Authors: Tim Akers
“Do you know what lies beneath these hills, Frair Lucas? Has cruel reason given you that insight?” Allaister glanced down at the dead girl. “Even in death you defile them. Why are you surprised when they rise up against you?”
“I will apologize to her spirit the next time I’m in the quiet house,” Lucas said. “As for what’s beneath this earth, well, I would rather
not
know. I think it’s better that way.”
“You’ll learn soon enough,” Allaister said. “I can feel the girl—the huntress. She is reaching out to her roots, finding the heart of what was buried so long ago. It’s like that last taste of summer, inquisitor.” He breathed in deeply, closing his eyes in pleasure. “Like the earth shuffling into the grave.”
“I can’t wait,” Lucas muttered. He hid the pendant behind his back, turning it over and over in his palm. “Though I think we have some business to conclude first.”
The Allaister-gheist chuckled and stalked forward, spreading his hands, palms up. The angry tide of the bound god crashed around him.
“Why do you fight me, frair? The high inquisitor formed me, the god of winter guided me, and ancient truths opened my eyes. I am the scion of your faith. I am the revelation, and the light.”
“Only the mad can believe that—and I have a history of killing those who are mad.”
“Alas, I’m afraid that I am the end of your history,” Allaister said. He spread his arms, wrapped in twisting cords of shadow-tainted water. “Look at my glory, man of the reasonable god, and know fear…”
“That isn’t my way,” Lucas spat. He brought the pendant around, quickly coiling its cord around his staff, clasping it and the staff in both hands before him. “I can do nothing for you, frair, but perhaps I can save your captive god.”
“You will need to save yourself first,” Allaister bellowed. He rushed forward, a tide of madness and white water cloaking his form.
Lucas stepped aside, focusing a very tight dissolution around his staff. The body of the gheist evaporated in the face of the binding, allowing the staff to pass untouched through the tidal cloak and strike Allaister directly. Lucas slashed the iron triangle across Allaister’s forehead like a short dagger. It left a minor scratch, but blood welled up, drawn toward the pendant like a crimson lace snagged on its rough iron.
Lucas stepped back, pulling the blood with him.
“This is your mistake, Allaister: you depend on gods you barely understand.”
“You know nothing of my theos, priest,” Allaister spat. “You did well in reducing me to this body, but there are no tricks in the court of winter that can end me.”
“That is why I employ other methods,” Lucas answered. He held the pendant up, letting it dangle at the end of its cord. The blood glittered darkly on its iron. “The wardens of this place understood what you were becoming. That’s why they died to keep you away.”
“For all the good it did them,” Allaister growled. He charged again and Lucas swung his staff, battering his opponent back but not penetrating the shell of solidified liquid. Allaister swung a fist, striking rock with a blow that echoed off the trees. They grappled, neither gaining an advantage, and when they fell apart, Lucas was diminished, his frail arms shaking, though he held the pendant high.
The gheist laughed.
“You have your precious jewelry, priest. Would you like me to bury you with it? Or should I give it to that bitch huntress?”
“You shouldn’t speak like that of your betters,” Lucas gasped. He was winded, the battle wearing through his thin reserves. Most of his energy had been spent by the river’s edge, tearing the gheist from Allaister’s body scrap by nightmare scrap, until only the core remained. It would swell again, fed by the everealm, drawing the essence of the hallow into Allaister’s body. If that happened, Lucas wasn’t sure Elsa and Gwen could stop it.
“She can speak for herself, when I find her,” Allaister said. He circled the trembling priest, stalking among the graves of the wardens. “Though if she continues along her current path, that won’t be necessary. She’ll find me.”
“Gods help you if she does,” Lucas said.
“Your gods won’t have anything to do with it,” Allaister answered, a cruel smile on his face. “Enough talking. Come, bring me your trick so we can end this thing.”
“I don’t have a trick, demon,” Lucas said. “I just wanted your blood. Allaister’s blood, actually.”
“Are you going to curse me, inquisitor?” the gheist said. “Scry my name?”
“Something like that,” Lucas said. He held the pendant in front of him. A crown of spinning runes formed around his head, etched in the air with naetheric power, glowing as it settled on his temples. His voice slowed down. “Something… quite like that…”
A look of understanding swept across Allaister’s face, coupled with newfound fear.
“Wait!” he screamed, jumping forward.
* * *
Time slowed. Lucas’s mind separated from his body, and the forest fell away. With the pagan pendant—an icon of summoning and perception used by the witching wives to sift the spirits from the material world—combined with his own talents, Lucas was able to observe and manipulate Allaister and his gheist.
Allaister and his bound god hung in mid-step, cloaked in circling runes of naetheric power, glowing as they rotated slowly in the air at the holy points of Cinder’s art—the heart, the head, the hands. Other, rougher runes, drawn black and flickering against the sky, hung above his shoulders like scrimshaw wings.
The gheist’s body was formed of greenish webs, bright lines of everam that were sharp at the bounds of the crashing tide, mingled with skeins of shadow at their core, tangled with the runes that circled Allaister’s spirit.
Indeed it was a guardian spirit, bound eternally to this hallow, feeding on its proximity to the everealm to strengthen the wards that kept the shrine safe. Lucas could see its relation to autumn, the aspect of a river slowly surrendering to ice, the final harvest before winter claimed its place. The spirit of the god was shredded, damaged both by Allaister’s rough binding and Lucas’s efforts to tear them apart. It was shot through with shadowy tendrils, the priest’s will bending the god’s spirit.
Whatever magic Allaister was using to bind the god, it was foreign to Lucas. It read like an ancient language, certain words and structures familiar, but the whole was incomprehensible. Elements of the casting reminded Lucas of Elsa’s blessings, binding the god’s power to the blood of the vow knight, and drawing divinity through her flesh. Yet it also had the taste and tremor of the pagan arts—some kind of blending Lucas had never before seen.
He did not need to understand it in order to destroy it. He raised his hands and drew on everything that remained—his heart and his mind, every scrap of blessing that Cinder had given him. Pushed all of that, his life itself, into the heart of the god and the mind of the priest.
The web of naether and everam frayed.
Lucas faded.
* * *
The Allaister-gheist slammed into him, sending Lucas reeling and his mind snapping back into his flesh. The shock of transition sent spasms through his bones. He lay on the ground, sprawled across the rough stones of the warden’s cairn, her cold corpse splayed next to him like a forgotten lover.
“A valiant attempt, priest,” Allaister hissed, “but you have failed, and now you must die.”
“A reasonable price,” Lucas murmured, barely able to raise his head, “but not one I have yet paid. Would you like me to shrive you, when you are gone?”
“I am not going to the quiet house today,” Allaister said, looming over his enemy.
“No,” Lucas agreed. “I don’t think they will have you.”
Allaister’s death first appeared at his heart. The color left his naked body, and a gush of water splashed out of his chest, beginning as a trickle that leaked from his skin, becoming a torrent that grew and grew as the priest lost control of the river spirit.
Lucas dragged himself back and up. The bowl-shaped clearing filled with water. At the center, Allaister struggled to regain control, unable to stand when the swirling maelstrom took his legs away. He summoned naetheric runes, stitched the air with dark invocations, but the god would not bend to his will.
The furious water churned the ground and undid the cairns of the dead wardens, releasing their limp bodies to float to the surface. Bleeding from nose and mouth, Allaister spat arcane wards and blasphemy into the air, then cried out as the currents smashed him against the rocky hillside, breaking his arm.
“It will do you no good, brother,” Lucas yelled. “That was your final mistake. The gods do not bend to us.”
“No, I do not—” Allaister fought to the surface one last time, fear and fury in his eyes, his skin already swelling. Each time he opened his mouth to speak, water crashed over him as if to cut him off. “It cannot end! I will—”
Then there was silence as the river washed over him, and he disappeared. The surface of the newly formed lake fell into a heavy chop. A dozen heartbeats later it calmed, choked with branches and bodies and other debris, contained by the will of the guardian spirit.
Lucas stood at the edge and raised his hands.
“I have no argument with you, goddess. Return to your banks and your purpose. The house of Cinder will trouble you no more today.”
The swirling pool of divine water waited for a dozen heartbeats, then sluggishly flowed into the forest, away from Lucas. The bodies of the wardens went with it, bumping lazily into trees, snagging in the underbrush before being carried by their god back into the hallow.
Of Allaister there was no sign.
The sky cleared, the storm melting away until only the sun and moon remained, and the stars pricked the veil of heaven to surround Cinder’s silver face. Lucas sighed, leaning forward on his staff. He was withered, his age fully claiming him. He turned and started the painful walk toward the shrine at the hallow’s heart.
T
HE HILL ABOVE
the god was as smooth and green as a river stone, slick with moss and the cold current of the stream. The sky was clearing. The first light of an eternal dawn spread across the grass. The air was crisp as an apple and just as sweet.
In an instant it began to change.
The trees that surrounded the hill shifted in the breeze as their leaves slithered together, a velvet-smooth sound that rasped drily through the air. The colors of autumn appeared, radiating outward from the hill and through the forest. Greens became gold, red, yellow, and white with the last jubilation of summer’s warmth and the approach of wintry death.
A whirling breeze swirled through the grasses, twisting each blade into a pinwheel for a few brief seconds before rushing on to the next one, the next tree, and on into the sky. Then the breeze turned into a whipping column of air. It mounted the hill, bringing with it a hissing torrent of millions of leaves, painted like gems and freed from their branches.
Autumn roared into the world.
The hill itself split like an egg, rock breaking with deafening cracks, the grassy crown peeling back to reveal a heart of muddy roots and broken stone, grinding open like a tomb. From that tomb rose the god of the harvest, second holiest of the pagan rites, and the one true guardian of the everealm.
It shimmered in a cloud of golden dust, a vaguely human shape that towered over the hill, growing larger as it moved. Its face was featureless but for a pair of eyes that burned like twin suns. A wicker mask bristled around its face, rising from its head, composed of dry twigs wrought in summer’s light. The cloak of swirling leaves swarmed like butterflies around its shoulders. Even the sky seemed to dip toward it. The clouds rolled aside.
In the midst of the autumn god, there was a child—a girl dressed in leaves and grasses, in light and retribution. When autumn had erupted at the tip of her knife, Gwen lost her name, her life, everything that made her the daughter of Colm Adair, child of the Fen Gate, child of flesh and scion of blood. All she had now were her primal senses. The only things that she remembered were her title and her prey.
Huntress… and Sacombre.
Slowly, inexorably, she moved into the forest, already towering over the trees as they transformed. The butterfly cloud of autumn leaves followed. The first taste of winter’s chill wafted behind her.
* * *
Elsa stumbled from the wounded earth, her hair and clothes choked with leaves, sticks, roots, stones, and dirt. Her skin was crisscrossed by dozens of cuts. The wind that filled the tomb at the moment of the god’s release had blinded her.
Her last sight of Gwen was of the huntress spreadeagled on a pillar of leaves and amber light. When she had recovered, Gwen was gone and the sky was spilling into the chamber. The priests had been turned into ragdolls of flesh and tattered cloth. Elsa hadn’t given them a second look.
Now the sky was trailing banners of golden light flecked with amber. Both god and girl roared over the hallow with the fury of an autumn storm on their heels.
Elsa sighed.
“She came to a decision, then,” Frair Lucas said. Elsa turned to find the man, much reduced, leaning against his staff like the totem of old age.
“She did, or the god made it for her,” Elsa answered.
“And what of us?” Lucas said. “What is to become of us?”
The autumn god answered. Violent winds whipped at them, filled with leaves, dry and brittle. Elsa rushed to Lucas’s side, shielding the frail figure with her bulk. He clung to her as the fury grew and grew, the wind louder, the leaves sharper, until Elsa was sure they would die on that hill, far from the blessings of Heartsbridge.
Without warning, the storm abated. The god was gone, and Elsa and Lucas as well. The hill lay barren and empty. The sky was clear, the sun bright.
* * *
Maeve’s wretched shadow lurked in the darkness. The spirit of death had taken everything from her, her blood, her soul, even the trace remnants of her memory. She was nothing but a stubborn echo of pain and loss, drifting between realms.
The room that held her remains was dark and broken. The sacred lines that defined it were scattered. Abstractly she wondered what it had once been, before the spirit of death came. Before her undoing. She wondered how long she would be here before someone came and shrived her soul.