Page 42 of Hinterland


  “A rogue god who does not rave.”

  Some measure of disbelief must have rung in Tylar’s words.

  Rogger dropped his voice even lower. “It’s probably why he chose to live in the hinterlands. With no wild Grace to calm, he had no reason to settle a realm. Why give up the world and freedom if you didn’t have to? And didn’t the Wyr sense something odd about him? Didn’t he escape their trackers? And what about Dart?”

  “What about her?”

  “A god’s seed rarely takes root in a belly. The Grace burns such fragile unions. But Keorn’s seed took root.”

  It made a certain horrible sense, though Tylar would prefer to discuss it with a tower full of masters. For every question Rogger answered, another two arose. Why did Keorn have a child? Why keep the stone secret? Why remain hidden in the hinterlands for four thousand years? Why not reveal yourself? Mystery atop mystery remained.

  And Tylar suspected the answers lay beyond the Divide, in the hinterlands.

  Finally, they climbed the last slope. A small group of hunters waited at the top of the pass. Harp stood among them. He had gone on ahead to ready the rope ladders for their descent.

  He came forward, face grim. “All is ready. I have Master Sheershym’s maps of the lands below packed.”

  His voice cracked a bit on those last words.

  Tylar clasped the boy on the shoulder. “You have much to bear on shoulders so young.”

  “And so bony,” Rogger added.

  His attempt at levity raised only a ghost of a smile on the boy’s lips, mostly polite. His eyes remained tired, haunted. Harp had much work ahead here. After Miyana’s death, the hunters under her thrall had fallen into various states. Some had rolled fully into a ravening lunacy. Others remained in a strange dreamlike state, as if their minds had simply snuffed out, leaving only a breathing husk behind. A few were grief-stricken, addled by guilt, but had hopes for some life hereafter.

  And one hunter had died, torn apart at the hands of his own people. His head rested on a stake not far away, forever baring his filed teeth in a grimace of pain.

  Harp led them to the ladders. “It might be best to attempt your climb in the morning,” he warned. “If you leave now, it will be dark when you finally set foot down there.”

  Tylar stared out past the cliff. It was his first view of the hinterlands below. Though the sun still hovered at the edge of the world, the lower lands were already blanketed in darkness. It was a world of broken rock and steaming jungle, more swamp than forest. A few fiery snakes glowed through the darkness, molten rivers streaming out from Takaminara’s volcanic peak, fresh flows from a god grieving for her daughter, fiery tears for one returned to her so briefly.

  Mother…forgive me…

  Tylar felt Harp’s eyes on him, waiting for his answer.

  Despite the dangers below, he had had enough of this sad land.

  “We’ll go now.”

  FIFTH

  FALL OF THE TOWERS

  By this sword do we swear

  By this cloak we do share

  By this masklin are we hid

  By this diamond we are bid

  By this oath are we bound

  By this honor we are crowned

  For the sake of all Myrillia

  We give our blood

  We pledge our hearts

  We devote our lives

  to all

  —Creed of the Shadowknight

  19

  A RUSTED HINGE

  “WE’VE LOST THE DOCKS ATOP STORMWATCH!” GERROD yelled down to Kathryn. He clanked down the central stairs. “The warden is abandoning the top five floors. We’re to rally below!”

  Kathryn climbed through the line of cloaked knights as they surged downward. Many bore wounds. Others were slung between their brothers and sisters. In all their eyes, the same expression shone. Horror and hopelessness.

  Alchemical smoke choked the stairwell.

  She met Gerrod at the floor where her hermitage lay. She was returning from securing the entire populace of Tashijan—those not of cloak or robe—in the Grand Court, out of harm’s way, leaving the halls and stairs to the knights and masters.

  The war had been going on for only four bells, and already they’d lost the shield wall and outer towers. They’d had to pull back into Stormwatch, the sole tower still holding. And its defenses were crumbling.

  She reached him and together they headed toward her hermitage. More knights were emptying out of this level, cloaks torn, faces raked. A knight sat slumped a few steps past the stairwell, blood pooled around him.

  “How many dead?” she asked.

  Gerrod answered, his voice muffled by his armor. “At last tally…” He shook his head, voice cracking.

  She glanced to him. He was her rock, and even he was breaking. She was suddenly glad he kept his helmet closed. His bronze countenance, while a false stolidity, helped hold her steady.

  He found his voice, as if sensing her need. “Six score dead, thrice that injured. We just lost five barricading the door to the docks.”

  Somewhere high above, a scream echoed. Human.

  “And it’s not just the wraiths,” Gerrod said. “Blessing our blades with dire alchemies has offered us some measure of defense, but Lord Ulf’s forces also come with stormfire, balls of lightning. Only stone seems to stanch them.”

  Crossing past the warden’s Eyrie, a shout called to her. “Kathryn!”

  She turned to see Argent at the center of a flurry of activity, gathering scrolls and packing up all that was important. He shoved through a few knights, a storm in shadow. He limped toward her. She had heard of his defense of the Agate tower. His last rally had saved hundreds of underfolk who made their home in the outer tower. She had heard the tale of Argent’s ride against a storm of the wraiths, with only a dozen knights, splitting the winged legion enough to allow the tower’s escape, mostly women and young ones.

  “Head below!” he yelled. “We gather in the fieldroom at the next bell!”

  She nodded.

  He reached the door, his one eye on her. She read the regret behind his stony face. “We’ll hold this tower,” he said in a quiet voice, fierce echoes behind it.

  “To the last knight,” she said.

  “And master,” Gerrod added.

  It was no longer a tower divided. In the past bells, as their defenses fell, one after the other under Ulf’s ravening legion, they were all crushed together. Knight and master. Underfolk and townsfolk. The battle here was not one of victory but of survival. Their squabbles of the past seemed petty and churlish.

  Kathryn noted the Fiery Cross on Argent’s shoulder. It was torn in half by a raked claw.

  “I’ll see you at the bell,” she said with a nod toward the warden.

  Their eyes held a fraction longer, just long enough to admit the fools they’d both been. And to forgive each other’s blind corners. At least for this one day. She prayed it would be enough.

  A shout drew Argent back to his duty.

  Released, Kathryn strode down to her own rooms. There were a few items she intended to secure, one in particular, the true reason she had forded up here against the flowing stream of their retreat.

  She rushed to her door, found it ajar, and pushed inside. The hearth was cold. The heavy drapery had been torn down and the windows boarded and shuttered tight. There was still glass on the floor from where Ulf’s emissary had broken through from the outer balcony.

  As she crossed the threshold, she heard a frantic scuffle from the next room. Her sword appeared in her hand. She held her other arm out toward Gerrod, warding him back.

  Wraiths had been worrying themselves through cracks, finding every means to gnash their way inside. A bell ago, a pair had clawed their way down one of the kitchen’s chimneys, defying a roaring fire and smoke, and attacked a baker’s boy, ripping his head from his body. Four others had died. It had taken the head cook with a butcher’s cleaver and a lone scullery maid with a spitting fork to fina
lly dispatch the beast. To such an extent had the defense of Tashijan fallen.

  Stepping farther into the room, Kathryn noted a small and familiar squeak from the next room.

  “Penni?” Kathryn called out.

  Silence—then a flutter of footsteps and a bonneted head peeked around the corner leading to her private room. “Mistress!” The maid offered a trembling curtsy that was strangely reassuring in its familiarity.

  Kathryn waved the girl over. “What are you still doing up here?”

  Penni took a scatter of steps toward her, then stopped. “I heard…below…that all was lost up here. So I came in a rush.” She pointed to the servants’ door in back.

  Kathryn realized she should have thought to do the same—it would have been quicker than fighting the tumult of the main stairs. She admonished herself for the narrowness of her vision, constricted by her own sense of place and caste.

  “I knew you’d not want to lose this,” her maid said.

  Penni held up a strap of black linen. Attached to it was a thumb-sized diamond. It was the diadem of the castellan, the symbol of her station. It was not the fake one, the artifice of paste, but the true diadem, the one stolen by Mirra and rescued by Lorr. The masters had already tested and cleared it of any Dark Grace. And despite its former bearer, it was an ancient jewel of Tashijan, the heart of the Citadel.

  It was why Kathryn had come up here.

  She stared gratefully at her maid, realizing how well the girl had come to know her mistress’s heart. Yet, in turn, Kathryn had barely noted her comings and goings. She did note her now: the firm heart in a trembling young girl’s body. Here was what they fought for in Tashijan. Here was what had ultimately made Kathryn turn her back on Ulf’s offer.

  A loud crack shattered through the room.

  One of the shutters at the back window tore away, followed by a tinkle of glass. Shards flew high. Penni turned and ducked, shielding herself with an arm. Kathryn was struck by the smell of burnt wood.

  Gerrod grabbed her elbow.

  Through the shattered gap, a blaze of azure scintillation swept into the room, a fiery globe as wide as her outstretched arms. It struck Penni, picking her off her feet. Her bonnet blew from her head in a wash of fire. Lightning crackled over her skin, burning her livery, arching her back, stretching her mouth in a silent wail.

  Gerrod shoved Kathryn aside and pointed his other arm at the ball of stormfire. From the back of his wrist, a stream of muddy bile jetted and struck the globe. With the touch of the alchemy, the fires were blown out like a spent candle.

  Penni collapsed to the rug. She shivered all over as if cold, despite her smoking skin and fiery-flailed clothes. Then she lay still. Eyes open, but no longer seeing.

  The diadem she had come to rescue lay between them, flung as she was struck and consumed.

  “I’ll get it,” Gerrod said.

  Kathryn brusquely shoved past him. She crossed, stepped over the diadem, and knelt down beside Penni. She scooped the girl up in her arms. She was so very light, as if all substance had escaped with her life. Kathryn felt the heat of the char through her cloak. The maid’s small head hung slack over her arm, neck stretched as if baring her throat.

  And so she had…to come here, to risk all.

  Kathryn shifted her arms and rocked her small body closer, so Penni’s head came to rest against her shoulder. Kathryn cradled her.

  “I have you,” she whispered.

  Turning, she headed for the door.

  Gerrod bent and collected the diadem from the floor and followed. But in her arms, Kathryn already carried the true jewel, the true heart of Tashijan.

  Far below, Laurelle sat in a moldy chair, its ticking puffing out. It smelled of mouse bile and mustiness. But she had sunk gratefully into it a bell ago, as if it were the finest velvet and down.

  To one side, Kytt rested cross-legged on the stone floor, leaning his back against a plank bed strewn with old hay. Delia sat atop the bed, supported by the wall. Her eyes were open, but her gaze looked far away. Her head had been bandaged deftly by Kytt, who was experienced with such minor care, since all wyld trackers were trained to attend injuries on the trail.

  They had found the refuge, a room with a stout door, deep within the level where they’d been trapped. Their attempt to push into well-lit and-populated regions had turned into a mad flight from things hidden in the dark and shadow. Between the senses of Orquell’s crimson eye and Kytt’s sharp ears and nose, they found all their ways blocked.

  They were forced to delve deeper into the abandoned sections of the aged tower. Until they were all but lost. Recognizing the futility, Orquell had finally pulled them into this room. He sat in the room’s center. He had raised a small fire in each corner, kindled from the beetle-riddled legs of a broken table and alchemical powder.

  Warding pyres, he claimed.

  He now seemed lost in his flames, eyes closed. He had remained like that for the past bell. Occasionally one of the pyres would spit with flame, hissing. And behind the sparks, Laurelle swore she heard thin whispers.

  But more often she heard screams.

  From above.

  What was happening?

  If she had been in her own rooms, she probably would’ve been locked up, shoulder to shoulder with other Hands of the realms, equally blind to the true state of the war. Still, she wished she was up there. Here she was truly in the dark, in more ways than mere shadowy halls. Her imagination filled in the gaps of the story above with a whirl of horrors. Even if the truth were more terrifying than any of her imagined scenarios, she’d still prefer to know. At least then she could focus on one tangible fear, rather than the multitude of phantom perils that swam through her head.

  “She waits,” Orquell finally muttered, his eyes still closed.

  “Who?” Delia asked, focusing back on the room along with the rest of them.

  Laurelle felt a thrill of fear, knowing that their short respite was about to end. She sat straighter.

  “The witch,” he said. “The flames chitter with her dark delight. She waits for the war above to tear and weaken. Then she will rise and sweep through what remains, consuming all in her path.”

  “Then we must get word above,” Delia said, scooting to the edge of the bed. “Light more fires.”

  “Too late. The warden has set plentiful flames, but he has forgotten the fundamental nature of fire.”

  “What’s that?” Laurelle asked.

  “Every flame casts a shadow.” He opened his eyes and stretched his shoulders, like a cat waking by a fire. “You can’t have light without darkness. And Mirra takes advantage of that. Just as she has slunk and lurked in secret passages wormed throughout Tashijan’s cellars, so she does now in the shadows cast by the warden’s pyres.”

  “But the gates below were all closed,” Kytt said. “Sealed with iron and wyrmwood. All else bricked tight.”

  “Bricks, iron, and wood. All cast their shadows when raised against the flame. And the more fires that are stoked, the darker those shadows become, and the more likely those dark paths will open for her legion. For Mirra does not move her legion through mere shadows. She moves her ghawls through places darker, through those trickles of Gloom found hidden in shadowy places.”

  Laurelle pictured the many fires throughout Tashijan. They had been set to ward against the storm’s cold, but if the master here was correct, those same pyres had cast deep enough shadows for some Dark Grace to tease open a passage into their midst.

  And now the witch waited.

  Like them.

  In the darkness.

  Only unlike them, with every passing bell, she saw her position grow stronger, while theirs sapped weaker.

  “She is about to strike. I sense it in the stanching of the pyres—a smothering swell of darkness.”

  Laurelle perhaps felt it, too. A weight to the air. Or maybe it was simply her own terror.

  “What are we to do, then?” Delia asked. “We’re buried among her forces her
e, trapped in the very shadows cast by those flames we need to reach.”

  Orquell slowly stretched to his feet with a creak of his bones. “Since we’re already here, we might as well be of use to Tashijan.”

  “How so?” Laurelle asked. Her hand drifted to her throat. She knew she wasn’t going to like his answer. And she was right.

  “We might as well call the witch to us.”

  “What?” Kytt squeaked.

  “We’ll draw her eye here. Away from the others.”

  He stepped to one of his pyres, the one set before the door. Powders appeared in his fingers, as if out of the very air. He cast the alchemy into the fire. Flames flared brighter, chasing sparks high. He leaned down and whispered into the fire. But whatever he said was consumed by the flames.

  Then he straightened and rested his fists on his hips.

  “Now we’ll see if she answers.”

  “When?” Delia asked.

  “It may take a while.”

  Delia stood up, eyes glancing over the four pyres. “Who are you truly?” Her eyes settled back to him. “You are rub-aki. That I understand. But you come here with your crimson eye painted over, and I suspect you’ve equally hidden your true purpose for arriving at Tashijan in so timely a manner.”

  Orquell ran a hand over his bald pate. “I am a master,” he said. “These tattoos were hard-earned. But my crimson eye—that I earned through a decade of toil and flame, long before I was ever tattooed in my disciplines.”

  He crossed to the bed and sat down upon it. He tapped a finger on the crimson thumbprint. “Do you know how this inner eye is ultimately opened?”

  Delia folded her arms, still suspicious, but Laurelle shifted in her chair to hear better.

  “The eye is opened in darkness.”