Hinterland

by James Clemens

  5

  A GATHERING OF RAVENS

  KATHRYN KNOCKED ON THE DOOR, CONCERNED. SHE HAD NOT heard from Gerrod Rothkild for over a full day. The last she had spoken to him was when Rogger had appeared at her own door, bearing the strange talisman of a rogue god’s skull.

  Then nothing.

  Not word, nor note.

  Such silence was unlike Gerrod. Especially now. In the past day, Tashijan had swelled to bursting as retinues from all the god-realms of the First Land had arrived. But more importantly, Tylar ser Noche was due here before evening bells. With such an event pending, Kathryn had spent the morning pacing her hermitage. It had been a year since she had last seen Tylar. Certainly they’d shared messages by raven and scroll, but their duties after the Battle of Myrrwood kept them both too busy for a casual visit.

  And casual was certainly beyond either of them.

  Even now.

  Her hands wrung at her belly. They had once been betrothed, certain to marry, sharing a bed already, first as a dalliance between knights, finally with a deeper stirring of the heart. Then Tylar had been accused of murder and broken vows. Kathryn’s own testimony before the adjudicators had gone a long way toward damning him to the slave ships of Trik and the bloody circuses that followed, where he was broken in limb and spirit. But his guilt had been fabricated from the start. He had been a blind piece in a greater game, used to weaken Tashijan and its former warden, Ser Henri.

  And the cost had not fallen solely upon Tylar.

  Kathryn still remembered the blood in her bed, the lost child, limbs as small as birds’ wings, expelled from her body by grief and heartache. It was this final loss that had driven her down here at that time, into self-exile, away from the staring eyes and whispers, betrothed to a murderer.

  But Tylar’s only crime had been some gray dealings, traffic below the table with some sordid characters from his past, done at first to raise coin for the city’s orphanages, where both she and he had been raised. But after a time, a few silver yokes had ended up in Tylar’s own pocket. It was a familiar slide. Still, the murder of the cobbler’s family was not Tylar’s doing, despite the blood on his own sword. It took the death of two gods—Meeryn, who blessed Tylar as she lay dying, and the naethryn-possessed Chrism, whom Tylar had slain—to finally clear his name.

  All should have been made right.

  But it hadn’t been.

  The pair remained lost to each other, bitter. Anger and guilt had rooted too deeply, becoming as much a part of them as their own bones. If Tylar hadn’t started his underhanded dealings with the Gray Traders, soiling his cloak…if I had trusted his professions of innocence to murder…if only I’d told him of our child… And though they had stumbled over words of forgiveness to each other, the words were spoken with the tongue and not the heart.

  At least not yet.

  But now Tylar was returning.

  Kathryn knocked again, needing to consult Gerrod, ever her counselor. Long ago, Gerrod had helped lift her back into her life after she fell down here the first time. She trusted no one more, not even herself.

  A coarse bark answered her. “I’m not to be disturbed!”

  “Gerrod!” Kathryn called through the door. She leaned close, keeping her voice low. She had come buried in her shadowcloak, shying from others. Even now, Grace flowed through the blessed cloth to hide her among the shadows.

  “Kathryn…?”

  “Yes!”

  She heard steps approach, and a latch scraped back. The door swung open. Gerrod pulled it just wide enough for her to enter, but no more.

  “Hurry,” he urged her.

  She thought at first the master’s furtiveness was because he had shed his armor’s helmet, exposing his pale and tattooed flesh. Gerrod preferred to keep his true face hidden.

  He closed the door behind her, leaned an ear against the wood, then stepped away. “Hesharian knows I’m dabbling in something secret. He’s already visited twice this morning.”

  “Does he know about the skull?”

  Gerrod shook his head and clanked over with a whir of mekanicals to the far side of his chamber.

  Kathryn caught the whiff of burning black bile, which even the sweet scent of myrrh boiling on his braziers could not mask. She also noted the state of his room. Normally Gerrod was fastidious in his upkeep, but the four bronze braziers in the corners of the room—in the fanciful shapes of eagle, skreewyrm, wolfkit, and tyger—were blackened with smoke, and piles of ash lay unswept beneath them. At his wide desk, a teetering stack of ancient tomes covered the surface, some open, others facedown, spines bent. In one corner, a stack of scrolls had spilled to the floor, and a candle had burnt to a slagged puddle of wax with a wan flame floating in the middle.

  Her friend looked just as wasted, sustained by as weak a fire.

  She doubted he had slept at all since acquiring the skull.

  “I think Hesharian grows suspicious of my studies,” Gerrod said. “The last time he appeared on my doorstep, he came with a strange milky-eyed master named Orquell. The man hails from Ghazal, where he has been studying among the Clerics of Naeth of that volcanic land.”

  Kathryn was well familiar with the cult of Naeth. Unlike most of Myrillia, the followers shunned any worship of the aethryn, the sundered part of the gods that had fled high and away into the aether, never to be heard from again. The Clerics of Naeth sought communion with the naethryn, the undergods, through strange practices and acts of blood sacrifice. While no one had been able to prove it, if ever there was a ready source of Cabalists, it would be found there. But as the followers rarely left their subterranean lairs, they seemed harmless enough, for now.

  “Why did this master come here?” Kathryn asked, suspicious of anyone associated with such clerics.

  “Summoned, I heard—by Hesharian.”

  Kathryn frowned.

  “They’ve spent some time up in the Warden’s Eyrie. Behind closed doors.”

  Kathryn suddenly remembered. “Dart mentioned such a man…”

  Gerrod nodded. “From such meetings, I can fathom why Hesharian has summoned this master from Ghazal.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of Symon ser Jaklar, the warden’s best man, turned to stone by Argent’s corrupted sword. Hesharian still keeps the man’s body in some secret hole. But to lift the curse would surely raise our esteemed master’s status—at least within the eyes of the Eyrie.”

  Gerrod finally waved the matter away. “But that is not why you came down here, was it? You came to inquire about the skull.” He turned toward the arched opening that led into his alchemical study. The thick ironwood doors were open, and the scent of bile emanated from within.

  “You must see this,” he said and disappeared through the archway.

  Kathryn followed him into his study, where the smell of black bile was riper. The windowless room beyond had been carved into an oval. In the center was a scarred greenwood table with a complicated apparatus of bronze-and-mica-glass tubing above it, attached to the arched stone roof. All around, the walls were covered from floor to ceiling with cabinets, shelves, niches, and nooks. At the far end rose Gerrod’s repostilum, a mosaic of blessed glass cubes, each die no wider than a thumb, eight hundred in number, containing drops of each of the eight humours from all hundred of the original settled gods, an alchemical storehouse of great wealth.

  Gerrod crossed to the center table. “I may have discovered some answers, but each revelation only begat another mystery.”

  In the center of the table rested the misshapen skull.

  Gerrod had painted its surface with black bile, so artfully that it looked carved of the warding Grace. The only spot not covered was a perfect circle on the top of the skull. The jaundiced bone looked pitted there as if eaten by caustic oils.

  Kathryn knew it hadn’t been oils that ate the bone—but Grace-rich humours. Positioned directly over the skull was a bronze-and-mica spigot, draining from the apparatus above. The device was used for mix
ing humours in alchemical experiments.

  “Here is the most intriguing discovery.” Gerrod reached forward and delicately turned a bronze key. From the tip of the mica tubing, a single drop of humour welled and clung precariously. “I’ve used a trickle of phlegm to bind blood and tears. Watch this.”

  The drop fell from the spigot and struck the skull. It rang most peculiarly, as if the bone were some sort of stone bell. The sound echoed for a breath as if trapped within the walls of the study and seeking a means to escape. Kathryn felt its passage almost like a wind. Her cloak trembled from her body, ever so slightly, lifting away, then settling back.

  As the echo faded, silence settled over the room, heavier than a moment before.

  She stepped away. “What was that?”

  Gerrod waved a hand through the air as if wafting something foul away. “The humours—blood, tears, even the phlegm—all came from Cassal of High Dome.”

  “A god of air,” Kathryn said. All the gods, while varying in the cast of their humours, could be relatively separated into four aspects: loam, water, fire, and air.

  “Exactly,” Gerrod said.

  “But what made that sound?”

  Gerrod nodded. “I don’t think made is the right word. I think the sound was already there, trapped in the bones of the skull, bound down into its mineral matrix. It is hard to believe, I know, but you must first understand that our bones are not pure stone, like some might imagine. There is flesh in there, too. If you leach away the minerals, you can reveal the flesh within. And in this skull there remains the desiccated flesh of a rogue god.”

  Kathryn felt a sick unease.

  “I believe the alchemy of air unbound some corrupted Grace still trapped in that flesh. An echo of power.”

  “What sort of Grace?”

  “That has been a good part of my study. But I believe I rooted out an answer from some old books. Tomes that dealt with the work of Black Alchemists. You are familiar with how loam-giants, wind wraiths, and fire walkers are born?”

  Kathryn nodded. Though the details were beyond her knowledge, she was aware that women, heavy with child, could ingest certain alchemies and give birth to children bearing special traits.

  “It is not only clean Graces that might transfigure such births. Corrupted Graces can do the same. I studied tomes that spoke of children born of cursed alchemies. Specific to this matter, children born of air alchemies.”

  Kathryn felt her stomach churn, remembering her own lost child. What mother would sacrifice her own child in such a manner?

  “From such corruption, children were born with strange voices. Rich in twisted power, it is said, able to bind pure Grace to its will. They call such corrupted talent seersong. I believe that was what we just heard, an echo released from the desiccated flesh that it once bound.”

  “Wait. Are you saying that the rogue god was bound by this song?”

  “I can’t say for sure. Air alchemies are the most ephemeral. But for such a trace to remain in the bones of the skull, the exposure would have to be long and intimate. Even after death, the skull remains deeply imbued with seersong. Remember Rogger’s story of what befell him in Chrismferry.”

  Kathryn could not forget the attack at the docks, of the ilk-beasts that sought the skull. She also remembered who one of the beasts had been. One of the god Fyla’s personal bodyguards.

  “You believe the skull was the source of their ilking?”

  “How else to explain it? The thief, Rogger, was wise to keep the talisman warded with black bile and to take a route far from any god-realm. But even Chrismferry, godless for a full year, remains a land rich in Graces. And possibly still tainted in some small manner. The naethryn-god, Chrism, had ilked hundreds before being banished. I think the skull, exposed to such taint, absorbed and echoed the curse upon the air, carried by the power of the seersong.”

  “Ilking the unsuspecting nearby.”

  “If they were rich enough in Grace. Like Fyla’s guard.”

  “And what about Tylar?” Kathryn shuddered. “Why was he not ilked?”

  “Tylar was probably too rich in Graces. All of his humours flow with power. And then there is the matter of the naethryn nesting inside him. The daemon probably helped protect him. But many mysteries remain. I need more time with the skull.”

  Kathryn reached out and touched his bronze hand. “And you need some sleep, too.” The shadow under his eyes told her that her friend was burning himself to the quick. “There will be time enough after the ceremony.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. Hesharian grows suspicious enough with my protracted absence. And at some point, I’d certainly like to talk at length with Rogger. We were interrupted last time from hearing his full story of how he came upon this strange talisman.”

  Kathryn drew Gerrod away from the skull and back toward the main room.

  He followed her slowly, almost reluctantly, but he did close the heavy doors to his study behind him. As he glanced around his room, he seemed to see it for the first time in a full turn of bells. His eyes widened slightly, and he shook his head at the sorry condition of his chambers.

  “I should brew us some bitternut,” Gerrod said and strode to a side table where a cold kettle rested.

  The third morning bell rang, muffled but clear.

  Kathryn sighed. “I must be back upstairs. Before the towers burn down on top of us.”

  Gerrod waved to a chair. “I know you think you are the only person holding our towers up, but they’ve stood for centuries, so I think they’ll last a little while longer.”

  “But the ceremony is tomorrow. I’ve a thousand—”

  Gerrod offered her a tired smile. “If I can leave my study for a while, you can avoid the hermitage. Sit. We have more to discuss. A small matter.”

  Kathryn’s brow pinched in curiosity as Gerrod stoked one of his braziers. He glanced over to her, one eyebrow raised.

  “Tylar ser Noche…”

  “What’s wrong?” Tylar asked Delia.

  She stared out the flippercraft window, watching the towers of Tashijan rise at the horizon, aglow in the setting winter sun. She shook her head but did not turn.

  Tylar sat across from her in the private cabin aboard the airship. They were alone. His personal bodyguards were stationed up and down the hall, led by Sergeant Kyllan, who stood outside their cabin, alongside the wyr-mistress Eylan. The other men were posted throughout the craft, keeping a watch over Tylar’s party. There were three for every one of his group. The only other travelers aboard the flippercraft, besides the ship’s crew, were the other seven Hands of Chrismferry, all coming to attend and witness his knighting. But only Delia, Hand of blood, shared Tylar’s cabin.

  “We’ll reach Tashijan early…by a full bell,” Delia mumbled to the window, nodding to the rising towers.

  “All the better,” Tylar said.

  Mid-voyage, the ship’s captain had come, cap in hand, to their cabin. The storm at their back had him worried. Tylar had seen the northern skies himself. A great winter storm had settled into the middle of the First Land and was slowly rolling toward the sea. The captain had swung their path far to the west, almost as far as the Middleback Range, to skirt the storm. But the captain feared they’d fail to outrun the blizzard, so he had come to ask permission to burn blood, to increase their pace, accelerating their schedule.

  Tylar had granted it.

  “We should have sent a raven ahead to alert Tashijan,” Delia said.

  “As much blood as we’re burning, the fastest raven would arrive about the same time as us. Besides, I’d just as soon land when least expected.”

  Delia finally turned from the window. “Do you fear some betrayal by my father?”

  So that’s what had been worrying her so…

  Delia had no love for her estranged father, the warden of Tashijan, Argent ser Fields. The coming ceremony would be as much a strain on the warden’s daughter as it was on Tylar.

  “No,” he answered. “I’m sure
Argent will be pinning on his best face. I fear more what sort of pomp and blow he might have arranged at the dock atop Stormwatch. I’m sure it will be tedious and full of false cheer. So if we arrive unexpectedly enough, we might slip down to our rooms and avoid all that. The less we have to share the same space with Argent, all the better.”

  A slight smile broke through her pensive expression. “You will both have sore faces before this is all over. Strained smiles, tight jaws, ground teeth.”

  “If this gesture weren’t so important—”

  “It is,” she assured him. “You deserve to have your cloak returned to you. And it will be good to head into spring with the First Land united and healed.”

  He nodded. “I’ve heard that all the god-realms of the First Land and some of the outlying realms have sent representatives. Even Lord Balger.”

  “It doesn’t surprise me. All the gods—even Lord Balger—want peace again, want the land to heal.”

  “Not all the gods,” Tylar mumbled.

  Delia’s eyes grew worried again. While a majority of the Hundred, the settled gods of Myrillia, had voiced their acceptance of Tylar’s regency, not all were as vigorous in their support as he would have wished. In fact, there were some who either remained silent or expressed outright distaste. And they were being heard—by other gods and by the people of Myrillia at large. Chrismferry was the oldest of all the god-realms. To have a man, even one blessed with a flow of Grace-rich humours, sitting atop the castillion at Chrismferry struck many as an affront against the proper order.

  “All the more reason we must tolerate coming here,” Delia said. “It isn’t only the rift between Tashijan and Chrismferry that needs to be closed. Uniting the gods of the First Land around your regency will help settle the rumbling across the other lands.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  As if the flippercraft sensed his worry, a slight tremor vibrated through its bones. The crew must be readying to land.

  Delia gripped the arm of her seat with one hand. “The effort will be worth the risk…” she mumbled and returned her attention to the cabin’s window, growing pensive again.