Ahraia glared at her, wondering if somehow she could challenge the Masai’s binding. She tried to form her own enchantment, but the Masai flicked it away, as a nitesse would brush away the slapping hand of a spriteling.
“You use the very forest to move as though it is woven into your blood,” the Masai said. “Tell me, how do you do it?”
Ahraia grappled with the enchantment. It bore the weight of all the enchantments she had ever suffered, like the Stone tree, but without the barest hope of resisting. Her right hand rested on the black-feathered arrow, poised, but paralyzed. The bow in her left hand hung pointlessly.
The Masai cocked her head.
“And your bow? I hardly even noticed. How did you retrieve it?” she marveled as though she had been privy to Ahraia’s thoughts. The Masai’s ears batted and Ahraia’s jaws were suddenly slack with permission to speak.
“Did one of my wards help you . . . or your sister perhaps?” The Masai’s eyes narrowed.
Ahraia didn’t answer. Her teeth were unbarred, but she struggled against the mind-numbing force of the Masai’s will, trying desperately to move her hand to the arrow. Her bond to Losna was muted, but it was clear her shadow was panicked, trying to escape;. Losna’s eyes quivered with fear and high-pitched whines slipped out as whimpers.
“If you aren’t going to speak, then it’s your shadow that suffers.” The Masai dropped to a knee next to Losna. The drain flashed in the dim light, stopping just short of Losna’s rib cage. Losna let out a strangled whine.
“Let her go,” Ahraia said desperately. All defiance fled from her, and she dropped any pretense of being able to undo the Masai’s enchantment.
“Let her go? No, no, no, my shade. Neither of you are going anywhere. You’re the most dangerous kind of trouble. Different . . . on a plain entirely changed. You would lead sprites away from me, but not into your own darkness—into the light, or whatever madness you see fit. No, this is it. I want my answers and then I’ll be done with you. Now tell me, how did you retrieve your bow? Did Kren help you?” Did she betray me?
Ahraia remembered seeing Kren beneath the hood and had the sudden urge to condemn her sister—but she couldn’t. The Masai pressed the blade against Losna. Fear wrapped around Ahraia’s mind and drove her nearly insane.
“No. No! I used an owl. Kren wouldn’t help me. She wants me dead.”
“An owl . . . like a shadow. And how did you break the chain? With an arrow?”
“No. With a pick. I don’t know what it is. I took it from a human.” An image of the tines clicking into the lock formed in her mind, passing to the Masai.
“Pure luck,” the Masai whispered. Her eyes were glazed. “And the Shad-Mon? How did you escape them?”
Losna’s whines suffocated Ahraia’s ability to think.
Tell me! the Masai commanded, pressing the tip of the drain deeper into Losna’s fur. Excruciating pain formed in the bond and blood trickled over the blade.
Stop. Stop, Ahraia thought desperately trying to break through the enchantment. She couldn’t. “I used the trees . . .” she said, her gaze flickering upward to the forest. She sought any living thing to bind; the firs were too tall, hemlock too distant. I used springs, she conveyed. She saw a maple, standing beyond the first ring of trees. It was the only tree within a stone’s throw that would possibly reach the Masai, but it would require the whole tree lean downward, an enchantment Ahraia wasn’t sure that a team of sprites could manage.
“The trees?” the Masai asked. “How?”
“I bend them to my will,” Ahraia said, binding the maple, knowing it was her last hope. “I fold them, like darkness. But I do it instantly, without the permanence or repetition of folding dark.” She turned the whole upper trunk down on itself, the tree straining to reach the Masai. It creaked perilously, a quiet noise that went unnoticed against the roar of the river. The Masai was standing over a tangle of roots. Ahraia formed a second binding, a deeper binding, through to the roots and the fir they connected to.
The Masai moved the drain from the Losna’s ribs to the tip of her ear.
“You got away from the Daemons using trees? Using springs? Like an imp?” She stopped, and actually laughed. It was a terrible noise, letting the air out of the woods.
“And here I thought you had some mastery over the world—some grace that I did not have. I was actually scared for a moment.”
“Don’t hurt her.” Please. Ahraia begged, stalling for time. The roots weren’t awake yet. The maple hadn’t reached the Masai.
The Masai locked eyes with Ahraia, the smile still spread wide across her face. She pulled Losna’s ear tight. Ahraia sensed the roots slowly rousing. She focused her binding, setting her will into the enchantment.
“Hurt her?” the Masai said. “Do you not understand? You’re going to watch her die. And then you’re going to die as well.”
“Why?”
Without warning, the Masai sliced through the tip of Losna’s ear.
Losna yelped in terror and pain. It shocked Ahraia, a violent pain that coursed through her, right to the end of her enchantment, to the roots of the trees. They roused.
“I rule the night, Ahraia. I’m not about to let a shade spin chaos out of darkness.” She moved the drain above Losna, both hands on the handle. Losna’s eyes widened with fear. Her breaths were ragged. Ahraia bared her teeth at the Masai.
“The night may be yours. But that shadow is mine,” she said, making her bindings work at once.
The roots slithered out of the ground and around the Masai’s legs like serpents out of water. They coiled about her ankles and knees, fixing her where she stood. The sinuous branches of the maple above then swung the rest of the way to the ground, twisting around the Masai’s wrist even as she slashed downwards. The leaves shuddered, pulling the Masai’s arm to a stop, the blade brushing Losna’s fur.
The Masai was shaking from the effort. Ahraia felt her mind reaching out to the tree, trying to pry it from Ahraia’s will. The Masai’s hand inched towards Losna, pressing into her fur. Losna whimpered. Ahraia felt blinding rage and pain. She refused to let go, refused to let her shadow be hurt any more.
Ahraia gritted her teeth as a second limb snaked down and wrapped around the Masai’s neck. Her eyes went wide as she realized what Ahraia meant to do.
You can’t—
Ahraia released the first spring, keeping the Masai’s feet rooted to the ground. The branch ripped skyward. Wood tested against bone and muscle. The Masai gave a long, agonizing scream before her arm was ripped from her shoulder.
The resistance to the bonding frayed. Ahraia had full control of the maple. It slithered tighter around the Masai’s neck, choking off her scream. She spit and foamed at the mouth, her eyes going wide and staring at Ahraia with pure fear.
Ahraia didn’t hesitate. She directed the second binding just as she had the first. The second limb wrenched upward with the full strength of the tree. The Masai’s head tore from her body, the maple slinging it into the canopy above.
The enchantment holding Ahraia snapped. Losna struggled up, teeth bared.
“Are you all right?” Ahraia said, dashing to her shadow. She knelt and checked her ear, still feeling the pulse of pain through their bond.
I’m fine, Losna thought. It was only the tip of my ear.
The Masai’s body remained standing where the roots held her—exactly as the keress had been—fixed, even in death.
Ahraia’s mind was suddenly free, and she sensed sprites swelling through the forest.
“We’re not out of this yet. Let’s go,” Ahraia said.
A dae-ward lurched to a halt. He looked at Ahraia, then at the standing body of the Masai. It took him a moment to understand what had taken place, and his yellow eyes spread wide with fear.
“She killed the Masai!” he shouted. The alarm rippled through sprites, spreading like a windless wave through the trees. Wards were streaming towards them. Ahraia leapt past the headless body of the Masai, with
Losna right on her heel.
The river wasn’t far. The roar of it was growing. Anger and vengeance spread behind her, and light spread before her. Ahraia looked for the toppled tree to cross the river but a glance told her it was nowhere near.
“We’re going to have to swim,” she called to Losna.
A hail of enchantments fell at her heels. They were running at a full sprint, dodging trees and branches as they dashed towards the river and the break in the darkness ahead. She saw churning water and great spears of sunlight. Fog unfurled over the cold water.
“Capture them!” A sprite called. Ahraia recognized Shalih’s voice. Get them!
Ahraia ran the length of a mist-slickened log, lunging to the rocks at the water’s edge. The river lay before her: swift and wide, unshielded from light. The woods overflowed with wards and the air reverberated with enchantment. Losna was running next to her in great loping strides. Ahraia didn’t hesitate. She leapt to the last rock at the water’s edge and plunged headfirst into the raging river.
35
The Heart of the Woods
Freezing water pressed inward, stealing Ahraia’s breath and shocking all fear and reason from her mind as the river’s current engulfed her. She surfaced and saw Losna, her golden eyes wide with fear before she disappeared. Ahraia cascaded over in a boil of spitting water. The river sucked her downward, ripping her away from her shadow. Water swirled. The torrent roared. Their bond thrummed in panic. Ahraia came up and gasped, and then she was dragged back beneath.
I can’t breathe, she thought.
Light swelled above. Bright, brilliant, tumbling white. A gasp of air. Then back beneath. Rushing water and roaring noise.
She came up disoriented and swept past a massive boulder. She kicked and scraped at it, her nails sliding over hard, water-smoothed stone. The river churned into a yawning hole, sucking her beneath again, this time pinning her, holding her in a merciless current.
She couldn’t breathe. The noise of rushing water was all she knew. Her lungs burned. Her elbow hit something hard, and then something sharp grabbed hold of her, biting her.
Panic rose, and she seized, trying to pull away in terror, imagining what kind of monster could live in such a place.
Losna’s thoughts suddenly came through the panic.
It’s me, her shadow thought. I’ve got you. Losna dragged her upward.
Together, they kicked and clawed for the bank. They broke through the current and the river’s roar lessened. Ahraia’s skin and lungs were burning. Her arms ached when she finally felt hard stones beneath her. She slipped, legs numb, feet numb, hands shaking and hardly hers. She stumbled out of the river, weighed down heavily by her cloak and boots. Losna surged from the water next to her, fur streaming with droplets.
The Dae-Mon was covered by fog so thick it was hardly more than the Bright Moon.
Ahraia rose, shivering and triumphant. Their bond reverberated between them. Losna shook herself and looked up at Ahraia.
We made it! Losna thought.
Ahraia turned back to the river, staring across the waters. It churned and swirled, screaming that it hadn’t taken them. The sprites and dae-wards of Angolor stood along the banks, hooded and sunlit. She knew the anger that festered in them. She could feel it, even spanning the river.
Ahraia shook her cloak loose, the eaves-web dripping heavily. She was too angry to be cold or light-burned. Her skin was aflame, but she wasn’t about to die from it.
The sprites jeered and shouted, all stooping to drink. Ahraia bared her teeth at them. Every one of them had killed their shadows. Every one of them had found it in their hearts to cut the best part from themselves.
Kren stood at the water’s edge. Her eyes were the only things that showed beneath a makeshift veil, but Ahraia could sense her disbelief. A faint bonding formed, and Kren’s conveyance came through sharp, filled with disgust.
You fool. You’ve killed yourself. You would have been the Masai. Though her words were clear, Ahraia sensed something tugging at her sister beneath the enchantment: yearning. A deep jealousy flowed through Kren as she watched Losna standing at Ahraia’s side.
Flit deserved better. Ahraia shook her head, not bothering to convey her thoughts. Kren was the last among the sprites to stoop and drink, summoning the Shad-Mon, but she pulled her veil aside and drank deeply. When she stood, her eyes gleamed with hatred.
Unveiled and unafraid, Ahraia stooped and drank as well, meeting her sister’s eye.
What are you doing? Losna asked. Ahraia smiled darkly.
“She thinks I’ve given myself to the monsters. But she’s the one surrounded by them.”
Losna bared her teeth. The sprites’ eyes glowed in the morning light. A distant roar carried through the woods.
Ahraia pulled an arrow from the clutch, fitting it to the bow. Without another glance, she flitted into the underbrush with Losna close at her heel. She closed her mind to all but her shadow and the woods.
“If we’re going to survive, we need to get across these woods. Then we can make whatever darkness we see fit. But we’re going to have to get to the other side.”
What are we doing about the daemons? Losna worried.
“There are rules here,” Ahraia said as she ran. The woods were dark, the fog so thick and the forest so deep that it was night within. Losna loped after her, eyes turning with the drifting fog, her fear carrying through the bond.
“First off, no drinking the water.” Ahraia stopped at a narrow stream that cut a swift path through a moss-covered glade. She stooped and drank. Losna quivered with worry, but Ahraia smiled and then hurried off.
“Secondly, don’t disturb anything.” Mushrooms spilled from a fallen tree. She kicked them, spraying their stems and heads across the forest. The woods teemed with life. She pulled fox tails from their stems, yanked ferns from their roots and shook every tree she passed, her heart racing. She formed bindings, the whole forest moving and shuddering at her will.
Losna looked about worriedly, then Ahraia stopped, breathing hard.
“The third rule,” she said, panting, “is stay quiet.” She threw back her head and let out a primal yell. Losna hesitated. Then, feeling Ahraia’s urge, she threw her head back and let out a howl. Though the fog was thick, muting even the daylight, it seemed to carry their voices. They grew, louder and longer and stronger, until they were in chorus, howling into the woods. When they were done, Losna’s fear was lessened. The blood was pounding in Ahraia’s head.
She laughed. The Shad-Mon’s roar echoed back, but it lacked the bite it had carried before. Their howls still echoed about them. Her madness bled through the bond, and Losna laughed with her, the roar a distant thought.
What are we doing?
Ahraia kept running. The woods were laced with channels and creeks. Water flowed and dripped everywhere.
She stopped and looked at her shadow. Her lungs and legs burned. Her skin and eyes burned too. But most of all, her heart was burning. She was alive. And she had her shadow. She looked into Losna’s eyes, having no trouble at conveying her thoughts with her words.
“The last rule is no one survives.”
She stooped and drank again. Losna followed her lead, leaning over and lapping at the stream, eyes gleaming.
We’re hunting it, Losna realized. Drawing it in.
Drawing them in, Ahraia replied, checking the tension in her bowstring. It was damp, but it would do.
Losna’s eyes widened, but then sharpened.
Good. I like a good hunt. She threw back her head and let out another powerful howl. It raised the hairs on Ahraia’s neck. She grinned, a fierce grin. The roar echoed back, closer now.
They ran, as only they could. The deeper they went, the more the air reverberated, an ominous pressure building. At each channel, they knelt down and drank. At each passing of the forest, they moved it. And each time they stopped, they shouted and filled the air with their voices.
The roars grew closer and closer, until th
ey didn’t answer.
Ahraia stopped running. Losna pulled up short.
An emptiness beyond her thoughts filled the air. An all-encompassing darkness settled in her heart. A fear descended about her without her permission.
“They’re here,” Ahraia said. Losna scanned the woods, her nose to the air.
Ahraia reached out with her mind. The nothingness spread, surrounding her, enveloping and embracing her. She ducked behind a tree, nervously looking up for claws above her. Losna watched behind her, sniffing at the air and growling. Ahraia dashed to the next tree, her bow at the ready.
Creak.
Her ears twitched. A bird called shrilly. She smelled damp cedar and tallow mushrooms.
Where are they? Losna thought.
“Keep your eyes behind me.” Ahraia turned about. Then she reached out to the forest in a massive enchantment, not of a single branch or single tree, but instead a bond to everything, melding every branch and stem, root and leaf. She felt the tall trunks, awake and watching, low ferns untrampled, leaves hanging, unshaken.
She could feel the forest moving. Her nights spent bonding every tree and branch gave her a web of clarity. She felt the hands moving across trunks as though they were sticks. She felt the moss pressed downward by clawed feet large enough to pin a bear.
One tree was swaying softly. So softly it might not have moved at all. But the rest of the wood was still.
Too still. Ahraia’s eyes narrowed—and then she saw it.
Gray skin. Claws like oversized talons. Shoulders too broad to be hidden by any tree, no matter how large the tree.
The Shad-Mon was wrapped about a fir, watching her with lifeless, black eyes, skin the same color as ash blended with the fog, claws, each as long as Losna, wrapped easily around the tree. Vicious teeth ran one over another in all directions.
Between the Shade and the Shadow Page 45
