by T. A. Miles
“A part of me, yes,” the hunter answered, wincing as the air bit his wound. “I fancied myself the guardian of these woods once. I challenged the demon when it entered, after witnessing it poison the trees and the water, and every living thing beneath this canopy. I couldn’t defeat it.”
“So, you offered yourself,” Korsten surmised, watching shame capture the hunter’s features. “You thought you could control it.”
“That was many years ago, before the people in the village settled here. Before them, the demon was satisfied with me.”
“Not satisfied,” Korsten said. “Drunk perhaps, bathing in such a strong pool of magic. The temptation of a fresh source from which to feed brought it around.”
The hunter nodded. “After the first attacks I went deeper into the woods. For a while the villagers were smart enough to stay near their homes.”
“And now someone’s sent them out,” Korsten replied, thinking of the young bard, though he couldn’t guess at the moment as to why the boy would want to see the villagers slain.
“It’s still with me,” the hunter said, pushing Korsten’s hand away from him, clutching his own to his side.
Frowning, Korsten said, “I Released it. It’ll be looking for a place to—”
“No,” the hunter interrupted. “It stays in the hart. We are part of each other, but still separate.”
“That’s how you control it.”
“No longer. The demon has brought us closer together.” He pulled his hand away from his side and showed Korsten the blood smearing his palm. “We have never shared our wounds before.”
“Then why don’t I sense it?” Korsten wondered aloud.
The hunter lifted his gaze, dark with pain and frustration. “You will if you stay here.”
Korsten slid his hand over the hunter’s, touching the blood again, reading it with that touch. He said, as a statement of fact, “I can’t leave.”
The hunter continued to gaze into Korsten’s eyes. For several moments he stared and studied, as if searching for Korsten’s soul. He wouldn’t find it, not by looking there. A frown creased the other man’s brow.
“We hide ourselves,” Korsten said, in answer to his unspoken question. Even as he spoke, Korsten was working Song, reaching deep into the soul, searching for the darkness tucked behind the hunter’s and within the hunter’s other half. He would have its attention, and he would drag it out.
“How do you hide yourselves?” the hunter asked, still gazing, as if mesmerized.
Song might have been communicating with him as well.
“I can’t explain it to you,” Korsten said.
The silence that followed his statement was brief, and perhaps he should not have been surprised when the hunter lifted his free hand to Korsten’s face and drew him near, kissing him softly upon the lips.
“I understood you,” he said when they separated. “From the moment you entered my woods.”
Understood me in what way? Korsten wanted to ask, but he’d found the demon.
The hunter suddenly shoved him back, either in a last effort to protect him, or to make room for the transformation that followed. Before Korsten’s eyes, the man’s body stretched and contorted, quickly taking on a new shape; that of the hart. Looking into its savage eyes, Korsten understood the separation between the beast and the man. They were not one, but somehow, they were joined. And somehow the veil of this creature emboldened the defiance of the demon. Even with Song actively at work, the Vadryn resisted the pull that might otherwise have had it surrender.
The hart lowered its massive head and lunged into a charge. Korsten rolled out of its path and raised himself up enough to work the Release spell once again. Somehow it had failed before, perhaps due to the arrow striking the beast at the same time, triggering the transformation from hart to hunter.
Korsten braced himself on one knee and used both hands this time, quickly illustrating the motions that would channel the correct powers to the desired effect. He did so while the hart was turning to come back at him. Moments before what would be his trampling, he touched the heels of both hands together and spread his fingers outward, sending a colorless burst of magic toward the possessed creature. It struck square in the chest, like a sudden, fierce wind, knocking the beast off its aim and onto its side in the snow.
The quiet that followed was never to be trusted. Korsten had learned that long ago. He manifested his sword immediately and stood, moving quickly toward the fallen hart. He took up a protective stance in front of it, waiting.
He could hear the snow falling once again, and his heart beating, not quite as fast as that of the animal on the ground behind him. It wasn’t dead, which meant that the demon didn’t swallow the entirety of its life force when it had gone down. It also meant that the Vadryn would attempt to reclaim the animal.
“I won’t let you,” Korsten said beneath his breath, which formed steamy clouds in the air in front of him.
A cold silence followed, and lasted for several moments, until it was broken by crisp musical notes.
Frowning, Korsten looked to the source. He watched the bard stroll out of the darkness and come to a halt several paces away, smiling like a demented child. Korsten glared suspiciously, but opted not to speak yet. He had seen this madness before, more than once, though each time had been for a slightly different reason. He could only wonder at the reason behind this child’s depravity.
The young storyteller stopped playing the lute. “I’m so glad you came,” he said to Korsten. “I had such difficulty tracking the beast myself. I thought that the village men might be able to help. I spent most of the previous season working spells over them, constantly impressing it upon their simple minds that they would find the creature and kill it. I didn’t have the utmost faith in their ability to kill it, in spite of that, but my hopes elevated when you arrived. You see, I’ve always believed in priests. And I’ve always known that they hunt the Vadryn.”
“There’s one of the Vadryn here, now,” Korsten warned, whether or not it was required. He couldn’t stand silent while a demon potentially stalked a child, however wrong this one may have been.
The bard ignored him, and even began tuning his lute. “I’ve always been fascinated with magic,” he said. “It’s in the blood, isn’t it?”
The boy kept tuning, turning one peg until the string snapped and coiled up, swiping him across the cheek. Blood ran toward his jaw. “I needed someone to kill the hart and release the demon. It wouldn’t be satisfied with me so long as it had the hart. But it’s dying now, and I’m willing to carry it. I can carry it so much farther, beyond these isolated woods.”
Words ebbed upon Korsten’s lips, but there was no time to get them out. Snow burst upward between them. A shadow rushed across the darkness, toward the bard, who opened his arms in offering.
The demon accepted, embracing the youth in its vaporous form. Fleshless arms coiled about him, reached inside him, and tore open his skin like an old sack, spilling the blood and soul out of him. Korsten was running toward them, watching the demon sink with the bard’s lifeless body, into the bloodied snow. It was absorbing his essence and what magic was in him, making itself stronger. It still wanted the hart, whose magic was far greater than the bard’s.
“I’ll not let you have him,” Korsten said, and he plunged his sword into the sullied snow at his feet.
The demon howled and burrowed away from him, bursting upward several paces away. The bard’s life fluid had given it temporary shape—an elongated body with sinewy limbs and slick, gray skin—but its face was nearly featureless; a mouth with a rack of narrow, sharp teeth and thin slits for eyes. It couldn’t survive in its state for long. The Vadryn were parasites, at the core of it, in need of a host.
Korsten braced himself for the beast’s attack. It would charge at him full force. He knew that, and he knew that he was the only obstacle between the demon and the body it wanted. The intent would be to overpower, to at least get Korsten out of its way if not kill him, so
that it could dive back into the soul it had been separated from. He would have to destroy it now.
Two Release spells had been cast already. A third might not be as effective, especially with the demon braced for it.
Korsten withdrew his sword as the demon came at him. He closed his eyes to the distraction of the beast’s frantic form pushing through the snow and brought his hands together, letting them touch just briefly. He put a gap between them and cupped the air, feeling it heat as he slowly turned his hands, as if rotating an orb-shaped object.
The demon lunged at him. Korsten could feel its presence bearing down on him. When he opened his eyes, he could see himself reflected in its black eyes. Flames obstructed the view and changed it altogether as Korsten released the spell onto the demon, enveloping it in Fire, which consumed it in an instant, leaving nothing to taint the blood or mind of another mortal soul. Or an immortal one, for that matter.
Korsten turned to face the hart, and found it gone. Somehow that did not surprise him. He walked to where it had lain bleeding, and saw the tracks of a man leading away from the depression it had made in the snow.
He looked into the darkness turning gray with dawn’s coming. He saw the shapes of the trees against the lightening sky and thought of the hunter perched amongst the branches, or the hart roaming amid the sturdy boles. Wherever he had gone, Korsten couldn’t worry over it just yet. A breath of sudden exhaustion escaped him and he lowered to sit in the snow.
Onyx returned to him shortly, and as he received a nudge, he made himself rise to his feet again. Onyx was right; it would be wiser to leave before the villagers regathered their courage and came to investigate. Swinging into the saddle, he allowed himself to be carried from the scene of unexpected carnage.
The demon had been defiant to Song, though wary of it. Had it been because the beast was more resilient, or because Korsten had held back? If he had held back, then perhaps there was some hope to controlling Song.
Twenty-two
THE TREES GREW TALLER as Korsten continued north, ever deeper into Morenne. His curiosity about cities and greater developments than an isolated settlement of woodsmen was growing into a cloak of dark anticipation, that he might stumble onto those more alert to the politics and to the war. The war, he recalled, that he had left actively waging in Indhovan. He had no hope for now of knowing what had become of the city or its inhabitants and visitors. More than a day had passed since the hart and the demon that might have been forcibly joined with it for some time…long enough that it might have been an older creature in itself. Not an archdemon, Korsten believed, but something established. That might have been why it was so resilient, and so reluctant to separate from its host.
Though a part of Korsten would have liked to entertain the idea that he had made the journey and discovered that he had a sudden handle on the Song talent, he knew better. He knew also that the circumstances he faced with the Vadryn would never be alike circumstances.
“So, perhaps I only came this far for you, Mother,” he voiced softly to the cold air. “It may be that I’ve offended and hurt those that I’ve loved deeply all over a phantom of my past. That I used my confusion with Song as a false motivation. Were my friends and my fellow priests never in danger beyond their control? Beyond Ashwin’s and Eisleth’s—or any of the Superiors’ control, especially.”
How presumptive he’d been, and how much a fool. Again. All he’d done was quell a demon too far north to care about and witnessed the gruesome murder of yet another child.
Korsten reached into his pocket for Zerxa’s key, and promptly threw it. In the same moment, he considered turning Onyx about and performing a Reach back to Vassenleigh, and to whatever awaited him in light of what he’d done, which bordered on betrayal.
“And over what?”
He had half turned around when he heard his mother’s voice.
“Korsten.”
“No!” he shouted at once, looking to the vision of her standing in the snow where he had thrown her pendant. Her key. “What is it that you want from me? Why must I go so far from where I’m actually needed? Why must you tempt me with the promise of answers for things that…that you can’t possibly know! You died, Mother!”
The words forced him to stop, and to feel the warmth of tears against his cold skin.
“Korsten,” Zerxa said implacably. “You’re nearly there.”
He wanted to write the promise off as empty, a further attempt by ghosts, or by himself to carry on with this madness. Have I gone mad?
A breath of frustration let itself out, and he reshaped it quickly into a longer draw to relax him and to reclaim his hold on sanity. The image of his mother was gone. He guided Onyx forward to where she had been standing, and looked down at the pendant, lying upon the snow in open defiance. He descended from the saddle and crouched to recover the item. With Zerxa’s pendant in hand, he rose and continued on foot.
The woods continued for over an hour before they began to open somewhat, revealing gray sky over the clouded white of a weeks old snow, littered with debris deposited by wind or by travelers, both animals and men. Korsten began to wonder about the presence of either as he emerged onto the lip of an overhang that showed him a valley. Within that valley, what he might have believed to be a tree line before coming to it, was in actuality the towers and rooftops of a city. Buildings of weathered gray with timbered peaks sprawled across a vast open space amid the forest and they appeared to be entirely lifeless. It was as multiple Haddowyns, all deposited into the same dismal place. It looked and felt like a grave.
Observing its high structures and fanciful architecture—in spite of its neglect—it must have been sensational once. Like Indhovan or Vassenleigh, or Edrinor’s capital…it must have been spectacular.
“I wonder what happened,” Korsten said quietly to Onyx, whose only response was to snort a puff of steamed air over Korsten’s shoulder. As if stirred by the breath, Analee fluttered into his line of sight and out of it as she drifted above his head.
There was nothing for it, save to investigate. He angled away from the edge of the minor cliff and made a path downward, into the valley, leading Onyx by the reins. It occurred to him as he walked that this city might have represented a harsh reality for Morenne. It might have been that the majority of their population existed on the outermost edges, that by necessity for the war or the poison of the Vadryn, they had moved their society at a pace to match their conquering. Their significant strongholds might all have been closer to the Borderlands and he had managed to slip between them, or around them getting to the interior of their diseased country. A more ignorant and less willing class of people might have been left behind. And where would the others go to, once they had conquered and ruined all of Edrinor like they had done to Haddowyn and other towns like it? Was that the point where they would realize, finally, that the Vadryn held no man an ally?
It took some time to traverse the open land between the forest’s edge and the city. Once arrived, Korsten stood very small beneath towering sentry gates, which were open and unattended. It was almost as if there had been a mass exodus, that whomever had last passed through these gates had no intention of returning.
Korsten led Onyx through the patterned shadow of the gates, over snow-smeared cobblestones, down a wide thoroughfare lined with many-storied buildings that were somewhat blockish in nature, but which rose to articulated peaks in many cases and rounded, wide slopes in others. The roofs were a mix of shingle and thatch, the windows many and paned, and the stone walls covered in frosted, winter-dead overgrowth in many areas. Where the stone was exposed, there was evidence of structural neglect or damage. Cracks ran across once healthy facades and in some places the walls had crumbled, exposing deep interior spaces.
Now that Korsten was among the buildings, it looked more as if a battle had taken place here. But a battle between who? This was far from Edrinor’s oldest borders.
It was then that he heard shouts and clamor echoing through the a
bandoned streets. It resounded off the cold, broken walls in such a way that Korsten had difficulty descrying which direction it was sourcing from.
A horrendous bellow tore through the derelict city, inspiring Korsten to stop moving altogether for a moment. The hideous sound scarcely seemed real. When it sounded again, he moved quickly toward the nearest wall, which was the gutted side of a set of structures lined directly beside one another. An incidental glance inside suggested they had been homes at one time.
A terrible crash thundered through the ground. A tremor rose through Korsten’s feet and with it a sensation of presence that reminded Korsten of the crone with its immensity. The tremor was followed by a series of heavy thuds resounding in the air. Korsten shrunk himself against the wall, tucking beneath the shadow of the structure’s broken height in the very instant something as tall as the wall must have been when undamaged stalked weightily out into the open. Korsten’s gaze followed the colossal form from a loosely human-like foot up oddly bent legs, to a thick, hunched torso and elongated head. He could not begin to guess what had inspired the creation of such a peculiar monstrosity, but it counted as the second beast of a very peculiar nature he had come upon since entering Morenne. Perhaps he should have expected nothing less from the home of the Vadryn.
With eyes like murky pools nested in a slick, mottled surface, the creature peered over the ground. The shouts of several men drew its attention, causing it to look in the direction of a long, thick shaft launched toward its head. The beast managed to avoid being struck directly with an alarmingly swift duck and turn motion that simultaneously sent it reeling in the direction of its assailants.
Korsten lingered in the silence left behind after the wake of the beast’s pounding footsteps. When he realized his grip had tightened considerably over Onyx’s reins, he opened his fingers a little, then stroked the horse’s muzzle with his other hand, silently thanking him for staying calm. Afterward, he edged toward the corner of the broken wall and peered around it, toward the commotion that occupied a near area of the city as intensely as a storm raging on a near horizon. A course of action to take was neither clear, nor evident. He could leave, yes, and perhaps he should, except that he believed he had come to some part of what he sought. Answers were not going to be found walking the northern wilderness indefinitely. His intuition had led him here, however roundabout the method, and it was revealing to him the decaying core of Morenne.