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Heartwood – Robbie MacNiven

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A Black Library Publication

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Heartwood

Robbie MacNiven

The Realm of Life had become a place of death.

Blood and bark, iron and earth, the glade shook with the fury of battle. At its centre a warband of Rotbringers had turned at bay, their tight cohorts of rusting plate armour and sagging, rotten flesh split apart by nature’s wrath.

Nellas the Harvester, branchwych of House Il’leath, swung her greenwood scythe in a hissing upward arc, parrying the blightking’s stroke. The hulking Rotbringer leant into the blow, trying to use his bulk to force Nellas’ guard down. The sylvaneth was dwarfed by the warrior, but she stood her ground, willowy limbs invested with the strength of the Wyldwood’s deepest roots. Bark creaked and the scythe shuddered in her grip as she held the blightking in place, while from the trees all around the sylvaneth poured. The whole forest keened with the battle-song of the Wargrove; the encroachment of the Great Corruptor’s minions into Brocélann would not be tolerated.

The bittergrub that coiled among Nellas’ branches saw its opening. It darted forward and locked its mandibles around the upper thigh of the Rotbringer, slicing through corroded plate and neatly snipping a hamstring. The blightking grunted and went down on one knee. The bittergrub held on.

Nellas leant back to give herself room, and plied her scythe in a great arc. There was a crunch, and the warrior’s cyclopean helmet thumped to the ground, a jet of pus-like ichor pattering across the glade’s trampled grass.

Nellas was pushing past the decapitated corpse before it had even slumped, her bittergrub wrapping around her once more. The Rotbringer champion was ahead, bellowing vile curses as he swung a great, rusting mace at Thaark. The treelord ancient’s own household revenants were struggling to reach him, locked in a grinding melee with the Chaos lord’s bodyguard. Nellas shrieked with fury as she saw the Rotbringer’s blow thump home into Thaark’s thigh, splintering wood and splattering thick amber bloodsap. The head of House Il’leath tore into the champion’s flesh in response, his great talons splitting armour and spilling rancid guts, but to no avail. The Rotbringer’s wounds regenerated as soon as they were made, the obese armoured body bound together by more than mere mortal willpower.

The Rotbringer heard Nellas’ cry and turned in time to swat aside her first blow, moving with a speed that belied his diseased bulk. Nellas darted back to avoid the warrior’s backswing, the forest air thrumming with the force of the mace’s passing. Thaark lunged at the champion’s exposed back, dragging fresh gashes down his spine, but he simply shrugged off the wound and stepped in closer to Nellas. She attempted a shortened slash with her scythe, but this time it merely clanged off corroded battleplate. For all her strength, the branchwych didn’t possess Thaark’s oaken might.

And now she had overextended. The Rotbringer was too close to strike at her properly, but the thrust of his mace was still deadly. The blow smashed into Nellas’ side, and pain fired through the branchwych. She went down, roots questing for purchase in the glade’s bloody earth. Her bittergrub lashed out at the plague champion, maw snapping at the wounds already dealt by Thaark, but the Rotbringer simply snatched its writhing, segmented body in one iron gauntlet. With a bile-choked laugh he crushed the spite, popping it with a hideous crunch.

Nellas tried to rise, shuddering at the departing soul-shriek of the grub. Her bark was splintered, bloodsap running down her side. The Rotbringer turned to Thaark, another stroke of his mace splitting a great gash down the treelord ancient’s trunk. Nellas could feel her lord’s life force draining as he swayed back from the blow.

‘Your Wyldwood is mine, tree spirit,’ the Rotbringer said, the voice rasping as though from two separate, phlegm-choked throats. ‘Skathis Rot claims this kingdom for the Grandfather.’

Thaark was able to ward away another huge blow with his upper branches, but he teetered as the Rotbringer kept swinging, snapping limbs and scattering leaves. Around him the tree-revenants of Thaark’s guard were battling furiously to reach him, but the phalanx of blightkings protecting their own champion were still unmovable. Only Nellas had broken through.

The branchwych rose silently. The whole glade shuddered as Thaark went down on his knees, a creaking groan seeming to run through the surrounding forest spirits as they felt his agony. Nellas hissed at their song of pain and loss.

‘Surrender your pathetic kingdom to Grandfather’s mercy,’ Skathis Rot spat, standing over Thaark’s splintered form. ‘Share in his magnificent blessings, and embrace the majesty of abundant decay.’ The Chaos champion smashed another blow against Thaark’s torso, breaking the iron-hard bark and exposing the soft heartwood. Chuckling grotesquely, the Rotbringer leant forward, one gauntlet probing at the sap-soaked wound.

Whatever it was doing, the distraction was enough. Nellas swung at the plague champion’s exposed back. There was a crunch as the greenwood scythe parted Skathis Rot’s skull. Grey brain matter, thick with maggots, splattered the branchwych. She shrieked with furious triumph.

The champion’s corpse fell heavily, the ground sizzling where vile ichor pulsed from its split skull. Nellas went on her knees before Thaark, running slender fingers over the great rent splitting her master’s trunk.

‘It is no use,’ the head of the clan said slowly, voice creaking like a great oak bending in a tempest. ‘He cut to my heartwood.’

‘You must rest, lord,’ Nellas responded, willing the broken bark to reknit beneath her fingers. It could not be too grievous a wound. House Il’leath could not lose Thaark.

‘Take my lifeseed, branchwych,’ the treelord said, gently brushing aside Nellas’ touch. ‘Plant it in the Evergreen with the others who have fallen here. Give Brocélann new life, and we will resist these invaders for an eternity. Ghyran endures.’

Around them the tree-revenants had finally broken through the remaining blightkings, butchering them with blade and talon. Nellas was oblivious to it all, looking up into the eye knots of her lord. The green battle-fury which had burned there was dimming.

The song of the Wyldwood shifted fractionally, a new melody struck by the dying treelord. The sound pricked at Nellas’ memory.

‘The song of Everdusk’s Waxing,’ she said.

‘It always was my favourite,’ Thaark murmured, swaying slightly. Nellas could only nod. Around them the last sounds of slaughter faded, and the survivors of House Il’leath gathered with bowed branches to hear the final spirit-song of their lord and master.

After death, the harvest.

The glade had once been a tranquil place, an enclave of lush green grass dappled by the shade of overhanging ash and yew boughs. Now it was a circle of hell, the grass trampled into churned mud, the spiked, armoured forms of butchered Rotbringers intermingling with the smashed kindlewood corpses of felled sylvaneth, dark blood and amber sap mixing in the furrowed muck.

Nellas passed over it in silence, using her scythe as a crutch. The wound in her side still throbbed. It would heal in time, when she had an opportunity to rest in the Evergreen and channel the forest’s healing song. Until then she pressed on. She had a duty to perform.

One by one, she harvested the lifeseeds of her fallen kin. As a branchwych it was her most vital task, a part of the ever-turning cycles of the Wyldwood. From the day she had sprouted from her soulpod many seasons ago, Nellas had served House Il’leath as one of its harvesters, plying her scythe and carrying each and every lifeseed fallen, in peace or in war, back to Brocélann’s heartglade – the Evergreen. Amidst a reaping of death she was a sower of life, of tender branches and new shoots.

As she went, Nellas hummed a new song. She sensed other little voices joining in, one by one, answering her lilting call. She spoke to them as allies and as friends, not with orders, as she would have her fellow sylvaneth clansfolk. And one by one they answered her. They came buzzing, fluttering or leaping from the surrounding Wyldwood, dozens of tiny forest spirits that gathered around her, their bodies glittering with fey light. They had come to show their respect to the ones who guarded their homes. They had come to bear away the fallen.

Every time Nellas plucked a lifeseed from the dead wood before her, one of the spites flitting around her would retrieve it, ready to carry it with the branchwych to its resting place in the Evergreen. The creatures did so in silence, their playful jostling and bickering suppressed for the moment by the gravity of their task.

Near the far edge of the clearing Nellas paused, her flock of spites going still around her. She had been one of three. Her sisters, Llanae and Sylanna, had completed Il’leath’s triumvirate of branchwyches. Between them the trio had reaped the echoharvest of the lamentiri, the sylvaneth spirit-songs, and ensured the continuing existence of the Wyldwood of Brocélann since Thaark had been a sapling. But no more. Nellas found Llanae and Sylanna side by side, bark broken and lifeless, their bittergrubs crushed alongside them. She had sensed them fall during the fighting, had heard their battle-song cut short, but in the fury and desperation of the glade’s killing she hadn’t had time to mourn. Now, as a pair of little spites reverently received their lifeseeds, Nellas felt the ache of their felling keener than the wound still burning in her side.

It had been a grim day for Brocélann. By the time Nellas had passed over the whole glade, the sun was sinking below the treetops and the air was thick with attendant spites. The urge to dig her roots in and rest was almost overwhelming, but she resisted. She was now the only one capable of seeing so many lifeseeds replanted. As the Forest Folk set about piling the Rotbringer corpses for burning, she made her way to the Evergreen.

It was a long walk, through hidden vales and along the high paths of Brocélann’s wooded uplands. Few outside the noble houses travelled such routes, fewer still at so late an hour. As she went, her way lit by the light of her buzzing companions, Nellas felt the ancient forest sigh and creak in sympathy around her. The whole of Brocélann had suffered, the loss of so many venerable sylvaneth sending an undertone of pain through the Wyldwood’s spirit-song. Nellas could still feel the shared agony in every rustle and moan of the forest around her.

By the time she arrived at the outskirts of the Evergreen, darkness had fallen. The woodland was restless, still distressed by the violation it had suffered. Things darted past Nellas, their shapes insubstantial in the dark. She felt the beat of wings as a woodland owl soared overhead, hunting. The killing, Nellas reflected, was never done. Around her she felt the ever-present song of the Wyldwood waver, as though the chorus had become suddenly doubtful. A colder, more cutting note entered the recital.

‘Stop.’ The command seemed to breathe from the trees themselves. Nellas halted, grip tightening around her scythe’s haft. There were few creatures capable of taking a sylvaneth by surprise in her own woods. None of them meant her well.

Shapes melted from the shadows beneath the surrounding boughs, taking physical form seemingly only with great reluctance. They were sylvaneth, but they possessed none of the graceful bearing of the Noble Spirits Nellas was used to communing with. Their outlines were jagged and sharp, their trunks stooped, features twisted with fang-filled disdain. They blocked the path ahead, pressing in on the branchwych from all sides. The song of the woodland grew colder still around them.

Spite-revenants, she thought. Outcasts. Nature’s most merciless aspect given form and thought.

‘You go no further,’ one of the malevolent spirits said. He was big, bristling with jagged fir needles, his eyes glowing a bitter, icy blue in the creaking darkness. ‘You are not welcome here.’

Nellas faced the Outcast, straightening despite the pain that flared from her wound.

‘The shadows are deep, so I will forgive you your mistake. I am Nellas the Harvester, of House Il’leath of the Heartwood Glade. I am bearing the lifeseeds of many of my house. Too many. In the name of the Everqueen, stand aside.’

‘We know who you are, branchwych,’ the spite-revenant said, showing no sign of moving. ‘And I am Du’gath, of the Loneroot. Your presence defiles the sanctity of this enclave. These woodlands do not want you here. Their roots squirm at your passing.’

‘Are you delirious with barkrot?’ Nellas snapped. ‘These little spites with me carry the very future of this Wyldwood. You have no right to impede us.’

‘You carry corruption. We can feel the taint that infects you. We cannot allow you to spread it to the Evergreen. Whether you are aware of it or not, you could bring about the destruction of the heartglade and the death of the whole forest.’

Nellas shook her head angrily, leaves rustling. ‘You refer to my wound? It was earned today in battle with those who would defile these sacred glades. I did not see you or your kindred there when Lord Thaark was felled.’

‘That does not mean we weren’t present,’ Du’gath countered, taking a step closer to Nellas. He stretched out one jagged talon, moving to touch her splintered side. The branchwych darted back instinctively, hissing as the sudden movement sent a pulse of pain through her body. She felt her anger flare.

‘It won’t heal,’ Du’gath said. ‘It is infected with the rot of the Great Corruptor. If you enter the Evergreen you may pass the taint on to the saplings there.’

‘If I don’t enter, the lamentiri will wither and be lost,’ Nellas countered. ‘Make way for me, Outcast. Unless you wish to see this Wyldwood brought to ruin.’

‘You know not what you carry,’ the spite-revenant said. ‘But I cannot bar a branchwych from her own glade. Tread with care, Nellas the Harvester. We will be watching you.’

The spite-revenants receded back into the darkness, their bitterness lingering on the night air. Nellas continued up the path, until the final branches parted before her.

The Evergreen, Brocélann’s heart, lay ahead. A clearing at the peak of the Wyldwood’s uplands, at its centre stood the great Kingstree, the oldest oak in the forest. It was here that the lords of Brocélann’s noble families gathered in council and mustered the Wargrove in times of conflict. It was also the focal point of the forest’s combined memory-echoes, the well that collected the reverberations of House Il’leath’s many life songs. Some, like the melodies of the Kingstree itself, were as old as the Jade Kingdoms’ deepest roots, while those soulpod groves newly planted in the shade of the great oak had only just begun to add their own cadence to the forest’s choir. Through them, Ghyran endured.

At night the clearing space was lit by the flickering of a thousand fireflies, and the colourful flashes that marked the passage of lesser spites weaving darts of light among the shadows of soulpod saplings and thick wildflowers. Nellas began to murmur her greetings to the many forest spirits as she stepped into the clearing, brushing gently past fresh shoots and leaves. As she did so more spites fluttered to her, perching in her branches, their tiny songs full of concern.

‘Do not worry yourselves, little lights,’ the branchwych murmured gently to them. ‘I will heal. Many others this day will not.’

As the spites that came to greet Nellas wove among those already carrying the lifeseeds, their songs melded into a mournful chorus. It was a tale of passing and of withering, of falling leaves and dry, dead wood. Nellas let it play out around her as she began the replanting.

Each of the lifeseeds had its place, a soulpod in the Evergreen. Those who had been Forest Folk, the dryads and the branchwraiths, were planted among those that formed a great grove arcing around the clearing’s edge, nearest to the trees which grew thick all around. The tree-revenants and the other members of the noble houses were planted among the pods closer to the clearing’s heart, ranked by their dedication to each of the Wyldwood’s ever-changing seasons. Then, nearest of all to Brocélann’s heartwood, in the shade of the mighty Kingstree itself, the treelords were laid to their final rest, the lamentiri of all planted in the fertile soil around them, their echo-memories allowed to rejoin the great chorus of the Wyldwood.

Not even the Everqueen knew what form, great or small, any of the lifeseeds would take when they sprouted once more from their soulpods. But regardless, all would serve the natural cycles. Nellas planted Thaark last of all, among the very roots of the Kingstree. The flourishing soulpods round about the old oak would take both strength and wisdom from its presence, and from the same soil new life would one day join the ranks of the sylvaneth.

As she nestled Thaark’s seed in the knotted core of the shining soulpod, Nellas swayed. Her exhaustion was coming close to overwhelming her. The harsh words of the spite-revenant returned unbidden, disrupting the mourning of the spites and the gentle songs she sang to the fresh seedlings. Corruption. Taint. She was infected. Her wound still throbbed, and every step brought with it a deep, aching pain. The growth song of the Evergreen called to her, promising the chance to rest and heal, but she pushed it gently from her mind. She had one more duty still to perform. Sensing her distress, the spites around her fluttered and darted to and fro.

Thaark’s seed safely buried, she took one of the lesser tracks out of the clearing, leaving the Evergreen’s hum of renewal behind her. The darting lights of the spites lit her way, guiding her faithfully down a steep, twisting path tangled with briars and thorns. As she went, the number of spites multiplied, until the whole Wyldwood seemed to be illuminated with buzzing, kaleidoscopic colour, the flying forest spirits dancing and spinning around, over and under one another with glittering, preternatural grace.

She paused at the edge of the path, beneath the boughs of a soaring beech tree. Its branches were laden with small sacks, around which the creatures dashed and darted. They were cocoons, each one bearing within it the germinations of a new forest spirit. Nellas reached out and delicately brushed one of the larger sacks, its skin black and mottled with orange blotches. It was ripe, close to hatching. As she came into contact with it, she prayed to the spirits of Ghyran that she would have a new bittergrub to accompany her. Her song throbbed through the cocoon, binding the small creature’s first memories to her own, imprinting on it the work of the Harvester. The loss of Nellas’ former grub, and the lack of the soothing, simple counterpoint of its little spirit-song, tugged at the branchwych’s subconscious. Just one more pain for the day’s tally, both mental and physical.

She no longer had the strength to return to the Evergreen. Instead, she walked a little way into the forest and planted her roots, letting her mind join the wider thoughts of the Wyldwood. As her consciousness fragmented, her last memory was of Thaark, and his final moments.

In the surrounding darkness, the Outcasts watched her, silent, waiting.

Realisation struck her. It was time. She pulled her scattered thoughts together, easing the forest’s drowsy night-time murmur to the edge of her thoughts. It was right that she witness this. The first song it should hear ought to be her own.

She returned to the beech, scythe in hand. The spites had gathered, adorning the boughs of the tree with shining, bickering brilliance. They crooned and fluttered as she appeared, excited at what was about to take place.

The black-and-orange cocoon stirred beneath its branch. She reached out a hand and touched it, twigs splayed. Through the fragile membrane, she could feel warmth and the squirming pulse of fresh life. Yes, she thought. It was time.

She withdrew her hand as a split appeared in the sack, oozing a thick, clear substance. The watching spites chittered all the louder, pushing and shoving one another as they tried to get a better view. The hatching of a new bittergrub was an uncommon occurrence. She prayed to the Everqueen that her new companion recognised her.

There was a pop, and the cocoon burst. A flood of green-grey slime poured from the ruptured sack, splattering the beech’s roots. With it came a thin, segmented form, gripping onto the branch it had hatched from with vicious pincers. A vile stink filled the cool forest air.

She knew immediately this was no bittergrub. It only bore a single segmented black eye, and hissing, acidic toxins dripped from its wicked mandibles. Its body was worm-like and its flesh translucent, exposing inner organs that were riddled with pulsing, yellow veins and swollen by globules of raw filth.

As the plague wyrm uncoiled, the attending spites shrieked with terror, scattering in a great, roiling cloud. She found herself rooted to the spot, frozen in a moment of horror as she understood that the rot had reached the very heart of the forest. The Outcasts had been right. The monstrosity that had hatched from the Wyldwood cocoon hissed at her and lunged, its slime-coated pincers snapping–

Nellas!

Her thoughts returned like a springsfed flood. She gasped and twitched, the first sensation that of the pain in her side, her second the realisation that at some time during the night she’d fallen, and now lay among the tangled thorns and bracken near the beech tree.

The bittergrub. A nightmare or a vision – she couldn’t tell, but the memory of the vile creature that had hatched so close to the forest’s heartglade made her branches shudder. She tried to rise. The pain of her wound was worse than it had been the night before. Not only had the splintered bark refused to heal, but now dark veins criss-crossed the injury, spreading like an ugly latticework along the bottom half of her trunk.

The accusations of the spite-revenant came back to her. She was infected. She was spreading the Rotbringer’s plague to Brocélann. The nightmare made her shudder again. Then she remembered what had woken her.

The voice of Thoaken of the Blackroot, snapping and splintering with a rare urgency.

She dragged herself up by her scythe, body trembling. Light was filtering through the forest canopy. It was well after dawn, she realised. The Wyldwood was quiet and still, as though the forest spirits around her were straining to overhear something momentous.

My lord, Nellas thought, letting the shoots of her mind quest out through the woodland and join the wider spirit-song. There, at its heart, she found him, along with the other treelords. They were gathered at the Kingstree. That could only mean an impromptu council had been called.

Where are you, Nellas? The treelord ancient’s creaking tone filled her thoughts. We have summoned the noble house to a moot. Grave news has reached us from beyond the treeline.

I’m on my way, lord, Nellas responded. She took a step, and found she was able to stay upright. Leaning heavily on her scythe, she began to make her way back towards the Evergreen. On the way she glanced at the beech tree, still surrounded by darting spites. The bittergrub cocoon hung among the others, whole and unblemished. Had it merely been a nightmare, a discordant tremor in the forest’s evening song, or a vision of something yet to transpire? She pressed on.

In the Evergreen, the noble household of Il’leath had assembled. A host of tree-revenants ringed the edge of the clearing, their attention fixed on the Kingstree at its centre. Beside its great trunk, the lords and ladies of the woodland clan stood in a close circle, swaying gently with the rhythms of their discussion. There were the treelords Bitterbough and Thenuil, the two loremasters, Ancients Gillehad and Whitebark, and Thoaken himself. The absence of Boughmaster Thaark leading the debate sent a stab of sorrow through Nellas’ heartwood.

The murmured contemplation of the watching tree-revenants stilled as she arrived. They parted wordlessly for her. She could feel their eyes on her injury. The sudden hush caused the treelord conclave to cease their own discussion and turn to watch her slow approach. She felt her anger spike under the scrutiny.

‘You need not bow, Nellas,’ Thoaken said as she drew closer. ‘I did not know you were wounded.’

‘It will heal with time, my lord,’ Nellas said, letting her roots sink in a little as she stopped before the gathered moot.

‘The whole Wyldwood aches for the loss of your sisters, branchwych,’ Thenuil said. He was a redwood by nature, his rust-coloured bark giving him a warlike appearance as he loomed over his fellow treelords.

‘And for the head of the clan, the venerable Thaark,’ Gillehad added, the ageing willow bent almost double. ‘The goodness of his spirit and the wisdom of his leadership will not soon be forgotten. May his lamentiri enrich many a sylvaneth as-yet unplanted.’

‘Such a loss makes your well-being all the more important, Nellas,’ Thoaken added. He was old, even by the standards of the ancients. A slender pine, his highest needles matched the canopy of Thenuil, while his grey bark was knotted and craggy with age. He swayed gently as he talked, each word as inexorable and measured as the passage of years.

‘Until the soulpods sprout fresh branchwyches, you alone can safely harvest the lifeseeds and tend to the Evergreen. And until we have elected a new head of the clan, Brocélann needs you now more than ever. We already miss Thaark’s guidance.’

Doubt made Nellas hesitate. Should she admit her fears? Should she tell the conclave that she believed Skathis Rot’s blow to her side had brought on some form of infection? That the Outcasts had accused her of corruption?

‘Spite-messengers have brought us grievous news,’ Thoaken said before Nellas could order her thoughts. ‘From both Ithilia and Mer’thorn. Our sister woods have been overrun by the worshippers of blight.’

His words chased all thoughts of self-doubt from Nellas’ mind, and she felt a keening at the thought of such desecration flare in her breast.

‘Surely not,’ she heard herself say.

‘It has been confirmed by those Forest Folk that escaped the felling,’ Gillehad creaked. ‘And we ourselves feel the spirit-song ache of many great lords cut down and wise ancients forever uprooted. Tragedy has finally caught up with our corner of Ghyran.’

‘How is this possible?’ Nellas demanded, turning from one treelord to the next. ‘The glamours have kept Ithilia and Mer’thorn safe ever since the Great Corruptor set foot in the Jade Kingdoms. How have the Rotbringers been able to overcome them?’

‘How did that warband pierce our own treeline?’ Gillehad replied.

‘Bands of Rotbringers stumble across us from time to time,’ Nellas said, voice snapping angrily like broken branches. ‘There were no survivors to tell of what this squirm-scum uncovered. There never are.’

‘I agree,’ said Whitebark. The ancient loremaster was the least vocal of the conclave, so old that he seemed in a perpetual doze, his spirit-song drifting and languid. A knotted silver birch, he leant heavily on one drooping branch like a crutch. ‘The chances of not one but two great Wyldwoods falling to the random roving of a warband large enough to overcome their enchantments are almost non-existent. We must assume their glamours failed them.’

Or that some rot beset them from within, thought Nellas. The realisation hardened her resolve.

‘We must discover the state of our sister woods,’ she said. ‘And find how the Rotbringer filth were able to locate them. I propose to the moot that I be allowed to spirit-walk to Mer’thorn for this purpose.’

‘Out of the question,’ Thoaken replied. ‘I have already told you of the vital place you now hold in Brocélann, Nellas. If we lose you, the very future of this Wyldwood would be threatened.’

‘If we do not discover how the sister woods fell, we will be next,’ Nellas said. Her anger drove out any thought of admitting her private fears, of agonising over what even now gnawed at her bark.

‘Spites are being dispatched,’ Thoaken said. ‘And the Wargrove assembled once again. We shall begin a muster as soon as our household has rested its roots.’

‘That will take time. A spirit-walk will be faster and safer.’

‘Not if the Wyldwoods have indeed become as corrupt as we fear.’

Nellas didn’t respond immediately. As far as preserving Brocélann was concerned, Thoaken was right, and the whole woodland knew that once he dug his roots in, the fury of all the gods, great and small, would not move him. But if Nellas’ fears were correct, they didn’t have time to assess the threat from afar. She bowed, ignoring the discomfort the motion brought her.

‘As you wish, venerable lord.’

She could feel the scrutiny of the conclave as she spoke, prickling with suspicions. Most of them, she suspected, perceived her intentions. She kept her eyes on the Evergreen’s nearest soulpod saplings, praying by bough and branch that they didn’t demand assurances of her. She could not disrupt the natural cycle by refusing a direct order from the conclave, but nor would she wait passively for events to play out around her. The fury smouldering inside her demanded her sister woods be avenged. Eventually, Thoaken spoke.

‘The moot will continue to ponder these dark events. You are clearly in need of rest, Nellas. You are dismissed, for now. May the Everqueen’s blessings be upon you.’

‘My thanks, lord,’ the branchwych replied, turning her back on the conclave.

She would have to be swift.

Nellas slid gently into the clear depths of the woodland spring, slender bark limbs immersed in its cool flow. The waters embraced her, whispering a song of renewal as they slid over the thick tangle of thorns and vines that sprouted from her scalp. Her green eyes opened beneath the surface, following the redfins and minnowspawn as they darted back and forth through the clear depths. The water was brimming with life, just like the soil it fed.

She could not allow a place such as this to fall to corruption. Ghyran endured.

Closing her eyes once more, she let the stream’s song fulfil her. The healing waters had reduced the agony of her wound to a numb throb. She could spend an eternity in here, watched over by the spirits of the spring, sustained by their soothing embrace. But in her mind’s eye she saw the waters congeal, the clear flow discoloured by filth. To stay would be to surrender Brocélann to damnation, a truth she had known even as she had paid lip service to Thoaken’s commands. Her bark would not leave the Wyldwood’s treeline, but her spirit would.

She hummed to herself, communing with the spring’s song, letting its melodies entwine with hers. As she did, she felt the flow around her tug, teasing at her branches. Though her roots remained sunken into the slick stones at the spring’s bottom, her mind started to drift.

There were many ways for the spirit-song of a sylvaneth to travel between the Wyldwoods of Ghyran, and the sacred waterways were one of them. The stream was one of several that flowed from Brocélann to her neighbouring woodlands, one of the realmroots blessed by the Everqueen to bring her life-giving energies to this part of the Jade Kingdoms. As Nellas’ spirit-song left her physical form, the water’s flow snatched at her and carried her along. She bound herself to the form of a passing bluescale, the big fish darting over rocks and between lazy fronds and watermoss, following the current as it carried her beyond Brocélann’s borders.

The sense of detachment was exhilarating. The pain of Nellas’ wound had become a distant ache, left far behind. The natural rhythms of the stream flooded her thoughts, the instinctive concerns and needs of its wildlife merging with her own desires. It was only with difficulty that she slid free from the bluescale, forging through the current towards the bank.

She emerged without disturbing the water’s surface, her spirit-form invisible to mortal eyes. It was immediately apparent that she was in Brocélann no more. Around her, trees stretched, but these were not the healthy boughs and branches Nellas had passed through when she had last visited Mer’thorn, many seasons ago. The forest was skeletal, leafless, the trunks bare and gnarled, each tree seemingly struggling to stand beneath the weight of its own dead wood.

Their song cut to the branchwych’s heartwood. It had none of Brocélann’s spirited cadence, none of the vibrant pitch and swell that coursed through the Jade Kingdoms still resisting the Great Corruptor. Instead it was a low, weary moan, the creak and sigh of a tree that had long given up the hope of ever sprouting fresh shoots again.

Nor were there any spites. The lack of the little darting lights and the elegant counterpoint of their songs was like a void in the branchwych’s core. A forest without spites was a forest that had lost the essence of its being.

Nellas eased her own song into that of Mer’thorn’s, her light, quicker tempo seeking to stoke the Wyldwood’s sentience.

Who has done this to you?

The tired answer drew her on along the bank of the stream, deeper into the Wyldwood. As she went, she noticed the waters beside her were also changing. The stream no longer possessed the crystalline clarity it had in Brocélann, but instead grew steadily murkier. Soon it was brown and discoloured. It began to congeal around the edges, the banks thick with green scum. Eventually it took on the appearance of tar, oozing and black, a pestilential stink coming off its bubbling surface.

The woodland, too, grew worse with every ethereal step Nellas took. The trees were no longer bent over and gaunt, like bare old beggars. Now they were clothed, but in all manner of vileness. In her time tending to the Evergreen, the branchwych had uprooted and carved out many diseases and blights before they could take hold among root and bark. Ever since the distant days of the Great Corruptor’s arrival in Ghyran, constant vigilance had been needed to ensure his plagues didn’t achieve what his Rotbringers could not.

Here, those plagues had run rampant. As she passed through the fallen Wyldwood, she saw every blight she had ever encountered in evidence around her. Spinemould covered entire trees, turning them into bristling, puffy growths. Sap with the consistency of pus poured from the hideous gouges bored by Weeping Rot, while all manner of monstrous worms and maggots had burrowed out nests among bark and branches. Leaves were black and slippery with Slimestench and Daemon’s Spit, while the forest floor beneath was rapidly becoming a rotting, shifting mulch. Instead of mischievous spites and darting forest spirits, great swarms of black flies now droned, filling the air with their buzzing, ugly insistence.

Nellas stopped trying to commune with the Wyldwood. Its song was no longer weak and breathless. It was no longer the voice of something dying a slow, inevitable death. It had become a drone, unhealthy but strong, a sonorous chant that she wanted no part in. The forest here, she realised, was no longer dying. It was alive, but it was not the life granted by the changing of the seasons or the Everqueen’s grace. It was unwholesome and twisted, a vile parody. It was the fresh life of maggots bursting from a boil, of a virus coiling in a bloodstream, of flies hatching from rancid meat. It was a mockery of everything green and vibrant, of everything Nellas had spent her entire existence nurturing and protecting. The realisation sent righteous anger coursing through her.

She began to seek out the Everqueen’s distant song, holding onto it like a beacon amidst the encroaching darkness. Even though she was invisible, the sensation of being observed made her thorns prickle. The forest was aware of her. She knotted a glamour about herself with whispered words, clutching her scythe close. Even her spirit-self felt as though it was swarming with lice and maggots, and each step became more difficult, more repulsive, than the last.

Before her, a clearing emerged. She realised as soon as she gazed beyond the final dripping, cancerous boughs that her worst fears were true. The heart of Mer’thorn and the heart of the corruption were one and the same.

Like all Wyldwoods, Mer’thorn had also once had an enclave at its heart, a grove where the energies of life swirled and eddied the strongest, where the soulpods thrived and the spirit-song reached its crescendo. Such places could take many forms, and Brocélann’s mighty Kingstree was only one expression of a heartglade. Mer’thorn’s had once been a menhir, a great, jagged pillar of primordial stone standing tall upon a grassy knoll, thick with moss and carved with the swirling heraldry of the enclave’s sylvaneth clan.

That menhir still stood, but it was split and deformed almost beyond recognition. Something had burrowed out its core, and now the space within was no longer a part of the Realm of Life. A sickly yellow light pulsed from its heart, and whenever Nellas tried to look directly at the rent in reality, her gaze instinctively flinched away, her spirit shuddering with revulsion.

From the open rift daemons came, clawing their way into the Wyldwood. They already infested the heartglade around the menhir, a sea of sagging, diseased flesh and corroded iron. Clusters of plaguebearers circled the space with an endless, limping gait, the tolling of their rusting bells a counterpoint to their throaty chanting. Great flies, bigger than Nellas and dripping with thick strings of venom, droned overhead. Underfoot, a living carpet of nurglings writhed, bickering and giggling like a nightmarish parody of the spites that had once inhabited Mer’thorn. The entire clearing was alive and bursting with the vital virulence of entropy and decay.

The Wyldwood’s heart was still beating, Nellas realised. It was choked and rancid with rot, a rot that had first taken root not at its borders, but at its very core.

The horror of realisation momentarily eclipsed all of Nellas’ other concerns. Her glamour shimmered, and she heard the chanting of the daemons skip a beat. The dirge of the trees around her rose in pitch. Her spirit-self tensed. She sensed a thousand rheumy, cyclopean eyes turn towards her.

Branchwych. The words, squelching like maggots writhing in rotten bark, slipped directly into Nellas’ thoughts. Skathis said you would come. He wants us to tell you it is too late. He wants us to thank you, branchwych. He wants to bless the rot that already works through your bark, for welcoming him into your home. Grandfather’s glory be upon you, and upon his Tallybands.

She had been right. Mer’thorn was lost. Shaking, she fled.

Nellas returned to her body with a scream of pain and rage. For a second, she didn’t remember where she was, her branches thrashing through the water as she surfaced.

But the agony in her side, worse than ever before, stung her thoughts into order. She had been right. She had brought corruption into Brocélann, but it hadn’t been in her. It had been in what she had carried.

Scythe in hand, she made for the Evergreen, keening a song of fear and warning for the forest spirits to spread around her. She had to rouse the Wyldwood, before it was too late.

‘She took the realmroot to Mer’thorn,’ said Brak. Du’gath dipped his branches in acknowledgement, fangs bared as he watched the branchwych race towards the Evergreen. To the spite-revenant’s attuned senses, the wound in her side reeked of corruption. Her visit to the fallen Wyldwood and her sudden madness were the final confirmation.

‘She must die,’ he said to his surrounding kin. ‘Before she can spread her foulness any further. Follow me.’

As she neared the Evergreen, Nellas’ spirit-song quested ahead. Even now, a sliver of defiance within her held out the hope that she was wrong. Maybe it had simply been her wound the daemons had referred to. Maybe, with time, the rot could be excised, and she could be made whole again. Maybe Brocélann was untouched.

Thaark.

She pushed her song ahead into the clearing, seeking out the individual voices that flowed from the Evergreen. She should be able to commune with them. She should be able to know for certain that her fears were misplaced.

Nellas.

The voice that answered her did not belong to any sylvaneth. It didn’t run in harmony with the melodies of the forest, but cut across it, a discordant baritone rich with rot.

Thank you, Nellas. Thank you for bringing me here.

She had heard the voice before. It belonged to Skathis Rot – not the mortal Rotbringer champion she had cut down, but the daemon that had inhabited his flesh. The daemon which had been transferred by hand to Thaark’s heartwood even as Nellas had split the champion’s skull. The daemon her spites had carried in the treelord’s infected lifeseed, right into the centre of Brocélann.

I will destroy you, monster, Nellas keened, her fury eclipsing even the pain of her wound as she threw herself through the last of the undergrowth and into the Evergreen.

Around her the trees were no longer singing. They were screaming. Nellas had planted Thaark’s lamentiri in a soulpod right beside the Kingstree, nestled among its very roots. In doing so, she now realised, she had carried the lifeseed tainted by Skathis Rot right into her home’s heartglade.

The Evergreen was under attack. What had once been Thaark’s budding soulpod was now a sinkhole, a black pit from which the filth of Chaos welled and poured. Plaguebearers were already limping and staggering through the Evergreen, chanting and muttering darkly to themselves as they hacked at the groves surrounding the Kingstree with rusty blades. The nurglings that accompanied them gnawed on roots or gleefully ripped down saplings, destroying future sylvaneth generations before they had even had a chance to bud. Around the clearing, great swarms of fat flies buzzed, breeding and hatching in a frenzy of infestation.

Worst of all was the thing at the Evergreen’s centre. Skathis had taken on physical form, a tall, emaciated, one-eyed daemon who now sat languidly above the sinkhole, reclining amongst the roots of the Kingstree as though they were his throne. Maggots longer than Nellas’ forebranches squirmed and writhed across the great oak’s bark, seeking to burrow in and defile its core. As the branchwych laid eyes on him, Skathis spread both skeletal arms, his long face split by a warm grin.

‘Welcome home, Nellas,’ the daemon boomed, his voice unnaturally deep and vibrant for such a wasted frame. ‘Good Boughmaster Thaark told me all about you before I consumed the last of him. How joyous it is to finally meet you!’

Shrieking, Nellas flung herself at the nearest plaguebearer. It was attempting to uproot a briarthorn soulpod with both hands, seemingly numb to the gashes the plant was leaving in its diseased skin. It was too slow to avoid Nellas as she sliced its head from its shoulders. Its daemonic form exploded into a great cloud of flies.

Nellas surged on, even the pain of her wound momentarily burned away by the rage that blazed through her bark. She disembowelled a second plaguebearer, then a third, Skathis’ merry laughter ringing around her all the while.

‘Curse you, maggotkin!’ she screamed, a single swing of her scythe eviscerating a clutch of squirming nurglings. ‘Die!’

‘Not before you, Nellas,’ Skathis chuckled, pointing one long, bony finger at her. ‘Not before you.’

Around the branchwych, the Tallyband closed.

‘Drycha’s curse,’ Du’gath spat as he looked down into the Evergreen. ‘We’re too late.’

‘It was the lifeseed,’ Brak said. ‘Not the branchwych. The disease was in what she planted, not her wound.’

‘We must help her,’ another of the spite-revenants added. ‘If we wait for the Wargrove to muster, the heartglade will already have fallen.’

Du’gath was moving. He burst from the treeline into the Evergreen like an icy gale, fangs bared and talons out. Keening their own cold war-song, the Outcasts followed.

Nellas plied her scythe, the harvester come home. One monstrosity after another fell, their corroded blades no match for her greenwood, their daemonic bodies disintegrating with every strike. But still they came, on and on, as inevitable as time’s decaying grip, and Skathis laughed all the harder. Nellas had barely managed to take a dozen paces towards him, and with every passing moment the sinkhole between them grew larger, and more filth hauled itself up from the depths. The Kingstree had started to bow slightly as the hole reached its roots. The ancient oak’s throaty song of pain and fear drove Nellas into an even more violent fury.

So busy was she with hacking and slashing, swinging and slicing, that she didn’t notice the press of rotting bodies easing around her. It was only when a clawed hand caught the downward stroke of a rusting sword meant for her upper branches that she realised she was no longer alone. With a contemptuous twist, Du’gath snapped the plaguebearer’s blade and tore the leprous daemon limb from limb.

There was no time for a greeting, much less for explanations. Nellas pressed forward, screeching at the woodland around her to rise up and strike down the violators of the heartglade. To her left and right, the spite-revenants ripped into the Tallyband, their features twisted with hideous fury, the same rage that now gave Nellas strength. For a moment, Skathis’ laughter faltered.

‘Slow yourself, dear Nellas,’ the daemonic herald said, weaving a complex pattern in the air before him. ‘That wound in your side looks like it may be infected.’

Pain, worse than any she had ever felt, speared through the branchwych. Her limbs seized up and her scythe slipped from her fingers. In a daze she fell to her knees, discoloured bloodsap oozing from her wound. Du’gath stood over her, driving back a trio of plaguebearers with a savage swipe of his talons.

‘We won’t reach the Kingstree in time,’ the Outcast called back to her. ‘We’re too few!’

Nellas couldn’t reply. The taint Skathis had planted in her side drove out all else, its agony threatening to eclipse her own spirit-song and cut her off from the strength of the Wyldwood. A single melody remained connected with hers, entwining itself with her thoughts. It refused to let her go. Through the haze, she recognised its voice. It was a bittergrub. It had been born, hatching pure and unblemished from the nearby beech tree. It lived, and with it came hope, sure as the first buds among the snows.

Nellas closed her eyes, seeking to focus through the pain. She could not save Brocélann alone. She could not even save it with the strongbranch fury of the likes of Du’gath and his Outcasts. But Brocélann could save itself. She only had to show it how.

She began to sing. It was not the terrible battle-cant of sharpened bark-claws and crushing roots, nor did it possess the violent beat of the fury that motivated the sylvaneth when they saw their sacred enclaves defiled. It was something deeper, something even more primal, a rhythm only the branchwyches, with their instinctive connection to all the creatures of the Wyldwood, could access. It spoke of shared lives and shared fates, of the bonds forged in the changing of Ghyran’s natural cycles. It was directed not at the noble houses, nor the Forest Folk, or any of her forest spirits. It was sung to the smaller creatures, dedicated to the multitude of tiny, vibrant souls that called Brocélann home. They were all the Everqueen’s children, as worthy as the most gnarled treelord ancient, and the death of the Wyldwood spelt their doom as assuredly as it did that of the sylvaneth.

Nellas heard it first as a hum, a counterpoint to the infernal buzzing of the flies that choked the air around her. She continued to sing, her voice rising and becoming stronger as the hum grew. Pain flared once more as Skathis sought to silence her. She ignored it now. Her spirit was no longer wholly bound to her body, but rose above the fighting to direct the Wyldwood’s salvation. Skathis had stopped laughing altogether.

From the trees the spites came. They were a cloud, a nebulous, darting, roiling swarm that shrieked with a rage as potent as their branchwych’s. They struck the flies first. The Great Corruptor’s emissaries, countless as they seemed, were squashed or snapped up, or had their buzzing wings ripped off. The spites engulfed the whole of the Evergreen in a multihued blizzard, poking out plaguebearers’ eyes and bursting nurglings like little pus sacks.

Nellas unleashed them on Skathis Rot. The herald of Nurgle wailed first with rage and then fear as the cloud descended upon him. The spites picked the bark of the Kingstree clean, plucking off and crushing each and every loathsome maggot that sought to defile the venerable oak. Then they set upon Skathis, ten thousand little limbs raking and pulling at his flesh, gnawing at his eye, slicing and slashing with little claws.

‘You cannot stop me now!’ the daemon wailed, flailing ineffectually with his gaunt limbs. ‘You are too late! A thricepox curse on each and every one of you! Grandfather take your miserable little souls!’

The daemon screamed all the louder as a spite lanced his eye with a long sliver of living wood. He staggered forwards and lost his footing on the edge of the sinkhole, teetering for balance. With a concerted heave, the swarm of spites tipped him. The daemon bellowed as he plummeted over the edge, knocking a clutch of plaguebearers back down into the pit even as they sought to climb up out of it.

As the daemon fell, the Evergreen resounded with the call of hunting horns. Nellas, still engulfed in the breaks and eddies of the spites’ great spirit-song, was only dimly aware of a furious roar. It was one the forest hadn’t heard in a very long time, and it was enough to make the roots beneath her quiver. From the trees around the glade the Forest Folk poured, twisted with their war aspect, and at the fore of their vengeful tide came Gillehad. The stooped treelord ancient roared once more.

The sound was echoed by the battle cries of tree-revenants as they too emerged into the heartglade. Striding in their midst were Bitterbough and Thenuil, talons bared and branches firm. The Tallyband broke before their thunderous blows, diseased forms flickering and turning insubstantial as they were banished back to their master’s blighted realm.

Nellas felt the grasp on her spirit-song waver and break. Her voice faltered. Her mind returned to her body, dragged down by exhaustion and pain. Her wound, she realised, was killing her. Du’gath still stood over her, roots planted and immovable, his bark scored and slashed in dozens of places by daemonic blades. She remained on her knees, bent and broken. She felt her consciousness slipping, the song of the Wyldwood suddenly distant and muffled. She could feel something crawling among her branches and gnawing at her bark. Memories of diseased worms and maggots made her shudder. Her thoughts finally slipped away, and her song faded into nothingness.

It was the singing of her new companion that woke her.

Her bittergrub was coiled on her breast, watching her with beady eyes. She stretched out a limb to let the creature run along her branches, and was surprised to notice the absence of a shock of pain for the first time in what felt like many seasons.

Tentatively, she shifted her body so she could look down at her side.

Her wound was healing. The flow of bloodsap had finally been stemmed, and tender greenwood had now replaced the rotten bark. She realised abruptly that the final sensation she’d felt before her spirit-song had faded was the bittergrub eating away at the diseased bark, freeing her body from the Great Corruptor’s foul grasp. It had saved her life, and with it possibly the future of Brocélann.

‘Your new grub would not leave you,’ Du’gath said, looming over her. ‘It gnawed away the rotting wood and gave your wound a chance to reknit.’

Wordlessly, Nellas thanked the creature, letting it scuttle appreciatively up one limb and nestle among her boughs.

‘I thought about cutting it in half,’ Du’gath said coldly. ‘But I trust the spites more than I trust you, Harvester. May you serve them well.’

‘Branchwych,’ boomed the venerable tones of Gillehad. The treelord ancient was striding across the Evergreen towards Nellas, who rose to meet him with the assistance of her scythe. She looked around as she did so. The heartglade was scattered with the dead wood of fallen sylvaneth, and the swiftly decomposing filth of the Tallyband, but of the sinkhole that had nearly consumed the Kingstree there was no sign. Soulpods had been ripped up or brutally slashed, and lifeseeds lost forever. But the Evergreen stood, and with it the future of the Wyldwood remained secure. For now.

‘You are healing, I see,’ Gillehad noted. ‘Thoaken has been beset with worry. We all have. We sensed your spirit travelling the realmroot to Mer’thorn.’

‘I beg forgiveness from the conclave,’ Nellas said, voice firm. ‘But I would have done it again if need be. It was necessary, for the good of all Brocélann.’

‘And in doing so you undoubtedly saved the entire Wyldwood,’ Gillehad replied. ‘By the time we were aware of what was afoot, it was almost too late.’

‘I would have made little difference if it weren’t for the Outcasts,’ Nellas continued. She turned to gesture towards Du’gath, before realising the spite-revenant and his sinister kin had vanished.

‘They do what they can, as do we all,’ Gillehad said slowly, casting his wizened gaze across the treeline. ‘There can be no bystanders in the war against the blight. Noble houses and Forest Folk, spites and Outcasts, we are all a part of the great Wargrove.’

‘I will tend to the soulpods until I have sisters again,’ Nellas said. ‘Once they have been fully instructed in their duties as branchwyches, I will travel the realmroots to all the remaining Wyldwoods of the Jade Kingdoms. They must be warned not to make the same mistakes we made. They must be told to examine all things, especially where it concerns their heartglades. The rot that festers from within may yet prove more deadly than that which gnaws from without. Thaark’s passing must not have been in vain.’

‘True words, Nellas,’ Gillehad agreed. ‘I wish all the seasons’ blessings upon such a task.’ 

‘Many thanks. Now, with the greatest respect, venerable lord, I must be about my duties.’

‘Yes, of course.’

Nellas bowed again, hefted her scythe, and began the harvest afresh. She sang as she made her way slowly through the Evergreen, a recital of both triumph and sorrow, the intertwining roots that ran through everything. It had always been so, the branchwych mused as she worked. And it would always be so, long after she and all she had ever planted had returned to the ground.

The seasons changed, but Ghyran endured.

About the Author

Robbie MacNiven is a highland-born History graduate from the University of Edinburgh. He has written the Warhammer 40,000 novel Legacy of Russ as well as the short stories ‘Redblade’, ‘A Song for the Lost’ and ‘Blood and Iron’ for Black Library. His hobbies include re-enacting, football and obsessing over Warhammer 40,000.

The War of Life rages on, as Torglug the Despised and the forces of Nurgle seek to destroy the Everqueen. But with their new Stormcast allies, the beleagured sylvaneth at last have a hope of victory...

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in Legends of the Age of Sigmar: Sylvaneth in 2016.
This eBook edition published in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by John Michelbach.

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ISBN: 978-1-78572-826-6

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