Vaethir glanced sidelong. His lover, a creature of the Otherworld with all his subtleties intact, had little appreciation for the qualities of the mortal world, tedious as it was. He gazed at his first triumph scattered over the field. “Tell me, Alorael, how do you feel, focused in this dimension?”
“Uncomfortable.”
“It is the distance between this realm and ours that you now feel. This spell lowers our vibration. We can no longer cross the Veil. We can still work magic, however.” The immortal warlock made a sound that rippled through his limbs with a snap. He flowed into the air as a faint mist, and then returned to his feet. “Like shapeshifting.”
Alorael nodded. As if to experiment, he whispered a word, causing his body to dissolve into the grass and stones. “That’s a bit more comfortable,” he said, returning to form. “And we can use it to remain unseen.”
“A good seer can detect it. An unfortunate limitation, but nothing compared to the power of this spell. In this dimension, we are not bound to Free Code. I can summon anything to do my bidding, say, to join me against the Fylking, and it cannot refuse.” He took a deep breath, appreciating the mingled odors of grass and blood. “But I may not have to resort to that. The Fylking won’t be able to use the Otherworld to go to ground. Forced by the spell into a physical form, they’ll be trapped here. We’ll find them.”
“Seers could aid them against us.”
“They could—but they are only mortal.”
The elf nodded slowly, considering. “What would keep the Fylking from using the spell to summon help against us?”
Vaethir smiled. “An injunction by the Elders of the Fylking Empire. When the Fylking created this spell, it left a dark blot on their history. They will not violate the injunction. They would die first.”
“Won’t other, more powerful entities seek to take advantage of the spell?”
Vaethir nodded. “This is one of the things the Fylking ran into. For this reason I employed the Wolf Lords to watch the Veil. They’ve been doing that for millennia. Nothing will approach this dimension without their knowing.”
Alorael’s eyes glittered as he watched the Niflsekt army cross the river and flood across the dales and up into the hills. “Are you sure? Among my kind there is talk of demons being summoned from the Severed Kingdoms into this world. I heard tell of a prince.”
Vaethir stiffened with surprise. “Isarvalos?”
“I see a plain beneath a yew tree.”
“Ýr,” Vaethir growled, his annoyance blazing. He had known Isarvalos was up to something.
“Do you think he means to challenge you?”
Vaethir snorted. “He wouldn’t dare. The Supreme Order of the Severed Kingdoms has strict injunctions against getting involved in the affairs of High Immortals. He has something else in mind.” He turned and gazed west. “There is plenty of trouble to be had in Fjorgin. That realm has a long history of sorcerers summoning things they shouldn’t. Perhaps Isarvalos means to clean up.”
The elf nodded slowly. “Speaking of cleaning up, it seems to me that seers will soon be in great demand. Shall I start with them?”
A smile touched Vaethir’s mouth. Clever. A seer wouldn’t suspect an elf. “I always did appreciate your initiative, Alorael.”
“To the sword, then?”
“To a man.”
~*~
Vaethir floated down on the wings of a vulture and landed on a tall outcropping in the shadow of Ýr. He stood, drawing his cloak against the wind as the scent of the sea filled his mind. Across the rocky plain scattered with grasses, shrubs and flowers camped an army, a clamoring, writhing nest of demons—armored, painted, hungry, sparkling with weapons and spoiling for war.
His jaw set with irritation, the High Vardlokk of Chaos reached into the fabric of the keep on the edge of the plain. The Archwolf was always easy to find. Like something rotting in a tree. The warlock blew on the wind through a crack in a window.
“Master!” the sorcerer gasped as Vaethir rose before him. He dropped his pen, splattering ink across the page on the desk before him. “I was about to—” His voice ended with a squeak as Vaethir took a step, clutched him by the throat and lifted him from his seat. His green eyes bulged as he clutched at the Niflsekt’s hand.
“What is an army from the Severed Kingdoms doing here?”
The sorcerer worked his mouth to speak. Vaethir dropped him to the floor, staring down like a raptor as the sorcerer crumbled to his knees with his hands on his throat. “Master,” he choked. “We did as you commanded. The Order of the Hooded One no longer serves. After we gave their bodies to the sea, Othin’s Eye opened and Isarvalos’s army came through. We had no power to stop it.”
“This has nothing to do with the Order of the Hooded One—and Othin’s Eye does not open on its own. Who summoned the demons through?”
The Archwolf bent over the floor. “I did. Isarvalos ordered me.”
“Why was I not told of this?”
“It is of no matter,” the sorcerer wheezed. “Their business is with Fjorgin.”
Vaethir’s cold regard did not waver. “Isarvalos would not send an army here just for fun. Why are they here?”
Still on his knees, the Archwolf clasped his hands. Whatever he was about to say, he had rehearsed it. “The best we understand, they have come to hunt witches.”
Vaethir tilted his head in mock incredulity. “Witches.”
“By the Father of Hel,” the sorcerer said, breathing heavily. “That’s all I know.”
Vaethir knelt before him and touched his face, damp with sweat. “If I discover you are lying to me,” he said quietly, “I will give you to the High King of the Supreme Order of the Severed Kingdoms and will tell him to use his imagination.”
The High Immortal withdrew, leaving the Archwolf of Ýr with his letters and the sweat on his brow. Hunting witches. As always, the conniving worm wasn’t telling him everything. He was stalling, too. But he was still useful.
First, he had to find out if the Archwolf’s claim was true. The watery old rot had been quick to mention Fjorgin, which told Vaethir to start his search in Dyrregin. Returning to the wind, he stepped upon the shore beneath the keep and cast his mind east, through the shimmering field of the Gate. His intention set, he scanned for impressions until he perceived a telltale emptiness, like a cold spot in a lake. A powerful shield, but it lacked subtlety.
The witch was afraid. Interesting.
He took to the wind once more, tilting a wing and surveying the waters below with the eyes of a hawk. As he passed over the Gate, it burned his wound like a flaming sword.
He alit into a glade and rose to his feet. Aspens shimmered in the breeze. A low stone wall, tumbled by the frost of many winters, rose and fell over the landscape. Cows lowed in the distance. A stream burbled faintly. Vaethir cast his mind like a cloak over the area and felt nothing but the emptiness hiding the witch’s presence from the Otherworld.
Above, in the top of an old beech tree, clamored a murder of hooded crows, their black wings rustling. Vaethir held up his arm and called out a command. The cawing grew louder as one of the birds separated and flew down, alighting on the immortal’s hand.
“Well now.” He drew forth a golden ring with a sapphire set into it. “Perhaps you can find me the witch.” The bauble caught the sunlight as he turned it.
The crow cocked its head and pecked at the ring. Taking the gift in its beak, it took flight. Vaethir followed it. The bird flew along the stream that cut between the rolling hills. At the top of a ravine, a cottage perched, a bottom story built into an outcropping that looked over the water. Stone steps wound up the embankment between boulders and ferns. Smoke curled from a crooked stovepipe and hung in the air like a cloud.
The crow circled the cottage roof and flew off with its prize.
Vaethir stood by the water in the evening light. He crouched slightly and then sprang into the air, landing lightly on the top step beneath the cottage. The sound of a woman hummin
g drifted from an open window. Vaethir flowed around the wood and stone structure, half man, half mist. Gardens crowded the front, flowers and vegetables creeping along the ground, shading it, or climbing trellises. Wooden chimes clattered from the edge of the cottage roof. A blackthorn tree grew by the door.
He entered as quietly as a wraith. Across small room crowded with furniture, kitchen utensils, rugs, and hanging plants, a woman turned. She didn’t start or scream, instead placing the rag in her hand on a sideboard. Then she lifted her chin, her eyes dark.
Vaethir reached up and pulled a stalk of wild basil from the rafter, moving it through his fingers as he approached. He caught the rich scent of menstrual blood. “I beg of you a question, good woman,” he said, pretending to ignore her hand creeping toward something behind her back. He brought the basil to his nose. Flickering light from the stove caught in a crystal hanging in the open window.
“By the Witch Goddess, you will leave now,” she said.
He crooked his mouth into a pout. “Tsk. Is that how you treat an honored guest?” He turned his head and placed the basil on the sideboard—then caught the witch’s arm in midair as she came at him with a feline hiss. In her clenched hand she held a knife made from a root, a thin, gnarled thing with the energy of a woman’s scorn, sharp, malicious and cruel. Gripping her wrist in a dragon’s claw, Vaethir plucked the knife from her hand. A naughty thing. He slipped it into his cloak.
He stepped close, towering over her, gazing into her eyes, grayish green as a dried basil stalk. “You should not have done that,” he said with a fading smile.
The Winged Scout
Othin stepped from the stables outside the Rangers’ Square after a lengthy ride east along the Taeson River. He took a deep breath and headed toward the training yard, avoiding his usual route. A week had passed since Diderik had demoted him, and he had grown tired of people asking him about it, especially since he gained nothing from going to Coldevin with news of Magreda’s disappearance.
In retrospect, he should have started with Lord Halstaeg.
The day Othin and his old commander had set out to look for Magreda, hours after the Fenrir Brotherhood had taken her, Halstaeg had first visited an apothecary, in which he spent five minutes. Then they had gone to the stone house of a wealthy merchant called Ferdorf who had a reputation for procuring stolen goods from other lands. Ferdorf was good at covering his tracks; no one had ever been able to prove his involvement. Halstaeg had spent ten minutes with him.
Then he’d led Othin to the Crow’s Nest, a cutthroat dive on the southern wharves that had a long history of taking care of its own affairs in the form of a knife, a large rock, some rope and a midnight trip offshore in a small boat. There, in the corner surrounded by three men who wouldn’t have gotten past the Night Guild at the Pink Rose if their lives depended on it, sat Magreda, holding a wildcard in one hand and a tankard of ale in the other.
As her story went, she had given her abductor the slip and come into the Crow’s Nest to hide until the danger passed. While relieved to find her safe, Othin had sensed she left something out of her tale—such as how she had escaped a Fenrir sorcerer’s spell when Leofwine, an Adept of the Fenrir Brotherhood, would have died at their hands had he not had the ability to turn their magic back on them.
Halstaeg had said nothing, the crags in his face falling into a familiar, unreadable look that told Othin he thought the same, and something else besides. Halstaeg always had a piece of useful information or an intelligence report stashed and ready to wield, but Othin had never seen him in action like this. The man’s claim of having influence in this city was an understatement.
Othin threaded through the halls with his hood pulled over his face until he neared the yard, where shouts and calls rang out in the ring. The area was equipped with posts, lifting bars, targets and racks of weapons including axes, spears and swords with blunted edges. Wooden benches and a small pavilion ringed the perimeter. Othin moved to the far side, in the shadow of a courtyard roof cast by the late afternoon sun. Halstaeg sat there, in his usual spot. Othin joined him.
“Detlef,” Othin said, using the lord’s first name, as repeatedly requested. He still wasn’t used to it.
“Othin,” came the calm reply.
In the ring, Magreda fought a seasoned ranger of the West Branch named Marton, an expert with blades who’d won the rangers’ Spring Arms Tournament the past two suns. Captain Genfawr, his wiry graying hair tied back with a leather cord, paced to and fro before the opponents, flexing his jaw as he made rude comments that he called suggestions.
Magreda crouched low, leveled her dark eyes on Marton and swept a longknife past his guard, causing him to leap back with a wicked grin.
“Follow up on that, Croc!” Genfawr barked, calling her by a nickname—short for crocodile—that he gave to anyone from Skolvarin, in history, looks or talk.
As Magreda scrambled to recover the lost moment, Marton twisted around and tagged her on the shoulder with his sword. Around the ring, rangers shouted and yelled their disappointment.
“And that would be your fucking blood darkening the ground,” Genfawr informed her needlessly, drawing his hand over his neck with a swift jerk. “Start again.”
“He likes her,” Halstaeg said.
Othin nodded. “She’s still playing by the rules. Wait until she starts playing dirty.”
“Like training a cat.” Halstaeg leaned back, crossing his long legs in front of him. “Are you bedding her?”
“None of your fucking business.” He recalled the curve of Magreda’s body in the firelight as he brought her into his arms in his bed in the rangers’ barracks the night before.
“You must enjoy being able to say that to me, now.”
“That, I do.”
“Her mother”—Halstaeg gestured to Magreda as she circled Marton, swaying her shoulders—“is a Skolvarin swamp witch of the First Clan. Mean as snakes, those women. They practice in the wetlands, far from civilization. Live in mud and wattle huts and sing like frogs.”
Othin breathed a laugh. “Where did you hear that?”
“She has a tattoo. Do you know it?”
Othin knew it well, a shining sun the color of henna with a black crescent moon in the center. About the size of a cat paw, it lay on the inside of her thigh, a nice place to touch. She had never told him what it was. After years on the coastal patrol, visiting her in the Pink Rose, he had finally given up asking.
He had also noticed the symbol painted in a corner of the front window of the Crow’s Nest, the tavern where she’d gone to hide from the sorcerer who abducted her. “Magreda said she didn’t know why the sorcerer took her. I wonder if they know about her association with the First Clan.”
Halstaeg shook his head, his jaw set. “Unlikely. I believe they meant to distract you and your rangers.”
Othin cleared his throat. “How do you know about it?”
“Skolvarin witches have their own guild of assassins,” the lord said, ignoring the question. He ignored most questions like that. “It’s called the Leopard Clan. No one knows who they are. All women, they move in the shadows and keep balance like predators. That tattoo is their mark.”
Othin settled his gaze on his new recruit as she stepped carefully around her opponent and lunged. Genfawr barked an expletive. Halstaeg’s charming story wasn’t exactly watertight. If Magreda had belonged to an assassins’ guild, she wouldn’t be in the ring getting yelled at by Genfawr.
“Magreda never mentioned this to me,” Othin said. “How did she join this guild?”
“The girls enter training when they reach womanhood. When Magreda came of age, her mother took her away to train in the swamps. Magreda left before her training was done, and came north.”
“Did she tell you all that?”
A glance. “She wouldn’t wish me fair morning.”
“And Genfawr? Does he know?”
Halstaeg shook his head. “He wouldn’t give her a ranger’s mantle if he
knew this.”
Othin nodded. Rangers had to be born and raised in Dyrregin and not belong to any other organizations such as guilds or orders. Perhaps he should have pressed Magreda about her background before taking her on as a recruit. Not that she would have told him. “So why are you telling me?”
“Because you would let her in.” Halstaeg smiled.
Othin looked at him sidelong. “It’s also a useful piece of information. Have you ever considered being a spy or an informant?”
Still smiling, Halstaeg tilted his head back to the sky, now cloudy and threatening rain. He took a breath to speak and then sat up straight, staring. “What is that?”
One of the men in the ring rose to his feet, pointing. In the street beyond the courtyard, a woman screamed.
“What?” Othin saw nothing but clouds, but a chill climbed over his scalp. He stood, strode to the wall and hoisted himself up. Then he froze. To the south, in the direction of the tower, flew some kind of creature. As it moved swiftly away, he made out long webbed wings, limbs and a snaking tail. It was black, and in the right light it could have been some kind of bird, but he didn’t think so. He swept the skies for more, but saw nothing else. He jumped down.
“I saw it, I tell you!” the ranger across the courtyard claimed, still pointing. Another man spoke to him calmly. Genfawr walked over to them and started asking questions. Magreda and Marton had stopped their match and stood still, gazing upward.
Halstaeg was pale. “Did you see it?”
“I saw something. Only one, fortunately.”
“Let’s hope it wasn’t a scout.”
Chilled by the comment, Othin pulled his hood and headed for the archway on the far side of the ring, ignoring the talk and movement of the others. Halstaeg followed him.
“Othin!” called Magreda, running up to them.
“Stay here until Genfawr gives you leave,” Othin said in a brisk tone. Halstaeg didn’t need another juicy morsel he could use in a pinch. He continued on, walking quickly before Genfawr hailed him down. “Where is Leofwine?” he asked.
The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords Page 66
