“I understand,” she offered. “I am sorry for your father.”
The night deepened. He remained at peace beside her. Crisp and cool, the stream babbled endlessly through the spaces between his toes, cooling the soreness of a seven-day walk. The hues of the sky mellowed from violet to deep blue to star-pricked black. He had cherished the dusk, but he revered the night.
“You think they are still in there?” Andelusia glanced to Sallow, breaking the comfortable silence. “The Wolde, the Pale Knight, Grimwain?”
He nodded. “All of them. We should not dwell on it. Not tonight. They will not bother us out here.”
“So we have one more night together? No war? No Grim? No Ur?”
“Yes. One more night.”
She looked at him. He knew everything in the world, save for what thoughts move in her mind. During all other nights, now was the hour when he would urge her to sleep while he stood watch. And yet tonight, closest to Sallow and Grimwain, he was content to cool his feet in the stream and watch the stars wheel in her gaze.
“Garrett,” she pried, “is anything the matter? Are you meditating for battle? Or is it something else?”
“Something else,” he said placidly.
She wrinkled her brow. “Here I thought I would have to lock you in chains to keep you from storming into Sallow, but you seem happy not to. Have you gone and changed your mind?”
“No.” He shrugged. “I am ready for what will be.”
She withdrew her toes from the water and tucked her knees beneath her chin. “Then what is it? You are not yourself.”
No, he wanted to say. I am completely myself.
The night fell into silence. The stream slowed and Mother Moon ceased to climb. He searched Ande’s face, her lips, and the darkness behind her eyes. And then, just as she looked away, he reached out and stroked his hand once through her hair. Where he touched her neck, he felt her skin warm as if by the summer sun. It was the first time he had touched her since Lyrlech.
“I dream of you,” he said to her.
Her eyes, lit by starlight, widened like windows pushed open by the breeze. “You tease me.”
“No. I mean it. I am afraid for you. I do not want you to suffer. When I dream of you, I see your courage, but sometimes I see you lost in shadow. I wish we did not have to do this. I dream of us in a faraway forest, living a better life, a real life.”
“You are serious?”
His gaze grew soft, lit by the stars the same as hers.
“I am.” He shivered. “Sometimes I dream of you and me together. We have a home among the trees. We watch the sun set every eve. We have children: a boy named Rellen, and a gaggle of little girls. I would not tell you this any other night, but now…now the curtain draws shut. We have no time. I have always wanted to say these things.”
Glimmering with starlight, she locked her gaze with his, and her arms fell from her knees. “I have the same dreams,” she uttered without breathing. “Of you and me.”
“If only our lives were different,” he said.
“Then what?”
“We might truly be together. We might be in love. If you would have me.”
“And if I would?”
“We would go far from here. To the mountains maybe. To a forest where no one could find us.”
“Yes. I would go. What then?”
“And then…I—”
“Garrett.” She looked at him. He saw the shadows in her eyes swirling the same as fire. “We are alone tonight,” she said. “No Wolde No Grim. No one else.”
“Yes,” he said.
“We have just this last night.”
“Yes.”
“No one will find us. No one can stop us.”
The shadows moved in his eyes, mirroring hers. He set his hand atop her knee, touching her so softly that his fingers might well have been made of moonlight. Her warmth rippled through him.
She is all I have wanted.
Ever.
“Garrett…”
After ten breaths’ torturous anticipation, he clutched her waist and hauled her atop his lap. Her eyes told that she had expected it, but her body trembled as though in shock. When he kissed her, finally kissed her, the heat inside her might have erupted were it not trapped behind her skin. His eyes slammed shut, and her touch became his only sensation in the entire world.
He kissed her gently at first, almost tentative, but the way she melted against his mouth made him ravenous.
He kissed her lips and her neck. The Nightness in her blood intoxicated him.
“Do…not…stop…” she murmured between kisses. “Never…stop.”
He kissed her harder. His muscles hummed against her body. She tried to push him onto his back, but he won over. Gripping her wrists and stretching her on the grass, he stripped her naked, halting only to pepper her body with brushes of his mouth. She did not resist. He felt her writhe, her heart hammering her into submission beneath him. His hands rough and warm, he roved over her every inch.
“Ande,” he said her name.
“Please…” she begged, “say nothing…”
He kissed her again and again. In the heat of the moment, he became something other than his usual self. His stoicism melted, and the man beneath the soldier’s mold emerged. He kissed her hands, her belly, and her breasts as though to devour her. He tasted the salt in her skin, the sweetness only she, of all the women in the world, possessed.
And then, in the grass beside the stream, he claimed her. She said nothing, but released her body to him. He was not gentle, nor did he desire to be. He made hard love to her, and the faster he moved, the hotter she burned beneath him. He drove his body against hers, and she kissed him more times than could be counted. Sweat slicked his skin and hers, glistening in the moonlight, boiling away with the Nightness. She made him feel alive.
When finally he shuddered inside her and his urgency fled, she pulled him close and let him lie atop her, two souls entwined in place of one.
That this should be the only time, he thought between heartbeats. Unfair.
I would spend forever with her.
I would end the world just to be with her.
An Army for Ande
At dawn, Andelusia wandered back into the world.
All was quiet inside the tent. Naked, her body loose and languid, she sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. In the first moments after rising, she fretted that last night had only been a dream or that Grimwain would greet her waking with a knife to her throat.
Not a dream. No knife. Just me and Garrett.
Garrett drowsed beside her. She looked at his face, for once at peace, and remembered last night as though it had happened only moments ago.
In silence, she slithered back into her clothes. Garrett did not stir. She nearly gave in and awoke him with a kiss, but bit her lip and resisted. Barefooted, she slipped out into the new day. She hoped her mood meant Father Sun would show his most brilliant smile, but it was not to be. Good morning, world. She gazed at the grey-curtained sky, the clouds promising rain. Not my fault today.
Though sullen and overcast, the new day felt warm. The breeze caught her skirt and played with her hair. Like Garrett’s touch, she pretended.
One night is not enough.
Garrett emerged from the tent and hugged her from behind.
“We must go,” he whispered in her ear.
She sank against him. “I know.”
“If things were different.”
“If only…” she sighed.
She wanted him to hold her forever, but at length he released her. She floated away to the streamlet, cupped a last few mouthfuls of crisp, clean water over her face, and returned to camp with her expression hardened. Garrett roved about, sheathing his sword, strapping his cuirass in place, and packing the gear. She collected her satchel while he worked, watching him with a growing sadness in her heart.
Last night. Already too far away.
“You do not have to come,” he
said as he bundled the tent.
“Yes I do.”
“You know what awaits us.”
“Father and Grimwain. What of it?”
He came to her. He was clad in black, his raiment the same hue as her ebon hair. She stood in his shadow, a pillar of ivory, and he touched her one last time. With one finger, he traced a line from her cheek down her belly, onto her hip. How easy would it be? She quivered. To take his hand and fly to other end of the world.
“Sallow.” She glowered over his shoulder.
“Yes.” His gaze followed hers. “There it is.”
“Are we heroes or fools?”
“Neither. And both.”
“We should go.”
“Yes.”
It was she who took the first steps toward Sallow. Under the grey dawn, she feigned fearlessness and marched for the black line of trees. The grass undulated beneath her feet. The wind parted to allow her passage. She walked with cold determination, her footsteps like daggers drawing closer to Sallow’s threshold.
Forget your love, her thoughts commanded her. Destroy the Wolde. End Grimwain. Send Father back where he belongs.
And be with Garrett forever after.
After a silent march across the fields, she and Garrett arrived at Sallow’s southern edge. The outermost trees creaked in the wind like coffin lids left open. She saw no Wolde, only shadows and black-fingered thickets.
“Empty,” she said.
“This time, I go first,” he insisted.
After a deep breath, she followed him into the trees. A dozen steps inside, and she remembered Sallow’s grimness. The trees looked like knives, their limbs sharp enough to skin her. In the distance, slate-topped hills jutted from the earth the same as gravestones. She wended between labyrinthine underbrush, careful to avoid every shrub, lest she stumble and rise with a hundred thorns in her legs. She listened hard, but no birds sang and no wildlife stirred. For all its silence, Sallow might have already been claimed by the Ur.
“To think I used to like this place,” she said to Garrett.
“Could be worse.” He walked with his palm atop his sword-hilt. “I see no Wolde.”
Yet, she wanted to say.
For that day and two more, she and Garrett marched north into the haunted wood.
Mucking through Sallow’s ruts and carving through its tangles was grueling, miserable work. By day she slogged beneath the trees, splashed across mires, and dripped from the rain. Each evening before striking camp, she came to life with hopes of seeing Wolde-fires, anticipating that over the next hummock of shattered slate she would see smoke rising. But no such luck, she lamented. No fires. No Wolde. Another while of this, and we will fly the rest of the way, risk be damned.
After three days and three nights, she felt her heart growing cold. Her hopes that Garrett might come to her in the dark were hollow, for he is the Hunter by day, and at night the tower beneath which I try and fail to sleep.
On the fourth morning, as a soft rain ended, she awoke having dreamed time had run out and the Black Moon had already cracked open.
She sat up inside the tent, beaded with sweat and shivering. “Garrett?” She clawed at his blanket, but found nothing.
She shook her horror away. The morning mist crept into the tent, and for a breath she worried it was not mist at all, but the fingers of the Ur invading. She crawled outside. The world still existed. Garrett sat beside a small, snapping fire, cooking breakfast. She felt relieved, but only a little.
“I want to use the Nightness,” she told him later as they breakfasted. He ate with a lion’s appetite, but she only nibbled at hard bread and salted strips of meat. “I can have us at the Undergrave before midday.”
“Save your strength,” he said. “We have eight days before the solstice.”
“Eight days...” she murmured. “Too long. I want this over by tonight.”
He looked at her. “The last time you used your magic, we awoke in a ring of Sarcophage swords. I want to see where we are going. Save your spells for the end.”
“I could go without you, you know,” she dared.
“Yes. You could.”
“In a few breaths, I might end it. Turn Father and Grim to ash. Be back in time for supper.”
He took a swig from his water. “Or you might never come back at all.”
The way he said it chilled her. She hugged her knees and peered over their tops. “I was only joking,” she said. “I need you there with me. Besides, they will expect me to use the Nightness. They will be waiting. Even if Grim thinks he killed me, he will expect me.”
“Yes.” Garrett nodded. “He will.”
She ate the rest of her breakfast in silence. Garrett did the same. The morning mists cleared off, and the dreary sky showed its face. Her only reassurance was that the weather was not of her making. This gloom belongs to Sallow.
It was during those moments, dark and uncertain, she glimpsed the growing darkness amid the clouds.
The moon.
The Black Moon.
Where have you been?
The Black Moon, long-absent, shadowed the morning. She saw it, but Garrett seemed not to. Its bulbous lower third burst through the bottom cloud-layer, a leviathan roiling in a turbulent sea.
Look at it, she wanted to say. Huger than before. Closer to the world.
The Thillrians were right.
It is falling.
Black and void, smoother than any worldly surface, the moon looked massive. Its closeness weighed upon her, compressing her blood, squeezing out the air in her lungs, and crushing her thoughts. With a shiver, she squinted and beheld the symbols etched into its surface. With her Nightness, they were legible. The language was of the Pages Black:
Imprisonment. She trembled, mouthing the meaning of several twisted symbols. Spirits of Nether. Confined. Removed. At play with souls of wickedest dead. No freedom. No release. Locked in darkness.
Sealed by Archithrope.
Unsealed at terminus of earth.
She snapped awake from her stupor. “Garrett,” she whispered. “Look! The Eye is…”
Her tongue fell flat. She looked across the campfire. Garrett was gone.
“Garrett?” She leapt to her feet. “Where are you?”
She heard nothing in the trees. The Wolde! she worried. Did I black out? She uttered a syllable remembered from the Pages Black, and a dagger of ebon Ur flame sprang to unlife in her grasp. Deathly heat roiled from the ethereal blade, smoking like a body freshly charred. The grass beneath her feet blackened and curled, while the limbs above the campfire wilted like flowers set aflame.
“Garrett?” she shouted into the Sallow thickets. “Say something! Are there out there?”
She heard a snap, a crunch, and a yelp of pain. Not Garrett, she knew. Someone else! Ready to kill, she spun and crouched, smoking dagger aimed at the noise’s source.
“Garrett? Who’s there?”
Sword in hand, Garrett emerged from the shadowy space between two hulking trees. A boy staggered into sight just ahead of him, whimpering at the tip of Garrett’s sword. Dressed in a scavenged hauberk and tattered grey tunic, the boy toppled to the earth when Garrett shoved him from behind.
“Speak.” Garrett set his swordpoint on the back of the boy’s neck. “Or be buried where you lie.”
Her breath caught in her throat. A boy? she marveled. In here? Crumpled amid the brittle reeds and needle-sharp grass, Garrett’s captive peered up at her as though to plead for mercy. Not a Wolde, she knew. Thillrian through and through.
“Who is this?” She let the Ur dagger fade.
“He watched our camp from the trees.” Garrett flicked his sword, and the boy whimpered. “He was spying.”
“But…m’lord…I’m not—” the boy dared.
Garrett pressed his booted foot into the small of the boy’s back. The boy hissed in pain.
“Stop!” She ran to Garrett and shoved him back. “He’s just a child!”
Her blood pumped in
her veins like molten fire. She did not realize her fury until she saw her handprint, hot and sizzling, smoldering on the breast of Garrett’s cuirass.
Unperturbed, Garrett waved the smoke away and withdrew his sword from the boy’s neck. “Not a Wolde, but a spy nonetheless,” he cautioned.
She shot him a cold look and knelt before the lad. He was a pale, weedy-limbed creature, not more than thirteen summers old. She pitied him, for he looked filthy, unfed, and terrified of Garrett.
“Your name?” She offered her hand.
Shaking like a sapling in a winter storm, the boy allowed her to help him to his feet. “Perci, m’lady,” he said. “Of County Shiver.”
“Perci,” she repeated. “Why were you watching us? The enemy is not south. They lie in Sallow’s heart, a while north of here.”
Perci looked at her as though she were crazy. “M’lady, we wasn’t watching for the enemy. We was watching for you.”
She blinked, stunned to silence. She looked to Garrett, who said nothing. “What do you mean?” The hairs stood on the back of her neck. “No one knows we are coming.”
Fidgeting, Perci dropped his gaze to the earth. “They told me, m’lady. They says we was too young to fight, so they sends us here. They says to watch for a lonely soldier or a lady with dark locks and clouds in her eyes. I reckon he and she are you two. They told us you might be together.”
Her eyes darkened. “Who said this? The wolf-men?”
“No m’lady.” Perci glanced between her and Garrett. “Ser Saul did. Him with the beard and the steel-shod stick.”
Her mouth fell open. Her heart leapt back to life. She smiled, a grin so sharp Perci blushed beneath her.
“Saul?” she blurted. “Saul of Elrain? Here in Sallow?”
“Yes’m. He and the other’uns are camped a few hours north.”
“Why on earth?”
“It’s the army, m’lady,” Perci explained. “Ser Saul and his friends made it in your honor. They mean to cross swords with the Pale Knight. They says he and his wolf’uns need to go, else dark times is coming.”
“An army?” she murmured. With an army, we could…
It was too much, too quickly. Even with the sky shrouded grey and the Black Moon lurking, she felt as though the sun shined upon her. Eyes glittering silver, she faced Garrett.
Nether Kingdom Page 47