by Greg James
“I guessed that much,” Willow said.
“Well?”
“I ... don’t know.”
“Remember, Greychild. The decision is yours and this is the hour. Take that which hangs at my side. I believe you have seen it before.”
Scaethe’s hand swept aside his robe. Willow gasped. Eren’s thule was there, hanging from his belt. There was no mistaking the blood-red glow of the stone set in its hilt.
“Take it as a gift and a token of my trust.” The Lamia hissed.
Willow looked to Nualan. He returned her gaze steadily and nodded. “Take it, Willow.”
“Why? What’m I going to do with it?”
The Lamia’s laughter heightened, “Have you not guessed? Do you not know? Are you truly so innocent and naive?”
... a gift ... a price ... to pay ... not going to die ... as a youngling, I was told your story ... I taught myself every word and line of the prophecy ... my part is almost over ... kneel before me with bloodstained hands ...
“Nualan,” Willow whispered, “you want me to kill Nualan?”
Can I kill someone? Is that part of who I am now?
“Come, Willow,” the Lamia chided, “do you truly care so much for a figment of your imagination? All this is dream to you, is it not?”
“Do not torment her, demoness.” Nualan rumbled.
The Lamia fell silent, though the sound of chattering insects – like so many flies buzzing around a corpse – did not diminish.
Willow turned to Nualan, “You knew about this?”
“I did, Willow, my love,” he said, “I have always known. It is written and must be done. There is no need to chastise yourself. I am here at this place and at the hour as foretold. I accept my fate. I know that I came here to die.”
“No, I won’t do this, not to you. I don’t have to.”
“You do have to,” Nualan said, “it is prophecy, and it will save your life.” He stroked a finger gently down her cheek, “I told you I would not let you die while you were under my protection.”
“I know but I didn’t think this was going to happen. I thought we’d get away somehow. There has to be a way out of this. There has to be!”
“Do not grieve, Willow,” Nualan said, “soon I will be one with Tirlane; the land that I love. Without my death, you will not return home and you will not see your father. A father should not be without his child. I have not mated. I have no child. I have saved myself for this moment so that you may go on without me. All is as it should be.”
“No, it’s not. I can’t do this.” she said. “Not even for Dad, for going home, not even for me.”
“You were not so sure before,” the Lamia, “why are you so certain now?”
“Silence, fell creature!” Nualan thundered. He stepped closer to Willow, knelt down and she rested her face against his breast. She could feel the beat of his heart. It was going so fast. He was as brave as he was afraid. He had not been lying to make her feel better earlier.
“No, I can’t do this.”
“Then give me your hands.”
“What? No.”
“Let me help you do what must be done, my love.” Nualan took her hands. She tried to pull away but he was stronger. The edge of the thule’s blade; it touched his throat as he moved his fingers to her wrists. He was gentle but did not let her go. She could see in his eyes that he would not. “Be swift, Greychild,” he whispered, “do not let me linger.”
“I can’t do this, Nualan. Not after what you told me.”
“You can and you must. Be sure and be true. I love you, Willow Grey.”
He raised his head, bared his throat, and closed his eyes. “I am ready. Let it be done.”
Willow choked on a sob. It was too hard to swallow – and this was harder than anything she’d ever done. Taking a life – is this the price I have to pay?
Nualan knelt before her; a ready sacrifice, noble and true against the rising light of dawn. She wanted to remember him that way. She hoped she would. Her fingers slithered loosely over the thule’s hilt. No, she couldn’t do this. It was too much to ask. Nualan opened his eyes and she felt his fingers pull at her wrists, guiding them in a fatal, twisting motion.
“No! Don’t!” she cried.
The thule flashed. His throat was cut. The deed was done. Nualan’s eyes closed. A long sigh escaped him and a great trembling shook through his body. He fell to the ground, still. He was gone – dead.
The Lamia laughed, triumphant. “I am Lamia! I am the Defiler! I am the End of All Things True! I am victorious against prophecy!”
Willow was on her knees and there was blood on her hands. There were no tears in her eyes. The pain inside her was too much; it was as heavy as the thunder-clouds rolling in overhead. The dawn was swallowed up by them and a black rain fell. Willow looked down at herself and felt coldness spreading in her gut. She looked at her hands. They were so dark with blood, as dark as a No-man’s.
“Did I not say you would kneel before me with bloodstained hands?” the Lamia said, “You have served me well, Greychild. Now, you may go. The way home is open to you. It lies through the valley yonder, across Cheren Mokur, in the castle of Silfrenheart. You may go to it as and when you please. I would not go back the way you came though for things have not gone well for those at Harrowclave. Let me show thee what I have wrought.”
Chapter Seventeen
The air was cold and bitter. Willow saw there was no ground beneath her. Her cries were snatched away by the rushing wind. It felt like falling as the clouds parted and she saw the patchwork of Tirlane spreading itself out far below, but she was not falling without direction. She could feel the speed of her descent being checked, becoming gentler. Willow was being guided towards something. She recognised a mass rising up higher than the land below.
Harrowclave – where the fires of the centaurs’ camp still flickered between its standing stones. There was Rathane on guard at the top of the pathway; spear and staff in his hands, eyes scanning the shadows of night.
Willow’s fall stopped here – she was hanging over Harrowclave like a watching angel.
What am I here to see?
Her question was soon answered. A piercing shriek split the air and she saw the shadows of night begin to crawl with life.
Rathane shouted as dark hands reached out and snared his staff, ripping it from his hand. The centaur cantered away, spear raised, and took up the horn which hung on a leather strap over his shoulder. He pressed it to his lips and a long, sonorous note competed with the necrotic shrieking of the shadows.
Back into the camp, Rathane retreated as the drove stirred itself from sleep. The fires of the camp were fed with fresh wood, making them blaze and reveal the attackers as they emerged onto the mesa’s plateau. Dark were the No-men and startlingly pale were the ghouls; spawn of Cheren Mokur.
The centaurs took up swords and spears. Nithoe’s silver eyes shone bright as her hands wove through the air and her lips muttered. The fires of the camp surged high at her command becoming furious columns of living flame. Unwary ghouls were grasped by burning tendrils and drawn into the fires where their flesh and screams were consumed alike. Their fellows recoiled, gibbering in fright, some dropping their weapons and looking as if they might flee.
Go on, thought Willow, run for it before Rathane and the others cut you into little pieces.
The ghouls did not run though. Their will belonged to the No-men. Willow could feel it; a silent power extending outward as a web from the shadowy figures, binding the cowardly ghouls to them.
For the No-men were not so easily deterred. Tendrils of flame tried to ensnare them but were caught in their long fingers and torn into harmless vapour. Willow looked to Nithoe and saw the Jenn bow her head, spread her arms wide, and then bring her hands together with a clap that rang out like thunder. The living flame of the fires leapt into the air and surged together, pouring across the plateau until it formed a wall – barring the way for the Lamia’s servants.
> Willow watched and saw Nithoe standing with her hands bound together, her shoulders tensing with strength, and sweat beading across her torso and flanks. She was giving everything she had to the protection of her drove.
The No-men approached the wall of fire and stopped before it. Willow hoped they would turn and leave – but it was not to be. More No-men strode onto the plateau, their numbers became greater and the blackness of their forms became closer, denser.
Willow realised what was happening.
They were forming into a Great-No; one which would be even larger than she’d seen at the Summerdowns. That first time it had been a single phalanx of No-men transformed. This was an overwhelming horde. She couldn’t see how many there were but their number soon turned the area of the plateau they occupied into a humming sea of darkness. The ghouls were lost among the No-men; possibly consumed. Willow held no doubts about the relentlessness of the No-men’s’ appetite. Friend and foe were the same to them as meat and drink to a starving man.
The wall of fire began to waver as the Great-No pressed itself forward, pushing its heaving mass into the flames. The colour of the fire changed, waxing to silver before becoming grey and slow. An oily smoke arose from it and then, with a mighty rush of fetid air, it collapsed; crushed out of existence by the Great-No.
The centaurs of Nualan’s drove did not flee at the monstrous sight though. They stood their ground. In the light of the moon, they appeared to Willow as statues sculpted from noble bone. They stood ready; some wielding spears, others with sword and staff in either hand, and a few notched arrows to the strings of their long bows. The moment when the wall of fire fell was etched into Willow’s mind as the centaurs and the Great-No faced one another, unmoving.
It was Rathane who broke the silence with an ululating war-cry as he charged the heaving mass of shadows, which surged toward him in kind. The Great-No came apart; separating into its component No-men as battle was then joined.
The battle was not to be a long one.
Nithoe was exhausted and kneeling. Her strength expended. She had been the drove’s one hope against the No-men. A drove never has more than one Jenn among its numbers.
The No-men were without mercy and did not tire as mortal flesh tires. The centaurs fought bravely but it was not enough. One by one, they succumbed and were slain. From her vantage point, Willow saw one of the No-men take Nithoe’s head as a trophy. She wished that she could’ve looked away and not seen that.
Rathane fought on to the last. No-men gathered before him and began to blur into a lesser Great-No so as to cut him off from retreat. He slashed, he cut, and he stabbed at them but he might as well have been trying to murder the air. With steady, even steps, the Great-No walked him to the edge of the plateau and ushered him over it.
Rathane fell and was lost.
Nualan’s drove were all dead.
The noble and the beautiful had been brought low by the base and foul.
The No-men ebbed away as if they had never been. The few surviving ghouls following in their masters’ wake; casting their eyes back at the still forms of the centaurs as if in fear they might spring to life again and give chase. They did not – and soon, only a terrible silence remained to hang over Harrowclave.
Chapter Eighteen
This was all wrong – so wrong.
Willow’s head hurt and her eyes ached; a ghost of the banished cancer stroked itself against her nerves. Willow screamed her despair into the gathering storm. She turned and ran from Morrow’s Watch and all she’d seen with the Lamia’s laughter ringing in her ears.
Willow ran until her legs couldn’t carry her anymore and she collapsed on the ground. She’d killed someone – taken a life. That was unforgivable. She looked down at the thule in her hand and thought how there should be more blood on it than there was. The rain had washed too much away.
I am the defiler, she thought, through and through. Nualan’s dead and the rest of his people are dead because of me. What am I going to do now?
She walked on with little to no idea of where she was going to. The landscape beyond Morrow’s watch was bleak and rough grassland. She could smell an over-ripeness which she guessed must be Cheren Mokur; the dreadful ruined land she would have to navigate to reach the way home, so the Lamia had said. Thoughts as unpleasant as her surroundings passed through her mind – of walking out into the marshes and casting herself into the nearest pool to drown.
A life for a life? That was fair, wasn’t it?
Motion to her left. A dark shape arising.
Could it be a No-man?
“Who’s there?”
A figure emerged from the brush, “I think this is something like how we first met.”
Willow saw who it was. “Henu?”
“Yes, friend Willow.”
“But I thought you’d gone. You left to go back to Beam Weald.”
“I did and I was on my way, but then I was gripped by a fear.”
“Fear?” Willow asked.
“Yes, that my pride could be part of a great undoing. The Giants and the Wardens fell to the Lamia’s will because of their hubris. Should I also be mastered by my own? Once I was away from Harrowclave and Scaethe, I could see things clearly – that I was being used. So I made my way to Morrow’s Watch, hoping that I would not be too late.”
“You are too late,” Willow said, “not that you could’ve done anything. Nualan’s dead. His people are dead. It’s all my fault. Everything’s become a nightmare. Why don’t you kill me? Here, use the thule. I’ll let you do it.”
“Why would I do such a thing?”
“Because I killed him and I don’t think I can live with it. I cut Nualan’s throat with this evil thing.”
“You did, but Nualan knew what was to come, I believe.”
“What difference does that make?”
“More than you could know.”
“You think too much of me, Henu. All I’ve wanted to do since I got here is go home and be with my Dad. I don’t care about any of you. I’m just a stupid, selfish little brat who only cares about herself and now ... now ... look what’s happened ... god ... ”
“Are you so sure you understand everything about Tirlane, friend Willow?”
“He said he loved me, Henu. He said he loved me and that he didn’t want anything from me. He just wanted me to know and then I killed him. And I saw the rest of his drove die. They were slaughtered. How could I be good and let something like that happen? I deserve to die. I should have stayed at home and let the cancer eat my brains.”
“I am your friend, Willow,” Henu said, “whether you think I should be or not. I have done once and it was a mistake, but I will never leave your side again. I will help you whatever happens and go wherever you lead.”
Thunder rolled from horizon to horizon. Lightning struck somewhere close by. The four winds howled. Willow thought on the Lamia’s words.
The way home is open.
“We’re going to Silfrenheart. I want to go home. That’s it. I’m done saving the world. This is all too much for me. I’ve had enough. I’m leaving.”
“I have no wish to cross the marshes of Cheren Mokur, but if this is where you wish to go then I will go with you.” Henu said.
The two companions had stopped at a point where the land rolled downwards on an incline. Where the slope ended, the earth was wet and glistening. Dark, moist channels threaded their way between tussocks and patches of firmer soil. A low reek of mist hung over the marshland which did seem to stretch as far as the eye could see. As they made their careful way down the incline, Willow breathed in and tasted the mist. It was not like that which shrouded the Summerdowns; it was cold and bitter.
She didn’t like it.
Following in Henu’s footsteps, Willow went from one patch of ground to the next like stepping stones. She caught glimpses of dark, greasy movement in the waters and thought of what Nualan had said about the Voice.
... it consumes those unwary enough to cross into i
ts domain ...
Some things were better left uncontemplated. There were a few times when Willow trod on ground which had been firm for Henu but which became soft and sucking for her.
There was a quality to the marshland air which made her scratch and wipe at her skin as if boils and scabs were breaking out across it. Her legs ached and her head hurt from having to concentrate so much on each step. The day was a long, grey, and tiring one.
“Can’t we find some shelter, Henu? Somewhere to sleep?”
Henu stopped to look around, peering into the marsh-mist, “There might be something over there, to the left. Follow me and be careful.”
The mists parted and Willow saw a hut standing on wooden supports in the middle of a mire. There was a ladder leading up to it.
“Let us rest here,” Henu said, “we can continue to Silfrenheart better with some sleep. I will take watch.”
Inside the hut were two pallets of old straw on the board-floor. The interior smelled musty. Willow laid down on one of them to sleep. The dreams she lapsed into were dark and troubled ones. She saw her Dad screaming, held down by No-men on the Lamia’s altar and the demoness herself; a raw, naked, beautiful and ugly spider, standing over him brandishing Willow’s thule in its mandibles. She heard her own voice crying out over Dad’s. She watched the Lamia plunge the thule’s blade into Dad’s chest.
Willow woke up, throat sore.
Henu was sitting on the makeshift porch of the hut. He turned, silhouetted, to face her, “Are you well, friend Willow?”
“Not really. Bad dreams.”
“I am sorry to hear that but I think the foul air of Cheren Mokur does not encourage pleasant dreams.”
“You can say that again.”
A low moaning that was not the sound of wind drifted by.
“What was that?” Willow asked, though she guessed at the answer.
“The Voice of Cheren Mokur,” Henu said solemnly, “it knows we are here. None cross into this part of Tirlane without it knowing so. If we are fortunate, we may be able to cross the marshes to Silfrenheart and not disturb it further. Come here, friend Willow, can you see the towers over there?”
