There was no sign of the choking jungle-forest they’d just left. If pressed, Len would have said the world tree was set in endless, rolling grassland, but any attempt to look at the actual grass just sort of... slid away, not sticking in his awareness.
One thing was clear enough, though—the tree was damaged. The trunk tilted at a slight angle... and not the dramatic sort of natural angle that some trees took on in response to being shaped by the wind. This was a straight tree whose root system was beginning to give way. From their slightly elevated vantage point on a hill, they could see where the ground around one side of the tree had heaved upward, exposing torn roots.
“Oh, no,” said the cat-sidhe, looking at the massive, damaged monument with genuine distress. “No, this is very bad.”
Len’s insides twisted when he tried to picture what might happen if the tree ever fell. Would it take all of Dhuinne with it? Would it take everything with it? His breath caught.
Beside him, Albigard appeared dazed. For lack of any better ideas, Len reached out and tangled their fingers together, as Albigard had done when Len learned that the Hunt might well be rampaging through populated areas back on Earth.
“We’ll fix it,” he told the Fae a bit desperately. “We’re going to fix it, okay? It’s going to be all right.”
Albigard blinked free of his reverie and swallowed. His lips parted, but no words emerged.
“We must not tarry,” the cat-sidhe said. “The Hunt returned to Dhuinne while we were traveling. I can sense its approach.”
Len jerked his head around. “What? You might have mentioned that earlier!”
“There is still time,” said the sidhe. “It seemed pointless to alarm you with something over which we have no control. Hurry, now. Let us find a way into the caverns beneath the tree.”
Albigard started toward Chaima without a word, like someone moving inside a dream. Len only realized that their hands were still clasped when Albigard pulled his away. The sick, panicked feeling that had been thrumming beneath Len’s skin ever since he’d awoken that morning ratcheted up another notch.
They headed toward the damaged area where some of the roots had been torn up, speeding to a jog when the cat-sidhe pointed out a dark gap among the confusion of rock and earth. It took longer to get to it than Len would have predicted, and when they did, his brain balked abruptly at the scope of the tree looming above him. It was as though a skyscraper had grown branches and taken over the world.
His blisters throbbed as he hobbled to a stop in front of the ominous gap in the ground. The cat-sidhe gestured them to stay back and ducked inside, disappearing for a few moments before reappearing.
“There is a pathway down to the main root structure,” the little Fae said tersely. “And sprites have taken up residence inside. There is enough light to see.”
Albigard nodded, his face pale in the golden light. “The Hunt?”
“Getting closer.” The cat-sidhe turned to Len. “Human... you need not go inside with him. You have already done more than could be asked of an outworlder.”
Len tried to think past his thundering pulse and the nausea coiling in his gut. “I’m going with him.” The words emerged unsteady despite his best efforts.
“You do not need to—” Albigard began.
“I’m going with you!” He barely recognized his own voice.
Albigard closed his mouth. His expression was haggard. Instead, he turned to the cat-sidhe. “I have only one further request, Elder. I don’t claim to understand the nature of your connection with the demon Nigellus. But if the Hunt is successfully contained and it is possible to allow him passage to Dhuinne under flag of truce, please try to arrange it. He believes it may still be possible to retrieve the souls of Ransley Thorpe and Zorah Bright from the Void, using the Hunt as a conduit. If it is, I beg you to assist him in doing so.”
The cat-sidhe’s expression grew achingly sad. “If it is within my power, I will try to make it so, a leanbh. But if the Hunt is truly absorbed back into Mother Dhuinne, it may not be possible.”
Len wanted to shout in frustration... to take the sidhe by the shoulders and shake them. Couldn’t you at least let him have this one hope to hold on to? he wanted to demand. Couldn’t you use that Fae gift for talking circles around a lie, and let him have this one damned thing?
It wasn’t the cat-sidhe’s fault, though. He knew that. None of this was the fault of anyone here. Aside from the Forsaken, the three of them were the only ones on Dhuinne who’d been willing to try and fix things before they careened completely out of control.
But it wasn’t fair.
“I understand,” Albigard said hoarsely. “Your assistance in this matter has been greatly appreciated.”
Len probably should have said something as well... thanked the sidhe for helping Len find Albigard and free him before his father’s henchmen succeeded in throwing him into Hell, if nothing else. But if he opened his mouth, he wasn’t sure what was going to come out of it, so he kept his jaw clamped tightly shut.
The cat-sidhe reached up and urged Albigard to lower his head to their height, placing a chaste kiss upon his brow when he complied. “Go with Dhuinne’s blessing, Albigard of the Unseelie. May your soul find peace among Chaima’s leaves and branches.”
The air rasped in Len’s throat, hot and painful as he held back the awful, burgeoning knot of grief and rage that wanted to break free. He couldn’t let it get out. Not yet. Not when it would only make Albigard feel worse. But when that burning ball of emotion finally did escape his control—and it would—Len wasn’t sure there was going to be anything left of him afterward.
“Go, quickly,” the sidhe said, releasing Albigard. “There is little time left.”
“You’ll be safe here?” Albigard asked.
“Yes, I will stay out of harm’s way.” Catlike green eyes met Len’s burning ones. “When it is done, I will be waiting nearby.”
... if you survive remained unsaid, but Len heard it all the same.
He made himself turn to face Albigard, who studied him intently.
“You are certain you wish to come?” the Fae asked him.
Len managed a tight nod, still unable to speak. He turned toward the rip in the ground and started walking, aware of Albigard keeping pace at his shoulder. The opening in the ground was large enough for them to enter one at a time without having to stoop, but the footing was a tumble of stones and disturbed clods of dirt. After the first few feet, it angled sharply downward. It would have been a terrifying black maw, if not for the sprites that had taken up residence among the broken roots forming the walls and ceiling.
All right... it was still a terrifying maw leading to unknown danger. But at least the cheerfully twinkling lights meant they could see their way down to Albigard’s doom.
Len skidded on loose rocks and had to accept a steadying hand from the Fae, whose preternatural grace still persisted, even in the absence of his magic. Eventually, the ground beneath their feet evened out somewhat, the space around them opening into a cavern many times larger than the cave where the Forsaken had based their camp.
Len looked around, taking in the massive, twisting roots embedded in the walls. “Why is there a cavern like this beneath a tree?” he asked in a rasping voice. “Why isn’t it just solid dirt and rock?”
Albigard sounded remote, as though he were already distancing himself from what was about to happen to him. “In the stories, it is because the roots are a conduit of destructive elemental magic. They have been absorbing the rock and soil since the beginning of time, using it to grow the trunk and branches. The caverns are the places they have already eaten away.”
Len wanted to reply to that, to keep the conversation going and provide some sort of distraction from the reality closing in around them. Somehow, he couldn’t seem to manage it.
“One wonders if the growing dead spaces are responsible for the instability we saw above,” Albigard continued absently.
“No, that’s n
ot it,” Len said, the words leaving his lips before his brain even registered them. He frowned, chasing something at the edges of his awareness, but it was already gone.
“Oh?” Albigard asked. “You have another theory?”
Len opened his mouth and paused. “No, I...” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”
“We’re both a bit distracted at present, I think,” Albigard replied, reaching for humor and falling well short.
They continued deeper into the underground space, neither of them entirely sure what to do beyond waiting for the Hunt to show up. Len berated himself for being on the verge of falling apart when he wasn’t even the one being asked to make the sacrifice.
But what were you supposed to say to someone walking to the gallows? How did you make it better when there was no conceivable way to make it better?
“This sucks,” he choked out. Which... yeah. Was basically the opposite of making things better.
Albigard hesitated, his footsteps slowing.
“I find the current situation preferable to any alternative in which the Hunt catches up to me, only to continue its uncontrolled rampage across the realms afterward.” The Fae’s voice was calm, but he still sounded distant.
“I know,” Len managed. “But it sucks, even so.”
Albigard tilted his head, an acknowledgement of sorts. His gaze roamed around the cavern. “If it helps, I imagine very few people have ever seen this place—seen Chaima up close, and walked among its roots. You are almost certainly the first human to do so.” He wandered forward, lifting a hand to the twisted mass of roots weaving through the wall. “It is an undeniable honor. I only wish I was still in a position to sense its magic directly.”
A tendril of root snaked out and wrapped around his wrist.
Len’s eyes widened, and Albigard inhaled sharply in surprise. He tugged against the unexpected restraint, which held fast. Len was already halfway to his side when he threw up his other hand and snapped, “Stay back!”
“Fuck that,” Len snarled, without a second’s thought. His hands closed over Albigard’s forearm, adding his strength to the Fae’s—but it was like pulling against steel. Even as they struggled against the living constraint, more roots wriggled out from the wall and floor. They ignored Len completely in favor of twisting around Albigard’s arms and legs, dragging him down and covering more and more of his body as they thickened and hardened into impenetrable coils.
“No, goddamn it!” Len shouted, scrabbling for the knife at his belt and yanking it free of its sheath. He fell to his knees and started hacking at the thickest of the roots, but the iron blade might as well have been sawing away at solid stone. “Albigard—”
The Fae had ceased struggling. His green eyes slid past Len’s shoulder, and a single shudder went through him.
“Stop,” he said in an unnaturally calm voice. “It doesn’t matter now. Save your strength.”
A horrible clammy feeling slid over Len’s skin, and he turned to look behind him in the sickening knowledge of what he would find. Around the cavern, the sprites were swirling madly, as though panicked by the approach of a predator. Beyond, oily black smoke rolled down through the tunnel leading from the surface, extinguishing their tiny, twinkling lights one by one.
TWELVE
LEN COULDN’T hold back the low, wordless noise of denial that escaped his throat as the Wild Hunt spilled into Chaima’s underground cavern.
In his twisted coffin of roots, Albigard closed his eyes for a long moment before opening them again. Len crouched over him protectively, knowing it was hopeless... knowing that even if he could somehow save him from the Hunt, by doing so he would be condemning both their worlds to a slow and painful death.
“If...” Albigard’s voice was a barely audible rasp. He swallowed and tried again. “If Nigellus is successful in retrieving them, tell Thorpe and the demonkin not to mourn me. Tell them I’m sorry... for all of it.”
Burning fear and frustration welled up behind Len’s eyes and spilled over, trailing salt water down his cheeks. “I’ll tell them,” he promised, cupping Albigard’s jaw in his palm. “They’ll understand, I promise.”
The Fae looked up at him with luminous eyes, as more and more of the sprites winked out. “Tears, a rúnsearc? Do not weep for me. Only...”
“What?” Len asked. “Just ask... I’ll do anything. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—”
“Don’t leave me,” Albigard murmured, a quiet plea.
Len swallowed a sob and leaned forward the last few inches, brushing his lips against the Fae’s in a tender kiss, just as the last of the twinkling lights extinguished. For an endless moment, Albigard’s lips moved against his, catching lightly against Len’s piercing—warm and alive and real in the darkness, even as the clammy chill of the Hunt rolled over them.
Between one heartbeat and the next, those warm lips went slack as the life fled Albigard’s body on a breath, leaving only a cold and empty shell behind. Len knelt in the dark, feeling as though his heart had just been ripped out. The Wild Hunt howled in triumph, swirling around him without making contact—held back only by the tattered cloak of death surrounding him. Len’s fingers tightened on the coils of root cocooning the Fae’s lifeless body, his nails digging into the living wood. A noise as terrible as any the Hunt had ever made bubbled up from his chest, demanding release.
Beneath his grip, the roots grew warm, then hot. A golden glow cut through the greasy darkness shrouding him, and he blinked rapidly as the roots began to move again—still ignoring him, but now coiling upward and outward, into the oily mass of the Wild Hunt. The glow increased until the roots almost seemed to become translucent, allowing Len to see as the Hunt’s darkness was sucked into them and siphoned toward the main mass of the world tree.
He fell back on his heels, holding his breath as the Hunt began to howl again, perhaps sensing that it was about to be trapped. The noise thundered through Len’s chest, more a feeling than an actual sound. An unnatural wind rose inside the cavern, ruffling his hair.
The eerie light spread through the cavern, more roots coming to life and grasping at the Hunt with every second that passed. The winds rose to a gale; the howling grew in pitch until it rattled Len’s bones.
All at once, the Hunt ripped free of the roots surrounding Albigard, opening a larger bubble of space around Len. He scrambled to his feet on shaking legs, watching in disbelief as the roiling mass of darkness tore itself loose and began to retreat toward the tunnel to the surface, still wailing like a banshee.
“No...” Len breathed, suddenly, agonizingly aware that he was the only one who could possibly block the Hunt’s escape through the narrow entrance to the outside world, and he’d been kneeling over a corpse instead of getting in a position to do the one damn thing he was here to do.
Panic beat at Len’s chest as he gauged the speed at which the Hunt was tearing itself free of Chaima’s grasping roots, versus the distance separating him from the entrance to the vast underground gallery. The impossibility of it sliced him to the bone. He stumbled forward, the glow of the roots’ magic illuminating the roiling black mass as its far edge reached the bottom of the tunnel.
“No,” he breathed again, as the prospect of having sacrificed Albigard for nothing flooded through his chest like frigid, brackish water.
Rage followed close on its heels. Icy, crackling rage, the likes of which he’d never felt in his entire twenty-eight years of existence. The absolute, immovable need to be at the other end of the cavern right the fuck now grabbed Len’s heart in a vise and squeezed.
A cold and terrible power rose from somewhere deep within him, demanding its release.
He lifted a hand, his fingers curling into claws. “No you fucking don’t!” he shouted, the volume of the words rising until it was a roar—a denial that would twist reality itself before admitting defeat to this horrible, sickening thing.
Crackling energy sank into his skin and exploded outward fr
om his raised hand, rippling along the length of the underground cavern like blue flames. It rushed past the retreating bulk of the Hunt, careening into the unstable tunnel leading to the surface, which groaned and collapsed in an explosion of rock, dirt, and dust.
Blocking the only exit.
Trapping the Hunt underground with Chaima’s grasping roots... and with Len.
His knees abruptly stopped taking his weight, and he crumpled to the ground, half-sprawled across the tangle of roots encasing Albigard’s body as the Hunt shrieked and wailed its rage around him. His vision wavered in and out, but he was dimly aware of more and more roots unfurling from the walls and floor, twisting into the mass of greasy smoke and sucking the Hunt’s darkness into the world tree.
The Wild Hunt flailed and screamed, crashing over Len like a tsunami. It battered at him, kept at bay only by the remnants of flickering animus left over from a tiny, nameless animal’s death—a last gift from Albigard, the creature sacrificed to Len’s necromancy in hopes that the final boost of power would be useful to him during the struggle they all knew was coming.
Len clung to the coiling roots, his face resting inches from Albigard’s with its staring, horror-filled green eyes. Tears trickled down Len’s temple and the side of his nose as he lay exhausted and beaten, watching more and more of the Hunt disappear into Chaima’s massive form.
He had no idea how long it took. But eventually, the wailing wind faded to a breeze, and then to nothing. The glow of the roots flared brighter as the last of the cancerous blackness flowed into them and disappeared. Then, the light faded by increments, pulsing like a heartbeat... and it was gone, leaving Len shuddering and unable to see, with only the corpse of his Fae lover for company.
In the end, it appeared he was destined to be alone in the dark after all.
THIRTEEN
HE WAS COLD. He was also fairly sure he should be feeling... something. Crippling grief? A sense of accomplishment at having achieved their goal? Fear of being trapped alone, underground?
Forsaken Fae: The Complete Series, Books 1-3 (Last Vampire World) Page 44