James Clemens: Hinterland

“Father!” Delia cried and crawled over to him.

An arm shifted, a hand wiped rock dust from the floor. Blood welled and spread from beneath the rock. Shouts echoed. Masters hurried forward.

But it was his daughter that took his hand.

“Don’t leave me,” she said. “Not again…”

His chin shifted, and he moaned. “Never.”

Then he lay still.

“I wish I had more practice,” Rogger said.

“You’ll do fine,” Tylar assured him. He glanced back at the others.

The flitterskiff floated a quarter league from the island in the clear channel again, out of the clogged choke. The others crouched, hands firmly on the rail. Dart shared his bench, clutching a hand to his swordbelt. He felt the tremble in her arm.

Each had a duty this night. And though fear shone bright in all their eyes, so did determination. Satisfied, he twisted forward and squeezed Rogger’s arm, sharing friendship and certainty.

“Go.”

With a nod, Rogger twisted the flow of trickling alchemy to full. “Hold tight!”

The paddles to either side churned the waters into a boil. The flitterskiff leaped forward like a startled pony. It blew across the waters, rising, lifting its keel, winds whipping the hood from Tylar’s cloak.

He tugged it back up, ducking lower.

The skiff skimmed on its paddle tips, racing along the channel. Rogger hit the first bend around a hillock, but he was too gentle with the wheel. They swung wide, almost burying their bow in a tangle of knotted roots. He pulled harder, tilting the skiff up almost on one row of paddles, and then they were away.

The channel twisted and turned from there.

Rogger did his best, flying the skiff around fast turns, slowing, jogging, banking, and tilting. He took the last turn with a bit of a panic. The rearmost starboard paddle struck a stone and clipped off with a jolt of the boat. The bronze oar flew like an arrow back into the flooded woods.

Then they were in the boiling lake.

Steam rose in a fierce, bubbling roil. The waters glowed a fiery crimson. As they shot across the water toward the island, the heat swamped over them, dampened them with a stinging wash. The kiss of Takaminara. Behind them, steam swirled and churned in their wake.

A screech of fury erupted from the island. Green flames flickered off the rocky spars, fanned by the beat of rising wings.

Rogger shot toward the island, a flittering spear of wood and bronze. He aimed straight for one of the pinnacles, as if he intended to ram it. “Get ready!”

Tylar shifted up, drawing Dart under his cloak, one arm snaked under her shoulders. “Both hands,” he told her.

Two hands locked onto his swordbelt.

“Now!” Rogger yelled.

The thief yanked on the wheel, and twisted the nose to the left, banking high. Their thrust still carried them toward the island, broadside first now. They slowed.

But not Tylar.

With shadows heavy in his cloak and Dart under his arm, he leaped over the starboard rail and flew like a dark raven toward the sandy beach.

Behind him, Rogger burnt more alchemies and the flitterskiff flew off like a frightened sparrow, skimming out and away from the island.

Tylar landed in a rolling tumble, protecting Dart with his limbs until they fell into the shadows of the rocky spar. He buried them both in the darkness and some scrabbled bushes.

He watched the flitterskiff skim out into the cooler waters of the lake and vanish to the right, intending to circle the island and retreat back the way they’d come in.

But not alone.

A wailing cry of a hunter pierced the night. Tylar did not dare look. They had leaped from the boat into the shadows, and they needed to remain out of sight. Before flying here, Tylar had smeared his blood all over the boat’s railing. His scent would be ripe on the skiff, a bait trolled through these dark waters and away.

But had they hooked their big fish?

Another shriek and the green firelight flickered with fury. Tylar heard the beat of heavy wings, rising from the island. Distantly, he heard Rogger shout.

“If you want to bite this arse, you’re gonna have to catch it first!”

The flap of leather and bone followed Rogger’s call.

Tylar waited another two breaths. The goal had been for Rogger to lure the winged guard away. The daemon’s power came from the island. If Tylar could stamp out the flame here, then the wraithed ghawl would be easier to manage, stripped of much of its Dark Grace.

Still, what would they find here? There was only one way to find out.

“Let’s go, and remember if I say-”

“- run, I’m supposed to run and hide,” Dart mumbled. “I know.”

He hadn’t wanted to bring Dart, but he had no way of knowing if her blood might be needed for the sword. Too much was unknown still about the blade, and he had gods to set free. It would not do to find himself standing with a bladeless hilt in his hand.

A screech echoed over the waters.

And who was to say being on the boat was any safer?

Tylar stood up and slid Rivenscryr from its sheath. “Keep to my shadows. I’ll keep us cloaked as much as possible.”

Already at his hip, she shuffled closer still.

He set out around the rock. The island had fallen into a hushed silence. All he heard was a flicker of hungry flame, a few scrapes, and what sounded like rattled chains.

He crept another step when he realized something was missing here.

Seersong.

When they’d first spied upon the island from across the lake, he had heard a few faint chords. A lone woman singing softly, full of sorrow. But now nothing. What had happened?

Tylar feared what this might portend.

Leading the way, he stepped past the granite spar and into the green firelight. The pyre rose at the island’s center. It cast no warmth, only a sick feverish tint to the skin, oily and foul. It splattered its light against stone and rock.

Tylar lifted his cloak against it, sensing the immense well of power here. He kept back from it, edging around the central square. Low stone buildings, all stacked brick and slabbed roofs, ringed the edges. The doorways were open, no windows. He made sure they kept clear from those dark openings, too.

He heard stone scrape inside-and again a rattle of iron.

Once they were among the crown of pinnacles, the firelight revealed carvings on the inner surfaces of the spars: of men and women at work, tilling fields, leading beasts of burden by yoke. One spar held what appeared to be a great tangled battle with spear and ax, decorated with limbless bodies, and staked heads that were too painful a reminder of Saysh Mal. Another seemed to depict great acts of carnal passion: feasts, debauchery, rutting bodies in every pose.

He stepped between Dart and that view.

Crossing deeper, he searched around him. Here was an ancient human settlement, long before even the human kings rose, stretching to a more distant time. Here is where the human Cabalists had chosen to set up their wicked forge, believing the lies of the naethryn Cabal, to end the tyranny of the gods, to return to the majesty of human rule.

Tylar turned his eyes away, back to the ring of stone buildings. By now, he had circled to the far side of the fire. Here rose the largest of the buildings. Firelight glowed out its door. Not the green poison of this pyre, but a regular hearth.

He approached, but motioned Dart to one side of the door. He led with Rivenscryr in hand. The door was low, requiring him to duck in order to peer inside. A small pit in the room’s center glowed with a few wan flames. It illuminated six stone slabs, radiating out from the fire. A single small figure lay atop each bed, draped in a gray robe, stained and ragged.

Tylar smelled the blood.

It flowed over the slabs and pooled at their feet. A few trickles dribbled toward the fire in the room. A fresh large drop rolled along one of the rivulets and extended its reach by a tiny measure.