Breaking the Suun

by J. A. Culican

  Estrid stood over me, a hand held out to help me up.

  “Thanks.” I took her hand and let her pull me to my feet.

  The shadebigs were still coming. Those that had fallen were regenerating, and the others were circling, waiting for their comrades.

  “We should get back up the tree,” Estrid said, pushing me forward to where Erik and Arun were already waiting.

  They linked their fingers together and Estrid stepped into the cradle of their hands. With her other leg, she pushed off the ground and they heaved her up, her fingers grasping for the lowest branch. Grasping and missing.

  Estrid stumbled back to the ground. “I can’t reach it.”

  I stepped up. “Try me.”

  A shadebig had made a move and Estrid was forcing it back. She took off its arms with two blows of her sword and finally, its head. The body collapsed to the ground, but we all knew it wouldn’t stay there.

  “You should hurry,” Estrid urged.

  But there was no time to get into position. The shadebigs were closing in on us again, and this time had us surrounded.

  “Frida, climb on my shoulders,” Erik said, holding his sword in one hand and his shield in the other. “You can make it.”

  “I won’t leave you.” I couldn’t even believe he thought I would.

  “It’s the only—”

  “Shh!” Estrid cut off his protest with a sharp sound that quieted us. “What’s that sound?”

  There was a steady pounding I not only heard, but also felt in my feet. Almost like… “Galloping?” I squinted into the shadows of the forest. “Horses?”

  Arun cursed again. None of us had anything to add.

  But then there was something else—a light. And just as my brain processed what I was seeing, a woman on horseback burst out of the trees, brandishing a glowing sword over her head. With a battle cry, she barreled down on the shadebigs, her sword slicing cleanly through two of them at once. They fell, and this time, they didn’t stir. The four of us stood in open-mouthed wonder, watching her dispatch one after another. The shadebigs seemed just as astonished, barely fighting back. Even more impressive was she was doing this all from the back of one of the monster horses.

  I huddled close to my siblings and Arun, letting the woman work. The horse wove expertly around the trees while she cut down the shadebigs until finally, none were left standing. It was a massacre, a circle of mutilated bodies and blood-soaked ground, and we were in the middle of it. She stopped a few feet from us and surveyed her work. The glowing sword rested across one thigh.

  When it became evident no one else would, I took a step forward to speak. But before I could, she wheeled the horse on me and leveled the blade at my throat, though I was more concerned with the horse’s gnashing teeth inches from my face. Not one to back down, I bared my teeth at the beast. In response, it snorted smoke at me. I coughed and waved away the cloud.

  “Tell me who you are,” she demanded, her blue eyes blazing down the length of the sword. “Be warned that if I do not like the answer, you will meet the monster’s same fate.”

  Chapter 14

  The D’ahvol spent our entire lives either fighting or training to fight. Weapons became an extension of our limbs, a constant presence from the time we were old enough to walk. Erik, Estrid, and I were no exception. When I’d been born, Erik had carved an ax out of the wood from a river birch I’d carried around and even slept with for years, until my father gave me the ax I had now. It was my greatest treasure, the head made of iron and steel and the hilt carved with my name in Ahvoli runes. Erik and Estrid had chosen the more traditional swords, and I’d grown up with the ringing of their wooden practice swords as my constant lullaby.

  That was why, when this woman lowered her sword at me, I wasn’t afraid.

  I was astonished.

  She was small, with delicate features and thin arms beneath a lightweight dress. She was dressed in the orange robes of a priest. But she fought like a warrior and controlled the horse-beast as if she were ten times its size.

  “How did you do that?” I asked instead of answering the question she’d leveled at me.

  She looked at one of the bodies that had fallen nearest to us. It was cleaved in half from its shoulder to its waist, oozing red blood in a puddle that nearly reached my boot. “Everyone in this area knows that in order to kill a shadebig, one must have an iron sword that’s been dipped in the Lake of Light.”

  “Oh,” Estrid said, “of course,” though she certainly had no more idea what the woman was talking about than I did. When she saw me glaring at her, she smirked and subtly pinched my arm.

  I decided to ignore her. “And what, exactly, is the Lake of Light?” I’d never heard of it but that didn’t mean much, especially if it was as obscure as the Sisters of Light.

  The girl seemed to remember herself. She put the sword back to my throat and glowered, as if it were my fault she’d forgotten to kill me. “That’s not important. Who are you, and why are you here?”

  What could we say? I still didn’t know if she was friend or foe. She’d saved us from the shadebigs, but only to hold us at sword point. I brushed my hair back from my face, tucking it behind my ears as I considered my answer.

  If I hadn’t been watching her, I would have missed it. The furrowed brow as she caught sight of the star beside my eye. She pushed my chin with the sword, turning my head slightly to the left to get a better look. Then, more carefully, her voice low and careful, she asked again, “Who are you?”

  “We’ve been sent by Lunla,” I said. Then, I added on a whim, “We’re friends of Beru.” I didn’t know what made me say it—maybe the way she’d looked at the star and been more intrigued than curious—but it seemed to work.

  Her eyebrows came together, she opened her mouth, snapped it shut, and opened it again, sucking in a breath. But before she could ask whatever question she was formulating, there was a crash in the trees not far away. All our heads turned toward the sound, but nothing emerged.

  “It isn’t safe here.” The girl began to turn the horse with what seemed to be just a squeeze of her legs. “Follow me.” She turned and passed between two trees without looking back.

  We all stood and watched her, unmoving, barely even breathing.

  “Who is she?” Arun asked with maybe a little too much amazement in his voice.

  I looked away from him before I could roll my eyes. “Do we go?”

  Erik shrugged. “What choice do we have?”

  Estrid also watched the woman's retreating back. “If she's from around here, maybe she can help us find the Sisters of Light.”

  I guessed they were right. Getting back in the ship would put us right back at square one. And Arun looked worse, leaning against the tree as if barely able to stand without its support. I wondered about the Lake of Light, and if it perhaps was what he needed to chase away the darkness.

  Just as we were deciding, the woman glanced back over her shoulder at us. “Or you can stay and tangle with the next pack of shadebigs coming this way. They won't be pleased to see their friends torn to pieces.”

  None of us were too eager for that. I followed, Estrid behind me, and Erik bringing up the rear, Arun leaning on him heavily. The forest seemed to get larger in scale as we went, or we were shrinking. The trees became wider and taller. The underbrush had berries as big as my fist and leaves as big as my head. The horse-beast cut a confident path through the growing woods, and we followed, careful not to stray too far. If the trees were bigger, what did that mean for the animals?

  We did not walk long before the woman slowed, the rest of us stopping behind her.

  “What is it?” Estrid asked.

  “We're here.” The woman slid sideways off the horse, which stood docile and patient.

  I looked around. I'd expected a clearing, a garden, and a towering stone temple like Lunla’s. But there was nothing here. Just more giant trees and the same unsettling stillness. I put my hand on the trunk of the tree beside m
e. I barely came up past where its roots met its base. It was enormous, big enough around I assumed this must be what it was like to be a bug.

  The woman shouldered past me and approached what I hadn’t seen before—a door at the base of the tree, not concealed, necessarily, but barely visible, made of the bark of the tree with a small groove for a handle. I was relieved to see it was of a normal size. She put her hand to the door and it pulsed with light so briefly I would have missed it if I’d blinked. Then she pulled on the handle and it opened outward.

  “This way,” she said, disappearing inside. The horse-beast followed her, barely fitting through the opening.

  Not one to be outdone by the animal, I went next. But I’d been wholly unprepared for what waited for us on the other side.

  I’d expected a crude hideaway inside a hollowed-out tree, but that was not what I got. We were standing inside a temple almost identical to Lunla’s, though more jewel-toned than gold. The ceilings were high overhead, held up by wooden columns which had been carved to look like different Bruhier monsters in all their terrifying glory and polished to a high shine. The same pews stretched ahead in two rows, but instead of stone benches, these seemed to be molded out of the wood of the tree and growing right out of the floor.

  “Wow,” Estrid muttered.

  She wasn’t wrong.

  Arun dropped into one of the pews, which creaked under his weight.

  The woman stopped a few yards away and turned, holding her arms out wide. “Welcome,” she said proudly, “to the Temple of Light.”

  Chapter 15

  “Tell me about your connection to Beru Halsted.”

  I hadn’t even known that was his surname, but I didn’t let the surprise show on my face. Instead, I dropped my eyes to the bowl in front of me while I considered my answer.

  We were gathered around a large wooden dining table that, just like the benches, was a part of the tree itself. The priest, who had introduced herself as Ravyn, had to have tremendous elemental magic to be able to maintain this place, even if she wasn’t the one who had created it. It was possible there was someone else here who had earth magic, but we hadn’t seen anyone else since we’d walked inside. It was a far cry from Lunla’s temple, which had priests and priests-in-training in every room. I supposed it wasn’t in a very desirable location, but I couldn’t imagine her being here alone.

  Ravyn had even been the one to serve us our meal, a thin stew with more root vegetables than meat. It made Gerves’s special stew he always made from the previous day’s leftovers look good, but we were all eating happily, none of us picky eaters.

  “We met Beru outside of Barepost,” I said finally, not sure what part of the story to give her.

  “Here, on Bruhier? How is that possible? He is supposed to be…”

  “Imprisoned in the Barren Wastes? A dreamwalker broke him out. A girl called Aria. who was traveling with him.”

  Ravyn nodded, her eyes flicking from side to side before landing back on me. “Does that have anything to do with rumors of the ur’gels attacking the area?”

  “They’re not just rumors,” Estrid interjected. She’d nearly cleaned her bowl and was wiping the sides with a slice of soft bread. “We’ve fought them ourselves. They’re looking for her.” She pointed the bread at me accusingly.

  “Wait a minute,” I started, but Ravyn jumped in.

  “Because you bear the mark the Creator bestowed on Onen Suun.”

  I nodded, noting she had not said I was his heir, only that I bore his mark. “When she released Beru from the prison, she created a crack in the spell that is growing, releasing more and more of the darkness back into the world. Beru thought that I was some sort of key to keeping the prison closed.”

  “And he told you to come to the Valley of the Horses?”

  “No,” I corrected her, “Lunla did. There was an ur’gel attack on her temple and Arun saved her life.” I gestured at the elf, who was staring down into his bowl. He wasn’t eating and apparently not listening either, because he didn’t glance up. “In exchange, she gave us this one hint: to seek the Sisters of Light, in the Valley of the Horses.”

  “She did not accompany you?” Ravyn asked, her own bowl of stew untouched.

  I took a spoonful of stew and swallowed before answering. “No. She stayed behind. We left her a couple of our younger traveling companions.”

  “And Savarah,” Erik said almost longingly. I wanted to launch the rest of my bowl across the table at him, but Ravyn’s reaction stilled my hand.

  Her head whipped toward my brother, her stare intense. “What name did you say?”

  “Savarah,” he repeated.

  “Tell me she has not also been released.”

  “Released from what?” Erik asked cluelessly.

  But I saw immediately what she was saying, and everything clicked into place. Savarah wasn’t just manipulative and cruel, she was evil. Evil enough that Onen Suun had locked her away in an eternal prison with the Dark One and all his minions.

  “Who was she?” I asked.

  Across the table, Estrid leaned over to whisper in Erik’s ear, likely filling him in on what he was still too blind to see for himself. Savarah had really done a number on our brother.

  Ravyn linked her fingers together and tapped them against her chin before beginning. “Beru Halsted had once been one of Onen Suun’s finest and most trusted lieutenants. To Onen Suun’s despair, he was thought to be killed in one of the most horrific battles of the Dark War, just a few days before Onen Suun sacrificed himself and the high dragons in order to create the prison in which Dag’draath now resides.”

  “But he wasn’t dead,” Estrid chimed in.

  “He wasn’t dead. He’d been captured, and because he’d been with Dag’draath’s troops when the walls went up, he was trapped there as well, and so were Dag’draath’s lieutenants. Of them, Savarah was perhaps his most trusted.”

  “Why?” I asked breathlessly. I felt validated and couldn’t wait to gloat to Erik and Estrid later that all my suspicions about Savarah had been right after all. Maybe it wouldn’t kill them to listen to me every now and then. Maybe, just maybe, it would save their lives.

  “Because she proved her loyalty to him by betraying Onen Suun, although, to be fair, Onen Suun had betrayed her first.”

  “You mean she loved him?”

  “She wanted him. Whether or not it was love is not for me to judge. But when he did not return her affection, she hurt him in the worst way she knew how.”

  “By going to the dark side.”

  Ravyn nodded. “By loving his enemy and using her powers for evil.”

  “Her powers?” Erik leaned forward.

  “She’s an empath, with the power to influence the moods of those around her. You can see how that would have been helpful in battle.”

  Sure. Send in one person to convince the other side that they don’t want to fight and save thousands of lives. But send in one person to stir things up, to brew anger and fuel grudges, and it would be bloodshed and chaos. The kind of chaos the Dark War had thrived on. It also explained why everyone around her was always at odds. Why my siblings and I hadn’t been getting along ever since she arrived in Barepost with Tsarra Trisfina.

  Ravyn looked at each of us in turn, her solemn gaze lingering lastly on Erik. “Heed my warning: stay away from Savarah. She is one of Dag’draath’s greatest weapons.”

  Arun, who had been unusually quiet through the whole conversation, gave a low moan.

  “Arun?” I leaned forward to try to look at his face.

  When he turned toward me, his eyes were as black as the amulet around his neck, and he lunged, teeth bared.

  Chapter 16

  Arun’s hands wrapped around my neck and the momentum propelled us both backward out of our chairs. We crashed to the floor, wood splintering beneath us. He gnashed his teeth just inches from my face, but I held him back with my arms against his chest.

  “Arun, stop,” I choked out.
>
  But it wasn’t Arun above me. It was someone else—something else. And whatever it was, it wasn’t listening to me.

  I kicked and bucked my hips, but he was deadweight, pressing me against the wooden floor. His hands pressed tighter against my windpipe. There was the scraping of chairs and raised voices, but it all grew increasingly faint, as if Arun and I had left the world behind. It was just the two of us and whatever darkness occupied his broken mind.

  Then, there was a strange cracking sound, like splitting wood, and suddenly I could breathe again. Arun dangled over me, his arms pinned to his side by winding branches. Behind him, an ancient face made of peeling white and brown tree bark leered at me.

  I blinked, scrambled back, and fumbled for the ax at my waist. But before I could draw it, Ravyn put herself between me and the tree monster.

  “Do not draw your weapon,” she said. “Eoghan is my servant.”

  So, she wasn’t here alone after all.

  Estrid appeared behind me and pulled me to my feet, but I didn’t take my eyes off the tree monster. It was almost exactly like the one we had fought on the cliffs above Barepost, though maybe a bit smaller. And not trying to kill us.

  “What is he?” Erik asked. He was the only one of us with the nerve to approach Eoghan, and he stood below him now, running a hand along the bark of what seemed to be a leg. Arun dangled placidly a few feet above Erik’s head, all the fight seeming to have left him. Erik ignored him.

  “He’s a trehand, one of the most ancient beings on this island.” Ravyn looked up at her servant with what could only be admiration. “They are typically peaceful creatures that are not commonly seen, though they are always around us. They will sleep for centuries until called to awaken.”

  It was strange for me to see this creature as more than a monster. “Why is Eoghan awake?” I asked.

  Ravyn smiled. “Eoghan is a curious trehand. He and a few others have been my companions since I arrived at the temple. I believe the light sent them to me, to keep me company in what would otherwise be a lonely existence. It likely helps I am a powerful earth elemental.”