sword. Lorth leapt over a rotting stump and met him in a deadly blur of thrusts and parries. As Lorth closed in, the hunter threw his blade high into the air with a word. Lorth countered the spell, sending the sword awry. He punched the man in the face, again in the gut, and brought his blade around for the killing blow.

  As the assassin died, the earth returned to balance.

  With a breath, Lorth let his deception cloaks dissolve into the ground. As he approached the woman, he heard her breathing heavily. He realized the assassin’s sword had landed near her when she picked it up and swung it at him. As he parried it, she dropped the blade and scuttled back.

  He sheathed his sword, drew forth his crystal and breathed a word over it. Soft light illuminated the wood. She huddled on the ground like a wounded animal, her hair a wild, flaming mess around her face, her eyes red and swollen and her flushed cheeks wet with tears. She was absolutely terrified.