by Jean Lee
“Don’t call me that.”
“Then how about Bloody Prince?”
“Bzzzzzzz!” Charlotte flails both hands at into the argument and buzzes them quiet. “Where’s a guy like Campion going to take Arlen and Aine? What’s The Lady even want with Aine?”
“Oh Aether,” Cairine’s voice croaks, “he’s taken them to the Pits!” Her head rocks back, and she moans, a heartbreaking echo of the wails Charlotte heard from afar when Aine was still trapped.
“They can’t have gone far.” Dorjan falls forward into a cloud of fur and dust to walk out in his beastly form. Wolf D sniffs ground and grass along the tree line, grunting every few moments before moving farther south.
Liam observes, ponders. “No. No, he didn’t. Smell the air, Cairine. Follow your nephew, check his study.”
Cairine claws the ground yet again, but she obliges.
Charlotte holds her own nose to the air. Ash. Acidic anger. Barely, just barely, a scent of honey. Herbs. Too weak to follow a direction. “Didn’t Campion say—”
“You of all people should know that what Campion says and what Campion does may be two very different things.” Liam leads Charlotte around the thicket to its northern side. Charlotte sees very little beyond their green shelter. The beach narrows north and east, overrun by a field of tall prairie grass, emerald and gold beneath the sun. North and west stand scraggly pines and sickly oaks, dense in some clusters, while so bare in others one would think the trees themselves had been sucked into the earth. Rocks, pine needles, and brambles litter the ground.
It looks so unlike the rest of River Vine that Charlotte can’t help but say, “What’s wrong here?” She half expects to inhale the sawdust and gas of a logging mill.
Liam kneels to pinch a scrappy little branch. It breaks without a fight. “It’s a scarred land. Father and Arlen’s fight was no mere scrimmage. There’s only so much pain a living thing can take before it’s crippled beyond healing. Rather like Ember.” He throws the branch behind him as hard as he can. The memory of his own magic crippling Ember’s leg out of spite goes nowhere at all.
Stale pine overwhelms the air. Charlotte considers this, and hunts for a path among the jagged rocks that is more pine than bramble. She spots one just a few feet away from Liam—only a foot or so wide, but several of the pine needles on the ground are broken. A few stray glitters from glass dust.
A very, very faint scent: herbs. Honey. “Dorjan, Cairine! Over here!”
It doesn’t take long for the wolf and bear to catch the scent. “But why north?” Cairine’s voice is more animal than human, sharp and rushed and panicked. “There is no door to the Pits so near the wall.”
“None that I’ve seen,” Liam corrects her while Dorjan transforms to hold Charlotte going any further. “Would Arlen tell me if he knew, or would he keep that a secret too? Ow!”
Charlotte pulls her fist back and glares. “That wasn’t fair. Knock it off and focus.” She adjusts the blood dagger’s harness before it can slide off her shoulders. “We’re all hunters. Let’s hunt.”
“We will hunt. Dorjan and I. You and Cairine will move into the Wild Grasses. An Incomplete sewn to a tree cannot hide well without a forest.”
“BullSHIT.”
“Charlotte.” The back of Dorjan’s hand lightly taps against the harness. She’s about to smack it off when she sees his blue eye crest with worry. “We can’t all go. Not if we want stealth.” A quick nod at Cairine.
A long, low growl.
“Please.” Liam bends forward to force Cairine’s eyes to settle on him. “Campion is injured, but he is also enraged. He lost his chance for complete revenge on the border family. He has selected whom he’s deemed the weakest of us and he will take him where he is certain of that weakness. Even if he intends to deliver them to Orna, he will not do so until punishment is exacted.”
Dorjan snaps his fingers. “Of course, the Wall!”
Liam nods. “Precisely.”
But Cairine shakes her head, still growling. “How can you possibly know this?”
“Because,” Liam runs his fingers through his curls to avoid looking at anyone, “I can be as much a jealous, angry bastard as Campion.”
A pause.
“Well, Aether preserve me. Right and honest? Surely you’re cursed.”
“Hush, nephew.” Cairine brings one paw up and, with great care, holds it against Liam’s mark. “The Wall could take you, too.”
Charlotte’s gut churns acid. It bubbles up into her throat.
Liam looks upon Charlotte hugging his leather harness close to her body. His own jealousy over the merest memory of Charlotte’s kin had been enough to let Orna drive Charlotte to the brink of madness. He should remain here, protect her, let the others save their own kin. Had not Arlen abandoned him to misery and torture?
But Charlotte had thrown aside all desire to protect those who mattered.
It is time for him to do the same. “He is worth fighting for.”
“Y-y-yes!” Dorjan presses himself close to the ground, nostrils flaring over the path. “Right, scent locked. C’mon, Eagle Eye—oof!” Cairine’s paw tussles Dorjan’s hair into a bushy state.
“May Aether’s Fire guide you through every darkness,” says Cairine.
Charlotte unbuckles the blood dagger’s harness and now brings Arlen’s satchel down and across her torso. “I’m the one who failed. I should be the one to go.” Her fingers glide between the harness and Liam’s skin to fasten its straps before slidingthe blood dagger into its sheath. “But I’ll just be a liability, won’t I?” She wraps her arms around his neck before he can respond.
The flesh just above her hips feels so soft beneath the soiled linen, just as her cheek brushing against his own when she embraces him. “Stay with Cairine,” he whispers into a wisp of her hair. “Please.”
Charlotte pulls back. Her thumb caresses the corner of his lips and up the hollow of his cheek. The touch ignites a trail of sparks through his mind, down his spine, to the very tips of his fingers and toes. When she meets his gaze, the forests in her eyes glow with hope. “Bring them back.”
“Liam.” Dorjan’s green eye glows bright against the scarred land. He nods curtly towards the broken forest.
Liam’s other hand quickly slides up Charlotte’s side to her shoulder, neck, cheek.
Liam breathes Charlotte in— lakewater, lilac, and war.
And runs.
No turning back.
15
Hunting Campion
Liam keeps an arrhythmic staccato pace with Dorjan. Scattered leaves and pine needles hide an array of sharp rocks. Liam’s feet seem to find them all, but with the sparks of Charlotte’s touch still alight within him, he cares little about the pain. Only Dorjan’s nose matters now, tracking the scent of their quarry. He slows, checks the ground, speeds up. Slows, checks the ground, speeds up. They move like this out of the sun-baked brambles and into the tattered forest.
A branch breaks. A creature cries. But nothing is close enough, not yet.
Dorjan is the first to slow. He points where a few drops of oil speckle upon a pine’s crusted sap. The brittle cove around them bears a pathetic green compared to the lushness of the foliage surrounding Rose House.
Then Liam feels it—a prickling around his wrist. Blast it. Already the mark is alive and moving. “The Wall is close.” He strains to look past the scattered clumps of life around them but sees nothing of the Wall surrounding River Vine.
Dorjan sniffs the air. “And Campion’s got company. Two, by the smell of it. Bully for us.”
An Incomplete oak groans.
Aine cries.
Liam unsheathes his blood dagger and wraps his hand around its base. Pulls. The blade grows. Burns.
Dorjan’s blue eye carries a glint of mischief. “Never thought I’d be happy to see that thing waving in my face.”
Liam smirks as he spins the sword into an attack hold. “Aine first.”
“Agreed.” Dorjan crouc
hes, changes, and loses form on all fours among the shadows. The muted sound of his running paws is quickly lost to a dangerous silence.
The firs here maintain branches only near the tops of their trunks. A few elms squat, their trunks rotted and hollow. Jagged shards of sunlight quiver on the old needle bed upon the ground.
Needles crack as Liam walks, the pine scent rotting-sweet. Too sweet. Too dark.
Someone grunts. Aine cries. All is beyond the brittle pines, out of sight.
Liam adjusts his hold upon the blood sword once more, and calls out: “Aine? Arlen!”
CRACK.
A fir snaps. A boulder as large as Cairine rockets towards Liam. He rolls away in time to see a giant hand of thorns, a shadow oozing oil as its split trunk creaks towards him. “Kiiiiih.” The Incomplete on top of the trunk is missing its lips.
Liam finds his footing. The feathers upon his sword glow, eager to fly. “Where are they?”
“Kiiiiih!” The branches of thorns volley down like an army’s arrows—
Liam fades, spins, and chops. Sparks and embers fly in the cut’s wake, fire pulses through the thorns, exploding ash.
More branches unwind to create a sweeping net of thorns. Too close to the ground to slide under, too high to jump over, Liam snicker-snacks two pines, one after the other, to fall into the thorny net’s path as he runs for that tossed boulder, and the advantage of higher ground—
The Incomplete looks confused as to why his net will not travel so quickly and turns to spot the pine trunks dragging—
And in that moment Liam vaults up the boulder, and leaps. He soars across the distance even as a man, the eagle’s battle-cry full in his mouth as his sword’s point finds its home in the Incomplete’s skull. The cursed tree bark singes Liam’s feet for but a moment while the fire of his magic rages through Incomplete and thorned oak alike.
No time to gloat. Follow the boulder’s flight, for it surely wanted to keep you away from that place. Hear the snarls and whines—yes, this must be the final curtain of trees—mac an donais, this mark! Its thorns have found my shoulder; I can feel them pricking. Do not think on it, Liam. If you are this close to the border, then surely Arlen’s mark has found his neck.
The land slopes. Liam slides and hops towards the treeline that ends a good stone’s throw before the Wall. There, beneath the sun, dark forms dance: Dorjan, snapping and barking furiously as he vaults back and forth before another Incomplete oak, its finger-branches whipping rock and soil into a toxic cloud between them. The half-hare, Campion’s companion from the assault on the thicket, now digs with its only arm, human in length but pawed on the end. His legs are but furry stubs, his ears a memory. This Incomplete is more a beaten shrub than beast, let alone Velidevour.
And then there is Campion.
Black dust puffs from his joints as he cavorts about a fleshy heap. His fingers pinch the air as he lifts his feet to one, two, kick the heap, one, two, sing a Mawdre tune. His skin flakes like sick bark on an ash tree, but his teeth and eyes reveal a fury unsinged by even the blood dagger’s magic. The heap twitches and dares to lift its head.
Arlen.
Something inside the half-hare’s hole whines.
Aine.
Fury courses through Liam’s mind like lightning. Heart’s Fire joins the storms within. Power wells up within his marrow, strength he long thought lost inside the Wall.
The balls of his feet hardly touch ground as he runs. A fallen tree proves the perfect ramp to catapault him upwards, the very dust about him alight as he cuts space and darkness and thwack—the half-hare’s head rolls out into the sun.
Liam’s sword glows over the hole’s mouth. Inside, black thorn tips glisten, barring Aine from crawling out.
“Your poison will not take her!” Liam drives the blood sword deep into the ground. Threads of fire unspool within the thorns, but they will not burst to ash like the others. The earth surrounding the blood sword smolders, caves.
Something unseen grabs the blood sword.
Something pulls upon the blade itself.
Liam’s knee digs deeper and deeper into the soil as he pulls back, yet he cannot free his blade completely lest the thorns turn upon Arlen’s daughter. “Cease, you nameless shadow!” he commands through gritted teeth.
“You’re too late, Bloody Prince.” Campion’s fist crashes into Liam’s temple, and all the world spins with sudden starlight, but Liam will not release his sword, by Charlotte’s heart he won’t. “That little girl’s on her way to—”
A roar stills all spinning— Arlen. His elbow pummels Campion’s neck like a sword’s hilt, pointed, and heavy. One strike, and the traitor is down.
Arlen turns. His knees shake, but he does not fall. He faces Liam, panic and hope flush upon his face as painted thorns release drops of blood down his neck.
I care now.
Liam drives all hope and flowers and skipping stones and sunsets into the blood sword still driven into the ground. White-gold burns in the hole’s mouth and ripples outward, scorching the Incomplete oak thrashing at Dorjan. Campion rolls away while Arlen somersaults towards the hole and reaches in with mangled arms to pull out his daughter, shivering and coughing.
Campion’s laugh is gargled and short. “You’re just putting her off, old man.” He shakes his hand, setting a spray of veli and blood off his split knuckles. “When The Lady wants something,” he makes a kisser’s mouth to Liam, “she gets it, don’t she?”
A deep, angry sigh rumbles through the ground and out of the hole at Liam’s feet. Soil, grass, roots cave into the darkness.
The hole is growing.
“Run, Arlen!”
A fissure shoots towards Arlen and Aine. Arlen cradles Aine up, lets her wrap her little arms tight about his neck despite the thorns pulsing on his skin, and he turns to run—
Campion leaps and slides along the fissure, its sighs following close behind him. With one crispy hand he grabs Arlen’s leg and yanks.
Aine screams.
Campion drags Arlen’s leg closer, jaws open and eager.
Arlen kicks Campion’s fingers, but only frees more black dust from the traitor’s body.
Every vein beneath Liam’s skin fills with sparks from his heart’s fire. “No!” With an eagle’s cry he rips the blood sword from the ground and runs along the fissure towards Campion’s back. The blade’s point is raised, aimed, thusted—
Campion’s reflexes are as fast as his mouth. He releases Arlen and rolls to the side. The blood sword misses Arlen’s foot by inches. From the fissure come black roots, spiraling out like the water-folk nets. “The Lady is none too pleased with you, boy.”
“Never. Call me. Boy.” Liam runs up a trunk to evade a net but is caught between two others like some wretched bird cage. It lifts him up and away from Campion towards the Incomplete dueling Dorjan. Liam spies the roots’ connection to the Incomplete’s trunk and realizes, I down the Incomplete, I down Campion’s last weapon.
Arlen lets loose a thunderous roar even as the mark strangles him, his fists clenched to fight Campion who skips ever closer, face twisted with wicked laughter. Aine barks at Campion from behind her father’s legs, and Dorjan howls behind the Incomplete’s poisoned branches—
Not for long.
Liam slices three branches and bolts down the arm, his feet slipping but his balance sure, and he slides, runs, slides, cries, “Go, Dorjan!” And he stabs the sword at the crux between the whipping branch and trunk. The joint splits and oil gushes out in two reeking waves.
Dorjan’s wolf-feet weave through the oil rivulets and lift him high over the fissure. He rolls and catches Campion’s leg in his jaws. Campion doesn’t scream, only grins as he punches Dorjan’s neck with far too much strength for a simple commoner. He laughs like getting maimed is part of the fun.
Liam’s feet burn as he climbs the last few branches towards the top of the rotting trunk, but the pain is nothing compared to the thorns growing across his chest beneath his harness, scra
ping his skin, his bones, every inch of the way. He reaches the edge of the rotting trunk and bares his blood sword, ready.
This Incomplete’s rooted in like the others, but its mouth is fully formed. Beneath those hairless fox ears, amidst the oozing sores, there is one eye very alert, very wide, but no longer violet as commoner eyes should be. Something worms up through his chest to his neck. It knots in his neck, silencing his howl of pain and filling his mouth with a female voice, smooth and delicious as wine beneath the stars. It coos at Liam from the Incomplete’s rotting jaws. The Incomplete’s eye blinks and changes to become…to become…
But this is not possible. Only one Velidevour in River Vine has ever borne eyes dark as a starry night. Liam does not dare let such confusion come uncoiled in his voice. “Hello, Orna,” he says with all the smoothness of a passerby on the promenade.
The Incomplete’s tongue rolls out of its mouth and licks the blade’s feathers. The tongue’s tip turns to ash, and even though the Incomplete’s face contorts in pain, it can only laugh Lady Orna’s laugh, and speak Lady Orna’s words. “Come. To. Me.”
Long ago, Liam obeyed those words. Too often he submitted to her whims and her body, for in the world of Artairs, such attention meant love.
Since meeting Charlotte? Oh, how his world has changed. “I think not.”
The stars within that single eye gather into a solitary prick of white. “Then. All. Will. Die.” The fox’s jaw stretches. Teeth snap from their places only to be sewn together by oil to forge fangs as long as Liam’s blood sword. A thousand tiny pops erupt from the Incomplete’s neck, and it grows, the neck grows into a skinless, broken serpent—
THUD
A quick glance down reveals Campion’s thrown body sliding down the trunk.
The Incomplete’s tree-body shudders, loses its balance.
It is enough.
Liam leaps backward just as the serpent-mouth snaps forward. Liam’s sword pierces what little bone and flesh remain. One snick out, and two fangs fall and pool into oil. The Incomplete’s head flops to the other side.
