As Iome poled at the rudder, her robes turning into a sopping weight, she heard the first of the warhorns blow, soft and distant, like the braying of a donkey. They were too deep of timbre to be horns of Mystarria.
Asgaroth.
Upstream behind them.
Someone had found the dead strengi-saats in the shallows, and now they called to other hunters.
For the next long hour, the horns continued to draw nearer. Ten miles back. Six miles. Three.
The steep banks and thick growth along the river seemed not to slow their pursuers. The hunters had to be on foot, but they were men with endowments of brawn and metabolism and stamina, so that they could run faster than a normal man, faster even than the swift current that bore the little boat along at perhaps eight miles per hour here in the hills.
But the longboat would soon be heading into deep valleys where the water grew sluggish and the pursuers’ path would grow easy.
Iome looked down to Myrrima and Hadissa. Both of them had endowments of hearing. They too had heard the pursuers and thus held worry on their brows.
“Pull close to shore,” Hadissa whispered at last as he reached into a rucksack and drew out his weapons. He held a strange assortment—throwing darts like small daggers, their blades green with poison from the malefactor bush; a garrote woven of golden threads; a curved steel club; a horn bow that would quickly lose its strength in the damp woods. He attached the darts to his belt, looped the garrote around his waist, and otherwise armed himself for stealthy battle.
He hesitated at the horn bow. He dared not remove such a fine weapon from its oilskin case, let it be ruined. The glue that bound the layers of ox-horn in it would turn to mush in a matter of hours.
But he was in great need. At last, he took it, still in its oilskin, along with two quivers of arrows.
Iome steered the boat close to a rock.
“Want help?” she asked.
She feared that Hadissa was on a suicide mission. He might be the most dangerous man alive, but even he could not hope to defeat Asgaroth’s army.
He smiled, a show of bravery. “It is time to repay an old debt.”
Iome nodded. Years ago, assassins from Indhopal had killed her husband’s mother, brother, and two sisters. It was only by luck that Gaborn had escaped that night, for he’d sneaked down to the garden to play with the wild ferrins.
Thus, Hadissa had missed killing the child who would grow up to become the Earth King.
When Gaborn met Hadissa again, years later, he’d looked into Hadissa’s heart and seen what he had done.
It was devastating. Yet in the world of the Runelords, an assassin’s trade was considered necessary. Some even thought it honorable. So Gaborn forgave Hadissa and Chose him under one condition: that from henceforth Hadissa would guard the family he had once tried to wipe out.
Now, Hadissa would seek to redeem himself.
“The fog will hide you, so long as the wind doesn’t pick up too much more,” Myrrima whispered. She knelt and reached into the water, brought up a handful, and sprinkled it upon him. “Blessed be your blades. May they strike true against Asgaroth and all enemies of Water.”
Hadissa bowed in token of his thanks for the blessing. Then with the grace of a deer he leapt from the boat and landed upon a rock. He squatted for a moment, perfectly still, like a dark cat, listening.
Then he leapt under the shadows of a pine bough, and Iome could see or hear him no more.
He will take a mighty toll, Iome assured herself as the boat flowed inexorably on.
The boat rounded a corner, and spanning above the river ahead was a land bridge, a huge natural arch of stone, with pine trees growing atop it, green ferns clinging to its side, and vines hanging toward the water. There were huge stones in the river beneath it, and the river split. There was a dark V of water, and the roaring of rapids beyond. This bridge was called Eiderstoffen, and not far below it, the river came out of the mountains and dumped into a broad plain. There the river slowed, flowed into the warmer waters of the River Dwindell, and meandered; once they reached that junction, though they were but fifty miles from the seacoast and the castle at the Courts of Tide, it would take many hours for their little boat to reach safe harbor.
Our enemies will be upon us well before then, Iome knew, and mentally she prepared herself for her death, for she suspected that she would not be able to buy her son safe passage with anything less.
The boat raced toward the archway under the stones, and Iome suspected that Myrrima would turn and ask if they should beach the boat, carry it around the rapids, but Myrrima did not turn. She aimed the prow into the darkest V of water, and the boat rushed through it, then suddenly dropped and lofted again as they hit white water.
Overhead, as they passed under the land bridge, hundreds of swallows’ nests could be seen, smears of white mud and twigs against the darker stone.
Then they rode through, and Iome saw a bit of snow in the branches of trees. But as the boat drew near them, the snow suddenly lifted, and white birds flew in a miraculous cloud that took her breath away. Snow doves, they were called. They must have come down from the mountains, where they fed on pine nuts and other seeds at the snow line.
For a long minute, she watched their white wings against the deep gray clouds as the flock veered this way and that. It seemed to Iome to be the most beautiful sight that she had ever seen.
The river twisted ahead, and white water roared and foamed over rocks everywhere. For several long moments the boat rocked, and some of the children cried out as it bucked.
Plumes of water surged over the gunwales.
The boat hit a submerged rock; boards cracked under the impact.
Then it slewed through swift water, around a second bend, and they rushed out of the hills and could see only plains ahead.
The boat hit the slow waters, and Iome spotted a small cottage high up on the banks, its stone walls and heavy thatch roof hidden behind a screen of cattails. A child’s rope swing hung beneath an elm that leaned out over the river, and a small fishing boat was perched on the shore.
But the sight of a peasant’s cottage offered no comfort. With a cottage near, Iome knew, a road will run beside the river. Our pursuers will make even better time.
The sounds of rapids faded.
For twenty minutes they rode the slow river. Around every bend she feared that Asgaroth’s troops would meet them. But she saw nothing, and she realized that Hadissa, brave Hadissa, was indeed holding back an army.
For twenty minutes more they traveled. She heard a horn again, not more than two miles back, high and clear—a horn of Mystarria.
Fierce braying answered from deeper horns.
“The battle is joined,” Sir Borenson said, grasping his warhammer and staring back longingly. “Waggit’s men have finally arrived.”
“One can hope,” Iome said.
In the slow water, they rode along, fully exposed.
Iome watched behind. The cottage faded away, but before they rounded a wide corner, Iome saw dark figures running along the riverbank, flashing through trees.
The boat rounded the corner. For a few seconds their pursuers would be hidden.
My turn, Iome thought as she quietly took her long sword and leapt from the boat. The water was shallow, no more than three feet deep, and numbingly cold. Iome landed a dozen yards from shore, then waded in among some cattails and crept up on a bank thick with moss.
Overhead, the skies were cold and gray. Rain fell. The thin mist that had been on the water all morning held. Iome knew that her hunters would be blinded by it.
She quietly crept up to the top of the riverbank and took a post behind a tree, waiting. She did not have to wait long.
Several fat axmen from Internook came huffing along the river at three times a normal man’s speed.
Fast, she told herself, but not as fast as me.
Iome glimpsed them through the branches, then hid herself for a moment.
She h
ad ten endowments of metabolism, three times as much as these men. They could not hope to match her speed. And suddenly the endowments that had been sending her racing headlong toward her death for these nine years became an asset, here at the end of her life.
When the axmen drew even with her tree, she leapt in front of them; their eyes went wide with shock when they saw her suddenly rush toward them from the mist.
They tried to halt, tried to raise their weapons. One man cried, “Och!” But with greater speed, Iome dodged their blows and with three quick slices took their heads off.
The bodies were still falling when she whirled and raced along the riverbank, following the boat. She remained in the brush along the riverside, but now the land around them opened up into fields for cattle to forage, and there was little cover at all.
In the morning, she raced through a meadow, where cottontail rabbits held as still as stone, ears pricked up, water sparkling in their fur as she passed. A pair of grouse leapt up from a bush, their wings thundering, and in seeming slow motion they winged over Iome’s head.
I am a ghost in the mist, she thought. I am fleet and fierce and untouchable.
Then she heard shouting on the river, and whirled to glance behind her. Just then, the heavens shook and lightning arced from horizon to horizon, and a fierce wind rumbled through the trees, making proud elms bow before it while drier grasses were knocked flat.
Asgaroth, Iome realized. He is blowing the fog away.
There was a shout from the river, and Iome saw that the wind had shoved the boat against the far bank, and now it was stuck there, lodged between two rocks.
Iome looked back upstream, saw dark figures racing through the trees along the bank. She dropped to her belly and eeled through a patch of tall meadow grass toward the boat, then lay concealed behind a fallen log.
Get Asgaroth, she told herself, and the rest will flee. He’s all that matters.
12
A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS
I would like to believe that with careful planning, hard work, and adequate resolve, I can create my own destiny. But other men with evil resolve make me doubt it.
—Fallion Sylvarresta Orden
Fallion woke as the boat thudded against the shore, the wind screaming all around.
He grabbed his dagger and leapt up, his hand still aching from his wound, and climbed out of the shelter. Borenson and Myrrima were poling the boat away from the rocks, but the wind was so fierce that their efforts did little good. Fallion looked around, realized that Hadissa and his mother were gone.
“What’s going on?” Fallion cried, and in a moment Jaz was there at his back.
Borenson turned, his face red from effort, and shouted, “Get back inside!”
“Can I help?” Fallion called.
“No!” Borenson shouted, and he turned and peered upriver, his face stark with alarm.
Fallion followed his gaze. A black wind was driving bullets of rain into his face. On the banks, running between trees, dozens of enemy troops rushed toward them.
“Are we going to die?” Jaz asked.
“Get in the shelter,” Borenson shouted, pushing Fallion and Jaz away. The tarp roof of their shelter flapped like a drumhead, thrumming from the wind. Fallion got in the shelter, but scrambled to the back so that he could peer upstream through cracks between the crates.
Something—a strange cloud—was rolling toward them—a ball of night with shadows dancing inside, strengi-saats seemingly carried in a maelstrom.
Lightning flashed overhead and thunder rumbled, troubling the waters. And all around that ball of shadow warriors swarmed toward the boat, moving so swiftly by reason of endowments that Fallion’s eyes could not follow them.
Ahead of the maelstrom, one warrior in the dark tunic of an assassin sprinted toward the boat—Hadissa!
Borenson raced to the door of their little fortress, blocking it with his bulk, and stood guard.
“Hide!” he warned the children. “Find the safest corner.”
Fallion gripped his own dagger. Though he was only nine, he had trained with weaponry for as long as he could remember, and calluses from blade practice had grown thick on his palm and along the inside of his thumb.
Suddenly from the black storm that came rushing toward them came a howl, deep and almost wolflike, but ululating rapidly—like cries of glee with words in them. At first Fallion thought it might be the hunting cries of strengi-saats.
Then he wondered if it might be the wind, howling like some beast. Fallion listened closely.
The ball of wind rolled toward Hadissa, who shouted a battle cry as he turned in one last desperate attempt to meet the enemy.
The wind screamed, and Fallion saw a dark knot of straw suddenly rise up out of the grass and shoot toward Hadissa, hurtling like bolts from a ballista.
The assassin leapt and tried to dodge as he spun in midair. The pieces of straw lanced toward him, and Fallion thought that they had missed, for when Hadissa landed, he stood on the balls of his feet.
But the wind was buffeting him, propping him up like a marionette. It lifted him in the air slowly, letting him spin, so that Fallion could see the ruin of his face.
The straw had pierced his right eye socket, burrowed through his brain, and left a gaping hole out the back of his head. A small tornado whirled through the hole still, sending more bits of straw through his socket, expanding the hole, so that brain matter and flecks of blood hurtled from the back of the wound.
The wind worked Hadissa’s mouth as if he jabbered inanely. Then the wind tossed him high into the air.
Fallion gasped in shock.
Hadissa had always seemed to be a fixture in Fallion’s life, a monolith. Now he was dead.
The maelstrom of dark wind boiled toward the boat.
A ball of lightning hurtled from the blackness and shot toward them. Fallion whirled, placing his back to a box for protection, turning away from the attack.
He peered up at Borenson. The ball lightning sizzled just overhead so that Fallion felt his hair stand on end. There was a crackling sound, a grunt and a cry, and for half a second, Borenson’s chest lit up so brightly that Fallion could see the red of blood and veins in it, the gray shadows of ribs. The blast hurtled him into the air, knocking him overboard.
Fallion let out a startled cry.
Suddenly he was plunged into utter darkness. Then Fallion’s eyes began to readjust.
Myrrima let out a shrill cry and grabbed her bow. Though the wind raged all around, the wizardess seemed calm, collected.
She drew her steel bow to its full and shouted, “Come no farther. You cannot have these children.”
The wind howled and raged. Fallion heard it keen over the boat, ripping trees from the bank by their roots.
Suddenly everything went quiet. For half a second, he just crouched, listening. It was as if the wind had disappeared.
He heard a dull thud, and Fallion felt as if he were at the heart of a storm. He could hear wind swirling around in the distance. Darkness had so enveloped the boat that he could hardly make out Myrrima’s shadow, though she was no more than a dozen feet away.
The enemy was out there, waiting.
Fallion peered through the crack. Around him the rest of the children huddled, trembling from fear.
From out of the darkness strode a man, all in black. At first, Fallion thought that it was a stranger. But then he saw that it was Hadissa, and he was not striding. Instead, he moved in little hops as the wind picked him up a bit, then let him bounce back down, his feet barely touching the ground.
Behind him, grim warriors strode through the shadows, and dark strengi-saats floated through the air, borne like kites, appearing briefly and then disappearing again. Myrrima let an arrow fly, and one strengi-saat dropped like a wounded dove.
A fierce light shone, ball lightning spewing around Hadissa’s head, as if the wind wanted Fallion to see this.
Hadissa drew near, a pale marionette, perhaps a hundred pace
s across the river; his dead mouth flapped like a scrap of cloth in the wind. His one good eye was fixed and growing cloudy, but it was the ragged hole where the other eye should have been that seemed to focus on Fallion. Wind surged through it, into the dead man’s skull, and issued out through his windpipe, causing the ragged flesh to tremble as he spoke.
“Come with me, child,” the wind insisted in a strange, rasping voice. “Long have I waited. You are a lord of the living, but I can make you King of the Dead.”
Fallion’s heart beat so fast that he thought it might break. It took all his courage to keep from running, to keep from leaping into the river, but something inside whispered that fleeing would accomplish nothing. There was something mesmerizing about the voice, haunting.
He could taste the air, a blazing hot streak across the bridge of his cheek—the scent of evil.
“No!” Fallion shouted, his heart hammering with fear.
Myrrima strode to the back of the boat, placing herself between Fallion and Hadissa with another arrow nocked in her bow, and shouted, “Asgaroth, show yourself!”
With a tremendous surge the wind batted her. She went tumbling away to Fallion’s right, skidding across the slick hull of the boat. She hit the gunwale with a thud, grunted in pain, and tried to right herself.
Fallion faced the dead man. The wind keened outside, its voice terrifying, and Hadissa’s face, growing blue in death, seemed to tower above him.
I should get out of here, Fallion thought. I should run, lead the enemy away from the rest of the children.
“In the name of the One True Master,” the wind hissed through Hadissa’s teeth, “I claim you. And by the power of the One Rune, I bind you to me.”
A gust ripped the roof from their little shelter, leaving them open to the sky. Fallion’s shirt ripped, leaving his young chest bare, and he felt wind racing over his flesh—an unpleasant sensation, as if a line of red ants marched upon his skin.
Dimly, a part of his mind became aware that some beast beyond his comprehension drew runes upon him, runes of Air. He could not see them, could not know what they might do. He reached up and tried to brush them off.
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