The Riven God

by F. T. McKinstry

  The queen had told Aelfric that the Howling Estuary was immune to the effects of magic. One more reason to take shelter here, though he didn’t entirely believe the claim. With or without magic, his hunters would come looking. The oborom had eyes and ears in the wind and Aelfric no longer had his amulet to protect him. That was the first thing they took before dragging him five miles over the ground to an entrance to their tunnel network that Gareth’s sappers hadn’t found. Less than a mile from Lifngrove, it was very well hidden.

  His weapons, they took next. Had he not already been bruised and beaten by the forest floor they would have taken his mind as well. In the short time they had left him alone to recover enough to be conscious of pain as they tortured him, he escaped. One of the queen’s best spies, Aelfric had learned more than a few tricks for eluding trouble.

  He never gained the chance to discover what had happened to Wulfgar, Bjorn, Pike and Brigid. His oborom captors told him the queen was dead. They would say anything. But Aelfric discovered something that made him wonder: The queen no longer held Lifngrove. After his escape, Aelfric managed to get close enough to the town to discover men hanging from the walls, one of them the erstwhile constable. Aelfric was unable to discover more before warlocks filled the woods, beating the brush for him. A tactical error, seeking sanctuary in the queen’s forest stronghold. The oborom knew he would try it. And this time, they brought a priest.

  Aelfric had come upon a cave in the forest and spent three days there whispering makeshift spells to blend him with the earth as the warlocks scoured the forest. They would have burned it down had it not provided them with resources and hiding places. They knew Aelfric was there; in his condition, he couldn’t get far. But the earth protected him.

  Driven by hunger, his mind thinned and cracked by magic, Aelfric had crept through the wilds of his homeland surviving on what the forest provided him. Like a wolf, he drew near towns and homesteads but didn’t dare make himself known. He set the bones in his arm and strapped it to an ash-branch splint. Shortly thereafter, he happened upon a dead man not yet ravaged by wildlife. With much difficulty, he removed the shirt beneath the corpse’s tunic and fashion a sling with it. He had become proficient in doing things with one hand and his teeth.

  His sketchy magical skills had helped him to get here. But they wouldn’t feed him or heal his wounds. Somewhere in this forbidding place lived a man among the ravens, gulls and seals. Queen Lorelei had called him a healer; everyone else considered him either mad or nonexistent. In either case, Aelfric’s best chance lay in riding this out. If he survived, the gorge would provide shelter until he could gather his strength and search for his companions.

  Assuming he hadn’t fallen in the warlocks’ ambush above the Widow Tears, Wulfgar would have come looking for him. But under the queen’s orders, the prince might not have had time. The warlocks who shot Aelfric down had cloaked him in spells and removed him from the place quickly. They hadn’t poisoned their arrows with graestrip. They wanted him alive.

  Harald hadn’t been so fortunate. Grief descended on Aelfric like a cold tide. The sea’s wicked poison had taken his lover before they reached Lifngrove, as they fled from the forest where the oborom had taken Wulfgar in return for their lives. For two miles, while fearing what the warlocks had in store for the prince, Aelfric had worked to keep Harald talking and alert as he wrestled the specter of death. It claimed him in sight of the gates.

  The sun moved beyond the narrow opening, casting Aelfric in shadow. He rose stiffly. The crude path had been cut into the rock centuries ago and used by warriors to defend the isle, and followers of the Circle to practice their devotions to the sea. Aelfric moved into the gorge, searching for signs of human habitation.

  Something flashed silvery pale in the rocks below. A fish, caught in a small pool formed by a bowl in a rock. Aelfric stopped and peered over the steep, rugged boulders tumbled over the drop. It would be a nasty descent, but he rarely came upon this much food this easily. And when the tide came in, the fish would escape.

  He moved up and down the path until he found the least perilous way down, and descended. Finally, he stepped onto the damp, slippery rocks at the river’s edge. The fish was still there. He swallowed, his mouth watering. Had he the means, he would prefer to cook this creature. But he had no easy way to kindle a flame and one useable hand wouldn’t accomplish it the hard way. He stood there for a moment, gathering his mettle and casting his gaze around for inspiration. Then his attention stopped on something.

  Long, pale objects hung in a mass of branches caught in an earthen hollow some thirty feet above the river. Bones? They were human; a skull hung from the end of a spine. He looked farther into the gorge. The hermit?

  Aelfric returned his attention to the stranded fish with a long exhale. Dead or alive, the hermit must possess a tinderbox. He had to live here someplace, perhaps in the towering forests rooted deep above the sea-torn rocks of the river. He knelt and flipped the fish into the rushing water. “Tide’s come early for you, friend.” He would find something later when he was hungry enough to eat it raw.

  Aelfric turned and surveyed the drop he had just come down. Getting back up would be harder. Idgit, he swore inwardly. Hunger had made him careless. He picked his way along the rocks on the river’s edge, eyeing the open space of the path above. He went back a short distance, found a place and started climbing. When he reached the place where he had thought the path was, he found himself on a wide, flat boulder with nothing around it worth stepping on. He glanced back towards the pool where he had seen the fish. The rising tide had enveloped it.

  He kept climbing, casting his gaze repeatedly at the waters. The tides rose high and fast in the Gray Isles, leaving little time for second thoughts. His wounds shrieked with pain, weakening him. He began to doubt his resolve. The hermit was just a dreamer’s tale. Those bones belonged to a warrior or a dissenter. Or a fugitive.

  Wind rushed through the gorge and howled in the crags. Aelfric turned his head as a chill rushed over it. The sea writhed and crashed beyond the gorge. In the opening, something slick and black rolled over a curling wave. It had a row of spiky fins along its spine.

  Disoriented by infection and fatigue, Aelfric leaned into the rocks as darkness passed over his eyes. Nauseous, he took a step, but his foot landed on nothing. The landscape spun out from under him. He flailed out with a cry as he fell, striking the rocks. Unable to get a hold, he tumbled towards the hungry waves storming below. His heart nearly stopped as he hit the icy water. He sank as the current dragged him under.

  In a parting mist he saw Harald, riding in the sun, his smile creasing around his eyes. As his breath ran out Aelfric thought, I join you in the Halls of Ascarion, my friend.

  Not yet, a voice replied, deep, resonant and flowing in the water. Something grasped his tunic by the neck and hauled him up into the air.

  Choking, half-conscious and numb with pain, Aelfric hung like a drowned animal in his captor’s grip. But it was not a man that carried him effortlessly through the storming course, up the rocks and higher, into the cold, briny air of the gorge. Its flesh was cold as a fish, smelled of the sea, and was covered in seaweed, green-gray webs and tiny, glittering jewels. Aelfric faded in and out of dreams as they ascended winding steps made of wood and stone. The air smelled of earth and evergreen. Sunlight beamed in intervals through the high boughs of pines swaying in the wind.

  They entered an enclosed space. The strange being lowered Aelfric down onto something leafy and dry, and then moved away. Aelfric rolled over and retched brackish water. His sling had come off his arm on one side. Judging by the pain, his splint hadn’t held his bones against the rocks.

  Woodsmoke filled the air. Lying on his side, shivering with infection and shock, Aelfric gathered his conscious awareness and peered up to assess his new situation. He lay near one wall of a hut made from woven branches packed with mud. It had a dirt floor strung with crumbling plant stalks. Lining the walls were narrow shelves stuf
fed with jars, boxes, crocks, shells, roots and other strange things. A large bucket sat near a tidy hearth built of flat stones. The room smelled of dust and animals. No human had lived here recently.

  Kneeling there, tending the small flames with gestures from a long-fingered hand tipped with curved nails that looked like claws, was a creature from a child’s tale. Aelfric stirred and cleared his throat, but he couldn’t speak as the being stood and turned around, ducking to avoid putting his head through the low thatched roof. He had flesh of iridescent pearl, long, coiling locks of red-brown hair tied in braided lengths around his shoulders, and blue-green eyes slitted like a reptile’s. A greenish web clung to his muscled form. As he moved, light glittered around him.

  “Do I dream?” Aelfric asked him, his voice cracking.

  “Mortals live in dreams,” the being said in his deep, beautiful voice. “But you are awake.” He returned to the fire. A cauldron hung over the flames and a wooden cup sat on the hearth. Aelfric didn’t think either of them had been there a moment ago.

  An immortal? “Who are you?” Who—or what, he added privately.

  The being knelt before him, placing the steaming cup aside. “Sit up.”

  Aelfric pushed himself up with his good arm, clenching his teeth in a sweat as the pain from his arrow wound shot through his chest and back. He coughed again, his throat raw. The entity moved to his side, placed one clawed hand over his wound and the other on his heart. Warmth filled his chest and back. It felt like the sunlight he had basked in earlier, inside of his body. After a moment, the pain in his shoulder vanished. He moved it, astonished. “What did you...?”

  “Be still.” He took Aelfric’s broken arm in his hands and removed the splint. Aelfric gritted his teeth, his breath quickening as the entity grasped his arm on either side of the now-fresh break and then worked the splintered bone together. A yell ripped from Aelfric’s throat; he grew faint, and mist covered his eyes.

  Suddenly, the sun-warmth flowed into his arm, tickling and swirling around the damaged flesh. Again, the pain diminished. Panting, Aelfric opened and closed his hand, and twisted his fist a couple of times. His arm was whole.

  Immortal, indeed. The being withdrew, picked up the cup and held it out. “This will keep you here,” he rumbled.

  Aelfric had no idea what that meant, but the immortal had just saved his life for the second time, so he didn’t question it. He took the cup with a trembling hand. It looked like tea, but smelled like something rotting on the floor of a sea cave. Steeling himself, he took a sip. It nearly gagged him, but it didn’t taste as bad as it smelled. He drank again.

  The glistening creature sat back on the floor with his arms over his knees. “I was mortal once,” he said in answer to Aelfric’s earlier question, as if nothing had happened. His gaze was as deep as the sea. “My name was Hemlock. You may call me that.”

  “Hemlock,” Aelfric rasped, swallowing. An odd thing to call an immortal. “I owe you my life.”

  Hemlock lifted his chin as if to appraise him. “That debt was paid.”

  An image of the fish stranded in the pool flashed over Aelfric’s thoughts. He ignored it and said, “By what?”

  “Why did you free the salmon?” Hemlock asked. “The tide would have saved it. You could have eaten it, for all that, but you went hungry. The Mistress knows her own.”

  Chilled, it occurred to Aelfric that this being had spared him in much the same way as Aelfric had spared the fish, for his life probably meant little more to an immortal than that. To change the subject, he gestured to the surroundings. “What is this place?”

  “East above the river. A man once lived here. He served the Mistress.” A dark expression passed over his fair features. “The old pacts between the kings and the immortal lords of these isles have been broken. The wolves were hungry this winter, deprived of their game by the minions of Ragnvald. The beasts found food where necessary. As they do.”

  Aelfric drifted into a memory. On the night before the oborom ambush, he had lain with Harald in an abandoned chamber in South Tower, drinking wine and talking about wolves. The only noble hunters left on this accursed isle, Harald had said, his hair hanging in his face and his eyes reflecting the firelight.

  Aelfric recalled the bones hanging in the roots on the river’s edge. In the Gray Isles, the creatures that graced the standards of the Great Halls were revered, wolves among them. It was forbidden to hunt them or to deplete their game. Humankind had learned to survive on the sea, crops they grew in the earth and on beasts they raised themselves. They left the wolves alone. Aelfric had never heard that this custom originated in a pact between mortals and gods.

  “The queen used to tell me things like that,” he said. He looked up with a glimmer of hope. “Do you know, is she...?”

  “She has joined the Circle,” the entity replied quietly. “By the king’s orders, the Sentinel of the West put her to death.”

  Aelfric set his cup aside as this news settled over him. He hadn’t wanted to believe his oborom captors’ claim that Lorelei was dead. But the more time he had spent with her, learning her arts, the more he had feared for her. The beautiful queen had always seemed so ethereal and impermanent, like something from another realm fading back into it. “And my companions?”

  Hemlock rose and took something from the fire, spilling it into a bowl. Again, Aelfric was startled by scents and objects that seemed to appear from nowhere, yet felt part of his reality, as if he simply hadn’t noticed them. The entity handed him the bowl. It was filled with shellfish, crab and leaves stewed in golden broth. Aelfric nearly swooned at the smell. As he looked up, the entity placed a spoon in it with a kind of care that reminded Aelfric he was mortal once. Despite his sickening fear that Wulfgar and Bjorn had met the same fate as the queen had, he began to eat.

  “The princes yet live,” the entity said. “But they need your help.”

  Aelfric paused, chewing, his spoon dripping. “I would give my life for them.”

  “That is one possibility.” That appraising stare again. “I am bound to the Old One’s injunctions, at present.” A smile touched his mouth, revealing a pointed tooth. “Such is the knowledge of my kind. You, however, being mortal, are not bound, as far as you perceive it. Unfortunately, neither is King Ragnvald. The Riven God is using him to exert his will upon this dimension.”

  For the first time since he had departed Tromblast Keep with the last of its protectors, Aelfric recalled his vision of the pale, silvery warrior emerging from the icy sea. He set his bowl down, no longer hungry. “Am I to gather the Riven God is your enemy?”

  The slit in the immortal’s eyes widened, darkening them. “His name is Carmaenos. He is marked by the Destroyer for violating a priestess of the Circle in another timeline. Because he is using the time-space matrix to hide his identity, it falls to mortals to unearth him.”

  “Pray, what does that have to do with me?”

  “Ragnvald is Carmaenos’ identity manifested in this dimension. A rocky channel for the sea, if you will. Through Ragnvald and the oborom, Carmaenos sees his enemies and knows their movements. We must close his eyes.”

  Aelfric leaned forward, his heart pounding as it occurred to him that the debt he owed this creature for plucking him from the river and healing his wounds had nothing to do with a salmon. “What are you saying?”

  “I want you to kill the king,” Hemlock replied with the serenity of a star.

  The Winterscythe

  Cold rain swept in sheets across the sea beyond the harbor of Caerroth, driven by a north-turning wind. Shivering in her cloak and a thin wool blanket, Rhinne gazed through the row of windows in the captain’s chamber of the Winterscythe as the war ship crept into the mists like an assassin. The silent docks, buildings and hills of the harbor moved slowly away, and then vanished.

  For all her trouble in Sourcesee, Rhinne didn’t want to leave. Eyrie, Eyeroth, the Shining Star—even the impossible wilderness—now seemed fair compared to a journey to Tro
mb.

  Heavy footsteps, banging sounds, creaks and voices rumbled in the ship as the sailors got underway. Earlier, several warriors in gray, white and black had gotten together a barrel and some hot water so she could bathe. They had also left her a stack of felted woolens. Something about the tall, pale-skinned men sparked her memory, but she couldn’t place it.

  Someone knocked on the door. Pulling her blanket around her like a waif, Rhinne went and opened it.

  “Milady,” said a tall warrior holding a tray of food. Rhinne stepped out of the way and let him in. He ducked into the room, closing the door with his boot. He moved to a small table and placed down the tray. He had a dark, reddish beard and blond hair plaited into braids that hung over his chest. Like the men who had come earlier, he wore stone-gray leggings, a white tunic and a black cloak trimmed with deep blue. His leather breastplate was ornately embossed with a woven circle containing a wolf standing on a river crowned by mountains and stars.

  He touched his fingers to his forehead and tilted his head slightly. “I am Laegir, Captain of the Eusiron Guard.”

  Rhinne gulped and nodded. “Rhinne of Tromb.”

  He gestured to the table. Rhinne went there and sat on a bench nailed to the floor. The table was covered with cuts as if someone had attacked it with a sword. Stifling a yawn, she picked up a piece of cheese. The sharp, creamy flavor awakened her hunger. She fell to the meal.

  Captain Laegir moved into the chamber, looking around as if to inspect it. He lifted a burning oil lamp hanging on a hook to check its contents. “I trust you are comfortable?”

  “Aye,” she said swallowing. Her rough travels had left her feeling unworthy of fine treatment. “I am grateful,” she ventured. She bit into a piece of stale bread.

  “We’re under orders, milady.” He folded his muscular arms over his chest. His accent and manner reminded her of Lorth.

  “By whom?” She could guess.