You can’t close your heart to power and not expect consequences, she heard Yarrow say. The gods take note of such things. Daft woman. The gods of Blackthorn took note of nothing but leaves and mold.
The laughter came again, this time lowering to a raspy growl that was not very childlike at all. Something struck the barn and scrabbled over the thatch above her head. Melisande opened an eye as Pisskin looked up. Chilled, she drew her hand from beneath the covers and formed a Banishing sigil. It was the only thing she knew how to do. The scrabbling continued.
Something tinkled outside, like delicate tack on a fine horse. Hooves struck the earth, cracking ice in weird rhythm. Shadows fled by the window above the barn door. Perhaps the king’s men had come for her at last. She almost wished it were so, but only because she knew it was not.
The deep-throated laughter sounded right next to her ear. Something fingered her hair, tangling it.
Melisande jumped up with a shout. Pisskin fled, leaping the entire distance to the floor below. The animals began to knock around in their stalls as the wind rose to a swell that screamed in the thatch and yowled in the cracks, shaking the barn like a rickety box. Not bothering to speculate how she was able to hear or see the Otherworld on this side of the Veil, Melisande grabbed her blanket and ran for the hayloft ladder. As she started down, something ripped the blanket from her arm and sent it billowing away into the dusty air. It took the shape of a bird with flapping wings.
Something came through the thatch between the rafters and landed on the floor below. It was ugly. Giggling like a wicked child, the creature ran on bowed legs to Digger’s stall, leapt over the gate and landed on the goat’s back. Screaming, the goat tried to leap to the side and crashed into the wall. A splash sounded as a bucket dumped over, sending water streaming over the floor.
The last step on the ladder was coated with something slippery. Melisande’s foot slid sideways on the rung, causing her to lose her grip and tumble to the ground. The air smelled of horse dung and pond slime. As she rolled over to catch her breath, the ugly, bow-legged creature went into the other stalls and began harrying the animals, causing them to cry out and leap around in the enclosed spaces. Damjan’s horse threw a kick at the back wall and cracked it. Grain and hay shot up into the air and scattered over the floor. Chickens and geese squawked in their coops.
Fearing for the animals, Melisande got to her feet and opened the stall doors. The animals escaped and began to dart around the barn looking for a way out. Something outside struck the window above the door and shattered it. Melisande covered her head as glass flew, followed by a plume of thick snow.
She ran for the door. She had to assume this attack was on her; maybe once she got out, the Others would leave the animals alone. As she reached the door, the geese rent the air with deafening screams. A blast of feathers flew from a coop. A silvery fox with a very long tail leapt out dragging a limp goose in its mouth. It climbed the wall like a squirrel and took its catch through the broken window.
“Pisskin!” Melisande called, but there was no sign of the cat. She flung open the door. Before she could slip through and close it behind her, the wind ripped it from her hand and slammed it against the outside of the barn. As it hung from a single hinge, the animals stormed out. Thor hit her with his shoulder and knocked her to the ground. Rumbling hooves and rustling wings fled by.
What happened to Damjan—and where was Yarrow? No self-respecting witch would sleep through this. The forest swirled, rushed and howled with pale ghostly figures: beasts with impossible and exaggerated features; squat, hairy things with crooked limbs; longhaired women with flowing dresses and skeletal faces; thin riders on cruel hounds ravaging the air on a hunt. They flew with abandon on a tide of wind, snow and howling wolves.
The door to the cottage crouched in the dark, shrouded by vines, trees and mist. It seemed as far away as a mountain ridge, bleak and forbidding. It was too still.
Melisande got up, brushed the snow from her side and limped toward the cottage, hugging the barn wall. She called again for Pisskin. She could only hope the cat had found a safe place to hide. The barn animals, on the other hand, would be fodder for predators. Digger might be safe assuming the Others didn’t tear off Melisande’s knit collar or simply harm the beast outright. She had heard stories of such things.
Somewhere in the forest amid the tumult of unseen mayhem echoed a strange, repetitive sound. Thwok! Thwok!
She reached the corner of the barn by the witch’s garden. Several ugly beasts with short legs, long arms and bony fingers crouched in the snow, tearing up dirt and throwing clods, roots and weeds around. Their laughter scraped Melisande’s nerves. One of them hopped up to the stone wall she had carefully stacked and strengthened against frost heaves and began to dismantle it. Laughing wickedly, the foul creature began throwing the stones into the woods. They thumped and cracked against the trees.
The weird sound continued. Thwok!
Though her anger was rising by the moment, Melisande knew better than to challenge the Otherworld. Right now she had to get to the cottage and find out what happened to Damjan and Yarrow. She hovered by the barn, her flesh prickling with the shouts and rush of the unseen moving around her. Inside the barn, something crashed. The violent sound moved her to step into the open.
Thwok! Thwok! She had an idea that it might be an axe.
She strode quickly toward the shadows cloaking the cottage. Darker shades in the shapes of cloaked men loomed on either side of the path to the door. An owl with a humanlike face swooped over her, forcing her to drop to the ground. As it went up into the trees, she rose and kept going.
A goat bleated nearby. It was not Digger, so she ignored it. The sound rose into a screech that set her teeth on edge. Something ran across her path, a hairy man with the hindquarters of a hoofed beast. He swung out something bristly that looked like a broom. Melisande tried to dodge the thing as it came at her face, but it moved with her as if the faun knew exactly what she would do. She noticed horns protruding from its head as the broom end struck her in the eyes, blinding her. As she screamed with pain, the Others yowled with laughter.
By this time Melisande had had enough. The snowy untracked earth blurred through the tears seeping from her eyes. Blinking through the onion sting, she headed again for the cottage, a black shadow tucked between the hedges. Where was that damned witch? Something must have happened to her. While Melisande did worry about this, she was more concerned for Damjan and the fact that neither Melisande nor the swordsmith had the ability to close the Veil and send these villains back to the Otherworld.
Thwok! A loud crack rent the air, followed by a groan and a roar of eerie, celebratory voices rising on a swooshing sound. One of the garden wall stones landed in Melisande’s path, causing her to stumble. Dazed and half blinded by the faun’s prickly broomstick, she didn’t realize what was happening until something enormous swooshed down from the sky and covered her in an icy tangle of branches and boughs, knocking her to the ground and crushing her into the snow.
~ * ~
Melisande stirred, noticing stillness. The wind had ceased, and snowflakes whirled slowly in the air. She lay at the foot of an immense ash tree with a trunk as wide as a palace and boughs that touched the heavens. Faint light emanated from its bark, silvery and golden in the twilight. At the base of the tree, cradled in the roots, lay a black, silent pool. Reflecting stars, the water whispered secrets.
Something rustled above. On a low-hanging bough, a hooded crow folded its wings, cocked its head and stared from an onyx eye. Why did you not call me? the bird inquired.
Melisande pushed herself up and stood. The pool made her nervous. She edged around it and over the massive roots to stand beneath the crow. Aside from dreams in which her feathered companion had warned her about the rangers, once as a crow and again as the crow warrior on his odd gray steed, she had little reason to believe the bird was anything she could call for help. It hadn’t saved her from the rangers it warned h
er against—or her broken heart—or the angry villagers of Odr.
“You’re a curious bird,” she replied.
Its black eye reflected the pool. Curious, indeed, why you abandoned your art.
Melisande considered the gray and black bird with a stubborn set to her jaw. “Knitting hasn’t exactly served me well,” she pointed out. “I’m not as big as the sky.”
Is that your mother talking, or your dragon-clad shadow?
Melisande swallowed hard. “What do you know about him?”
In response, the crow released a rough cackle. It knew something.
The crow lifted its wings. Your art serves you better than you think. Refusing your art will serve you less well. It rose up and wheeled away. In its wake the wind returned, shaking the ash tree to its roots like a shudder from the heights and depths of the world. Melisande staggered as the roots beneath her feet began to writhe like serpents. Then she toppled into the black pool with a shriek.
~ * ~
Melisande awoke in the dark to the sound of shouting. The boughs clutching her shook as something dragged and snapped at them. She smelled torch wax. “Millie!” a man’s voice called out. “Millie, talk to me.”
“I’m here,” she replied weakly, her heart in her throat with relief to hear Damjan’s voice. Her eyes stung as she opened them. Torchlight blared through the dripping ice and snow covering the fallen tree towering over her. She craned her head and looked for signs of the Others, but didn’t see or hear anything. Somehow, aside from being trapped by the tree they had felled on her, she had eluded being crushed or broken.
Had any of it happened at all? The wind might have blown the tree down, struck her in the eyes, bruised her body and knocked her out. She could have dreamed the rest.
Damjan hacked at a large gnarled bough with an axe. “Are you hurt?”
“I think I’m all right. What happened?”
He went on cracking branches and tearing them aside to get to her, until he got beneath a huge bough that blocked her escape. “When I lift this, try to get out.” With a grunt, he put his weight into holding up the tree.
Melisande pulled her cloak from the tangle and wriggled in his direction, kicking and grasping at broken branches until she was free enough to roll from beneath the bough. Damjan lowered it with a gasp. Then he knelt, lifted Melisande into his arms and stomped over the mess to a clearer place. There, he put her down and made sure she could stand. Sweat glistened on his brow and a bleeding lump swelled on his forehead. Still silent, he went to retrieve his burning torch from the ground.
Melisande turned around toward the garden. The tree had fallen over it as well, scattering the wall and turning up the snowy dirt. Branches had hit the roof of the barn, damaging it. She had no idea what was real and what was a dream. It could have been the storm. All of it.
“What’s happening?” she repeated as Damjan returned to her side. “Where’s Yarrow?”
“In her cellar, last I knew.”
There was only one reason Yarrow would go into her cellar at this time of night. “I need to get into the barn.” She moved around the fallen tree, hoping to find the barn closed up with the animals safe inside. As the two of them approached, it appeared just so. But when Damjan reached for the handle, the door drooped to the side with a crack and swung open on one hinge.
Melisande followed him as he stepped inside, torch raised. “Did you let the animals out?” he asked.
“Something frightened them,” she recalled, staring at the goose feathers strewn about the floor. “They were hurting themselves in the stalls, so I opened the doors. When I went outside to get help they got past me.” She looked up at the broken window. “The tree fell on me before I reached the cottage.” Her throat turned dry as she finally asked the obvious question: “Did Yarrow do something to open the Veil?”
“I don’t know. When I went inside, she wasn’t there. I heard her talking below, in the cellar. I smelled something strange, like burning plants. So I returned to find you. When I got outside, a branch came off a tree by the house and knocked me out.” He put his hand on the lump on his head. “The wind must have brought it down. When I came ‘round, I saw the big tree and you under it.” He put his hands on her shoulders and searched her eyes. “Why did you ask me that?”
“The Otherworld set upon me. I saw them, heard them.” Glancing around the barn, she briefly described what she experienced. Then she went back outside. “I’m not sure, now. I might have dreamed it.”
“Had you that skill before?” he asked, following her. “Seeing Others?”
Melisande shook her head. “No. But—Damjan, did you tell Yarrow about the dark rider I saw in Odr?”
The smith stopped and swung the door to stand open, presumably in case the animals returned. Snow thickened in the air. “I knew better than that.” After a pause: “Is he still appearing to you?”
“Aye,” she admitted. “And I never told her either, which means she’s seen him too.” She wondered if Yarrow saw or heard her talking to the immortal warrior in the woods earlier. It would explain the witch’s behavior.
“Perhaps he unleashed the Others on you,” Damjan offered.
“Maybe.” She paused, and then added, “Damjan, once you believed tales of rogue Fylking and Otherworld mischief to be the work of grandmothers and storytellers. Now you’re taking me at my word. Why?”
The swordsmith moved through the fallen branches. “I’ve seen things.” He waved his torch toward the cottage, dark and silent. “Do you need anything from inside?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because we’re leaving,” he informed her.
“Your horse is gone and we can’t travel at night in this.”
“The tracks are still fresh enough to follow if we leave now. I’ll find him.”
“I’m not leaving Pisskin and Digger here.”
Damjan started to speak, but Melisande silenced him as something pale shimmered in the darkness beyond the torch’s glow.
“What is that?” he whispered.
Once she realized Damjan could see it, Melisande knew what it was.
The witch approached, her face gaunt and her eyes dark as the cottage cellar. “So I was right, heh,” she spat. She seemed taller than usual. “You called your Niflsekt lover to close the Veil.”
Damjan looked at Melisande. “What?” he whispered.
“She is mad,” Melisande returned. Niflsekt. A lost tale woven like a black strand of yarn into nine thousand suns of history. The wars were over. The Fylking warriors who guarded the Gate were fierce and unassailable. And no wicked Niflsekt, even if he did slip through, would bother to stalk a heartbroken mortal or steal a piece of knitting from her hand. In a louder voice, she said to Yarrow, “There are no Niflsekt here now.”
“Don’t toy with me,” the crone growled. “I know what I know.”
“Enough,” Damjan said. “We’re leaving now.” He took Melisande’s arm and guided her toward the cottage. “Move aside.”
Yarrow blocked their path. “You’ll not enter here. You are cursed.”
“I want my knitting bag,” Melisande said.
The witch rattled out a laugh. “Oh, I’ll wager you do. Foolish girl! Tampering with things you don’t understand.”
Melisande lifted her chin as she recalled the dragon warrior holding up the thread of her swatch, his hand steady, almost careful. The crow warrior’s voice came back to her. Your art serves you better than you think.
She felt reasonably sure the crow had closed the Veil. The dragon warrior certainly hadn’t come to her aid against the Others, for all his talk about looking after her.
“You have no power over me,” she said.
The witch stepped forward, her white hair stirring on the wind blowing snow and clattering the trees together.
Glancing around, Damjan held up his torch as if to fend off a wild animal. “No one is threatening anyone here. Let Millie get her things and we’ll be gone.”
The swordsmith didn’t see the dark, gnarled figures moving down the trees, sharp nails and teeth clicking like ice. Melisande had no power without her needles and the witch knew it. Melisande said, “You opened the Veil, didn’t you? To trick me.”
The witch lifted her hands to the trees. More creatures came, things with snow for hair and water for limbs.
Melisande stepped back as the creatures reached the ground and began writhing in her direction. She hissed at Damjan to move away. “You have your proof. The Niflsekt closed the Veil,” she bluffed. “What makes you think he won’t protect me now?”
Yarrow’s dark eyes came into focus. “I sent word on the wing to Faersc, to warn them. An eagle is swift. The Fylking are swifter.”
The wind shifted again with a familiar presence, a cold shadow in a dream, a whisper, an immortal touch. A low-throated wail cracked the clouds with a blinding bolt of lightning that put Melisande and Damjan on their knees.
The tree and water shapes fled into the ground like mice screaming for their lives.
The dragon warrior towered on his black steed. The beast’s burnished hooves didn’t touch the snow, nor its breath frost the air as the entity gazed upon the crone, his raven-scaled armor and helmet shimmering with wrath. He raised his sword.
Damjan swore an oath to the war gods of Math. Melisande formed a Banishing sigil with as much futility. At that moment she realized Yarrow was right. A Fylking would heed the sigil. A Niflsekt would not.
Yarrow raised her arms and began to chant an invocation:
“By the glory of the Wooded World;
By the Source of the Fylking;
By the Apex of the Gate;
I summon—”
The Niflsekt’s cloak, the sinuous movement of his steed and his pale blade swirled in light and void, word and silence, fire and ice. The crone collapsed, her cry unfinished as her severed head sailed slowly through the air, splattering blood over the snow, long hair spiraling like smoke on the dying wind. It skidded over the cottage path and thumped against the corner stone of the ivy garden.
The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords Page 22
