by Tim Akers
That was why Elsa had let Lucas go his own way. By duty, she should have accompanied him to Heartsbridge, but she couldn’t do it. Her vow, her mission, was to Gwen Adair. To find her, to hunt her, to bring her to justice. She still remembered breaking the news to Lucas. He had not taken it well. Neither of them had.
Despite all that, even as Elsa hunted, this time with Ian Blakley in tow, she was unsure what she would do when she found Gwen. Judgment was an inquisitor’s business. Vengeance belonged to Strife, but Elsa held no anger in her heart toward the huntress. If anything, she felt bad for the girl. And when they did find Gwen, it was to fight at her side at Houndhallow against this new heresy, these void priests. Elsa wasn’t sure what to think of them.
All she truly knew was that the goddess who had been so close to her since she was a child, the light that had burned in her heart and fanned the flames of her joy for decades, was gone. Had vanished in the final reckoning against the voidfather. Gone from her heart, from her blood, from her mind. Something Elsa had done must have offended the bright lady, and Strife had withdrawn her blessing.
Withdrawn it and given it to a mad child. Sophie Halverdt, who had done nothing to earn the favor of Strife, was suddenly the gifted avatar of flames. Surely there was something wrong about that. Surely that wasn’t just.
No, Elsa thought. But it certainly was vengeful.
Alone in the woods, she unbuckled her sword and pulled the leather band from her hair. It had been so long since she had drawn on the power of Strife that Elsa’s hair had begun to grow back. Her usual charred locks were giving way to cascades of soft hair. It tickled her face and drove her mad. It wasn’t a vow knight’s hair. It didn’t feel right, but she couldn’t bring herself to cut it or burn it away. Somehow that would feel like cheating. Like pretending to be something that she wasn’t. That she would never be again.
The thought of never drawing Strife’s flame again sparked both fear and rage in Elsa’s heart. She sat on the ground, crossing her legs and laying her blade across her knees. This is how she had sat when she’d sought Strife’s blessing in the past, on the rare occasions when the mistress of summer had seemed far away. Elsa had tried this a dozen times since Houndhallow. One more time wouldn’t hurt.
She started by concentrating on the beat of her heart. Strife’s power stirred in the blood of the faithful, echoing through the bloodwrought runes of the vow knight’s blade and armor, drawing the flame into existence. As she meditated, though, she could feel nothing. The blade was cold, her heart silent, the song of her blood muted. The doors that led to Strife’s realm were closed, as if they had never been there at all.
Elsa breathed through the dozens of exercises she had learned at the Lightfort, reciting liturgies and invoking promises given her by the priests. They echoed through her head, falling on deaf ears. The promises were broken.
It wasn’t me. I didn’t break my promises, not to Strife, not to the church, or Lucas, or my parents, Elsa thought. I’ve been true! I’ve been faithful, and holy, and just. This isn’t my fault. I’m not the one who broke this deal. It was you! It was Strife! I’m the one who’s been abandoned. I’m the one!
Anger kindled in her heart, and she fed it. If Strife was the goddess of flame and joy, well, she was also the goddess of hate. She was petty, she was vindictive, and Elsa was done with her. If this was how she was going to treat her faithful, abandoning them without warning and without instruction on how to return, then Elsa wanted nothing to do with her. There were better gods. There was a better hope, even if Elsa had to forge it herself.
Something stirred. Deep in her heart, nestled against that anger, nothingness became flame. Elsa’s eyes shot open. She leapt to her feet, snatching the sword as it tumbled from her knees, and gave a shout of joy. Stoking the flame, she drew it into her blood, and thrilled at the sudden heat that filled her. Winter be damned!
Elsa drew the blade and pushed fire into the runes. They sparked to life, then blinding fire coruscated across the steel. She howled with joy, holding the sword aloft and feeding more and more power into it. The sword became a bonfire. She could feel, just at the edge of her attention, young Morganne watching her from the clearing. Elsa turned and laughed, and the child disappeared into the trees.
The flames grew and grew, and Elsa filled them with her anger.
32
IN THE COURTYARD of Houndhallow, shouts of panic and horror filled the air. Ian stumbled out of the doma, fear numbing his legs. Waves of freezing mist clung to his face. The columns of guards had scattered, running from the malevolence leaking out of the doma. Considering the things the people of Houndhallow had seen and the evils they had faced, Ian couldn’t blame them. He found Volent kneeling just outside the entrance to the sanctuary.
“Henri, can you walk? We have to muster the guard.”
“Tession got away. Did something to my heart, and got away,” Volent said quietly. When Ian laid a hand on Volent’s shoulder, he flinched. “Leave me, Ian. I am no good to you.”
“There was a time when that was true,” Ian said. “But not now. Whatever has crossed us in the past, we have gotten through it. Together.” Ian hooked an arm under Volent’s and heaved him to his feet. “Now get moving.”
Volent looked at him curiously. His face was blank, without fear or anger, but the scars that crisscrossed his features had turned black.
“Whatever has frightened you, Ian, there is no point to it. We will die here, or we won’t. What does it matter?”
“Well, there’s the dying part. I thought I was okay with that for a while, but it turns out I’m not, so, please.” He tugged on Volent’s arm. “I’m not going to leave you here to face him alone.”
“Face whom?” Volent asked, looking over Ian’s shoulder. “Ah, yes. I see.”
Ian looked back. Cinder was a bare outline in the mists, drawing them into himself, his eyes shining like twin moons behind the clouds.
“You don’t know what he is, Volent. Trust me…”
“Oblivion. That is death enough for me.” Volent shook Ian off and faced the approaching god. “Leave it to me. Emptiness will always find a home.”
Ian hesitated, but Volent shoved him away and turned back to the shrine. After a heartbeat of uncertainty, Ian turned and ran into the courtyard.
“Banners of Houndhallow! Brave swords of the north, hear me! We have been betrayed. Gather your courage, and stand with me once again into the night!”
“They will not hear you, Ian Blakley, Ian of Hounds, coward son of the Reaverbane,” Tession said. The priest had been lurking in the shadows of the courtyard. He was dressed still in the vestments of the celestial church, but carried a black staff of twisted metal. “I have plucked what courage they might have had from their mortal hearts, and turned it to my will. You must stand alone, and die alone.”
“I don’t fear your threats, void priest. Folam underestimated the strength of the Blakleys, as did Sacombre. We overcame them both. And now I will defeat you, as well.”
“Your father bested the heretic Sacombre,” Tession said. He drew the staff across his chest, then snapped it straight, pointing at Ian. “But you are not your father.”
A hideous energy poured from the staff. It struck Ian in the chest. His wound answered. The shards of Folam’s pendant squirmed beneath his skin. Light danced across his chest, tearing away his robes, splintering the chain of his shirt like frayed rope. Ian stumbled back, trying to remain upright even as the pain pressed him down. Finally he fell, first to his knees, then his hands and face were pressed to the filthy ground. Snow filled his mouth, snow laced with blood. He could hear screaming; his own, the fleeing guards, the air itself. He pushed himself up on one hand and grabbed at his chest.
The wound was no longer empty. The black roots of a tree grew from his flesh, sharp and sticky with his blood. As Ian watched, the tree stretched spindly fingers toward the ground. He could feel its roots burrowing through his ribs, filling him, feeding on him. His fingers sc
rambled at its tiny branches, but the wood was as hard as iron, as sharp as steel.
“These things have been forgotten,” Tession hissed. “I will remind the world!”
Black roots stretched out from Ian’s chest, feeling their way toward the hard-packed soil of the courtyard. He wrapped his hands around the trunk rising from his chest, trying to pull it free, but it was as much a part of him as his bones. He screamed out, but only Frair Tession’s tepid laughter answered.
“We hoped to do this at Cinderfell, you understand. To draw the darkness down where it had first been lifted up. But Houndhallow is more than a worthy home for our new god. Don’t you think?”
“Fuck you!” Ian shouted, but the pain of the blossoming wound turned his voice to a whimper. Tession bent closer to Ian.
“This is what we were looking for. That rebel spark! When you charged that gheist outside of Greenhall, we knew we had our man. A pity it took so long to harvest you. But I’m not sure I’ve seen a finer vessel.”
Ian tried to answer, but the tree growing out of his chest was becoming difficult to manage. He fell forward, and the trunk slammed into the ground. Branches twisted through his lungs, and a whole web of roots unfolded from the base of the trunk, spreading across the hard earth. They melted into the ground, burrowing like worms. Ian gasped in pain, and then the tree started to grow.
It lifted him off the ground by his bones. The agony of its birth became unimaginable. Ian screamed and screamed, his throat growing raw, until a tangle of branches crawled up out of his mouth and silenced him.
He hung quietly over the courtyard, staring down at Frair Tession. Some part of his mind wondered what had become of Volent, where Nessie might be. Whether his father was alive, or dead, or still fighting. Tears streamed down his cheeks. Ian tried to move, but the tree held him in place. It was still growing, taller and taller, wider and wider. At first he thought it would tear him open, bursting through his flesh, but soon realized the tree was lapping over him like water. He sank into it.
The last thing he saw was Frair Tession, smiling sharply and shaking his head. Then the bark closed over his face, and there was only darkness and the sound of branches scraping across the stones.
* * *
He was there forever. Ian could feel the roots clawing through winter-ravaged earth, feel the trunk push aside cobblestones as it grew wider, taste the wind in the branches. Like flowers turning to the sun, the tree reached and reached toward the darkness growing inside the doma. And the darkness reached back. Deep in the shadows, the spirit of Cinder sang to the tree, of homecoming and remembrance. Of heartbreak. Of longing.
Eventually the growth stopped. Time passed, time that couldn’t be measured. There was no passage of days or nights, no meals; time passed without sleep. There was only the deep vibration of the earth, pulsing between the tree and the shadow. It was a song that passed through stones and shivered the earth, though Ian was sure that if he were outside the tree he wouldn’t be able to hear it at all. Ian’s heart stopped, but the rhythm of the earth continued. He melted into it.
In time, there was another presence. Hands on his bark, a voice traveling through his branches. Cold hands. Cold words. They didn’t mean anything to him, but the presence in the doma took notice. It struggled, trying to run from the voice without abandoning the tree. There was pain, of a reunion long anticipated and suddenly interrupted. Fear of abandoning something sought after, yearned for, and finally found. But fear also of the voice, and what it could do. What it was already doing. Ian watched this exchange from afar.
Suddenly, he was drawn into it. The voice changed, and Ian fell through the tree, into the song between root and shadow. He became aware of the tree, seeing it from the outside for the first time. It was black and tall, with gnarled limbs barren of leaves, reaching up into the sky. Its bark was ash. Among its branches hung pagan icons, tied with leather and swinging in the breeze. Frair Tession knelt beside the base of the tree, whispering into its roots. How much time had passed? Where was Volent, or Clough? Where were his people?
No time, he realized. No time has passed. And there is no one to save me.
The gaunt frame of Cinder, summoned from the shrine by Ian so long ago (or yesterday? Or just now?) stood at the door of the profane doma. It watched the tree with unabashed longing.
Another sound filled the air. Horns, and shouting. Ian tried to turn his attention to the world beyond the courtyard, but found himself unable to look that way, as though he were in a dream that contained nothing more than the tree, the courtyard, and the song. Even the walls of Houndhallow seemed a distant horizon, lost in the fog.
The tree wavered, but the song continued. He descended into the branches, sliding through bark until he was facing Frair Tession. The priest’s whisper hissed across his mind, promising chains and threatening freedom. Ian glanced behind him and saw Cinder reaching out, thin hands stretching thinner to cross the space between shrine and branches. He turned back to Tession.
“You can’t do this! I won’t let you!” Ian yelled. He wasn’t sure where his voice was coming from, or who could hear it, but Tession continued his whispers. Ian hauled back and punched Tession in the throat, watching as his hand, ghost-limned and bright, passed through the priest’s skull without resistance. Frustrated, he punched again. This time Tession opened an eye, scowling in Ian’s direction.
“Be gone, spirit. You have no place here,” Tession said. Ian felt a tug at his heart, as if he were caught on a fish hook. “The god of graves answers to me now.”
“Not yet, he doesn’t!” Ian answered. He threw himself at Tession, but before his ghostly form could reach the priest, Tession raised a hand and whispered. Ian flew back against the tree, hanging against its bark like a leaf caught in the wind. He couldn’t move.
“This will be over soon, young hound,” Tession said. “We are almost done with you.”
Ian tried to scream, but there was no air in his lungs, and no shape to his mouth. He twisted against the tree like a man on the gallows, waiting to be cut down. Tession knelt again and began to whisper. On the platform above, Cinder drew closer.
Something about the gaunt man on the stairs was familiar. The frame, the cracked lips, the tentative way it stretched out its hand toward the tree. It was all very familiar, like a dream Ian had once. Or like a dream he had been captured inside. He looked back to Cinder, then down at the tree.
Elsa and I were trapped in that dream, Ian thought. She couldn’t do anything because she was… she was trapped in the trees. But the old man, Night himself, he only let us go when I drew Death’s attention to his little deception. But what does that have to do with this? What is this tree, and why is Cinder drawn to it? Cinder was closer now, and Tession’s whispers were coming faster, more urgent. And who do you draw to scare away the god of winter?
Summer, of course. But how…
Ian looked down at his hands. His veins were black, their ends sprouting from his flesh in thin branches that dripped poison, and his fingers were tipped in gnarled, hungry roots. Whatever seed the voidfather’s wound had planted in Ian, it had taken to his flesh, and was growing through him. The tree might have sprouted, but the corruption that twisted it was still in Ian’s blood.
Ian was the poison Tession hoped to use against the winter spirit. The tree was only the bait, though it had grown from him. If the tree was harmless without Ian’s presence, then the only choice was to remove himself from the tree. But how?
He thought back to the dream. If he couldn’t call on another power to force Cinder’s hand, he would have to draw Cinder’s attention elsewhere. He cast about the courtyard, unnatural eyes roaming through the doma, scanning the walls, feeling out the spiritual weight of Houndhallow. His mind brushed against his sister, and Sir Clough, standing together facing the door to their room, waiting to die. He sensed the fear of his people, watching from windows, still in their nightclothes, as their lord was turned into a pagan god. Ian felt terror beyond knowing, and
then he felt emptiness. Emptiness.
Volent?
Huddled beneath the shattered altar in the doma, a man made of nothing but wounds and emptiness. In a blink, Ian hovered over him, his form weak so far from the roots of the tree. He reached down and drew the man’s attention.
“Volent,” he whispered, and his voice sounded like the scratching of wind-stirred branches. “I need you.”
Henri Volent lay still and cold. His eyes were open, staring blankly toward the shadow-wrapped form of Cinder. The hems of his clothes were singed. At first Ian worried that the man was dead, but as he watched, Volent’s chest rose and fell with shallow breath. Ian tried again.
“Sir Volent, you have to get up. I need you to do something for me.”
Volent blinked and turned toward Ian’s hovering form. He took a long moment to focus, then smiled.
“Sir Blakley. I see that he’s gotten a hold of you, as well. I thought I was done with him, but all the handles were still there. He wields me like a sword, Ian. Like a glove. Sacombre knew me well enough.”
“Sacombre is long gone, Henri. You need to get up. There’s something you must do, or all is lost.”
“All is long lost, Ian. Finding it is just the first step in losing everything. Why search? Why get up at all? Best to be born in the grave.”
“This is not the man I knew. The Henri Volent I knew—”
“You never knew Henri Volent. Henri Volent died a child, and has been walking around ever since, waiting for the gods to let him go. And they have. They finally have.” Volent laid his head back down, nestling harder against the altar. “I don’t want to get up anymore.”
“Then fuck Henri Volent,” Ian snapped. “Give me the Deadface.”
“You were never his friend, Ian. Neither of us was. Leave me in peace.”