The Dread Hammer (23 page)

He started hearing the prayers again when he was outside. He stood for a time, his eyes half-closed, listening to the compelling voices calling him by the name they had gifted him:
Dismay, Dismay
. He smiled in anticipation. It was a bitter thing to spill innocent blood, he had learned that all too well, but he would never regret the blood of the guilty.

The cottage door opened, releasing a little light into the night. In a flat voice Ketty said, “I know they’re calling you. Are you going?”

Smoke let out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding. “No. No, I’m coming inside.”

She’d left food on the table for him—crackers, cheese, and dried apples from the saddlebag—but instead of sitting down with him to eat, she crawled into bed with Britta.

“I’ll hunt tomorrow,” he told her.

She didn’t answer.

“Ketty, you know I—”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“But—”

“
Don’t
talk to me, Smoke.”

So he was commanded to silence. It was so unfair.

He blew out the candle and lay down by the fire, but he didn’t sleep. The voices didn’t let him.

Come Dismay
, they pleaded with him.
Avenge me.

Avenge me
.

~

H
e is a murderer, my Smoke, a bloody-handed demon. Dehan the Trenchant believed Smoke was his to command and died for the error. It’s clear to me now my beloved brother belongs to the Dread Hammer. He is a weapon made to serve Her ruthless purpose and Her purpose alone. I offer up my thanks that She’s taken him away from the Puzzle Lands—and I’ve tangled the threads to ensure he cannot return. Smoke has never kept count of the dead. Let the Dread Hammer keep count for him. It’s not my task anymore.

Ketty still had nothing to say to him in the morning, not even a thank you for the breakfast he cooked for her. She nursed Britta again, and this time she had more milk, though not nearly enough, and Britta was left hungry and fussy. When she started wailing, Smoke remembered he needed to go outside to check on the horse. Britta was still crying, so he passed the time walking around, looking at the well and the garden overgrown with weeds. He glimpsed a grave beyond the garden, but he didn’t go there.

When Britta finally gave up complaining, he went back inside. His heart almost stopped when he saw the Hauntén Otani in a chair by the hearth, holding Britta in her arms. Ketty was sitting on the rug at her feet, watching Otani with a half-smile, but her sweet expression turned into a cold glare when she noticed Smoke.

He took off his boots to avoid tracking in mud.

“Will you forgive him?” Otani asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re a cruel wife, Ketty of the Red Moon.”

If it had been in Ketty’s power to slay with a look, those would likely have been the last words he ever uttered.

“I’m going to stay here,” she announced, standing up to face him. “Otani says that no one has dared to live in this cottage since you— Well, no one has. I have the books, and Otani will teach me what she can, and I’ll learn to be a wise woman—a healer and a midwife—and maybe it will make up somewhat for what you did here.”

Smoke remembered how she’d loved the books from the moment she saw them. Even the terrifying drawings of wounds and birth had fascinated her. “I think it was decided long since,” he conceded.

“Otani will help me raise Britta,” she went on. “She’ll learn about the Hauntén from her grandmother, and she’ll learn about human people from me.”

Smoke waited to be told his role in this new family . . . if he had one?

Ketty gazed for a moment at Britta, asleep in Otani’s arms. Then she turned again to Smoke and, crossing her arms over her chest, she said, “You were restless last night. I know you were hearing the prayers again.”

“I like to hear them.”

“You like to answer them.”

“Why not? I
am
Dehan’s demon son.”

Otani lifted the sleeping baby to her lips and kissed her. “Everything has a cost,” she said. “Every transgression requires atonement.” She looked up. Smoke met her gaze, but no longer did he feel his soul tearing in two. She said, “Dehan wasn’t the only one involved in your making. It’s my fault too, I think, that you are what you are. I was bereft when my son was taken from me and for many moons I prayed to the Dread Hammer for vengeance. I think She granted my prayer by shaping you into Dismay, the bloody hand of a woman’s retribution.”

“So go!” Ketty shouted at him as her simmering anger boiled over. She waved her hands at him as if to shoo him out the door. “If you’re bidden to serve the women of the south, then do it! Do that service the Dread Hammer has made you for!”

“I will. I have to.”

He went back to the door and put his boots on again and then his coat while Ketty watched him, so pretty in her blue dress and so very angry, with a wolf’s snarl on her face. He’d left his bow and his sword leaning against the wall. He took them up. There was nothing else he needed except to know the truth. “Ketty . . . do you still love me?”

She stomped her foot and clenched her fists. “Don’t ask me that, you idiot!” Her beautiful eyes were suddenly sloppy with tears. “That’s what makes it all so hard—of course I do!”

He ducked his chin and dared a half-smile. “I’m going now. But pray to me, Ketty, when you want me to come home.”

She tried to bite down on a smile, but she couldn’t do it. Tears were running freely down her cheeks. “
Go
,” she whispered, waving him off again. “Go—but listen for me.”

He nodded. Then he reached for the threads. His reflection dissolved into a column of gray vapor that rose up through the roof and was gone.

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Stories of the Puzzle Lands - Book 2

Hepen the Watcher

Continue to the next page to read the opening chapters.

Mythic Island Press LLC
presents

Stories of the Puzzle Lands - Book 2

by Linda Nagata

A tale of exile, rebellion, fidelity, and fire

The demon Dismay’s murderous nature has earned him the ire of his beloved wife, who has sent him away in a fit of temper. In his exile he ventures south into the land of Lutawa, drawn there by the prayers of abused and desperate women who beg him to grant them vengeance against the men who cruelly rule their lives—and Dismay is pleased to do it.

Still, murder is hard and dirty work.

When an avid desire for a bath brings him to a fine Lutawan estate, he meets two beautiful young women. Ui and Eleanor are well-acquainted with the whispered tales of the demon Dismay, who slays men but never women, and they’re delighted to entertain their fearsome guest, but they warn him to beware.

Lutawa is ruled by an immortal king, who punishes treason with the terrible weapon of infernal fire. Believing this king to be the same cruel deity known in the north as Hepen the Watcher, Dismay resolves to kill him—and accidentally draws Ui and Eleanor into his schemes.

Those who help Dismay risk a fiery death, those who hinder him risk the demon’s bloody retribution, while Dismay, still yearning for his wife’s forgiveness, discovers that love can be as hazardous as the wrath of Hepen the Watcher.

* * * * * * *

Hepen the Watcher

Demon

Dismay, please kill them. Kill them tonight, oh please.

Her lips shaped the silent words, this young girl, nine or ten years of age, kneeling on the dirt floor of a tiny hovel, her head bowed and hands clasped together. She prayed in a shadowed corner, outside the reach of moonlight intruding through an unshuttered window. The silver glow fell instead across two men, asleep on a straw pallet. Both were naked, their small, wiry bodies worn with labor, their skin wrinkled with time and washed gray in the moonlight, making them seem even older than they were, serene, ghostlike, altogether different creatures from the monsters who had forced themselves on the girl only an hour before.

Dismay, please kill them before they wake.

The sweet, clean scent of whiskey still hung in the warm night air.

Dismay
—

The door opened.

The girl looked up to see a shadowy figure silhouetted against the moon-washed yard, a tall, lean man, with eyes that glittered green as they fixed on her. “
Leave now
,” he whispered, drawing a sword from his back scabbard.

She was on her feet at once. She grabbed a thin blanket from the foot of the bed and half a loaf of bread. Then she slipped silently past the demon and fled into the night.

Hundreds

“Sheriff, the Hauntén demon has killed again.”

Marick looked up with a start. As the King’s sheriff he was charged with enforcing the law and protecting the people of Lutawa from blasphemy, be it their own or that of a murderous demon sent from the godless north.

Outside the inn where he and his men were lodged, the sun had just risen over the trees. Its rays reached in golden brilliance past closed shutters to stripe the room and the large map that lay open across the table. The young deputy who’d just arrived with his report dared a glance at the map, but he knew his place, and his gaze returned at once to Marick. “It was no more than twelve miles from here, sir. In Breden!”

He was a ruddy-cheeked youth, wide-eyed with excitement. Like Marick, he was dressed in the fashion of the sheriff’s company: black boots, black gloves, and a black silk tunic, traditionally loose in the shoulders, cinched at the waist, and flaring again as it draped over loose black riding pants. The silk’s sheen was dimmed by a layer of dust from the road.

“And how many were slaughtered in Breden?” Marick asked in a grim voice.

“At least two, Sheriff. A hovel was set on fire! I saw it myself. Two farmhands lived there, along with a child slave they’d only just acquired.”

Seated on the adjacent side of the table was Cullo, Marick’s first deputy, a man of imposing size who shaved his head smooth every evening because the spark from a pyre had once set his hair aflame. “You predicted it,” he said to Marick, satisfaction in his voice. “You predicted the demon would be seen next in the district of Anacarlin, and you were right.”

Marick’s gaze turned to the map: a beautiful document that charted the kingdom of Lutawa, its farmlands and hills, its rivers and lakes, its villages and towns, all drawn precisely to scale. Seventy-three tiny tags were pinned to the map, each written on in neat script, marking a site where the demon had been seen or where it had left bloody corpses and burned homes. The creature had struck first in the borderlands, but in the days that followed it had moved steadily south, bringing terror into the heart of the Lutawan kingdom.

Looking up again, Marick fixed a hard gaze on the young deputy. “Hovels are known to catch fire. Why do you believe this was the demon’s work? Did you see the creature?”

“No, Sheriff. No one saw it. But the hovel burned so fiercely it had to have been doused with oil, and anyway, the farmboss—”

The youth stopped midsentence. His gaze cut away as the color of his ruddy brown cheeks grew even warmer. “Well, the farmboss said it was the demon’s work.”

“Did he? And why was he so sure? Speak, son! If you know something, say it.”

The boy looked at Marick again. He straightened his shoulders. “I’m sorry, Sheriff. It’s just . . . I know the farmboss was speaking in anger, but he told me the two dead men had defied the master when they brought the girl home. The master is a godly man of the Inherent. He doesn’t permit any of his slaves or servants to keep a child whore. The farmboss said the demon was welcome to punish the two men for their disobedience, and that they got no more than they deserved.”

Marick’s brows rose.

“Blasphemy,” Cullo growled.

“Is it blasphemy?” Marick asked the young deputy. “Did this farmboss invite the Hauntén demon in?”

The boy looked suddenly frightened. “No! Or, I don’t think so, sir. It’s just the dead men were longtime troublemakers. The farmboss had to whip them all too often. The master takes it from his pay if the servants and slaves don’t live as godly men.”

Cullo’s chair creaked as he leaned forward. “There’s no doubt these two troublemakers are dead inside the hovel?”

“The farmboss was sure of it, though he can’t look for bones until the fire’s cooled.”

“Return to Breden in the afternoon,” Marick said. “Look for the child whore’s bones among the ashes. If you can’t find them, look for the child whore and bring her to me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now go tend to your horse and get some sleep.”

The deputy left, closing the door behind him.

“One mile, twelve, or a hundred,” Cullo said. “How can we catch a creature that comes and goes with the stealth of smoke?”

Marick reached for a quill and a new tag. “We must lay a trap for it.”

“Ha! If only we could—but how? Despite what the Breden farmboss thinks, the demon strikes at random, for no just cause. How can we predict where it will go next?”

Marick wrote out the new tag, then pinned it beside the village of Breden. “It doesn’t strike at random.”

The first attacks had been the worst. They’d taken place in daylight, far north in the borderlands. Hundreds of free farmers had been slaughtered, along with their dogs and women. Farmhouses and fields were burned. Each rampage went on for hours, consuming farm after farm, but after several days, the demon disappeared.

When it finally struck again, it did so with a new discipline, coming at night and in stealth. It stalked farmhouses and mansions both, entering unseen to murder the men as they slept, splattering bedroom walls with blood and soaking the floors—but the dogs and the women no longer suffered its wrath.

“It’s not random,” Marick repeated. “Each time there is a woman, and many of these women have confessed that they summoned the Hauntén demon with blasphemous prayer.”

Cullo scowled. “Do you mean to bait your trap by forcing the bitches to pray?”

Marick didn’t want to admit to the temptation. “I serve the King,” he said sharply. “It’s not for me to encourage blasphemy—”

Cullo stiffened.

“—and no doubt the demon would know a false prayer anyway.”

A knock sounded on the door; it opened again. Another deputy peered inside. “The Inherent are here to see you, Sheriff.”

“We’ll join them shortly.”

Marick stood up to roll the map—the
King’s
map, entrusted to him. The King’s law forbade anyone to possess a true map of Lutawa, excepting only His own trusted servants, and none were more trusted than the King’s sheriff, who was charged with ending the terror of the Hauntén demon.

Cullo held up the brass map case. “It’s a risk to involve the Inherent,” he warned as Marick slipped the rolled map inside. “They are devoted to the King, but not to you. They fear your influence with Him.”

“As they should. Still, they are godly men. In the matter of the demon, we are surely allies.”

“You have a great confidence in these old men, to set them on guard against the demon.”

Marick shrugged. “The Inherent have the privilege. Let them share the risk.”