by Adam Golden
Rhiannon reached for the Light, desperate. Her banshee had no form, but the Light needed no form to grasp. If she could lash the ghost’s spectral body, perhaps she could reel her in like a fish on a line. Rhiannon cast her will out toward the Aether and felt a violent shock as nothing came back. The Light didn’t come. There was no Light here, no Aether, nothing.
Gruaidh help me!
Caoin pleaded, and Rhiannon could do nothing but watch from behind tear-blinded eyes as the apparition faded into the bluster of gray murk.
Gruaidh . . .
A flood of images slammed into Rhiannon as the ghost woman faded to nothing, but a tangle of massive twisting trees knotted together, a gray clearing dominated by a dilapidated stone well, and two figures, maybe women, huddled in conversation and obscured by shadow. What did it mean? How would it help her find her friend? Rhiannon didn’t know. She couldn’t concentrate with the incessant tapping. Where was that coming from?
Tap, tap, tap. There was nothing around her, just swirling gray emptiness wherever she looked and yet . . . tap, tap, tap.
Rhiannon surged upward, fully awake and panting wildly, her face wet with panic sweat and floods of fresh tears.
Caoin! What had happened to Caoin?
She bounded to her feet and crossed the room in a pair of long strides, tearing the door open and nearly bowling over a tiny Fae in Maiden silver. The young Brownie reared backward in shocked horror, eyes wide as saucers at the fuming wild-eyed Pyski that had all but run her down.
“Move!” Rhiannon barked, and the Brownie girl jumped.
“Pardon . . . uh . . . Guardian, you are wanted,” the little novice squeaked, drawing back but staying in front of Rhiannon.
“I have something I need to do,” the Pyski said, wrenching impatiently at her twisted clothing. “Are you going to get out of my way?” the Guardian demanded.
“Um . . . apologies, but no?” the soft-spoken youngling said in a squeak, and then as though hearing her own words for the first time the little creature stammered quickly to explain. “You see, the Prioress, she said to tell you . . . well, that is—”
“What?” Rhiannon demanded, doing her best to control the urge to bowl over the little Fae and rush out after Caoin. “Speak! My friend is in danger. Spit it out or get out of my way!”
The diminutive little Fae cringed backward but steadied herself, drew in a breath and said, “The Prioress said to tell you that they think they’ve found it.”
“What?” Rhiannon asked, taken aback. “They found it? Found what?”
“Forgiveness Lady, I know no more. I was told only to bring you quickly, that there was no time to lose.” The Brownie turned to lead Rhiannon back to the Prioress’s study and paused when Rhiannon didn’t move. “Are you coming, Guardian?”
The Pyski felt rooted to the floor. What was she to do? They could have the answers. Had they deciphered whatever magic the Bwgan hoped to work? Or pierced the mad seer’s lunacy and discovered where she could find the Bough? What did ‘there is no time to lose’ mean? She had to go after Caoin . . . didn’t she?
But there is so much at stake. The greater good.
She’d said those words so often, used them to justify so much, but they had never felt so hollow. Caoin had been her ally, her companion, her friend, the only real friend she’d ever had. But how could she turn away from her mission? From the entire purpose of her life? Eldest Niamh’s words to the last Grand Court came back to her. ‘Let us gather everything we have and deliver one swift decisive blow.’ They’d done their part, sacrificed so much so that she could be made. She had a duty, a purpose. She was their legacy, a weapon forged for that single devastating thrust.
‘But I am more than that, aren’t I?’
Caoin always treated her as though she was, approached her with kindness, compassion and respect, like a person, like a friend.
“There is a place,” she said to the Brownie, who was all but bouncing on her toes with agitation to be about the task she’d been assigned. “A wood, all twisted trunks and gnarled roots grown into a great snarl—”
“The Edgewood, on the outskirts of the western orchards,” the Brownie answered after a moment’s consideration, and with a bit of a shudder.
“How far?” Rhiannon demanded.
“A half day’s hard hiking at least, but the Edgewood is spooky. Haunted. Besides, it’s off limits.”
“Not to me,” Rhiannon said as she pulled Light from the Aether and began to change shape. “Tell the Prioress that a pressing responsibility required my immediate attention and tell her that I hope we’ll have the chance to talk again.”
The young novice nodded, stunned, as a dragonfly of brilliant white-blue light shot away from her at incredible speed.
Chapter 20
The Edgewood was a shock after miles and miles of neatly spaced and carefully tended apple trees. All signs of cultivation ceased abruptly, as though nature had reared up in all its wild, chaotic fury and claimed the place. It was more a gigantic thicket than a proper wood, a mile-wide snarl of gnarled limbs and sharp-thorned briars braided into a forbidding tangle that could have hidden anything. Rhiannon couldn’t tell where one tree ended and the next begun as roots and branches entwined in a never-ending network of knots. She saw a few places where a single human might squeeze in but not many larger than that. The Edgewood was hard to enter, hard to leave, and that felt by design.
There was a feeling about this place, a wrongness. There was life here, she could feel it all around her, but there was also a sort of numbness. There was no growth that she could see, no leaves on the branches, not even buds, no sprig of grass, and not a creature anywhere. It was as though the Edgewood had strangled or driven away all other life, and now held its breath, frozen, a predator before the pounce. It reminded her, unwelcomely, of Dewi’s Marbh Bog, though this place didn’t have the same not-quite-sentient malevolence. Still, there was something here, something strong and decidedly unwelcoming of strangers.
There were signs of an attempt to tame the great tangle. Rhiannon had passed high above the ruins of an abandoned timber camp on its outer edge. Half-constructed shelters, tools scattered around abandoned saw pits and a litter of half-buried, moldering personal effects told the tale of a place left in haste and untouched for long years.
Some of the outer boles were scarred by tool marks and other signs of chopping. Whole swaths were black with char where someone had tried to clear the land with fire. By the number of rusted iron axe-heads, saws, and shovels she’d found littered on the ground and half buried in places, those efforts had failed and long since been abandoned. The Pyski wondered if those intrepid foresters had gone away willingly to seek other places to ply their trade, or if the Edgewood had exacted a higher price than a camp and some tools for their attempt to defile it.
Rhiannon zipped into a narrow crack between two trunks and flung herself at full speed toward the center of the growth. That’s where she’d find it—whatever it was. This whole place had the feeling of a gigantic spider’s web, something made to wait and snare the unwary.
Like Caoin. Something in here had snagged the Banshee’s spectral form, and she’d been more than frightened. The vision Rhiannon saw was one of desperation and pure terror.
I’m coming. She pushed the thought outward with her whole will. Maybe the old washerwoman would hear, maybe—
Something whistled past Rhiannon’s head and hit one of the trunks behind with a hard, dull thunk. A dart? An arrow? The Pyski dropped, tucking herself into a ball as she turned over on herself. Her gossamer wings beat furiously as she flattened herself out into a rocketing dive toward the ground. A dark blur flashed before her eyes and Rhiannon rolled, pulling up and to her right.
She looped around a twist of thick root and winced as something struck it hard where she’d been a blink before. Something whistled behind and Rhiannon zigzagged blindly. A second and third missile smacked into trunks near her.
She was surrounded!
She couldn’t see even one of her attackers in the murky confusion of the wood, and its strange pulse of life hid any sense of them. The Guardian flew as randomly and erratically as she could, making sure she kept moving. She reached toward the Aether, found the Light, and let out a breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding.
The Edgewood filtered the Light as effectively as it screened simple sunlight, letting in only isolated ribbons of each. Rhiannon soaked up those solitary motes of vitality greedily, weaving them into showers of white-hot sparks that burst into being around her. They were blinding and made the complex maneuvering through the trunks a tricky endeavor, but the waves of sparks made a marvelous screen against the archers’ weapons.
After one flare Rhiannon heard a strangled cry of pain.
Got one!
The press of growth gave out suddenly and Rhiannon jerked to a surprised halt. The center of the Edgewood was an irregular ovoid of clear space dominated by a dilapidated stone well on a small hillock of grayish earth. Overhead a lattice of tightly woven branches let in light but blocked any chance of escape to the open sky.
Darts ripped out of the tangle from several directions, and Rhiannon tensed for an impact even as she wove a chrysalis of solid Light around herself. The missiles struck her hastily formed shield and skittered away. One struck the barrier directly in front of the Pyski’s face and drove her into the shield at her back. An angry growl bubbled from between her lips, and Rhiannon pushed with her will. The Light shell around her expanded into a shockwave of steel-hard luminescent shrapnel that tore through vine and branch, seeking flesh. Muffled cries sounded as her Light shards found marks. More than one indistinct shape slumped from its perch, hitting the ground hard.
A flash of pale gray shimmered in her peripheral, and Rhiannon threw herself sideways a split second before the razor edge of a heavy saber had a chance to split her skull. The Guardian’s inelegant dive turned into an easy roll and she came up in a ready crouch. Light leaked from her fingertips, waiting, eager as she took in the situation.
A half-dozen assailants were on the ground now. They were all women, all dressed in dark gray and hidden behind scarves which concealed all but their eyes; five of the six bore long hardwood staves. The sixth, the one with the cavalry saber, was closest to Rhiannon and held herself best of them all. Her posture was wary but confident—this would be their leader, or at least their champion.
“Back again, Hervor?” Rhiannon asked. “You came with five last time. You should have brought more,” the Guardian said with a smirk.
The leader, who she thought must be the Nordic woman from the infirmary attack, said nothing. She barely twitched, it was almost imperceptible, but it was enough. The volley of missiles was well fired, it should have worked, but forewarned, Rhiannon let the Light surge, and the bolts flashed to ash before they got closer than ten paces. The saber struck like lightning, and the Pyski weaved and dropped back two steps, hastily forming a pair of long, heavy bladed knives of Light to catch the weapon.
Rhiannon batted the saber aside contemptuously and lunged with the blade in her right hand. She spun and struck again as the masked Maiden ducked her lunge, bringing her longer weapon to bear. Sparks flew as the steel saber clashed with the Pyski’s Light weapons. The two women traded the same few paces of ground back and forth again and again as one or the other was forced to press forward or give ground under each attack. The engagements were quick brutal affairs of hack and slash, parry, thrust, and disengage. This was no courtly duel filled with graceful feints or elaborate embellishments. There was very little grace to be seen.
The masked attacker slashed at Rhiannon’s middle and the Pyski brought one of her knives up to take the impact. The Light blade sheared into the inferior steel weapon, and the ruined blade clattered to the dirt. Rhiannon opened her mouth to speak and reeled back as her attacker snapped out a jab with the broken sword’s handguard. The blow didn’t catch her cleanly, it clipped the side of her head rather than crumpling her face as it had been meant to. Still, it was enough to snap her head back and throw her balance off.
She staggered back, momentarily unable to see, and the masked Maidens fell on her like a pack of jackals. Whirling lengths of polished wood were everywhere. The Guardian deflected a hard-swung strike toward her head, only to have another take her across the knees.
The Light raged inside her, and she channeled it furiously. She formed heat and pushed it at their clothing. Jackets smoked, the soles of boots grew hot as rocks on a sunny beach, and one of them let out a panicked scream as her headscarf burst alight. Rhiannon surged forward and took handfuls of her enemy’s tunic as the woman beat at her own head with her hands, trying to put out the flames.
A hard-swung blow meant for Rhiannon struck the flaming Maiden instead, landing with a sickening wet squelch. The sound was nearly as disgusting as the rank stench of burning hair, and the Guardian heaved the limp corpse away from herself before she leapt over another sweeping strike at her legs. The fallen Maiden’s staff was in the Pyski’s hands now, and the remaining attackers slowed the flurry of strikes.
They’re unsure, even in numbers, even with their archers still in the trees.
Rhiannon felt a shadow of a smirk playing at the corners of her lips. She spun the staff in lazy circles as her power snatched another volley of projectiles out of the air and turned them to dust. Something snagged the end of the staff and pulled the Pyski off balance. A shock of searing agony tore across Rhiannon’s shoulders and the staff was gone. She staggered, and whatever hit her struck again, scourging her back and driving the Pyski to her knees. The pain was atrocious, incredible.
A gnawing carnivorous torment tore at her insides, as though she we’re being eaten alive from the inside out. Her concentration shattered. The Light fled. Something whistled through the air and Rhiannon let out a blistering scream as a noose of fine metal links closed tightly around her throat. A boot pushed at her backside, and Rhiannon fell on to her face in a mewling sprawl as fresh waves of suffering crashed against her.
* * *
It smelled of mold and damp, like turned earth and rot. Like a grave. That rich, sweet stink is what pulled Rhiannon back to consciousness, and the first conscious twitch of her body tore a bellowing wail of agony from her throat. Her body was rigid, spasming in shock. Numb hands clawed and grasped uselessly at the object she was impaled on. It felt like wood, like bark.
She lifted her head, not even trying to stifle the scream the movement forced from her lips, and tried to see what it was. A spike of uncut, unturned wood as long and thick as her forearm protruded from between her breasts. It came to a rounded kind of point, and the entire length that she could see glistened with her own not-yet-dried blood.
A root.
She could feel the slack-jawed horror on her face, and between screams the sound of her rapid panicked panting filled her ears.
What . . . ? How . . . ? I’m dead.
No. It hurt too much, she was still bound to her husk.
Why aren’t I dead?
The root must have pulverized her heart, and without the Light . . . The Light! Rhiannon clawed for the Light with the desperation of a drowning man grasping for a floating log. It wasn’t there. For the first time in her existence, in any of the existences she’d experienced, the Light was utterly absent. Another wave of violent spasms rocked her body and brought a fresh outbreak of screams.
She screamed for what felt like an eternity. She screamed until her outrage and suffering were leaking out in long dull whimpers. She held her body rigid, frozen in terror of the surge of torment that threatened. It wouldn’t kill her, that was obvious, and if she were going to pass out, she surely would have by now.
A flash of the vision struck her, her vision of the Bwgan, of Jogah. All of those lives, those possible paths. Jogah, the earnest Pyski Guardian, was a friend, a mentor, an exceptional scholar and a dedicated and passionate protector of his people. Until the pain stole it all away. U
ntil he broke, and the Darkness slid in. A cold chill of horror spread through her. How much of this torture could her mind take? Weeks? Months? She’d seen it happen to him so many times, in an infinite spectrum of ways, and she knew—not feared, knew—that she would break just as he had. Eventually she would.
“Noooooooo!” The sound of her voice filled the darkness and brought a wince of shock. Her voice rang off of walls she couldn’t see. “Please!” she begged. “Not that . . . Not . . . please!”
“Oh, enough of that now,” came a voice she knew, a voice filled with unpretentious confidence and kindly lightness. That voice came from far below and sounded . . . exasperated. “I do hate the caterwauling.”
A sprig of root snapped out whip-quick from the darkness and snapped tightly around the trapped Pyski’s mouth.
“Better,” the prophetess sang.
Rhiannon screamed around her rigid gag as the root that held her jerked and coiled downward. The root’s sinuous path changed her perspective and gave the pinned Guardian her first clear look at the place. A massive cavern, hundreds of feet deep and more than half as wide, dominated by and formed of a mad chaos of intricately knotted roots. Miles and miles of roots.
I’m under the Edgewood.
She couldn’t imagine another clutch of growth anywhere that would have this monstrous tangle of appendages beneath it, and that strange power she’d felt from it when she approached the wood hummed on the ragged edge of her awareness.
There were lights down here. Just a few, weak red-orange lights like torches. No, braziers? Focus on the details. Anything to distract from the spike of rough bark inside her chest, grinding against bones and scraping nerves.