James Clemens: Hinterland

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 gaze 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.