by Darius Hinks
Summer lingered within the borders of the Wildwood, as though even the cold were afraid to enter. The leaves were still glossy and thick, cladding the trees’ interlinked arms in a thick, impenetrable coat. It was dusk by the time Drycha reached her supposed prison, but even at midday the Wildwood was a tenebrous pit; a realm of shadows and heavy, ominous silences.
Drycha paused before entering and sent Liris on her way. Liris might be willing to enter her home, but she would be unlikely to leave. Even in the half-light, it was possible to make out the slender stone columns that punctuated the edge of the Wildwood. Ariel’s witches had poured every ounce of their artifice into these crude, granite sentinels and few spirits could pass through their net, but Drycha was no ordinary soul. Her memory was longer than Ariel could ever imagine and she had deciphered the secret of the stones in a few short decades. She now travelled the forest as easily as she ever did. She had never fully abandoned her gloomy home though. It harboured magic far more interesting than the wards that contained it. There were beings hiding within its borders that straddled countless worlds and a hundred different pasts. One in particular was dearer to her heart than any other denizen of the forest. Despite her fury and pain, Drycha smiled as she passed the rune-carved stones, knowing she had returned to the true heart of the forest.
The gloom enveloped her and she allowed her physical self to dissipate, becoming one with the sluggish breeze and merging her voice with the petulant screech of eagles, drifting somewhere overhead.
Creatures of enormous size slithered through the dark. Ignorant to the passing of centuries, they pursued errands that could make sense only to themselves, never dreaming that they should have become extinct thousands of years earlier. Insects the size of hawks whirred past, drumming the air with flashing, tessellated wings and scattering coloured lights across the ground. The earth heaved and crumbled over the spines of subterranean behemoths, tunnelling to realms undreamt of by even the most learned minds.
Paths unfurled at Drycha’s feet but she ignored all of them. The Wildwood had a sentience of its own and its goals rarely coincided with those of its guests. Drycha knew that, if she allowed it to, her ancient host would lead her to wonders that would destroy her mind and leave her howling at her own shadow.
So she listened for the song of the forest: bewildering, labyrinthine rhymes, taught to her many years ago, during the first years of her incarceration. Each stanza suggested, in some oblique way, a different route to the one before, and Drycha circled and weaved as she listened, navigating the forest to the rhythm of the words, ignoring even the most tempting visions. For Drycha’s untamed soul, the Shadow-glades were a drug. If she indulged herself with even the smallest draught it would be enough to leave her intoxicated, so she followed the ancient tune like a rope, allowing it to haul her back to her master.
It took three days and four nights, all passed in darkness, before she found him. He was hunched in shadow at the bowl of a natural amphitheatre, surrounded by his dutiful handmaidens. They were wraiths of bark and thorn, like Drycha, and they were kneeling in the trees, twitching and shifting with excitement, as though watching him perform a grand soliloquy. Drycha wondered at the sight of them. She had never seen such a crowd gathered to worship him. Perhaps she was not the only one to have heard his call? The Ancient One, as ever, was motionless. Drycha stumbled to a halt as she saw him. For a while she was unable to approach. It had been many years since she had allowed herself the pleasure of his company and even now, surrounded by a whole crowd of supplicants, she could feel his calming presence speaking directly to her heart.
The centuries had gradually stripped him of form, leaving little more than a mountain of shadows and a vague rustle of leaves, but the song of the forest radiated from him, flooding the amphitheatre with its silent refrain, filling Drycha with courage.
While the Ancient One lived, there would always be hope.
She raced down the slope and allowed his tune to soak through her tired limbs.
Some of the other branchwraiths looked up as she knelt beside them, but they quickly lowered their heads again, lost in adoration of their lord. Drycha saw that their prayers must have been continued for years. Their legs had taken root, sinking into the ground and creepers had stretched over their backs, binding them to the earth.
Drycha assumed the same posture, taking physical form so that she could bend it in homage to her master. Her wooden knees cracked as she knelt and her wrists clicked as she extended her claws in prayer.
‘Coeddil,’ she whispered. ‘Ancient father. What must I do? Guide me.’
There was no audible reply, but the silent song grew in magnificence, soothing Drycha’s quivering limbs and dazzling her with visions. The images were a confused jumble of faces and colours, but Drycha understood the protocol. She relaxed her limbs and took slow, deep draughts of the cool forest air. As her heart slowed, Coeddil’s song began to make more sense.
Beyond the borders of the Wildwood, time hurried on; the impatient hours threw stars across the heavens and rolled the sun across the sky, but here, in the deepest watches of the Shadow-glades, the days went forgotten. Drycha gave herself to the slow, heaving rhythm of Coeddil’s song, and gradually, as the grass grew over her trembling limbs, the Ancient One’s meaning became clear.
First he sang of the endless web – the essence of the forest, binding the present to the past and weaving it into the future. As the melody washed over her, Drycha saw everything with perfect clarity: what they did to the forest, they did to themselves – a promise here, a betrayal there, all would be remembered, changing and directing their fate and shining back at them from the meres and springs of the forest. Then the tune grew darker in tone. The threads had been torn. The gossamer that bound them was hanging loose, sending the natural order into a chaotic whirl. She glimpsed, quite clearly, the false king, Orion, as he blundered through the Vaults of Winter, destroying the ancient keystone of the Sínann-Torr.
Drycha bristled with hate at the thought of her enemy, but the Ancient One soothed her with the glacial magnificence of his song. ‘The forest is forever,’ it seemed to say. ‘What is done will be undone. Everything has been foreseen. Every misdeed is simply another strand of the web.’
Drycha drifted free from the tyranny of time. She had been knelt in prayer for several weeks, but she was no more aware of the fact than she was aware of the birds that settled on her shoulders. Every portion of her soul was joined to her master’s song.
Her rage passed as she understood how insignificant Orion was in comparison to Coeddil’s fathomless wisdom. The outlanders were insects, barely registered by her master’s magnificent vision. The Ancient One’s song showed her, for the first time, exactly what Orion had done. His blunder had set off a chain of events that spread far wider than she could have ever imagined. As his song rolled silently around the amphitheatre, she pictured the crudely chiselled waystones surrounding the Wildwood. At first she struggled to grasp the details of Coeddil’s meaning, but as his rhymes tumbled over her, she realised that it was his old refrain: everything is linked; everything is part of the Great Weave. The strands of magic severed by the false king had lashed out through time and space, reaching even this far corner of the forest. The spirits of the Shadow-glades had been trapped for countless centuries, but now there was a crack forming in the dam.
Drycha’s heart began to race again as she pictured a new vision of the future – one in which the branches of the Wildwood stretched beyond their prison.
Coeddil allowed this idea to settle in her thoughts before changing his melody and throwing her mind down another avenue. She plummeted though a dream of rotten flesh and swollen growths. She swam through a black plague, watching in horror as it flooded the forest; twisting, corrupting and destroying everything she loved. The vision was dizzying and terrifying but Coeddil cast her even further – hurling her mind through clouds of flies and crows, to t
he borders of a revolting labyrinth. It was a spiralled garden, grown from towering mounds of fungi and bubbling lakes of larvae. Holding court at the centre of this garish scene was the being she caught all those centuries earlier. When at first she laid eyes on it she had failed to understand the full horror. She had been young then, and naive. How could she have dreamt its true nature? But now, as she looked at it through the bitter lens of old age she understood. It was far more than a monster; far more than a villain. It was the outstretched claw of a god.
Again, the melody changed. She watched in horror as the rotten garden grew, spreading its lurid, rubbery grasp across the trees; transforming everything it touched.
Drycha recoiled. Why was her master showing her this? Was there no hope?
Coeddil remained silent, but his inky mass billowed across the hollow, caressing her gnarled flesh and silencing her cries.
Drycha slipped back into the dream and saw her master’s reply to her question. As the rotten garden spread, the Wildwood rushed to meet it. With the borders weakened, it was free to extend its thorny grasp, spreading the Shadow-glades north, smothering the daemon’s power and plunging the whole forest into wild, blessed darkness.
Drycha gasped, awed by the thought of it. ‘The Wildwood unbound,’ she whispered, as the shadows caressed her. It was more than she could have dreamt of – a way to lock down the whole forest. A way to reclaim what had been lost. The scale of Coeddil’s vision was dizzying. If such dreams were made reality, the plague would not be the only threat to be driven back. Drycha sighed with pleasure as she imagined Ariel’s runts, cowering in their hovels, with the Wildwood scratching at their doors – a prison turned on its creators.
She lurched to her feet and cried out a wordless thank you.
As she opened her eyes, she saw that it was not only shadows that had gathered around her. The other branchwraiths had risen from their prayers and formed a circle around her. There were hundreds of them, she realised, looming out of the gloom and reaching out to her with knotted claws. Their jagged mouths were open wide, moving in time to the Ancient One’s silent song, and their presence was suddenly explained: Coeddil had summoned them for her.
He had built her an army.
The year was almost over. Each morning the trees gave up a few more of their leaves and shrank from the cold, hardening breeze, until there was nothing left but steel-cold bark. As Liris waited for Drycha’s return, she watched a succession of pale sunrises, each weaker than the last and, one by one, she sensed the forest spirits starting to slip away from the mortal realm. She kept her vigil in silence, unmoving and unmoved, invisible to even the keenest sighted of the animals that passed by. Frost crept over her limbs, hardening her joints and freezing her eyes, but still she did not shift position. Then, after the nineteenth darkness she cleared the ice from her eyes and creaked her body into motion.
Something was happening to the borders of the Wildwood.
The trees were moving against the breeze. As Liris watched in amazement, the wall of trunks bowed and juddered, then began to move. At first she thought the whole Wildwood had become mobile, but she quickly realised her mistake. With a hiss of delight, Liris realised she was watching hundreds of her sisters – branchwraiths – marching out to meet the frozen dawn. Cold sunlight flashed across a row of clenched talons and hunched, brittle backs, before retreating into silhouette as her sisters spread their reach, throwing the forest into shadow. It was an army of root and thorn and, leading them on, full of terrible pride and wrath, was Drycha.
Liris lurched and loped through the bracken to greet her.
Drycha’s face splintered into a merciless smile. She did not pause as she reached Liris, but hauled her along with the others, locking her fingers with Liris’s.
‘What does it mean?’ asked Liris.
‘The asrai have failed us,’ replied Drycha, smashing through the forest, spreading shadow as she went. ‘But the Ancient One has not.’ She gestured to the clatter of brittle limbs that surrounded them. ‘We must retrieve what was always ours.’
She stared at Liris, her eyes wild. ‘We have kneeled for too long. The Wildwood is rising.’
Liris shivered with joy. Then she frowned and looked up at the pale heavens. The clouds were pregnant with snow. She could taste it on the breeze. ‘The year is almost over,’ she said. ‘We will soon start to fade.’
Drycha nodded. ‘We must work fast. If the forest is to survive until we return, it must become as fierce as the Wildwood.’
She waved her army forwards.
‘It is time to spread our roots.’
Chapter Eleven
Orion opened his eyes. He was in a forest devoid of colour – a vale of ink-black and blinding white. There was nothing to soften the brutality. He sat up and heard the dry crunch of dead leaves. To his surprise he realised the sound was coming from his own skin. He looked down at his body and saw that it was as bleached, brittle and dusty as everything else.
‘I do remember,’ he said, surprised by how ragged his voice sounded. As his eyes became used to the harsh light he saw a plain of pale dust, divided into thousands of perfect squares, delineated by arrow-straight rows of white, barren trees that trailed into the distance and vanished over the horizon. ‘I have been here,’ he said, lowering his voice to a whisper. One of the trees was within arm’s reach and he reached out to tap it with his claw. He nodded. ‘Bone.’
Something moved beside him and Orion gasped as he saw that Ariel was sitting beside him, grimacing at the leafless wasteland. She gripped Orion’s arm. ‘We are fragments of Isha and Kurnous. We have travelled from our home to the Endless Vale, seeking an audience with Sativus, who is our friend.’ She stared at him. ‘Whatever else we forget, we must remember that.’
Orion shook his head in dismay. ‘What have you done?’ Like him, her flesh was a fragile white shell. Her wings had crumbled away and her robes were a funeral shroud. The sight of her face, so drained of life, so unrecognisable, was terrible to see. He turned away, feeling both pained and humbled as he realised she too must have eaten one of the flowers. She had chosen to follow him.
Ariel gently turned his face back towards hers and stroked his broken, dusty brow.
‘I’m still in here,’ she said, with a smile that sent a crack across her cheek.
He forced himself to meet her eye and, after a few seconds, he saw a shimmer of colour, somewhere deep in the centre of her bone-white pupil – a flash of deep-blue sky. It was only there for a second, but it was enough. ‘And so am I,’ he said, willing her to trust him again.
For a moment they did nothing but look at each other. Then Ariel leant forwards and let her lips scratch against his. ‘I know,’ she said.
Orion tried to sigh with pleasure, but he realised there was no air. They were in a vacuum. The place was not silent though; there was a constant murmuring sound at the edge of his hearing. It sounded like leaves rustling in a breeze, but there were no leaves to be seen. ‘What is that?’ he asked, turning to Ariel.
She looked around at the shadows. ‘Whispers,’ she said, after a few moments. ‘The whispers of the damned.’
Orion grimaced as he realised she was right. The sound was made up of thousands of voices, all whispering at once. The words were urgent and panicked, and they tumbled over each other in a desperate torrent.
‘We are immortal.’ Orion straightened his back and tried to block out the sound. It was impossible to ignore. The panic in the whispers was contagious. It tingled over his bleached shell and filled his mind with anguish. He looked down the featureless avenue of trees. ‘Whatever they are saying has no meaning for us. We’re only passing through. I will not allow you to endure this place for long.’
Taking hold of Ariel’s hand he strode off down the colonnade. ‘Let’s find our guide.’
They walked for a few minutes, but it was impossible to tell if they had
covered any distance. Each dusty square was identical to the last and, despite the inky shadows, there was no sun to navigate by.
After a while they began to notice figures watching them from the shadows. Some were huddled in groups, and some were alone, but all of them peered suspiciously at them as they passed. The figures kept themselves well hidden in the darkness, and it was hard to see them in any detail, but the further Ariel and Orion walked the more eyes they noticed glinting beneath the trees.
Orion paused at the sight of one of the figures. For a second, it stepped out into the light and he glimpsed it more clearly. It was a young warrior, made of the same gleaming bone as the trees. Orion only saw him for the briefest moment, but there was an intensity about his stare that worried him.
Orion peered at the lost soul for a moment, then growled and hurried on, dragging Ariel after him.
She looked at him in confusion, but before she had time to question him another sound emerged from the trees, mingling with the torrent of whispers.
Ariel turned to the right as a burst of song rang out.
Orion nodded in reply and they changed direction, following the distant tune.
The song continued and they realised it was nearer than they first imagined. It was a soaring hymn – dozens of voices, joined together in a haunting, lachrymose union.
Ariel saw more figures gathered on the horizon. Then, noticing Orion’s wrapt expression, she gave him a warning glance. ‘Remember what Naieth told us. The rootless dead are not to be trusted.’ She waved her hand at the air, indicating the soothing melody. ‘They are not at peace – however beautiful they might sound. Do not reveal your power to them.’
Orion nodded in reply, ashamed that he had been so easily beguiled. His spirit self was not blessed with weapons, but he flexed his claws as they neared the source of the music.