Hinterland g-2

by James Clemens

  The scuff of rock and low voices announced the arrival of the rest of their party. They had all come down in pairs, joined by bonds new or freshly forged. Krevan and Calla had their shared heritage as pirates, leader and mate, but Tylar had begun to note Calla’s eye lingering occasionally upon Krevan, revealing a certain longing that never made it to her lips. Krevan seemed oblivious. Next came Malthumalbaen and Lorr, an unlikely pair, but both were sculpted of the same Graced cloth. It was this commonality that forged a bond between them. Last came Dart and Brant, also tied together by strange circumstances, her father stumbling into Brant’s life and dying.

  And of course, Tylar was no exception. He had his own shadow, too. One that had been with him from the start of his long journey as a godslayer.

  “I’m not climbing back up that,” Rogger said.

  Tylar did not argue with the sentiment. His entire left side ached, from ankle to shoulder. His hand throbbed and felt four sizes too large. But at least they’d been descending the ladder. His aches reminded him of Master Sheershym’s assessment: a spreading poison, weakening the naethryn inside him, and in turn, corrupting the spell that kept his body healed and Meeryn’s undergod tethered to this world.

  What if the naethryn died?

  Rogger continued his gripe. “When this is all over, I’ll just sit here and wait for the next passing flippercraft.”

  Tylar clapped the thief on the shoulder. “Why bother even leaving? From what I’ve heard of the hinterlands, I think you’ll fit in here just fine.”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve heard the state of some of these hinter-villages. Not a worthy bottle of wine to be found.”

  “In that case, we should get you out as soon as possible. You’d die of thirst before the moon changes its face.”

  “True…true…”

  Despite their banter, there were no smiles. It was not humor that generated their words, but worry, both for themselves and for those they’d left behind. Tylar had especially grown anxious during the long climb down here. Another day ending and still no word of the state of Tashijan.

  Stepping away from the others, Tylar spoke softly a fear that still plagued him. “What if we don’t even need to venture into here? What if the storm is already broken?” He nodded below. “Maybe all this is for naught.”

  Tylar left unspoken his other concern.

  What if it was already too late?

  Rogger remained silent for a long moment, then spoke equally softly. “Raving or not, the rogues here are still enslaved. It wouldn’t be right to leave them in such a state. They’re still worthy of mercy.”

  Tylar remembered the grief expressed by Miyana, of the horror of seersong. He knew Rogger was right. Besides, the Cabal were behind this slavery, cultivating a great source of power and Dark Grace. It had to end.

  He glanced to the others, making sure everyone was ready. Brant bent down and untied his stone from around Pupp’s neck. They had attached it to him to draw Pupp into solidity. Malthumalbaen had carried him, with a look of pure adoration on his face.

  “Who’s the fearsome cubbie?” the giant intoned. He was still bent on one knee, running thick fingers through Pupp’s spiky mane. Pupp’s tail wagged and a good portion of his rump.

  Brant removed the stone, and Pupp vanished.

  The giant’s hand fell through empty air again. “Aww…” He stood. “He was like a tin of coals in a cold bed. All warm and steamy.”

  Dart hid a grin behind her own fingers.

  With everyone gathered, Tylar waved Krevan to lead. They needed to get out of the open. The hinterland’s dangers were not all twisted Grace and raving rogues. There were men and women worse than any ilked beast, who were happy to prey upon those who ventured into their fringes. Such folk lived lives barely better than those of the beasts, harvesting wild Grace and plundering where they could, often across borders. Though rogues might not be able to cross into a neighboring settled realm, men were not forbidden to do so.

  Before anyone noted their trespass, Tylar wanted to reach their sole ally in this strange land, even as untrustworthy as that ally might be.

  “Can you find Wyrd Bennifren?” Tylar asked Krevan.

  He nodded. “I studied the old maps of Sheershym. It should not be hard to find the Wyr encampment. If they’re still there.”

  The Wyr-lord had hired Krevan to secure the skull of the rogue god, the one who had fathered Dart. According to their pact, Bennifren had planned to remain at the fringes of the hinterland, awaiting word until the new moon. That came this night. Tylar feared if they delayed too long that the Wyr might simply move on.

  Krevan led the way. They descended the slope with care. The loose rock could easily twist an ankle, especially after the long climb down the cliff.

  Tylar kept watch on the forest ahead. It did not look all that much different from the highlands above, except that the lowland trees grew taller, the canopies wider. They appeared true monsters of the loam. A few flickerflies flashed in the deeper wood, warning them back. Tinier wings buzzed ears and exposed skin. It remained the only sound, except a trickling of water.

  They discovered a spring. Its waters spilled out of the bottom of the scree and flowed over broken shale toward the forest, vanishing into the darkness.

  “According to the map, we should follow this,” Krevan said and set off.

  But once they reached the jungle, it seemed impossible to enter, tangled with vine and bush, creeper and sapling. Anything that could stretch a leaf to the sun grew at the edge. They would dull their blades trying to hack more than a quarter-league through here.

  Instead, Krevan stepped into the stream and scuttled down its rocky course. He had to crouch, but it was passable.

  “Mind the moss,” he said. “It’s slick.”

  They followed in a line. It was more like entering a cavern than a forest edge. The scent of wintersnap filled Tylar’s nostrils, its leaves ground under the tread of the pirate in front. They didn’t have far to go. The tunnel of brush slowly rose and thinned. Deeper under the canopy, away from the sunlit edge, the underbrush strangled away to vines and low bushes.

  Tylar’s boots sank into the spongy layer of decaying duff.

  All around, the march of tree trunks struck Tylar like the columns of a grand palacio. Ropes of moss streamed this woodland hall, softly aglow in the darkness. To either side, other creeks and brooks trickled through the forest, all flowing ahead, downhill. The combined babble and echo of water over rock sounded like a mighty river. This was how the highlands drained into the hinter, creeping in tentative dribbles, like their own approach.

  “Don’t look so bad,” Malthumalbaen muttered.

  Tylar agreed. The forest seemed no different from other dark woods. The depths of Mistdale, all black pines and dread wood, struck a more ominous demeanor.

  “Don’t be fooled,” Rogger said. “We’ve barely crossed the border. The deeper you go, the more the landscape is warped and woven by wild Grace into maddening design.”

  As if wanting to prove his point, a nesting winged beast took flight with a sudden burst of a flaming tail, streaking like a fiery arrow. It screeched, alerting others. More flames shot through the dark in fright.

  “So much for a quiet approach,” Rogger said.

  They continued onward, led by Krevan.

  No one spoke, wondering what other strangeness and horrors might lay deeper in the hinterland. For four thousand years, rogues had wandered these lonely lands, maddened both darkly and brightly. Some rogues were burnt into dullness, others into a malicious sharpness. But all leaked wild Grace into this unsettled land-into loam, into water, into air-where it corrupted in both subtle and monstrous ways.

  Tylar compared it with the settled lands. He remembered the daemon inside Chrism describing the first settling of a realm, how Chrism was chained and bled against his will, punished for his murder of children during his raving. What was done with vengeance proved the greatest boon to Myrillia. Chrism’s ravings fa
ded as the wild Grace that had burnt his sanity bled into the land. The knowledge of this boon spread. Other gods followed his example, and the Nine Lands settled out of the centuries of raving and destruction into a long peace. Grace was harnessed, shared, and traded, blessing Myrillia into a new era, raising man out of its cycle of rule and ruin during the unending wars of its ancient human kings.

  Tashijan itself rose out of one of those ancient keeps, ruled by the last human king, until the man swore his fealty and pledged his knights to the gods of the First Land, beginning the long line of shadowknights. The pact set by this ancient king protected the lands around the keep, free of any one god’s rule. Wards had been set up at the borders, to forbid even the trespass of wandering rogues.

  The pact had been unspoiled for four millennia.

  And now all was threatened.

  Krevan stopped. A large outcropping of rock rose ahead. One of those bastions Tylar had noted up by the cliff. It looked like a crooked finger raised to the sky, perhaps warning against further trespass.

  Tylar hobbled to Krevan’s side. He certainly could use a rest, but they dared not. Not yet. Tylar controlled his breathing as he joined Krevan, hiding his exhausted, rasping breath.

  Still, the pirate stared him up and down. Krevan kept silent about what he found, but a crease between his brow deepened.

  “How much farther?” Tylar asked.

  Krevan frowned and grumbled. “I should check the map.”

  Tylar didn’t like the worried tone to the pirate’s voice. Calla joined them, shrugging off a pack. The maps were unrolled.

  Stepping clear, Tylar searched up between the canopy’s leaves. Clouds were blowing into view. But so far, the full face of the lesser moon shone down. It was called a Hunter’s Moon when full like this, casting enough glow to see but not enough to give away a hunter’s blind.

  How far had they come? Not even half a league, he imagined.

  Krevan whispered with Calla.

  “Already lost?” Rogger asked as he stalked up.

  “No,” Krevan answered and nodded to the pinnacle of granite. “This is the right place. This is where Bennifren said to meet.”

  “Have they moved on?” Tylar asked.

  The answer came from above their heads. A rope sailed down the side of the nearby pinnacle. A shape quickly slid along it, dropping from some hidden perch. The figure was cloaked in hunter’s green and black boots.

  Krevan drew his blade. Tylar slipped Rivenscryr free, not taking any chances with the malignant Grace of this land.

  Alighting without even a crackle of twig or dry leaf, the newcomer strode toward them, tall, back straight, unperturbed by their raised blades. The hood was shaken back, revealing dark hair, skin the color of bitternut and cream. Familiar eyes studied them.

  “Eylan…” Dart said, also recognizing the woman.

  The woman failed to respond, but Dart was correct. She was a match to Eylan, from boot to crown. Even her movements were the same: the way she leaned on a hip as she stopped, how her eyes took in a situation in a single sweep to the right, then back again more slowly and warily to the left.

  Only then did Tylar realize his mistake. The woman didn’t recognize them-and it couldn’t be Eylan. They had all seen her die.

  Was she a twin?

  “My name is Meylan,” she said, confirming his thought. “You will come with me.”

  Though they’d never met, Tylar felt a strange affection for the woman, as if she were his own sister. But with it came a twinge of guilt. Did she know of her sister’s death? She would have to be told.

  But not now…

  Meylan turned as if there was no brooking any defiance. Her words were reinforced by the appearance of more figures, similarly attired, hoods up. They appeared from behind the boles of trees and lowered themselves out of branches.

  Lorr stepped to Tylar’s side. “They use Grace to hide their scent and even their breath.”

  They did indeed move silently. He had yet to hear a single footfall or snap of a broken branch. He counted a full score of them, all women.

  Meylan touched the rocky side of the pinnacle, and flames burst from its tip, flickering sharply above. Rounding the outcropping, Tylar found a break in the foliage. Ahead, the lands continued to drop away. Atop another pinnacle a good league away, flames burst.

  Signal fires.

  Meylan had passed on word of their arrival.

  Krevan paced Tylar. “I should have guessed Bennifren would not have simply told me the location of his hinterland camp. Secrets run through his veins, more than blood.”

  Rogger came up on his other side. “Wise to remember that. The Wyr make pacts that are unbreakable, sealed with a word. But all else is suspect.”

  They followed Meylan, but Rogger was not done. He nudged Tylar and pointed back. “Watch as they pass under the firelight.”

  Brows pinching, Tylar glanced at the women that trailed the group. They made no move to threaten them. But he spotted daggers on their belts, and he did not doubt more blades were hidden on their bodies. He was not sure what Rogger intended him to see.

  Then one of them stepped past the pinnacle. Shafts of firelight flickered and danced shadows from above. The woman’s face was momentarily illuminated in its ruddy glow.

  Tylar stumbled. She looked indistinguishable from Meylan-as much as Meylan looked like Eylan. Another woodswoman slipped through the same light, revealing again the same face. Then another.

  “Just so you know who you are dealing with,” Rogger said.

  Tylar held back a shudder as he looked across the score of women. The warmth he had felt toward Meylan went cold. For centuries, perhaps millennia, the Wyr had sought to breed godhood into human flesh. Their practices were as arcane as they were heartless. No manner of manipulation of the flesh was beyond them, resulting in abomination, mutilation, deformity.

  But this?

  It seemed so much worse. Beauty and horror. Maybe it was that this abomination wore the face of a woman he had come to know, to appreciate, even to value as a friend.

  Affection and guilt shifted to anger.

  Tylar stared as the women spread through the forest.

  He would remember Rogger’s warning. He was also mindful of what the thief had said about the unbreakable pacts with the Wyr. Tylar had his own oath to honor, a debt that perhaps he could no longer delay in settling. The Wyr had collected his other humours-but he owed them one more.

  His seed.

  Tylar knew that before he was allowed to head deeper into the hinterland, Bennifren would demand that he satisfy their old deal. Tylar also knew he needed the Wyr-lord’s cooperation. To gain it, there would be little room to maneuver.

  Ahead, Meylan glanced back, perhaps sensing his reluctance.

  He stared back at her, a woman wearing the face of a friend.

  He read no friendship here.

  Only a reminder of what was owed…and the danger of its corruption.

  Dart stayed close to the giant as they entered the camp.

  She had heard tales of the Wyr for as far back as she could remember, tales meant to scare one to hurry to bed, to finish one’s chores, to keep one’s word. The one common element of these stories was that bad children ended up in the Wyr’s clutches, dragged away and never seen again. But as she grew older, the tales grew both more truthful and more frightening. The Wyr were a cadre of Dark Alchemists, buried within their subterranean forges, concocting all manner of Grace in their pursuit of godhood. The ends to which they’d go to achieve this were both monstrous and pitiless.

  Dart followed the others into the camp, staying close to the giant.

  The Wyr had made their home on the bank of what appeared to be a wide lake but was in truth a flooded forest. Here was where all the trickling creeks eventually ended, becoming a slow shallow river several leagues wide, flowing westward toward the distant sea. Twisted trees corkscrewed out of the flood, raised up on tangles of roots, as if trying to crawl out of t
he black water. Great slabs of rock tilted out, too, strangely barren, along with more pinnacles.

  The closest of these spires rose near the bank, shadowing a collection of ramshackle tents. Its pinnacle bore a crown of fire. The beacon had led them here, escorted by Meylan’s band. Its flames lit the camp below with a foreboding glow, all fire and shadow.

  Faces watched their approach: spying from behind flaps of tents, lifting up from some labor, wafting smoke from their eyes. Dart, in turn, studied them, expecting beastly countenances. Instead, most of these folk looked as normal as their group-and when compared to Lorr and Malthumalbaen, maybe even more normal.

  A few forms, though, were plainly tainted. A bare-breasted woman hauled wet clothes from the creek. She had arms and legs as thick around as the giant’s but was hardly taller than Dart. When she turned, her eyes were shadowed by heavy brows that sloped steeply back. They watched dully as the group passed.

  Then there was a boy, far younger than Dart, who approached their party with the simple doe-eyed curiosity of all youth, shyly but still drawn. From his eyes, it was plain he was full of questions, but they would never come.

  He had no mouth-only a gaping hole at the base of his throat.

  She had to look away. But he must have noted the horror in her face, for he turned away, too, in shame. That more than anything disturbed her. She had her own secrets, but they were hidden well, hidden deep. Not like the boy’s.

  As they neared the water, another woman approached, ducking out of the largest of the tents. She was wide-hipped and full of breast. She straightened and shuffled toward them. Her head tilted slackly to one side, a trickle of drool hanging from her lower lip. She carried an infant in her arms, cradled to those ample breasts. From the swaddling, a bald crown of head shone pink as the child suckled.

  Pupp, who had been hanging close, moved to her ankles, flaring brighter as his hackles raised.

  The woman stepped before them and pulled the babe from her breast. She lifted it, as if offering the child to them. It appeared to be an ordinary babe. Milk dribbled from plump lips. Rosy cheeks shone, well fed and hale.