by Ari Marmell
‘You’ll consider it? Really? And you call her crazy?’
“Thank you, Cerris.” She sat down beside him, her hand rising up his arm, settling gently across his shoulders. “And even though I know it was partly because you needed my help … Thank you for coming for me.”
She leaned in close, and Cerris paradoxically found himself shivering as he felt the heat of her skin. Her lips brushed his, once, twice, feather-gentle … And then hard, almost desperate. He tasted Irrial’s mouth, felt her breath in his lungs, and with a final shudder he wrapped his arms about her in return.
And if, behind closed eyes, Cerris saw a face other than hers, a face so slightly younger, gazing at him sadly across a gulf of lost years and broken promises … Well, it would never hurt her if she never knew.
Chapter Five
THEY TRAVELED FAR, until Braetlyn was a distant memory and even Mecepheum had fallen behind. Over half the breadth of Imphallion they journeyed, upon the saddled backs of mean, ugly, war-bred mounts from the baron’s own stables. Jassion sat his horse stiffly, spine straight, resplendent in chain hauberk—with black-enameled vambraces and greaves—and, as always, the crimson-and-midnight tabard of his barony. His face was sullen, and at irregular intervals his hands reached of their own accord for the terrible sword slung across the saddle behind him, as though afraid that if he ignored it for too long, it might wander away.
For many days, his silence had been a surly one, for Jassion had hoped—despite the discomfort he knew it would entail—to ride forth in full armor, an imposing titan of steel daring the world to deliver its worst. His companion, however, had explained quite resolutely that he did not plan to spend his mornings helping Jassion into his “iron breeches,” and since the baron couldn’t precisely strap himself into his armor, he’d been forced, reluctantly, to settle for mail. Since much time had passed, Kaleb was fairly certain that Jassion couldn’t still be angry about so middling an issue, and thus figured that the continued silence was due largely to the fact that the noble was more or less an arrogant, discourteous ass.
Kaleb, who wore no armor but rather a simple leather jerkin and deerskin pants beneath his cloak, took it upon himself, with a malicious relish, to fill the silence with inane chatter. From observations on the weather to the names of sundry flora and fauna, he poured unwanted speech like molten metal into the baron’s unwilling ears, and took great delight in watching the fellow quietly seethe.
As the roads grew narrow, however, dwindling into game trails—and as the sparse foliage slowly thickened, the trees towering nearer one another as if seeking comfort from some unseen fear—even the impertinent sorcerer grew serious. Kaleb and Jassion exchanged glances, each beset by a sudden wariness.
A bend in the trail, circling a copse of particularly thick boles, and they saw it rising before them: a wall of green and brown. At that border of branches and brambles, the voices of the wildlife stopped as though the sound itself had been cut by an unseen blade. The sunlight, no matter how it squirmed, failed to wend through the gaps in the leaves, so that nothing but utter darkness regarded the new arrivals from within the foliage.
For several moments they stared at that barrier, each lost in his own thoughts. And only then, as though made abruptly aware of where they were and what waited ahead, the horses reared. Bestial shrieks of terror rattled the trees, startling what few birds and animals had dared draw even this near the looming forest. Eyes rolled madly, and spittle dripped from iron bits.
Even as his mount lurched, Kaleb leapt nimbly from the saddle to land on the thick soil. Jassion, weighted down by his hauberk or perhaps simply less fortunate, fell hard on his back and lay gasping. The baron’s mount thundered madly back down the path, and after an instant of wrestling with the reins Kaleb dropped them, allowing his own to follow.
Behind him, the leaves of the impassible wood hissed and rustled in a breeze that neither man could feel, as though chortling their grim amusement.
Kaleb sidled over to Jassion and offered a helping hand, hauling the winded baron to his feet as though he weighed no more than a child’s doll.
“Horses …,” the nobleman panted between gasps.
Kaleb shrugged. “I can probably call them back once we’re through here.”
“And …” Another wheeze. “If not?”
“Then I guess, my lord, you learn the hard way that your feet are good for more than putting in your mouth or kicking the occasional servant.”
Jassion tried to glare, but his gulping breaths—which, Kaleb noted with a snicker, were all too appropriate for a man with a fish emblazoned on his chest—rather ruined the effect.
Remarkably, Kaleb chose to remain silent until the baron had finally recovered. Then, spotting a sudden spark of panic in Jassion’s expression, he pointed. “Over there. It fell when you did.”
Jassion must have been grateful indeed, for his muttered “Thank you” as he stooped to retrieve the fallen Talon actually sounded heartfelt. He looked taller when he rose, and the lingering traces of pain had faded from his breath.
And again both men stood and scrutinized the wall of trees, like children desperate for any excuse to put off a hated chore.
“Are you certain she’s here?” Jassion asked finally.
“What’s wrong, my lord? You couldn’t possibly be frightened, could you?”
“There’s precious little in the world that frightens me,” Jassion said, still watching the trees. “But I’m not an idiot.”
“You—”
“Don’t.” He paused. “Can’t you just cast a spell to find out? Wiggle your fingers and see if she’s home?”
“Oh, certainly. Why, I’ve just been waiting for you to ask. Then, for my next trick, I’ll gnaw on a steel ingot until I shit broadswords.”
“I’ll take that as a no, then,” Jassion muttered.
“You do that.”
More staring.
“You must understand,” the baron said, “I’ve heard tales and ghost stories of Theaghl-gohlatch since I was a child. Normally I wouldn’t believe a word of them, but then I consider who it is we’re looking for. And my understanding is, very few who enter Theaghl-gohlatch ever come out again.”
“True,” Kaleb said. “But Corvis Rebaine was one of them.”
Jassion scowled and stalked toward the trees, the smirking sorcerer trailing in his wake.
CAREFULLY THEY WORMED THROUGH THE BOLES, pushing and occasionally chopping branches out of their way: Jassion with Talon, Kaleb with a broad-tipped falchion he drew from gods-knew-where. But after fewer than a dozen paces, their progress stalled. The briars and the foliage grew too thick for Kaleb’s blade, and while the Kholben Shiar was not so easily ensnarled, the close press of the branches provided Jassion inadequate room to swing.
Branches twisted, contrary to any breeze, to block their path, scraping and tearing at exposed flesh. Thorns pierced leather and wool and even, at times, between links of chain, seeking blood. The air grew thick with pollen and the scents of growing things, cloying and disorienting. Somehow, though they could see the gleaming sunlight behind them, its illumination failed to reach them. They stood surrounded in a pall of darkness as heavy as the plant life.
A distant wolf howled, swiftly drowned out by the flapping of a hundred wings and the chittering of unseen rodents. And when that faded away, replaced by dozens of tiny chewing mouths and the whimpering of predator turned prey, even the jaded Jassion blanched, glad now for the shadows that hid his weakness from his companion.
“We should never have come.” The baron was shocked to recognize his own voice in that whisper, to feel his lips moving, driven by a fear growing stronger than his will. “Oh, gods …”
Kaleb’s own face remained as wooden as the trees, and if the same soul-deep terror churned through him, it would have required more than a brighter light to see it. With two fingers, he pushed against the nearest branch, watched as it swiftly sprang back to block his way. He pushed it again, then sniffe
d carefully at his fingers, apparently oblivious to the panicked whimpering beside him.
He slid the falchion beneath his cloak, back to wherever he’d kept it hidden, and raised both hands before him. He spoke, and though his voice barely rose above a whisper, his words were clearly intended for ears other than Jassion’s.
“You brought this on yourself.”
From upraised palms poured a sheet of incandescent flame, a torrent of obliteration. It burned a furious blue at its core, leaving spots dancing before Jassion’s eyes, but at its edge, where it licked hungrily at tree and leaf and grass, its all-consuming fury was an angry red. On it came, a geyser of fire that seemed to draw strength from the pits of hell itself. And perhaps there was something unholy in Kaleb’s spell, for the smoke that snaked upward, curled around the trees like a lover’s caress, smelled overwhelmingly of brimstone.
Still it continued, until Jassion could see only the blinding light, hear only the furious crackling of the fire. He fell to his knees, hands clasped over his ears, rocking back and forth and praying for it to end. He felt the heat wash back over him, singeing the hairs on his hands, and wondered if his supposed ally were mad enough to incinerate them both.
So overpowering were the reverberations in Jassion’s ears, indeed in his mind, that when the torrent finally ceased, he took a moment to notice.
Small embers flickered, marking the edges of the clearing that Kaleb had burned into the flesh of Theaghl-gohlatch, though already they were beginning to fade, overwhelmed by the wood’s unnatural darkness. Layers of ash coated the soil, and more fell in gentle flurries. Animals wailed from all directions, cries of agony and endless rage, and Jassion was certain he heard words—subtle, alien, unintelligible—intertwined within those calls.
Hands still limned in a cerulean aura, smoke leaking from beneath his nails, Kaleb stepped into the path his fires had gouged. “I can do it again!” he called, and his voice carried far into the forest, passing through the thickest copses without hint of distortion or echo. “And again, and again still! I am no mere traveler for you to consume, and if need be I will burn my entire path, step by step! You cannot halt us, not like this.”
And before Jassion’s unbelieving gaze, Theaghl-gohlatch replied! Shadows danced at the limits of sight, shadows that should not, could not exist in the muted light of the dying flames. Wood and bark creaked in the darkness, accompanied by a low moan that was most assuredly not the wind, and Jassion somehow knew that he and Kaleb now stood upon a path that led directly to the heart of this godsforsaken nightmare.
Kaleb gestured for Jassion to rise. The flames around his hands flickered once and were gone, but were swiftly replaced by a steady golden glow hovering in the air just above his head. It wasn’t a lot of light, but more than enough to illuminate the path before them.
“How mighty a sorcerer are you?” the baron rasped as he rose shakily to his feet, leaning briefly on Talon as though drawing strength from the demonic weapon.
“Enough,” Kaleb said simply. “I suggest we move. Theaghl-gohlatch is home to more than just the trees, and not everything is so easily intimidated.”
“You find trees easy to intimidate, do you?” Jassion asked wryly as he fell into step beside his companion, and then cursed himself bitterly for providing Kaleb the opening when the man replied with a jaunty “My bite is far worse than their bark.”
“This is not the time for jokes, Kaleb!”
“Sure it is. I mean, if I wait until after this place kills us horribly, it’ll pretty much be too late, won’t it?”
It felt strange, striding through that haunted wood, and not merely in a spiritual sense. Beneath the coating of ash, the soil was thick, even spongy. It seemed greedy, reluctant to release their boots, making each step a struggle. Though the trees had apparently cleared their way—Jassion’s mind shied away from thinking too long about the implications of that—many a branch and root jutted into the path, tripping them, forcing them to duck and edge ahead at awkward angles. They walked within a pocket of sanity that reached only as far as Kaleb’s light; beyond, in the dark, lurked trees nourished not on water and sunlight but a palpable, undying hate.
The baron knew, in that moment, that everything he’d ever heard of Theaghl-gohlatch was undeniably, horribly real. And he wondered how anyone, no matter how vile, could stand to make this place their home.
Chirping split the dark beyond, a sound very much like a nattering sparrow, and for an instant Jassion began to relax. But the sound continued, never wavering, until the baron felt his muscles quivering, the hair on his neck standing straight—and only then did the woodland song rise to a shrieking laugh. It was a sound no animal, nor any sane man, could have produced, vacillating between a little girl’s delight in some new toy, and the gibbering of an old man toying with a new little girl.
Jassion wiped the sweat from his brow with one hand, kept the other firmly wrapped about Talon’s hilt—if only to keep it from trembling. He felt a weight pressing on his chest, and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. For a single heartbeat, he was back in the stone cellar of Denathere’s great hall, a boy feeling himself slowly crushed beneath a dozen bleeding corpses …
No! No, I will not have it! I am the Baron Jassion of Braetlyn! I have faced the worst monster history has ever birthed, and I have proved him nothing more than a man! He shoved past Kaleb, staring into the looming dark, shouting aloud, now, though he never realized he had spoken. “I did not yield to him! I will not yield to you!”
Perhaps, just perhaps it was that cry of defiance that saved him, for had Jassion remained behind his ally, his attention locked on his inner struggle, he’d never have seen the shadows gathering, moving against Kaleb’s light, reaching toward them like questing fingers.
But because he had, when the attack came, Jassion stood ready to meet it.
Rustling, there, in the trees; an explosion of shattering sticks in the foliage beyond. Jassion saw nothing of his assailant, but he felt a gust of movement from the left and dropped into a defensive crouch, taking a blow against his hauberk that would otherwise have gashed open his unprotected hip. A piercing shriek stung his ears as something razor-edged raked across the mail, and though the chain kept his flesh unscarred, the force alone staggered him. Branches and leaves bent inward behind him, the only visible sign of his attacker’s passage.
He shifted aside, placing his back to Kaleb’s as the forest came alive. From all directions he heard them, though still he saw nothing: footsteps, impossible to pinpoint or to count, circling to a rhythm almost ceremonial, even singsong, in its cadence. The susurrus of brushing leaves blended seamlessly into a choir of incomprehensible whispers. And beyond it, rising to a pitch practically beyond the baron’s hearing, that inhuman laughter, never once pausing for breath.
Another flicker of movement, and Jassion swung Talon in a low arc. With a speed seemingly impossible in so large a weapon, the demon-forged blade sliced the air, whistling a war cry of its own. A jolt ran through Jassion’s shoulder as something intersected Talon’s sweep. An impossible, childish voice rose in an abortive scream and died in a liquid gurgle. Milky crimson, like no blood Jassion had ever seen, spattered across the leaves, and he clearly heard the sodden thump of something striking the earth near his feet. Yet in the single instant it took him to glance down, something else darted from the undergrowth to claim its prize, leaving no sign of the foe he had slain.
A dozen voices hissed as one, and the mocking laughter died without echo. Even the parchment-like whispers ceased as though the leaves themselves held their breath, perhaps hoping to escape notice.
Refusing to be lulled or distracted, Jassion maintained his crouch, waving Talon before him in wide sweeps, struggling to spy his foe in time to strike. Behind him he thought he heard Kaleb muttering under his breath, but dared not glance around to see what the sorcerer might be doing.
They came as one, from not one side but every side. Sound without source, movement without form,
they remained unseen—if they were even real at all. Jassion felt the tip of his blade bite into invisible flesh, and then the Kholben Shiar was wrenched from his hand by something that drooled and babbled beside him. He could not help but scream as something punched between the links of his hauberk and into the flesh of his side, searing his nerves like grain alcohol poured across an open blister. Blood welled thickly between the intertwining rings, and though there wasn’t enough to suggest an especially deep or gaping wound, Jassion felt the strength drain from his legs. Face beaded with sweat, chewing his lip to distract him from the pain until it, too, bled freely, the nobleman took a step toward his fallen blade, then one step more …
The ground rushed toward his face, an open-palmed slap delivered by the world itself. Jassion tasted soil, felt it filling his nostrils. His hand flopped like a landed fish mere inches from Talon’s hilt. Already the pain of his wound was fading, settling into a manageable if constant burn, but Jassion heard the drumming of feet all around him, knew that the seconds he needed to regain his strength were seconds his foes would deny him. Something shifted above, casting a shadow not merely of darkness but of cold across his exposed back, and Jassion all but choked on the bile that surged behind his tongue, the bitterness not of death, but of failure.
The blow never fell, though, for suddenly Kaleb was there. Perhaps driven by whatever magics he had summoned, his limbs moved with speed to rival the forest creatures’ own. Jassion twisted onto his side and looked up to see a blur of motion from out of the darkness. And he saw Kaleb step into the assault, his fist closing on an unseen throat and lifting his enemy high with one arm. For a single heartbeat, Jassion thought he could just make out a silhouette, far too lanky and long of limb to be human, flailing as it dangled from the sorcerer’s fist. Then Kaleb’s hand closed with a vicious crunch, and those limbs fell limp and melted away into the endless night.
Kaleb spun away from his fallen companion, blue flames once more flickering across his fingers. Jassion felt the first burst of searing heat as Kaleb unleashed his magics, and then his wound flared with renewed agony and he felt nothing at all.