‘Are you certain? Maybe you should…’
‘I’m fine.’ Kalyth gave Idrelle’s arm a squeeze. ‘Let’s go. The day isn’t getting any longer.’
It wasn’t until the sun was directly overhead, watery and pale, that Kalyth realised she had wandered west. She was far from where the armies of Chaos should have been. Boulders littered the landscape, rising up all around her like angry fists. In the distance, a blue-grey ridge arced skyward like a spine. The trees were sparse and small. The wind moaned, long and low.
According to the branchwraiths, the enemy would never camp here where there was so little cover.
Only the outcasts favoured this terrain.
But why had she come here? Why had she not realised where she was walking? It was as if her body had shrugged her mind away and drifted to this place of its own volition. She didn’t remember the journey at all and it was unsettling, as if slowly surfacing from a dream.
Disoriented and dizzy, Kalyth leaned against a boulder and took in a lungful of sour, sulphuric air. She had the inexplicable urge to keep going, to let her legs carry her up and over that ridge. She envisioned summiting the blue-grey rock, looking down at an encampment full of outcasts, dangerous as a cluster of thunderclouds waiting to storm.
Kalyth shook herself and pushed away from the boulder. She needed to finish her mission, to scout the ground she’d been assigned, or she’d never make it back to the grove before dark.
Kalyth started back the way she came, but that itching, that horrible sense of something wrong, blossomed through her again. It was stronger than it had been in the forest. It was swelling. Spreading. It felt as if a thousand thousand somethings simmered in her legs and arms, and Kalyth knew it wasn’t grief over her fallen brothers and sisters that she felt.
Something was inside her.
Cover your mouth, Idrelle had said. Nobody knows how the madness spreads! Kalyth’s heart lurched. Had she been infected by Chaos after all? No. There had to be a simpler explanation.
Parasites perhaps? Kalyth’s body was as much a part of the natural world as the trees themselves and sometimes other creatures made her their home. Perhaps the morning sun nudged a colony of insects from their winter sleep and they had burrowed into her for warmth?
As Kalyth walked, she tried to disregard it, but the itch intensified. Every step she took seemed to drive it deeper. She felt it in her hands, the crook of her elbow, the socket of her hip, places so deep she couldn’t begin to scratch them.
Last summer, a colony of beetles had burrowed into her left calf, just beneath the thick bark of her skin. Kalyth remembered the scrape of their mandibles, the horrible tickle of their legs, wriggling, squirming. It wasn’t until the first frost that she had been able to finally pluck their still bodies out. The carapaces had fallen onto the frozen ground at her feet, small and upturned, their wings half folded, their legs crooked and bent. She remembered her surprise at how small they seemed. Crawling through her, they had been impossible to ignore.
But this was different.
This itch became a throb. The further Kalyth went, the worse it became until she wanted to scream in frustration, rip her bark away in long strips. A shudder wracked her, as if her body was trying to shake the bugs loose.
Kalyth moved faster. She felt feverish. She needed to scout the land quickly and return to the grove and huddle beside Idrelle, warm and safe in the familiar forest, feel her brothers and sisters all around her, close her eyes and let the Spirit Song of Alarielle comfort her. She tried to connect to it now, but the buzzing inside her made that almost impossible.
For one terrifying moment, she couldn’t hear the Spirit Song at all.
Kalyth ran. She bounded through the snow in great, loping strides, the wind bitterly cold against her skin.
A deep gelatinous heave knocked her off her feet.
Kalyth fell headlong into a snow bank. Something in the centre of her chest pulsed, round and moving and very much alive. It shouldered its way deep inside. Kalyth tried to tell herself she was imagining it. Parasites didn’t do that. Her body would push anything that dangerous out of her before it bored that deep, wouldn’t it? But she could feel it pounding; a second pulse. If she closed her eyes, she could almost see it there, coiled against her heart, bigger and brighter than all the other little things skittering through her.
Kalyth curled around herself.
She felt the Bright One shake himself in her chest. She felt his mouth shift, the hard press of his teeth from the inside as he smiled.
And then he spoke.
By the time Kalyth returned to the grove, the sun was setting. Sweat rolled down the crags of her bark. It took every ounce of effort not to dig at her own body. She was fevered, full of those thousand thousand horrible little things, the Bright One whispering over and over to her.
Don’t you want us here? We just want to be warm. You’re so warm. It’s so cold out there. It’s so cold. Please. Pleasepleaseplease.
Kalyth had spent nearly an hour on the ridge trying to ignore his voice, trying to dislodge the little ones that had somehow spread through her until it felt as if every inch of her was crawling with them. She beat her arms, pounded her palms flat against the boulders, plunged her feet and hands into snowbanks, hoping the cold would drive them out of her.
Nothing worked.
The little ones wormed into her ear canals. They squirmed around her jaw and into the roots of her teeth. And the harder she tried to get rid of them, the faster they moved. The Bright One chuckled softly, the sound vibrating against her ribs.
And as many times as she told herself what was happening was impossible, she could still hear him murmuring, whispering, sighing into her ear.
Now, Kalyth hurried across the snowy field. She needed to be home so very badly. She needed somewhere safe. Somewhere that made sense.
Idrelle waited for her in the copse of evergreens at the edge of the forest. The setting sun tossed shadows onto her face, violet and deep; so dark her eyes seemed as though they’d been spooned from her skull.
The Bright One hammered in Kalyth’s chest and, for a moment, her vision hazed red. She didn’t see Idrelle as she stood now, her mouth pinched with worry, one hand outstretched and wanting Kalyth to hold it. Instead, for an instant, Kalyth had a vision of Idrelle with her body broken and slumped against the evergreens. There were bloody holes where her eyes should have been and when Kalyth looked down, she saw those eyes, wet and round, in the snow beside Idrelle’s upturned hand, bloody fibres trailing away like tails. It would be so easy to make that vision real. To reach up. To pluck those eyes out of Idrelle’s skull. The Bright One wrapped his fingers gingerly around one of Kalyth’s ribs. It would be so very easy. It would feel so good. All that blood. All that warmth.
‘Kalyth, are you all right?’ Idrelle’s hand was cool when she touched Kalyth’s face. ‘You look even worse than you did before. Oh, I knew it. You are sick. You should have stayed here.’
The worry in Idrelle’s voice sank through her. Kalyth shoved her panic aside and strained to clear her thoughts. She could control this. They were only parasites. Just a few bugs. There were bigger problems, an army swelling in the dark and waiting to attack and Kalyth wouldn’t do anybody any good if she unravelled now. She needed to be strong.
For Idrelle, she needed to be strong.
‘I’m just a little tired,’ Kalyth said. Did she sound as breathless as she felt? Did she sound normal? ‘I didn’t find any enemy camps. Did you?’
Idrelle frowned, studying Kalyth carefully. The corners of her mouth were tight with concern, but she finally said, ‘No. Berlyth did. Just south of the glassy lake. She said there were two hundred of the rotbringers there. The Wargrove is mustering at daybreak.’
‘We’re going to fight?’
‘We’re not. We’ve been ordered to hold the line at the edge of the
grove. Oh Kalyth, don’t look at me like that. Somebody needs to stay here. Besides, you don’t look well. Are you sure you’re not sick?’
The little ones scratched over Kalyth’s shoulders, bubbled beneath the bark of her back. ‘I just need some rest,’ she said, and hoped against hope Idrelle believed her. When it was all over, she would tell Idrelle all about it. She would let Idrelle baby her and nurse her back to health. But for now, she needed to keep the truth of it to herself, for Idrelle’s sake. For everyone’s sake.
There were so few of them left.
As night settled over the forest and Idrelle nestled beside her in the grove, Kalyth told herself it was all for the best. Some secrets needed to be kept.
But she could still hear the Bright One whispering as she fell asleep.
Let us stay with you. You’re so warm. And we’re so cold. So hungry. We’re starving. We’re dying. We need you. We want you. Help us.
Please, help us.
In the dream, Kalyth stood in a pale field.
Tall grass rippled around her. Shadows hovered at the edges of her vision, though the sky was cloudless and lit by an indistinct sun. The air was hazy and thick. And everything, everything, was white.
Kalyth inhaled. The thick air slid into her nose and mouth like oil. It slicked the back of her tongue, rolled into her belly. Kalyth’s chest tightened and she retched, but every time she opened her mouth, the liquid air poured in until everything inside of her sloshed.
But she could breathe. Her body pulled oxygen from the syrupy air like a fish inhaling water. Shuddering, Kalyth stilled herself and tried to concentrate on that. She wasn’t dying. There was life flowing through her.
She reached for the Spirit Song, but it was slippery and she couldn’t grasp it.
And then she realised she wasn’t alone.
The parasites inside of her, those thousands of tiny squirming somethings, were all around her now, a slowly churning carpet where the grass had been moments before. Their bodies were bloated and gelatinous. Branches sprouted from their sides, tender new shoots above their stunted arms. Their heads wobbled on thin necks, their faces were wide-eyed and gaunt. They gazed up at her as they caressed her feet and ankles. They crawled up her legs and curled their tiny hands against her bark. They pleaded with her silently, vibrating with hunger and need, shaking desperation into her arms and chest.
They were so cold.
They were so hungry.
They needed blood.
They were dying.
They needed blood.
HelpusHelpusHelpus.
They needed blood.
The sea of tiny, bloated bodies quivered, and in the distance a mound rose from the earth beneath them. It ploughed languidly towards her, a giant rolling wave in an ocean of squirming bodies. It slowed to a stop in front of her and the Bright One emerged from beneath the blanket of his tiny siblings, letting them fall away from him as he stood, eye to eye with her. His skin glistened, his branches, so familiar, so much like a sylvaneth’s, shimmered. His eyes shone.
A scar puckered the side of his face like a long, sideways grin.
We’ve been waiting for you, the Bright One said. The words coiled through Kalyth’s mind, slow and steady. His lips didn’t move. He laid his hand over his chest, fingers ticking over his colourless skin as if searching for something. He paused, grinned, and sank his fingers into himself, hand disappearing into a gummy wound. The Bright One’s eyes fluttered, his grin widened, and when he slinked his hand back out again, he held an axe.
The axe was dripping when he handed it to Kalyth. A gory umbilical tethered its haft to the hole in his chest. The axe throbbed, that same slow thrum Kalyth had felt when the Bright One was inside her; a distant rhythm, a second heartbeat.
The little ones began keening. Wailing. Crying. They were so hungry. They needed her help. They wanted her help.
The shadows at the edges of the landscape detached and elongated, twisting and turning and growing, until they became bodies, faces, the servants of the Dark Gods rising from the pale earth.
Kalyth gripped the axe more tightly. How many of her brothers and sisters had these monsters killed? How many forests had they burned?
The Bright One stroked a smooth hand over her shoulder. You know what you have to do, he said.
Kalyth raised the axe.
The little ones clamoured up her legs, onto her arms, clung to her, dug their fingers into her. Thousands of needling hands, thousands of hungry, open mouths.
Kalyth rushed towards the nearest enemy, the Bright One beside her. There was no resistance when she swung, the blade cutting through armour and flesh as if through water. The dream world shuddered. Kalyth drew the blade out again. Blood fountained from the wound. The little ones scrambled off her, gleeful and diving into the river of blood, burrowing and sucking with their tiny, starving mouths.
The Bright One pressed against Kalyth. The axe, still tethered to his open chest, burned in her hands.
Again, he said.
Kalyth charged and swung. The world gushed red.
Again.
Blood rushed over her, hotter and faster, frenzied and full of jubilant need. Again she attacked, laughing, screeching, howling. It felt good; it felt so good, to finally do something. To attack, to let her rage bubble up and over like a spring. A geyser. A volcano.
When Kalyth finally stopped, gasping, blood raining from her branches, the ground roiled with parasites, their bellies pulsing red with gore. They cooed and purred, wriggling happily over her feet.
The axe hummed in her hand and Kalyth closed her eyes to let the rhythm of it settle into her, steady and powerful.
The Bright One nuzzled her ear and, even though there was nobody left to kill in the dream world, he breathed, softly, sweetly, Again.
Kalyth woke in the grove, the moon bright and full. The ground beneath her wasn’t soaked with blood. Not yet. But she could smell it all around her, salty and sweet. Beside the frantic beating of her heart, Kalyth could still hear the Bright One whispering Again. Kalyth’s hands clutched for an axe that wasn’t there. Trembling, she sat up.
Idrelle lay beside her, her face soft, one hand looped around her own branches for comfort, the other outstretched where her arms had been wrapped around Kalyth. She didn’t stir. Was she sleeping still? Kalyth wanted her to be. Because if Idrelle saw her now, feverish and full of bloodlust, she wouldn’t be able to hide any of it from her.
And what if she did know? the Bright One whispered.
Kalyth couldn’t seem to silence him now no matter how hard she tried, but the presence of him behind her thoughts was beautiful in its own way. Would sharing that beauty with Idrelle be so terrible?
Kalyth pictured holding Idrelle in her arms, her head against her breast. Maybe she’d be able to hear him, too. Maybe all the little ones would wrap their tiny hands around Idrelle’s fingers. Maybe the Bright One would flow into her.
All she had to do was open Idrelle up.
It wouldn’t be so hard.
She didn’t need an axe. Her claws were her weapons. One slice, one carefully placed swing, would do it. She could hack into all the fleshy, woody parts of Idrelle and the Bright One and all his brothers and sisters could rush into her. And if Idrelle didn’t want it, if she resisted, well then, her blood-sap would feed the little ones.
They were so very hungry.
Kalyth felt them jitter eagerly at the idea and the Bright One nudged Kalyth with a gentle hand. She leaned over Idrelle, one arm raised. Her claws glinted in the moonlight.
Idrelle stirred, frowning and fitful as she rolled onto her back, as if she could sense something was wrong. Idrelle was always so sensitive. How many times had she known something was wrong before Kalyth mentioned it? Idrelle cared for her, loved her.
She loved her so much.
The Bri
ght One whispered how lovely it would feel, how warm. Idrelle’s blood would be like velvet running over her skin. All Kalyth had to do was drive her claws into the back of Idrelle’s head, crush her body between her fingers, pop legs from hips, arms from shoulders, tear into flesh with her teeth and–
Breath hitching, Kalyth jerked upright. She staggered away from Idrelle, horrified. She lost her footing. Tripped. Turned. Ran. She crashed through the forest, past the ash trees and the soulpods, through the copse of evergreens and into the field. Frost crackled beneath her feet as she sprinted across the snow and the little ones scampered into the warmer parts of her, coiled around her insides, fingers tugging, faces upturned and begging for heat and blood, blood and heat.
It wasn’t until Kalyth reached the western ridge, towering blue-grey and cold, that dead landscape leading to the outcasts’ camp, that she stopped. She collapsed against one of the boulders, her claws scraping against it, clenching and unclenching as she tried to gather herself together again, but she couldn’t feel where the parasites ended and she began anymore. Everything was shifting, squirming, moving.
She looked up.
The Bright One stood beside her.
‘You aren’t real,’ Kalyth whispered. She tried to believe it was true.
The Bright One chuckled. The little ones clustered around his feet, mewling as they wound between his legs. The Bright One reached out a hand. He stroked Kalyth’s face tenderly. What makes you say that?
Shivering, Kalyth reached, one last time, for the Spirit Song, but there was nothing left to bind her to Alarielle or her brothers and sisters. There was nothing but an emptiness that seemed to stretch on forever.
Kalyth sank into the snow. The Bright One sank with her. Her hands trembled. Her insides quivered.
You know what you have to do, he said.
Kalyth clenched her teeth. ‘You aren’t real.’
The little ones crawled over her legs, inched onto her arms, around her hands, up and down the length of her claws.
‘This isn’t real.’
Cut. Kill. Break. Kill. Kill.
Kill.
Maledictions Page 8