The Riven God

by F. T. McKinstry

  Lorth chuckled. “To a point. I think they like letting me feel the heat. I’ve put them there often enough.”

  As they walked, a last quarter moon emerged from the clouds, casting faint light. The road had grown in since the last time Lorth stopped here. At last, he saw a grayish wall looming through the trees.

  As they approached, the prince said, “There’ll be something living here.”

  “She’s out hunting. Mind the bats.”

  For a moment, Wulfgar said nothing. Then he wheezed a laugh. “You’re shit mad.”

  Smiling, Lorth pushed the broken door aside and leaned in. It smelled of moldy hay, charred wood, and animal droppings. “Och. Fit for a king.”

  “Be fit for mine,” Wulfgar muttered.

  A short time later, the hunter stood in the crumbled doorway of the barn gazing into the night. He had watered the horses in a small stream out back and fed them from his stores. Banyae, who loved horses, had secretly added a large bundle of spring tubers to the feedbags.

  Wulfgar slept inside against the foundation, wrapped in his cloak, his head cradled in a pack. A seasoned warrior, the prince dealt patiently with the mission at hand. But in silent moments, the grief on his heart showed like a badly concealed bloodstain.

  Clouds had closed over the moon, and the air felt damp. Lorth couldn’t sleep for the questions in his mind. Normally, he didn’t mind a treecloak. It forced him to rely on his darker senses, and not get too dependent on the wizards’ arts. The gods were fickle and their agendas didn’t always consider the comforts of magic. But Lorth didn’t like having things out of his control that he needed to protect. War had taught him that his ability to kill came with the ability to ward the innocent. He had learned this nearly at the expense of his heart and homeland. It stayed with him.

  The earth keeps secrets. In the last two days, Lorth had all but redefined, if not understood for the first time, the Shade of Low. So it was, with the Hunter’s Rede. The Shades were alive; their meanings changed subtly to reflect the layers around a central precept. At first he had thought it referred to the hidden location of Eifin’s book deep in a cave by the sea. It very well may have. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that it held something more, something deeper. Something that had to do with Rhinne.

  The princess had fled the citadel before he could talk to her about it, of course. Fled with the help of Ascarion, Lorth believed, who had somehow managed to become conscious in Void. Lorth had never heard of an entity breaking the Old One’s rules. Nothing did that.

  That morning, he and Wulfgar had come upon several travelers picking through the remains of a cart on the edge of the road. It appeared to have been looted and destroyed by highwaymen. Remembering what Eusiron had told them about cart tracks, and not one to take such a discovery at face value, Lorth had followed signs into the forest and discovered evidence of a fight. Following the clamor of ravens, he found a carelessly discarded sword that Wulfgar identified as the sort the oborom used. Then he found the body of an assassin.

  Neither he nor Wulfgar believed that, even armed, Rhinne would have the strength or skill to take an oborom hunter, let alone in the manner in which he had been killed: an adept blow in the spine precisely above where his hauberk ended. After inspecting the area, Lorth hadn’t arrived at any explanations that made sense. He hadn’t even been certain Rhinne was involved until Wulfgar reminded him that the thorn-clad hunters rarely engaged anyone other than their marks. One universal truth.

  So where had she gone? Lorth would have overtaken her on the road by now, unless she had come by another horse. Possible. But Lorth’s watchers patrolled this road and one of them would have seen her. Another, more chilling thought told him she took to the forest. Many paths, ways and pitfalls threaded the woods from here to Caerroth, and Rhinne didn’t know the way. Even following a general direction was not easy and Lorth had to assume Rhinne wouldn’t risk taking the time or putting herself at the mercy of hunters.

  No word from Eusiron. No winged messengers from Eyrie. No reports from watchers. And a wounded princess with the Otherworld on her side.

  For once, Lorth did not like being in the dark.

  The hunter left the barn and moved into the trees. He cleared his mind and knelt, placing his hands on the cold ground. He opened his heart to the earth, resonating with stone, loam, roots, and the rapid heartbeats of creatures sheltering below. He descended into the depths where the waters fed the mountains. And then he opened his eyes.

  Darkness, silence. Still aware of the forest, Lorth stiffened as a vast, familiar presence filled with wood and coalesced into a blacker shade amid the shadows. “Would you defy a treecloak cast by the Source?” the Dark Warrior said. He leaned casually against a tree, glimmering with the lofty energy of his kind.

  “If the Old One wills it,” Lorth returned.

  Snarling like a wolf, Eusiron drew his sword and sliced through the grid with a nasty command in the Dark Tongue that put Lorth on his face before the Destroyer’s feet.

  “She does not will it,” the war god hissed.

  Lorth lay in the pouring rain, his heart hammering in his breast. As something touched him, he pulled Leaf and rolled over into a crouch.

  “Oi!” Wulfgar barked. “Relax. It’s me. What are you doing out here?”

  Lorth returned his knife to his boot. “Freezing.” He got up, swaying on his feet with vertigo. He followed Wulfgar into the barn and found a place in the hay. Still rattled by the Dark Warrior’s assault, he curled up to sleep.

  “What were you doing out there?” Wulfgar asked, settling himself nearby.

  “Nothing,” Lorth grumbled with a yawn. True enough. Though why Maern had turned him loose as a wolf one night and then turned Eusiron on him the next utterly baffled him.

  I am not innocent, smiled the Shade of Age.

  *

  Three days passed before Rhinne and Fana emerged onto the high, narrow way that led from the Forest of Roth to the crescent-shaped port of Caerroth. They crossed a rushing stream bouncing into a stony rift carpeted with arrowhead and peppermint. Far below, the sea moved restlessly through the trunks of a tall pine stand. Gulls wheeled in the air.

  The women had met with no further trouble from assassins on the remainder of their journey. Walking, crouching in thickets and behind rocks, avoiding cottages and passing travelers, they had encountered only a talkative woodsman until late one night, when a band of foreign mercenaries found them. One of them, visibly drunk, had slurred something about “entertainment.” But as Rhinne had reached for her stolen sword, an eerie shape fled just beyond the firelight, spooking the men’s horses. The drunken soldier fell from his mount and didn’t move again. The rest of them fled shouting about witchcraft.

  Her dreams were full of rivers, birds and serpents. She ran from owls and ravens, horses and cloaks without men inside of them. Over it all, a dark warrior with eyes the color of clouds gazed upon her silently, making no motion or expression, only the presence of death’s silent mastery. Fana had dreamed of him too. After a day, Rhinne had begun to feel the warrior’s presence in the forest around them. It had a certain identity. She even suspected it had protected them from the soldiers, though neither she nor Fana had gone as far as to say so.

  She glanced sidelong at her companion. Deep in thought, trudging along the narrow way, the older woman had said little over the last two days, her mind occupied by darkness. Rhinne let her be.

  They continued until they reached the top of a hill that overlooked the harbor. It was late afternoon, overcast. Below the trail and a wooded hill, the Shining Star perched on the cliffs that edged the sea. Beyond it, boats of all types and sizes rested on the water, including crafts of Eyrie and several large ships, two of which were partly blocked from view. The third, long, granite-gray and forbidding, had a prow that looked like a knife. Rising to the steely sky, her riggings held dark sails bound to the masts in ink-colored folds.

  All along the docks and in the streets beyond, re
d-cloaked soldiers mingled with the press of city folk. “What’s happening?” Rhinne said.

  “Looks like trouble,” Fana replied, gazing down.

  Rhinne’s pulse quickened. Somehow, she had to find passage on a ship to Tromb. That would have been complicated enough without a military presence. She recalled the location of the harbormaster’s house, where Sirion had taken her on their arrival. She would be lucky to get near the place, now.

  “Do you live here?” Rhinne asked.

  “Just passing through,” the older woman said shortly. “As are you, I think.”

  “My brother is here some place,” she said, doubting it. “I need to find him.”

  “Who is he?”

  “His—he is captain of a ship called the Eastfetch.”

  Fana turned and looked her up and down. “Rest somewhere out of sight and let me go down there, see what I can find out. You’ll stand out like a king’s treasure on those docks. ’Tis a rough place. We don’t want no attention.”

  Rhinne released a breath in relief. For a moment, she had been sure Fana would abandon her here and go on her way. Three days ago, she would have welcomed it. But their journey from Eyeroth had sent her mettle to flight. She turned and gestured to a large clump of stunted pines over one side of the path. “I’ll be in those trees. Hurry.”

  Fana nodded, then shrugged her pack higher onto her shoulders and headed down the path with an odd lift in her step.

  Slumped with fatigue, Rhinne picked her way over the bank and into the copse. She groped through the prickly branches until she found a hollow carpeted with ferns and sheltered from the wind by a boulder on the east side. Ignoring hunger and thirst, she settled down to wait. She could just glimpse the path at the top of the rise where she had parted from Fana. She watched it for a while, her hopes rising and then falling each time someone passed. In time, she grew sleepy. Unable to fight it, she curled up and let herself sink into the silence.

  She awoke to the sound of a cawing bird. Clutched by cold, she blinked up at the inky trees surrounding her. A dark creature stirred and then flapped into the sky with a croak. She pushed herself up and parted the branches. Night had fallen and a stormy wind blew from the sea, chilling her. No stars twinkled through the clouds. She had no idea what time it was.

  Fana had not returned.

  Rhinne got to her feet, clutching at the trees as she left her shelter. She stumbled up the rocks and brush to the path, hesitating as she reached the top. Twinkling lights spread over the city market below.

  Where was Fana? Rhinne’s first thought was that something had happened to her. Then a colder thought followed. What if Fana had never planned to return? Rhinne envisioned the woman on her knees before the dark Lord as he had called her a thief. Her heart pounding with a sickening thud, she reached into the pocket of her cloak for her purse. She drew it forth, feeling its weight but not trusting her relief. With shaking hands, she drew it open and reached in. Then she dumped it on the ground and knelt, scrabbling through it in a panic.

  Stones. It was full of stones.

  Rhinne rose in a swoon. She might have thought she had lost the pouch on her journey had it simply disappeared. But she would have noticed that.

  A thief. Gone like a rat into a dungeon crack.

  Her cheeks warm, Rhinne stumbled down the rugged path, glancing repeatedly at the ships cradled silently in the black water of the harbor. The bow watches were set; lanterns glowed upon the prows and afterdecks.

  Fana had cared for her, tended her wounds these many days with root and leaf. Saved her life, even. Why? She could have let the assassin kill her, taken the money and saved herself a lot of trouble. For all that, the thief had probably discovered Rhinne’s purse on the night she had found her by the road. Why had she not taken it then? Why care for Rhinne and offer to help her?

  A dead man on the road. An assassin. An eerie presence haunting them in the forest. Perhaps fear had stopped Fana from bolting with the coin and leaving Rhinne for dead.

  Rhinne stopped in her tracks and leaned over her belly, crushed by disillusionment. Again and again she touched the empty gray spot of Fana in her mind, no softness or care left behind. The rat thief must have seen her coming ten miles off.

  Rhinne straightened her back gathered herself, then stomped down the hill. Right back where she started, stranded in the largest port in Sourcesee with no coin and no way home. Her stolen weapons wouldn’t get her far.

  She reached the docks, cradled by the sounds of lapping water and creaking wood. It smelled of brine, urine and fish. Men walked and lounged everywhere, warriors waiting to go to war and restless to be off into the lusting arms of the sea. This was not a good place to be at night. And the wizards were no doubt searching for her still.

  She crept along until she spotted a dark place between the slumped roofs of the buildings that lined the shore. She slipped into it and peered out, aching with hunger and thirst. A dimly lit tavern hunched on the street across the way. She ducked into a narrow passage, barely missing a man lumbering out the other way. He growled a curse at her and kept going. Rhinne rounded a wall to the back of the tavern. The door was open, and steam billowed out. It didn’t smell very good, even to her starving senses. A pile of barrels, wooden boxes and refuse littered the ground by the door.

  Rhinne lurked in the shadows until she spotted water dripping from the roof and onto a cube-shaped stone near the edge of the building. She started forward—then leapt back as a man came through the door and tossed something onto the pile. He glanced around for a moment, and returned back inside. Rhinne ran to the drip and held out her hand, then brought it to her mouth.

  The hair on her neck prickled as a presence loomed up behind her, soundlessly, like a cloudy sky. She turned as a black-cloaked shadow towered over her.

  A strong hand closed over her mouth, silencing her scream.

  The Purple Vine

  An uneasy breeze whispered in the crags around the Shining Star, damping the air and stirring the brush along the strand. Wulfgar stood near the front steps of the inn and gazed at the gray eastern sky. To the west, heavy clouds had consumed the setting sun.

  Aside from the coming storm, Caerroth had a different air than it had when Wulfgar arrived on the Eastfetch. Streets, stables, training yards, taverns, inns, and brothels had thickened with soldiers. Wulfgar had noted the Raptors better behaved, as a rule, than those he had known in other lands. According to Lorth, their service to the Eye and the things they knew thereby made any misconduct punishable by harsh measures.

  The presence of wizards in the city gathering to board a warship for the Gray Isles gave Wulfgar hope he hadn’t felt since finding out Rhinne was still alive. Earlier, he had sought out Pike and given him the news, suggesting he gather their men and ready the Eastfetch to sail. The burly sailor had flashed a gap-toothed grin, stretching the scar on his chin. He was far more attached to the idea of the sea and a good fight than he was concerned for the as-yet undiscovered whereabouts of the North Born of Tromb. Fair enough. Bjorn hadn’t sent these men here to do the work of spies.

  Similarly appealing to Wulfgar was the presence of a Keepers’ warship called the Winterscythe, a swift, forbidding vessel manned by a cutthroat crew as nasty as Pike and then some. Lorth had commented dryly that the Winterscythe changed captains more often than sails; however, being a Keepers’ ship, her captain and first mate were picked from the Order of Albatross with high ranks in the Order of Raptor. This and the news that the Aenlisarfon had sent word to the Master of Wychmouth in Mimir to ready a force for the trouble at hand caused Wulfgar to readjust his cynical opinion as to the willingness of wizards to involve themselves in the affairs of men. But then, Ragnvald and his minions had crossed rather flagrantly into their territory.

  When Wulfgar and Lorth had arrived to the Shining Star two days ago, orders from Eyrie awaited them: Hunt for assassins and spies. Give no quarter. Lorth had read the message with a faint, chilling smile. Then he packed away his Ra
ven’s habit, dressed comfortably as a mercenary and headed with Wulfgar to the rougher parts of town. Wulfgar had what he assumed was a rare opportunity to observe the wizard as he noticed the behaviors of odd folk, conversed with stray cats, and vanished into walls or shadows. Wulfgar had agreed to play bait. Drunk in a square, rude in a brothel, obnoxious in a bar or a shady shop, he let his lineage and origins shine like a stolen jewel. Thus aided by the wrong sort of attention, Lorth tracked down informants, spies and killers, including an oborom assassin who, no doubt owing to the fate of his predecessors had chosen to hide his blood and thorns. But Wulfgar’s amulet knew him.

  Now clad in plain clothes, Wulfgar turned as a small company of Raptors strode from the narrow way that led to the stables behind the inn. Greeting Wulfgar as they passed, the red-cloaked warriors ascended the steps to the door. Golden light, the smell of food and the loud talk of patrons flooded forth as they entered the common room, a favorite haunt of Keepers.

  After the first night here, Wulfgar had tired of the talk of wizards. Rhinne’s mysterious disappearance had worn his nerves to shreds, leaving little insulation against thoughtless pleasantries. The tension in his heart between worrying about her and lusting for war had shortened his temper considerably. He spent the second night on the Eastfetch with Pike, his crew, and Torlach.

  This evening, Lorth had agreed to take Wulfgar to a lower profile establishment. The wizard would have his animal eye on every sailor, barmaid, drunk and rat, of course. The man never stopped hunting.

  The inn doors opened again and Lorth emerged wearing a shabby green cloak he jokingly considered good luck, something he didn’t believe in. Marsin, one of the sailors who had delivered Rhinne to these shores, accompanied him. On one arm he bore a raven, its onyx eyes reflecting the light from the inn. Wulfgar assumed it was Nightshade. The bird had hung around Lorth off and on during most of their journey.

  Wulfgar lowered his chin in greeting as the men approached. Marsin wore a crease of anxiety in his forehead that smoothed as he stroked the bird’s feathers with his fingers. “Nightshade found your sister at sea and they bonded there,” he said to Wulfgar. “I think Rhinne preferred Nightshade’s company to ours.”