by Tim Akers
Frair Lucas screamed and stumbled. Elsa fell, the guttering flame of her conjured sun bursting through the sudden blizzard, only to fail, flicker, and snuff out. With a gasp she fell to her knees, and then there was silence, the wind gone, the windows frozen as solid as stone.
In the center the high inquisitor seethed. The light that wafted from his skin seemed too sharp, the edges cutting the air and his skin. His flesh boiled under his robes, and streaks of black ash smeared his cheeks. Flecks of darkness floated in his eyes, and blood mingled with the sweat that poured down his chest.
“So it is with all the blind,” Sacombre growled. His voice left his chest and became a chorus of stones and breaking bones. “Such is the fate of fools.”
“What has become of you?” Malcolm asked.
“I am becoming,” Sacombre hissed. “I am winter itself. The very heart of purity. It is but an aspect of Lord Cinder’s power, and I will be its greatest avatar.”
“Even if it means heresy?” Malcolm asked.
“Heresy and revelation… what is the difference? What is fear, but an opportunity not taken?” Sacombre drew himself up. His flesh was shuffling off, and something purer, darker, something profane was coming through. “The church will not stand against me. Nor the north.”
“It is not the north you should fear, nor the church.” Malcolm stepped forward, walking past the fallen priest and vow knight, the limp body of Sir Merret. “They were doing their duty to the Celestial throne. To their lords.”
“The duty of the misguided,” Sacombre rattled. “The church locks the souls of its dead away. I would free them, as I will free you, Malcolm of Houndhallow.” He stretched out a claw-tipped hand, beckoning. “Free you from the flesh and the worries of this world.”
“My wife will be quite disappointed if I leave my flesh, I think. My thanks for the offer.” He dragged the tip of his feyiron blade across the floor, splintering the ice that Sacombre had summoned, leaving a runnel of water behind. “How ever can I repay you?”
Sacombre snorted. He was growing, height given by twisted legs, his shoulders hunching with the burden of new wings, ribs of stone and bone sprouting from his chest to enclose the pulsing heart of shadow that glowed through his skin and robes. Claws erupted from his malformed feet. What remained of his skin was pebbled with foul growths. Shadows whispered from his open mouth, trailing a stream of fog in the air.
The high inquisitor rose to his full height and spread those terrible wings. They scraped against the ceiling, brushing aside tapestries rimed with frost.
“Enough nonsense.” His voice boomed now. “Come and die like a hero, Malcolm. Come and prove your faith in sacrifice!”
“An excellent invitation,” Malcolm hissed, then he ducked his head and charged forward, howling, throwing caution aside as he slid forward on the ice, sword raised above his shoulder.
Sacombre buffeted him with his wings, stealing the breath from Malcolm’s lungs and freezing his skin. He fought against the blows, but as he did the high inquisitor charged. With his wings and claws, he was able to find purchase on the ice while his opponent struggled to remain upright, delivering a series of harsh blows that drove Malcolm back into the corridor.
There he fell, sword skittering away, his spine screaming in pain as he hit the ground. Sacombre bent and came through the door, his form clenching and then unfolding into the greater space of the hallway.
“So you see,” Sacombre whispered as he loomed over the fallen duke, “there is little hope for you. Your men are dead, your son has abandoned you, and your wife lies dying.”
Malcolm pushed himself to hands and knees, then to his feet. White-hot agony blossomed through his chest, radiating from his hips up to his ribs and heart. He winced and spat blood.
“What do you know of my wife, or my son?”
“I have eyes, Malcolm. Eyes everywhere. Yes, things are going well. Your death will rally Tener. My heresy will divide the south. There will be war. Pure, winter-blessed war. Horrible.” Sacombre lifted his hands in benediction, sighing contentedly. “But let’s make a show of it, shall we?”
“You’ll kill me either way.”
“Of course. But I don’t think you want to die as cattle do,” Sacombre said. He nodded to where Malcolm’s sword had fallen. “Go on.”
Malcolm sighed. He just wanted this done. The demon was right. Without his son beside him and his wife to guide him, he was a ship without a sail. In truth, he might be ready to die—but he wasn’t willing to be slaughtered where he stood. At least he could die fighting.
He went to the sword where it had struck the wall, feyiron cutting stone as easily as wood. He drew it, then faced the creature that had been the high inquisitor.
“You’re a heretic, a murderer, and a bastard,” Malcolm said, “and I’m here to bring you Cinder’s judgment.”
Sacombre laughed, long and hard, then he swooped down, wings beating and claws grasping. Malcolm ducked aside, rolling and falling as the creature crashed into the ground. He rolled through a doorway, coming up among wooden soldiers, a playroom decorated in a child’s fantasy of war. Sacombre crashed into the doorway, crumbling the frame, freeing a small avalanche of stones as he broke through. Fissures ran through the wall.
Malcolm scrambled to his feet, backing away as Sacombre approached. The gheist that wore the high inquisitor’s body flapped those terrible wings, breaking walls and ceiling. A part of the tower slid away. The storm outside leaked in, filling the room with its tumult. Malcolm swung, only to miss and be battered aside by claws that drew blood. He swung the sword back and drove it into the demon’s chest. Ribs of rock and shadow sparked as he struck them, but he couldn’t find flesh.
A rain of stones signaled the ceiling’s collapse. Malcolm squinted through the gravel, shielding his face from the scree. For a second he thought Sacombre had been buried in the wreckage, but then the creature burst from the gray rubble, shaking free of the detritus, spraying knife-sharp shards of stone across the room.
There was a strange peace in the sky. The storm had withdrawn. Two figures hovered in the distance, watching.
Malcolm shook his head.
“Gods damn all of the heretics,” he swore. He scrambled up the wreckage of the room to what remained of the tower’s roof. Splintered planks of wood lay haphazardly over the yawning chasm of the tower. He skittered to a stop at the chasm’s verge, staring down at the courtyard far below, and the fields beyond.
The god was nowhere to be seen.
He saw the terrified faces of Suhdrin and Tenerran alike, eyes upturned to see where the avalanche had originated. An audience to watch him die heroically. He gave a laugh. Sharp pain snagged his ribs, and his lungs protested the wasted breath. That only made Malcolm laugh harder.
There was a crash, and he turned to watch the bound god approach. Sacombre clambered up onto the roof. He stretched his wings, triggering another avalanche of debris, then twisted in strange, impossible ways, surveying the landscape.
“The pagan god has abandoned you, Malcolm,” Sacombre said with a leer. “Gwen Adair has stayed her hand. Even she accepts defeat.”
“Maybe she ran before I could get to her,” Malcolm said. “I’m going to have some very cross words for her when this is over.”
“You will have to speak them from your grave, old fool!”
“Oh, will you fuck off with the lofty threats,” Malcolm spat, then he raised his sword above his head, and charged.
* * *
“He will die,” Gwen whispered.
“What does that matter to you?” Ian challenged angrily. “This is all our fault, isn’t it? We betrayed your precious gods, bent our knee to the church. What do you care if one of us dies?”
“Your father is throwing his life away,” Gwen said. “He cannot hope to stand against Sacombre.”
“So kill them both. Kill everyone. You seemed so keen on it a moment ago. Or have you remembered what it is to be human?”
Gwen turned slo
wly to face him.
“I can help him. If you’ll accept a pagan’s help.”
“No,” Ian said. “I will not make that choice for him—and I know what he would decide, if asked. My father is a faithful man.”
“Even if it means his life?”
“Especially if it means his life,” Ian said.
59
SACOMBRE STRUCK MALCOLM in the chest, throwing him back to slide across the roof. His shoulders came to rest suspended over open air. The tower was slowly falling apart. The roof groaned and shifted, the surface tilting dangerously toward the courtyard far below. Malcolm scrambled up the incline, toward the peak where Sacombre waited, lazily flapping the abomination of his wings.
The high inquisitor was still changing. The ribs now pinched his body, and a gnarled growth of spine had separated from his back, holding him like a spider holds its prey. His legs dangled limp beneath this horrible growth, and the twisted, bird-like legs of the gheist descended from the spine and gripped the stone with talons as black as ebon. Either it was tearing free from Sacombre’s body, or Sacombre’s soul was so corrupted that it was discarding the human flesh.
“What do you fear, Malcolm Blakley?” the creature asked. “When I end you, what will be your last regret?”
“Not killing you sooner,” Malcolm spat, then he charged, sword ahead, heart in his throat, lungs a ragged banner of his scream. The gheist pounded down at him with the talons of one leg, but Malcolm slid aside, rolling and coming to rest beside the other leg. Sacombre swept his wings back, preparing to take flight. Malcolm leapt to his feet and put the blade into the fine webbing of the wing, severing inky tendons and the cobweb-thin folds of demon-flesh.
Sacombre howled, spun, grabbed Malcolm in his claws and squeezed. Malcolm felt the plate of his armor wrinkle and crack.
“I will find Ian next,” the creature whispered. “I will have your son do my work for me.”
Malcolm writhed in Sacombre’s grasp, then raised his sword and began to hammer down with it. Each blow was like striking stone, the force of it shivering up Malcolm’s arms and numbing his shoulders. The pain in his chest grew and tore, until red-hot delirium bled into his eyes.
“Will you shut…”
The sword bounced off Sacombre’s skull, peeling flesh and bone away, though the gheist didn’t seem to mind.
“The fuck…”
Another blow, this one into his shoulder, and the stone-black blade struck the ribs that held Sacombre’s body close to the gheist’s spine.
“Up!”
One final swing, again onto those ribs, and this time the ebony bones shattered, first one and then the next, crumbling into ruin. Sacombre howled and released Malcolm, throwing him aside like a rag. He hit the debris-strewn roof and bounced.
Sacombre’s legs flailed against the ebon bones of the gheist. His arms, corrupted by the demon’s bones, shot through with stone and foul growth, fought with the wings that were now trying to smother him. There was a sound like silk ripping, and one of the gheist’s arms tore free of Sacombre’s flesh, spraying blood and bile into the air. As soon as it was free of the host body, that arm gripped him by the chest and started to push.
And like a stillbirth, the form of the high inquisitor slowly slid free of the gheist, flesh tearing and reforming, bones screaming as they tore away from the growths that had claimed them. Another skull emerged from the back of Sacombre’s head, as though the man was an egg. Sacombre’s limp form fell to the stones, and the gheist rose.
The old god of winter and death, black and frozen and horrible, drew itself to its full height. It was a skeleton of black ice, wings like fog and ink, claws and jaws as sharp as the coldest wind. It hung at the top of the broken tower and peered down at Malcolm.
“Will you kill me as well?” Malcolm whispered. “Or has your season yet to start?”
A storm answered Malcolm’s question.
The sky descended on the tower’s roof, filling it with cutting leaves and a wind as strong as stone. The god of death howled against the tumult, but golden light wrapped around its inky wings. Gwendolyn Adair, greatly changed and divinely wrought, appeared before him.
“I can hold this one for a while,” she said. Her voice was like a clamoring bell. “I have a debt to settle with you, Malcolm of Houndhallow. A very old debt, but it must keep for a while.”
The storm withdrew. Autumn stole from the shadows, the tremendous cloud of roiling leaves disappearing over the horizon as quickly as it had appeared. In its absence, Cinder’s silver light bathed the destruction of the castle in sharp whites and blacks. Fires were burning in the village below.
Two figures lay huddled on the roof. Ian, arms crossed and face bleeding, lay as though asleep in the midst of the battle. His chest rose and fell in gentle rhythm. Beside him was Sacombre, somehow still alive, his wounds leaking shadows and the ichor of a fallen god.
Malcolm fell to his knees, laying his sword next to the unconscious form of the high inquisitor. He succumbed to a fit of weeping that came from deeper than his heart. And when he was done, he bound Sacombre hand and foot, then crawled back into the broken ruin of the Fen Gate.
He left his son behind, to find his own way.
EPILOGUE
THE DRY SCRATCH of Malcolm’s pen filled the room. There were sheaves of paper stacked on the camp desk, hastily set up in the ruin of the Fen Gate.
For the last week the shattered remnants of the Suhdrin army, devastated by Gwen’s mad god, split by Halverdt’s death and the heresy of the high inquisitor, had been trickling into the damaged castle to parlay with the reinforcements the northern lords had finally sent. Tensions were high.
“How long will you keep me waiting?” Ian asked. He had been sitting by the door for nearly an hour, staring silently at his father. Malcolm sighed.
“Long enough for your mother to wake up, if I can. Perhaps she could talk you out of this,” he answered, then dropped his pen into the inkwell and gathered up the letter. “Will you take this to Houndhallow, at least?”
“I’m not going that way. At least, not directly.”
“You don’t know where you’re going,” Malcolm said, frustration clear in his voice.
“I’m going west,” Ian replied. “Sir LaFey promised to lead me to the witches’ hallow.”
“If there’s anywhere we know she isn’t, it’s the hallow,” Malcolm said. When they had cleared and burned the great pile of forest debris, the bodies of Gwen’s family were gone, though no one had seen them being spirited away. The assumption was that the autumn god had taken them.
“Give me Fianna, and I can shorten this search considerably,” Ian said. “I only need…”
“The witch is not going with you. She’s not going anywhere other than Heartsbridge. She and Sacombre can stand their trials and face justice.”
“That isn’t justice,” Ian spat. “You would really betray her trust this way? She saved my life! She saved Mother…”
“Go into that room and tell me your mother has been saved!” Malcolm said, standing sharply. “Whatever the witch did to her, it did not restore her to anything like life! And she is a pagan, Ian. A witching wife confessed and witnessed! Be glad that I’m not giving her over to the inquisition directly.”
“Only because the high inquisitor stands accused of the same heresy. The entire court of winter is in chaos, and they don’t suffer disorder well. You know you’re simply sending her to her death.”
“If anyone can find mercy, it’s the celestriarch. Cinder’s law is not mine to break, Ian! If the church grants her mercy, I’ll respect and celebrate that decision, but no faithful Celestial can ignore the laws of winter just because they find them distasteful.”
“Are you calling me a heretic?” Ian demanded.
“I don’t know what’s in your heart, son,” Malcolm said carefully, “and honestly, right now, I don’t want to know.”
“Why is that, Father,” Ian asked. “For fear you would be forced to b
ind me and send me south with Fianna?”
Malcolm didn’t answer, but returned his attention to the papers.
“I have work. If you must go, then go.”
Ian didn’t answer. Without looking at his father again, he went out the door, slamming it behind him.
* * *
The wagons that were to take them south were bound in iron and arcane symbols. A handful of Suhdrin soldiers joined them, along with the injured who could not be treated in the field. They left behind the tense lines of Suhdrin lords who were digging in around the Fen Gate, the war on hold in light of the high inquisitor’s heresy, and the incredible devastation wrought by the god of autumn.
Sacombre sat quietly in his cell. There was hay on the floor, and two buckets sat in the corner. The only light came through cracks in the wood. He had half the wagon to himself. The other cell was just as graceless, just as dirty, just as quiet. Its prisoner sat huddled in the corner away from the former priest.
He watched her shadow closely.
When they were well down the road, he stirred and slid across the jostling floor of the moving prison, leaning his head against the bars that separated them.
“What a pleasant surprise,” he whispered. His voice was dry, his throat made rough by the god that had torn its way free from his body.
“Hardly surprising, my lord,” Fianna said quietly.
“It seems you did well.”
“Well enough,” she said. “He was a fragile vessel.”
“Still…” Sacombre leaned back from the bars, seeking some comfort in the straw floor. “You gave him what he needed. Molded what could be shaped.”
“Yes,” the witch answered, smiling grimly in the darkness of the iron-framed wagon. “The hound is ready for his hunt.”
* * *
When night was gone and morning threatened, Malcolm returned to his chambers. His son was gone, and not enough of his wife remained. Tener was fractured. Suhdra was twisted against itself. Sacombre’s words hung in Malcolm’s mind, about the south being split, and the north united. There was so much work to do, and little rest to be had.
