“Giliead, for the love of-- Yow!” His boot slipped on the mud as he made to dodge and the wild swing caught him in the side of the head.
Everything went black, leaving him with just the cold wet gravel against his face and under his hands to tell him he was still conscious. Oh no. Being beaten to death was not the end he would have chosen. And he didn’t want a curse-ridden Giliead to be the one responsible. Ilias lifted his head, tasting his own blood, getting a hazy view of the ground as his vision slowly cleared. A hand gripped his hair and he realized Giliead was kneeling over him. “You don’t want to do this,” he said, slurring the words.
“But I do,” Giliead breathed into his ear.
Ilias blinked grit out of his eyes, suddenly focusing on the hand planted firmly in the dirt only a few inches away from his face, the copper and leather archer’s brace on the wrist. The olive leaves etched into it were a match for the designs on Ilias’ own armbands. He’s wearing that wrong, he thought woozily. Giliead drew his bow with his other arm. Then with sudden clarity, it’s not him.
The realization came with a rush of equal parts relief and terror. There were curses that masked identity, but Ilias had been so convinced it was something affecting Giliead’s mind that he hadn’t even considered another possibility. Ilias made himself go limp, hoping whoever this was didn’t just decide to snap his neck since he wasn’t providing any more entertainment. After a moment the man shook him roughly by the hair, then pulled him up off the ground. Ilias twisted and smashed an elbow back into his face. The grip on his hair released and Ilias shoved off the ground, scrambling out of reach. He landed in a half-crouch and turned to put a tree at his back.
The man wiped his face with a sleeve, though the blow hadn’t even given him a bloody nose. “I wasn’t done yet anyway,” he said, watching Ilias with that predatory expression so disconcerting to see on Giliead’s face.
Except it’s not quite Giliead’s face, Ilias thought, eyeing him intently, looking for the subtle wrongness he knew was there now. The archer’s brace on the left arm instead of the right was just the most obvious. He looked for the girl’s bloodstain on Giliead’s shirt and saw it was on the wrong side too; he hadn’t noticed it earlier because the bad light made it hard to see against the red-brown cloth. It’s a...mirror image. As if I’m looking at his reflection in water. He slipped a hand under his shirt and pulled his belt knife. “I think I’m done,” he said through gritted teeth, and shoved to his feet.
The duplicate surged toward him with a growl and Ilias slammed into him and drove the knife up under his breastbone as the bigger man’s weight pushed him back into the tree. The duplicate gasped in shock and Ilias shoved him away, breathing hard.
The blade was buried in the man’s chest to the hilt, but the fluid leaking from it was thick and green. It gave off a foul odor, like plants rotting in bog water. Ilias met the curseling’s astonished gaze and said, “I thought so.”
It lunged toward him again, but stopped short with a gasp, then staggered back. It fell to its knees, fumbling at the blade. Ilias pushed away from the tree, watchfully evaluating its attempts to stand. When he was sure it wasn’t going to get any further than clawing at the grass and writhing, he circled around it, limping over to collect his sword. His ribs stabbed him as he bent over to pick it up and his head throbbed from that last blow. He spat out some blood, took a deep breath to slow his pounding heart, then turned back.
It was still trying to get up but the thick green ichor puddled around it, leaving it shrunken and its skin loose, as if it was a punctured wine skin. Its clothes, even the leather and metal, had shrunk and wrinkled too; it didn’t even appear that human anymore, which made it much easier to look at.
Ilias stopped at the edge of the growing puddle of ichor and leaned on his sword. “What did you do to him?”
It looked up at him, baring its teeth. “You’ll never find him.”
So he’s still alive. Ilias looked away to hide his relief. “I don’t know, you seemed anxious to keep me out of that grove. I think I’ll try there.”
It snarled at him, making another wild grab, but its arm fell off. The sickening smell drove Ilias back another step. The abrupt movement had used up the last of its strength and it sank back into the puddle, the last remnants of humanity vanishing.
A crack and a strangled yell from the trees ahead spun him around. That was Gil. He bolted for the grove.
Past the first curtain of trees and brush, the ground sloped down. Ilias fought his way through clinging vines to see the stream formed a large pool, choked and foul with weeds. Branches thrashed on the other side of the water as a familiar form grappled with one of the curseling trees. Ilias plunged toward it, calling out, “Gil!” though he had never tried to kill a tree before and had no idea where to start.
Wrestling with a whip-like branch trying to pierce his chest, Giliead looked up, shouting frantically, “Ilias, no! Don’t let it touch you.”
Ilias slid to an abrupt halt, staring in horror as he realized two of the sharp branches had already pierced Giliead’s flesh, one burrowing into his thigh and another through his right upper arm, blood welling up around the foul wood. Giliead forced the writhing branch down, managing to free one hand. He reached out, saying with a gasp, “Give me your sword.”
Ilias ducked in, slamming the hilt solidly into Giliead’s palm as the branch whipped free and darted toward him. The wood slammed across his back but he twisted away, then another branch suddenly sprang up to curl around his ankle, yanking him off his feet.
Ilias hit the ground hard but saw Giliead use the instant of the curseling’s distraction to drive the sword down under the roots. Half-sitting up, Ilias caught a glimpse of something green and horrible moving in the cavity under the tree.
A groan came from under the earth and a foul odor of rot filled the air. With a piercing crack the trunk split and the branches writhed wildly and drooped, all motion dying away.
Ilias pushed to his feet, dragging the nest of branches aside to get to Giliead. With gritted teeth, Giliead worked the wood out of his upper arm. He gasped as it came free, shaking his head with relief, his frayed braids flying. “That...was different.”
“Different? That’s a new word for it.” Ilias was so giddy with relief he hardly knew what either one of them was saying. He took the sword from Giliead to awkwardly cut away the branch piercing his thigh. Giliead waved him away and pulled it out himself, making an inarticulate noise in his throat at the pain. Blood welled but Ilias could see it hadn’t gone in as deep as he had feared. He stepped in to put an arm around Giliead’s waist and Giliead grabbed his shoulder for support as Ilias hauled him away from the trunk. The thing under it began to leak that sour green fluid. “There’s bodies in trees all up and down this water, do you think there’s a curseling under every one?”
“No, I can’t smell any other curselings. I think the curse was carried by the water from this one.” Giliead leaned heavily on him, wincing. “I don’t remember much of it. I left camp, came up here. I could smell the curseling, I went right to it. But instead of killing it... The next thing I knew the tree was trying to eat me.”
Ilias nodded, hearing his own suppositions confirmed. “It made a duplicate of you and tried to kill me. Maybe you woke up when I killed it.”
“It made a what and did what?” Giliead demanded, then they both froze.
In the silence Ilias heard it again. A low groan, a human groan, from further into the grove. Giliead eased away from him and Ilias pushed cautiously forward, weaving around the trees, Giliead limping after him.
Following the edge of the pool where it wound further into the grove, Ilias glimpsed movement. Another step revealed the source and he stopped, glancing up at Giliead.
It was the wizard Pheneras. He was wound up in one of the trees, pierced in a dozen places, the sharp branches weaving in and out of him. Some were broken off as if he had fought it long and hard, and blood stained the once fine material of his p
ants, shirt and overvest. Near the base of the trunk was a second Pheneras, slumped over in a heap, half its head bearing the sharp features and dark stringy hair of the wizard, the other half in the process of dissolving into green ooze.
Ilias looked at Giliead in time to see him swallow with difficulty. He glanced at Ilias, brow lifted, saying, “It did that to me?”
Ilias just nodded. Giliead shook his head with a grimace and reached for the sword. Ilias handed it over and Giliead limped forward, close enough to grab the real Pheneras’ hair and jerk his head upright. Ilias twitched but the tree didn’t react to Giliead’s presence. Looking closer, he saw the branches drooped, no longer trying to force a way deeper into the wizard’s flesh. Giliead was right, it had been just one curseling, connected to all the trees by the water.
Pheneras’ eyes blinked and opened, staring uncomprehending at them. Giliead asked, “Did you know this was here?”
Pheneras drew a rattling breath, then his lips parted in a rictus smile. “No, it’s old, older than any of us. Finding it was a happy accident. I saw it call you, I watched you fight it all night until it wore you away and took you in its embrace. But I lingered too long, and it seized me too.”
Giliead was silent a moment, then nodded to himself. He said, “If you’d known it was here, I would have left you like this,” and thrust the sword into Pheneras’ chest.
Taking the head was awkward but they managed it. Since Giliead needed Ilias to lean on and they only had three usable arms between them, Ilias broke his rule about not carrying wizard heads, and said only, “I hope you remembered to bring a bag this time.” Giliead grumbled a retort Ilias didn’t bother to listen to.
Making their stumbling progress back through the forest, Ilias tried to make plans for when they could leave this motherless place. Once Giliead’s wounds were cleaned and bound it would take him a few days to be able to walk. Then they would need to do the rites for all these bodies, to free any trapped shades wandering the woods. It was going to take days.
Ilias realized it was only last night that Giliead had said it was always others who got hurt, never him. Ilias said, “Well, it’s not just others. You get hurt, too. Happy now?”
Giliead snorted ruefully. “Oddly enough, not really.”
About the Author
Martha Wells is the author of over a dozen fantasy novels, including the Books of the Raksura series (The Cloud Roads, The Serpent Sea, The Siren Depths), The Wizard Hunters, and the Nebula-nominated The Death of the Necromancer, as well as the YA fantasies, Emilie and the Hollow World and Emilie and the Sky World. She has had stories in Black Gate, Realms of Fantasy, Stargate Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, and in the anthologies Elemental, Tales of the Emerald Serpent, and The Other Half of the Sky. She has also written media-tie-ins Stargate Atlantis: Reliquary, Stargate Atlantis: Entanglement, and Star Wars: Razor’s Edge. Her most recent books are a two-volume collection of novellas set in the Books of the Raksura world, Stories of the Raksura I: The Falling World & The Tale of Indigo and Cloud and Stories of the Raksura II: The Dead City & The Dark Earth Below. Her website is www.marthawells.com.
Martha Wells, Between Worlds: the Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories
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