Hinterland g-2

by James Clemens

  Brant stared out to the frost-covered woman. She stood as if unaware of their presence. Eyes unblinking, toes frozen to the ice. It did not appear she even breathed. No breath steamed from either nostrils or lips.

  Still Brant sensed something studying them, wary and watchful.

  He clutched the stone at his throat. “I know nothing about breaking curses,” he mumbled.

  Rogger explained. “If Tylar is right, your stone seemed to counter the seersong in the skull. At least you were able to break its hold momentarily on Tylar. The why and how of it all will have to wait for now.” The man shrugged. “And if it doesn’t work, no harm done.”

  No harm…

  Brant remembered the burn. He glanced to the skull in Rogger’s lap. The tainted bone had ruined his home and traveled half the world to haunt him again. Did no one understand it was best destroyed? He had to resist kicking it from the man’s thighs and stamping it to crumbles. But would that truly end its curse? Perhaps a cleansing fire…

  Rogger seemed to read his intent. “Your friend gave his life to help steal this from the witch below. Pay back a small part of that blood debt. Use the stone and skull to strike back at them.”

  Brant scowled at him, recognizing when someone was trying to ply his emotions. He hated the man for the attempt-mostly because it worked. He had to try.

  For Dral.

  He nodded.

  “Ready yourself, then,” Tylar said.

  Brant ignored him. There was no preparing.

  Rogger studied Brant a moment longer, then reached and peeled back a flap of bile-caked sailcloth. A peek of bone showed. It was enough.

  He gasped as the stone ignited between his fingers, melting fat, burning flesh. Flames roared into his chest. He moaned, trying his best to expel the heat. His legs went weak.

  Tylar caught him and lowered him to the stairs. “Speak her name,” the regent said.

  Brant tried, but fire seared his throat. It was agony to breathe. Sweat poured like molten fire into every crease.

  “You’re killing him,” he heard the castellan warn. “There must be another way.”

  Brant rocked on the stairs, seeking some way to escape the pain.

  “Her name…” Tylar said.

  Brant knew only one way. He let the fire build. He squeezed the stone with one hand. The agony stoked until he could stand it no more. He screamed. “EYLAN!”

  He felt a slight ebb of the pain. Tears blurred his vision and trembled the woman’s form.

  “She’s moving,” Rogger said.

  It wasn’t just illusion. The woman stumbled a step, almost losing her footing on the slick ice. Then she seemed to catch herself and began to stiffen again.

  “Again…” Tylar said. “Anything. Each word will help break through the seersong to reach her.”

  Brant searched deep inside himself, seeking something to fortify him against the pain, to free his tongue. But all he found were more flames. They burnt through all his memories, stripping years. Page after page of his life turned to ash. Finally a memory appeared, one long lost and buried by a tide of days. A thatched room, hard arms cradling him, rocking him…and a lullaby gently sung to the moons, sung to hold back the night.

  It was a mother’s tune, but he’d had no mother.

  This memory refused to burn, shielded by grief and lit by flames.

  In that moment, he recognized all he truly lost so long ago. Had he ever truly mourned more than the hunter who was his father? He listened to the lullaby and grabbed the grief that he had unknowingly carried with him all these years, as buried as this lone memory.

  He let the flames carry forth his anguish.

  He started haltingly, words dissolving into gasps and moans, etched with agony. But he refused to stop. He continued to sing-not for Tylar, not to break curses, not even for his lost father. He sang for the boy who wanted those hard arms around him one last time.

  Tylar did not even recognize when the boy had begun to sing. Brant lay on his side, curled on the stairs, moaning. Then Tylar saw Eylan stir again out in the ice. She hobbled a step toward them…then another.

  Only then did Tylar perceive a whisper of words from the boy’s pained lips. “‘Come, sweet night…steal the last light…so your moons may glow.’”

  Below, Eylan lifted an arm, trembling, confused.

  “The seersong’s grip is loosening,” Rogger said, rising with the skull under one arm.

  Krevan slipped down to join them. Kathryn went to the boy, kneeling and lifting his head into her lap. She stroked back the lanky hair that had plastered to his forehead with sweat.

  He whimpered, then continued, thready and weak. “‘Come, sweet night…hide all our worries…so our dreams will flow.’”

  “He’s burning up,” Kathryn warned, glancing to Tylar.

  “But it’s working,” he countered.

  Eylan lifted her head toward them. Ice still clouded her eyes, but the depth had melted. Lips parted and cracked. Blood flowed.

  “No…” she moaned. “Stop…”

  Hands rose to her ears. But against whom was she warding? Her new masters out in the storm or their attempt here?

  Eylan took another step in their direction. Cakes of frost fell from her arms and legs. “Must stop…”

  Blood dripped from her chin and splattered to the ice, steaming and hot. The seersong’s hold was plainly melting, releasing her.

  “Eylan,” Tylar said. “Tell us about the storm.”

  “Must stop them…”

  He was still unsure whom she meant.

  Behind Tylar, the boy continued his tinny whisper. “‘Come sweet night…protect all the children…’til the cock’s first crow.’”

  Eylan’s eyes found his. Tylar read flinty glimpses of clarity. Her face twisted in a rictus of agony, baring too many teeth.

  “Help them,” she keened out at him. “Free them…”

  The words echoed Brant’s earlier words, when he’d held the skull down below. Tylar glanced back to the boy, remembering the strange discourse.

  HELP THEM…FREE THEM…FIND THEM.

  The boy had no memory of what he had been saying. Tylar turned back to Eylan. But here was someone who might know.

  “Find them…” Eylan gasped out, finishing the same chorus.

  “Who?” Tylar shouted out to her.

  She fell to one knee on the ice. Blood now poured from both nostrils. The war for her mind was tearing her apart.

  “It’s killing her.” Rogger confirmed it at Tylar’s side. “The seersong has its hooks deep in her mind and spirit. Ripping them out is destroying her.”

  Out on the floor, she sank to one buttock, supported by an arm on the ice, weakening rapidly.

  “The boy’s almost gone,” Kathryn said behind him.

  He had no choice.

  “Who?” he called again to Eylan. “Who are we supposed to find?”

  She lifted her face. “The rogues… find the other rogues…chained and forced…” She suddenly coughed, spewing crimson across the ice.

  “Forced to do what?”

  Eylan opened her mouth to speak, but only blood flowed. Tears streamed down her face. She lifted her arm and pointed toward the wrecked gate.

  “The storm?” he asked quietly.

  Her only agreement was the sagging drop of her arm. Her head sank heavily, too.

  “Where are they? How do we find them?”

  Eylan did not stir, seeming deaf to him now.

  “The boy’s stopped breathing!” Kathryn gasped out and stood. She hauled the boy up in her arms and faced Rogger. “Cover the skull!”

  Hesitating, Rogger glanced to Tylar. Both of them knew they needed more answers.

  “He can’t speak any longer!” Kathryn screamed at the both of them. “Rogger, cover the skaggin’ skull!”

  Recognizing the truth of her words, he finally obeyed and whisked the sailcloth back over the skull. He shrugged an apology at Tylar.

  A scrape drew Tylar
’s attention back out on the ice.

  Eylan’s fingers scratched at the ice. Her head lolled like a broken doll. Then an arm pushed, a leg shifted. She began to rise.

  “The song is claiming her again,” Rogger said.

  White frost climbed her calves and scrawled up from her wrists, coating her again, collecting up its lost puppet.

  She lifted her head. Her eyes found Tylar. He read the clarity before it drowned away. Her lips moved and one word escaped, an answer to his last question.

  “Hinterland…”

  Then her eyes iced over.

  Before he could grieve, a sharp twang startled him.

  From Eylan’s forehead, a small puff of feathers bloomed-then seeped blood. A crossbow bolt. Her head fell back, followed by her body. She crashed to the ice.

  Dead.

  Tylar turned.

  Krevan lowered his crossbow. He matched Tylar’s stare-then turned and climbed the stair. It was a cold act, but the right one.

  For Tashijan, for Eylan.

  Still, Tylar remained silent as Krevan left. He had noted how much the pirate’s arm shook as he lowered the bow.

  Kathryn led the others, sweeping up the stairs toward her hermitage. Behind her, Krevan carried Brant. The boy had begun breathing again, but it remained shallow, and he’d yet to wake.

  Fury helped fuel her course. She had cradled the boy as he had come within a hair of dying. Though she understood Tylar’s desire for every bit of information, there were lines between necessity and cruelty. To use the boy so harshly bordered on as black an art as those they fought practiced.

  Still, he breathed now-and none had noted her tears as she’d held him. A part of her felt foolish, and a good amount of her anger was directed at herself. Had she not seen enough death? Why did this boy’s life warrant tears when the loss of so many others had not? But she knew the answer. She knew the source of those hot tears.

  They rose as much for the son she had lost long ago as the boy here this night, churned up by her fury at Tylar for risking Brant. That anger stoked embers within Kathryn that she’d thought had long gone cold. But a fire remained, a buried resentment toward Tylar for his role in the loss of their child. He had willingly plied with the Gray Traders, opening himself up to accusation and misuse. A path that eventually led to a bloody bed and a tiny body in her palms.

  Brant moaned in Krevan’s arms. A hand rose. At least this boy would live.

  She took a shuddering breath and continued onward.

  As if sensing some dam had broken inside her, Tylar pushed up to join her. “Argent will be furious,” he said.

  “I’ll deal with him,” she said coldly.

  And for the moment, the warden was anything but furious. Jubilant was more the word to describe him after he discovered that Eylan had been slain. He had been more than willing to allow them all to flee up into the highest levels of Tashijan, their duty done. With the storm’s deadly emissary gone, the ice had melted and receded from the lower hall.

  But for how long?

  They needed to be prepared.

  Argent took over the refortification of the first level. Fires had to be relit, stations posted, and the broken main gate repaired. He had Master Hesharian leading a group of masters to discern some defense against another attack. They didn’t know how long a respite was bought with Eylan’s life, but all knew the war was not over.

  “Have you heard any further word from Master Gerrod?” Tylar asked.

  She shook her head. “I sent a runner up to let him know our urgency. Dart should be ready as well.”

  “We’ve shaken them up,” Tylar said, referring no doubt to the powers that wielded the storm. “But it won’t last long. We must take advantage of it.”

  She nodded.

  As they rounded another landing, a booming shout rose to their right. “Master Brant!” From the hallway, a massive shape pushed out on the stair. A loam-giant. “What have you done with Master Brant?”

  There was an equal amount of threat as grief in his voice.

  Tylar held up a palm. “He lives. We’re taking him to the healers up in the castellan’s hermitage.”

  “I’ll take him, then.” The giant pushed toward Krevan.

  Once his shoulders cleared the hall, Kathryn spotted a gathering of others, hanging back, plainly curious for news. She also saw the Oldenbrook guard who had accompanied Tylar into the cellars. He stood next to a lithe woman in a silver nightrobe.

  “Back to your rooms!” she ordered them.

  There was a small motion back, but she was mostly ignored. She had no time to argue and turned to the giant, ready to give him the same instructions.

  Rogger, though, touched her arm. He whispered. “That is the twin brother of the giant that died below.”

  Kathryn let her angry breath sigh out of her. Only now did she note the watery pain in the giant’s eyes, still angry, needing something to do. Apparently the Oldenbrook guard had brought word of his brother’s demise.

  She waved to Krevan. “Let him come.”

  He took the boy up in his massive arms with surprising gentleness.

  Brant stirred, jostled. His eyelids opened. “Mal…” he said hoarsely.

  “I got ya, Master Brant.”

  A feeble hand rose and touched the giant’s chin. “Dral…”

  “I heard…I know, Master Brant.” The giant nodded for them to continue. “We’ll get our blood from them yet. Then we’ll mourn.”

  They wound the rest of the way to the top of Stormwatch, reaching her hermitage again. The remainder of Krevan’s Flaggers still guarded her door. All had been quiet, they reported.

  Such seemed impossible after all the chaos below, but she took them at their word and led the others inside. Dart and Laurelle shared chairs by the hearth, while the young wyld tracker napped against the curled bulk of the bullhound.

  They all rose, one after the other as the party pushed inside.

  Dart’s eyes widened as she saw the giant carry in Brant’s weak form. A hand rose to her throat with concern.

  “He’ll live,” Kathryn promised her. “Can you show him to the healers? He might have to share the bed with Lorr.”

  “Not this night, my lady.” A form hobbled in from the back room, drawn by their arrival.

  “Lorr-what are you doing out of bed?”

  Though barefooted, he had donned his breeches and had a loose shift open. His left arm was swathed with bandages, but his face was uncovered, baring his burns. The blistered flesh had already settled to a pinkish hue across his cheek and in a goathorn curl up the side of his head.

  “The work of your fine healers…masters of Grace, they are.”

  A grunt discounted his words as Healer Fennis rounded behind him. “Stubbornness of this prickly tracker, more like it.” He waved the giant over to him. “And a fair amount of quickened healing due to his Grace-blessed nature.”

  Lorr shrugged.

  Healer Fennis followed the giant into the next room, calling to his wife. “Don’t put away the whistlewort yet, my dear.”

  “They’ll have to manage as best they can,” Tylar said. “Weak or not, we must be gone with the boy in the next quarter bell.”

  Kathryn understood.

  “We leave so soon?” Dart said.

  Kathryn turned to her. “Do you have your bag ready?”

  “I helped her,” Laurelle said and nodded to a stuffed sack-cloth beside the hearth.

  Tylar turned to Krevan. “Can you send Calla above? Have her check with Master Gerrod on how long until the flippercraft is ready?”

  Krevan obeyed, then returned. He knew of their plan, plotted before they’d ever ventured into the cellars, but he did not know everything. “How can we hope to pierce the storm? Won’t the storm suck the air alchemies from the ship?”

  “Tylar and Gerrod have worked something out,” Kathryn said. “The better question is what to do after you make it through?”

  The plan had been simple before. To g
et Tylar and Dart out of Tashijan. They could not risk Rivenscryr falling into the Cabal’s hands, especially with Dart here, too. And once through the storm, Tylar could rally the gods of the First Land and whatever forces could be brought to bear.

  But now matters had become more complicated, with the skull, with the boy, with the dying words from Eylan.

  “We must find the rogues,” Tylar said. “We knew the storm out there had to be fed by more than one god. Ulf alone could not wield such forces from Ice Eyrie. We assumed he had the support of a cadre of gods, more of the Hundred who sought my downfall.”

  “It was a reasonable assumption,” Kathryn said. “No one considered rogue gods might be involved. They are wild and raving creatures, beyond such masterful manipulation of vast amounts of Grace.”

  “Unless they were enslaved,” Tylar said. He glanced to Rogger, who had the skull wrapped up in his satchel. “Like Keorn must have been, trapped in seersong. Somehow he was able to escape, to flee into Saysh Mal, sacrificing himself to bring a warning out.”

  “And carrying with him a means to free his trapped brethren.” Rogger nodded toward the next room. “The stone…bonded to the boy.”

  “I’m not sure that all is so simple,” Kathryn said. “There is more going on. But either way, does any of us doubt the Cabal is behind the enslavement of these rogues?”

  No one voiced a dissent.

  “Then that answers my earlier question. Mirra’s forces and the storm were brought against us as a unified strategy. A coordinated attack to capture Tylar and gain the Godsword. Mirra may even know about Dart. And once they gained such power, Tashijan would surely be torn apart, not only destroying the bastion for all of Myrillia, but murdering a good portion of the Hands that serve the gods around here. In one move, we could lose this entire Land.”

  “Artful strategy,” Rogger said. “You have to respect that. They must have been planning this for years.”

  “Or even longer,” Krevan said. “I fear that, like the Wyr, the Cabal’s plots are stretched over centuries.”

  “And if the castellan is correct,” Rogger said, “it’s all the more reason to get Dart and Tylar free of here.”

  “And what of the rogues?” Krevan asked.

  Tylar rubbed at the corner of his eye, almost tracing his tattooed stripes. Kathryn recognized it as a gesture of intense concentration. She also noted the wrapped digit of the same hand. She had heard that it had not healed. Tylar had dismissed it earlier, but Kathryn feared that the Dark Graces flowing through here threatened the complicated spell that bonded naethryn to man. Yet another reason to get him clear of Tashijan.