by Scott Hale
“R’lyeh, Jakob, get back!” Vrana commanded; she kicked behind the Horror’s knee, and when it went down, she yanked the ax from its back. The Horror reared up and hit Vrana’s legs, knocking her off her feet. “Fuck!” she cried as the balls of bone that were its hands pounded her breasts.
“Get off!” R’lyeh drove the daggers into the Horror’s neck and twisted. This time it screamed, and as it screamed, the Horror pushed R’lyeh away, sending her crashing into Jakob.
Exploiting its distraction, Vrana kicked the Horror of the Field off her. She jumped unsteadily to her feet and, with both hands, swung the ax through the creature’s neck, severing its rotted head from it wretched body.
Vrana, R’lyeh, and Jakob stood there a moment, shaking, as the last of Richard’s soupy lifeblood poured out of its neck.
“How do we stop the Witch?” Jakob was panting and crying silently.
“Find a way into the Void and drag her out. R’lyeh, are you hurt?”
After a moment, the girl shook her head and said, “I’m okay, Vrana.”
“Are you sure?”
Before the Octopus could respond, Jakob interrupted with, “She lives in the Elys?”
Vrana nodded. “I think so.”
“And the more who know about her, the weaker she becomes?”
“Maybe,” Vrana said, herself unconvinced. “If anything, it makes her more active, which makes her more vulnerable.”
Jakob went to the mutilated corpse of his once-friend and knelt down beside it. He waved off Vrana’s insistence for him to move away. He dug into Richard’s pockets, the last bits of clothing still clinging to his body. “We are merchants, traders, and to be a good one, you must be registered; otherwise, no city is going to open its gates to you.” He removed his hand and revealed a set of identification tags on a chain. “His woman will be wanting this. It’s all that’s left of him.” He rubbed what little tears he had left out of his eyes. “I’ll not bury this thing. Let it rot. He lives on in memory alone.”
“Jakob,” R’lyeh said slowly, “I’m sorry.”
“Do you fault me for wanting to die?”
She shook her head. “I understand entirely.”
Nora took shape in the murky light of the following evening. Jakob led them to the deadfall on the outskirts, the place where the Witch had sometimes stayed when she first came to his town. The pile of twigs, branches, and trunks stood three times as high as the Raven and was longer and wider than Nora itself. From the lattices formed by the curving branches, it looked like a gigantic ribcage. The deadfall rattled when the wind passed through it, moaned even, somehow reminding Vrana of a book she had once read and not finished.
“Jakob,” R’lyeh had said as he guided them toward the deadfall, “what happened here?”
“This was a small wood that the children used to play in. I played here when I was a boy. When that Witch came to Nora, she left by way of here. We surrounded the woods. We could still hear her inside, but we couldn’t find her, so we cut it down, all of it. The next morning we knew she’d escaped. Trees don’t grow here anymore.”
“Do you want to know what happened in Geharra?” Vrana asked as she and R’lyeh found a place to sit.
“If you have to ask me, then you know that I don’t.” Jakob started toward Nora. “When I tell the others about the Witch, they’ll want to help, especially the women. Anything to hurt the bitch who took their men.”
“You still don’t believe we are who we say we are?” Vrana asked.
Jakob shook his head and, as he disappeared into the dark, said, “Not at all.”
Vrana threw her cloak around herself and R’lyeh to hold at bay the frigid breath of the sea. “What’s the matter?”
The Octopus shook her head, the preserved tentacles sliding across her chest. “I don’t like being this close to Nora. What if they come for us?”
“They won’t. Not after what happened last time we were here.”
R’lyeh pulled the cloak closer, struggling to keep her grip on its silky exterior. “Because of the flies,” she said. “Why would she save you if she knows you mean to kill her?”
Vrana shrugged. “Maybe she enjoys watching me. She took to that man in the hotel. Maybe I’m the first since then. I don’t know, R’lyeh.” When I’ve figured it all out, she wondered, is that when the Maiden will be done with me?
“We haven’t talked about the Red Worm much,” R’lyeh said, her voice sounding distant, like a whisper daring to be heard.
“We can, if you’d like.”
“No,” R’lyeh said resolutely. She coughed out the signs of a cold. “Thinking about it is enough. For now.”
“Are you sure the Horror didn’t hurt you?”
A black shape tore through the night, moving fast down the hill upon which Nora sat. It darted back and forth, sweeping its long shadow across the land. It was a horse, Vrana realized, and it and the hooded figure in its saddle were heading directly for the deadfall. She turned to R’lyeh to tell her to hide, but the Octopus was far ahead of her, having already found a niche inside the wooden ribcage. For a moment, she thought the girl’s bloodlust had been extinguished, but then she saw the daggers in her hands and thought otherwise.
“Two?” the hooded rider questioned as it stopped inches away from Vrana. A second horse appeared from behind the rider, having followed without the need of restraints.
“Nora,” Vrana said as the figure pulled back its hood and dropped from the horse. Vrana gripped her ax. She still could see in her mind’s eye the mayor commanding the crowd that night outside the town. “Allinora.”
Nora scoffed at the Raven. “Don’t be a bitch. Where’s the Bat?”
Vrana shook her head.
“I know what happened,” Nora said. The right side of her face twitched where her cheek was bruised. “I’ve my watchers just as you do. And if backwoods Nora knows what’s happened, so does most everywhere else.”
“What happened to your face?” Vrana tilted her head toward the mark.
Nora peeked over Vrana’s shoulder; R’lyeh was coughing and cursing as she brushed against a coil of thorns. “After you set the flies on us, we had ourselves a talk. It seemed some thought I was in league with your kind. I expect they saw us in the library. A woman got uppity and put her fist to my face. So I put mine in hers, but unfortunately for the woman, the cow forgot to take her tongue off her teeth. Who’s that in there?”
Vrana ignored her. “There was nothing we could do for Richard.”
Nora licked her lips. She shoved her hand into a pocket and left it there. “So Jakob said. It seems we are both in your debt.” She ran her other hand down the side of the horse and called the second one forward. “Two horses for two men. But I know how you Night Terrors are, always wanting more. So what will it be?”
“I’ve asked Jakob to spread word of the Witch and learn more about her if he should travel again.”
“And the abortion of Geharra?” Nora cocked her head. “I suppose that’s more of a group effort than anything else.” She removed her hand from her pocket, a small square of paper between her fingers. “Put this in your elders’ hands, and I’ll put my men to work. I’ll send an excursion to the Elys and root out the cunt.
“There will be war now, or something of the sort. There is much to learn in times such as these. You’d be surprised what finds it ways into a transaction on an empty stomach.”
“What is this?” Vrana took the note, which was not sealed, and slid it into one of her satchels.
“None of your concern, little bird.” She relinquished the horses to Vrana’s care and turned away. “It was nice meeting your friend.”
Vrana couldn’t be sure, but it seemed the horses given to them by Nora were the same as those they had left behind at the gates of Geharra. The beasts needed little guidance, as though the destination had already been whispered into their ears. Vrana was grateful for the horses, her legs even more so, but it was R’lyeh who appeared most affect
ed. She didn’t say much as they rode through the borders of the forest, but when she did, she spoke warmly, her body close to the horse, its heart calming her own.
“Did you have a horse back home?” Vrana asked, watching as R’lyeh seemed to soothe the creature with her touch.
“I liked to think I did.” R’lyeh sat upright. “He was nobody’s. I don’t know why he came around. I was the only one he let touch him.” R’lyeh yawned. “I thought this one was him. They look just the same.”
They stopped when the moon was at its highest in the sky, and their eyelids refused to stay open. They were not yet fully in the South, but they were close enough that Vrana could allow herself to relax. Camp was set hastily, poorly, and if there was anything lurking nearby, it had gone unnoticed and would now have the opportunity to claim a free meal. R’lyeh was reluctant to be parted from her horse, but eventually complied—pouting like the child she was until sleep silenced her.
Vrana knew that she would dream, knew that she would never be without dreams, for her hand bore the Witch’s mark and her mind the Worm’s; and yet, she dreamt of neither. In her dreams, she was without a mask, weapons, or armor. She was very aware of many things of which were of little consequence to her. She was hardly nude, but felt as though she was beneath the dress she wore, which was soft and blue like a piece of the sky. Vrana was in a home that was not her home, running her hands under the faucet of a sink, acutely aware of the floor beneath her feet, which was cold and rumbled as though something had awakened below.
She turned and found before her a kitchen fitted with a table, refrigerator, pantry, and cupboard. Farther on, she saw a hallway lined with photographs in thin frames of men and women, young and old, smiling and without Corruption. Sighing, Vrana twisted her neck to the windows beside her and saw with watering eyes a stretch of grass greener than she had ever known, with fences like fangs clamping on tightly to the plot of land.
“Mom?” she heard a voice call from somewhere inside the house.
Vrana said nothing in response. She waited a moment for the speaker to make their appearance, following with her eyes the sounds emanating from the ceiling above, where feet plodded on weakened wood. No one came, though, so she took a seat at the table that had not been there a second ago and listened to the birds that were singing outside. Content, she folded her hands in her lap and watched as shadows lengthened across the tabletop, off the tabletop, and onto the floor, up the walls and down the hall. Clouds, she thought naively, looking once more out the window, where swarms of helicopters cut through the sky. Clouds covering up the sun.
“What do you know about the Old World, Vrana?”
One eye opened, with the other following close behind. Vrana coughed herself awake. “Huh?”
“We never got to it. I found a part of a railroad track a few years ago—a television, too, or at least I think that’s what they called them. I don’t know.” R’lyeh pushed her hair behind her ears. “I thought it was interesting, but nobody else seemed to want to talk about it.”
“Well, you would have loved growing up in Caldera.” Vrana sat up. Her back was wet, covered in sweat. “So I bet you know all about this world, don’t you?”
“Maybe, not everything,” R’lyeh said. Branches fell from the canopy above, a predator of the night looking for a place to rest. “I’ll make you a deal,” she said with an impish grin.
“Will you now?” Vrana laughed. “I want fifty compliments… about my hair, my armor, about how good I kill stuff. And that’s every morning I’m talking about.”
R’lyeh snorted. “Are you always this cocky?”
“Only when I’m trying to be funny. You first, R’lyeh.”
The Octopus stretched out her tentacles, all four of them. The talons of the Cruel Mother glinted in the moonlight as she moved them from the patch of grass where she’d hidden them. “There are a whole bunch of towns and villages and settlements between Eldrus and Penance. They trade between one another. I heard they think they are separate from the city-states, but the teachers always told us they fall under Eldrus’ rule. That’s the Heartland.”
“In the Old World, there were many nations, and they were all connected to one another. You could speak with someone thousands of miles away. It only took a second. Telephones, that’s what they called them. And they had the Internet, too, which was like a telephone, except you could talk to millions of people and read millions of things, like a huge, never-ending library.”
“Why don’t we have those things?” R’lyeh asked, amazed.
“I don’t know. Maybe we shouldn’t have those things. Maybe that’s why our people keep the Corrupted the way that they are now.”
“I see. Did you know the royal family in Eldrus was murdered three years ago?”
“I did know that,” Vrana said. “All but one was killed, right?”
“The youngest, Edgar, but everyone thought he’d died. When they found the bodies in the keep, Ghostgrave, his was missing. The council thought he had been taken for some sort of ransom or blackmail or something. Edgar was the good one, the one everyone hoped would take over; even the elders, I think, felt that way.”
Vrana could sense R’lyeh enjoyed educating her. “But that’s not what happened, is it?”
R’lyeh shook her head. “He came back a year later with a child. People said he was different, changed. People said they saw him riding out of the Nameless Forest before he made his way back to Eldrus; that’s where he got the boy from.”
“Is that so?” Vrana said in disbelief. “Nobody leaves the Nameless Forest. Then again, if nobody leaves, then how do we know what we know about it, eh?”
R’lyeh bit her lip. “That’s true. Tell me more about the Old World.”
Vrana laughed. “It’s hard to find a place to begin, R’lyeh; it existed for millions of years. Before the Trauma, humans could cross the air and sea and see into the depths of space; all they needed was money and motivation, and what they willed would be done.”
“And we didn’t exist then?”
“No, we didn’t.”
“I liked killing the Horror,” R’lyeh revealed.
“Me too. What did you like about it?”
“Everything,” R’lyeh whispered. She paused and then said, “You called them humans. Were they not Corrupted in the Old World?”
Vrana chose not to confront R’lyeh’s statement. “I suppose not. Their arms were not colored red, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“And our purpose is to keep their numbers low, like ours,” R’lyeh said to herself. “If we didn’t exist in the Old World, then where did we come from?”
Vrana tapped her finger on her lips. “Constantly, the humans asked themselves the very same thing. Maybe if they knew the answer, none of this would have happened. Our keeper told me to think of the earth as a body, an organism, and that its response to the Trauma was us, our people, so that it may heal.”
“Do you believe that?”
Vrana shrugged. “It sounds nice, doesn’t it?”
R’lyeh looked at the ground, sighed, and lay down, her back to Vrana. “I don’t believe it. Everyone would be alive if that were true.”
Vrana didn’t disagree with the girl. She watched R’lyeh until she stopped whimpering in her sleep, when the waking sun set fire to the night sky.
CHAPTER XXIV
They were a half a day’s journey from Caldera when the horses refused to go any farther. R’lyeh tried to convince hers to stay with them and see them through the last of their journey, but when its companion took off, the horse was quick to follow.
“Do you think they will make it back?” the girl asked, taking a few steps forward to see the beasts once more before they were swallowed up by the horizon.
“Absolutely,” Vrana said, taking R’lyeh by the shoulders and turning her around. They went forward. “We’re going straight across. You can swim, right?”
Ahead, a swamp shifted restlessly in its mossy cradle. Vrana had
passed through this area on her third trial, but she had been much deeper south, where the water was shallower. She’d considered seeking out this crossing again, but with their horses gone and their patience depleted, the more dangerous route somehow became the more appealing. If there were any reward to be reaped from the decision, it was Vrana’s sudden realization that she could not see Kistvaen’s peak from where they now stood. The spellweaver had made it and, with the others, had caused the mountain to disappear once again.
“Um, Vrana,” R’lyeh said as she teetered along a half-submerged log, a red wisp circling her head.
“Ignore it.” Vrana hopped and landed on all fours onto a fallen tree, sending ripples across the swamp. “It’ll try to take you somewhere you don’t want to go.”
“Where’s that?” R’lyeh said, following behind Vrana. She jumped onto the fallen tree as the Raven leapt off it and onto two trunks.
Vrana stopped to catch her breath. They were crossing the deepest part of the swamp, and with a keen eye and a bit of balance, doing so would be easy enough. Felled trees, thick vines, and large rocks littered the place, ensuring that they would always have a bridge to the other side. No, it wasn’t the path, crude as it was, that worried Vrana; rather, it was the shadows she saw in the water, following them as they went, waiting with open mouths for a hand or a foot to break the surface.
“A small grotto,” Vrana finally answered. The wisps were no mystery to her. “They’ll lead you down a darkened path, where the trees close in so you can’t escape.” Vrana pushed herself off the stump, grabbed a vine midway, and flung herself onto a bed of debris. “They’ll take you to the grotto and sing to you until you’re too tired to fight them off.”
“Then what?” R’lyeh called, one leg dipping into the water as she lost her footing on a stump. She pulled it out before something could pull her in.
“Then they enter all the cavities of your body and eat you from the inside,” Vrana said, almost laughing. “But wait! There’s more!” Vrana smacked a wisp that floated too close to her, and it fell apart like a dandelion. “Afterwards, they take over your body and make you walk around. They try to get you to convince others to follow you back to the grotto.”