James Clemens: Hinterland

“Any word on the Wyr?”

“Not a word. Like they packed everything and took off.”

Tylar frowned. Here was a major source of his unease. When they had escaped back to land with the flitterskiff, they’d found the Wyr had folded up tents and vanished, leaving only Krevan and Calla. He wouldn’t have been bothered by their sudden departure, except for what he had found on the island.

The six songstresses.

All identical.

Wyr-born.

Had Wyrd Bennifren left knowing what Tylar would find? Had he sold the songstresses to the Cabal? Had he fled to avoid any uncomfortable questions of collusion with the Cabal? Or were there deeper plots here?

He remembered the slain songstresses, throats cut by their own hands.

Only afterward did Tylar realize the absence of any Cabalists on the island. In fact, he had seen no real evidence of their direct involvement at all.

Only the hand of the Wyr.

But what did that portend?

Tylar’s hand settled again to Rivenscryr. A cold chill crept through his bones. He wondered what hand had truly wielded this sword back on that island. And to what end it had been put. An act of mere mercy or something more dire?

Facing the Hunter’s Moon, Tylar knew only one thing with certainty. In this war between Myrillian gods and naethryn, there were as many shades of gray as there were gods. And until this war was over, he would keep Rivenscryr at his side.

A knock on the balcony door announced yet another visitor.

“Regular crossroads here,” Rogger mumbled.

The door opened to reveal a cloaked shadowknight. Kathryn dropped her masklin when she saw they were alone. Strands of music flowed in with her, a dance under way. “Tylar, I don’t think you can hole up here much longer. Gerrod can dance with only so many Hands.”

“Sounds like duty summons the weary,” Rogger said and headed toward the door. “And women and wine summon the bearded.”

The thief slipped past Kathryn and through the door, leaving a pall of pipe smoke behind.

Kathryn waved it from her face and stepped into the more open air of the balcony. “The feast won’t be much longer.”

Rogger left the door ajar when he departed.

Music flowed out to them. Kathryn joined him at the rail. Stars rose to fill the sky, reflected in the water below.

“I saw Delia heading down…” she began.

“She’s leaving. With the evening flippercraft.”

“Back to Argent?”

“Back home…” he said with a tired nod.

Kathryn remained silent, and they stood together at the rail. Once lovers. Now regent and warden.

“It’s been a long day,” he muttered.

She nodded as music flowed.

He held out a hand. “Care to dance?”

She frowned at the offered hand.

“We once knew how to dance,” he said.

“That was another life.”

“Still, sometimes a dance is just a dance. To prove that we still live.”

He kept his hand out. She finally took it.

Stepping back, hand in hand, they spun across the balcony, two shadows in the moonlight, scribing a path for the stars to read.

That they still lived.

The Wyr-lord waited for the sun to slip beneath the sands of Dry Wash. Under a tent awning, Wyrd Bennifren lay nuzzled tight against the woman who carried him, his new milk mare, one hand clasped to her teat. He had already suckled his belly full, and now used the nipple to tug his watery eye up to the fold in his swaddling.

It wouldn’t be long.

The screams had died a full bell ago.

From his perch, he saw that the unkali ara knelt in a circle around the center tent. As they had since midday. Heads bowed to the sand, waiting. They wore their traditional haleesh capes, brooched in silver and gold at the neck, one side knotted back to expose their family bone daggers, passed from father to son.

But all their sheaths were empty.

Each had buried his dagger to the hilt in the sand, gifting the blood to the desert. Not that the sands were thirsty, having been well slaked this past night.

Bennifren willed his milk mare to turn.

The bodies of the dead littered the sands, sprawled out in all directions, for a full league. Thousands. They were all that was left of the legion of a hinter-king who had crossed into Dry Wash, claiming dominion, as such men were wont.

Only this particular king wouldn’t be wrong.

He would rule.

That is, if all went well in the center tent.

Finally, the flap lifted, and a woman stepped out, eyes bandaged, shaven-headed, fingers stretched to an extra joint. A Wyr-witch. Few knew they existed. She bore a large tome in her hand. The Nekralikos Arcanum. One of the rarest texts, written on human skin and inked with alchemical bile.

The witch had overseen the long and torturous preparations within, following the rites that had been devised during the time of strife, between the Sundering and the settling, when much blood had been spilled, and all gods raved.

She had performed the sukra lempta gall.

The Rite of Infamy.

Even this rite had to be hidden in code within the Nekralikos.

Such was its great secret.

But the Wyr had always known it.

For they had devised it-they, the first to play the game of gods.

Over the past day, the hinter-king had been hollowed out-both flesh and that which lay beneath-leaving him an open vessel. Then they had baited the trap. Bennifren had hoped to use the Godslayer’s seed, but other humours served just as well, especially blood.

And scent was scent.

All that remained was to discover if their prey had been woken enough, stirred enough. Their brethren had been slaughtered, twelve in all, screaming in agony. Surely those on high had stopped their ageless dreaming long enough to turn their faces down toward Myrillia. Surely they would send one of their own, drawn by the scent of the murderer.

Bennifren found it amusing that the Cabal sought to pit man against man or god against god. For the Wyr’s goal, though, a larger game needed to be played, one with levels of intrigue that stretched across ages, on all sides of the field. It had required a manipulation of both shadowknight and Cabal, of ravening rogue and calculating god. Even the lives of many of the Wyr had been spent to hide the design, buried under bodies and blood, a carefully crafted game of lies and false trails-all for one reason.

To slay a god. And not just one god.

The Godslayer had proven his name so well.

A dozen rogues. A dozen deaths.

All to wake the sleepers above.

Surely those blessed with Bright Grace, undisturbed for so long, noted their brethren flickering out, torn from their midst, torn from the aether.

But had it been enough? Had they come? Had they accepted the Wyr’s hollowed vessel?

The witch stepped away from the tent, holding back the flap.

A naked figure stumbled out, bronze-skinned, black-haired, and long of limb. The hinter-king. His torso had been split down the middle, from groin to collar, and burnt back together, sealing what had been captured within, a trap of flesh.

Bennifren urged his milk mare forward. He waited in the sun as the hinter-king stepped out of the shadows and into the light. The king’s face lifted skyward, perhaps searching from whence he had come, perhaps merely enjoying the last rays of the sun on his face.

“Welcome to Myrillia,” Bennifren said. “Do you know what you must do?”

Sky blue eyes lowered to him, shining with an azure Grace. The words issued from on high, dreadful with certainty.

“LET THEM ALL BURN…”