The Iron Hound

by Tim Akers

  The hunt was on. The quarry was flushed. The forest would have its toll.

  * * *

  There was nothing left of the world. The burning, churning void of the blizzard was everything, everywhere, cutting through the feeble wool of their cloaks. Ian felt nothing, not even pain.

  He rode at Elsa’s side like a shadow, emptied of his will and his hope. And still they pressed on. Pressed until Elsa’s horse drifted to a halt, its knobbled legs shaking with cold and fatigue. Ian pulled up and glanced over. The knight didn’t move, hunched over in the saddle, the hood of her cloak tipped down until it was touching the horse’s frozen mane.

  “Hey!” Ian yelled, but the storm stole his voice. He nudged his horse closer and tried again. “Hey! We have to keep on! If the horse is spent, we’ll walk, but… hey, are you in there somewhere?”

  He put a gloved hand on Elsa’s shoulder and shook. The vow knight leaned away from him, farther and slower, until she fell in a heap from the saddle. Ian yelped and jumped down, falling to his knees as his numb legs betrayed him, crawling to the pile of frost-lined fur that was Sir Elsa LaFey.

  When he turned her on her back, Elsa’s hood flopped back. Her face was pale, eyes wide, and the scars that danced across her cheeks were angry and blue. The usual radiance of her eyes, copper-bright and sparkling, had frosted over. There was more to her condition than just cold, Ian knew. He shook her again.

  “Elsa! Elsa, wake up! You damned stubborn fool, you don’t get to die here! This is not a death worthy of a knight of the vow, is it?” He looked around the road. The storm had swallowed the surrounding forest, leaving nothing but a swirling white void all around. There was no shelter from the gale. “We have to keep going, Elsa. We have to keep moving.”

  The vow knight didn’t move. Ian looped one of Elsa’s arms over his shoulder and tried to lift her, but between her armor and muscular bulk, he wasn’t able to budge her. Exhausted, he collapsed to the ground beside her, gasping for air.

  “This is not… how I thought… I would die,” he yelled at the storm. “This is not… the fate… I was promised…”

  “Promised? Who said anything about promises?” The voice was deep and rumbly, something Ian could only hear with his bones. He raised his head. A dark mass slid out of the storm.

  The hound.

  It trotted easily through the snow, quickstep paws the size of dinner plates crunching through crust, its fur tangled with icicles, a beard of crystal breath dangling from its jaws. It jogged between Ian and Elsa, the smell of its breath sharp in the frozen void of the storm. One eye watched Ian as it passed.

  “You have died once, Ian of hounds. When were you promised only the one death, or the one birth? You are given what you take. You are gifted with what you wrestle from the gods. That is our way.” The words hummed through Ian’s skull like the reverberations of a bell, his teeth chiming each sound, his eyes watering with the silent tumult.

  “They are coming for you, Ian. The anger and the void.” The hound glanced over its shoulder, one pale eye staring at the fallen prince. “They are coming.”

  And then the beast padded by, and disappeared into the storm. The snow and the wind swallowed him, leaving only tracks in the ice. Slowly those began to fill in, and in moments all trace of the gheist was gone.

  Ian rolled over onto his knees, leaning over Elsa’s still face. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t seen the totem spirit, nor heard his words. Ian sighed.

  “You’ll skin me for this, but…” Ian tugged his glove free and tilted Elsa’s head, then slapped her across the cheek with all the force he could muster. A tear leaked from her frost-rimed eye, but she didn’t move. Ian gritted his teeth and hauled back to slap her again.

  “You’re either brave or an idiot,” Elsa said softly. She blinked several times, shuffling a skin of ice from her lashes. “Thinking you could strike me a second time.”

  “I’m not sure even the first was wise,” he said, “but I can’t get you onto the horse without a little help.”

  “This isn’t a bed? We aren’t beside a hearth?” she asked. “I feel warm enough. Let’s stay here.”

  “No, no, that’s called freezing to death. I think even a knight of the vow is subject to that. Only a little farther, I promise. Then you can rest.”

  “If you insist,” Elsa said. She threw an arm over Ian’s shoulder. When she hauled herself up, the force of it nearly crushed him into the ground. Together they reached Ian’s horse. “This isn’t my horse. Much too ugly for my horse.”

  “Your horse has given up, and I can see why, hauling around a lunk like you. Animal cruelty. Up you go,” Ian said, grunting as he pushed Elsa into the saddle. After a moment of tottering back and forth, the vow knight settled into the seat, limp hands grasping the pommel. Ian clung to her waist, unsure that he was steady enough to walk on his own.

  “Ian?” Elsa asked from the saddle.

  “Yes?”

  “There was something here,” she said. “Wasn’t there?”

  Ian didn’t answer. The storm moaned steadily around them, snow and frost gathering on his arms, melting whenever it touched Elsa’s skin. The vow knight snorted.

  “Ian? You can stop hugging me, now.”

  He pulled his arms awkwardly away from her waist, realizing suddenly that his face had been resting on her thigh. He looked up to see she was smiling bitterly. He gathered the reins of both horses, unwilling to mount Elsa’s beast for fear of killing it on the spot, then started trudging down the road.

  The prints were gone, but he was sure he could just see the shape of a hound in the storm ahead of them, like an afterimage of black fur floating in the snowy void.

  His feet were numb, and his knees. The cold traveled slowly up his legs. He marched on, alone in the storm, following the ghost of a forgotten god.

  * * *

  Night came and went, the dawn little more than a brighter gale of biting wind and sleet that knifed through Ian’s cloak. Hours more passed before he saw a shadow in the distance, and hours more than that before the shadow became a tower of stone, and a wall, and a gate.

  20

  THE MORNING WAS subdued. The crowd that had muttered and argued and threatened the previous evening now sat in stunned silence. Folam, the voidfather, sat beside Gwen, attended by the elders of the tribes. Cahl stood off to the side, hands clenched at his waist, hood pulled tight to his eyes.

  The voidfather held an orange in his hand, which he peeled with slow precision, dropping pieces of skin at his feet like flower petals.

  “So,” Folam said after several moments of perfect silence. He glanced up at the elders. “What is happening to us?”

  The elders looked among themselves, Judoc and Noel avoiding one another’s eyes, the other tribesmen more curious than nervous. It was Morcant, elder of the tribe of tides, who spoke first. He stood, tall and thin, his cloak crusted with salt.

  “The world is changing around us, Folam. We are here to discuss those changes, and what must be done about them.”

  “The world is always changing, Morcant,” Folam said. “Every sunrise brings a new trouble, every birth and death and rebirth another opportunity. Such changes are the natural order of the world. The order that is the will of the gods. The order that we are sworn to uphold. But these days are different. These days, that order itself is changing, and that is not natural.”

  “We maintain the order as well as we can, voidfather,” Morcant said. “If the natural order is upset, that is the fault of the celestial church. They hunt the gods. They disrupt the order. Only the Suhdrins can answer for that.”

  “We have one among us,” Judoc muttered. “Perhaps she would like to speak for her southern kin?”

  “It is easy to blame the Suhdrins for our troubles, elder bones, but there are domas in every village in Tener, as well. It is easier for us to maintain the rites in the north, but a mistake to think of the lords of Tener as our friends.” Folam fixed Judoc with a gaze that would burn stone. “Simp
ly because we share braids and ink. They wrap themselves in ancient clothes, but not ancient faith. Betrayal is betrayal.”

  “We can’t go looking for enemies everywhere, elder,” Morcant said.

  “Nor can we assume friendship at every Tenerran hearth,” Folam answered. “Nor among every tribe. We have become lazy. We have become weak.”

  “Weak? The church culls our faithful like wheat at the harvest,” Judoc snapped. “The damned inquisition pulls down our henges and puts our witches on trial, or slaughters them in their beds. Your own daughter is being dragged to Heartsbridge in chains, and—”

  “I know the fate of my daughter,” Folam said. He stood, throwing aside the remnants of his orange, and began yelling, his jowls shaking. “She knew the risk when she left her henge to answer the call from the Fen hallow. A call that the rest of you ignored.”

  “The inquisition was massing at the border,” Morcant protested. “An army of priests was marching on the Fen Gate. Only a fool…”

  “Enough!” Cahl snapped. “Enough of this bickering. The voidfather is right. Something is happening to us. Something is tearing us apart.”

  “Yes,” Folam said. The old man settled back, calming his features. “Yes. We have defended the order on this island since the Spirit Wars, long before the Suhdrin landed here, with their domas and their priests and their iron. The crusades could not disrupt us. The betrayal of the Tenerran tribes, their conversion to the celestial church, and their assumption of Suhdrin titles could not ruin that balance. We have held true throughout the generations.”

  “And we will hold true for generations more,” Morcant said.

  “Will we?” Folam asked. “When I arrived yesterday, two of you were manifesting your gods and threatening violence. Don’t we have enemies enough without that sort of foolishness?”

  “Voidfather, it’s clear that the celestial church has corrupted someone of our faith,” Judoc said. He stood and pointed at Noel, who sat demurely at the edge of the elder’s council. “The high inquisitor bound a god, summoning it in the battle of the Fen Gate to try to kill Malcolm Blakley. And who is more likely to have succumbed to the church’s seduction—”

  “Better to ask who would be better equipped to summon the god of death,” Noel countered with a tight smile.

  “I have heard these arguments,” Folam said, “but there is more to this than the binding of Eldoreath, as disturbing as that is. Eldoreath is an aspect of death whose worship was forbidden, long before Suhdra was founded on our shores. Even the tribe of bones speaks his name with fear.” He shifted on his seat, and uncomfortably adjusted the stone around his neck. “We must ask how such knowledge came to the inquisitor—but there is more. Another god, forbidden of old, and yet walking the earth once again.”

  “Elder? What god is this?” Morcant asked.

  “You have heard the words of this girl, but you have not listened to them,” Folam said, turning to Gwen. “Tell us, child. You were pursued to the Fen hallow, by a priest of the inquisition?”

  “And in the company of two other priests!” Judoc said. Folam glared him into silence and then gestured for Gwen to speak.

  “Yes,” she said. “The largest gheist… god… I’ve ever seen. Until the autumn god, at least.”

  “Tell us of this other god. By your tale, it led these priests to the hallow, despite the efforts of the wardens.”

  “The wardens died defending the hallow,” Gwen answered. “They tried to keep it away, but it was relentless. It took all our effort, and nearly our lives, to kill it. And even that wasn’t enough. Frair Allaister still found his way to the hallow.”

  “A relentless god, possessing the bodies of the dead. Hunting its prey, and so powerful that even the combined energies of the wardens of the Fen hallow could not deflect it.” Folam slowly turned to the crowd, facing each elder, each tribe, one at a time. “A similar god attacked Greenhall at the height of summer, at the peak of the church’s power. Does anyone know the name of this god?”

  “No such spirit answers the rites of my tribe,” Judoc answered. “He is not of the realm of death.”

  “Nor of tides,” Morcant said. “Nor of any tribe that I can name.”

  “We do not know it in Suhdra,” Noel said. “Do any of you?”

  There was a long silence in the grove. The gathered tribesmen muttered among themselves. Folam waited patiently.

  “You will not name it,” he said finally. “Because its theos has passed from our knowledge.”

  “But how is that…” Morcant started, then paused as knowledge dawned. “One of the forbidden?”

  “Yes. Like Eldoreath, and forgotten by all but a few.” At the sound of the name, a shiver passed through the gathering. Folam raised his arms, palms up. “As elder of the tribe of voids, it has passed to me to hold all these names, even those who have been exiled from the world. So you may make your accusations, Judoc, you may make your assumptions, Noel, but they are empty. The hunter god does not belong to any of us. And yet the church holds it.”

  “How was it summoned?” Noel asked. “Where did they get this knowledge?”

  “That is the question that remains. A group of rebels, little more than angry farmers, raided the doma at Gardengerry. That is where it began.”

  “How can farmers summon a god?” Judoc asked.

  “One of them was more than they seemed,” Folam answered. “This priest, Frair Allaister, led them in peasant’s guise. How he accomplished his task, I cannot say. From there it went to Greenhall, and then on into the Fen. If what this girl tells us is true,” he said, gesturing to Gwen. “It took the combined might of the wardens and two priests of the church to turn it aside.”

  “A battle that cost the wardens their lives,” Cahl said.

  “Yes,” Folam agreed. “But with the wardens dead and the shrine in the Fen Gate compromised, Allaister and his priests were still able to reach the hallow.”

  “How then did the autumn god rise? We have heard stories and accusations, but no truths,” Morcant said. “Surely this girl couldn’t…”

  “This girl has a name,” Gwen said. “And a station, and will be addressed appropriately!”

  “The little princess is used to her Suhdrin manners, and her Suhdrin title,” Judoc said.

  “You will not give me a place in this conclave, nor listen to what I say other than to denounce me as a traitor,” she answered. “So I will take my place, whether you approve or not.”

  “Peace, peace,” Folam said gently. “The matter of Gwen’s connection with Fomharra isn’t important, not right now. What is important is how the church knew about him, how they found him, and how they have bound not one but two of the ancient gods to their will.”

  Gwen and Judoc continued glaring at each other, but when no one else spoke, Folam continued.

  “And not just any gods. Forbidden gods. Sacombre bound the god of death, Eldoreath, condemned and hidden from even the tribe of death. Eldoreath was drawn from his shrine, weakened, and buried in the far north. How the high inquisitor found him and bound him is a great mystery. One whose answer, I suspect, stands somewhere in our midst.”

  “The name of this god is barely known to my tribe, and then only by reputation and fear,” Judoc said. “An aspect of death bent by winter, corrupting its henge and driving its shamans mad. Its final prison was a secret, even to the tribe of bones.”

  “And what of this other god, bound by Frair Allaister in Gardengerry?” Noel asked. “The hunter. No record of it stands, even in my most ancient tomes.”

  “Nothing more is known. Only that it rose from Gardengerry, a place all wise Tenerrans avoid. The villagers claim the walls are cursed.” Folam spread his hands. “I suspect that’s simply a memory of the god hidden within, and a proscription against its worship.”

  “Are there others? Forbidden gods the tribes have forgotten?” Noel asked. “If the inquisition has discovered these two, they may have stumbled upon some ancient text that details the remaini
ng spirits.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Folam said. “So that is the question for this conclave. If we can determine where Sacombre’s broken priests will strike next, we can perhaps stop them. Or at least slow them down.”

  “And why would we do that?” Morcant asked. “Let the celestials kill each other. Let the south rise up and fight. Tener will crush them on the stones of winter, and wash our fields in their blood.”

  “A red wish from the elder of tides,” Noel chuckled. “Shouldn’t that be the business of our friend Judoc?”

  “We do not rush to death’s embrace,” Judoc answered. “Nor do we wish that realm on any, friend or foe. As to the question, we know of none other than Eldoreath.”

  “There are stories of deeper gods, out among the Broken Isles,” Morcant said. “Shadows that move beyond the reach of mortal souls, far beneath the waves.”

  “If they are out of reach, they are no concern of ours,” Folam said.

  “So much of our history was lost in the crusades,” Cahl said bitterly. “Here we stand, the eldest of our creeds, comparing folk tales in search of some forgotten truth.”

  “Forgotten truths are often the most powerful,” Judoc said. “What of the harrowight?”

  “The inquisition would have no need of binding that demon,” Morcant answered. “If what the girl says is true, the harrowight still roams the land, eating souls and wearing them like a cloak, no matter how many times we banish it.”

  “But every god is an unfolding of some greater god,” Judoc said. “Hiruk-Who-Waits is an aspect of the devouring rain, who is in turn an aspect of Maghuk, mother of storms.”

  “Yes,” Folam said. “What of it?”

  “What if the harrowight is an aspect of some other god? One we don’t know, or have forgotten.”

  The conclave was quiet for a while. It was Judoc who broken the silence.

  “If the harrowight is an aspect of anything, it is death, and we already know the fate of Eldoreath.”

  “We don’t, actually,” Judoc said, just loudly enough for Gwen and the elders to hear him. “The bitch let him go.”