Heartwood (Tricksters Game) (35 page)

W
HEN STRUATH OPENED his eyes and saw Yeorna looking down at him, he screamed. Only when he saw the leaves of a shrub through her body did he understand.

“Forgive me, Tree-Father.” A tear oozed down her translucent face; her golden hair had faded to a pale yellow.

“I am the one who should ask your forgiveness. For allowing this to happen to you.”

“Nay. If only I had stayed in the cave. If only I had—”

“It is done, child. Blaming ourselves won’t help the others.”

“The Holly-Lord? He is safe?”

“Aye. I think so.” Quickly, he told her what had happened. He struggled to piece together the final moments of the battle, but could only recall disjointed images and sounds. “I heard Darak’s voice at … at the end.”

“Then Morgath must be dead. Darak would have killed him.”

“If he realized it was Morgath.”

“He will. He must. I don’t think I could bear this if I thought …”

“Hush, now.” He wiped the tear from her cheek. They both started.

“I didn’t think … I mean, our bodies are so …” Yeorna held up her hands, staring at them with the same disbelief and wonder Morgath had evinced in the cave.

“Perhaps it is because our spirits still remember the feel of a mortal body.”

“If that is true …” Yeorna’s forehead creased in a thoughtful frown. “Tree-Father. I believe Morgath is here.”

The surge of excitement startled him. Perhaps his spirit still clung to emotions as well.

“You feel him?”

Yeorna frowned. “I don’t know. It is not the same as when I felt you.” Before he could voice the question, she said, “I wasn’t sure it was you. Only that the energy felt … familiar. So I followed it. I think, perhaps, that because our spirits have touched so many times, there must be a … a sort of link between us.”

“And you think you share something similar with Morgath?”

“Nay.” Yeorna’s face twisted as she turned away. Struath rose, briefly surprised by the ease with which he got to his feet. No more throbbing knees, no more aching joints. He had left those behind with his body.

“Forgive me, my dear. I only meant—”

“Nay.” Her denial was softer this time, although her face was still troubled. “It is hard to bear the thought of being bound to him. What I feel … it might be a link between our spirits, but I think what I feel is my body.”

Morgath. Alive and in Chaos.

“Can you find him?”

“I think so.”

To find him. To destroy him. To achieve in death what he had not been able to accomplish in life. The intensity of his desire made him dizzy. He fell to his knees. Yeorna reached out to help him, then pulled back, her eyes wide with horror.

His outstretched hand was filled with a strange mist that swirled in mad spirals. Even as he watched, the mist burst through his upraised fingers. Frantically, he tried to contain it, only to discover that his left hand had disappeared, too. Just like Morgath when he had emerged from the portal in the grove and the man who appeared in the bog. Morgath had seized some other creature and preserved his spirit, but the man in the bog had simply melted away.

He toppled over on his elbows. Helplessly, he watched himself dissolve. Feet and hands gone. Legs dispersing in a swirl of white. Forearms eddying around him. He flailed with his stumps, screaming, as he tried to gather up the pieces of himself. He had lost his body. Chaos would not steal his spirit, too.

He was rising, flying, just as he had flown with Brana. Would he ever see her again or was she as lost to him as his body? He exerted the full force of his will to quell the terror, searching for the shaman’s stillness. Slowly, he drifted downward to settle beside Yeorna. One glance showed that he was whole again, his form as tranquil and translucent as when he had first awakened.

“What did you do?” Yeorna asked. “How did you stop it?”

“I’m not sure. Perhaps human will is stronger than that of Chaos.”

But it would take more than will to defeat his enemy.

Morgath ran, screaming his fury.

Half a lifetime to find a portal. Half a lifetime to escape.

He batted away the hissing moths, slashed his way through lizard-headed vines with the woman’s dagger. Only when he heard himself whimpering like a child did he stop his headlong flight. He commanded himself to be calm. To ignore his trembling legs and his burning lungs and the searing pain in his side. To remember that he was Morgath. When he had been mere spirit, he had escaped the Lord of Chaos. A pockmarked hunter in ragged breeches would not defeat him now.

He would make him pay. If it cost his own life, he would make the Hunter pay. He would find the people he loved—in that miserable village, in the First Forest, in the Forever Isles. He would find them, and destroy them, and he would make the Hunter watch. He would take the girl’s body, and then her spirit, and he would make the Hunter watch. He would find the Hunter’s brother, and he would shred his spirit like dead leaves, and rend the fragments into powder, and blow the powder to the four winds. And he would make the Hunter watch.

He was the most powerful shaman in the world. He possessed a strong, young body. With it, he would find a portal. He would escape. He would wreak such havoc on the world that its inhabitants would look back upon their endless winter with longing. And he would make the Hunter watch it all and beg for mercy on his knees before he killed him.

Darak sat where he had collapsed. He had his dagger and his waterskin, the sling hanging from his belt and the bag of charms around his neck. With those, he would have to battle Morgath and the powers of Chaos.

The ground beneath him seemed solid enough, although it was disconcerting to see stars in the earth—if it was earth he was sitting on. Squinting, he realized the plain that stretched before him was not so featureless after all. Low scrub dotted the landscape and what might be trees or standing stones loomed in the distance. The vista was bathed in a strange half-light that was neither dawn nor dusk. The air felt heavy, perhaps from the discharge of energy that had accompanied the transformation, but at least it was warm. No need to depend on the Trickster for fire here.

His smile faded. The Trickster had lied. He had opened a portal. Darak went over the words of their conversation twice before he realized the truth. The Trickster had refused to open a portal—for him. Somehow, Griane must have convinced him to open one and the Trickster, damn him, had chosen the worst possible moment to do so. Now he was in Chaos, without Struath, without the spirit catcher, and without any idea how to find Tinnean or the Oak.

The legends said Chaos was ever-changing. That much he had seen for himself. Morgath claimed Chaos had changed his magic. If he was telling the truth, it explained why the shaman had only been able to deaden the feeling in his hands.

Chaos was a place of illusion, but real water had splashed him when the cliff transformed and real water still cascaded from the cloudless sky. Maybe if you believed in the illusion, it became real. Could willpower transform reality into illusion just as easily?

Struath might know the answers, but he didn’t know whether the shaman was dead or alive. If he was alive, he’d be searching for a way to reach Chaos with the spirit catcher, but if Morgath had won, Struath’s spirit was lost somewhere in this strange, shifting world.

One thing was certain: sitting here would accomplish nothing. He flexed his arm. No muscles severed, although the deep gash at the shoulder still bled freely. He stripped off his mantle and hacked off a strip of wool. He was winding it around his arm when he noticed the flower.

He was certain it hadn’t been there when he had collapsed. Had it sprung up from the drops of his blood spattered on the ground? The tiny scarlet petals looked so soft. He wanted to touch them. The flower needed to be touched. It was lonely. He was her only friend. His blood had given her life. He must protect her. Nurture her. Feed her.

He reached out his hand. The flower lunged toward him. He jerked away with a curse as the tiny petals snapped shut on empty air.

Fool. The Trickster had warned him he would only survive if he gave up his sense of reality. In his first moments here, a flower had beguiled him.

Clumsily, he finished bandaging his arm lest he leave a trail of hungry flowers to mark his path. He looked up, squinting into the distance. Had the scrubby bushes grown larger or was it his imagination? Surely, they hadn’t been so close. And just as surely, there had been no path leading toward them. Now, clustered stars headed straight toward the trees—or stones—in the distance. The path began—or ended—at his feet.

Real or illusion? The path to Tinnean or the path away?

Cautiously, he tapped the star-path with his shoe. Nothing. He placed one foot upon the path. Still nothing.

In the forest, he followed the same trails as the animals. The trails led to water and to feeding grounds. They avoided natural hazards. A hunter could follow the trail or wait beside it for game. If he was skillful—and lucky—he would bring home meat. If he was careless—or unlucky—he could fall prey to another predator.

He stepped onto the star-path. “Forest-Lord, if you can hear the prayers of a man in Chaos, guide my footsteps to Tinnean.”

Scanning the scrub for danger, he set off.

Cuillon came to rest in a meadow. Yellow flowers dotted the field. The air was warm, the stillness broken only by the buzz of insects. Trees ringed the field—hazel, ash, elder, oak. Surely, Chaos could not be so bad if there were trees.

The copse trembled as if shaken by a great wind. One by one, the trees melted into columns of fog that vanished as the flowers shot skyward, green stems as thick as the trunks of birches, yellow petals bobbing above him like so many suns.

He was still trying to decide if they were real when he felt the faint thrum. He closed his eyes, desperate to pinpoint the direction of the energy, afraid that it, too, might be an illusion. Despite the prickling in his hands, he opened himself to the energy.

It felt like their grove and their Tree, their roots sinking deep into the earth and their branches reaching toward the sun. It felt more than real; it felt right. For the first time since their quest had begun, he felt whole. It was a great wonder to him that he could feel joy in a place that the others had described with such fear.

The Oak was here.

The pain surged, driving him to his knees. Thorns burst through his palms, his fingers, his nails. Green leaves sprouted. Twigs ripped open his flesh. Gasping, he abandoned his connection to the Oak so he could reassert his control over the boy’s body. Long moments passed before he could move. Hands slippery with blood and sweat, he fumbled for Tinnean’s dagger and awkwardly sheared the green leaves from his fingertips.

“I am Cuillon,” he said and felt sensation return.

He cut two long strips from the doeskin and bandaged his hands.

“Please, Maker. Let me remain a man for just a little while longer.”