by Darius Hinks
No, he realised, I’m not a god, but the servant of a god.
In a moment, Haldus understood everything. There was a reason he felt such a bond with each incarnation of Orion. His entire purpose was to serve and watch over him. It always had been. It was the reason he had been sent to the physical realm.
‘The final test approaches,’ said the horned god, leaning forwards in his throne.
Kurnous spoke with the roar of a tempest and Haldus cowered at the sound. He heard laughter coming from some of the other beings in the trees, but dared not face them. He had recalled his true station. He might not be as humble as a mortal, but he was humble nonetheless. To converse with one god was enough.
‘Keep him safe,’ said Kurnous. It was not a request.
Haldus tried to rise, and assure his master that he would never fail him. He would die before he let Orion be harmed.
The words stalled in his mouth but the god seemed to hear them just the same. He nodded and sat back in his throne.
Haldus cowered on the ground for a while, waiting to be dismissed; then he realised that the gods had forgotten him. They had shifted their gaze west and their terrible faces looked troubled. Haldus tried to see what they saw, but his eyes were too weak. All he could make out was a faint glow on the horizon, somewhere beyond the sea. It was the flicker of a vast fire, seen from hundreds of miles away and it filled Haldus with an awful sense of dread.
The thought of fire reminded Haldus of Amphion, the eagle spirit that had consumed him. As soon as he recalled his mortal self, the impossible glade began to vanish. Flames washed over everything until all that Haldus could see was Kurnous’s feral gaze. That soon vanished too but, before it did, Haldus noticed a softening of the god’s expression. He saw gratitude, perhaps even pity, and then the eyes were gone.
Haldus roared in pain and staggered backwards, clutching at his burned flesh. He stumbled over a fallen tree and landed on his back in a pool of weed-knotted water. The air was thick with the rancid stench of plague and the sky was yellow. There was no mistaking the diseased wreckage of his home. He looked down at his body, expecting to see something equally ruined. To his surprise, he was not burned. He was bruised and scarred from countless battles, but there was not a single blister from his embrace with the eagle.
‘What is this?’ he moaned, struggling free of the pallid weeds. As he climbed to his feet he started to recall a strange dream, filled with blazing trees and terrible gods. The memory was fleeting. The more he tried to grasp it, the more the details slipped away, leaving him with a single, worrying thought. He had to protect Orion.
‘What are you?’ asked a thin, scraping voice.
Haldus looked across the little pool and flinched. On the far side of the pool was the eagle spirit. It was sitting patiently, watching him from its halo of flames, its four wings folded behind its back. He looked around. They were in a small, muddy clearing, surrounded by the pathetic stumps of diseased trees. It was early morning, not much after dawn by the looks of it, but the light coming from the spirit was enough for Haldus to see that there was no escape. Beyond the trees was a quivering, garish obscenity. Whichever direction he looked, there were mounds of pink and purple fungus. Each of the growths was surrounded by clouds of gnats and spores and leaking rivers of eye-achingly yellow pus. Haldus groaned as he saw animals lurching and limping between them. There were foxes, boars and birds, all mutated beyond recognition. They screamed and whimpered as they moved, tormented by the changes rippling through their bodies. Haldus gripped his head, as though in pain. To see his home like this was agony. How could things ever be as they were?
‘It comes this way,’ said the eagle spirit. Its voice was a little lower, softened by fear or sadness. It turned and fixed one of its large, oil-black eyes on Haldus. ‘The plague is unstoppable now. It will pass through here any minute. Your flesh will change, like everything else.’
The spirit did not sound saddened by the prospect of Haldus’s death. It clearly despised him.
‘Why did you not kill me?’ Haldus asked.
The flames around the eagle dimmed slightly as it considered this. When it replied, it sounded hesitant.
‘You are not what you appear to be. What are you?’
Haldus shook his head, confused. ‘I am the Prince of Arum Tor. My home is in the mountains. The Cáder Donann is where–’
The spirit interrupted him with a screeched laugh. ‘You don’t know. You don’t know your own nature.’
Haldus decided that the spirit must be insane. Perhaps its imprisonment at the hands of Lord Cyanos had unhinged its mind.
The spirit looked disappointed. ‘I thought perhaps you were something new – something that might save us.’ It laughed again, but this time at itself. ‘I am a fool. I may as well have killed you along with the others.’
Haldus was about to speak when the spirit thrashed its four wings and launched itself into the air. The second its huge talons left the ground, the spirit vanished, leaving Haldus with only an after-image of its flaming silhouette.
He cursed and looked around. The spirit had been right – the mutant fungus was rolling and tumbling towards the little pool he was standing in. Tentacle-like growths had lurched up from the gaudy mass of shapes and were already stretching towards him. They were moving painfully slowly, but it was only a matter of time until they reached him.
He climbed up the shattered remains of a tree and made one last attempt to save himself: he placed his fingers to his lips and let out a long, clear whistle. The sound bounced back from the miasma and Haldus had the impression that it travelled no further than the first wave of fungus. He slumped back in the fork of the tree, filled with despair. He thought of Damára and Clorana and the others he had left behind, and prayed that they were still alive.
As he sat back, something pressed into the small of his back. He reached round to move what he thought was a broken branch and his fingers brushed against the book he had taken from Cyanos’s theatre. It was a small, bulging notebook, hundreds of pages thick and crammed with small, tightly packed lines of handwritten text, written in scratchy black ink. Haldus shook his head in distaste as he studied it. Over the top of the words, Cyanos had scribbled diagrams and sketches in other colours. There were countless equations and formulas and portraits of forest spirits: a great stag; a bloated toad; a golden child caught in a tempest; a hooded mage, with flesh made of serpents; a flaming eagle, clearly Amphion; a serene-looking wolf; and, finally, separated from the others by a harsh line and rows of notes, the forest dragons.
Haldus peered at the tiny characters, forgetting for a moment about the daemon-plague rushing towards him. Some of the text was written in the crude, indecipherable alphabet of mankind but Cyanos had also used elven runes. The runes were of an archaic style, but Haldus began to piece together what they meant. Cyanos was boasting – boasting of how easily he had beguiled the forest spirits. He had divided them, deliberately, from the great drakes, by seeding lies over hundreds of years. Haldus shivered as he realised the full extent of Cyanos’s lunacy. Serving different masters at different times, he had driven the great drakes into self-imposed exile – telling them a lie of some kind, concerning Orion. Cyanos had learned that, with the Council of Beasts divided, the forest would begin to die. His original hope was that, as this catastrophe struck, the forest would drive out the asrai forever.
Haldus skipped to the final pages. The writing here was more erratic, careering across the page in a series of manic spirals. From what Haldus could glean, Cyanos had recently fallen under the sway of a new master. His final words were gibberish – describing a beautiful garden, tended by a benevolent, smiling grandfather. This was his new vision for the forest. Cyanos had written at great length about how delightful this garden was, but the accompanying illustrations showed a bloated, knotted stomach, severed from its body, floating in a pool of liquid and swarming with flies.
Haldus shuddered and threw the book from the tree. It flew acro
ss the clearing and into the approaching wave of fungus. As he watched in disbelief, a snake-like growth sprang up and swallowed the book before it could hit the ground. The tube of fungus was topped by the head of a leprous wolf and it grinned at Haldus as it gulped the pages down.
Haldus climbed higher and stared out across the forest. Wherever he looked, he saw nothing but swollen, diseased life, feeding on the forest’s corpse.
‘I have to reach Orion,’ he muttered.
Chapter Seventeen
Drycha tasted the blood of her enemy and smiled. The ground was sodden with it. The interlopers had fought hard to defend the Blessed Oak and they had died in their hundreds. The daemons had already moved on, as the Ancient One told her they would, but not before tearing down Ariel’s pathetic defences. As Drycha clicked and clacked through the shadows, blood oozed through her knotted feet, nourishing her hate. Behind her came the Wildwood Host: nearly two thousand of her vengeful sisters. Even the Ancient One’s visions had never predicted this. Nothing could stand against such numbers. And now, as Coeddil had promised her, the final barriers were about to come down – destroyed by the same fools who constructed them. Drycha had answered the witch’s summons because she felt the terror and desperation in her magic.
Freedom was close. She could taste it as clearly as the blood.
Drycha made no attempt to disguise herself as she approached the Oak of Ages. She did not even take her sisters with her. At a wave of her brittle-bark claws they folded into shadow, vanishing into the rotten trees like ghosts, leaving Drycha to approach the interlopers alone.
What a pitiful group. The council of the great realms had been scattered. Drycha had foreseen their demise months ago on the threads of the Great Weave, but that made it no less satisfying to see now. Less than half of the pale lords survived. A few of them were leading their people to their deaths in the south and the rest were here, huddled at the foot of the Oak, whimpering like abandoned children.
They recoiled at the sight of her, turning to the red-haired figure at their centre.
She did not tell them I was coming, thought Drycha. Laughter bubbled in her narrow chest but she suppressed it. So many crimes were about to be punished, so many debts repaid. She would not demean the lives that had been lost with laughter. Drycha heard the witch address her, but her attention had wandered to the Oak. It was dying. The bark had split in several places and blood was flowing from the wounds, raining on the criminals cowering in its roots.
‘This is what you have wrought.’ Drycha wrapped her mouth around their vile language and hurled clarion, cold words through the darkness. She kept her gaze locked on the ancient tree, horrified by the sight. ‘I have made mistakes,’ her voice was cracked and hoarse, ‘but I can atone and the forest will forgive. You are not meant to be here. And this is the result of your trespass.’
Someone began speaking and Drycha realised it was one of the false king’s priests – one of his horned riders. ‘What hope is there in this, Naieth?’ he demanded, fixing his black eyes on the witch and jabbing his spear at Drycha. ‘She despises us, more than the daemon.’
The witch shook her head and this time Drycha heard her words. They were filled with sadness. ‘It is another’s hate you see, Atolmis. She is just the vessel.’
Rage boiled through Drycha’s sap. It took all her strength not to butcher the pitiful lot of them. ‘My hate is my own.’ She flexed her claws and stepped closer. To her satisfaction, most of the nobles backed away, but Naieth and Atolmis stood firm.
Naieth rattled her long, black nails along her staff. ‘Your master has lived too long, dryad. He has nothing left but treachery and bitter remembrance. His vision is dimmed. And he has lied to you.’
A dozen furious retorts sprang to Drycha’s lips but she bit them all back. The end was almost at hand. She would not tarnish her moment of victory by squabbling with such unworthy souls. ‘Why have you summoned me?’ She felt a flush of pleasure, knowing what was about to come.
Naieth closed her eyes for a second, looking troubled. Then she looked back at the bleeding Oak, as though waiting for an answer. None came and she turned back to Drycha, mouthing words under her breath but not saying them out loud.
‘Speak up, witch,’ said Drycha, relishing Naieth’s discomfort.
Naieth straightened her back and said: ‘You know what I would ask of you, dryad. The forest is consumed. Our halls have fallen. The future of our race hangs in the balance. My visions have shown me a wound, in the south of the forest – a hole in the mortal realm. The daemon that has entered our home has created a tear in the Great Weave, allowing the winds of Chaos to leak through. If we do not heal the wound, the forest – perhaps the world – will be destroyed.’
There was sharp crack as Drycha nodded her head. ‘This I have seen, witch, long ago. You have interrupted me as I lead my sisters to war. Once I am finished here we head south, where we will remove the forest’s other unwelcome guests.’
Naieth’s eyes glittered as she stepped closer. ‘Your master has misled you. You cannot do this alone. Without Orion and the Wild Hunt, there can be no victory.’ She waved her staff at the shadows. ‘The forest must strike as one – not just you and your sisters, but Orion too.’
Drycha said nothing but her eyes burned in their narrow, splintered sockets.
‘We need your help,’ said Naieth. ‘The daemon has robbed the forest of its seasons.’ She looked at Atolmis. ‘The Chosen One has been found, but he cannot be born. With no Even-night he will remain trapped in the Otherworld, nameless and disembodied. We need a spring, Drycha, even if it is only for an hour, we need a spring.’
Drycha smiled, causing the nobles to flinch. ‘Then use your bullying magic, witch. Twist the threads as you have always done. Wring out whatever reality you desire. You have no need of me.’
Naieth clenched her jaw. ‘Savour your moment, dryad, if you must, but give me an answer. You say you have seen all this. You know our power is failing. But the host you have been granted has strength enough to do this. With so many spirits at your command you could turn the very elements to your will. You know this is within your grasp, dryad. Will you help us?’
Drycha stepped up to Naieth and traced a splintered talon across her cheek. ‘And if you’re right – if I can do this, why would I help the imposters who have destroyed my home? Why would I help the self-appointed jailers who have kept my kind locked away in the Wildwood?’
‘If you do not, the forest will die.’
‘I do not believe you.’
Naieth paled. ‘But you will help. I have seen it in my dreams.’
‘For a price.’
Naieth looked suddenly tired and lowered her head.
‘We will give you nothing!’ cried Atolmis, levelling his spear at Drycha, his face full of outrage.
She ignored him and kept her eyes locked on Naieth. ‘Your witch thinks differently.’ Still smiling, she turned and began summoning her sisters into the sacred grove.
Nuin glided low over the treetops as they neared their destination. Prince Haldus scoured the darkness as they flew, straining to recognise anything in the bubbling cesspool below. Nuin had arrived so quickly after he whistled that Haldus knew she must have foreseen his need. And she had not come alone. On either side of Haldus, half-glimpsed in the darkness, were other hawks, their feathers snapping and fluttering in the breeze. Haldus could not see their riders, but he smiled as he thought of them. Damára and Clorana flew together on one bird and the others were ridden by more of his subjects – survivors from the assault on Cyanos’s lair.
Haldus looked upwards, trying to see the stars, but it was no use. The heavens had led them this far but now, as they descended through the pestilent fumes, he had lost all sight of them. Haldus was blind in his own realm. To make matters worse, the air was filled with a haunting, sinister sound. It seemed to be a song, but it was so violent and brutal that he could hardly recognise it as music. The words were indecipherable and they were scre
eched rather than sung.
After nearly an hour of circling, assaulted by this horrible music, Haldus thought he might lose his mind. Then Nuin changed course, veering south down the shoulder of a steep-sided valley and gliding over a series of small, moonlit hills. Haldus crouched lower and placed his face next to hers. ‘What do you see?’
The other hawks swooped after Nuin and soon he saw what she was leading them towards: the slumped carcass of an old oak tree.
Haldus frowned, then gasped as he recognised the circular area around the broken tree. ‘By the gods,’ he breathed as he saw what had befallen the Oak of Ages.
As they descended, Haldus and his fellow hawk riders saw a strange scene in the sacred grove. From a distance, it looked as though thousands of saplings had been planted around the old Oak but, as they got closer, they saw that the saplings were actually willowy forest spirits – dryads, with brutal faces and lithe, bark-clad limbs. At the centre of the circle were two figures. A robed spellweaver and a dryad. They were clutching each other’s forearms and appeared to be performing a strange dance – swaying and jerking in time to the screamed chorus.
Haldus’s kin had supplied him with fresh weapons and he raised his spear as Nuin neared the Oak, thinking that the asrai council must be under attack.
The hawks landed at the centre of the clearing, inside the circle of dryads and not far from where the two dancers were jerking back and forth.
Haldus leapt down and raced towards the Oak, with the other hawk riders sprinting after him. As they neared the dancers, Haldus saw other asrai standing nearby. They were nobles, he saw – members of the council – but their robes were in tatters and their shoulders were slumped under the weight of failure. He recognised some of them from the army he had abandoned at Crowfoot Falls and wondered what had become of the others. He felt a rush of guilt as they recognised him, but he noticed that none of them were doing anything about the host that had surrounded the sacred oak. There was even one of Orion’s pyre wardens amongst them. The Wild Rider did not look as cowed as the other nobles, but he was making no attempt to fight.
