Wrath-Bearing Tree

by James Enge

  “So does mine,” said Danadhar. He used Armageddon to slash his left forearm. Blood bright as Morlock’s fell from it and infected the earth with fire.

  “You are my ruthen kin,” whispered the Gray. “I have shed your blood. And I would have killed you. I am as guilty as that pig in his golden wallow and that dying monster in the temple.” He raised the glass sword, now with the point toward his own neck.

  Morlock’s hands were free. “Noddegamra,” he said.

  The glass sword fell to fragments as the Gray’s lower jaw gaped with surprise.

  “Armageddon,” said Morlock.

  The pieces flew toward Morlock’s right hand, reassembling themselves in the air as they flew.

  Danadhar fell to his knees. “Is it a miracle?” he said. “Have you come to teach us the truth?”

  “Eh,” Morlock said, backing away slowly.

  “What does that mean?”

  “You figure it out,” said Morlock, and fled into the night, leaving behind the blood burning on the ground and his bestial blood-kin kneeling beside it.

  That night a winter storm fell on the dead lands like an avalanche.

  Aloê had spent one memorable winter in the Northhold; she was not the proverbial Southholder gaping in amazement at her first flake of snow. But she was sure she would have died that night if she had been on her own.

  It was Ambrosia who saved them.

  They were walking westward toward the Sea of Stones when Ambrosia arbitrarily stopped the march.

  “Snow coming,” she said curtly. “Got to get ready.”

  “Maybe we should try to reach the Colony of Truth?” suggested Aloê.

  “No time. Smell the snow on that wind! Besides, they won’t be glad to see us. They’ll be finding gods under every mushroom in the fields before too long.”

  Ambrosia brusquely set Aloê to collecting deadwood, and then turned to weaving a sort of hut out of the dry field grass.

  “At least the wood’s dry,” was the girl’s only comment after Aloê had brought a third armload. “I wonder how long it’s been dead?”

  “How much more wood do you think we need?” Aloê asked.

  “Depends,” Ambrosia replied. “How badly do you want to live?”

  “That’s no answer.”

  “Just keep bringing it until the snow is getting too deep to walk in.”

  Aloê stolidly returned to collecting wood. Ambrosia lit a fire and went back to weaving her hut.

  Aloê watched the hut grow in installments, catching a glimpse whenever she brought in a load of wood. It was looking like a dome or bubble of dry grass at one point. Then Ambrosia started covering the outside of the dome with clay she had excavated from the ground nearby.

  The wind by now was pretty fierce, and edged with stinging ice crystals. Aloê was collecting wood at a run, now, piling it on the north side of the hut so as to form a windbreak for their shelter.

  “Good,” said Ambrosia tersely when she saw what Aloê was doing.

  Then the snow fell on them like a wall of white. Aloê barely made it back to the hut with a last armload of wood, guiding her way by the last guttering light of the fire.

  Ambrosia was standing by the tunnel-like entrance of the hut. “Come on!” she shouted. “Bring it in here!”

  Aloê ducked down and entered the shelter on her knees, still cradling the firewood in her arms.

  Ambrosia came crawling in behind her, and fastened the door when she was in.

  The inside of the shelter was also lined with clay. The bare ground was lined with grass, except in the center where Ambrosia had built a clay-lined fire pit, complete with fire. There were cunningly placed breeze-holes to bring in a maximum of fresh air and let out the smoke while losing the minimum of heat.

  “Amazing!” Aloê said, dropping the firewood on a heap already bolstering the northern wall.

  “Thanks,” said Ambrosia. “Where would you be without me, eh?”

  “Dead.”

  “Maybe. Maybe. You’re no creampuff, though. I’d’a stayed looking at that mirror till it ripped my soul in half if it weren’t for you.”

  “Well, I enjoy hitting things. It’s nice to put the habit to some productive use.”

  Ambrosia laughed sleepily. Her eyes closed for a moment, then jerked open again. “I’m a. I’m snoozy. I.”

  She fell over on the hut floor, her face and hair rippling like water. Presently she was gone, and it was Hope who opened her eyes, nodded amiably at Aloê, and glanced around her bemusedly.

  “I take it we are narrowly escaping death again,” she said presently.

  “Thanks to Ambrosia, yes.”

  “I’m glad you’re warming up to her,” Hope said.

  Aloê wasn’t sure this was entirely true. “Well,” she temporized, “the girl’s had an odd life.”

  “Yes. Yes. Although I’m always annoyed by people who want special consideration because of their sad life-stories. The thing is, Ambrosia doesn’t want special consideration. She simply wants to rule the world.”

  “Or the interesting parts, at least,” Aloê offered.

  Hope smiled quietly and nodded. “This would be almost cozy,” she said, looking around the hut. “If only we had some food. And blankets.”

  “While you’re wishing, don’t forget a bottle of wine and mead. And a storybook and a handsome fellow to read it to us. Well, failing any of that, I’m going to sleep.”

  Hope said something in response, but Aloê’s world was already getting dim and fuzzy. She crawled into a heap of dead grass and escaped from the world for a while.

  Her dreams were luminous and mostly untroubled: she seemed to be swimming through warm waters alongside someone she trusted. The dreams ended as a shockingly bright cold current dragged her and that shadowy other apart.

  She opened her eyes with a sense of loss and relief. Ambrosia was crawling through the tunnel-like entrance to the hut, pushing a bundle of wood ahead of her.

  “Ah!” said Ambrosia. “You’re up again.”

  “Urm.”

  “If that means, ‘What’s for breakfast?’ I don’t have anything for you. Otherwise this setup would be rather cozy.”

  “Your sister was saying the same thing last night.”

  “Oh. Well, I tell you what.”

  “What?”

  “Storm’s over. We’re several feet deep in snow. Not much chance at digging for roots, or whatever could grow around here before you destroyed that god-shield. Let’s hit the road and find a town or a farm or something to buy some food and a place out of the cold.”

  “It might be a long walk,” Aloê reflected.

  “Right!”

  “Ah. I see what you mean,” said Aloê, and crawled shivering out from her grassy blanket.

  “It’s not too bad out there—a little breezy, maybe,” Ambrosia said. “Hope wove us some grass cloaks last night. At least I assume it was her.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “Then. Let’s leave the shelter here with the fire burning. If travel is too difficult, we can come back here.”

  “To starve.”

  “It might take months to starve. Cold can kill you in hours or less.”

  Aloê shuddered, and accepted the grass cloak from the imperious girl. She led the way out of the hut.

  The tunnel-like entrance now opened into a trench of snow. Aloê stood up and surveyed a blinding white wilderness of hellish cold. The shelter was almost entirely buried in snow: only the crown of the roof was clear, due to the fire within, no doubt: the surface of the snow about it was splayed with a glittering crown of ice.

  The sky above was a clear glorious blue, like warm seawater on a summer day, not too far from shore. But there was nothing warm about the air, with its cruel wind toothed like a saw-edge with crystals of blowing snow.

  “Like I said,” Ambrosia said, standing up beside her. “Not too bad.”

  “God Avenger,” Aloê said, through chattering teeth. “What could be
worse?”

  “Freezing rain,” Ambrosia said. “Or—hey, you’re serious? Is it too cold for you to travel?”

  “We can’t wait for spring. Let’s go.”

  “I grew up in the northern foothills of the Blackthorn Range,” Ambrosia said, like an old woman reflecting on her long and varied life, “so this isn’t so bad.”

  “I grew up in the Southhold of the Wardlands. I was twenty years old before I first saw snow.”

  “No! Really?” Ambrosia looked at Aloê with wild surmise. “What’s that like?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way. Let’s go.”

  “Take these, first,” said Ambrosia, reaching into a nearby trench, containing their (almost depleted) stock of firewood. What Ambrosia handed her was a pair of screens made of sticks and grass on light wooden frames. “Snowshoes. Ever used them?”

  “A couple of times, when I was fighting dragons in Northhold.”

  “Oh. Oh, yes?” Ambrosia pondered this while Aloê tied the snowshoes to her feet with twine wound from dry grass. When Aloê was about half-done, Ambrosia reached into the trench and drew out a pair of snowshoes for herself and was done securing them on her feet before Aloê took her first tentative steps.

  “Where to, do you think?” Aloê asked the unwontedly quiet girl. “Should we scout for a town in visionary flight?”

  “Maybe not,” Ambrosia said. “With that god-shield down, whatever the whatever-it-was was worried about might be snooping around.” She shrugged crooked shoulders and said, “I say south. Somewhere along the coast there should be something.”

  “If nothing else, we can fish.”

  They turned south and started slogging along the wind-packed surface of the snowdrifts.

  They had not been walking long before the heard the merry sound of sleigh bells.

  “Death and Justice,” muttered Ambrosia.

  “What is it?” Aloê asked.

  “Worse. Who is it?” the girl said glumly.

  Presently the sleigh came into sight over a ridge of snow. It was drawn by a team of eight fat men, wearing furry coats that made them look like bears. In the driver’s bench of the sleigh was a tall man wearing a heavy white mantle and a warm red hood against the bitter wind. Instead of a whip he held a carillon of bells, and he played on it to drive the team forward.

  The sleigh came up alongside them, and the old man sang a long sleepy word in a tongue Aloê did not know. The team drew to a halt and stood in the snow without shivering. The fur-lined hoods of their coats were so deep that their faces could hardly be seen, but Aloê caught sight of a few empty or malevolent expressions.

  “Io, Saturnalia, father!” said Ambrosia. “Did you bring me any presents?”

  “Life,” said the old man, “or death. Get into the sleigh or I’ll have to dispose of you.”

  “You’ll face my brother if you do!” shouted the girl furiously. “His harven-father taught him what to do with a kinslayer!”

  “Your brother, who knows so very little, will not even know the location of your exsanguinated corpse. There is danger for us on every side, Ambrosia, and I will take what risks I must. Choose now, Ambrosia: life or death.”

  “What about my friend?” demanded the girl. “Can you at least give her a ride to the coast?”

  “Your friend,” said the horrible kindly looking old man, and turned his bright blue eyes on Aloê. “Is this the young woman who sprang my trap under Old Azh?”

  “I am Aloê Oaij, Vocate to the Graith of Guardians.”

  “I take that for a yes. You must get in, too, my dear. You are in this as deeply as we are, I’m afraid. I am Merlin Ambrosius, by the way, if you have not guessed.”

  “I have. What happens if we don’t go along with you?”

  “I will set my team upon you both. They are other than they seem. Your death will be dreadful and its aftermath more unpleasant still, possibly. On the other hand, I have food and blankets and hot tea in my sleigh.”

  “You might have mentioned that to start with,” Aloê said, and climbed into the sleigh. Ambrosia followed, grumbling.

  “Excellent,” said the old man. He gave the bells a shake and shouted at the team, “Now, Legio! Now, Carnifex! Now Illspell and Malice! On, Zavuv! On, Ornias! On, Ephippas! On, Andhrakar!”

  The furry figures leapt forward and began to run through the snow, dragging the sleigh after them.

  Aloê was not unhappy with the turn of events. The sides of the sleigh protected them from the worst of the wind; the blankets were warmer than the grass cloaks. She shucked off both her snowshoes and her shoes proper and tucked her frozen feet into the relative warmth of her kneepits.

  “There was some talk of food and tea,” she pointed out.

  Merlin laughed. “You really adapt yourself to circumstances, don’t you?”

  “What else should I adapt myself to? Is the food in this basket here?”

  “Yes, help yourself. You might hand me a mug of tea when you have a moment.”

  In the wicker basket on the floor of the sleigh was a clay jar of hot tea and three mugs. The food was a dish of spicy sausages and a packet of crisp dried vegetables. Aloê shared the food and drink with the glum-faced girl beside her, then handed the old man a mug of tea.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Seriously, how could it happen between you and Morlock? I don’t understand it.”

  “Is it necessary that you do?”

  “I am the boy’s father, after all. I have a natural interest.”

  “Natural!” Ambrosia laughed bitterly.

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full, girl. You’ll choke.”

  “Save you the trouble.”

  “I don’t mind taking the trouble, if it proves absolutely necessary,” Merlin said, with a smile frostier than the bitter wind.

  “Are you going to kill me, too, if I don’t answer you?” Aloê said, matching his coldness.

  He looked at her with some surprise. “I think you’re misreading our family banter, my dear. But don’t let it worry you. In our way, Ambrosia and I are very fond of each other.”

  “Stupid old fool!”

  “Ambrosia, behave. We don’t want Vocate Aloê to get the wrong impression of the family she’s become attached to.”

  “Attached to?” Aloê said with some dismay. She had no desire to be attached to any family, particularly not this one. “How’s that?”

  “Because you have attached yourself to my son, my dear. A reckless choice, and one I’d have tried to talk you out of, had I been present for you to consult. But the thing is as it is.”

  “You’re wrong about that, Merlin,” Ambrosia said crossly. “Your cage caught her because they’d just been copulating.”

  “Don’t be vulgar, Ambrosia.”

  “I said ‘copulating,’ didn’t I? Is there a more polite word?”

  “In any case, you’re quite mistaken. Your brother is this woman’s life-mate, and vice versa. I’ve seen couples married for centuries who weren’t as talically intertwined as those two.”

  “Oh.” Ambrosia looked dubiously at Aloê. “Really?”

  “Really. Hence my natural curiosity, but that’s all it is.”

  “Where are we headed, if you don’t mind satisfying my natural curiosity?” Aloê intervened, to change the subject.

  “A town not too far from here, on the edge of the dead zone that once prevailed over these parts. We should be safe there, for the time being, until I come up with a new plan to protect myself from the Two Powers. I confess that you, my dear, fatally wounded my original plan, once and twice.”

  “Nothing personal.”

  “I don’t agree at all. Anything that affects my safety, I consider very personal indeed. But I recognize that your blundering intrusion in Old Azh was quite accidental, and I am willing to recognize your defeat of the Balancer and his god-mirror as something heroic.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t be too flattered. I tend to find heroes a nuisance.”

 
; “Then I’m even more flattered.”

  “All right. Repay my kind words by telling me the tale. How were you captured? What happened after?”

  Whatever his vices as a father, Merlin was a good listener. He heard Aloê through and then said, “I had planned to visit the Balancer after my blood was secured. The site may still be worth a visit, though it will be a tad more dangerous now.”

  “More dangerous?”

  “Of course. The god-mirror was a defense against the Two Powers. That much is clear. Why the Balancer needed one is an interesting question, though perhaps less than urgent. How the mirror was constructed and how I can use its principles most effectively for our defense: those are the pressing issues.”

  “It’s a defense that might be dangerous to those in its path, though,” Aloê observed.

  Merlin laughed as if she’d made a joke.

  “You think he cares?” Ambrosia called out. “Hey, Merlin, where’d you get your sleigh team? Was the harthrang-dealer having a sale—buy seven and get the eighth for free?”

  “What nonsense!” the genial old man said. “One never does business with a demonolater. They simply can’t be relied on. One makes one’s own harthrangs, or one does without.”

  “What’s a harthrang?” asked Aloê.

  “A demon inhabiting a human body,” Ambrosia answered, before Merlin could speak. “These corpses seem surprisingly undecayed, Father.”

  “Thank you, my dear. The cold may have a preservative effect.”

  “Or maybe it’s due to the fact that those bodies are still alive. You fed living people to those sceathes so that you could have your little team of reindeer.”

  “It was necessary,” the necromancer said patiently, as if he were teaching his daughter the spelling of a difficult word that was very important to know. “The flaring and extrusive talic imprint of the harthrangs will successfully mask our own presence from the Two Powers. I have put this to the test, Ambrosia; I know that it works.”

  “And the people who died for your experiment?”

  “They would have died sooner or later anyway,” said the kindly looking old man.

  “You old fool! If you can’t trust a demonolater, how can you trust a half-dozen demons? Where do you think demonolaters learn their dishonesty?”