James Clemens: Hinterland

He entered but pointed back. “Stay near the door. Watch the square.”

Dart stepped within the shelter of the threshold, but she faced outward.

Tylar crossed to one of the beds. The figure was a girl, surely no more than fifteen, straight blond hair, long to the shoulder. She appeared no different than any young girl, except for two things about her neck. Under her chin, her throat bulged out, like a frog in mid-croak.

One of the songstresses.

He looked into her open eyes, such a sweet face for such a font of misery. But was she to blame? Such children were born of Dark Grace, against their will, tainted by black alchemies to become these sirens of Grace. Were they any freer than those they bound?

And then there was one last horror found at her throat.

A ragged slice drawn clean and deep. Its edges had peeled back as her lifeblood poured out. Tylar’s toe nudged one of the blades, a shard of obsidian in a bronze handle. It lay near the girl’s slack fingers.

She had cut her own throat.

He stepped to the next, and the next-all the same.

All the songstresses.

Dead.

He touched one cheek. Still warm. The deaths had occurred only moments before. He remembered the forlorn notes of song he had heard drifting over the lake. Maybe it hadn’t truly been seersong, only one last whisper into the night, a lone child knowing what she must do.

Tylar stared across the ruin here.

“Why?” he whispered to them.

The one word encompassed two questions.

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.