James Clemens: Hinterland

Brant crouched beside her in the shade, glad the others were gone. “I have.”

He patted the lone blanket remaining. Dart sank to it. She seemed oddly nervous, shifting a bit too much, as if she were sitting on a root.

“What have you decided?” she asked.

The two cubbies had grown bored and taken to wrestling in the sun and trampled grass.

He nodded toward the brother. “I thought a good name would be Lorr. He was certainly wise to the wood.” And he had spent his life to save theirs, so they could be sitting in the shade under blossoms with the sun shining.

She reached out and touched his knee. He glanced from the cubbies’ play to her. Tears filled her eyes. “He would like that.”

Brant’s throat suddenly tightened. He stared at her too long, finally dropping his eyes. “What about your cubbie,” he whispered. “The sister?”

“It’s why I sent the others on ahead,” she said softly. “I wasn’t sure it was appropriate…not an insult…”

He glanced to her, sweeping back a fall of his hair, his brow crinkling.

She continued, not meeting his eye. “You mentioned what a good little hunter she was…what a good little huntress. I thought maybe…”

Brant knew immediately the name she picked.

“Miyana.”

The god’s final plea echoed in his head. I want to go home. Maybe in this small way, they could grant her that, a heart in which to live, to become a huntress of the forest once more.

Dart’s eyes flicked to him, still moist with tears. “Is that all right?”

Brant leaned forward and brushed his lips against hers.

“More than all right,” he whispered.

He stared into her eyes, their noses touching. She smiled softly, like the sun rising over Saysh Mal. It warmed completely through him.

“Thank you,” he whispered again and kissed her, knowing that more than a god had found a new home this morning.

Two others had, too.

It had been a long day…and the night promised to stretch just as far.

Tylar stood on a small private balcony as the grand ball waged behind him, a war of pomp and finery, set to flute and drum. Dancing had already begun, and as the feast was in his honor, he would have to attend.

But first he needed a moment alone.

He stared beyond the rail of the balcony. It overlooked the Tigre River as it snaked to the east. The sun had nearly set behind the castillion, casting a great shadow across the dark green waters. A few stars shone to the east, along with the rise of a full moon.

Another Hunter’s Moon.

He tried to read portent in it, but failed.

The day’s knighting had left him with a heavy heart and an unsettled sense of doom. He could not shake it.

He ran a palm down the cloak that was clasped in gold at his shoulder, a new shadowcloak, and at his waist, a fine new blade. On his other hip, he carried Rivenscryr, sheathed. It did not bear its diamond as his new sword did. That was kept on a cord around Brant’s neck, his new Hand of blood. Only a handful of people knew the significance of that drab, dull stone, and that was the way it would remain.

Until Tylar understood it better.

A hand drifted to the gold hilt.

A son had designed it, and a father had used it to sunder a world.

He pondered if the world might not be better if he tossed the blade into the river. Perhaps the stone, too. He wondered for the hundredth time why the stone had come again into the lives of gods and men. It had been dropped like a pebble in a still lake, and those ripples continued to spread. He feared he had not yet seen the full extent of that rippling.

He pictured again that dread island, shaped like a rocky crown.

As they had departed by flitterskiff, Takaminara had claimed the island, welling up a churn of fiery rock, no longer held off by poisonous flames. Molten fingers rose out of the boiling waters to grasp the island and drag it burning back into the waters. The fiery conflagration could be seen far across the flooded forest as they retreated. It spewed steam and great gouts of fire high into the sky as morning slowly dawned.

Finally, a creak of a door drew him around, away from that dark night.

A slender shape slid through, closing the door behind her. “I thought that was you slipping away.”

“Delia?” A bit of the darkness around his heart lifted. He had known she had arrived, but commitments had pulled them both in different directions until now.

She stepped into the moonlight, dressed in a slim gown of the lightest green, a complement to her hazel eyes and dark hair. She smiled at him, shyly, as if this were the first time they met. She paused a few steps away, plainly fearful that she was intruding.

He motioned to the rail, but she remained where she was.

“Tylar…”

Frowning, he came forward, sensing some great consequence in her stance. “What is it?”

“I wanted a moment with you, but there’s been such chaos this day. All the retinues, all the Hands from various lands.”

“I know. I was hoping…once all the tumult died down. After the feast-”

She cut him off. “I’m leaving with the evening flippercraft.”

He stared at her, stunned.

“My father,” she said. “I don’t like leaving him alone for too long-mostly to protect the servants from him.” She offered a smile to blunt the sting of what she was saying.

“You’re going so soon?”

“I must.” She even backed a step to prove it.

He searched her face, her eyes, and discovered the deeper truth.

“At this moment of my life,” she explained, “there’s room for only one man in it. And that has to be my father. While in the past he might have shirked his responsibility to me, quite callously even, I won’t do the same. I won’t pay back bile with bile, or I’d be no better. He needs me. That is my place.” She glanced up at him. “For now.”

“Delia…”

She took a deep breath, and her voice somehow both softened yet held a harder edge. “I spent time with Kathryn. I’ve gotten to know her. Her heart and her will. She’s borne much pain, now and in the past. I won’t add to it.”

“Delia, Kathryn and I, we’ve already-”

“No, you haven’t, Tylar.”

He wanted to protest, but she fixed him with those eyes, as hard as Argent’s, as sharp as Kathryn’s. He could not lie. Not to her. And in turn, he knew, perhaps it was time he stopped lying to himself.

She nodded, as if reading his thoughts. She stepped forward, kissed him on the cheek, then backed away. “I must hurry to meet my maid.”

She turned, and in a shimmer of pale green she was gone.

But before the door closed, a hand shoved out and stopped it. “Now that wasn’t pretty,” Rogger said with a sad shake of his head as he entered. He smoked a pipe and was dressed in fine cuts, a gray cloak over black.

“Rogger, I don’t-”

The thief held up a hand to silence him as he crossed the balcony, expounding his wisdom. “Young women…they’re as fickle as they come. Pretty, I’ll grant you. But I’ll tell you, great-mothers and great-aunts-they have a head on their shoulders and know what to do with the rest of their bodies.”

Tylar shook his head. “I see someone discovered Chrismferry’s ale.”

“And its cooking wine.”

Tylar leaned on the balcony’s rail. “I heard you met with the Black Flaggers this morning.”

“Had to. Cook needed salt. A barter for the wine. And if you need salt, no better place than a pirate’s ship to get it. Scrape it off their hulls.”

Tylar looked at him in exasperation.

Rogger waved him off with his pipe. “I met with Krevan. That is a pirate in a sour mood. Even with that comely Calla doting on him because of his chopped arm.”