“Yes! Yes!” Aralore crowed as she threw the lid onto the ground and reached inside eager to hold her prize up in triumph.
A shock wave slammed into the trees around her toppling them, and they, in turn, knocked down more trees in a wonderful parody of dominos. Aralore laughed at their tortured screams. Trees in the ranks behind her began to draw back, quivering in fear of her.
Yes, yes, yes! Fear me. I am the light-stealer!
Gripping the melon-sized black gem, Aralore lifted it free of its confinement. But it was so cold, her fingers numbed and grayed. Weakness slugged Aralore in the gut. Her legs shook from an inhuman fatigue forcing her to go down on one knee. The crystal fell from her nerveless hands and bounced.
Tenebrous waves crashed over the forest for a quarter-mile around her, stealing all light. Darkness enfolded her in an expanding black sphere that blotted out the sun.
No! This is my moment of triumph. But the stone was drawing something out of her. As the shining cord within her unspooled, Aralore crashed face first into the ground and darkness winnowed away her world. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
“Preceptor!”
An orange body flung itself over the black lumir crystal and the shadows receded. Still, a gray haze surrounded them, cutting them off from everything outside the stone’s sphere of influence.
“Get the box!” Somnya shouted as she reached for the lid.
“No, we must use it to destroy all magic. Only then can we be free.” Aralore coughed and pushed to her knees.
She felt better with the stone’s influence muted by Hutel’s broad back. The middle-aged acolyte had curled his body around the stone forming an imperfect seal. But some of the stone’s power trickled out. And that bit attacked the ground, yellowing the grass, making it brittle enough to shatter in the slightest breeze.
A black mist boiled out from under Hutel. He thrashed as his exposed skin grayed and flaked off. Raising his head, he regarded Aralore with bulging eyes.
“Preceptor—” he said then his face collapsed like an advanced stage leprosy patient, leaving a bloody ruin that blackened as she stared at it.
Hutel’s body convulsed as his musculature dissolved. In seconds, there was a deflated man-shaped bag of skin over protruding bones. A foul-smelling liquid spilled out of his decaying corpse, dampening the black lumir crystal’s power.
No, this couldn’t be happening. It must be a trick of the uncertain light. Aralore refused to believe it as she crawled closer.
“Free the stone. We came here to use it—” Aralore broke off as silver light blossomed in her peripheral vision. It was the Bitch Plant Queen coming to plead for clemency.
Kill her! Unleash the black lumir crystal’s full power, Aralore shouted but the words refused to leap off her tongue. Instead, they rattled around inside her mind competing with inarticulate howls of hate until the White Witch took even that away.
White light drowned Aralore. It reached deep, scouring her. Then the Bitch Tree spoke, and her words fell like the first leaves of fall—each one attracting attention.
A woman’s silhouette appeared in the light then she bent until her diamond eyes peered into Aralore’s. “Ara-lore. Daughter of Io, seventh sister, seeker of truth—why risk your life and sanity on this quest?”
The woman had appeared in a pond soaking her pristine skirt. The jewels on her crown blinded Aralore. She gestured to the upended box, and it reflected her glory. So too did the still water of the pond.
“Ara-lore,” said the Queen, in a singsong voice, “why should you carry it alone? It’s such a burden.”
Why indeed? The White Witch had a point.
The Queen of All Trees faded into a sunbeam cleaving through the dark then it too vanished leaving Aralore blinking at the box Somnya closed with shaking hands. It squatted on a boulder, mocking them. Black fluids stained her sister-of-the-cloth’s skirt and sleeves, and she looked more than a little sick from rooting around in Hutel’s remains. But God love her, Somnya lifted her chin and put on a brave face as she backed away from the box, and its dark passenger.
“It’s in the box?”
Somnya nodded. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief except Aralore. Though perhaps her acolytes had earned a small respite from their holy quest. After all, God didn’t make the world in a single day. Surely, He’d understand if its unmaking took a few days.
Aralore rubbed her aching head. What had just happened? She regarded the rapidly decomposing body at her feet and felt her gorge rise. Hutel was a sack of charred meat, flaking away to reveal his bones. A foul liquid trickled out of his corpse and soaked into the earth staining it black.
Far from deterring her, his death proved the stone Dirk had sold her was the genuine article. It was so much more than the light-stealer. Vague ideas for weaponizing such a stone flitted in and out of her mind as Aralore regarded the first martyr to her cause.
As a plan crystallized, Aralore started to smile, but she checked the impulse and flattened her lips into a serious line as befit the solemn moment. Kiss your office goodbye, high priest. I hold the thing that will dethrone you.
Aralore blinked as the image of the high priestess card from her mother’s hated tarot deck flashed before her eyes. It mocked her and her aspirations. I’ll show you a woman’s true place, mother. I’ll show them all.
“What is your command?” Somnya asked in a shaky voice.
They were watching her. Aralore had let the silence stretch on for far too long. A hand interrupted her field of view, but it was only a momentary reprieve. Aralore grasped the proffered hand and let Velor pull her to her feet.
Her acolytes waited for an explanation, but all she had was the rallying cry rising from the depths of her soul. “Hutel was first to fall in our crusade. We will honor him.”
Then we’ll send the rest of the forest to meet its maker. Aralore fought a grin at the thought.
Angelic Heart-to-Heart
Grass sailed away under him. Each blade had symbols superimposed on it, but they blurred as Sarn picked up speed. In an eyeblink, he flew over the standing stones and their double ring of trouble at the limits of the mile-wide meadow. Sarn streaked through row upon row of tree-shaped containers alight with scrolling glyphs. The strange sigils crawled across the ground and dove under it, creating a network of symbology—the very spells animating the forest.
Somehow, in this bodiless state he could see the architecture of the forest’s enchantments, but not read them. Too bad the sight didn’t come with a primer. Sarn could only guess at what he was looking at and the more he did, a strange desire to understand kindled in his heart. But understanding was dangerous.
Still, the view was fascinating. So much so, he forgot his danger until something tore out of his side.
A woman with his features materialized wearing a worn gray dress. She pumped white wings sending gleaming feathers flying as she reached for him.
“Give me your hand, brother.”
The word ‘brother’ struck him momentarily dumb then Sarn lunged for her. Their hands caught and held. Hers was ice cold, but he held fast to her and shivered as that cold traveled up his arm.
“How come I can hear you when I couldn’t before?” Sarn swallowed, but nothing happened because he was incorporeal again. His body must still be in his cave and its unoccupied status must be scaring his poor son. I’ll make it up to you, Ran, I promise. I just need a few more minutes.
A month ago, this same woman had appeared to help him fight a demon. Then she’d been just a mute fighter who’d pulled a blade out of his side. Now, she was speaking, and he couldn’t pass up an opportunity to get some answers. Ran would understand.
“Because you’re on my turf now.” She blew a lock of hair out of her narrowing eyes. They weren’t green like his or his son’s but gray like everything else about her. “The rules are different when you’re out-of-body, which by the way, is dangerous. You’re a naked soul right now without the power to defend yourself.”
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br /> “That’s why you’re here.”
She nodded. “Just don’t make a habit of this.”
Vague memories shifted around inside Sarn’s head. They poked and prodded the darkness obscuring everything from before five years ago—when the Lord of the Mountain handed him over to the Rangers. Something warmed on his chest, and he touched his pendant with his free hand. A name drifted out of his jumbled-up past.
“Sovvan.”
Her face lit up. “You remember my name. I knew you would. We were twins after all. Of course, I was the talkative one and the oldest.” She held up a finger. “By one hour, but it still counts.”
“Why do you have wings?”
Her lips quirked in an impish grin Ran often wore. “Don’t worry. You won’t grow a pair. I made a deal to get these.” She swept her free hand backward indicating her supersized dove wings.
“What deal?”
“I’ll tell you another time. I’ve waited almost fourteen years for this moment. Before it slips away, I need to say a few things.” Sovvan glanced over her shoulder. “We don’t have much time. I’m borrowing your magic to manifest, so the longer we talk, the more I’ll drain you. So, let’s keep this short and sweet okay? I don’t want to tax you any more than necessary.”
Sarn winced as his map spawned and pointed frantic red arrows at two black upside-down pentacles superimposed over each other. They moved through the forest below and exerted a fell pull on him. He lost some altitude despite his winged savior. Beside the strange symbol walked Dirk. Where the hell is that troublemaker going now? And how did he survive the Ægeldar?
There was only one entity that conman could be searching for—the Queen of All Trees, and that jerk was leading something bad to her.
Neem’eye eriskeen, whispered his magic.
Is that the name of the thing with Dirk?
No answer, of course not, since when did his magic ever say anything useful? Anger swamped Sarn. He jerked his numbing arm away from his sister and plummeted toward the black symbol swelling on his map. He must stop it.
“No!” Sovvan swooped down and recaptured his arm.
“Let go of me. I must stop him.” Sarn gestured with his free hand to the dark tide still pulling him away from Mount Eredren. She shook her head. But no matter how hard she beat her wings, she could no longer slow his slide toward whatever had laid hold of him. It pulled him toward the thing with Dirk.
She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Listen to me. It’s not your fault I died. You couldn’t help being who and what you were, and neither could I. Unfortunately, I was allergic to magic.”
Allergic to magic—her words slammed into Sarn and he forgot all about Dirk and his new friend.
“How could you be allergic to magic?”
“Many people are. Magic is a sliding scale. Mages on one end, nulls on the other.”
“You were a null, weren’t you?”
Sovvan nodded. Her hands were losing cohesion, but she held on and the tide dragged her despite her efforts to stop it. “Yes, until death fix that,” her smile turned pained. “‘Cause every bloody thing must balance. Grand ain’t it?”
“One of us had to die so the other could live,” Sarn said slowly, following the logic she’d thrown out to its horrible conclusion.
She nodded.
“Why you and not me?”
Sovvan pointed at a black smudge he was plummeting toward. Her lips opened and closed, shaping words and an explanation fourteen years’ overdue, but Sarn couldn’t hear her. She faded into a white ball of light, and it slammed into his chest. But Sarn remained caught in a dark gyre sucking him down into darkness.
Light poured through the seams in his forest green tunic as his crystal pendant punched through the fabric, and its light stabbed the black force alternatively squeezing and stretching Sarn, but he was fading as he fell. Everything was blackening, and the ground was rising to meet him.
“Papa!” Ran shouted, but his son sounded so far away as he blacked out.
When Dirk crossed the last circle of standing stones, he met some resistance but after a moment’s struggle, it let him pass. Trees dwarfed him as they slid aside gesturing for him to continue. A leaf-strewn path snaked northward deeper into that enchanted forest, and Dirk felt eyes on him the instant he set foot on it.
Behind him, those giant trees closed ranks sealing him in with inevitability. Doubt niggled at Dirk, but it was too late to go back. Leaves rustled. He turned, but there was no one there. Neither were there any creatures or birds. There was just the rustle of dry leaves and the crackling of twigs underfoot. Beneath that was an eerie silence.
Dirk regarded the path. The shadows dappling it seemed sinister until first one child, then two then a choir full of them began a haunting song.
Come and see. Oh, come and see—what your dark deeds have done. ‘Cause I’ll be there. Yes, I’ll be there to show you—to show you. So, come and see. Oh, come and see ...
It was the same song that had called him in here full of such heartbreaking innocence and it spurred him on. Dirk followed the trail set aside for him and the song rose and fell with his steps. Branches waved to him. They were black hands urging him on.
After hiking for a while and racking up several miles at the very least, there was still no damage. The forest looked as pristine as it always had. So, I was right. That stone was harmless.
Dirk stopped and shook his head. He’d let doubt play him like a fool. Now he was lost in the forest until it chose to let him leave. Smart going there. You’re a real genius. You let a bunch of weeds trick you into coming in here and for what—a silly song?
Thank God, his friends couldn’t see him now. They’d laugh their asses off. A pang of guilt for leaving them in the Ægeldar made Dirk rub his chest. Quit worrying. They’re fine. They have Cris to look after them.
But he didn’t. Feeling suddenly exposed, Dirk searched for a rock to put his back against. The forest had lured him in here for a reason, likely not a good one.
Groans startled Dirk as two trees parted. Their massive bases were wider than ten Villars packed together. They separated by slow increments like two gigantic woody curtains revealing a spill of silver light. Framed between them, she stood there, the Queen of All Trees. Oh God, she was magnificent—like a diamond faceted into a perfect replica of a tree.
In her silver branches, she cradled a wizened tree like a mother caring for her child. Its bark flaked off as it thrashed. Not even her presence, or her light, could soothe its pain. Behind her, a graying sky leaned hard on thousands of fallen trees. They lay this way and that, gray and dying.
Dirk dropped to his knees. “Oh, God, what have I done?”
She didn’t answer, but there was anger in her every line. The world stopped, freezing time or maybe it just felt like it had as the silence stretched on broken only by the crying of the wind. He might have knelt there forever pinned by guilt if a voice hadn’t spoken from behind.
“What about your friends?”
Dirk’s head snapped up. “What about them?” He raked the clearing for the fellow who’d mentioned them.
A hooded man appeared before him and shrugged. “Ask her, she’s the one who sealed them in the pit. Oh yes, your friends are trapped in the Ægeldar.”
“She what?” Dirk turned beseeching eyes on her, the mythic Queen of Shayari. “Is he telling the truth?” His gut screamed a resounding yes, but she held her peace.
“Don’t bother asking. She doesn’t speak to men.” A familiar sickle smile spread across the hooded man’s face. “She doesn’t rescue them either. But I do, and I’m offering to help you.” He extended a bony hand. There was a symbol branded on his palm—two upside-down pentacles, one inside the other.
Dirk drew back. There was something about those pentacles—some warning from an old myth, but he couldn’t call it to mind.
“Take my hand, and I’ll help you free your friends.”
Dirk glanced one last time at the Queen of All
Trees, but she neither moved nor spoke. She was a silver statue, as immutable and bright as the sun. But her light was as cold as was her regard.
And yes, he deserved her scorn for what he’d done. But his friends—Rags, Cris, Gore, and Vill—they were the only family Dirk had ever known.
And you conned them into this. They’re imprisoned because of you, rasped his conscience. And it was right.
I can’t leave them in that pit. Just the thought of it made Dirk shiver with revulsion. Any deal was worth it if it saved his friends.
“What will that cost me? No one helps for free.”
The hooded man smiled, and his eyes twinkled at the prospect of a deal in the offing.
“Nothing you haven’t already promised,” said the Adversary to the soul he already owned.
Dirk nodded and took the Adversary’s hand. Without another glance, he headed back to Mount Eredren with the Adversary on his arm and determination in his heart.
The door creaked. “Sarn? Sarn are you in there?”
Ran cringed and crawled onto Papa’s lap. Papa sat so still. Go away. Leave Papa and me alone, he thought at the intruders, but they didn’t go away.
“You can’t just walk in there,” said Uncle Miren’s friend Bevik.
“Why? He doesn’t visit. He acts like we have leprosy or something.” Moirraina knocked again. “Sarn, I’m coming in. We need to talk.”
The door opened. Everything went dark. Even Papa’s eyes stopped glowing and he toppled, hitting the ground hard. But that was wrong. Why didn’t the rocks catch Papa and keep him from harm?
Ran poked the cold stones. They felt dead—drained of magic. Oh no, Papa! Had the black mist got them? Or was this the regular non-threatening darkness because there was no light?
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