by Neil Beynon
Pan nearly missed the opening.
The Morrigan sensed the woodsman enter the cave. Pan did too, but it made the goddess pause, her attention not on the rope. She tilted her head as if listening. Pan could see the broken palace swaying all around them. His mistake had been attacking her directly – all he really needed to do was trap her as she sought to do to him.
‘Goodbye, sister,’ he said.
The Morrigan looked at him, puzzled.
Pan erupted from the metal rope, shattering it, and up through the ceiling of the palace into the cavern, out into the ur-sky of Golgotha. The structure beneath him collapsed and folded in on itself, even as Pan bound the ruin with magic almost as old as they were. This wasn’t gods’ magic but the cants the forest had taught them long ago.
Pan waited a moment to see if the spell would hold. The rubble bubbled once and settled. He had succeeded. He had bound the Morrigan. His sad smile faltered as he realised he had also blocked his way back to the Cave of Shadows. The tunnels lay behind rock now. The ground shook a little as the Morrigan tried to free herself. Pan fancied he could hear his sister screaming through the rubble. The Mnemosyne glinted in the distance.
The god made for the lake with his remaining strength, dropping like a rag doll into the silver water. Pan pulled himself down for the bottom of the lake, sliding past the creature that lived in there, ignored, as he was nothing the creature could eat. In the murk, he could just about make out the water ahead, and he was pleased that the tunnel he remembered was still in use, as he swam across to the opening.
Pan emerged from the tunnel into a pool and kicked himself up to the surface, where he enjoyed a few brief draughts of air before he heard the howls. Cernubus might know what had happened already, and if he didn’t, he would soon. They couldn’t get in now. But if they did? He still did not have enough magic to fold space. He doubted he would ever have enough again if he didn’t get out of Golgotha soon and back into the forest.
‘Move,’ he hissed at himself.
The god ran down the tunnels, thankful the crumbling palace had not blocked the path he had to take. It had been a long time since he had cause to visit his sister in her home, and it was a struggle to find his way through the network, back to the Trivium. He saw the corpse of Kerberos, struggling to regrow its heads. At least, he thought, I know I am on the right track. Pan ran up the corridor that led to the Cave of Shadows and in.
The ground shook once more. There was no time. Anya, Vedic, Akyar and Meyr were all only halfway up the wall and barely making progress. Pan wanted to ask why they weren’t out yet, but he had no time and little power. The hunter was coming.
The god turned and let loose a cant at the tunnel behind him. The ceiling of the tunnel collapsed in a hiss of magic and sulphur that made his companions look down.
‘Pan!’ yelled Akyar, delighted.
Pan had no time to respond. The cave-in would not hold back his cousin long, and there was no alternative for him but to use what magic he had left. The trickster spoke a cant, which spiralled him into a whirlwind, lifting off the ground. Spinning up to Akyar and Meyr, the whirlwind pulled them into its midst and lifted off again, only to take Anya and Vedic. Pan screamed as he pulled all four up out of the tunnel into the light of the forest and dropped them in the grass before he collapsed face down. His hair had turned silver-white.
Anya looked up at the sky and felt air in her lungs and grass underfoot.
It was good to be alive. She couldn’t believe they were, and she wasn’t surprised to see Meyr’s little face peering over her in concern.
‘I’m all right,’ she said, squeezing his hand.
‘Pan?’ asked Akyar.
Anya saw the Tream scrambling over to the god and turning him onto his back. The Tream gasped. Pan now looked old, his hair pale and his skin cracked like the desert mud. He smiled faintly at Akyar.
‘I think I overdid it,’ said Pan, with a rasping chuckle.
‘How do we fix this?’ asked Akyar.
Pan shook his head. ‘You do not need to do anything: the forest will heal me. This just takes time, and Cernubus is slowing it down.’
‘He’s close?’ asked Vedic, getting to his feet.
Pan coughed. There was blood on his chin, golden and gleaming brighter than the suns above. ‘No, but he is coming. I would not like to be my sister when he gets to Golgotha.’
Meyr stepped closer to Akyar, wrapping his hand round the vizier’s.
Anya slapped Pan’s arm. ‘It’ll be fine. We’re safe now.’
‘Are we?’ asked Akyar. ‘Surely, he will return for us.’
Vedic did not say anything. He stared into the treeline, still breathing hard and looking like the only thing he could manage was a slow stumble.
‘Yes,’ said Pan. He looked round at the carnage wrought on the forest. The soil still looked reasonable, and he began rubbing mud over his wounds and skin.
‘We should split up,’ said Anya. She couldn’t say why this was the right thing to do. It wasn’t a voice in her head but an instinct.
‘Why?’ asked Akyar.
‘Cernubus needs Danu more than Meyr,’ said Anya. ‘If we split up, he has to make a decision who to follow. He’s more likely to come after Vedic and me, as we’ll be trying to free Danu.’
‘It’s a long way back to Hogarth,’ said Vedic, hoarse.
Anya nodded. She countered, ‘This is about belief, right? He has taken the forest, and we have to believe the thain knows that by now. He wanted to execute the Tream heir. He has Shaanti children ready to kill as well … Maybe he even wanted the daughter of the witch-warrior. He can do without most of these sacrifices, but he needs Danu to convince the Kurah he is all-powerful. He will come after us with everything he has.’
Pan stared at her. ‘She is right.’
‘The Shaanti will be wiped out if they meet the Kurah in open battle,’ said Akyar, ‘won’t they?’
‘Without help, they will be wiped out either way,’ replied Pan.
Akyar looked at Pan. The god did not look away.
‘I don’t see how we could get back to the palace in time for Hogarth to make a difference. The battle will already be over, the Shaanti dead.’
‘I can do that,’ said Pan.
‘You’re not recovered yet,’ said Akyar.
Pan put his arms around him. ‘Do you think I am going to let you out of my sight again with that mad bastard roaming round here?’
Akyar smiled, resting his forehead against the god’s. ‘The feeling is mutual.’
Meyr smiled. ‘We will go back together?’
Pan nodded and lifted up the boy. ‘We will indeed.’
‘What about Danu?’ asked Vedic, glaring. ‘We could do with your help as well, little goat.’
Pan turned to look at the woodsman. ‘Well, I never thought I would hear you say that.’
Vedic shrugged. ‘I was always able to assess the field.’
Pan nodded. ‘I will return as fast as I can. But we need both you and the Tream in play if we are to win the day.’
‘How long until he finds us?’ asked Vedic, standing and checking he still had his sword.
‘Hard to say, Vedic,’ said Pan, weary. There was brown returning to his hair now. ‘We should move into the treeline.’
The god passed Meyr back to Akyar and tried to move. The effort made the trickster dizzy, and he doubled over, coughing and gagging as if he had spent all night drinking and smoking. Akyar put his hand on the god’s back.
‘We have to let him regain more of his strength first.’
‘It appears so,’ said the woodsman, his eyes darting round the clearing.
‘A small rest will do us all good,’ said Anya.
Vedic sat down again, muttering in a language Anya couldn’t understand. She was too tired to labour her thoughts on his strange tongue and instead sat down on a fallen tree trunk.
‘It’s a good thing,’ said Akyar, putting the Tream child down. ‘You co
uldn’t fight your way out of a pile of washing right now. You nearly died in Golgotha, Vedic.’
‘I’ve nearly died a few times recently,’ said Vedic. ‘In my youth, it was practically a full-time profession for me.’
Pan silenced him with a look.
Anya spoke up again. ‘We haven’t eaten properly in days; you’re exhausted. Do you have a way of breaking that spell holding Danu?’
Vedic did not answer.
‘Me neither. And we have to stay with these guys until Pan attempts his cant to take them back to Hogarth. What if the wolves came?’
‘They’re Tream,’ said Vedic. ‘Hard to kill. They will be fine.’
Anya was surprised at the woodsman’s words. She had thought he had changed in Golgotha, but she could still see that uncompromising hardness on his face. Vedic was like the trees he tended: he could sway but not bend.
The woodsman hissed a little as he shifted, still favouring his left arm even though Anya was not in any danger. She thought he looked like he might actually die at any minute. Vedic was pale and clammy as he started to pull what little dead wood there was around them into the start of a fire. Pan got to his feet, sighing, and walked over to the woodsman, forcing the man to sit down. He placed his right hand on the woodsman’s cut chest.
The space under Pan’s fingertips, where he touched the woodsman, glowed the colour of fire. Anya thought she saw Vedic’s chest respond in the same colour before the god stepped away. Vedic looked up. Many of the cuts on him were gone, as were a few of the lines around his eyes, and he looked sharper. His eyes glinted in shadow.
Pan’s hair was grey again.
‘How long will we be delayed?’ asked Akyar, his voice even.
Pan shook his head. ‘I’m regaining my power quicker than my appearance suggests. Eat with them, and we will try before the sunset.’
‘What about Cernubus?’
‘He is on his way to Golgotha,’ said Pan, hiding his face. ‘He cannot easily get from there to here now.’
‘The Morrigan?’
‘Alive,’ he whispered.
Anya was concerned at the way he sounded upset. ‘She kept you captive, tortured you. Why are you crying?’
‘She wasn’t always like this.’
Akyar chipped in. ‘But she is today.’
Pan looked up at him with tear-streaked cheeks. ‘And yet she is still my kin. Once, the Morrigan remembered how to laugh.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
The battle rages.
It’s nothing like the stories grandfather told me. Kurah clash with Shaanti men and women on the edge of the forest, in what looks like a chaotic brawl, and everywhere the Kurah are being driven back. I am not sure exactly where we are. This is further north and west than the Barrens, where the forest meets the edge of the plains. In the distance, if one could see so far, Vikrain sits shimmering on the horizon. This is Boulay. I have been told the tale of this battle since I was a child, but I’ve never imagined that the fight was like this.
I bark orders in the Kurah tongue. I am back in someone else’s body, a passenger once more. We are carrying that giant sword again. I still can’t remember its name. We bellow and point.
The thain is younger than I remember her being. The hair poking out from her helm is not white as it was when she visited the village to see my grandfather. She is fighting out at the centre of the battle, and she is vulnerable as we move towards her. The smell of the battlefield is overwhelming; why did no one tell me this? The field stinks of the foul concoctions of the engineers and mages, and the blood and piss and shit of the dead and dying. We are standing in the dead, fighting my own people, and I do not understand any of this.
The warrior comes from nowhere, it seems. The Kurah are moving to surround the thain, and suddenly the woman is there. She is dressed in armour that glints purple when the light falls one way and black when the light falls another – it is almost Shaanti but seems to have come from somewhere else. Grandmother. I think I once knew the story of where she got the armour, but I have forgotten the words. In her hand is the sword that sings, the sword she left to my mother. The weapon looks nothing like I imagined. The blade is closer to a Tream weapon: thin, slightly curved, and faster than you would think possible. The steel seems to be able to cut through Kurah armour, and my grandmother is leaving a swathe of dead in her path as she clears the area around the thain and puts the leader at her back so they form each other’s guard.
I cannot see my grandmother’s face. She is wearing a helmet that, again, no one has ever told me about, and her hair is pulled back in a tight plait that hangs down the back of her armour. If the armour didn’t give her away, it would be easy to mistake Gobaith for a young and slight man.
They call her the witch-warrior when they think we aren’t listening, but there is no sign of magic here, unless you count her skill on the field. Grandfather will be here somewhere as well. They both fought at this one. This was the battle that led the Kurah to run back to their own lands with their tails between their legs. My host turns us round to face the witch-warrior as the tide of battle brings us together.
‘You again,’ she says, bringing her blade round to block the giant nightmare that my host swings two-handed.
‘Heathen,’ my host replies in Shaanti that sounds awkward and accented.
‘You’re broken,’ she replies, attempting a parry, but my host is surprisingly nimble for such a large person.
‘The stone god is with us,’ my host replies. ‘If it is his will that we perish today, others will win the field tomorrow.’
‘You do not understand the true nature of the gods,’ she replies, flipping over us.
We’re on the ground now. I realise she has kicked our legs out and I’ve lost my blade. The singing sword is pointed at our throat.
‘They are not your betters,’ she says. ‘You are too dangerous. You could have been so much more.’
My grandmother swings back the blade over her head, and I know she means to take my host’s head. This is the Shaanti way of dealing with murderers, and rarely a wise move on a battlefield.
She freezes.
The witch-warrior staggers back as if struck, and her arms drop. Her free hand grasps her stomach before pulling her helmet free, and she looks on me with her face. I have forgotten what she looks like in the paintings. She is younger here but so much calmer than she is when I dream of her. She almost looks like I imagine my mother once did. I see the moment the look turns to fear. I have never imagined her afraid.
‘What are you?’ she asks.
I, or the person I am riding in, do not answer.
‘Do not fail her …’ she begins to say, and then a Kurah shoulder tackles her, and everything erupts in chaos as my host scrambles for his sword.
The retreat horns signal from the Kurah side, and we are fighting at the rear guard of their force, buying the rest of the army time to get away. I see the Kurah king riding away and the thain pressing home the advantage, but we do not see her again, or Thrace.
Falkirk is getting closer to me with his shock warriors, and I wonder if my host will fight him. The storm is breaking overhead, turning the ground to sludge, and all around, Kurah are dying. My host strides over to the body of one of his comrades and pulls the man’s signal horn from his belt. We sound the retreat.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The sky above the distant forest was marbled with light and smoke.
The ground shook in pulses from whatever events were unfolding within the wood as the Shaanti made camp. The thain had marched them for days, driving a hard pace from sunup to sundown and only stopping when she absolutely had to. Such a pace had allowed them to move swiftly along the most dangerous part of the journey out of the mountains and across the central plains. The central road was the riskier route. The path brought them closer to the Barrens and the Kurah, but it also offered the only reasonable line of defence, having been cut into a series of trenches. Originally these measures had been
taken to prevent bandits from seeing who was on the road. During the war, they were enhanced to help the army attack the invading Kurah. Now the road would serve one last purpose against that same enemy, allowing the people who built it to run away and survive.
‘The gods do battle,’ said the thain, folding her telescope.
She stood on the perimeter of the camp, Bene at her side and men milling further away – pretending to be busy but desperate to pick out some words, some sign of hope, from the ruler. The smell of wood smoke was beginning to waft across the camp as the Shaanti got their evening rations underway. The next camp they made would have less cover, and fire would be too dangerous. She had yet to break the news.
‘It might just be Kurah,’ said Bene, shaking his head. ‘You can’t be sure.’
The thain shrugged. She passed Bene the glass. ‘Look for yourself.’
The warrior looked through the glass, one of only four they possessed, and his sharp intake of breath told the story. The thain led Bene away from the others. No good would come of discussing matters within earshot of the camp, and she was satisfied that the Kurah would not attack from the forest, or they would have arrived days ago.
‘The guard are right,’ said Bene, adjusting the reins on his horse. ‘You’re being foolish dismissing them this close to the perimeter.’
‘Maybe,’ said the thain. ‘But I need to talk. We are at the crossroads, or will be by tomorrow, and we have little time.’
‘It bothers you to run?’
The thain’s head snapped round at Bene’s words. The warrior was not glowering though, or sneering with sarcasm, as many of her other people had done. His expression was open and devoid of accusation. The thain’s shoulders dropped. She knew that Bene would not turn on her. This was an honest question from a man who would follow her into Golgotha if she asked, and so deserved an answer.