by HP Mallory
I looked over at Ull and Tiresias, pointing at Tallis’s wounds frantically. “Has he been poisoned?”
Ull gave another reedy laugh that, under the circumstances, annoyed the hell out of me. “No, child, it is just common dung. The claws and wings of the Stymphalians are slathered with such foul slime, which is why your man’s wounds are becoming infected.”
My bladesmith looked up at the Minotaur and waved him off. “Ah can stand.”
Asterion let him go but looked concerned. “Not for much longer, I would say. The Stymphalian birds have killed folk far hardier than you.”
A crooked grin popped up on Tallis’s face. “Aye? Well, Ah doubt any o’ ‘em had Druid blood pumpin’ inside ‘em.”
He closed his eyes and began chanting in his usual Gaelic tongue. The wounds started bleeding darker blood, making the red around them vanish. Once they bled clean again, the wounds slowly began to seal. When Tallis opened his eyes, the only trace of his injuries was the recent trails of blood on his body and some tears in his kilt. He tried stepping forward but nearly fell down.
Asterion caught him yet again. “You are in no condition to do anything but lie down.”
Even as the Minotaur put him on the ground, Tallis couldn’t stop talking. “Why’d… Minos’s protection nae work here?”
Our man-bull guide had the answer. “Because his protection is only potent against thinking beings. When mindless beasts such as these attack, it is rendered useless.”
Ull sighed as he leaned against Tiresias. “Would that I were not so frail at the moment, I could create an enchantment to see you safely through.”
The entire time, Bill kept looking between Tallis and the tree. The hurt in his eyes told me how much he hated seeing what happened to Tallis. It took me a couple more seconds to figure out what he was preparing to do. And once again, I was too late to grab him before he did it.
Bill ran straight into the swarming birds as fast as his stubby legs would carry him. “Geronimo!”
I have to say that Bill got a lot further than Tallis could. No matter how bad those flying bullet birds cut him, he just kept going. But even he had his limits. He finally collapsed halfway there, thousands of cuts crisscrossing every inch of his body. And those damned birds still kept cutting into him even as he crawled back to us. When he got close enough, Tiresias helped me yank him out of the line of fire.
We dragged him next to Tallis, who looked at Bill with something between awe and disgust. “Now why’d ye go an’ do somethin’ that foolish, stookie angel?”
Bill grinned back at him, making some of the cuts on his face bleed faster. “Look… look who’s talkin’, Tido.”
Ull regarded them with sadness. “I am sorry to both of you that I cannot do more.”
Bill squinted at him and snorted. “Hell, nobody’s expectin’ ya to. I mean, yer so old.”
That prompted the same cryptic look to be exchanged between our hosts which I really wished one of them would explain. All Ull said was, “So I am thusly useless against these intruders.”
Tiresias gave him an affectionate kiss on the cheek before propping him against the nearest tree. “It will not do to judge yourself so harshly. Even the great Herakles was forced to use his bow and arrows rather than his legendary strength when it came to dealing with these little monsters.”
I stared at the field between us and the tree. The idea of following Tallis and Bill’s footsteps wasn’t my idea of fun but… “Would chainmail suffice to keep those little bastards off me?”
“Nae, Lily,” Tallis said.
“No,” Asterion said at the same time. They looked at each other and then both looked away.
Tiresias stretched her hand towards my shoulder, carefully rubbing her fingers up and down the little metal links. “It will protect you… for a time. But the Stymphalians rely on the principle of attrition. After enough blows, they will penetrate your skin. At best, you would be crawling back to us in much the same way your friends have.”
Asterion faced the ground as his open hand began to suddenly move in a large circle as if it were being stirred by a strong gust of wind. Tiresias’s blind eyes widened and she swiftly turned from me to grab the Minotaur’s open hand.
“No!” she yelled.
The man-bull snorted in annoyance while the ground under him started swirling even faster. “Surely this flock couldn’t resist—”
The prophetess pulled her hand up higher. “And neither could anything else within the Grove. Unleash Charybdis here and the entirety of this place will cease to be.”
The Minotaur growled at the prophetess and some of the ground got sucked up into the man-bull’s hand. For just a second, I thought Tiresias accomplished the opposite of what she set out to do. But then, Asterion roared as he clenched his hand into a fist, making the wind stop. He scowled in the direction of the flock.
“There must be a way through,” he said.
There is.
I felt my skin crawl as the voice of The Self echoed in my head. I swallowed and looked around slowly. What do you want?
To help, of course… always to help.
While The Self had helped me in the past, I couldn’t shake my fear that now it was coming to collect on that debt. And what will this help cost me now?
Knowledge…
I didn’t get it. What?
There is something you need to know. But you must let me take over now.
When I heard that, all my worst fears surfaced. Now I was seeing this thing’s true colors: it wanted to control me just like Donnchadh and Persephone tried to squeeze me out. Well, to hell with that! I’d prefer to face AE’s wrath for failure before taking a deal like that again.
To my absolute lack of surprise, The Self protested. Not like that…
Exactly like that… how stupid do you think I am?!
While I was arguing with myself, essentially, I saw, to my horror, my hand inching its way to my blade. I began to jerk it away when a feminine hand stopped me, the hand of Tiresias. Her unseeing eyes seemed to bore into mine.
“Trust yourself,” she said.
I was so distraught I babbled out a protest. “That thing isn’t me! It’s some kind of—”
With a lot more strength than I expected, Tiresias pushed my hand towards the hilt. “Trust yourself.”
I was vaguely aware that Bill, Tallis and even Asterion were asking me what was happening. But I couldn’t hear any of them over the Self’s inner voice.
Knowledge for safe passage… a fair trade?
No matter how reluctant I was, I knew there wasn’t any other way. But I trusted others before to do right by me, and keep their word. Would this be any different?
I took a deep breath, and blew the fear out of my system on the exhale. Then, under my own power, my hand went to my blade and I pulled it out.
###
Tallis
Even as I called out “What is it, Besom?” I knew.
The Self she was so frightened of had manifested in her hour of need and as usual, it scared her. I’d have done me best to comfort her but I was in nae shape to do anything more than lie on the ground and be grateful those sons of bitches hadnae killed me.
I could only watch her extract the blade I’d forged, pulling it free. The blind prophet/prophetess took a pair of careful steps back as the familiar blue light surrounded me love.
As toned as her muscles were before this trip, her body shape visibly grew by an extra layer of thickness and sinew, stretching the limits of the chainmail’s elasticity. Aiming her blade right at the monsters that waylayed both meself and the stookie angel, she marched straight toward them.
The first bird bounced off the armor only to be split in half by her sword stroke. The second, third and fourth birds to strike her met the same fate. Each dead bird marked another step towards the tree. Yet the birds remained infinitely numerous and I could see rents in her armor opening.
###
Lily
I pulled the
sword loose and then…
I was standing in the middle of an inferno. Through the smoke, I sensed I was in some sort of dining room, although the enormous table and the ballroom-sized room suggested it was more of a feast hall. The wooden beams over my head were ablaze, and the stone ceiling on top of them was beginning to collapse all around me. On the other side of the hall, someone kept shouting through the smoke. All I could make out was a bloodstained sword in their hand and the sensation of ruthless cruelty coming from its wielder.
My sense of fear prodded me to flee down the nearest corridor, which was also on fire. I soon realized I was back in the burning castle of my nightmares.
What the hell?
I frantically looked for an escape route.
How could being here help me? I demanded.
Why had The Self led me here?
###
Tallis
When the first cuts began to slice into Besom’s fair skin, I longed to help her. Enchanted or nae, those multiple cuts could only be suffered so long. Besom’s swordsmanship never faltered and I was glad to see more of those cursed birds falling to her blade. By now, she had nearly reached the tree. I couldnae help wondering how she could retrieve the soul with those birds still striking incessantly at her?
###
Lily
I felt rather than heard the man from the dining hall behind me. That was why I kept running into blocked-off passages and falling timber, although every prospective escape route was impassable.
The man behind me was moving a lot less quickly, his blade gleaming in the flames as he confidently strode up to me like a B-movie slasher.
The flames allowed me to see more of him than just his weapon of choice. I could make out what appeared to be Roman armor, a side-fan helmet that gave him the look of a peacock. Even as I ran from him, I kept asking myself why he was after me in the first place.
###
Tallis
I didnae notice before, but Lily was timing her stride to synchronize with the circuit the soul was taking around the tree. By the time she reached it, they were practically beside one another. She suddenly reversed the grip on her blade and drove it into the ground. That sent out a great burst of blue energy that repelled the demon birds long enough for her to pull out the soul vial. It also knocked more than a few of the apples loose from the huge tree.
Lily quickly scooped the soul into the vial and plugged the stopper over it before the birds could regroup. Snatching up several of the apples, she pulled her sword from the ground before running towards us again with superhuman speed.
###
Lily
With all my blundering, I expected my luck to run out eventually. I stumbled into a bedroom where the furnishings were being flambéed just like the rest of the castle. Lacking any other corridors through which to escape the inferno, I ran toward the only window in the room. When I looked outside, however, I decided against jumping out of it.
I wished the smoke were playing tricks on me, but I knew better. I’d been here too many times not to recognize the lush green fields or the water of the loch lapping alongside them. I was fleeing through the passages of Fergus Castle. And it was on fire.
A shout from the doorway made me tear my eyes away from the outside and I faced my pursuer. Under the helmet, I could see his eyes hungering for me.
###
Tallis
As swiftly as her legs could carry her, the distance was still too great. I had thought she’d managed to avoid them, but the Stymphalians came back at her with a mighty force.
Her chainmail was shredded to ribbons by their steely wings and the talons of the infernal beasts. But, still, Besom refused to quit. She stumbled back to us before falling flat on her face. Some apples rolled away from her grasp but the blue aura about her kept glowing.
I could see the wounds on her bare skin healing until they were gone. Still, I picked meself up to crawl over to her.
###
Lily
There was nowhere left to run. In a few seconds, he’d be on me and that would be it. I saw a mirror through the haze and I looked at my reflection. I knew the reflection had to be mine owing to the fact that I was so close to the window behind me. But the person staring back at me was different somehow.
The long red hair and fair skin bore a certain resemblance to the body AE supplied for me. But my face was different…
I was someone else now.
The Roman soldier kept advancing, his face looking worse than I could imagine. He was going to die with me and he didn’t care. Hurting me on his way out was good enough for him.
As that the thought washed over me, I glanced over my shoulder at the green fields beyond. I was too high up to survive jumping, but what other choice did I have?
Throwing myself out the window, The Self’s voice rang out all around me.
And so fell Sorcha Fergus, the beloved of Tallis Black, betrayed into the hands of Aulus Plauntius.
The window got further and further away…
###
Suddenly I was back in the Grove. I blinked and sucked in a mouthful of air. Then I started coughing. Afterwards, I stared up at Tallis’s worried face. Tallis, who seemed on the verge of tears. A quick glance at my body revealed my former chainmail was hacked to scrap metal but otherwise, I was unhurt.
And then I remembered what I’d just done. “Did I get the soul?” I asked.
Tallis smiled tightly. “See fer yerself, lass.”
He held up the glass vial. Inside it, a light flew around. It was the soul.
I looked around to see Bill lying still on the ground but there was no sign of Asterion. I was about to say something when a strong male voice made itself heard over Tallis’s shoulder.
“Nor is that all.”
I didn’t recognize the voice’s owner, at least not at first. He was a young man who could have been maybe five years older than me. But a good look at the black robe and crooked smile told me exactly who it was: Ull.
As I opened my mouth, he held up his right hand. “To forestall the inevitable question, this is how my sudden change in appearance is possible.” He held up a small golden object in his left hand, a shiny, tiny, golden ball with numerous teeth marks around it.
“That’s one of the apples from the tree, right?” I asked.
Tiresias held up a whole one in her hand. “But as you have no doubt deduced, this is no mere apple! In the same way that—” She nodded towards the source of the apples and finished “—is no mere tree!”
While my brain struggled to register the latest information, Ull pushed himself off the tree on which he was leaning. “Now that you’re awake, I thought you might want to see this.”
From the air, he pulled out a staff. The wood was a perfect match to the wood of the suicide trees. Symbols began to glow up and down the length of it as Ull started chanting and pointing it at the flock of carnivorous birds. A bunch of wavy holes in the air popped up in front of each of the birds with a bigger one popping up on the trunk of the tree. In seconds, every one of the bullet birds were sucked into the smaller portals and then were sucked into the center of the tree.
“Much, much better… Hellene monsters have no place near something as magnificent as Yggsdrasil,” Ull said.
Bill, who was now sitting up with most of his wounds healed, scratched his head. “Why would anyone name a tree Yee-Draw-So? I mean, it’s just a tree, right?”
Tiresias shook her head as she tossed the apple up and down. “Tell that to the souls still trapped within the trees behind us.”
Bill hung his head in shame, something I didn’t think he could muster. “Ah, shit, I’m sorry, T. It’s just—”
Our gender-bending prophetess shook her head and waved him off with her free hand. “You are still heavily injured and not thinking clearly. That makes fertile soil for many regrettable statements.”
The runes on the staff finally stopped glowing as Ull came over to us. “But to answer your question, d
ear angel, this is the tree that I hung from for the same nine days and nights that Odin did. A lesser known anecdote concerns Idun. This is the tree on which she cultivated her apples of youth.”
He glanced over at Tiresias with a sly look. “Speaking of which, I am surprised you have yet to bite into that apple yourself, Tiresias. You know I always preferred you as the fairer sex.”
A playful smile danced across the blind prophetess’s lips. “Oh, I thought it novel if I played the role of the older woman for once.”
The magician chuckled for a bit before turning his attention to the rest of us. “If you will all remain still for a moment…?”
More symbols popped up on his staff, but they were different this time. Bill’s wounds began to close up more quickly, my chainmail sewed itself back up to its original pristine condition and Tallis’s color came back to his cheeks.
Ull sighed while we marveled at his superior handiwork.
Tiresias came over and put a hand on his shoulder. “Take care not to overexert yourself. Yes, you have more vitality than before but even that has limits.”
He patted her hand as he got back to his feet. “Agreed but can I do any less for the people who resolved our problem?”
Tallis grunted. “Ah cannae claim sooch an accomplishment. Besom is the sole reason things have been set right.”
Tiresias nodded. “Bearing that sentiment in mind…”
She suddenly tossed the apple she was fondling in my direction. I was so surprised, I barely caught it in time. I looked between it and her. “What’s this?”
