by Tim Akers
“Your flag’s on fire,” one of the guards pointed out.
“So it is. I’ll get another,” Brennan said, then threw the banner into the hard ground like a spear, just ten yards beyond the sentry line. It stuck, the flames flickering up the pennant, consuming the green and gold like a candle. Once they were around the corner, Gwen gave another signal.
Her men fell into two columns.
“Hard canter. They’ll figure out what happened before long. Best we’re far down the road when they do, and better that we keep the horses as fresh as we can.” She gave Sir Brennan a bright smile. “In case there’s a fight.”
“Gods be good,” Brennan said, shaking his head wearily. Then he laughed. “Gods be damned good.”
27
HENRI VOLENT STOOD at the mouth of his tent, watching the column pass through his camp. He counted fewer than twenty Suhdrin men, with a burning banner at their fore. They cantered out the northern sentry line, leaving the banner behind, then disappeared into the forest.
He heard hounds baying in the distance.
“Who the hell was that?” he muttered to himself. The camp was in disarray, with several tents set ablaze by scattered campfires, and a cadre of troops by the southern entrance mustering as though they meant to make a foray. He headed in that direction, buckling his longsword to his belt as he walked.
An infantry captain by the sentry line was organizing his troop into a shield wall, and three knights-errant were buckling themselves into plate and calling for horses. Volent stood in the middle of the activity, his gaze going from the empty southern road to the fallen banner in the north. There was a distant fire to the south, its dim flames flickering between the wirewood trees. He took the captain by the shoulder and spun him around.
“Make your report, captain.”
“Riders, my lord,” the man stuttered. “A full column to our south, with archers among them. I’ve sounded the alarm…”
“You haven’t, actually,” Volent said, “and I would advise against it. On whose report do you know of these pagan riders?”
“The reinforcements, my lord. The men from Stoneturn what we were expecting. They were ambushed, and…”
“Those riders?” Volent asked, pointing north. The captain squinted in the direction Volent was pointing.
“I suppose, my lord.”
“You suppose. Because the riders who just entered this camp, who rode past your post, they have just exited the camp to the north.”
“My lord? Why would they do that?”
“Why indeed?” Volent spat. “And if there was an ambush, why would it be set up to our south? On the road over which we just passed this morning? Within earshot of our sentries, and bow shot of our ranks?”
“I don’t know, my lord.”
“No, you do not. Sir Havreau.” Volent shouted to one of the knights who clattered nearby, preparing his mount. “Get down the road, and tell me what you see!”
“Yes, my lord. As soon as my plate is affixed and my sword blessed by the inquisitor.”
“To hell with your plate,” Volent snapped. He grabbed the knight’s horse from its attendant and swung into the saddle. “Send word to Inquisitor Finney. Have the man waiting for me when I get back.”
He dodged around the barricade that was only now being dragged back across the road, then galloped south down the darkling path. The wirewood trees bent down over him like the crest of a silent wave, frozen in flinty silence. The darkness passed quickly. Once around the first curve, Volent was bathed in firelight. Torches lay at the base of a dozen trees, their pitch-wrapped heads guttering in the char. Riding on, Volent found the site of the attack. Bodies lined the trail, stripped of their valuables and their colors. Dead men. His men.
Swearing, Volent whipped his horse back to the camp. The inquisitor waited at the sentry line, his eyes flickering in the flames. Volent dismounted smoothly beside him.
“I was at my prayers, Sir Volent, and had a vision. I heard hounds baying in the forest. Demons in the pagan night,” the inquisitor said.
“Demons, hell. Those were Tenerrans. It smacks of that huntress bitch.”
“Your men decided not to stop her?”
“Greenhall has not blessed me with the finest minds in his service. Despite your assurances, I think the duke suspects this is a fool’s errand. What of your lot, frair? Why didn’t your priests of Cinder warn us of her presence? If she makes it back to the Fen Gate, we’ll have lost our element of surprise. This whole expedition may already be lost!”
“Lost? When such an opportunity has presented itself?” Finney asked. His voice was as smooth as moonlight, and just as clear. “Even if we win this war, the Tenerran lords would have sued for peace eventually, and they would never have handed Gwen over to the inquisition. But now that she is within our reach, we don’t have to ask for her surrender. We can simply take her.”
“Poor luck for her,” Volent muttered.
“Cinder’s justice is always done,” Allaister said.
“Priests have a funny way of saying that they’ve gotten lucky. But luck or providence, she has already passed us by,” Volent said. “She has riders with her, and knows these paths like the veins of her body. The only way we could catch her is by breaking my force apart and spreading out.”
The vow knight, Elsa LaFey, strolled up out of the darkness. Even at night, her eyes seemed to glow with a glint of copper sun.
“Hardly wise,” she said. “One of two things will come of that. Either the huntress will lie in wait and pick your rangers apart piece by piece, or she will outdistance them as they beat the underbrush.”
“Neither is an acceptable solution,” Volent answered. He would rather not have the vow knight and her companion on this ride, but there was nothing he could do to prevent them from coming along. “What would you do, Sir LaFey? You have hunted these woods before, have you not?”
“For gods,” she said, “not little girls—and this business with the House Adair has nothing to do with me. I am here to find the gheist.”
“Then go find it, why don’t you?” Volent snapped. He turned back to Allaister. The shadow priest had fallen strangely silent when LaFey arrived. “Can your priests be of any help, Inquisitor? Do you have any scryers among you?”
“We are here to guard your troop from the pagan night,” Allaister said. “Nothing more.”
“Then this is hopeless. Gwen Adair will make for the Fen Gate, summon reinforcements to its walls, and burn us out of the Fen,” Volent said. “We might as well withdraw immediately.”
“I will not leave the north until I have that gheist,” LaFey said.
“Then you’re on your own,” Volent answered. “Inquisitor, prepare your priests. We march south in the morning.”
“And I will continue north,” Elsa answered. “The gheist is near. I can smell its corruption in the air. I will go speak to Frair Lucas.”
Allaister remained silent while the vow knight marched away, waiting until she had disappeared before he spoke.
“There is another way, Sir Volent,” he whispered.
“Yes?”
“We are inquisitors, after all. Frair Lucas may spend all of his energy on hunting gheists, but it is also our duty to root out the pagan savage. Without the witches and their shaman drones, the old gods would have no hold on this world. We have rid the south of the old henges, and Suhdra is now safe from the gheists.”
“The old gods still stir in the south, Frair,” Volent answered quietly. “I know that better than most.”
“Perhaps you do. The point is that my men have turned their arts to sifting the hearts of mortals, to find the truth of their faith, and to searching the villages for hidden enemies. We have certain necessary skills.”
“You can hunt for Gwen Adair?”
“I can,” Allaister answered. “As Sir LaFey can taste the corruption of the gheist in the air, I can sense the paths of pagan hearts.”
“Why didn’t you say so earlier? W
e will decamp immediately.” Volent turned to call one of his attendants, but Allaister held his arm.
“There are considerations. We cannot work our power in the company of your men.”
“Why not?”
“My sect must hold its secrets tight,” Allaister answered. “Knowledge of our rites is a crime punishable by death. Or madness. None may be permitted to exploit them for personal gain.”
Volent stared the man down for a heartbeat, wondering what sort of shadow Allaister could cast that would be so fatal to witness. Then he shrugged.
“What would you have us do?”
“My priests and I will keep the huntress occupied. Even if we don’t catch her, I can guarantee that she won’t make it to the Fen Gate.”
“How are we to navigate the Fen without you?”
Allaister answered by producing a map from his robes. It was very old, and very fragile. The priest gingerly laid it on the ground and crouched over it. He motioned Volent closer.
“We are here, or close enough,” Allaister said, stabbing at the map. The geography depicted was strange, with several sites, marked in fading ink, that didn’t correspond to anything he knew. Nevertheless, he was able to find the Fen Gate, and the Tallow.
“Farther north than I expected,” Volent said.
“Yes. This land shifts beneath our feet, to confound as much as to protect.”
“Then won’t we be just as lost marching south as north or east?” Volent asked.
“The magics of this place are meant to protect the castle—” the priest’s eyes flickered to the map “—and its environs. The wards will not hinder your exit. It is only if you try to travel north that you will be confounded.”
Volent looked again at the map, and the unnamed sites dotted throughout the Fen. He wondered what secrets lay in the forests around House Adair, and why the church was willing to risk so much to find them.
“What of the huntress? What if she has warned the commanders at the Redoubt? We will be marching into a trap.”
“I assure you,” Allaister said with a leer, “her attention will be elsewhere.”
* * *
The tents of the camp were cold and dark when Allaister and his fellow priests slipped out into the night. They passed by the sentries without being seen, their bodies bound to shadow and the shifting silence of the moon. When the flickering lights of the Suhdrin camp were out of sight, they gathered in the pit of a small grove, surrounded by gnarled trees and the smell of fallen leaves.
They lit a fire among the mosses, and fed it with their blood.
Allaister stood at the heart of the circle. Flames lit the narrow planes of his face, the coiled ink of his tattoos crawling between the shadows like snakes in a forest. He took from his robes the gauntlet that he had bound to the gheist in distant Gardengerry and laid it in the blood-fed fire. The flames shunned the metal, snapping away from it as though a stiff wind blew from its surface.
The blood of the priests leached out of the fire to crawl across the blackened steel of the glove, magically drawn from the flames to settle in the runes etched across the metal’s skin. As the fire grew, the runes began to pulse.
In time with a heart.
A sound came from the darkness of the forest. The circle of priests turned to face that direction, forming a half-moon with Allaister at the center. The shadows grew and thickened, winding through the trees until a shape loomed black at the edge of the fire’s light.
A god stepped into the light.
The gheist was a chaotic mass of shadow and fog, a rough huddle of squirming lines that shifted under the gaze, never staying true to one form or another. The other priests bowed their heads, either from fear or awe, but Allaister stood straight and true in front of it. The mass was anchored to the darkness of the forest, and as he looked around he could see more of it among the trees, flowing around their firelight, slithering through the branches and blocking out Cinder’s silvery light.
The priest smiled.
“You’ve grown,” he whispered.
“I am becoming,” the gheist replied, and the mass shivered and solidified into something like a human form, only taller, thicker, like a man wrapped in thick cords. “Becoming what I was. I was so much more than this.”
“No longer,” Allaister said sternly. “Whatever you were when the pagans put you in that tomb, I have made you something else.”
The gheist didn’t answer. It shivered, and waited.
“I have a new task for you,” Allaister said. “There is a girl in this forest. A girl of pagan blood.”
“One of the wives?”
“I think not,” Allaister said. “Though perhaps. She is the huntress of her tribe. Her name is Gwendolyn Adair.”
“Adair, Adair,” the gheist murmured, its voice a hollow echo. “Gwendolyn Adair. There is iron in her blood.”
“Yes,” Allaister nodded.
“And the other god—has its hiding place been found? Am I no longer to hunt the hallow among the Fens?”
“She will lead us there, if we pursue her.”
The gheist remained still for a long time. Its attention seemed to be elsewhere.
“Can you do it?” Allaister asked.
“I have found her,” it said. “She is fast, and warded, but she is no witching wife.”
“Then we hunt. We are leaving the demon-bound one behind, so there is no need to hide yourself any longer.”
“This one is sick,” the gheist rumbled. The humanoid form slouched closer, pushed forward by the tendrils that anchored it to the darkness in the forest. “We will need another.”
“Sick?” Allaister asked.
Without warning the wrapped form of the gheist cracked open, breaching like an egg, and a body slumped out. It was dressed in priestly clothes, a look of horror on its face. Oily blood leaked from its mouth. The circle of priests flinched back.
Allaister knelt by the body, cradling the man’s head in one hand. He stared into the dead, slick eyes.
“Ah, Frair Montandon, I am sorry for your loss—but we all make sacrifices.” He raised his free hand to the tip of the crescent of priests. “You may have this one.”
The priest who stood there stared at Allaister, then dropped his staff and stumbled into a run. The frayed clump of shadow that had held Frair Montandon didn’t move, but as he approached the edge of the fire’s light, a pillar of squirming darkness spilled out of the shadows and swallowed him in a cascade of writhing night. A brief, sharp scream was cut off as the gheist filled his flesh.
Then there was silence—none of the remaining priests seemed to breathe. As quickly as it had arrived, the hunter god disappeared among the trees. The pale light of Cinder’s face filled the clearing once again. The fire hissed and spit.
Allaister stood and, with his hidden court, followed the god into the night.
* * *
“What do you think of this?” Elsa asked. She and Lucas stood hidden in the groves that overlooked the previous night’s camp. Sir Volent and his men had struck camp and were winding south with haste, their banners struck and their mood grim.
“I think their mission has changed,” Lucas answered. “Frair Allaister and his men are gone from their ranks, and they have turned their backs to the Fen Gate.”
“Perhaps they return to Greenhall,” Elsa agreed. “They may have split with the priests, and are determined to head home.”
“That may be, but it’s more likely that they seek an easier prey,” Lucas said. “Last report had Blakley’s forces stretched thin along the Redoubt. A sufficient attack upon their rear could break the defenses along the Tallow.”
“It’s been a month since that report,” Elsa replied. “Things could have changed. The war may be over.”
“This is the sort of war that is never over,” Lucas said. He twitched his reins, and his horse turned north. “But that is none of our concern. Not yet, at least.”
Elsa followed suit, peering around with a troubled look. “I can
feel the strangeness of this place closing in,” she whispered. “The land has found us, and it does not approve.”
“I am a shadow, Sir LaFey, and you are the sun.” Lucas shrugged. “We will stand together, and the land will not confound us.”
“Still, this is a haunted place. A place of great power,” Elsa said.
“Yes, and something else,” Lucas said. “Do you feel it?”
“I do,” Elsa said. “The scent of corruption is gone. Our gheist is missing.”
“We will find the trail again, I’m sure,” he replied. “I can sense something just north of the camp. We will start there. Perhaps we will find where Frair Allaister has gone, as well.”
“What good will tracking the frair do us?”
“An interesting question,” Lucas said. “I’m sure there will be an interesting answer, as well.”
28
THE WATERS OF the Tallow flowed peacefully over the smooth stones of the ford. They started as snowmelt in the high Suhdrin mountains that surrounded Heartsbridge, then washed down into a hundred lesser streams that eventually became the Wyl. At Dunneswerry that river split, half into the Tallow, half into the Silverlyn. When it entered the Fen, the Tallow cut its way through limestone bluffs and narrow gorges, sometimes rushing white and fast, other times as slow and gentle as summer, until it reached the Felling Bay and emptied into the sea. It served as the natural border between Tener and Suhdra, a line drawn by the gods.
This river had seen a lot of blood, and still it ran clean and cold.
Ian stood at its northern bank and washed the dust from his feet. He waded slowly out into the depth of the river, feeling the tug of the current and the flickering touch of curious fish, then dropped beneath the surface. The cold arced into his bones, yet Ian felt relaxed in a way he hadn’t since Chev Bourdais had tried to kill him on the fields of Greenhall.
He sunk his feet into the mud and let the current drag across him. He gave his mind to it, reciting the rites of Cinder that settled his thoughts and invited cold reason. Ian was angry with his father for shuffling him to the flank, keeping him from the glory of the battle. All these weeks later and he was still angry with Martin for implying that Tener was at fault in this struggle, and he was furious with himself for letting these things keep him awake at night. So he let the anger go with the water.
