“Weather’s lowering. Fair day, wicked night.”
“Have you a place to rook?”
Bastian made a dismissive noise. “Not close by, thanks to those firedrakes. Safe haven in a tree places us too far up the coast to do you any decent service. If there’s any shelter on these crags, here on Doumhall proper, it’s above the cloud line. I can taste the ice forming. We go there, we’ll freeze.”
“Doesn’t leave much in the way of options.”
“Rool feels much the same.”
“Will you come inside, then?”
“Don’t look for us, trust us to find you.”
“Take care, my friend.”
“Always. You, the same.”
He returned to himself to find Khory watching him intently, hunkered down on her heels so they were on the same level. In the distant background, Ryn and Elora busied themselves finding fuel for a fire.
“The eagles aren’t happy,” Franjean told her, tucked in close to Thorn’s side and hoping the information would satisfy the DemonChild enough to make her stroll away.
“What’s your problem?” she asked him levelly, at which point the brownie went spectacularly ballistic, a fireworks display of arms and legs and speech, all working wildly at once as he charged forward, uncaring of the size differential between them.
“You!” he squawked. “You you you! I know you for what you are, dissembler, and where you rightly belong—which isn’t in the company of decent folks.”
“Odd,” Thorn couldn’t resist interjecting, “I’ve heard much the same said about you, Franjean.”
“Oh”—the brownie turned the most exaggerated look of dismissal on Thorn—“how droll. I am so struck to the quick!”
“Would it were so, that we might have ourselves a little peace.”
“You—you’re standing up for this, this thing?”
“Khory is quite capable of ‘standing up’ for herself. But she’s as much my friend as you are and deserves the same respect and courtesy.”
The brownie’s mouth gaped as he struggled to find an appropriate, preferably lethal, rejoinder. Gaped wider (in appearance, like a fish gobbling for food) as nothing came, not the slightest flash of inspiration. His teeth came together with a sharp and resounding clack and he spun on his heel to stalk stiff-legged away, muttering determinedly that he’d have no more truck with such foolishness and ingratitude.
“Why do I suspect that I will pay for this, in full measure?”
“What else are friends for, mage?”
“Surprised me, too, saying that,” he told her honestly, face turning into a frown that betokened mostly confusion.
“Did you mean it?”
Took a deep breath before replying, because he still wasn’t wholly sure. And decided, in that breath, to cast rationality away, as he had with the deer, and let his instincts speak for him. The High Aldwyn, he thought, would be proud.
“Wouldn’t have said so, otherwise.”
Since none of the others knew how, Thorn had to light their fire, and in any other venue it would have been a most impressive blaze. But they were crouched in a hearth that stretched wider than a jousting pitch and stood half as high as a cathedral. The chamber itself was beyond superlatives. Elora’s Aerie fell far short of the ceiling and the King’s Palace could have been lost in a corner. The walls rose in a gentle arch, but the scale of construction was so huge that Thorn couldn’t easily tell which elements were due to the ravages of time and which were ornamentation; it was too hard for the eye to wholly encompass the scope. A single glance wouldn’t do; too often, he was forced to scan from side to side to take it all in. He heard a jest from Ryn about what it would take to light the room—one of the towering trees from Cherlindrea’s forest would do nicely, with a firedrake to set its crown alight—but the truth appeared both more prosaic and breathtakingly beautiful. As the comparatively minuscule fire they’d laid in the hearth cast its glow outward, that light was caught by crystalline threads in the very fabric of the rock. This wasn’t simply a reflection, the light was somehow absorbed, each thread energized throughout its length in the same way that heat flows down a strand of metal until the entire piece is warm to the touch. The threads cast no direct light—the shadows were still primarily cast from the fireplace—but that was because the source was too weak. For Thorn and his companions, they established a background ambient texture that sparkled like a starlit sky, an ever-changing panoply of color and intensity. Were the hearth in proper use, the room would have been awash in brilliance.
“Hoy, Franjean,” called Ryn as Thorn sliced vegetables for cooking (under the circumstances, with the stag close by, he thought it inappropriate to serve any kind of meat), “you Wee Folk are supposed to know all there is—”
“About everything worth knowing, yes,” the brownie deigned to reply, from his distant perch midway up a fireplace cornice.
“Anything about where we are?”
“There’s the obvious, that one could fit the whole of the Royal Angwyn kitchen into this single hearth.”
“We know they built big.”
“Gods don’t like to think about the Gods that came before. You Daikini are supposed to have the exclusive market on mortality.”
“And I’m sure,” Elora interjected smoothly, “if Ryn were Daikini, he’d feel properly humble.”
“Ever wonder, though,” Ryn went on, “about what comes after? In their day, think of those who dwelled here. Were they the ones who made the world? What were they like, to make their homes of mountains? Where’d they go? How would they feel to be forgotten? How will we, when it’s our turn?”
“Brownies, cretin, are never forgotten, so long as the memory of one of us lives, so live we all!”
“My point, exactly. What happens when even the memory dies?”
“Somber thought, Ryn,” Thorn said, “for so generally merry a folk.”
“It hasn’t been a merry few days, mage. People lived here, now they don’t. Same was said of Nockmaar and Tir Asleen and now Angwyn. The world turns, but where does it go?” He shrugged, suddenly, disarmingly, disturbingly human in stance and gesture, as though another had stepped forth to live for a time within his skin.
“I swim, I hunt, I play,” he said, “I try to do none lasting harm, and think nothing amiss in asking much the same in return. How many folk in that city across the way walked their waking days by the same rules? How many of my brethren will suffer from the storm that killed Morag? Mortal I may be, Peckling”—and he rounded on Franjean as he spoke, with a thread of real anger laced through his words, “but does that give Gods and Goddesses the right to rip my life to shreds as though I was no more than a piece on their game board? If they want a war, let them find a place to do it that leaves the rest of us the hell alone!” He finished with a shout that boomed and echoed off the stone rafters and took a long time to fade away.
“Bavmorda was no God,” Thorn said simply. “She was a woman with tainted dreams—and the desire and ability to make them real. And for all the fanfare, Elora’s no God, either.”
“No God,” the girl said, trying for humor but coming up short, because her description of herself was what she believed to be the truth, “no dreams, no desire, no ability.”
“I don’t know,” Ryn continued helplessly, waving away the plate of food Thorn offered and a cup of steaming broth as well while he paced back and forth before the fire, as though he were in a cage. “I’ve heard the stories. If this Bavmorda was such an abomination, why’d the Great Powers have to drag that Nelwyn into it? What’s’isname?”
“Willow Ufgood,” Elora told him softly, and then, more softly still, her memory of the tower haunting her features, fading the rich, dark blue of her eyes, which turned inexorably toward Thorn, “my protector.”
“Why any need for a Sacred Princess at all? Why didn’t they simply slap Bavmorda down and have done with it?”
“Why not ask them yourself?” Thorn said, draining the last of his own cup.
Ryn looked puzzled a moment, before noticing that Thorn was looking past him, as was Khory. Even Franjean had fallen silent. Only Elora, staring into the heart of the flames as though she might find the transcendence she’d touched oh so briefly with the firedrakes, paid not the slightest heed.
The great, vaulting hall was empty no longer.
Throughout their trek up from the beach, they’d remarked on the emptiness of the forest, not an animal to be seen or heard, as though none had ever been. Now they knew why.
All stood before them, from the smallest bugs and lizards to full-grown mountain cats and highland rams. Birds and beasts together, hunters and prey, amongst their own kind or mixed in with others, some standing alone, others with families clustered close by, the very old and the barely born. They stood and stared, with an air of patient expectation, and the thought came to Thorn that he had come into some fantastical court, with this multitude the jury.
Dead center—in the room, in the gathering—was the stag, and as Thorn rose to his feet and started forward, so did he. Only the beast’s aspect changed with every deliberate step, flesh and sinew running like wax or mercury, turning him to fox and owl and raven and mouse and spider, so that by the time he finally came to stand before the Nelwyn he had manifested the form of every creature present.
Including, at the last, a passable imitation of a Daikini.
He was tall and he’d seen better days; the one constant throughout his ongoing metamorphosis was the legacy of his burns, and in each instance he wore them as a badge of honor. The hair of his head had been reduced to scrappy stubble, his beard the same. The day’s travel had weathered his skin some, but it still possessed the roseate pink of a baby’s flesh and he held himself as though the very touch of the air was an irritation. He still wore horns, though not so huge on a human head as when he was a stag. They formed a sleek curve up and back from the flanks of his skull, each with three nasty, sharp points.
“Why?” he demanded, without preamble or introduction.
“I don’t know,” was all the answer Thorn could find.
“This was a blessed place,” the man said, his voice as raw as his flesh, and there was a pain in it that had nothing to do with his wounds. “All within lived in peace and harmony.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“The balance is broken. The land screams because its spirit is no more.”
He saw Cherlindrea, as silver in her way as Elora had become, that glow dulled, the bright glory of her eyes as ensnared by the Deceiver’s lies as her body was by his web of evil.
“We are all of the world,” Thorn said, with a passion of his own. “In our way we have all suffered. But we survive, we persevere. As Franjean said, about his own folk—so long as one of us lives, there is hope. From that hope, rebirth.”
“Words!” the StagLord shrieked, hand flashing up and down faster than the eye could follow, changing as it swept across Thorn’s face to grow a brace of claws in place of fingers. He felt a sting and saw blood fly but otherwise took no notice of the strike as the StagLord raised his hand—truly a human hand once more, as normal in appearance as Thorn’s own—to show its scarlet fingertips to the assemblage.
“Is that what you’d prefer?” he asked of the taller man, after quelling Khory with a silent glare. She’d crossed almost the whole distance to him, starting the instant the StagLord raised his hand, gathering speed with every loping step in a charge that would have ended with her plunging past him, her sword slicing across him level with his shoulders to claim his head, and into the heart of the gathering beyond.
“That there be war where once was peace,” Thorn continued, without making any effort to stem the flow of blood down his slashed cheek. If the StagLord was bothered by Khory’s aborted attack, as Taksemanyin placed himself bodily in her way and pressed her—gently, insistently, inexorably—back toward the wall, it didn’t show.
“If such is your hope,” the StagLord replied, “it comes too late.” And a rustle of agreement made its way across the assemblage.
“We come as friends!”
“What was once given freely, manling, must now be earned.”
He thrust out his right arm, and Thorn’s blood leaped forth from outstretched fingers, becoming the rough-braided body of a whip, to rake diagonally across Elora’s back from shoulder to hip.
“If you would regain your rightful place amongst us,” the StagLord thundered, “you must prove yourselves worthy.” This time his cry was echoed by a susurrus of voices from the assemblage, redolent with a rage and a hunger for vengeance that allowed little chance for mercy.
The fire was blazing more brightly, far beyond the capacity of the combustibles that had been found for it, reaching up and outward to the side as though the hearth were remembering the way things were when it was young and well used. Too late, Thorn saw that Elora sat too close; he couldn’t go to her; he dared not turn his back on the StagLord, sensing he’d be impaled within a brace of steps, but aware as well that it was too hot for Ryn or Khory to try either.
The whip slash left a wicked trail across her shirt, and should have cut her to the bone—but as they watched, the stain faded away, until there wasn’t a mark on her shirt. The cloth was as pristine as when it first was woven and by implication the skin beneath as well.
“She is the great Betrayer,” accused Cherlindrea’s forest consort, taking her immunity to his attack as proof positive of his indictment.
“Not so,” denied Thorn, with passion to match.
“All came to pay her homage.”
“And were deceived. As was she.”
“More words.”
“True words!”
“Spoken by one who would say anything to save her!”
“I saved you!”
“And that has earned you the right to be heard, and judged fairly.”
The blood whip came now for him, his vision flooding scarlet as tendrils stabbed through his eyes and poured fury into every particle of his body. The StagLord thrust himself forward, hands grasping Thorn beneath the armpits and lifting him high overhead until he was poised on the tips of the man’s horns. The energies of the blood whip arced around and through them both, spread-eagling Thorn and stretching his extremities to their utmost until joints began to pop from their sockets; his mouth had likewise gone wide as flesh would allow, teeth bared to such an extent he thought all the component parts of him would tear apart, his expression twisting into a rictus of unbearable agony that he knew was but a fraction of what the StagLord had endured running through the fire.
He and the StagLord had shared blood, now they shared life, the skeins of their pasts rising from every orifice, right down to the pores of their skin, and Thorn found himself in the depths of the primeval wood, moving with stately grace on four hoofed feet, secure in his speed and strength, and the deadly prongs that tipped his antlers, to keep him safe. Wherever Cherlindrea had a grove, there was he able to roam, moving with the ease of thought from one to another regardless of the distance between them. On solstice and equinox he and his lady met for a moonlit dance, casting through a myriad of forms in celebration of the diversity of life within their realm. Sprites and fairies streaked the air with rainbows that were in turn lit from within by an array of cascading sparkles, creating the same riotous patterns of glittering diamonds that could be seen watching the moon cast its glow across the ocean surface. Even in the depth of winter, their bower was bedecked with garlands, and from the elemental passion of their love came a surge of renewal for both the woodland and the creatures who dwelled within.
When Cherlindrea was ensorcelled, it was as though the heart had been cut from both her consort and the land he nurtured. It had been a struggle to shift halfway across the world to this grove, and he arrived to find the firedrakes already at work. He’d wa
sted no time, but rushed to the defense of its inhabitants. There’d been none of the Veil Folk to rescue, trees were empty of dryads, ponds and streams of nymphs; no elves, no fairies, no pixies, nor nixies, brownies, or trolls. Only the denizens of the waking world, and those he herded with increasingly reckless desperation to the hoped-for refuge of ancient Angwyn. The firedrakes tried to stop him, for the sport of living prey excited them even more than the joy they found in simple burning, but here his strength stood him in good stead. And to the surprise of the elemental fire creatures, his rack proved as formidable against them as any corporeal foe.
But the woods about him had become a hollow place, bereft of any aspect of the divinity he worshiped, and far poorer for the loss of her. He wasn’t the first to share her arbor; his desperate fear was that he would be the last.
“I,” Thorn cried, each word a hoarse shout, like a man uttering his last testament. “Fight. For. What. I. Believe!”
“And what is that, manling?”
Pain vanished; with it, all support, as the StagLord cast him to the stone floor. He’d been pulled so taut that nothing about his body felt like it fit together any longer, not jaw, not teeth, sentences emerging as though he had marbles in his mouth.
“Elora Danan spoke for your life,” he said from all fours, as though he were the beast here. “Doesn’t that count for something?”
“You speak with passion for the Betrayer, mortal. Say you nothing for yourself?”
“She’s no more your betrayer than I am.”
“Have a care, lest you condemn yourself.”
“Slain by friends or foe, the end’s the same. I’m sorry for the damage that’s been done here. But you’re not the first to suffer so, nor—heaven have mercy—the last, and of a certainty nowhere near among those who’ve suffered worst! I don’t know why the patterns have been broken, perhaps that was necessary to re-form them in a new and better way. But it’s done. Wish all you please for something different, the world is as it is, we have to make the best of it.
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