Reclaimer

by J. C. Staudt

  Oh no. She darted off without another word.

  Stoya found them at the fork where Briar Creek and the Wildwood River joined to form the Hightrade. The cooper’s older boy and girl were hopping across the stones to a beach of pebbles on the far side of the stream. Draithon and their youngest boy watched jealously while Rhilde held their hands to keep them from attempting the same feat. Stoya called Rhilde’s name as she ran up to them.

  “Mistress Lyrent,” Rhilde said. “What are you doing here? It’s early in the day yet.”

  “We’ve finished the day’s work sooner than expected,” Stoya said. “I can take him now. Thank you so much for looking after Draithon. You’ve been an immense help to Eldrek and I.”

  Rhilde frowned at Stoya’s frantic look. “Is everything alright?”

  “Yes. Yes, it’s fine. We’ve got to be getting on, is all.”

  Rhilde held onto Draithon’s hand. “A group of riders in gray cloaks passed by here a moment ago. They were headed toward the bridge.”

  Stoya feigned surprise. “Really? I hope nothing’s happened. Come, Draithon. Time to go.”

  “I want to stay and play, Mommy,” Draithon said.

  “I know, sweet one. But we must go now.”

  “It’s alright,” Rhilde said, stroking the boy’s hair. “You can come back and play tomorrow. Can’t he?”

  Stoya smiled, unwilling to tell what she knew was a lie. “Here we are, darling.” When she bent to pick him up, Draithon began to cry.

  “What’s this all about?” Rhilde asked.

  “Nothing. Everything’s fine. Take care of yourself and the children.” Stoya trudged up the bank with Draithon in her arms and turned left down the path.

  Rhilde watched curiously, no doubt wondering why Stoya was taking him toward the village instead of toward home.

  As soon as the trees stole Rhilde and her children from view, Stoya cut across the road and plunged into the deep forest, leaving home and village and safety behind. She quickly realized her sandals were unsuited for the thick tangles of trackless woodland, but she could scarce go back to the hut to retrieve her old riding boots.

  A few moments after crossing the road, she heard the Dathiri Pathfinders riding back toward the village. By now they’d found the empty hut and would be keen to question every villager they could find. Stoya had no doubt Rhilde and her husband would comply with their interrogations, and thus it was only a matter of time before they deduced her absence. With luck the soldiers would keep to the road, but she doubted it. The Pathfinders were Olyvard’s most elite trackers; they would face every danger in the realms before they gave up on the king’s ransom.

  The sounds of the village faded, and the forest swallowed her. Branches reached out with stabbing fingers; thorns and dead limbs scraped at her shins and ankles. The sobbing child in her arms made the going no easier. When Stoya could run no longer, she took shelter behind the trunk of a massive oak. There she soothed Draithon and dried his tears until he settled. She stayed vigilant, watching always in the direction of the road and the village beyond. “Shall we go for a walk?” she asked Draithon.

  “I want to go back to the river and play,” he said.

  “We can’t go that way, love. Poppy is going to meet us this way. Don’t you want to go see Poppy?”

  “I want to see the river.”

  “I’ve told you, we aren’t going to the river. Not that one, anyway. There’s another river over that way. One you’ve never seen before.”

  His eyes lit up. “Is it big?”

  “Very big. And do you know what’s at the end of it?”

  “What?”

  “A lake. A huge lake, with a town, and a bridge that’s even bigger than our bridge. And after that, the mountains.”

  “What’s mountains?”

  She told him.

  “Why are the rocks pointy?”

  “They’ve been that way for ages and ages, ever since the world came into being.”

  “Oh,” he said. He thought for a moment. “How long is that?”

  “A very long time, sweetheart. Are you ready? Do you want to come with Mommy to meet Poppy and see the river, and the lake, and the mountains?”

  He was. Stoya took her son by the hand, and together they vanished into the depths of the Wildwood. They would never return to Briarcrest, she knew. Never again would she see the place she’d come to call home, with its familiar faces and sounds and smells.

  Stoya did not know where they would run to, or for how long they would be able to stay there. Where could she go? Not home to her father at the Greenkeep, that was certain. Nor to Kestrel and the others, who by this time had left Galmeston on their expedition, southbound through the Thraihmish wilderness toward the Towershield Mountains and Tenleague Deep. Stoya wondered who Kestrel had chosen as their caster. Probably some half-blind hedge mage with a gouty leg and a beard long enough to cover him in the nude.

  Perhaps the only way to evade the Dathiri for any length of time was to flee into the Tetheri wilderness. Eldrek would feel right at home there. He would be a falcon again by the time he found them, the spell worn off. If he dropped the scroll during his transformation, it might be lost to them forever. Worse yet was the thought that if and when Darion ever returned to the realms, he would have no way to find her now.

  Chapter 7

  The further Darion traveled, the harder it became to avoid familiar places where people might know him by name. He’d visited every major town and city in Dathrond and Orothwain during his youth, and through Sir Jalleth had befriended members of every race and crossbreed in the realms. The Dwarves of Korvane were no exception, and since the ancient mountain fortress was on his way, he decided to stop for a visit.

  Fortress Korvane stood at the eastern tip of a range of high hills branching off the Breakspires. There, in a depression beside the road hemmed in by mountains, the dwarves had erected a marketplace from which to sell their wares to passersby. All manner of dwarf-forged iron, stone carvings, precious gems, and jewelry fashioned of the earth’s rich bounties could be purchased in those stalls. The dwarves welcomed any traveler with gold and silver to spend, though it was only their penchant for trade which gave them patience to suffer regular contact with the other races. Despite Korvane’s proximity to such a well-traveled road, its denizens remained the most pure-blooded of all dwarves in the realms. Few outsiders were ever allowed past the market and into the hallowed halls of the fortress itself.

  Deep in those dwarven passages, nearly two decades ago, Darion had forged Bloodcaller with the help of famed forgemaster Fultric Silverbrand. Legend said the dwarves had dubbed Darion Grand Ironbreaker of Korvane due to his exquisite work on the weapon, despite an utter lack of prior experience. What the legend did not say was that forging the sword had taken him four attempts, and in the end Fultric had done most of the work. Darion was reluctant to return to Korvane without Arixval on his belt. Yet it was true friends he needed in times like these, and he did not think his longstanding allies would betray him to the Dathiri.

  Darion kept his hood up as he turned off the main road and headed down the path under a shroud of dusk. He saw two dwarves he knew by name among the tented stands where sharp-eyed dealers haggled with customers, but he did not call out to them. The market saw visitors from across the realms, and he would sooner his name not be spoken in such mixed company. Instead he went straight for the twin pillars at the far end, carved in likeness to the ancient dwarven kings, where a pair of guards stood watch over the winding mountain path to Korvane’s entrance.

  Far up the hill he could see the mouth of that grand domain, wreathed in moonlight. Beneath a smooth stone archway stood the sacred door, as tall as three men standing heel to shoulder, carved from the very rock itself in the crisp quadratic fashion of the dwarven stonecutters. Darion had passed beneath that archway only four times in his life; twice going in, and twice coming out.

  He dismounted and, without lowering his hood, said to the guards,
“Well met, good sirs.”

  “That depends on who you are, now doesn’t it?” one replied.

  Darion bent to one knee before them, holding his horse’s bridle in one hand. “Masters, I must beseech you to allow me passage. I am friend to you, and to Igrad Jarl of Broadmantle.”

  The guard walled off his mouth with a hand. “Shall I be the one to tell him kneeling hasn’t made him any shorter?”

  The other dwarf laughed. “Igrad Broadmantle is no longer jarl of this fortress, tallmaster.”

  “Then I’ve been away too long. Is it Gerind who rules now in his stead?”

  “Do not misinterpret,” said the dwarf. “Igrad lives. The Broadmantles, young and old, have left this place. If it’s them you’re looking for, you’ve a ways to go yet.”

  “It was not them in particular,” said Darion. “Only a safe place to lay my head for the night.”

  “You may find that in the Cloudspears, west of here. They’ve driven the goblins from Nimgol and made a home in its halls. A fortress built by dwarves ought to be inhabited by them, Igrad said before he left. The Broadmantles, along with the Hornbenders and Silverbrands, have forged their new dominion in that place of old.”

  “Why did they leave?”

  “War,” said the dwarf. “War takes its toll on all of us. When the Korengadi came, and the Berlish struck an alliance, and the Frosthammers descended in force from the Thraihmish north to lend their aid, Igrad was caught in a position he could not escape without offending one ally or another. He chose to remain neutral in the conflicts of the human kingdoms, and instead waged war on the goblins. Korvane never sent a single soldier to the aid of either side. He left not in shame, but under duress from those lords who took issue with his indolence.”

  Darion knew what it was like to be admonished for refusing to take sides. “Tell me, sir dwarf. Who now rules in Korvane?”

  “Heigir Jarl of Cragfoot.”

  So triumphs the rival, Darion thought. Now he was beginning to reconsider his decision to stop at Korvane. Heigir Cragfoot was as loose-lipped a dwarf as Darion had ever met; if these guards required him to divulge his name in order to pass, the news would get out in short order. Still, he was pleased to hear Heigir was finally getting his chance to rule. The young Cragfoot had been born for leadership, but had spent some ninety years in the shadow of the stern and cantankerous Igrad Broadmantle.

  It seemed Darion would have to postpone his visit, and his congratulations, for another time. He could never reveal himself now. To ask Heigir Cragfoot for sanctuary, even for one night, would bring undue attention on both himself and Korvane. He would not turn Dathrond against the dwarves on his account.

  “Tell Heigir Jarl that I wish him well in his time of rule,” Darion said. “And long may he live.”

  “Long may he live,” both dwarves repeated.

  “I shall take my leave, sirs,” Darion said, standing.

  “You’ve changed your mind right quickly.”

  “I have. Perhaps I will return another time, when I have cleared my name.”

  “Not only does he think he’s short; he speaks in riddles. Before you go, you must tell us this name of yours.”

  “Riddles it is,” said Darion. “I have been praised for my deceit and condemned for my honor. I will say no more.”

  “Will you not share your name, so we may tell Heigir Jarl who has called upon him?”

  Darion mounted and wheeled Posey toward the main road. “When my path is made clear, I will call upon him again.”

  “As you say, tallmaster.”

  Darion rejoined the road as it wended its way along the southern edge of the mountains and turned south. He rode late into the night, keeping a leisurely pace and finding the prospect of sleep an unfavorable one. Each day since landing on the shores of the five realms, he’d found himself increasingly anxious to reach the Greenkeep. There he would find Alynor and his child, and learn what had become of his lands, titles, and incomes during his absence.

  Hammering a spike into the ground and tethering his horse to it, Darion collapsed onto his bedroll without building a fire. He succumbed to sleep within moments, and the sun woke him early the next morning. For two days he followed the road south along the Breakspires until he reached Tradecross. He stopped at the huge open-air market only long enough to buy a warm meal and rations for the road before moving on.

  After Tradecross, the flatlands rolled into the gentle slopes of the Grey Teeth. Darion passed through Barrowdale, one of the two cities overrun by a band of sellsword mercenaries called the Hand of Suffering in the days of the Korengadi invasion. The Hand had long since moved on to where the gold was fresher, leaving Barrowdale’s citizens to rebuild. Yet despite the fresh wood and thatch on every rooftop in the city, Darion could see the signs of war and fire lingering on its stone walls and balustrades.

  From Barrowdale he passed due south to the Elûnor Bridge, where Gruske Frosthammer and his army of mixed-blood Thraihmish dwarf-folk had been camped at Darion’s last visit. Here, too, Darion noted an air of war long-past. Fire pits dotted the hills north of the river; waste troughs festered behind an embankment off the road; iron stakes and shreds of sealskin marked the hexagonal contour of dwarven tents; discarded pots and cups lay scattered across the hills. Darion didn’t know what had become of Gruske and his army after he saw them in Maergath; his clandestine manner of travel was proving a detriment when it came to gathering news. All would be revealed when he reached the Greenkeep, he was certain.

  The narrow sliver of land between the Elûnor and Erandor Rivers was a plodding and monotonous stretch of fields and farms and hamlets. Darion was relieved when the dusky peaks of the Red Range loomed before him, heralding his approach to the solemn and imposing city of Vale and the Grimlir Pass in which it lay.

  As in Highhollow, where Berlish and Dathiri remained constantly at odds, here in Vale the Dathiri and the Orothi were similarly pitted. Theirs was a silent rivalry; nothing like the vocal contests Darion had witnessed in Highhollow. Vale had changed hands dozens of times through the centuries. Even in times of peace, and while the city was under Orothwain’s control, Dathiri soldiers kept a heavy presence in the streets. That was more than enough reason for Darion to lay low while he was passing through.

  He made it a point to stay away from the Jarl’s Jötun, where he and Alynor and Kestrel had met Triolyn the archer. Instead Darion took a room at the Meadowlark, an inn perched on a stone ledge beside the eastern wall, where the sound of the rushing falls cascaded over the cliffside and filled that part of the city with its constant churn. It was no coincidence that most of the city’s crime was committed within the Falls District, where the noise was always loud enough to mask a scream.

  As for Darion, he found the sound comforting. He left his window ajar as he slept, high on the fifth story of the towering inn, so he could hear the falls all night long. Sometimes the wind would carry a spray of mist through the open window to tickle his face above the coverlet. He didn’t mind. The sound seemed to mask his memory-dreams, those unbidden glimpses of the past which now came to him whether sleeping or awake.

  War is a gruesome thing, even when borne of the noblest cause, Sir Jalleth had once told him. Darion’s time with the Korengadi army had proven so yet again. He had witnessed countless atrocities since pledging his sword to Rudgar King, and though he often tried he could not shake their memory.

  The northmen had raided the Eastgap and put farms to the torch on their way to Maergath. On their way back, Darion had seen fields burned to ash and whole villages destroyed. When the Korengadi army returned to its own shores, Rudgar found the brutality faced by his own people even worse. There were women and children strung out on castle walls, mutilated but still clinging to life, set there by Dathiri captains to dissuade the returned Korengadi from hostility.

  These displays served only to incite Rudgar’s rage. He refused to see his countrymen treated as hostages. Instead of negotiating better terms with the Dathi
ri at each keep and castle, wherever they threatened the safety of his people he struck swiftly and dealt vengeance without mercy. The moment I allow pity for the few to stand in the way of justice for the many, Rudgar would say through Vaeron Shask, I have failed as king. My people do not need a puppet for a ruler. They need a champion.

  And their champion he was. By refusing to concede to the demands of the Dathiri cowering behind the crenelated walls of every stronghold in his kingdom, Rudgar had soon come to be known as the Crimson King amongst the Dathiri rank-and-file. His reputation for barbarous treatment of the southern invaders had spread faster than his army could move.

  The first few fortresses lasted long and fell hard before him, but by the time the blizzards of winter had buried Korengad that first year, Dathiri garrisons were surrendering to Rudgar King’s army within days. The Korengadi advance across the snow-covered tundras quickly became legend, flags and tabards cutting a swath the color of blood across the landscape, visible even through the fiercest snow-blind winds. Death begets death, Darion thought, waking in his high room at the Meadowlark from a nightmare of cold sweat and bygone tragedies.

  Now it was a choice between following the road northwest to Rivermont or south to Deepsail, the Orothi capital, where he could take ship for Riverend. His third option was to break from the road entirely, head south along the Greenshore tributary, and hope he could find a way across the river. He would’ve liked to visit Myren and Evulon at the Two Turtles in Rivermont, but that was one familiar place he’d be better off avoiding. He couldn’t imagine the stories his half-brothers must’ve heard in the wake of his exile, but his setting them to rights would have to wait.

  Darion decided to take his chances with the river. He left behind the sullen-faced soldiers and the stale horse-stink of Vale’s walled confines in favor of the sweet fresh fragrances on the open plains of eastern Orothwain, keeping the river to his right. The days were hot—both of them, as that was how long it took him to navigate the pebbled shoreline and chest-high grasses of those springtime fields. Darion was thankful to be wearing a thin cloak and studded leather instead of the thick furs and platemail he’d sold in Korengad. The lonely wilderness gave him ample opportunity not only to lower his hood, but to remove his cloak entirely so he could feel the breezes in his sleeves.