Hinterland g-2

by James Clemens

  Why had they killed themselves? Were they no longer needed? Had Lord Ulf ordered them to take their lives? And if so, what did that portend for Tashijan?

  But there was a larger question locked in that single whispered word. He stared across the slabs. Every face that stared up toward the roof, wide-eyed and blind in death, was the same. As with Meylan’s group. All identical. But Meylan and her sisters were all Wyr-born.

  Tylar’s blood went cold. He knew the truth. So were these children . They’d been birthed in the same Wyr’s forges, identical songstresses.

  Why?

  Dart stepped deeper into the room, a warning tone in her voice.

  “Tylar-”

  He turned his back on the horror here and hurried back to her side. She pointed, drawing him down so he might see better.

  All around the ring, they crept out of doorways, many on hands and knees, others sliding on bellies, others hunkered into beaten postures. Had they sensed the winged guard was gone? Or was it just Tylar’s trespass?

  They came out of their stone dens, naked, covered in mud and their own filth. Hair caked in bile, limbs starved to bone, and many of those broken and healed crooked. But all their eyes, staring up, staring over, staring at nothing, glowed with Grace.

  Here were the rogues.

  What was left of gods treated brutally.

  Twelve in all.

  They clawed from their warrens, chained at the ankles. One began to wail at the sky, then another. One woman sat outside the doorway, tugging her hair out by the fistful. Another man rocked on his knees, digging at the stone underfoot, tearing nails and flesh in his urgency.

  Though freed from the seersong, they were bound even tighter now by madness, beyond even the ability to use their Grace to break their chains.

  Tylar remembered Rogger’s description of tanglebriar, how if you yanked the weed, its roots only dug deeper and spread wider. How long had these been rooted with seersong? With the loss of the songstresses, something worse than raving was left behind-mindless agony and an imprisonment far worse than chain and stone, locked forever in your own horror. He had seen what such madness had wrought in Saysh Mal-not just to those around them but to the gods themselves.

  He pictured Miyana stepping into fire. The same as her brother.

  I want to go home.

  Tylar stepped out. No one noted him. He had come to free these rogues. And so he would.

  Lifting his sword, he stalked out.

  “Faster!” Brant yelled.

  Rogger cursed and raced the flitterskiff around another bend. The daemon had closed upon them again. They were burdened by tangle and choke. The ghawl had open air.

  Their only advantage lay in dense cover and darting turns.

  But they were rapidly losing even that slim lead.

  Rogger had taken the last turn too sharply and sheered three paddles off on a shoulder of rock. The skiff jostled, and Rogger had to fight the wheel to hold them steady. And now they were heading into a familiar section of the wood, less dense with areas of open canopy.

  Malthumalbaen knelt in the boat’s stern, balancing one hand on the rail, holding aloft a thick branch, more a log, with the other. And Brant appreciated the giant’s skill with it. They had already come close to death a few moments back. The daemon had dropped like a diving hawk at them, crashing through a sparse section of canopy.

  A quick swing of that log, and he’d batted it aside. It had crashed into the muck and weed. They had cheered-but in a storm of wing and claw, it had burst up, showering filth, climbing and leaping back into the air to continue its hunt.

  And it was upon them again already. It flapped above the canopy, closing the distance with a savage screech of triumph.

  Rogger did his best. The flitterskiff raced but in a rattling limp compared to its effortless flight. It was over for them. Had they bought Tylar and Dart enough time? Once the beast ravaged them, it would discover the ruse and return to the island in a furious rage.

  They had run out of ways to confound the daemon.

  They were too few, too limited.

  Too few?

  An idea dawned. Maybe not.

  Brant twisted back to Rogger and told him where to go.

  The thief nodded. “You have a deliciously evil streak, boy. That’s why I love you.”

  Brant faced around. He grabbed his longbow, supplied by the Wyr, and readied his arrows. The giant came next to him.

  “You want me to just throw my log?”

  “When I tell you.” Brant worked fast, fighting the jostle as Rogger swung the boat toward the new target. It was time the daemon learned how all life in the wood was connected by a dance of predator and prey. Heartless and hard-but nonetheless perfect.

  This was what Brant had been taught as a boy.

  The Way.

  “Here we are!” Rogger said.

  And not a moment too soon.

  The daemon appeared in a break in the canopy overhead, turned on a wing, ready to dive.

  “Now!” Brant bellowed and arched back. He pulled hard on his bowstring. Oil dripped from his arrow’s shaft to his fingers.

  Malthumalbaen threw his log at the neighboring tree, then leaned down and touched Brant’s arrow with a burning piece of straw.

  The shaft ignited as Brant let loose the string. The arrow shot high, arcing a fiery trail up through the hole in the canopy. The daemon wraith had begun its final dive.

  Brant’s arrow struck true.

  From the neighboring tree, woken by the giant’s log crashing through the limbs of their roost, a thousand white bats took to wing, searching for the attacker. Malthumalbaen wisely threw his piece of flaming straw into the water.

  The bats noted the only other flame, honed from centuries of hunting.

  In their skies.

  In their territory.

  Impaled upon a winged trespasser.

  Brant’s arrow did nothing to discourage the daemon, but the thousand bats did, churning up like smoke through the hole in the canopy.

  The daemon’s dive tumbled as wings struck bats, and thousands upon thousands of fangs tore at skin and eyes. It twisted in midair, plagued at every turn, unable to escape the swirling white cloud. It fled higher, shedding the cloud for a moment. The rush of air fanned the impaled arrow’s flame.

  In that moment, the daemon hesitated, turned once on a wingtip. Then with a wail of fury, it swung away.

  Back toward the island.

  Rogger watched it leave. “It knows about Tylar’s trespass.”

  Brant stood next to Rogger, shouldering his bow. “We did all that we could.”

  Rogger looked above. Overhead, the swirl of bats chased after the slower-flapping daemon, following its flame. A cry of rage flowed back, tinged by pain.

  “And those little buggers will slow it down a bit more for us.”

  Malthumalbaen sank to the bench. “I could almost like those bats now. Especially fried in pepperseed oil.”

  Tylar stood amid the carnage.

  The fire at his back had dimmed to flickers of green flame. With each rogue he slew, more fuel for the pyre died. Somehow each god’s lifeforce was forged to the flames, some dread blood alchemy, forced upon them by the song. And like the chains that bound their ankles, they were unable to escape-not while they lived.

  It was up to Tylar to break that curse, too.

  In the only way he knew how.

  Their bodies lay where they fell. He made each of their deaths swift.

  He felt the tenth no less than the first-especially as he finally learned the truth of Rivenscryr.

  He stepped to the eleventh rogue and lifted his sword. It was a woman of fine bone, revealed by her sunken skin. A god might not die, but they could eternally starve. She stared up at him. She did not wail. She had bitten off her tongue some time ago, and in the horror of godhood, it had yet to grow back. How many tongues had she bitten off? Had she done it to silence her cries or out of hunger?

  He met her ga
ze and found nothing there, a burned shell, waiting to be released. Like all the others…or at least those who still had eyes.

  Tylar heaved back his sword and swung it sharply.

  Graced steel cleaved flesh and bone with hardly a shudder of the hilt.

  Still, as Rivenscryr touched flesh, the last flicker of life entered the blade, drawn up the steel by Keorn’s black diamond, drawing together in that exact moment all that had been sundered-flesh, naethryn, and aethryn.

  And slaying all three.

  That was the final truth.

  No god had truly died on Myrillia in all its four thousand years since the great Sundering. Parts certainly had died. Meeryn. Chrism. But these were only a sliver of the whole. What had died before had left spirit in the naether and the aether. Like the undergod inside Tylar. Or Chrism’s naethryn banished from Myrillia back to its dark underworld. They abided.

  Even Miyana and Keorn.

  No god died truly and wholly.

  Until this night.

  As the stone of Rivenscryr drew all parts together for that fleeting last spark of life, the blade cut it short, ending all.

  The rogue god’s head rolled toward the fire. The body slumped.

  Truly and finally dead.

  “Lillani,” Tylar whispered.

  It was the other cruelty of the sword. What was it about a name? As all parts joined and the raving of millennia snuffed out with each death, a name rang through the blade, full of joy. Then gone.

  Tylar had learned all those names.

  He stepped toward the twelfth and final.

  A god who took the shape of an older boy, sixteen, seventeen. Now he was more a feral wolf than boy. He had rended his manhood to shreds with his nails, and he frothed at the mouth. One leg was broken, the one snagged in iron. He must have fought his chain with the same ferocity as he had fought seersong. But he had lost both battles. Forever trapped.

  Tylar lifted Rivenscryr, hating the sword in that moment.

  Across the woods, he heard a wailing screech of the daemon. He had heard it echo periodically as it hunted the forest for the flitterskiff, searching for Tylar’s blood. But now it came closer. Another call followed, confirming. It swept back toward the island.

  As he lifted his sword, a voice spoke behind him.

  It was not Dart. She crouched by the stone house where the songstresses lay cold on their stone beds. He should not have brought her here. She sat, knees up, face buried between them.

  She knew it was a mercy, too. But that didn’t mean she had to watch.

  The voice came from the flames.

  “You are an Abomination,” Lord Ulf said, whispering ice through the flames. “Here you prove it.”

  Tylar stared into the fire. “I do what must be done. Forced by malice and corruption.”

  “You kill all,” Ulf said, with a note of confusion and wariness, plainly unsure how Tylar had accomplished this.

  “I know.”

  “But why? When any blade can take a head from a god? Why kill all when madness has eaten only the one?”

  Tylar had considered the same after slaying the first rogue, realizing how deep Rivenscryr cut. Still, he had moved on with his Godsword. He had remembered the war between Meeryn’s aethryn and naethryn. Forever apart. Forever incomprehensible to the other. Such fracturing when the third was forever lost was not life. Let death be death.

  Also he had remembered Miyana, when the Huntress had stepped into the molten rock. Of full mind in that moment, all three, bringing back her name. She had tried to tell him, tell everyone, knowing it was denied her even then.

  I want to go home.

  And there was only one way to do that.

  Total release.

  Tylar turned his back on Ulf and stepped to the feral boy-god.

  Ulf spoke behind him. “You are an Abomination!”

  Tylar swung the sword, cleaving madness from the boy. “Jaffin,” he whispered to the night, naming him.

  “ABOMINATION!” Ulf wailed.

  Tylar turned to the fire. “No-just Godslayer.”

  With the death of the last rogue, the foul pyre expired.

  But not before a thread of righteous triumph sailed clear.

  “You are too late…Tashijan has fallen…”

  Tylar hesitated. Was it true? Was that why the songstresses were dead? Before he could weigh the words, a screech drew him full around. It dove toward the island.

  “Tylar!” Dart called out, rising and stepping toward him.

  “Run!” he commanded. “Inside!”

  Dart backed into the songstresses’ home but stayed near the door.

  Tylar gathered shadows to his cloak and shifted away from Dart’s hiding place, drawing the daemon’s attention by baring Rivenscryr, shining bright in the dark.

  The daemon crashed to the island’s center, scattering ashes of the dying hearth that had given birth to him. Wings raised as it faced Tylar. Frayed and torn, the wings bled a thick ichor. A feathered arrow, charred and black, sprouted from its ribs. With the fire gone and its font of Grace stanched, the wraithed ghawl had weakened.

  But like a wounded she-panther, such a beast was at its most wary, its most dangerous. Its neck lowered. It hissed at him from a fanged face that bore little resemblance to Perryl. Claws dug into stone underfoot. Wings batted at the air.

  It searched, as if unsure what stoked its fury. Its masters were gone, leaving it directionless, abandoned.

  Then Tylar noted something beyond the wary confusion.

  Pain.

  And not just from its injuries.

  “Perryl…”

  The word blew the creature back like a gust of wind. It landed across the cold fire in a crouch, hissing, spitting, wings held straight up. It looked ready to take to wing and flee.

  “Was that why you still came?” Tylar whispered, circling the fire, his blade ready. “The beast in you wants to run, but something holds you here.”

  It screeched, a note of frustration and agony, trapped in a tidal push and pull of instinct and memory.

  “Perryl…”

  An agonized whine streamed from somewhere deep inside the beast.

  He knew why his friend had come back. Tylar lifted Rivenscryr. The blade’s flicker ignited another hiss and snap of wing. Clawed hands ripped at him through the air, savage and raving.

  Still, it held back, ending its hiss with a slight mewling cry.

  Fearful on every level.

  Tortured and pained.

  Lost between beast and man, instinct and horror.

  Tylar knew what Perryl wanted of him. He saw it in his eyes. Perryl fought the beast’s instinct, to flee, to fight. But for how long? He used all the will remaining in his ilked form to hold firm, to hold steady for the blade, to beg for the same kindness Tylar had shone the rogues.

  The mercy of the blade.

  But Perryl could not hold out for much longer.

  Tylar knew Perryl needed his help, for one last battle, one last death, one last release. Still, after so much blood on his sword, he hesitated. And that proved the cruelest act that night.

  Behind Tylar, a whining and rattling erupted, the flitterskiff returning.

  The noise and sudden arrival startled the beast beyond Perryl’s control. With a spread of wings, it leaped with a screech of panic-ready to flee and lose itself in the hinterlands, trapping his friend forever in horror.

  Tylar swept forward, but the distance was too great even for shadow.

  He had failed Perryl one last time.

  But another did not.

  As the daemon leaped, a flaming form burst out its chest, skewering clean through, a fiery spike through the heart, gutting it.

  One last screech wailed with a lick of flame from pained lips-and the daemon fell to the stones in a tumble of wing and smoking flesh.

  Pupp climbed free of the debris. Steaming with black blood, shaking his spiked mane. His eyes glowed especially bright.

  Dart ran up to Tylar,
one hand bloody. In the other, she held one of the songstresses’ obsidian knives.

  Tylar sank to his knees beside his friend.

  Suddenly all the grief whelmed through him, shaking up from a place deeper than where his naethryn swam. He dropped his sword and covered his face. The tears came in great racks of pain. Twelve names burnt into his heart. Or maybe it was because at least this one death did not bloody his hands.

  Not this one…

  And that was enough to save him.

  Dart lowered next to him. She reached to his shoulder. “Did…did I do all right? I wasn’t sure…”

  He touched her arm, swallowing hard. “You did fine, Dart…just fine.”

  A KNIGHTING IN MIDSUMMER

  Saddled high, Kathryn sweltered in a full cloak over rich finery. She wore polished boots to the knee. Her horse was tacked in silver, a match to her cape’s clasp and warden’s badge. As the retinue would be traveling through Chrismferry’s main streets, she had her hood up and masklin fixed in place.

  Gerrod rode up beside her. “We’re just about ready to head out.” Even hidden behind his armor, he appeared ill at ease, shifting in his saddle, adjusting his reins. The castellan diadem shone brightly at his throat.

  Such were their new positions: Warden and Castellan.

  Of Tashijan in exile.

  Kathryn glanced behind her. They had made much progress over the past two moonpasses. Had it truly just been sixty days? Tylar had granted them the Blight, an empty and ruined section of Chrismferry’s inner city, not all that far from his castillion, to house and rebuild Tashijan. It proved a good place to set down new roots, land that had lain fallow for a long time. Already the Blight was a jumble of rebuilding, tearing down, mucking out, and clearing. And some shape was taking form-a skeleton of rafters, stone walls, and trenched fields. Tashijan was rising again.

  New land, new roots, a new foundation.

  Argent had proposed the original knighting of the regent as a way to bring Chrismferry and Tashijan closer together, to unite the First Land. Now their houses were closer than ever, by both distance and determination.

  A small blessing for all the blood spilled.

  Beneath her, Stoneheart shuffled his hooves, restless to leave.

  Kathryn patted the stallion’s neck to reassure him. Atop this same horse she had led the survivors out of the rubbled ruin of Tashijan. The journey was already being heralded in song. The Great Exodus. A trail of horses, folk on foot, and wagons that stretched thirty leagues. She could have taken a flippercraft, but she had wanted to be there, needed to be there, among them.