The Pagan Night

by Tim Akers

  “Should we wake the frair?” Gwen asked.

  “He’s already out there, somewhere,” Elsa answered. Confused, Gwen looked back at the priest’s tent. The old man sat in the mouth of it, legs folded under him, chin resting on his chest. “The line between dreaming and searching can be strange with him,” the woman said. “Not that he doesn’t trust you. I think he’s more comfortable like this.”

  The sound grew closer and faster. The hill at the crest of the next valley shivered, its carpet of trees swaying and then buckling as something massive moved beneath their boughs. A trench opened in the distant tree line. Gwen caught a glimpse of the gheist rolling languidly forward like a boiling fist of tar.

  “It got bigger,” she said.

  “Aye,” Elsa agreed. “We need some space.”

  Suddenly Frair Lucas stood up like a dead man summoned to life by some dark god, his lips quivering as he drew frenzied breath.

  “We need to get higher,” he said.

  “I just…” Elsa started, but Lucas cut her off.

  “There’s a ridgeline south of here. Some boulders. We need to get among those,” he said, then started off in that direction. Sir LaFey pushed Gwen after the priest.

  “Your armor?” Gwen asked. The vow knight had shrugged it aside before she went to sleep. Gwen had considered warning her of the gheist’s imminent approach so that the vow knight might prepare, but couldn’t see a way to do so and still keep the secret of the witching wives.

  “I have my faith,” Elsa answered, but there was worry in her eyes. “Or my sword, at least.”

  Gwen took quick stock of her own supplies. She had her blade and wore her plate-and-half. Now that she was running through the woods, though, she wished she had pared down to the leather armor she usually used to hunt. A quiver of three bloodwrought spears banged against her back.

  “Do not stop,” Elsa said from behind. Gwen turned to answer, but in so doing again saw the gheist as it topped the hillock. The night was still hanging on to the sky, and the sun was well below the horizon, but Gwen had all the light she needed. The thing was enormous, its rolling bulk clutching dozens of bodies in the shadow-black ribbons of its form—men and women, horses, bears, the wretched and the dead.

  Gwen stumbled to a halt. She was beginning to regret not warning her companions. Then Elsa grabbed her roughly by the cloak and pushed her on.

  Ahead of them, upon the ridge, was a jagged line of boulders, some twice the height of a man, with mossy channels cut between them by years of rain and the patient work of roots. A bristling crown of trees topped the largest boulder, roots and trunks spilling down its sides like melted wax running down a bottle. Frair Lucas stood in the gap between that rock and the next, peering past them at the gheist.

  A shriek reached their ears.

  “We’re going to need new horses,” he said as Gwen pushed past him. Her heart ached at the thought of the beasts, tethered and unable to run. She only hoped neither she nor her companions would share their fate.

  They ground to a halt just beyond the frair. The gap he had chosen offered just enough space for them to move around and swing a sword. A great place to hold against a charge, or to wait in ambush. Not so good against a gheist. Gwen went to the far side of the gap and looked down. The ground tumbled away in a shallow decline dotted with rocks and jagged roots—difficult to retreat across. The gheist was close enough now that running was out of the question anyway.

  She went back to stand beside Lucas.

  “What do we do?” Gwen asked.

  “Fight, I suppose,” Lucas said. “Elsa?”

  “It’s the same gheist,” LaFey answered, “but it’s been adding to its hosts.”

  “Could it have split?”

  “That’s a miserable thought,” Elsa said. “And it’s best left for later. Can we just kill the god that’s here, please?”

  “Hopefully,” Lucas said, and he turned sharply. “Gwendolyn, keep them away from us, and try to not get killed.”

  All this time the gheist had been rolling up the hill toward them. It seemed confused, casting back and forth through the trees, like a hound that had lost the scent. Gwen wondered if the witching wives had done as they hoped, if the gheist was still under their influence. She had a momentary panic that it might slip its leash and dart away. With their horses gone, there was no way they would be able to catch up with it.

  She calmed her nerves and focused as it came closer, grew larger, sticky ribbons of shadow lashing forward to pull it up the hill. The wreckage of their horses stuck to the outside of the roiling ball of umbral energy, slowly dissolving into the demon’s flesh.

  “Here we go,” Elsa whispered as it got close. Standing beside the vow knight, Gwen suddenly realized that Lucas had disappeared. She glanced around and found the priest behind her, sitting cross-legged on the ground, the short staff resting on his knees, hands folded over it as if he were in prayer. Elsa grabbed Gwen’s shoulder and pointed.

  “He’s helpless when he’s like that,” she barked. “Keep them away from his body.”

  “Then what—” Gwen began to ask, then a twisting helix of dark power swirled up from the ground, a lightning strike in reverse, static energy dancing across the priest’s skin and lifting the loose folds of his robe in a tearing wind. Leaves and loose gravel clattered into a whirlwind, scouring the boulders and forcing her to squint.

  The storm settled down, and a ghost of the frair hung in the air above his unconscious head. The edges of his shadow form were frayed and wavering, lines of force that trailed in the air like tattered banners. The priest’s shadow held its staff like a mast.

  “And now we fight, perhaps to die,” Lucas said. “The will of the gods be done.” His words echoed through both forms, the voice of the shadow all gravel and doom, his mortal voice little more than a whisper, spoken as though in a dream. The shadow form flickered over Gwen’s head.

  He flowed like a swallow through the air, darting and striking at the gheist, harassing the much larger demon among the trees. The demon seemed startled by this, at first, and for the briefest moment it stopped and huddled in on itself, the lesser entities of its body circling tight to protect the core.

  Frair Lucas scythed past the demon, cutting with shadows as sharp as knives. The flickering specter dancing through the trees was a far cry from the timid man sitting on the ground beside her. She looked from one to the other, wonder etched on her face.

  “The speed of the mind,” Elsa said with a smirk. “Those bones have gotten frail, but he’s as sharp as an arrow in that skull of his—and just as fast.”

  “I had no idea,” Gwen whispered. “I’ve never seen a naethermancer’s art.”

  “Few have.” Then Sir LaFey started to move. “It looks like my step in the dance has arrived.” She marched out of the gap between boulders, sword and shield at the ready. The gheist was so occupied with the frair’s sharp orbit that at first it paid her no mind. That changed as she began to invoke the bright lady’s many blessings.

  With the sun still below the horizon, Elsa was forced to draw what power she could from the gloaming. The strange magics of the Celestial church were always weakest during the transitions, dawn and dusk, spring and autumn, and with the equinox looming, her powers were reduced by the time of day to a fraction of their glory.

  Still, she drew from the pewter glimmer of sun reflected off the sky, calling out Strife’s power, heat stored in the earth and the air. She pulled that power into the bloodwrought runes of her armor and the etched blessings on her weapons. The metal flashed like lightning, and the plants closest to the vow knight curled into ash. Gwen felt a wave of heat wash over her.

  “This way, demon!” Elsa yelled, throwing her shield wide to draw the gheist’s attention. “Step into the light and be seared!”

  The creature howled with its dozen voices, the braying of horses and terrified mouths of dead peasants and soldiers joining together to vent the rogue god’s frustration. It rolled for
ward in a mass, tendril-wrapped bodies leaping ahead to stop and draw the bulk after it. A farmer slithered forward with shadow-choked arms to grip a tree on one side, the corrupted body of a knight surged toward Elsa on the other. Between them came the twisting, sickening tumor of the gheist.

  The two met, mad deity and vow knight, Elsa standing like a lighthouse against a shadowy tide. It broke over her, arms scrambling to get closer, ribbons of inky night darting out to test her defenses, the puppet bodies of those who had fallen pressing around her perimeter. They screamed with their gaping mouths, grabbing for Elsa’s shield, her arms, snatching bits of cloth from her cloak like fish striking bait. Still she stood, blocking and striking, swinging the sun-bright blade of her sword in shimmering arcs that cut through flesh and bone, clipping the inky ribbons that manipulated the dead soldiers.

  The gheist wrapped around her, its enormous mass stretching beyond her flanks, staying just out of range of that hated sword. It flowed like a river around a rock, and on the other side it found Gwen.

  She was forced back. The boulders on either side directed the demon’s attack, with only a couple of the dead able to squeeze between the rocks and shamble toward the huntress. She drew her spear back and let fly, taking the first puppet in the throat. The tendrils that gripped the dead man skittered back, abandoning the body like ice melting away from a lightning strike. The peasant, bloodwrought spear dangling from his throat, tumbled to the ground and was still.

  The gheist kept coming. The fallen body was replaced by another, and then another, and then the creature was climbing up the boulders and slithering along the sides of the tiny depression in which they stood, scrabbling with broken fingers over stone and moss until its many forms loomed into the sky. Gwen stumbled back, and bumped into the frair’s still form, resting in the center of the clearing.

  “Watch the body, girl,” Frair Lucas whispered.

  Abruptly the shadow of the priest—the flickering, scything specter of the naethermancer—swooped into the gap and started cutting through bodies. He quickly cleared the forms off one of the boulders, only to have a wave of the monsters sweep down the other, bodies trailing ribbons of dark power. Gwen tripped, her legs tangled in the biting tendrils, falling to the mossy ground beside the priest. She stabbed down at the loops of black force that were slithering around her ankles—cut through her own boot and drew blood, swore and spat and stabbed again.

  The gheist retreated, only to bring another limb to bear against her. A knight, his armor broken and his face crushed beneath the constricting threads of the demon, clattered down the boulder and landed with bone-breaking force. One of his legs was shattered, so the possessed knight held himself upright with one arm on the rock. With the other, he raised his sword.

  Gwen parried the first blow, but when the second nicked her shoulder and sent her sprawling, she no longer regretted wearing her plate-and-half. The huntress had never seen an opponent like this—had never faced a demon so capable of attacking so many opponents. Gheists were usually half-mad with isolation, berserk forces of nature unleashed on the world. This one moved with precision, bypassing Elsa’s threat to attack Gwen.

  No, she realized too late. To attack the frair.

  The possessed knight twisted and struck Frair Lucas with the pommel of his blade. The shadow priest, his spectral form hovering at the top of the boulders and battling a different host of enemies, dissolved with a howl of pain that forced a shiver through Gwen’s spine. The projected weapon of his mind—the shadowform—tangled into a knot of naetheric power, then spun back into Lucas’s body.

  The frair flopped to the ground, writhing with spasms as the naether flowed back into his mouth, his eyes. His scream of pain was choked by the ribbons of power as they reeled back into his soul.

  He fell to the ground, and was still.

  Without hesitation the bodies that the priest had opposed tumbled down the boulder’s face, rushing to finish the frair’s life. Gwen stood over him, blood leaking from foot and shoulder, her wounds sending bolts of pain through her with every parry and stroke. The bloodwrought tip of her spear dissolved the gheist’s tendrils, robbing the bodies of unholy life wherever she struck, yet it was one blade against a tide of demonic force.

  And then Elsa was in the fray.

  The vow knight fought her way back through the tide of dead and dying, appearing at the head of the gap like a bonfire in the night. The storm of the gheist receded around her, shying away from her blade. Despite her own wounds, Gwen gasped. The woman was torn, blood thick on her face and chest, running down her arms, slick in her hair. The lightning scars on her face had burst and were glowing in the dim light of dawn, the blood that seeped from the wounds dancing with embers—a fire to match the madness in her eyes.

  Gwen feared she would drink too deeply of the bright lady’s blessings, and lose herself in the fervor. Strife was the goddess of war, yes, but also the goddess of madness, the blessed mistress of the insane. “My frair!” Elsa shouted. She brushed the huntress aside and straddled the priest. Gwen tucked herself against the boulder, shielding her face from the bright arcs of light sparking off Elsa’s sword, the sun-bright runes of her armor. With only one clear opponent, the gheist pressed its bulk into the gap. The sky disappeared behind the stitched mass of broken bodies and broken weapons. A wall of darkness surged toward them, its face a nightmare of shadow-choked corpses.

  They spoke.

  “A needless death,” the gheist said, its voice echoing from dead mouths. “But Cinder guides our hand. I will see you safely to the quiet, priest.”

  “The ashes you will!” Elsa screamed. “Any hell you open will be your own.”

  “Patience, patience,” the wall of dead whispered. “Accept our blessing, and your death.”

  It grew as still as a pond. Something floated to the surface—a body, wrapped and fetal, thin limbs wasted as though by atrophy. He wore priestly robes and stepped gingerly free of the grasping ebon surface. The ribbons of darkness crossed lovingly over his chest and filled his mouth, but when his lips moved, only one voice filled the narrow space.

  “As you can see, sir knight, Cinder has blessed this demon. The lord of night has strange tools. Winter can be harsh for those who fall.” The priest raised his arms in benediction. “Go gently to your grave, faithful woman. Do not resist the will of your god.”

  “I know my god, demon,” Elsa spat. “And I know my enemy just as well.” The gheist-possessed priest just smiled, a strange parting of lips that tore skin and cracked the bones of his jaw.

  “Well enough, then you shall die,” he said.

  Before Elsa could move, however, Gwen jumped to her feet, drew her spear back, and let the bloodwrought tip fly. It went straight and true, burying itself in the gheist-priest’s chest with a meaty thunk.

  Nothing happened.

  “What in hell,” Elsa whispered. The vow knight took a step back.

  But Gwen was still moving. She had taken the measure of this gheist-priest, and knew the weapons of the church couldn’t harm it. He had said it himself. Cinder had blessed this demon, and with that blessing came protection.

  While the spear wobbled where it had struck, Gwen drew a second weapon from a hidden pocket in her belt. Something she kept hidden, especially around Celestial priests. It was a sharp blue splinter of crystal that glowed in the dim light. Tears of the earth, the witches called them, and to hold one was heresy. Gwen carried a matched set. It was a miracle that Allaister hadn’t found them.

  Its mate was buried in the shaft of her spear. Gwen raised the crystal so that the demon could see it, could know it for what it was. A look passed over its face, and then the calm surface of the walls that surrounded them burst with reaching arms.

  “No,” Gwen said simply, and she broke the crystal in her hand.

  The light inside flashed, erupting from the crystal like a lightning bolt. It arced to meet its twin, hidden in the spear, shattering the shaft. Coruscating energy danced through the a
ir, punching through the gheist-priest’s body like a crossbow bolt. His ribs spread open like a flower, and the meat beneath seared into ash. The ribbons of the gheist’s form fled from the priest. His body tipped backward, falling to the ground like a tower whose foundation had succumbed to the sapper’s tunnel.

  Tendrils whipped and slashed through the air, drawing into each of the bodies that the gheist had added to its form. Screaming in pain, in fear, and disbelief, it dissolved, limp bodies flopping out of it as the shadow ribbons fell away. The screaming diminished as it lost each mouth, until it stopped completely. The last of the tendrils flew up into the air, to dissolve in the early light of dawn.

  Elsa stood still, staring at the dozens of corpses, the weapons, the broken remnants of the gheist. Then she turned to face Gwen.

  “Well,” she said, slowly, dangerously. “I suppose there’s no question as to your heresy, Huntress.”

  “There has never been,” Frair Lucas said from his place on the ground. “Not in my heart, at least.” His voice was quiet, his eyes closed, the pooled blood from his head wound smeared across his cheek. He opened one sticky eye and looked at Gwen. “She is as I suspected. As I hoped. Now let us pray it’s not too late. The shadows of Cinder will have felt that loss. We have less time than I thought.”

  3

  FIRE AND SHADOW

  35

  THE FOREST FELT heavy on his shoulders. Ian was wrapped in fog so thick that he couldn’t see the man to his left, or the woman to his right. The valley below was as gray as a winter morning, and every sound was muffled. Even his heartbeat was a soft thud in his chest.

  A shadow moved far to his left. Whether it was man, god, or pagan, Ian wasn’t sure. In the time that had passed since his near death and new birth, he had become used to the divine presence of his new companions. They were as common as the mist, though no less strange.

  He was drawn from his reverie by a new sound—a clatter of wood and creaking metal that drifted up from the valley. He tensed forward, straining his ears and peering into the murk, his breath tight in his chest. The man to his right leaned out just enough to catch Ian’s eye.