by Leo Hunt
“This way, my children,” he says. “We do not have far to go.”
We follow Berkley silently, away from the tent, into the mists and snow. The forest is consuming the playing fields, and we move between great gray trees, strung with vines and armored in thorns, but it all seems to move aside as Berkley passes, without any sign of anything ever actually shifting. He walks, and the forest always has a path ready for him.
The trees grow thicker still, and I can see people tangled in their branches and roots, the same forest we found ourselves in after we left Elza’s house. Gray shapes, sleeping or else moving with drugged, lazy spasms, people quietly singing to themselves with roots burrowing through their chests and faces. As we walk they become more numerous, until the trees seem to be mostly made of these bodies, strange twisted pillars of lost souls.
“What are these?” I ask Berkley as we pass a particularly large mass of roots and people.
“Thralls,” he says. “Worshippers. The remains of the mortals the Tree has pulled into its realm.”
“This is what’ll happen to everyone in Dunbarrow?”
“Great power requires a great appetite,” Berkley says, stepping on a singing face without a downward glance. “It would behoove you to accept that. I have consumed many lesser spirits to become as mighty as I am. Countless millions. You will need to do the same.”
The light has changed, becoming greener and brighter, like we’re walking underwater. Frost glitters on the bodies of the damned and the roots of the gray trees. The fog shimmers. We must be closing in on the gateway. I clasp Elza’s hand tightly. She hasn’t spoken a word since we left the tent.
“In fact,” Berkley says, “this should provide an excellent opportunity. Let us raid our enemy’s larder, shall we?”
He reaches into one of the masses of souls and pulls one out, mewling, a withered old man with blank silver eyes and colorless wrinkled skin. He looks like an ancient newborn. Mr. Berkley holds him by the neck, appraising him with one blue eye.
“You want me to eat him?” I ask.
“No, my son, I want you to wear him for a scarf. Of course we are going to eat him. He is aged and weak, and the Tree has drained most of the succor from him long ago. I chose this example in the same way a mother cat will bring her young a wounded bird; in order to teach without risk. He has no will remaining and is easy prey.”
I look into the man’s eyes. There’s nothing there. He’s barely a person at all; he’s the husk of a dead one. There’s no way Berkley will buy this if I don’t do as he says. I’m lucky he’s even letting me try to save Dunbarrow at all. But this . . . he was still a person once. What am I if I do this?
I’m like him.
What will Elza think?
I can’t even look at her.
I have to do this.
“My son,” Berkley says, “why do you hesitate? Do not grieve for him; he is weak. Were he wise and strong, he would not find himself in this unenviable position. We are above him. We may do as we please. His spirit is yours.”
He holds the man’s face out to mine. The gray lips move without a sound. He doesn’t seem to know where he is.
I close my eyes and lunge forward, biting the spirit. My teeth tear through him easily, and I gulp his spirit down. It’s like drinking glacier water, a cold refreshing draft, mixing with the heat inside me and fizzing into every part of me. My sigil flares colder than ever. I bite again, taking more, drinking deeper, until there’s nothing left.
I can’t believe I did that.
I think I’d do it again.
Berkley’s eyes are pinpoints of azure flame in the dimness. “There,” he says, “your first taste of true power. Why bind a spirit to your sigil when you can consume it entire? And this was only a weakened thrall, already drained of its succulence. Imagine eating a strong spirit, feasting upon them in a great banquet. Imagine eating a prince of demons defeated by your own hand. Oh, the meals we have had in Tartarus, my son. The feasts yet to come. You cannot yet know.”
He claps me on the back.
“I can’t wait, Father.”
“You look larger already!” he says. “Doesn’t he look strong, Elza? You must be proud.”
I still can’t look at Elza. I hear her clear her throat behind me.
“Yes,” she says, almost a whisper.
“Perhaps we all have room for a little more,” Berkley says, reaching into the tortured mass of people again. “How would you like some, Elza? Your beauty will only grow.”
“We’re wasting time,” Elza says.
He looks at her, and she stares back.
“I beg your pardon?” Berkley says softly.
“This is a waste of time,” she says. “I’m not eating someone’s hand-me-downs. Did we come to challenge the Barrenwhite Tree or go through its larder like thieves?”
Berkley’s eyes flare brighter. He removes his hand from the mound of gray people.
“You would instruct me in matters of courage and cowardice? You are Luke’s consort, nothing more, witch child. Remember your place.”
“I don’t want to be anyone’s consort if they act like this,” she says. “We came to issue a challenge, I thought. Or are we here to hide in the woods?”
Berkley’s jaws drip with blue fire. I clench the handle of my sword. He’s melting, turning into something else, and for a moment I catch the glimpse of something like a horned bear made from shadow.
“Please, Father,” I say. “Forgive us. She has a sharp tongue.”
He starts at the sound of my voice and snaps back into focus, a tanned, white-haired lawyer again.
“No, no,” he says. “The girl is right. As I said, it is no insult to speak truth. There is nothing to be gained here. But I might suggest she express herself more delicately in the future. There is indeed richer food than the Tree’s thralls in these woods, if one only knows where to look.” He grins ferociously at Elza and she drops her gaze.
“We are sorry,” I say.
“All forgiven,” he says cheerfully. “Come. We are close to the gateway.”
We follow him through endless ranks of trees, through drifts of snow that melt beneath his feet, past wailing masses of gray thralls, their twisted bodies piled high into the sky. The green and blue light grows stronger, shimmering walls of light in the fog, like we’re walking through the aurora, and there’s a high ringing tone in my ears.
In the path before us, we come across the bodies of two deer, their throats cut open, blood staining the snowy earth. There’s fresh snow settled on their fur.
Elza puts a hand to her head.
“I remember something,” she hisses to me. “I’ve seen these before.”
I look at the corpses. Nothing comes to me. Berkley has already stepped past them, his eyes fixed on the glimmering brightness we can see between the trees.
“Just a little farther!” Berkley calls to us.
“Come on,” I say. “We can work this out later.”
Elza shakes her head, like she’s trying to get water out of her ears, dislodge the memory, but evidently nothing occurs to her. I take her hand in mine, four-fingered, and squeeze.
“We’ll get through this,” I say. “I know we will.”
She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t take her hand away either. We move through the nightmare forest, following Berkley. The gauzy light grows brighter and stranger, veins of blue-green lightning running through the air around us, coiling about branches like vines.
After a few more moments, we come to a clearing in the forest, a cathedral of wintery light, and I know that we’re in the presence of our enemy.
The passing place has changed beyond all recognition. The Devil’s Footsteps are gone, and the ground is coated with snow. The oak trees that always encircled the standing stones have turned to stone themselves, and I realize that these trees must always have been the real passing place, the gateway that the people who put the standing stones here were trying to keep closed. Seven trees of livi
ng stone line the clearing, and in the middle stands an eighth.
The Barrenwhite Tree grows from the ground where the Devil’s Footsteps once stood, a splintered white mass that towers over the clearing. I was expecting it to be ugly and frightening, but actually it’s beautiful. It does look like a tree, but there’s something of a heart about it too, a swollen growth with veins of ice reaching up into the shimmering sky. The Tree does emit the light we’ve been seeing in the sky all night; some of the branches glow with green and blue streaks of power that drift up to tint the fog above us. The ringing tone is louder still, like someone struck my skull with a bell. I weigh my sword in my hand. We have a chance, I tell myself. This wasn’t all for nothing.
Two figures wait for us before the Barrenwhite Tree. One is Margaux, seeming to be unharmed, dressed in a dark robe, her white swan mask held under one arm. The other is hung upside down from one of the Tree’s branches, its feet bound together with rope, wearing a dark robe and a black owl mask. It’s the second Apostle, the one Margaux threw onto the bonfire. It doesn’t seem to be burned, but the Apostle’s body is lifeless and limp. What this means, I have no idea.
Berkley comes to a halt just past the nearest stone oak tree. He surveys the scene with undisguised loathing. I stop beside him, with Elza behind me.
“Is that truly you?” Margaux says, in the voice of the Tree. Her eyes have rolled up into the top of their sockets, exposing only the whites. “What shape is this now? This is how you come before me, after so many years?”
“I wear the shapes I please and walk where I like,” Berkley replies. “It has always been the way.”
“What business have you here, Speaker of Secrets?”
“Relinquish your hold over this town,” Berkley says. “Release the thralls you have captured here, and return to your rightful place.”
“A strange demand. You love menfolk so much that you wear their skin now? You order me to release what I have rightfully taken? Never. Begone from here, Speaker. Take your morsels with you.”
“Relinquish your hold on this realm,” Berkley says again.
“This is my right. You know this. It is the Feast of Winter. When my star rises above this world, I take a piece of it back into our realms. I teach the mortals new ways to live and love, beyond fear or death. I am beloved of them again, as it was before the worlds were divided. It has always been the way.”
“I challenge you,” Berkley says to the Tree. “I defy your will.”
There’s a silence. The green-blue shards of light that project from the branches of the Tree glimmer and flash, sketching sharp shapes in the mist that churns about us. Then Margaux’s body laughs, her mirth sounding almost like cries of pain.
“What care you about my thralls, Speaker? What care you for the living or the dead, or anyone besides yourself? Or is it that you have worn the shape of a man so long, you have inherited their cares?”
“This is the birthplace of my apprentice,” Berkley says. “He demands that you remove yourself, and I give him authority to do so.”
I wasn’t actually born in Dunbarrow; I wasn’t even born in the northeast, but it doesn’t seem like the right time to bring this up. I feel the Tree’s attention fall onto me, the full weight of its cold gaze.
“I know it is the home of Luke Manchett,” the Tree says. “Do you think I chose this place at a whim? It pleases me to consume his house and kin, to use him so easily as the agent of my own arrival. He broke the gateway open himself, at my Apostles’ urging. He bears one of the locks within his own mouth.”
Berkley turns to me, eyes flickering with blue firelight.
“Is this true?” he asks me softly. “You aided this spirit? You wish for two masters?”
“I don’t remember!” I say. “But I wouldn’t do something like that! Why would I want to? Why would I let it free?”
This is bad. Why didn’t I think about this before?
Berkley grabs hold of my face and wrenches my mouth open, reaching inside with his other hand. I hold completely still as his fingers sear into my gums, pulling out the stone lodged there. He holds it up to the green-tinted light.
“They put a spell on us,” Elza says. “We don’t remember what happened. We ran away as soon as we could.”
Berkley turns to look at her, then back at me.
“This is the truth?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
He thinks for a moment, turning the stone over in his line-less palm.
“You are untutored,” he says lightly. “It would be no great matter for the Apostles of this exile to compel you into opening this gateway. I will teach you how to defend yourself against such assaults.” He tucks the shrunken standing stone into his jacket pocket. “As for you,” he says, addressing the Barrenwhite Tree again, “you presume to use my own apprentice for your designs? Knowing full well my mark is upon him?”
“Your apprentice? The Manchett boy? This is how low you find yourself now, Speaker? An idiot child who has drunk from your well of secrets. I used him easily and discarded him.”
“I got away from you,” I tell it. “You haven’t killed me yet. I’m still here.”
“For now.”
“Enough idle talk!” Mr. Berkley says, raising his voice so it booms through the clearing. “Barrenwhite Tree! Lost Child of the Winter Star! I challenge you! I defy you! Your will is not your own, but mine! Your acolytes are weak and fearful, where mine are great and terrible! By river and by heart, by stone and by hand, I expel you! By tree and by eye, by sky and by tooth, I defy you! By the power of eight, I challenge you!”
“You are a fool, Speaker of Secrets,” says the Tree. “You challenge me by the power of eight over a scrap of a town in the living realms? This, of all things?”
“I do challenge you, exile.”
“Then you know I must accept,” Margaux says in that terrible voice. Her face grimaces. “Name your champion, fool.”
“I name as champion my apprentice, Luke Manchett,” Mr. Berkley says. “Our champions will battle to the death, as it always was. Only one will leave the circle with their spirit intact.”
“And what shall the victor receive, O Speaker of Idiocies?”
“Idiot, am I? Fool, you call me? I would like to know, if you fancy yourself so sharp, how you found yourself stuck inside that grave of ice in the first place? If you are so powerful, how is it you must resort to speaking through the stolen tongue of a chattel? Why you may only come sneaking through cracks into the living world to feed, whereas I rule a great empire of spirits and do as I please?”
“Because I have never bowed,” the Tree says, “and you did, Scraper of Foreheads.”
Mr. Berkley’s eyes flare so brightly, they go beyond color, white-hot furnaces. There’s heat streaming from his body, turning the snow around his feet to steam. Elza covers her face with her scarf, cringing away from him.
“We could never have won,” Berkley hisses. “You saw it, too, but blinded yourself.”
“You feared her.”
“I WAS NOT AFRAID!” Berkley screams. “I FEAR NOTHING! I AM SPEAKER OF SECRETS! I AM LORD OF TARTARUS! YOU ARE A BROKEN RELIC TRAPPED WITHIN A TREE OF ICE! YOU ARE NOTHING! YOU NEVER WERE!”
My hands are clasped over my ears. Berkley’s voice could split the sky in half. There’s nothing human about it anymore, nothing cheerful or charming.
“You are a craven, miscarried shadow, Speaker of Secrets. Mother always said as much.”
“Do not even say her name,” he snaps, recovering some of his composure. I’ve never seen anything get under his skin like this before. “Do not dare. I challenge you, by the power of eight, and this fight shall be not only for our champions’ lives, but for ours!”
“Tread carefully,” the Barrenwhite Tree says. “Challenges such as this cannot be revoked. Are you sure you do not wish to simply gamble for a small town? You will not be able to break your promises to me so easily this time.”
“Whoever’s champion loses t
his fight, they will submit to the blade! They will submit to destruction! THEY WILL LOSE ALL!”
“I accept,” the Barrenwhite Tree replies. There’s a moment of stillness, and a circle of blue-green flames erupts on the ground before us, about the diameter of a boxing ring. If I had a heart, it would be pounding. Mr. Berkley lays his hands on the sides of my face and takes hold of me, forcing me to stare into his glowing eyes.
“I may have overplayed our hand,” he says, soft and urgent. “If I had not already named you champion, I would name another, one proven, but this is no longer possible. Do not fail me, or as my final act I shall ensure the witch girl perishes alongside me.”
I look back at my unlikely ally: his face masklike, the mouth no longer even moving convincingly in time with his words, his form unstable, with darkness seeming to leak from around the edges of this false body. He — it — is losing control. Whatever’s really lurking at the heart of Mr. Berkley, the Barrenwhite Tree knows exactly how to turn the screws. Seams of blue fire flare across his body. His fingernails sizzle, burning my spirit flesh, tiny fragments of hot stone.
“What will it choose?” I ask him. “What will I have to fight?”
“The Tree is old and powerful,” he says, “but hardly well followed in the recent ages of the worlds. The Apostles you see before you may be its only remaining servants.”
Margaux, then. I’ll be fighting Margaux. I wait for her to step into the ring, but she doesn’t move. Instead the other Apostle — the one I had almost forgotten about, hanging upside down from the icy branch of the Tree — speaks.
“Allow me, Lord . . . I beg. Let me stand for you,” it rasps.
“My Apostle,” Margaux replies in the Tree’s terrible voice, glancing upward at the dark-robed figure that hangs above our heads. “My Wisdom. You presume now to speak to me? You lied. You swore the boy was dead.”
