by Darius Hinks
‘This way!’ Finavar freed himself from Alhena’s grip and followed his guides. They were waiting on a column of roots that had formed itself into a spiral staircase. Finavar leapt up it, two steps at a time, with the others rushing after him. They ran like this for half an hour or so and the stairs grew wider as they climbed. The glow from the walls faded, replaced by a more natural light that started to leak through the cracks in the tree.
‘Take us to the spellweavers,’ gasped Finavar as he climbed. ‘Lead us out of the tree to where the mages were drifting.’
‘What is this, Fin?’ cried Caorann, sounding doubtful. He had one of his hands pressed over the pouch at his belt. ‘What is the stone for?’
‘Just make sure to keep it covered,’ he replied. ‘No sunlight must touch it.’ Then he raced on in silence, conscious of the three pairs of eyes that were fixed on his back.
The patches of light grew larger and more regular, painting the tree’s innards in cool, ivory panels. With no way to glimpse the tortured landscape outside, it was possible to imagine the world was as it should be. Finavar pictured a beautiful, glittering hoar frost scattered across the valley, cold, perfect and ready for the first snows of winter. You will see snow again, old tree, he thought. I promise you.
There was no sign of their pursuers, but the odd shriek of wooden joints left them in no doubt that they needed to keep moving.
After another hour of climbing, they began to hear the falls again and realised that the scouts were leading them back to the outside world. The air felt cooler and a fine mist started to form in the air, causing their hair to hang lank and cold across their faces.
‘Almost there,’ whispered Finavar, picking up his pace.
Finally, the spiral staircase led up to a broad, wooden door, carved from the tree trunk and framed by shards of daylight. The wardancers blinked and shielded their eyes as they forced it open and stepped out into a wall of glittering spume.
It took a few moments for them to make out their surroundings but, once they did, all four of them felt a moment’s panic and took a step backwards. They had emerged on the stump of a long-shattered branch that was as broad as a small meadow, but did not jut out more than a few feet from the tree trunk, creating a thin lip on the side of the tree. They looked out from its edge and, below them, the world fell away.
There was a sheer drop beneath the ledge, filled with the raging torrents of the Limneonas. They were flanked on either side by two great talons of the falls and the mixture of height, movement and noise was overwhelming. Water rolled and tumbled into the distance, filling the air with booming thunderheads of spray and hazing everything into a vague impression of a landscape.
Even blurred by this torrent of water, Finavar could see that they had, somehow, climbed almost to the very crown of Hallos. Whatever magic had kept the tree alive all these years had hurled the wardancers up through its whole body in a few short hours. They had climbed to the clouds. Finavar could just glimpse the river, far below, but it looked more like a stream than the vast artery he knew it to be. Doubt welled up in him again. What lunacy had possessed him?
He looked back at the others and saw that all three of them were now looking at him with something approaching awe. At first he failed to understand what they were seeing in him; then he realised that they thought he was responsible for their impossible ascent – and maybe they even attributed the incredible sight of the falls and landscape to him. Again, their belief renewed his own and he nodded back at them.
He looked around for his guides but was unable to locate them in the clouds of spray. Then he saw that, as always, they had led him where he needed to be. There were figures drifting in the wall of water to their left. It was impossible to see them clearly, but he could glimpse staffs and coils of light whipping around their slender limbs.
‘The spellweavers!’ he cried, struggling to be heard over the din. ‘We have to speak with one of them!’
The others followed his gaze and looked doubtful. The noise of the water was ear-splitting and the mages were hovering several feet away from the ledge.
‘I think they’re busy!’ cried Caorann, jabbing his sword at the shapes rippling around them. ‘They’re keeping Haldus’s army alive. What’s left of it.’
Finavar nodded, unsure what to do next.
‘What is your plan?’ yelled Alhena. Her fury had not faded with the climb and she glared at Finavar as she reached his side. She jabbed a trembling finger at the cascading falls and the clouds of water that surrounded them. ‘What are we doing here? How is this going to save anyone?’ She grabbed Finavar’s arm again, on the verge of hysteria. He knew that he had to find a way to distract her from her crushing grief – and make her feel her father’s death had some point.
‘We have to jump.’ He looked at each of them in turn and then at the miles of waterfall below them.
They stared back.
‘What?’ Caorann managed eventually.
He looked at Sibaris, expecting support, but the youth looked as shocked as Caorann. He looked away, unwilling to hold Finavar’s gaze.
Finavar felt Alhena’s grip tighten on his arm and he wondered if she was about to draw one of her swords and gut him.
‘It will work,’ he said quickly.
‘Tell me,’ said Alhena.
The fury he expected to hear was absent from her voice. There was only a desperate hope.
‘Tell us what we have to do,’ she said.
He looked at her and saw that, unlike the others, she wanted to believe. He supposed that the alternative – that her father had died on the whim of a lunatic – was more than she could bear.
Finavar nodded and summoned the other two to join them at the edge of the outcrop. ‘Do you have the Cythral Star?’ he asked, looking at Caorann.
Caorann nodded slowly, still looking stunned by what he had just heard. ‘I have placed the pouch inside another pouch. Both of them are wrapped in a piece of cloth. It is safe.’
‘Good. When we reach the monster that has dammed the valley, I mean to sow that seed in its mouth.’
Caorann shook his head slowly. ‘Are you raving? What…’ he ran out of words to describe Finavar’s madness and he looked at his other friends for explanation. ‘What is he talking about?’
Alhena nodded, her eyes wide. ‘A forest would be born in its flesh. It would be torn apart.’
Caorann’s shock grew as he realised Alhena was seriously considering Finavar’s plan. ‘By the gods! Even if that made any sense, how do you think we’d reach the monster? There’s an entire army between us and it.’
‘On land there is an army,’ replied Alhena, her gaze still locked on Finavar’s.
Finavar nodded eagerly. ‘Exactly – the river cuts straight through the army and ends at that creature that is drowning us.’ He looked at Caorann. ‘Do you see? We can sail straight past all those things and reach the horror that spawned them.’
‘Sail?’ cried Caorann. ‘What do you mean “sail”? In what?’
Finavar grinned, but before he could reply, Sibaris cried out in alarm and rushed back towards the door.
One of the wooden guardians had stepped out into the light.
Sibaris leapt into the air and brought both his blades down onto its neck. It had barely taken in its surroundings when it stumbled back out of the door with its head missing.
Sibaris slammed his shoulder against the door, closing it with a dull thud.
The others rushed to join him, throwing their weight against the wood.
Caorann looked around and dashed off into the clouds of mist, returning a few seconds later with some sturdy-looking branches in his arms. He wedged them against the door and booted them until they were jammed in place.
The others followed his lead and did the same and, as the door started to rattle and shake with blows from the other side, the four wardancers backed away.
‘Should hold for a few minutes,’ said Caorann. Then he looked at Finavar, still we
aring the same look of disbelief. ‘I’m glad you’ve worked out a way for us to fly, or I’d be worried.’
Finavar pointed at the rippling silhouettes of the mages, gliding on the far side of the falls. ‘That’s our escape, Caorann. We just need to get their attention.’
‘Why in the name of Loec would they listen to us?’
‘Because some of us are well-connected,’ he smiled at Sibaris. ‘Aren’t we? One of the mages up there is Mälloch the Elder,’ he explained, ‘Lord of the Fiùrann and the great-grandfather of Sibaris here.’
The door rattled on its hinges as more weight hit it from the other side.
They looked back to see several of their props snap.
Caorann looked from the door, to Finavar, to the spellweavers. ‘I’m sure you were never this deluded.’ Then he strode across the ledge, paused briefly to pick up a stone and hurled it through the water.
The force of the waterfall sent his stone way off target, but the others quickly followed his example and began throwing rocks at the rippling shapes.
After a few attempts one of the figures finally registered their presence. It looked around and caused the other figures to do the same.
Finavar looked at Alhena and she nodded eagerly at him. ‘And then what? When we have their attention?’
The door exploded, scattering wood and hinges across the outcrop.
The wardancers whirled around, lifting their swords as a large shape hurtled towards them through the spray.
Finavar groaned as he saw the monster that had broken through the door. It was an enormous, wooden lion, flanked by dozens of the swordsmen who had killed Thuralin.
He took down several of the swordsmen with a lethal, blades-extended, pirouette and Alhena and Sibaris waltzed into the others, but the lion pounded on, smashing through the scrum of battling figures and making straight for Caorann, sensing somehow that he was the one with the stone.
Caorann leapt high as the wooden beast reached him, bringing his sword hilts down in a savage blow to the back of its head.
The pommels cracked noisily against its thick wooden neck, but the only effect of the blows was to send Caorann staggering away, clutching his arms and howling in pain.
The animal scrambled to a halt, just inches from the edge of the outcrop and then turned to race after Caorann.
Finavar tried to block its way, but the creature smashed into him like a falling tree and bowled him out of the way.
Caorann leapt up onto the door frame and, just before the animal reached him, he kicked himself clear, flipping away from harm just as the lion crashed into the doorway, knocking several of the soldiers back down the spiral stairs.
The animal whirled around and this time it padded towards Caorann with slow deliberation, swinging its head from side to side as it approached.
The wardancer backed away as far as he could, until there was nothing but air behind him.
Finavar and the others fought desperately to reach him before the lion did, but it was no use, dozens of the swordsmen had now filed out onto the ledge and they had encircled each of the wardancers so that they could not break free.
Caorann crouched low as the lion reached him but, before he could make a move, the wooden animal opened its jaws wide and let out a weird, screeching roar, like the creaking of a hundred broken doors.
The sound distracted Caorann and one of his feet slipped back over the edge of the precipice. He managed to stop himself falling, but only by lurching towards the lion.
It tore into him, sinking its incisors into his shoulder and chest and flinging him around with a ferocious shake of its head.
Caorann howled in pain and frustration and his blood sprayed through the air, turning the clouds of mist a cheerful pink.
He jammed one of his swords into the animal’s eye, then cursed as it failed to notice.
Then he jammed his other blade into its mouth and, with a pain-fuelled burst of strength, he levered its jaws open far enough to free himself.
He rolled clear in a shower of blood and splinters.
The lion rounded on him and, as it prepared to pounce again, Caorann saw he had nowhere left to turn. He crawled backwards away from the lion as fast as he could, but it was useless.
The lion reared up over him and he put his arms in front of his face, unwilling to see his own body torn apart.
An odd, grinding sound rang out, even louder than the sound of the falls.
The wardancers gasped as hundreds of tendrils burst from the tree and enveloped the lion in a thick mesh, ensnaring it like a hunter’s net. It roared again, but the more it struggled, the tighter the mesh became. The mesh contracted at an incredible speed, crushing the lion with a series of cracking, popping sounds, until the ball of roots was no bigger than an apple.
More of the swordsmen were trying to crowd onto the ledge, but tendrils suddenly erupted from the door frame, lashing themselves across the opening in a thick lattice of vines and roots. A few of the swordsmen were already halfway through and they exploded, torn apart like pieces of seasoned kindling.
In a few seconds, the doorway had vanished behind a wall of leaves, wood and moss, leaving just the few dozen swordsmen that had already made it through.
Finavar and the others flew at their attackers with renewed vigour, slicing and lunging and driving them back towards the edge of the shattered branch, where they kicked them into the falls.
After a few minutes, every wooden swordsman had been driven from the ledge and the wardancers rushed to where Caorann was sprawled in a pool of his own blood.
To their relief he managed to sit up and even grin as they approached.
‘We’ve lost enough today,’ breathed Alhena as she dropped to her knees beside him. She wore the same furious snarl she always did, but they all heard the emotion in her voice.
Finavar nodded. ‘We should bind that wound until we can find you some help.’
‘You should tell me what you’re doing here, first,’ said another voice.
Finavar turned to see a tall, hawk-nosed noble in a voluminous bearskin cloak. Mälloch’s skin glimmered as he sauntered towards them, reflecting the light of more suns than just the one hanging overhead. As when he first met him at the Feast of the Two Branches, Finavar felt humbled by such casual grandeur.
‘Great-grandfather!’ cried Sibaris, rushing towards the noble.
Mälloch held up a warning hand and kept his beguiling stare locked on Finavar. ‘How did you escape your prison?’ He kept his tone flat.
Alhena helped Caorann to his feet and both of them stepped between Finavar and Mälloch, drawing their blades as they did so.
Their unquestioning loyalty made Finavar’s pulse race.
Mälloch noticed it too. ‘You are choosing your friends more wisely these days.’ He frowned. ‘Although you seem to have lost one. Where is the doom-monger with the taste for fern seed?’
Alhena tensed, but Finavar placed a hand on her arm.
‘You sent me to my death,’ he said, ‘but luckily for me, the forest had other ideas.’ As he spoke, Finavar pulled back his cloak to reveal what the tree spirits had done to his body.
The wardancers stared in shock as they saw the gnarled, lichen-covered plates that replaced his skin.
Mälloch simply nodded. ‘And what of your mind, Finavar? Did they heal that?’
Finavar hesitated, conscious of his friends’ eyes on him. Then he nodded, looking at Caorann, Alhena and Sibaris in turn. ‘Yes,’ he answered quietly. ‘I have been a fool. I am a fool no longer.’
Caorann raised an eyebrow at this but he bit his tongue, sensing the gravity of the exchange.
Mälloch’s expression grew less severe. ‘I was wrong to take you to that waystone. Elatior was further gone than any of us realised. If I’d known how confused he was, I never would have listened to him.’ He glanced at Sibaris. ‘We should have found a way to prevent your banishment.’
Sibaris nodded in agreement but Finavar shook his head. �
��I was heading for a worse fate. You saved me, Mälloch, the second you sent me into the Wildwood.’
Mälloch frowned. ‘Why did Lady Ordaana say those things about you? I can see now that they were lies, but why? What have you done to earn her wrath? Why did she want you to die?’
Finavar was about to reply when Caorann coughed and staggered.
‘Forgive me,’ said Mälloch, stepping closer and raising his sword.
Alhena raised her own weapon but Finavar shook his head.
She lowered her blade but maintained her scowl.
Caorann’s face was drained of colour and he looked on the verge of fainting, but he looked back at Finavar suspiciously.
‘Trust him,’ said Finavar with a gentle smile.
Caorann shrugged. ‘You’ve been keeping some strange company, Fin, but I don’t suppose I have a great deal of choice.’ He held up his arms and revealed his wounds.
‘Messy, but far from fatal,’ said Mälloch as he studied the ragged tears left by the wooden lion. He placed the tip of his sword against the wound and muttered a quick charm. The clouds of mist billowed as currents of magic answered Mälloch’s call. The blade of the weapon pulsed with light and, after a few seconds, the bloodflow lessened.
‘You must bind it carefully,’ Mälloch said, reaching for the bundle of cloth at Caorann’s belt.
Caorann clapped his hand over the cloth and backed away.
Mälloch narrowed his eyes, but shrugged. ‘Any cloth will do, but you should not leave the wound exposed like that.’
Sibaris tore some of his loincloth away and rushed to hand it to Caorann.
As they wrapped the wound, they heard a low tearing sound coming from the green mesh that covered the doorway.
Mälloch looked surprised. ‘They’re determined. What have you done to annoy Hallos? It’s been many years since this tree felt the need to defend itself from asrai.’ He glared at Sibaris. ‘You’ve hardly been here five minutes and you’ve already earned its wrath.’