by Matthew Ward
Shaking off a drunken Immortal’s offer of plundered wine, Aeldran ascended the northwest tower. Here, at least, sobriety ruled, the guardian lunassera as cold and crisp as their shard-spears.
“May I speak with my sister?”
The women shared a glance. “Surrender your sword.”
Aeldran unbuckled his belt and handed it to the nearer handmaiden. The other unbarred the door and stepped aside.
The chamber was swamped in gloom, broken only by a shard of moonlight from a narrow window, the wooden frame and stained-glass sunrise far newer than the stone in which they sat. Aeldran’s eyes adjusted to a room bare of all but the meanest comfort.
The door closed. A dark shape moved across the window. “Have you come to free me?”
Aeldran hesitated. “The princessa considers the matter.”
She scratched at the stubble of her hair. “So she has stolen my brother, as well as my freedom.”
“Not that. Never that.”
“She’s bewitched you.”
His heart ached. “I admire her. As you once admired her. One of us should hold true to that, even as the other falls to pride.”
Diffuse moonlight gave shape to his sister’s scowl. To bound hands outstretched. “The window opens onto the cliff. The stones are old and worn. I know you have a dagger. Free my hands, and I’ll climb.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I’ll die in the valley. Broken bones bereft of a brother’s love.”
Aeldran stared, aghast. “You’d give yourself to the Raven out of spite?”
She glared back. “Only if you shirk duty to your elder.”
“Duty?” He shook his head, anger slipping into weariness. “I held my tongue as hubris overtook you. I offered support, even when you ignored my counsel. Even to duty, there is a limit.”
“I was right before. You are bewitched. Seduced by soft smile and silken hair.”
“Wielding my love for you as a weapon against me? That is our grandfather talking. How many more of your words have been his? You swore to be better. Instead, you’ve become Maggad’s heir, body, spirit and soul.” He shook his head, despairing at his own words. “My sister is already dead.”
Naradna slumped. “I cannot live or die at another’s whim. Not again. Set me free, and I’ll ask nothing more of you.”
Aeldran rubbed his brow to conceal pained expression. “The princessa’s ire is cooling. You need only wait.”
“She will never forgive me.”
“That again is our grandfather talking. He couldn’t recognise forgiveness in others for he’d none of his own. I forgive you. So will the princessa.”
“You don’t know that.”
He’d no proof to offer, only faith. And faith had never convinced Naradna of anything. “And you shouldn’t judge her by your own demons, Aelia.”
She flinched at the name long abandoned. Stared away into the dark. As ever guided by reckless pride, soured in the harsh tutelage of their upbringing. Aeldran scowled. For all his claims, he saw no limit to duty, not between blood. Naradna had made mistakes, but forcing her hand would only feed resentment. Coax forth the poison of their heritage until nothing of his sister remained.
With a sigh, he slid a dagger from concealment within his armoured sleeve and set it on the table. “Running is no answer. But it’s not for me to choose. Stay, or seek whatever escape you wish.”
Turning his back on sullen silence, Aeldran left the makeshift prison in search of wine. He was halfway across the courtyard when the mountainside shook to a booming, breathy grave-call.
The dolorous fanfare reverberated deep in Melanna’s troubled soul, banishing the tangle of decisions made and yet to come. Mist gathered to smoke at the gatehouse edge, the silver of a skull helm brilliant against writhing shadow. A black flame blazed to life about the blade of its sword.
Melanna’s blood slowed to an icy trickle as hollow eye sockets turned upon her. Ancient, instinctive fears woke to life. Icansae tales from Soraved assumed bleak significance. Revenants of Otherworld, set loose to the Tressian cause. The figure lunged and she dived beneath its sword. The strike of her shoulder on a battlement still stained with Tressian blood jarred sense out of stark terror.
Rolling to one knee, she swept her own sword free.
“Ashanael Brigantim!”
Her voice shook as she thrust, her blade biting deep. Sword and helm clanged on stone as the figure dissolved, the sound swallowed up by cries from the courtyard below. The anarchy of men assailed by the impossible. And above it all, the screech of circling ravens.
Shadow writhed beneath the fallen helm. Others gathered at the rampart’s edge.
Heart in her throat, Melanna took the stairs three at a time. “Rhaled! To me! Ashanael!”
No response came, though there were voices aplenty. Cursing. Shrieking. Dying. Close enough to touch, and yet impossibly far away through vapour soured by Otherworld’s mists. They twisted even Vrasdavora, the square-set Tressian walls become a clawed hand closing above her.
At the lower rampart, Melanna tripped on a corpse. An Icansae shieldsman, his throat ripped wide and his doublet torn bloody. Others lay close by, distorted by mist. Black fire rushed to claim her, silver leering close behind. Steel scraped. A revenant hissed to nothing and Melanna ran on, heart racing and spine prickling with the knowledge that other revenants followed close behind.
A dozen corpses slumped about a dimming fire, a Rhalesh Immortal smouldering in the ash. Three shieldsmen lay at the stairway’s foot, wounds behind and swords scabbarded. In the courtyard proper, a sea of dead lapping at stone cliffs. Still the screams rang out, the defiant mingling with the dying.
“Rhaled! To me!”
No one came. No one answered. But for the screams, Melanna would have thought herself alone, drawn into Otherworld for the Raven’s sport.
A circle of revenants bled out of the mists, swords levelled as they closed.
Melanna gripped her sword tight and gathered fading courage.
Light blazed. Mist recoiled before the sweet scent of spring blossom. Barely visible through the gateway, a funeral pyre crackled white. Men stood silhouetted against it, scarlet and green shoulder-to-shoulder. Revenants hissed and seethed where light yielded to darkness.
“Ashanal!”
Sera cast the last contents of her birchwood box onto the pyre and stepped to the circle’s edge. A shard-spear left her hand. Pierced, the revenant nearest the gateway shrilled and dissolved into shadow, breaking the circle.
The moon slipped behind a cloud. Melanna ran for the gap.
A revenant barred her path. A wild parry checked black flame, and she hurtled on.
Melanna’s boot snagged on a sightless corpse. She righted and twisted away as another revenant gathered out of the mists. The stroke meant for her skull instead scattered armoured scales about her shoulder. She spun, arm numbed by a blade cold as ice, terror reborn as the chill wormed outward from the bloodless wound.
Already off-balance, she stumbled. Shadow blotted out mist. Black flame crackled against a silver leer.
The northwest tower loomed. Or at least the jagged spire the mists had made of it. Screams rent the air, the drifting veil alive with darting shadow and black flame. The dead lay thicker with every frantic stride. Aeldran forged on, retracing steps lately taken, fear for his own life swamped by that for another’s.
A thrust scattered a revenant to writhing shadow, and then the tower door was in sight. Lunassera guards stood back to back, shard-spears held in challenge to the mists. A revenant’s empty helm lay on the stones nearby.
“Stay back!” said one.
“I will not leave my sister to die in a cage.” Aeldran let his sword-point dip and prayed they’d listen. The night had grown dark enough without further stain. “I beg you, do not doubt my resolve.”
The lunassera shared a glance. As one, they stepped aside.
Aeldran flung open the door.
“Naradna!”<
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The silence of drifting mist was his only answer. At the table, Aeldran’s hand closed about the remnant of a severed rope. Beyond, a broken window frame sat jagged and dark.
The revenant’s sword shuddered mid-sweep. Shadow dissolved into greenish-white. Helm and sword fell away. A hand dragged Melanna upright.
“Found a fight you can’t win, Saranal?”
Melanna blinked at her saviour – a woman in a filthy shirt and torn trews, her face alive with savage glee. “Naradna?”
The surviving revenants drew in. Darkness gathered beneath the helm of the one Naradna had stabbed. Her shove propelled Melanna towards the gatehouse. A breathless run, and they stood beneath the pyre, flanked by terrified faces and drawn swords. Revenants crowded close at the mists’ extent, their forms flowing closer as white flame flickered orange. Left and right along the roadway, pyres stood cold and dark, others blazed from white to amber in ailing refuge for the few score survivors sheltering beneath.
“I’ve no more duskhazel,” murmured Sera. “Once it burns through…”
“Then we run,” said a wide-eyed shieldsman. “Before it fades.”
Another nodded. “If the fires hold them, we might reach the rest of the army.”
“Assuming it’s still there,” said Melanna bleakly. “They might already be overrun. We fight.”
“We’ll die!”
Voices murmured agreement. Eyes darted east. Feet edged back. Too late, Melanna realised there was more scarlet than green huddled about the pyre. Too many men of Icansae who’d little reason to heed a Rhalesh princessa, warleader or no.
Naradna tucked her dagger into her boot and snatched up a corpse’s spear. “I had my chance to run. I stayed.” Her eyes tightened. “I am Naradna of Icansae, and I stand with the princessa. If men elect to flee while women fight, so be it.”
Expressions shifted, fear yielding to shock, and then to determination as Naradna’s words lent weight to rumour whispered about campfires. Whatever scorn the men of Icansae had poured upon her while drink flowed held no purchase beneath the pyre. Tradition leveraged as shame. The murmur died. Swords turned outwards. Logs spat and crackled like old leaves underfoot.
Melanna winced as sensation crawled back into a numbed arm. “How did you get free?”
“Your lunassera should have searched the room better.” Naradna’s stare dared to be gainsaid. “I found a dagger and slit my bonds. I’d be halfway into the valley by now, had I wanted.”
“That dagger?” Melanna glanced at the blade tucked into Naradna’s boot. At its serpent hilt. “Unusual to find an Icansae weapon in a Tressian fortress.”
“It’s of no danger to you.”
Melanna recognised the deeper message and nodded.
The fire flickered, the flames more orange than white.
“Stand firm!” she cried. “Stand together! Ashanael Brigantim!”
The pyres guttered and died. The road drowned in darkness. Mist rushed in.
The dry crackling noise survived the fires’ death, scratching to a crescendo over the revenants’ hisses and the startled cries of fearful soldiers. Brisk wind swept the roadway, bringing with it the scent of fresh sap and withered leaves; the mustiness of the forest floor and old blossoms. Melanna stood stock still, good hand about the numbed, and both tight about her sword. The threat of the revenants, so close a heartbeat before, now seemed distant, forgotten. In its place awoke a different sensation. An unfamiliar presence.
The revenants hissed. Not in threat, but alarm. New sounds echoed. The scrape of root on stone. The rustle of dry leaves. The wet rasp of swollen timber. And beneath it all, a whispering, crackling sound like the buzz of desiccated insects.
A crack in the clouds restored wan light to the roadway. Melanna glanced at Sera, her mask a grey gleam. “What is it?”
The handmaiden shook her head, eyes aghast and lips a pale slash.
“There!” said Naradna.
A gangling, indistinct shape. Soon as seen, it was gone. Melanna had the sense of others just beyond sight, marching in time with the scritching footsteps.
Those footsteps quickened. Monstrous shapes blurred against the mists. Uneven shoulders lowered. Shieldsmen shrank back towards the pyre. Naradna scowled and gripped her spear tighter.
The clouds parted. Silver light granted shape to a nearby shadow.
The creature was hunched and gangling all at once. Had it stood straight, it would have towered over any man Melanna had ever known. Its limbs were a tangle of roots and branches, woven into a mockery of ephemeral form, caked in moss and twisted straw, and woven with thorns. The head was a misshapen knot of briars, with a jagged, creaking maw and green eyes that blazed bright beneath a lopsided, gnarled brow.
With a crackling, wheezing hiss it pounced on a revenant. Woven branches flexed like muscle around the newcomer’s mouldered bones as it tore the spirit to scraps of inky darkness. Then the moon slipped behind cloud once more, and the creature was just another mist-wreathed shadow in a night overfull of them. A nightmare of fable and cautionary tale come to horrifying life.
“Blessed Goddess,” breathed Naradna. “That was a strawjack.”
The night erupted in a cacophony. The dull thwack of steel striking wood and the brittle rustle of trampled branches. The shrill cries of dying revenants. Sap hung sweet on the air, cloying and sickening.
Melanna’s fogged thoughts writhed between fear and disbelief. Strawjacks. Whispering Ones. Demons woken from Fellhallow’s ancient groves. She told herself it shouldn’t have mattered. She was Ashanal, chosen of the Goddess. She’d vanquished vranakin and survived Malatriant’s resurrection. But reason had little purchase in the darkness. It did little to still the tremor in her limbs.
The tumult’s fading was as swift as its onset. The horrible crackling, rustling sound faded to nothing, leaving a night silent of all save Melanna’s thumping heart and the hurried, febrile breaths of her companions.
When moonlight broke the clouds again, it touched on a roadway robbed of mist. Neither revenant nor strawjack graced the darkness – at least, none living. Silver masks lay strewn about, their wearers’ swords inert alongside. Here and there, split timber and mangled bones marked a strawjack’s demise. A lone figure stood hunched beneath Vrasdavora’s gatehouse, tattered robes twitching like branches in a breeze; the smooth visage of his mask tilted in curious mockery.
{{Be not afraid, she who is to be queen,}} Jack buzzed. {{There are powers in this world greater than death, and eternities more delightful.}}
Melanna swallowed to clear ashen throat. What should have felt like salvation instead had the sensation of a poacher’s snare drawing tight about her neck. Jack’s gaze burrowed deep, divesting armour and cloth, skin and bone, until her naked soul shivered helpless in his sight.
Flesh writhed. Disgust awoke tremulous bravado. “What do you want of me?”
{{Nothing your father has not already promised.}} Ragged folds shifted as Jack bowed, gangling arms spread wide. {{We will see one another again.}}
A shadow passed over the moon, and he was gone. Melanna sank to her knees, her flesh itching from within. Not even the sight of survivors emerging into the light, Aeldran among them, banished the horror from her heart. It wasn’t until Naradna found her voice that she’d some inkling as to why.
“Where are the bodies?” breathed Naradna. “Where are the dead?”
For of those the revenants had slain, there was no sign.
Forty-Three
Stars shone above sombre pines, the waning moon holding knightly court even as she faded. Woodsmoke mingled with salt air blown east from the distant sea. Welcome relief after months amid Tressia’s squalor, ample compensation for a night with no roof save the open sky. It awoke old memories of wolf’s-heads and conspiracy. They in turn reminded Josiri how much had changed, and how much had not.
Erashel fidgeted and stared into the campfire, arms looped about her knees. For all the hardships of her recent years, the Lady B
eral was markedly uncomfortable away from the city’s comforts. “You’re sure he passed this way?”
“Certain,” he replied, careful not to offer any quirk of expression she’d construe as amusement. “The signs are clear. Two travellers – one with an impressive stride – followed this trail a few hours back.”
“Where do you suppose he’s heading?”
“Indrig, I thought, avoiding the roads…”
“More’s the pity. There are taverns on the roads. Taverns and beds.”
“… but the further west the trail veers, the more likely it’s Kellevork or Trondæ.”
“A coastal fortress or a fisher village? That sounds like a man seeking a ship, which means he’s running.”
“I cannot sit idle while the Republic burns. Those aren’t a deserter’s words.”
“They are if he’s a liar.”
“Not Viktor.”
She shook her head. “He’s desperate if he’s putting faith in thrakkers.”
Josiri shrugged. “My father swore Thrakkians made firm friends, so long as they owed you something.”
“Mine said much the same, which is why he never trusted them.” She offered a wry smile and hugged her legs tighter. “Always the fate of Trelans and Berals to have opinions just similar enough for contradiction.”
“We’re doing better lately, you and I.”
Her smile adopted a little of the fire’s warmth. “You are sure it’s Viktor we’re following?”
“Tell me what you hear.”
She cocked her head. “The Dusk Wind in the branches. The waters of the stream.”
“Nothing more?”
“No.” Erashel’s eyes narrowed. “What’s your game?”
“No game. But these woods should be alive with birds. Nightjars, owls, kernhawks, starids. There’s nothing. Something passed this way and they’re hiding until its memory fades.”
“And you think that’s Viktor? Why?”
“Because the woods around Eskavord were always the same.” He stared into the fire. “For years, I thought the town’s industry had driven them off. But then I moved to the city, where larks greet every dawn and an owl’s shriek every moon.”