James Clemens: Hinterland

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.”

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.

Kathryn also remembered that last morning. The storm had broken at dawn. As rocks still rattled, unsettled and loose, they had found they had survived. Tylar had snuffed out Lord Ulf’s font of Dark Grace, and with it went his storm and ice. But as they pushed open iron shutters and stepped out into that cold morning, all lay in ruins: toppled and gutted towers, broken-toothed walls. Even Stormwatch had been held together only by the last of Ulf’s ice, and the melt of the morning sun threatened that precarious hold.

Kathryn could still picture her last view of Tashijan, from atop the rise of a hill. The once-proud citadel lay in rubble and ruin. And as she watched, Stormwatch slowly gave way, its last alchemies fading, the morning sun melting crusts of ice, and down it came, rumbling like thunder, casting up a cloud of rock dust-then gone, crushing the Masterlevels under it. So she had turned her back, left Tashijan to the haunt of wraith and daemon. Someday they might rebuild, but for now they needed a new home.

A horn sounded up ahead.

“Are you ready?” Gerrod asked.

She nodded. “We should not be late to a knighting that is long overdue.”

She nudged the piebald stallion and walked Stoneheart down a lane lined by stacked planks and brick. Hammering and chiseling, shouts and laughter echoed all around.

Gerrod clopped his horse beside her. “Yet another parade of Tashijan in exile through the streets of Chrismferry.”

“Another parade?”

He nodded ahead. “What with all the woodwrights and stonemasons flowing in and out our temporary gates, it’s like a daily circus around here.”

She offered him a small smile, but it was hidden behind her masklin. He did not see how quickly it faded. As she led the bright retinue toward Chrismferry, she could not deny a cold worry that even the midday swelter could not melt.

“What’s wrong?” Gerrod asked, shying his mount closer, ever knowing her moods. He touched her knee with his bronze fingers.

She shook her head. It was too bright a day.

“Kathryn…”

She sighed, glanced to him, then away again. “Did we win?”

“What do you mean?”

She lifted an arm to indicate all the rebuilding. “Or did Lord Ulf? Back at the Blackhorse, he stated what he sought through all the death and destruction he’d wrought. ‘ The steel of a sword is made harder by fire and hammer. It is time for Tashijan to be forged anew .’ Is that not what happened?”

He motioned for her hand. She gave it. He squeezed her fingers.

“We will be stronger. That I don’t doubt. Already the other Myrillian gods unite more firmly against the Cabal, pull more strongly in support for Tylar. Did you not see the number of flippercraft in the skies over the past days? Hundreds. The knighting today is not the small affair of Argent’s original design, a few Hands from the closest gods. There are retinues here from every land, from as far away as Wyrmcroft in the Ninth Land. That is proof alone.”

He squeezed her hand even harder, almost painfully. “We will be stronger. Not because Ulf won, but because you did. He made an offer to you: to walk away, to escape with a few. But because you held fast, many more survived. And it is that victory that makes us stronger, not capitulation to the mad calculation of a cold god.”

She took a shuddering deep breath and felt some of the ice inside her break apart, but still the shards hurt.

“Even Lord Ulf knew he was defeated. Did he not leave his castillion and wander into the hinterlands to the far north?”

Kathryn had heard the story of the god’s last steps. Just as it was forbidden for a rogue to enter a realm, a god was equally forbidden the hinterlands. Lord Ulf’s form was seen blazing like a torch as he strode north across the frozen wastes to his doom. At the end, the lord of Ice Eyrie gave himself over to the flame.