Goron had revived himself enough to sit up, but his eyes were still wide, and his jaw trembled. Szat was now the colour and shape of a blueberry.
The mothras began to chant, a resonant hum that made Morwen’s insides vibrate. “Senuna, Senuna”. The grove descended into darkness as wings, as vast and dark as a thunderstorm, filled the sky above.
“Snap out of it,” Morwen yelled kicking Goron in the leg. “We’re in a lot of trouble.”
Goron lifted his head and followed Morwen’s gaze. He’d woken from one nightmare to another.
The branches swayed violently and a powdery dust fell like snow as a gigantic mothra fluttered down and landed upon the grass.
Morwen could see her life-sized reflection in Senuna’s shiny, black eyes. Her head drooped. She felt insignificant and helpless.
“Strangers have come, Senuna. Many brothers and sisters lie dead by their hands,” a chorus of voices called from the trees.
“Is this true?” Senuna asked. Her bruise-coloured lips seemed to move in slow motion.
Senuna’s words were liquid velvet in Morwen’s ears. She closed her eyes and listened to the dripping echoes a moment before replying. “Yes, but we were afraid. We thought they meant us harm.”
“What are you doing in our forest?” Senuna asked.
“To kill you all for poisoning Wichsault.” How could she lie to such a beautiful voice?
Senuna’s laughter was as soft and violent as a storm of cotton balls. “The old man has been up to his tricks again I see.”
“He told us it was you. That the mothras send clouds of poison to cleanse the forest of all human life. I never thought it was you, though,” Goron said lying on the dewy grass and grinning stupidly.
“Me either,” Szat said. “But Morwen did.” The demon was sitting up staring adoringly at Senuna.
“I…I…suppose I did,” Morwen stammered.
“Hush child,” Senuna said.
Morwen smiled, and her head swayed dreamily from side to side at the melodious sound.
“The old man is the god of this forest and to protect it he sends plagues and pestilence to its enemies.”
“Why isn’t Murdus helping to protect the forest?” Goron asked his eyes musingly traced the spirals on the mothra’s wings.
“Murdus, Widon, they are one in the same,” Senuna said.
Goron jumped to his feet, “You mean we’ve been worshipping the cause of our destruction?”
Morwen laughed. At least she knew where she stood with the night mother. “How can we get Murdus to stop poisoning Wichsault?”
“There might be one way. Long ago there was a beautiful goddess called Blodwen who presided over the forest with Murdus.”
Goron grimaced at the mention of Blodwen’s name.
“All living things were Blodwen’s lovers. She had many children, mothra, slaug, human, boggart, and toadok among them. The two gods quarrelled. Murdus disliked many of Blodwen’s children. They were unkind to the trees, and he tried to kill them, but Blodwen fled with her offspring deep into the forest. Perhaps if you talk to her, she may be persuaded to return if Murdus promises not to harm her children.”
“There’s a bit of a problem there,” Goron said rubbing the back of his neck and staring at his feet. “I ah…I sort of chopped...um.. killed her by accident.”
Morwen didn’t think Senuna’s eyes could get any bigger, but they did.
“You killed the mother?” Senuna said.
“It was an accident. I needed wood to make a fire for this deer I killed, so I chopped down this big, old willow tree which her lifeforce was somehow linked to.”
“You…you felled the lifetree?” Senuna was shaking uncontrollably. Her voice wasn’t bewitching anymore and sounded like the buzzing of hundreds of flies.
A mournful wail came from the mothras in the trees, and they fluttered into the air.
“How was I to know?” Goron was bright red and droplets of perspiration formed on his forehead.
“Murdus was right about you humans. “You’re better off dead,” Senuna spread her wings sending forth a dust storm of scales. She snatched up Morwen and soared into the air.
She’s going to fly as high as she can and drop me. Morwen snapped out of her trance-like state and shouted down to Goron, “Thanks! You murderous, horny oaf.”
“Sorry,” he yelled as he thudded to the ground after flinging himself into the air to try to grab Senuna’s wing.
They were above the trees when a tentacle grasped Senuna. The mothra queen beat her wings and scratched helplessly.
The tentacle squeezed. There was a strangled cry, that sounded anything but bewitching, and a squelch. Morwen was squirted with insect guts, then she fell. Branches tore at her robe and skin and bashed her bones. The merciless ground rose to meet her.
Morwen shut her eyes and waited for the impact. She felt her waist gripped firmly, and she hovered in mid-air. Visions of being squeezed out of her skin like a paste swirled beneath her eyelids, but she was being caressed and lowered gently to the ground. She opened her eyes. It was Zooktuk. His tentacles whirred above her as he swatted and squashed the swarm of mothras. The last few fragments floated to the ground, and Morwen looked around her. A giant bowl of mothra soup had been dropped from the sky into the clearing.
“No hurt Morwen,” Zooktuk said beaming down at her.
“Thank you, Zooktuk, I guess.” Morwen surveyed the carnage and sighed. None had survived, another creature to add to her growing list of extinct species. Twinges of remorse pricked her. She began to feel guilty. Murdering the sick and dying was one thing, but genocide was so much more sinister.
“Delicious,” Szat said scooping up a warm, yellow glob of mothra goo and plopping it into his mouth. His colour was back to normal and so too was his appetite.
“We need to find Murdus and kill him. Though, I don’t like our chances of fighting a god without our weapons.” Morwen raised an enquiring brow and shot a sideways glance at the charybdis.
“Zooktuk no kill gods.” Zooktuk thrust a tentacle holding an axe and a staff at Morwen and Goron. “Zooktuk found.”
Morwen didn’t know if she should feel creeped out at being stalked by a one-hundred-ton monster.
She decided to be grateful instead. “You’re a good friend, Zooktuk,” Morwen said accepting the staff. “The ruins will be as good a place as any to start.” She began to walk along the river. Szat and Goron followed.
“No, Zooktuk carry friends, much quicker,” Zooktuk said extending a tentacle.
The lazy motion of their transport lulled the travellers into silence. Morwen gazed through half closed eyes as dusk gently painted the sky with the colours of ash and blood. Goron sat upright, his mouth pressed into a tight line and his eyes lifting from his axe only to scan the shadowy tree line. Szat dozed lightly, occasionally smacking his lips.
Zooktuk safely transported the trio to the ruins of Victain. He would wait for them on the river’s bank, resting in the slivers of remaining sunlight until their business with Murdus was concluded, and then ferry them to Wichsault.
If there was any doubt about Senuna’s story, it was dispelled. Yellow, bilious clouds spewed out of the tower where they had slept only the night before and drifted across the still air in the direction of Wichsault.
“Right,” said Goron and stalked ahead. The warrior was sullen on his journey down the river, spending his time sharpening and polishing his axe. The blade reflected the ominous sky, bleeding with red light. Goron’s fingers opened and flexed around the handle. Morwen knew how deadly Goron was with the axe—Murdus didn’t know what was coming for him.
Goron was no doubt angry with her for yelling at him when he confessed to the destruction of the lifetree and the death of the goddess, Blodwen. Seriously though, what sort of moron cuts down a lifetree to make firewood? They’re a
s rare as fist-sized diamonds. To each one was tethered the soul of a god or goddess. Morwen stopped and rapped her knuckles on her head.
“Oi,” Szat said, falling from her shoulder and swinging on her hair as if it were a jungle vine.
How could she have been so stupid? Murdus was a forest god just like Blodwen. The only way to kill him was to cut down his lifetree. To challenge him in the flesh would be certain death. “Goron, come back,” she shouted. The warrior ignored her. Instead, he glared up at the tower, wreathed in yellow smoke, for one last time, and then ducked his head under the six-foot-tall door frame, and entered.
Morwen dashed after him with Szat holding her hair as it streamed behind her. He was already rounding the first turn of the stairwell as she burst into the tower. She bounded up the stairs two at a time.
“Stop, you fool,” she puffed tugging the back of his shirt. “He’s a forest god just like Blodwen, right. That means we can’t fight him this way. We have to fell his lifetree as you felled Blodwen’s.”
Goron wheeled round, eyes blazing. “Stop harping on! I told you it was an accident, and if you hadn’t put that curse on me, it would never have happened.”
“I never cursed you, I just said I did.” Morwen couldn’t look Goron in the eyes.
“What!” Goron roared. He was two steps above her and looked like an enraged giant.
“Shh, keep your voice down. I cursed my sister with her own flesh. She doesn’t know shadow speak, so she had no idea. I’ve always hated that bitch. She got all the attention.”
“You really are a horrible person.”
Morwen shrugged. “I’m starting to realise that.”
“What did you curse her with?”
“Oh, nothing too horrible, bad acne and breath that smells like a privy.”
Goron’s lips twitched, then he burst into laughter. Morwen grinned up at him. The laugh was cut short, and Goron’s eyes narrowed. “You mean being raped by the slaug queen and killing Blodwen was my fault?”
“Yes.” She kept grinning.
“Oh.” The giant, deflated, slid halfway down the wall. “So, where is this tree of yours? We’re in the middle of a forest in case you didn’t notice.”
Morwen couldn’t resist a smirk. “We’ve been living under it all our lives.”
“The Wichsault tree!”
“The very same.”
They gathered in the great hall, all one hundred and eighty-six survivors. Many were too weak to walk by themselves and relied on the stronger ones to carry them. Goron would not recognize his sergeant. Her skin was sallow and patchy, and her eyes were pebbles of dull light at the bottom of a well. Her muscles had begun to sag as if they were melting. The dark rot had nearly triumphed over her body.
The number of poisonous clouds had increased dramatically in recent days. The air was thick with its acrid stench, and black clumps of the mould that came with it clung to the masonry. She lowered the stretcher she was dragging and joined the emaciated occupant in a forlorn moan. She regretted it instantly. Her lungs felt as if they were full of nails.
“You should have got someone else to help,” Anwen chided.
Jasin winced at the reek of Anwen’s breath. It smelled like a latrine after one of Goron’s infamous feasts. The skin on her face, once glowing and unblemished, was pasty and covered in acorn-sized zits.
“What does it matter now?”
“I guess it doesn’t, not now.” Anwen scratched at her cheek. One of the zits ruptured, and its curd-like filling oozed across her face like a pale worm.
Goron wouldn’t look twice at his once betrothed now. Jasin looked around, not that there was much else to choose from. I guess that puts me at the top of his list. She laughed and reproached herself immediately. Sharp, burning twinges, as if the nails inside were rattling around, stabbed into her lungs. She would no sooner settle down with a man like Goron than she would pick her teeth with her sword. Where was he anyway? Probably naked in some cave with that insidious warlock. “Is that everybody?” Jasin said surveying the collection of wretches.
“Yes, every soul in the castle.” Anwen’s eyes welled with tears.
Jasin thumped Anwen on the shoulder, making her stagger to regain her balance. She didn’t do affection very well. “That’s it then.” She reached among the mugs for the jar on the banquet table and read the label, “Killer’s Eye.” The jar was small and only half full of the deadly leaves. “Are you sure this will be enough?”
Anwen supressed a sob. “The book said one pinch is enough.”
Jasin flipped the lid on a barrel of ale with her sword, emptied the jar’s contents inside, and carefully stirred the concoction with her weapon. “Poison’s up,” she yelled.
A silent line of smiles formed before her. All the survivors were tired of suffering. Jasin filled the mugs and gave Anwen the last.
“You’re not having any?” Anwen asked.
“A warrior’s death for me.” She pulled the sword from its scabbard. It glistened in the pale candlelight, still wet with ale. She would never have put a wet sword in the scabbard before last night. That was when Anwen, who had taken on Morwen’s mantle of tending to the sick and dying, had approached her. The castle’s inhabitants had decided unanimously that nobody wanted to go on. It took somebody else to tell her what she already knew. Jasin too wanted to die.
“You know, I still love him.”
“Who?” Jasin said. She was distracted wondering how it would feel to stab herself.
“Goron, of course. If he’d come back, I was going to ask Morwen to lift the curse so we could be married.” Anwen flicked back her straw-brittle hair.
The memory of that beautiful girl flashed in Jasin’s head, and she felt sad. “You would have made a handsome couple,” she lied. Jasin realised how still and silent everybody else was.
Anwen must have too, for she raised the mug to her lips and sipped. She shuddered and screwed up her face at the bitter draught.
“I think it works better if you drink it fast.”
“Oh, of course.”
There were no guards in the gatehouse and nor was it barred. There would be time for reprimands later. Goron wrenched open the door, and he and Morwen sprinted through the entrance to the central courtyard and the lifetree. Flakes of masonry crunched under their feet and echoed in the silence. Goron’s axe cut deep into the trunk. Dark red sap, as thick as porridge, bubbled from the wound. Morwen was right. One hundred more strokes, an abattoir of blood, and the tree toppled, dissecting the eastern wing. Morwen and Goron roared in triumph and Szat, for good measure, put the tree to flame.
They spent an hour roaming through the castle wondering where everybody was before they came to the great hall and found the answer. Bodies lay sprawled on the floor and slumped against walls. Goron brushed the hair from the face of one seated at the table. Large pus-filled pouches confirmed it was Anwen. He spun around to face Morwen and caught sight of the body at Anwen’s feet. It was Jasin. Her guts a cold, congealed mess beside her.
“Not a one left, if they’d only held out a little longer,” Goron said sinking to his knees beside Jasin’s insides.
Morwen bit her lip. She could hear Szat splashing around in the bottom of the barrel. “I better go and make an antidote.”
Goron stood up and rubbed at the large tears with the back of his grubby sleeve. “What are we going to do now?”
Morwen made her way to the window overlooking the black sea. The distant silhouette of the island was blurred by a light sea mist.
Goron sniffed. “We could start our own kingdom, fill these halls with children.”
“Queen of Dark Rot.” Her eyes focused on the island. “No, there’s nothing here for me now. See if Zooktuk is still wallowing in the river, I need a ride.” She turned back to Goron, “You coming?”
THE END
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Simon McHardy, Dark Rot
Dark Rot Page 15