Striking from ambush, with the advantage of terrain and the convenience of planning, Bloodhawk could deal with twelve hrumm. But not like this. Exposed, surrounded, and bone weary – he would die before even half his hunters hit the ground.
But there was a way.
Singing Arrow had never liked what the wilhorwhyr called bending light. Aulden magic was best left to the aulden, she often said. She thought it a crutch, at best – walking in rainbows – and an unreliable one at that. Since the time of the Sundering the lands of Faerie were a dangerous place to linger even for the fae who once called it home. Their once bright realm was now haunted by treacherous storms of iiyir and hungry shadows of the Dark. If he ventured too deep without a tether to the mortal world, he might never return, and he had no talisman or wilderwine to bring him safely home. But even Singing Arrow had acknowledged that sometimes the worst option could end up being the last best hope.
Bloodhawk closed his eyes.
A’ widdershins we go,
to Faerieland, beyond the Veil.
A’ widdershins we bend the light,
to skip behind the shadows.
The rhyme held no magic in itself, but it served to center him. It had been that rhyme tripping from his lips when he’d first walked widdershins and found his way into the Veil as a child. It had been easier then, when his aulden blood guided him, before age and human reason clouded the way. It had been years since his last venture into Faerie. But, with some effort, it could still be done, at least for a short time.
Bloodhawk opened his eyes, focused on a leaf, solely that leaf, and moved it moonwise in his mind. He let his eyes lose focus on all else, but the leaf remained crisp in his vision, crisp and green and haloed in the waning light.
One heartbeat.
A snowflake’s tear sparkled on its surface.
Two heartbeats.
Each vein throbbed in sharp relief on the blade.
Three….
The leaf twitched, shivering within itself, then split into two identical selves. Bloodhawk followed the leftward leaf as it shimmered widdershins. Then the light moved, flickering, and the mortal world dissolved.
Looking at the world from within the Veil was both the same and different. Everything was in its proper place, but nothing looked the same. Shadows twisted around their sources instead of falling from them. The light that shone down was pale, like the moons, not warm and gold like the suns. And here, on the doorstep to the otherworld, there were advantages beyond a change in scenery.
Shifting back and forth from Faerie had once allowed the aulden fantastic power. They had come and gone as they pleased, traveled leagues as if footsteps, appeared and disappeared at will, done battle as half-seen and unassailable wraiths, and the other races had bowed or cowered to them. But the andu’ai had shattered the Veil on their arrival, and when they mended it – blocked the way to Faerie. The aulden had been trapped in the mortal realms, and this brief flirtatious bending of light to trip within the shadow of Shadow was all that was now allowed to them.
Bloodhawk hoped it would prove enough for him.
Time moved differently within the Veil. The mortal world turned slowly, dreamlike, while Bloodhawk moved like lightning. He had never felt more in tune with the ur’iiyir; the ebb and flow of the world tides surrounded him in streams of muted silver. The thoughts of the forest, such as they were, flowed through him. For but a fleeting moment, Bloodhawk was the Caerwood, and like a heartbeat, leagues away, he sensed the forest heart. The Sacred Grove. The aulden.
Bloodhawk blinked away the distraction. Closer, like a weed, the intrusion of the hrumm invaded his vision. His mouth soured at their taint.
The first hrumm broke through the tree line to his right, running at its most furious pace, though from Bloodhawk’s side of the Veil, the creature appeared to flail upstream against a powerful current, slow and clumsy. Bloodhawk availed himself of the first weapon at hand, flinging soiled moss at the hrumm’s startled face. The filthy missile struck true, and the hrumm halted, gagging, and tried to clear its eyes.
Bloodhawk grabbed the bow and arrows he’d left at the ready and swung to his left, loosing both shafts at the next two hrumm. He watched as each broad-headed arrow gleamed on its way to hrummish flesh, kicking his loosened breeches off of his legs as he moved forward. The first strike took the hrumm off its feet to tumble in the brush, dead. The other hrumm spun, clutching the feathered dart that suddenly poked from its side, and fell squirming in the dirt.
Bloodhawk rose, discarding his bow and unsheathing his long sword to meet their advance. An arrow flew into the thicket, striking the maple as he dodged the sluggish missile. He felt the pain of the old tree through the ur’iiyir and grimaced. Two more shafts whistled toward him, but he shifted on his feet and slipped between them. The world outside was moving faster now.
Bloodhawk sprinted half-naked from the foliage to his right, cutting down the hrumm he had inconvenienced with his well-aimed waste, and flanked the hrumm who were charging his position straight on. He tracked the quick darting glances under their furrowed brows as they searched the trees, unable to fix his position. He was still but a ghost flitting through the trees, and so long as they looked for him directly he would elude them. Wild hrumm might have looked askance, trying to catch his true form where it was most vulnerable to detection, out of the corner of the eye. But these trained hrumm of the thars had the edges of their hunting instincts whittled away, so that they might march in straight lines and wield steel and die for Malakuur above all else. And fortunately so, for him, mused Bloodhawk.
Bloodhawk slipped in behind and left the two hrumm dead in as many sword strokes. The blade, striking from within the Veil, passed through mortal flesh with uncanny ease. Seven more, he thought, weaving through the trees, moving ever moonward as he followed his remaining prey.
A’ widdershins we slip,
to otherworld, of moonkiss’d shadows.
A’ widdershins we weave the light,
to dance in faerie hollows.
The hrumm were throwing down their bows and drawing curved blades of fire-blacked Malakuuri steel, hunting the twilight for any hint of movement. Three were bunched close together, poking in the undergrowth by the maple with their sword tips.
Bloodhawk had called plants to his aid many times, just as he had animals. But never here, from the Veil, and it was not so much calling out to the natural iiyir of the starweed as it was calling in – like twitching his own fingers to snake up the legs of the advancing hrumm, binding them in root and leaf and dragging them down in a helpless jumble amidst the nettles and soiled dirt of his latrine ditch.
Screams of terror were rare in the hrumm, and so Bloodhawk heard a rare thing. “Ul raog ha’uhiir!” barked one of the hrumm, trying to free its tethered sword arm. “Aald’naogh! Aald’naogh!” it rasped, even as the vines constricted the breath from its lungs and choked the sound from its throat.
Yes, the forest is alive, Bloodhawk agreed, the fading pulse of the tangled hrumm throbbing against phantom fingers. “Nòg aald’naogh,” he corrected, his voice floating from nowhere, “ma raogmyztsanogg!”
Whether they thought he was aulden or wilhorwhyr really mattered little to Bloodhawk, save for any additional terror a lightbending wilhorwhyr might bring them. Without urghuar or Dieavaul to intercede and pull him from the Veil, either would be dangerous enough to the hrumm. And indeed, they shuffled nervously, one of them eyeing escape over its shoulder.
But Bloodhawk’s tenuous bond to the shores of otherworld was fading – the Veil folding in behind him, pushing him back and out to the mortal world. He pushed himself forward, straining to retain his advantage for one more span of heartbeats.
A’ widdershins we glide,
through tides of glimmer-life.
A’ widdershins we drink the light,
to join in faerie glamour.
The hrumm pointed their blades, shouting, a fierce light kindling in their eyes as they finally
picked their phantom from the twilight. Bloodhawk charged, his sword high, and braced for a scything swing. The turf pounded beneath his feet, more solid with every step, the shock of steel through bone and flesh traveling up his arms to his shoulders – almost normal. Two hrumm died from that last fae blow, their swords still aloft and pointing, their own viscera spooling into their laps as they fell. The light of purplish dusk was suddenly warmer, and the breeze whistled colder around his exposed legs and privates. His thigh muscles seized, hardening and cramping as if he’d run twenty leagues with no respite, and he fell in the steaming blood of his victims.
And so ends the rhyme, he thought, head swimming.
A’ widdershins, we tarry,
as the fair folk make us merry.
A’ widdershins, they bid us stay,
before the suns call us home,
before the suns call us home.
A’ widdershins, they bid us stay,
before the suns call us home.
Bloodhawk tumbled through the mess of worming innards, rising with a weak parry that saved his life but lost him the grip on his sword hilt. Without thought to the lost sword, he grabbed the swinging arm of his assailant, his instinct and battle training acting through his delirium. The hrumm spun off, slipping in the bloody mire and, in a stroke of unplanned providence, impaled itself through the side as it fell.
The last hrumm was in mid-swing, and Bloodhawk slipped his arm inside the arc of the sword in a defensive parry that sliced him from wrist to shoulder blade but spared him the intended heart-stroke. Face to face with the hrumm, he crushed its sturdy larynx with a sharp punch, grappled its neck in an iron hold, then pivoted and broke its spine with a thunderous crack.
Bloodhawk collapsed. His arm burned, and the shorn sleeve of his quilted undershirt was soaked in blood. He examined the wound and found it a nice long slice, not deep, and certainly within his skill to mend. But the flesh already stank.
Barrowshade. He grimaced, recognizing the strong moldering odor.
Barrowshade was rare, and fatal – to humans, at least. Aulden were more resistant, and at worst might fall terribly ill. Bloodhawk wasn’t sure what effect the barrowshade would have on his mixed blood, so he sat down to clean and dress the wound as best he could before moving on. At best, the poison would have little or no effect on him. At worst, between his aulden blood and healing lore, he would be manageably ill.
In years to come this encounter might prove an amusing anecdote. The story could serve to illustrate the folly of overconfidence to wide-eyed Initiates equal parts eager and foolish. For now, he had to mend his arm, and continue to the heart of the forest, to the Sacred Grove.
Find the aulden, he thought, his purpose unclouded by grief or self-doubt, or even his short-lived self-pity. Find the Ceearmyltu.
But first, he reminded himself, my breeches.
CHAPTER TEN
DWYNLEIGSH
CALVRAIGN struggled to wake, swimming in a murky lake of unconsciousness but failing to break the surface. He felt some degree of comfort in hearing Brohan’s disembodied voice floating to his ears. He concentrated on his words as he rose into the shallow waters of half-sleep.
The master bard was conversing with a man whose voice he didn’t recognize, “…would never have found him had it not been for the lightning strike. That was a double stroke of fortune for your friend. The burning tree guided me to him even as the flames kept him warm.”
“Aye, the same fortune brought me. I’d begun to think I would never lay eyes on the poor lad again,” responded Brohan’s familiar voice. “I had occasion to weather such a storm once, in the Iron Peaks. Never here, where the winters are comparatively mild. Very curious.”
Calvraign heard someone stirring the coals of a fire, and then a pop and hiss as fresh wood took flame. Though he was, for all he could tell, warmed through and through, he still felt a lingering chill not related to the snow or the wind, but tied to the dark apparition he had seen just before passing out. He wanted to ask Brohan or this stranger if they had seen the phantasmal figure as well, but he could not break through the last thin layer of sleep. Instead, he continued to drift just beneath the surface of consciousness, listening.
“Whither or whether, we are fortunate you happened by, sir knight,” continued Brohan. “Not many care to travel the winter moons lightly.”
“I was meant to be in Dwynleigsh a ride gone, but my duties delayed me, and my mount was lost to the winter. My Lord Elvaeir has granted me leave to joust in the festival.”
“Ah yes, I know Lord Elvaeir quite well. Why, I was in Tiriel just last Goldenmoon to sing for him. What news from the north?”
Calvraign heard the strange knight speak for quite some time and struggled to concentrate on his words. Evidently the early storms had beset Tiriel with more anger than they had yet seen in the Crehr ne Og or Providayne. The snow on the windward side of the city walls had climbed halfway to the parapets, and similar drifts had buried shepherds and livestock alike in the fields. Baeden Maer had frozen before the full stock of winter supplies had arrived, trapping the great river barges on the wrong side of a massive ice jam. And the inclement weather had brought in its wake andu’ai from deep in the Ridge that walked about without care or concern in gales that would freeze human blood solid in the vein. The Old Ones had not been seen for a thousand years in such numbers. Some, he claimed, feared this was merely the beginning of arachaemyyhl, the ancient aulden legend of Eternal Winter, and that there was no hope to fight against it.
Brohan must have been disturbed by mention of this, for he stopped the knight in mid-sentence. “Surely Elvaeir can’t believe such nonsense? One can’t yell arachaemyyhl every time an andu’ai is seen, regardless of the weather!”
“Master Madrharigal, do not make light of this, I prithee. We have lost many good knights in battle already, and not to solitary andu’ai but to bands of three and five. Even the Qeyniir have sent us aid. And, before I departed, we had just received word that andu’ai were seen in the Bryr Moill on the border with Symbus. If this is not cause for concern….”
Calvraign finally managed to open his eyes and took in his surroundings through his first tentative blinks. He was in a small shepherd’s hut, which apparently had been abandoned for the season. Roughly hewn timbers sealed with tar and sap made up the ceiling and walls, sheltering the dirt floor from the elements. A fire lit the hearth, next to which sat Brohan and a tall man in a thick but well-worn traveling cloak fastened at the neck. There was a faint glimmer of steel at his wrist and collar, betraying the armor he wore beneath. He could not make out the stranger’s features in the dim flickering light of the fire, but he could see that Brohan wore a deep frown over his ever-present smirk.
“Concerned, yes, Sir Artygalle, but not with the end of the world, only with the uprising of an ancient and powerful race. The andu’ai’s stranglehold on Rahn was broken once before when they were more than just scattered bands in the wilderness. They can be dealt with again. This is why Lord Elvaeir sent you to the festival, then? Not merely to joust in the tourney, but to gain allies.”
“Didn’t you always say that the andu’ai defeated themselves, Brohan?” interrupted Calvraign from his straw mat, propping himself up on one elbow. “I mean, wasn’t that the whole point of the Litany of Swords?”
Brohan glanced in Calvraign’s direction, at once surprised and annoyed. “What?”
“You always said it was their internal struggle that toppled them. What if they are united again?”
“Welcome back to the waking world, young sir,” said Artygalle, turning to face the boy with a nod, “and thank you for your kind words of agreement.”
Calvraign returned a brief nod and examined the knight. He seemed young, not many years past his own age, and his eyes were bright and alert with the wonder of the newly traveled. Artygalle was not a handsome man, yet not homely, with nondescript dark blond hair and unassuming brown eyes.
“Cal,” rebuked Brohan, knee
ling by the straw mat and laying the back of his hand on Calvraign’s forehead. He nodded to himself, satisfied, and continued. “What you speak of and to what Sir Artygalle refers are entirely different. The Empire of Anduoun was a vast kingdom of kingdoms, and the andu’ai ruled it millions strong. To throw off their yoke was a much different thing. Of course their own strife helped sow the seeds of their destruction. But these attacks are not some grand revenge of the Old Foe! More likely it’s a restless remnant that’s been hiding in the mountains, enjoying the brief opportunity this weather has provided to make mischief. It should hardly require a monumental alliance to drive them from whence they came.”
“The Qeyniir evidently disagree,” responded Calvraign with a quiet shrug.
Brohan halted his retort before the words even passed his lips.
The Qeyniir, of all the Seven Tribes, had perhaps the most dangerous reputation. Known as dark and brooding even amongst the dark and brooding aulden, they had never shown mercy to any uninvited human who dared trespass within Bael Naerth. If they had been drawn outside their groves to lend aid to humans, even those of Tiriel, whom they trusted only slightly more than other human folk, perhaps the situation was a dire one. And Brohan knew all of this, for it was he who had taught the very same to Calvraign.
“Regardless,” Calvraign continued, taking advantage of Brohan’s momentary pause, “what concern of ours should it be if this is arachaemyyhl or not, if it serves the purpose of uniting our people against a common foe? You yourself said that the nobles lack the common sense to do so of their own accord. Perhaps this will give King Guillaume what he needs to bring them together again.”
In Siege of Daylight Page 13
