The Riven God

by F. T. McKinstry

  You must leave Tromb, the golden haired warrior repeated in her mind. What good did that do her now? If he hadn’t told her that, she might have stayed in her room.

  At the very least, she should have had the sense not to go searching for an imaginary book in the middle of the night.

  Provoking an oborom priest might not have been such a good idea, either.

  The truth stared her down with an indifferent expression not unlike the inky darkness around her. She had left her room for nothing. A dream. Her imagination. There were no books, no golden warriors. Just Tromblast, oborom, and wicked smiths.

  She turned from the closed door, felt around for her sword and sheathed it. She felt every single hurt as she reached for the wall. Then she limped heavily into the blind dark, unsure of any direction.

  The Seer

  The steam had cleared.

  Aelfric knelt with his hands on his head, focusing on the pulse in his veins and breathing deeply in an attempt to calm his distress at having just abandoned Princess Rhinne to the caves. It was not working.

  He shouldn’t be here. If he had told someone what he had seen on watch by the North Cave, he wouldn’t be on his knees waiting to be questioned. And what Rhinne’s being in the under-rim at this hour had to do with it, he dared not guess. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

  At least he had been mindful enough to retrieve her weapons and return them to her. He felt slightly more comforted by the Circle amulet he had spotted around her neck through the badly arranged folds of a torn tunic. He drew another long breath as he tried not to imagine how that rip got there. Something to do with that swollen bruise on her jaw, no doubt.

  Cobin knelt by his side, his brown hair hanging in his face in an anxious tangle. There was no sign of Sencin. They had bought him enough time to show Rhinne to the stairwell, but no more. Perhaps she had put a blade into him. Unlikely. As Prince Wulfgar often said, Rhinne was better at tactics than her temper let on.

  The oborom soldiers were silent and methodical as they searched the smithy. A priest stood nearby, with thin flaxen hair and a grave-cold gaze. Aelfric resisted looking behind him as a pair of soldiers moved towards the stairs where Rhinne had gone. Several moments passed before a shout rang out, followed by a scuffle. Cobin cast Aelfric a quick glance that he didn’t return. Had Sencin actually thought to hide down there? Unbelievable.

  The oborom wrestled the black-haired smith to his knees next to Cobin. As he started to speak, one of the soldiers struck him across the face with an explosive crack. Aelfric closed his eyes briefly. This would get worse. The priest hadn’t bothered to question them, which meant he was waiting for someone who would.

  Aelfric worked to clear his mind. It couldn’t have been possible, what he saw by the North Cave. He got only a glimpse before his instincts forced him down to the cold sand behind a boulder stained with gull droppings. In that short time, in the dark, it could have been anything. But his heart told him otherwise. He had been too afraid to go anywhere but here, to pound metal until the sun rose.

  He regretted that choice, now. While his training with the queen had prepared him for being questioned by the oborom, he doubted his ability to withstand an interrogation holding the information he now had.

  The oborom moved. Aelfric looked up as they parted in silence, heads bowed. A man strode in, tall, pale-skinned and commanding, cloaked in black. No priest, this. Worse. Aelfric’s heart turned cold as the Sentinel of the West stepped up before the captives, his expression unreadable. The queen had told Aelfric much about her eldest son, but in the prince’s presence, his thoughts scattered.

  The priest leaned close to Dore’s ear and spoke. The barest trace of a smile touched the corner of the prince’s mouth. It didn’t reach his eyes.

  “I understand you lot helped the North Born to escape,” he said.

  Sencin and Cobin exchanged glances. Either Dore was baiting them or the under-rim guard had turned them in to save himself, as Rhinne had predicted. It wouldn’t matter. Rhinne’s safety depended on all of them desiring to protect her, and given how willing Sencin and Cobin had been to hand her over to the oborom, Aelfric knew they wouldn’t shelter her under questioning. At best, he would be controlling the damage.

  “Milord,” Cobin offered shakily. “She tricked the guard, ran in here and got into the stairwell to the underground before we could catch her.”

  Aelfric kept his eyes on the floor. While most wouldn’t believe the North Born would be so foolish as to enter the caves, Aelfric knew that she probably was—tactics or not—and so would Dore. Wild as a cat, with the Circle flowing in her veins.

  “How hard did you try?” the Sentinel asked, too quietly.

  “I went down after her,” Sencin put in. “She had already gone through the door. I dropped the bar.”

  “Why did you do that?” the warlock returned.

  “The North Born is a witch,” Sencin replied with convincing disgust.

  “Ay, good riddance,” Cobin added, foolishly.

  Dore spoke a word. Heavy spiders crept over Aelfric’s skull as Cobin groaned and pitched forward with a gag. Something pale and greenish foamed from his mouth as he died there. The queen had told Aelfric that his amulet would protect him from such things; however, if Dore put that to the test and thereby discovered that he wore one, his safety would end. The amulet wouldn’t protect him from a knife. Or a rope.

  Dore moved in front of him. “Perhaps you have something to add,” the warlock said, glancing pointedly at Cobin’s body, going cold.

  Aelfric plied everything he had been taught to hide the image in his mind of the shining being emerging from the ice-cold sea.

  He quickly considered where he stood. Whether his companions had been desperate or just plain ignorant to offer Rhinne a hiding place, tell the oborom she had escaped and then accuse her of being a witch, it had caused his faith in their basic goodness to vaporize like something thrown into a forge. Before that, he had been weighing his distaste for deceiving them against Rhinne’s safety. Now, his path was simple. While he could easily turn in Sencin to save himself, the smith had less honor than a cornered animal and would expose Aelfric as smoothly as he had Rhinne. He decided to stick to his priorities and do something that would stand a chance of hiding his deeper thoughts from the warlock’s mind.

  The truth.

  He looked up. Dore’s gaze pierced his heart like a dull blade. Fighting the presence of his visions, Aelfric said, “Milord. Somehow she got the guard to open the door, and then trapped him inside. By the time we came in, he was gone. She demanded that we let her go. Your men were already in the halls. We released her, knowing she would be trapped.”

  Well, most of the truth, anyway.

  The ennui on the prince’s face was chilling. “You should have held her here until I arrived. Why did you not?”

  Aelfric drew a breath to speak, but Sencin interrupted him. “She threatened to turn us in for helping her if we did that.” Aelfric could have choked at how easy Sencin was making this for him, especially when he added, throwing his head in Aelfric’s direction, “This man showed her the stairwell to the caves.”

  All Aelfric had to do was look into Dore’s eyes. He didn’t have to say anything; Sencin was the one they had found down there, not him. Even so, his shaky alibi filled him with anguish. He hadn’t planned on the oborom discovering that Rhinne had gone below, or he might have gone with her. But that had flaws. For the sake of them all, he had to get out of here and tell Prince Wulfgar what he knew.

  Dore turned to the priest at his side. “Kill that one,” he said, gesturing to Sencin. His gaze returned to Aelfric with a dead-leaf smile. “Take this one below.” Ignoring Sencin’s last cry beneath the knife, the Sentinel swept around them and headed for the stairwell to the caves like a wintry wind.

  The oborom hauled Aelfric up, tied his hands cruelly and yanked his hood over his head. As they shoved him towards the stairs that led out of the smithy, he tried with all his s
trength to forget the being he saw emerging from the sea, shining with immortality in the opaque light of a dark moon and perfectly matching the queen’s description of a god capable of rending every heart in Ealiron from love.

  *

  Wulfgar awoke with a breath.

  With a warrior’s reflex, he gathered his body into watchfulness from the tranquility of sleep. Through tall arched windows at the far end of the room, sea blended with sky in heavy gray. Coals settled in the hearth. Animal skins covered the floor, and battle gear hung on the walls. Near the bed, his ancestral sword hung in a scabbard of worn leather adorned with knotted patterns of serpents and beasts woven into the standard of the South Born of Ragnvald.

  A dark brindle wolfhound named Torlach sat patiently on the floor, thumping his tail as he saw his master wake. The woman by Wulfgar’s side, a mean-spirited courtesan whom he took to ease his lust now and then, wouldn’t suffer the hound on the bed. He could tell by her breathing that she was also awake, though the sun hadn’t yet climbed above the sea. As he rose and left the bed, she made a soft sound of displeasure.

  “You are leaving already?” she said hoarsely. “So early?”

  “I’m expected in the training yards, Sael,” he lied. An old but useful habit. He was reasonably certain Sael was a spy, and he didn’t share his business with her—only his bed, where she more than made up for the risk.

  She watched him dress in layers of wool, leather and mail. He had made sure to slip knives into both his boot and belt the night before Sael came, so she wouldn’t see him do it. Nor had she seen him put the Circle amulet into a hidden pocket of his tunic. His mother had given it to him for protection; a serpent of the sea, cast in iron. He kept it close because she had firmly asked this of him, and Wulfgar had seen enough weird things over the last season to take her advice—though he still believed his sword was the only protection he really needed.

  “May I come with you?” Sael’s voice cut into his thoughts.

  He yanked a strap tight and threw her a mocking glance for being obvious. “Perhaps another time, when I need the distraction.” Which will be never, he didn’t need to add.

  Sael’s face darkened into a wall as she slid from the bed and snatched her smock from the floor. She wriggled her silken curves into it with calculated grace, and brushed her honey hair from her neck. Wulfgar called Torlach to his side and waited by the door, flexing his jaw with impatience. The courtesan swept through, threw him an arch look he couldn’t so much as guess the nature of and then moved down the hall with a hard set to her shoulders that told him he would be finding another to warm his bed. Fair enough. Bedding her seemed a much worse idea than usual, today.

  The training yards were in the Common, a high, wooded area in the center of Tromblast that contained the Great Hall and the living spaces of people who worked in the keep. But Wulfgar wouldn’t go there yet. He had to find Aelfric. The red-haired spy had taken the order to watch the North Cave with his usual professional calm, but this hadn’t fooled Wulfgar. Nobody wanted that post in the middle of the night.

  With Torlach loping by his side, he turned down another hall than the one Sael had taken, choosing an elaborate route in case she decided to trail him. That would be a brave move on her part, but a well-paid spy was a brave thing—and a vindictive woman, an even braver one. Wulfgar had taken too many chances with her already.

  He reached the wide hall before the south Gate, and released the hound to the marshy plain overlooking the sea. Assuming Sael would be careful not to follow him here, Wulfgar relieved himself and then found something to eat. Then he checked the guardroom to see if Aelfric had reported in.

  He hadn’t. The shadow on Wulfgar’s heart darkened as he doubled back, heading for Aelfric’s quarters, which were nearby.

  The only things the queen’s watchers had ever seen by the North Cave were seagulls and oborom. Aelfric had probably gone to bed. But Wulfgar had to make sure. According to his mother, a prophecy claimed that the Riven God would emerge from the northern sea, in physical form. She explained that his appearance in the sea would cause less damage to time and space. Wulfgar didn’t understand this, and her further explanation was so abstract that he hadn’t bothered to note specifics. As the North Cave was the closest entrance to the water, and controlled by the oborom, the queen stationed watchers there. If Wulfgar had believed in the Riven God, he might have felt more resolved. But right now he thought it needlessly risky.

  He strode through the dimly-lit halls of the South Tower, aware of people stirring in their chambers. Those he passed, mostly armed guards and watchers, acknowledged him with quiet respect, if not hope: the Sentinel of the South had become a last bastion of strength and sanity for many. They greeted his appearance as they would a ray of sun, light in a realm that had, since the autumnal equinox, grown darker by the day though spring was nigh.

  His mother was fond of saying that the cycles of the seasons had power, and that change would come like the tide, in waves, a lock mechanism moving into place with the motion of the sun and stars. She said that his sister Rhinne was the key, innocent of her power, of even the danger she faced. A protective measure, she maintained.

  To Wulfgar’s mind, this notion was too romantic to be practical. Rhinne deeply resented their mother’s reticence, and the tides of change were more likely to drop her from the end of a rope than not. She threatened the new order; whether for being North Born and female, strong, or just plain troublesome, Wulfgar had yet to determine. But he would see to it that his little sister didn’t go down without a fight. For love of her, he had taught her how to use the sword of her ancestors, passed down through generations of North Born males. One change he could deal with.

  And not the only one. War in Tromblast was imminent, if Wulfgar knew anything from his travels as a hired blade. This place felt like a pot about to boil over, with Ragnvald and his black-cloaked rats throwing wood onto the flames. Typically, the causes of such things were easy to understand. But the imbalance in Tromblast was a puzzle with too many pieces missing.

  The queen knew. She kept much of it close, even from Wulfgar, giving him a first-hand appreciation of why Rhinne had such a problem with her.

  He passed through a stable with narrow openings revealing a gray pre-dawn and the tumbling sea. Wulfgar inhaled the scent of horses and brine. It would be a good day to ride out to Graylif as he had promised Rhinne. Under his patient insistence, the queen had taken up residence in Lifngrove, a village Wulfgar had taken over two moons past and turned into a fort to hold his growing army. Lifngrove provided a natural defense in the form of a wooded rise protected from the south and west by the Lifn, a deep river that flowed through Lifnmir to the sea. He had tried to convince his mother to take Rhinne, but she had adamantly claimed that his sister was safer in the keep. He sighed. Rhinne would have refused to go anyway. Nevertheless, he did intend to bring her for a visit, whether she liked it or not.

  As he entered the corridor leading to Aelfric’s room, he shivered. He slowed his pace, wrapping his hand comfortably around his sword hilt. Near the end of the corridor, something slipped into darkness like a shadow retreating from a bright light.

  Wulfgar drew his blade and broke into a run. When he reached the end, no one was there. He lowered his sword. Oborom. Fiendish, sneaking whoresons! Sheathing his blade, Wulfgar moved to Aelfric’s door and knocked softly. No answer. With a breath, he dropped the latch and pushed it open. The room was cold, but not as cold as his heart as he saw the empty bed. He closed the door and leaned against the wall. The images of the morning gnawed at him: the torchlit portcullis of the south gate towering like a fierce mouth with thin iron teeth; a black cloaked soldier standing by a wall, his silver helmet glinting.

  Aelfric, where are you...

  He scanned the hall once more. He heard the low voices and movements of men awakening, arming themselves for another uncertain day. Perhaps Aelfric had risen early and gone to the smithy, though it was not like him to do that befo
re reporting in. After another moment of deliberation, Wulfgar decided to check. As he turned, someone shouted.

  “Milord!” An armed man ran up to him, out of breath. Wulfgar recognized him as one of his mother’s personal guards.

  “Ralt.” Wulfgar leaned aside to see down the hall, but the warrior had come alone. “What are you doing in Tromblast?”

  Ralt released a shaky breath. “The queen commanded me to look after the Seer. Something is wrong. Please come.”

  Without hesitation, Wulfgar accompanied Ralt down the hall in the direction of the shore. “My mother sent you here from Graylif just to guard Asa?”

  “Aye, milord.” The warrior’s tone didn’t invite further questions.

  And Wulfgar didn’t need to ask. On the other side of the stable, at the end of a weathered passage with a dirt floor, a hovel looked out over the marsh that lay in patches on the plain between the southeastern corner of Tromblast and the sea. A woman named Asa lived there. Old even when Wulfgar was born, she eked out a living from the marsh. The people of the keep cared for her and brought her supplies: blankets, food or peat, in return for potions, salves, or wisdom. Asa said little. She was always there, on the edge of the marsh, like a force of nature. Wulfgar had never heard anyone call her a witch, but she knew things. Many things.

  His mother called Asa the Seer. She had once told him that Asa was from Sourcesee in the west, the home of the Keepers of the Eye. She had trained in the great citadel of Eyrie. The Keepers, who watched and governed from their crystal towers built over a millennium past, were said to be master shapeshifters, archers, weather workers and seers of the stars. As a boy, this had fascinated Wulfgar. As a man, a warrior, and a Sentinel, he made it his business to listen to Asa when she was inclined to speak. Years ago, in a more innocent time, they would play a game: he would ask her where someone was, and she would tell him. To his knowledge, she had never been wrong.