Hinterland g-2

by James Clemens

  In the room, the old woman whispered in a lullaby voice, melodious and sweet. “I’ve been waiting so long for you.”

  Though Brant’s bones burnt with fire, he still heard the lilt in her words. And he knew it for what it was.

  Seersong.

  Rogger grabbed Tylar by the back of his shadowcloak and yanked him back into the hall. “What are you doing?” he asked. Graceless, he seemed deaf to the melody.

  “Come to me…” The old woman continued to sing.

  Tylar fought Rogger. Krevan crawled.

  Rogger threw an accusatory arm toward the old woman as if to scold her-but instead, a dagger flew from his fingertips.

  She laughed.

  The knife was swept aside like a leaf in a swirl of wind.

  Doors opened up and down the hall, creaking ajar or banging wide. The daemons, cloaked in shadow, crept from their hiding places with a familiar rustle, filling the darkness, surrounding them on all sides.

  All a trap.

  And Brant had led them here.

  “No…” he moaned.

  Brant’s single word broke Tylar’s gaze upon the woman and back toward the others. Tylar tried to push away with one hand. “Go…run…!” he called to the others.

  From the room, a hummed melody flowed again and drew Tylar’s attention back. His head swung around, swayed by the Dark Grace of the song. To the side, Krevan continued his slow crawl toward the room, dragging the ash-faced woman with him.

  Surprisingly it was Sten who finally seemed to comprehend the depth of the trap. He backed a step. “Away-we must be away. They are lost.”

  The captain drew his blade, while Dral hauled Brant up into his arms. The movement only stoked the fire inside him. He screamed, but the sound seared in his throat, unable to escape.

  Unrelenting, Rogger attempted to haul Tylar, but the regent, lost to the song, swept out his sword and came within a hair of removing his friend’s head. Rogger stumbled back, letting him go.

  And still she sang, humming, encouraging, welcoming.

  Tylar and Krevan were caught in its melody, like flitterbees in a web.

  “We must flee!” Sten cried out.

  Brant wanted nothing more than to escape-from here, from the cursed fires that flamed out of the stone. But he had not come this far for nothing. His road had led him to this ruin. He would not turn back.

  No…

  But no one heard him. Maybe he hadn’t even said it aloud. Did he still have a tongue? He tried again, coughing feebly to clear the flames from his throat.

  “No…”

  Dral glanced down to him. “Master Brant?”

  Thank the Grace-blessed oversized ears of the giant.

  He could manage no more than a whisper, all but mute to the others. “Get…me…to her.”

  Brant did not have to explain whom he meant. Dral glanced into the room. The way stood open.

  The giant searched down at Brant, studying his face. He had no strength for words, but Dral must have read the desperation shining through his pained tears. The giant turned to the door, hitched Brant higher under one arm, and charged forward. He knocked the regent aside and bulled across the threshold and through the smatter of oily flames.

  The old woman’s eyes widened at the attack. She lifted her arms but dared not let go of the skull. “Stop!” This was more a screech than a song.

  Dral merely lowered his shoulder and lunged. Though Grace-born, the giant was not blessed now. The song held no sway. Brant felt a scintillation of power in the air, but Dral was no mere dagger on the wind. He was born of loam. Water and air were no match.

  The giant was upon her in three strides. A massive fist shot out and smashed her square in her surprised face. She flew off her feet, blood spurting. The skull tumbled from her slippery palms and clattered to the floor. A tooth broke from it and skittered away.

  Brant wriggled from the giant’s arms. He fell to the floor beside the skull. Fire continued to consume him. He stretched with arms that were surely sculptures of boiled fat and ash.

  “Stay back!” the woman cried.

  Dral strode toward her.

  Brant’s hands closed upon the rogue’s skull, where all his heartache had begun. It would now end. Let them both be consumed together.

  As his skin touched bone, the fire inside him snuffed out. There was no relief, no cooling balm, simply gone. It left Brant hollowed out. He had been gutted by the fire, and like the charred husk of a burnt stable, he collapsed inward on himself.

  And kept falling.

  Tylar’s wits returned like a fall of brass pinches, rattling and heavy in his head. Chaos surrounded him. He could make no sense of it for a breath. Beside him, Krevan rose from hands and knees, face screwed with equal confusion.

  Tylar found the Godsword in his hand, but he had no memory of drawing it.

  “The boy…” Rogger said at his shoulder, nodding his head to the room while keeping a torch high toward the passageway on the right. To the left, the Oldenbrook captain and Krevan’s woman did the same. Tylar’s torch lay at his toes, guttered and blown.

  Beyond the torchlight, darkness stirred against the waning flames, drawing down upon them. They were being herded together, driven toward the room.

  “Stop the boy!” Rogger said again, rattling those pinches in Tylar’s head back to some semblance of order.

  He lifted his sword.

  Brant sat in the center of the floor. Past the boy’s shoulder, the giant had Mirra by the throat, pressed against the far wall, dragging her off her toes. Tylar remembered enough.

  Seersong.

  He swung back to the boy. Brant stared toward him, but his face was empty. Yet, still something glowed behind the glass of his eye. Tylar knew it wasn’t the boy.

  Brant opened his mouth.

  Tylar rushed forward, sword high. He would not be snared by the lilt of Dark Grace again.

  Too late.

  Words flowed out the boy’s stretched mouth, echoing from deep within. “HELP THEM…”

  It was no song. The agony behind the two words stayed Tylar’s hand. Also there was something oddly familiar about the sibilant cast to the voice.

  Though Brant’s lips did not move and no breath seemed to escape his chest, words still flowed.

  “HELP THEM… LET THEM ALL BURN… FREE THEM… LET THEM ALL BURN… FIND THEM… LET THEM ALL BURN… ”

  It sounded almost like an argument. Even the cadence shifted back and forth, echoing up from some other world. Tylar paused with uncertainty.

  But another had no such hesitation.

  “What have you done!” Mirra wailed through the throttling hold of the giant. Her wild eyes found Tylar’s, fired with terror. “Kill the boy…before he wakes them! Tylar, kill the boy! ”

  Refusing to be swayed again, Tylar backed a step.

  “No!” the former castellan cried out. Her hand rose, bearing a small bone dagger. She drove the yellowed blade into the shoulder of the giant.

  He bellowed, stumbling back and letting her free. But one arm swung out as he spun away. He cuffed her on the side of the head, felling her to the ground.

  The giant caved to his knees. An arm lifted toward them, the same limb that had been wounded. From the impaled blade, a rotting spread out from his shoulder and down his arm. Flesh melted and putrefied to bone. Fingers fell away. The rot flowed to torso and neck. Half the giant’s face sagged on the one side, sloughing from the skull beneath. He screamed, wafting out an exhalation of pus and virulence-then collapsed face forward.

  The stone floor silenced his scream.

  Forever.

  To the side, the boy continued his litany, like the rote cadences that clerics cast to the aether.

  “HELP THEM…HELP THEM… LET THEM ALL BURN… ”

  Then Rogger was there. He scooped the skull from the boy with a wrap of cloth. It stank of black bile. He shoved it into an empty sling over his shoulder.

  Brant collapsed backward, sprawling out on the ston
e floor.

  Was he dead, too?

  Then an arm trembled up. Fingers scribed a pattern of confusion.

  “Get the boy!” Tylar ordered Krevan. “We must get free from here.”

  A moan escaped the boy as he was lifted up and tossed over the large man’s shoulder.

  But Brant was not the only one to stir.

  To the side, Mirra shoved to the wall, sitting up. “No escape…” she shuddered out.

  Tylar turned to the door.

  The Oldenbrook captain and Krevan’s woman backed away from the doorway and farther into the room. Beyond the threshold, darkness ate the light. The black ghawls had closed off their only escape.

  Closer at hand, the captain’s torch sputtered out with one last gasp of embers and ash. They were down to two flaming brands, one borne by Rogger, the other by the gray-cloaked woman.

  Too few to hold back a horde.

  Proving this, shadows stretched into the room and spread across the walls. They were forced back. Knights formed out of the gloom, shifting in an ever-flowing weave of malevolence. Mirra was swallowed up along the edge of them.

  Rogger sidled next to Tylar. “We need a way through them. Mayhap a little help from that black dog of yours. Turn daemon upon daemon.”

  He nodded, sheathed his sword, and waved everyone behind him.

  They needed some wedge here.

  He grabbed his smallest finger of his left hand.

  Agee wan clyy nee wan dred ghawl.

  He yanked and snapped the digit straight back. From the sharp pain of the tiny break, a tide of pain spread outward, growing and swelling, a trickle becoming a flood. The world spun, and out of the tempest of pain, it burnt a hole into this world. Cloth burnt to ash over the black handprint on his chest, freeing what lay beneath. Gloom flowed out from his body, and the naetherspawn swept into this world, taking shape and sculpting itself from the smoke.

  Wings unfurled, and a snaking neck stretched, sprouting mane and muzzle. Both wyrm and wolf. Fiery eyes opened on his world.

  As the naethryn filled the room, it drew off all of Tylar’s strength and sturdiness of limb. His back was bent, joints callused, and his knee turned askew. He was no longer regent, no longer knight -only a broken man again. Gnarled fingers brushed through the tether of smoke that linked to the naethryn.

  It needed no guidance, this black dog of his. It knew his heart.

  “Keep back!” Rogger warned their party. “One touch will kill. Burn the bones right out of your flesh.”

  Even the shadows heeded the thief’s admonishment.

  Like a wave receding across a beach, the darkness retreated out the doorway, taking Mirra with it. She was nowhere to be seen.

  The naethryn hunched, wings high, head low. It bellowed, maw stretched wide, baring fangs of Gloom and tongue of black fire-but not a sound escaped it. Still, a mighty wind blasted outward. At the door, darkness shredded away under the force of the silent gale, ripped and scattered. The shadows emptied of any lurkers hidden within its folds, becoming lighter, weightless.

  Rogger pulled Tylar straighter, supporting him under a thin shoulder. The thief was stronger than most imagined. “Let’s go!” Rogger ordered and passed the Oldenbrook captain his torch. “Keep ’em high! Don’t let any of the buggers near.”

  Krevan-burdened with the boy who still lolled in a half-daze across one shoulder-grabbed one of the fallen torches. There was still enough oil to ignite its end from his cohort’s torch.

  They stepped as a group toward the door.

  Beyond the threshold, words reached them. “Kill the naethryn,” Mirra ordered. “Then bring me the god’s skull…and the head of the boy.”

  As the naethryn gathered its wind for another assault, Tylar sensed a shift in the shadows. Something approached the threshold. The daemon bellowed again, blowing back the thickening darkness yet again. But this time the retreating shadows revealed a form in the doorway, resolute against the assault.

  A knight, his cloak billowing in the naethryn’s wind.

  One of the black ghawls.

  The knight stepped forward, little intimidated by the wan firelight, emboldened by the horde at his back, the entire legion’s power flowing into him, armoring him against the flames.

  Tylar recognized the bloodless countenance under a fall of white hair.

  “Perryl…”

  The knight lifted a sword carved of Gloom. As he shifted it higher, streaks of emerald flowed along its length, glinting with malevolence and poison.

  “Kill the naethryn!” Mirra screamed from the darkness.

  And her daemon obeyed.

  Kathryn stood on the first landing with Argent. They had a view to the hall below that separated the tower from the Masterlevels. The yawning archway stood open.

  At least for now.

  Two knights manned the gate’s greatwheel, ready to lower it at the warden’s command. Another two knights stood with sledges, prepared to break the clutches on the chains and bring the barrier crashing down if necessary.

  To either side, flames blazed from giant braziers. Wall torches spread outward down both hallways. Still, all the light offered little illumination of what lay below. The stairs spiraled away into the depths, dark and silent.

  “They should’ve been back by now,” Argent said.

  “A little longer,” she urged.

  “A time was set. Longer and they are surely corrupted or dead.”

  She turned to Argent, ready to argue, ready to fight. She had no strength for it. Worry had worn her hollow.

  Argent read something in her face. In turn, the steely sternness softened at the edges of his lips. “A moment more,” he whispered and turned to face the same dark gate. “No longer.”

  Tylar faced Perryl-or rather the naethryn did. Two creatures born of Gloom. The Godsword had failed to kill the daemon earlier. Would Meeryn’s naethryn fare any better?

  “Stay back,” Tylar warned those behind him.

  Perryl stepped into the room, long of limb and somehow moving with an unnatural grace he had never shown in life. His sword carved a path through the air, leaving a smoking trail. A noxious miasma accompanied it, like the vapor from a bloated corpse.

  Tylar’s naethryn eyed his path, cocking its head one way, then the other, sizing up-then striking with the speed of a serpent. It snapped at Perryl, but he was no longer there, a blur of shadow to the side.

  The knight stabbed his sword.

  The naethryn coiled back to avoid the point and struck out with an edge of wing. Perryl was clipped in the shoulder and spun away. Still, the blow did damage. The misty darkness on that side collapsed to mere cloth and bony arm.

  Perryl backed, shook the limb, and the foggy darkness wrapped him up again. He circled wide, searching for a weakness. He took another step to the left. Then, faster than the human eye could follow, he ducked under a wing and thrust his sword toward the throat of the naethryn.

  The naethryn reared back from the blade.

  Perryl stumbled as he missed. His sword point dropped.

  The naethryn lunged forward.

  “No!” Tylar yelled. He had recognized the feint. He had taught Perryl the move, as all knights taught their squires. It was called Naethryn’s Folly.

  And so it proved to be.

  As the beast snapped at the knight, Perryl turned heel and wrist, catching himself. The sword point jabbed up as the naethryn lunged down. At the last moment, perhaps heeding his yell, the creature hoved to the side. Instead of the blade driving square into the exposed throat, its edge sliced the left side.

  Tylar felt it as a searing pain across his own ribs.

  He gasped, his legs going loose under him. He thought Rogger would hold him up, but the thief was gone. His knees struck the stone floor. The naethryn reared up and back, wings spread wide, eyes fiery with pain.

  Perryl moved under its guard, going for its exposed belly.

  But Rogger had slid under the right wing of the naethryn. Glass glint
ed in both hands. He threw one, then the other. Snowballs made of crystal. Repostilaries. Small vessels full of humours.

  Perryl, focused on the fight, had failed to note the thief.

  The globes smashed-one at Perryl’s toes, splashing his legs, the other full on the chest, drenching him.

  Rogger rolled to the side, circling back.

  Perryl’s legs staggered, stiffening. The cloak that billowed with Gloom and shadow turned to cloth, tangling the knight further. Perryl wrenched away, barely avoiding the jaws of the naethryn.

  Again Tylar caught a glimpse beneath the flowing cloak: of naked, translucent skin, beneath which something squirmed and kneaded, writhing under the surface. Then Perryl dove into the waiting darkness at the door, seeking refuge and escape.

  Rogger returned to Tylar’s side and hauled him to his feet. His left side still burnt, but he found enough strength to stand and stumble alongside him.

  “Now!” Tylar said. “Before they regroup.”

  Obeying the desire in his heart, the naethryn drove through the door ahead of them, clearing a path. They followed, encircled by flames. But the legion appeared in full rout.

  As they fled, his beast lunged out into the shadows and yanked something squirming in its jaws, like a waterstrider spearing a fish. The naethryn shook its catch and tossed it far down a side hall with a flip of its snaking neck. A keening scream marked its flight.

  Tylar glanced to Rogger. “You saved us back there.”

  “Actually, you did.”

  Tylar frowned at the thief.

  “Those were repostilaries of your own saliva. Delia gave them to me before we headed down. Thought we might be able to use them.”

  “Why-?” Then Tylar understood. Each humour had its own effect on Grace. Saliva weakened an aspect.

  “Wasn’t sure it would work against Dark Grace, but apparently Grace is Grace. Figured it might dull him, knock his legs out from him.”

  It certainly had. If Perryl had finished his blow…followed through with Naethryn’s Folly…

  Tylar rubbed the fiery slash across his ribs.