“Back, back . . .” Er’ril urged needlessly.
They all sped in a stumbling retreat.
Suddenly, like ripe milkweed pods, the galls burst open. A flow of tiny red spiders poured forth from the ruptured sores, spilling across the trunk and branches. The stench of rotting meat flowed forth from the heart of the tree, now a nest of the blackest corruption. Within a heartbeat, thousands of spiders drifted on lines of silk, wafting in the twilight breezes.
“Mother above, what horror is this?” Er’ril cursed.
Nee’lahn knew the answer. “It’s the Horde.”
The spiders continued to entomb the tree in their webbing. It seemed as if the beasts were already growing, their tiny bodies swelling like blood blisters, their black legs stretching longer and thicker. So foul to the eye, there could be no doubt that poison ran strong in their bites.
“What . . . what are we to do?” Elena asked. “We can’t go through that forest.”
“Yes, we can,” Nee’lahn said, her voice venomous enough to match the spiders. She recalled the final chorus of the ancient oak. What he had asked of her was blasphemous to a nyphai, an entreaty that went against the grain of her own spirit—but now Nee’lahn understood the necessity.
“How?” Er’ril asked. “What do you propose?”
Nee’lahn closed her eyes, remembering the image that had bloomed in the oak’s deathsong: Flames licking at wood and leaf. Her voice grew hard with the promise of revenge. “We burn our way through.”
ELENA CHEWED AT her lower lip and flexed her right hand, studying the ruby stain in the early evening gloom. The sun had already set behind the peaks of the Teeth behind her, leaving only a shadowed twilight at the edge of the corrupt wood.
No one paid her any heed as she stood near the back of the wagon. The others were too deep in discussion on the plans for tomorrow. Only one item had already been settled—that they would not brave the forest this dark evening. Instead, they decided to camp well away from the woods with two guards posted throughout the night.
As they all argued back and forth, only Mist stood by Elena’s side at the back of the wagon, the horse’s nose buried in her feed bag. Elena’s left hand idly ran a comb through her horse’s mane, removing brambles and tangles from the long day’s ride. But she did a shoddy job, her attention more on the bloodred whorls and black eddies of magick that swam across her right hand.
She concentrated on the ruby stain, remembering Er’ril’s instructions. Just let the magick show; don’t release it. Elena deepened her breathing and let her heartbeat slow. She needed to practice control of her magick’s flow, sensing that tomorrow would test her skills. With her lids sinking partially closed, Elena willed the tips of her fingers to warm. As she watched, only half aware, the nails of her right hand began to glow a soft rose.
Now for a bit more magick.
Elena bore her will to an intensity that scared her slightly. She could feel the call of her wild magicks, a seductive chorus of power. She listened to their siren song, now well familiar with their allure after the many days of practice with Er’ril.
Elena could not deny that a part of her—the half of her spirit that was wit’ch—was attracted by the whispers of power. But rather than deny this appetite, she heeded the power’s call. Er’ril had taught her that ignoring her desires would only give the wit’ch in her more strength and control over her own true will, allowing the wit’ch to overwhelm the woman.
She would not allow that!
She was Elena Morin’stal, and too many had already died in her name for her to give up her heritage to some siren song of power. She would not lose herself to magick’s lust.
She spread her hand wide. The tips of her fingers brightened to a white heat, the color burnt clean from them. She allowed herself a smile of satisfaction. If she should prick her finger now, the wild magick would be free to flow from her, unleashed into the world. And when she finally chose to do this, it would be the woman, not the wit’ch, that bent the wild magick to her will.
She clenched her fist into a tight ball, feeling the energies penned up within, then opened her hand. Her magicks crackled in blazes of power across the palm and back of her hand.
Suddenly, a voice rose behind her. “What are you doing?”
Startled, Elena’s magick flared brighter, like an ember fanned to flame. She fought it back down, but not before the blaze had stung her eyes, as if scolding her for not releasing its energies into the world. After it had died away to nothing, it took a moment for her stressed eyes to make out the slender figure of the shape-shifter standing behind her.
“Mogweed?” Elena slipped her hand, now dark again, back into its glove.
“Sheathing your sword, I see,” Mogweed said with a fluttering smile.
“Pardon me?”
He pointed to her gloved hand. “Covering up your weapon. A sheathed sword seems innocent enough, even beautiful, until the blade is pulled free, revealing its deadly edge.” Mogweed’s eyes glowed amber in the weak light. “Your magick is like that sword.”
“Maybe. But a sword is easier to control,” she said shyly. “It doesn’t try to stab people all on its own.”
“Ah, child, everything takes practice. A sword is only as lethal as the skill of its wielder.”
“But even a child can accidentally kill with a sword.”
“True, so true.” Mogweed reached to her currycomb. “Let me help you with that.” He began to work Mist’s mane with more diligence than Elena’s halfhearted effort.
“I can manage,” she said, but Elena could not deny that Mist seemed to enjoy the shape-shifter’s attention. Of course, the chunk of cured sweetroot he first offered to the horse did wonders to ingratiate the man to Mist.
“Tut, tut,” he scolded her. “I enjoy it. The horses deserve a bit of kindness for their long day of labors.” He glanced over to her with those strange, slitted eyes. “Now, enough about horses. I really came to see if you could use some company. You seemed so alone back here. Why aren’t you with the others?”
“No one seemed interested in my ideas about tomorrow.”
“Hmm . . . that sounds familiar.” He offered her a smile. “I keep mostly to myself, too. I’m afraid I don’t fully understand the goings-on of mankind. We si’lura are an isolated people, living deep in the Western Reaches, well away from men, except for the occasional hunter or trapper. I’m not comfortable around others—” He lowered his voice, sounding like tears might threaten. “—especially so far from home.”
Elena took a brush and began wiping down Mist’s flanks. “I know how you feel,” she mumbled. A pang of sorrow caught her unawares. As she worked at Mist, soft music rose from the campfire as Nee’lahn began playing her lute. The lonely notes wafted outward like the gentle warmth of the campfire, spreading not only into the night but also reaching inside Elena. Er’ril had once told her that Nee’lahn’s lute contained an ancient spirit of the nyphai’s lost home. And listening to its mournful voice, Elena knew it was true. Its chords spoke of lost homes and vanished friends and touched Elena’s heart. She had already lost so much of her own home—mother, father, aunt, uncle. Her only hope lay in the chance that her brother Joach, after being stolen off the streets of Winterfell by the darkmage, still lived somewhere amongst the lands of Alasea. Her secret dream was that along this lengthy journey she might find her brother again. “Joach,” she whispered to Mist’s flank, “you promised to be there for me. I am holding you to your word.”
Mogweed raised his head from near Mist’s tail. “Were you talking to me?”
She smiled, cheeks flushing. “No, sorry. Just remembering . . .”
He nodded knowingly. “Memories of home are always a strange mix of sorrow and joy.”
“Yes . . . yes, they are.” She lowered her face and hid the tears that began to well. She had always found the shape-shifter rather cold: always alone, seldom speaking, always studying everyone with narrowed, suspicious eyes. Now, maybe, for the first t
ime she began to understand the man. Maybe the two of them weren’t so different.
The two worked over Mist in silence, both turned inward. When he didn’t know she was looking, Elena caught a wavery smile pass over Mogweed’s face. She imagined the shape-shifter’s thoughts dwelt, like hers, on bittersweet recollections of lost homes and families. After several moments of quiet brushing, Mist’s coat glowed in the fading twilight.
They both stepped back to admire their handiwork.
“That’s much better,” Elena finally said. “Thanks.”
“No, I should thank you for allowing me to help. I found it nice to talk to someone who shared my sentiments.” Mogweed suddenly raised a hand and patted his leather jerkin. His fingers stopped at an inside pocket and withdrew something. “Here’s a gift,” he said. “Just a small token.”
Elena leaned closer to see what he offered in his open palm. “It’s an acorn.”
“Yes, from near that big oak.”
“But why did you . . . I mean of what . . . ?”
“I know it’s not much of a gift. But I’m a collector. What is someone’s trash is another’s treasure. I heard Nee’lahn’s tale. This woodland home is dead. I felt sorry—so I collected the acorn to maybe plant somewhere free of this foulness, to give the forest a chance to someday live again.” Mogweed began to withdraw his hand. “I’m sorry. It was a silly offering.”
“No, no.” She took his hand in her own and removed the acorn. She held the oak seed in her fist and pressed it to her chest. “What a sweet and thoughtful gesture. Thank you, Mogweed. I will treasure your gift.”
“I thought since we both lost our homes . . . that maybe we could at least bring someone else’s back.” His voice cracked with his last words. “And in that way, maybe bring back a little of our own.”
Elena did not hide her face this time. A single tear rolled down her cheek. She wanted Mogweed to see how much he had touched her with his words.
He seemed at first shocked by her emotion; then he glanced at his feet, as if embarrassed or guilty. “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t think . . .”
“No, Mogweed.” She reached to his shoulder. For a heartbeat, it seemed he cringed from her touch, as if he suddenly did not want to be here. She squeezed his shoulder.
Before she could speak, a stern voice rose from behind her. “Elena, shouldn’t you be in bed?” It was Er’ril. “We’ve a dangerous day tomorrow, and I want you well rested.”
She removed her hand from Mogweed’s shoulder and faced the plainsman. “I was just combing out Mist.”
Er’ril ignored her. “Mogweed, don’t you have the first watch? Shouldn’t you be with Kral?”
“I was just going,” he said meekly, brushing past Elena.
“And keep your eyes open,” Er’ril called after him, his words more an accusation than an instruction.
When Er’ril turned back, Elena knitted her brow darkly. “You need not be so hard on him,” she said. “He’s not a warrior, just a wanderer—like me.”
Er’ril blew out a rude noise. “I can read people. He’s a shirker. Always looking for the easiest path.”
Elena roughly placed her brushes and combs back into the wagon. She dumped the horse’s water bucket, slightly splashing Er’ril with the contents. “Yes, you’re a keen observer of people’s feelings.”
As she stomped off toward the spread of bedrolls, her fingers wandered to the lump in her pocket. The acorn was a reminder that looks could deceive. The acorn appeared tiny and weak, but within its shell lurked the potential for a mighty oak.
Er’ril could not see that—not in Mogweed, not in herself.
“What is the matter with that child?” she heard Er’ril grumble behind her.
Nothing, she answered silently. Nothing at all.
ER’RIL STOOD WITH his back toward the camp’s fires. In the distance, the light of the flames lapped to the fringes of the forest, but its heat barely reached his position. So far the creatures of the Horde seemed content to stay within their dead wood. Still it would be unwise for his band to let its guard down. Behind Er’ril, to protect against any marauding spiders, the group of bedrolls lay within a protective ring of small campfires. Standing just beyond their circle of warmth, Er’ril wore a deerskin jacket with a furred collar against the late evening’s cold as he stood watch. Morning seemed a false promise this dark moonless night. Even the stars were just whispers poking through a thin cloudy haze that had blown in at nightfall.
Unblinking, he studied the forest, trying to pierce its mysteries. The companions had argued well into the evening on the best course through the wood. They had all quickly decided that turning back was not an option. According to the wolf, the other trails were swamped with snowmelt—and who was to say that these other paths weren’t similarly blocked by corruption? No, they had to risk the wood. Yet doubt ran like ice in Er’ril’s veins. The child was ultimately his responsibility.
“We must go forward,” Tol’chuk suddenly said beside him, as if reading his mind. The og’re had been sitting so still and quiet, like a crouching boulder, that Er’ril had almost forgotten the hulking creature was there.
“I know,” Er’ril said, thankful to speak aloud what troubled him. “But are we right? We could always go back to Kral’s people and wait until the other passes open.”
“No, this be the correct path.”
The certainty in the og’re’s voice drew Er’ril’s eyes. “How can you be so sure?”
Tol’chuk shifted his thick body, his joints creaking like breaking saplings. In the firelight, Er’ril saw the og’re pull open his thigh pouch and remove a large object. Like a fired coal, it glowed a deep red between Tol’chuk’s claws. Er’ril recognized the stone: the Heart, as Tol’chuk had named the large crystal, a chunk of precious heartstone mined from deep in the og’re’s lands.
Er’ril had seen the crystal before, but never aglow as it was this night. His gaze was drawn to it; its gentle radiance seemed to penetrate deep within him. Er’ril found his voice strangely hushed as he tried to understand the og’re’s revelation. “What’s the significance of . . . of the Heart?” he asked.
Tol’chuk became silent, a boulder again. Only the white flumes flaring from his nostrils into the chill air indicated he still lived. Finally, he spoke again. “I would tell you something, Er’ril. Something I have told no other.”
“What is it?”
“Long ago, one of my blood ancestors, the Oathbreaker, betrayed the land most foully. And as punishment, the land cursed our people.” The og’re lowered his face in shame, his back bending in anguish.
Er’ril had never seen Tol’chuk so pained. Uncomfortable with the og’re’s display, Er’ril found his eyes drifting back to the forest’s edge, but he knew he could not so easily ignore his companion’s distress. He spoke into the silence. “What did this Oathbreaker of yours do?”
“No one knows.” Tol’chuk held up the glowing stone. “But this be our curse. The stone holds our clan’s spirits of the dead until they can travel to the next world. But the land laid a corrupt seed, a black worm called the Bane, within the heart of the stone. It now eats our spirits instead of letting them travel beyond.”
Er’ril grimaced. A foul story indeed.
“I be the last descendant of this Oathbreaker, doomed by my mixed blood never to bear offspring. Prophecy says only I can lift this curse upon our people’s spirits and destroy the Bane.”
Er’ril glanced back to the heartstone, trying to pierce its glow and spy the black worm inside. He could not see what the og’re described. “This Bane . . . How are you supposed to get rid of it?”
“I must discover what the Oathbreaker did and correct it.” Tol’chuk lowered the large crystal back to his lap.
“I thought no one knows what this ancestor of yours did.”
“That be true. But I was given the Heart as a beacon. It guides me where I must go.”
Er’ril digested this information, beginning to understan
d. “The glow—?”
“It calls me forward. Leads me where I need to be. First to the shape-shifters, then to the girl. After I joined you all, the stone grew dark and quiet—so I know we all must stay together. But with the first melt of snow, it began to call again, worse as each day passed. Now it urges like hooks in my heart. We must not delay.”
Er’ril studied the stone for several moments in silence. “I believe you,” he finally said and turned back to face the corrupt forest. Though the og’re’s words had helped steady Er’ril’s resolve on their course, they did little to ease the fear around his heart. Stone or not, prophecy did little to protect one from a spider’s bite. “But, Tol’chuk, are you quite sure of your stone’s pull?”
As answer, the og’re lifted the heartstone toward the dark wood. The crystal flared brighter, competing now with the flames of the hearths. “We have no other path. We must travel through the spiders’ forest.”
3
ELENA ADJUSTED THE damp cloth across her nose and mouth. It sat cold against her cheek. She shifted in Mist’s saddle, unable to find her rhythm.
“We look like a bunch of bandits, eh?” Kral called to her as he rode beside her. Elena imagined he wore one of his broad grins under his own mask of wet cloth. The others were similarly garbed to protect them from the smoke to come. Her companions were also outfitted with hooded cloaks, to keep ash and stray spiders from hair and face.
Elena nodded at Kral. They did look somewhat like a raiding party.
Ahead, Elena could see the tall column of black smoke already marring the blue morning sky. Its source was a fierce bonfire started at daybreak by Er’ril, Nee’lahn, and Meric. It raged a stone’s throw from the forest’s edge, near where the trail entered the wood.
She followed the trail of smoke to the blue sky above. Why did her journeys always begin with fire, she thought, remembering the orchard blaze that had heralded the beginning of her horrors.