Hinterland Page 3

  Lord Jessup, god of Oldenbrook, entered the reception hall. As was his custom, he wore the simple cloths and leathers of the sailfolk that plied the great lake: soft bleached boots into which were tucked the hems of his baggy black trousers, a billowing white shirt hooked at the neck, and a peaked cap of blue velvet.

  The only bit of true decoration was an azure sapphire fixed at the base of his throat, an ancient gift granted to Lord Jessup shortly after settling this realm. The sapphire had been discovered by a fishwife as she scaled and gutted one of the mighty lake shaddocks, the fierce bottom dwellers found only in the deepest depths of Oldenbrook Lake. Pulled from the shaddock’s gullet, the gem was a blue that matched exactly the hue of the lake, and all knew its portent, the lake welcoming its new guardian and god. Lord Jessup had come to cherish the gem as much as he did the people and the lands here.

  As the god strode slowly through the gathering, the jewel glowed slightly, a reflection of the god’s shining Grace, like moonlight on still waters. Reaching the high seat in the room’s center, Lord Jessup settled to the cushions.

  The god’s eight Hands, including Brant, lowered to one knee.

  The emissaries from Tashijan bowed, even Castellan Vail.

  Lord Jessup waved them all up. “Kathryn ser Vail, Castellan of Tashijan, Magistrate of the Order of the Shadowknights, be welcome,” he said formally. His manner then melted to warmer tones with a tired smile. “It is an honor to have you gracing Oldenbrook once again.”

  “My lord,” the castellan said, bowing more deeply, then straightening with a shift of her cloak.

  “How long have you been away from our shores?”

  “I believe six years, my lord.”

  Brant recognized the slight pause, the inflected lowered timbre in her voice. It was an awkward subject, one to be skirted. And with good reason. It surely had to be a tender matter still to the castellan. She had been betrothed to Tylar ser Noche, a shadowknight once in service to Lord Jessup. All in Oldenbrook knew their story. Balladeers still struggled to capture the pain and tragedy in strum of string and chord. For the ballad of Tylar ser Noche, a shadowknight stripped of cloak and love, remained unfinished. First lover, then murderer, then broken knight and slave, and finally godslayer…now risen anew as regent of neighboring Chrismferry.

  The other half of the tragedy stood here. Tylar’s betrothed and lover. Forced to damn him with her own testimony, she was equally cursed, banished and humiliated into a secluded life. Some even whispered that an unborn child had been lost to her sorrow and heartbreak. But her wheel had turned also, and she rose again as castellan of Tashijan.

  But did the song end even there? One served in Chrismferry, the other in Tashijan. And with no true end, the balladeers struggled for a satisfactory final chord.

  But Lord Jessup held no such conflict in his heart. “It is good to have you here again,” he said. “What brings you from the Citadel to our shores with such haste?”

  “Haste arises because of a dire storm due to strike from the north. Wyndravens sweep south out of Mistdale and Five Forks with messages of a last great winter squall, the worst of them all, one raging with snow and bitter winds. The northern edge of Mistdale forest lies blasted and dead, trunks burst with ice. The rivers of Five Forks are frozen solid to the sea, and the freeze continues to flow south, crushing ships, stalling all movement.”

  “I have felt the echo of pain through the waterways,” Lord Jessup said. “Is that why you have come with such speed?”

  “I come also at the behest of Warden Fields.” Stiffness entered her voice. “He has asked that I personally attend each god of the First Land and announce a ceremony of noted distinction to be held at Tashijan, one which is meant to heal a rift across our Land.”

  “And what ceremony might that be?”

  “The sanctifying of a knight to a new cloak.”

  Lord Jessup’s brow pinched with curiosity. Brant could almost read his thoughts. It was a common rite when a knight first gained his shadowcloak for the god whom he first served to oversee the sanctification, to bless the moment with the god’s own Grace. But then why come with such a distinguished emissary for such an ordinary event?

  Understanding suddenly smoothed Lord Jessup’s face. “The knight to be cloaked?” he said. “Am I to assume this is Tylar ser Noche, regent of Chrismferry?”

  Castellan Vail bowed her head in acknowledgment.

  “Is Ser Noche not already a knight? Did he not bend a knee where you now stand when I first blessed his cloak?”

  “And that cloak was stripped,” the castellan reminded him in a pained voice. “The ceremony I come to announce is one to reinstate Tylar—Ser Noche—to the Order of the Shadowknights. He will receive back his cloak and his diamond-pommeled sword, certifying his station. Warden Fields has asked that I request all the gods of the First Land to send high representatives to Tashijan for the event.”

  Lord Jessup raised his hands, steepling his fingers before his lips. He spoke between them, one eyebrow lifted. “And so to heal a rift…”

  Brant read the layers of meaning in those few words. The knighting ceremony was more than an attempt to right an old wrong. It was fraught with layers of import and consequence. All winter long, rumors had abounded of a continuing tension between Tashijan and Chrismferry. Whispers spread of how Warden Fields had employed Dark Graces during his bloody and savage pursuit of Tylar, back when the broken knight had been declared a godslayer. As such, there continued to be enmity between the two most powerful men in all the First Land. It could not last. All of Myrillia looked to the First Land for stability and guidance. The histories of Tashijan and Chrismferry stretched back to the Sundering, when the gods first came to Myrillia and settled its Nine Lands out of savagery.

  The growing rift threatened all.

  The knighting ceremony plainly was intended to unite Tashijan and Chrismferry once again, to spread a healing balm over the recent frictions. And the gods were being called to witness and bless the new union.

  It now made sense why Kathryn ser Vail had been sent as emissary. The woman stood between all: between the two men, between the two strongholds, between the past and the present.

  “When is the ceremony to be held?” Lord Jessup asked.

  “In a half-moon’s time.”

  “So soon?”

  “Thus the urgency.”

  Lord Jessup nodded his head once. “Then we must hope that the coming storm is truly the last dying breath of this interminable winter.”

  As final matters of scheduling were discussed, along with minor issues of trade and conflicts, Brant’s attention drifted.

  Motion drew his eye.

  Castellan Vail’s page—the girl he had once known as Dart—was staring hard at him. Or rather at his knees. Brant glanced down, fearing his leggings were soiled or torn or somehow offensive enough to warrant such heated attention.

  But nothing appeared amiss with his wardrobe.

  Glancing back up, he watched the girl make a dismissive, shooing motion at him. What had he done so wrong to irritate the girl? Though they had not known each other well back at the school, neither had there been animosity between them.

  His face reddened as he found himself obeying her silent command. He backed toward the door. Her eyes followed him. Across the hall, matters of the realm were quickly settled, and Lord Jessup stood, signaling the gathering at an end.

  Happy to be freed from his obligations here, Brant edged out the door and back into the High Wing of the castillion. He closed the way and muffled the low cacophony of the voices inside. He suspected it would be another full bell before the gathering would truly disband. It was seldom that a god-realm had the privilege of Tashijan’s second-highest-ranking personage in attendance.

  Alone, Brant turned to the empty hall.

  Before he could take a step, his skin prickled. He tensed, going dead still. As out in the forest, he sensed something near, unseen, hunting him. He even heard a growl inside his
head, an echo of the Fell wolf’s hungry warning.

  What could—?

  Brant’s chest suddenly burst with a searing fire. A silent cry burned from his lips as he fell to his knees. One hand ripped at the hooks and strings of his shirt, tearing to his woolens, fighting for the source of the flame. He yanked on the twisted leather thong around his neck, tugging free what hung from it. It was the only piece of home he had carried out from the misty jungles of Saysh Mal.

  The black stone fell free, glassy and iridescent.

  Brant knew it was the source of the fire. The stone had burned like this once before. It was one of the reasons why he still kept it near.

  He stretched the talisman as far from his body as the corded braid around his neck would allow. The stone appeared no different than before, drilled through the middle and threaded with the leather cord.

  With his other hand, he hauled his woolens lower, expecting to see a ruin of blistered and charred flesh. But the skin of his chest was smooth and unblemished.

  Still on his knees, holding the stone aloft, Brant lowered his palm to the floor, leaning his weight. He blinked away tears, breathing heavily.

  It was over. He knew if he touched the stone it would be cold again.

  As he pondered the mystery, a creature flickered into existence before him—almost nose to nose with him on the floor. It sniffed at the outstretched stone, setting the talisman to wobbling on its braid.

  Brant froze.

  The daemon stood knee-high, flowing in molten bronze, half wolf, half lion, spiked at collar and hackle, black jeweled eyes lit by inner fires, maw lapping with flame, fangs forging and melting in a continuing eruption of savage barbs.

  Its eyes stared into his for a half breath; then it pulled back—and vanished.

  Released from the spell, Brant jerked like a snapped bowstring, falling on his rear and scuttling away like a crab on hot sand. But the beast was gone. He searched around. Nothing. Shaking, he forced himself to settle his center. Muffled laughter and conversation arose from the room behind him.

  As he sat, he sensed a vague lessening of pressure inside his skull, something receding. Then in a moment, nothing.

  Slowly he gained his feet, only now noting how his left fist clutched the black stone. It had indeed gone cold. He opened his palm and stared down. Had the stone somehow conjured the daemon and again banished it?

  As he began to tuck the stone away, the door creaked open behind him. His free hand went for his knife.

  But it was a familiar figure, a page cloaked in black.

  Before Dart could say a word, a call reached them both, arising from Kathryn ser Vail. The Tashijan party was departing.

  Dart glanced over her shoulder, back into the room. She retreated toward the castellan, but not before her blue eyes latched upon him again. She bowed her head as if they had just agreed to something.

  A secret between them.

  Then she also vanished, closing the door with a snap.

  Brant remembered the word she had whispered with such urgency when first caught creeping into the High Wing.

  As if she had been searching for something.

  Pupp…

  And the strange shooing motion at him a moment ago.

  Had she been warding him away—or someone else?

  Brant stared at the stone in his palm. Two stones had led him to this moment. One had been pressed into his palm by Lord Jessup’s Oracle, selecting him to serve in the god’s household. But before that, another god had gifted him with another stone, the one that hung around his neck.

  Was this one also a call to serve?

  He pictured the fiery figure on the jungle path, crumbling in flames and rolling the stone to his toes. What did a rogue god of the hinterland need from a lone boy out of Saysh Mal?

  Brant tucked the cursed stone away.

  To root out that answer would take a great hunter.

  But at long last, Brant had finally found his first trail marker.

  He pictured the girl’s blue eyes and mumbled a name to the empty hall, full of promise as much as curiosity. “Pupp.”

  2

  A REGENT IN BLOOD

  CLOAKED IN BLACK, TYLAR SER NOCHE WAITED ON THE DOCKS. The stars shone and the greater moon had set. It was the darkest point of the night, when both moons were gone and the sun remained only a rumor. It was also the coldest part of the night. Ice crusted the edges of the sludge canal and made the planks of the ironwood dock treacherous underfoot.

  His party had been waiting for a full turn of a bell. All were buried in woolens, furred boots, and heavy cloaks. Their breath steamed the air.

  “Perhaps he won’t come,” Delia whispered through a scarf about her mouth. She stood close, a head shorter and a decade younger, wrapped in an oiled black cloak lined with fox fur, its hood fringed in snowy ermine, a perfect complement to her pale skin and exacting contrast to her shadow-dark hair. The only color about her rose from the shine of her eyes, a warm hazel, green-tinged in the torchlight. “Or perhaps the letter was a forgery, one meant to lure us where there are few witnesses.”

  “It was no forgery,” Tylar assured her.

  The missive had arrived a fortnight ago, urging secrecy. It had been coded properly and signed with the proper sigil.

  Ancient Littick for thief.

  Tylar had first seen the same sigil branded on the letter-writer’s buttock. Plus a few telltale drops, richly crimson, had stained the white parchment. Not blood. Wine. Testament enough to the verity of the letter’s author.

  “Rogger was never one to mind the precise ringing of a bell,” Tylar said, urging patience with a slim smile.

  “Let’s hope he was precise enough about the turning of the day, then,” Sergeant Kyllan said, stamping his boots to warm his toes. The master of Chrismferry’s garrison did not like this moonless rendezvous. He scratched the tortured scar across his left cheek, scowling slightly. Kyllan had refused to allow Tylar to cross the city alone, especially in the middle of the night. There were still many who wanted Tylar dead.

  And the numbers were growing daily as this endless winter stretched on. Rumbles and rumors spread through alehouses and wenchworks of a curse upon his regency. Though Tylar had slain the daemon that had attempted to usurp the god-realm of Chrismferry, the city’s gratitude was as short-lived as a bloom after the first frost. And as winter’s hardships grew, it seemed even the change of seasons had become the responsibility of the city’s new regent, a mantle Tylar wore with ill comfort.

  For Tylar’s security, Kyllan had ordered ten of the garrison’s pikemen to accompany him on this dark journey across the city. But Tylar suspected it was an unnecessary escort. He had more than enough protection from the party’s one other member.

  Wyr-mistress Eylan stood at the foot of the docks, dressed in deerskins and fur, a sword in hand, a half ax at her waist. Her cloak had a hood, but she did not bother pulling it up, seemingly impervious to the frigid breeze that swept up the crumbling canal from the distant Tigre River. Her skin glowed with a flushed ruddiness, a shade darker than her tanned leathers. Her black hair trailed to mid-back in a thick braid, decorated with three raven feathers.

  She seemed to note his attention, glancing over to him, appraising him coldly, then looking away again.

  Bound by an oath, Eylan seldom strayed far from Tylar’s side, not so much in concern for his safety as to protect a debt sworn to her lord. A year ago, Tylar had promised his seed in trade for his life and the lives of his companions, a humour of significant Grace that Wyr-lord Bennifren intended for the forges of his Black Alchemists. Tylar was determined to avoid paying that debt for as long as possible, preferably forever.

  ’Til then, he had gained, in Eylan, a second shadow.

  Tylar returned his attention to the stagnant canal.

  Nearby, a small single-sailed trawler, long abandoned, lay stripped and on its side, half-beached, hull burst, locked in ice. Tylar was surprised to find it here. The long winter had taxed
the city of Chrismferry, especially the underfolk too poor for the rising cost of coal and wood. Scavenging had become commonplace. The planking of the old trawler would heat a hearth for a good turn of the moon. Yet here it remained, untouched.

  Of course, here was the heart of the Blight, one of several sections of the great city long gone to seed, as abandoned and broken as the old trawler. Chrismferry spread across both sides of the Tigre River. Founded four millennia ago, it was the oldest and greatest of all the cities of the Nine Lands of Myrillia. It would take a man on a horse two days to cross from one end of the city to the other. The world was the city, the city was the world. Such was said about the first city of Myrillia.

  But if true, what did the Blight signify?

  The city seemed to be decaying from the inside. The borders continued to extend along the Tigre River and out into the surrounding plains, but in the past centuries, sections of the inner city had fallen into ruin. Canals filled with silt, houses fell under the rotted weight of their roofs, cobbled streets were stripped of stones, leaving only muddy, pitted tracks that daunted all manner of wheel. Soon the only inhabitants of the Blight were those seeking to lose themselves, but even these low dwellers seldom stayed long. Easier prospects could be found at the edges of the city.

  Why did Rogger insist on returning to the city under such strange circumstances? The former thief had left Chrismferry a year ago under the guise of a pilgrim, to discern what he could of the state of the Nine Lands and to seek any thread or crumb about the Cabal. Since Tylar had freed the city, nothing more had been learned about the faction of naethryn—the daemonic undergods of Myrillia—who sought to kindle a new War of the Gods. Nothing until Rogger’s cryptic letter had arrived by raven. What had the thief learned that required such a dark place to meet?

  The answer was not long in coming.

  From the depths of the canal, a tall black fin split the waters and rose, steaming, into the frigid air. The bulk of the underwater vessel splintered ice as it surfaced, one of Tangle Reef’s undersea crafts. It appeared like a small wooden whale, fueled by the blood of Fyla, the god of the watery Reef.