They still wanted something.
She flinched as the door rattled and screeched behind her. She twisted around. No place to hide, no weapons, nothing. As the door closed with a boom, she stood up to face her fate.
The Sentinel of the West strode in under his usual stormy mien. Rhinne held her hatred behind a fortress wall. No sense giving him something else to use against her.
“Come with me,” the prince said shortly. Rhinne snatched her cloak from a chair and entered her brother’s wake. As they passed through the dark passages of Tromblast’s underground, she calculated how much damage she might do to him before he put her down. Adder had taught her much. But he hadn’t taught her his private magic, and without that she would be no match for Dore. The wicked prince knew it, too. He made no effort to contain her.
They ascended into the higher levels of the tower and entered a hall with a tall arched ceiling. A warriors’ meeting place, it was used for feasts, gatherings and drunken mayhem, if Wulfgar’s stories were to be believed. Rows of columns in the shapes of serpents supported the arches. Everywhere stood pale statues of women, gods and beasts. Some of them had been defaced.
High above, in one corner, part of the ceiling had caved in, revealing the early morning sky. Hooded crows perched about on the broken walls, cawing loudly.
Dore led her to a fire burning in a rough stone hearth. Faintly illuminated by the daylight, a high-backed chair faced the fire, obscuring a man who sat there. The air smelled of woodsmoke, bitter herbs and bile. A puddle of vomit splattered the hearthstones. No one had bothered to clean it up.
Dore approached the chair and moved before it, his brow lowering like a rain cloud. Rhinne’s heartbeat quickened as the man in the chair stood and turned to her.
“Daughter,” the king rasped. He looked shorter than Rhinne remembered him. His hair had grown long and unkempt, with large swaths of gray, and he had a days-old beard. Set deeply into sunken cheeks, his eyes were no longer cerulean blue but clouded with milk, gazing more inward than outward. Once a tall, fair king, he had become a sorcerer who had given his soul to a god who had violated the balance of the world. He clutched the top of the chair with a gnarled hand, swaying on his feet.
“What do you want?” Rhinne asked.
He wheezed like an old man. “Much. When my armies crush the forces of Ealiron they will have earned a great reward for their service to Carmaenos.” He moved uneasily around and dropped into the chair, breathing heavily.
“You look unwell, Father,” Rhinne remarked, knowing what weakened him.
In a thin voice, he continued, “Your mother was unfit to bear me a fourth son. But you,” his milky gaze crept over her as he put his head back, “you have the strength of a warrior. You will bear him.”
Rhinne coughed up a laugh. “How do you suppose you’ll accomplish that?”
Her face exploded as Dore struck her with the back of his hand. The blow whipped her head to the side and caused her to stagger.
The king huddled in his chair as if unaware. He made a weird sound in his throat.
“Father?” Dore said, moving to his side. The prince’s face was pale and his expression drawn. Rhinne had never seen him so distraught.
She glanced sidelong into the room. Now might be a good time to make a break for it.
The king cried out, clutching his breast. “My lord Carmaenos!”
Rhinne fled. Behind her, Dore shouted a string of horrible words that swept over her body like a tentacle.
She heaved to a stop with a shriek as a tall, shining figure appeared in her path. An unbelievably strong male hand gripped her by the edge of the leather hauberk she wore and lifted her into the air. Clad as a warrior, impossibly fair, his long, flaxen hair shone like the morning and his pale blue eyes froze her heart.
The Riven God set her down gently, his presence established. Rhinne stumbled back, clutching her throat, her heart pounding wildly.
“Master,” Dore said. His voice shook. “The king is dead.”
*
A complex birdcall racket echoed into the vaults of the hall before the east gatehouse as Aelfric pocketed Hemlock’s whistle. He grabbed his sword from the floor and rolled up onto his feet. The sound, like that of crows, proved useless aside from giving his assailants a moment’s pause.
Aelfric threw a sloppy kick at the first warlock who recovered his wits. As the man twisted out of the way, Aelfric found a gap in his guard and slashed him across the torso. The others charged him. The priest’s spell had weakened him, but he had more strength than he had originally thought. Hemlock’s touch, perhaps. More likely, the priest had been in too much haste to construct it properly or, being Ragnvald’s apothecary, didn’t possess the same abilities as the more powerful priests. Slashing and parrying the attack, Aelfric maneuvered in Adelan’s direction. If his supposition about the priest was correct, the warrior might still be alive.
Adelan no longer lay on the floor.
One of the oborom turned on the others and began striking them down. Heartened by this change in fortune, Aelfric lashed out with more force. From the direction of the gatehouse, men began to shout. Beyond the portcullis, hundreds of oborom rushed forth and slammed against the bars. The portcullis rattled up slowly, allowing droves of black-clad warlocks into the hall.
Using the distraction, Adelan struck down another. But the last two oborom were no longer concerned with them; they lowered their blades and stumbled back, their faces filled with horror. Then they fled. Throughout the hall, warlocks erupted into a commotion as a cloud of large black and gray birds swooped from the plain and into the gatehouse. Hooded crows. Cawing harshly, they swarmed into the hall, causing a frenzied confluence as the men coming into the gate collided with those seeking to escape the birds. Some of the warlocks stopped and stared; others ducked and hollered commands to vanquish what they believed was some magic sent against them.
“Why do they fear the birds?” Adelan said.
“Hooded crows are thought to serve the Mistress.”
The crows headed right for Aelfric and Adelan. “Get down!” Aelfric shouted. The two men knelt with their hands over their heads as the birds flew down like a storm, hundreds of ashy gray birds with black heads, throats, wings and tails. They landed on and around the men in a thick blanket of noisy caws and knocking sounds.
The whistle. When Aelfric realized the birds meant no harm, he rose. The crows fluttered up and landed on and around him again, perching, preening and cocking their heads, black eyes shining in curious attention. The creatures avoided the bodies of the oborom.
“What is this?” Adelan said, staring around. He sat on the floor, cloaked in birds. As he held out his arms, they covered them. One bird hopped on top of his head.
Aelfric coughed on a laugh. “I think Hemlock’s whistle brought them. Either that or our priest was not a very good priest.”
Adelan got to his feet, taking care not to step on the birds. “He’s about to be in even more trouble, then. I got the herbs in his basket while he was dealing with you.”
Aelfric grinned. “Brilliant.”
They whirled around as the roar of men sounded from the plain. More oborom ran into the hall, in fear for their lives. The portcullis thundered down as the gatekeeper hit the release. It shook the ground as it struck, impaling several warriors. The noise caused the hooded crows to lift up in unison, leaving Aelfric an Adelan standing on a carpet of bird droppings amid the bodies of the men they had killed.
“Let’s get lost,” Aelfric suggested. As they ran towards the wall, the birds followed them. Men fled in every direction as they passed.
“Shit,” Adelan said, looking up as the eldritch winged crowd fluttered and careened around them. “Can you dismiss them?”
“I don’t know how I called them.”
“Try blowing the whistle from the other end or something.”
Aelfric laughed, despite himself. “They did clear us a path.” Crows clamored around them, their calls
merging with the pounding rustle and shouts of warriors forming into battle lines.
For some reason, the gate began to open again. Then Aelfric realized why the king’s army had fled into the keep. Northmen, Trombian warriors and, to Aelfric’s astonishment, Raptors charged into the hall and clashed with the oborom lines.
That was enough for the crows. In unison they lifted into the air and flew for the gate, causing men to drop to the floor as they passed overhead.
Adelan stared at the foreign warriors as they raged into the hall. “Those are Eaglin’s men. You said the Mistress destroyed them.”
“I don’t know what I saw.” He looked down at himself. “We’re dressed like oborom.”
They discarded their cloaks, drew their swords and joined the fray, helping the Keepers’ army. Here and there against the walls, groups of oborom began to kneel in surrender with their hands on their heads. Some of them were priests.
Aelfric’s attention was caught by a mounted warrior with golden hair moving in the rush before the gatehouse arch. Aelfric cupped his hands over his mouth. “Wulfgar!”
The prince checked his mount and looked around to find the source of the call. Aelfric shouted again. When the prince saw him, he urged his steed through the turmoil. As he approached, he jumped from his horse in mid-stride and tackled Aelfric with an embrace. “By the Mistress,” he breathed. “Thought I’d lost you.” He held Aelfric at arm’s length as the battle raged around them. “What are you doing in here?”
“I’ll explain later.” He lifted his chin as Adelan ran up to them, his sword dripping blood. He stopped and wiped it off on a dead man’s cloak, then sheathed it.
Wulfgar embraced the northman. “You bastard,” he growled. “I’ve never been so glad to see you.” The prince turned around as if searching for someone, then lifted his fingers to his lips and whistled.
A mounted warrior in a fine black cloak reined his horse around and moved in their direction. Aelfric’s spine tingled as his animal senses glimmered with power. The wizard approached and dismounted, then slapped his arms around Adelan as Wulfgar had. “If I hadn’t just seen you die I would kick your ass,” he said, releasing the warrior with a genuine smile. When he turned to Aelfric, his smile faded. He nodded in strange acknowledgment. “I am Lorth, the Raven of Ostarin.”
“Aelfric of Tromb.” A chill swept over him as the wizard regarded him from the eyes of a wolf.
“What happened?” Adelan asked, looking between them. “Where is Rhinne?”
“Dore took her,” Wulfgar said, “after publicly executing someone we thought was you.” Leaving the warrior with that disturbing information, he turned to Aelfric. “Tell me you know where she is.”
“I don’t.” Aelfric recalled the gathering of elite he had seen in the passage beneath the North Tower. “But I know where we can start looking.”
*
Rhinne stood before the Riven God as her eldest brother’s announcement settled into her mind like the hooded crows circling above. Dead. In her visions, she had seen Ragnvald weakening. She hadn’t sensed this. Perhaps the king had thought himself immortal.
The Riven God didn’t take his attention from her. She flinched as he reached out and touched the throbbing bruise on her cheek where Dore had earlier struck her. The pain subsided, and then vanished. With an inscrutable expression, the war god brushed a tangle of hair from her face.
“Master?” Dore repeated, stepping away from the chair in which the king had died.
“You will take his place,” Carmaenos said. “Leave us.”
The prince hesitated, his face ashen, until the entity impaled him with a stare. Clenching his jaw, Dore swept by them and left the hall. The door slammed with a boom.
Carmaenos walked to the fire, his dark cloak swirling around his feet. When Rhinne didn’t move, he beckoned. “Come, child. I will not harm you.”
Not believing that for a moment, Rhinne walked slowly towards the fire, skirting around to keep a distance from her father’s corpse and the puddle of his sickness. When she came in sight of the chair, it was empty. She gulped. It wasn’t that the god had focused the body elsewhere that rattled her, but the casual way he had done it. Like brushing a dead spider from his sleeve.
“All things dream,” the entity said in the voice of a moonrise. “My dreams create worlds. I would place you above this one.”
Without thinking, Rhinne said, “I am not Eifin. And this is not your world.”
The entity regarded her with veiled interest. Rhinne suddenly realized she shouldn’t have revealed the things she knew. She recalled Ascarion’s warning: One thought, Rhinne. That is all it will take for him to undo everything. By way of recovery she added, “That spell your minion cut into me made me see things.”
She jumped as the god appeared before her, close enough for her to catch his scent, a disturbing blend of animal musk and brine. She stepped back.
“You smell like another man,” the god noted.
Rhinne’s cheeks flushed hot. “A man your pets murdered in cold blood.”
“Ah,” he sighed. “I fear your brother went to great pains to make you believe that.”
“You lie.” Her throat tightened.
“Your father sought to break you, just as he sought to break your mother. He never succeeded at either.” His pale hair slid from his shoulder and caught the firelight as he lowered his head thoughtfully. “You are right, of course: you are not Eifin. You are of that essence, but an aspect is a complex being. You have strength Eifin does not.”
“Because you raped her,” Rhinne shot back.
That mysterious look, again. “You do not know the whole of it. I regret harming her, and refocused this timeline to change it. Eifin never existed.”
Rhinne closed her arms over the scar in her abdomen. “In the minds of gods, it happened. You changed this timeline to hide it, not undo it.”
“That’s what you were told.”
“I know about Eifin’s book. You sent your thugs after me to find out where it was so you could escape with the evidence.”
The beautiful entity turned his face just so, as if the accusation hurt him. “Do you feel obligated to abide the will of Eusiron, whatever he asks of you? All things have free will. I didn’t bid them to harm you; they took that upon themselves. I sought only to find and bring you here. To explain.”
Rhinne knew he was trying to soften her, to trick her, but his manner was so sad and strong she half wanted to believe him. The trouble was, though her father and his priests had tried to violate her, they didn’t, and Rhinne couldn’t claim the experience as her own. Now this devious god had not only rendered Eifin nonexistent but also released himself from Ragnvald’s reign of terror by calling on the law of free will—the same power that had enabled him to invade the world in the first place.
“What do you want with me?” she asked, no longer afraid.
“Your forgiveness,” the god said quietly.
“By your own account, there is nothing to forgive. Why then do you ask this of me? Suppose I refuse?”
He spread a perfect hand in a gesture of patience. “You have seen trouble by my presence here. I did not wish it upon you, no more than your creator Eusiron did by letting a priest onto your ship.”
Rhinne lifted her chin. “I haven’t forgiven him for that. Neither has the Mistress of the Sea—and she has less love for you, so you know. Why should I forgive you?”
She stood before the god in challenge, waiting for the floor to fall out from under her by a bad turn of his mind. The sound of shouting men and clashing arms filled the passages beyond the hall. Something slammed against the door.
Dore ran in and swiftly shut the door behind him. He uttered some kind of spell. “Master!” he barked, striding into the room. “We are under siege—”
In a swift, shifting wind, Carmaenos appeared before Rhinne’s brother with a word, silencing him. Flushed with anger, Dore drew the East Born blade. Bad move. The Riven God’s sword appe
ared in his hand a moment before the blow, parrying and slicing into the prince’s guard with the precision of a snake strike.
Rhinne stumbled back as the entity moved again, his form swirling in mist before her. She wouldn’t have believed anything had happened but for Dore’s body crumpled near the door in a widening pool of blood.
Suddenly, she recalled Eusiron on the deck of the Winterscythe after the Mistress had finished with him. The god had let Rhinne strike him. Punch him in the chest. Curse him. She couldn’t imagine Carmaenos doing anything like that. He would have cut her down.
Then she had another thought. Carmaenos knew that Eusiron had let the priest aboard the Winterscythe. Rhinne never had understood how her own Source, who had involved himself in this far beyond the expected, could have been so careless. What if he did it because he knew Carmaenos would see it? There had to be a reason. The Dark Warrior couldn’t have anticipated what the Mistress would do. Or could he? Perhaps he knew the loerfalos would intervene, protect Rhinne and punish him for exposing her.
A message. He did it to leave her a message: the Destroyer cared no more for the strategies of gods than she did for those of mortals. She was beyond them. As Lorth was fond of saying, Only the Old One knows. The Void was the source, the binding force that gave all things expression, from the smallest shell to the gods themselves.
And Rhinne was a Web. The earth, keeping secrets—and the sky flashed and rumbled with a storm.
Eusiron. A tear broke from her eye and slid down her cheek. I didn’t understand.
The Riven God’s mood darkened like a new leaf touched by frost. “A clever witch, you are. But you are not the Old One.”
Rhinne spun around as the door crashed open. Warriors in red, gray and black rushed in with thunderous yell. “Rhinne!” a man shouted in a voice she knew. All the blood drained from her face.
The hall vanished.
*
Rhinne stood on an outcropping carved with strange symbols. Around her in every direction lay the smoking ruins of a realm that once had been green, fair and covered in old forests. Gray mountains towered around it. Rivers flowed sluggishly, choked with corpses and debris. Charred, broken trunks crouched beneath the overcast sky, thatches on roofs had burned to the open air and bodies lay everywhere: men, woman, children, animals. An army of ravens picked at the remains. Wind blew across the desolation, carrying the smell of smoke and death.
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