The Iron Hound

by Tim Akers

  The first, cold flecks of mist touched Gwen’s face.

  Then she saw the gheist. It nestled at the foot of the waterfall, the veil of mist and foam gathered around its mass like a cloak. Its body was the color of granite shot through with white marble, its mouth a massive cave of small teeth, each as bright and sharp as crystal. The god stirred sluggishly, its vast, empty eyes watching the bridge with disinterest.

  Gwen stumbled to a halt. The crowd flowed around her. She took a nervous step backwards, then another. An iron hard hand closed around her arm.

  “You have to go through,” Cahl whispered into her ear. “Our paths are not your paths. We do not travel from place to place, but from god to god, and this is the god of our journey. So you must go through.”

  “I don’t understand,” Gwen said. “Roads go places. We’re going to someplace.” She pulled free from his grip. “What does this gheist have to do with us?”

  “Why are you afraid?” Cahl said. “Gwendolyn Adair, proud heretic and twice-damned huntress of the very gods she’s meant to worship, and you balk at the presence of a divinity in its place of worship?”

  “How do you know it isn’t mad?” She looked down at its gaping mouth, at the rings of teeth flexing slightly in the mist. “You’re putting children in front of it. What if it demands a sacrifice? Who here will keep it from taking what it wants?”

  “You are brave only when there is a need for fear,” Cahl said. “There is nothing here to fear. There is no danger in this place.” He prodded her down the mountain. “Go. See the god… and be seen. Try to understand.”

  Gwen stared at the shaman for several long moments, then joined the crowd of pagans down the hill. They slowed as they approached the bridge. From this new position she was able to get a better look at the proceedings, and saw that some kind of priesthood attended the gheist. Several people in red and yellow stood at the foot of the bridge, speaking briefly with each person before they crossed.

  Aedan, tall and stiff and deadly serious, crossed a short distance ahead of Gwen. He made his way to the center, bowed briefly to the god at the waterfall’s base, then hurried to the other end of the bridge.

  And then it was Gwen’s turn. A priestess took Gwen by the shoulders, looking into her eyes and muttering something in a tongue Gwen had never heard. The woman was crying, though her eyes weren’t red and she didn’t seem unhappy. She was about to push Gwen onto the bridge when she paused and looked at her again.

  “I was not expecting someone like you,” she said quietly. Gwen wasn’t even sure how she could hear the woman. The priestess pulled Gwen off the steps, holding tight to her shoulders as she looked her up and down. “Troubled whispers have floated in the mist for weeks, but this is not what I was expecting.”

  “Makes two of us,” Gwen muttered.

  “Are you prepared? Has your shaman instructed you?”

  “I’m not…” Gwen grimaced and looked over her shoulder. Cahl was up the trail, staring at her back. When she turned to the priestess again she could see Aedan on the opposite bank, a hooked knife in hand. She sighed. “You don’t know who I am?”

  “Not at all, which is why I’m worried,” the priestess answered. “A girl your age should have passed through this gate a half-dozen times, at least. And your clothes, your manner… you are Suhdrin born?”

  “We are standing on my father’s land!”

  “Oh! Oh, I see now,” the priestess said. She leaned forward quickly, gripping Gwen’s face in both hands and tilting it like a bowl to the sky. She pressed her thumbs into Gwen’s eyes, pressing and pressing until Gwen struggled to be free. “Tears, child. I need the salt of your blood,” the priestess whispered. Just as quickly as she had struck, the priestess released Gwen, smearing the wet of the huntress’s eyes down her cheeks. “There. That is all the blessing I can manage. Pass, and be known.”

  The priestess stepped aside, motioning to the bridge.

  On the other side, Aedan grew very tense.

  “Go on, child,” Cahl shouted from behind her. “The river waits.”

  Gwen took a tentative step onto the bridge. A fresh blast of mist washed over her, wetting her clothes and hanging like dew on her lashes. The chill took her breath, filling her lungs with clean, damp air, dismissing what pain remained. Slowly she walked out to the center of the bridge, keeping her eyes down and her shoulders hunched. Finally, at the middle, on a worn bit of cobble, Gwen stopped, and turned, and faced the waiting god.

  This close, the gheist was massive. The veins of silver and white turned out to be miniature rivers cutting through the flesh of the god’s body, tumbling over shoulders and chest in waterfalls as delicate as lace. The stone of its skin was vaguely translucent, as though its body was made of hard-packed ice, old and gray with age. Deep veins of crystal blue pulsed beneath the surface. The gheist gave off an air of weight, of time, of inevitability. The wide bowl of its mouth, ring upon ring of flaked teeth as delicate as grass, huffed and flexed in the mist. Its eyes were open wounds in the rock, scarred and blackened.

  Gwen took a deep lungful of the gheist’s breath. It turned her blood to steel, her skin to stone. The smeared, cold-salt tears that ran down her cheeks burned like hot lead. The gheist, disinterested and sluggish, took notice of her blood. It flexed forward ever so slightly. Its body broke through the waterfall’s veil, spray arcing over the stone, dashing rainbow light through the valley.

  “Lost child,” its breath said to her breath. “Wandering child. Wounded. Bright.” The mist hung in the air, frozen in space, dancing slowly over the river. “Coming home. Walking home, alone. Welcome.”

  “I’m not alone,” Gwen stuttered through the chill. “I’m not…” And then she thought of her father, her mother, the soft face of her brother, broken and battered and dead. Then she was crying, on her knees, breaking inside. “…alone.”

  “Peace between us, child,” the god’s breath said. “Peace and…”

  Something twisted inside Gwen’s chest. Hot blood filled her mouth, the taste of iron and the summer sun. She felt the attention of another divinity, stretching out across the horizon, touching the sun and then arcing down to earth, to rest in the steel gauntleted hand of a woman.

  “Elsa?” Gwen whispered. The pain returned to grip her. Pain and bright light. Her eyes flashed the heat of the sun, boiling away her tears and flaring spears of molten light that burned off the mist. A cry went up from the gathered crowds. Aedan’s voice rose above the crowd.

  “Child of Strife!” he yelled.

  The gheist roared and surged forward, gathering the mist like a cloak and throwing it, blasting her with a wave of cold water. The fire in her eyes snuffed out, and the pain with it. Gwen stood, stumbling back, holding out her hands. The sound of the god’s movement was like a mountain being torn out at the root.

  The valley shuddered, and a chorus of screams drifted down from the paths. The cascade of water threw a wall of wind in front of it, whipping trees and knocking the pagan faithful from their feet. Those closest to the river scampered away, trying to escape the tumult, but the shaking ground kept them down.

  The path began to crumble.

  “Child of summer! Exile! Corruption!” the gheist howled, its voice echoing down the valley, ringing off the stone bluffs and quivering the trees like a squall line. Its mouth peeled open even wider, eclipsing the bridge, which collapsed like a puzzle, and was carried downstream by a wall of water. The current lapped up onto the shore, picking up those along the bank and smashing them into the bluffs. Gwen had only a moment to witness this before the wave reached her.

  She slipped from the broken bridge, was picked up and thrown like a leaf. Gwen screamed and the river’s water filled her mouth. It dragged her down, the broken stones falling and battering her flesh, bruising her, spinning her around like a top. She felt the gheist’s crystal-sharp teeth against her skin. They ground her down, pushing her to the river’s bed, pressing the air from her lungs, squeezing the sense from her
head. Numbness leaked into her hands, her arms, her feet, stealing into her chest like a poison.

  Her family waited for her in the darkness. Her family and the silent dead.

  * * *

  Cahl’s face was horizon wide and as bright as the sun. The constellation of Aedan’s scowl hung over his shoulder. Gwen shifted against a bed of river stones and sighed.

  “I am tired of this,” she said. Her voice was sticky with mucus, her throat wet and thick and tired. “Nearly dying at the hands of your tame gods, then waking up to your foul visage.” She tried to stir, and the fire in her blood blossomed through her flesh. She gasped, then forced herself into a sitting position. “Waking up in pain. This is a load of shit.”

  “What happened?” Cahl asked.

  “I don’t know. Ask the waterfall,” Gwen answered. She turned to look at Aedan. “Did you do that? Order it to kill me or something?”

  “The god does not answer to my call,” the dark-faced shaman answered. “Something shifted in your blood. Something divine.”

  “She has worn a god,” Cahl said. “It is no surprise that her soul is unsettled.”

  “No,” Aedan hissed. “This was another. A binding of the blood priests. Do you doubt her heresy now?”

  “What does he mean, a binding?” Gwen asked.

  “As it was with Fomharra and your spirit, so can it be between your spirit and something else,” Cahl said. He settled back on his haunches, looking at her thoughtfully. “It’s the way the vow knights of Strife bind themselves to their blades, and sometimes their armor. It is a very old rite, from before the church’s arrival in Tenumbra.”

  “She knows what it is, Cahl,” Aedan said. “She has bound herself to them. Probably before she led those priests to the hallow, as a bargain for her life.” The shaman leaned down into her face. His breath smelled like loam and rotting leaf. “What was the deal, huntress? Did you swear allegiance to their calendar, with the promise of leading them to our hidden places with your blood?”

  “Yes, of course,” Gwen said, grimacing through the pain. “It was my plan to kill half the Suhdrin army, uncover the high inquisitor as a heretic, and then get dragged through the forest by a crowd of unwashed farmers.”

  “Do not joke at treachery, child,” Cahl muttered. “They will quarter you for mirth just as quickly.”

  “I am not in league with the church,” Gwen said. “I am not loyal to Heartsbridge, nor bound to…” She paused, struck by a thought. “By blood. They did.”

  “They did what?” Cahl asked.

  “They took my blood. Frair Lucas, when he and Elsa freed me from Frair Allaister on our way to the witches’ hallow. I had forgotten, because… well. Because so much else was happening.”

  “By her word,” Aedan said. “She is bound to them!”

  “Yet not by her will,” Cahl answered. “That is hardly grounds for conviction.”

  “Something must be done about it,” the other shaman said. “We cannot lead them to the conclave, simply because you are soft on the girl.” He gestured to the river that murmured peacefully nearby. The roar was distant. “This place has already been corrupted. The waterfall will have to be sanctified, assuming this vow knight doesn’t come and slay the god before then. We can’t afford to risk any more holy sites—not until her blood is pure!”

  “The binding of Fomharra would have disrupted the blood magic,” Cahl said. “It is possible she has shaken free of their hounds.”

  “They are still scrying her! You saw what happened. I sensed the binding, if not its source.” Aedan stood, and suddenly a wicked knife, bright and barbed, filled his hands. “You have lost Fianna. You have lost the child of hounds, and stood witness to the discovery of Fomharra and the hallow by the celestials. I will not stand by and let you surrender this opportunity, as well.”

  “And I will not stand by and let you murder this girl, not while she might still be of use to us.” Cahl remained squatting, and though he didn’t draw steel or shift his stance, there was a violent tension in his shoulders. “That is all there is, Aedan. Put away your foolishness.”

  “I will not…”

  “You will,” Cahl said calmly. “The girl is going with us to the conclave.”

  Aedan stood there, bristling and angry. Finally he leaned down and drew his blade silently across Gwen’s shoulder. The skin parted and blood cascaded down her flesh like a waterfall. Cahl shifted slightly, ready to strike, but Aedan stood up and backed away. He held the blade in front of him.

  “They are following her blood. I will lead them to it,” he said.

  As Gwen watched, the crimson lace of her blood squirmed against the knife’s edge. Like rain soaking into dry earth, the blood sank into the runnel, tinting the steel. The blade took on a rusty tint, darker along the edge that had cut into Gwen.

  “Very well,” Cahl said, “but the conclave will not wait for your arrival.”

  “My voice will be heard,” Aedan promised. He glanced down at Gwen with a sneer, then slid the blade into his belt. “Once I am done cleaning up this child’s folly.”

  13

  THE CASTLE WAS in an uproar. The aftermath of the inquisitor’s shriving filled the corridors with unholy smoke, and the stones of the Fen Gate shook underfoot.

  Malcolm ran past a window on his way to the ruined chambers of the tower. A storm brewed beyond the shutters, a gray sky looming oppressively overhead. Horns shouted from the Suhdrin encampment, and panic was in the air.

  “We need faithful hearts,” Malcolm snapped. “Men and women we can trust with our souls, if not our lives.”

  “Any sworn to the hound will be faithful to you, my lord,” Sir Doone answered. “Even to death.”

  “I need more than that,” Malcolm said. “They must be willing to lie to an inquisitor, and the weight of that extends beyond the grave.” They turned a corner, dropping into a brisk walk until they were sure the way was clear and returned to a run. “Gods help me, I never thought I would ask that of my people.”

  “These are strange times,” Doone said. At the next corridor she turned left while Malcolm continued ahead to his wife’s hidden chamber. The guard on duty was dressed as a drunken soldier, napping in the crook of a broken pillar. The man dropped his act when Malcolm came into view.

  “Sir Doone will arrive shortly,” Malcolm said. “Go to your quarters and pack a bag. Enough for three weeks in the woods, and no less.”

  “My lord, I’m to stay here to guard…”

  “Go!” Malcolm snapped. The man stumbled away, the stink of whiskey thick in his wake, and Malcolm wondered how much of his disguise was an act after all. Once he was alone in the corridor, he slipped inside.

  His wife was as he had left her, the strange light lurking beneath her skin and the submerged grace of her hair twisting slowly in the dimly lit chamber. Malcolm went down on one knee and took her cold, dead hand.

  “It is time, my love,” he said. Sorcha’s eyes slowly turned to him, unfocused and wet. “We must go.”

  “To my son?”

  “No, north, to Houndhallow. It is no longer safe here. The inquisitor has sensed your presence. The time has come to flee.”

  “Home,” she said, then turned back to the empty wall. “I haven’t the strength.”

  “Well, we haven’t got a choice,” Malcolm said. He stood and went to her trunk, which lay half-open in the corner of the room. He started taking out cloaks, robes, and a brace of knives. “You must dress warmly. The woods will be cold this time of year, especially at night. I won’t save you from war, wounds, and the inquisition just to lose you to fever.”

  “I do not feel it,” Sorcha whispered. “The wind, or the winter.”

  Malcolm stood uncomfortably in the silence left by the lady’s voice, her willow-thin words drifting between the stones like a dream barely forgotten.

  “Be that as it may,” he said finally, “I will have Sir Doone pack extra blankets, and enough wood to blaze a trail from here to Farwatch.”
>
  A knock hammered the door. Malcolm froze, then drew his feyiron blade and stood beside the door.

  “Who is it?” he whispered.

  “It is the MaeHerron boy,” Sorcha said. “Don’t be so silly.”

  Malcolm pulled the door open before MaeHerron answered. Grant stood in the doorway, axe in hand, mouth opened. His eyes flickered between Malcolm and Sorcha.

  “Houndhallow,” he said finally. “I saw Sir Doone running about like a scalded cat. I figured to find you here.”

  “How did you know about this place?” Malcolm asked.

  “Your wife’s condition is a poorly kept secret,” MaeHerron answered. He stepped into the room, his eyes locked on Sorcha’s strange form. “What do you intend to do?”

  “Sneak her out. I won’t let her fall into the inquisition’s hands, not while the Orphanshield has his blood up.” Malcolm ducked into the hall to see that the coast was clear, then shut the door and pulled young MaeHerron close. “Once this trouble with Colm Adair has blown over, I will go to someone I trust. The high elector, or maybe Frair Lucas. Until then, we must keep this secret.”

  “It doesn’t look good,” MaeHerron said nervously. “You understand that? Keeping secrets from the inquisition, especially now.”

  “Yes, yes, I know, but sometimes what is best is not necessarily what is most truthful,” Malcolm said. “I won’t lose my wife. Not after what she did for me. I can’t just surrender her to Heartsbridge. Surely you understand that?”

  MaeHerron looked nervously from Sorcha to Malcolm and back. “What will you do?” he whispered.

  “Take her back to Houndhallow. Go over the wall, so honest men don’t have to lie, and dishonest men won’t take advantage. Plus it lets us avoid the Suhdrin camp.” Malcolm returned to packing his wife’s clothes, shoving everything into a satchel and throwing it over his shoulder. “I’m sending a few men, along with Sir Doone. Not enough for their absence to be noticed.”