by Darius Hinks
Cyanos looked awkward but he nodded. ‘I remember.’
Haldus looked back at the wooden fortress crouched in the side of the hill.
Cyanos stared at him in shock.
Haldus clenched his jaw. ‘Think, Cyanos. South of here is Endar Varian and the Moonspring Glades. Think how many souls will be damned if we don’t end this here.’
Cyanos looked appalled, but he nodded. ‘Of course, Prince Haldus. You’re right.’
As the sun set behind the Alarin Hills, the valley lit up with a light so powerful that it seemed dawn had come early. Prince Haldus watched from the rocky outcrop on the opposite hill. He had placed the first flaming brand at the foot of the gate. He knew that he could not expect his soldiers to do something he could not. Then, as he walked away, silhouetted by the flames, dozens of figures marched solemnly past him, carrying brands of their own, their eyes wide as they considered the terrible nature of their task.
‘What have I become?’ he whispered, as the flames climbed higher and the screams grew more desperate.
Chapter Three
Finavar saw Ordaana, sitting beside a moonlit brook. He had crawled from his brother’s corpse to exchange vitriol with her, but even charged with grief he could not match her bile. She was railing and cursing, demanding the death of Ariel and Orion, claiming that they were the doom of the asrai. He had watched this scene before; this had all happened in the past. Even in dreams there was a part of him that knew this to be a memory. But this time he watched the scene with a different focus. As Ordaana ranted he studied her movements and noticed something new – something he had only half considered the first time. With every bitter word, every twitch, she scratched angrily at a mark on her shoulder. Once he had noticed this, he could think of nothing else. It overwhelmed him. He could see nothing but her hateful words and her fingers, clawing at the mark on her shoulder.
Finavar sensed the power in this tiny blemish. Three circles laid out in a triangle. They were the root of everything that had gone wrong. All the madness that had overtaken his people stemmed from these three points. He peered closer, terrified by the scale of ruin that was leaking from the symbol. Ordaana carried the end of the world on the surface of her pale skin. She carried the mark of damnation.
He reached out to touch it.
Finavar awoke with a painful series of jolts. His face was pressed into matted hair, heavy with animal musk and the thick aroma of blood.
He looked up and saw the forest rushing by. The dark, brutal crush of the Wildwood was gone. He was travelling through a winding gulley, crowded with waist-high ferns and weary, leafless trees. Overhead was an iron-grey sky, heavy with the promise of snow. It was early morning and the air was crisp.
I’m home, he thought.
For a moment he could think of nothing else. He had done the impossible. He had escaped the Wildwood.
Then he noticed that there was something else drifting on the breeze – a cloying undercurrent of damp and decay. Am I home, he wondered?
He looked down, wondering at the incredible speed he was travelling.
He was strapped to the monstrous hound. Thick vines had been used to lash him to the monster’s back, holding him in place even as it pounded through brushwood and pasture.
He grimaced. The animal stink appalled him all the more now that he realised where it was coming from. Orion’s guide. The killer’s favoured weapon. With his face just inches from the hound’s back, he could see through the countless holes in its flesh. It had clearly been through some terrible ordeal. He wondered how the creature was still intact, never mind running. Through the wounds he saw the same green light that had been poured into his own flesh. The idea that they shared some kind of enchantment horrified him and he strained against his bonds, trying to free himself.
The hound staggered as Finavar moved; its strength was almost gone. The thought gave him hope. He could not imagine what vile punishment Orion’s hound had planned for him, but he was determined to escape it. The hound’s breathing was quick and laboured, but he knew a wounded animal could find unexpected reserves of strength.
The hound picked up its pace, as though sensing that it was almost out of time.
It smashed through the thicket and pounded up the side of the gulley.
Finavar felt the strength of the spirits, still in him, along with the benign presence he had felt in the orchard. Something was stirring in his soul. He wrenched and struggled, breaking the bonds that held him in place.
He slipped around the side of the hound, almost free, but it continued racing up the slope, forcing its broken body into one last, desperate charge.
They reached the summit just as Finavar managed to break the remaining cords and kick himself free, sending the hound tumbling in one direction and himself in the other.
He rolled across hard, cold turf, but the strength he had regained had brought with it his old agility. He bounded up onto his feet and whirled around, dropping into a crouch and bracing himself for the hound’s attack.
No attack came. The animal was lying a few feet away and Finavar relaxed, seeing immediately that he was in no danger. The beast was on its side, panting heavily, gouts of blood and green fire pouring from between its ribs. Its limbs were folded in an awkward jumble, hardly connected to their shoulder joints.
The beast stared at him, but was unable to do anything other than lie there as he looked around for a weapon.
Finavar found a fallen branch and grasped it in both hands as he approached the hound.
The monster’s chest slumped as he approached. Its ribs were crumbling, as though the fire they contained was consuming them. The animal’s body took on an oddly deflated appearance as Finavar loomed over it.
‘You can tell your master I’m done with him,’ said Finavar, his face contorted by disgust. ‘I’ll not waste another day pursuing vengeance. He’s not worthy of my hate. I’ll do what I should have done at the beginning. I’ll return to my own kind and forget about all of you.’
It was only by speaking the words out loud that Finavar realised he was free. He had rid himself of a terrible burden. ‘I cannot undo what happened to Jokleel.’ He spoke with growing certainty. ‘It was not my fault. I cannot be responsible for the actions of my king.’
His voice grew louder. ‘I will not be devoured by this guilt. I will not become like Orion. I will not turn on my own kind.’
He stood proudly over the crippled animal, feeling as though he was speaking directly to the Mage Queen and her Consort-King. ‘Orion can do as he pleases, but I will fight for my people. I will fight for my home and the glory of Loec.’
He expected the hound to struggle, or attempt to attack him, but it just lay there, panting and staring past him, looking at something further up the slope.
He followed the direction of the hound’s stare and saw that they had climbed onto the foot of a larger hill – a huge grassy mound that jutted from the forest like the back of a prehistoric monster. At its summit there was a crooked dolmen, robed in ivy and lichen.
Finavar looked back at the hound. It met his eye briefly and then looked back at the hilltop and the stones.
He lowered his club, confused. There was no rage or judgement in the hound’s eyes, only relief. It glanced once more at the hilltop and then stiffened in pain and, despite all his hatred, Finavar felt a wave of pity.
The hound rolled into a tight ball and its breath became even faster and more ragged. Then, after a final snort, it fell silent and lay still.
Finavar stood there for a moment on the wind-lashed hillside, staring at the hound. The light faded from its body and Finavar knew it was dead. He felt a growing sense of doubt. The hound had made no attempt to attack him. And now, as its body collapsed, there was no trace of anger in its eyes.
Finavar stepped closer, shaking his head, sensing that he had missed something important. He reached out, as though to wake the hound.
At that moment, the light flared one last time, leaving nothi
ng in its wake.
The hound was gone.
Finavar gripped his club tightly and sat on the grass. The flash of light had left an after-image of the hound’s corpse in his eyes and he pressed his hands against his face, trying to rid himself of it.
His thoughts whirled. So much had happened, he struggled to know his own mind. He was free of his oath to avenge Jokleel; he saw clearly now that he had been a fool, but what should he do? Every path had been obscured. Then he recalled his epiphany in the Wildwood. He must find his friends and regain what they had lost; then they must hunt down that treacherous worm, Ordaana.
He climbed to his feet, remembering the urgency of the situation. He knew now that Ordaana was behind all the ills that had befallen the forest. Who knew where her deranged plans would lead?
He looked back down the slope. The terrain looked familiar, but he could not place any of the landmarks. As he peered down into the grey, leafless gulley, he saw another after-image of the dead hound and was reminded of its final glance.
He turned to look at the distant group of standing stones. They were silhouetted against the leaden sky and he felt an odd sense of dread as he studied them. What had the hound wanted of him? Why had it brought him here? Why did it lead his gaze in that direction?
Once again, he had the sensation that he had missed something.
Finavar shrugged and began to climb the hill. At least from the summit he might be able to spot a familiar landmark.
As Finavar climbed, he realised what a terrible mistake he had made. There were no familiar landmarks. This was not his forest. It could not be his home. It was obscene. A mockery of nature. With every step he took, he saw a little more of the landscape and each new vista filled him with dismay.
There were pockets of natural forest, like the gulley below, but huge tracts of Finavar’s home were gone. It had been transformed into an eye-watering rainbow of colours. The world should have been in the grip of winter. It should have been dismal and dun, but Finavar saw a harlequin dance of carmine, copper and cadmium. Fingers of pale fungus speared up through the trees, topped with sapphire-blue cupolas and hazed by citrus-yellow spores. Purples and pinks danced across the horizon – teetering, pustulant digits, reaching up from wobbling, paunch-like hills. It was a hideous mockery of summer, but a summer without warmth or beauty, or the hosts of tiny spirits that should have filled the blooms of that season.
Finavar groaned as he climbed, moving faster to see the full horror of the transformation.
The rivers of acid he had glimpsed from the Chains of Vaul had now fanned out, covering the entire forest with ribbons of boiling, yellow poison. Wherever they flowed, an iridescent patchwork of mutation had sprung up. He found himself in a forest without sanity – a world in which rotten, gaudy blooms had destroyed the natural order.
Finavar clutched his head in his hands as he neared the summit, stumbling like a drunkard. The mutation was everywhere. Everything was infested and corrupted beyond recognition. He cried out as he saw, less than half a mile away, a monstrous, goitre-like growth that had boiled up from a riverbed, enveloping an entire valley. It was a mottled pink mound, quivering and silky like the belly of an enormous rat. The vile thing was littered with chimney-like carbuncles and they were belching flies into the air. Even at this distance, Finavar could tell that the insects were huge, like the ones he had seen at the Chains of Vaul, and they were moving with horrible deliberation: flying in neatly-ordered columns towards another fungal goliath – a slug-like limb that covered miles of the horizon.
‘Ordaana, what have you done?’ he snarled, continuing on towards the stones. ‘What have you taken from us?’
Finavar advanced over the other side of the hill: the situation was even worse than he had thought. Wherever the forest had resisted the advance of the florid garden, it had fallen to another threat. The dark, impenetrable glades of the Wildwood had burst from their boundaries and rushed out to meet the plague, creating an impassable barrier of thorns and roots and leaving nothing inbetween. The forest was shared between two equally dreadful invaders.
By the time Finavar reached the stones, he was trembling with rage. Whatever game Ordaana was playing, she had destroyed his home. He smashed his club against the old rocks and howled.
The branch broke in a shower of splinters and two shapes bolted from the shadows beneath the capstone.
Finavar recoiled, surprised by the movement. Then he laughed.
Watching him from a few feet away was a pair of polecats. Their fur had been scorched in a couple of places and one of them had lost part of an ear, but Finavar recognised his scouts immediately.
‘My friends,’ he said, bowing.
The sight of Mormo and Mauro distracted him from his rage for a moment. They looked back at him with the same calm, patient expressions they always wore. He recalled how he had driven them away after the death of his brother and felt a flush of shame. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, bowing again.
The polecats watched him for a few moments, as though gauging his sincerity, and Finavar saw that the change in them was more profound than he had at first thought. Their eyes now gleamed with the same odd light he had seen in the hound and there was something ghostly about them, as if they were only half present.
‘Did you follow me?’ he asked, amazed by their bravery. ‘Did you enter the Wildwood?’
The polecats rushed through the grass and climbed into his outstretched hands.
He pressed his face into their fur, savouring their scent and noticing again that they had been changed somehow. Finavar, like all of his race, could sense magic as clearly as the breeze, and he felt it now, pulsing through their tiny veins. Then, sensing that they wished it, he placed them back on the ground.
They immediately bolted back under the dolmen.
Finavar frowned. Orion’s hound had sent him to these stones; it had sent him to his friends. Once again, he sensed that he was on the edge of some great wisdom. It infuriated him to follow the train of thought, but he was beginning to doubt the dissension he had seen between Orion and the rest of the forest. Could it be that neither the hounds, nor Orion, were as vile as he thought? The dying hound had brought him to his guides, and one of the forest’s hidden links with the Great Weave. Orion’s servant had saved him from the Wildwood and shown him a route to… His thoughts faltered as he looked at the polecats. He could see their eyes glittering in the dark beneath the stones. A route to where?
He stepped closer and saw another surprise. Scratched into the dust beneath the stones was a rune. He recognised it immediately. It was the mark of his patron god, Loec. The meaning was clear – someone intended him to enter the dolmen and let it lead him where it willed.
As Finavar stepped closer he felt magic emanating from the rocks; it rippled over his skin like the charge of an approaching storm. He glanced back at the madness surrounding the hill and decided he had little choice. Besides, his guides were waiting silently for him at the threshold, clearly willing him to enter, and they had never betrayed him before.
Finavar laughed. After all the trials he had endured he was getting used to braving the unknown.
He strode forwards. As he moved, the polecats launched themselves after him and all three of them vanished from the hilltop.
Chapter Four
Leaves danced in the breeze, allowing a brief splash of sunlight to hit the forest floor. The light rippled across twelve smooth, yellow domes that filled the little glade. They were mushroom caps, each about six or seven feet in diameter. Their size was not the most unusual thing about them, however. Clara was far more unnerved by their cheerful, smiling faces. As she dragged herself higher up a tree, twelve pairs of eyes followed her progress. The eyes were essentially human in appearance, but each of them was as large as Clara’s face.
‘I don’t like the look of you at all,’ she whispered, settling on a bough and wishing she still had her crook. When she had first reached the clearing, just a few hours earlier, she thoug
ht the place relatively safe. The surrounding valleys were filled with things she was trying desperately not to think about, but this glade had seemed like a haven. Then, after what she was sure was only the briefest of naps, she had awoken to see these grotesque, fungal faces looking up at her.
She had arrived in the clearing as a bird – a jackdaw, she thought, and before that she had been a series of lumpen, shuffling toads. Before that, she was unsure – a fox, maybe, or perhaps a pine marten. She had a clear image of a fawn, emerging from a shattered oak, but she could not be sure if that was a vision of herself, or a memory of a more natural kind.
The forest was playing a game with her, she knew that now. Every time she managed to regain human form, it would fill her mind with visions so beguiling that they quickly overwhelmed her flesh. For a while she had lost herself utterly to these enchantments – subsumed by the wonders and horrors of the changing forest. But now she had learned to preserve a kernel of herself, buried so deep that it was untouched by the transformations tormenting her body. She was Clara. She was a mage from the Amber Hills.
And she was a damned fool.
Her wrinkles deepened as she considered what a mess she had made of things. All she had meant to do was snatch a little of the Everwood’s power and leave. By now she should have been ruling the Amber Brotherhood with one jabbing, rheumatic finger. But no – she had to let herself be outwitted by meat-headed peasants and then dragged into this lunatic’s daydream of a forest.
She looked down at the mushroom caps and grinned back at them, bearing her crooked yellow teeth in a furious, mocking grin.
To her horror, they all began to laugh – a low, gurgling sound that caused their rubbery flesh to quiver. Some of them were so amused they threw back their domes and revealed the rippling gills beneath.
‘By the gods,’ she said, ‘what do you want with me?’
The faces became suddenly quiet, but they gave her no answer. They stared at her with lidless eyes and their mouths hanging open expectantly. She noticed that they had rows of fine, needle-like teeth behind their lips. Then the breeze dropped and the tree canopy fell back into place, plunging them into darkness.