Hinterland

  Applying a bit of force, he found the black diamond could be removed from the pommel, but once free, the sword’s blade vanished, and the stone returned again to black rock, both snuffed out. The attempt disturbed them all, especially when Tylar gasped as his body crumbled into further ruin. Still, it took only another drop of Dart’s blood to ignite the stone and feed it back to the pommel. The gold melted over it hungrily, and the silver blade sprouted anew. Tylar’s body also straightened a bit.

  Not much, but enough.

  But Dart had overheard him with Rogger. The poison still spreads. Some poison born of Chrism’s blood. The sword and stone may stave it off somewhat, but I can feel my bones’ ache leaching outward.

  Another reason for haste.

  The gift of the flitterskiff was gladly accepted. It would speed them where they needed to go. They also had the Wyr maps and knew the straightest path to an island deep out in the flooded forest, where the rogues were snared.

  The Wyr maps were vital.

  The flooded forest was a maze of soggy hillocks, slower mossy mires, rocky outcroppings, flat expanses of open water, and twisting currents within the larger breadth of the floodwaters.

  Tylar limped to Rogger’s side. He leaned on the back of the chair.

  “Are you sure you won’t run us straight into a tree?”

  Rogger glanced back. “Do you mean I’m supposed to avoid those?”

  The boat suddenly rocked. The bow’s nose rose as Malthumalbaen clambered aboard. He looked ill at ease. The flitterskiff was all air and water. Born of loam, he looked little comforted by this means of travel. Or maybe he had witnessed Rogger’s bobbling struggle with the strange craft out in the water.

  Malthumalbaen sprawled in the skiff’s stern, filling the space, one hand on each rail.

  With everyone aboard, Tylar took the bench behind Rogger and pointed forward.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Hold tight!” Rogger twisted a knob to open the flow of alchemies.

  The seat vibrated under Dart’s rear. She peeked over the rail as the paddles began to beat, churning water, wafting them forward. Then they beat faster and faster, blurring away. The force of the churn drove them forward—then up. The skiff rose to the tips of its fluttering paddles, lifting the keel free from the drag of the water. Unfettered, the craft sped like its namesake: the flitterfly. It buzzed over the water, skimming the surface with its paddles.

  They raced faster than a horse could gallop.

  Leaning close, Rogger took care to keep an eye on the trees. As directed by the Wyr-man, he stuck to the flattest water, avoiding rocks and floating logs with careful turns of the wheel.

  “Do you have to go so skaggin’ fast?” Malthumalbaen groaned.

  Rogger called back. “While we’ve got clear water, I’m burning alchemy. But according to that Wyr-master of the boat, we’ll be wishing for open water before we reach this island.”

  Tylar shifted forward, speaking in Rogger’s ear. Dart could not make out his words, but from all the pointing, Tylar was directing Rogger’s path as keenly as possible in this watery wood.

  Dart sat back. Her hand rested in Brant’s. She hadn’t planned to put it there, but there it was. They watched the passing hinterlands together. The moons had appeared again as the rains ended and the clouds blew apart. The greater moon had joined her sister, casting enough light off the water to see fairly well.

  But strange luminescences glowed in the dark. Glittering green mosses appeared, like those in the dry wood, and also red shining molds on tree trunks, and glowing yellow puffs that exploded out at them as they passed.

  But beauty in the hinterlands also hid horror.

  “Don’t breathe any of that,” Rogger warned, nodding at the glowing puffs. “It sets in your lungs and births worms that will eat their way out.”

  Dart sank lower in her seat, glad now for the craft’s speed.

  Still, the Wyr-master proved right. Within half a bell, the trees grew closer and closer, bunching around them. Rogger was forced to slow. Their keel sank back to the water as the alchemies were trimmed.

  Their speed remained swift, but not the maddened flight of before.

  Rogger sped them through the thickening woods. As the trees grew closer, the way darkened. Rogger circled around one of the spars of rock that jutted out of the landscape. Here the waters grew sluggish as the currents of the floodwaters eddied around the pinnacle. Thick rafts of algae and weed choked the slower waters and stifled the paddles.

  They were forced to proceed no faster than a man could row, lest they risk breaking some of the paddles.

  And still the trees grew taller, the canopy thicker, blocking all moonlight.

  Tylar lit a small torch to check his map.

  “I could use one of those up front,” Rogger griped. “I can barely see past my nose, let alone this pointy bow.”

  Brant squeezed Dart’s hand and let go. “I’ll do it,” he said and scooted down the bench.

  He collected one of the larger torches, lit it off of Tylar’s brand, and moved forward to join Rogger. Brant steadied himself with a hand on the port rail and held the torch high. The firelight stretched across the water.

  Able to see, Dart glanced up. The canopy overhead was draped with giant striped vines. The firelight played along their bellies, making them seem to shift and slide. Then a scaled head snaked down out of the twist, hissing to reveal fangs as long as her outstretched hand.

  The firelight stirred others, warming their scales.

  Dart squeaked in alarm, sliding off her seat to the planks below.

  Other eyes noted what roosted in their rafters. One of the serpents uncoiled and slid out of the tangle, crashing to the boat’s center with a writhe of muscles, as thick around as Dart’s leg.

  She grabbed the rail, ready to leap into the water.

  But Malthumalbaen sighed, snatched the snake by the tail, and whipped it over his shoulder, as if tossing away a gnawed bone. Its coils splashed into the waters behind them.

  He returned to resting his chin on his fist.

  “It’s only a little snake,” he mumbled.

  Rogger eked more alchemy through the mekanicals. With a whisper of paddles, they sped out from under the serpents’ nest. Clear of the pinnacles, they found a less clogged section of the flooded forest, where the currents were swifter.

  Brant kept his torch burning.

  Dart eventually calmed enough to return to her bench.

  Rogger guided them through a watery maze of rocks and hillocks. “Straightest path, my arse,” he grumbled.

  Tylar checked the map to the territory. He looked far from convinced that they were on the right track. He looked up and frowned. “If we could see a few stars…”

  Despite the dangers, Dart appreciated the occasional handsome view that opened up. A long lane of water lilies that balanced tall-stemmed flowers atop green pads as wide around as Dart was tall. Hanging nests of violet-breasted swifts, so tightly packed that they looked like grapes on a vine. As their boat passed, the birds took to wing without a single peep. But their passage set their hollow nests to bumping against each other, sounding like tuned wood pipes, wafting out a beautiful warbling.

  Up ahead, a tall tree swung into view, rising in distinct tiers as if trimmed by the hand of man rather than random growth. Brant’s flames revealed thousands of small blooms, white as snow against the green leaf, all tucked in for the night.

  As they swept closer, Dart watched one bloom open its petals. A fat little head beaded out toward them, eyes reflecting crimson. The petals spread wider to reveal wings.

  Not hanging flowers.

  Bats.

  As their earlier passage had fluttered the swifts from their nest, the firelight did the same here, shaking the bats from their roost in a single explosion of wings. But unlike the swifts, the bats weren’t fleeing.

  “Torches!” Tylar yelled.

  The flock swept toward the boat.

  Malthumalba
en moved forward, rocking the boat, to grab two brands. Dart snatched one. In a breath, fires flared across the boat. Unfazed, the bats struck with needle-toothed fury. They landed on shoulder and arm, chest and leg. Teeth bit into skin, claws dug through cloth. Malthumalbaen was assaulted the worst, being the tallest and largest target.

  Or maybe it was that he held two torches aloft.

  Dart remembered how firelight woke the bats.

  Maybe it angered them, too.

  Testing this thought, Dart swatted a bat from her neck, then plunged the flaming end of her torch into the water. The fire died with a hiss of steam. The flurry of wings shifted away from her. One bat on her arm leaped toward the giant, despite the greater danger of his slapping hands and massive pinching fingers.

  “It’s our fire!” Dart called out. “The flames goad them to attack!”

  The flames were quickly doused. Malthumalbaen threw his last brand far behind the boat. It flew end over end, blowing brighter by the passage, trailing embers. The flock of bats took wing after the flying torch.

  They all sank down into the darkness, scratched and bitten.

  “Those mites are far worse than any snake,” Malthumalbaen grumbled, sucking at a wounded finger.

  They continued onward without torches.

  “It shouldn’t be far,” Tylar finally said, rolling his map, squeezing the scroll tight in his hands.

  Proving his word, a glow appeared through a tangle of woods ahead. Tylar motioned Rogger to slip out of the clearer current in the flooded wood and edge more slowly through the choked channels. It would be easier to hide their approach among the heavier bushes and low branches.

  As they left the swifter current, the waters thickened with weed and algae. Rogger cut the alchemy to a trickle, drifting more than powered.

  The glow shone from directly ahead.

  “Does anyone else smell that?” Rogger whispered, nose pinching.

  “Brimstone,” Tylar mumbled, followed by a hushing motion.

  Rogger drifted them closer, nosing them through bushes. He finally stifled the alchemical flows completely. Malthumalbaen propelled them from there on, reaching to tree limbs and bushes to pull them toward the glow.

  “Far enough!” Rogger warned in a whisper.

  They all shifted forward, weighting the bow down. The giant stepped back to steady the trim.

  Dart scooted up beside Brant. Through a break in the foliage, the view opened to a monstrous sight.

  An island rose from the center of an open expanse of water, a lake within the drowned woods. Six giant pinnacles rimmed the land, each tilting slightly outward. It made the entire island look like a half-submerged crown.

  Dart saw that the inner surfaces of each pinnacle had been shaved flat. She could just make out etched pictures and symbols drawn upon the smoothed surfaces. It reminded her of the small circle of stones at the Wyr camp, covered with ancient writing.

  Between the spires of the crown, low stone structures ringed the island. And in the center blazed a massive fire, shaking with green flame, shimmering off rock and stone wall.

  “It’s an old human settlement,” Rogger said.

  “Taken over by the Cabal,” Tylar whispered. “The location is not random or mere opportunity. The Cabal sway their human allies with a false promise of an end to godly tyranny. What better stronghold than one of our old settlements, ripe with sentiment and history?”

  “Why does the water boil and glow out in the lake here?” Dart asked. “Is it more Dark Grace?”

  Dart stretched to view the extent of the boil. All around the island, circling it entirely, the water trembled and bubbled. Steam wafted in shimmering sheets, high and away. Here was the source of the brimstone. A deep crimson glow shone from the depths.

  “No,” Brant said, “it’s not Dark Grace. I believe it’s a flow from Takaminara, like the burn that cut a swath through Saysh Mal. She sends her molten fingers out into the hinterland.”

  “But why? Is she protecting the island?”

  Rogger answered. “More like protecting the world. I wager if she had the chance, she’d melt the island to slag, but that green fire must be fueled by the rogues, keeping her at bay. There is little else she could do. Takaminara’s influence beyond her realm is limited, and she is only one god against who knows how many rogues here.”

  Faintly, Dart heard a few sweet chords echoing across the waters, a forlorn note full of power. Seersong. But Tylar seemed unaffected. The stone, whetted and wedded to the sword, kept him safe.

  Tylar stirred. “We’ll have to move swiftly across the boiling water. Ride high and fast, and beach well up the strand. If we move now—”

  A scream rose from the island, piercing with a wail of horror.

  The force of it blew back the steam in a cold wash, turning steam to water and splashing it outward. As leaves dripped, they watched something rise out of the green fire, lit from below, though fiery in its own right. It twisted like smoke into the air, finally unfurling massive black wings. A cloak fell from its form and into the waiting flames.

  “Perryl,” Tylar moaned.

  “He’s been ilked into a wraith,” Rogger said. “A wraithed daemon.”

  The beast screamed again, not quite with the force of his birth but fierce enough. Flapping high into the air. The power that welled from him could almost be tasted on the air.

  “But who ilked him?” Dart asked.

  Rogger answered. “Remember who wields this font of Dark Grace. A god who is well familiar with wind wraiths.”

  “Lord Ulf,” Tylar said.

  Rogger nodded. “He makes his final move.”

  The end came with a thunderous crack.

  It shook Stormwatch.

  “The Shield Wall!” Kathryn cried out and hurried to the fieldroom’s window. Despite the terror, there was also a measure of relief. They had been waiting for the past bell, balanced between certain doom and frantic hope. A thousand plans had been proposed and discarded. Their only true defense was fiery pyres laced with alchemies devised by Gerrod and his fellow masters. But they had too little flame and too much territory to protect. More strategies were waged, to no avail.

  So when the ice finally came, Kathryn could not dismiss a measure of relief, ready as ever to make this stand. She had kept the tower for this long night, against wraiths, against witches, against daemons.

  Now she must stand fast against a god.

  She peered out the window, joined by Gerrod on one side, and Argent and Delia on the other. Father and daughter stayed close. Too late perhaps to know each other truly, but not too late to be near.

  Across the yard, as Kathryn watched, a large section of the Shield Wall caved inward, cracked from crown to root. A wall that had stood for four millennia.

  Why this show of power? Why not simply freeze them out?

  But Kathryn remembered Ulf’s cold countenance. She knew it wasn’t bluster here, some magnificent display to his might. That was not Lord Ulf. He meant to tear Tashijan down, wall by wall, tower by tower, brick by brick.

  She remembered his words: There is no way to weed this patch. Best to burn it and salt the ground.

  He meant to accomplish that end. It was why he built his ice all night, gathering the cold for this final assault. None would live—but more important to Ulf, nothing would stand afterward.

  Another crack reverberated through the cold air. Another section of wall fell. And through the breaches, his ice flowed. Like a mighty exhalation from the storm’s heart, an intense cold blew into Tashijan. The outer towers frosted over. Stone shattered with mighty pops. One wall of the Ryder’s Tower burst as if struck by a fist. Its crenellated crown toppled with agonizing slowness, tilting, sliding, then crashing into the snow.

  Kathryn heard echoes of annihilation coming from the other sides of Tashijan. Lord Ulf struck on all fronts. He bore his ice in a tightening noose around Stormwatch.

  Kathryn tore her eyes away. The others did the same. Bearing witness wou
ld not save them; it would only instill despair.

  After all the pickets this night, there remained only one more line to hold. “Sound the Shield Gong,” she said.

  Gerrod nodded and headed out to pass on the word.

  It was their only plan.

  All of Tashijan would gather in the Grand Court, in the heart of Stormwatch. The central Hearthstone was already aflame with alchemies. Pyres burnt at every door. They would make their last stand there.

  All around, stone crashed and mortar moaned.

  Kathryn turned to Argent and Delia. “Get to the Court,” she said. “I will keep vigil for as long as possible.”

  “It is my place to be here,” Argent said.

  “Your place is at the last picket, Warden. With your people.”

  Argent’s eye shone toward her, once again seeking some argument. Argent to the end. But a hand touched his shoulder.

  “Father…let’s go…”

  The fire dimmed to something warmer as he turned. He touched the fingers on his arm and nodded.

  “Be swift,” Argent said to Kathryn.

  She bowed her head in acknowledgment.

  They departed, leaving her alone in the fieldroom.

  Kathryn crossed to the window. She peered out at the fall of Tashijan, as stone and ice fought. She remembered the offer Lord Ulf had set before her. To escape with the heart, to flee and not look back.

  Well, I’m looking, she said silently. But never back over my shoulder. I will face you full on.

  And though she saw what swept toward her, she did not despair.

  She still held out one hope.

  23

  A NECESSARY MERCY

  WEIGHTED BY DESPAIR, TYLAR MOVED BACK TOWARD THE stern of the boat.

  The daemon had settled to the island, vanishing among the flames and structures. Plainly Perryl had been ilked to protect the island, a ravening guard of Dark Grace.

  How could he hope to defeat the daemon?

  Tylar hobbled to the middle of the boat and sat down heavily, earning a complaint from his side, sharpening his breath. The others followed.