The Winter Vow

by Tim Akers

  “You will pay! You will pay! All of you, your families, your damned lords and their stupid little…” He choked on his sobs, face twisted into a rictus of misery. “You will pay for everything you’ve done!”

  Morrow reached into the sand and grabbed Gwen’s foot, then started dragging her. For only having one hand, Morrow was much stronger than Gwen expected. She slipped beneath the sand briefly, then slid out, her head banging on the stone floor, rattling her teeth. Her vision swam with black pools. She was about to pass out when sharp pain in her shin pulled her awake. Gwen screamed and tried to pull her foot free, but the catatonic Orphanshield was holding her ankle firmly in both his hands, while Morrow peeled away her legging, taking a good bit of skin with the leather.

  “This has been too long in coming. All you old families, thinking you’d dodged the god’s revenge, when you’ve forgotten even the least of the true legends. Saying your secret prayers while taking the church’s bread, living the southerner’s life, as if you deserved it. As if any of you deserved this!” Morrow struggled to keep the knife still, wincing each time he tried to use his injured arm. He wiped sweat from his face, then slid the box under Gwen’s foot. “Well, this is what you fucking deserve!”

  He plunged the blade into Gwen’s leg. Her screams cut through the air, barely human, as the knife slipped through meat and muscle. Blood poured into the box. Morrow threw the knife away, his eyes glassy and bright, his hands shaking.

  “What you deserve! Soon the whole of the north will understand what they’ve forgotten!”

  Gwen was still trying to get her foot away, but Gilliam was unmoved. The inquisitor just stood there, staring straight ahead while Gwen bled out in front of him. She could hear the autumnal heart beating, drinking in her blood, gasping for more. Vines crawled out of the box, fixing into the altar, spreading to the walls and into the stones. They twined around Gilliam’s chest, his neck, began to squeeze tight. The Orphanshield’s face started to turn blue, and still he didn’t flinch.

  Gwen tried to push away from the altar, but already the vines were crawling across her legs, looping over her shoulders. Golden leaves unfurled from the creepers, turning the floor into a shimmering carpet of shivering light. Gwen tangled her fingers in the vines and pulled. Maybe if she got enough of them, she could trip Gilliam, knock him free of that iron-vise grip.

  Frair Morrow stomped on her hand, grinding it painfully into the stone. She gasped, the pain a bare echo of the misery in her leg, but it was enough to shock her. He didn’t say anything, just grimaced down at her, his face twisted in tears and hatred. There was no escape.

  Gwen let her mind go. If her body was trapped, at least her spirit could struggle. The whole castle was choked with strange spirits, turning the walls and forest and very stones of her house into a foreign land. She recognized that now that her body was breaking. It wasn’t time or memory that made Gwen feel like an exile in the Fen Gate. Something was here. Something malevolent.

  She reached out and felt the boundaries of the room. The heart was familiar, but in a broken way, like a favorite bowl that had been shattered. Fomharra. Gwen had no idea what had become of the autumn spirit after it abandoned her in the witches’ hallow, but if this bound heart was a part of it, she feared for the Fen God. But there was more, behind Fomharra, a pulsing darkness that crept into every living and dead soul in the castle. Gwen stretched toward it, letting her soul come loose from her body. A shade of it passed through her.

  A moment of terrible cold, more than cold, an emptiness that reached through her, squeezing her heart numb. Gwen’s soul fluttered away, blown on winds as sharp and strong as steel, spinning away from her body like a rag. She tried to breathe, but the air around her was stone, the cold stone of the grave. She fell.

  Back into her body. The impact arched her back, thrashing her limbs, turning her body as taut as a bowstring. Her hand slithered out from under Morrow’s foot but, though it was a struggle for him, Frair Gilliam held on to her legs. Morrow jumped back, snarling.

  “You have given me what I need, huntress. I was sure we would spend months draining this place of your essence, of the spiritual dregs of your family’s heresy, before we could revive the autumn spirit. I would say that sometimes the gods provide. But we both know better than that!”

  He reached across the altar and plucked a knife from Frair Gilliam’s belt. For a second, Gwen thought he would plunge it into Gilliam’s chest, but instead Morrow laid it over his own palm and sliced the skin. Even though his hand and arm were already covered in blood, the new wound opened and started to bleed profusely. The blood that came out wasn’t red, or thin, or human. It was black and bubbled like pitch as it dripped down Morrow’s fingers. He held his arm over the iron box, mixing his own blood and the foul ichor with the heart of leaves.

  As soon as the blood touched the heart, Fomharra arrived. The hundred bloody handprints burned orange, becoming autumn leaves, shuffling onto the floor to stir in a mad wind that blew from the heart. Morrow covered his face and backed away, sheltering against the wall. The Orphanshield didn’t move, though his face was swollen and nearly black. Gwen began to rise from the ground, carried aloft by Fomharra’s spirit. Light wove through the air, strands of clean power, the familiar bindings of the Fen God, summoned into the heart of the Fen Gate.

  As soon as Fomharra arrived, the black strands of Morrow’s blood started to corrupt it. Gwen saw this, knew this, felt this through her bones. It was the same as the dark god that now lurked beneath the castle. The joyous storm of autumn’s power turned sour. The winds grew cold, the leaves gained a razor’s edge, the warm light that glowed through the air turned bilious and foul. The stink of rot filled the room.

  For a brief moment, Gwen had Fomharra’s power, just as she had when she rose from the witches’ hallow. Her hold on it slipped immediately, as Morrow’s corruption warped the god’s power, bent it to destruction. She could feel it slipping away from her. But it was still enough.

  Gwen reached out for the void spirit, the dark spirit that was turning the Fen Gate into a nightmare. Its cold arms wrapped around her soul, but she shrugged it off, sifting through the hundreds of tendrils that had worked their way through the castle, looking for a specific corruption. And here it was, wrapped around one soul, paralyzing it. She grabbed the tendril and poured Fomharra’s power into it. The darkness strained, it stretched, and finally it snapped.

  Frair Gilliam stumbled back, letting go of Gwen’s leg, his eyes wide in sudden suffocation. His hands scrabbled at his neck, pulling on the vine that was choking him, finally grabbing his sword and cutting the vine loose from the heart. The vine turned to dust, its leaves flaking and falling to the ground. The Orphanshield stood goggle-eyed, staring in shock at the room, at Gwen hovering in front of him, at the crawling heart of autumn and Frair Morrow, who was already charging toward him with knife in hand.

  “For the love of the gods, inquisitor!” Gwen shouted. “Damn something!”

  Morrow jumped over the altar and stabbed at Gilliam, but the old inquisitor still had fight in him. He brushed aside the knife, holding Morrow by the collar and staring at him in wonder. Morrow tried again, punching the knife toward Gilliam’s gut, but the blade turned off Gilliam’s sheath, barely scratching his wide belly. Gilliam grabbed Morrow’s wrist, punched him once in the face, then dropped his limp body to the ground. He stood there, taking deep, gasping breaths, clearly in shock.

  “You have to break it before it gets out, Gilliam. You have to destroy it!”

  “But I don’t… what is happening? Lady Adair? Where have you been? The inquisition has some questions—”

  “Damn it!” Gwen snapped, half command, half frustration. She grabbed what little control she still had of Fomharra’s power and threw it at Gilliam. A torrent of leaves, sharp and sick, blasted into the old man. He stumbled back, falling to the ground, immediately becoming tangled in the growing roots of the heart. They grabbed at his ankles, wrapping around his arm, tryin
g to pull him into the ground.

  Gilliam pushed himself to his feet, then drew the shorter of his swords and started slashing. Leaves and roots flew through the air, bleeding light and corruption. He stood upright and summoned a veil of shadows, pulling Cinder’s power into a shield to protect him from the gheist. The torrent of leaves sloughed off the naether, turning to embers as they fell. Gilliam straightened to his full height and locked eyes with Gwen.

  “By Cinder’s power, be condemned!” he shouted.

  Darts of twisting naether shot out from the inquisitor’s blade, slicing through the wind and piercing Gwen to the heart. Fomharra’s power snapped free from her soul, twisting and howling as Gilliam cut it down. She could feel it dwindling. Gilliam fought his way forward, shrugging off the howling wind and cutting leaves, severing the web of light that tried to hold him in place. He drew his other sword, long and silvered, the runes of Cinder chasing up and down its blade in purple light. Gilliam whispered an invocation, then drove the sword into the autumn heart.

  The iron box shattered. Gwen caught a glimpse of burning leaves, and then she was thrown against the wall. Her head smacked against stone.

  In the cold heart of her soul, Fomharra fled, leaving her once again.

  36

  HENRI VOLENT EMERGED from the shadows like a death sentence. Ian could only watch as the man once known as the Deadface marched ominously toward him. The leather straps holding Ian in place creaked and he swung slowly from the black tree.

  “I have to admit, I don’t understand what’s going on, Ian,” Volent said. “I just watched you drop from that tree like a newborn foal’s balls, but gods damn me if it makes any sense. And that guy over there.” He nodded over his shoulder at the place Cinder had fallen. “I could have sworn to you that was Cinder himself. Bloody damned lord of winter, and he fell to my blade as quick as fog to sun. And now here you are, tied up and delivered like a present.”

  “You don’t have to do this, Volent. We rode together at Houndhallow, and a dozen battles since. You don’t have to kill me.”

  “People are always telling me what I do and do not have to do. What I must do, for honor or duty or family. First it was Lord Halverdt, but it turns out he was mad, and under the influence of Tomas Sacombre, who was himself possessed by the god of death. Then it was you, for a while, convincing me that I could be a better person, if I just chose.” Volent reached the bottom of the stairs, but instead of coming directly to Ian, he strolled around the black tree, talking to the close walls of the doma. “If I just chose! As if the things we do in life are choice, and not destiny. But I think I know better, Ian. I think I’ve seen behind this little game of yours.”

  “I’m not playing any game, Volent. We fought together against Folam Voidfather, as my father fought side by side with Lord Halverdt to destroy the Reavers.” Ian shifted in his bindings, but they only pulled tighter. He could see movement in the far reaches of the doma out of the corner of his eye, but couldn’t tell what it was. “We stopped Tession. I don’t understand why you’ve… you’ve…”

  “I am what I am, Ian,” Volent snapped. He came around the tree, and back into Ian’s field of vision. Ian struggled against his bonds, but couldn’t move. “But you knew that. Knew it when you poured that corruption into me. Just another lord, using me as a tool for his own darkness.”

  “There was no other way! I had to—”

  “There is nothing you have to do, Ian. You just said that yourself.” Volent crossed the distance between them and stood in front of Ian. “We rode together at Houndhallow. We were never going to be friends, but we were becoming allies. And like everyone else, when you needed me for your own purposes, you used me and threw me away.”

  “I didn’t know what would happen, Volent. I swear to you, I just needed to get the poison out of this tree, to do whatever I could to foil Tession’s plan.”

  “And now you have, and look what it has cost me.” Volent gestured to his face, eerily beautiful and yet utterly broken. “I would rather be a monster than this. Do you know what I had to do to free myself from this face? To free the world from who I was? Do you have any idea?”

  “Volent, please—”

  “The Deadface, Ian. I forgot who I was, but now am reminded. It’s best you know as well.” Volent stood in front of Ian and raised his sword. “Know the name that will end you.”

  “I am not yours to kill,” Ian said. Volent paused, his dead eyes curious. “I have enemies enough, Volent. Among the pagans, in the houses of Suhdra, even in my own family. But I am not your enemy, and you are not mine, just as I am not your lord, nor you my servant.”

  “And yet you think to command me. To stay my blade.”

  “I’m not commanding you. I am reminding you of our bond, and of the enemies that we have faced. Sacombre used you, and Halverdt, and Cinder himself. But I have not. I will not.”

  “Then why did this happen? Didn’t you ask me to end this ritual; and to do that, didn’t you poison me with this darkness?”

  “We both know who you are. What you are. I didn’t make you anything worse than you already were. You can blame your face for your actions, or the demon that rode you all those years, or the poison you carry now. But we are what we do.”

  “Easy for a duke’s son to say,” Volent answered with a sneer.

  “No easier than it is for a monster to think he’s something else. Kill me if you must. But know that it is Henri Volent who holds the blade and spills the blood. No one else.”

  Volent stared at him for three long breaths, the anger and hate boiling in his eyes, though there was no emotion on his still, dead face. Finally, his shoulders slumped.

  “I am that man,” he said. “And I always will be.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that,” Ian said, relaxing slightly.

  Volent drew back and struck, a quick swing that came at Ian in a blur. Ian screamed, then fell to the ground. His bonds were cut, though the blade had nicked his face. Volent stared down at the blood.

  “You could use a scar,” he said, then wiped his blade and looked away.

  Ian scrambled frantically free of his bonds, wiping the blood from his face. His chest was seeping as well. He pulled open his shirt. The wound Folam Voidfather had given him was bleeding ash, but he felt no pain. He looked over at Volent.

  “Thanks for not killing me.”

  “I’ll thank you to forget it. And me.” Volent turned and marched toward the door. The guards were filtering back into the doma, staring in horror at the tree, and the bodies of the dead priests. But those who saw Volent’s face, and what he had become, showed the most fear of all.

  “Where are you going?” Ian called after him.

  “Away. Where lords cannot command, and gods cannot judge.”

  “But you can’t—”

  “My lord, riders at the gate!”

  Ian rushed outside. Guards were rushing to the gates, and the sound of distant horns and shuffling hooves reached Ian.

  He called up to the guardhouse, “What banner do they fly?”

  “The hound, my lord. It’s your sainted mother!”

  A smile broke across Ian’s face. “Volent, find my sister! She’ll want to—”

  But when he looked back, Volent was gone.

  * * *

  They searched the castle, but there was no sign of either Henri Volent or Frair Tession. Sorcha did not believe her son’s promise that Volent was redeemed, but neither did she trust her own eyes when she saw the tree growing in the courtyard. Ian’s explanations sounded like nonsense, even to him.

  “It’s been months since I was last in Houndhallow, and look what you’ve done to it. I did not want to come home to a ruin. And what about you? Last I heard of you, dear son, you were looking for Gwendolyn Adair. And you found her, yes?” Sorcha asked. They sat in the empty great hall, Ian warming his hands by the fire, his mother sitting casually in a light dress, as though it were the height of summer.

  “In a manner of
speaking,” Ian said. Again, he tried to explain what had happened at Houndhallow after his return with Elsa: how the pagans were tricked into attacking by the voidfather, and how the void priests betrayed them all. His wound, Master Tavvish’s ambush, the slaughter. Her eyes narrowed at the news of Tavvish’s death, but she said nothing. Ian was just finishing when the door banged open and Nessie came in, with Sir Clough close at hand.

  “Mother!” Nessie shouted. She ran across the room and threw herself into Sorcha’s arms, unfazed by her mother’s strange appearance. Sorcha buried her face in Nessie’s hair, breathing deep. After a few moments, Nessie pulled back and looked into her mother’s eyes. “I’ve not had a letter from you since you left to pull Father’s backside out of the fire.”

  “And you won’t get a letter from me, talking like that,” Sorcha said. “We’re at war, darling. That doesn’t mean we can talk like barbarians.”

  “I’m just repeating your words,” Nessie answered, unabashed. “And besides, I think I’ve grown enough to swear, if the situation warrants.”

  “All right, all right. A matter for another time. I’m glad to see you, darling.”

  “I’m glad to see you, too. Now if only Father were here.”

  “He will be, soon enough,” Sorcha said. Though she was hugging Nessie, she locked eyes with Ian. “If we have to drag him home kicking and screaming.”

  “Is that why you’ve come, Mother?” asked Ian. “To draw me back into Father’s war?”

  “You can stay here, if you prefer. Stay behind safe walls and wait for the war to come to you. But it will, Ian. It will. Make no mistake.”

  “I have never run from it,” Ian said. “But there is just as much a war here as anywhere else. You saw the tree—”

  “I was going to ask about that,” Sir Clough said sharply.

  “You have seen the tree in the courtyard,” Ian finished. “The void priests struck this very morning. If I hadn’t been here, it might have gone badly.”

  Clough looked put out at that. She turned to Sorcha. “What is the situation in the field? Are the forces of Houndhallow in need of our help?”