A Sword reclaimed; a heart still pained
With every step, a shadow gained.
Lady Araynia sat at the entrance to the cave in stillness and silence. The sun had moved behind the peaks at her back, leaving the little rocky valley in cool blue shadow. The higher slopes remained glowing in sunshine; and beyond them, the snow-capped tips seemed distant, lofty and unreachable, far beyond the worries of lowly mortals.
Araynia wondered dimly what it would be like to stand up there, at the very top of the world, bathed in light while the rest of the land wallowed in darkness.
What would that feel like?
Below her, amongst the boulders, small clouds of midges gathered in the hollows, protected from the breeze, but not from the robins, which darted now and then into the rocks, their red breasts bright flashes of colour against the grey.
Little, happy creatures with little, simple lives.
Araynia stared at them blankly.
After some time, she heard sounds behind her: footsteps and voices echoing in the cave.
Everine and Ben.
She didn’t look up or greet them as they emerged. Questions were asked, concerns were expressed, but Araynia didn’t trust her voice so she merely nodded or shook her head. Yes, she was alright, although of course she wasn’t, but she had to give some response; yes, Arzath had given her the Sword. No, he wasn’t coming back.
They were on their own, now.
Everine remarked that they were better off without him, anyway. For all his power, the sorcerer was no more able to stop Carmine than they were.
That put everyone in a dark mood, and there was little talking afterwards.
Their most immediate problem was how to manoeuvre Hawk’s wheelchair down the boulder slope.
It wasn’t easy. The chair became wedged in almost every crevice and hollow. Dry sticks jammed up the spokes, as though determined to halt their progress. Hawk flopped about like a dead fish, constantly threatening to topple out even after they tied him in place. Many times, they had no choice but to drag his body over the boulders separately to the chair, because hauling both at once was impossible. The boulders were large, and there was no clear path down through them.
All three of them became tired and irritable very quickly, forced to rest often. Araynia was loath to help, not because she didn’t care but because she was not very strong and felt useless. And a large part of her that she didn’t want to admit to didn’t like being close to the semi-dead man.
In truth, he repulsed her. It was a shameful thought considering she was, apparently, destined to become a healer, but she couldn’t help it. Nothing about Hawk’s condition was natural or right. A normal dying man she could probably deal with, but this…
After what had happened to Luca, she could hardly bear to look at him.
Araynia made an effort to repress her feelings and assist where she could, but mostly Ben took her Sword from her to use as leverage for getting the chair free.
The boulder slide was only three or four hundred yards downhill, but it took them three hours to manage it.
Dusk had fallen by the time they finally reached the myrtle forest. The sky had turned purple overhead, speckled with fresh white stars, the peaks rising darkly around them. They all collapsed in exhaustion at the edge of the trees.
But no one wanted to camp within sight of the cave. It loomed as a black hole on the mountainside above them.
It was far too easy to imagine what might come stalking out of it.
In wordless agreement, all three of them got wearily back to their feet and pushed on through the forest.
Around midnight, they could go no farther. Everine’s legs simply gave out under her. Determinedly, she tried to keep going, but progress was so slow that it was no longer worthwhile. None of them had the energy to extricate the chair from snags, which were plentiful in the dark.
Ben called out to Araynia, who was walking ahead with her blue gemlight guiding the way. She seemed to be lost in a kind of trance. But when she stopped, the light faded away and the young woman folded up like a dropped doll.
Sleep overwhelmed them.
Dappled sunlight greeted Ben as he awoke, along with a musty smell of mushrooms and damp leaves, and an incredible symphony of birdsong. Rubbing at his eyes, he pushed himself up.
They were lying in the middle of a rainforest. Ancient myrtles, tall grey sassafras and giant treeferns surrounded them. Moss covered almost everything in soft, emerald blankets. There appeared to be no defined path, but the undergrowth was relatively sparse. The ground was lumpy and criss-crossed with protruding roots and rocks.
He wondered how far they’d managed to travel. Looking back the way he presumed they had come, he could not see the boulder slope, but the peaks were still visible above the treetops, quite close. Judging by the terrain, he guessed dismally, probably not very far.
He could see straight away what had caught up the chair; one front wheel was entwined with a trailing length of ivy, while a back wheel was hampered by an awkward root. Getting to his feet, wincing at a wave of multiple complaints from various parts of his body – especially his back – he pulled out his silvertine dagger and crouched by the chair, hacking away at the vine.
Everine woke while Ben worked, groaning at her stiff muscles. She said nothing, however, not even a word of complaint, just got up and helped her brother with the chair.
When they were done, Ben went to wake Araynia. He shook her and said her name several times, and was starting to seriously worry when her eyes finally flickered open.
They sat around in silence, eating fruit and bread from the sacks they had filled at the storeroom, listening warily to the forest sounds. There was nothing black to be seen, although the twisted limbs of the old myrtles reached over them somewhat disconcertingly. All seemed peaceful in the forest, however, the shafts of bright sunlight broken only by the flitter of birds and swaying leaves.
Ben looked down at the apple he was eating, realising that it was rather tasteless. Whether from the preservation spells, his fatigue, or simply a rubbish apple, he wasn’t sure. He found himself unwittingly daydreaming about the time Luca had made a fabulous dessert out of apples and perfectly crispy pastry…
He wasn’t hungry at all, after that.
The expressions on the faces of his companions told him their mood was much the same.
“Something is wrong,” Araynia announced, quietly and suddenly.
“Yeah,” Ben replied, in an attempt to lighten the mood. “This apple is fifty years old.”
Everine gave the noblewoman a sarcastic look. “Something other than a red-haired maniac with tentacles chasing us? Or the fact we’re pushing a dead man in a wheelchair through a mountain range?”
“No.” Araynia swallowed, shaking her head. “N-not that.” She looked harrowed and pale.
“Araynia,” Ben said carefully, with more compassion than his sister, “what’s bothering you, apart from the obvious?”
She was fidgeting with her gemstone, avoiding eye contact with them, clearly distressed about something. She took a long time to reply.
“Arzath,” she whispered finally.
Ben and Everine exchanged a frown. “Arzath?” Ben said. “Of all things, you’re worried about him?”
She nodded.
Everine snorted loudly. “The damned sorcerer’s miles away by now! He’s the one who chose to desert us!” She glanced distrustfully at the wheelchair. “I can hardly blame him, either…”
Araynia looked up, anxiety on her face. “He gave up his only weapon!”
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“His only weapon?” Everine stared at her incredulously. “He can burn anything in his path! He was on the verge of murdering us all back in the tunnel!”
Araynia shook her head. “Not wraiths.”
They all fell silent. After a long, sombre moment, Ben shook his head. “Carmine followed us all the way here for Hawk, not for the sorcerers,” he pointed out reasonably. “There’s no reason to think she may have gone after him instead of us.”
There was another uncomfortable silence, in which a disturbing thought crept into Ben’s head:
Carmine should have caught up to us by now.
They had been so slow with the wheelchair, and had slept for half a day, judging by the position of the sun. And a wraith probably didn’t need to eat or rest…
Taking a deep breath, he let it out again and began packing up the remains of their meal into the sack. “We’re all on edge,” he said, standing up. “Let’s keep going.”
Everine remained sitting. She threw up her arms and let them drop again. “Where are we supposed to be going to?”
Ben removed his scarlet bandanna, smoothed his hair out of his face, then re-tied it around his head tightly. Then he picked up the sack and tossed it over his shoulder. He looked around for a moment, then pointed south. “That way,” he said. “And we keep going that way, for as long as we can.”
An hour later, they had left the rainforest behind and entered a drier stretch of pine trees. The ground here was smoother and softer underfoot, but the land had become more hilly, rising and falling in endless small crests and gullies. The smooth, round, lichen-speckled boulders made a reappearance, poking up from the pine needles like the exposed skulls of giant corpses.
Ben kept checking the position of the mountains and sun to ensure they were still moving south: they were. He estimated that they would eventually hit the major road that ran beside the foothills of the northern branch of the Barlakks, though how far that might be, he had no idea. He remembered it only vaguely from roughly-drawn maps. What they were going to do when they reached more civilised country was a problem they were going to have to face later, but for now, they were focussed on just making it out of the mountains.
Everine was mostly in charge of the wheelchair, though she let Ben take over now and then. Araynia was reluctant to even go near it. Neither of them were surprised by her attitude; Hawk was a complete stranger to her, and a mostly dead one at that. He unnerved all of them, but Ben and Everine had gotten used to the feeling.
Ben felt intense sympathy for the noblewoman. Luca’s death had affected all of them, but he could barely imagine what Araynia was going through. He didn’t know how to comfort her, or even if he should try. The young Lady seemed naturally shy and withdrawn, but was now in a very peculiar mood. Mostly, Ben and his sister just gave her space and didn’t ask her to do things unless necessary. Everine was a little snarky sometimes, but she hadn’t gotten along with Araynia from the beginning. This irritated Ben, because he liked the noblewoman, and he thought his sister was being a bit insensitive in the circumstances. But Everine was Everine…
Now that they were travelling in daylight, Araynia had retreated to the rear of their line. Ben looked over his shoulder often to see that she was falling further and further behind.
He had just finished helping Everine push the chair up a steep incline, when he looked back and saw that Araynia was standing still at the bottom of the slope.
He called encouragement to her, but she didn’t even look up.
Leaving Everine leaning against a tree rolling her eyes, he jogged back down the hill. “Not still thinking about Arzath, are you?” he asked as he reached her.
She looked at him, her face haunted. “I cannot go on.”
“Sure you can! I’m pretty sure it’s less steep over the next hill…”
Araynia shook her head.
Ben sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Okay. We’ll take a rest break and eat something…”
“No.”
Araynia’s Sword was wrapped up in her fur-lined cloak, tied to her back with a spare length of rope as a makeshift sheath. She reached up and untied it, letting the whole bundle slip to the ground. Ben watched in confusion as she bent down and withdrew the Sword.
“What are you doing?”
She stood up slowly, taking a deep, shaky breath. “I… cannot go any farther. I feel that… something is terribly wrong. Something is pulling me back.” Tears glimmered in her eyes as she looked down at the beautiful silver blade. “I… I was given this Sword for a reason. I feel that I must use it.”
Ben stared at her, aghast.
Everine joined them. “What’s going on?”
Araynia’s eyes roamed around the forest, as though watching mysterious things unseen to them. “I feel things,” she went on softly. “The lives of animals, of people. I sense things that I couldn’t sense before. Sometimes, I see them glowing, or hear their thoughts randomly. Something is happening… to me…”
She looked down at the Sword again. “This Sword belonged to Lord Arzath’s brother. There was a strong bond between them. I have inherited Lord Requar’s magic, and I think… his intuition as well.” She swallowed back her emotions. “I know that Arzath is in danger! I cannot explain to you how I know. But it is true.” She shook her head. “I cannot simply walk away! He has trusted me with his most valuable possession, and in doing so left himself vulnerable to wraiths! All to protect me!”
She wiped tears from her face with the back of her long blue sleeve. “I do not deserve his sacrifice or this Sword! He should not die because of me!”
She turned away from them, stepping over her cloak and walking off into the forest.
“Wait!” Ben cried. “Araynia!” He whirled helplessly on his sister. “Everine!”
“We’re not going back,” Everine stated outright.
“But–”
“She’s a grown woman!” Everine said sternly. “She can make her own decisions, just like Arzath did.”
“We can’t just let her walk off and fight Carmine on her own! This is crazy!”
Everine’s temper flared. “What do you propose we do, Ben? Run after her and tie her up, while she’s waving a magic Sword around? And suppose we go with her – what of Hawk? Shall we abandon him in the middle of the forest? Or would you prefer to wheel him all the way back there, serving him up nicely right into Carmine’s face?”
Ben shook his head, exasperated.
“Well?” She glared at him, putting her hands on her hips. “Who do you want to save? A dead man or a pretty girl?”
Ben flushed. “It’s not like that!”
“No,” Everine told him brutally. “It’s not. Because you made your decision back at the storeroom already. Now we have to live with the consequences.” She turned and began making her way back up the hill.
Ben was distraught. He paced around at the bottom of the slope, fear and grief burning through him in alternate waves. He didn’t want to lose another friend to Carmine.
Araynia’s small dark form had almost disappeared amongst the trees, but her Sword caught the shafts of light, flashing intermittently, like a signal of farewell.
Ben was seriously tempted to carry out Everine’s first suggestion: picking up that rope and chasing her down, tying her up and forcing her to go with them. Perhaps Everine had forgotten, but Ben was aware that Araynia was carrying the Sword of Healing, which, unlike Ferrian’s Sword, could not be used to harm any living thing, only wraiths. She couldn’t hurt either Ben or his sister with it, and they could overcome her easily…
But the most appalling thing was that Araynia was right; she was the only one of them with a decent silvertine weapon, and Arzath was indeed defenceless. He would likely die if Carmine caught up with him.
But Everine was right as well, and there was no way he was going to convince his sister to go back. And he couldn’t abandon her alone with Hawk. And he didn’t want Hawk to die, either…
Gods damn it! No matter how he tried to figure it out, someone was not going to survive!
With a cry of frustration, he kicked at the pine needles. Then he scooped up the cloak and rope and, with great reluctance, followed his sister up the hill, leaving the young noblewoman to face her fate alone.
The clearing was wide, and ringed by the oldest trees in the forest; five huge, venerable myrtles, wider than they were tall, standing in a circle like elderly folk deep in millennia-long conversation. Draped with ivy and sprouting mushrooms, they had not seen a Human or other intelligent creature in a long time – perhaps ever. Perhaps they had been standing there, in that secluded pocket of the Barlakk Mountains, since the Dragons ruled.
It was a rare grove of wild magic – the trees here had auras, and thoughts. They did not move or show any other signs of sentience, but Arzath’s Mind Vision revealed the truth they kept hidden.
The sorcerer stood in the middle of the clearing, turning around slowly, regarding the trees.
A pity that they were about to be destroyed.
Yes, he thought. This is the place. This is where it will end.
The trees would be witness to his final act. They would record it in their roots. Their magic and the natural passage of time would allow them to regrow, to remember. This place would remain terrible and sacred for all the years that were to come.
Arzath reached up and unclasped his black cloak. He whirled it off his shoulders to one side, and did the same with his gloves. Then he stood for a long moment, eyes closed, feeling the cool, damp air on his face, and the living scent of the forest. Birdsong echoed around him, as though in some great cathedral.
He was hearing them for the last time.
It wasn’t Ben’s words that had brought him to this; Arzath had been moving towards this fate for years now. If it hadn’t been for the girl’s rude interruption at the waterfall, he wouldn’t be here at all. He had been granted a short, annoying reprieve: that was all. But the obnoxious boy had brought a certain truth into stark clarity:
Arzath was redundant. He was old, outdated and superseded by a man that was younger, quicker, more resourceful and more powerful than he was. The Age of Tyranny was over; Arzath could not rule with force and fear as he once had. He no longer even had the stomach to kill: there was a time he would have burned that boy into a charred skeleton without a second thought.
He didn’t have a Sword; Ferrian had stolen it from him, and this left him only a little less pathetic than the rest of Humankind in the face of the ever-growing demon-wraith plague. He didn’t relish the prospect of spending the rest of his miserable life running from the hell-damned things like a rat! He had already been ejected from his castle by one of them.
If there was one thing Arzath hated above all else in the world, including Requar, it was feeling helpless.
No more.
Opening his eyes, Arzath walked to one end of the clearing. Then he held out an arm and paced in a slow circle around the circumference. Purple runes glowed on the ground beneath his hand as he passed, just as they had at Requar’s funeral.
He had left the Sword of Healing for the girl. He had known exactly what he was doing when he did it: it was not a decision he made lightly. But he had realised that there was no point in keeping it from her; she had bonded with it already and there was no reversing that. And she would have reclaimed it from him eventually, one way or another.
Requar’s magic lived on within her: she was his legacy. She was needed in the coming days of darkness; Ferrian could not be the sole surviving sorcerer. For all his worthy attributes, Arzath had seen the boy struggling with the responsibility of replacing Requar, of trying to do too much, to save too many people: of trying to make the world a better place.
He was repeating Requar’s mistakes. The world didn’t need improving; it needed to be rid of abominations. The rest would survive on its own merits.
But Araynia was too important to lose, which was why Arzath was doing everything in his power to ensure that she survived.
Closing the circle, he watched as the entire ring of symbols glowed once, brightly, then faded into the leaf litter. Satisfied, he took up his place in the centre of the clearing.
As long as the girl was travelling with her foolish friends, however, she was threatened by the wraith that hunted them. Which was why he was creating a diversion.
The thing fed on souls. A sorcerer’s soul was more than it could resist; it would seek to gorge itself on his life force and magic. He had distanced himself from the others deliberately, and left an enticing trail of spells for the wraith to follow, right to this clearing.
Kneeling in the leaves, he closed his eyes again and quietly began to prepare for the encounter. He didn’t expect to kill the wraith outright, not with magic alone.
He smiled to himself. But he sure as hell was going to give it more than it could eat.