They would kill him, and the king.
He could do nothing but keep running.
He tried to be quiet, willed himself not to be seen as he hurried down the road to the west, outside of Helstrow’s walls. He did not stop until he reached a copse of trees well outside the fortress-town’s precincts, a place where he thought he might hide long enough to catch his breath. He laid the king down in a sward of soft grass and looked back the way he’d come, his eyes unblinking.
Looming above the walls of Helstrow, he could see the keep and the palace. Both of them were burning.
Part 2
Interlude
There was a place in the Free City of Ness where drovers brought their sheep to pasture while they waited to be taken to market. A pleasant common of green in the midst of a boisterous and noisy city. It was not particularly safe at night (no place in Ness truly was), yet for its idyllic calm, it had become somewhat fashionable, and some of the richest men of Ness built villas on its edges, pleasure palaces where they could get away from the endless flow and ebb of commerce.
In the middle of this sward there stood a wide swath of rubble and burnt timbers that no one had ever fully cleared away. It marked where the grandest of those houses once stood. Everything of even remote value had been gleaned from the spot, but no one wanted to build anew there and even the sheep gave it a wide berth.
It had been the house of Hazoth, the sorcerer. It was the place where that great man had been dragged down into the pit by his own enslaved demons. It was also the place where Cythera was born, and where Coruth the witch had been imprisoned for many, many years.
Coruth was probably the first person to set foot inside its ruins since the night it came down. It never occurred to her to do so before-she had been glad enough to get away from the place-but sometimes a witch had to go where others feared to tread.
That day she looked mostly like an old and bent woman, because that was how she felt most of the time, and no one was watching, so she didn’t have to take the trouble to appear as an imposing figure. Her robes were black and shapeless and unremarkable. Her iron-colored hair was bound back with a bit of cheap ribbon. She walked with a measured step that suggested some of her great age, though she retained enough vanity not to use a walking stick.
It was not difficult to find the place where Hazoth died. The very ground there cracked open to admit him, and while the earth had smoothed itself over, finding its own level, not even weeds would ever grow there again. Coruth paced out the patch of utterly barren ground to find its center, then sat down on the dirt and let the sun warm her for a while before she did anything else.
“She’s your daughter too,” Coruth said finally. Hazoth couldn’t hear her, of course. He was dead. But some things needed to be said even if there was no one there to hear them. “You were a terrible man, a right bastard, frankly. One of the worst. But it was your seed that put her in my womb, and I figure you have a right to know what’s going to become of her. It isn’t pretty.”
A soft breeze stirred the grass at the edge of the barren patch. Each individual blade fluttered, rubbing against its neighbors. A cricket looking for a meal approached the place where Coruth sat, then reconsidered and turned away. No human being was in sight-and definitely not in earshot.
“She’s going to learn magic, one way or another. She’ll gain the kind of power you and I work with, maybe even more. I’m going to have to train her. It’s the only chance she’s got. And you, of all people, know what that means. I’ve seen her future and it can go one of two ways. Normally when I see the future, I know it’s bound to happen. That there’s no changing it. I do my best to look surprised when it comes to pass. And being a witch, well, that means when I see something unpropitious, something I don’t like, it’s just too bad. More times than not I have to go along and help make it happen anyway. This time, though, I see two possibilities. One is she becomes like me. A witch. Old and alone and bitter, but the world is better for it. The other chance is she becomes a sorcerer like you, and every horror of the pit can’t match what happens next. I can’t let that come to pass. There’s still time for her to pick which path she’ll walk. Do you know how rare that is? How infrequently I get this chance to make the future a better place?”
A cloud passed briefly across the sun, one of those thin insubstantial clouds that can’t block out all the light. A chill breeze ruffled her clothes, but soon enough the cloud passed by and the sun returned. Coruth tilted her head back and let the heat sink into her face.
“It’s going to cost me. Especially now, when I’m needed for other things. I don’t suppose you care, but Helstrow fell today to the barbarians. I’m going to have far more work than I can handle. As if that’s something new.”
In the distance she could hear a cowbell chiming, as a herd of animals was brought down to the common.
“Sod this,” she said. “I’m getting stiff, sitting here talking to you. I just thought you had a right to know about Cythera. A father should know these things.”
It hurt her old joints to stand up, but she did it without making too much noise. She started away from the barren patch of earth, intending to head home and begin her preparations. But then she glanced around slyly to make sure no one was watching, and headed back.
The patch of dirt was the closest thing Hazoth had to a grave. She hitched up her skirt and pissed all over it, cackling the whole time. And then she went home.
Chapter Thirty
Helstrow burned for days. The barbarians were too busy celebrating to notice. A great carousing went on in whatever houses remained spared by the flames, an orgy of drinking and debauchery. Out in the streets, men of Skrae hung by their necks from every eave and standard, or lay stinking and bloody on the cobbles. Inside the houses, berserkers danced and reavers gambled for the spoils of war, while drunken thralls made sport in the elegant mansions, stealing what they could carry, smashing anything too big to be moved.
Of all that horde, one man stayed sober on the night of the victory-Morget, now called Mountainslayer, who never touched spirits. Nor did he exult or crow in victory. Instead he roamed the alleys and lanes of Helstrow, looking for something he could not find.
This place, this fortress city, belonged to him and his people now. As it should be. As it always should have been. Morget knew the story of this land, having heard it repeated by scolds since he was just a boy.
Once, Morget’s people and the people of Skrae had been cut from the same cloth. When they first arrived on this continent, fleeing from the decadence and bureaucracy of the Old Empire, they had all been warriors, every man among them as proud and fierce as Morget’s berserkers and reavers. They lived as nomadic hunters and raiders. Over time, though, the weaker among them banded together to form villages and holdfasts and eventually permanent cities. They built high walls to keep out those who were too strong and wild to live in any structure more permanent than a tent. Eventually the city people united against the nomads. A great war was fought, and the wanderers, the warriors, were too small in number to resist. They had been pushed back to the east, where they could not endanger the city folk. Eventually they were pushed right over the Whitewall Range. A wall higher than anything their cities could boast.
For two hundred years the clans of the East had been penned in, kept locked behind those mountains by the men of Skrae. Morget’s people had once been great warriors-soldiers, generals, slayers of elves and ogres. For far too long they’d been reduced to raiding the sheep of the hillfolk north of their steppes or at best picking away at the edges of Skilfing in the Northern Kingdoms. It kept them sharp, forcing them to keep their arms strong and their fighting skills honed. But it made them bitter as well because they knew their true destiny was to rule, to smash
