The Riven God

by F. T. McKinstry

  “Hai!” he shouted, louder this time. “By the Eye, I demand to speak to the Raven of Ostarin!” He gripped the leafy bars and slammed his boot against the thick oak portal of his cell.

  How had Elspeth known about the warlock? She had known of the danger before Wulfgar’s amulet had. So either she knew he was coming, or sensed it. No telling which. Only secrets in her eyes, as he had questioned her.

  Enraged by powerlessness, Wulfgar snatched up the empty cup and began dragging it back and forth against the bars. Over the racket, he yelled: “Answer me at once you sons of bitches or I’ll call him using the Dark Tongue!” Complete nonsense, but few would know to mention the Old One’s language, as Lorth had described it to him. For some reason.

  A metallic screech echoed from somewhere above. Wulfgar pressed his face against the bars as torchlight flooded the corridor, followed by heavy steps. A man came into view wearing a cerulean cloak with blood-red edging, which Lorth had explained marked a Keeper of a certain order as a Raptor as well. Wulfgar recalled what he now knew about the Orders of the Eye. Sky blue. High up.

  “What is your name?” the man said. He had wavy black hair shot with gray, steely eyes and an air of command.

  “I am Wulfgar, Prince of Tromb, Sentinel of the South,” Wulfgar rasped tiredly, noting a subtle change in the wizard’s mien. “I must see Master Lorth at once.”

  The wizard withdrew and turned to leave. “The Raven of Ostarin is not under beck and call.”

  Wulfgar slammed his hands against the door. “You fool! She was murdered!”

  The torchlight faded into the shadows as the man departed.

  Wulfgar shouted a curse that put the hair up on his neck, then whirled around and started to pace. These men didn’t care about a serving girl beyond locking up a man in connection with killing her. For Wulfgar had killed her, with lust, with doubt, by being here at all. He might as well have poisoned the Riven God’s knife himself.

  You are burdened with darkness.

  “Elspeth,” he breathed, sliding down against the wall with his head in his hands. Forgive me.

  The Bird Cage

  Lorth uttered a cloaking spell that rendered him nondescript, drew his hood against the wind and strode beneath a stone gate in the direction of the Journeyman’s Square, a cluster of workshops housing blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters, weavers, barkers, cobblers and horse traders. As to the last, the hunter had just heard a thing in the Purple Vine that made his spider scar throb.

  He had decided to leave the prince with his meal, his whiskey, and Elspeth. Lorth was friends with her mother, a priestess of Maern with wild, stone-gray hair like a raven’s nest and the temper of a blizzard. She knew more than a few words in the Dark Tongue. In contrast, Elspeth, a fledgling seer, was shy as a hare. She rarely warmed to men in the tavern as she had to Wulfgar. Leaving the couple to themselves, Lorth gave instructions to the barman that he wouldn’t be long.

  It was a small thing, a merchant overhearing a woman in a stable haggling over a pony. She had claimed the beast was hers and offered an absurd sum to get it back. But what sent Lorth out the door was a threat she had made, that no one would want to be found with anything of hers. The horse trader—and the merchant who related the tale—had guffawed at the claim.

  Lorth had not. It could have meant anything. But his scar didn’t lie.

  When he reached the stable, it was closed up for the night. Lamplight emanated from inside. Lorth crept around the edge of the barn beyond the view of the street. Somewhere near, a cat yowled. Light rain fell, and wind tugged on a loose slat on the edge of the roof. Lorth stilled himself and settled his mind into the barn like an owl to hunt for impressions...horses stirring, a swallow roosting in the rafter, a stablehand polishing a saddle.

  A rhythmic, rustling sound caught his attention. A large bird fluttered down and landed on the ground near his feet with a raspy sound of recognition. Lorth knelt and let the raven hop onto his arm. “Hai, Nightshade. Do you ever roost?” Stroking her plumage, he unraveled the linen from her leg. The message had a finely scrawled image of a raven with an “E” next to it. It read: I have Rhinne. Come to the harbor guardhouse. Eaglin.

  “Good news for a change,” Lorth said to the bird. She fluffed out her head feathers with a trilling sound. Forgetting the stable, Lorth headed back to the Vine to fetch Wulfgar. As he reached the street outside the gate to the square, Nightshade suddenly took to the air, circling him once before soaring off to the east.

  “Stranger by the day,” Lorth muttered. He continued on his way. Suddenly, Nightshade flew out of the dark with a raucous croak and circled him again, bidding him to follow. He hesitated, then went after her. He might have ignored the mad creature before she had shapeshifted into a dead god. That event had changed many things.

  The raven flew in more or less a straight line for a time, requiring Lorth to navigate the streets and alleys in haste to keep up. Then she dropped a wing and changed direction, leading him into a narrow path that went away from the main part of the city. Houses and buildings gave way to planted fields. An inky smudge upon the overcast sky, the raven led him on until she finally circled and alit on a stone post with a kruk.

  Lorth slowed his step and turned around a few times. Houses scattered over the hills beyond the fields and lights from the city glowed beyond. Nothing stood out; his senses were quiet. “Well?” he addressed the bird. “Mysterious as you are, I seem to be missing your point.”

  The raven perched there like an omen, her wings ruffling in the wind.

  Lorth knelt and placed his hand on the ground with a deep breath and a word. The depths didn’t turn to him, and the earth was silent.

  A door slammed in the distance not far from where he stood. Lights twinkled through the blowing trees on the far side of a field edging the path. A figure emerged and stomped across the rows with no care for what grew there.

  A voice rang out from the house. “Thieving wretch!” a woman cried. “Get out of my kale and don’t come back here!”

  The first figure swung around and made a rude gesture. “You best hope I don’t!”

  “I hope they find you!” The door slammed again.

  Nightshade made a guttural noise that sounded like a laugh.

  “Promising,” Lorth said dryly. He tilted his head; the raven hopped onto his shoulder. He strode down the path towards the woman, intercepting her as she emerged from the field. She stopped on one side of a low stone wall as he approached and dropped his cloaking spell. He drew forth a crystal with a word. Soft light emerged from his hand.

  “Who’re you?” the woman demanded. She was short, had ratty, graying red hair and colorful clothes that glimmered with the shine of silken threads too fine for one who would fire off a curse while trampling seedlings. Beneath her false impression, her fear smelled like a wet dog.

  Lorth studied her, wondering why the bird on his shoulder had led him here. The woman’s green eyes settled on the raven as if she wondered the same thing.

  Then she whipped her hand from a pocket and threw sand in Lorth’s face.

  Nightshade unleashed a cacophony of alarm calls as Lorth jumped back, blinded by grit. Furious, he growled a word and hit the ground on all fours, his senses spreading into the night with the velvet strength of predatory intent. The woman ran ahead on the edge of the path, huffing with desperation and unaware of what now followed her. With a fluid leap, Lorth tumbled her to the ground. Nightshade flew overhead, landing with a rustle and a screech in a tree above the path.

  The woman grappled with the wolf like a cat, her cries escalating to a scream. Lorth rose over her as a very angry wizard with swollen, bloodshot eyes and half a mind to skin her raw and feed her to his dark winged friend.

  “Milord!” she choked, not knowing what he was without his Raven’s habit. He doubted she would address him properly even if she had. “Forgive me! I thought you were”—a gulping pause—“something else.”

  Lorth’s smile could have wit
hered moss. “An oborom assassin, perhaps?” As she opened her mouth in a mixture of terror and confusion, he came down and hauled her up by the arm. “You picked the wrong man to cross this night.” Holding her in a rough grip, he drew his longknife from the scabbard on his thigh, flipped it deftly in his hand to lodge the image in her mind, and then escorted her back towards the city streets.

  “Where’re you taking me?” she gasped, wincing as he hustled her along. When he didn’t respond, she said, “I have coin. I’ll make it worth...”

  She trailed off as Lorth slowed, drew her around and put her back against a wooden building on one side of the passage.

  “...your while,” she finished softly.

  Lorth feigned the wrong kind of interest. “How much coin?” In the instant of her hesitation, he slipped his mind into the energy patterns of her space and detected the number three. Something she had split to hide.

  “Oi!” she started. “Here, then.” She pulled forth a shining purse that caught a distant light. “I don’t need no trouble. Now I know you’re—”

  “Shut up.” Lorth took the purse and hefted it in his hand. More coin than a person this coarse would own by honest means. “Now give me the other two.”

  “But I—”

  He put the knife to her throat. “I’ll not ask again.”

  Breathing heavily, she fumbled in her clothes for the other two purses he knew were there. She held them out with a wild expression of dismay. As Lorth took them, his heart skipped a beat. The price of an ancient sword. “Who are you?” he asked quietly.

  She opened her mouth, but her breath caught on fear. “I’m—nothing.”

  “Nothing,” he echoed. “Do you believe I won’t harm you?”

  “A true wizard wouldn’t!” she shot back. “You’re a rogue.”

  Rumbling with laughter, he hustled her once more towards the street. “So, Nothing. One rogue to another. Where did you get it?”

  “I’ll no’ tell you—”

  Lorth released a whistle. After a moment, Nightshade dropped from the sky and landed on his shoulder. He gently projected an image of Wulfgar into her mind, and in Aenspeak said, “Find our Child of Ascarion and bring him to me.” He didn’t need to wonder if the creature understood; there was more to her than met the eye, even for a raven. Without a sound, she lifted off and wove through the passage and out of sight.

  “What’re you doing?” the woman snapped.

  “Telling my friend to prepare her companions for a feast.” He crossed the street with the thief in tow, heading for a dense thicket of trees on the far side. “They haven’t had nothing for a long time.”

  Her breath caught as she struggled in his grip. “You don’t mean—”

  “Ravens don’t feed at night. But don’t worry, I’ll kill you first. Less work for them, come dawn.”

  She cried out. “Fiend! I stole it, ay? What’d you think!”

  He kept moving. “No one with that kind of coin would be so careless as to lose it to a thief.”

  “Och!” she choked as he moved past a fence and dragged her into the trees. Wind rustled the boughs above, giving the woman’s frightened imagination an image of dark creatures roosting in the treetops. She panted, “’Twas a woman and she stole it first, of that I’m sure! On the run, she was. Come now,” she pleaded. “We’re of like kind, you and I. You have the coin. Let me go.”

  Lorth slowed and stopped, then turned around and guided her back to the street. She yanked her arm as if he might release her; he gripped her all the tighter. “Only place you’re going is into the Bird Cage until I decide what to do with you—and don’t go thinking I’ve ruled out feeding you to the ravens. I might yet.”

  The rain fell harder, pelting them. Torches, cressets and lamps hissed in the dark, and people hurried through the streets to shelter. Lorth said nothing as his prisoner pleaded with him, rattling off her tale. His silence freed her tongue. She found the girl in the woods on the North Road, badly wounded. Offered to bring her to Caerroth. Tended her wound, a cruel wound, as if some ruffian had tried to disembowel her. When her cart was vandalized she used the forest path and didn’t escape with the coin until the girl was safe above the harbor. And so on.

  Lorth was less interested in what the woman said than in what she didn’t say. She hadn’t mentioned the assassin with his throat torn out, the assassin with the knife in his back, or her reasons for going into the forest when the road would have served them better. She had been dedicated to keeping Rhinne close and hidden at all costs, which meant she must have known about the coin early on. She had probably rustled through Rhinne’s person on the road before she awoke.

  But dedicated enough to risk assassins and the things that killed them? Not likely. She had a dozen chances to lift Rhinne’s purse and leave her to her fate. Lorth didn’t think compassion had kept the thief honest on their journey. Something had frightened her worse than hunters, wizards, or bad conscience.

  The Bird Cage crouched at the end of a quiet street. A single candle burned in a lantern hanging by the door. Sealed by a crystal and glimmering with one of Ecthor’s spiky watch-webs, the door required no guards. As Lorth approached, wind whipping his cloak and rain dripping from the edge of his hood, the woman tensed by his side. She had stopped talking a while back, when his silence had finally beaten her.

  Something stirred in the trees crowding the old arched door of the gaol. A raven shook the rain from its feathers, one black eye staring. Lorth held out his arm. The bird flew to him, white feather flashing. He had bid her to find the prince. Why was she here? Chilled, Lorth glanced at the door, his gaze moving up the stones. Best case, Wulfgar would be upstairs in the Vine with Elspeth in his arms. At worst, and more likely, the prince had returned to the Shining Star. He wouldn’t be here but under the darkest of circumstances—if he were here at all.

  Lorth released the woman’s arm. As she rubbed it, she cast a longing glance over her shoulder into the street. Lorth said, “Try it and I will kill you. I’m just in the mood and I give no quarter to spies.”

  She jerked her head around and gaped in speechless shock at the accusation.

  Raven on his arm, the hunter focused his mind into the crystal in the center of the door and spoke a word. As the door creaked open he said, “After you, Nothing.”

  As she hobbled inside, Lorth smiled coldly. Ecthor would drop a nut when he felt her pass through his watch-web. “My name is Fana. And I’m no’ a spy.”

  Lorth followed her, silent. Nightshade lifted from his arm and flew down the dank, narrow corridor. The bird had some place to go, all right. Sitting out here in the rowan trees waiting for him to let her in.

  The Cage was quiet as he descended the steps to the Raptors’ office. Lorth’s scar began to itch as footsteps echoed below. Torchlight stained the walls. Two Raptors appeared on the landing, old guard, rough and not usually stationed in the Cage. They had known histories at war before taking up with the Eye. The older one, Alinan, had a nasty cut on his face that appeared to have been put there recently. Brawl, so named for his fondness of keeping order in taverns, looked over Fana with mild interest.

  “Evening lads,” Lorth said as he stepped down, drawing the hood from his face.

  “Master!” Alinan said in surprise. The Raptors put fists to their hearts, heads bowed. As Fana stared at Lorth in astonishment, he said:

  “This woman is a spy. Brawl, put her away until I can question her.”

  As Fana protested loudly, Lorth turned to her with one finger aloft. “Dawn will come, Nothing, and the ravens will awake hungry. I suggest you revise your story before I return.”

  “I’m no’ a spy!” she repeated as the Raptor took her by the arm. She flung a finger at Lorth. “And he’s no wizard either or I’m a bloody privy door.”

  Brawl rumbled with laughter. “Wizard is as wizard does.”

  “Rogues!” she complained. “I demand to see a Keeper in charge here.”

  Lorth said to Brawl, “If s
he gives you any trouble, kill her.”

  The warrior grinned. “Aye, Master.” He drew his sword, silencing the thief with its shine. “On with ye, then.” He escorted her down the hall.

  “Where is Ecthor?” Lorth asked Alinan when they had gone.

  “He went out grumbling something about a treecloak. I think he’s looking for you.” He glanced over his shoulder into the shadowy passage. “Were you accompanied by a bird?”

  “Aye. What does Ecthor want?”

  His face hardened to gray stone. “Trouble at the Vine, Master.”

  Lorth’s heart grew cold as he envisioned Nightshade’s black eye glinting in the rowan tree. “Tall, blond hair, outlander?” Lorth gestured to the cut oozing blood on his face. “Did that?”

  The Raptor nodded briskly, his jaw flexing. “The same. He killed one of the girls up there. Told us—”

  Elspeth. “Where is he?” Not waiting for an answer, Lorth pushed past him and ran down the hall, ignoring the Raptor’s warning as he flooded the ancient stone with his mind. Lorth drew his crystal and spat a word over it. He found Nightshade hopping about on the floor in front of a cell at the end of deep passage reserved for those the Keepers chose to put close to the earth, to bind them. It was an old cell, eerie in its silence. The raven flew up at the grate in the door and squawked. From inside, a familiar voice rasped something in return.

  Lorth slammed the glowing crystal against the grate and looked in. Against the wall sat a figure huddled in a cloak, his eyes shining in the dim light, hair hanging in his face, his mood emanating the power and rage of a caged animal.

  “Wulf,” Lorth breathed. The door was sealed with a mechanism for which he didn’t have a key. Beneath it, Ecthor had put a spell on the lock. Lorth drew a deep breath, inhaled the blood red power of roots and the strength of stones that had held back the sea for an eon. He channeled it into a mindkey spell that hit the lock mechanism like a hammer, shattering both the tumblers and the spell. The door flew open and struck the wall with a thud.