Her children, though, had done their job well. Nothing still lived within a quarter league of the glade. From here, she could see the ground littered with the small bodies of the dead woodland creatures—tufted squirrels, birds of every feather, even a red doe lay sprawled at the edge of the copse, its neck contorted from the poisons. Satisfied, she bowed her head in preparation.
Before her, atop the worm-eaten wood of the stump, rested a palm-size bowl of carved ebon’stone. Its basin glowed blacker than the richest obsidian, while jagged veins of silver quartz etched its dark surface like forked lightning at midnight. She allowed a finger to trace its edge.
Here lay wealth—and within its basin lay power.
Using a bone dagger, she sliced her thumb and dripped the blood into the basin. Fat droplets rolled like quicksilver to the bottom of the bowl, then quickly vanished—the stone was always thirsty.
Reciting the words taught her, Vira’ni’s tongue grew colder with each utterance. Without halting, for that meant death, she forced her tongue to keep moving. Thankfully it was a short litany. Tears squeezing between her clenched lids, she spat the last word through her blue, frozen lips.
Finally done, she sat back upon her heels and raised her injured thumb to her mouth, licking gently at the cut. The blood was like fire in her frozen mouth.
Now, though, came the hardest part of the spell—waiting.
As she sucked at her wounded finger, her children must have sensed her distress and approached tentatively. Vira’ni allowed them to climb up her legs and nest where they had been birthed. An especially concerned child even crawled up her belly to gently rub its furred legs against her nipple. She ignored the young one, dismissing its impetuousness.
In her mind, she went over the ritual. Had she made a mistake? Perhaps more blood—
Black flames suddenly erupted from the ebon’stone bowl, flickering like a hundred serpents’ tongues above the basin.
“Darkfire,” she whispered, naming the flames with lips still blue from the cold. But these flames offered no warmth. Instead the small glade grew colder for their presence. Where normal fire shed light into darkness, this flame drank the late-afternoon sunlight that dappled through the branches overhead. The wood grew gloomy as a fog of cold darkness flowed out from the flame.
The child at her breast, frightened by the darkfire’s blaze, bit her teat, but Vira’ni dismissed the pain. Poison or not, the spider’s bite was but a small nuisance compared to the menace that lurked within the black flame.
She bowed her head to the stump. “Master, your servant awaits.”
The flames swelled. Darkness swallowed the bowl and the stump. A faint scream echoed up from the flames. Even this whisper of pain brought a shiver to her skin. Vira’ni recognized the music of Blackhall’s dungeons. Her own voice had once joined the same chorus as she writhed among the tortured. And so she would have remained if the Black Heart had not found her pleasing to his eyes, choosing her as a vessel for his power and impregnating her with the Horde.
Vira’ni’s hand raised to where the Dark Lord himself had touched her that final night. A single white lock now nestled within her black hair, like an albino snake among black roots. As she fingered the single snowy tress, images flashed across her eyes—yellowed fangs, ripping claws, the beat of bony wings. Her fingers fell away from her hair.
Some memories were best left untouched.
Then a voice rose from the flames, a voice that poisoned her resolve. Like a beaten dog fearing the strike of its master’s hand, Vira’ni felt her bladder loosen, soiling herself as she bowed her head farther. Her bones shook with each word. “Are you prepared?” the Dark Lord asked.
“Yes, Sire.” She kissed the ground fouled by her own weakness. Her children scattered from her side, the spiders skittering under leaf and carcass. Even this small remnant of the Horde knew their father’s voice.
“Your region is secure?”
“Yes, Sire. My children guard the entire pass. If the wit’ch comes this way, the Horde will alert me. I will be ready.”
“And you know your duty?”
She nodded, smearing her forehead in the mud. “All must die.”
2
ELENA CLOSED HER eyes and allowed the motion of the horse to lull her. The muscles of her legs responded to the shifts and rolls of her mount with easy familiarity, the line between beast and rider dissolving into simple rhythm.
They had been on horseback for almost a full day now, though the company had made little headway down the pass. The trundling, creaking wagon slowed them to a pace no faster than a quick walk; and to further delay matters, several swollen creeks had to be forded with care, the swift currents proving treacherous to wheel and hoof.
While the others grumbled about the meager progress of the troupe, Elena did not mind, simply happy to be once again atop her own horse. The small gray mare, Mist, was the only piece of her home to survive the ravages of last fall’s horrors. Now, as she rode, it seemed as if those terrible events were mere echoes from a bad dream. If she allowed herself, she could almost imagine that she was traveling the fields and orchards of her valley home, perhaps on a jaunt to Baldy Nob Hill for a picnic. Her hand strayed to the mare’s dark mane and combed the rough hair with trembling fingers. A slight smile curled the corners of her lips. For a moment, she could almost smell home in the scent of Mist’s musky sweat.
“Child, you’d ride better if you kept your eyes open,” Er’ril said, his road-tired voice shredding the memory of her home.
Elena straightened in her saddle and opened her eyes. Rows of alpine birch and lodgepole pine lined their path. Ahead, Elena saw the back of the wagon lurching through the rough terrain. “Mist is following the others. She won’t take me astray,” Elena mumbled.
Er’ril kicked his mount, one of the tall crag horses, a white stallion whose coat blended well with the ice and snow of the peaks. The Standi plainsman, dressed in knee-high black boots and a deep brown riding jacket, drew abreast of her. A band of red leather tied his black hair back from his rugged face, yet the winds of the pass caught a few locks and blew them like a banner behind him. He and his mount towered over the small gray mare and its rider.
“Have you been practicing your lessons lately?” he asked in a hard voice, his eyes glinting in the late-afternoon sunlight.
She turned away from his stare to study the pommel of her saddle. “I’ve practiced some.” Er’ril had been tutoring her on the few basic skills that the plainsman knew about the control and simple management of magicks. Er’ril’s brother, Shorkan, had been a powerful mage before sacrificing himself to the binding of the Blood Diary, and during Er’ril’s decade at Shorkan’s side, a small bit of the arcane skills had brushed off onto him.
The plainsman sighed and reached a hand to grab her reins lightly while controlling his own horse with subtle movements of heel and thigh. “Listen, Elena, I understand your reluctance to touch the power within you, but—”
“No. You’re wrong.” She slipped the glove from her right hand, revealing the bloodred stain. “I’ve come to accept the burden and do not fear it.” Elena reached her fingers toward Er’ril’s wrist, and as she knew he would, he pulled back his hand from her touch. “It’s you and the others,” she said, “that fear the power.”
She raised her face, but Er’ril would not meet her eye. “It’s not that we don’t—” he began.
Elena held up her ruby hand to stop him. She needed to voice this. “I have seen how everyone tries not to stare,” she continued, “how they shrink from my touch. Their fear scares me more than the magick.”
“I’m sorry, Elena, but you must understand. It has been centuries since anyone has borne the mark of the Rose—and longer since a woman has done so.”
“Still, can’t you see the girl hidden behind the Rose?” She pulled her glove back on. “I am more than just the stain on a hand.”
When she raised her eyes, she found Er’ril staring at her with a thoughtful exp
ression, the hard lines of his face softened. “Well spoken, Elena,” he said. “Perhaps I have looked too much at the wit’ch . . . and not at the woman.”
She nodded her thanks. “Perhaps you should see both. Because I suspect that on this journey, both will be equally tested.”
Er’ril didn’t answer, but he reached a hand and squeezed her knee. “You have grown much during the six moons among Kral’s people. More than I had thought.”
“It must be the mountain air,” she said with a whisper of a grin.
He patted her leg and offered her one of his rare smiles. Something deep inside her stirred at the sight, something touched by more than the palm on her knee. A mixture of relief and regret flooded her when he removed his hand and turned away.
Er’ril sauntered his stallion a few steps aside while Elena tapped Mist’s flank to urge the horse after the retreating wagon. Elena sighed. Suddenly the journey to A’loa Glen didn’t seem quite so long.
Ahead, the thunder of hooves erupted near the wagon, drawing her attention. Meric appeared, mounted atop a spirited roan filly. The elv’in lord seemed to float above his saddle as the horse galloped toward them. Meric’s silver hair, tied back in its usual braid, flagged behind him, matching his mount’s own tail. He and his filly flew to join them.
“What is it?” Er’ril asked.
Meric ignored him, instead bowing his head first toward Elena before answering. “Kral has called a halt ahead. He’s found something odd. He asks that we all join him.”
Elena gripped her reins tighter. “What did he find?”
Meric shook his head. “I don’t know. He says he’s never seen its like before among these peaks and passes.”
Elena recalled the wolf’s message: The trail smells wrong. She reached a hand and pulled her riding jacket tighter around her neck.
Er’ril’s hand had wandered to the pommel of his sword. “Lead on,” he said.
Meric swung his horse around and guided the way. As they passed the gaily painted wagon, Elena saw that Nee’lahn and Mogweed were already gone from the wagon’s front. She glanced within the tented interior. It was empty. Apparently Tol’chuk, too, had proceeded ahead.
Meric led the way along the thinly marked trail. As they rounded a bend, the path beyond vanished over a steep slope. The others gathered near the crest and were studying the lower lands. Elena and her companions dismounted and joined them.
“Kral,” Er’ril said as he stepped up to the mountain man, “what’ve you found?”
Kral just pointed his thick arm downward.
Elena stepped beside Nee’lahn. The nyphai woman wore a worried expression. Ahead, the trail dropped in steep switchbacks toward a lower rimwood forest. With the sun setting behind them, the wood below drowned in shadows. Composed predominantly of black oaks and red maples, the trees’ gnarled and bent boles were a dramatic change from the straight and stately posture of the lodgepole pines and mountain birch of the higher elevations.
“That wood looks sick,” Nee’lahn whispered, seeming to draw inward, as if listening with more than her ears.
“What’s that stuff growing on the tree branches?” Mogweed asked.
Elena saw it, too. Strands of gossamer filaments blew and billowed from almost every branch, like ghostly mosses. Some clumped in thick patches, some in ribbons stretching longer than the trees were tall.
“What is it?” Mogweed asked, directing the question at Nee’lahn, the troupe’s expert in woodlore.
But the answer came from Tol’chuk, the og’re’s sharp eyes glowing amber in the dying light. “Looks like webs.”
Mogweed’s voice rose sharply in pitch. “And how . . . What would cause those?”
Elena answered that question herself. “Spiders.”
NEE’LAHN STEPPED TOWARD the lone oak, seeking answers. The ancient tree towered like a sentinel near the edge of the dark wood, separate from its web-shrouded brethren. Only its branches, peppered with green buds, lightly brushed the arms of its companions. Something was dreadfully wrong here.
“Nee’lahn!” Er’ril called. “Wait!”
She ignored him, only raising a hand to silence the plainsman and indicate she had heard his warning. The others were still trying to coax the wagon down the series of switchbacks to where the trail continued into these strange woods. She could hear their raised voices as they shouted orders to one another. Only Er’ril and Elena had followed her when she had hurried toward the forest’s edge.
As one of the nyphai, steeped in the elemental magicks of root and loam, the woodlands were her charge. Nee’lahn could not remain idle while this stand of old-growth forest suffered. She would find who or what had assaulted its spirit—and make them answer for their violation!
Nee’lahn cautiously approached the ancient oak, careful not to crush the fallen acorns near the base of its knotted trunk. It wouldn’t be good to offend this old man of the forest—not if she needed answers.
Bent with age, its bark burnished to a polished black by decades of winter’s ice and summer’s scorch, the solitary oak commanded respect. Its branches were a snarled canopy overhead—as if in form, the old man expressed his anger at what had occurred to his root brothers. But even this stout survivor had not escaped the corruption’s touch. Nee’lahn spotted several melon-size horny growths sprouting like yellow boils from his trunk. They somewhat resembled the parasitic galls from nesting wasps, but she had never seen them swell so large.
Nee’lahn reached a tentative finger to touch the bark of the old man, keeping her hand well away from one of the ripe growths that protruded overhead. Closing her eyes and bowing her head, she opened herself up.
Wake and hear me, old one. I seek your counsel.
She waited for a response, searching for that stirring of spirit that meant she had been heard. Some of the older trees could become lost in dreams and were reluctant to abandon the communal song of their forest home. But such was not the case with the old man—she heard no trace of woodsong, no music of the glade in which the old man communed.
The entire forest lay silent to her calling.
A chill passed through her. Only one other forest had been so deathly still—her own woodland home, Lok’ai’hera, after the Blight had destroyed it.
“Nee’lahn,” Elena said near her shoulder, but the girl’s words seemed far away. “You’re crying. What’s wrong?”
“The forest . . . It isn’t sick.” Nee’lahn’s voice cracked as she answered. “It’s dead. Poisoned like my home.”
“How could that be?” Er’ril said. “Look, the trees still bud with new growth. They seem fine.”
“No. A tree’s spirit will sing the moment it sprouts from seed and continue until it dies.” She faced Er’ril and Elena, touching her palm reverently on the cold trunk of the old man. “I hear no woodsong here,” she whispered. “All the spirits are gone.”
“Yet, the trees still sprout,” Er’ril continued to argue.
“It’s a deception. Something has dispossessed the true spirits and taken over the trees. What lies before us is not forest . . . but something else.”
Elena stepped closer to Er’ril. “Who could have done that?” she asked, her eyes wide.
“I’m not—” Nee’lahn tensed. Maybe it was just her imagination or a wishful dream, but for a breath, she’d felt a familiar touch: a tingling behind her ears, a minor chiming, like wind through crystals. She dared not hope. Then she felt him reach for her, swimming up as he drowned in poisons.
The old man yet lived! But he was in such pain.
“Nee’lahn?” Elena asked tentatively.
“Hush, he’s weak.” Nee’lahn turned away from the two worried faces to place both palms upon the knotted trunk of the ancient oak. Come to me, old man, she prayed. Let my song give you strength.
She hummed softly in her chest a melody taught to her as a child. The tree spirit drew closer, hesitatingly, as if wary. Nee’lahn opened farther. See my light; fear not. Then his song joined
hers, at first just a mere whisper, but soon with a desperate fervor. It had been a long time since this tree had communed with another of the root. His song wrapped around her like the arms of a long-lost friend. Yet, Nee’lahn sensed little strength left in those once-strong arms. Though beautiful and full of the resonant depth that only the passage of many winters could cultivate, the woodsong faded with each note. The old man was using the last of his spirit to reach out to her.
Nee’lahn would not let his effort be in vain.
She sang in harmony to the old oak’s chorus of pain and loss, pleading: Tell me what has happened to those who shared your root, old one. We must know.
The old man continued to sing, but his voice weakened rapidly. Only one word reached her clearly: Horde.
What did that mean?
Confused, she hummed in supplication for a clearer description—but none came. He was slipping away. She tried to sing him songs of healing and hope, but it was to no avail. The old oak’s spirit died as she held his song close to her heart.
She lowered her forehead to the bole of the tree. May the Sweet Mother make you safe, she sent him in final prayer. Yet, just as the old man drifted into nothingness, a last clear whisper reached back to her.
Shuddering, shocked by the oak’s final message, she dropped her hands from his bark. No! Not that! Tears sprang fresh to her eyes.
“What is it?” Elena asked.
Nee’lahn tried to pull her mind back to normal speech, fighting for control of her tongue. How dull simple language was when compared to the multilayered song of the root. She shook her head, still dazed by the tree’s message. “We must—”
“Get back!” Er’ril grabbed Nee’lahn by the shoulder and yanked her away from the oak.
Dancing to keep her balance, she twisted around to see what had so startled the plainsman. Her hand flew to her mouth to cover her expression of disgust. With the death of the tree, the yellow galls now quaked and shook upon the dead carcass of the old oak, and a sick droning buzz reached Nee’lahn’s ears.