The Riven God

by F. T. McKinstry

  After a blushing pause, Rhinne said, “He didn’t come to me. I thought he might be here waiting.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Wulfieeee...” Lorth sang up hauntingly from below. Rhinne giggled.

  Throwing a black glance over his shoulder, Wulfgar swung over the side, caught his foot on the ropes and descended. Rhinne stood by the rail, gazing down, her strangeness wavering around her like a spell.

  Wulfgar dropped into the boat, catching his balance. He untied the line and shoved against the hull of the Winterscythe as Lorth began to row. Wulfgar sat down and grabbed the second set of oars. “She reminds me more of my mother every day,” he said, glancing up at the ship. Rhinne had disappeared.

  “It comes naturally to women to keep secrets,” Lorth said.

  The two men rowed, leaving the towering shadow of the Winterscythe behind. It continued to rain as darkness and cold surrounded them. The north wind tore at their backs.

  “What’s your excuse then?” Wulfgar returned.

  “Knowing secrets often means keeping them. Or not.” Lorth eased up on the oars and did something that caused the boat to waver. “You can come out now.”

  Wulfgar realized the wizard had thrown a kick when someone grunted behind him. He twisted around. “What’s this?”

  From the pile of supplies heaped up in the middle of the boat, someone sat up. “How did you know?” a man said, dragging a piece of tarred leather from his head.

  The wizard began to row again. “I’m a First Regard siomothct, you idgit. But I heard you stifle a laugh when I called Wulfie here from the rail. Make yourself useful and keep a lookout on that shore for trouble.”

  “Adder,” Wulfgar growled. He turned around and resumed rowing, locking in time with the wizard’s strokes. “When Laegir finds out you left my sister without protection he’s going to gut you alive. How about I save him the trouble.” His rowing strokes became stronger and deeper, driven by anger.

  “Rhinne can call a sea dragon to her hand,” Adder reminded him. “You think anyone’s going to bother her?”

  “That’s a point,” Lorth put in.

  “It’s not the point,” Wulfgar returned. “She was looking for you. She’ll lose her mind trying to figure out why you did this.” He pulled another stroke, his strength burning. “Since you’re here, perhaps you can tell me if she’s missed her menses yet.”

  Lorth cleared his throat.

  Adder said, “Och! She’s no fool. She takes care of that.”

  Wulfgar stopped rowing and turned around again. “What?”

  “The women in the Guard keep an herb,” Adder said. “They gave her some.”

  Lorth wheezed a laugh. “As women grow wiser, so do their secrets.”

  Wulfgar took up the oars again. “Rhinne will be on the next boat,” he panted. “You should’ve come with her.”

  Adder didn’t respond.

  “You’re avoiding her,” Lorth said. “What are you planning?”

  “I know the layout of the keep,” the warrior replied. “I will go there and make sure our men have a way in.”

  Wulfgar snorted. “Will you, now. It’s a good twelve miles to Tromblast, and farther in the wilds. Three rivers to cross. On the coast, three towns under my father’s control. I’d ask whose orders you’re under but since you snuck onto this boat I’ll assume you have none. You’re not going anywhere.”

  “I don’t take orders from you,” Adder informed him.

  “You do now!” Wulfgar shot back over this shoulder. “You know nothing of Tromblast and I’ll not tell my sister that someone else she loves has fallen to the oborom.”

  The sound of water crashing on the rocky shore drew closer. Lorth said, “Wulf, steer to starboard.” The longboat changed direction slightly as Wulfgar complied. “Now forward with all your might.”

  Their talk ceased as they maneuvered the craft on the rising tide. Though he couldn’t see much in the inky dark, Wulfgar focused on what he knew of the coastline edging the forest of Idungrove. He gauged their position by the crash and foam where the water hit the rocks onshore. “Lorth, do you sense a large outcropping? Starboard of that, about thirty feet, there’s a passable strand. It’s not a smooth walk, and there’ll be a climb but there’s room for the boats.”

  Lorth looked over his shoulder and plunged an oar to direct them away from the invisible bank of rock towering in their path. “You islanders are fiends, dealing with these tides,” the wizard remarked.

  Wulfgar grinned. “We have a saying: ‘The peril of the tide is the power of the tide.’”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Adder said behind him. Then the warrior moved suddenly. “’Ware. Torches ashore.”

  “Take the oars,” Lorth said. Adder scrambled forward as Lorth moved ahead of him. As the longboat lurched forward again, Lorth began to mutter in the wizard’s tongue.

  The sound of a hissing arrow struck the air.

  “Lorth was that you?” Wulfgar asked, expecting to be struck in the back at any moment.

  “Aye. Keep rowing.” The wizard took another shot, and then another.

  An arrow struck the side of the boat. “That wasn’t you,” Adder commented.

  “Relax. I’ve made us hard to hit.”

  Wulfgar rowed, hoping with each stroke that his father hadn’t seen the Eastfetch, as Rhinne had assured them. Laegir was right. This plan had as many holes in it as a wrecked ship. His father and Dore wouldn’t be caught unawares.

  “How many?” Adder asked. “Can you tell?”

  “I think it’s a scouting party. They aren’t countering my mind, but they doused the torches and they’re up in those woods where I can’t get a shot.”

  “They must not have a priest with them,” Wulfgar said. “That means they didn’t know we were coming.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  They rowed until the longboat scraped bottom. Lorth splashed into the surf and moved to the shore, blurring with the night like a ghost. Adder and Wulfgar got out and pulled the boat onto the rocks in the shallower water. They paused as someone cried out above. Farther away, another shouted. “He’s hunting them down,” Wulfgar said.

  Without comment, Adder began unloading supplies and carrying them up the rugged strand to higher ground. Wulfgar drew forth the anchor and dropped it into the rocks, making sure it would hold the boat against the tide. The icy surf numbed his thighs. He loaded an unwieldy mass of things from the boat onto his shoulders and then headed for the shore. Adder was not in sight.

  He hesitated with a chill as someone came down from the woods above. “It’s me,” Lorth said. His dark form seemed to grow less dark against the night. “Where’s Adder?”

  Wulfgar headed for the embankment. “He was moving supplies. He wasn’t up there?”

  “I didn’t see him.”

  Wulfgar lowered a heavy sack and gazed into the moonless night hanging in the trees. “Can you sense him?”

  “Well, there’s a thing.” He laughed. “I didn’t even sense him down here.”

  Wulfgar dropped the rest of the supplies and started for the bank.

  “Wulf,” Lorth said firmly, stopping him. “There’s no time. He has chosen his path.”

  “Someone might have taken him.”

  “Not likely. You’ve seen him fight.”

  Wulfgar clenched his fists and drove them into his eyes. “He’s shit mad. He’ll compromise the mission.”

  “Don’t assume that. Sometimes the best defense is in the unpredictable.”

  Lorth walked to high point above the incoming tide. Wulfgar followed him, gritting his teeth. The wizard leaned down and picked up something, then drew an object from his cloak and spoke a word, causing pure white light to beam out from a crystal in his hand. He lashed it to the end of the branch, which he drove into the rocks. Wulfgar looked behind him, half expecting to see an army of warlocks in the trees.

  Torchlight flared out in the distance, then vanished. “They’re coming,” Lorth
said. “This should draw on my life force long enough for you to guide them in and set up a perimeter. I’m going to see if we’re safe to wait out the night. You should have time to get everyone ashore before I return.” He hesitated, throwing a glance over his shoulder at the woods. “I’ll keep an eye out for Adder.”

  The wizard departed without a sound, leaving Wulfgar standing before the rising tide to wait for the warriors and crew of the Winterscythe. His heart thumped evenly in his breast. Until now, he had thought being bloodied to sense by the violation and loss of those he loved kept him from doing something daft, even to avenge the Riven God’s attempted rape of his sister. He knew his enemy.

  He had to appreciate Adder’s recklessness, however. Lorth was right. In a breathtaking rush he imagined Elspeth, a smile touching her lips as she awoke in his arms, released from death by the blood of a god. One night of lovemaking, the shyness of a cat, the story of a crow. Only that, to capture his heart. To avenge her, he would be capable of anything.

  “Just don’t get yourself killed, Adder,” he said to himself, “or my sister will bring the sea down on this isle.”

  Sorcery

  The night darkened as Lorth stole away from the light of his crystal beaming out over the sea. Beyond, the deeper waters defied his senses like a woman in a bad mood. He cleared his mind, focused on the faint hum between his eyes and gathered light from the unseen, parting the shadows so he could navigate through the woods.

  He divested two of the scouts he had killed of their remaining arrows. His quiver full, he moved on, his senses extended for impressions of Adder. He would intercept the warrior if the opportunity presented itself; however, Lorth didn’t have time to hunt him down even if his better sense encouraged him to try. He didn’t believe the reason Adder had given for leaving Rhinne behind. He shuddered to speculate as to the real one.

  Based on the crude map Wulfgar had drawn of western Tromb, it was roughly two miles to the bridge on the outskirts of Vik where most of the town traffic went to and from the southern coast. The bridge would be guarded; by whom and how many, that would tell him much.

  After a short time, he sensed something hovering on the fringes of his mind. He perceived no magic, no human pattern. It felt more like a curious animal; a likely perception, as not many humans would be able to keep up with him. It moved here and there, trailing him, yet not.

  He passed through the forest unhindered. When he emerged, he knelt and gazed at the sea in the direction of the Winterscythe. Darkness enveloped her; no torches, no voices, only the void. He continued on, heading northeast.

  As Lorth moved over the rocky, brushy plain north of the shore, his shadow followed him. He began to reconsider his assumptions. He would have felt an oborom. A hungry wolf might follow him like this, but not into the open where scouting parties roamed. He put together the patterns in his mind. He hadn’t sensed Adder hiding out in the longboat when they got into it; nor had he detected the warrior in the forest as he swept it for scouts. Rhinne’s lover was more than he seemed.

  Time to test the waters. Lorth stopped and knelt, breathing a word. The air grew cold and clear, and the wind dropped. His vision and hearing sharpened. Then he waited.

  For a time, nothing happened. Lorth scanned the landscape on every side, and saw nothing. Perhaps his original idea of an animal was correct. The presence had vanished into the night like a breath. Lorth continued to watch...until the earth shivered. He turned his head in the direction of the coast and trained his focus there. After a moment, he discerned something filling the space beside an outcropping as if it were merged with the stone.

  No animal would do that.

  The presence spoke; its voice so faint that Lorth wouldn’t have heard it without his senses heightened by earth and air—which meant it knew he could hear it. “Master Lorth,” it said. “I know you are hunting me. I will come forth; please don’t rip my throat out.”

  Smiling, Lorth rose to his feet as the figure of a man came into focus from the night. “Well then,” the hunter said as Adder approached him. Lorth looked the warrior up and down as he circled him. “Adelan of Nemeton. I was not aware the Eusiron Guard was being trained in the arts of siomothct.”

  “We aren’t,” Adder said with a long exhale. “Nor was I aware that you were, or I’d not have planned this.”

  Lorth grasped his sword strap and started walking. “Who taught you?”

  The warrior strode by his side and said nothing.

  “Ah,” Lorth said. “You worried I’ll report you?”

  “You’re on the Aenlisarfon,” Adder said with a laugh. “If the planet wasn’t cloaked you’d have told them already.”

  “Na. I learned my skills the same way you did: beyond the Keepers’ hand. Keep your truth, I’ll not press you.”

  “He was Order of Raven,” Adder said finally. “Two suns past, I heard a rumor that the Council stripped him of his cloak. He found trouble. I often wonder if he got caught training others as he did me.”

  With a start, Lorth put this together. Eadred. Long white hair, pale green eyes and the temperament of a barracuda. Lorth wouldn’t have imagined the Raven taking on an apprentice, even outside of the Eye. “You speak of the Raven of Nemeton?”

  “The same. You know him?”

  “Aye. The Council sent me to these very isles to discover the nature of his ‘trouble,’ as you put it. A misunderstanding. I saw to it he was reinstated to the Order.”

  “I am pleased to hear this. What happened?”

  “Long story. It had nothing to do with training apprentices. How did you know him?”

  “Some six suns past, I left my training in Eusiron and returned to Nemeton to care for my father. He was very ill and my mother didn’t have the means to care for him. I couldn’t find useful work in the villages, so I began to fight for coin. I was good enough to support my parents. Master Eadred tended the Waeltower of Ash. He often frequented the village fights; some said to keep order, to keep it clean. He took note of me. That very season, my father died. Eadred took me into his care and taught me many things.”

  Lorth nodded. “So that’s where you learned to fight. First time I saw Eadred in hand-to-hand I nearly choked on my teeth.”

  Adder laughed. “Aye, I learned my limits quickly.” He fell silent as the plain thickened into a glade. They moved as wolves towards the faint flicker of lights in the distance. “Master Eadred was called away the next year on a mission. When he didn’t return, I went back to Eusiron with my mother and was accepted into the Guard.”

  They walked until the sound of the river blended with the wind. Staying in the trees, Lorth reached the rolling course and followed it towards Vik. “I’ll make a deal with you,” he said quietly. “I’ll overlook how you came by your fine skills if you tell me what you’re planning to do.”

  “I told you, I’m going to Tromblast.”

  “To do what? Let’s have the real story this time.”

  “If you expose me to the Council you’ll expose Master Eadred too.”

  “Na. I’ll just bind your powers.”

  Adder turned to him and stared. “You would not.”

  Lorth stopped and locked gazes with him. Knowing well the devastation he had felt when Eaglin threatened to bind his powers years ago, Lorth had no intention of doing the same to Adder. But Wulfgar was right. There was too much at stake to allow a man with Adder’s skill and the recklessness of a woman on his mind to make decisions beyond orders. Lorth didn’t like the idea of having one of Eadred’s protégés on the loose and he was not above using a rough bargaining token to make the point.

  Lorth sniffed the air scented with woodsmoke and pine. “If you’re plotting some kind of vengeance for what happened to Rhinne on that ship...”

  “I’ll take them down,” Adder vowed. “Ragnvald, Dore, the priests.”

  “You are skilled, Adder, and I respect you. I’m even starting to like you. But you don’t understand what you’re facing. The people of the Gray I
sles have been using magic outside the Eye for centuries. They don’t play by the rules. Eadred—a full-fledged Raven and a siomothct—fell in these isles to the wiles of a witch with a similar bent. It broke his mind. And even I couldn’t break the spell Ragnvald is using to see our movements under Ealiron’s treecloak. How far do you think you’ll get?”

  After a pause, the warrior conceded. “Very well.”

  His veiled resolve told Lorth he hadn’t seen the end of it.

  “Let’s get to the bridge,” the hunter suggested. “Your skills will be of use here, I think.”

  They moved with new urgency, hugging the steep bank above the river. Torchlight stained the trees ahead. They crept forward until the bridge came into view. The wide stone arch was guarded by a dozen heavily armed oborom. Lorth’s spider scar began to ache. Dark shapes stood in the trees beyond the bridge on either side.

  “Och,” Adder said. “No routine watch, this.”

  “Aye, not at this hour. They’re preparing for something. I’d like to find out what.”

  “Think we can take them?”

  “I’d rather get into those woods across the river.” He dropped his mind into the black water rolling and crashing below. The soul of the river blended with the rising tide ached in his bones and whispered in his mind with the heart-pounding malevolence of an Otherworld sentry questioning an outlander. “These waters are rough. Think you can handle it?”

  “I can’t swim.”

  Lorth cast him a sidelong glance. “What the hell does Laegir expect of you lot?”

  “He’s a mountain man.”

  They both turned at the sound of a distant horn. A slow drumbeat reverberated on the air.

  “What’s going on?” Adder said. “Master Eaglin?”

  “Too early. Besides, he wouldn’t announce himself.” Lorth knelt to study the bank, casting his mind into the woods on the other side. An uncomfortable prickle turned over in his gut and raced into his scar, causing his breath to shorten. He stood up and drew Adder into the trees. Beyond the far side of the bridge rumbled an approaching company. A mounted warrior rode forth on a fine charger the color of clouds. He wore the polished trappings of rank and a dark cloak that partially hid his face, pale as a moon. The energy around him raised the hair on Lorth’s flesh like the cry of a frightened animal.