by Adam Golden
She saw others look to her. At the chamber’s great doors, the file of guardsmen who’d escorted Jogah to this place were fighting a holding action, cutting down snaking vines and tendrils as others poured out of the room. She saw the File Leader’s eyes as she fell, saw him turn, and she knew his mind. She knew what she’d have done in his place.
“No,” she screamed at him as he opened his mouth to call his file to order. “Get them out. Flee!”
The File Leader, a fox-kin Wild whose name she didn’t know, shook his smoky vulpine head stubbornly.
‘Damned Wild stubbornness . . .’ Niamh swore unkindly inside herself and pulled together all of the Light she could wring from the Aether. She compressed and compacted Light, drawing more and pressing it tighter until the pressure in her chest felt as though it would split her open. The fox-shaped guardsman and his file were advancing, fighting their way back into the room. They couldn’t, she wouldn’t allow it.
“Daiu!” she screamed with a force that brought the file leader up short. “Go.”
The pressurized wave of Light ripped from the ancient Pyski and sheared into the ceiling of the chamber where she’d directed it. The room trembled, the mammoth fluted pillars which stood around the edge of the massive ovoid chamber wavered; some fell as the dome buckled. A wave of alabaster stone and marble crashed to the ground and, when the dust cleared, the doorway was buried behind a mountain of rubble.
Naimh was spent, could barely raise her head to look. She hoped the stubborn Wild and his file had the sense to flee, most of the others had gotten out. She’d done what she had to . . . hadn’t she? The shadows dominated the wreckage of the room now, slinking toward her like hungry predators. She couldn’t do anything. Tendrils now held both of her legs and the inky clinging sludge of shadow was crawling up her body as it dragged her closer to the center of the room.
‘Jogah,’ she panted in her mind. ‘Jogah please.’ She could see him now, still where he’d been before the insanity erupted.
Stock still, his every muscle looked rock-hard with tension, and a bushel of the slimy tentacle shadows writhed from the yawning rictus of his scream. Others snaked from his fingertips and his eye sockets, lashing about wildly. Niamh focused on the boy, on Jogah—he didn’t seem to be directing any of it. He wasn’t controlling it. He was just a host.
The realization made the old Pyski glad somehow, but she didn’t know if it mattered. Maybe separating the host from the parasite would kill it. Maybe, but she had nothing left. She couldn’t free him. Could she reach him? The slow drag toward the shadow creature’s core continued.
She was almost close enough to touch her former ward now. “Jogah,” she gated. The shadows were pressing hard on her chest and talking was difficult.
The shadow stuff spasmed, clutching tightly around her and climbing over her with more frenzy.
‘His name,’ she realized, spluttering, that was the trigger that had launched this madness. Carefully. She would have to approach this very carefully indeed.
“Have you forgotten your duty, Daiu?” she asked, each word scraping through her insides like the teeth of a rasp. The sludge of midnight slid up over her collarbone and constricted her throat even further. “Do . . . you not feel the pull?” she croaked. “Does the Spril’fe hold no sway? What . . . ?” she asked in a bare whisper as the clinging dark reached her jaw line. “What of Meical?”
The darkness recoiled as if from a blow. The ooze that nearly covered her shuddered and slid back to the hollow at her throat. “What of your charge, Gaurdian?” she tried to roar. It came out a strangled hiss. “Have you abandoned Meical as you have abandoned the Light?”
Existence spun end over end, and Niamh pinwheeled wildly through the air. She struck something hard and crumpled. Somehow her oxygen-starved brain held on to shreds of consciousness. She tried to shake her head and hot needles of agony burrowed into her brain. What? What had happened? Pressing down on the rubble-strewn floor with all the strength in her battered form, she managed to lift her head and shoulders a few inches.
The room was a devastated ruin, more rubble pile than chamber, but the coils of obsidian malice were gone and sunlight pooled on the floor from the rents in the ceiling. Not a shadow could be seen anywhere. They were gone. He was gone. Niamh dragged herself inch by inch to the mountain of rubble before what had been the room’s entrance. She pulled and jostled until she was seated against the stone, and once she was positioned, she let the tide of sobbing despair that had been dammed inside her loose. She thrashed about weakly, howling with the anguish and terror she’d held at bay during the fight. Her shining student . . . What had been done to him? Who could have . . . ? How . . . ? Those fractured thoughts cut off as another crashed home. Meical. Oh, dear Light, what would happen when Jogah reached the boy? When he saw? What would he do then?
Chapter 9
He hit the ground hard, bounced, and tumbled end over end. ‘Get up. Go. Hurry. Go!’ the fractured voice in his head panted. They’d be coming. Hunting him.
Who was coming? Why would they be hunting him? He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember, but the certainty pulsed through him; he needed to run and keep running. Bwgan dragged himself to his feet and staggered away from the impact sight, losing himself in the thick tangle of trees as quickly as he could.
This place was a riot of life and color, choked with trees, plants and flowers of so many and descriptions that looking at them all made Bwgan dizzy.
‘Jungle.’
The word floated up from somewhere in his confused, clouded mind. That was what you called a place like this. Something about it reminded him of Duinn, which was mad. This was nothing like that empty wasteland. Duinn was dead, a corpse stripped clean and left to molder, whereas this place was an explosion of life everywhere he looked. He could feel it all around him, watching, moving, breathing, pressing on him. That was it, they both had that sense of weight closing around him. They were two sides of the same coin, one packed with life, the other utterly devoid of it, and both oppressive in the completeness of what they were.
The other place hadn’t been like that. The place where he’d found himself after he’d escaped Maeve, where the creatures from the white city captured him, that place felt different . . . lighter somehow.
Behind him something rustled through the brush. Bwgan crouched low and froze. Were those Light creatures coming? Could they find him even amid this muddle of growth? He moved as silently as he could manage, put his back to the massive bole of a tree, and put his face in his hands. He could feel the ragged ridges of the scar tissue on his cheeks against his palms. Why was it always like this? Nothing made any sense. Nothing ever made any sense. Frustrated tears leaked from his eyes and he dashed them away. Everything was so fractured, so confused.
He remembered the white room, the sea of staring faces, the lady . . . the one with the haunting purple eyes. She’d been speaking to him. She said . . . what? She’d asked him something and then . . . the name. Bwgan felt a chill down his spine. She’d used that name, the one Ferdoragh had used to fool him. She’d called him that name. And then nothing, a confusion of blackness and shadowy half-formed images. His hands clenched, dragging at the confusion of scars on his face.
‘Remember!’ he cursed at himself as he tried to reach deeper. There was pain. Of course there was. There was always pain, but there was more . . . something else, something hungry. Something familiar. His mind skittered away from that; whatever it was he couldn’t seem to focus on it. He wanted to, but it kept sliding away, like trying to get a grip on oil.
When he’d come back to himself he was hurtling through the sky and the ground was rushing up to meet him. Why did this happen always to him? What had he done? What was he doing now? And why couldn’t he remember? Why couldn’t he ever remember?
Despair hardened into anger as he heard whatever was behind him grow closer. That old woman had known something. These shining things knew something about him. Why else would they have cap
tured him? Why would they be hunting him now? Bwgan pushed himself off the tree trunk and scanned the area around him. He’d sworn to himself that the running was over. How quickly he’d forgotten. No more running. Let someone else run from him, let them fear him.
* * *
The plates of Pwyll’s armor rattled like the clang of signal bells. His palms were sweaty inside his gauntlets, and the tip of his spear faltered constantly as his whole body trembled with fear. What was he doing out here? He hated the Brocéliande Wood at the best of times. It might never grow as dark as true night in a mortal woodland, but it was always dim and wet and full of creeping, crawling things. It was no place for him. He wasn’t a warrior or a hero. He wasn’t that strong or particularly brave. He played the dulcimer. He liked puzzles. His Familiar was a toddler for Light’s sake, and a toddler of no particular interest to anyone, save the tyke’s parents and himself of course. She certainly was no Focus, and he was no Guardian. He couldn’t even shift into a set of armor that didn’t rattle as if he were hung with pots.
What was he doing out in this godforsaken rainforest hunting a monster that had leveled a building and nearly killed Naimh herself? Fianna. He was here because Fianna had convinced him that a stint in the Home Guard would be good for him. Not that it had taken much convincing, Pwyll admitted with a blush that made his helmet feel like a furnace. He’d follow Fianna off a cliff and never notice the fall. He still wasn’t sure why the sultry jaguar-kin Wild had chosen him as her mate, cat-kin always mated with fighters, and usually with other Wilds. Fianna wouldn’t say, she just smiled that toothy feline grin of hers whenever he asked. But whatever her reasons, he considered it the best luck of his short, unremarkable life.
She was probably in heaven right then, skulking through this tangle of nonsense, prowling about on sleek silent paws, hunting a dangerous spriggan fugitive. Pwyll shuddered. He hoped she was alright. He hoped she was close. He always felt safer with Fianna nearby.
He was being foolish, and he knew it. There were four full files of the Guard searching the area around Aos Si. More than fifty Pyski filled these woods, including every hunting Wild that could be located. The spriggan had probably fled anyway. Why would it stay?
“To kill more Pyski,” Pwyll whispered, answering his own question. Something creaked, and the terrified guardsman leapt and spun in time to see some rodent or other scamper across a gnarled tree limb and leap to another.
“Oh, well done Pwyll, well done indeed,” he said to himself with a quavering bark of nervous laughter. “Fainting at every passing squirrel. You great silly . . .” He reversed his spear and drove the tip into the soft loamy earth at his feet, shifted his helmet back into the Aether, and mopped the sweat from his brow with a Light-formed handkerchief. “Honestly,” he muttered, “of all the nonsense—”
A rustling crash from the canopy brought his head up. “Damned squirrels,” he muttered. The irritated curse turned to a high shriek as something much bigger and darker than a squirrel streaked down at him like a falling boulder and drove him to the ground.
Pwyll’s lunch fountained up out of him, spraying his face, neck, and chest with thick warm vomit. His head spun. The Brocéliande spun, and the monster spun. The monster. The Spriggan was there. It was sitting on his chest! Eyes like twin pits of unbroken black stared from a face seemingly made of scars. Pwyll’s whole body trembled. He couldn’t get enough air to scream. Dear Light, how he wanted to scream, to thrash, to find any way to flee. But he couldn’t move, or he couldn’t make himself try to move. He was frozen.
It was true, there was a Spriggan in Aos Si, an actual Dark Fae. Of course it was true. He’d known that, but to see it, to be touched by it . . . It’s touching me! A wave of frenzied revulsion swept through him, igniting a set of violent spasms that arched the guardsman’s back and nearly threw the demon. Something animal rose in Pwyll, something too mindless to be afraid. The Gaurdsman jerked and twisted with all the terror-born strength he could muster. He had to get free. His heels drummed and scraped for purchase while he flailed arms that felt heavy as lead in an attempt to fight the thing off. For an instant, he thought he might actually do it. Maybe . . . A stone-hard smack across his jaw snapped his head sideways and a grip like a vise clamped down around his throat.
“Stop.” The word came out in a grated, threatening hiss, and it froze Pwyll as completely as if he’d been turned to stone. It could speak? It spoke Sidhe?
It’s so . . . small. The realization rose from somewhere behind the dread, and Pwyll latched on to it desperately. He must be in shock. That was something that happened when a person was terrified beyond belief, wasn’t it? He thought it was. Fear wriggled in his guts like a nest of snakes, but it felt muffled, as though he were watching this happen to someone else. This strange detachment showed him something he’d missed. Pwyll saw how slight the thing atop him was. In fact, the weight resting on him wasn’t much of anything at all. Certainly not crushing. This . . . well, it didn’t look like a building-leveling threat to all Aos Si at all. He’d imagined the great spriggan threat as some monstrous creature, a dragon or the like. This creature could have passed for Pyski, though a Pyski stitched together from gnarled twigs, tatters of slug-pale flesh, and wisps of dark cobweb thin hair.
“W . . . what . . . are . . .” he stammered.
The hand around his throat clamped tightly and the aborted question leaked out as a desperate wheeze. “Tell me what you know!” The words were rough and delivered in a rush, as though the creature were unpracticed at speech.
Pwyll opened his mouth to respond and closed it again; he tried again but nothing came out. What could he say?
“Tell me!” The iron grip at his throat lifted Pwyll’s head off the ground and slammed it back down “About . . . me! Why . . . you hunt me?”
Pwyll’s vision swam. The monster blurred and refocused sickeningly as he tried to refocus his eyes. “You attacked . . . destroyed the rotunda . . . killed . . .”
“YOU TOOK ME!” the monster roared, pulling Pwyll up close to its hideous face. “Tell me why! Tell me about . . .” The creature stopped, and its focus slid away from Pwyll.
The guardsman slid back to the ground and pulled a series of slow shuddering breaths through his bruised throat. What was going on here? This thing was wild, violent, but it also seemed confused. Desperate, it seems desperate, maybe . . . frightened?’
“Li . . . listen friend,” Pwyll ventured in a high quavering voice that was immediately closed off by a hard squeeze of his throat.
“Tell me,” the monster grated, leaning in close, those black unblinking eyes only an inch from his own “About . . . Jogah”
Pwyll blinked, his mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. ‘Jogah? The Ulster Guardian? The one who . . . why would it want to know . . .?
A chesty cough of a roar ripped through the noise of Brocéliande Wood, and Pwyll gasped in recognition. ‘Fianna!’ He opened his mouth to cry out to her. A dappled blur of smoky sapphire and black streaked out of the tree cover and slammed into the Spriggan. She was here, she’d come to save him!
It took Pwyll a moment to realize that he was free. The demon’s weight was really gone. He could hear his mate and the monster scuffling somewhere close. A chorus of shuffling, scraping, and grunting sounds mixed with Fianna’s short sharp growls filled the High guardsman’s ears.
He rolled over on his stomach and tried to pull himself up on shaky arms. Fianna yipped a high, whimpering sound and a spike of alarm brought his head up. She was hurt! Pwyll scrambled to his feet. What could he do? Should he throw himself into the melee? Would that help or hinder his lover’s efforts to survive? He didn’t know! His eyes cast about for something . . . anything.
His spear! He’d put it . . . Where? His eyes latched onto the weapon lying on the ground, knocked over in the tussle between the ethereal jungle cat and the spritely demon-thing. The shaft was broken, but some remained, and the head was sharp. Pwyll dove for the weapon, rolled in a movement he
’d seen in training but never actually managed before, and came up crouching with the weapon in front of him.
“FIANNA!” he yelled in warning, and plunged the weapon into the melee, praying that he’d hit his mark.
* * *
The strange spirit-cat savaged him with teeth and claws sharp as chipped obsidian. The pain rolled off of Bwgan like rain off of waxed wool. What was pain to him? He was so close! The frightened one knew something. Bwgan knew he did. He’d seen recognition when he’d used that name. A few moments more. He’d only need a few seconds! Rage swelled within him and he drove a hard fist into the animal’s face.
He kicked and felt the great cat recoil. He was strong. Stronger than he’d been before.
‘How?’
He didn’t know and didn’t have time to consider. The cat’s great claws ripped at his chest, its jaws snapping near his face. Bwgan drove a hammer blow down hard on the lightning quick limb and gloried at the sharp bark of agony as the limb snapped. The animal might look ghostly, but there was substance enough for pain, and if he could hurt it he could kill it.
“FIANNA!”
He didn’t know what the word meant, but Bwgan knew desperation when he heard it. He turned, but too slowly. The silvery point of the spearhead plunged toward his face, and he couldn’t free himself from the tangle in time. The hungry dark surged inside him as it had in the white room, but this time he felt it coming. And he welcomed it.
The weapon froze, caught in the inky black miasma that sprung up about Bwgan. The rabid animal beneath him went limp. Tendrils of tar-black darkness rose out of him, snapping and flailing like the tentacles of some great sea monster. They clung to the man-shaped creature and to the cat-thing. Both hung limp in their grasp, eyes wide and staring, and Bwgan started as he realized he could feel them. Waves of sensation and experience that he instinctively knew were theirs crashed into Bwgans’s mind. He felt their lives, saw their love, their desperate need to save each other, and . . . He recoiled as though he’d been slapped. He saw himself as they saw him.