Bloody Rose

by Nicholas Eames

  There were half a dozen animals surrounding Cura’s inkling. Vargyr, Tam guessed, judging by their size. The beasts scattered as Rose led a charge down the snowy bank—all but a giant skunk, who bared its fangs and leapt at Brune. The shaman levelled his glaive, but one of Rose’s scimitars—Thistle, blurring green—brought it down with a yelp.

  The lynx bounded away from Kuragen’s spear. When it reached the opposite bank it turned and settled into a crouch.

  “Wait!” Brune laid a hand on Rose’s shoulder before she could hurl Thorn as well. She glanced up at him, eyes wild, her face as white as the ice skirting the stream’s edge.

  She’s terrified, Tam realized, scarcely believing her eyes. How long has it been since she’s fought stone cold sober, without the false courage of Lion’s Leaf coursing through her veins?

  And yet, fearing for Cura’s safety, Rose had rushed in without hesitation. Only now, as she lowered her arm, did Tam see the warrior’s hands trembling, or notice the sheen of cold sweat that plastered her hair to her face.

  By the time the bard’s eyes snapped back to the lynx, it was gone. In its place was a woman. She was powerfully built and utterly naked. Her pale skin was laced with scars and daubed with paint markings intended to resemble those of her fain.

  Assuming I’m using that word correctly, Tam thought.

  “Brune, son of Fenra!” the woman yelled. “I am Sorcha. I speak for Shadrach, who is Clawmaster of this Wood.”

  “So, speak,” Brune said impatiently.

  The woman’s eyes flickered to Cura’s inkling, betraying the barest hint of … fear? Uncertainty? Morbid curiosity? It was hard to tell from so far away, but Tam guessed it was probably all three.

  “You were exiled. Ordered never to return. You have returned.”

  “Your people have a startling grasp of the obvious,” said Freecloud.

  “For this transgression. You are summoned. To the Faingrove.” The lynx-woman had a curious way of speaking, as if barking orders to someone who could comprehend only a few words at a time.

  Rose slammed Thorn back into its scabbard. Her other hand gripped the collar of her armour as if it were constricting around her throat. “The Faingrove?” she asked her shaman. “What is it?”

  Brune’s expression hovered somewhere between devastation and determination. “It’s an arena.”

  “Not alone,” said Rose, for the seventh time.

  “Yes, alone,” Brune insisted for the eighth.

  “This isn’t a negotiation,” she told him. “I’m not asking.”

  “It’s not my rule! Our laws forbid—”

  The white lynx turned to yowl at them, which Tam assumed was Sorcha’s way of telling her charges to shut the fuck up. The bard might have thanked her for it were she not afraid that doing so would earn her a reprimand as well.

  A whine to her right drew Tam’s attention. The skunk Rose had wounded earlier limped alongside them, the only one of their escort (aside from Sorcha) who was not embodying their fain. She was a middle-aged woman, scrawny, with twin streaks of grey in her ratty black hair. Her breasts swayed beneath stooped shoulders as she hobbled, a bloodied hand clutching the wound on her leg. She was barefoot in the snow, but that seemed the least of her concerns.

  When she caught Tam staring, the woman spat at her feet. “Fabhik du ik arhsen klak.”

  “What did she say?” the bard asked.

  “She likes your coat,” Brune translated, obviously lying.

  When they reached the vargyr settlement the shaman staggered to a halt. Brune’s village was populated by trees taller than any Tam had ever seen. Even this late into winter they retained a full complement of scarlet leaves. Even so, a few shafts of falling snow pierced the canopy here and there. Between the paths were great mounds of green and brown peat, fronted by walls of flat stones like the ruin they’d seen in the forest this afternoon. Before each arched doorway was a carved wooden totem depicting the fain of its inhabitant.

  More than half of the homes were destroyed, their roofs caved in, their stones scattered or blackened by fire. The totems in front of these dwellings were wrecked as well, burnt or smashed into pieces.

  “What the hell happened here?” Brune asked. Since Sorcha didn’t seem the talkative sort, he directed his question toward the skunk-woman. She answered with a sneer, but when the shaman took a threatening step toward her she found her voice awful quick.

  “Your father. His enemies. All of them, broken. Broken in Faingrove.”

  Tam’s flesh crawled as the skunk-woman spoke. Her voice was a shrill and grating whimper that sounded barely human. As they proceeded along the winding trail between shattered homes, the bard quickened her pace until she was shoulder to shoulder with Fable’s shaman.

  “Is she … um … normal?” Tam asked him. “I mean, normal for a vargyr?”

  Brune shook his shaggy head. “No. None of this is normal. I don’t understand what’s happened here.”

  They were forced to step around the charred remains of a spider totem, and Tam took a moment to thank the Holy Tetrea that Brune’s “spirit-mirror” wasn’t some sort of hideous insect.

  “Vargyr use their fains to hunt, or to defend themselves. These people”—he gestured toward the twin badgers who’d attacked Cura at the stream, now snarling and nipping at one another’s flanks—“they should be people. If they stay shammed for too long … Well, they’ll end up like her.”

  The skunk-woman was crouched on all fours, sniffing around the base of a shrub.

  Brune stopped before one of the crumbled mounds. Its stones were worn smooth and cloaked in green lichen. The totem before it was missing most of its head. The lower half was gouged by four deep claw marks, but it was still possible to discern the likeness of the animal it was meant to signify.

  “A wolf?” Rose was squinting to see in the growing dusk.

  “My mother lived here,” Brune said. “She left when I was very young.”

  “Where did she go?” Tam asked.

  The shaman reached to run fingers over the totem’s disfigured face. “She wasn’t from here. She and her pack were wanderers. Wyld Hearts, we call them.”

  Tam’s breath caught. She could almost hear her mother’s voice whisper in the evening breeze blowing through the leaves overhead.

  “She stuck around long enough to see me whelped, but after that …” Brune sighed, and seemed somehow diminished for it. “Not everyone loves their children, I guess.”

  Tam’s heart ached to imagine a child growing up believing such a thing. Even when she and her father were at odds—when something one of them said wounded the other deeper than intended—she had always known that he loved her.

  Freecloud shifted uncomfortably, his ears drooping like flowers dead of thirst. It occurred to Tam that he and Rose had left their own daughter behind.

  Another of Sorcha’s barks got them moving again. Tam could see a vast cavern up ahead, its walls and ceilings thick with foliage.

  The Faingrove, she assumed.

  More and more vargyr joined their procession. Most of them loped or scuttled on paws and claws and hooves, but a few of them remained human, or something close. Tam spotted a man with a ridge of grease-spiked hair who cackled like a hyena as he clambered over the peat mound beside them. Another woman walked on her knuckles and beat her chest when Cura dared to meet her gaze.

  Brune’s expression was bleak. “How could my father allow this to happen?”

  “Animals tend to favour instinct over intellect,” Freecloud pointed out. “It makes them prone to subservience.”

  “What do you mean?” Rose asked.

  “The longer they remain in this form, the more susceptible they become to the commands of someone stronger than them,” Freecloud suggested. “You can tame most dogs in a matter of hours, but it can take months to break a human’s will. Or so I’ve heard,” he added, when Rose eyed him askew. “I’ve never trained a human, just so we’re all clear on that.”

&nb
sp; “So what are we doing here?” said Cura. “We came so that Brune’s dad could set him straight, didn’t we? So the old bear could teach him how to find his …”

  “Fain,” Tam provided.

  “Whatever. But now Brune’s dad wants to kill him. Coming here was pointless—so why not leave? Fight our way out of here?” She nodded at the skunk-woman, who was stumbling along with her eyes closed, no longer bothering to clutch the wound that would almost certainly kill her. “I doubt these runts could stop us.”

  “Except it’s almost dark,” said Freecloud. “We’ll be blind, and lost. They won’t.”

  Rose looked up at her shaman. “It’s your call,” she told him. “You don’t have to go through with this if you don’t want to. But if you’re staying, then so are we.”

  Brune peered into the Faingrove ahead. A damp heat radiated from inside, but there were no fires burning that Tam could see. “I’m staying,” he said eventually. “I’ve been running from this place long enough, I think. It’s time to settle this.”

  “Then let’s settle it,” Rose said. She didn’t bother asking whether or not the others agreed. She didn’t need to. Freecloud offered Brune a reassuring nod. Cura was scowling into the dark as if her own demons were waiting inside. If the Clawmaster intended to challenge his son, he would have to go through Fable first.

  Sorcha relinquished her fain and fixed Brune with a sneer. “No fangs inside,” she said, indicating the twinglaive strapped to his back. “No outsiders, either.”

  “Try and stop us,” said Rose, already pulling off her gauntlets.

  The vargyr bared her teeth. “You think I can’t?”

  “I know you can’t.”

  The two women glared at one another until the shaman cleared his throat. “Maybe you could wait outside …” he began feebly.

  “Like hell we could.” Rose wheeled on Brune. “Now would you please tell this kitten to get out of my fucking face before I drag her back to that stream and drown her in it?”

  Sorcha growled. Her hands flexed into claws, but before she could embrace her fain a deep voice boomed from inside the cavern.

  “LET THEM IN.”

  The vargyr around them cowered. Their ears flattened, and those with tails tucked them between their legs.

  Cura sniffed. “Let me guess: the great and powerful Shadrach?”

  Brune, who’d gone rigid, only nodded.

  “Fine,” Sorcha conceded. “But no fangs. No shells.”

  “No fangs, huh?” Freecloud sounded amused. He laid Madrigal’s scabbard on a stone shelf and began unlacing his armour.

  Cura relinquished no fewer than six knives, and Brune gave up his twinglaive. Tam leaned Duchess against the rock wall and unbuckled her quiver.

  It took Rose several minutes to peel off every piece of warped black metal she’d strapped to herself. When she finished, Sorcha examined the pile of discarded gear.

  “Clawmaster demands tribute,” she sneered.

  Rose looked dubious. “Fine,” she said. “It’s mostly junk anyway. He can have anything except my—”

  “These.” Sorcha picked up the rune-etched gauntlets.

  “Of course,” Rose said curtly, but Tam saw the barest hint of a smile curl her lips.

  The lynx-woman sniffed the gauntlets before passing them off to a weaselly-looking man whose fain, Tam guessed, was probably a weasel.

  “You really don’t need to come in,” Brune told his bandmates. “A challenge is sacred to the vargyr. It can’t be avoided, and it can’t be interfered with. Shadrach and I will fight one-on-one. I’ll kill him, or he’ll kill me, but you can’t help me in there.” He looked pointedly at Rose. “None of you can.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she told him. “You’re not going through this alone, Brune. That’s not how a band works. Where you go, we go.”

  Sorcha gestured at Rose’s wool longshirt. “No shells,” she repeated, as if speaking to a child. “Only skin.”

  Rose frowned. “Only skin?

  “You want us naked?” Freecloud asked.

  The lynx-woman nodded. “Naked. Yes.”

  Rose gave Brune on a friendly clap on the shoulder. “Good luck in there,” she said. “We’ll be here if you need us.”

  They stripped.

  It was awkward.

  Tam (immensely grateful for the heat rolling out of the Faingrove) did her damndest to look the others directly in the eye, and they attempted to do the same. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help but gawk at the scars lacing Rose’s lean frame, the bizarre horrors inked over Cura’s pale skin, and the tattoo of a butterfly axe on Brune’s lower back.

  “A girl made me do it,” explained the shaman, when he caught Tam looking.

  Of all of them, only Freecloud’s body was left unblemished by the band’s misadventures. The druin healed quickly, Tam knew, but also she’d never seen him take a blow unless he deliberately put himself in harm’s way, as he had back in the Ravine, and again during the brawl in Highpool.

  A group of vargyr gathered around Brune, each bearing a wooden bowl of coloured liquid that began to radiate as dusk gave way to night.

  “It’s made of bloomshrooms,” said the shaman, as an old woman with milk-white eyes slathered the glowing paste over his arms, chest, and legs. “We can’t enter until we’re done up in likeness of our fain. Hence the claws.” He raised his hand to show off the red stripes on the back of his hand. She painted his face as well, sketching fangs around his mouth and a long white snout between his eyes.

  He didn’t particularly look like a bear, but Tam decided it wasn’t worth pointing out that a blind woman had done a lousy job of getting his fain right.

  At Sorcha’s orders, the bowl-bearing vargyr surrounded the rest of the band as well.

  Freecloud arched a brow. “They’re painting us, too?”

  “Painting us like what?” Tam asked.

  Brune shrugged. “I guess we’ll see,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The Clawmaster’s Cave

  They walked five abreast into the waiting dark. Brune’s mountainous frame was marked by white whorls and the plume of a tail up his broad back. Rose bore the jagged red stripes of a Rushfire tigress, while Cura sported violet feathers and a raven’s wings in blazing blue across her bare shoulders.

  Tam was a raccoon, or something like one. Her legs were striped green and gold, with cuffs at her wrists, and a bandit’s mask around her eyes.

  Freecloud’s nose was a red slash between fans of vibrant blue. The same colours were applied to both his groin and rear (which the druin found hilarious), while his chest was splashed a lustrous white.

  “What are you supposed to be?” Tam had asked him outside.

  “A mandrill, I think.”

  “Is it a monster?”

  “It’s like a monkey,” he explained. “A very angry, very dangerous monkey.”

  There were no fires in the Faingrove. The only light came from its inhabitants (painted in semblance of their respective fains) and from a collection of glowing skeletons bound by gut string and arrayed throughout the cavern. Each set of bones belonged to an animal much bigger than it ought to have been. Tam recognized at least three bears, a snake, a wolf, a southern ape, and several large cats.

  Shadrach’s trophies, she presumed. How many challengers, willing or otherwise, have stood in this place and wondered if they’d soon be nothing more than a despot’s decoration?

  It was sweltering inside. Brune had explained that the Faingrove was home to a hot spring, and Tam could feel steam curling around her as they moved deeper in. They were told to stand near one of the lower pools, while Brune proceeded alone to the open space in the centre of the grotto.

  Mighty Shadrach, Clawmaster of the Silverwood vargyr, reclined on a throne made of glow-in-the-dark bones. The skulls of conquered enemies gleamed like morbid lamps across the back, and the wings of some vanquished avian adversary reared against the darkness above him.

  Brun
e’s father was painted almost entirely red, so it was impossible to mistake how enormous he was. There were slashes of white on his forearms and calves—each of which were as thick around as Tam at the waist—and a mane of gold across the breadth of his shoulders.

  Sorcha knelt at his feet. She had given him Rose’s gauntlets, but the Clawmaster seemed to think they were nothing more than trinkets, since he cast them aside as he stood to greet his son.

  “You should not have returned.” Shadrach’s voice came from all directions at once. It enclosed them like the heat of the hot springs, oppressive and smothering.

  “You should not be Clawmaster,” Brune shouted back. His words incited a discordant choir of yelps, snarls, growls, and barks. There were more than a hundred vargyr present, by Tam’s estimation. They were all in human form, but their fains had long since come to dictate their nature.

  “I have earned my rank by sacred rite!” boomed Shadrach. He swept his bulky arms to indicate the hanging skeletons. “Behold, my unworthy challengers.”

  “Your victims, you mean. You are mad, Father. There’s nothing sacred about what you’ve done here.” Brune called out to those gathered along the shelves and ledges of the cavern. “Look at what you’ve become! Listen to yourselves, grunting and shambling like beasts. We used to sing in this place. Do you remember? We used to dance, and feast, and celebrate our second natures. And now?” He turned ponderously. “It’s nothing but a killing ground. A wicked shrine to a god you didn’t ask for, and you sure as hell don’t deserve.”

  “Be silent!” Shadrach shouted down the slope before him. “I will not tolerate these slurs from an outcast!”

  “You made me an outcast, Father. You turned me away. Your own son!”

  “My son?” The Clawmaster sounded incredulous. “No. You were never mine. Not truly. And the day I realized that is the day I cast you out.”

  Brune staggered beneath the hammerblow of his father’s words. “Not yours? You would disown me now?”

  “I’ve seen your fain, boy. I saw it then, and I see it now, plain as fresh tracks. You bring your filthy pack to this place and claim to be my son?”