Hinterland

A KNIGHTING IN MIDSUMMER

Saddled high, Kathryn sweltered in a full cloak over rich finery. She wore polished boots to the knee. Her horse was tacked in silver, a match to her cape’s clasp and warden’s badge. As the retinue would be traveling through Chrismferry’s main streets, she had her hood up and masklin fixed in place.

Gerrod rode up beside her. “We’re just about ready to head out.” Even hidden behind his armor, he appeared ill at ease, shifting in his saddle, adjusting his reins. The castellan diadem shone brightly at his throat.

Such were their new positions: Warden and Castellan.

Of Tashijan in exile.

Kathryn glanced behind her. They had made much progress over the past two moonpasses. Had it truly just been sixty days? Tylar had granted them the Blight, an empty and ruined section of Chrismferry’s inner city, not all that far from his castillion, to house and rebuild Tashijan. It proved a good place to set down new roots, land that had lain fallow for a long time. Already the Blight was a jumble of rebuilding, tearing down, mucking out, and clearing. And some shape was taking form-a skeleton of rafters, stone walls, and trenched fields. Tashijan was rising again.

New land, new roots, a new foundation.

Argent had proposed the original knighting of the regent as a way to bring Chrismferry and Tashijan closer together, to unite the First Land. Now their houses were closer than ever, by both distance and determination.

A small blessing for all the blood spilled.

Beneath her, Stoneheart shuffled his hooves, restless to leave.

Kathryn patted the stallion’s neck to reassure him. Atop this same horse she had led the survivors out of the rubbled ruin of Tashijan. The journey was already being heralded in song. The Great Exodus. A trail of horses, folk on foot, and wagons that stretched thirty leagues. She could have taken a flippercraft, but she had wanted to be there, needed to be there, among them.

Kathryn also remembered that last morning. The storm had broken at dawn. As rocks still rattled, unsettled and loose, they had found they had survived. Tylar had snuffed out Lord Ulf’s font of Dark Grace, and with it went his storm and ice. But as they pushed open iron shutters and stepped out into that cold morning, all lay in ruins: toppled and gutted towers, broken-toothed walls. Even Stormwatch had been held together only by the last of Ulf’s ice, and the melt of the morning sun threatened that precarious hold.

Kathryn could still picture her last view of Tashijan, from atop the rise of a hill. The once-proud citadel lay in rubble and ruin. And as she watched, Stormwatch slowly gave way, its last alchemies fading, the morning sun melting crusts of ice, and down it came, rumbling like thunder, casting up a cloud of rock dust-then gone, crushing the Masterlevels under it. So she had turned her back, left Tashijan to the haunt of wraith and daemon. Someday they might rebuild, but for now they needed a new home.

A horn sounded up ahead.

“Are you ready?” Gerrod asked.

She nodded. “We should not be late to a knighting that is long overdue.”

She nudged the piebald stallion and walked Stoneheart down a lane lined by stacked planks and brick. Hammering and chiseling, shouts and laughter echoed all around.

Gerrod clopped his horse beside her. “Yet another parade of Tashijan in exile through the streets of Chrismferry.”

“Another parade?”

He nodded ahead. “What with all the woodwrights and stonemasons flowing in and out our temporary gates, it’s like a daily circus around here.”

She offered him a small smile, but it was hidden behind her masklin. He did not see how quickly it faded. As she led the bright retinue toward Chrismferry, she could not deny a cold worry that even the midday swelter could not melt.

“What’s wrong?” Gerrod asked, shying his mount closer, ever knowing her moods. He touched her knee with his bronze fingers.

She shook her head. It was too bright a day.

“Kathryn…”

She sighed, glanced to him, then away again. “Did we win?”

“What do you mean?”

She lifted an arm to indicate all the rebuilding. “Or did Lord Ulf? Back at the Blackhorse, he stated what he sought through all the death and destruction he’d wrought. ‘ The steel of a sword is made harder by fire and hammer. It is time for Tashijan to be forged anew .’ Is that not what happened?”

He motioned for her hand. She gave it. He squeezed her fingers.

“We will be stronger. That I don’t doubt. Already the other Myrillian gods unite more firmly against the Cabal, pull more strongly in support for Tylar. Did you not see the number of flippercraft in the skies over the past days? Hundreds. The knighting today is not the small affair of Argent’s original design, a few Hands from the closest gods. There are retinues here from every land, from as far away as Wyrmcroft in the Ninth Land. That is proof alone.”

He squeezed her hand even harder, almost painfully. “We will be stronger. Not because Ulf won, but because you did. He made an offer to you: to walk away, to escape with a few. But because you held fast, many more survived. And it is that victory that makes us stronger, not capitulation to the mad calculation of a cold god.”

She took a shuddering deep breath and felt some of the ice inside her break apart, but still the shards hurt.

“Even Lord Ulf knew he was defeated. Did he not leave his castillion and wander into the hinterlands to the far north?”

Kathryn had heard the story of the god’s last steps. Just as it was forbidden for a rogue to enter a realm, a god was equally forbidden the hinterlands. Lord Ulf’s form was seen blazing like a torch as he strode north across the frozen wastes to his doom. At the end, the lord of Ice Eyrie gave himself over to the flame.

Still, Gerrod was not done. “If we are going to forge Tashijan to a harder steel, then let it be in a fire born of our own hearts. And I know no heart burns brighter than yours.”

Gerrod seemed suddenly abashed at his last words. His fingers began to slip from hers. “All know this,” he mumbled. “Did not every stone cast for our new warden bear your color? Not a single stone against?”

Kathryn did not let his fingers slip so easily away. She gave them a firm squeeze. “You are kind. But the casting was so clean because Argent stepped aside.”

Gerrod finally freed his hand and took his reins. “How is he faring?”

“ Stubborn -that’s the word Delia used. She came by early this morning. Arrived with the dawn flippercraft from Five Forks. She says he mends well and is slowly adjusting to his new leg, but he is quick to wrath and not willing to listen to his healer’s warnings.”

“Little wonder there,” Gerrod mumbled. “One eye, one leg. The man is slowly being whittled away.”

Kathryn smiled, a rudeness perhaps, considering his maiming, but she suspected even Argent would respect it. Back in Tashijan, Argent had survived by will and alchemy-but mostly by a promise to a daughter. Not to leave. And as always, he stubbornly kept his word.

A commotion drew their attention to the side. A small figure ran toward her horse. “Warden Vail! Warden Vail!”

She glanced down and recognized the youth in mucked boots and muddied clothes. She reined her horse to a halt. “Mychall?”

The stableboy hurried to her stirrup. He held up a strip of black cloth. “I did it!” he shouted proudly and waved the strip. “I’ve been picked!”

She smiled down at him, knowing what he held, remembering when she had been chosen, given a bit of shadowcloak, picked to join the knighthood.

Mychall waved his bit of cloth and ran back down along her retinue. “I must tell my da!”

She watched him race away.

When she turned back to Gerrod, he stared at her. She knew he was smiling behind his bronze. “Still think we lost?” he asked.

She rattled her reins to get Stoneheart moving again. Inside her, the last of Lord Ulf’s ice melted away.

As the last morning bell rang over the meadow field, Brant whistled sharply. They were already late, and still needed to get attired for the knighting.

Stalks of sweetgrass parted in a weaving pattern, flowing down the slight hill. The pair of wolfkits responded to his whistle, running low to the ground, a hunting posture. They burst from the field together, bounding toward the small group gathered in the shade of a wide-bowered lyrewood tree, heavy with midsummer blossoms.

Brant led the pair back to the lounging party.

To the left, the meadows rolled into the green Tigre River, its waters reflecting the castillion of Chrismferry. Four stone towers rose from each bank of the Tigre, supporting the bulk of the castillion that ran like a bridge from one side to the other. A ninth tower, taller than the rest, rose from the center of the castillion, a beacon over the river, its white quarried stone blazing in the midday sun.

Great festivities were planned for the day, but before that happened, they had all wanted a moment to enjoy the sunshine, away from the tumult.

Buried in the shade ahead, Malthumalbaen rested against the twisted trunk. He chewed the end of a churl-pipe, a gnarled piece of wood as long as the giant’s arm. He puffed a trail of smoke as Brant returned with the cubbies.

Resting beside the giant, the bullhound Barrin snored, nose on the giant’s knee. Malthumalbaen stirred with a crack of bone.

“Ach, are we ’bout ready to head back, Master Brant?”

He nodded.

“Good thing that. All this dogflesh is making me hungry.”

The giant slowly gained his feet. Barrin groused about being disturbed, then was pounced upon by the returning cubbies. The bullhound let out an irritated grumble of reluctant tolerance.

“They’re getting big,” Laurelle said, packing the basket and stepping aside so Kytt could roll the blanket. “It was hard to tell when you were working them in the field.”

The pair had arrived late to the gathering, returning from the adjudicator’s office in lower Chrismferry, where they had gone to attend matters in regards to Liannora and her attack on Delia. They had been summoned to give testimony to what they had overheard in a hallway. Since the fall of the towers, Liannora had languished in a cell in Chrismferry, claiming her attack on Delia was all the doing of Sten, captain of the guard, insisting that in the tumult and chaos of the siege, he had misinterpreted a jest.

Unfortunately, Laurelle and Kytt could shed no more light on the foul act with certainty. They had never heard Liannora plainly order Sten to attack Delia. There were rumors she was to be set free.

But Lord Jessup had washed his hands of her. Though she might escape punishment, a god’s judgment was of a higher order. She had already been banned from setting foot in Oldenbrook.

Which left Lord Jessup needing not one but two new Hands to fill his wing.

Brant adjusted his crimson sash, marking him a Hand of blood. But no longer for Lord Jessup. With the god’s blessing, he now resided in the High Wing here, serving the regent while Delia attended her father in Five Forks. And there were rumors here, too, that she might not return at all.

“Look how they’ve grown!” Laurelle said. “Almost to my knee now.”

The cubbies were indeed growing fast, three times their weight when Brant had found them.

“But they’re still young,” Dart said quietly. She bent a knee and muffed up the fur of one of the pups, the sister. The cubbie lolled on her back, tongue hanging loose, happy for the attention.

“And learning fast,” Brant said. “Especially yours, Dart. She’s a true little hunter.”

Dart smiled up at him. He was happy to see it. Her rare smiles cheered him more deeply than he cared to admit. Since she had returned from the Eighth Land, a haunted look often shadowed her eyes. And he could not blame her. He still woke up sometimes covered with sweat, picturing moldering heads on stakes. But at least the real nightmare was over. Back in Saysh Mal, Harp was putting the forest in order, helped by a pair of acolytes that had descended from Takaminara. As the goddess had protected her daughter’s people, she watched now over their land. They should fare well from here.

Dart straightened from her wiggling cubbie and nodded to the other, who sat straight-backed at Brant’s side now.

“That boy of yours is no laggard either,” Dart said. “He might let his sister run down a mouse, but it’s his nose that always roots it out to begin with.”

Her words lifted a proud grin to Brant’s face. The whelpings had been left in his care, a burden shared with Dart. It allowed them both an excuse to escape their roles for a short time-he as a Hand of the regent, she as page to Warden Vail. Out in the fields, with the wolfkits, they could be themselves.

With everything packed up, Dart waved Laurelle on with the others. “Go on ahead. We’ll catch up.”

Laurelle searched between them, a ghost of a smile hovering, reading something more behind Dart’s words. Laurelle had a disconcerting ability to do that, to understand what was unspoken better than any. Brant barely recognized her as the girl he’d known at school.

It seemed they were all learning fast, struggling to find where they fit in this new world.

“We’ll meet you at the gates,” Laurelle said. She turned, drawing Kytt along with her. If the tracker had had a tail to go along with his nose, it would have been wagging.

At least some things hadn’t changed about Laurelle.

As they left, Dart lowered again to her little she-wolf. “We said that by the knighting we’d pick names for them. Have you decided on your boy?”

Brant crouched beside her in the shade, glad the others were gone. “I have.”

He patted the lone blanket remaining. Dart sank to it. She seemed oddly nervous, shifting a bit too much, as if she were sitting on a root.

“What have you decided?” she asked.

The two cubbies had grown bored and taken to wrestling in the sun and trampled grass.

He nodded toward the brother. “I thought a good name would be Lorr. He was certainly wise to the wood.” And he had spent his life to save theirs, so they could be sitting in the shade under blossoms with the sun shining.

She reached out and touched his knee. He glanced from the cubbies’ play to her. Tears filled her eyes. “He would like that.”

Brant’s throat suddenly tightened. He stared at her too long, finally dropping his eyes. “What about your cubbie,” he whispered. “The sister?”

“It’s why I sent the others on ahead,” she said softly. “I wasn’t sure it was appropriate…not an insult…”

He glanced to her, sweeping back a fall of his hair, his brow crinkling.

She continued, not meeting his eye. “You mentioned what a good little hunter she was…what a good little huntress. I thought maybe…”

Brant knew immediately the name she picked.

“Miyana.”

The god’s final plea echoed in his head. I want to go home. Maybe in this small way, they could grant her that, a heart in which to live, to become a huntress of the forest once more.

Dart’s eyes flicked to him, still moist with tears. “Is that all right?”

Brant leaned forward and brushed his lips against hers.

“More than all right,” he whispered.

He stared into her eyes, their noses touching. She smiled softly, like the sun rising over Saysh Mal. It warmed completely through him.

“Thank you,” he whispered again and kissed her, knowing that more than a god had found a new home this morning.

Two others had, too.

It had been a long day…and the night promised to stretch just as far.

Tylar stood on a small private balcony as the grand ball waged behind him, a war of pomp and finery, set to flute and drum. Dancing had already begun, and as the feast was in his honor, he would have to attend.

But first he needed a moment alone.

He stared beyond the rail of the balcony. It overlooked the Tigre River as it snaked to the east. The sun had nearly set behind the castillion, casting a great shadow across the dark green waters. A few stars shone to the east, along with the rise of a full moon.

Another Hunter’s Moon.

He tried to read portent in it, but failed.

The day’s knighting had left him with a heavy heart and an unsettled sense of doom. He could not shake it.

He ran a palm down the cloak that was clasped in gold at his shoulder, a new shadowcloak, and at his waist, a fine new blade. On his other hip, he carried Rivenscryr, sheathed. It did not bear its diamond as his new sword did. That was kept on a cord around Brant’s neck, his new Hand of blood. Only a handful of people knew the significance of that drab, dull stone, and that was the way it would remain.

Until Tylar understood it better.

A hand drifted to the gold hilt.

A son had designed it, and a father had used it to sunder a world.

He pondered if the world might not be better if he tossed the blade into the river. Perhaps the stone, too. He wondered for the hundredth time why the stone had come again into the lives of gods and men. It had been dropped like a pebble in a still lake, and those ripples continued to spread. He feared he had not yet seen the full extent of that rippling.

He pictured again that dread island, shaped like a rocky crown.

As they had departed by flitterskiff, Takaminara had claimed the island, welling up a churn of fiery rock, no longer held off by poisonous flames. Molten fingers rose out of the boiling waters to grasp the island and drag it burning back into the waters. The fiery conflagration could be seen far across the flooded forest as they retreated. It spewed steam and great gouts of fire high into the sky as morning slowly dawned.

Finally, a creak of a door drew him around, away from that dark night.

A slender shape slid through, closing the door behind her. “I thought that was you slipping away.”

“Delia?” A bit of the darkness around his heart lifted. He had known she had arrived, but commitments had pulled them both in different directions until now.

She stepped into the moonlight, dressed in a slim gown of the lightest green, a complement to her hazel eyes and dark hair. She smiled at him, shyly, as if this were the first time they met. She paused a few steps away, plainly fearful that she was intruding.

He motioned to the rail, but she remained where she was.

“Tylar…”

Frowning, he came forward, sensing some great consequence in her stance. “What is it?”

“I wanted a moment with you, but there’s been such chaos this day. All the retinues, all the Hands from various lands.”

“I know. I was hoping…once all the tumult died down. After the feast-”

She cut him off. “I’m leaving with the evening flippercraft.”

He stared at her, stunned.

“My father,” she said. “I don’t like leaving him alone for too long-mostly to protect the servants from him.” She offered a smile to blunt the sting of what she was saying.

“You’re going so soon?”

“I must.” She even backed a step to prove it.

He searched her face, her eyes, and discovered the deeper truth.

“At this moment of my life,” she explained, “there’s room for only one man in it. And that has to be my father. While in the past he might have shirked his responsibility to me, quite callously even, I won’t do the same. I won’t pay back bile with bile, or I’d be no better. He needs me. That is my place.” She glanced up at him. “For now.”

“Delia…”

She took a deep breath, and her voice somehow both softened yet held a harder edge. “I spent time with Kathryn. I’ve gotten to know her. Her heart and her will. She’s borne much pain, now and in the past. I won’t add to it.”

“Delia, Kathryn and I, we’ve already-”

“No, you haven’t, Tylar.”

He wanted to protest, but she fixed him with those eyes, as hard as Argent’s, as sharp as Kathryn’s. He could not lie. Not to her. And in turn, he knew, perhaps it was time he stopped lying to himself.

She nodded, as if reading his thoughts. She stepped forward, kissed him on the cheek, then backed away. “I must hurry to meet my maid.”

She turned, and in a shimmer of pale green she was gone.

But before the door closed, a hand shoved out and stopped it. “Now that wasn’t pretty,” Rogger said with a sad shake of his head as he entered. He smoked a pipe and was dressed in fine cuts, a gray cloak over black.

“Rogger, I don’t-”

The thief held up a hand to silence him as he crossed the balcony, expounding his wisdom. “Young women…they’re as fickle as they come. Pretty, I’ll grant you. But I’ll tell you, great-mothers and great-aunts-they have a head on their shoulders and know what to do with the rest of their bodies.”

Tylar shook his head. “I see someone discovered Chrismferry’s ale.”

“And its cooking wine.”

Tylar leaned on the balcony’s rail. “I heard you met with the Black Flaggers this morning.”

“Had to. Cook needed salt. A barter for the wine. And if you need salt, no better place than a pirate’s ship to get it. Scrape it off their hulls.”

Tylar looked at him in exasperation.

Rogger waved him off with his pipe. “I met with Krevan. That is a pirate in a sour mood. Even with that comely Calla doting on him because of his chopped arm.”

“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.