Hinterland g-2 Read online

  Hinterland

  ( Godslayer - 2 )

  James Clemens

  Hinterland

  James Clemens

  In Shadow…

  He has forgotten his name, leaving only will to drive him. Arrow-bit and cut to bone, he reaches one hand, then another. The very land rejects his naked body. Fingernails break and bleed. Toes scrabble for purchase on the cliff face. His blood blackens the cold stone as he climbs the Forge.

  But he cannot stop.

  His pursuers will not.

  He hears them far below: the ravening cries of the leathery grecklings, the chinking rattle of their keepers, the harsh shouts of his former captors, and rising like steam, the worst yet, the sweet notes of seersong.

  Tears run hotly across his cold cheeks.

  The song calls him back, slows him. If he knew his name, he would be caught again. But all is forgotten, so he digs and climbs.

  He must not stop.

  He searches upward. Light streams over the top of the white cliff, reflecting the morning’s fire off the ice-capped peaks that frame the notched pass above. The Forge. The beacon between two lands. And though the brightness heralds the rise of the sun beyond the mountains, here on the western cliffs night still rules.

  He must reach the border.

  At last, one hand reaches out to find not rock but air. The top of the Forge. He draws his body upward with the very last of his strength into the morning’s warmth and light. He rolls to the flat stone nestled between two peaks. Ahead, the land falls away again, the slopes gentler.

  But not gentle to him…

  He rises to his knees, staring to the east.

  More peaks, but nearer still lies a promise. Though shrouded by morning mist, the vast emerald cloud forest is visible. Birdsong reaches him even here. He smells loam and wet leaf.

  Saysh Mal.

  Green lands settled and forbidden to his blood.

  He already feels the admonishment under his knees. Fire warms his bones, but it is not the pleasantness of a hearth’s glow: It is fever and fear. A warning at the border, written upon his marrow.

  Do not pass.

  He stands, and despite the warning, he trespasses. His bare feet move him away from the cliff’s edge, away from the cries below, away from the last notes of seersong.

  He leaves the hinterlands behind.

  There is a path ahead. Left by whom? Hunters of the distant forest? The curious, the foolhardy, the hopeless? Who would trek to this vantage to stare out over the blasted hinterlands?

  He continues, tracing the path down toward Saysh Mal. Each step grows more agonizing. Warmth becomes fire. Warning becomes demand. The blood of this land rejects his own. He smells his own seared flesh. Smoke curls between blackened toes. Drops of his own blood ignite with spats of flame.

  He walks onward.

  Agony both erases and stretches time.

  He hobbles now on fiery stubs, feet gone. And still the land is not satisfied. His bones are now tinder. The fire races through marrow, igniting hip, spine, rib, and skull. He smolders. The old arrows impaled in his body have become feathered torches, fueled by his own blood. Shafts fall to ash.

  He struggles onward, a living candle of oil and meager fat.

  Past the last peak, he falls to hands and knees. He crawls, blindly, amid smoke and flame.

  Then he senses more than hears: Someone is near.

  He stops. The land’s attack upon his blood rewards him for halting. Ever so slightly, the fire ebbs. Smoke clears. Though his eyes are burnt away, he notes shadows and light.

  A figure steps toward him.

  “No, boy!” someone shouts from a different direction. “Stand back from it! It’s a shiting rogue god from the hinter!”

  “But it’s hurt.”

  “Let it die!”

  “But…”

  Through his pain, the god hears compassion, not so much with his burnt ears as with his heart. It gives him the strength for one last act. He reaches to his lips and removes his burden, preserved in Grace, carried in his mouth.

  No strength remains.

  He falls to the ground and lets his burden roll from his flaming fingertips. Though blind, he senses its journey into the boy’s shadow.

  It is his last hope, his heart, his life-and the only chance to save this world.

  With his burden lifted at last, darkness settles over him as the land consumes the last of his life’s flame. Words echo to him as he fades from this world.

  “What is it?”

  The boy answers. “Only a rock.”

  FIRST

  Cloak and Shadow ser (regained knighthood) Tylar de Noche-regent of Chrismferry, the Godsword (too archaic as written) bearer of Rivenscryr, and vice-lord of Tashijan. Knighted in ann. 4154 and stripped in 4163, Tylar came to his regency after the Battle of Myrrwood the ninety-eight with the unanimous consent of all the gods Myrillia (to avoid repetition of “nine”) of the Nine Lands. His reign would herald the beginning of the second War of the Gods. -Hand-edited and unpublished page from The Compendia of Figures and Personages from the Age of Twilight, sold at auction for eleven hundred gold marches

  A BRONZE BOY IN SNOW

  He was being hunted through the wintry wood.

  The forest whispered the hunter’s presence: with the shushing of snow slipping from a pine branch, the skeletal rub of brittle briar branches, the creak of twigs in an ancient deadfall.

  Still, Brant remained calm, as he had been taught.

  Unhurriedly, he continued through the woods.

  With each crunch of his boot, the brittle crust of ice cracked into the deeper snow. He left a trail of footprints that could easily be followed. His father would shame him if he saw his carelessness, but he was long in his grave, killed by a she-panther, leaving no one around to admonish his son.

  Especially not in this strange cold land.

  Brant was as foreign to this country as a fish on a sandy shore. Even after living here for over a year, he still found the air too heavy and difficult to breathe.

  The elders might force him from his own lands and call it a blessing, place him in a strange school in Chrismferry and call it lucky, have him chosen for service by the god of Oldenbrook and call it fate, but Brant would never truly call this land home.

  So he kept a ritual, honoring his father and keeping to the old ways. Each morning, he abandoned the raftered bridges and stone pillars of Oldenbrook and hunted the woods that fringed the great lake. He carried a trio of gutted and skinned snowhares impaled along the shaft of one arrow, borne over a shoulder. His baiban bow was hooked over his other arm, while the feathers poking out from his quiver tickled his left ear.

  His father could not fault his skill with the bow this day. He had killed the hares swiftly. Three bolts through three hearts. He dressed them where they fell, leaving entrails steaming in the snow, blood scenting the dry air. It was the Way, sharing the rewards of the hunt with the forest. So it had been taught to every child back in his faraway homeland of Saysh Mal. By the Huntress herself, the Mistress of the Cloud Wood, god of loam and leaf. But the Way was not honored here…except by Brant.

  Then again, why should it be? Here was not a realm of loam but a land of river, lakes, and ponds.

  Brant stopped to listen again as he reached a familiar brook, greeted by his own footprints, those he had left earlier as he headed out into the snowy glade. The whisper of the forest had gone silent. Still, he waited five full breaths.

  With his eyes on the forest, he knelt at the creek’s edge, broke through the thin ice to reach the flowing water, and filled his goatskin flask. The wind brushed the tanglepine branches overhead, dusting him with snow and allowing a spear of sunlight to penetrate.

  The ice sparked br
illiantly, reflecting bits and pieces of the kneeling hunter: a snatch of brown hair, disheveled and draped across an unlined forehead…a corner of an emerald eye, squinted against the sudden glare…a stretch of thin lips, drawn even thinner…a corner of clefted chin, flecked by two days’ growth of beard.

  Brant froze, recognizing in such a broken reflection not himself-but his father. The stubble on the chin was too thin, grown from a young man of fifteen winters, not the dark shadows of his father’s. And certainly one slivered reflection could not be misconstrued: Under the angle of a jaw, a branching scar marred the smooth bronze skin of his throat. If one squinted, it looked not unlike a hand, throttling him.

  That belonged to Brant alone.

  Shadows descended again as the wind died and branches fell back into place. It was time to go. Brant stood and followed the ice-edged brook as it switched back and forth through the wood. Around the last curve, the great blue expanse of Oldenbrook Lake opened before him. It might as well have been the sea itself. The far shore was only a promise, even in the clear, crisp morning.

  The neighboring brook trickled into a misted meltpond bordering the shoreline of the great lake. The rest of the expanse was frozen over, but it was not flat ice. Instead the surface had been rilled into ridges by winter’s winds and dusted with mounds of snow. Out in the city, sections of the lake ice had been shaved smooth for games played atop thin silver blades.

  Brant had always watched from the edges or atop bridges. The slick ice made him wary, and not just for its treachery of footing. When smooth, it was glassy. One could peer into the depths of the winter lake. Things were moving down there. And the clear ice seemed more illusory than real.

  Brant crunched through the snow, happy for solid ground under his heels. A fringe of dead brown reeds marked the boundary between forest and lake. He was reluctant to leave the land for water.

  The growl behind him changed that.

  He spun, dropping to a knee, facing the depths of the shadowed forest as the hunter finally revealed itself. In Brant’s hand rested the hilt of his skinning knife, ready. He took a long slow breath through his nose, trying to catch a scent. Back in Saysh Mal, he knew most animals by their musk, but he smelled nothing lingering on this cursed dry air.

  The beast moved as silently as the mist rising from the meltpond.

  No crunch of ice.

  The growl had been the only warning, full of hunger.

  Brant dared not nock an arrow to his bowstring. He knew the beast would be upon him if he moved. He remained as still as a heron hunting among the reeds. Crimson eyes appeared in the forest, much closer than he had suspected, low to the ground. Muscles bunched at the shoulders. Bulk shifted. Ghost took flesh.

  The wolf’s white pelt blended with the snow, blurring its edges. Still, what he discerned was massive. A giant that stood to Brant’s shoulders. Its head lowered in threat, lips rippling back from yellowed fangs. Large pads were splayed wide, made for stalking silently atop frozen snow. Black claws dug through the crust of ice, gaining purchase for the lunge to come.

  Brant recognized the tufts of gray fur tipping each ear, marking the wolf as a hunter of Mistdale, far to the north. A Fell wolf. It did not belong so far south. But this winter had been long-too long. Rain should have been falling since the passing of the last moon, but snow still drifted from the slate skies. Even the hares over his shoulder were mostly bones, having barely survived on the few roots and tubers under the snow.

  Brant met the wolf’s gaze, acknowledging the sunken eyes and thin stretch of fur over bone. He noted a single drop of crimson on the lower curled lip.

  Blood.

  He eyed his own trail of bootprints.

  The wolf must have come upon the entrails of his catch, feasted upon them, then followed his track. Looking for more. It seemed the Way was as unknown to the beasts of the forest as the people of Oldenbrook. Or maybe hunger broke all pacts.

  Brant sensed that to wait any longer would only drive the wolf to attack.

  He knew what must be done.

  The wolf had growled. Therein Brant placed his life.

  In a swift motion, he swept the arrow from his shoulder and cast the meat toward the wolf. If the wolf had meant to attack, it would not have growled and given itself away. The rumble had been a warning, a challenge, and a cry of hunger.

  The trio of hares landed near the wolf.

  The beast lunged and snapped up arrow and meat. With a low growl, it retreated to the shadows under a tanglepine.

  Brant used the moment to retreat, too. He backed out onto the ice, snapping through the dry reeds. The wolf kept to its bower, satisfied with its catch. Only then did Brant see a pair of eyes deeper in the forest, drawn by the meat and blood. Smaller eyes, closer together. Cubbies. Two.

  With a flash of white pelt, the large Fell wolf-a she-wolf-fled with her catch and her offspring. No wonder the wolf had come so far south. Not for herself but for her cubs. Spring cubs, born too soon, born into a bad season. Still, she fought for them, to give them a chance.

  Brant understood that only too well.

  He rubbed a knuckle along the scar under his jaw.

  As he crossed the frozen lake, he sent a silent prayer up into the aether for the she-wolf, from one stranger in this land to another.

  With the sun a quarter-way up the sky, Brant climbed a last ice ridge. The full breadth of his new home appeared ahead. Oldenbrook. The city, the second oldest of all the Nine Lands, rose out of the lake itself, raised on stone pylons and stout poles of ironoak. It was a city of archways, bridges, and frozen boats. The sprawl hugged the southern coastline and climbed in snowy tiers from the city’s lowest level to the blue-tiled castillion that sat atop Oldenbrook’s highest point.

  Beneath the city’s vast belly, the water remained unfrozen, melted both by the Grace of its god and the heat of the city itself. Even from here, Brant noted how the edifice steamed and misted, like some monstrous slumbering beast, waiting for true spring.

  He could also hear the echoing groan and creak of the city. The song of Oldenbrook. On the calmest day in summer, it could be heard. It reminded Brant of the deepwhaler he had sailed aboard when forced from his homeland to these cold shores. The rub of ropes, the pop of planks. Sometimes he woke at night in his room, certain he was back in that ship’s cramped cabin. He would rub his wrists, remembering the shackles.

  Brant found himself doing the same now as he stared at the city. As royally as he was treated here, Oldenbrook was not so much home as a place of exile and banishment.

  Movement drew his gaze to the sky. A small flippercraft descended toward the city, aiming for the high docks neighboring the lofty castillion. The airship steamed as much as the city, its blood-fed mekanicals hot as red coals in a brass warming pan. Its rudders and skimmers churned the air. A trail of smoke vented from its topside. Burning blood. Someone came with urgency.

  Brant squinted at the flag fluttering near the bow. He could not make out the full details. Silver on black. He knew what he would have seen if he’d had sharper eyes. A silver tower embroidered on a black field. A ship from the citadel of Tashijan.

  It was not a particularly unusual sight. After the tragedy and bloodshed in neighboring Chrismferry last spring, all of Myrillia was still unsettled. For a turn of seasons, ravens had filled the skies. Ships had sailed water and air in every direction. The thunder of hooves over the stone bridges of Oldenbrook had woken many each night.

  But as summer wore to winter, and winter stretched endlessly, the ravens returned to their rookeries, the ships were tied back to their docks, and horses remained stabled. It was as if all the northern lands had pulled into themselves, guarding, wary, waiting for this long cold to break.

  Or for something else…an unnamed fear.

  Gods had been slain.

  With the deaths of two gods-Meeryn of the Summering Isles and Chrism of Chrismferry-the Hundred now numbered Ninety-eight. Though order had been restored by the new regency in Ch
rismferry, the world still felt out of kilter, unbalanced, and every inhabitant of each of the Nine Lands sensed the rockiness of this ship.

  Brant increased his pace toward the city. A flippercraft from Tashijan could only mean some business with the lord and god of the city, Jessup of Oldenbrook. And as the god’s Hand of blood, Brant should be in attendance. It was only through the indulgence and understanding of Lord Jessup that Brant was allowed these morning excursions. He would not pay back such kindness by tarrying too long.

  He hurried toward the nearest stone pylon. Each of the hundred support pillars of the city was as thick around as the encircling arms of fifteen men. Four of the columns had hollow hearts. Named the Bones of the city, they were positioned at the cardinal points of the compass. But it was not marrow that ran through these four Bones. Instead it was the true lifeblood of Oldenbrook.

  Water.

  Brant aimed for the western Bone.

  The door to its interior was guarded by two massive loam-giants, men born under the Graced alchemy of loam to grow to hulking proportions. Heavy-browed, limbs like trunks, double muscled. And though Brant had lived all his life under the auspices of a god of loam, he still had a certain discomfort around these guardians of the Bones. The Huntress of Saysh Mal had always refused to allow her Grace to forge men in such a manner, finding it distasteful. Some of her prejudice had found its way into Brant’s heart.

  Not that the guards here had ever given him reason to feel uncomfortable. Despite their large size and dour appearance, there was a vein of good nature in their hearts.

  And by now the guards certainly knew him. As he approached, heavy axes were lowered, and the iron bar was lifted from the door.

  “No luck,” one of them boomed, noting Brant’s empty hands. The guard was a red-mopped giant named Malthumalbaen. It was said that a giant’s name was as long as its bearer was large.

  Brant slipped his bow from his shoulder. “Long winter,” he answered with an apologetic tone. He often shared his catch with the guards here. Paid little coin for these long, cold vigils, they appreciated the extra bits.