In the square outside the counting house, Pellin stopped us. “It has to be done here, where we can see the light of the sun and we have to hurry. Dawn is coming.”
The rest of the Vigil gathered around me with our guards and the rulers standing watch over us. “How is this done?” I asked Pellin.
He looked to each member of the Vigil. “The fight to free Elieve’s mind took everything from Igesia, and he was stronger in the gift than I.” He took a deep breath. “We must fight our way inside the vault in your mind and use the power of our gift to hold it open until dawn. The threads that came for you before, Lord Dura, are as nothing. Now, they will be as thick as vipers.”
Pellin turned to Rymark. “We must expose Lord Dura to the light of day, while his vault is still open.”
The king of Owmead issued orders to his guards. “Create a defensible perimeter around the square,” he said, “and put every archer we can on the buildings.” He turned to address the Eldest. “If Cesla’s men don’t withdraw at dawn, that’s going to make for an interesting confrontation. They’ll be ordinary, but we’ll be outnumbered. We can’t defend the square for more than a few moments.”
Pellin nodded. “Consider the worst possibilities and plan for those,” he said.
“That’s the soldier’s maxim,” Rymark replied.
Gael shouldered her way between Ellias and Rymark to stand by me. “I’ll stay by your side as long as I can,” she said. Then she leaned in close so that only I could hear her. “You must live.”
For once I had no desire to dispense with the polite pretensions others used to hide from their grief. I didn’t say anything about being dispensable or how the need for Cesla’s defeat outweighed my need to live. She knew. “Your eyes are like slate,” I said. “They only look that way when you’re angry.”
One of her hands found the back of my neck and pulled me close. Our foreheads touched. “Or scared.”
“When you’re bantering with me, they’re a deep rich blue, like the sky at sunset,” I said.
Her mouth quivered as she tried to offer some lighthearted jest, but after a moment she shook her head. “Then come back and see them that color, Willet.” She pulled away, making room.
Pellin and the rest of the Vigil closed in around me, and I prayed in desperation. Mirren and Fess had less experience in the gift than I, and the only time I’d fought within another’s mind, I’d been trapped there.
Pellin paused, looking at me. “Your vault has to be open.”
I knew what he needed. “My memories from the war are the key.”
Bolt came forward to wrap his arms around me. “It seems to me I’ve done this before.”
As one, Pellin, Toria, Mirren, and Fess put their hands on my head. Within the confines of my mind, I welcomed them to my construct and showed them where I kept my memories of war. I’d modeled it after Custos’s sanctuary in Bunard. Pellin opened a door into my past and lifted a stack of parchment sheets. Oddly, I wondered what had happened to Custos—and if he had anyone to bring him figs.
Then the past came for me.
I stood rooted to the spot, my feet refusing the command to run. The forest, the arrow, or the mercy stroke? “No one survives the Darkwater.”
The sergeant smiled, the long puckered scar across his forehead dimpling with the expression. “We have a saying south of the strait, Norlander. ‘If there is no second, it’s because the first hasn’t been tried.’”
The hiss of an arrow broke the spell binding my feet. “I hope you have a saying for surviving the forest.” I ducked behind a bole two paces across. The mercenaries followed and we headed deeper into the gloom.
The men gathered into a tight mass as the light faded from the thick canopy and the dying sun. “Ben, split the men into two squads of six, four to watch each point, one to watch the floor, and the last to watch overhead.” Strange smells, sweet and acrid, filled my nose, and I turned westward in an attempt to make our stay in the forest as brief as possible. “I’ll take the point on the lead group.”
Just before night fell, we improvised torches. Darkness closed in. A hundred paces in, some instinct warned me. I turned searching for the men behind me. Ben’s squad had vanished, no longer trailing behind us. “Curse it,” I said. “Where are they?”
“We have to return for them,” one of the men said. “We do not leave our countrymen behind.”
“We can’t stay here,” I said. “If we can get out of the forest quickly enough, we might escape its poison.”
The southerners around me nodded. “Then let us find our brothers quickly.”
We backtracked to the last spot I’d seen Ben’s squad, but there was no one there, and when I bent to examine the ground by torchlight, the forest floor was undisturbed. Panic made the air thick. When I stood, only three men stood with me. My torch made enough light to see perhaps twenty feet in any direction. Nothing moved.
“This place is cursed,” I said. “Stay if you want, but I will not.” I ran, trying to retrace our steps, but the forest betrayed me. Everywhere I went, the floor appeared undisturbed. Alone, I turned, trying to find west, but in searching for Ben and his squad, I’d gotten turned around. I peered harder, searching the darkness for any hint of light that might indicate the setting sun.
There! A glow in the darkness like the faintest witch light appeared, but it eluded me. For hours I ran until my soul became parched for light, but the black canopy of the forest never receded, and I imagined that I had died on the battlefield and some lightless hell had taken me as punishment for forsaking my vow to be a priest.
I slowed to a walk as my feet hit mud. Then they splashed water. How many days had I been in the forest?
I came to the shore of a lake bordered by massive cypress and sycamore trees, their trunks and leaves twisted and blackened. Dim moonlight glinted on the surface, but the glow I had chased was gone. A man knelt in the distance, his arms thrust to the elbows in the water. The cords of his neck strained as though he worked to lift a ponderous weight, and his eyes stared through me, unseeing, witnessing horrors.
I left the footing of tree roots to approach him, flinging my arms for balance as my feet sank through a depth of mud to find purchase on something smooth and hard. I reached down through centuries of detritus and decay, curious.
“No!” the man kneeling in front of me cried. “I cannot hold!”
But I was dead already. Too much time had passed since I’d entered the forest. I pushed through the mud until my hand touched the foundation I stood upon, metal smooth beyond the ironsmith’s art.
My head filled with the presence of another.
“You are mine, little one,” a voice said. Pain erupted in my thoughts as strand upon strand of black evil spun a web through my mind, attaching itself to every memory I owned. Not one remained free. “I have claimed you and sealed you to me with the power of my name.” Fire flared in my mind as though I’d been branded, marked to the depth of my soul. “Sealed with my name,” the voice said, “you are ever and always mine.”
“No,” a second voice whispered, for my ears only. “You are not, though your redemption will be incomplete and its cost beyond calculation.” A song ghosted through my mind as black strands snapped, freeing most of my memories, but not all. “We will meet again, Willet. I am Ealdor.”
“Return to your people,” the first voice said.
I rose from the water, relinquishing my touch. The man before me still strained, caught in his motionless struggle. I could do nothing for him or for the figures passing me, as I stumbled from the waters, on their way to damnation.
Light tore through the forest.
Chapter 68
Pellin slipped behind Dura’s eyes to be joined an instant later by Toria Deel, Fess, and Mirren. The river of memories and emotions that defined Dura flowed by—broad, swift, with the multicolored strands that indicated the strength and tenor of his past. A strand so dark that it ate the surrounding light floated near the surface. “That
’s it,” Pellin said, reaching for it. “Be ready. The evil of the Darkwater will try to consume you when his vault opens. It will know we’re here. Focus your thoughts like a blade and slash any of the attacks that come for you. They may appear as thin as strands or as thick as vipers, and they’re quick.”
He grabbed the memory and entered Dura’s descent into the Darkwater, holding it so that Dura would experience the memory over and over.
Violence exploded with a soundless concussion. Threads darker than pitch came from everywhere, but the Vigil were ready. Slashing with their gift, they cut through the threads in midflight.
“We have to go to his vault,” Pellin said. Entering the stream that defined Dura, he sank below the river of recollection until he saw the black scroll. Sensing their presence, the vault no longer sent threads against them, but ropes as thick as Pellin’s arm. Fess and Mirren slashed with their gift, but they lacked the strength and focus that came with years of practice. Their strikes landed but failed to cut all the way through. Each rope that came for them required two or three cuts to sever.
And the ropes were coming faster.
Two attacked Fess simultaneously, one taking a high line as the other wrapped around his leg, pulling him from his feet. Toria and Mirren cut them away and Fess stood, but his strikes were weaker.
“We have to get inside,” Pellin said. He broke into a run, his gift slashing before him with Toria, Mirren, and Fess following, cutting their way through a hedge of evil. The sounds of whiplike strikes and snapping threads filled the cavern of Dura’s mind.
Dura’s vault loomed above them, larger, far larger than Elieve’s had been. Pellin searched for some snatch of prayer from the liturgy, but panic filled him. “Aer, help me,” he gasped. Thrusting forward with his gift, he tore a hole in its surface and stepped through.
And found the image of Willet Dura standing inside. Toria, Fess, and Mirren slipped in beside him and the tear closed behind them, trapping them. There would be no retreat—victory was their only hope.
Dura shook his head. “I was in the forest.”
Pellin gathered his strength and slashed, using his gift as a broadsword that cut through a swath of waving tentacles, but the effort left him gasping. “We’re inside your vault. Somehow, you’re here as well.” A rope shot out of the darkness, coming for Dura’s back like the bolt of a crossbow. Toria cut it from the air. “Help us,” Pellin said. “We have to read the writing on the inside of your vault and keep it open until dawn.”
Dura turned as a tentacle as thick as his leg came for him, and he slashed at it, severing it with one strike, but as the end fell, writhing, to disappear in a puff of oily smoke, he doubled in pain, clutching his belly. Agony twisted his face and put him on his hands and knees. A moment later, he pushed himself to his feet, his face deathly calm.
“I understand,” he said to no one.
A sinewy rope of purest black came out of the darkness, wrapped around Toria’s middle and lifted her from her feet. She screamed as it coiled, tightening. Fess leapt, catching her and hacking at it with his gift, but while his strokes injured it and thick smoke poured from it like ichor, it remained intact.
Dura stepped forward, his hands raised, and spun, cutting the air with his arms as his gift lashed out. The tentacle holding Toria parted like silk beneath a sword, and she fell. Dura curled in agony, screaming as though he’d been gutted. Mirren crouched by him, searching as he thrashed in pain.
She looked at Pellin. “There’s no wound.”
“Guard us,” Pellin said to the others and knelt by Dura’s side. “What, Dura? What do you understand?”
Tears streamed from him as he spoke through clenched teeth. “It’s not just the forest,” he said. “It’s me.” He clutched his midsection. “Oh, Aer, have mercy.”
Strands came at them for what felt like hours, numerous as threads in a spider’s web. Toria panted with each strike of her gift and Mirren tottered on her feet. Fess wore the look of a man who knew he would be used up long before the battle ended.
“Help me lift him,” Pellin cried. Ropes curled around his arms, pinning him.
Fess slashed at them, hacking desperately, but it was as though he wielded a dull cleaver now. They pulled Dura to his feet. Agony stretched his face as he saw the multitude of strands. “Oh, Aer, again? Do I have to do it again?”
He raised his hands, his fingers curled like claws, and brought them raking down toward his side. Dozens upon dozens of ropes fell severed to the ground and the air filled with oily black smoke. Dura threw back his head and screamed. On it went, his cry scaling upward until Pellin covered his ears.
“We have to help him, Eldest,” Toria said. “He can’t do this on his own.”
He slashed at a group of threads that came for him. Were they weaker now? For a moment, there was a lull in the attack and he gestured at the walls. “Memorize the writing.” Glyphs and runes filled the inside of Dura’s vault just as they had Elieve’s, but Pellin couldn’t tell if they were the same and tentacles of black obscured the writing, a writhing nest of snakes that blocked his vision. “Move. We have to see the rest.”
At his feet, Dura whimpered, huddling over hurts they could neither see nor heal. Weeping, he struggled to his feet, half bent to protect his middle. “Read it,” he said, his face consumed by pain Pellin couldn’t understand. “I’ll help clear the threads.” Screaming as though he eviscerated himself, he wielded his gift, recoiling in agony with the death of each strand.
“This is killing him, Eldest,” Toria cried. “What’s happening?”
Pellin shook his head. “I don’t know. Elieve was absent in the battle for her mind. Some aspect of the gift enables Dura to be present and aid us, but each thread he cuts wounds him in some way.”
Threads shot out of the darkness toward them, pulling Pellin’s attention away and the four of them worked to keep themselves free while Dura aimed strokes of excruciation at the walls of his vault. Pellin turned, taking just enough time to memorize the writing. For a moment almost too brief to be real, he thought he spotted writing that differed from the stylized glyphs and looping whorls of the Darkwater. “There.” He pointed. “Willet, aim there.”
Dura’s mouth stretched in agony as he slashed at the black vines that pulsed where Pellin indicated. The threads receded, recoiling in pain beneath the strikes of Dura’s gift. Then they returned in a boiling mass. “Again!” Pellin extended his hand, aiming the focus of his thoughts.
“There!” he shouted. Dura’s gift opened a section of the wall and Pellin stared. Names. Words he recognized as names stood outlined against the unrelieved black of the wall.
“Eldest!” Toria screamed. “Help us!”
Pellin took just long enough to commit the names to memory before turning. Threads encompassed Fess, working to crawl into his mouth and nose. Already he was choking and though he worked to free himself from the strands, the blows of his gift no longer cut the tentacles that came for him. He coughed, struggling to breathe.
Anger fiercer than any Pellin had experienced in the long expanse of his life flooded through him. Always the innocent died to save the guilty. How many had died for Cesla’s pride already? How many more would perish for the Fayits’ arrogance? No, he would not bear it any longer! He slashed with the fire of his gift, his anger giving him strength that burned through tentacles of evil and left them smoking, writhing to escape.
Given respite from the attack that had choked him, Fess tried to renew his assault. Lines of fatigue etched his face. He had used too much of himself. Beside him, Toria and Mirren stood back to back. The newest member of the Vigil defended against the threads that came leaping at them from the dark, while Toria strove to clear the walls.
Each time the battle stalled or threatened to go against them, Dura would fight, screaming in agony.
“Stop this,” Toria yelled as he fell again. “You’re killing yourself.”
Dura shook his head, scattering tears as he squeezed h
is eyes shut and pulled a shuddering breath. “You don’t understand. It’s my fault there are so many.”
Sensing their momentary weakness, a cascade of black came for them out of the dark. Pellin’s anger, so fierce a moment ago, guttered, waning, and his heart shuddered, laboring to find its rhythm.
He turned to the prostate figure at his feet. “Willet, I don’t have the strength of Igesia. I’m sorry. We must have your help.”
He didn’t answer.
“He can’t help you. He’s mine, and I’m coming to collect what belongs to me.” The voice emanated from all around them as threads and ropes of black stopped just short of them. Pellin stilled and the rest of the Vigil mirrored him, searching the walls for the speaker.
“He belongs to Aer,” Fess yelled his defiance.
“If he is Aer’s,” the voice mocked, “then let Aer show himself and aid him.”
The threads surrounding them coalesced into a trunk of glossiest black, shimmering in the air, a colossus of evil that threatened to sweep them away. As Pellin watched, the threads unwound to stand suspended in the air once more. Cesla stood among them, his eyes purest black. “If Aer will not deign to show himself, I will.” He smiled. “Greetings, brother.”
“I know you, Atol Bealu,” Pellin spat. “You may wear Cesla’s likeness, but it is no more than a mask.”
“How little you know,” Cesla crooned. “Are you surprised that I claim your kinship even now?” He laughed. “Your brother hasn’t died. He lives still within this shell, horrified at the cost of his pride.” His black eyes glittered. “Like him you will all live and be mine. You cannot win. With every entrance into the forest, my power grows. Even if your defenses hold, you will all belong to me when the Darkwater engulfs your city. Do you think your kings and queens, huddling around you in fear, will save you?”
A realization came to Pellin, and he pulled Fess close and whispered into his mind. “Cesla must be somewhere close. Find him.”
The Wounded Shadow Page 50