The Dread Hammer

by Linda Nagata

  Did Takis see it too? She looked up at him in irritation, then pushed aside his restraining arm. “Father, do you know this creature?”

  Dehan ignored her. “What’s done cannot be undone, and I have already paid with the life of my wife, who died giving birth to this demon son. Take him if you want him.”

  Pellas shook his head. “I won’t accept what lies here. It’s flawed and tainted.”

  Ketty started forward, but Tayval’s grip tightened on her arm. “What are they talking about?” she whispered. There was such dread in Tayval’s eyes that Ketty was sure she knew, but Tayval made no answer.

  Pellas said, “You sent mercenaries hunting my wife. You showed them how to pin her in the world with barbs of steel. You stole my son’s perfect soul from her womb. Dehan, do you know what was left behind? Nothing but a bloody pulp! It broke her mind. She wandered the forest blind and dazed, and if not for the wise woman of Nefión who found her and cared for her, she would have surely died.”

  Dehan said, “It’s the duty of the Bidden to safeguard the people of Koráy, at any cost.”

  The woman Hauntén spoke for the first time as she gazed down at Smoke where he lay pinned and bleeding. “You wanted to make a god, didn’t you? A warrior even more blessed than Koráy—but you made a demon instead.”

  Dehan’s fist thumped the table. “Pellas, the soul of your son still lives. Take it! Take it and go!”

  Again, Pellas shook his head. “These were once two perfect souls, your son and mine, but the binding you set on them has done its work. They’ve long since become one flawed creature. No . . . you took a perfect soul from me. I’ve come to collect the same.”

  Takis suddenly stepped back, retreating into the shadows behind Nedgalvin as if she thought the price would be taken from her—but Pellas’ gaze was turned to Ketty. “I’ll accept the child of my child as settlement for the debt.”

  Ketty met his gaze with a snarl, holding Britta more tightly still. “You are not Smoke’s father!”

  The other male Hauntén, the younger one, spoke. “He is a demon, with two fathers, two mothers, and two souls!”

  “Hush, Gawan,” Pellas said. “She bears no blame in this.”

  Smoke groaned and Ketty leaned forward to look, praying he would rise up, but he was still trapped beneath the foot of his Hauntén father, and though his right hand groped for his fallen sword, the blade lay beyond the reach of his bloody fingertips. So Ketty turned to Dehan instead. “Don’t let him take Britta.”

  Takis looked at Ketty as if she’d suddenly become the enemy. Then she whirled on Dehan. “My father—”

  “Quiet,” Dehan growled. But then he raised his hand, and like a little girl, Takis ran forward to clutch it. Dehan told her, “Britta is a child of the Bidden and she’s precious to me.”

  “She’s precious to all of us,” Takis whispered.

  Ketty scurried to his side. “You have to protect her. She’s the only grandchild you have, the only hope for the Koráyos people.”

  Takis squeezed her eyes shut and looked at the floor, while Dehan spoke to Ketty in a gentle voice. “You’ll have more children, but the debt must be paid.”

  This was so far from what Ketty had hoped to hear, it took her a moment to understand. She staggered, retreating from the Trenchant, but Nedgalvin was in the way and when she turned, there was Tayval.

  Ketty heard herself sobbing. She tried to push past Nedgalvin, thinking only to reach the door, but mist swirled around her and suddenly she was faced with Gawan, and the woman whose name she had not heard spoken. “Give up the child,” the woman said.

  “No! Britta is not a slave. She can’t be used to pay anyone’s debt!”

  Gawan said, “Thellan, take her left arm.”

  Gawan seized her right. She kicked at them, but she was made awkward by the baby. They pried her fingers loose and Gawan wrested Britta from her arms. The baby was red faced and squalling. Ketty was screaming too, still wrestling with Thellan, when Gawan’s reflection shifted into a swirling plume of white mist that streamed away, vanishing through the wall.

  Thellan released Ketty as soon as Gawan was gone and Ketty collapsed, her fists clenching and unclenching as her body shook with hysterical sobs.

  Smoke waited, trying not to hear Ketty crying, dear Ketty, the only one who’d tried to defend him.

  Thellan came to see him. Beautiful Thellan. She squatted by his side with a hungry smile. “Live, pretty child, and I’ll come for you.”

  Smoke snarled, groping again for the hilt of his sword, knowing it was only inches away. How he would love to slit the throat of this Hauntén siren!

  She stood up. With the toe of her boot she nudged his sword closer, though still not quite close enough for him to reach. Then she dissolved, and was gone.

  Only Pellas remained behind. Smoke watched his Hauntén father, knowing he still had a promise to keep. He was acutely aware of his sword, less than an inch from his bloody fingertips.

  Pellas stepped back. Using two hands, he yanked his sword out of Smoke’s shoulder. Smoke rolled, grabbed the hilt of his sword and came to his feet.

  His left arm was a dead weight at his side. It took him a step or two to work out the balance, but then he charged the table where Dehan sat. Dehan saw him coming. He stood up so quickly he knocked his chair backward against Takis.

  The spell was still intact, but during these seconds Britta was safe in the world-beneath, where the punishment of Dehan’s ruthless spell could not touch her.

  Smoke used his right hand to boost himself onto the table, and as he did, Pellas kept his promise. The spell that compelled Smoke’s obedience shattered. Smoke launched himself from the table top, his sword held high, its chipped blade swinging in a hissing arc that struck the Trenchant behind his ear before slicing down with such force that his neck was nearly severed. Dehan collapsed. Smoke came down on top of him, but his momentum sent him tumbling onto his broken shoulder. He screamed at the white hot pain, clawing at the ground.

  But he had to get Britta back.

  He forced himself up, until he was kneeling. Then he tried to get his feet under him, but he slipped in the blood pooling around him. The Trenchant’s blood.

  What did it matter, when he could run the threads?

  He threw back his head, reaching with his mind into the world-beneath . . . but nothing happened. He could go nowhere. He was still pinned, as if the sword’s steel blade remained in him.

  Takis was suddenly crouched beside him.

  “I’m still caught in the world,” he whispered to her.

  “Are you? Good!”

  The threads sang with her fury. He’d never felt anything like it before. She looked like she wanted to hit him. There were even tears in her eyes. Tears for the Trenchant? Jealousy awoke in him, and guilt. Useless feelings. “I don’t care what you think! I would do it again.”

  “I know you would.”

  She grabbed his hair and yanked his head back. He would have toppled if she hadn’t held him up. He grabbed her wrist with his right hand. “Let me go!”

  “Be still! Don’t tempt me! I’m so angry now I could kill you!”

  Even in his weakened state, her words hurt. “That’s a . . . treacherous thing to say.”

  “Shut up!”

  What little strength he had was quickly leaving him. He sagged against her supporting arm. Then Tayval was crouched on his other side. He saw her dip her fingers into the pool of their father’s blood. “For you, idiot,” Takis said as her tears spilled over. “A portion of our father’s strength. So don’t die.”

  With bloody fingers, Tayval painted twin stripes across his cheeks. At the same time Smoke sensed her at work in the world-beneath. Threads twisted and combined, and suddenly he felt touched with a giddy energy as if new blood had rushed in to fill his empty veins. His terrible lethargy retreated. He struggled against Takis’ restraining hand, but she shook him by the hair and ordered him again to “Be still!”

  Hi
s ears buzzed with a cacophony of women’s voices.

  And meantime, Tayval continued her work in the world-beneath. She summoned into existence fine new threads. She sent them circling around him, pulling tight in a heavy net of obligation.

  “Stop it!” he hissed. “Stop it. You don’t have to bind me. I would never hurt you. Either of you.”

  “You say that now,” Takis said. “But loyalties change, and yours have never been to the Puzzle Lands.”

  The voices challenged his loyalty too. He tried not to hear them. He tried again to slip away into the world-beneath and when that failed he tried to understand what Tayval was binding him to. That’s when he saw it: a new spirit, barely in existence yet swiftly growing.

  Smoke’s grip tightened on Takis’ arm. “Dehan gave Britta away so you could keep your new child!”

  No wonder she was afraid.

  But the strength Dehan’s blood had brought to him was fading and he could not fight her. He couldn’t even hold on to his anger. Tayval was taking that away.

  Like Dehan, Tayval had inherited much of the skill of Koráy. He felt her spell binding him to Takis’ child in an irrevocable net of love and obligation much like the one that bound him to Britta. He turned his tired gaze to her. “I don’t even mind,” he whispered as the buzzing in his ears reached a crescendo. Loving Ketty and loving Britta was the only true joy he’d ever known. He could love Takis’ child too.

  Takis said, “He’s slipping away.”

  Smoke shook his head, or he tried to. He tried to say, No, I’m not, but the words were lost within the clamor of distant voices, women beseeching him to do murder on their behalf.

  It troubled him that he could not answer.

  Nedgalvin was as shocked as the Trenchant when Smoke rose up from the dead and attacked. The demon could not have had strength left to stand! And yet Dehan lay dead at his feet and Takis . . . she would be the Trenchant now.

  Takis and Tayval and Smoke were all huddled together in the pool of their father’s blood, engaged in some ritual, with no attention to spare for anything around them.

  It occurred to Nedgalvin that if only he had a sword, he could destroy the Bidden here, now, once and for all.

  The blood was spreading, and the smell of it was making him sick. The weeping of the Binthy girl was grating on him too. She was a pretty thing, but he couldn’t stand a woman’s useless weeping.

  Still, he could see why Dehan had kept her.

  Nedgalvin valued a beautiful woman. Takis was comely enough, and he’d never had more pleasure in bed, but he would never call her beautiful . . . especially not after seeing the Hauntén woman. Thellan. She would be a treasure to lock up on his estate.

  He shook his head, trying to banish the thought of her.

  His life in the south was gone. He had no estate. His family and friends must believe him dead and even if he returned and proved them wrong, he would be hanged for the disaster at Scout’s Pass.

  Why grieve over it? Takis would be Trenchant and rule over the Puzzle Lands while he would rule over her. That was God’s way.

  ~

  Smoke hears prayers and he answers them. Does this make him a god?

  When a god kills, is it divine justice? Fate? Or murder?

  A Wolfish Snarl

  Takis stood with sword in hand facing down the five top-ranking officers in Samerhen. They had come armed and angry into the family quarters, seeking retribution for the murder of Dehan.

  “Let us pass, Takis,” the senior among them insisted. He carried a sword on his back and another at his waist, but he had respect enough not to draw his arms against her.

  “Your anger is honorable,” she said softly. “But it’s not for you to kill my brother. He is of the Bidden and we protect one another. It’s our way.”

  “Heed us, Takis, and accept the truth. He’s not like you. Smoke is a demon child, corrupted in the womb, born flawed, and dangerous to all of us. The Trenchant used him anyway. He believed he could control him—but look what happened! Dehan is dead. Murdered by his own son.”

  “I am the Trenchant now,” Takis reminded him.

  The senior officer inclined his head. “We don’t ask you to raise a hand against your brother, only that you let us pass. He needs to be put down, Takis. We will do it for you.”

  “You would murder him as he lies helpless and unconscious?”

  “Would we have a chance against him otherwise?”

  “No. I can’t let you do it. He belongs to the Bidden. Your justice is not for him.”

  Smoke smelled first the milk leaking from Ketty’s breasts, and then Smoke woke to find her sitting beside him. Her eyes were red from crying. She looked at him for answers, but he had none. He didn’t even know why he was still alive.

  He saw that he was in his own room. Sunlight came in through the window, which meant it was a new day. His left arm was bound tight across his chest, but his right was free. He tried to speak, but he had to swallow first, working moisture into his dry throat before words would come. “Wh-where is Britta?”

  “They took her!” Ketty said it with a wolfish snarl. “Smoke, don’t you remember?”

  “I do remember. I’ll bring her back.”

  Takis spoke from somewhere nearby, her words clipped with cold fury: “Tayval has not saved your life so you can throw it away again.”

  Smoke turned his head to look for her, and spied her standing at the door.

  She fixed him with an angry glare. “You won’t be able to travel as a spirit into the dark heart. Tayval says the way is closed to you, the threads are tangled—unless you can persuade a traitor to guide you?”

  Smoke thought about that word, “traitor.” “I lost Britta because I let them in.”

  “That’s right.”

  “No!” Frustration fired Ketty’s voice. “The Trenchant left you no choice, Smoke. You did the only thing you could.”

  Smoke raised his right hand. Ketty caught it. “I’m sorry, Ketty. I didn’t know they would take her.”

  “You should have known!” Takis insisted. “But you chose to bring them here. You lost Britta, and you murdered our father!”

  This was too much for Ketty. She turned around in her chair. “You leave him alone! The Trenchant traded our child to save yours. If the Hauntén had known, maybe they would have taken your baby instead!”

  “They wanted Smoke’s child, not mine.”

  From the way Takis said it, Smoke guessed that she’d said it many times before. “I knew you were in love, Takis, when I saw you in the bath.”

  “Shut up.”

  “But you didn’t bind me to him, and I’ll kill him if I can.”

  Somewhere behind Smoke, Nedgalvin chuckled. When Smoke heard it, the hair on the back of his neck stood up. He dropped Ketty’s hand and flopped over, searching around him for a sword that wasn’t there.

  “Stop it, Smoke,” Takis warned. “I will not tolerate any more of your wanton murders!”

  Smoke spotted Nedgalvin, sitting in a corner chair behind Ketty. His hair was combed, his beard neatly trimmed. He was dressed in fine clothes and looked very sure of himself. “Maybe someday we’ll finish it, Dismay. But not today. It wouldn’t be fair.”

  “I don’t care about fair if the advantage is mine.” Then Smoke’s brow furrowed. He looked at Takis. “Why was I still pinned after the sword came out? Why couldn’t I run the threads?”

  “It was the Hauntén blade,” she said, suddenly sounding tired. “The steel was brittle. It crumbled, leaving bits and pieces. Tayval dug out three fragments from your wound.”

  Smoke lay back, scowling. Had Tayval gotten them all? He had to know. So he reached out for the threads and to his heartfelt relief he felt his reflection dissolving.

  Ketty misunderstood his intention. Her eyes went wide. “Smoke, don’t go!”

  He hadn’t been going anywhere; he’d only been trying to see if he could, but Ketty didn’t know that and she lunged at him as if she could hold h
im in place. Her weight came down on his wounded shoulder.

  He cried out as the room around him dissolved in a blur of pain that only eased when Ketty’s sweet lips brushed his cheek. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she murmured. “Don’t go.”

  The voices were whispering to him again, calling to him. Dismay, Dismay.

  Takis spoke to him, sounding closer now. “Smoke? Are you still with us?”

  He blinked and saw that she was crouched beside the bed, next to Ketty. She said, “Nedgalvin is our ally now. Dehan accepted him. You will too.”

  He shook his head. “He’s Lutawan. He’ll betray you.”

  “You’re my brother. You’ve already betrayed me. I guess I’ll have to take my chances.”

  “When you want me to kill him, just let me know.”

  “Smoke, what about Britta?” Ketty asked.

  Smoke caught her hand again; he looked into her eyes. “I’ll find her. I’ll walk into the dark heart if I have to, but I’ll bring her back.”

  Takis said, “I can’t let you do it.” She stood up, the better to glare down at him. “We can’t afford a war with the Hauntén.”

  “She’s our daughter!” Ketty insisted.

  “Even for your daughter.”

  Smoke closed his eyes. No point to argue. He would go. It didn’t matter what Takis said. He listened to the voices, entranced by them.

  “He’s asleep again,” Ketty whispered.

  “I’m not. I’m listening.”

  “To what?” Takis asked.

  “Prayers.” He opened his eyes again, remembering. “The Hauntén heard me praying. It’s why they came. To answer my prayer.”

  Takis looked at him as if he were mad. “You prayed to them to break the spell?”

  “I prayed to anyone who would listen! Pellas said the price would be high. I thought he meant coin.”