Dark Enchantment

by Janine Ashbless

  His forearms were smooth where the burning over the years had seared the hair follicles.

  If he ever found himself flinching from this moment, he’d told himself, that would be the day he would turn from questing and retire to court, because he would no longer be able to confront an enemy. Pain was the companion of the soldier and a knight could not fear it. He had to accept it, even embrace it, and Herrick’s relationship with pain was longstanding and intimate. Not fearing pain was what raised a warrior over a civilian; it was what raised men over women. Pain was the keen edge of life; it was the only time he felt his life in him as a tangible thing, to be cherished.

  When he was dressed he descended the stairs and met the crowd of villagers waiting outside for him. A hard frost had settled overnight and the ground and rooftops were painted white. People huddled in their winter cloaks and stamped their feet. Antonius made a little speech to which he hardly listened. Then Fosca rushed up, flung her arms about his neck and pleaded, ‘Come back safe to me!’

  Without looking her in the eye Herrick extracted himself from her grip.

  Antonius and a few of the other men accompanied him out of the village as far as the old church on the knoll; no one else cared to go that close to the dryad’s wood. The tiny windows of the building were broken through and choked with the black stems of briars, the doorway likewise impassable. It didn’t look like anyone had been in the building for a century, though Antonius told him the attack had taken place less than three decades ago. Beyond the church the hills rose, and the forest that spilled down their flanks was advancing on the village; young birches and hawthorn and elder had turned the rank grassland to scrubby wood. They didn’t even dare graze their livestock this side of the village, Antonius said bitterly.

  Herrick left them at the church wall and went on alone. Sheathing his sword and slinging his shield across his back, he nocked an arrow to the bow, carrying it across his body with deceptive casualness.

  The capo had been right about this land not being suitable for horses. The slopes were steep, falling away to deep gullies, and the footing was made treacherous by fallen trees and dead wood. But there were the remnants of trails; people had been here once, unmistakably. He came across what looked like a lumber yard quite soon, the piles of rotting timber furred with moss, and there were small houses hidden here and there, with roofs all broken by sprouting trees and floors thick with autumnal litter. Miners’ huts, he guessed. There were bones lying about here too, among the broken pots and rusted trivets and fallen beams: just skulls, which are always the last to disintegrate when left out in the open. Not all the skulls were adult-sized. Herrick turned one over thoughtfully with his foot and passed on into the deeper forest.

  Away from the village the chill seemed fiercer, the frost thicker. The day was quite still, as if it held its breath. All but the oak trees had shed their leaves and frosted twigs hung like a froth of lace against the black trunks and the iron-grey sky. Every long weed stalk was turned to a feathery plume by ice. He was crossing a stream on a fallen log when a deer stepped out from the frozen undergrowth, glanced at him curiously but without fear, then paced gracefully away. He watched it go without raising his bow, thinking that it must have been generations of deer lifetimes since the last human dared hunt in this place.

  Another beast gave him greater pause for thought. Upon one stag-headed oak sat a large bird with bronze plumage. Not just bronze-coloured plumage he noted; the heavy individually discrete feathers and the metallic clinks as the bird preened them made that clear. It was a Stymphalian bird, a type he’d thought extinct. They were dangerous in flocks, he knew, but this one seemed to be alone and indolent. Herrick gave it a careful berth nonetheless.

  The going was steep. Despite the weather Herrick was starting to feel uncomfortably hot in his arming jacket and mail hauberk. Then he heard singing.

  It came from a valley steep enough to be called a ravine, and when he’d descended carefully through the trees he found a level floor and a river that was probably ferocious in spring, but now only half filled its bed, lying in dark pools between stretches of moving water and broken rock. It was markedly warm down here; no frost lay on the ground and there was a steam in the air and a scent of warm earth. Primroses bloomed unseasonably in drifts among new spikes of grass. In one of the pools the singer was bathing. Her song was gentle and wordless.

  It was as it should be, he told himself with a half-smile, as he edged forwards: nymphs and goddesses of old were always discovered at their bath. He raised his bow, the arrow aimed straight at the pale glimmer of skin in the shadows under the trees.

  It was a narrow target; she was slenderly built. Her long hair was the black of ash buds in winter while her skin was a pale uncanny green, like the flush on the petals of snowdrops. Defying the season overhead, white petals of hawthorn were drifting down in the still air from trees on the cliff face, and lay on the pool’s surface or clung to her damp skin like snowflakes that refused to melt. The water must have been gelid, but she washed herself slowly, with great concentration, as if enthralled by her reflection or the slim body under her hands. The surface of the pool cut across her form at the exact point at which the cleft of her gently curved rear started, and Herrick’s keen glance found that precision peculiarly frustrating.

  The smell of the may blossom was heavy and sweet, like honey. The scent of hawthorn is the scent of death, the old woman had said – but hawthorn blossom at different times may smell alluring, or of sex, or of corruption. It depends on the tree, and the time, and the man.

  Her song faded away. She lowered her hands to the water. ‘Why don’t you shoot?’ she asked, without turning. Her voice was low-pitched.

  He didn’t answer. He stepped forwards out of cover though, the bow at full draw, the arrow tip aimed unwaveringly.

  ‘You don’t shoot deer or birds,’ she continued. ‘Do you shoot unarmed women?’

  That hurt. ‘I’ve never shot anyone in the back.’

  She laughed. ‘What about in the front?’ she asked, turning. Her face was triangular and delicate, with slanted green eyes under angled rows; a hungry face, not beautiful by any courtly standards but entirely arresting. And her body – oh, her body made Herrick’s heart thud against his ribs, so he dragged his eyes back to her face, away from those breasts upon which the water droplets sat like pearls. Her lips, like her nipples, were the dark red of ripe haws. She smiled. ‘Well? Will you shoot me now?’

  Then she walked forwards out of the pool, up onto the spit of sand and grass where he waited, and as she did, her hair changed colour, blanching to the blond of new-cut pine, and her skin warmed to the cream of peeled willow strips. Her expression with its mocking smile did not change though.

  ‘No,’ he said with resignation, dropping his bow to one side. But he put his hand on the hilt of his sword.

  ‘Your mistake,’ she told him. She was nearly as tall as he was when she came up close, with long clean limbs. ‘How are you going to kill me now, man of iron? You are here to kill me, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m here to stop you.’

  ‘Stop me doing what?’ Her hair moved about her like a live thing, undulating softly. It reminded Herrick of the twitch of a cat’s tail before the beast pounces.

  ‘Killing innocent people.’

  ‘And when have I done that?’ She looked him up and down. ‘You don’t look innocent to me.’

  He raised a brow in acknowledgement. ‘The people of Estoli. The woodsmen and the hunters and the miners.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘They were innocent, were they? Felling the trees? Killing the animals? Raping the earth?’

  ‘They were just trying to stay alive.’

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘There were children,’ he growled.

  ‘Ah.’ Her eyes glittered with ire. ‘There is no end either to the greed of men, or the begetting of their children. They will fill the earth and take everything.’

  ‘A child is of more worth tha
n a tree!’

  She laughed. ‘Says you, human.’

  ‘Says God.’

  ‘Not this one!’ Her arm lashed out, faster than he would have believed, and she backhanded him stingingly across the face. Herrick felt his blood surge in his veins. He blinked hard, meeting her mocking eyes, but his sword did not leave its scabbard and his hand did not leave its hilt.

  She shifted on her toes, clearly frustrated by his lack of reaction. ‘Well,’ she sneered, ‘aren’t you going to fight me? Shall I strike you again? Will you turn the other cheek?’ She raised her fist again, but this time he saw it warp, changing, and as she swung at him he jerked back out of the way. Her hand swung past his face and he glimpsed six-inch thorns jutting from the knuckles. She’d have ripped his throat out.

  Without needing to think he was in the fighting stance, his sword out in his hand. She danced around him, laughing, her damp hair swirling, her feet barely seeming to touch the ground. Herrick’s face burned, not just from the blow she’d struck him but from shame that she should scorn him. He was a knight and not used to being treated to lightly. When she feinted at him he slashed back, meaning to catch her knuckles on the flat of his blade, but her hand was not where it should have been and he struck only empty air.

  ‘Faster than that, man of iron,’ she mocked. She stabbed at his eyes. As he swiped back she slid past beneath his guard and ripped her other hand across the exposed underside of his arm, just at the edge of his mail sleeve, drawing blood.

  She was inhumanly swift, he realised. And her nails were now as sharp and thick as lion claws. A duel that should have been hopelessly one-sided – armed knight against naked nymph – turned instead into a twisting dance of slash and dodge, both combatants proud and angry, she grinning but he grim-faced and increasingly discomforted. He had the armour and the sword and the reach on her; she had a litheness that would have put a cat to shame. They circled each other frantically. Herrick took a moment to unsling his shield, but it was hardly in his hand before the wood warped, burst into leaf, turned sear and then withered to dry sticks that fell apart. The iron boss and rim fell uselessly to the ground, and she laughed.

  Then a raking blow from her snagged her curved claws in his mail, trapping that hand long enough for him to seize the wrist. His grip was harsh enough to grind her wrist bones together, but she responded by growing thorns from her skin like the spikes of blackthorn, long as fingers and narrow as awls, which punched clean through his palm and out the other side. He gasped, but didn’t let her go – not until the points emerging from her hand pierced his hauberk and the padded cloth beneath and drilled into his abdomen. Then he wrenched away and released her, scattering droplets of blood as he staggered out of her reach, and cursed in shock.

  ‘Come on. You aren’t trying!’ she spat, closing for another bout.

  He was aware at the periphery of his vision of the trees moving, of the landscape flexing as the forest warped into an arena for their combat. Water hissed as it boiled away, rocks groaned and shivered into sand. Grit and leaves and pieces of bark whipped around them, stinging his eyes. Even worse was the knowledge that she was right: killing her was not his heartfelt goal. He was not putting everything into it. He wished she were armoured, or even clothed. He wished she wasn’t so fast. He wished he wasn’t starting to pant for breath.

  He took the decision and swung a killing blow at her. Somehow she side-stepped, the tip of the blade scoring her ribs, then whirled and kicked out at him. Her foot connected with the side of his knee. In her movements she’d been so swift that she seemed almost ethereal, but she was solid enough when this blow slammed into him. Herrick felt the joint break, even heard the crunch, and then the afterwash of pain took his breath away. He collapsed to a crouch, his head full of a white roaring agony that swamped everything else. He was only vaguely aware that the dryad was still there, that his mouth was open, that he was retching emptily as his body tried to vomit out the pain.

  ‘Get up.’ She impinged on his consciousness. He swung his head to focus on her, wondering if she would step within reach of his blade. But she stalked in a half-circle well beyond the swing of his arm, her back arched proudly, ignoring the thin red trickle crawling down to her hip. ‘You can’t give in just yet,’ she said. ‘It’s much too soon.’

  Herrick tried to get his gasping under control. Every nerve sang with strain and the blood was roaring through his veins. He didn’t trust himself to speak out loud. He had to get upright, he told himself, get his back to something solid. It was his only chance; down here on the ground he was finished.

  ‘You must be in a lot of pain.’

  He nodded once, his lips clamped shut. Her hair was dry now, a dense dark cloud the green-black of yew leaves, her skin flushed all over to the russet of an autumnal beech crown. But her eyes were the same, and her piquant, cruel face.

  ‘I know what pain is.’ She touched the nick on her ribs. ‘Not this. But seeing my trees felled, my land invaded, my shrines overturned …’

  Herrick got his good leg under him, trying to rise, but that was not part of her plan. ‘I’ll heal you,’ she announced. ‘We’ve hardly started, have we?’ Taking up a handful of soil from between her feet she threw it contemptuously upon him. Herrick jerked his face away, shutting his eyes. Then he felt his broken leg twist beneath him, and a warmth flare up his thigh and down his calf.

  ‘Get up,’ she repeated.

  He stood straight, testing his knee, dizzy with shock. The joint was whole, as was his pierced hand, the pain nothing more than a memory. His awe must have shown upon his face, because she made a spitting noise.

  ‘In this wood, man of iron, I am a goddess. The earth hears my whispers; the oak moves to my commands. Do you think you can kill me with that little blade?’

  He was beginning to doubt it. ‘I can try.’

  Her smile widened. ‘You learn too slowly. Shall we have another lesson?’

  Then she threw herself at him. Herrick had no time for anything except to thrust the sword straight out at her breast, braced in both hands. She struck the blade full on, dashed up its length and all over him – a hail of autumn leaves and stones, no more solid than that. The moment she was behind him she took form again, whirled, smashed the helmet from his head and kicked him in the back of the knee, folding him. He caught himself as he went down, but even as he turned and slashed there was movement in the grass all around him. Bramble tendrils whipped from the earth, tangling his feet and hands. In moments he was dragged over on his back, a spiny loop tight around his throat. Fragile in themselves, in numbers they pinned him to the ground. Then new tendrils grew and slid up his sleeves and under the edge of his hauberk, their passage like lines of fire drawn on his skin, emerging at the neck. Dozens and dozens of living strands, binding together into stronger and stronger cords. They tightened and flexed – and tore his mail shirt open. The bronze rivets first corroded and then stretched and snapped.

  Herrick had seen thistles cracking marble slabs in Rome, or else he would not have understood that a living plant could be so strong.

  Then the ground heaved beneath his back, a huge boulder thrusting him up until he was raised and spread and nearly snapped in half, the pressure against his spine almost unbearable. The brambles did not let go, but having ripped open his armour and shredded the cloth beneath they did nothing but tighten against his skin, a thousand tiny thorns speckling him with his own blood. He felt the air against his stinging flesh. He saw the tree branches tossing overhead and the white petals of shed may blossom fluttering down upon him, and he wondered if this was the end.

  The dryad jumped up onto the rocks and straddled his hips. He couldn’t even raise his head to look down at those naked thighs.

  ‘So, does the guest bed suit you?’

  He groaned.

  ‘A little hard on the back? What a pity.’ She bent and licked the blood streaks on his chest; he was surprised to learn that her mouth was warm. ‘Still, you did arrive at very short n
otice, without invitation. You must make allowances.’

  His heart was racing; she must be able to feel its thud against her lips as she sipped from him. ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ he said through gritted teeth, as the world spun around him.

  She chuckled, surprised. ‘Do you enjoy this, man of iron?’

  ‘Herrick.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s my name.’ It seemed important to him that she should know it. He did not want to go nameless to death.

  She mouthed the foreign word with distaste. ‘Is this how you expected it to end, Herrick?’

  ‘One day.’ And he was horrified to find that his strongest emotion was relief.

  ‘You’ve fought my kind before?’

  ‘No. No dryad.’

  She circled his nipple with the tip of her tongue, making it harden. ‘Monsters …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The last children of Rhea. So that the children of the stones may inherit the earth.’ Her teeth closed cruelly over his left nipple and he groaned from deep in his chest. Then she released the crushed nubbin of flesh and crept forwards up his chest, breathing the smell of his sweat and his fear until her lips were against his ear. ‘Do you wish to hear the good news?’

  He managed to swallow, and she took that for assent.

  ‘This isn’t the end, Herrick. Not yet. You are not going to die until I tire of hurting you. And in this place I can take you to the brink of death and bring you back again, over and over, for my pleasure. Until your pain has brought me ease.’

  Fresh damp sprang from every pore. His insides seemed to turn liquid. She raked claws down his chest and stomach, testing every patch of skin between the criss-crossed bonds. He rolled his eyes back and tried to call upon the mercy of God, but it came out sounding completely wrong somehow.

  ‘What’s this?’ Her voice was low with surprise.

  He strained to look down at her and found she’d reached his lower garments, had been sliding about on his crotch, had found something that should not have been there at all: his massive, stony erection, pushing up against the cloth, the swollen head seeping with such eagerness that it was making a damp patch. Herrick was washed by a crimson tide of shame.