by Andy Remic
“I heard stories. Of monsters.”
“Tales told by frightened drunks!”
“Yes, but look at the horses.” Now, all four had begun to shiver, and with coaxing words they managed another twenty hoof-beats before Kell and Saark were forced to dismount and stroke muzzles, attempting to calm them.
“Something’s really spooking the animals.”
“Yes. Come on, we’ll walk awhile.”
They moved on, perhaps a hundred yards before Kell suddenly stopped. Saark could read by his body language something was wrong: he had seen something up ahead. And he didn’t like it…
“What is it…oh.” Saark stared at the statue, and his jaw dropped. It was thirty feet high, towering up between the trees. It was old, older than the woodland, pitted and battered by the elements of a thousand years, sections covered in moss and weeds, lichens and fungi; and yet still it stared down with a menacing air, a violent dominance.
“What’s it supposed to be?” questioned Saark, tilting his head.
“A stone lion, perhaps?” muttered Kell. “Hence, Stone Lion Woods.”
“I’ve never seen a lion look like that,” said Saark. “In fact, I’ve never seen a lion. Not in the flesh. Apparently, they are terrifying, and stink like the sulphur arse-breath of a cess-pit.”
“It is a lion,” said Kell, voice low, filled with respect. “Only it’s twisted, deformed, reared up on hind legs. Look at the mane. Look at the craftsmanship in the sculpted stonework.”
“I’m more interested in whether it’ll topple on us. Look at those cracks!”
The two men watched the statue, a hint of awe in their eyes, hands stroking the skittish horses, calming the beasts with soothing murmurs. A little snow had filtered through the canopy of Stone Lion Woods, and sat on the statue, shining almost silver in the gloom. The effect was ghostly, ethereal, and Saark shivered.
“I don’t like it here. The rumours speak of terrible beasts. Ghosts. Hobgoblins. Were-dragons.”
“Horse-shit. Come on. I feel my axe; she’s getting close.”
Saark looked oddly at Kell. “You can really sense the weapon?”
“Aye. We are linked. She’s a bloodbond weapon, and that means we are joined, in some strange way I cannot explain, nor understand.”
“A bloodbond. I have heard of such things.” Saark closed his mouth, reluctant to speak more. The tales and legends of bloodbond magick were dark and fearful indeed: stories used to frighten little children. Like the Legend of Dake the Axeman; he was huge and shaggy, with the grey skin of a corpse and glowing red eyes. Dake would creep down the chimney of bad little boys and cut off their hands and feet in the night. If they were really bad, Dake would take the child with him, back to the Tower of Corpses where he’d hang the child in a cage from the outside wall and let Grey Eagles eat their flesh. Even now, Saark remembered his father scaring him with such stories when he’d been a bad boy: when he’d slapped his sister, or stolen one of his mother’s fresh-baked pastries.
For years, such nightmares had been erased from Saark’s memory. Now, especially in this caliginous and eerie place, watched over by a twisted stone statue, the horror of those dark tales from childhood crept back into Saark’s sparking imagination. He remembered all too clear huddling under thick blankets watching the twitching shadows on the walls…waiting for Dake the Axeman to come for him.
“Are you all right?” said Kell.
“I was just…thinking of my childhood.”
“Were they happy times, aye?” said Kell.
Saark pictured running into the house holding a kite he’d made to find his father swinging from a high rafter by the neck, his face purple, one eye hanging on his cheek. There was dried blood around his mouth, his tongue stuck out like some obscene cardboard imitation. Taking a bread knife, he’d cut down the dead man and sat with him, rocking his head, holding his stiffening hands until his mother arrived home…with the city bailiffs, ready to repossess their family home. There had been no sympathy. A day later, they were walking the streets.
“Happy, yes,” said Saark, banishing the memories like extinguishing a candle. Strange, he thought. To resurrect them here, now. He’d locked them away in a deep, hidden place for decades. Saark coughed, and tugged at the horses. “Come on. Let’s move. This place gives me the shits.”
“You sure you’re well?” asked Kell. He appeared concerned. “You looked, for a moment there, like you’d seen a ghost.”
Saark pictured his father, swinging. “Maybe I did,” he said, voice little more than a whisper; then he was gone, striding down a wide, twisting trail and Kell tugged his own mount forward. The gelding gave a small whinny of protest, and moved reluctantly.
“That’s not good,” muttered Kell, sensing a change in Saark’s mood. “Not good at all.”
They moved through the woods, deep into gloom for an hour, gradually picking a route over roots and branches, through a mixture of junipers, Jack Pine and Tsugas, through rotting leaves from towering twisted oaks and thick needle carpets from clusters of Red Cedar. The woods were old here, ancient, gnarled and crooked, and huge beyond anything Saark had ever witnessed.
Reaching a natural clearing, Saark halted and gazed at the array of statues, his mouth dropping open. There were seven, arranged in a weird natural circle as if the trees themselves were wary to set root and branch near these twisted effigies.
“What,” he said, “are those?”
“The Seven Demons,” said Kell, quietly. He placed a hand on Saark’s shoulder. “Best move quietly, lad. We don’t want to upset them.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Blood-magick is an old beast, no matter what the vachine think. It goes back thousands of years. When you’ve travelled as much as I, you learn a few things, you see a few things; and you begin to understand when to keep your head down.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“Yes.”
“So, is this place haunted, then?”
“Worse, laddie, so let’s just be quiet, move quickly, get to Nienna and hope we don’t upset anything.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It can only get worse, trust me. The Stone Lion Woods didn’t garner their savage reputation through idle banter, drunken discourse or the loose tongue of a happy mistress.” Kell grinned at Saark, and at his contradiction. He could see it in Saark’s eyes…you’ve conned me, thought Saark. Kell shrugged. “Follow me close, lad. And keep your puppy yelps to yourself.”
They moved through the circle of statues. Some were big, incredibly old, unrecognisable in their shape or form, weathered, battered, broken, and covered in fungus and moss. Two of the statues were man-sized, a stone representation of twisted, unfathomable monsters; a third was a man, tall and proud, regal almost; another was a lion, and another…something else entirely. A final statue was small, only knee high, and reminded Saark of a deformed embryo, only a touch bigger, and stood on hind legs with joints reversed like those of a dog. He shivered. He felt curiously sick.
They plunged back into the woods, Kell following his senses, although Saark wondered if Kell was crazy and simply navigating a random path. Regularly Saark checked his back-trail, for albino soldiers, or worse, the cankers which seemed to be hunting them. They walked all day, sometimes slowing to squeeze through narrow sections of tangled branches, and leading the skittish horses with care.
The night fell early, and again the two warriors came upon a circle of seven statues at dusk. Saark began to get twitchy, jumping at lengthening shadows as the trees crowded in, gnarled and crooked, limbs reaching over them, towards them, brushing at faces and clothing, dropping their lodes of snow to the woodland carpet.
Kell stopped. “We’ll leave the horses here,” he said. They were beside a narrow cross-roads, trails probably formed by wild deer, badgers and boars.
Saark nodded. “Is Nienna close?”
“Ilanna is close. I’m hoping the girl is with her.”
“You mean your granddaughter.”
Kell stared at Saark. “That’s what I said.”
They carried on, on foot, until they came to a long corridor in the thick woodland; it was almost rectangular and walled with evergreen leaves and pine branches, holly and juniper and hemlock entwined with honeysuckle and creepers. The air was thick with resin and woodland perfume, cloying, a heady aroma, and Nienna and Kat were both seated on a thick fallen log.
“Nienna,” said Kell, his voice low, barely more than a growl. His eyes fixed on Ilanna, resting beside the girl; and then transferred back as she turned. Her face was frightened, skin tight, eyes wide; she mouthed at Kell, and he frowned, trying to make out the words.
Saark crept up beside Kell, crouched at the edge of the leaf corridor. He frowned. “What’s she trying to say?”
His words, although quiet, reverberated down the natural sound channel. Nienna stood up suddenly and grasped Kell’s axe in tiny hands, turning away from the men towards a distant clearing, rich in its greenery. Something began to click, like pebbles dropped on boulders, and Kell stood and launched himself down the corridor towards the two girls…beyond, almost out of sight but hinted at, it rose hugely from the ground, earth and dead leaves and brown pine needles tumbling around the thing as it detached from the woodland floor and huge grey limbs unfolded to reveal fists, each the size of a man, and twisted limbs only barely reminiscent of the lion it had once represented…
“It’s a Stone Lion,” shrieked Nienna as Kell reached her, took her in his hands, shook her.
“Are you injured?”
“No! It saved us! Saved me and Kat from the canker!”
A noise began to thrum through the woods. It was ancient, if a noise could be such a thing, primeval, not really words but music, a song, a song made from stone and wood and fire, and it rose in pitch and volume until it was a roar and Kell glanced back, saw the fear in Saark’s eyes, could hear the whinny of their tied horses struggling at tethers and he took his axe, his Ilanna, and she melted into his hands like warm soft female flesh, and she was there with him and his agitation and fear fled and Kell was whole again, a total being and he realised, in that crazy snapshot of time how his addiction and his need was rooted deep down in his skull, his bones, his blood, his soul, and Ilanna was his saviour; and more, also his curse.
“It said it would kill you,” hissed Nienna, her eyes not on Kell but the creature still rising from the earth at the end of the tunnel. “It said we were protected by the forest, because of our…innocence. But it knew you would come, you and Saark; it said you were defiled. Abused. You were not creatures of the Stone Lion Woods. It said it would eat you, like it ate the canker…”
“Go to Saark,” said Kell, his face grim, and grabbed Kat, pushing her after Nienna and both girls fled along the green corridor. A cold wind blew, filled with the smell of ice and leaves, of rotting branches, of sap, of mouldy pines and wild mushrooms and onions.
Kell grasped Ilanna, and faced the Stone Lion.
Its roar died down, and it stooped low, stepping into the corridor. It was five times the height of a man, twisted, a merged and joined creation of stone and wood, earth and trees, and primal quartz; it was a carved thing, a live thing, a demon of the deep woods, a spirit of the darkness, and its face, despite being a worn weathered blur of stone and wood, looked down at Kell and he could have sworn it was grinning.
He glanced back. Tightened his grip on his axe. “Saark!” he roared. “Get to the horses! Get the girls out of here!”
Saark nodded, and they fled.
Kell turned back, faced the Stone Lion. It growled, a long, low, permanently mewling sound, and took a few tentative steps, as if testing its legs worked. It lowered its head then, spine crackling, and roared at Kell with a hot blast scream which stank of rotting wood, sulphur, onions and death.
Kell’s beard whipped about him, and he ground his teeth, face dropping into a snarl.
Give me your blood, said Ilanna. Her voice was sweet music in his mind, but Kell steeled himself, for he knew the deception, knew how this thing worked; he had been tricked before, had been used before by Ilanna…and it had led to terrifying results.
“You know I cannot.”
You will not!
“I remember the last time,” he muttered, as the Stone Lion took another step forward on twisted legs, sizing him up, its eyes falling on the axe in his hands, its head tilting to one side, almost…inquisitive.
It’s going to crush me, he thought.
How can I fight something that…big?
It will be different this time, promised Ilanna. I will be good. I promise you. I will smash this puny creature of blood-oil magick, of the forest and the soil. I will not…abuse you, Kell. I know I injured your mind, and your pride. It will be different this time!
“No.”
The Stone Lion charged, the ground thundering, and Kell stood his ground, axe raised, eyes narrowed, mouth a grim, sour, dry line and it smashed towards him, and at the last moment he rolled, felt the Stone Lion’s huge bulk slam past and the axe sliced one leg, a butterfly blade exiting with chunks of stone and wood splinters. Kell’s shoulder hit the earth, he rammed the wall of the green lane, was spun around by the incredible force, and with a grunt he gained his feet, watched the Stone Lion stumble, skid, turn, and lower its head towards him. He hefted Ilanna, moving to the centre of the trail, studying the way the Stone Lion carried itself; he’d injured it, damaged it in some way, but it had not screamed. There was no blood. Now, in silence, it advanced, more slowly, and its huge long arms came thumping towards Kell and he swayed back, fast, a stone-like fist whirring a hand’s-breadth from his face and his axe slammed the arm but glanced off, nearly wrenching Kell’s arms from sockets. He skipped back avoiding another blow, then the Stone Lion surged forward and Kell was backing away, his axe ringing from arms and fists as he deflected blow after blow, his own arms jarring with every strike of the axe-blade, but the Stone Lion was tough, its skin like stone and Kell realised its legs were its weakness; he ducked a whirling appendage, then rolled under its reach towards the thick trunk-like legs. Ilanna sang in his scarred hands as he cut chunks from the Stone Lion’s twisted timber shins, embedded one butterfly blade in a thigh with a clunk and wrested it free as the Stone Lion caught him in the chest with a blow, accelerating him down the green lane to tumble, and lie on his chest, panting, before scrambling to his feet and lifting his axe with a grimace.
The Stone Lion was gazing down at itself, at its damaged legs. It looked up, glared at him, and let out a high-pitched roar that made Kell shudder. But he stood his ground, and glimpsed a thick yellow liquid oozing from the cuts and slices he’d inflicted. The Stone Lion took a step forward, then went down on one knee. It stood again, grasping the lane to heave itself up.
Kell decided this was the right moment.
He turned and ran, stampeding through leaves and dead pine, listening for pursuit from the massive creature of legend. As he reached a thick section of woodland he risked a glance back, but the Stone Lion still stood its ground, glaring at him, its chest…heaving? Heaving, or laughing. Kell was unsure which. Then he blinked, and realised the wounds he had so skilfully inflicted were healing, the thick yellow liquid had hardened, formed a shell over the cuts like hardening sap.
Kell fell into the woodland; only then did he hear the pursuit, the thump thump thump of a heavy pendulous charge, and the ground was shaking beneath him and fear filled him up like a jug. He realised he could not kill it…unless he gave control to Ilanna. He scowled. That would only happen over his dead body.
Run! If he could reach the horses, he could outrun the Stone Lion. Perhaps.
He charged on, branches slamming his face and arms, the Stone Lion in pursuit. He reached the crossroads where they’d tethered the horses, and for a second was flooded with relief, for Saark and the young women were nowhere to be seen; they had fled, were gone, were safe. His sacrifice had bought them time. Only, now…he frown
ed. All the horses were gone. Which meant he was…on foot.
“Saark, you dandy bastard!”
A roar echoed through the trees behind, and Kell cast about; Saark had headed south, as they’d discussed, to reach King Leanoric, warn him of events in Jalder. Kell sprinted down the trail but the recent fighting, lack of sleep, and the curse of age and inactivity hit him like a cobble. He faltered within a hundred yards, was streaming with sweat after two. The Stone Lion still pursued. It ceased its bestial roar, but Kell could hear the thump of heavy steps…how could he not? He grimaced.
“Horse-dung,” he muttered. He was going to die here.
Ahead, through heavy snow, the trees grew thinner and a fantasy entertained Kell; maybe he was by the edge of Stone Lion Woods? Maybe there was a boundary to the Stone Lion’s territory, beyond which it could not pursue? Blood-oil magick worked like that, sometimes…
But there was no guarantee.
Kell laboured on, and could hear the Stone Lion growing closer, and closer, a dark shadow behind, a black ghost in the trees. Kell stopped, wheezing, red lights dancing in his brain. He hawked, and spat a lump of phlegm to the woodland floor.
A high roar, bestial, like a choking woman, made him jump and surge forward…as growls up ahead made him skid to a halt, confused. Through the trees, Kell saw the shape of a canker. Something died inside him. He was trapped. By all the gods! Trapped!
“Not good.”
His eyes narrowed, as the first canker was joined by two more, all three different shapes and sizes, but each with a wide-open head showing cogs and gears clicking and moving. Kell glanced back. The Stone Lion was there, advancing on him. He could see its legs now, and no wounds were visible…it had completely healed.
Kell sprinted, axe tight in sweat-slippery hands, and the cankers saw him; with spastic jerks of deformed and bloated heads, they let out vicious, triumphant growls and howls and thuds of accelerating, deviated twisted clockwork with bunched muscles run through with lodes of silver-quartz, and with snarls they leapt to the attack…and in a whirling chaos of confusion, with the Stone Lion roaring behind, and the smell of hot canker oil in his nostrils, Kell narrowed his eyes and lifted his axe in the eerie snow-brightened woodland where snow flurries drifted and swirled, and as panic detonated around him he leapt at the cankers and brought the singing, glinting blades of Ilanna around in a savage downward sweep…
