The Riven God

by F. T. McKinstry

  Once ready, she slipped the lines and pulled them in, allowing the craft to swing out and drift on the tide towards the cave entrance. Not as high as she would have liked, but still ebbing; enough to give her an hour or two to get clear of the keep. She hoisted a sail as she cleared the entrance to the cave.

  As she entered the shadow of the West Tower cast upon the water by the rising sun, a sensation of exposure settled over her heart. If Dore had accused her of treason and set his wolves on her, even Wulfgar’s watchers might not stay true. Clearly, for this same reason, Harald hadn’t sent one of his men to accompany her. She couldn’t trust anyone here, not anymore. The wicked smiths had reminded her of that.

  *

  Spooked by Harald’s warning, Rhinne had every intention of doing just as he asked. She sailed west, taking her bearings from Tromblast and the rising sun to mark her course for Lifnmir, a journey she had taken many times before. The winds blew to her favor; that and the tide helped her make good speed.

  As the West Tower receded from view, faint mist gathered on the sea. Rhinne looked up once more to note the position of the tower before it vanished from view. Then she paused, her throat turning suddenly dry.

  In place of the tower rose the thorn-shaped contours of a mast and sails, black as charred wood.

  Someone had followed her. No fisherman, this. Only the oborom sailed in black boats—and only their presence prickled in her lower gut with twining thorns.

  She spun around in a panic. If she sailed for Lifnmir, she would be easy to find. The oborom might have discovered her plan, or seen her somehow by their dark arts. That priest had found her easily enough.

  The mist thickened as Rhinne trimmed her sails and continued westward. Her pursuer may not assume she would head for the open sea. She would pretend to do that, and then spend the night returning. In the back of her thoughts, she hoped the skies would be clear, so she could use the setting sun and the stars to find her way back. But she had no time to worry about that.

  If you set sail, nothing will protect you, Harald had said. A strong claim to make for the coming of Endwinter, which Rhinne would recognize in wind and sky early enough to avoid. Now she wondered if Harald had known she would be pursued. But it was too late to know. A feint to the open sea with Endwinter nigh offered her the best chance of eluding the warlock in her wake.

  By the time Rhinne had logged her course and settled into the tiller seat, the mist had grown so thick she could barely see the bow, let alone her pursuer. The wind, though light, still moved her along with unnatural persistence. Fortunately, the western side of Tromb faced the open sea and held no port or quarter; any ships approaching the isle tended to do so farther south. Though this decreased her chances of meeting up with someone, her nerves still tightened for fear that something might come looming out of the fog at any moment.

  A warlock could find her in fog, she had to assume. She sailed on for some time, holding the best course she could with no sun, cloud, scent or seabird by which to navigate. No one caught up to her, and the thorny sensation in her womb diminished a little. But it didn’t leave her completely.

  The mists did not lift, nor the winds abate, though they shifted subtly from time to time. Rhinne kept track of it and did her best to stay on a general course to the west. Fatigue threatened to engulf her, but she didn’t dare doze off. She ate a meal and focused on every aspect of the boat, every sheet and line, the pull on the tiller, the movement of telltales. She kept her sails filled, tacking when necessary; but soon, she began to doubt the accuracy of her calculations.

  She lost track of time. The mist, a need for sleep and the rhythmic movement of the boat lulled her into a dreamlike calm. She worked her sails and inked her log without thought. Warmth tingled in her forehead, between her eyes. Her pursuer and the events of the morning faded into gray. She sailed like a ghost that hadn’t yet realized it had died. So the day passed, and darkness descended, bringing fresh wind from the north. Rhymes and stories moved like fishes through her thoughts.

  Wolf Star shines on wintry high, gazing northward by and by. Ice and snow on shorelines lie, wind and spirits haunt the sky...

  The depths swirled around her, green, gray and black, an infinite kingdom of water. The north wind ruled the skies. She lashed the tiller and lowered the sails. Then she went below and fell into a deep sleep.

  She awoke with a start thinking she was in her bed in Tromblast. Then she remembered. She went above.

  No wind stirred the overcast sky. It was cold. The quiet sea lay dark and iron gray. The sun shone directly before her, half swathed by clouds on the horizon like a bleeding wound. She watched for several moments until it descended a bit. Sunset. Rhinne yawned as sleep fell from her bones. Somehow, she had slept the day away. But she didn’t recall when she had dozed off. Waking and sleeping had blurred in the fog.

  The Ottersong moved towards the sun as if carried by a strong current. Rhinne moved to the foredeck. The gentle breeze of forward movement touched her face. She studied the waters moving around the craft, the only disturbance in an otherwise calm landscape. Sure enough, a current drew her along.

  As the sun sank deeper into the horizon, the current didn’t shift or fade. This could only mean one thing: she had sailed far enough from Tromb to get picked up by the Western Drift, a powerful current some twenty miles south of Waleis that sailors used to ease passage to and from Sourcesee.

  The blood drained from her face. Even if she unfurled her sails, she wouldn’t be able to escape the current without wind. And until the stars came out, assuming they did, it would be difficult to find her way home.

  Under no circumstances make for the open sea.

  Too late! But at least she knew her direction, now. The Drift turned southward, at some point, and then split near the Isles of Claw on the southern tip of Sourcesee. But that was many days away yet. When the wind returned, she would sail out of the Drift and back for Tromb, perhaps having frustrated any pursuit. She would use the night, or if she didn’t make it in time, heave-to, wait for the next and then sail into Lifnmir from the south.

  Thus decided, she returned to the tiller seat to wait for wind and stars. Night fell so dark and drear that she lit an oil lamp for company and studied her charts. In the rear of the cabinet that held her navigation supplies, she found a flask of whisky Wulfgar had apparently forgotten. After wrapping her body in two layers of woolens and donning a warm pair of gloves too large for her hands, she settled into her seat by the tiller, pulled the stopper from the flask and took a long sip. She choked on the bitter brew with a laugh. She swallowed it and drank another. Pleasant warmth spread into her chest.

  She attempted to determine from her log how far she had come, but the last few entries held scant information. To worsen matters, no wind or stars emerged. She sat there for some time, hoping, until the cold drove her below.

  Dawn broke to a clear sky and a brisk east wind. Though this had undoubtedly driven the Ottersong even farther along the Drift than Rhinne would have liked, at least she had wind, now. At once, she got to work changing course.

  Once out of the current, she began to tack windward, feeling hope with the rising sun. But her hope didn’t last. A subtle change touched the air like a damp, cold breath. On the northeastern horizon, white haze gathered in the shape of a thorn.

  Endwinter.

  Buried deep in the history of Tromb, the myth attributed the storm to the Mistress of the Sea, a great serpent big enough to surround the Gray Isles. In the spring, she stirred, opened her great jaws and exhaled. As Endwinter swept over the sea, it cleansed the depths and washed the isles with rain and wind, awakening them from their winter slumber. It was said the Mistress knew little of mortals, and like a woman in the throes of destruction, cared nothing for them. So sailors avoided the sea when the storm gathered, three days before, and three days after, as if to hide from the influence of a dark moon.

  Rhinne knew stories of sailors who had returned to port from the clutches
of Endwinter. Stories aside, few risked being caught in it, and though Rhinne hadn’t ceased to scry the horizon for signs of pursuit, the fact that the warlock had forsaken his chase didn’t bode well.

  Rhinne eased off on her sails with a troubled breath. No point trying to outrun this out here. Best she could do was ride it out. She heaved to and lashed the tiller. Then she shook the cold from her bones and went to secure her supplies and take down the sails.

  Trust the water.

  Trusting a river was one thing, but that advice had come from a dream. Only luck had saved her from the Lower Draumar.

  Endwinter was another matter. Harald, a flesh and blood man who had known war at sea and beyond, had warned her against this. But as before, she had found herself facing a threat that forced her into a desperate decision. She cringed under her oath to him. This might not have gone so badly if not for the oborom, fog and a dead wind. Under the original plan, she would have been safely in port by now.

  As Rhinne worked, the thorn widened, deepened, and devoured the sun in a bank of clouds shimmering with silent lightning. She finished securing the Ottersong and cast a drogue from the stern. Then she returned to the tiller with a handful of rye tack and watched the storm knit itself upon the sky, building and gathering force. The sky darkened as the wind picked up and stirred the waves into scattered rhythms.

  She stopped chewing and swallowed as something changed.

  The water swirled and bubbled like a cauldron stirred from the depths. A flashing wave of fishes swept over the surface as if to escape something below. One after another, enormous swells rose from beneath the turbulent waves, smooth and dark green, arcing gracefully. Rhinne got up, staggering to keep her balance. Then she fled for the cabin stairs.

  She never made it. Something slick and black towered up from the waters and whipped around, raising wind and spray into a gale that flattened her on the deck. It lifted the Ottersong and threw Rhinne into the hollow beneath the tiller seat. With a great crash it submerged again, rocking the boat nearly clean over and throwing Rhinne from one side of the deck to the other as it came to rights.

  The Ottersong swayed and rocked in confusion on the troubled waves. Rhinne’s heart thumped wildly, her flesh tingled with shock and she now had a new set of bruises from being thrown around in the cockpit. She crept across the deck and grasped the tiller to regain control over the boat.

  What just happened? Unless her wits utterly deceived her, she had just seen a sea serpent. She had never entertained those stories as real. Aside from a childhood fairy tale about Endwinter, the only other reference she knew was the knotted image on her amulet. But that meant nothing.

  Wind, legends, and dreams crowded Rhinne’s mind as she worked the tiller to keep the Ottersong from being swamped by the heavy sea. The boat creaked and groaned as if in pain. Droplets of sea spray filled the air, mixed with driving snow and rain. The foam on the waves shone white against the darkness. She couldn’t tell which way the wind blew anymore; it came from every direction at once.

  Rhinne gripped the tiller as a shadow passed over her heart. Water rolled and splashed around the rudder. The tall swells of the waves rhythmically obscured the foamy void. The clouds and rain became a black, rolling force empty as the coldest desolation. Rhinne’s heart began to pound. Darkness rent her womb like a scream, a curtain of bleeding thorns.

  She released the tiller and stood, backing away with her arms clutched over her gut as she realized why she could no longer see the sky or the stormy features of the sea.

  She was in the path of a water wall as high as a chasm drop.

  Her heart in her throat, Rhinne bounded, flailing and gasping for her life, to the cabin hatch. She tore it open and leapt down the steps, knowing as she closed it that she was sealing herself into a watery tomb.

  She ran to the back of the cabin and got into the bunk. One side of the Ottersong reared up now, speeding over a watery embankment. Rhinne gripped onto the bunk as if it might somehow save her from what was about to happen.

  The memories of her life flowed as a slow moving, brightly colored river as the wave struck, sending the Ottersong spinning around, then up on its side and completely over. Rhinne screamed. She tumbled to the roof as the boat went over, then to the floor as it went over again, clutching and grasping at objects as they flew around her. It was completely dark. She heard a horrible cracking noise from above, then fell to her face just as the top of the mast crashed through the cabin roof, knocking something into pieces and scattering it across the floor. Water poured in through the ceiling.

  Her cry went unheard as the Ottersong lurched sideways again, pitching her across the floor. Choking on brine, she groped for air. As she tried to thrust her body forward, her head struck something that didn’t move.

  Darkness descended slowly, like a coiling serpent.

  The Aenlisarfon

  A young buck stepped from the thickening spring tangle of a raspberry patch on a wooded hillside. Lorth of Ostarin, his tall, lean body tucked into the hemlock trees like a mountain cat, soundlessly lifted and drew his bow, arrow nocked. An elegant bow, it had been given to him by Icaros, the wizard who had raised him.

  The buck hesitated as wind sighed through the trees, driving a cloud over the morning sun. The hunter released the string. He rose, hopped gracefully over a mossy boulder, and made his way down. Icaros had enchanted the bow with a homing spell, a parting gift to Lorth as he went into the world to find his fortune as an assassin in service to the darker forces of nature, the efficacy of weapons, and a bit of coin.

  Much had changed since then.

  As Lorth reached the buck, it bleated softly, struggling with death. The hunter placed his hand on the creature’s neck and breathed a word in the Dark Tongue, the language of formlessness. The animal stilled as its essence fled into the arms of the Old One, the creatrix, origin of all conscious structure and the forces of transformation.

  An unkindness of ravens flew from the north and landed in a rustle in the surrounding trees with varied sounds of begging and recognition. Years ago, the local ravens had figured out that Lorth not only walked with death but also left portions of his kills for his eldritch companions. The creatures always seemed to know where he was, a sense born of thousands of years of hunting with wolves.

  Lorth pulled a knife from his belt, dressed the buck, and left the remains. The ravens flooded down. He cut down a pair of saplings and fashioned a narrow sled onto which he tied the carcass. Heaving it behind him, he headed up the hill to the northern gates of Eyrie, the ruling seat of the Keepers of the Eye.

  The wizards’ citadel sat atop the mountain of Rothmar like a crown. In its center stood the Oculus, an eight-sided amethyst Waeltower that focused the mind of Ealiron through an architectural construct connected to the Source, the energy of the planet. As a Raven, the highest order in the hierarchy of the Keepers of the Eye, Lorth perceived the Source as a river of light flowing up from beneath the tower with stunning power and precision. It had taken him two years after his initiation to adjust to it. Flowing from the formlessness the Old One, the Source sang in every tree, plant, stone, stream and creature as the awareness of a god.

  Lorth climbed the steep terrain in long strides, weaving through the trees, brush and boulders with the undaunted ease of a northman. His mind was clear but for the sounds of birds and the wind in the trees. Several of the ravens had followed him with their usual trickery in mind, but a bark in the Dark Tongue kept them in check. As he reached the narrow, twisting path that led to the citadel, Lorth adjusted his burden and caught his breath. Then he headed up, the long, graying braids of his hair swaying with his gait.

  Ahead, an ancient gate of carven stone marked the northern entrance to the citadel. In the arch, carved and set in gold, shone the standard of Eyrie: an open eye enclosed by a circle and the spiraling rays of a sun. As he approached the gate, Lorth perceived a shimmering watch-web that hadn’t been there when he departed early that morning. Not one to be k
ept track of, he spoke a word as he passed through, rendering his presence as insubstantial as moonlight.

  As he walked up the shallow steps, a familiar voice rang out in the trees. “Master Lorth!” A girl of thirteen summers jumped from the top of a wall and ran up to him. Born in the borderlands between Asmoralin and Haln, she had frizzy black hair, dark skin, and eyes the color of amber honey. She wore the stiff leather trappings of a swordsman’s training gear, and had a black cloak with red trim folded over her shoulders. It dragged the ground.

  “Banyae,” Lorth said pleasantly. “You should be in the yards. Samolan will make you spend the night in the South Tower if you miss his lesson.” He glanced at her sidelong. “Is that my cloak?”

  “Aye,” she said with a grin that fled quickly. “I’m on orders from the Aenlisarfon. They want you in Onesee.”

  Lorth climbed the path, dragging his kill. That explains the watch-web, he thought. He knew on first seeing the young page why she had come. Whenever Lorth tuned out the mind-voices of the Aenlisarfon, which he did often, they called on Banyae to track him down. She had learned his habits by talking to Samolan, a warrior from Haln whom Lorth had fought alongside for many years as a Raptor, an order of warriors in service to the Eye. As usual, Banyae knew where to find Lorth, though she had enough sense not to come out into the forest where he liked to hunt.

  “They said now,” she added, peering up at him.

  Lorth continued up the path a short distance until he reached the northern arm of the citadel. He shrugged the sled from his shoulders and lowered it to the ground. “Think you can carry this?”

  Banyae made a face. “Sod that!”

  Lorth hid a smile. “Language,” he chided her. “You’ve been hanging around Samolan too much.” The Halnsman had taken Banyae under his wing as an apprentice to the sword, but not to the finer aspects of social decorum.