Hinterland

  Praise for Shadowfall…

  “A compelling tale filled with richly developed characters.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  “James Clemens once again sets the standard of excellence for fantasy.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “A dazzling new entry in the world of epic fantasy. The plot is byzantine in its complexity, the characters are rich and fully realized, and the system of magic…is both fascinating and innovative…. Shadowfall is likely to become a favorite of fantasy lovers worldwide.”

  —SFRevu

  …and the enthralling fantasy of James Clemens

  “Grabs at your heart and tears a little hole, then tears another, and another—a brutal and beautiful ride. I can’t put the book down!”

  —R. A. Salvatore

  “I loved every page. Clemens has constructed a world of magic that’s never been seen before, with a cast of beings who are so engaging and entrancing that you never want the story to end.”

  —John Saul

  “Clemens demonstrates considerable skill at combining swift pacing with character development.”

  —Library Journal

  “Fresh, sparky details and enough plot convolutions to keep fans coming back for more.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  HINTERLAND

  BOOK TWO OF THE GODSLAYER CHRONICLES

  JAMES CLEMENS

  ROC

  Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © James Czajkowski, 2006

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-1268-4

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For Greg Mahler.

  Thanks for all the help in spreading the word.

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  FIRSTCLOAK AND SHADOW

  1A BRONZE BOY IN SNOW

  2A REGENT IN BLOOD

  3A GIRL WITH A WOODEN SWORD

  4A WINTER’S CLOAK

  SECONDCASTLE IN A STORM

  5A GATHERING OF RAVENS

  6A SWORD OF STEEL

  7A RUMOR OF DAEMONS

  8AN INOPPORTUNE SURPRISE

  9A MEASURE OF DARK GRACE

  THIRDWYR AND WRAITH

  10A NAME SCRIBED IN BLOOD

  11A WREATH OF LEAVES

  12A FIRE IN THE CELLAR

  13A WRAITH IN THE WIND

  FOURTHRUIN AND ASHES

  14A TRAIL OF SMOKE

  15A SCRATCH AT THE WINDOW

  16A TWISTED ROOT

  17A PARLEY AT THE BLACKHORSE

  18A RIVER OF FIRE

  FIFTHFALL OF THE TOWERS

  19A RUSTED HINGE

  20A PACT WITH A DAEMON

  21A WITCH’S THRONE

  22A CROWN OF AN ANCIENT KING

  23A NECESSARY MERCY

  24A KNIGHTING IN MIDSUMMER

  APPENDIX TO MYRILLIA

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Novel writing, despite the time spent alone with the blank page, is a collaborative process. First, let me acknowledge Penny Hill especially, for the long lunches and the thoughtful commentary, but mostly for her friendship. And the same goes for Carolyn McCray, who still kicks my butt to challenge me to stretch a little further. Then, of course, I’m honored to acknowledge my friends who meet every other week at Coco’s Restaurant: Steve and Judy Prey, Chris Crowe, Lee Garrett, Michael Gallowglas, Dave Murray, Dennis Grayson, Jane O’Riva, Kathy L’Ecluse, Leonard Little, Rita Rippetoe, and Caroline Williams. They are the cabal behind this writer. And a special thanks to David Sylvian for lugging a camera everywhere, even atop the highest peak in the Sierras. Finally, the three people instrumental at all levels of production: my editor, Liz Scheier, and my agents, Russ Galen and Danny Baror. And as always, I must stress that any and all errors of fact or detail fall squarely on my own shoulders.

  Naught but bitterweed and cleaved stone

  Fraught with slate skies and icefire rime

  Caught in dread shadow and winter's scrabble

  Hinterland

  Where hope has no hearth nor home.

  —decryption of the Grimoire y Eld, ann. 1439

  Wyrm and weir,

  Stile and stair,

  Can you skin the wyld hare?

  —a child’s rhyme played with daggers

  In Shadow…

  HE HAS FORGOTTEN HIS NAME, LEAVING ONLY WILL TO DRIVE him. Arrow-bit and cut to bone, he reaches one hand, then another. The very land rejects his naked body. Fingernails break and bleed. Toes scrabble for purchase on the cliff face. His blood blackens the cold stone as he climbs the Forge.

  But he cannot stop.

  His pursuers will not.

  He hears them far below: the ravening cries of the leathery grecklings, the chinking rattle of their keepers, the harsh shouts of his former captors, and rising like steam, the worst yet, the sweet notes of seersong.

  Tears run hotly across his cold cheeks.

  The song calls him back, slows him. If he knew his name, he would be caught again. But all is forgotten, so he digs and climbs.

  He must not stop.

  He searches upward. Light streams over the top of the white cliff, reflecting the morning’s fire off the ice-capped peaks that frame the notched pass above. The Forge. The beacon between two lands. And though the brightness heralds the rise of the sun beyond the mountains, here on the western cliffs night still rules.

  He must reach the border.

  At last, one hand reaches out to find not rock but air. The top of the Forge. He draws his body upward with the very last of his strength into the morning’s warmth and light. He rolls to the flat stone nestled between two peaks. Ahead, the land falls away again, the slopes gentler.

  But not gentle to
him…

  He rises to his knees, staring to the east.

  More peaks, but nearer still lies a promise. Though shrouded by morning mist, the vast emerald cloud forest is visible. Birdsong reaches him even here. He smells loam and wet leaf.

  Saysh Mal.

  Green lands settled and forbidden to his blood.

  He already feels the admonishment under his knees. Fire warms his bones, but it is not the pleasantness of a hearth’s glow: It is fever and fear. A warning at the border, written upon his marrow.

  Do not pass.

  He stands, and despite the warning, he trespasses. His bare feet move him away from the cliff’s edge, away from the cries below, away from the last notes of seersong.

  He leaves the hinterlands behind.

  There is a path ahead. Left by whom? Hunters of the distant forest? The curious, the foolhardy, the hopeless? Who would trek to this vantage to stare out over the blasted hinterlands?

  He continues, tracing the path down toward Saysh Mal. Each step grows more agonizing. Warmth becomes fire. Warning becomes demand. The blood of this land rejects his own. He smells his own seared flesh. Smoke curls between blackened toes. Drops of his own blood ignite with spats of flame.

  He walks onward.

  Agony both erases and stretches time.

  He hobbles now on fiery stubs, feet gone. And still the land is not satisfied. His bones are now tinder. The fire races through marrow, igniting hip, spine, rib, and skull. He smolders. The old arrows impaled in his body have become feathered torches, fueled by his own blood. Shafts fall to ash.

  He struggles onward, a living candle of oil and meager fat.

  Past the last peak, he falls to hands and knees. He crawls, blindly, amid smoke and flame.

  Then he senses more than hears: Someone is near.

  He stops. The land’s attack upon his blood rewards him for halting. Ever so slightly, the fire ebbs. Smoke clears. Though his eyes are burnt away, he notes shadows and light.

  A figure steps toward him.

  “No, boy!” someone shouts from a different direction. “Stand back from it! It’s a shiting rogue god from the hinter!”

  “But it’s hurt.”

  “Let it die!”

  “But…”

  Through his pain, the god hears compassion, not so much with his burnt ears as with his heart. It gives him the strength for one last act. He reaches to his lips and removes his burden, preserved in Grace, carried in his mouth.

  No strength remains.

  He falls to the ground and lets his burden roll from his flaming fingertips. Though blind, he senses its journey into the boy’s shadow.

  It is his last hope, his heart, his life—and the only chance to save this world.

  With his burden lifted at last, darkness settles over him as the land consumes the last of his life’s flame. Words echo to him as he fades from this world.

  “What is it?”

  The boy answers. “Only a rock.”

  FIRST

  CLOAK AND SHADOW

  ser (regained knighthood)

  Tylar de Noche—regent of Chrismferry,

  the Godsword (too archaic as written)

  bearer of Rivenscryr, and vice-lord of Tashijan.

  Knighted in ann. 4154 and stripped in 4163,

  Tylar came to his regency after the Battle of Myrrwood

  the ninety-eight

  with the unanimous consent of all the gods

  Myrillia (to avoid repetition of “nine”)

  of the Nine Lands. His reign would herald

  the beginning of the second War of the Gods.

  —Hand-edited and unpublished page from The Compendia of Figures and Personages from the Age of Twilight, sold at auction for eleven hundred gold marches

  1

  A BRONZE BOY IN SNOW

  HE WAS BEING HUNTED THROUGH THE WINTRY WOOD.

  The forest whispered the hunter’s presence: with the shushing of snow slipping from a pine branch, the skeletal rub of brittle briar branches, the creak of twigs in an ancient deadfall.

  Still, Brant remained calm, as he had been taught.

  Unhurriedly, he continued through the woods.

  With each crunch of his boot, the brittle crust of ice cracked into the deeper snow. He left a trail of footprints that could easily be followed. His father would shame him if he saw his carelessness, but he was long in his grave, killed by a she-panther, leaving no one around to admonish his son.

  Especially not in this strange cold land.

  Brant was as foreign to this country as a fish on a sandy shore. Even after living here for over a year, he still found the air too heavy and difficult to breathe.

  The elders might force him from his own lands and call it a blessing, place him in a strange school in Chrismferry and call it lucky, have him chosen for service by the god of Oldenbrook and call it fate, but Brant would never truly call this land home.

  So he kept a ritual, honoring his father and keeping to the old ways. Each morning, he abandoned the raftered bridges and stone pillars of Oldenbrook and hunted the woods that fringed the great lake. He carried a trio of gutted and skinned snowhares impaled along the shaft of one arrow, borne over a shoulder. His baiban bow was hooked over his other arm, while the feathers poking out from his quiver tickled his left ear.

  His father could not fault his skill with the bow this day. He had killed the hares swiftly. Three bolts through three hearts. He dressed them where they fell, leaving entrails steaming in the snow, blood scenting the dry air. It was the Way, sharing the rewards of the hunt with the forest. So it had been taught to every child back in his faraway homeland of Saysh Mal. By the Huntress herself, the Mistress of the Cloud Wood, god of loam and leaf. But the Way was not honored here…except by Brant.

  Then again, why should it be? Here was not a realm of loam but a land of river, lakes, and ponds.

  Brant stopped to listen again as he reached a familiar brook, greeted by his own footprints, those he had left earlier as he headed out into the snowy glade. The whisper of the forest had gone silent. Still, he waited five full breaths.

  With his eyes on the forest, he knelt at the creek’s edge, broke through the thin ice to reach the flowing water, and filled his goatskin flask. The wind brushed the tanglepine branches overhead, dusting him with snow and allowing a spear of sunlight to penetrate.

  The ice sparked brilliantly, reflecting bits and pieces of the kneeling hunter: a snatch of brown hair, disheveled and draped across an unlined forehead…a corner of an emerald eye, squinted against the sudden glare…a stretch of thin lips, drawn even thinner…a corner of clefted chin, flecked by two days’ growth of beard.

  Brant froze, recognizing in such a broken reflection not himself—but his father. The stubble on the chin was too thin, grown from a young man of fifteen winters, not the dark shadows of his father’s. And certainly one slivered reflection could not be misconstrued: Under the angle of a jaw, a branching scar marred the smooth bronze skin of his throat. If one squinted, it looked not unlike a hand, throttling him.

  That belonged to Brant alone.

  Shadows descended again as the wind died and branches fell back into place. It was time to go. Brant stood and followed the ice-edged brook as it switched back and forth through the wood. Around the last curve, the great blue expanse of Oldenbrook Lake opened before him. It might as well have been the sea itself. The far shore was only a promise, even in the clear, crisp morning.

  The neighboring brook trickled into a misted meltpond bordering the shoreline of the great lake. The rest of the expanse was frozen over, but it was not flat ice. Instead the surface had been rilled into ridges by winter’s winds and dusted with mounds of snow. Out in the city, sections of the lake ice had been shaved smooth for games played atop thin silver blades.

  Brant had always watched from the edges or atop bridges. The slick ice made him wary, and not just for its treachery of footing. When smooth, it was glassy. One could peer into the depths o
f the winter lake. Things were moving down there. And the clear ice seemed more illusory than real.

  Brant crunched through the snow, happy for solid ground under his heels. A fringe of dead brown reeds marked the boundary between forest and lake. He was reluctant to leave the land for water.

  The growl behind him changed that.

  He spun, dropping to a knee, facing the depths of the shadowed forest as the hunter finally revealed itself. In Brant’s hand rested the hilt of his skinning knife, ready. He took a long slow breath through his nose, trying to catch a scent. Back in Saysh Mal, he knew most animals by their musk, but he smelled nothing lingering on this cursed dry air.

  The beast moved as silently as the mist rising from the meltpond.

  No crunch of ice.

  The growl had been the only warning, full of hunger.

  Brant dared not nock an arrow to his bowstring. He knew the beast would be upon him if he moved. He remained as still as a heron hunting among the reeds. Crimson eyes appeared in the forest, much closer than he had suspected, low to the ground. Muscles bunched at the shoulders. Bulk shifted. Ghost took flesh.

  The wolf’s white pelt blended with the snow, blurring its edges. Still, what he discerned was massive. A giant that stood to Brant’s shoulders. Its head lowered in threat, lips rippling back from yellowed fangs. Large pads were splayed wide, made for stalking silently atop frozen snow. Black claws dug through the crust of ice, gaining purchase for the lunge to come.