Maledictions

by Graham McNeill et al.

  Glowing green faun lights swarmed in bunches along the stream. As a boy, Cade had believed the old stories that told how these insects were actually spirits, servants of the Father, sent to guide wanderers to a safe destination. But he knew he would receive no such guidance tonight. Cold fear soaked him at the thought of Abi reaching the boundary before him.

  He sprang up the trail, settling into a bounding run, his hunting axes clacking at his hip. This was all his fault. Abi could be in danger, as could every orphan in the village. His sheltered world faced an apocalypse of his making. May oak and earth forgive him. Fool that he was for showing her this route. Madman that he was for allowing her to approach the boundary and giving Abi her first glimpse of the Lands Beyond. That forbidden vista was the preserve of no one in the Cradle but the Matriarchs and master rangers such as Barrion.

  His pace slowed as he reached the foothills, his breath laboured as he fought his way up their steep banks. His last visit to these pastures had been during a happier time, when the goldlace and bloodthistles bloomed. Cade had been helping re-thatch the sheds when Mother Alder had condemned Abi to the goat pens for the rest of the season. Cade had helped her carry dung barrows to the fields, a favour that quickly became habit.

  She appreciated his assistance and he was fascinated by her seemingly endless capacity for talk. She spoke at first of her duties under the Matriarchs, who dwelt in stony chambers in the high reaches of the village. She had been taught to understand the ancient runes, then progressed to tedious copywork, salvaging with her quill the history of the Horned Throne from countless crumbling scrolls. But oh, how she devoured those endless lines of information. It was for her like opening a door into a new world, a world beyond her dungeon cloisters. She asked much about Cade’s exploits as a hunter and he obliged her with casually audacious tales of stalking dangerous beasts among the treacherous margins of the Cradle. How he relished the look of fascination in those inquisitive brown eyes.

  They had discussed philosophy in the privacy of the empty fields, shovelling pellets of dung along the furrows as they debated what might lie beyond the stars. She had been punished with her current duties for her ceaseless questioning of Mother Alder, whose every answer, whose every angry demand for silence, served only to inspire more questions.

  ‘We orphans are told our parents are dead, but did we not have other family to care for us in the Lands Beyond? Who dictated such a tradition? Who are the founders of our custom? The Horned Father? Or someone else? If we are never to leave the Cradle, then is this all our lives are to be?’ Abi’s questions troubled Cade, though her curiosity was infectious. Her passion enthralled him as much as it terrified him.

  ‘The truth is bliss,’ she once told him. ‘Not ignorance.’ Those words had struck him hard, made him ashamed of his comforts, of his fears. He was no sheep in thrall to the shepherd, but a man. And he became determined to prove that. He yearned to inspire her.

  Cade paused for breath atop a steep rock and looked back at the village. How quickly might Barrion follow his trail? What might he and his followers do to Cade when he eventually caught up with him? Cade skipped on, from rock to rock, bounding like a billy goat, away from the gushing stream until he reached the shelf of trees. He hauled himself onto the ledge and a wall of pines stood before him.

  He pounded sparks from his flint to set ablaze a stout torch from his belt. Was she waiting for him by the stones on the other side of the trees, too afraid to cross the boundary? Could he reach her in time? If so, what would he do? Talk sense into her? If she refused to listen, would he have to stop her? The thought of harming her, even for her own good, set his belly churning.

  He entered the trees, his crackling torchlight washing over the ground, revealing a shifted pebble, tufts of moss smeared underfoot. The smell of pine smothered him, a carpet of dead needles flesh-soft beneath his feet. He pinched a tassel of hair from a splintered branch. The strands were long and milky-yellow, plucked from the roots. Abi had battled her way through these branches, determined. Perhaps she lay injured nearby. If he was lucky. Perhaps she was dead, her carcass sprawled and wolf-ravaged, awaiting his discovery. He felt a sickening glimmer of hope.

  The pines eventually released him onto a grassy mountain ledge dominated by a single towering stone. It was coffin-narrow, flat as a headstone. Beyond lay a sea of hills and fields, ghostly green beneath the moon.

  Cade stood alone, his torch whooshing in his hand as he spun around in search of Abi. He sobbed her name.

  Nothing.

  The air here seemed to tremble with a gravelly hum that haunted the edge of Cade’s hearing. He felt a slight but dizzying pressure in his head, like palms pressed hard upon his ears. Two more stones stood glowering a short distance away, either side of the stone before him. Countless more stood beyond those, Cade knew, erected centuries ago along the mountains of the Cradle, forming a ring that surrounded the sacred valley.

  The boundary stones watched as Cade probed the grass. Abi’s trail passed between the standing rocks, continued down the grassy slope and vanished into the Lands Beyond. Those black clouds Cade had seen to the north that afternoon were now advancing, a sarcophagus lid moving to shut out the moonlight.

  Cade felt weightless with panic as he comprehended the unavoidable truth that lay pressed into the grass before him. The boundary had been crossed. An orphan had left the Cradle. Catastrophe would follow. His torch fell dead to the ground and he dropped before the stone, pressing his hands in entreaty upon the lichen-splattered rock.

  ‘Forgive her, Father! This is my sin, not hers. Punish me and spare the others, I beg you. It was I who caused this. It was I who inspired this blasphemy.’

  He ground his forehead against the stone.

  ‘I should never have brought her here.’

  Cade looked out across the Lands Beyond, remembering the eternity of blue skies and green pastures it had been months ago. But he had been more enchanted by the sight of Abi, standing beside this very stone. She had stripped off her dairymaid’s cap, pale hair shamelessly aflutter, shielding her eyes as she fell in love with the horizon. He knew then that he had lost her. In bringing her here, in attempting to draw her closer to him, he had succeeded only in casting her away, striking in her a longing for that which neither he nor the Horned Father nor anything in the Cradle could ever hope to satisfy.

  The Horned Father gave no answer. There was only that deadening murmur in the air as the boundary stones considered Cade’s entreaty. His hands fell away, his palms tingling. He had seen something move in the Lands Beyond.

  Cade instinctively flattened himself upon the grass, thankful his torch was extinguished. He was unsure what he had just seen, but something about it caused his heart to beat hard against the earth. Not daring to raise his head, he stared into darkness, cold grass nuzzling his face. Had he seen only a scarecrow? He recalled something with outstretched arms, its ragged garments licking the air. Yet he knew full well that scarecrows stood staked in their fields; they did not shamble silently about the earth of their own volition.

  He must be mistaken. Horned Throne preserve him, he had to be mistaken.

  He slowly raised his head, struggling to steady his hastening breath as he peered out from behind the stone, and over the bushes that covered the steep slope.

  Ice drenched his scalp at the sight of a shred of darkness bobbing on the spot some distance below, far too big to be a rabbit. It vanished beneath the brow of a hill before he could identify it.

  A fox, then. It must be a fox, he thought.

  As he struggled to convince himself, the shape rose again, nearer this time. It was steadily mounting the hill. He could see a figure, perfectly visible in the moonlight, cloaked it seemed, its long vestments flapping in the wind, arms thrashing as it clawed its way up the slope towards him.

  Cade heard himself whimper, feeling his limbs shake with a sudden energy as he went to
bolt back through the pines. The figure stumbled and fell. He heard a distant yelp of pain. Long pale hair flashed in the moonlight.

  ‘Abi!’

  Cade sprang, eyes fixed on the exhausted figure struggling up the hill below. He took several strides past the boundary stone before he realised what he’d done.

  As he passed between the boundary stones and down the hillside, Cade’s skull rang like a bell, its shimmering echoes ceaseless, entrancing. He shook his head to clear it and ­stumbled onto his rump, suddenly fascinated by the feel of the grass caressing his palms, cold and damp. He could smell foxglove and heather, richer and sweeter than anything that grew in the Cradle. The sky shone black, bedewed with diamond stars. Cade felt as though some cataract had been lifted from his eyes, enabling him to behold the world with a new and hypnotic clarity. The pale green moon gazed down at him and he could see every ring and grain on its radiant surface as clearly as if he were holding it in his hand. He reached out, half-expecting to touch it, when the moon opened its eyes and screamed at him.

  Cade recoiled in terror, flailing as he realised someone was shaking him, trying to drag him upright.

  ‘Get up!’ Abi screamed at him, her hair wild, her face streaked with dirt. ‘Move, Cade! Run!’

  Cade gazed up at her, struggling to comprehend, to sober himself from the haze of newfound sensations.

  A shock of pain lashed his cheek as Abi slapped him. She dragged him to his feet, clawing at him, urging him back up the hill towards the boundary stones. Cade could feel his new alertness settling into focus and he found himself absorbed by the sight of his legs steadying into a run beneath him. Whatever was happening to him could wait for an explanation. Abi gasped at his side, her skirts clawed to rags, her baggage lost. The crags tumbled into the empty foothills far below. Nothing but the wind stirred the cascading grass that swept away into the Lands Beyond.

  ‘It’s gone,’ Cade said. ‘Whatever you’re running from, Abi, it’s gone.’

  She cried out as he pulled her back, pointing into the empty chasm below.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I see nothing.’

  She seized him by the shirt, her breath hot in his face, eyes white rings of terror in the dark.

  ‘That doesn’t mean it’s not there.’

  She wrenched him back up towards the boundary stones, but Cade shrugged her off. Something else had moved down there. A thicket of tall grass some sixty paces below had shifted against the wind. Cade was already crouched, weighing a slender throwing axe in his hand. A grabbler perhaps, lumbering through the weeds in search of worms?

  He tried to pinpoint the spot, but the space at which he was trying to stare seemed to keep pushing his eyes away. Try as he might, they simply would not focus on the spot where he had seen the grass move. Yet every time he looked away, he thought he could see something moving steadily towards him. He looked again, trying to catch himself out, but his eyes just slipped across that benighted patch of ground, as if whatever stood there was too abhorrent to behold. Cade could see nothing.

  Abi shrieked as she tugged at his arm, begging him to move. But Cade refused to stir. He knew Abi to be as fearless as any hunter. To hear her voice ring with such terror felt to him somehow indecent, and he craved to obliterate the cause of it. Spurred by anger, he pounced, gauging the distance between them and that shuffling patch of grass as he flung the axe high in the air. Its thin steel head dulled with charcoal, the axe was almost invisible in the moonlight, silent as an owl as it dived for its target. Cade tried to glare at that ruffling grass, impatient for the death-squeal of whatever lurked there. But the harder he tried to look the more readily his vision bounced aside. His head throbbed.

  The axe rang as it shattered in mid-air, just short of its mark. Cade froze. There came no threats, no snarls of rage. The wind carried no musk. There was nothing there, and yet on it came. When Cade looked aside he could perceive the grass continuing its bristling path up the hill towards him, the sward flattening as if beneath a heavy and implacable tread, slowly closing the distance between them.

  ‘Why?’ he said, his voice sounding slow and stupid. ‘Why isn’t it dead? What is it?’

  He felt another splash of pain across his cheek as Abi released him from his stupor.

  ‘Now’s not the time to ask, Cade. Run!’

  Suddenly he was scrambling back up the hill with Abi, neither daring to look back. The boundary stone rose before them, imperious as it watched the two young sinners struggling below. He and Abi had put themselves beyond the Horned Father’s reach, beyond salvation. How could He welcome them back into His blessed sanctuary? How could He possibly protect them, when the very thing that pursued them could have been sent by Him to deliver punishment?

  Cade clawed his way uphill. The long grass snagged the toes of his shoes; sharp stones slit his hands and shins. The boundary stone loomed black, its silhouette melting into the night sky as if fading from reach. His movements felt dream-slow and he sensed a presence gathering behind him, hungering for him. He imagined it reaching for him, tearing through the caul of reality, about to clamp an immovable hand upon his shoulder.

  Cade whimpered as Abi dragged him after her, pulling him past the stone, back into the Cradle.

  Cade saw Abi sink to the ground, limp and breathless. He hauled her onto his shoulders as though she were a hunter’s kill, his legs threatening to buckle under her dead weight as he carried her into the pines. She was too exhausted to protest as he dumped her in a hollow at the foot of a tree. He peered back through the ramrod trunks at the boundary stone that guarded their retreat. The air was still. Nothing yet stirred near the stone. As his own breath returned, he felt giddy with relief. He rested his head against the bark and thanked the Horned Throne for His forgiveness of two foolish children.

  ‘Are you hurt, Abi?’

  She shook her head, a thicket of hair masking her face as she panted.

  ‘That thing out there,’ said Cade. ‘What manner of abomination was it?’

  She brushed her hair aside and looked up at him, her face ghostly and imploring. She spoke in gasps.

  ‘I know not, Cade. And it matters not. All that matters is that we are safe. Thank you. And thank the Throne.’

  Relief engulfed them both and they threw their arms around each other. Cade enjoyed a moment of wondrous surrender before rage erupted and he snarled at the girl.

  ‘What madness possessed you? Crossing the boundary. Your mischief risked us all.’

  ‘They would have killed me if I’d stayed. You know that, Cade. You too, had they thought us partners in witchcraft.’ She shook her head, wincing in regret. ‘I was so sure nothing was there.’ She laughed as if realising a poor joke. ‘Throne forgive me.’

  ‘They mean to hang you still, Abi. They believe you to be a witch.’

  ‘A fine word for a woman who questions their thinking.’

  ‘Do you think I jest?’ Cade said, irritated by her remark. ‘We cannot return until we have planned what to tell them.’

  ‘I know exactly what to tell them, Cade,’ she said with a hopeful smile. ‘I’ll need to speak to Mother Alder. She’ll understand.’ Now it was her turn to shake him. ‘We know the truth, Cade. No orphan must ever leave the Cradle and now we know why.’

  ‘What do you speak of, Abi?’

  ‘The boundary stones, Cade. They stand for our protection. I’ve read about them in the ancient texts. I think they divert spirit matter, the energies of the earth, in such a way as to hide us from what’s out there.’

  Cade shivered. ‘From the Nothings?’

  She steadied him with a zealous grip. ‘I fled because of doubt. Now I return to the Cradle with a faith stronger than ever, with proof of the Horned Throne’s power.’

  The earth shuddered.

  Cade looked about him, searching for the source of the tremor. The great boundary stone shifted
beyond the pines. It lurched like an enormous tooth loose in its socket. Then it cracked, bursting into rubble as it collapsed in a cloud of dust.

  Before he could comprehend the impossibility of what he had just seen, Cade felt a familiar chime in his head. It passed through him like a seismic wave, leaving him feeling somehow cleansed, liberated. He felt he could pinpoint every cricket chittering in every thicket about him.

  Abi was screaming.

  The boundary stone adjacent to the one that had just fallen was itself crumbling from view. Its death howl resounded with a tenor too substantial to have been a mere echo. Cade knew the ring of stones that surrounded the valley was collapsing, one stone after the other. He stumbled under the weight of his realisation and toppled into Abi who knelt now beside him, sobbing and pleading.

  ‘What have I done? Oh, Horned Throne, forgive me.’

  Cade felt weightless, dizzy with loss. The Cradle was no more. His home since infancy had been invaded by the Lands Beyond, and whatever vengeful energies dwelt there. The dust that lingered where the boundary stone once stood blew apart as if at a sudden breeze. Abi saw it too, though she looked away, wincing in pain.

  Something stood there, he knew, the dust disappearing around it, as if the stone and whatever sacred energies it possessed were repelled, shattered by the very presence of its conqueror.

  Cold fear squirmed in Cade’s belly, wriggling through his guts like an eel, as a half-glimpsed silhouette moved through the dust towards him.

  And several more followed.

  Cade fled with Abi back through the pines, numbly aware of the branches slashing his cheeks, tearing at his hair. They eventually broke from the line of trees, welcomed by the gushing stream that would lead them all the way back to the village. They paused for a moment, hands on trembling legs as they caught their breath. The Horned Father watched them from atop the darkened Tor, His curled horns bowed as if in mourning.