Ahraia’s mind was finally clear of enchantment. Their retreat was cut off.
The sprites on the far bank gathered, a collective yearning for death billowing across the river like the fog. The Masai leaned forward to drink, and every sprite mimicked her.
“What do you know about the Shadow Woods?” Ahraia said to the Astra, already moving along the bank.
“Don’t drink the water. Don’t touch the trees. Don’t make a noise.”
“What about the daemons? Don’t you know anything more? You’re the Astra!”
“They protect the heart of the forest, the seed. The source of the—where are you going?”
Ahraia began to run over unsteady stones and tilted trees, looking for the right break in the river or the right tree to spring her towards the other bank.
I’m going to get my shadow back.
“Your shadow? You’re delusional. There’s no escape from this. Not unless you can spring wings.”
Spring wings. Ahraia wondered if any bird could carry her. Not here. Maybe a vulture of the plains or a jont owl of the West Vales. But nothing here, she thought, looking to the dead woods.
And no spring would bear her more than a fraction of the way across the water. Unless she could find a place where the river narrowed, where maybe two trees leaned together from opposite banks. It wasn’t likely, but it was better than waiting.
The Astra followed right behind her. “Ahraia, we need to stick together if we are going to have any chance.”
“Stick together?” Ahraia scoffed. I should stab you in the neck and leave you to rot.
A roar trumpeted through the forest, filling the spaces between fog and trees and moss. It filled the space between Ahraia and the Astra. They looked at each other. Ahraia’s ears twitched. The last echo was swallowed by the moss-carpeted forest. The Astra looked pale and stark, not ashen in the least. Her eyes were clouds of white, her pupils mere pinpoints in the bright fog.
“We’ll have a better chance together,” she said hoarsely, pinching her hood closed in front of her eyes.
Ahraia’s skin was burning too. The forest ahead wasn’t dark. It was day. And a steep, open hillside of rocks blocked her path. She looked towards the deeper-dark, towards the shadow-draped woods.
“I’ll stick with you.” But only so the last thing I see is you in the Shad-Mon’s claws, Ahraia conveyed loosely. Farther upstream, she hoped there would be a place for her to cross. Maybe even the current would break, and she could swim. She saw sprites following her on the other bank, and she guessed their enchantments would drown her if she tried. Another roar rent the air. The moss swallowed the echoes reluctantly. She was going to have to go into the woods to get past the sunlit hillside.
Without another choice, Ahraia turned into the cool fog, towards the roar. She scrambled up the hillside, her hands sinking in deep, wet moss as she climbed. The slope plateaued in flat woods and almost at once, she was disoriented. Swirling gray mist danced devilishly amongst the dark trunks.
“Where are you going?” the Astra said, breathing heavily. “You’re heading right towards it.”
Ahraia opened her mouth to answer, but dove to the side as an enormous arm loomed out of the fog ahead. She drew her drain but looked up to find it was only the ghostly figure of a moss-laden tree. The Astra had lunged beside her and lay in the soft-blanketed ground, white-faced and wide-eyed.
The river could still be heard, but its roaring was dimmed, dampened by the forest. Ahraia scrambled up and hurried upriver, above the rockfall that had blocked her way at the water’s edge.
Where are you going? the Astra conveyed.
I’m getting across that river.
There’s no use. The dae-wards patrol the other side. We’ll never get away that way.
Ahraia spun about. “We?” she shouted.
Shhh, the Astra conveyed.
“We aren’t doing anything,” Ahraia said. “You can go and die wherever you like. Just get away from me.” She turned back but immediately felt something grabbing at her hip. The Astra, who had lost her drain in her fight against the Masai, had seized the bone-drain from Ahraia’s waist.
“What in the light do you think you’re doing?” Ahraia said just as an enchantment crashed over her.
The Astra’s face was crazed. The cut on her cheek still ran with blood.
You’re going to get me out of this, she conveyed. She held the drain before her but was backing away with a maddened gleam in her eyes. It’s your fault I’m here. The Shad-Mon needs food. Perhaps a sacrifice will appease it. Perhaps it will let me be—if I hand you over.
The enchantment held Ahraia’s neck back, as though a firm hand grabbed her by a fistful of hair. It stilled her mind and her feet. The Astra stepped under the cover of a large fir tree.
But Ahraia hardly noticed the enchantment.
A menace was moving towards her through the forest, far beyond any hold the Astra was capable of casting. It came first as a stillness, a serenity belied by the ever-drifting fog. It settled next as a silence, a swallowing of footsteps and shifting trees, a muting of sounds too consequential to be dimmed. And lastly, it came as an inevitability: a lurking shadow where no shadows were cast, a fate already decided. She could sense it in her bones.
The Astra hadn’t noticed it yet. She was still staring at Ahraia, her conveyance touched with insanity.
A sacrifice will certainly do. Isn’t that how we came to be? We emerged out of our bond to the daemons, from the need to keep them, and guard them . . . and to sacrifice to them. She clung to the trunk, as though it would keep her afloat in the sea of fog.
Ahraia struggled against the binding. She thought of Losna and Kyah. She thought of Alua and Thelon. She thought of Kaval, Altah, and Hayvon. And her mind suddenly spit with fury, with a rage that far outweighing her fear. She couldn’t break the binding, but she could form her own. She reached out to the Astra and made her bond. She forced the Astra from her hiding.
No! What are you doing? the Astra conveyed, suddenly aware of what Ahraia intended.
Ahraia moved her one step at a time into the clearing.
“Stop. Let me go!” the Astra said.
“We can both go down together,” Ahraia said. It gave her a certain pleasure to know that the Astra was going to die. A tree trunk groaned and the Astra’s head snapped about.
You’ll kill us both. It’s coming! the Astra conveyed desperately.
Ahraia grimaced. It was all she could do. Her nose suddenly stung with a foul scent of rotting flesh. Her own fear held her rooted to the ground.
“It’s already here.”
The Astra’s struggle suddenly stopped and her thoughts went blank. Her eyes went wide and her ears curled back. Abysmal fear spread across their bindings.
A chill ran through Ahraia. While the Astra’s reason fled like crows from a fox, Ahraia’s senses sharpened. A branch moved that had no place moving. The ground trembled, muted by the moss. A fetid smell was smothered by the fog.
It’s here, the Astra thought, more to herself than to Ahraia. Ahraia followed her gaze. All she saw were dark trunks. Dark trunks and shifting fingers of fog. Fingers . . .
A hand.
She saw it.
A monstrous, clawed hand clutched a tree trunk as wide as Ahraia was tall. It gripped the tree impossibly high—a spring length above the ground—but the body was hidden by a gnarled cluster of trees.
The fog shifted, making even the trees ghostly trunks shift with it. When it cleared, the hand was gone.
Ahraia stared in disbelief.
Where did it go?
The thick trees crowded together without any hint of the monster hiding behind them. Her heart pounded in her chest. She kept her gaze on the forest, searching high and low for any hint of the claw. Midway up, the trunks melded, rising skyward before stopping abruptly as a round, misshapen stump. And then Ahraia realized what she was looking at.
The Shad-Mon.
Standing on its hind
legs, one arm formed what Ahraia had thought was a half-fallen tree, slanting across the wood to hold itself up. Its head stood taller than the tip of the tallest keress’s horns, and its arms would have rested on the ground if they weren’t suspending the monster, like some horrible, drawn-out imp. The daemon’s hands were larger than Losna, ending in long fingers, tipped with razor-sharp claws. It drew itself forward, like an enormous spider, using the trees as its web.
I’m dead, the Astra thought. The enchantment holding Ahraia was wavering. The Shad-Mon’s second hand crept forward, wrapping around a broad fir as though it was as small as an arrow shaft. Even the fog couldn’t hide the daemon now.
Its eyes were black pits of the night. Its mouth stretched all the way across its broad head, with jagged teeth spanning the curve of it.
Ahraia wondered if her ears had stopped working; nothing that big could move in such silence. But she knew they hadn’t; a tree creaked behind her.
Another, the Astra thought, looking past Ahraia’s shoulder. Ahraia glanced back and felt her blood run cold. A second Shad-Mon was closing in behind her, eyes just as black, its feet curled about a fallen log like a second set of hands.
Even as she looked, however, Ahraia knew her mistake.
In the span of a breath, the binding holding her broke, and a moment later, she felt the brunt of the Astra’s mind buck against her enchantment. The hold snapped and they were both suddenly free.
Ahraia spun back, but too late. The Astra stabbed out, the white bone slashing towards her heart. She deflected the blow, but the blade sliced across her shoulder. She cried out in pain, leaping back. She pulled her metal drain free. It glinted weakly in the half-dark. Her ears turned as a tree groaned behind her. The woods all about her were suddenly in motion, and she knew both Shad-Mon were closing in.
The Astra cast another enchantment, seizing Ahraia as she stabbed forward. The fear of the Shad-Mon sharpened Ahraia’s mind. She overpowered the binding and fell backward as the blade passed just before her eye. A footstep shook the ground. Ahraia knew the hand of the Shad-Mon was coming.
In a single movement, she bound the Astra, ducked forward and stabbed down into her foot. The blade pierced through skin and tendon, past bone and muscle before embedding deeply in a root beneath.
The Astra screamed.
Ahraia jerked the blade free, rolling away. She came up ready to fight, but the Astra wasn’t there.
The ground where she had stood was empty.
Ahraia froze and looked up. The Shad-mon had plucked the Astra into the air. She beat uselessly against the massive hand and a shrill scream escaped her lips. The gaping maw of the Shad-Mon opened and a horrible crunch cut her cry violently short.
Half the Astra’s body disappeared in a single swallow. The Shad-Mon threw its head back. Her legs flopped lifelessly about before disappearing into the gaping void. Bones crackled. Tendons tore. The air was filled with crunching. Then silence.
Blood streamed between the Shad-Mon’s teeth.
Ahraia didn’t have to turn to know the second daemon was almost upon her. She leapt up and ran, linking the nearest branch she could find.
The bough swung down as a massive hand swept across the moss-strewn ground. Ahraia reached up blindly, letting the spring twist about her wrist. As soon as it touched her skin, she directed the binding upward. Mid-run, her feet jolted off the ground. Wind and hair swept across her face. Something passed terrifyingly beneath her, like a great bird of prey suddenly sprung from the shadows.
The Shad-Mon roared. The air shook with the closeness. Ahraia’s ears were ringing as she landed along a thin branch.
Too thin. It bent under her weight and she leapt away at once, swinging back into the air just as the Shad-Mon crashed into the tree.
Ahraia let go of the branch, tumbling to the soft moss. She formed her next spring and it carried her up again, a dozen feet off the ground.
Next spring. For a moment, she was airborne, waiting for the branch to reach her. She grabbed hold, feeling the perilous pull of the ground before it carried her higher still.
Every corner of the woods shook with violent roars. Both Shad-Mon were chasing her, no longer creeping through the woods, but careening through trees, snapping branches and trunks alike. Ahraia formed spring after spring. The fog made every direction seem the same, and soon enough she lost any sense of the river.
Get me out of here, she thought desperately, unsure which direction she was heading. She formed a shift between two maples as one of the daemons crashed against the trunk. Ahraia slipped; the branch cracked, and she tumbled into the air. Suddenly, she was falling. And the hand was waiting beneath.
Instinctively, she bound the daemon, stilling the monster’s hand, keeping its fingers splayed wide. In an instant, she plummeted past stony skin and slipped through its claws before crashing to the mossy ground below. She tumbled down a short hill, saved by the slope and the deep moss. The binding remained and she tried to hold the Shad-Mon, fighting to still it with her mind. The daemon roared and the binding frayed, too insignificant to contain a thousand years of instinct. In that moment, she sensed that it was protecting something, and she had no interest in finding out what.
She pushed herself up and ran towards the next spring she could find.
Where is this dark-forsaken river? she thought, sprinting over a fallen log. She heard something through the woods. Something distinctly familiar that wrenched at her heart and legs.
A long, drawn-out call to counter the roar of the daemons.
It drifted, fighting through fog and mist to reach her. Ahraia turned, running the length of another log to try and hear it. A monstrous hand smashed down behind her, sending the log spinning like a twig; splinters and debris fell all about her. She landed on all fours and was up and running. Then she heard the call again. Louder this time. It stirred her heart. A howl.
“Ahooo!”
“Losna!” She turned towards her call, springing through the woods, and feeling her heart soar with hope. She found herself slipping down a hillside, sprinting towards the rising roar of the river. A thousand nights spent running unfolded in one smooth motion between her mind and feet: Over that log. Fold back the brush. Slick moss. Sliding. It happened without thinking. Running so fast she was past obstacles before she had time to worry if they would stop her.
A narrow maple leaned from the hillside. She ran the length of the trunk, feeling it bounce and bend even more, so it was almost flat. She was out ten feet, twenty feet from the hillside. She formed a binding and lunged off the tree, grabbing an already-swinging branch in midair. The spring plunged down. Down and down, slowing just before she landed on soft moss. The bellows of the Shad-Mon echoed after her. But Ahraia knew the way now. The forest passed in a blur.
Ahead, light was spreading radiantly in front of her. The fog glowed, bright and luminous. She had never been so excited for light in all her life.
She heard the deadly roar of the river. From the sound of it, she guessed it couldn’t be swam. She needed a bridging tree. But such an enchantment—especially alone, without proper time or care—would never work. Behind her, a tree crashed to the ground, shaking the forest.
Several cottonwoods towered at the edge of the fog, their yellow leaves tipped in light. A fir tree amongst them stood dead, a pillar, stripped of bark and branches.
Boom.
Another tree crashed to the ground.
Suddenly, Ahraia knew how to form her bridge. No living tree would bend across the river, but maybe the dead tree would.
Losna’s howling was growing louder.
I’m coming, Ahraia thought, binding the two cottonwoods beside and beyond the dead tree. Her mind strained for the connection, the binding on a scale beyond anything she had ever done.
Bend for me, she thought, ignoring the swell of noise behind her. Move!
The tops of the cottonwoods turned inward, blowing in a windless gale towards the dead fir.
Behind her, the
Shad-Mon pulled themselves through the forest by clawed hands and feet. The air whirled through her hair. Something had fallen, close. A branch, she hoped. Not a hand.
The cottonwoods leaned. Their tops were nearly touching.
Farther, she urged, pouring her will into the enchantment. The first branch touched the smooth bark. It strained—wrapping about the dead tree. More branches seized hold, pulling the trees into a forced embrace.
Now back to center! Towards the river, she commanded, releasing the trees back to where they wanted to be. They heaved, leaning all their weight back towards the river, pulling the dead tree with them.
Ahraia stumbled to the soft moss, exhausted. The fir leaned but didn’t break. It was too deeply rooted. The daemons were right behind her. The ground buckled at their weight.
At any moment, stony hands would lift her bodily into the air, and that would be it. She would know nothing but blood and teeth.
“Ahooo!”
She scrambled up, willed on by Losna, darting sideways as the daemon’s claw slammed to the ground. Losna’s calls were louder now.
“Ahooo!”
The daemons extended to their full height, driven mad by the noise. Both paused, looking towards the river, towards the sound of the howling.
Ahraia used the distraction to gather her strength. She made for the dead tree. She could see frothing water through the forest. She reached out and bonded a third tree. It was smaller, but it leaned in eagerly and grabbed the dead fir, joining the other two in their task. Together they pulled, branches straining, trunks leaning.
“Farther!” she screamed.
A massive whine filled the air and the dead tree tipped as its roots began to give way. A slow groan reverberated from the deep, then grew, crackling through the earth.
Snap!
The roots ripped away.
Rock and dirt and debris spit violently into the air. Ahraia covered her face as she ran, the light spinning all about her. The dead tree tottered and then fell. Roots emerged from the ground, rising upward.
Between the Shade and the Shadow Page 39
