by Darius Hinks
‘Sativus answers to no one. Nobody can see his movements. Nobody can see everything.’
Naieth was about to answer when the walls collapsed.
There was a deafening, grinding roar as the chamber tumbled and rolled over them. Soil, bark and roots slammed into them and for a while they were helpless, tumbling through a maelstrom of sound and movement.
None of them could say afterwards how long they fell, but when the turmoil ceased, they found themselves blinking and gasping under a cool, pewter-coloured sky. A network of dark branches framed the cloudless vaults, and as he looked up, Orion laughed.
‘Your blessed tree is playing games with us, Ariel.’ His head was still spinning as he staggered down a branch as wide as a road. He peered over its side. Far below were the churned remains of the Council Glade. They were so high that the funeral pyre was little more than a small, blackened smudge.
Ariel stepped lightly from the branch, beating her wings and lifting herself into the air. ‘Naieth?’ she asked, looking back towards the trunk of the tree.
Naieth saw something further down the branch and her eyes widened in shock. She was about to speak, then she clamped her mouth shut and looked away.
‘What?’ demanded Orion. ‘Speak up.’
Naieth’s face coloured and she ignored Orion, turning to look at Ariel. ‘Only the dead, my queen, are truly unblinkered. Only they see all routes.’ Her eyes were full of fear. ‘But we have seen enough necromancy for one night.’
Ariel shook her head. ‘What do you mean? I will not summon the dead.’
As they spoke of the dead, an image flashed into Orion’s mind – rows of harsh, bright lights, surrounded by ink-black shadows. ‘You cannot bring them here, but what if we go to them?’
Ariel looked aghast. ‘What do you mean?’
Naieth narrowed her eyes. ‘Would you risk your own, lingering span then, my king? Would you cross the pale threshold?’
‘What choice do I have?’ Orion waved at his wasted limbs. ‘I have no time left.’ His voice rattled with emotion. ‘I must act now or the whole forest dies with me.’
Ariel shook her head, looking from Naieth to Orion. ‘What do you mean? What risk?’
‘He speaks of the Endless Vale.’ Naieth kept her gaze locked on Orion. ‘He seeks those without roots. He seeks the timeless wit of the dead.’
Ariel recoiled. ‘The Endless Vale? What made you think of such a pitiful place?’
He massaged his temples and looked pained. ‘Sélva has fallen. Some kind of plague is eating through the south of the forest. It…’ His words faltered and he shook his head.
Ariel and Naieth turned to each other in horror, but Orion continued, oblivious to their shock.
‘The priests told me they must return his remains to the King’s Glade, or he would spend eternity wandering the Endless Vale.’ He looked at Naieth with desperate hope in his eyes. ‘You have seen something that put you in mind of the dead. You are keeping something from us. If the dead see all, lead me to them. I could cross this Endless Vale. I know I have seen the place before. My memories are vague, but I’m sure I have been and returned. And if I’ve been there once, I could go again. The dead could lead me to the Spirit King.’
Naieth glanced anxiously along the branch and gave no reply.
Ariel stared at Orion. ‘It is not possible. You are immortal. Such a fate is not set aside for you.’ She turned to her handmaiden. ‘Is it, Naieth?’
Naieth gave no answer and Ariel frowned, turning to look at her. ‘Is it?’
Naieth was too busy watching the branches to answer for a moment. They were coiling themselves into new shapes, like snakes preparing to strike. She noticed Ariel watching her and registered the question. She drummed her coiled nails on her staff. ‘There are ways. Death is only another season. Even the soul of a god can be cast to the wind.’
Ariel looked appalled. ‘What kind of power could send Orion to the realm of the damned?’
The prophetess was clutching her staff of twigs and blinking as she stepped out further into the light. The violence of the tree had left her hair and robes in disarray and, as she turned to face Ariel, she looked utterly wild. ‘The tree of life is also the tree of death.’ She spat a leaf from her mouth and wiped away the remnants with the back of her hand. ‘The king asked and it would appear that the tree has replied.’ She pointed her staff to a small hollow where the branch split into three. ‘Even a spirit as old as his can join the ranks of the dead.’ She turned to Orion. ‘If you are prepared to take leave of your senses.’
Ariel and Orion looked where she was pointing. There was nothing unusual about the fork in the branch. It was as mossy and decrepit as the rest of the Oak. The hollow was carpeted with dead leaves and a few tiny flowers – a little cloud of blue vervain, still clinging to life, despite the autumn chill.
Naieth walked past them and nodded at the flowers. ‘The Oak has led us to the Tears of Isha.’ She knelt and brushed the tiny petals with her staff. ‘A poison fit for a god.’
Orion stepped to her side and looked at the flowers. He knelt beside her and reached out to touch one.
‘Wait,’ snapped Naieth, grabbing his wrist and glaring at him. ‘The shadow of your life would be set free from its master. You would forego yourself, Orion. Are you sure? Would you really abandon life so carelessly?’
Ariel landed a few feet away with a nervous laugh. ‘He is immortal, Naieth. What harm can flowers do him?’
‘These are rare blooms, my queen. They have the power to unshackle even the mightiest of souls.’
Orion stared at the tiny flowers. ‘And what then?’
‘Yet again, you would create a terrible imbalance. The seasons are your measure and your guide. The twilight of the year is the twilight of your soul.’ She frowned. ‘But if you taste the Tears of Isha, you will fall free now, before midwinter comes. You will enter a Kingdom of the Soul. You will cross into that Endless Vale that you have seen in your dreams.’
There was doubt in Ariel’s eyes again. ‘Would you really do such a thing?’
He glared back at her. ‘If it will undo what I have done, yes. The dead could lead me to Sativus. You said yourself that we must seek his aid.’ There was desperation in his voice. ‘I have no time, Ariel. How else will I find him? The tree has brought me here. Its meaning is obvious.’ He looked up at the heavens, pain written across his face. ‘I have seen what you have only felt, Ariel. The forest is diseased, and it is because of me. And the rot is spreading. I must undo what I have done before it’s too late.’
Naieth looked at Ariel with a raised eyebrow. ‘The Oak of Ages does not dream idly, my queen.’
Orion looked at her with an expression of unusual calm. The tumult had vanished from his emerald eyes, replaced by a cool certainty. ‘I’m sure of it – my purpose was not my own. Until now, something has driven me to madness.’ He addressed Naieth without rancour. ‘You do not see it, but I am myself once more.’
Ariel knelt beside them and looked at the flowers. ‘And, if he did this, if he descended into shadow, how would he find his way back? How would he return?’
Naieth paled. ‘He would do business with the dead. They are trapped in a nightmare and they will seek wakefulness.’ She grimaced. ‘They are bound in a silken dark and they would feel his pull. They would be moths to a flame.’
She stared at the king. ‘You would need to conceal your true power. If your presence became known every soul that was ever damned would come looking for you. They would lie, beg and fight to leave that timeless hell. You would have to remain hidden, or…’ Her words trailed off and she looked back at the clump of vervain.
‘Or what?’ asked Orion.
Naieth laughed. It was a cheerless sound. ‘I cannot believe I would sanction this,’ she whispered, ‘but the Oak of Ages has wisdom far beyond mine.’ She shook her head
and spoke louder. ‘If you did this, you would tread paths more meandering and beguiling than you can imagine. You would see nothing but lies and illusion. And if you forgot your purpose, even for a moment, you would forget yourself. You would become as lost as all the others. You would never return.’
She reached down and cut a flower with a coiled, yellow fingernail. Then she laid it on the head of her staff.
‘Be aware, my king, that this would not happen through doleful choice, or guileless chance. Nothing is unmarked by prophecy, nothing. There are no decisions. There are no mistakes. There is only fate. The wiles of the forest are behind all that we do, as sure and noiseless as the roots beneath our feet. If you go it will be for a reason. You will need to broker forgiveness if you are ever to return. You will have to earn your freedom. Somehow, you will need to become the succour of despair.’
Orion drew back from the flower, confused by Naieth’s warning.
Naieth studied him closely. She seemed oddly excited. ‘Any one of the dead could show you the way, but the price will be terrible and promises meaningless. You must be sure of your guide. You must find someone you can trust. Someone who does not simply wish to escape their doom. Someone who could offer you forgiveness.’ She held the flower towards him and glanced at Ariel. ‘It is an act of madness. And the Oak demands it.’
Orion stared at the flower for a moment, then snatched it and dropped it into his mouth.
Ariel shuddered and looked away.
For a second there was no effect.
Orion wondered if Naieth had played a joke on him.
Then his eyes widened as he realised he could not breathe. He tried to draw in air but it was as though he no longer had lungs to fill.
Panic gripped him, but he remembered that Ariel was watching and adopted a calm expression. He felt the strength starting to fall from his limbs, so he sat carefully on the branch.
Ariel and Naieth looked down at him, Ariel with horror and Naieth with intrigue.
He looked up at Ariel and realised that, in all his fury and guilt, he had forgotten something.
‘I’m sorry,’ he tried to say, but no sound emerged.
Ariel stooped to his side, her eyes full of pain.
The world turned white.
Chapter Eight
It was like rediscovering a long-forgotten flavour. As Finavar moved in for the kill, his taste for violence came flooding back.
His body was still painfully thin, but as he slipped through the branches cords of muscle snaked around his limbs, hurling him easily through the trees. He still wore no clothes, but his body was draped with relics of his recovery: scraps of bloody skin and necklaces of teeth that looped around his chest and neck. Even his greasy locks were plaited with the claws of his last meal – a wildcat that had led him a merry dance for almost a whole morning. After weeks of stealth and half-remembered skill, Finavar was growing stronger. His vitality was returning, along with his hate.
Today’s hunt was not for food. To his outrage, he had discovered that most rare of tracks: human footprints. A group of outsiders had somehow reached deep into the forest. These glades were the most sacred of all the asrai kingdoms. Kindreds of all kinds, whichever gods they worshipped, agreed on one inviolable rule: no one but asrai could see such places and survive. The thought thrilled Finavar. This would be his first true test.
He dropped onto a narrow path, bordered by towers of blackthorn and carpeted with the bloody pulp of fallen fruit. The sun was directly overhead and as it broke through the network of branches it transformed the path, turning it into a grid of gleaming gold bars and trembling silhouettes.
Finavar padded silently through the shadows and crouched near the foot of the hedge. The outsiders were close. In a few seconds they would turn a corner and appear before him. He could hear the clatter of metal armour and the strange, angular sound of their voices. Even their scent was unnatural: an acrid, sweaty stench that drifted ahead of them.
He stepped back into the hedge, knowing that even the slightest shadow would be enough to hide him. His filthy limbs would be invisible to such blinkered eyes. No species was as blind to its surroundings as man. Finavar felt a trace of pity for them as he imagined the world they inhabited: a flat, soulless mirror for their pride, and nothing more. Then he recalled the atrocities they were capable of: trees butchered for no reason and lashed to lifeless stone, creating vile tributes to their own egos. He shivered, picturing what might happen if such monsters were ever allowed to return home, carrying news of the forest’s most intimate treasures.
Thorns scraped against Finavar’s skin and he felt a shiver of sentience – a ghost of spring’s wrath. The branches tried to envelop him, creaking and snapping as they circled his arms, but he shrugged them easily away. The forest’s vigour was gone; lost with the last days of summer. The smell of winter was already on the breeze and there was nothing for the trees to do but quietly seethe.
The outsiders trudged into view. They were churning up the boggy path with their iron-shod boots and the man at the rear of the group was dragging a sack along the ground. Finavar felt brief disappointment as he saw that there were only five of them. Then he reminded himself that he was far from recovered. Only a few weeks ago he had been on the verge of starvation. Five would be enough. Besides, they were a determined-looking bunch. Leading them was a hulking youth in an iron breastplate. His skin seemed barely able to contain his massive frame. It looked to Finavar as though a bear had taken the flesh of a human and decided to wear it as a suit. The youth’s face was a furious mess of sunburn and broken blood vessels, and the smell of wine oozed from his pores. In one hand he held a battered broadsword and in the other he had a heavy cudgel.
A light breeze struck up, rippling through the leaves, and Finavar moved in time with it, lifting his sword in a fluid movement that went unnoticed by the outsiders, even as they passed directly in front of him. He drew a breath to begin his song and exploded from the hedge with a whooping cry, plunging his sword into the man with the sack.
The others whirled around, drawing swords and howling curses.
They saw the wounded man topple to the ground, clutching at his chest, but Finavar had already vanished from view, slipping back into the blackthorn before they had chance to see him.
The man in the breastplate yelled a command and the outsiders formed a defensive circle, standing back-to-back with their swords raised.
Finavar crouched in the shadows, surprised to find that his muscles were trembling. He felt a brief moment of doubt then quashed it, emerging further down the path with his bow raised, training an arrow on the men.
His slender frame was half submerged in shadow but they saw enough to recognise the face of their own death.
The men bolted. Two raced towards Finavar with their swords raised and the other two fled.
Finavar loosed three arrows so smoothly that he barely seemed to move.
Three of the men tumbled to the ground before they had taken more than a few steps. Each of them had an arrow slotted neatly through the centre of his neck.
The one in the breastplate was still charging towards Finavar as he drew a fourth arrow and prepared to shoot.
Finavar’s muscles trembled again and he stumbled, sending his arrow whirring off through the trees.
He cursed. The dizziness passed as quickly as it had come, but before he could draw another arrow the outsider smashed into him, sending them both tumbling back across the path.
Finavar rolled clear, but pain exploded in his jaw. The strength went from his legs and he crashed to the ground again.
As Finavar tried to rise he saw the outsider lift his sword. The hilt was bright with blood where it had connected with his face and he was about to bring it down again.
To Finavar’s horror, he realised he was too light-headed to dodge the blow.
A voice rang out through t
he trees and the man froze, mid-strike, to look back down the path.
The sack was wriggling and jolting across the ground.
The outsider shook his head in confusion, before turning back to finish what he had begun.
He cursed as he saw that Finavar was now standing several feet away.
Even such a brief hesitation was enough for Finavar. As the outsider lunged after him, Finavar rushed forwards and waltzed around him, brushing the man’s throat as he did so.
The outsider whirled around in confusion, bewildered by Finavar’s speed. As he did so, a flash of red fanned out from his neck.
He let out a gurgled cry as he realised his throat had been slit.
Without even pausing to watch his victim topple to the ground, Finavar kept his sword raised and strode down the path towards the trembling sack, determined not to be caught out a second time.
He shook his head in disbelief as a figure rose from the sack. It was one of his own kind – a young shadow-dancer, wearing nothing but a loincloth and a spiral of tattoos that looped around his wiry frame.
Finavar did not recognise the marks of kinship on the warrior’s skin, and his hair was plaited in a strange, complicated style, but wherever he came from, Finavar was amazed he had been caught by such unworthy foes. To be taken by outsiders was a transgression of the highest order. Finavar would have been shocked to find any of his kin caught in this way, but to see a wardancer – a servant of Loec – bundled into a sack filled him with shame.
‘How could you allow such a thing?’ he cried, grabbing the youth by the arm and glaring at him. ‘They could have tortured you.’ His fury grew as he noticed that the boy’s breath stank of wine. ‘They could have learned our most treasured secrets. How could you let such morons take you alive?’
‘I had them,’ said the youth, but his cheeks flushed red as he backed away from Finavar. He stared at him with reproach in his eyes. ‘Who are you?’