First Blood

by K. Gorman

  That was precisely what it felt like.

  She tilted her head, searching, trying to feel through the forest the way she normally could. The frown on her face deepened.

  One spot in particular stood out to her. Where the rest was a background noise to her senses, this had a quiet, glow-like feel. Closer than the rest.

  She grasped Nales’ wrist and pulled him forward again. “Come on. This way.”

  He resisted, briefly—she felt the hesitation in his arm—but followed along, quiet and tense.

  In another hundred yards, the ground suddenly diverged.

  Both of her eyebrows shot up as the disturbance came into view.

  “What the… fuck?”

  It was as if someone had taken two places and attempted to shove them together like old pie crusts. The earth was jagged and rough at the seam, pushed up in places, a mix of the darker forest on one side and a harder, drier type of soil on the other.

  She squinted, trying to make sense of it. It still jangled in her woodcraft as wrong, but seeing it in person made the sensation slide.

  “Is this what the fey were talking about? The ‘disruptions’?”

  “It would explain the gate flare we saw that night. And verify their theories.”

  Nales’ tone was quiet and low. She could feel him by her side, his body as still and wary as hers.

  She kept her mouth shut, feeling the spark of anger flare within her—she was still pissed off at him, however unreasonable it was—and instead turned her focus to the area itself.

  It was rough, lighter-colored. Hard and compacted, with a heavier mix of rock and sand than the normal, springy loam of the rest of the forest, a different mix of minerals, and it had a dry, acidic tinge to it. The air above it also felt dry and a touch acidic, as if something in the soil exhumed pieces of atmosphere like a foul smell.

  Her fingers curled back like claws.

  “It’s definitely foreign,” she said. “I can sense demon here, too, though the smell is faint.”

  The sulfur, at least, she could smell. It seemed to be coming from the soil itself, which might partially explain its lighter color. It seemed to exude it, the same way it made the air drier. It pricked at her skin like a miasma, almost visible in the surroundings. Underneath hung the distinct odor of rotting blood and viscera that seemed to come with them.

  “Perhaps one came over with the land.” The prince’s eyes moved back and forth, human-blind but doing their best to survey the land in the dark. “Any blood?”

  “Hard to say. That tree’s been hit, though.”

  She made a gesture to the side, where the seam ripped right across the angled trunk of an older poplar. The scent of sticky sap almost overpowered the sulfur she smelled, and the wound at its base stood out like a shock of white, half-ripped and splintered through—as if someone had carved out a chunk with their bare knuckles rather than a saw, or kicked it out.

  Other bits jumped out at her now that she’d noticed it—roots ripped all along the seam, a log near torn in two, branches displaced. Part of the scene looked as though a drunk castle groundskeeper had taken a pair of clippers to a segment, just to get it out of his way. Cleared right in a specific area—which told her that the cut, or transplant, or whatever it was, was not confined to the ground. They just hadn’t noticed it in the air as much, due to its fluid nature.

  But yes, there was a distinct hole in the canopy where this clearing stood.

  Gods alive. What happened to the worlds?

  She blew out a breath. Nothing good, that was for sure. But she suspected the prince was onto something.

  The gates definitely had something to do with it.

  “Let’s keep going,” she said. “There’s something bigger up ahead. Similar to this, but I can’t get a focus on it.”

  This patch of earth still jangled at her, but the sensation had played down once she’d set eyes and feet on it. The other, however, still rolled in her mind like a batch of raw, wet cotton.

  Beyond, a much larger presence filled the back of her mind.

  The demon lord? No, probably not. This felt more like a place than a person.

  Once again, she took his wrist and pulled him forward.

  They found a second horse a quarter mile away, similarly butchered, its guts spilling down the slope in a grotesque tumble, as if something had caught it mid-stride. This time, they found signs of struggle—flattened earth, scuffs, bent and broken branches, the black glisten of demon blood partway up the trunk of an ash. She almost gagged at the overpowering stench of rot and sulfur.

  Fear spooled in her gut like fraying wire. The closer they got, the more the world seemed to tremble in her woodcraft. Little fluctuations, like the flutter of moth wings, pulling at her skin, eating away at her nerves like ants on wires. She couldn’t help the tension that clamped her jaw as they drew closer, and by some unspoken agreement, both she and Nales slid into a more careful approach.

  Tension pricked at her skin like an approaching stormfront.

  Then, they found the first demon.

  The hellhound hadn’t been mauled like the two horses—in fact, judging by the blood on its mouth, it had likely been doing the mauling—but she recognized the clean cuts that marked its sides.

  Blades. Most likely fey.

  Hope sprung in her chest.

  Maybe they were still alive.

  Maybe they had won.

  A jittery bundle of nerves and excitement ran through her, but she suppressed the shiver before it could enter her muscles. She moved forward, leading Nales on at a faster pace, unable to conceal the tension that ran through her. She could feel the fear tremble through her gut, the way it hijacked her nerves. Her left hand went to the hilt of her blade, ready to unsheathe it, finding some calm in holding the weapon she’d trained with for years.

  After another ten minutes, they came to the edge of a clearing where the forest began to slope into the funnel of the river valley. She pulled Nales down beside her, next to a bush for cover as she surveyed the changes.

  At first, it was hard to make sense of what, precisely, her eyes were telling her. Half the valley had been mauled—a big trench of earth cut through its center as if the talon of an extremely large bird had scratched through, digging deep enough to uproot trees, rip up sod, and scratch the rocks below. Temdin, it looked as if a child had gotten to it and used the valley for a game of matchsticks.

  And beyond it…

  Well, the river valley where Ulchris sat was, quite simply, gone.

  Her jaw slackened as her mind caught up to what her eyes were perceiving. The entire thing had been taken—moved out and replaced. Instead, a low, bumpy mountain sat over what had once been the slow bend of the river wetlands.

  She could see its outline clearly against the rest of the forest. Dark and rocky, devoid of flora except for small, scraggly-looking trees and shrubs, along with acidic-philic plants that bent in the cracks of the ground in clumps and series. The back of it made a craggy outcrop against the slow slope of the forest and valley beyond.

  And the smell…

  Her diaphragm spasmed, a hint of bile crawling into the back of her throat as the stench of rotting blood and sulfur mixed into the spriggy scent of the forest. This time, there was a miasma—she could see it clearly, slipping up from the dense, coarse ground like a dark ground fog, a larger remnant of the stuff she’d seen off the first hellhound she’d encountered. Her mind flipped back to the wiry, lean roughness of its coat, the way it seemed to wear the rot and acid like a cloak.

  Slowly, the area settled in her woodcraft like a shiver.

  Silence lay thick in the air—even thicker than before—and a distinct unease crawled through her skin. Every inch of her was taut, wary, alert. Ready for action. Her eyes darted to and fro, senses working in overdrive, searching.

  It was clear something had happened here. Fires burned here and there, dotting the landscape like scattered sheep. Bodies slumped in their glow, their bumps and ou
tlines more solid than the ground they lay on—demons. She recognized the snout of one hellhound, its snarl limp and dead, and the mangled wing of another demon sticking out like a broken umbrella post. The smell of death and sulfur pressed against her senses like a hot rag.

  As she followed the light of one fire, and her attention landed closer to the small mountain, her breath died in her throat.

  “Is that… a fortress?”

  Distinct battlements lined the lower crags of the mountain, fitted in a rough, carved style. Columns and balustrades, arching in paths and criss-crossing up the slope, along with what looked to be stone steps accompanying them, if she squinted properly.

  Her blood ran cold as the implications sank in.

  “I’m not crazy, am I? This is where Ulchris used to sit, right?”

  She’d been to it, once. Keenly remembered the view. A small white temple half-hidden in the trees on a rise by the river, a quiet road snaking its way up to it through the forest.

  “You’re correct. Ulchris used to be here. Now, it’s…”

  “A demon fortress,” she finished for him.

  Gods, it really had just transplanted itself, hadn’t it? There was even a glint of water through the trees where the river had diverted, flooding several fields like a dark, rushing pool. She stared, feeling the coolness of the water prick distantly in her woodcraft.

  “Yes.”

  She didn’t need to look to the side to see Nales’ tension—she could feel it. He knelt next to her like a meercat, back and neck stiff, face wary, his entire body still as a hunting spider. Like her, he also had his hand on the hilt of his sword.

  “It’s not supposed to be here,” he sputtered. “Even when he ruled, his hold was on the other side, in the infernal realm.”

  “Guess he relocated.” She turned her attention back to the scene ahead of them. “Lots of dead demons,” she commented, keeping her voice low, tension pulling her shoulders tight. She glanced to the side. “I count fifteen at the least. More, most likely.”

  And a lot of magic had been used. She wasn’t an expert in it, not like the fey were, but she could feel it in the air. Every inch of the place felt like it had been hit by a lightning strike—booming and potent, violent and powerful, the energy already spent but still wreaking havoc in its passage.

  But there was something else, too. A second tone underneath it.

  It felt like it was waiting.

  Not a good sign, given their current situation.

  She swallowed back her fear and forced her mouth to work.

  “I don’t see any fey yet.” She clamped her teeth shut, the words almost electric as they left her chest—was it really possible they were still alive? She’d thought so before, when she’d seen the marks in the hellhound’s corpse, but, Gods, she hoped they were.

  If a party like that couldn’t defeat the demon lord…

  A tremble of fear—true, cold fear—crawled up the underside of her spine. Fey were powerful. If they couldn’t defeat the demon lord, they would need an army. Her shoulders stiffened with tension, and she sank closer to the leaf litter. Though the scent of sulfur and rot was still overpowering, the wet, earthy scent of the soil below helped ground her. Her fingers trembled into the dirt.

  They had to get out of there.

  “If this is his keep, there will be upwards of five hundred demons inside. More, most likely. It all depends on what he’s been doing with the past two hundred and fifty years.” Nales spoke with only a sliver of a tremor in his voice, the tone low and even. “Our historical texts tell about him subjugating the forest lords through the ley vein corruption. I’m sure there’s more to the story, but…”

  “Forest… lords…?” She managed.

  He grunted. “Like the deities you pray to, except demonic.”

  Gods, how did he know all this? Had he spent all his free time reading demon lore as a kid? Given what he’d just told her about his family, that would make sense, she supposed.

  She pulled her mind back into the present. Now was not the time to wonder about that. Instead, she let out a slow breath and instinctively reached down into the soil, wincing as the energy of the demonic area jangled in her woodcraft senses.

  It wasn’t an energy she’d ever felt before. Overpowering, far more than the clearing had been. It was playing hell on her senses, even with her attempts to ground, pressing straight on top of her like her head was in some scientist’s bell jar.

  And where had the fey gone? It was clear some fight had taken place—she could feel that much. Though the atmosphere crushed against her body, she could feel the magic that had been used in the area, like the shock of a thunderstrike, or the pressure of a building storm system. And there were certainly enough demonic bodies lying around.

  But she couldn’t see anything from here. Only the corpses. And the vague sense of movement from the walls of the mountain itself, like catching the sight of ants crawling along corridors.

  Nales shifted. “We should go back. This is too big for us.”

  Oh, thank Elrya. He isn’t a moron.

  “Oh, it definitely is. I agree.” She put a foot under herself, shaking at the thought—they’d need a veritable army to take out the hold ahead, and a large one at that. No, going back was the best idea. They’d regroup. Send word to Lorka. Muster the King’s army, maybe the Raidt’s. If anyone could defeat the mass of demons and undead in that fortress, it would be them. “Once we get—”

  Leaves rustled to her left. A footstep. A silhouette shadowed the trees.

  Adrenalin smashed through her. She was on her feet, blade in hand before she’d completed the thought.

  Volaon li Naine stood between two trees to the side, hair frayed and disheveled, his pale, blood-streaked form outlined by the slim fraction of moonlight that slipped through the leaves.

  The breath rushed out of her in a whoosh of relief.

  “Oh, praise the gods,” she started, immediately relaxing. “We’d thought the worst. Are you okay?”

  He didn’t look okay. In fact, his ability to stand was about the only thing he had going for him—the rest of him was a mess. An absolute, bloody, half-mangled mess. Blood coated his pale form in dark patches and smears, more than a few nasty wounds visible, armor scored deeply in places. Much of it had crusted, but some of it was still wet and oozing. Most prominent was the jagged cut that slashed his bicep, making both skin and fabric gape, and a massive trauma point on his temple.

  Very little of him wasn’t covered in blood.

  “Elrya,” she said—this time, the goddess’ name was both a prayer and a curse. “We need to get you back to Doneil. He has a healing rune.” She swallowed, spotting more and more cuts and bruises—even a break, by the way he was listing to the side. They had to get him to Doneil soon. “Where are the others?”

  He didn’t reply, but his eyes locked on her—black as ink, gleaming in the light of the nearest fire. He stepped forward, faster than she would have expected from someone so injured—the fey always were—and a twig snapped under his heel, leaf litter giving a whispery rustle, much in the way some had for the raccoon earlier.

  “Volaon?” She backed up a step as he closed in, her gaze darting to his bicep wound again—Gods, it looked terrible. Almost like the blood had slowed. Probably not a good sign. “Where are the others? We have horses. We can get to them. If you just—”

  He lunged, quick as a snake. She jerked back with a squawk, snapping herself away.

  Cooling flesh wrapped around her wrist in a grip hard enough to lock her bones.

  A shock went through her as realization hit.

  He was not alive. Undead.

  Her squawk turned into a growl. She ripped her hand down, snapped to the side. He followed, lightning fast, blocking her automatic temple strike and snatching at her. The whisper of drawn blades came from behind her—Nales—and she felt others close in. Footsteps. Vague, pale silhouettes of the other fey rushing them.

  Panic flooded her syste
m. She switched her blade around, but Volaon blocked her other strike, capturing her fingers on the hilt in a bruising grip and forcing her back.

  As the others closed in on her back, she took them both down in a spinning tumble.

  The air whumphed from him in a stale mess. Cold skin pressed against her, his weight bearing down like a sack of bricks. She struggled, struck out. Bone cracked as she smacked his face, clicking loose like a rigid carcass. She jutted an elbow out and twisted, feeling him try to turn her.

  Then there were other hands on her. Holding her down, forcing her to bend. Pain stung through her legs as someone kicked out the backs of her knees, pushing her down. A hand on her neck pressed into her vertebrae, bowing her forward. In her peripheral vision, she saw Prince Nales to the side, forced to his knees.

  Her woodcraft snapped through her like lightning as her cheek pressed against the forest loam.

  Volaon’s grip on her knife hand tightened painfully. She resisted, refused to let it go. Hands held her down as she struggled, and she switched gears, began to pull on something—anything—to help her, scraping at her magic in wild efforts. Felt the wind lift as one of her runes activated, felt the forest respond, reach into her woodcraft as if it could do something—

  Volaon’s grip tightened painfully. A second later, he pulled back.

  Her elbow popped like a chicken bone.

  Pain smashed through her. A scream ripped from her throat, raw and loud, then a second one, louder, when he forced the broken arm to twist up her back. Tears blurred her eyes. Acid clotted in her throat.

  The ground pressed hard into her cheek and chest. She swallowed the yell into a full-throated hiss, choking to get fresh air into her lungs.

  Then, the fey stopped. Stilled.

  Waited.

  The wind shifted, touching the magic in her extended senses. The breeze brushed through her power like a cold hand, dry and trembling.

  Leaves scratched to the left, dry and crackling, and a low voice spoke into the tremor of the air.

  “What is this? More sheep to feed my flock?”