The Riven God

by F. T. McKinstry

  Wulfgar followed Ralt into the cobwebbed passage he had so often frequented as a youth. When they reached the end, Ralt leaned his head against the squat arched door and softly spoke. No response. He cracked open the door. “Milady?”

  The crone sat by the window like a mound of seaweed, facing the sea. She didn’t move. Fearing the worst, Wulfgar entered and approached her, coming around to see her face.

  “I came earlier to bring her food,” Ralt said in a low voice at his side. “She always breaks from trance when I arrive. Today, she will not come out. This has never happened before. She loves you well, perhaps she will know you.”

  Wulfgar knelt. Asa was alive, but not present. Her rough lips were parted, her chin was damp from spittle, her face was pale as if from illness or terror, and her eyes stared wide and gray at nothing. She held a deep brown cloak in her lap with something embroidered on it, and worked it frantically with her fingers. She smelled like dried herbs, soil, mushrooms. Wulfgar gently disentangled her gnarled hands and took them in his. They were as cold as the northern sea.

  “Asa, my friend. It is Wulfgar. What do you see?” Still, she stared. Then, one of her fingers twitched, and her eyes suddenly came into focus on him. From deep in her throat, she made a sound. Wulfgar leaned close to hear.

  “Ascarion,” her voice rattled out, like stones tumbling into a well. It was the voice of the north, night, the darkness on the sea, the still point at the center of time. A shiver gripped Wulfgar to the bone. He withdrew, still holding her hands. She gazed into his eyes, seeing someone, something that was not him.

  Ascarion. He didn’t know the word, but he had known Asa long enough to know it meant something. He placed the old woman’s hands back into her lap, and stood. “I’ll send for a healer, Wise One, to ease you.” An absurd thing to say. He glanced at Ralt, who wore an expression of unease. Asa was the most accomplished healer in the Gray Isles. Who could ease her? This went beyond that.

  As Wulfgar stepped back, the crone’s voice boomed out into the room. “Ascarion!” she cried, tearing at the cloak and rocking in her seat. “Beware the sea!”

  And then she wept, in great, shaking sobs. Wulfgar knelt again, disoriented and not a little frightened. He had no idea what to do. He put his arms around her, whispering empty comforts.

  “Milord,” Ralt breathed. “The queen warned—”

  “Quiet!” Wulfgar returned, rocking the crone in his arms. He smelled urine. “Asa.” He knelt there, utterly helpless as the crone grew still, took one breath, and relaxed into his arms like a telltale sagging after a passing gust.

  Ralt knelt by the crone’s side and took her wrist. Wulfgar didn’t need to see the warrior’s face to know that the Seer had flown.

  *

  Wulfgar strode like the wind for the far side of the South Tower complex with Asa’s last breath on his heart. The image on the cloak she had been holding was burned into his mind like a brand: a wren perched on an apple bough entwined with ivies and flowers, and enclosing an open eye. A Keepers’ cloak. What could have frightened her to death?

  Beware the sea!

  Aelfric still hadn’t reported in or returned to his room. As Wulfgar strode beneath a heavy sky of foreboding, he didn’t see passing faces or hear their greetings. He received several reports, which settled into some place to be put together later. For now, he sent all inquiries to Gareth, his most trusted commander.

  The sea. It had become a dangerous thing flowing in the veins of every islander. Could this be what Asa had meant? For several seasons now, the seas around Tromb had been particularly hungry. Explanations always came handy as to why one sailor or fisherman didn’t return over another, and as the seas of North Derinth were notoriously treacherous, storms and currents were the most popular of these explanations. But Wulfgar wondered. Everyone wondered.

  Wulfgar had posted loyal and far-seeing watchers on Tromblast’s towers and the shores beyond. He used the highest points on the island, fortressed and designed in times of war, to watch for enemy ships. Now they watched for a different kind of enemy, elusive and hiding in mists and rumor. He had no solid evidence of anything awry. But his heart knew otherwise. Warlocks wouldn’t need towers or men to watch the seas in their dominion. It was said that the Master of Wychmouth, high in his Beryl Tower on the southern coast of Mimir, saw through the eyes of birds, even the wind.

  Wizards. Warlocks. The difference was a matter of opinion. The Masters of the Eye were as aloof as the gyrfalcons that nested on the cliffs above the Howling Estuary in the north. No one knew what they saw, for they didn’t tend to involve themselves in the affairs of regimes or the shadows inherent in them. When they did, only the gods knew why. Indeed, Wulfgar had received a mysterious report three days ago that the wizards on Tromb had departed for Mimir. The report didn’t include an explanation.

  Bjorn, the Sentinel of the East, had set sail on his warship the Eastfetch two suns past, before the oborom rose up from the caves to shadow the isle. Wulfgar hadn’t received word from his brother since. With a wave of grief in his heart, he recalled asking Asa, last summer, where Bjorn had set sail or dropped anchor in the world. Caerroth, she had grinned toothlessly, patting him on the knee. A lively port on southeastern tip of Sourcesee in the west, Caerroth could keep a man like Bjorn busy for a long time. But Wulfgar didn’t know if his brother was still there.

  Merchant ships bringing goods and supplies made it into the harbors of Tromb without any unusual trouble. And away again. The other islands were not far; Wulfgar had questioned more than one captain, but none had any untoward reports aside from the usual talk of heavy waters at certain times of the year. The only startling thing Wulfgar had heard involved the sinking of the Sea Holly, a small yet nimble supply ship he had known since boyhood. The captain, a gaunt, rugged man from Asmoralin, had been known to sail her through the worst seas without mishap. No one knew what had befallen her.

  Such things happened. But Wulfgar hadn’t forgotten the chill on his spine that came with the news. If it had happened during a year not heralded by the oborom and the seeming treachery of familiar seas, he might only have felt the sadness of a passing memory. But this hadn’t felt as innocent as that.

  To further aggravate Wulfgar’s protective instincts, the queen asked him to ready Rhinne’s boat, the Ottersong, for a journey. Wulfgar had done this with a stormy heart and too many questions. He had sailed the Ottersong around the tip of the isle, moored her in a cave beneath the West Tower and left her there under heavy guard. The queen had given him only one explanation: If your sister gets out, we will be freed.

  If. She had to say if. Wulfgar might have brushed this off with his usual annoyance had her words not begun to take shape around him.

  He swept into a wide corridor and then passed into a stairwell that led to the lower levels of the complex. He stepped from the stairs into the passage that led to the smithy. Several oborom stood near the end. Not an unusual sight down here, as the smithy contained not only an entrance to the under-rim, but also to the caves. That and the armory would mean trouble sooner or later; for this reason, he had put Aelfric down here as an undercover smith, to keep an eye on things.

  The black-cloaked soldiers turned and gazed at him dispassionately. Wulfgar approached with all the strength and stature of his bloodline to bear. He studied their faces as he passed. Occasionally, he would recognize someone, though this had become rarer. Ragnvald had taken to moving his men between towns and underground strongholds to ensure they faced strangers and not some friend, sibling or lover. Their eyes always looked the same, like fortress walls. Fear drove this; the oborom did horrific things to deserters. But many went willingly. Unfortunately, anything the priests promised them or let them believe would surely be a lie; and once enlisted, no one went back. Anyone who couldn’t stomach the darkness ever returned from the underground.

  The warlocks let Wulfgar pass. They usually did. Being a Sentinel, he stood above challenge—for now. When that changed, so wou
ld many things.

  He approached the smithy door, a wide arch with an ancient iron hammer and sword crossed in the top of the frame. Two soldiers stood there with characteristic fortress-wall expressions that told him he wouldn’t get through without a fight. By the markings on their helmets and wrists, these men reported directly to the Sentinel of the West. Something here had gone bad. Wulfgar hoped against reason it didn’t involve Aelfric.

  He lifted his chin to try out his stature with Dore’s elite guard when, at the far end of the hall, a company of oborom came into view escorting a man in a plain cloak with the hood down. They moved towards a low shadowed door that the queen herself had locked with a spell last autumn. Aelfric had recently reported the spell had been broken.

  Wulfgar pointed down the hall. “Who is that?”

  The guards stared without expression, yielding nothing. Wulfgar resisted the urge to slam one of them against the wall. Instead, he turned and strode after the prisoner escort, daring the guards to stop him.

  When he reached them, he realized why the men at the door hadn’t challenged or revealed anything to him. As the company stopped in response to his approach, an oborom priest turned and drew the hood from his face. Clad in thorns, he had pale blond hair snaking from beneath a gray skull cap. His eyes looked like tidal pools. Not all of the priests were powerful, but the aura around this one said otherwise. Wulfgar glanced at the prisoner, who gazed at the floor from beneath the shadow of his hood.

  “Who is this man?” Wulfgar demanded.

  “The business of the West Sentinel,” the priest said smoothly. “No concern of yours.”

  In a river of red and orange, an instant calculation of space, steel and blood, Wulfgar envisioned how this would go. This was not just a routine bit of trouble. Not anymore, not today. He preferred to avoid starting brawls with the oborom, not because he didn’t have the strength or protection to carry it off—but because he did. It would be like tossing a torch onto a dust-dry bale of hay. And to kill a priest, even to try, would mean exile. He would be marked by Ragnvald’s assassins and no one eluded that lot, not even a Sentinel.

  “By the laws of Tromb,” Wulfgar said, his nerves winding up like a crossbow, “no Sentinel has rank over the others by virtue of age, element or association. Any concern of my brother’s is my concern as well.”

  The priest stepped forward in a dark cloud. “That law has changed.”

  Wulfgar breathed a laugh. “Of course it has.” He drew his blade, spun it slowly to loosen his wrist, and held it up before his face. “This one hasn’t.”

  “Fool.” The priest’s eyes darkened.

  Just then, the prisoner whistled like a house finch.

  The priest’s eyes snapped sidelong as Aelfric pulled the hood from his face, revealing a shock of red hair. In that moment, Wulfgar made a decision he knew would change his life sooner instead of later. In one fluid motion, he drove his ancestral sword into the priest’s body. He withdrew it with a twist, braced his boot against the man and kicked him off, sending him sprawling against the wall in a bleeding tangle of malice.

  Wulfgar’s blade came around as the oborom exploded into action. An expert at close quarter fighting, Aelfric whirled and put two of them on the floor, even with his hands tied. Wulfgar did likewise; aside from his being one of the best blades in the keep, the oborom had grown soft, many of them, accustomed to controlling things by fear and the powers of their priests. They were no match for him.

  One of them regained his wits, his nose broken and bloody, and uttered a word that caused a weird hum to swell through the hall. It surrounded Wulfgar’s chest, weakening his arms. “Faltich,” Wulfgar growled. As the counter-command cleared the air, he thrust his blade into the warlock, silencing him. Then he cut the cords around Aelfric’s hands. By this time, the oborom at the other end of the hall had joined the fray. The two warriors met them easily.

  After a moment, however, something changed. The warlocks hesitated, stepping back. As Aelfric spoke his name, Wulfgar turned. Still alive, the priest slumped against the wall, his lips bloody and curled into a sneer as he clutched the gash in his abdomen with spidery fingers. And then he spoke.

  Before Wulfgar or Aelfric could get to him, he growled a string of thorny, foul-tasting words that entered Wulfgar’s mind like a fog, sickly and aching with hatred. The force of it caused his knees to buckle and his blade to slip from his hand. Aelfric cried out.

  Wulfgar dropped slowly to the floor as crushing weight descended on him. He grasped at his chest for the amulet, which was supposed to protect him from things like this. In the pocket on his heart, he felt a solid piece of metal. Animal fear settled into him. He had sewn that pocket himself and dropped the amulet into it only two days ago. In a flash, he recalled the sly look Sael had given him as she left his room that morning.

  She had found the amulet and removed it.

  He went to his belly, unable to move. The priest slavered against the wall, choking on laughter. Wulfgar had a dry thought that his lust and temper were ever his undoing.

  Forgive me, Asa. It was his last clear thought, as his eyes closed. In a dreamlike stupor, he felt the seer’s presence around him, holding him as he died, just as he had done for her. In his throat, she spoke a word, strong and clear as the wind:

  “Ascarion.”

  Trust the Water

  Rhinne was not sure when she first became aware of the person trailing her. It came with a thought that she was about to go from being a fox to a carcass that the wolves and ravens shared. Better yet, a hare. Pretty, but foolish.

  Pain whined incessantly in the back of her mind, and in her womb, the now-familiar sensation of thorns. Though she would have liked to curl up by the wall and sleep, being stalked was the better choice; she would freeze if she stopped moving. All the while, she shoved her warrior dream far beneath the surface of her thoughts in small, squirming bits of stress and sorrow hardly worth what she had landed herself into.

  She stopped once or twice to listen for the one shadowing her, but heard nothing. Either her imagination ruled this, or her stalker did. Given what had happened in the smithy, Rhinne had to assume the latter. But she was in no mood to be hunted. Her fear had given way to creative ideas of how she might startle or expose this brute.

  Finally, her tension snapped. She stopped her aching march, swaying on her feet. The lightless corridor was silent but for enigmatic echoes and the blood pounding in her ears. She lowered herself to the floor by the wall and grew still. The amulet on her breast pulsed with cold.

  She considered calling out and asking her hunter to show himself, but thought better of it. She leaned her head against the rough wall and thought about her warm bed. A bath. The sun. She envisioned Wulfgar, riding beside her, his blue gaze roaming far and wide over the horizon, a fine gray cloak sweeping around him, his golden hair plaited into two heavy braids that fell over his shoulders and a black leather band over his brow. What would he have done? He would have stayed in bed. He would not have punched an oborom priest in the face. He would have killed the under-rim guard, not let him escape and he would not have trusted a smith—but then, would he have to? No, they would have helped him. Bastards.

  Someone must have found the priest’s body by now. Rhinne had to assume he’d been sent to accost her, never mind how he’d known where she was. Given that, they probably knew she was the one who killed him. Or maybe not. Who knew, with warlocks? So much of their art involved hiding the nature of their art.

  She closed her eyes—it didn’t look much different from when they were open—and listened. She heard nothing but the underground, but she felt a presence, a breath, a mind bearing down on her. Probably an oborom soldier looking to raise himself by capturing a hare in the caves. Some said that small bands roamed the caves looking for such fools. Rhinne had never guessed she would end up being one of them.

  Those smiths would rue the day she ever caught up to them. Assuming she made it out of here alive.

  She
lost track of time as she sat there. She dozed, awoke, entertained the thought that she had only imagined the stalker, and dozed again. Thorns twined below, ever strengthening. Thorns within, thorns without.

  A familiar voice rang out around her. “Get up.”

  Rhinne started awake with any icy river of shock in her veins. But she stayed where she was. She was too weak to fight anyone, let alone the First Born of Ragnvald. “What do you want, Dore?” she said tiredly.

  Soft laughter came from the darkness. “I doubt you’re clever enough to grasp the answer to that question, even if I were to give it to you.”

  Clever as a fox, she thought. “Want to know what I want? Some breakfast, for a start. Sleep. A world free of oborom.” She paused. “Oh and how about you swinging on the end of a rope.”

  She braced herself for the back of his hand. Instead, he uttered a word, and light flared out, blinding her. She covered her eyes and muttered, “Nice trick.” Once her eyes adjusted, she looked up, blinking. Her brother stood over her holding something that looked like a glowing crystal. He wore a black cloak and an analytical expression as he perused her torn and broken condition.

  “It would appear that Sorvin forgot his orders.” Rhinne held her gaze on him and thought, They have names? She still felt the priest’s fist in her stomach. Dore continued, “I’d have slit his throat for that. You saved me the trouble...but that makes you a murderer, doesn’t it.”

  “What do you want?” she repeated with a tired breath. “If you mean to execute me, get on with it. I don’t need the banter.”

  His eyes glittered. “By eluding my priest, you have revealed yourself to us.”