Hinterland g-2

by James Clemens

  They all sank down into the darkness, scratched and bitten.

  “Those mites are far worse than any snake,” Malthumalbaen grumbled, sucking at a wounded finger.

  They continued onward without torches.

  “It shouldn’t be far,” Tylar finally said, rolling his map, squeezing the scroll tight in his hands.

  Proving his word, a glow appeared through a tangle of woods ahead. Tylar motioned Rogger to slip out of the clearer current in the flooded wood and edge more slowly through the choked channels. It would be easier to hide their approach among the heavier bushes and low branches.

  As they left the swifter current, the waters thickened with weed and algae. Rogger cut the alchemy to a trickle, drifting more than powered.

  The glow shone from directly ahead.

  “Does anyone else smell that?” Rogger whispered, nose pinching.

  “Brimstone,” Tylar mumbled, followed by a hushing motion.

  Rogger drifted them closer, nosing them through bushes. He finally stifled the alchemical flows completely. Malthumalbaen propelled them from there on, reaching to tree limbs and bushes to pull them toward the glow.

  “Far enough!” Rogger warned in a whisper.

  They all shifted forward, weighting the bow down. The giant stepped back to steady the trim.

  Dart scooted up beside Brant. Through a break in the foliage, the view opened to a monstrous sight.

  An island rose from the center of an open expanse of water, a lake within the drowned woods. Six giant pinnacles rimmed the land, each tilting slightly outward. It made the entire island look like a half-submerged crown.

  Dart saw that the inner surfaces of each pinnacle had been shaved flat. She could just make out etched pictures and symbols drawn upon the smoothed surfaces. It reminded her of the small circle of stones at the Wyr camp, covered with ancient writing.

  Between the spires of the crown, low stone structures ringed the island. And in the center blazed a massive fire, shaking with green flame, shimmering off rock and stone wall.

  “It’s an old human settlement,” Rogger said.

  “Taken over by the Cabal,” Tylar whispered. “The location is not random or mere opportunity. The Cabal sway their human allies with a false promise of an end to godly tyranny. What better stronghold than one of our old settlements, ripe with sentiment and history?”

  “Why does the water boil and glow out in the lake here?” Dart asked. “Is it more Dark Grace?”

  Dart stretched to view the extent of the boil. All around the island, circling it entirely, the water trembled and bubbled. Steam wafted in shimmering sheets, high and away. Here was the source of the brimstone. A deep crimson glow shone from the depths.

  “No,” Brant said, “it’s not Dark Grace. I believe it’s a flow from Takaminara, like the burn that cut a swath through Saysh Mal. She sends her molten fingers out into the hinterland.”

  “But why? Is she protecting the island?”

  Rogger answered. “More like protecting the world. I wager if she had the chance, she’d melt the island to slag, but that green fire must be fueled by the rogues, keeping her at bay. There is little else she could do. Takaminara’s influence beyond her realm is limited, and she is only one god against who knows how many rogues here.”

  Faintly, Dart heard a few sweet chords echoing across the waters, a forlorn note full of power. Seersong. But Tylar seemed unaffected. The stone, whetted and wedded to the sword, kept him safe.

  Tylar stirred. “We’ll have to move swiftly across the boiling water. Ride high and fast, and beach well up the strand. If we move now-”

  A scream rose from the island, piercing with a wail of horror.

  The force of it blew back the steam in a cold wash, turning steam to water and splashing it outward. As leaves dripped, they watched something rise out of the green fire, lit from below, though fiery in its own right. It twisted like smoke into the air, finally unfurling massive black wings. A cloak fell from its form and into the waiting flames.

  “Perryl,” Tylar moaned.

  “He’s been ilked into a wraith,” Rogger said. “A wraithed daemon.”

  The beast screamed again, not quite with the force of his birth but fierce enough. Flapping high into the air. The power that welled from him could almost be tasted on the air.

  “But who ilked him?” Dart asked.

  Rogger answered. “Remember who wields this font of Dark Grace. A god who is well familiar with wind wraiths.”

  “Lord Ulf,” Tylar said.

  Rogger nodded. “He makes his final move.”

  The end came with a thunderous crack.

  It shook Stormwatch.

  “The Shield Wall!” Kathryn cried out and hurried to the fieldroom’s window. Despite the terror, there was also a measure of relief. They had been waiting for the past bell, balanced between certain doom and frantic hope. A thousand plans had been proposed and discarded. Their only true defense was fiery pyres laced with alchemies devised by Gerrod and his fellow masters. But they had too little flame and too much territory to protect. More strategies were waged, to no avail.

  So when the ice finally came, Kathryn could not dismiss a measure of relief, ready as ever to make this stand. She had kept the tower for this long night, against wraiths, against witches, against daemons.

  Now she must stand fast against a god.

  She peered out the window, joined by Gerrod on one side, and Argent and Delia on the other. Father and daughter stayed close. Too late perhaps to know each other truly, but not too late to be near.

  Across the yard, as Kathryn watched, a large section of the Shield Wall caved inward, cracked from crown to root. A wall that had stood for four millennia.

  Why this show of power? Why not simply freeze them out?

  But Kathryn remembered Ulf’s cold countenance. She knew it wasn’t bluster here, some magnificent display to his might. That was not Lord Ulf. He meant to tear Tashijan down, wall by wall, tower by tower, brick by brick.

  She remembered his words: There is no way to weed this patch. Best to burn it and salt the ground.

  He meant to accomplish that end. It was why he built his ice all night, gathering the cold for this final assault. None would live-but more important to Ulf, nothing would stand afterward.

  Another crack reverberated through the cold air. Another section of wall fell. And through the breaches, his ice flowed. Like a mighty exhalation from the storm’s heart, an intense cold blew into Tashijan. The outer towers frosted over. Stone shattered with mighty pops. One wall of the Ryder’s Tower burst as if struck by a fist. Its crenellated crown toppled with agonizing slowness, tilting, sliding, then crashing into the snow.

  Kathryn heard echoes of annihilation coming from the other sides of Tashijan. Lord Ulf struck on all fronts. He bore his ice in a tightening noose around Stormwatch.

  Kathryn tore her eyes away. The others did the same. Bearing witness would not save them; it would only instill despair.

  After all the pickets this night, there remained only one more line to hold. “Sound the Shield Gong,” she said.

  Gerrod nodded and headed out to pass on the word.

  It was their only plan.

  All of Tashijan would gather in the Grand Court, in the heart of Stormwatch. The central Hearthstone was already aflame with alchemies. Pyres burnt at every door. They would make their last stand there.

  All around, stone crashed and mortar moaned.

  Kathryn turned to Argent and Delia. “Get to the Court,” she said. “I will keep vigil for as long as possible.”

  “It is my place to be here,” Argent said.

  “Your place is at the last picket, Warden. With your people.”

  Argent’s eye shone toward her, once again seeking some argument. Argent to the end. But a hand touched his shoulder.

  “Father…let’s go…”

  The fire dimmed to something warmer as he turned. He touched the fingers on his arm and nodded.

&
nbsp; “Be swift,” Argent said to Kathryn.

  She bowed her head in acknowledgment.

  They departed, leaving her alone in the fieldroom.

  Kathryn crossed to the window. She peered out at the fall of Tashijan, as stone and ice fought. She remembered the offer Lord Ulf had set before her. To escape with the heart, to flee and not look back.

  Well, I’m looking, she said silently. But never back over my shoulder. I will face you full on.

  And though she saw what swept toward her, she did not despair.

  She still held out one hope.

  A NECESSARY MERCY

  Weighted by despair,Tylar moved back toward the stern of the boat.

  The daemon had settled to the island, vanishing among the flames and structures. Plainly Perryl had been ilked to protect the island, a ravening guard of Dark Grace.

  How could he hope to defeat the daemon?

  Tylar hobbled to the middle of the boat and sat down heavily, earning a complaint from his side, sharpening his breath. The others followed.

  He motioned for the giant to pull the skiff farther back out of sight.

  Dart settled to a bench opposite him. She was staring as he rubbed his knee. “You’ll be killed,” she whispered, voicing his own worry.

  “The lass is right,” Rogger said. “You could barely drive the beastie off last time. Now that ghawl is wraithed and has the full might of the enslaved rogues feeding it.”

  “But I have the sword,” Tylar said. “Forged anew.”

  Dart met his eyes. “But a blade is only as strong as its wielder.”

  Tylar recognized an old adage drilled into every page and squire. It was probably one of the first lessons Dart had been taught by Swordmaster Yuril. He reached out and patted her knee.

  Leaning back, he faced the others. “It’s not like this is a battle we can walk away from.”

  Brant’s voice was grim. “Maybe Tashijan has already fallen.”

  Tylar shook his head. “Until I know otherwise, we must hold in our hearts that it stands.”

  He read the defeat in all their eyes as he stared across the boat.

  “I’m not saying I wouldn’t prefer a stronger body, but here is the weapon I must wield. If I could pull the naethryn from my body and cure it of the poison, I would. Until then, the stone helps.”

  Tylar remembered Perryl’s threat. You are riddled with the blood of Chrism. Nothing in Myrillia. Nothing in the naether can burn this poison away.

  “But why?” Rogger asked, drawing back.

  “Why what?”

  “Why does the stone help?”

  Tylar shook his head. “I don’t know…” He remembered how it felt when the stone ignited the sword, a sense of the world tightening and sharpening around him. “I think the stone rallies aethryn and naethryn together. Returning what was sundered. Meeryn’s aethryn must somehow support its naethryn.”

  “But not completely,” Rogger said, scratching his beard.

  “Not while it’s inside me. Like I said, if I could pull the naethryn out-”

  Rogger lifted a hand. “What if instead of pulling it out of you, we went inside of you? Right through that black palm print of yours.”

  Tylar frowned.

  Rogger met his eye and said one word. “Balger.”

  Tylar flashed back to being imprisoned in Foulsham Dell. The fire god of that realm, who had been curious about his mark, tested it with his hand. Instead of finding flesh, his fingers had fallen through the blackness. Balger had reached far enough in to get his hand bitten off by the naethryn inside him.

  “A god could take that stone,” Rogger continued, “and hand it to your naethryn. Then perhaps aethryn and naethryn could join more fully and burn the poison away, breaking its hold, like the stone did to the seersong in Miyana.”

  Tylar considered this possibility. Perryl’s words echoed. Nothing in Myrillia. Nothing in the naether. But what about something in the aether?

  Finally he shook his head. “Unless I can get one of those rogues to cooperate, we have no god to attempt it.”

  “No,” Rogger said, “but we do have a godling. And she is able to see farther into our mark than any of us.”

  Dart sat straighter, eyes wide as moons. “But I’ve touched his mark before. Nothing happened.”

  Rogger nodded. “But what about Pupp? He already walks between worlds. He delivered the stone to Tylar. Why not to his naethryn, too?”

  Dart shifted in her seat, slowly nodding. She patted her thigh, plainly calling her companion. “I think I can get him to do it.”

  Tylar held out little hope of success, but it would not cost much time to attempt it. For the plan he intended anyway, he wanted the flitterskiff pulled back a fair distance, back to the clear channel. So he had a few moments. He directed the giant to haul them back far enough until Rogger could ignite the mekanicals.

  While the two men worked, Tylar stripped open his cloak and parted the shirt beneath to expose the mark on his chest.

  “Let’s be quick about this,” he said.

  Dart held out her hand. “I’ll need the stone.”

  He nodded. He already had the sword pulled. Grabbing the hilt in one hand and the diamond in the other, he twisted them in opposite directions, popping the stone from the pommel. He felt the snap deep within him. Pain lanced out from his core and shocked through to the tips of his limbs. His sword hand spasmed, tightening again into a knobbed grip.

  Dart looked on with concern.

  Tylar passed her the stone, gone dull again. The sword’s blade had also blown itself out. She nicked a finger and daubed the stone. It flared again from rock to gem.

  She motioned with her other hand. “Lie across the bottom of the skiff.”

  Feeling slightly foolish, Tylar obeyed.

  Off to the side, blocked by the solid bench, Dart leaned down, reached out, and whispered. Tylar saw a ruddy glow flare up beyond the bench, bright in the darkness.

  Pupp.

  Over the bench’s edge, the creature rose into view, all molten armor and fire. He clambered to the top and stared down, the gem brilliant in his jaws, lit by inner fire.

  “Lie still,” Dart told him. “He’s not very comfortable about this.”

  Tylar remembered the burned stump of the squire’s arm-Pupp needn’t be the one worried here.

  Pupp lowered from the bench to Tylar’s shoulder. The nails of his paw sliced through cloak to skin, steaming hot. Tylar winced. Pupp crawled, belly low, toward the black handprint on his chest.

  Beyond Pupp, the others all gathered around.

  “You all might want to step back farther,” Tylar warned. He felt it inside him. A stirring down deep.

  Pupp lowered his fiery muzzle toward his mark. Somehow Tylar knew before the nose reached him. He tensed. He felt the naethryn writhe inside him, rising as Pupp lowered.

  Then the molten muzzle sank through his mark as if through shadow.

  Dart gasped behind him, echoed by the others.

  Then Pupp vanished from his chest, weight and burn gone.

  Everyone glanced at Dart.

  She pointed down to her legs. “Something spooked Pupp. Probably the naethryn. He’s hiding behind my cloak.”

  “But where’s the stone?” Brant asked.

  “He dropped it.” She pointed to Tylar’s mark. “Down there.”

  Tylar reached to his chest, to his mark, but found only skin and breastbone. He lay his palm atop it. The stone was inside him.

  Falling…

  He sensed the rock tumbling into a deep well.

  Then something rumbled even deeper inside him, a rushing up, a monstrous pressure building behind his rib cage. “Everyone! Get flat!”

  When the rising pressure struck the falling rock, the impact shattered through him. Tylar’s body leaped full off the boards, back arched, balanced on head and heels, arms out.

  Pain and pleasure trapped him in a clenched breath.

  He filled, swelling up, leaving no ro
om for himself.

  Too large…

  Vision dimmed.

  Then finally, like a popped cork, the pressure broke through into this world. From his chest, smoke flumed with the force of a gale out of his body. Bones broke with the passage, unmoored, torn loose.

  He collapsed to the planks.

  Beyond pain.

  From his chest, more smoke sailed high. A storm of black and white, churning, mixing, coiling one to the other. Tylar noted wing and snaking neck, one black, one white, like two wyrms mating or fighting in midair.

  Aethryn and naethryn.

  Between them, a flickering lick of green flame danced and lashed, as if this were the fire that smoked them into existence. But Tylar knew it to be the burn of poison, Chrism’s hatred given form. The two wyrms writhed around this core of flame.

  At the very top of the column, a star glittered, reflecting the flame from a thousand facets.

  The black diamond.

  Slowly, as the two wyrms writhed, they smothered the fire between them, squeezed and strangled. The flame lost its brightness, the fierce flickering slowed, and in another few moments, it expired with a final waft of putrefaction.

  With the fire gone, the smoke swirled with less violence, and the two creatures, both lost parts of the same whole, coiled and churned, trying to become one again-and failing-forever missing the third.

  Tylar heard two voices in his head, two expressions of grief, more thought than word.

  LOVE LOST HELP HOPE

  LOST LOSS PAIN FURY

  FREE FAITH LIFE WEEP

  FIGHT BITTER WEEP LOSS

  The litany flowed through his head, but was felt more with the heart, two views of the same pain and loss, neither able to get the other to understand, to comprehend, too foreign to the other, yet so alike.

  He recognized the first voice, one tinged with regret and hope. It had spoken to him before, revealing itself as naethryn. But the other voice was more embittered, laced with fury and cold inflexibility. He knew who the newcomer was, summoned by the stone, the smoky wyrm in white.

  Meeryn’s aethryn.

  Another voice reached him through his pain, one of urgency and plain word.

  “Bloody yourself, Tylar!” Rogger said. “Call back your dog!”