by Andy Remic
The image flashed like lightning, piercing in her mind.
The Betrayal.
She stumbled a little, righted herself, and gasping ran to a stand and poured water into a goblet. She drank, greedily, then slapped the cup down, panting, cursing herself for having a memory, or at least, having a memory of those terrible days and weeks when she had No, don’t say it, don’t even think of it… it did not happen; it was a dream, a bad dream.
Why had she done such a terrible thing to the man she loved? Her husband? The father of her children?
And he had forgiven her. Her smile was cracked as she looked at herself in the silver mirror. Her eyes had lost their green fire. She blinked away tears, found inner strength, and reached towards a tiny stone jar. Her hand paused over the jar, which was intricately decorated with ancient battle scenes and heroes from Falanor’s long turbulent history.
“No.” Her word seemed loud, and cracked, in the echoing empty chamber, despite the proliferation of hanging silks and furs and the many tapestries which adorned walls, again depicting the history of Falanor.
Her hand moved away from the jar and hovered, uncertainly, for a moment; she felt weakness flood her, rising from her toes to her brain like the sweep of an Elder wand, and her hand snaked out, knocked the lid clumsily from the jar which clattered to the marble table-top. Alloria refrained from cursing, and didn’t look inside the jar, simply wetting her finger and dipping it into the dark blue powder therein. She stared at her green eyes in the mirror as she rubbed the powder under her tongue, instantly enjoying the relaxing honey of blue karissia entering her blood, entering her mind, and she knew it was weakness and a certain specific horror from her past that made her indulge in this rare drug, and that was no excuse, but it was something she had come to rely on during the old days and the bad days when things had seemed so unclear and seemed to go so wrong. Blue karissia pulsed in her, flowed with her heartbeat, and the world swayed and quickly Alloria slipped from her shawl and dress and climbed into bed to fall instantly asleep, her dreams filled with colour and beauty and an enveloping blue.
Alloria woke to darkness, and the world felt wrong. She could taste the bitter after-effects of the narcotic, and wondered how long she had been under its spell. An hour? Three hours? She sat up, disorientated and feeling mildly nauseous. She shivered, and stepping from her bed pulled on a long silk gown, kicked her feet into thick slippers and found the water jug. She drank greedily, the dehydrated drink of the blue, and only then did a flood of questions tumble into her gradually awakening mind…
Why had the lanterns not been lit? In her chambers, and also outside, on the paved walkways? Normally the garden would be filled with globes of light. Alloria found it hard to believe the lightsmiths had been remiss in their duty.
Warily, she moved to the doors of her chamber and opened one a crack. Outside, a velvet silence rolled through the Autumn Palace. Alloria listened for the familiar footsteps of guards, the distant clink of armour. She heard nothing. She opened her mouth to call out, and closed it again, changing her mind.
Where was Erran? And the other guards? During the hours of darkness she usually had two men posted outside her sleep chambers. Where were they? It was unthinkable they would be away from their post.
Her eyes scanned the black, and goosebumps ran up and down her flesh. Something was wrong; deeply wrong. She could feel it in her blood and bones. Slowly, she eased the door shut. She had a short sword, nicknamed a glade blade, back by the bed. She crept away, back, and padded across the floor. She winced as she drew the blade, for it whispered, oiled steel on leather, but she felt better with the sword in her hands. She knew how to use it; how to defend herself; although she had never been called upon, in reality, to kill, and somewhere deep in her subconscious she wondered how she would respond to the necessity.
She stood, in the darkness, uncertain of what to do.
Then a voice broke the silence; it was cool, clear, and way too arrogant. “What are you going to do with the sword, sweet little Queen Alloria?”
She tensed, poised for attack, tracing the voice that was in the room, gods, he was in the room and with her and where was Erran, where were the guards? Would she have to fight the intruder alone?
Fear flooded her.
“Who are you?” Her voice was stone. Ice.
Something moved in the darkness, and Alloria lifted her sword, a swift movement, or so she thought. In retrospect, it was probably hampered by the drugs she’d taken to help her sleep; to help alleviate the nightmares.
“I am here to help.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Graal. I have travelled a long way for you, my queen.” He stepped into a pool of light filtering through high windows; he was tall, athletic, and moved with grace. He had long white hair and blue eyes blackened by the night. His face was beautiful, and Queen Alloria found herself paralysed by the effect. He carried no weapon.
“My guards are nearby,” she said, voice quieter than she would have liked.
“Your guards are all dead,” sighed General Graal. As if emphasising his point, and with perfect timing, something huge moved outside, crunching wood, gouging marble, and settled with a grunt. It was big, Alloria could sense that; and primitive. It grunted when it breathed, its shadow a crazy dance on a far wall.
What are you? she thought, with a shudder.
What is happening here?
Graal approached, and the sword flickered up with a hiss, but he carried on moving and stepped within her reach, batting the blade aside with a consummate ease that shamed her. She tried to withdraw the weapon, to stab at him, but he held the blade and then he held her jaw, and fear flushed through her like an emetic.
“Where is Mary?” she said.
“Alas, nearly everyone is dead.”
“No!”
“All dead.”
“Erran?”
“All dead, my sweetness. It is you we have come for; and your…drug taking has made it so easy. So sweet.” Alloria fell from the world, then, fell and fell and only recovered when she realised Graal was removing her clothes.
“What are you doing?” she shrieked. Outside, the huge creature shifted again, cracking timber.
“Alas, this is a necessary consequence of war.”
She started to fight, but Graal was too strong, and he punched her, suddenly, viciously, and she lay stunned half on the bed, her gown hitched high, her cold pale loins exposed in the gloom.
Without passion Graal fucked her, raped her, and she cried and her tears soaked into the bed sheets and as Graal rose to ejaculation so his head lowered, incisors ejecting, and her bit her neck and she screamed and he tasted her blood, drank her as with a grunt he came, and she felt warmth inside her and blood pumping from her, and everything made her sick and weak and weeping; she turned, and vomited on the bed, and conversely, this seemed to give Graal some pleasure; some form of satisfaction.
He pulled up his breeches, his childmaker pale and thin and glittering with complex gold and brass wires in the spilling light from the moon. Emphatically, he licked Alloria’s blood from his vachine fangs.
“My husband will hunt you down for this,” snarled Alloria, eyes narrowed, fingers plugging the twin wounds in her neck. Hatred was a real thing in her core, a toxic scorpion wild in her breast.
“I hope so,” said Graal, and gestured, to where Mary was held in a tight embrace by an albino warrior. She was bound, gagged, her eyes wide. She had seen everything. Graal smiled, a crooked smile full of malice. “See she is released near to Leanoric’s camp. It will provide…interesting results, I feel.”
“What are you doing?” hissed Alloria.
A sword pressed against her throat, and she whimpered, and Graal leant in close. He kissed her lips, passionately, with love, and she was too frightened to pull away. She could still feel his seed, warm inside her, and with shame she feared him, but more, with guilt she feared the cold darkness of death.
“I am layi
ng a trail,” he said, and gestured. Mary, the sweet little one who had attended Alloria so honourably, was dragged by her hair from the room. Blood streaked her face, her breast and her loins. She had not been treated well.
“He will kill you,” hissed Alloria. “He will kill you all!”
“We will see,” said Graal, and struck a savage blow which knocked her to the bed; then to the floor. Darkness flooded in, and she remembered no more.
EIGHT
Stone Lion Woods
The canker leapt with a howl, and the girls hunkered in terror. It landed, and with a blink they realised they weren’t the target. One of the woodsmen was still alive, groaning softly, and had lifted his sword and rolled, groan turning to a snarl at the sight of the canker…which stooped, suddenly, and with a crunch, bit off his head.
Kat eased through dead pine needles, through the rotting forest underlay as the canker ate the corpse noisily. It tore long strips of meat from his thighs and bones with crunches and rips, and then from the man’s broad arse, huge lumps which glistened. It swallowed them down in a fast, slick gobble.
They both crouched, watching the canker. Nienna felt herself shivering, and they scavenged around for what torn items lay at their feet. As they dressed in rags, so Kat stood on a dead branch, which cracked. The canker lifted its head from its feast, blood rimed around the massive open jaws, and stringing from its twisted teeth. Nienna saw, suddenly, that this was a different creature from back at the cottage. The mouth was smaller, more lop-sided to the left, the teeth like blackened steel stumps, which bludgeoned meat rather than sliced it. It was also slimmer, less bulky than the first canker they’d witnessed, and with a start, Nienna saw it had breasts, small and rounded, hanging down between its stumpy front legs; the nipples gleaming like polished iron, aureoles of copper, and within the frighteningly thin translucent skin tiny pistons worked.
It was a woman, Nienna realised, and this, somehow, made the cankers a thousand times worse. One thing to be a monster; but to be a monster created from a human shell? To think that through a series of twisted decisions, of incorrect choices, of random bad luck, one could end up…like that?
“Gods,” she hissed, and the canker tilted its head, focusing on her and Kat as if for the first time. Its tiny gold-flecked eyes narrowed, and raising its head, it bellowed up into the dark night forest in something akin to pain…
Not waiting to see if it attacked, Nienna and Kat turned and ran, sprinting as fast as they could, tearing down forest lanes and leaping fallen trunks, ducking under thick branches, as all around the snow continued to pepper the forest innards and the cold stillness invaded them, their bodies and their minds, threatening with icy chill…
Breaking branches told them they were being pursued. Nienna glanced back to see the canker wedge between two boles of trees that must have been a hundred years old apiece; it roared again, a terrifying squealing bass sound that echoed off through the forest, through the trees which swayed high up as if in hissing appreciation of the gladiatorial hunt taking place within.
With a grunt, and the cracking of wood, the canker broke through the trees. They fell, toppling from high above, crashing through branches and other smaller trees and bringing a whole mass of forest down in a howling crunching terrifying clump.
Nienna and Kat were running, pine needles peppering their hair from above as trees fell and whipped. The canker howled again, and continued to crash after them, clumsy in its passion.
“Thick woods,” panted Nienna, face streaked with sweat and covered by numerous tiny scratches.
“What?”
“Head for thick woods; the trees will stop the canker. Slow it down!”
Kat nodded, and they veered left. The canker altered its course, crashing and smashing, thumping and tearing its way through the forest like a whirlwind. Soon, the trees grew more closely placed, but this plan didn’t work as well as Nienna and Kat anticipated; for one thing, the more dense sections of forest were the younger sections of forest. The older, thicker trunks were more widely spaced; they had conquered their territory, their particular arena of forest floor, and at their bases where little sunlight reached were simple carpets of pine and discarded branches. Here, now, in the midst of entanglements was where new trees fought for supremacy, for height, for sunlight, and Nienna realised with a pang of horror that the canker ploughed through such trees with ease. There was no halting it…
“I’ve got to stop!” wailed Kat.
“What is it?”
“My feet, they’re cut to ribbons!”
Darkness poured into the thick forest, like from a jug. That was the second downside, Nienna realised, acknowledging her own error of judgement with a sour grimace. The thicker the woods, the more dark and terrifyingly cloying it was. With bigger trees, at least some light, and snow, crept through. Here it was just icy and dark, with little ambient light
Kat stopped, and Nienna stopped beside her. They stood still, listening to the canker falter, and halt; a bellow rent the air, and they heard the deformed beast sniffing.
“Maybe it won’t see us,” said Kat, voice trembling. She shuffled closer to Nienna, and they held each other in the caliginous interior. They could not even make out one another’s faces.
“Yes.”
The canker, snuffling and grunting, came closer. Now they could hear the tiny, metallic undercurrent of vachine noise; the click of gears, the whistle of piston, the spinning of cogs.
“What the hell is it?” said Kat.
“Shh.”
Even now, it came closer, and closer, and both girls held in screams and prayed, prayed for a miracle as their feet bled and they shivered, sweat turning to ice on their trembling flesh…
Something huge moved above them and Nienna felt a great presence in the trees, as if a giant stalked the forest and the canker growled, screamed, and leapt, and there were sounds of scuffling, of claws scrabbling wood and jaws clashing with metallic crunches and then a mammoth, deafening, final thud. The forest shook, as if by a giant’s fist.
Silence curled like smoke.
Nienna and Kat, both trembling, looked at one another.
What happened?
To the canker, but also…out there?
There came a series of sudden hisses, and clanks, and then silence again. Whatever had happened to the canker it had been immediate, and final. Some giant predator? A bear, maybe? Nienna shook her head at her internal monologue. No. A bear couldn’t have killed the-thing-that pursued them. So what, then?
“Come on, let’s move,” whispered Kat.
Something huge and terrible reared above them in the darkness, smashing branches and whole trunks in its ascent and making Kat scream out loud, all sense of self-preservation vanished as primeval terror took over and the dark shadow reared above, and roared, suddenly, violently, a deep and massive bass roar without the twisted undercurrents of the canker…
“I know where we are,” hissed Nienna, clutching Kat in the shade.
“Where?” she wept.
“Stone Lion Woods,” whispered Nienna, her mind filled with horror.
“I’m telling you,” said Saark, “it’s crazy to head out into the snow!”
“Well, I’m going, aren’t I.”
Kell opened the door, and stepped out into the storm. It had lessened now, and small flakes tumbled turning the forest clearing into a haze. Kell’s eyes swept the dark trees.
“Get your sword.”
Saark reappeared in his damp clothes, grumbling, and stood beside the immobile form of Kell in the snow. “What’s the matter now, you old goat? Forgot your gold teeth? Left your hernia cushion? Maybe you need a good hard shit?”
Kell turned on him, eyes wide, flared in anger. “Shut up, idiot! There’s something in the trees.”
Saark was about to offer further sarcastic comment, but then he, too, sensed more than heard the movement. He turned his back on the small hut and faced the trees, rapier lifting, eyes narrowing.
Ke
ll drew his Svian from under his arm, and cursed the loss of his axe. He felt it deeply; not just because it was a weapon, and he needed such a weapon now. But because the axe was…his. Ilanna. His.
“Hell’s teeth,” muttered Saark, as the albino soldiers edged carefully from the trees, gliding like pale ghosts, their armour shining in shafts of moonlight tumbling between snow-clouds.
“I count ten,” said Kell, delicately.
“Eight,” said Saark.
“Two archers, just inside the trees, off to the right.”
“By the gods, you have good eyesight! I see them!”
“Horse-shit. I wish I had my axe.”
“I wish I had a fast horse.”
“Very heroic.”
“Not much use for dead heroes in these parts.”
The albino soldiers spread out, crimson eyes locked on the two men. Kell stepped away from Saark, mind settling into a zone for combat; and yet, deep down, Kell knew he would have struggled even with his axe. With a long knife? Even one as deadly as the Svian? And with his bad knees, and cracked ribs, and god only knew what other arthritic agonies were waiting to trip him up?
He grimaced, without humour. Damn. It wasn’t looking good.
“Drop your weapons,” said the albino lieutenant.
“Kiss my arse,” snarled Kell.
“Superb: weaponless and an idiot,” said Saark, eyes fixed on the soldiers.
“You can always run back through the woods and jump in the river.”
“Now that is a good idea.”
They stood, tense, waiting for an attack. The lieutenant of the albino soldiers was wary; Kell could see it in his eyes. He wasn’t fooled by an old man and a dandy dressed in villager’s clothing. He could see Saark’s hair, the cut of his stance, the quality of his rapier. There were too many factors of contrast, and the albino was cautious. This showed experience.