by Scott Hale
The Arachne had done much to the area while Edgar was away. Webs, like walls, had been spun in between the trees, creating a funnel for those entering and exiting the encampment.
Edgar skulked behind the walls, careful to avoid drawing unwanted attention to himself.
Arachne skittered all around him, leaving trails of spit and flesh-eating strands where they went. Through the funnels, the people of Chapel shuffled as their captors taunted them overhead. They begged and balked in their pathetic march, but nevertheless did as they were commanded by the hateful abominations.
“Pay respects to your lord,” the creatures growled. “Hurry now, we’re hungry.”
Edgar followed at a distance, the rifle steadied, ready to fire. The stinging hairs from the Arachne rained down around him, twisting into his skin like needles.
Where did these beasts come from? he wondered, watching these unnatural contortions of the human body. At that moment, stories of the Nameless Forest started to come back to him. Where had he heard them? How did he know them? But none of those surfacing memories told him anything about these spiders.
Was he the first from the outside world to see them? No, probably not. He knew they were called Arachne, and that came from someone else. If he killed Anansi, what would happen to him? The people of Chapel seemed agreeable enough to submit to their new, eight-legged rulers. Would the Arachne do the same for him? For all its complexities, was the Nameless Forest truly that simple in its allegiances? If so, what did that mean for Anathema? Were they now Edgar’s to command, too?
Edgar hid himself in the roots of a tree. The funnel opened up to a silken manse that glittered in the sun; it was the plot Anansi had claimed as his own. Inside, the outpost looked like the skeleton of a home, a blueprint writ in web-work. It was all lines and no furnishings.
Looking at it, it seemed as though a weak wind could tear it down, and yet it stood strong, even as hundreds of Arachne crawled over it, expanding its spires into the canopy.
There was Anansi, in the center, in plain sight, basking in the glory of his crystalline creation.
I have to kill now. Edgar wedged the rifle between two roots to soften the recoil. If I miss, I’m dead. If I hit, I’m probably dead.
He couldn’t believe he was considering this, but he was. It was as though a switch had been flipped in his head. Maybe it had been the little girl, maybe it had been Father Silas; or maybe it was just him, being him, doing what needed to be done for himself at the cost of something else. After all, that was the way of the royal family of Eldrus.
Edgar brought his eye to the iron sights atop the rifle’s barrel.
If the Nameless Forest is this simple, the spiders won’t attack, because they’ll be mine. Or they’ll be Crestfallen’s, and she’ll stop them.
He slowed his breathing and turned the gun until his aim was on Anansi’s head.
Or maybe they’ll belong to whoever the fuck sent me here.
He hadn’t been kidnapped for a ransom. He knew that now.
His finger danced around the trigger. Strange vibrations shook in his chest, but he ignored them.
Don’t stray. Stay sane.
A loud crack, and a cloud of smoke: the bullet exploded from the chamber and whizzed across the forest.
Anansi’s head snapped back and a chunk of skull and brain sailed across his writhing haven.
Edgar fell back on his elbows, shocked. “Holy fuck,” he said, over and over again. “Oh my god. Holy fuck.”
The Arachne dropped from the trees. With the smoke still in the air, they knew immediately where to go. They hissed and screamed and pushed past their prisoners, towards the murder tree.
Edgar backed up, and stood. He left the rifle in the roots. Taking out his dagger, he ran along the funnel and cut through its thinner parts, dodging and weaving through web-choked forest. He could feel the Arachne behind him, above him. He could smell the stench of their spit and feel the heat of their hate.
He bounded through the Nameless Forest, crying out as fingers scraped against his ankles, his wrists. They were so close that they could reach out to claim him if they wanted, but they wanted him to be afraid; to get fat with fear. They yelled at him with breathy threats, promising agony, promising despair; promising to tear his flesh, to suck out his bones.
“What gives you the right?” they screamed in a horrifying, dizzying unison. It was something they had practiced time and time again before. “What gives you the right, outsider filth?”
Edgar stopped. Not to respond, not because he had given up, but because something had been shoved down his throat two hours ago, and now it was coming up.
“Oh god!”
Edgar tipped his head back as eight legs pushed through his mouth. They clamped down on the sides of his face, to work its body loose from him.
With a sickening slurp, the creature dropped out of his mouth. With it came hundreds of strings that tore at Edgar’s innards, for it had been attached to them, drinking from them. It dangled from his lips, twisting as it tried to tear free of his organs.
Looking at it, barely conscious, with the Arachne inches away, he saw that the creature was a hairy, brown orb. But when it finally wiggled free and hit the ground, the creature cracked open like an egg, and inside the egg, there was an infant. An infant no larger than his palm, with eight stunted legs attached to its gray body.
Edgar’s eyes rolled back into his skull. He wavered there, drooling on himself, and fell forward. But he did not fall into green grass.
No, not green grass. His eyes fluttered open.
Not green grass, at all.
But white satin.
“They’re all true in their own way,” Amon said, forcing a piece of vermillion vein into Edgar’s mouth, “but I think you’ll find this one most revealing, my lord.”
Many years after the Trauma, winter fell upon the continent, and all hearts became as ice in that cruel season. Crops were destroyed by the cold, and towns lost to the snow. People turned to one another for help, and turned on one another when no help could be given. Children were offered up to demons for warmth, and in return the demons gave candles that would not only burn in the coldest of winds, but ensured whoever looked upon them would never be able to look away again.
Those that oversaw the continent found themselves weathered as well. The men and women they had been in the summer were no more: the cold had eaten away their kindness and their morality, and left them nothing but the will to survive and the doubt that they would.
In Geharra, the ruling council disappeared into the dungeons, naked and inebriated, never to be seen again.
In Six Pillars, the Lillian priests tortured themselves, each one-upping the other, like children, to please their absent God.
In Elin, however, the royal family had retained some of its civility, for a visitor in a white satin dress had come to the keep in the final months of Fall. It was this woman who had kept up their spirits in that trying year. Her name was Annaliese, and with the help of her esteemed uncle, the young woman had been sent to Ghostgrave in hopes of finding her lost sister, who was said to have been seen last in Elin. The winter struck before the search could truly begin, and when Annaliese found she could not leave the city, so taken was the royal family by her that they kept her close and as their own.
Queen Vivienne and her five children looked upon Annaliese as a daughter and friend, but King Novn saw something else. He saw a woman more beautiful than he had thought possible, and an equal to him in intelligence and wit. He saw a woman whom he could speak to about his most personal thoughts, a woman whom he could lie down with and wake to every morning of every day of his life, and every life he may live thereafter. In Annaliese, he saw a summer that could melt away the winter that had settled in his heart, long before the one that now ravaged his kingdom.
On a snowless night, Annaliese and King Novn left Ghostgrave, and went to where neither the cold, nor anyone else would follow.
Under many covers
and many disguises, and through many bribes and many favors, King Novn had his marriage to Queen Vivienne nullified. He married Annaliese moments later in the presence of a priest suffering from hypothermia. The documents were sealed and placed in an Old World trinket he carried for safekeeping: a ball of hollowed steel.
They arrived at the Nameless Forest months after the escape, their love for one another no less because of this. Just as they had expected, the Forest was untouched by the chill, for the Forest was a world of its own, beholden to neither the rules of man, nor his gods. King Novn had heard many stories in childhood of the place, and had he been thinking clearly, he may have even heeded them.
They built a home on the shore of a river and lake, whose waters were golden, between two trees so tall it seemed as though they touched the stars themselves. They feasted on the animals of the Forest during the day, and on one another at night. They worried little. They were happy.
For a while.
Two months of living in the Nameless Forest had begun to take its toll on the king of Elin. He often woke to find Annaliese staring at him, or kissing him; except that, when she kissed him while he slept, she drew blood and drank it.
When Novn went to the lake to sit by its waters, he found reflected on its surface his guilt. He saw Elin, his wife, and his children, and each in some way were made worse by his leaving. When Novn left to hunt, he found himself stalked by shadows, and when he returned home, he found the shadows in his bed, with Annaliese, asleep beside her. They wore the faces of all the men King Novn hated, including his own.
Three months of living in the Nameless Forest and Annaliese was pregnant. Novn found that he could not sleep beside her, because she would not sleep at all. She never did. One night, after waking from his own hut near the home, he heard Annaliese speaking to someone behind the trees.
“I won’t do it,” she said into the night. “Let’s make it different. We needn’t be maidens any longer. You needn’t be Pain. I needn’t be Joy.”
“He’s watching you,” the night spoke back. “It’ll be longer this time if he kills you. Just give yourself to me and we’ll live forever. Come down stream. I’ve a doorway there, my pet. We can have it all. A cult all our own.”
King Novn stumbled back to his hut, gathered his belongings, and was gone by the morning. It took him days to work his way out of the Nameless Forest, but when he did, he found the mainland thawed.
He returned to Elin, to his family. They did not ask him where he had gone, for they knew whom he had gone with, and that was enough. King Novn renamed the city Eldrus, for it had endured the cruel winter and thought its name should reflect its endurance. He hoped that this would help the people, himself included, to forget all that had transpired before.
But Annaliese did not forget. Nine months later, four sons ripped their way out of her womb. Annaliese wore the white satin dress while she birthed those boys, and continued to wear the bloodstained garment for the rest of her days. She was not surprised by his betrayal, because, despite her best efforts, she was not human, and who could truly love something so inhuman as she?
Annaliese took on many names over the years, and took over the Nameless Forest, too. To each boy she gave a ward, and they ruled it as kings would rule, for they were of royal blood and would need much practice before they claimed the throne of Eldrus, which, by rights, was theirs to claim.
When their strength was great enough and their subjects many, for Annaliese had begun calling others to the Forest, she promised them the mainland and the city.
But Annaliese became crestfallen and forgot her promise.
The sons grew comfortable in their rulings and forgot their humanity.
Eldrus moved forward and forgot the king’s infidelities.
The world was made safer by these forgettings, for what a terrible place it would become if the royal family of Eldrus knew that the true heirs to the throne still lived after all these years. And that, if they were so willing, could give to Eldrus the Nameless Forest and an army of its people and horrors.
CHAPTER XIV
Thirty-Three Days Ago
“You want me to go to the Nameless Forest and kill my oldest living ancestors?”
Amon stared at Edgar. “Yes, you’ve got it.”
“I won’t.”
“Edgar,” Amon said, sitting forward, elbows on his knees, crushing the veins that grew out of them, “by the time you remember this conversation, you’ll have already done it.”
“No.”
“We’ll see.”
Edgar bit his lip, and then shoved his fingers down his throat, trying, once again, to regurgitate the vermillion veins he had ingested.
“Already in your system.” Amon sat back in the chair. “You’re already mine.”
Edgar vomited onto his fingers, but it was only water and what he’d had for dinner. The vermillion vein was inside him, and it wasn’t about to let go. “What… are they?”
“The veins?” Amon ate the last bit of the vermillion vein he had been holding. “You’ll see soon enough.”
“This is insane.” In defiance, Edgar wiped his hands all over the Archivist’s chair. “You expect me to kill those four in the Nameless Forest, and then what?”
“Rule.”
Edgar laughed out a tear. “You fucking idiot. No one would listen. There’s six before me, my father included. I have no claim, no matter what I do.”
Amon nodded. He stood up and circled the chair, so that he came around to the side of his desk. He picked up an object wrapped in dried flesh and tossed it onto Edgar’s lap.
“What is this?” Edgar pushed the object onto the floor. The flesh peeled back, revealing a black dagger with red Death engravings.
A figure emerged from the dark and stood beside Edgar.
Amon nodded at it, the eel Night Terror from the dungeon, and said to Edgar, “We’ll talk more, when this is finished.”
No one stood in the halls of Ghostgrave this night, except for the ghost that haunted it. This ghost, he used to have a name, but now the ghost wasn’t so sure of it anymore. In his hand, he held a dagger—so strange was the weight and texture of it—but he couldn’t recall who gave it to him. There were voices in his head, too, but he didn’t recognize them. They didn’t belong there.
The ghost glided soundlessly through the keep, needing no light to find the door that stood so vividly in his mind. He had passed it many times before, but seldom had the opportunity to open it.
When he found the door, its handle felt smooth in his hand. Daily use had worn it down. It was still wet with drunken sweat. The door wasn’t locked, and it practically opened on its own. After all, it had suffered much abuse over the years, and no amount of carpentry would see it recovered.
The ghost pushed past the door and into the room on the other side. With the dagger in his hand, he went to the bed and the body tangled in the sheets there.
Lena lifted her head off the pillow. Her cheeks were red, and her eyes dark. Her lips were the color of wine. She moved her mouth, trying to speak, but all she could manage was a series of yawns. She sat up, caught the strap of her gown before it fell too far down her arm.
Lost in the twilight realm of sleep, Lena looked like a child sitting there, and, like a child, she was too trusting to think much of the intruder who stood silently at her bedside.
“What do you want?” She lay back down. “What time is it, anyway?”
The ghost took one last look at what he had done and closed the door behind him. Lena needed the kind of rest that was best left undisturbed.
As he went down the hall, he wiped the dagger against the curtains that lined it. Who would he have to apologize to for the mess in the morning?
He searched the shadows for the staircase he needed to climb—there it was, where it always was—and climbed it to the next floor.
Horace’s room was in a transitory state, much like the thing that now inhabited it. He was a heavy sleeper, so when he finally woke, the
ghost was almost done with him. Horace’s arms shot out to stop the ghost. Any other time, they would have, but not now, not this time.
The ghost worked the dagger like a saw. He looked around the room, taking note of the belongings his brother had packed for his move into the royal quarters. The dead would appreciate him as king more than the living ever would.
The ghost backed out of Horace’s room.
Behind him, Auster shouted, “What’s happening? What’s going on?” He went to the ghost. “I heard screaming.” Auster’s eyes fell to the dagger. “What did you do?”
The ghost hesitated—Strange, he thought—and embraced his brother.
“No, stop!” Auster begged.
The ghost smiled and pulled him closer. He was warm to hold, but after a while, he grew cold. When he did, the ghost opened Auster, to find that warmth again.
When Auster was too heavy to hold, the ghost carried him back into his room and carefully, so as not to wake him, tucked his brother back into bed.
Even when she slept, especially when she slept, actually, Audra looked innocent. She lay in her bed, curled up, clinging to the pillow beside her. There was a softness to her face, a gentleness to her breaths that promised kindness, even in the face of cruelty. Her hair shone silver in the moonlight. When she spoke in her sleep, she did so in childish ramblings. It was as though she were some unfortunate changeling from a far better world.
The ghost never realized how much he cared for his sister, and now that he did, he had to show her.
Vincent wasn’t in his room, so the ghost went to the only other place he could possibly be: the dungeon. Stepping into that squalid place, the ghost found locked within each cell many of the guards who were supposed to be guarding Ghostgrave. They stood there with blank expressions on their faces.
The ghost, passing by, noticed all of the guards’ jaws were quivering. Going closer to the cells, he saw that their mouths were laced with vermillion veins.
The ghost went to where the dungeon widened and entered the cell where the Night Terror had been. The chamber was empty, the manacles undone.