by Darius Hinks
Then there was just the darkness.
Scenes coalesced. Faces disintegrated. Everything formed into something else; new life from old. The pattern repeated endlessly until Finavar was teetering on the brink of a great revelation.
Then, as always, he saw the face of his brother. He tried to focus on it but, like everything else, it collapsed under the weight of his gaze and assumed a new shape.
It became a grizzled, canine face, with a blood-clotted muzzle and eyes like the winter sun, leaking cold flames into a grey dawn.
Dawn? Finavar dragged his eyes from the brutal-looking hound and looked around. He was in a clearing and there was sky overhead, clearly visible beyond the spider-like reach of the branches. A crisp breeze that tasted of snow washed over his face. The trees that surrounded him were lashed furiously together in an impenetrable crush. This was still the Wildwood, but there was no mistaking it – he was nearer to the borders. He could smell the forest – the real forest – somewhere nearby. Maybe no more than a mile or two. Hope stirred again.
He looked back and saw, to his disappointment that the hound was still there. It had not faded with his dreams. He wiped the sleep from his eyes and studied it more closely. It was sitting at the mouth of a cave, just a few feet away from him, breathing quickly as though it had just finished running. It was glaring hungrily at him. As he saw it more clearly, Finavar recognised the hound and felt a rush of fear and disgust. It was one of Orion’s spirit guides. One of the vicious beasts that led the Wild Hunt to slaughter. He tried to rise, to back away, but found he was too weak to stand. He looked down at his frail body and groaned. It was a wreck. His mind was still clinging to a kernel of hope, but his body was failing fast. Again, he felt the uncontrollable urge to laugh. He looked like something the dog had vomited onto the forest floor. He was a battered, bloody pulp.
Then he noticed that the hound was in no better shape. The blood that had matted its hair was its own. There were deep gashes in its side and its ribs were exposed – shocking and pale in the morning light. There was a key difference between the two of them, though. Finavar’s wounds left him looking pathetic and all too mortal, but the hound’s injuries only revealed how spectral it was. They leaked emerald-infused light into the clearing, splaying out from the animal’s body and flickering across a circle of trees.
No, Finavar realised, not trees. The tall, crooked shapes were moving and whispering to each other. Some clutched long, curved weapons in their wooden claws. As Finavar studied them he spotted the spirit that had rescued him from the orchard. It had stooped down, as awkward and swaying as an old man, with one of his hands resting on his aching back. Its weird, elongated face was just a few feet from the hound and they had their eyes locked on each other. There were no words, but Finavar sensed that they were communicating. Communing. Every few seconds the tree spirit would shudder and click into a different position and, each time it moved, the hound shifted on its haunches and snarled in response.
The light from the dog washed over the spirit and Finavar saw its eyes, flicking in his direction. They’re talking about me, he realised. It looked as though the hound was demanding something – demanding him. With every move it looked at Finavar, drooling bloody saliva as it snapped and growled.
The thing clearly wished to devour him, but Finavar was powerless to escape. All he could do was hope that the tree spirits refused to hand him over. After all, what love would they have for a servant of Orion? He looked at their strange, crooked faces. Did they understand how little Ariel and Orion cared for them?
His attention began to wander. He could feel a steady flow of blood rushing from his wounds and guessed that he was finally dying. The little flame of hope was still there, but it was guttering. As the brutal hound edged closer, he found it harder to understand how he would escape the Wildwood. His body was almost done. He could no longer move his legs and his torn skin was horribly cold.
The sun rose higher and, even as life slipped from his ruptured veins, Finavar savoured the warmth that washed over his face. He forgot about the monsters that were haggling for his life and closed his eyes. He pictured himself in open pasture, deep in the heart of the forest, dancing to the glory of Loec, singing for his playful lord.
Something shook Finavar’s body and startled him into wakefulness. The hound was still watching from the foot of the cave, but the tree spirits were now stooped over him, plunging him back into shadow. They must have won the argument, thought Finavar, but his thoughts were so muddled he could not remember if that was good or bad. What difference did it make? One monster or another?
This close, he saw how different the spirits’ faces were from the bark of trees. Their features were huge, strange and inhuman, but filled with emotion and intelligence. What he had originally taken for splits in bark, were actually runes, formed from their brittle flesh and glowing with faint light. He was so beguiled by the lights that it took him a little while to notice what they were doing.
He gasped and pulled away, realising as he did so that he had regained some of his strength. The whispering of the spirits grew in excitement and they held him fast, pushing him back to the floor.
The thing that had so alarmed Finavar was this: the spirits had torn open some of the runes on their limbs and were pouring treacly, sap-like liquid from them, into the symbol they had scratched across his chest. He stared at them with a mixture of horror and fascination, unable to grasp what they were doing. The same light that was leaking from the hound’s flesh was in the liquid entering his body.
The hound saw his movement and edged forwards, raising its hackles and letting a low, dangerous growl.
The spirit with the avian features raised a hand and the hound paused.
What power do they wield over it, Finavar wondered? How long can they hold it off? I need to be ready for when it strikes. I need to be strong enough to fight. His lip curled in distaste. If I have to die, it will not be at the whim of Orion.
He looked away from the hound and studied his body again, sensing that a transformation was taking place. He gasped. Where the liquid had entered his wounds it had formed a thin, bark-like crust. His skin was rebuilding itself.
‘What are you doing?’
His voice made him jump. It was strong and sure. Utterly unlike the pathetic croak he had expected.
The spirits bristled and rattled at the sound, but continued their work. If anything they were moving faster now – pouring more of their luminescence into his body and holding him even tighter.
Finavar found that his strength was returning with increasing speed. He tensed his muscles and the tree spirits had to lean all of their weight against him to hold him in place.
The hound snarled and began pacing back and forth, swinging its head from side to side.
Finavar’s vision filled up with the unearthly light. Every bough and leaf began to blaze. It was as though someone had held a candle behind a painting, so that the colours doubled in brightness. The world was suddenly aflame with green light. His pulse raced faster and, with a delighted laugh, he rose to his feet, hurling back the spirits, throwing out his arms and reaching out to touch the light.
His mind raced and, as the spirits tumbled away from him he saw that they were laughing with him.
Finavar turned to face the hound, flushed with his new-found power.
The animal held his gaze as he strode towards it, clenching his fists.
Finally, Finavar had the chance and the power to take his revenge.
The light was now rolling and blossoming through his thoughts and Finavar was still a few feet away from the hound when he realised the magic was going to overwhelm him. It raged so fiercely that it burned away reality. The candle had destroyed the painting, leaving nothing but light.
Finavar reached into the radiance, but it was too late. The world had slipped away.
Chapter Two
‘What have I become?’ muttered Prince Haldus.
It was dusk, but the failing
light could not shield him from the truth. A vast army was gathered in the valley below him. Nobles from all the great realms had answered his call, just as Naieth promised they would. The greatest asrai force ever assembled was now under his command. The fate of the forest was in his clumsy grasp. And everything told him that this was not his role. He was not born for plans, negotiations and tactics. His place was in the mountains with his hawks, or following his lord in the Wild Hunt – anywhere but here. But they had left him no option. The lords of the great council. Too proud to kneel to each other and too afraid to stand alone, they had knelt to him – their awkward, rough-mannered cousin from the mountains.
He was drifting high in the clouds, on the back of his enormous warhawk, Nuin, and he could see that even now, after months of plague and war, the asrai numbered in their thousands: archers, wardancers, riders and spellweavers from every realm of the forest. Banners that had never been seen together before now fluttered side-by-side, united by desperation and rage. Since the seasons had been replaced by endless blight, the great halls of the asrai had fallen. Some had burned, some had been torn down, but most had simply rotted – consumed by sorcery and disease.
He steered Nuin down through the clouds and landed on a knuckle of bare rock jutting up from the forest, just to the south of where his new army was gathering. There was a noble waiting to meet him – another warhawk rider, sitting on a raptor almost as huge as Nuin.
‘Lord Cyanos,’ said Haldus as he landed.
Cyanos dragged his gaze from the surrounding hills and nodded in greeting. His appearance was unusual for an asrai. His hair was straight and centre-parted and it was as black as the ornate breastplate that covered his chest. His cloak was bunched at the shoulders and Haldus knew that it hid a pair of stumps – all that was left of the wings that had once adorned his back. Even stranger than that were the objects dangling from his armour. Lord Cyanos carried dozens of odd fetishes that clearly had no place in the forest. As he turned to face Haldus, copper, clockwork devices clattered against his armour, jangling against astrological measures, metal-clasped cylinders and bunches of metal keys. And at his belt, he carried a small, leather-bound folio of vellum sheets, covered in printed text. With his gentle manners and studious air, Cyanos was as different from Haldus as it was possible to be, but they had become good friends just the same. Haldus recognised in Cyanos a fellow outsider. The gossips and players of Ariel’s court would shun this peculiar scholar as surely as they had always been appalled by Haldus’s lack of social grace.
They sat in silence for a moment, studying the shocking sights that surrounded them. They were in the far north, near the rolling Alarin Hills, but even here there was no respite from the plague. Large swathes of the hillside had been stripped bare by disease and there were foetid, fleshy growths jutting from the earth – pale domes of fungus that quivered in the breeze, shedding spores across the hills. It was terrible to see. The beauty of the forest had been replaced with a gaudy, diseased facade. There was no birdsong – just the same droning hum of flies that crowded every other valley. Everything noble and pure had perished, apart from the person they had come to find.
‘Lord Thenot lives here?’ asked Haldus, looking in disbelief at a pile of gnarled, leafless branches opposite. It was a kind of gate, but it looked like the work of humans – shoddy and crude, with none of the finesse or beauty of asrai craftsmanship.
Cyanos frowned and peered at his little book. ‘It did not always look this way. His halls have been ruined, Haldus, like everything else.’ He showed the prince an illustration of a beautiful, soaring gate made of living ivy, guarded by proud lords and warriors. ‘The plague has destroyed him.’ Cyanos waved back to the south. ‘I’ve told you what the prophecies say, prince. We must set watch over the Crowfoot Falls, but once you have placed your main force there, I can show you the way to the halls of a truly powerful ally. I know someone who can help you with this burden.’ His eyes flashed with hope. ‘We’ll only need a small force. There will be little or no enemy there. And then I’ll show you an ally who can actually stop this wretched plague.’
Haldus sighed. ‘I trust you Cyanos,’ he waved at the plumed, strutting figures below, ‘far more than any of Ariel’s courtiers, but we must at least investigate this place. Thenot is my cousin. He cared for me as a child after the death of my father. I need to know if he’s still alive.’ He looked embarrassed by the emotion that had crept into his voice. ‘Besides, we seek allies and there may be some survivors here.’
Cyanos gave him a gentle smile and nodded. ‘Then we must hurry.’ He waved at the ugly pink growths that littered the landscape and the clouds of flies that blurred the horizon. ‘We have already lost too much.’
Haldus and Cyanos crossed the valley and approached the gate to Thenot’s halls on foot, accompanied by hundreds of glaive-wielding warriors, all of them wearing plates of thick leather armour. Haldus despised showmanship or displays of power, but he knew that even here, in the halls of their own kin, there was danger. Whoever remained in Thenot’s halls must know that they faced a well-armed force of soldiers.
The gate was as broken and crooked as they thought, but it had been barred from the inside with fallen branches. It must have once been a grand sight, Haldus realised. It would have originally stood over fifty feet tall – a grand, spiralling arch of ivy and thorn, but now it was little more than sticks and rubble. As they approached, he heard a terrible din – the sound of a jeering, howling mob. Hoarse, furious voices rang out, accompanied by the hammering of fists on wood.
Haldus frowned at Cyanos, confused, then stepped closer to investigate.
As he got nearer, he saw shapes watching from the opposite side. None of them seemed willing to approach the gate though – waiting a few feet away from it, yelling and cursing.
‘Kinsmen!’ he cried, holding his hand aloft with the palm facing out. ‘I am Prince Haldus of Arum Tor.’ The din faded away as he spoke. ‘I come to you with the blessing of the Mage Queen and a promise to–’
Haldus’s words were cut short as an arrow whistled from a tower of branches, teetering at one side of the gate.
Haldus ducked aside and it thudded into the overgrown greenway he was standing on.
The howling of the mob began again. More arrows flew, but they landed behind the gate, driving the mob back. Voices cried out for mercy and freedom.
Cyanos hurried to Haldus’s side. ‘This is madness. We must leave!’
‘Wait,’ said Haldus, frowning. He peered at the figures beyond the mound of branches. ‘These are our kin. And they’re trapped somehow – imprisoned in their own halls.’
‘Why are you attacking those who would save you?’ he cried, stepping closer to the gate. This was not the first cold greeting he had received and he was growing tired of pride and stupidity. ‘Fight with us, not against us.’
‘Leave!’ cried a voice from the gatehouse. ‘Or the next shaft won’t go wide.’
The voice was ragged and pained, but it sounded familiar. ‘Lord Thenot?’ cried Haldus. ‘Is that you?’
‘There’s nothing here for you but death,’ replied the voice, sounding even more furious. ‘Leave now, cousin.’
Haldus shook his head. ‘We’re kin,’ he cried. ‘We will not abandon you–’
‘You will leave!’ came the reply as Lord Thenot stepped into view.
Haldus and the others gasped and backed away. Lord Thenot was essentially as Haldus remembered him, but the left side of his body had been transformed. The same pink growths that littered the hillsides had sprouted from his torso and his skin had been enveloped by a black, fungal covering. There was a moist, trembling lump of meat hanging from his body, like an external organ, but it was horribly animated, twitching and quivering and trying to speak.
To Haldus’s disgust he saw that the growth had a gaping mouth and three misshapen eyes. The thing was attempting to catch passing flies with a long, prehensile tongue.
Lord Thenot saw the disgus
t in Haldus’s eyes and grimaced – his face contorted by a mixture of shame and fury. ‘Yes,’ he cried over the noise of the mob. ‘This is what we are, cousin. Damned. You should leave now and pray–’
His words were cut off as he whirled around to shoot several more arrows at the howling mob below.
‘He’s killing his own people,’ gasped Haldus.
Cyanos looked just as disgusted, but he shook his head. He had been studying the gate through a small cylinder he had unfastened from his black armour. ‘He’s protecting us from them,’ he said, handing the object to Haldus.
The prince looked at the thing suspiciously, then, at Cyanos’s bidding, he held it up to his eye. There was a glass lens in the tube and Haldus felt as though he had been thrown towards the gate. Suddenly he could see right through the gaps and into the halls beyond. He muttered a curse as he saw that Thenot’s subjects were even more mutated than their lord.
‘I can only hold them back for so long,’ cried Thenot. ‘My arrows are running low and my mind is starting to wander.’ There was fear in his voice now. ‘I’m not sure I will want to hold them back for much longer. Do you understand? It’s taking me. I’m losing myself. I can barely remember my own name. You must leave cousin, while you still can. Do not be here when we–’ He broke off with a curse and loosed some more arrows at the figures below.
Haldus felt a sickening realisation. ‘We cannot leave them like this.’
Cyanos shook his head. ‘What can we do? It’s too late for them, prince. We must go where we can still be of use.’
‘I know it’s too late for them,’ replied Haldus, ‘but what about the rest of this realm? What will happen when Thenot weakens and his people spill forth from that hellish pit?’
Cyanos nodded. ‘They will spread their disease to their kin.’ He frowned. ‘But what can we do?’
Haldus peered through the looking glass again. ‘The halls are nothing but deadwood now.’ His voice was grim and he looked at Cyanos with a pained expression. ‘Remember your Great Work, Cyanos – the pyre you built when you were…’ his words faltered.
