by Darius Hinks
‘No, my king.’ Atolmis’s voice was suddenly edged with passion. ‘This body is nothing. It needs only serve you until the winter solstice then, after the flames take hold, you will be free: no longer burdened by this physical vessel. Your bier will lift you from the temporal realm, to dwell forever in the Oak of Ages, watching over your people from the true heart of the forest.’
Orion sneered and threw the hood to the ground. After a few moments he looked up at the lowering sky. Luminescent beings stared back at him, separated from the mortal world by only the thinnest veneer of reality. Winged and majestic, they called his name, summoning him to their golden glades. They seemed to be mocking him.
‘Have I ever lied to you?’ demanded Atolmis, with more emotion in his face than Orion could ever recall seeing before. ‘Do you trust me?’
Orion stared back into the featureless black of Atolmis’s eyes and, after a few seconds his fury began to fade. ‘I trust you,’ he muttered, mirroring Atolmis’s gesture by placing a hand on his shoulder. ‘I always have.’
‘Then I will remain your guide, for as long as you need me.’ Atolmis dipped his head in a slight bow and stepped back.
There was something timeless about the high priest that eased Orion’s mind, but he had not forgotten the stag’s head. ‘How can I find Sativus, Atolmis? Where are his halls? I must make amends before I die.’
Atolmis shrugged. ‘All of the forest is his home.’
‘But how do I find him?’
One of the other riders, Sélva, muttered something and Atolmis glared at him.
‘What?’ demanded Orion, noticing Atolmis’s disapproval. ‘Speak up.’
‘The Mage Queen, my lord. She has often taken counsel from the Spirit King.’ Sélva’s voice was hesitant as he felt Atolmis’s furious gaze on the side of his face. ‘She must have some way of hunting him down.’
Orion reeled backwards, his face filled with anguish. Ariel. His immortal love. He had forgotten her. Despite everything they had shared, the hunt had entirely wiped her from his thoughts. Since the time of the solstice he had abandoned her to whatever fate threw her way.
‘The outsiders,’ he said, staring at Atolmis in alarm. ‘They’re leeching power from the ancient stones. They’re turning it against her!’
Atolmis smiled. ‘You killed them, my lord, every last one. Search your memory. You braved the Vaults of Winter. You destroyed the guardian of the Torr-Ildána. Then we returned you, victorious, to the Oak of Ages, where you were reborn again as Kurnous.’
He leant forwards, clearly excited by the memory. ‘At the time of the great conjunction, you summoned Luabh, Fuath and Druan and began the Wild Hunt, scouring the forest of its foes and freeing those of us who had become too weak to live.’ He closed his eyes, picturing the scene. ‘You tore them from the forest like a canker.’ He laughed. ‘The only threat was in the minds of your subjects. I never doubted you for a minute.’
Atolmis’s praise only added to Orion’s feelings of dread. He found that his priest was right, the memories were all there, cowering shamefully at the back of his thoughts. He saw the pitiful sight of the stone giant, collapsing to its knees in Dhioll Hollow, horrified by the destruction of its ancient ward. Why had he ignored its pleas? Such blind determination now seemed like madness. The giant had guarded the Torr-Ildána for thousands of years. Why would it have performed such a terrible duty if not for some great purpose? Orion shook his head, sensing that he perpetrated a great wrong.
He frowned. ‘Luabh, Fuath and Druan?’
Atolmis nodded, sombre-faced once more. ‘Your spirit guides, my lord – the hounds of Kurnous. You will see their kind again, when next you hunt.’
Orion nodded, recalling the hounds with a mixture of fear and affection. During the madness of the hunt, his soul would fragment, racing ahead of his flesh in the bodies of the hounds. They were part of him, he realised – the wildness of his soul in physical form. As he recalled the sound of their mournful voices, his fury returned and he looked across the corpse-strewn hillside to the gloomy borders of the forest.
He raised his chin and spoke to the morning breeze. ‘If weeks are all I have, then weeks will have to suffice. Before my time is done, the Spirit King will have faith in me once more. No flames will touch my flesh until I have undone the harm I have wrought. I will find Sativus.’
He stomped off through the long grass, levelling his spear at the forest. ‘I must speak with my queen.’
The forest had changed. Orion sensed it the moment he stepped beneath its eaves. Superficially, things looked as they always did at this time of year. Many of the trees had already shed their leaves, carpeting the ground with copper and gold, and the air was cool, damp and fusty with leaf mould; but, as Orion travelled further into the gloom, his sense of alarm grew.
‘What’s that smell?’ he asked, snorting with distaste. There was something sweet and foetid on the breeze – a thick, cloying stink that seemed to hang in the air.
Atolmis shook his head. ‘It smells like something rotting – a corpse, maybe.’
Orion strode on through the trees, wondering what kind of corpse could create such a stink.
For the rest of the morning he followed his nose, heading in the direction of the sweet smell. As he trampled through bracken and brushwood, he sniffed and prodded at trees, feeling increasingly more agitated. As he travelled deeper into the forest Orion saw that many of the trees were showing signs of change. Some of them were grotesque-looking hulks, bloated out of all recognition by lurid brackets of fungus and armies of teeming mites. Decay was part of life, but something about this was clearly unnatural. Clouds of lemon-coloured spores were drifting beneath the eaves and, as they alighted on Orion’s chest and arms, they left angry blemishes on his skin. During the fury of the hunt, he had barely registered the forest at all, but now he wondered at how alien it seemed. He had returned to an old friend and found he could no longer recognise its face.
After a couple of hours, Atolmis called out to him. ‘My lord, look.’
Orion turned and let out a grunt of surprise. Not far from where they stood was a small clearing, picked out of the forest gloom by a shaft of soft, russet light, peppered with tiny, drifting shapes.
‘What are they?’ muttered Orion, changing direction and heading for the clearing. ‘Spores, or spirits?’
As he neared the patch of open sky, Orion realised that the clearing reeked of decay. He had to hold his hand over his face as he crossed the final few yards and stepped out into the golden light.
At the centre of the clearing were the hulking remains of an old oak. Its hollow trunk was several feet wide but most of its branches were gone, so that it resembled an enormous, rotten barrel. As Orion crossed the clearing and saw the bark more closely, he realised that it was rippling and shivering with life. He peered closer and grimaced. The wood was riddled with grubs: pale, ghostlike things with fleshy, dimpled bodies that glistened as they caught the light. He looked up and saw that the shapes drifting overhead were more of the grubs, with broad, buzzing wings and barbed, needle-like tails. His sense of alarm grew. He had never seen such blight in the forest before. It felt like something alien had crept into his realm while he slept.
‘Slugs?’ muttered Atolmis, riding into the clearing with the other priests, but it was clear from his tone that he was as unnerved as Orion.
Orion scratched at the dead bark and cursed, immediately regretting his action. There was nothing but grubs beneath, thousands of them, writhing and oozing at his touch. As he watched in disgust, he realised that what he had taken for a large mound of them was actually the segmented back of one enormous creature. He was about to withdraw his hand when the lump of pallid-flesh burst out of the rotten wood and latched itself onto his chest.
The thing was as big as a hound and Orion laughed in disbelief as its weight sent him staggering back across the clearin
g.
His humour died as he noticed a dark trail of blood, flowing down his stomach from where the grub had latched onto his skin. He wrenched the thing free and hurled it to the ground. Then he strode forwards and slammed his spear into its flesh.
As the creature writhed and squirmed beneath him, Orion saw that it had left a moist, suppurated hole in his chest.
He turned to Atolmis with a quizzical expression but, before he could voice a question, a loud cracking sound filled the clearing and the stink tripled in strength.
The priests’ horses reared in alarm, almost throwing their riders, and Orion whirled around to see what could have spooked them.
The trunk had disintegrated as dozens of huge grubs wriggled and heaved themselves from the ground, some of them as big as horses.
Orion grabbed his spear just in time to defend himself.
The first of the grubs burst open on the spearhead, showering him with pale, jelly-like innards.
Fluid slapped against him and Orion cried out in disgust.
As he wiped the filth from his face, another one of the grubs enveloped him, smothering his face with its quivering bulk.
Orion staggered backwards and pain exploded all over his body. The flesh of the giant slug burned with the same acid as the spores he had encountered earlier in the morning.
He struggled desperately with the thing, attempting to wrench it away from his face as his lungs began to scream for air.
He glimpsed movement through the thing’s pale flesh, then he gasped with relief as it was hauled away from him.
Atolmis had pierced it with his spear and, as Orion crashed to the ground, trying to catch his breath, Atolmis wrenched his weapon free and stabbed the thing again.
Blubbery innards slopped across the ground but, before Atolmis could retrieve his weapon, another one of the creatures slammed into him. This one had enormous, tacky wings on its back, slick with mucus and filling the air with an angry whirring sound.
Atolmis toppled backwards beneath its weight and vanished from view as it smothered him.
Orion reeled as another grub slapped against him. For a while he could think of nothing but his desperate struggle to keep the grubs off his face. He lunged and stabbed, and soon there was a mound of torn flesh lying around him on the ground.
A chorus of alarm reminded him of his priests.
He whirled around to see they were huddled next to one of the largest grubs, howling and cursing, but holding their spears back.
Orion felt a rush of fear as he realised he could not see Sélva.
He rushed across the clearing and barged through the priests, groaning in disgust as he saw why they were holding back their spears. The grub had entirely enveloped Sélva. The horned priest was clearly visible through the creature’s translucent flesh, struggling desperately to free himself.
Orion shoved the others back and raised his spear. He singled out the end of the grub that seemed most likely to be a head and prepared to strike.
Before he could attack, the creature suddenly doubled in size, changing from milk white to a deep crimson.
Orion and the priests froze in shock as they realised what had happened. Sélva’s body had burst – disintegrated by the grub’s stomach acids.
It had digested him.
As Orion stared in horror, the sated grub lifted its bloated mass free and rolled away, leaving a trail of bloody slime.
Orion bellowed with rage and stabbed it repeatedly with his spear.
The others rushed to his side and did the same, covering the forest floor with chunks of hissing, acidic flesh, not caring where they punctured the bloated grub, knowing that Sélva was beyond harm.
Once they were done, Orion and the others backed away, clutching their spears and waiting for another attack.
None came, but the remains of the tree were shuddering as it prepared to vomit another creature from its roots.
‘Leave,’ snapped Orion, glaring at his priests, not prepared to lose another one. Then he turned back to the tree, grasping his spear in both hands and crouching low to the ground.
The priests had no intention of deserting their king, but as they readied their weapons the remains of the tree collapsed inwards, emitting nothing more menacing than a cloud of spores.
Quiet descended on the clearing, broken only by the heavy breathing of Orion and the buzzing of the smaller grubs, spiralling and banking through the air.
Orion remained crouched and ready for battle, staring at the slumped remains of the tree. ‘I knew it.’ He sounded dazed. ‘I knew that smell did not belong in my forest.’
Atolmis and the others stepped over to the remains of the bug that had consumed Sélva. They picked at the glistening mess in disconsolate silence for a few moments, then Atolmis turned to Orion, his face contorted by pain.
‘My lord, we must take him to the King’s Glade. We cannot abandon him to the Endless Vale.’
Orion was still staring at the remains of the tree. ‘What?’ He turned to see that all the priests were looking at him.
He spoke in a hoarse whisper, staring at the clotted lumps that had once been Sélva. ‘The Endless Vale?’
Atolmis nodded. ‘He gave himself to you, my king. Now his soul must be allowed to find peace. Only in your sacred halls will he find the forgetfulness he needs.’
Orion could barely recognise Atolmis’s voice, it was so choked with emotion. He delved into his past. The Endless Vale. The words triggered a memory, as much a sensation as an image. He recalled blinding, colourless patches of light punctuated by tall, black, serried ranks of shadow. The memory was sinister and illusive, like a half-recalled nightmare.
‘We’re no longer what we were,’ said Atolmis. ‘We’re no longer simply mortal.’ The other priests nodded in agreement as Atolmis waved at the surrounding trees, becoming more animated. ‘We can’t bind our souls to whatever rock or branch we choose. Even the Oak of Ages would not suffice. We would never escape our memories of the hunt. We would never forget what we did. We would join the ranks of the rootless dead. Sélva will only find rest in one place.’
Orion gave the tree one last wary glance, then he walked over to the priests and looked down at the bloody slop pooling around their feet. Grief welled up in him and he recalled the rider as he first saw him: powerful and strange – his guide to a new life. Without the priests he would still be a wandering mortal named Sephian.
He tried to hide his grief by speaking in harsh, gruff tones. ‘What exactly would you take, Atolmis?’ He waved at the pool of blood.
The priest looked wounded by his king’s tone, but he gave no reply, other than to drop on one knee and pluck something from the grub’s still-twitching carcass.
He held it out to Orion and the king saw that it was a narrow, spiralled horn – one of the pair that had previously crowned Sélva’s head.
Orion glimpsed the patches of light and dark again and realised that he knew where Atolmis was referring to. He had seen the Endless Vale. He stared at the horn for a while, unsure what to say, then the pain of his acid-scorched skin reminded him how urgent his errand was.
‘I have no time for detours.’ He waved at the autumn leaves. ‘The year is fading. I must speak to Ariel. I must know where Sativus hides himself before I am too weak to face him.’
The priests looked at each other in shock and Atolmis shook his head.
‘My king,’ he said. ‘We must not abandon Sélva. He joined his spirit to the Wild Hunt. He has committed violence in your name, this year more than ever. He will never know peace if we fail to perform the necessary–’
‘Take him where you will!’ Orion could feel the seconds passing through him like knife wounds. ‘I must leave.’
Atolmis gave a stiff nod, clearly holding back an angry reply.
Orion saw the hurt he had caused and regretted it, b
ut he could think of no way to undo it. Sélva was dead. The thought hit him again with such violence that he thought he might vomit. Every death in the forest suddenly seemed to be his responsibility.
‘Perform your rites,’ he snapped. ‘Go where you must. I have to leave.’
Atolmis looked horrified. ‘Our purpose is to watch over you.’ He glanced at the horn in his hand. ‘If you will it,’ his voice faltered, ‘we will leave Sélva to his fate. If you think finding Sativus is so important, we must accompany you.’
Orion clutched his head. Everything seemed to be slipping away from him. For a few moments he stood there in silence, unsure what to do. He could not bear any kind of delay, but he needed his priests at his side.
‘My king?’ said Atolmis, after a few moments.
‘I will come for you when I’m done.’ Orion grimaced at his own decision. ‘Wait for me in the King’s Glade.’ He looked down at his spear, his face full of doubt. ‘I’ll find Sativus alone.’
Chapter Three
Finavar woke in the early hours. Moonlight picked out the shape of his brother, lying at the entrance to the cave, and for a moment he forgot everything. He opened his mouth to speak, then paused, remembering the truth. Even in silhouette, it was obvious that Jokleel’s position was odd. His head was tilted back at a hideously unnatural angle and his limbs were spread across the ground in an awkward jumble.
Finavar climbed to his feet and stood swaying in the dark. He was naked and as he stepped towards the mouth of the cave, the moonlight revealed how skeletal his body had become. His skin was stretched taut over his ribs and his hip bones gleamed like blades. The vertebrae of his spine were clearly visible. His hair – once a mane of flaming locks – was now plastered to his skull-like head in greasy, matted clumps.
He crouched next to the grey, waxy shape that had once been his brother and tried to arrange it in a more natural position. Then he sat and cradled Jokleel’s head, humming a gentle lullaby and attempting to shoo away the flies that constantly filled the cave. He had wrapped Jokleel in a ruddy shroud of leaves and berries in a vain attempt to disguise his unnatural end.