“That’s why you’re here.”
She nodded. “Just don’t make a habit of this.”
Vague memories shifted around inside Sarn’s head. They poked and prodded the darkness obscuring everything from before five years ago—when the Lord of the Mountain handed him over to the Rangers. Something warmed on his chest, and he touched his pendant with his free hand. A name drifted out of his jumbled-up past.
“Sovvan.”
Her face lit up. “You remember my name. I knew you would. We were twins after all. Of course, I was the talkative one and the oldest.” She held up a finger. “By one hour, but it still counts.”
“Why do you have wings?”
Her lips quirked in an impish grin Ran often wore. “Don’t worry. You won’t grow a pair. I made a deal to get these.” She swept her free hand backward indicating her supersized dove wings.
“What deal?”
“I’ll tell you another time. I’ve waited almost fourteen years for this moment. Before it slips away, I need to say a few things.” Sovvan glanced over her shoulder. “We don’t have much time. I’m borrowing your magic to manifest, so the longer we talk, the more I’ll drain you. So, let’s keep this short and sweet okay? I don’t want to tax you any more than necessary.”
Sarn winced as his map spawned and pointed frantic red arrows at two black upside-down pentacles superimposed over each other. They moved through the forest below and exerted a fell pull on him. He lost some altitude despite his winged savior. Beside the strange symbol walked Dirk. Where the hell is that troublemaker going now? And how did he survive the Ægeldar?
There was only one entity that conman could be searching for—the Queen of All Trees, and that jerk was leading something bad to her.
Neem’eye eriskeen, whispered his magic.
Is that the name of the thing with Dirk?
No answer, of course not, since when did his magic ever say anything useful? Anger swamped Sarn. He jerked his numbing arm away from his sister and plummeted toward the black symbol swelling on his map. He must stop it.
“No!” Sovvan swooped down and recaptured his arm.
“Let go of me. I must stop him.” Sarn gestured with his free hand to the dark tide still pulling him away from Mount Eredren. She shook her head. But no matter how hard she beat her wings, she could no longer slow his slide toward whatever had laid hold of him. It pulled him toward the thing with Dirk.
She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Listen to me. It’s not your fault I died. You couldn’t help being who and what you were, and neither could I. Unfortunately, I was allergic to magic.”
Allergic to magic—her words slammed into Sarn and he forgot all about Dirk and his new friend.
“How could you be allergic to magic?”
“Many people are. Magic is a sliding scale. Mages on one end, nulls on the other.”
“You were a null, weren’t you?”
Sovvan nodded. Her hands were losing cohesion, but she held on and the tide dragged her despite her efforts to stop it. “Yes, until death fix that,” her smile turned pained. “‘Cause every bloody thing must balance. Grand ain’t it?”
“One of us had to die so the other could live,” Sarn said slowly, following the logic she’d thrown out to its horrible conclusion.
She nodded.
“Why you and not me?”
Sovvan pointed at a black smudge he was plummeting toward. Her lips opened and closed, shaping words and an explanation fourteen years’ overdue, but Sarn couldn’t hear her. She faded into a white ball of light, and it slammed into his chest. But Sarn remained caught in a dark gyre sucking him down into darkness.
Light poured through the seams in his forest green tunic as his crystal pendant punched through the fabric, and its light stabbed the black force alternatively squeezing and stretching Sarn, but he was fading as he fell. Everything was blackening, and the ground was rising to meet him.
“Papa!” Ran shouted, but his son sounded so far away as he blacked out.
When Dirk crossed the last circle of standing stones, he met some resistance but after a moment’s struggle, it let him pass. Trees dwarfed him as they slid aside gesturing for him to continue. A leaf-strewn path snaked northward deeper into that enchanted forest, and Dirk felt eyes on him the instant he set foot on it.
Behind him, those giant trees closed ranks sealing him in with inevitability. Doubt niggled at Dirk, but it was too late to go back. Leaves rustled. He turned, but there was no one there. Neither were there any creatures or birds. There was just the rustle of dry leaves and the crackling of twigs underfoot. Beneath that was an eerie silence.
Dirk regarded the path. The shadows dappling it seemed sinister until first one child, then two then a choir full of them began a haunting song.
Come and see. Oh, come and see—what your dark deeds have done. ‘Cause I’ll be there. Yes, I’ll be there to show you—to show you. So, come and see. Oh, come and see ...
It was the same song that had called him in here full of such heartbreaking innocence and it spurred him on. Dirk followed the trail set aside for him and the song rose and fell with his steps. Branches waved to him. They were black hands urging him on.
After hiking for a while and racking up several miles at the very least, there was still no damage. The forest looked as pristine as it always had. So, I was right. That stone was harmless.
Dirk stopped and shook his head. He’d let doubt play him like a fool. Now he was lost in the forest until it chose to let him leave. Smart going there. You’re a real genius. You let a bunch of weeds trick you into coming in here and for what—a silly song?
Thank God, his friends couldn’t see him now. They’d laugh their asses off. A pang of guilt for leaving them in the Ægeldar made Dirk rub his chest. Quit worrying. They’re fine. They have Cris to look after them.
But he didn’t. Feeling suddenly exposed, Dirk searched for a rock to put his back against. The forest had lured him in here for a reason, likely not a good one.
Groans startled Dirk as two trees parted. Their massive bases were wider than ten Villars packed together. They separated by slow increments like two gigantic woody curtains revealing a spill of silver light. Framed between them, she stood there, the Queen of All Trees. Oh God, she was magnificent—like a diamond faceted into a perfect replica of a tree.
In her silver branches, she cradled a wizened tree like a mother caring for her child. Its bark flaked off as it thrashed. Not even her presence, or her light, could soothe its pain. Behind her, a graying sky leaned hard on thousands of fallen trees. They lay this way and that, gray and dying.
Dirk dropped to his knees. “Oh, God, what have I done?”
She didn’t answer, but there was anger in her every line. The world stopped, freezing time or maybe it just felt like it had as the silence stretched on broken only by the crying of the wind. He might have knelt there forever pinned by guilt if a voice hadn’t spoken from behind.
“What about your friends?”
Dirk’s head snapped up. “What about them?” He raked the clearing for the fellow who’d mentioned them.
A hooded man appeared before him and shrugged. “Ask her, she’s the one who sealed them in the pit. Oh yes, your friends are trapped in the Ægeldar.”
“She what?” Dirk turned beseeching eyes on her, the mythic Queen of Shayari. “Is he telling the truth?” His gut screamed a resounding yes, but she held her peace.
“Don’t bother asking. She doesn’t speak to men.” A familiar sickle smile spread across the hooded man’s face. “She doesn’t rescue them either. But I do, and I’m offering to help you.” He extended a bony hand. There was a symbol branded on his palm—two upside-down pentacles, one inside the other.
Dirk drew back. There was something about those pentacles—some warning from an old myth, but he couldn’t call it to mind.
“Take my hand, and I’ll help you free your friends.”
Dirk glanced one last time at the Queen
of All Trees, but she neither moved nor spoke. She was a silver statue, as immutable and bright as the sun. But her light was as cold as was her regard.
And yes, he deserved her scorn for what he’d done. But his friends—Rags, Cris, Gore, and Vill—they were the only family Dirk had ever known.
And you conned them into this. They’re imprisoned because of you, rasped his conscience. And it was right.
I can’t leave them in that pit. Just the thought of it made Dirk shiver with revulsion. Any deal was worth it if it saved his friends.
“What will that cost me? No one helps for free.”
The hooded man smiled, and his eyes twinkled at the prospect of a deal in the offing.
“Nothing you haven’t already promised,” said the Adversary to the soul he already owned.
Dirk nodded and took the Adversary’s hand. Without another glance, he headed back to Mount Eredren with the Adversary on his arm and determination in his heart.
The door creaked. “Sarn? Sarn are you in there?”
Ran cringed and crawled onto Papa’s lap. Papa sat so still. Go away. Leave Papa and me alone, he thought at the intruders, but they didn’t go away.
“You can’t just walk in there,” said Uncle Miren’s friend Bevik.
“Why? He doesn’t visit. He acts like we have leprosy or something.” Moirraina knocked again. “Sarn, I’m coming in. We need to talk.”
The door opened. Everything went dark. Even Papa’s eyes stopped glowing and he toppled, hitting the ground hard. But that was wrong. Why didn’t the rocks catch Papa and keep him from harm?
Ran poked the cold stones. They felt dead—drained of magic. Oh no, Papa! Had the black mist got them? Or was this the regular non-threatening darkness because there was no light?
“Papa!” Ran grasped his limp arm and shook it.
“Sarn!” Moirraina landed next to Ran and shoved him aside. “Bevik—get a light. I can’t see anything in here. Don’t you have any lumir?” That last statement she directed to Ran.
“Yes, but it went out.” Ran squeezed his bear, but Ghost Bear opted not to manifest.
Were there faces in the darkness other than Moirraina’s and Bevik’s? Ran scanned the blackness around them but saw nothing—no wraiths, no wizened faces, no grinning skulls, no skeletal hands reaching for him. He squeezed his eyes closed and chewed on Bear’s ear until the backs of his eyelids lit up orange.
Ran opened his eyes.
Bevik picked his way through the clutter while holding a thin stick away from his body. An orangey tongue danced on its tip and splashed his teenage face with light, accentuating the area around his eyes and nose.
Ran sat up. He’d never noticed Bevik and Will had similar features, but in this lighting, their resemblance was unmistakable. Were they related? Entranced, Ran stared at the flickering thing Bevik held. It wasn’t lumir nor was it like anything he’d ever seen.
“What is that?” Ran reached for the pretty light.
“It’s fire. Don’t touch it unless you want to get burned.” Bevik swatted Ran’s hand away.
“What’s a fire?”
“It’s like red lumir only not a crystal, and it’ll spread to anything flammable it touches.” Bevik nodded to the piles of papers, clothes, and books strewn around the cave. Most of the clutter belonged to Uncle Miren. Bevik held the fire higher, and its glow fell on Papa, who’d begun to thrash.
“What the hell did you do to yourself?” Moirraina shook Papa’s shoulders, but the fit continued.
Crack! She slapped Papa hard across the face, again and again, but it had no effect. Papa kept seizing and gasping for breath. His eyes were rolled back until only the whites showed intermittently when his eyes fluttered open.
“This is why you shouldn’t live alone.” She slapped Papa again then wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
“Papa?” Ran clutched the tie that bound them. It was strong and secure like always despite Papa’s apparent distress.
As suddenly as it started, the fit ended. Papa slumped into unconsciousness. Ran edged past Moirraina. Before he reached Papa, she seized his arm and hauled him out of the door into darkness.
Down the hall to the Foundlings’ cave, they went. Moirraina didn’t trip over anything, but every rock caught Ran’s boots and he stumbled. He tried to break her grip, but her fingers were wrought iron, and they manacled his arm.
“Let go of me! Papa, help me!”
“Quiet. I’m trying to help your father.” She flung a door open and shoved Ran inside.
“Make sure he stays here,” she said before shutting the door in his face.
Ran kicked the door and stretched up on his toes, but his fingers just grazed the handle. He glared at it. I wish I was as big as Papa. But he wasn’t. He was still too little to reach anything without help. Ran kicked the door again as hot tears rolled down his cheeks.
“Papa!”
Honor Him
Aralore picked up a fist-sized rock and placed it on Hutel’s back. His corpse collapsed in a shower of particulates, exposing a pile of browning bones. But she retained her composure despite her gorge rising at the sight.
Thank God, he no longer had a face. Aralore set another rock down next to Hutel’s skull, and its eyeless pits glared at her. Hutel’s the first, but there’ll be more. I must accustom myself to the gore. There’s no victory without bloodshed. Aralore forced herself to meet that hollow stare as she intoned the first words of the new death rite. After all, she was the Will and the Way of the future.
Looking to heaven, Aralore said, “O, heavenly Father, throw wide the gates. Send out Your angels to light the way.” Aralore placed another stone beside the first. “To heaven fly, our fallen brother-in-the-spirit.”
The others followed her lead, each repeating the same refrain, “To heaven fly, our fallen brother-in-the-spirit.”
With eleven pairs of hands, building a crude ossuary took a half an hour. Aralore offered the crowning stone to Velor. As Hutel’s friend, it was his right to end the ceremony and say those final, soul-freeing words.
The taciturn swordsman took the stone with a nod of thanks and held it for a moment of silent prayer before laying it on the cairn. “Heavenly Father, accept our fallen brother Hutel into the ranks of Your Faithful.”
“We’ll meet him again in the Last War.” Aralore squeezed Velor’s shoulder, bunching the orange fabric of his robe.
“’Till the Last War!” echoed the others.
Aralore gave them a moment more then she clapped her hands. “Hutel has earned his place. Let’s go earn ours.”
“What about the box?” Somnya pointed and all eyes turned to the magic-killer.
Was that why its contents had killed Hutel? Had he possessed hidden magical talents? Aralore rolled that reasoning around in her mind disliking it. Wouldn’t there have been signs?
Aralore approached the box. It rested on one of the million boulders littering Shayari’s greenery. She touched the lid. Why did you attack me? I have no magic. But she did live in a country infested with that vile stuff. Maybe it had infected her too. Aralore shuddered at the thought and cracked open the lid.
Darkness leaped out. A narrow black beam slammed into an enchanted tree two hundred yards away. It screamed and writhed out of the way. Aralore turned the box, angling it so the beam tracked the fleeing tree. It gave one last shriek then fell with a satisfying thud.
Aralore stroked the box as possibilities flooded her mind. Maybe the Last War was here already.
“Preceptor?”
It was Somnya again, her faithful seneschal. Aralore let those visions of grand battles go. She’d come back to them another time.
“Come. We’ve got a magical site to investigate and cleanse. Velor—send word of our errand. Inform me the instant the prelate’s spotted. He should be here for the grand unveiling, don’t you think?”
With luck, one touch to the crystal will cave his pompous, misogynistic head in. Aralore fought a smile at the image that thought
conjured.
Velor bowed. “Yes, Preceptor.”
Aralore slid her hands under the box. How had it grown so heavy? Earlier it had weighed about ten pounds, but now it felt like it weighed double or triple that, and her arms strained to lift it.
No way, I can't ask for help. This is my test, my burden to bear. I won’t share it. Though Aralore’s opinion changed when the weight pinning her arms against the boulder lightened. Somnya caught her eye, and at Aralore’s nod, they lifted.
The box rose but the lid slipped. It wedged itself between the rear of the box and Aralore’s breasts doubling the exposure of the black lumir crystal. However, the lid reflected the shadows boiling out of it away from Aralore and her assistant.
Those shadows fanned out in a gray cone seeking and destroying enchanted trees. Light streamed out of their moaning corpses into the jewel swelling inside the expanding box, weighing it down. Aralore strained to hold her end up until another pair of hands reached in to take some of the load.
It was Velor, of course. He and Somnya had been with her since the beginning. It was right for the three of them to trudge into victory together. Aralore regretted ever desiring to shut out her siblings of the cloth. They were her true family.
Shoulder-to-shoulder, they marched, and her acolytes trailed behind in somber silence. The ten men and women in burnt orange robes were the only color left in the graying forest. For now, their strength was enough to carry the black lumir crystal as it gorged itself on magic. But there would always be more hands to help carry the light-stealer.
A large hand landed on Ran’s heaving shoulder and squeezed.
“Why are you crying?” Saveen asked as he spun Ran to face him. Saveen stood a little shorter than Uncle Miren, but his mind was still little like Ran’s which made him the perfect playmate—just not right now.
Saveen regarded Ran in that open, trusting way of his. A candle melted on a nearby stalagmite, and its blackened wax ran down its side like ichor from a wounded monster. Ran shuddered, remembering the tentacular thing in the cavern with the underground lake and the pink lumir island.
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