by Tim Akers
“They are, but the gheists remain—and something is trying to kill them.”
“What? I don’t see… Oh.” Elsa’s eyes went wide, and she shifted along the bank, pushing herself between Gwen and the surging waters.
What remained of the guardian gheist was plowing toward them, an amorphous humanoid blob that vaguely resembled a woman, foam and mist cascading off it in sheets of black, infected water. Bound to the fallen god was Frair Allaister Finney. He hung in the center of it, a dagger limp in his hands. Blood leaked from his palms, blood that swirled through the gheist in a veinwork of corruption. He was naked under the water, his body stitched in strange tattoos and blood.
“The Glimmerglen…” Gwen said. “We can’t let her fall. We can’t let that bastard corrupt her. She can’t die like this, not after standing guard for so long.”
“Gheists can’t die,” Elsa said. The vow knight was prowling the bank, testing the grip on her blade and preparing for the fight. “Kill them and they reform in the everealm. I’ve dealt with my share.”
“They can die here. Anything can die here. We’re too close to the everealm.”
“You expect me to wade out into that?” Elsa asked, gesturing to the surging froth.
“I expect you to get out of the way,” Gwen snapped. She pushed the knight aside and ran toward the bank, heaving her spear back and letting fly. The spiraling head of the shaft arced over the water and landed with a satisfying crunch against the gheist that rode Allaister. The bloodwrought tip tore into watery flesh, ripping through it.
The gheist flinched, then raised its terrible head and scanned the bank. When it saw Gwen and Elsa, the demon roared with a tortured voice and rushed forward. The river gave one last try at preventing the shadow priest’s assault, the fragments of the guardian spirit that remained in the waters binding together to throw up a wall of silent mist. Allaister bulled into it, the mists wrapping around him like a blanket. He slowed, he stumbled, the river strained beneath him.
Then the priest-bound god broke through the barrier. The river burst in a final surge of power, then the whitecaps collapsed, the current slowed, and the river calmed. The Allaister-gheist, withdrawing from the corpse of the fallen god, bellowed its victory.
As the river fell silent, the forest behind them sent up a wail so shrill it threatened to knock Gwen to her knees. The demon hunched forward and continued across the becalmed waters.
Gwen screamed and charged into the water now calm, slow, and shallow. Her boots crunched across a bed of smooth river stone. She drew another spear from her quiver, taking it in both hands and raising it over her head, howling as she ran.
Allaister loomed over her.
She struck. The spear bit into the demon’s knee, water-skin tearing and reforming like molasses. Allaister seemed unfazed. He slapped her aside, sending her tumbling through the water, her quiver of spears rattling open, scattering shafts into the current, where they floated away like sticks. The demon reached for her.
Before Gwen could get to her knees Elsa charged forward, invoking the rhythms of the sun and Strife. The heat of Strife’s blessing in her blood turned the water to steam at her feet. There was a terrible pressure in the air as she passed, and an intolerable fire. When Elsa brought her sword down on the demon’s arm—the arm that was reaching to crush the life from Gwen’s body—the sound of the blow echoed like thunder through the valley. The sword severed gheist flesh and sent a great wallop of dead god into the river.
Allaister reeled back, severed arm flapping in the air. The gheist lost form for a moment, its vaguely humanoid shape slipping into a chaotic pillar of water, then Elsa had a brief glimpse of the fallen Glimmerglen, the woman’s face startled and angry and alone. At the core of the gheist, Allaister’s face twisted in concentration. The body bubbled, sprouted an arm no larger than a child’s, then swelled, formed another hand around that one, and then a dozen more in quick succession.
Arms lashed out, a head, the legs split and collapsed and split again. And then the gheist’s body was regrown, as whole as it had been before Elsa’s blade fell. Allaister smiled in his tomb of water, then crashed the entire gheist down into the river, looking to bury Gwen among the stones.
Gwen was on her feet again, and swung out of the way. A plume of water erupted from the impact, raining on them as they crawled up the bank.
“Cinder and fucking Strife,” Elsa swore. The pair of them backed away, seeking dry ground. “This is going to get interesting.”
“Going to get?”
“Yes, well, the deadly sort of interesting.”
Gwen edged along the bank, eyes scanning the water. She fumbled her sword out of her belt—a blade meant for mortal work, for killing men, not fighting the manifest gods of the old religion. The edge wasn’t even wrought with her blood.
“My spears are in the river,” she snapped. “Draw it away, and I can—”
Allaister surged up from the river like a flood, right at her. Whatever else had been taken from the shadow priest, beneath the corrupted waters of the gheist his hatred survived. Elsa danced to intercept him, but managed little more than deflection. Gwen looked back.
They were nearly at the trees.
* * *
“The river’s lost,” Elsa said. “The shore as well. Go find the frair, if you want to do something other than die needlessly.” She swung through a series of counterstrikes and soft ripostes. Allaister struck with the river’s force, great concussive slams that cratered earth. It was only the god-touched power of the vow knight’s blade that kept her alive.
Elsa’s shoulders wrenched with the effort of deflecting the blows. Her blood burned holy and hot. Tiredly, regretfully, she tapped deeper into Strife’s blessings. Her veins flooded with molten power. Ashes filled her mouth and her blood.
“With my spears—” Gwen protested.
“RUN!” Elsa howled. Strife’s blessing gave her voice the resonance of hammered bells. Gwen ran.
With the child out of the way, Elsa settled into the serious business of not dying. She had given up her holy mission, her vow to protect the godsroads and domas of Tenumbra. Following Frair Lucas all these years had warped her sense of purpose in some ways, but in other ways she carried with her a clarity that she had never known before.
Here and now, that clarity meant she needed to stay alive. The huntress was no match for this demon, and the frair had higher tasks ahead of him. So it was left to Elsa to stand against the madness that Frair Allaister had become—to stand and to fight and perhaps to die.
The flickering giant that contained the shadow priest lurched to shore. Its footsteps created ripples in the smooth pebbles of the beach, waves of piled stone that washed away from it, as though its very presence created shivers in the earth. Whatever injury Elsa had managed to inflict on the demon was already repaired. It towered over her. Allaister hung limply at the demon’s heart, like a hooked fish.
It started toward the forest, ignoring her.
“Hey! Godfucker!” she yelled, waving her sword. Glory wicked off her blade, leaving bright shadows in the air. “This is as far as you’re going! This is your grave, you bastard!”
The demon paused, head tilted like a curious dog as it regarded the vow knight at its feet. When it spoke, its voice—a grim parody of Allaister’s voice—was as dull and hard as a tombstone.
“Precious Elsa. Far from home, aren’t you? What will you say to the high inquisitor when he finds you defending a pagan hallow?”
“What will you say when he finds you summoning gheists and binding them to your flesh?” she asked. “It seems to me you have sufficient heresy to answer for!”
“Oh, Sacombre and I have an understanding. A deep understanding, in fact. And you’re right not to worry about answering to Lord Cinder,” the shadow priest said. “I am all the judge you’ll be given.” He stepped forward and almost lazily brought his fist down on Elsa’s head.
She sidestepped and deflected the strike so that it bur
ied itself deep into the unyielding earth. Though it appeared to be water, the gheist’s form was solid enough. Mist sprang up from the hijacked god’s wounded arm, a tiny storm that resolved into a vortex of lightning. Sparks arced from the damage, stitching the earth in ash.
“Great gods, but you’re a heavy blow,” Elsa muttered.
“The river has its own storms, daughter of suns. You will feel their wrath.”
The gheist withdrew the limb and swung again, scything through the air like a reaper. Elsa blocked again, and again, each blow shivering through her bones, pushing her back, her feet sliding on stone and mud as though it was ice. She was forced to draw more and more from her vows, pulling Strife’s power out of the sun and through her blood, just to keep moving, just to keep fighting, but the pain of the invocation was taking its own toll. The heat from her body crisped the fallen leaves at her feet and withered the living trees behind her. Even the body of the god began to boil. Light the color of molten gold pulsed from her eyes and veins.
“How long can you burn, child?” the gheist taunted.
“Long enough to end you!” Elsa answered, even as she coughed blood and ash. She tried to press the attack, but the demon’s defenses were too much. She fell against a tree. The bark sizzled beneath her shoulder.
“You would break yourself to save the gods you curse? How have you fallen so far, daughter of suns? Is this what they taught you at the Lightfort?”
“They taught me to kill mad gods, and you qualify,” Elsa said. She slid to the side, whipping her sword beneath the demon’s arcing attack and into the writhing flesh of its arm. The wound was closing even before the steel had left it. Elsa spat and crawled back. “Though you’re a little more conversational than most.”
“I would never claim to be a god, Sir LaFey. Though I am a binder of gods, certainly. A master of the fallen. The first in a new priesthood.” Though his eyes were closed and his body seemingly unresponsive, Allaister smiled. “I like the sound of that.”
“The first in a new heresy,” Elsa said. She was grateful for the rest, but at the same time the divinity burning through her blood wouldn’t last much longer. “The last, as well, if Strife has a say.”
“We are in a pagan place, among pagan gods,” he replied. “The bright lady is far away. She cannot save you, Elsa.”
“I don’t need saving,” she spat, drawing herself up to her full height, the radiant power of the goddess washing off her armor.
“We will see,” the demon answered, then he took up the attack once again. His pummeling fists tore through trees and earth like wet rags. “Pray you live long enough to see the error of your faith. Pray you survive to see the wonders we have wrought. Pray you are blessed with our wisdom, and our knowledge, and our power.”
“Pray you shut the fuck up,” Elsa said, then threw herself at her opponent. Faster than the hulking god, she was able to gain momentary ground, blade flashing like lightning forged from the sun, her face twisted in a rictus of effort and concentration. The spirit that held Allaister at its heart reacted with a mortal’s defense, fighting like a priest, trying to keep fists against blade, careful of its body, falling back as Sir LaFey pressed the attack.
And then the god seemed to remember that it was a god, and Elsa only a fool with a death wish. It slammed its whole form into her, cascading like a waterfall, surrendering the pretense of human form, becoming an arc of thunderous water. The blow knocked her sword from her grip, blistering the flesh along her palms. She fell to the ground, breath torn from her lungs and blood full of fire.
The gheist loomed over her and laughed, a sound like hail on stone. When Elsa looked up, her mouth gaping like a fish out of water, she could see the slightest sliver of Allaister’s eyes, barely open.
“There will be little left of your prayers soon enough, Sir LaFey,” the gheist chuckled. “It’s been a good game.”
* * *
“How do you know her name?” Frair Lucas asked. He appeared at the edge of the trees. The gheist turned to him.
“A daughter of suns, and elder son of moons,” Allaister said. “The old war can begin, can it? Will you finish her while I watch, or do we have a debt to settle?”
“You don’t know her name,” Lucas said. “Frair Allaister does, but you don’t. Which means there’s more of him than you.”
“Not for long,” the gheist said, then it turned back to Elsa. “If you won’t help, then you must watch her end.” It raised its fists in the air, ready to strike the life from the vow knight’s flesh.
“No,” Lucas said, shaking his head. There was a glimmer of darkness in Elsa’s eyes, the glowing veins of her face twisting into shadow, and then her body came undone like a knot, blood and bone turning into mist, a skein of darkness that snapped toward Lucas’s upturned hand like a falcon called to roost.
The shadows dripped and reformed like wax from a candle, and then Elsa was standing beside the frair, moved by shadow magic and Lucas’s will. She bent forward and vomited bile and sparks.
“I fucking hate that,” she said.
“You would hate dying more,” Lucas said softly. “Go find the child. I will deal with this one.”
“It doesn’t cut proper,” Elsa warned.
“I am not the cutting kind,” Lucas said. He gestured toward the depths of the forest. “Fly. Gwen will need you before this is done.”
“My place is with you.”
“Your vow is to the goddess, and Lady Strife needs you alive. There are more important things to do than die bravely. Now go, before I get angry and force the issue.”
Elsa grimaced. Her sword still lay by the gheist’s feet, and there was no retrieving it now. She limped into the forest, then stumbled, then broke into a run, bolstered by the glowing remnants of Strife’s blessing. The trees trembled at her passing, holiness stinging the air, her falling sun damaging the sanctity of the pagan night.
When she was gone, Lucas turned back to the gheist. The creature started lumbering toward him.
“You do not show your fear, son of moons,” the demon rumbled.
“Neither do you, gheist.”
“What do I fear from mortal blood, no matter how tainted it is by the ashen god?” the gheist asked. “Do you know the god you face? The futility of winter standing against spring?”
“No,” Lucas said. “Do you?”
The two fell together, and the world bent around them.
50
ELSA FOUND THE girl among the wreckage of her hidden hallow, crouching between the cairns of the dead wardens. As she approached, the huntress made as if to bolt, but settled when she saw the vow knight.
The sky was turning into thin pewter, a precursor to dawn.
The night can’t be done already, Elsa thought.
“I thought you were dead,” Gwen said as she approached.
“Disappointed?”
“No. Just surprised.” She twisted herself around into a seated position and looked at Elsa. “Allaister still lives—I can feel his corruption in the air—and you’re here. I thought you would fight until he was dead, or you were.”
“Frair Lucas stepped in. He sent me to find you.”
“Where’s your sword?”
“Lost. What are you doing?”
“Preparing,” Gwen said, then turned back to the nearest cairn. Elsa came around the edge to watch. With a pin dipped in her own blood, Gwen was scrawling a rune across the stone. The knight looked around and saw that each cairn had a similar rune hidden somewhere on its surface.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Saying goodbye,” Gwen answered, “and giving them a quicker path into the everealm. If Allaister gets past your frair, I hesitate to think what he might do to these dead.” She leaned back to examine her work, then stood. “I would spare them that horror.”
“We should be gathering our strength,” Elsa said grimly. “Frair Lucas is paying a heavy price. If we have the ability to save him, we should be about it.”
“There is no further defense,” Gwen said quietly. “Allaister has crushed the last of the wards, and our only hope of survival is an old inquisitor and a vow knight without a sword. Even if we win,” she added, “the best I can hope for is a trial for heresy.”
“It’s better than dying,” Elsa said quietly.
“If you insist.”
They fell silent, and the sounds of battle wrenched the air below like thunder in a gorge. Gwen went to the last cairn, drew a line of blood from her palm, then set to work on one of the stones. When she was finished, she stood. Elsa took her by the shoulder and looked her in the eye.
“So you’re going to give up?” Elsa asked.
“No,” Gwen answered. “I just have a peculiar way of fighting.”
“Peculiar indeed. What are you waiting for?”
Again Gwen didn’t answer, so Elsa stared up at the sky.
“How is the sun already rising?” she asked.
“Be glad for it,” Gwen answered. “Perhaps Strife’s ascent will give you the power you need to die with glory.”
“That chance has passed,” Elsa said. “Besides, I think I’m—”
Gwen grabbed her by the shoulder and dragged her down so that the grass closed over them. Elsa struggled, but Gwen put her lips to the vow knight’s ear.
“Quiet,” she hissed. “There is something among the trees.”
They lay still and listened. Something shuffled past, twenty yards distant, voices speaking in hushed tones. When they were gone, Gwen crouched in the grass and looked around.
Four priests of the winter court were working their way onto the top of the hill in the center of the hallow. They were chanting now, some sort of incantation, the shadows of naetheric icons floating around their heads.
“They’re looking for the entrance to the shrine,” Gwen whispered.
“I still marvel that Allaister was able to corrupt so many of the faithful with his heresy,” Elsa whispered.