The Dread Hammer (16 page)

They came at twilight, when the household was gathered for the evening meal.

Smoke came first as a swirl of vapor pouring through the walls. Several diners cried out and stumbled from their chairs. Even the Trenchant stood in alarm as Smoke materialized in the open space fronting the head table, reeking of blood and charred lives. He went to his knees at once, his head bowed in abject submission. But before his knees hit the floor he felt the gravity of the three Hauntén as they took shape behind him.

Chairs scraped as people jumped to their feet. There were gasps and small screams and the sound of running feet. Smoke looked up to the table where his family dined and knew at once something had changed. Takis had risen to her feet to stand beside Dehan, but behind
her
was the Lutawan officer, Nedgalvin, and Smoke could not think why he was there, or what had moved Takis to show him to the Trenchant, and what had stopped Dehan from instantly commanding his death.

None of them were armed, though, at least not with steel.

Ketty was there too. His gazed passed over her swiftly. She’d backed away into the shadows behind the table. Her pretty eyes were wide with fear and confusion as she held Britta securely against her breast.

Only Tayval was still seated. Her shocked gaze was fixed on Smoke, but everyone else stared at the Hauntén gathered behind him.

And what were they waiting for?

He turned to glare at Pellas. “
Do it!
”

Pellas glanced down at him, and it was as if a mask had been stripped away and his inner heart revealed. Hatred blazed, a dark fire in his eyes, so fierce Smoke felt his soul begin to tear in two just as it had when he’d fled the midwife’s cottage.

He was betrayed.

There was no time for any other thought. He lunged from his knees, drawing his sword as he did so. The blade hissed through the air, but Pellas was already gone in a silvery vapor. Smoke’s blade whistled through the shifting cloud, meeting no resistance until it bit deep into the wooden floor.

As he wrested the blade free Pellas coalesced almost on top of him. Smoke stepped back, but Pellas was faster. He struck Smoke’s wrist with a numbing blow that sent his sword clattering to the floor. At the same time, Pellas hooked his heel behind Smoke’s ankle and jerked hard. Smoke’s feet flew out from under him, and his back slammed against the floor.

Pellas came after him with such speed his Hauntén body half dissolved to fluid mist. Smoke saw him draw his thin, curved sword. He tried to roll away, but Pellas was faster. Gripping the blade in two hands, the Hauntén stabbed it down through Smoke’s left shoulder. Ribs cracked, his shoulder blade snapped, and then the point of the sword sank into the wooden floor.

Smoke tried to flee along the threads.

But he was pinned to the world by steel, just as he’d been that day he’d met Nedgalvin. He sensed all around him the weft and warp of the deeper world, but he could not retreat into it.

Then the pain hit him.

It sucked all the air out of his chest, leaving him nothing left to scream with. Not that anyone would have noticed, so many people were already screaming all around the room.

But then the first shock passed. The pain that followed on its heels only stoked his ever-present anger. Bending his right elbow, he forced himself up, an inch, two inches, his left shoulder still impaled on the sword. Its blade sliced deeper through his muscle tissue. Hot blood bubbled from the wound.

Pellas pressed a booted foot against Smoke’s chest, slamming him back down against the floor.

Smoke screamed. He couldn’t help it. The pain in his soul when he looked at Pellas combined with the wracking pain in his shoulder was more than he had ever imagined, or endured—but even as he screamed, he fought back. Seizing Pellas’ ankle with his right hand he tried to throw him off.

But his strength had bubbled away with his blood. He felt its sticky warmth beneath him, clotting in his hair, and he could no more move the foot that held him down than he could lift the Fortress of Samerhen.

It was so unfair! Pellas had betrayed him, and his defeat was complete.

What would happen to Britta? What would happen to Ketty?

But he already knew. Dehan would care for them. He writhed again, driving even more blood from his body.

It was the midwife, curse her! It had been wrong to murder her, he knew that, but he’d only been trying to protect Ketty. That had seemed like reason enough at the time, but everything had gone wrong since then and now this—

I am a fool!

The Hauntén did not answer prayers. Kor
á
y was the only one of them who ever had. He
knew
that. Yet he’d been so desperate he’d chosen to believe them. He’d brought them here—

Fool!

—only to find they’d come for retribution, sent, no doubt, by the old spirit who’d caught him at the cottage.

It was so unfair.

Ketty screamed in horror as the Hauntén demon stabbed his sword into Smoke. Her scream frightened Britta so that she started screaming too. “Help him, help him,” Ketty sobbed, and then when no one did she started around the table.

Tayval was on her feet before Ketty had gone three steps. She caught her arm.
Stay
, a ghost voice whispered inside her mind.
You cannot stop it
.

“He is my husband,” Ketty pleaded in a voice choked with tears.

Stay
.

As Pellas stood balanced with one foot against Smoke’s chest, he regarded Ketty and the baby she held. “Dehan.” The Hauntén’s merciless green gaze shifted to the Trenchant. “Twenty years ago you stole away what was precious to me. I’ve come now for restitution.”

Silence filled the room. Even Britta had stopped crying. Ketty held her close and kissed her, more a comfort to herself than to the baby. She looked at the Trenchant, and was startled to see him sigh and sit back down again. He leaned against the armrest of his chair, cupping his chin in his palm as if considering the Hauntén’s request. After a few seconds he gestured at Smoke. “Pellas, it lies there beneath your foot. All that is left. Take it.”

“No!” Ketty shouted, and Pellas turned again to consider her, but Tayval pinched her arm and pulled her into the shadows that lurked beyond the reach of the table’s candlelight, where Nedgalvin’s broad shoulders blocked her view of Smoke. The southerner stood with a protective arm in front of Takis—but Ketty noticed that his gaze was fixed on the woman Hauntén, staring at her as if he were transfixed.

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!”

His 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.