by Tim Akers
Fianna pushed back from the bars, curling up on the filthy floor of the wagon. The wheel creaked beneath her. There was a river in the distance, but it was silent, jealous of its secrets, wary of the pagan heart.
15
THE HILL THAT led to the earth’s wound was slick with black blood. The grass that lay matted against it was brittle and gray. Even the stones that lay like scattered dice, thrown there as if by an explosion, seemed somehow fragile in their bulk. The sky above whipped past, turning dark. The first stars appeared on the horizon, opposite Strife’s descending glory.
“This is not the place we left,” Elsa said quietly. “It is changed.”
“Whatever power was held here, surely it influenced the hallow greatly. Its departure—” Ian started. Elsa cut him off with a rapid shake of her head.
“No,” she said sharply. “There was much strange about this place before Gwen broke the gheist free of its bonds, but if anything, that departure should have returned the hallow to its natural state. It should have returned it to the Fen.”
“The Fen is a foul place,” Ian said. He kicked a stone and watched it crumble into pebbles. “But it is not like this.”
“So something has happened—something more than I was expecting.” Elsa adjusted her grip on the sword and crept forward. “Stay on your guard.”
“Right. My guard,” Ian muttered. “Against some unspoken danger, of which I have neither knowledge or hope.”
“You have hope in me,” Elsa responded with a smile. “Just stay close, and yell if you see something horrific.”
“How horrific, exactly? Because we’re walking through a field of dark blood and ash, and I think…”
“Shut up,” Elsa said casually. Ian nodded and followed the vow knight as closely as propriety would allow.
They found a pit at the top of the hill, its edges dark with the vile blood, and smoke rose in gentle curls from the stones that remained. The cloud that hung overhead was alive with swirling forms, claws and teeth and twisted faces that leered in the day’s dying light. The hair on Ian’s neck stood on end, and a gentle hum started up in the bloodwrought tip of his hunting spear.
“It was less… evil… when you were here?” he asked demurely.
“The autumn god that waited here was the harbinger of winter, the first servant of the god of death.” Elsa paused, staring up at the scything pillar of greenish smoke that hung above the chasm. “But it wore brighter clothes,” she said. “It was a different kind of horror.”
“I think I would prefer its cheer,” Ian answered.
“At least this spirit is honest,” Elsa said. “Though I don’t think it’s a gheist at all. Merely the scent of one, burned into the air until the everam itself holds the stink of it.”
“Not a gheist?” he said hopefully. “So there’s nothing to fear?”
“There’s always something to fear,” Elsa said cautiously. She edged her way to the lip of the chasm, looking down cautiously. “Falling into that, for example.”
Ian moved to her side and looked down. The bottom of the pit was swallowed in darkness.
“Is it deep?” he asked.
To answer, Elsa drew a tinder from her belt and ran it like a whetstone down the length of her blade. The runes of the holy weapon sparked, drawing fire from the air and setting the tinder ablaze. The vow knight tossed the burning brand into the pit. It disappeared into an unnatural darkness, a void that knew no depth.
“Ah,” Ian said, backing away.
“Gwen was here. She must have returned after the battle.”
“With the death god in tow,” Ian said. “But why?”
“Perhaps to seek the help of the wardens, though they were dead,” she replied. “Or in the hope that the sanctified ground might have some effect on the gheist. Or maybe she intended to release the god as far from hearth and home as she could manage, that the wards might protect it from the church’s interference.” Elsa peered around at the ruin of the hill and the close-pressed nightmare of the cloud. “Whatever she meant to do, it seems as if she failed.”
“So she’s dead?” Ian asked.
“No, I can still feel her bond, though it is weak. Something is shielding her from me. I can…” Elsa paused, closing her eyes and moving her lips in silent prayer. The cloud swirled away from her, like fog scattered by a stiff wind. She breathed in deeply, held it, and then opened her eyes. “No, there’s nothing. She lives, but that’s all I can say.”
“Perhaps if we return to the Fen Gate and summon an inquisitor, he would have better luck at tracking the girl.”
“I will not bring the inquisition into this,” Elsa said sharply. She turned and marched down the hill, leaving Ian alone with the angry sky. “The faithful of Cinder have done their part, Sacombre more than most. I will finish the doom that they have written.”
He hurried after her. “Why do you care?” he asked. “Frair Lucas rides even now to Heartsbridge to deliver the high inquisitor to trial. Sacombre is in chains. Cinder’s judgment will be rendered.”
“Their judgment means little—and besides, what judgment is there to be found in the cold court of winter? They will gather in stone rooms, and make speeches. Frair Lucas is a good man, a better servant of the gray lord than any I’ve known, but that is the problem. He alone do I trust, and he will not be alone in Heartsbridge.”
“Then why didn’t you go with him?” Ian asked. “To make sure judgment was rendered? He may need you.” They were at the bottom of the hill already, Elsa tromping through the wild garden at its foot. The sun had set, and the darkness between the trees already was impenetrable.
“There is no place for my kind in that ritual,” Elsa said, her words clipped close together. Ian was surprised to find this depth of anger in the vow knight. Her temper always had been quick to rise, but it was just as quick to disappear—as sharp and brief as lightning on the horizon. This was different. Deeper.
“The judgment of Cinder was born to twist, to find fault where there is only folly, and innocence where there is guile,” she continued. “The fate of the high inquisitor should be clear enough. Any blade could have dealt it.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
The vow knight came to an abrupt stop near the pillar that had held her sword. Her armor flickered with a ghostly flame that sprang from the metal. Ian stomped to a halt, nearly running into her.
He was unable to prevent himself from probing further. “You were there. Sacombre was in no condition to fight. You could have ended it right there. Any of us could have.”
“Any of us,” Elsa said without turning. Her voice was raw. “So why didn’t you?”
Before Ian could answer, however, the vow knight stormed away, disappearing among the trees, her light like a brand quenched in water.
“Well, enough of that line of questioning.” Ian looked around the strange garden. “I’ll have to find a place to sleep. Somewhere else.” Light danced among the petals. The flowers swayed quietly to an unheard song, brushing up against his legs like plump cats. “Somewhere else.” Cautiously moving out of the garden again, Ian settled into the crook of the most normal looking tree he could find, resting his head against dry leaves and listening to the buzz of insects and the splashing current of the river.
He woke screaming several times. Of Sir Elsa he saw no sign. Not even among his nightmares.
* * *
When he woke, the vow knight was standing over him, blade drawn. He blinked the sleep from his eyes. His back was killing him.
“Sir LaFey,” he muttered, though his throat was choked with the grit of dry leaves. “I have—”
“Why didn’t you?” she asked. “End it?”
“I don’t think—”
“Why didn’t you put your blade into him, Ian Blakley? Hero of the Allfire gheist at Greenhall, brave son of the Reaverbane, champion at the gate, future lord of Houndhallow. What stayed your hand?” Elsa loomed closer, the tip of her sword hovering at Ian’s throat. “You
r father I understand. He fears the wrath of Heartsbridge, simpers for the approval of men who hate him for his blood and his ink. But not you. You don’t seem the simpering type. So. Why?”
Ian stared up. Her eyes were rimmed in red, her cheeks scalded in trails that ran down her neck, blood lining her teeth. The air smelled like burning metal.
“Because it was not my place to judge him,” he said eventually. “Nor could any other. We must leave it to the church.”
“Because you’ve committed your share of heresy—is that it?” Elsa said. “Because for all that you bend your knee in the doma, you know the call of older gods. You won’t be able to put the blade to Gwen Adair, for the same reason. Do you even think her guilty, Blakley? Does her sacrilege mean anything to you?”
“Do you think her guilty?” Ian asked. “If I have my story straight, you were here with her. You were in the chamber when she summoned the gheist, and did nothing to prevent it. You could have—”
“That is not the matter at hand!” Elsa shouted. Her voice rattled the leaves above, and the earth below. “Why did you follow me here? What mission has brought you to the witches’ hallow, Ian Blakley? Ian of the tribe of hounds! I know of the hallow that rests beneath your castle walls, the iron hound, its head black with soot from blood sacrifice! Does a witch attend it, as well? Do you seek to return the house of Adair to its rightful place among the tribes? What treachery can I expect from you?”
Ian raised his hands and slowly stood, his back scraping against the bark of the tree. Elsa’s blade followed him, unwavering.
“I am here for Gwen, not the hallow. You know my faith.”
“I knew hers, as well.”
“I would know her heart,” he said. “What led her family to this corruption. What they hoped to accomplish by hiding their god from the church. What the church hoped to do by destroying it. Her father is dead, and her mother, and all of their blood. She is the last Adair, perhaps the last in a long line of heretics, going back to the crusades. And yet I prayed with her at festivals, I knelt beside her in my family’s doma, when they would visit. She was faithful.”
“She had a strange way of showing it,” Elsa said. “Worshipping at the foot of a hidden god. Harboring a witch inside her walls. Holding common cause with the wardens of the hallow. Doesn’t that sound like a heretic to you?”
“How many of the feral gods did she slay? And when she turned her blade against mortal man, it was in defense of her blood. Surely you can’t believe that Volent was justified in killing those peasants at Tallownere? That Halverdt’s war was good and right and holy? And yet it was the church that led it. Does that sound like a heretic?”
“I knew her,” Elsa replied. “I heard her confession. She was careful, but she was fallen.” The knight stepped closer, the heat from her blood washing over Ian’s face. “Gwen Adair was one of them. A pagan.”
“Yet when it came down to it, you were the one she looked to for help. You and the frair were the ones she guided to this very hallow. She may have been a heretic, but to whom? Do you think the wardens would have wanted that? I have known pagans, Elsa, and the only thing they trust less than an inquisitor is a knight of the vow.”
“She didn’t have a choice,” Elsa growled.
“Did she ever have a choice?” Ian asked, holding out one hand, placing it gently against the blade that was inching toward his throat.
“What are you saying?”
“Just this. Gwendolyn Adair was born into her heresy, she was raised to it. Her father led her to the hallow, and her blood commanded it. Yet when everything else failed her, it is the church she depended on. You, and Frair Lucas. She depended on you.”
“For all the good it did her.”
“May aye, may nay, but she held both things in her heart. The hallow and the doma. The celestial and the pagan. And while she lives, and before the cold courts of winter have had their way with her, I would know that heart. Know what it cost her to bear that burden, even from birth.”
Elsa stood, quivering. The blade warmed beneath Ian’s fingers, hot enough that he had to draw his hand away, blinking as the dry heat stole the water from his eyes. He was just about to flinch away when Elsa stepped back, and the storm of her anger passed.
“We cannot stay here,” she said uneasily. “There are demons in the shadows.”
“Have you found her trail?” Ian asked, as though nothing had just passed between them, as though her sword had not been inches from his throat.
“No. I can still feel the bond, but the blood has been corrupted. Maybe something happened to her when the god took her. Something in the flesh. Or perhaps she is dying, and the echoes carry through the bond. Frankly, I don’t know. I have never tried to use the blood bond to track a god-touched heart. No one has.”
“Then what do we do?”
“We will have to find another way to track her.” Elsa sheathed her blade and turned away. Ian saw that their horses waited among the trees, already packed and brushed and fed. “Now that the wards are gone, it will be easy to find our way out of the Fen. North, I think. I remember there being a castle just beyond the borders.”
“Elsa?”
The vow knight paused for a heartbeat, then swung herself into the saddle. She flicked the reins, and started toward the river. Ian raised his voice.
“Elsa! You’ve heard my reasons. Why are you here? What brings you to the hallow, and Gwendolyn’s trail?”
“I could have stopped her,” she called back. “I should have stopped her.”
“And what then would have become of Sacombre’s gheist?” Ian shouted at her retreating back. “Who would have stopped that demon?”
“Gods know,” she answered, and then she was too far away to be heard.
* * *
They followed the river along the hallow’s edge, a short journey that turned east and then north before joining another stream that marked the far border of the sacred grove. From there they struck north, finding the way easier than expected, as the Fen faded behind them.
Leaving the silent trees of the hallow behind, Ian and Elsa failed to notice a figure watching them from the cleft peak of a rock. It crouched among the shadows, a hood pulled tight across a face broken and red with blood. A body lay at its feet. When the pair disappeared over a hill, it bent to the body, cradling the limp head in its palms.
“You were meant to tell them, yes?” it asked, with a voice as rough as broken spears. “You were left behind to show the way. Abandoned. Alone.” Lovingly, the figure passed its hand over the dead boy’s face, closing his eyes. “Sleep restfully, child. Have no fear.”
The figure stood, blinking into the bright sun, tracing the path the vow knight and her companion had followed.
“I will be your messenger, yes? The messenger for the dead.”
16
THEY WRAPPED HER in elk-hide hung with bone runes and anointed in blood, and then lifted her into a splint. Every step of the trail brought pain. The faces of the caravan were dark and grim as they traveled beside her.
She struggled to stay awake, and when she slept her dreams were haunted by crushing water and sharp sun, and the anger of the shaman.
Days passed. Weeks. Gwen reached the point where she was able to walk, but Cahl prevented her. She was as much a prisoner as a patient to the team of pagans who carried her litter between their shoulders. By the time they reached the grove where the conclave was to take place, Gwen was sore and tired and restless.
The grove was a shallow bowl dotted with smooth boulders scattered throughout, each inscribed with old runes as soft and eroded as if they were written in sand. The gathering had an air of nervous expectation. By the time Cahl and his companions arrived, the meeting had already started. The shamans and their witches were waiting in a semi-circle a dozen bodies deep, the far ranks disappearing into the trees of the grove like stalking wolves.
Cahl lifted Gwen from the litter and set her down on a stone plinth. The elk-hide clung tight to
her shoulders, pinning her arms against her ribs and restricting her breath. The audience shifted silently among the trees. A handful of pagans sat closer to her, each heavily tattooed and wearing symbols of the pagan faith. Cahl had warned her that many of the elders would be there. It was their word that would decide her fate. She kept a close eye on them as Cahl addressed the crowd.
“We all know why we are here. Fomharra’s release resonated through every henge in Tenumbra. Not in ten generations has the god of autumn risen, and now that he has…”
“She,” Gwen muttered.
Cahl glanced back at her, grimacing before he turned back to the crowd. “Now that Fomharra once again roams the land, we must decide what to do. The balance was maintained by our circles. By the church, and Suhdra, and the loyalty of the lords of Tener. Now that balance has been broken.”
“Bloody form of loyalty,” a voice called from the audience. A murmur went through the grove. Cahl raised his hands.
“There is blood on both sides of this fight. We must put that behind us.”
“A debt unsettled must be repaid,” one of the elders said. She was a woman, dressed in the warm furs of the northern crags. The tattoos that scrolled across her cheeks looked like a brace of elk horn.
“There is too much debt to be paid,” another elder muttered. “Blood upon blood. Generations of it, more than even the dead can remember.”
“Perhaps you are concerned with the payment of the dead, Judoc,” the woman said, “but I have buried sons under Suhdrin stones.” She turned to Cahl. “Am I to forgive those debts as well?”
“Do not speak to me of Suhdrin stones, Cassandra,” a second woman said. Gwen was startled to notice that she was dressed in southern clothes, and had no ink on her face. Her amber hair was neatly braided and she sat with her legs crossed, her hands folded delicately on her knee. “You have old forests to hide in, and friendly villages among which to live. Even the lords of Tener turn a blind eye to your rites.”
“Why are you even here?” Cassandra asked sharply. “How are we to trust a face without the ink, and a heart that sleeps beneath a Suhdrin roof, and lives with a Suhdrin husband?”