This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.

At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it is a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests and vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reigns the Emperor Karl Franz, sacred descendant of the founder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.

But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering Worlds Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands of the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever near, the Empire needs heroes like never before.

Principal Characters

SURVIVORS OF LOCRIMERE

Finavar the Darkling Prince

Jokleel younger brother of Finavar

Thuralin old, crippled follower of Finavar

Alhena Thuralin’s daughter

Caorann Finavar’s oldest friend

Lord Beldeas highborn; Warden of Locrimere

Lady Ordaana highborn; wife of Beldeas

Death’s-head forest spirit that accompanies Ordaana

Hauran Quillwort Lord Beldeas’s advisor

Eremon captain of the Locrimere’s kinbands

THE SILVAM DALE

Princess Asphalia highborn; senile old spellweaver

Prince Elatior the Enchanter; highborn ruler of the Silvam Dale

Varamus spellweaver; servant of Prince Elatior

THE COURT OF THE EVERQUEEN

Ariel the Queen in the Wood

Laelia handmaiden; powerful mage

Naieth revered prophetess

Lord Salicis deceased noble

THE KING’S GLADE

Orion Ariel’s Consort-King

Atolmis the Hunter High Priest of Kurnous

Sélva priest of Kurnous

Luabh, Fuath and Druan Orion’s spirit guides

THE BRÚIDD (THE COUNCIL OF BEASTS)

Sativus forest spirit; resembles a great, noble stag

The Wrach Keeper of the Dark Paths; the Blind Guide

Zephyr forest spirit; resembles a playful child

THE FIÙRANN

Mälloch the Elder lord of the Fiùrann

Sibaris young wardancer

THE VALE OF FINCARA (TURAS-ALVA)

Lord Cyanos ‘King’ of the alvaír

THE KINDRED OF ARUM TOR

Prince Haldus Warhawk Rider; Lord of Arum Tor

BRANCHWRAITHS

Drycha

Liris

DAEMONS

Alkhor

Ganglion

Bule

DRAGONS

Tamarix

OTHERS

Clara human sorcerer from the Amber Hills
Coeddil ancient forest spirit

Chapter One

An old woman stumbled through the dusk. She was bowed by rain, buffeted by wind and leaning heavily on a tall crook. She looked like a scarecrow, cut loose and sent tumbling across the wind-blasted heath. Her gangly body was draped in pelts and her face was hidden beneath the battered remains of a stag’s head. A snake’s skeleton rattled around her neck and her crook was a femur, carved with runes and topped by spiralling ram’s horns. In her other hand she clutched a length of twine that was leading her through the heather.

‘Here?’ she asked, digging her heels into the mud and leaning back against the wind.

She looked quizzically at the bones but they gave no answer. She was about to speak again, but the length of twine jerked taut and dragged her on, leading her through the waist-high shrubs towards an ominous wall of darkness at the edge of the heath.

The old woman’s name was Clara and it was clear she had travelled a long way. Her head nodded beneath the weight of her hood and, as she neared the boundary of the field, she stumbled to her knees, cursing under her breath as the twine slipped through her fingers.

She scrambled to her feet and howled into the storm. There were words in the howl, but they were hoarse and slurred – the sound of a dog, attempting to mimic its master. The stag’s head slipped back to reveal a lined, snarling face that was almost as fierce as her voice.

Clara lurched on through the rain, chasing the twine as it snaked through the gloom.

She saw that the wall of darkness was a row of densely packed trees – the borders of a forest, stretching off in either direction; a forest so vast she could see no end to it. The trees disappeared into the banks of rain and mist, shifting as she tried to focus on them and every thirty feet or so, they were punctuated by a tall, white standing stone. The stones gleamed in the half-light, like a row of bared teeth.

‘Everwood.’ She spoke to her necklace again, her voice full of awe. ‘He’s brought me to the blessed Everwood.’ She stared at the dark, ugly trees, knotted with briars. ‘By the gods. Am I really up to this?’

Rainwater blurred her vision and the trees shifted again. They were straining against the stones, as though trying to hurl down their ancient guardians. Clara shivered and let out another canine howl. Then she reached into a leather sack, searching for the one thing that she knew would calm her. Despite her fear of the forest, she stepped closer, sheltering from the rain as she removed a fragment of human skull from her sack. Some moonlight had broken through the gloom and she could just about make out the words carved into the cranium.

‘I’m the one,’ she growled, nodding furiously and spraying rain from the antlers of her hood. ‘It has to be me. This will prove it. I know I can do this. I know I can.’

So much had happened since the skull’s owner had passed away, but Clara’s certainty remained: only she should replace him. She had been chasing the light since long before the others were born. Only she could be trusted to lead them. Only she could be trusted to wield that much power. The Brothers of the Amber Hills would see it, eventually, however much they snarled and glowered. There would be no more doubts. No more sniggering in the shadows. After this, they would see what she was worth – that she was truly one of them. She had crossed so many borders, both physical and spiritual. She had gone further than all of them. No one else in the brotherhood would attempt something as dangerous as this.

‘Clara,’ she spat, even more urgently, repeating her name like a mantra, imagining the sound issuing from dozens of grudging throats.

Once her heartbeat had steadied, she looked around for the length of twine. At first she struggled to locate it in the dark, but then she saw the other end of it, several feet away, knotted around the throat of a rain-sodden fox.

‘Tolmun,’ she snapped, reaching out through the rain.

The fox remained motionless, watching her intently.

‘Is this really the place?’ She waved her crook at the impenetrable wall of trees. ‘The Everwood? Is that what it will take?’ She let out a gravelly laugh. ‘By the gods, I’ll need some nerve.’

The fox gave no reply, but Clara knew this was right. The winds howling through the eaves carried more than just the scent of rotting leaves. There was power in the dark. Such power. She could smell the deep, heady aroma of it, leaking into the mortal realm. Vast draughts of magic surrounded her: lightning-charged and lethal, coiling through the heather like a serpent.

She looked back at the wind-battered fox and croaked with laughter. ‘I suppose we’ve faced worse, eh? Come on, let’s get this over and done with.’

The fox remained motionless, staring at her in expectant silence.

Clara looked pained for a moment, then laughed again, this time with more genuine amusement. ‘Of course. You’re right. I must perform the rite alone. If I am to rule, only I can carry this burden.’ She glanced slyly at the fox, clearly hoping she was wrong, but the animal remained motionless.

Clara sighed and reached out to touch its head.

The fox flinched and Clara did the same. ‘Tolmun,’ she whispered, ‘have you forgotten yourself in there?’ The idea filled her with another sickening wave of fear. Should she really do this? Could she really harness the Everwood? Was she risking too much? Could she forget herself, like Tolmun? Her fears threatened to send her scrambling back across the field. Then she remembered the sniggering doubt of the Amber Brothers and her resolve hardened.

She pursed her wrinkled lips and made a gentle clucking sound, holding out her hand to the fox again. After a few minutes of nervous pacing, it finally held steady and allowed Clara to release the twine from its neck.

As the animal bolted into the night Clara raised an open palm in farewell, wondering which of them would survive the longest.

‘You’d better watch out for those peasants.’ Clara grimaced as she recalled the red-faced morons who stared at them from the walls of Garonne. She had hidden her tattoos and marks of allegiance, pulling the stag hood as low as she could, but she knew from experience that it would only pique their interest. They would crawl out of their neat little houses once the rain cleared and come looking for the mysterious fur-clad stranger.

She caught a glimpse of the fox as it crested a hill and she called out, her voice feral. ‘Tell the Amber Brothers! Tell them what I’ve achieved! Tell them I’ll return!’

The rain doubled in force, as though in mockery of Clara’s words, and she was forced even further beneath the trees.

‘Be quick, Clara,’ she muttered, rummaging in her sack again. Her auguries had been clear: midnight would see a powerful storm of magic. The cause was unknown – a whim of the gods, perhaps – but it would dwarf the squalls currently whipping through the trees. The full weight of it would tear her apart, but if she could perform her rites before the storm hit she could borrow the power she needed and flee.

Clara shivered as she peered into the forest. Who knew what was rising from the darkness? Who knew if she could really harness it? Her gift was as strong as ever, stronger maybe, but her flesh had been ravaged by the decades. The older she got, the more it felt as though the power wielded her, rather than the other way around. Her memories were a jumble of human fear and animal hunger. Since her apprenticeship in the Amber Hills she had stretched herself to the limit – always attempting to prove her worth, assuming ever-wilder forms, throwing her soul into the strangest of hosts. She looked at the brooding trees.

‘I can do this,’ she muttered. ‘I can do this and then I can rest.’

Lightning flickered on the horizon, followed by a low rumble of thunder.

Clara’s heart began to pound and she laughed again. It was too late to doubt herself. She had never sensed such raw hunger. Something truly wild was coming. Something unstoppable.

‘Be quick, you old goat,’ she said, rummaging in her sack again. She took out a small ebony box, carved with stylised arrows and sealed with a bronze clasp. With an anxious glance, she stepped further into the forest, sheltering beneath a hunched old oak. Once she had found a patch of ground that was relatively dry, she placed the box on the ground and opened it. Something tiny was moving inside, but she ignored it and took out a piece of waxed cloth. There were more symbols on the cloth – a circle, punctuated by eight compass points and overlaid with another stylised arrow. She flattened the cloth onto the rotting leaves and muttered under her breath.

Clara gasped as light shimmered between her crooked fingers, almost as bright as the lightning overhead. The flesh of her hands glowed a warm, blood-red and she saw a delicate network of vessels, pulsing beneath her puckered skin.

‘By the gods,’ she muttered, flexing her fingers and looking up into the rain. Even this, her most humble of rites, felt incredibly potent. The wind was almost entirely Aethyr. She had never encountered such a thing. The entire spectrum of magic was howling around her ears. Instinctively, she closed down her senses. To perceive the entire beauty of it would unhinge her mind; kill her maybe. She focused her thoughts on the thin current she called her own. It was her finest, oldest friend. The Amber Brothers had the most pompous, archaic names for it: Garrack, Ghurrag, Ghur, Gur-maan, but they meant nothing to Clara. She knew it simply for what it was: the hunger of the beast. To Clara it appeared as it had done since she was a little girl, all those years ago in the backstreets of Altdorf. She saw golden fragments of light, coiling through the air like fireflies, eddying and spiralling in the dark.

As she studied the display, the tingling in Clara’s flesh grew stronger. Her soul was straining against its bonds, craving change; craving wildness.

Clara cursed herself for being so easily distracted and returned her attention to the piece of waxed cloth. Her incantation had merely been intended to flatten it and make it rigid, but as she looked down she saw that it was blazing with amber light, and the symbols around the circle were trembling, as though preparing to launch themselves into the air.

‘Tolmun,’ she said, her voice cracking with a mixture of fear and amusement. ‘Where have you brought me?’

She reached into the box and drew out a length of fine thread. As she held it up to the moonlight, she saw that her companions were still intact. Tied to the end of the thread, by a complicated series of tiny knots, were eight spiders. They twisted and skittered as Clara studied them, revealing a daub of paint on each of their abdomens. Each daub was a different colour, and Clara felt a swell of pride at the skill she had shown in marking them so accurately. Even now, riddled with arthritis, she was the best of all of them.

Thunder rolled again, louder this time, and Clara flinched.

‘Right,’ she said, carefully lowering the spiders onto the circular design, while keeping hold of the other end of the thread.

The spiders began to roll and thrash their limbs. The unguents in the box had subdued their natural belligerence but now, exposed to the magic-charged breeze, it returned in force. Three of the spiders were immediately locked into a ball, and four of the others began circling each other, but one made straight for the edge of the circle. Clara grinned. She had a guide.

The spider settled on the symbol denoting south-
south-east and Clara looked in that direction. A few hundred yards away there was a length of shattered white rock, buried deep in the heather. She looked at the edge of the forest and realised there was a gap in the waystones.

‘Of course,’ she muttered. ‘One of them has fallen.’

As she stared though the dark, she saw that the trees were already extending their reach: roots and creepers were snaking through the grass like grasping fingers.

‘There’s a crack in the dam,’ she whispered, her eyes bright with awe.

She scooped up the fighting spiders with trembling fingers and popped them back in the box.

Then she picked up the remaining one and held it before her face. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, before popping it in her mouth.

She grimaced as it danced across her tongue. Then she crushed it against the roof of her mouth and gulped it down.

Again, the magic was more potent than she had expected. The soul of a spider would usually give her a little burst of frenetic energy, a nimbleness in her fingers, nothing more; but tonight it made her feel as though she could scale trees. Her crooked old limbs sang with energy and the clouds rolled back from her rheumy eyes.

Before the effect wore off, she packed away her box and scuttled back out into the rain, moving incredibly fast and occasionally dropping to all fours as she went. As the lightning flashed she blinked in and out of view and, for a brief second, as one of the flares picked her out, it looked as though her limbs had multiplied and segmented, elongating as they threw her across the heath.

Clara reached the fallen stone and placed her crook against it. It was covered with the kind of symbols and runes that would have usually fascinated Clara but she ignored them and closed her eyes. Midnight was approaching fast. She needed to make her attempt and leave.

As she ground her crook against the stone it began to pulse with the same golden light she had seen moving through the forest. She laughed as the power lanced through her palms and raced into her chest. The feeling was intoxicating. She closed her eyes and savoured the sensation.

‘By all the bloody, blessed gods,’ she breathed, tilting back her head as magic rushed into her brain. ‘This is it.’

For a second, Clara was so lost to the power of the growing storm that she forgot herself. Her face rippled in the darkness and began to assume another, more bestial shape. Her shoulders swelled and hunched, sprouting clumps of fur.

‘No!’ she snapped.

The transformation ceased and her shoulders dropped back into place.

‘I’m human.’ She snatched the fragment of skull from her bag and stared at it, determined to remember her purpose. ‘I’m Clara.’

She returned her attention to the crook and began to recite her invocation. She had been practising for weeks as she travelled south from Altdorf and the words tumbled easily from her mouth. She prayed to whichever gods would listen – begging their indulgence – begging leave to fulfil her destiny. Willing them to grant her power, one last time. The winds of Aethyr responded to her pleas, whipping around the shattered waystone and clawing at her ragged furs.

Lightning flashed overhead and a ball of light began to form in the stone.

Clara opened her eyes and saw power stirring in the charred rock. She touched her head, channelling flames from the storm; flooding magic into her skull.

To her delight she felt a sentience entering her mind – something noble and powerful; something that heard her pleas. ‘I can help you, Clara,’ it seemed to say, as her vision filled with blinding light.

‘What must I do?’ she cried, straightening her tired old back as the magic grew stronger.

There was no reply but a face swam into view, haloed by the blazing lights. The face was benign and proud, and for a while Clara failed to notice that it was not human. Then, as her palms began to blister and throb, Clara realised that she was facing a stag – a white stag, of unbelievable beauty. As she held the creature’s gaze a new sensation entered her limbs. It was as though the animal’s sentience had charged her blood somehow and begun changing her body. It raced through her veins, filling her with vigour.

Then she realised the stag was about to speak to her.

‘Witch!’ screamed a hoarse voice and Clara felt something connect with the side of her head.

The power vanished and Clara found herself sprawled on her back, lying in the wet heather, staring up at the stars.

A face swam into view. For a second Clara thought she was still looking at the white stag, but as the blood cleared from her eyes she saw a furious peasant looming over her, clutching a brutal-looking club.

‘What have you done, witch?’ howled the peasant, gesturing at the storm.

There was another explosion of pain in Clara’s head and she lost consciousness.

‘She’s one of them. A daemon worshipper.’

Clara awoke with a start. She looked out across a moonlit, rain-lashed heath and realised she had no idea where she was, or who she was. Instinctively, she tried to reach for the bone in her sack, but the sack was gone and her arms were bound.

Fear gripped her as she discovered she was tied to a broken stump of white rock. She felt a flash of recognition at the sight of the peasants, huddled in the rain, rifling through her possessions. Her prized collection of animal skulls and wooden fetishes were scattered across the grass. One of the peasants, a hulking simpleton with a face like boiled meat, was holding her crook up into the moonlight, grinning idiotically at the runes carved along its length.

‘Nah, she’s just a lousy conjuror,’ he said, waving the crook at Clara. ‘Look at her! She’s senile. The only danger is that she might accidentally piss on you.’

Another peasant grabbed Clara’s hair and yanked her back, pointing at the side of her head.

‘Then what’s this?’

‘It’s where you hit her, you idiot.’

The man, not visible to Clara, sounded almost hysterical. ‘It’s the bloody rot is what it is. The mark of Chaos. She’s barely human. They’re all alike. It’s them what bring the rot down on our heads. With all their spells and books.’

At the mention of spells, Clara’s memory began to clear. An image of the white stag flashed into her mind and she felt a brief return of the sensation she had experienced before – an odd, exhilarating rushing feeling in her veins. The animal had touched her soul, she was sure of it. Could her spell have worked? Had she channelled the power of the Everwood?

Thunder rolled overhead and Clara remembered something else.

‘We need to leave,’ she said, through a mouthful of blood.

The man nearest to her stooped, so that his face was directly in front of hers.

‘The witch is trying to speak!’

Clara saw a sallow-faced youth with lank, straw-coloured hair and feverish, sunken eyes.

‘I told you we should have gagged her.’

The youth started looking around for a piece of cloth.

‘A storm is coming,’ Clara said, straining against her bonds.

The peasants jeered.

‘A storm is coming?’ cried the bald brute. He shoved the youth aside and waved at the columns of rain slamming into the hillside. ‘You need to work on your premonitions, old girl.’ He grinned at his friends. ‘I think the idea is to predict things before they happen.’

The other peasants laughed and then continued rummaging through Clara’s belongings.

Clara shook her head, sure that something dreadful was about to emerge from the trees. ‘Not that kind of storm,’ she said, but her words were drowned out by laughter and rain.

‘Here,’ cried the pale youth, ‘perhaps your magic bloody hat will shut you up.’ He rammed the stag hood down over Clara’s head, wrenching it so low that it covered her face.

Clara’s panic grew. Strands of power were tugging at her furs and ruffling her hair. She could feel the night straining at its seams.

‘We need to leave,’ she repeated, shaking her head so that the stag’s head fell back a little, enabling her to see.

The peasants had found her leather purse and their faces lit up as they poured out the coins.

‘I know you’re possessed,’ whispered the ill-looking youth who was still crouched by Clara’s side. His eyes were rolling with excitement and he had a butcher’s knife in his hand.

‘Maybe I should let these bloody daemons out?’ he said, his lips trembling as he raised the blade to Clara’s throat. ‘What do you think, old girl? Shall I rid you of them?’

Clara looked past the youth into the streams of power pouring from the trees. The peasants were clearly blind to the Aethyr but where the stone had previously stood, she saw a familiar thread of amber lights, snaking through the glare. She reached out to it with her mind.

Her body went into a violent spasm and her head jolted back, spilling pale fire from her eyes.

The youth gasped and backed away, lowering his knife.

Clara felt her bones starting to lengthen and she sighed, giving in to a pleasure she had long denied herself.

Lightning flashed right overhead and the youth began to scream.

Clara felt a grim satisfaction as her ribs broadened and cracked.

Then the other peasants began to scream and Clara opened her eyes to revel in their fear.

To her surprise, none of them were looking at her. They had dropped her belongings and were staring slack-jawed at the trees behind her.

The youth at her side was now crying. He had dropped his knife to the ground and was clutching at his face in shock.

Clara strained and twisted herself around the waystone until she could see what had scared them.

The forest was gone.

Clara’s breath caught in her throat. Where rows of trunks had once stood there was now a tsunami of leaves and light.

Clara moaned in fear. The scale of it was beyond comprehension. It was as though the realm of the gods had fallen into the mortal world. Branches, earth, rain and sky were all rolled into one glistening whole, tumbling towards her like an ocean, crackling with arcane power; but it was not this that made Clara groan. The wave of destruction was being ridden by an army – a host of wailing, blood-drenched daemons.

Clara joined her scream to those of the peasants. The figures racing towards her were impossible. They could not exist. Her mind crumbled in the face of such outlandish beings.

She saw a rain of maleficent imps, each no bigger than her fist, with leering, giggling faces and cruel, tiny blades. She saw the husks of dead trees, blazing with inner fire and reaching out with splintered claws. She saw animals of every kind; torn, bleeding and wild with hunger, but all clawing deliriously as they were carried along by the verdant storm. She saw pale, impossibly slender men, with almond-shaped eyes and hideously alien features. They were howling songs to the wind and they were all horribly wounded, trailing blood as they ran, but their faces were ecstatic, and as they tumbled towards her, Clara realised that they were not men at all, but something beyond nature – something quite beyond her understanding.

The vanguard of this unholy parade was a group of figures even more horrific than the others: horned riders, adding to the roar of the storm with the sound of hunting horns and pounding drums. Some of them wore tall masks of splintered birchwood and rode pale horses, draped in bloody scalps; others sprinted on foot, tearing at the creatures nearest to them with long, curved talons.

And towering above everything was the spirit that finally caused Clara to scream a prayer and clamp her eyes shut. There was a giant leading the charge: an ivy-coloured monster, with tall, knotted antlers and the hindquarters of a stag. Its face was a mask of rage and its eyes were like braziers. Snapping around its heels was a pack of rangy hounds, their eyes flashing with the same unearthly light as those of their master.

Clara slumped in her bonds, abandoning all hope of escape.

The peasants were still screaming and she looked up to see that they were trying to flee through the grass. It was pointless and pitiful. The whole hillside was shuddering with the force of the storm. As the daemons tore from the trees and thundered through the grass, the peasants stumbled and fell, screaming for mercy as the immortal host crashed over them.

Clara’s frail body shook as the spirits smashed against the stump of rock she was tied to. She felt her skin blister as they screamed past, laughing and snarling as they went.

The peasants’ cries became hysterical as the spirits and animals dragged them from the ground, tearing their bodies to shreds as they thundered through the rain.

Clara’s bonds held her in place and, although it shook and creaked, the stone held firm. She dared a glimpse at the carnage and saw that the emerald giant had paused to attack one of the peasants, grunting and snarling as it skewered him with a spear.

The rest of the monsters continued flooding past the stone without even glancing at Clara and she began to wonder if she might survive after all. They were making for a cluster of distant lights on the far side of the valley: Garonne. Her stomach turned as she realised the carnage that would ensue once the daemons reached the fortified little town. Garonne’s defences would be meaningless against such beings.

Clara held her breath as the host roared past her, feeling more hopeful with every second that passed.

Then her heart stopped.

The antlered giant had turned to face her.

A peasant was still hanging from the giant’s spear as it stepped towards Clara, shouldering its way back against the tide of monsters and churning up the muddy field with its hooves.

Clara struggled desperately but her bonds were still too tight. She could do nothing but watch in horror as the giant approached.

She muttered a prayer as the monster came to a halt a few feet away and stared at her down the length of its nose.

‘Merciful gods!’ screamed the skewered peasant, clutching at the spear with one hand and reaching out to Clara with the other. His belly was torn wide open and he was trying desperately to force his steaming innards back into place. ‘Help me, you bloody witch! Do something! Don’t let it kill me!’ His voice became a hitching whine as his life spilled out onto the grass. ‘Please! By the gods!’

Clara was only vaguely aware of the man’s cries. The giant was still staring at her, oblivious to the man dying on its weapon, and Clara could see nothing but its blazing eyes.

Then, to Clara’s horror, the giant spoke. The idea that such a nightmarish creature would use language was even more grotesque than the sight of its violence. The giant’s voice was low and grinding, and the words were gibberish – a sing-song, meaningless doggerel – but something about the sound was oddly familiar. She knew she was about to die, but for some reason all she could think about was the odd poetry of the monster’s voice. She wracked her brains, trying to place where she had heard the low, rolling vowel sounds before.

The monster pointed at her head and spoke again.

The strange language conjured an image in Clara’s mind: a group of men, dressed in the same furs and bones she wore, huddled around a brazier, conjuring images from the flames. Sorcerers, she thought, recalling the Amber Brotherhood, back in the hills north of Altdorf.

He’s speaking the language of Ghur, she realised. It sounds like one of our rites.

Her thoughts evaporated as the giant dropped its victim and strode closer, narrowing its incandescent eyes.

The peasant flopped to the ground like a gutted fish, either dead or close to it, and the monster reached for Clara’s throat.

The old woman closed her eyes and prepared for death.

There was a snapping sound and Clara felt herself being lifted from the shattered stone.

She opened her eyes and saw that the giant had torn away her bonds and dragged her onto her feet. Seeing the creature’s face so close up was like seeing the world in the shards of a broken mirror. Its features were vaguely humanoid, but grotesquely oversized and brutally carved, like a crudely wrought totem, chiselled from a piece of green wood. The monster’s head was almost twice as large as Clara’s and its eyes were like emeralds, glittering in the dark. Clara suddenly found it hard to breathe. She caught the smell of raw meat on the monster’s breath and her legs collapsed beneath her.

The monster caught her easily in one hand and, with the other, snatched the stag’s head and held it up into the moonlight.

Clara dangled helplessly in the monster’s iron grip as it stared at the stag’s head. She realised that the thing was more than just a feral brute. There was a fierce intensity in its narrowed eyes and it studied the stag horns as though they were familiar.

The monster’s lips curled back from its teeth and it glared at Clara, as though accusing her of something.

‘I didn’t kill it,’ whispered Clara, knowing she was wasting her breath. How could she reason with such a thing?

The sound of hunting horns rang out and the monster looked over its shoulder, staring at the glittering host thundering down into the valley.

Clara gagged as the monster tightened its grip on her throat, then fell heavily to her knees as the monster dropped her, turned, and charged down the hillside after the other daemons, discarding the stag’s head as it vanished into the rain.

Clara watched the nightmarish shapes for a while as they thundered away from her. Then, as the noise and fury began to fade, she started to laugh. The peasants lay all around her, broken, bloody and dead; discarded like the remnants of a meal but, somehow, she was alive. How could that be? Why had they let her live?

It was only as her panic subsided that she noticed the terrible pain of her head wound.

Agony and confusion pooled in Clara’s mind as she dropped, senseless, into the mud.

Chapter Two

The god flew through a storm. It was fleet-limbed, weightless and snatching at the firmament. Its name was Kurnous and its fury was as bottomless as its hunger. Centuries passed, or perhaps seconds, as time and the cosmos fled before it, scrambling into burrows, cowering in dens and massing in great towers; screaming for mercy as Kurnous returned the world to a state of raw beauty. There was only hunter and hunted. There could be nothing else.

Then, something changed.

The god glimpsed a flash of silver – a blade emerging from a pool of pitch. Pain flashed in its chest, quickly followed by a dizzying rush of sensations: the breeze, whistling through the dark, and rain, needle-cold against its skin.

As the physical world began to bite, the Otherworld began to fade. Spirits and gods withdrew, taking decorous bows and giving their places to storm clouds and hunched, wind-lashed trees. The impact of hooves on turf shook through its legs and the god slipped into a dream. It dreamt that it was not a god at all, but a being of flesh and bone – a mortal sprinting through a tempest, with blood pulsing through its veins and air burning in its lungs.

The god dreamt that it was a simple king, called Orion.

The dream unnerved the god, but it charged on, down into a moonlit valley. Its subjects spiralled around it as it ran: faces and limbs, crumpled beneath divine hooves; the slow, the old and the weak, all crushed by their king. Kurnous’s heart drummed with the beat of their passing souls, bound to them by hunger and religion. Some of the spirits stayed with Kurnous, howling alongside the bodies of the living; waving spears of mist and blades of tempered moonlight. The god looked up and saw that the Otherworld was still there: a mantle of stars, overlaid with countless, bewildering constellations.

The air was filled with wonders, but as the god reached the valley floor it glimpsed something all too real. The landscape had been brutalised – defiled by the industry of mortals. They had built one of their vile halls: a squat, ugly fastness of chiselled stone and butchered trees. It guarded the end of the valley like a hulking boar, bristling with pennants and gilded with glittering casements. Kurnous’s pulse quickened, then, to the god’s delight, it realised its mortal subjects were already making for the stronghold, howling and screaming as they scrambled through the flood.

The god paused, grasping at the fragments of a dream and realised that the truth was this rainy hillside. The truth was this panting frame. He was Orion.

‘What’s happening to me?’ he whispered.

Lights flickered overhead, distracting him from his thoughts. At first, Orion paid them no heed, assuming that his friends, the spirits, were simply echoing his outrage with their incandescent flesh. Then he saw hunters falling. Not because of him, but because of arrows – arrows with steel heads that flashed through the lightning-charged air. Bloodstained nobles spun backwards across the grass, leaving a spray of rain behind them as they died.

Orion raised his horn and filled the valley with sound.

The hunters answered by racing even faster towards the structure, but the closer they got, the more of them that fell and the more Orion’s outrage grew.

Who would dare stand against the Wild Hunt?

Sharp heat flared across Orion’s chest and he stumbled – more from shock than pain. The rites of midsummer had lifted him beyond the petty concerns of flesh. What kind of sorcery could have power over him?

He slowed to a jog and looked down at his chest.

There was nothing there, but in his mind he glimpsed a flash of silver again. The image was brief, but it seemed to be a knife. He picked up his pace and ignored the pain. Kurnous was in his bones. He could still feel the god’s spirit, as real as the rain. He was invincible.

Orion had only gone a few more feet when the same sensation erupted in his chest. Along with the pain came something more potent: doubt. Was there something he had misunderstood? Something beyond the hunt? Something he had forgotten? Someone?

An idea crept into Orion’s thoughts – a terrible idea that he immediately tried to suppress. He saw an image of curling leaves, edged with copper. There was something awful about the image, something that filled him with dread. He crushed his doubt with a howl and charged on. The feel of bones, crunching in his fist, would set him right.

The hunters answered with ecstatic screams, delighted by his wordless command and, from somewhere up ahead, he heard his hounds, howling back at him, leading him through the dark.

On either flank of the charge were riders, mounted on pale, ghostlike steeds. Orion recognised his feral priests, with their tall, jagged masks and thin, spiralled horns. The one named Atolmis raised his horn and let out a long note, spurring the horses on. They rode so fast it seemed as though the storm had hurled them through the darkness. They tore ahead of the main group, crossed the final half-mile and crashed through the huddle of buildings around the keep.

Some of the outsiders were still racing towards a pair of huge gates, clutching belongings and livestock as they slipped and stumbled through the mud. Atolmis and the other riders tore through them, leaving spears embedded in backs and faces, before circling around to retrieve their weapons.

By the time Orion and the others arrived, the riders had already dragged their spears free and spurred their horses on, making for the quickly closing gates.

Arrows flew out to greet them, but Atolmis and the others moved with bewildering speed, jamming the hinges with their spears.

Seconds later, Orion arrived and smashed the gates apart with a delirious howl.

The hunt poured over his shoulders and flooded into a cobbled square.

Outsiders were waiting. Crowds of wide-eyed, white-faced men clutching scythes and clubs, huddled behind metal-clad soldiers with iron helmets on their heads, garish shields on their arms and terror in their eyes.

Orion was oblivious to these details as he bowled into them, sending shields and bodies clattering across the cobbles.

His huntsmen followed: lords and beasts, still snarling as they collided with the wall of shields.

Some of the outsiders buckled under the impact, but many held their ground, driven to heroics by fear.

Above this onslaught screamed diaphanous spirits, flooding over the battlements, hauling archers from the walls and casting them down onto the soldiers in the square.

Orion finally came to a halt, his way blocked by a crush of bodies and shields. He lashed out wildly, revelling in his rage. These people. This building. They were like white noise in his head. They were like a flaming brand, jammed into his skull. Everywhere he looked he saw perversion and constraint. They had brought order and artifice to the wildness of the forest; now he would bring the wildness of the forest to them. Wood, teeth and bones crunched beneath him and a glut of warm blood washed over his forearms as he jammed his spear into the wall of screaming faces.

Then, for a third time, pain knifed into his chest, accompanied by the flash of silver, but this time the feeling was different: final, somehow. He knew he would not feel it again.

Orion wrenched himself free from the flailing bodies and staggered back into an open space, trailing limbs and scalps as he reeled towards the gates.

He looked down at his muscle-lashed limbs, smeared with blood and soil. They looked utterly alien to him.

What’s happening to me, he thought again, looking back at the heaving throng and feeling another shadow of doubt. Something had changed. For a brief second, the spirit world disappeared and he saw the battle for what it was – a pitiful orgy of violence.

One of the outsiders had followed him and Orion saw his opponent clearly for the first time. Until that moment, he had seen prey and nothing more. Now he saw a panting, bloody mortal, desperate for life.

The warrior was taller than the others and clad from head to toe in links of metal, so that no part of his flesh was visible. His face was hidden behind a grilled, bucket-shaped helmet and he was holding a two-handed sword that was almost as tall as Orion. He wore the same gaudy colours as the other men, but the images emblazoned on his tabard were worked in far more detail and gilded with golden thread.

As he strode towards Orion, he called out in a deep pompous voice, levelling his sword at Orion’s face.

The words were gibberish but Orion guessed their meaning: this petty interloper was attempting to order him away from his own realm.

Orion’s doubt vanished, replaced by fury.

He tried to draw himself to his full height but, infuriatingly, his knee gave way and he dropped awkwardly to the ground. He cursed bitterly. How could such a thing happen to the spirit of Kurnous?

The outsider had a clear chance to strike, but he lowered his sword and waited patiently for Orion to rise, calling out another pompous command.

Orion’s anger spiralled as he realised the outsider had deliberately given him a chance, as though he were facing some pitiable cripple.

Rather than standing, as the man was expecting, Orion launched himself through the air, antlers first.

The pair of them rolled across the cobbles and the man howled in pain. One of Orion’s antlers had torn a hole through his chainmail and blood was rushing from his side.

Orion jammed the haft of his spear across the man’s throat, meaning to crush the life out of him, but the knight was faster, hammering the hilt of his sword into the side of Orion’s face.

Incredibly, Orion found himself on the ground again. He stood and looked down at his body. The image of bronzed leaves flashed into his mind again as he realised the green tint was fading from his skin. He backed away, shaking his head in horror. ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘It can’t be.’ But he could not deny that his body looked smaller; frailer, even. As the battle raged around him Orion began to guess the meaning of his dreams. He let out a howl of such fury that his opponent briefly lost his nerve, lowering his sword and taking a few steps backwards.

Orion launched his spear at the knight.

The man hacked down with his sword but Orion’s strength was too great and the spear gouged a deep wound in his chest.

The man rolled clear, clutching the wound. Then he collapsed onto the cobbles, loosing his sword as a fit of coughing overtook him.

By the time Orion reached him, the man was trying to rise. Despite the blood rushing from his chest, he was still refusing to accept defeat. Once he had made it to his feet, he wrenched his helmet from his head and turned his face to the stars, taking a deep, ragged breath. His agony had clearly done nothing to dampen his courage. He glared back at Orion, as determined as ever. His armour was torn to shreds and his pain was obvious, but he clearly did not intend to back down.

The force of the storm dipped for a second and Orion hesitated, struck by the bravery of the outsider. The man’s proud demeanour moved him somehow, reminding him of a world beyond the frenzied bloodlust of the hunt. He realised that since the moment he left the Oak of Ages, on Midsummer’s Eve, he had seen nothing with this much lucidity. Summer had passed in a blur of rage and bloodshed. He could recall nothing with any clarity. His pulse quickened as he wondered what he might have done in Kurnous’s name. Images of crazed hunts filled his mind. He glimpsed groves and meadows, torn apart by his rage – filled with maddened howls and butchered flesh. He saw proud, ancient spirits, begging him for mercy. Suddenly his actions seemed to be those of a lunatic. What had driven him to such a rage?

For a few seconds the two opponents faced each other in silence; a sliver of calm at the heart of the battle. Then Orion held out one of his clawed hands, drawing the knight’s attention to the carnage that surrounded them. The outsiders were being torn apart. It had taken a matter of minutes for the hunters to butcher almost half of them.

The knight turned, shedding more blood and almost falling as he did so. He took in the full horror of the scene, then he looked back at Orion with a frown, sensing that something was being offered.

‘Flee,’ snarled Orion, confused by his own generosity. The words felt odd as they left his mouth. ‘Leave my home. While you can.’

The lure of the hunt remained. Orion could feel its pull, like a powerful tide, demanding more violence and blood, but he realised to his shock that it was fading. He could refuse its call.

Orion’s words must have been unintelligible to the knight, but he nodded, recognising a rude kind of chivalry. The idea of retreat obviously appalled him, but as he looked back at the bloodshed he nodded with more certainty.

The entire weight of the forest was still pressing against Orion, urging him to butcher and kill, but the voices were definitely weaker; more distant.

The knight saw that his chance might soon pass. He gave Orion an awkward, crooked bow, that almost sent him toppling to the ground; then he turned to his men, calling out a command and waving at the broken gates of the keep.

The relieved outsiders did not need telling twice. They scattered like vermin, but the knight remained, lifting his sword from the ground and swaying as he turned to face Orion. He clearly did not allow himself the same chance of escape he had offered his men. Before he had taken a few steps though, blood loss overtook him and he fell to the ground again, slumping awkwardly against a pillar and gasping in pain. His sword clattered across the flagstones.

Some of the hunters stormed after the fleeing outsiders but most turned to stare at Orion, sensing the change in him. A column of dazzling spirits spiralled around his body like fireflies, lighting up his doubt-filled features, while others gathered around the fallen knight, intrigued by his bravery.

A white stallion barged its way through the crush, ridden by a solemn-faced Atolmis. He dismounted and stepped to Orion’s side.

‘Autumn is almost over,’ Orion said quietly.

The high priest gave no reply.

‘I’m dying,’ said Orion, looking at Atolmis with rage in his eyes.

As the echoes of violence faded into the night, the power of the hunt began to seep from Orion’s flesh. After months of headlong pursuit, he finally felt his heart begin to slow. Every bruise and scar suddenly screamed out for attention. Exhaustion, long held at bay by adrenaline, washed over him. He stumbled back against a wall as the celestial spheres began turning around him again, filling the stronghold with a strange lustre – a dazzling vortex of stars and gods that blinded him to everything else.

As the king gave in to his fatigue, his hold over the hunt slipped. The gore-splattered nobles looked down at their ruined bodies in horror, coming to their senses like sobering drunks. The glittering spirits dispersed, filling the sky with lights and taking the knight with them as they headed back towards the trees. The animals bolted, pounding across the cobbles and thundering off into the night.

Atolmis had dismounted and, as Orion swayed, on the verge of falling, Atolmis caught him and lowered him gently to the ground.

The crowd started to disperse as the asrai remembered that they had names, families and lives. Several of them collapsed, clutching at terrible wounds they had been unaware of until that moment; others staggered off into the rain with glazed expressions on their faces.

‘What have I done?’ asked Orion.

Atolmis and the other priests remained silent, watching him with featureless black eyes until sleep took him.

Orion awoke, bathed in autumn light. He looked up at tall, ivy-clad walls, struggling to remember where he was. Then, as he saw the knight’s bloodstained helmet lying a few feet away, the previous night came back to him.

He groaned. Every part of his body ached and as he looked down at his wounds he cried out. Where once there had been broad, ivy-lashed muscle, there was now a bruised, battered body that looked scarcely any different from that of a mortal. The emerald hue had almost vanished from his skin and his frame was a fraction of its former bulk.

Orion lay there on the cold stone, unwilling to rise and face the day. He saw nothing ahead of him but pain and loss. Then he noticed voices muttering, talking to him in deep, rumbling tones of disapproval. He looked around but the voices were from somewhere deep in his consciousness. They were familiar, and he found it oddly comforting to realise that they had always been there – he had just chosen this moment to listen. The voices urged him to rise and shrug off his fear. He was hearing the ghosts of his former lives, speaking to him from the heart of the forest – guiding him from the Oak of Ages.

He listened to them for a while; then something tugged at his memory – something from the previous night that stood apart from all the wildness and rage. He shook his head and willed the voices to be silent. Something had halted him in his tracks and it had seemed incredibly important. The idea needled at him. What had he seen, out there in the valley?

He rose and stretched his limbs, wincing at the cuts and grazes that covered them. He could no longer deny the truth. The year was ending and so was he. While he had abandoned himself to dreams of violence and godhood, his life had slipped away. His eyes widened as he allowed the idea to sink in. It was over. Already. Self-pity threatened to overwhelm him, so he focused on the mystery of the previous night. What had he seen?

Orion’s hooves clattered across stone as he staggered towards the gates of the keep. As he neared the shattered wood, figures sprang up to greet him. Atolmis and the other riders had watched over him during the night and they bowed at his approach.

‘My lord,’ said Atolmis, hastily gathering his things. ‘Do we hunt?’

Orion shook his head and barged past him, lurching out into the fields. The valley was grey in the morning light and the air was still.

Orion peered out into the gloom and realised that retracing his steps would be easy. There was a clear path of destruction, leading back up the side of the valley and into the forest. The hunt had left a trail of crushed grass, broken bodies, shreds of clothing and dark pools of blood.

Without a word of explanation, he hurried up the slope, staring at the ground as he went; desperately trying to recall what had made such an impression on him. What could have been striking enough to stand out amongst such madness?

The riders mounted their pale steeds and followed at a discreet distance, their calm, considered demeanour a sharp contrast to their manic charge of the previous night.

After a half an hour or so of fruitless searching, something finally caught Orion’s eye – a length of white stone, lying on the sodden grass. He felt a flash of recognition and dashed over to it, wrenching a tattered hood from near its broken base. It was made from the head of a stag.

Orion recalled everything in a moment – he saw the outsider, bound to the rock and wearing this grubby hood, but more importantly, he realised why the hood had disturbed him so.

‘Sativus,’ he said.

Hooves thudded up the slope behind him and he recalled his priests. ‘My lord?’ asked Atolmis.

‘He had faith in me,’ he muttered, staring in confusion at the ragged hood. ‘Why did I pit myself against him? Why did I hunt such ancient beings?’ He turned to face Atolmis and his voice became a snarl. ‘Why didn’t you stop me?’

There was no emotion in Atolmis’s black eyes. ‘I am here to serve. It is not my place to question you, my king. Besides, what would I have stopped? The rites of the summer gave you your purpose. Our songs filled you with the blood of Kurnous. He lives, through you. He hunts, through you. You have led us in his name, and all summer we have–’

‘I forgot myself!’ cried Orion, waving the hood. ‘I tried to bring the Brúidd to their knees. What kind of madness was that?’ His eyes darkened. ‘And I sense that I did worse things. How can I make amends?’ He waved at his scarred flesh, his words full of bitterness. ‘I’m dying and weak. What can I do now?’

‘You are far from weak, my lord. Your blood has cooled a little with the passing of summer, that is all. Kurnous is still with you. In fact,’ Atolmis looked up at the clouds, ‘you must be closer now to the gods than ever before. I imagine that, for you, the veil is already wearing thin.’

Orion followed his gaze and saw what he knew Atolmis could not: the air was indeed teeming with spectres. It took all his willpower to ignore them and keep his gaze fixed on the physical plane. He knew that, if he let them, the spirits would enrapture his soul again and the next time he awoke it would be in another ruined keep, or on a mound of butchered flesh, and he would be a little bit closer to death.

‘How long do I have?’

Atolmis was unruffled by his king’s fury. ‘You are immortal, my lord.’

‘My flesh is already wasting away. How long will I live, Atolmis?’

Atolmis dismounted and stepped to Orion’s side. Then he placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘My king, you have performed deeds others could not achieve in a thousand lifetimes. You have held a mirror up to your subjects and shown them the truth of what they are: proud, noble, but most of all wild.’ He leant close and lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Do you understand? You are more than you were – more than just flesh and bone; you are everything that defines us.’

‘And now you expect me to just waste away?’

‘No, my king.’ Atolmis’s voice was suddenly edged with passion. ‘This body is nothing. It needs only serve you until the winter solstice then, after the flames take hold, you will be free: no longer burdened by this physical vessel. Your bier will lift you from the temporal realm, to dwell forever in the Oak of Ages, watching over your people from the true heart of the forest.’

Orion sneered and threw the hood to the ground. After a few moments he looked up at the lowering sky. Luminescent beings stared back at him, separated from the mortal world by only the thinnest veneer of reality. Winged and majestic, they called his name, summoning him to their golden glades. They seemed to be mocking him.

‘Have I ever lied to you?’ demanded Atolmis, with more emotion in his face than Orion could ever recall seeing before. ‘Do you trust me?’

Orion stared back into the featureless black of Atolmis’s eyes and, after a few seconds his fury began to fade. ‘I trust you,’ he muttered, mirroring Atolmis’s gesture by placing a hand on his shoulder. ‘I always have.’

‘Then I will remain your guide, for as long as you need me.’ Atolmis dipped his head in a slight bow and stepped back.

There was something timeless about the high priest that eased Orion’s mind, but he had not forgotten the stag’s head. ‘How can I find Sativus, Atolmis? Where are his halls? I must make amends before I die.’

Atolmis shrugged. ‘All of the forest is his home.’

‘But how do I find him?’

One of the other riders, Sélva, muttered something and Atolmis glared at him.

‘What?’ demanded Orion, noticing Atolmis’s disapproval. ‘Speak up.’

‘The Mage Queen, my lord. She has often taken counsel from the Spirit King.’ Sélva’s voice was hesitant as he felt Atolmis’s furious gaze on the side of his face. ‘She must have some way of hunting him down.’

Orion reeled backwards, his face filled with anguish. Ariel. His immortal love. He had forgotten her. Despite everything they had shared, the hunt had entirely wiped her from his thoughts. Since the time of the solstice he had abandoned her to whatever fate threw her way.

‘The outsiders,’ he said, staring at Atolmis in alarm. ‘They’re leeching power from the ancient stones. They’re turning it against her!’

Atolmis smiled. ‘You killed them, my lord, every last one. Search your memory. You braved the Vaults of Winter. You destroyed the guardian of the Torr-Ildána. Then we returned you, victorious, to the Oak of Ages, where you were reborn again as Kurnous.’

He leant forwards, clearly excited by the memory. ‘At the time of the great conjunction, you summoned Luabh, Fuath and Druan and began the Wild Hunt, scouring the forest of its foes and freeing those of us who had become too weak to live.’ He closed his eyes, picturing the scene. ‘You tore them from the forest like a canker.’ He laughed. ‘The only threat was in the minds of your subjects. I never doubted you for a minute.’

Atolmis’s praise only added to Orion’s feelings of dread. He found that his priest was right, the memories were all there, cowering shamefully at the back of his thoughts. He saw the pitiful sight of the stone giant, collapsing to its knees in Dhioll Hollow, horrified by the destruction of its ancient ward. Why had he ignored its pleas? Such blind determination now seemed like madness. The giant had guarded the Torr-Ildána for thousands of years. Why would it have performed such a terrible duty if not for some great purpose? Orion shook his head, sensing that he perpetrated a great wrong.

He frowned. ‘Luabh, Fuath and Druan?’

Atolmis nodded, sombre-faced once more. ‘Your spirit guides, my lord – the hounds of Kurnous. You will see their kind again, when next you hunt.’

Orion nodded, recalling the hounds with a mixture of fear and affection. During the madness of the hunt, his soul would fragment, racing ahead of his flesh in the bodies of the hounds. They were part of him, he realised – the wildness of his soul in physical form. As he recalled the sound of their mournful voices, his fury returned and he looked across the corpse-strewn hillside to the gloomy borders of the forest.

He raised his chin and spoke to the morning breeze. ‘If weeks are all I have, then weeks will have to suffice. Before my time is done, the Spirit King will have faith in me once more. No flames will touch my flesh until I have undone the harm I have wrought. I will find Sativus.’

He stomped off through the long grass, levelling his spear at the forest. ‘I must speak with my queen.’

The forest had changed. Orion sensed it the moment he stepped beneath its eaves. Superficially, things looked as they always did at this time of year. Many of the trees had already shed their leaves, carpeting the ground with copper and gold, and the air was cool, damp and fusty with leaf mould; but, as Orion travelled further into the gloom, his sense of alarm grew.

‘What’s that smell?’ he asked, snorting with distaste. There was something sweet and foetid on the breeze – a thick, cloying stink that seemed to hang in the air.

Atolmis shook his head. ‘It smells like something rotting – a corpse, maybe.’

Orion strode on through the trees, wondering what kind of corpse could create such a stink.

For the rest of the morning he followed his nose, heading in the direction of the sweet smell. As he trampled through bracken and brushwood, he sniffed and prodded at trees, feeling increasingly more agitated. As he travelled deeper into the forest Orion saw that many of the trees were showing signs of change. Some of them were grotesque-looking hulks, bloated out of all recognition by lurid brackets of fungus and armies of teeming mites. Decay was part of life, but something about this was clearly unnatural. Clouds of lemon-coloured spores were drifting beneath the eaves and, as they alighted on Orion’s chest and arms, they left angry blemishes on his skin. During the fury of the hunt, he had barely registered the forest at all, but now he wondered at how alien it seemed. He had returned to an old friend and found he could no longer recognise its face.

After a couple of hours, Atolmis called out to him. ‘My lord, look.’

Orion turned and let out a grunt of surprise. Not far from where they stood was a small clearing, picked out of the forest gloom by a shaft of soft, russet light, peppered with tiny, drifting shapes.

‘What are they?’ muttered Orion, changing direction and heading for the clearing. ‘Spores, or spirits?’

As he neared the patch of open sky, Orion realised that the clearing reeked of decay. He had to hold his hand over his face as he crossed the final few yards and stepped out into the golden light.

At the centre of the clearing were the hulking remains of an old oak. Its hollow trunk was several feet wide but most of its branches were gone, so that it resembled an enormous, rotten barrel. As Orion crossed the clearing and saw the bark more closely, he realised that it was rippling and shivering with life. He peered closer and grimaced. The wood was riddled with grubs: pale, ghostlike things with fleshy, dimpled bodies that glistened as they caught the light. He looked up and saw that the shapes drifting overhead were more of the grubs, with broad, buzzing wings and barbed, needle-like tails. His sense of alarm grew. He had never seen such blight in the forest before. It felt like something alien had crept into his realm while he slept.

‘Slugs?’ muttered Atolmis, riding into the clearing with the other priests, but it was clear from his tone that he was as unnerved as Orion.

Orion scratched at the dead bark and cursed, immediately regretting his action. There was nothing but grubs beneath, thousands of them, writhing and oozing at his touch. As he watched in disgust, he realised that what he had taken for a large mound of them was actually the segmented back of one enormous creature. He was about to withdraw his hand when the lump of pallid-flesh burst out of the rotten wood and latched itself onto his chest.

The thing was as big as a hound and Orion laughed in disbelief as its weight sent him staggering back across the clearing.

His humour died as he noticed a dark trail of blood, flowing down his stomach from where the grub had latched onto his skin. He wrenched the thing free and hurled it to the ground. Then he strode forwards and slammed his spear into its flesh.

As the creature writhed and squirmed beneath him, Orion saw that it had left a moist, suppurated hole in his chest.

He turned to Atolmis with a quizzical expression but, before he could voice a question, a loud cracking sound filled the clearing and the stink tripled in strength.

The priests’ horses reared in alarm, almost throwing their riders, and Orion whirled around to see what could have spooked them.

The trunk had disintegrated as dozens of huge grubs wriggled and heaved themselves from the ground, some of them as big as horses.

Orion grabbed his spear just in time to defend himself.

The first of the grubs burst open on the spearhead, showering him with pale, jelly-like innards.

Fluid slapped against him and Orion cried out in disgust.

As he wiped the filth from his face, another one of the grubs enveloped him, smothering his face with its quivering bulk.

Orion staggered backwards and pain exploded all over his body. The flesh of the giant slug burned with the same acid as the spores he had encountered earlier in the morning.

He struggled desperately with the thing, attempting to wrench it away from his face as his lungs began to scream for air.

He glimpsed movement through the thing’s pale flesh, then he gasped with relief as it was hauled away from him.

Atolmis had pierced it with his spear and, as Orion crashed to the ground, trying to catch his breath, Atolmis wrenched his weapon free and stabbed the thing again.

Blubbery innards slopped across the ground but, before Atolmis could retrieve his weapon, another one of the creatures slammed into him. This one had enormous, tacky wings on its back, slick with mucus and filling the air with an angry whirring sound.

Atolmis toppled backwards beneath its weight and vanished from view as it smothered him.

Orion reeled as another grub slapped against him. For a while he could think of nothing but his desperate struggle to keep the grubs off his face. He lunged and stabbed, and soon there was a mound of torn flesh lying around him on the ground.

A chorus of alarm reminded him of his priests.

He whirled around to see they were huddled next to one of the largest grubs, howling and cursing, but holding their spears back.

Orion felt a rush of fear as he realised he could not see Sélva.

He rushed across the clearing and barged through the priests, groaning in disgust as he saw why they were holding back their spears. The grub had entirely enveloped Sélva. The horned priest was clearly visible through the creature’s translucent flesh, struggling desperately to free himself.

Orion shoved the others back and raised his spear. He singled out the end of the grub that seemed most likely to be a head and prepared to strike.

Before he could attack, the creature suddenly doubled in size, changing from milk white to a deep crimson.

Orion and the priests froze in shock as they realised what had happened. Sélva’s body had burst – disintegrated by the grub’s stomach acids.

It had digested him.

As Orion stared in horror, the sated grub lifted its bloated mass free and rolled away, leaving a trail of bloody slime.

Orion bellowed with rage and stabbed it repeatedly with his spear.

The others rushed to his side and did the same, covering the forest floor with chunks of hissing, acidic flesh, not caring where they punctured the bloated grub, knowing that Sélva was beyond harm.

Once they were done, Orion and the others backed away, clutching their spears and waiting for another attack.

None came, but the remains of the tree were shuddering as it prepared to vomit another creature from its roots.

‘Leave,’ snapped Orion, glaring at his priests, not prepared to lose another one. Then he turned back to the tree, grasping his spear in both hands and crouching low to the ground.

The priests had no intention of deserting their king, but as they readied their weapons the remains of the tree collapsed inwards, emitting nothing more menacing than a cloud of spores.

Quiet descended on the clearing, broken only by the heavy breathing of Orion and the buzzing of the smaller grubs, spiralling and banking through the air.

Orion remained crouched and ready for battle, staring at the slumped remains of the tree. ‘I knew it.’ He sounded dazed. ‘I knew that smell did not belong in my forest.’

Atolmis and the others stepped over to the remains of the bug that had consumed Sélva. They picked at the glistening mess in disconsolate silence for a few moments, then Atolmis turned to Orion, his face contorted by pain.

‘My lord, we must take him to the King’s Glade. We cannot abandon him to the Endless Vale.’

Orion was still staring at the remains of the tree. ‘What?’ He turned to see that all the priests were looking at him.

He spoke in a hoarse whisper, staring at the clotted lumps that had once been Sélva. ‘The Endless Vale?’

Atolmis nodded. ‘He gave himself to you, my king. Now his soul must be allowed to find peace. Only in your sacred halls will he find the forgetfulness he needs.’

Orion could barely recognise Atolmis’s voice, it was so choked with emotion. He delved into his past. The Endless Vale. The words triggered a memory, as much a sensation as an image. He recalled blinding, colourless patches of light punctuated by tall, black, serried ranks of shadow. The memory was sinister and illusive, like a half-recalled nightmare.

‘We’re no longer what we were,’ said Atolmis. ‘We’re no longer simply mortal.’ The other priests nodded in agreement as Atolmis waved at the surrounding trees, becoming more animated. ‘We can’t bind our souls to whatever rock or branch we choose. Even the Oak of Ages would not suffice. We would never escape our memories of the hunt. We would never forget what we did. We would join the ranks of the rootless dead. Sélva will only find rest in one place.’

Orion gave the tree one last wary glance, then he walked over to the priests and looked down at the bloody slop pooling around their feet. Grief welled up in him and he recalled the rider as he first saw him: powerful and strange – his guide to a new life. Without the priests he would still be a wandering mortal named Sephian.

He tried to hide his grief by speaking in harsh, gruff tones. ‘What exactly would you take, Atolmis?’ He waved at the pool of blood.

The priest looked wounded by his king’s tone, but he gave no reply, other than to drop on one knee and pluck something from the grub’s still-twitching carcass.

He held it out to Orion and the king saw that it was a narrow, spiralled horn – one of the pair that had previously crowned Sélva’s head.

Orion glimpsed the patches of light and dark again and realised that he knew where Atolmis was referring to. He had seen the Endless Vale. He stared at the horn for a while, unsure what to say, then the pain of his acid-scorched skin reminded him how urgent his errand was.

‘I have no time for detours.’ He waved at the autumn leaves. ‘The year is fading. I must speak to Ariel. I must know where Sativus hides himself before I am too weak to face him.’

The priests looked at each other in shock and Atolmis shook his head.

‘My king,’ he said. ‘We must not abandon Sélva. He joined his spirit to the Wild Hunt. He has committed violence in your name, this year more than ever. He will never know peace if we fail to perform the necessary–’

‘Take him where you will!’ Orion could feel the seconds passing through him like knife wounds. ‘I must leave.’

Atolmis gave a stiff nod, clearly holding back an angry reply.

Orion saw the hurt he had caused and regretted it, but he could think of no way to undo it. Sélva was dead. The thought hit him again with such violence that he thought he might vomit. Every death in the forest suddenly seemed to be his responsibility.

‘Perform your rites,’ he snapped. ‘Go where you must. I have to leave.’

Atolmis looked horrified. ‘Our purpose is to watch over you.’ He glanced at the horn in his hand. ‘If you will it,’ his voice faltered, ‘we will leave Sélva to his fate. If you think finding Sativus is so important, we must accompany you.’

Orion clutched his head. Everything seemed to be slipping away from him. For a few moments he stood there in silence, unsure what to do. He could not bear any kind of delay, but he needed his priests at his side.

‘My king?’ said Atolmis, after a few moments.

‘I will come for you when I’m done.’ Orion grimaced at his own decision. ‘Wait for me in the King’s Glade.’ He looked down at his spear, his face full of doubt. ‘I’ll find Sativus alone.’

Chapter Three

Finavar woke in the early hours. Moonlight picked out the shape of his brother, lying at the entrance to the cave, and for a moment he forgot everything. He opened his mouth to speak, then paused, remembering the truth. Even in silhouette, it was obvious that Jokleel’s position was odd. His head was tilted back at a hideously unnatural angle and his limbs were spread across the ground in an awkward jumble.

Finavar climbed to his feet and stood swaying in the dark. He was naked and as he stepped towards the mouth of the cave, the moonlight revealed how skeletal his body had become. His skin was stretched taut over his ribs and his hip bones gleamed like blades. The vertebrae of his spine were clearly visible. His hair – once a mane of flaming locks – was now plastered to his skull-like head in greasy, matted clumps.

He crouched next to the grey, waxy shape that had once been his brother and tried to arrange it in a more natural position. Then he sat and cradled Jokleel’s head, humming a gentle lullaby and attempting to shoo away the flies that constantly filled the cave. He had wrapped Jokleel in a ruddy shroud of leaves and berries in a vain attempt to disguise his unnatural end.

‘Soon,’ he whispered, to his brother’s frozen grimace. ‘Soon, we will be together.’

Finavar had retained enough sense to know that he could never take his own life but, after countless weeks without food, and untreated wounds all over his frail body, he knew that nature would soon take its course.

A sound rang out from the trees below and Finavar cursed. ‘Why won’t you leave us to die?’ He laid Jokleel’s mouldering corpse gently on the ground and crept to the cave mouth, scowling down through the treetops.

At first he could see nothing but shadows and the grey, rolling foothills of Drúne Fell; but then, after edging cautiously down the mountainside, he saw two small shapes snaking through the trees, watching him with tiny, button-bright eyes.

He cursed again, grabbed a stone and hurled it at them.

His aim was poor and the stone clattered harmlessly against a tree trunk, but the eyes vanished.

‘I have no need of guides,’ he tried to say, but his words became a gasp as he collapsed back against the rock, his pulse racing from the effort of throwing the stone. ‘Find a new master,’ he managed to say after a few seconds.

It took a few minutes for him to catch his breath; then he turned to climb back into the cave.

Another sound echoed across the rocks and he paused, peering down through the trees.

Finavar’s face paled as he saw a figure, sat beside a small brook. From this distance it was impossible to make the person out with any clarity, but when laughter rang out again, he realised it was a female voice. There was something familiar about the sound and he stared into the darkness, feeling a growing sense of dread.

As he watched, the figure shifted and there was a flash of light. It looked as though she were holding a mirror in her hands.

Finavar turned and looked anxiously at Jokleel’s remains, just visible within the cave mouth.

Then the laughter rang out a third time, sounding even more familiar, and he decided he would just climb a little way down the mountainside for a better look, then return to watch over his brother.

It was only as he climbed over the ledge and began to descend that Finavar realised how weak he was. His wasted arms could barely hold him as he reached for handholds and edged along ridges, and his legs trembled under his weight. The going was slow but he finally reached the forest floor without mishap, and crept through the trees towards the brook.

Someone was sitting by the edge of the water, clad in a ragged, hooded cloak and whispering furiously to herself. Every few moments she would touch her shoulder and laugh – a shrill, hiccupping sound that echoed through the darkness.

There was hardly any moonlight in the clearing but, every few minutes, she would turn an object in her hands and moonlight would flash across her face, revealing fine, imperious features and a knotted mass of silver hair. Her cloak was filthy and her eyes were sunken and wild, but her sneer of disdain was unmistakable.

Finavar gasped as he recognised the Lady of Locrimere. ‘Ordaana!’ he cried.

The noblewoman leapt to her feet, threw back her hood and held out the object in her hands.

Finavar saw that it was a long, silver knife. The hilt was clogged with dark lumps of soil, but the blade gleamed with an inner light, revealing a line of delicate sigils along its length.

‘Death’s-head,’ said Ordaana in a taut, brittle voice. She levelled the knife at Finavar. ‘I have been seen.’

Finavar cowered and looked over his shoulder at the slopes of Drúne Fell. He was so weak and confused that for moment he did not realise Ordaana was referring to him.

‘Who are you?’ she snapped, edging across the clearing with the knife still pointed at his face. ‘What do you want here?’ She glared at him as she approached, then looked back over her shoulder and called out again. ‘Death’s-head!’

Finavar held up his hands and stepped backwards. ‘I meant no harm.’ He turned to leave, then caught his foot on a root and collapsed to the ground.

Ordaana stared at him for a few seconds; then, as she saw his frail, naked body more closely, she laughed. ‘By the gods, I think you’re even more pathetic than I am. What are you?’

‘I’m Finavar.’ He climbed awkwardly to his feet, with his hands still held out before him. ‘I meant no harm.’ He tried again to leave.

‘Wait!’ Ordaana grabbed his shoulder. ‘Finavar?’ She scowled. ‘Don’t I know that name?’

Finavar’s heart sank. He had no desire to reminisce. Why had he not just stayed in the cave and waited for death?

Ordaana continued staring at him and he reluctantly nodded. ‘Yes, my lady, you know me. I am one of your subjects. I’m a shadow-dancer. Before it burned, Locrimere was my home.’

Ordaana blanched and let go of his shoulder. She tried, uselessly, to pat down her nest of silver hair and smooth out the tattered remains of her robes. Then she waved at Finavar’s emaciated body. ‘I took you for a wanderer, or a roaming seer.’ Then she narrowed her eyes and approached him again, pointing the knife at his narrow chest. ‘But why would I know your name? I was never in the habit of remembering my subjects.’

Finavar looked wistfully up at the distant cave mouth, sensing that he would not escape for a while yet.

Ordaana followed the direction of his gaze and flinched. ‘Is there someone else up there? Others from Locrimere?’

Finavar shook his head. ‘None that still breathe.’

This seemed to calm Ordaana and she continued interrogating him. ‘Why do I recognise your name?’ She stared at his face. ‘You even look a little familiar. Are you sure you’re just a lowborn?’

Finavar stared back at her, his eyes gleaming and wild. ‘Some of your subjects called me by a different name: the Darkling Prince.’

Ordaana’s eyes widened and then she laughed again. This time the sound was a thin shriek and her body shook with the force of it. ‘You? The mighty Darkling Prince?’ She hugged herself, trying to stifle her laughter. Her shoulders refused to cease their shuddering and Ordaana reeled away from Finavar, shaking her head violently.

As she whirled around the clearing, Finavar saw his chance and began to edge back into the trees.

‘Wait!’ Ordaana rushed after him and dragged him back into the clearing, still laughing at the sight of his wasted limbs.

‘Sit with me for a moment,’ she demanded, shoving him to the ground. ‘Amuse your lady once last time, bard.’ She dropped to the ground beside him and leant towards him with an eager expression on her face. ‘I sense that you’ve ruined yourself almost as effectively as I have.’

Finavar slumped against a tree, too weak to resist. ‘I have no tales left to tell, my lady.’

‘Tell me your own tale, I order it!’

Finavar shrugged. ‘I’m dying,’ he said, flatly.

Ordaana laughed again, rolling onto the ground. Then she sat up and clapped him on the back. ‘Oh, but you’ve lost none of your wit, versifier!’ She waved at his protruding ribs. ‘Do you think I can’t see that?’ She leant closer and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘But why? Tell me what happened.’ There was a note of hunger in her voice; desperation, even. ‘Tell me what has driven you to such despair. The last time I saw you, you were quite the young firebrand. Now you’re a withered vine. What changed?’

Finavar glanced up at the cave again.

Ordaana clutched his bony hand in hers. ‘Then I will let you leave, I promise. I will not deprive the mighty Darkling Prince of his final rest.’

Finavar sighed, seeing he would not escape without some kind of explanation.

‘My younger brother, Jokleel, lies in that cave. He’s dead. I killed him.’

Ordaana’s laughter seemed on the verge of overwhelming her, but she managed to stifle it and nodded for him to continue.

Finavar stared back at her, unwilling to share his shame.

Ordaana squeezed his hand tighter, until he could feel the bones grinding against each other.

‘What do you care of my story?’ Finavar’s eyes glittered in their sunken pits. ‘I’m a lowborn. What is my life to you?’

‘Tell me!’ hissed Ordaana, her lips curling back from her teeth.

Finavar closed his eyes for a moment. The last thing he wished to do was recount the tale of how he failed Jokleel, but he could see Ordaana would accept nothing else.

He began slowly, hesitating over his words, teasing the facts out like splinters. ‘We were foundlings. Jokleel had no parent but me.’ He licked his cracked lips and looked at everything but Ordaana’s face. ‘But when he was a child I would sing to him – tales of Orion; legends of Ariel’s Consort-King.’ He sneered. ‘I told him we could never be orphaned with such a noble being watching over us.’

Ordaana winced at the mention of Ariel, but Finavar continued without noticing, his voice sounding more confident as he warmed to his theme.

‘Jokleel had no love of violence, you understand, or war. He saw the things that I was blind to. He was in tune with the forest in a way I could never fully understand; but I ignored that, arrogant fool that I was, and taught him the Dance of Blades. I taught him everything that came so naturally to me, assuming it must be right for him too.’ He clutched his head in his hands. ‘I told him that we could prove our worthiness to the king by becoming the finest shadow-dancers he had ever seen.’ A bitter laugh fell from his lips. ‘My brother was born wise and I turned him into a fool.’

‘You said you killed him.’

Finavar kept his head in his hands. ‘Not with my own hands, but I killed him just the same.’

Ordaana looked vaguely disappointed, but nodded for him to continue.

‘We proved our skill. Many times. We danced like Loec Himself. Jokleel never truly revelled in it – the violence, I mean – but I kept him close and we made a name for ourselves. Others joined us and we finally achieved our goal.’ Finavar lifted his head from his hands and looked up at the mountain. ‘We were here at Drúne Fell when the Wild Hunt rode out. We were here by Orion’s side when he destroyed the outsiders. We proved our worth. And, in the midst of the battle, Jokleel received his reward.’

‘Your brother died in the battle? Is that what you mean? Is that all you have to tell?’ She threw Finavar’s hand back into his lap. ‘What tragedy is there in that? He made a heroic end of himself. He died covered in glory.’

‘There was no glory!’ Finavar glared at Ordaana. ‘Jokleel was butchered. Butchered by his own king. Cut down by the one person I raised him to trust.’

Ordaana nodded, slowly, and the sneer dropped from her face. ‘I see.’ She glanced up at the inky void of the cave mouth. ‘You sacrificed your brother to a false king.’

For a few moments, Ordaana relaxed. Her shoulders dropped and the taut, manic edge slipped from her features. She looked at Finavar with something that might have been pity.

They sat there in silence for a while. Then Finavar frowned. ‘A false king?’

‘Of course. We have all been lied to, Finavar, not just you.’

Ordaana sat back up and waved at her torn robes. ‘Who do you think drove me to this state?’

‘Orion?’

‘Ariel! The other half of that venomous lie.’ The sneer returned to her face. ‘Naieth and the “wise” have fooled us all into worshiping beings that have no love for us. What Orion did to your brother is just a glimpse of the disdain they have for us, Finavar. They care for nothing but their own immortality. We are cattle to them. Cattle. As long as they rule we are doomed. They will be the death of the asrai, if I do not stop them.’

Even from the pit of his despair, Finavar could not quite accept this. He began to protest but Ordaana spoke over him.

‘I know them, Finavar,’ she said. ‘I served that wretched queen for lifetimes. I know everything about her. Everything. And she cast me aside like an old gown. She ruined me on a whim.’

Finavar recalled what he knew of Ordaana – that she had returned from the court of the Mage Queen one summer, furious enough to burn down her own sacred glades. And she had never returned to serve again.

‘What happened?’ he asked, intrigued despite himself.

Ordaana took a deep, trembling breath. ‘I took a lover, Finavar. Is that such a terrible crime for a noblewoman? My drooling rake of a husband bedded half of Locrimere. Was it so awful of me to seek solace in the arms of another?’

Finavar could think of nothing to say. The protocols of the highborn were a mystery to him.

‘Ariel felt that my infidelity was indecorous; inappropriate for a lady of her court. Can you believe that? Indecorous!’ Ordaana’s voice rose to a higher pitch and tiny blue flames began to crackle between her fingertips. ‘My lover was a noble. More noble than Beldeas could ever be. More noble than that wretched queen, certainly.’ She stared into the past, recalling her lost love. ‘He was a prince from the north – a dancer, like yourself, but highborn and proud.’ Her voice grew husky with emotion. ‘And he loved me. Truly loved me. Loved me enough to risk everything. Loved me enough to give me a child.’

As Ordaana recalled her lover, the blue flame rippled up her arms and flashed in her tear-filled eyes.

Finavar gasped and backed away, but Ordaana was too lost in her tale to notice.

‘Can you believe that such a wanton creature as Ariel, who takes a new lover every spring, decided that I was unworthy of her?’ She reached out and grabbed Finavar’s shoulder again, holding him in place. ‘She banished me, Finavar. She sent me home like a scolded child, covered in shame. She made a fool of me. How could I show my face at court after that?’

‘And the fire?’

Ordaana flinched. ‘You know of the fire?’ She shook her head, remembering that Finavar was from Locrimere. ‘Of course you know.’ Her tone changed. The rage ebbed away, to be replaced by something else. Shame, perhaps. ‘Like your poor brother, I had been trained to serve.’ She held out a hand and for a second the whole clearing pulsed with blue light. It blazed from every leaf and stem until Finavar had to shield his eyes. Ordaana lowered her hand and the light faded. ‘I’m charged with the lifeblood of that witch, Finavar. Can I be blamed if my rage carries more consequence than that of a less noble soul?’

She hugged herself and rocked back on her heels. ‘Was it my fault that curses turned to flames in my mouth?’

Finavar nodded, relieved to see that the blue fire was fading from her flesh. ‘So you burned your glades in a fit of rage. It was Ariel’s rejection that–’

‘I didn’t know she was in there!’ Ordaana’s words spiralled into a thin screech and she no longer seemed to be addressing Finavar. ‘I didn’t know!’

‘Who was in there? Ariel?’

‘My daughter,’ giggled Ordaana, rolling into the mud at the edge of the brook. She thrust her hands into the ground and smeared her face with soil. Then she sat bolt upright and turned to face Finavar, her face completely expressionless.

‘I murdered my own child.’ She stared at him with mud dripping from her cheeks. ‘Do you see? Now do you see the real meaning of tragedy? Do you see what pain really is? I did not lie to someone, as you did. I set her home alight and she burned. I murdered her. My own blood. I murdered her, Finavar. I murdered–’ Her words stopped suddenly and her head dropped onto her chest.

For a moment, Finavar saw something beyond his own loss. As he watched Ordaana, trembling with grief and guilt, he felt a wave of simple pity. Then he frowned. ‘My lady,’ he said, softly.

She was too lost in her grief to hear, so he repeated himself a little louder.

‘My lady.’

Ordaana’s head snapped up like a marionette and she stared at him.

His voice faltered under the intensity of her gaze. ‘Ariel and Orion – you said they would be the doom of the asrai.’

For a few seconds she stared at him in silence. Then she spoke in a calm voice, as though nothing had happened. ‘Of course. Naieth has convinced us all that we need to be ruled, but we do not. The last hope of the asrai is rebellion – to throw down those deluded tyrants and rule ourselves.’

There was a rustling of leaves on the other side of the clearing and Ordaana rose to her feet. ‘Some guardian you are, Death’s-head. I could have been murdered a hundred times for all you care.’

What Finavar had mistaken for a bundle of sticks, walked across the clearing and bowed to Ordaana. He realised it was a forest spirit of some kind, no taller than a foot or so, glimmering with the same light he had seen flashing across Ordaana’s fingers. The thing’s name obviously came from the shape of its head – a long, bone-like sphere that wobbled on its brittle neck.

‘Have you found the route?’ Ordaana asked.

The spirit nodded, peering around its mistress to look at Finavar.

‘Do not concern yourself with that.’ She nodded at the trees. ‘Show me the way.’

The spirit still hesitated, looking at the knife tucked into Ordaana’s belt.

‘Yes!’ she said, losing her patience. ‘I have it! Now show me the way back.’

Finavar dragged himself onto his feet and lurched towards Ordaana. Now that she was about to leave he suddenly wished to hear more of her strange ideas.

‘You said you would stop them,’ he said.

Ordaana looked back in surprise, as though she had already forgotten him.

‘What?’

‘You said you would stop Ariel and Orion.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Did I?’ She placed a hand on the silver knife and pursed her lips. ‘Perhaps I said too much.’ She gave the spirit a meaningful glance, then stepped closer to Finavar and drew the blade.

He shook his head, realising he was far too weak to defend himself. He tried to back away but tripped and sent himself crashing to the ground again.

Ordaana stared at him for a moment then another violent burst of laughter rocked her body. ‘What does it matter?’ She laughed so hard that tears began to course through the mud on her cheeks. ‘Look at you. You’re already dead.’ She clutched her shoulder and, as quick as it came, the laughter ceased and she adopted a stern expression. ‘What does it matter?’ she repeated, in a much quieter voice.

‘Enjoy your death,’ she said and strode from the clearing, muttering to herself as the wooden spirit clattered after her.

Finavar lay on the ground until she had vanished from view, then he let out a long, relieved breath. He knew that Ordaana had been seconds away from killing him and, to his enormous surprise, he was glad she had not. He looked down at his skeletal body. Perhaps he wanted to live after all. But why? What purpose could he serve? Everything he believed had been proved wrong. He played through the conversation in his head and realised that in amongst the madness of Ordaana’s grief there was a kernel of truth. He tried to imagine a forest free of Orion’s tyranny; a realm in which his brother’s life would never have been taken so cruelly; a realm in which the asrai kneeled to no one.

He used a low-hanging branch to drag himself back onto his feet. Then he looked back up at the cave. Perhaps there was more that he could do than waste away in a meaningless vigil? Perhaps there was a better way to remember his brother’s death? He stood for a long time by the brook, considering Ordaana’s words and his place in the forest. His life was forfeit. Apart from Ordaana, nobody even knew he had survived the battle. The thought gave him a strange feeling of weightlessness.

As Finavar climbed slowly up the face of Drúne Fell, he was followed by the dawn, rippling and tumbling over the ancient stone, throwing back the shadows that had haunted him for so long.

Chapter Four

The garden reeked of death. As she crossed the final few miles, Ordaana had no need of her guide and strode ahead, leaving Death’s-head to clatter into the daemon’s strange, incipient realm alone.

It was early morning and, as the autumn light broke through the branches, Ordaana saw how busy Alkhor had been. A whole swathe of the forest was defying the season and springing into new life – moulded to the daemon’s will. Trees that should have been naked were bloated with vibrant fungal growths and twisted into narrow, looping avenues – all painted a lurid shade of purple and pink by tiny, cilia-like flowers. As Ordaana hurried beneath them, she saw that a pattern was starting to emerge: a vast, irregular spiral of rotting boughs, reaching out into the leafless forest and filling it with the daemon’s sweet-smelling contagion. Clouds of lurid yellow spores filled the air, settling on everything, so that Alkhor’s garden resembled the nightmare of a lunatic confectioner – grotesque, swollen mounds, dusted with garish colour and hazed by shifting veils of flies.

Ordaana stumbled to a halt, bewildered by the maze of yellow and pink. ‘What is he making?’ she whispered. Then she heard another sign of Alkhor’s presence: the harsh cawing of crows. She changed direction, hurrying down another coiled corridor, then paused, drawing her knife.

One of the mauve trees had split open, spilling its contents across the path. Its bark was moist and sponge-like, and it had fallen away to reveal a writhing mass of grubs: worms, maggots, lice and ticks, all pouring out of the dead tree and rippling across the ground towards her.

It was not the smaller bugs that made her pause; there was something else, something still trapped in the bark – a long, segmented abdomen, as thick as her waist and thrashing with hundreds of ink-black legs.

She edged closer, keeping the silver knife levelled at the rotten trunk.

The gleaming, armoured mound shifted and more of the bark tore open, sending thousands more of the smaller grubs tumbling to the ground.

Ordaana hissed and froze again, sensing that the thing was about to wrench itself free. Dozens more of its legs were now visible, rippling like grass in the breeze and clawing at the soft bark.

‘It will not harm you,’ came a voice from the air.

Alkhor’s voice, like everything else about the daemon, had changed. The crisp, refined tones it had adopted when masquerading as Aestar Eltanin were gone, replaced by a throaty gurgle, always on the verge of laughter.

‘Really?’ she muttered, her tone full of disdain, but she edged forwards just the same, keeping her knife drawn as she passed the mound of grubs and followed the sound of the crows.

The heart of the garden was a spiral of trembling terraces, all painted dazzling yellow by the clouds of spores and occupied by a lurid carnival of moving shapes. The trees themselves were in motion, heaving their crumbling bark in a convulsive dance; lurching this way and that like drunks struggling to hold down the contents of their stomachs. The circular terraces were also moving. The grassy mounds were rolling like a luminous tide, still forming into whatever outlandish shapes Alkhor had in mind. The air was a blur of spores and flies and, above it all, screaming their approval, were hundreds of saffron-coloured crows.

As Ordaana climbed and stumbled down the shifting banks, she heard another sound beneath the cawing of the crows: a cheerful, melodic humming that led the garden’s lurching dance. She peered through the yellow haze and made out a hulking shape, moving in circles through the centre of the mounds.

She held some of her torn robes over her face as she continued climbing, trying to shield her mouth from the clouds of flies that surrounded her. Then, as she reached the very centre of the garden, and entered the final circle, the air was suddenly clear. It was as though she had broken the surface of a yellow lake and emerged into the air. Alkhor was waiting to greet her and, for a moment, she wondered if she could force her eyes to take the daemon in.

Alkhor’s appearance had been gradually changing since it first appeared to her after the battle of Drúne Fell and now she could hardly recognise it. Her errand had taken her less than a week, but Alkhor had doubled in size while she was away. All pretence of humanoid form was gone. Alkhor now resembled one of the bugs she had seen falling from the rotten trees, only much larger, and built around a pockmarked grin and a pair of tiny, glassy eyes, embedded like cherries in an enormous, dough-like mound of grey. There was another change. As Alkhor grew in size, it seemed to be fading from the world. There was a vague, insubstantial quality to its flesh, and in some places, she could see through its skin to the trees on the far side of the clearing.

‘Ordaana!’ cried Alkhor, extending a pair of ragged wings from its back and lurching itself into the air.

The daemon’s trembling bulk hovered over her, borne by spindly, pounding wings that could not, in any sane world, have carried the weight of a fly.

‘I knew you wouldn’t fail me.’

Ordaana nodded, still struggling to look directly at the daemon, and brushed her fingers across the knife’s hilt. ‘The Eternal Guard took pity on me.’ She sounded vaguely embarrassed by her admission. ‘I told them I had been attacked by outsiders and had come to consult with Naieth. None of the lords were there, anyway. Prince Haldus has gone back to his mountains and his hawks, and Captain Eremon and the others are all racing around the forest with Orion. ’ She sneered as she chose her words. ‘They are basking in the light of Orion’s glorious rage.’

Alkhor nodded, still grinning and clearly not listening to her. ‘Have you seen how quickly things are progressing?’ The daemon drew its rusted sword and waved it at the maze of rotting trees. ‘See how my garden grows, Ordaana, see how it grows!’

Ordaana had to concede that the sight was impressive, if disgusting. ‘What is it?’

Alkhor laughed kindly. ‘Of course, you do not have the pleasure of knowing my grandfather – so how could you recognise him?’

Ordaana frowned and looked again at the ridged, purple tunnels that surrounded them. ‘Your grandfather?’

‘Of course! What subject could be more worthy of an artist’s time? And that’s just what a gardener is, Ordaana – an artist who works with life itself, in all its wonderful guises.’

The daemon saw that Ordaana was still confused and tried to adopt a serious expression. ‘Forgive me, I’m not being clear.’ The daemon waved at the bulging, tuber-like growths. ‘This is a portrait of my grandfather’s most beautiful feature – the part of him that illustrates his genius more than any other. The part of him that I first saw.’ Alkhor could contain its ebullience no longer. ‘It is his stomach, Ordaana! I am recreating the wonderful, intricate workings of his gut.’

Ordaana grimaced as she realised that the pinkish tunnels of trees were intended to resemble muscular, quivering orifices and curtains of mucus-lined membrane. Her own stomach turned and she felt an overwhelming urge to flee, but she steeled her herself and glared at the daemon as it landed beside her. ‘Is it time, then?’ She gripped the knife. ‘Are you ready to strike?’

Alkhor laughed. It was a rattling, liquid sound that shook the daemon’s entire bulk. ‘Strike? Oh, my queen, my eager queen; there will be no “strike”.’

Ordaana turned to face the daemon and the awful absurdity of her position suddenly struck her. She was talking tactics with a winged, bloated monster in a purple, stomach-shaped garden filled with groaning trees and whirring clouds of flies. Alkhor’s mirth seemed quite an apt response and she began laughing too. Great spasms shook her body and tears poured from her eyes. ‘Why not?’ she laughed. ‘You have a stomach-shaped garden – what more could a general need?’

Alkhor’s enormous face lit up, delighted by Ordaana’s joke. ‘Exactly!’ The daemon gasped, struggling to speak for laughing. ‘An army marches on its stomach!’

The daemon rolled onto its back and Ordaana slumped next to it, laughing just as violently with tears pouring down her cheeks.

After a few minutes, the two of them fell quiet and Ordaana’s face locked in a dazed grimace.

Alkhor was oblivious to her pained expression and continued speaking in cheerful tones. ‘The knife is just the first part of the puzzle, my queen.’ The daemon spread its ragged wings. ‘It may look impressive, but it has taken the last of my strength just to begin this haven. I’ve barely started and even now I can feel myself being hauled back to the palaces of my grandfather. All you see here is a fraction of his beauty, Ordaana. A fraction! This will be my greatest creation, but it will take time, my queen.’

Ordaana’s stomach turned again ‘You’re a messenger of the Dark Gods – immortal and all-powerful. Surely you mean to crush Orion,’ she gripped the silver knife, ‘and let me deal with his simpering queen.’

Alkhor reached out with one of its small, flaccid limbs, flopping a claw on Ordaana’s shoulder. ‘You are sweet, my queen, but I am far weaker than you imagine. What little power I have is being used just to hold me here. You must understand, my true home is with my grandfather, in that most heavenly of gardens. It was only the enchantments of the tree witches that fixed me beneath those old stones and now, thanks to your curse, Orion has unlocked me from their prison. My ballast is gone, Ordaana. Left as I am I will soon fade completely from your world.’

Ordaana gripped the daemon’s claw, noticing how easily her fingers sank through the blubbery flesh. ‘You must not leave!’ she cried, staring into the daemon’s glinting eyes. ‘You promised me! You promised me revenge!’

Alkhor’s face rippled into a grotesque parody of concern. ‘You will have your revenge, my queen – just not yet. While I remain here, in this little paradise, I can cling to life a little longer, but for me to do any more, there is something you need to help me with.’

‘Anything!’ cried Ordaana. ‘What must we do?’

Alkhor chuckled. The sound was like an underground stream, gurgling over rocks. ‘We must cement our union. We must start a family, my queen. Then I will know you are true. Then I will know I can trust you with my secrets.’

Ordaana backed away, staring at Alkhor in horror.

Alkhor looked away, adopting a coy, coquettish expression. ‘Oh, my queen. How sweet of you! No, I don’t mean that. Not exactly, anyway.’

For a while, Alkhor could do nothing but laugh. Then, once it was calm, the daemon nodded at the silver knife in Ordaana’s belt. ‘Our family will begin with a simple cut, Ordaana.’

‘You want me to cut you?’

Alkhor grinned. ‘If you would. I must remain here if I am to cling on to your mortal realm, my queen, I must finish my work, but I am so weak. As this garden spreads, Ariel’s fawning lickspittles will discover it and try to prune it back. I need to have absolute faith in you, Ordaana. I will need you to lead my children! You will be my most trusted servant. My proctor!’

Ordaana looked mystified. ‘Children?’

Alkhor giggled. ‘As we spread our delicious contagions, our brood will grow. We will garner children of the most delightful perspicacity. They will bring order and logic to this wilderness. They will create, codify and count, my queen; create, codify and count!’ The daemon reached out with one of its withered limbs and stroked Ordaana’s face. ‘Tell me: why do you think I sent you to retrieve the knife?’

Ordaana grimaced at Alkhor’s touch, but resisted the urge to flee. She shrugged. ‘We used it to curse Orion. The curse was successful and Orion freed you from your prison. Now that the curse is no longer needed, you wish to have the blade back.’

Alkhor shook its head. ‘There was more to it than that, my queen. I placed a part of myself in that blade.’ The daemon pointed at the intricate glyphs that ran down its length. ‘Those characters are beyond translation but, in the tongue of my grandfather, they spell my name.’

Ordaana raised an eyebrow.

Alkhor grinned. ‘My name, Ordaana; even an innocent like you can understand. It has the power to part the molecules of my flesh; it can touch me, in a way no other weapon could.’

Ordaana was about to ask a question when Alkhor reached down to its sagging gut and lifted a roll of fat, revealing a glistening lump of purple intestines.

‘Cut a piece,’ gurgled the daemon. There was a repugnant smirk on its face.

‘What?’

‘Cut a piece free,’ giggled Alkhor, reaching into its own bowels and wiggling the mass of tubes. ‘See what happens.’

Ordaana shook her head in disbelief. Then, feeling a sudden hatred for the daemon, she decided to do as it requested.

She raised the knife, stepped forwards, grabbed a warm, sticky loop and sliced it free.

Oily blood rushed over her hand and she hissed, hurling the chunk to the ground.

‘Thank you, my queen,’ said Alkhor in a husky, affectionate voice.

The daemon lowered its gut back into place and shooed Ordaana away from the piece of meat.

She did as she was instructed and began to ask a question.

Alkhor silenced her with a raised claw and hunched over the piece of intestine. With a muttered oath, the daemon took its pitted, iron sword and placed it across the tube, squeezing more blood from it with the weight of the blade.

Ordaana was mystified by the daemon’s actions but, as Alkhor continued to mumble, clouds of spores began to spiral overhead, forming a lurching, yellow tornado that trailed down the blade of the daemon’s weapon and surrounded the lump of viscera.

Ordaana’s robes began to ripple and snap, caught in a breeze that had sprung from nowhere. She edged back towards the daemon, sensing that something momentous was about to happen.

To her disappointment, nothing did.

Alkhor continued muttering, and the spores carried on circling, but nothing else changed.

Minutes passed and Ordaana grew impatient.

‘What are you doing?’ she snapped, stepping closer to the daemon.

Alkhor gave no response, still hunched over the bloody lump.

Ordaana tried several times to get the daemon’s attention, but it was useless. Alkhor seemed to have slipped into some kind of trance – muttering and burbling to itself like a drunkard.

Ordaana’s rage grew and she clawed at her tattered robes.

Finally, as the morning passed and the afternoon wore on, Ordaana’s exhaustion overcame her. She sat down, leant against one of the bloated trees and stared at the daemon in disbelief. What kind of lunatic had she bound herself too? How could Alkhor grant her revenge? It was a giggling moron, playing with its own innards like a child with some dolls.

Sleep eventually washed over her, but at various points in the night she woke to see Alkhor, still hunched over the piece of intestine, its face underlit by a flickering yellow glow and its toothless mouth spread in a manic grin.

Finally, in the deep watches of the night, she was woken by a loud crashing sound and a hiss of escaping air.

Ordaana lurched to her feet, holding the knife out before her, wondering for a moment where she was.

She saw the great bulk of Alkhor, slumped on the ground, drooling and staring at the spore-filled heavens, exhausted by its magic. The daemon was insensate and staring at the sky. Its wings were crumpled awkwardly beneath its back and the hissing sound came from somewhere between its folds of flesh.

Ordaana climbed to her feet and looked around. The mauve of the garden looked even more surreal drenched in moonlight. ‘What am I doing?’ she muttered, looking back at Alkhor. ‘How can this thing grant me revenge?’

She stepped closer, noticed movement on the ground and stooped to investigate.

‘Isha preserve us,’ she gasped.

Lying next to Alkhor was a tiny, panting daemon, no bigger than a rat. It was made of glistening, white flesh and looked up at her with lidless, black eyes that were a perfect match for Alkhor’s; but where Alkhor resembled an enormously obese grub, this was part canine and part soft, slimy gastropod. There was a far more profound difference, though. Where Alkhor was ghostlike and indistinct, this slug-like creature was horribly present. There was a physicality about it that made it even more grotesque than the enormous hulk that lay next to it. As it squirmed and shuffled in the mud, there was no denying that the tiny daemon was as much a part of the world as its bed of rotting leaves.

For a moment, Ordaana saw the daemon as it truly was – a repulsive little lump of fat and claw with a mass of tentacles for a face, but then, as she considered her part in its creation the present and past became jumbled in her mind. As she stared at the pathetic little creature, she realised it was smiling at her. The smile triggered something in her memory and then she began to see it as something else; something she had long dreamt of.

‘Alhena,’ she breathed, her eyes wide with astonishment. ‘My child. I thought I’d lost you.’

As Alkhor gurgled in the darkness, Ordaana scooped her new offspring into her arms and held it tight, her slender body rocked by deep, heaving sobs of joy.

The white, blubbery lump nestled in her arms and her skin began to blister at its touch, but she was oblivious, smiling blissfully as she crushed it tighter to her chest.

‘I will never let you die. Whatever happens. I will never let you die.’

Chapter Five

They entered the grove at midnight, handmaidens, twelve of them, dressed in sombre colours and holding flaming bundles of birchwood. As they stepped from the trees and crossed the royal dais, moonlight revealed robes adorned with berries and pressed flowers, and faces hidden behind masks, carved to represent forest spirits. A ghostly carnival of animals seemed to be gathering in the darkness: boars, wolves and ravens, their features rendered in bold, angular lines. They met in silence at the centre of the dais and held their torches over a mound of ferns and copper-coloured leaves. As the flames lit up the heap they revealed a pitiful collection of objects: broken arrows, single shoes, remnants of bloodstained clothes and cracked, wooden masks.

Once the twelve had assembled they turned to face a towering mountain of bark and shadow, looming over one end of the clearing: the Oak of Ages. A white-robed figure was standing in the arch of its roots, watching in silence as they took their places.

One by one, the torchbearers raised their brands and began to hum. The sound was a gentle drone at first, but it quickly swelled in volume and complexity, becoming a roaring, wordless threnody, filled with mourning and pathos.

As the sombre chorus climbed towards a crescendo, the figure in white raised its arms and the sound tripled in volume, shaking leaves from the trees and causing the torches to sputter and snap.

The melody reached its climax and drew the figure in white from the tree. Ariel drifted, smoke-like through the air and took her place in the circle. She wore no mask, but she had black tears painted on her pale cheeks and her hawkmoth wings glittered with dew and spiders’ webs.

The final strains of the music died away.

‘Lord of the Forest,’ said Ariel, addressing a handmaiden in pale blue robes and a fox-shaped mask. ‘What would you ask of us?’

‘I ask only that you protect,’ replied the handmaiden. Her mask was designed in such a way that it covered her ears, nostrils and mouth, and when she spoke her voice sounded flat and unnatural as it resonated through the wood.

Ariel repeated the question to each of the twelve and received the same answer each time. All of them had their ears blocked and they spoke in dull, loud tones.

Ariel dropped to one knee and lifted a torn dress from the mound of objects. ‘And what if we are sundered from our souls?’

The twelve handmaidens answered in turn, placing their flaming brands into the mound as they spoke. ‘We will bind you to the trees. We will bind you to the earth. We will bind you to the air. We will bind you to the lakes. We will bind you to the pools. We will bind you to the birds. We will bind you to the grass. We will bind you to the leaves. We will bind you to the roots. We will bind you to the beasts. We will bind you to the flowers. We will bind you to the hours.’

As each of the torches dropped into the mound, the flames grew, until, after a few moments, Ariel and her handmaidens were forced to step back.

Ariel took the hands of those either side of her and the others followed suit, until the whole circle had linked hands. Then she looked up at the stars and spoke again. Her voice became less formal and it was clear she was no longer simply reciting a prayer. ‘Bravest of friends, the slopes of Drúne Fell will always ring with the sound of your final words. We will hear your breath on the summer breeze and see your tears in the morning dew. In the gossamer and in the gloaming we will see your faces. While the asrai endure, you will endure. While there are trees to grow and a sun to shine, your sacrifice will never be forgotten. Whatever the manner of your death, we will not abandon you.’

As the word ‘endure’ left Ariel’s lips, the flames pulsed brighter and smoke plumed overhead.

It quickly became apparent that it was no ordinary smoke. As it rose from the shoes and broken weapons it fragmented, spiralling in a dozen different directions and paying no heed to the breeze. As the flames raged higher, the smoke’s true nature was revealed.

‘The lost of Drúne Fell.’ Ariel’s voice was filled with awe as a host of shadowy figures gathered above her. Dozens of them were drifting through the darkness. Their bodies were represented by only the most vague outlines, but their souls flickered, as bright as cinders on the breeze. As they rolled and tumbled through the air, Ariel caught glimpses of their faces. Some were familiar and some were unknown, but all were filled with gratitude.

‘Let the Binding begin,’ she said, lowering her head.

The handmaidens renewed their song, but this time it was laced with the notes of a new, less morbid tune. It spoke wordlessly of eternal peace and the endless beauty of the forest.

The shadowy figures responded by rising higher and drifting away from the flames, heading towards the enormous oak at the edge of the royal dais.

As the ghosts neared the tree Ariel joined her voice to the chorus and the flames blazed even brighter, throwing back the shadows and revealing the dead as they once were: noble young warriors and powerful, beautiful handmaidens. At their head was a proud young prince, dressed in an elaborate costume of eagle feathers and luxuriant, flowing hides.

Ariel’s painted tears were smeared by real ones as she recognised Lord Salicis – a brave captain of her Eternal Guard. He bowed his head in gratitude as Ariel guided him towards the Oak of Ages. She could feel his soul crying out to her in relief as he led the ghosts to the sanctity of the tree. She called on every realm of the forest to reach out and mark their passing. ‘Watchers of the Northern Sentinels, guide them home.’ As she spoke, the stars overhead rippled, as though seen through water. ‘Lords of the Crags, guide them home.’ Again, the air was filled with a strange lustre as her subjects sent their prayers. ‘Ladies of the Crystal Mere,’ continued Ariel. Then, as she named the southern reaches of the forest, she began to frown. Her words dragged power from the trees, but it was strange. The streams of magic were laced with a gaudy, saffron mist. The ghosts of yellow spores eddied around her, gleaming in the moonlight. Her frown deepened as a sweet, cloying aroma drifted from the shadows. ‘Guardians of the Wildwood,’ she tried to say, but her words were mumbled and confused.

Then her voice stopped dead.

The chorus faltered and the masked figures around the fire looked up in surprise.

‘My queen,’ said the figure in the fox mask. ‘The Binding is not complete.’

The spirits began to disperse, drifting across the grass, losing their way without the beacon of Ariel’s voice.

‘Something is in the forest,’ said Ariel, quietly.

‘My queen?’

Ariel looked up, her face drained of colour. ‘Something is here, Naieth.’

The singing ceased completely and the noblewoman at Ariel’s side looked up in alarm. ‘You must complete the rite, my queen. They will be lost.’

Ariel shook her head and staggered away from the fire, looking at the edges of the clearing as though expecting an enemy to emerge from the shadows. She looked up at the ghost of Salicis, her eyes glittering, and was about to speak to him, when a new sound filled the Council Glade.

Salicis began to scream.

The sound was like knives on stone.

The handmaidens reeled away from the fire, discarding their masks and clamping their hands over their ears.

The young noble clutched at his spectral robes as though they were burning him and his limbs started jerking and thrashing, as though caught in a powerful wind. At the sound of his cries, the other spirits began to wail, clawing at their faces and grasping at the air.

Ariel watched in disbelief as the funeral rites descended into chaos.

The spirits floating overhead pulsed with sickly, yellow light and began to fall, hitting the ground with a series of heavy thuds.

‘They live,’ gasped Ariel as she saw how tangible Salicis’s body had become. His blissful, diaphanous face was gone, replaced by an ashen, bloodstained grimace.

‘No,’ replied Naieth, dashing to Ariel’s side. Like some of the others she had discarded her mask and she stared at Ariel with fear in her eyes. ‘They do not.’

As the bodies continued thudding to the ground, Ariel saw that their eyes were clouded and white, and their wounds were puckered and dry.

Ariel watched in horror as Salicis stood on trembling, broken legs and screamed even louder, sensing that the peace he almost attained had been snatched from him. His wounds were dreadful enough, but Ariel noticed something else as he lurched across the grass, back towards the funeral fire. As the firelight washed over him, Ariel saw that growths were swelling from his torso and limbs – grey, spongy discs, like brackets of fungus.

‘We must destroy them,’ cried Naieth, grabbing Ariel’s shoulder. ‘My queen, they cannot be allowed to defile the sacred glade!’

Ariel shook her head as the undead warrior staggered towards her. ‘We must bind them to the Oak of Ages. Their deaths were unmarked. We can’t just–’

One of the handmaidens cried out in horror as Salicis reached her. She had reached out to comfort the screaming corpse but it immediately threw her to the ground, pummelling her face with the hilt of its broken sword and screaming even more wildly.

Another of the handmaidens raced to help, but within seconds a whole mob of the corpses had piled on her, wrenching, stabbing and howling as they tore her apart.

‘My queen!’ screamed Naieth. ‘We must do something!’

Ariel shook her head, horrified. She held one of her hands aloft and the ground erupted, filling the air with a forest of crumbling roots.

‘Bind them to the earth instead!’ she cried, directing the roots to the front row of spirits and enveloping them in knotted tendrils.

Every one of the nobles was a powerful spellweaver. They were Ariel’s closest handmaidens and at her command they raised their palms to the sky, summoning a tornado of coloured growth, tearing magic from the earth and turning the Council Glade into a maelstrom of thrashing tendrils.

Hundreds of roots crashed into the corpses and dragged them to the ground. There were more falling all the time though, and as fast as the handmaidens could weave their spells, more of their fallen kin slammed to the ground and staggered towards them, each one more mutated than the last.

Ariel moaned in horror as another handmaiden was dragged into the mass of wailing spirits. They were so incensed by their abandonment that they had no idea they were butchering their own kind. Their blank eyes rolled in horror and fear as they crushed the life from the handmaiden.

The combined effort of the spellweavers was now hurling dozens of the undead onto the ground, but the violence of the spell had torn the clearing apart. Many of the corpses tumbled into chasms that opened up from nowhere.

The surviving handmaidens drifted up into the night sky, still weaving roots as they rose.

‘This is an abomination!’ cried Naieth, still at Ariel’s side. ‘We have to stop them!’

Ariel closed her eyes for a second as she considered the significance of her next command.

‘Drive them into the fire!’ she cried, her voice shrill with pain. ‘Destroy them.’

The handmaidens responded immediately, lassoing the spirits and hurling them onto the flaming mound, turning it into a funeral pyre.

The screaming doubled in volume as the flames took hold, but Ariel and the handmaidens were resolute, flinging their brothers and sisters to a second death.

The bodies caught like kindling and flames erupted into the night sky.

‘Burn them!’ howled Ariel, her voice hitching as she saw Salicis’s body collapse in the fire.

The loss of their sisters drove the handmaidens to a vengeful frenzy and the tide finally started to turn. Within minutes, they had dragged half of the undead warriors into the flames, tearing the glade apart as they cleansed it of screaming dead. Finally, as the last of the spirits smashed into the fire, filling the night with sparks, the handmaidens dropped to the ground, exhausted and wide-eyed.

Ariel fell to her knees, trembling with shock. The glade was unrecognisable. Where once there had been a perfect circle of grass, there was now a brutalised mess of churned earth and ragged trenches. The fire was still blazing, drenching the scene in a hellish, bloody hue. As the firelight flickered across the upturned soil, it revealed gruesome remnants of the spirits – limbs and organs, glistening on the ground like a hideous windfall. To Ariel’s horror, she saw that some of the body parts were still making a pitiful attempt to reach the Oak of Ages. Some of the severed limbs were dragging themselves across the ground, like clumsy, spasmodic snakes.

Seeing that Ariel was too dazed to react, Naieth ordered the handmaidens to gather up the remnants and throw them on the fire. Then she hurried to her queen’s side and took her hand.

‘What happened here? What did you see?’

Ariel continued staring at the carnage for a moment; then she recognised she was being addressed and looked at Naieth.

‘What?’

‘My queen. You saw something, just before the spirits turned against us. What was it?’

Ariel shook her head in confusion. Then her eyes widened as she recalled the moment before the battle. She whirled around, staring at the surrounding trees.

‘Something has been born, Naieth.

‘It’s the Old Enemy. The Plague Lord. He’s here again.’

Chapter Six

A doe paused at the centre of clearing, draped in autumnal gold. Sunlight bled through its slender frame, causing its outline to glimmer and shift. It looked like a piebald ghost, barely discernable from the copper-clad trees. Steam plumed from its nostrils as it lifted its head and looked warily at the shadows, its body taut with fear.

Finavar was a few feet away, crouched in the upper branches of an oak, silently training an arrow on the animal’s flank. He had remained motionless for nearly an hour, confident from the tracks below that his prey would return. His chest was bound with scraps of old bark and he had joined his spirit to that of the oak, allowing his lungs and heart to slow, keeping time with the slumberous pulse of sap, winding its way through the ancient trunk. He was one with the tree: sombre, patient and powerful. It was only as he tried to draw back the arrow that he remembered the true state of his body. His arm shook and his fingertips burned as he prepared to fire.

The doe looked directly at the oak, sensing danger.

Finavar looked deep into the doe’s enormous eyes, preparing to let the arrow fly, then he recalled the face of his brother.

His thoughts slipped back to Drúne Fell, and his final goodbye.

He had laid Jokleel out on a bed of leaves by the brook and dressed his remains in an autumnal shroud. He had woven moss into his hair and smeared the juice of hawthorn berries across his sunken cheeks. He had sung the tale of Jokleel’s short life with tears streaming down his face. Then he had packed his brother’s hands full of earth, so that his flesh would remain bound to the forest; not doomed to wander through the underworld, searching endlessly for a soul.

Finavar had waited until the sun was at its zenith, so that Jokleel would leave no shadow behind when he entered the afterlife, then he lit a spark in the leaves and stepped back to watch the flames unfurl themselves across his brother’s skin.

‘To the forest, a gift,’ he whispered, trying to steady his voice. ‘A guardian, tireless and true. A soul of purity and wisdom. A child born of your roots and…’

His words had trailed off as the fire took hold. It had seemed, for a second, as though Jokleel had raised his head.

Finavar panicked. What if he was wrong? What if Jokleel had only been sleeping? Don’t be absurd, the logical part of his mind had replied. The boy’s dead. His flesh has been rotting for weeks. But Finavar could not shake the idea that he was burning his brother alive.

As the flames reached higher, the bed of leaves began to collapse and the body had shifted again, with a sudden, jerking motion.

Finavar had howled in fear and leapt forwards, reaching into the flames. The brittle, autumn leaves had already made a fierce blaze and he had gasped as pain exploded across his hands and forearms.

The heat had been too great and Finavar had lurched back from the fire, thrusting his arms into the brook and collapsing into the mud at exactly the same spot where Ordaana had fallen.

As he looked back at the fire he had seen Jokleel’s body jerking and shifting in the heat.

‘Jokleel!’ he had cried, reaching out with his throbbing fingers.

The fire was short-lived. Jokleel’s slight corpse could not sustain it for long and it soon began to die down, spitting and hissing as it lifted the fat from his bones.

Once the flames failed, Finavar had climbed to his feet and stared at the scorched remains. The momentary madness passed and knew he had done the right thing. He had muttered a few more words of prayer, committing Jokleel’s spirit to the trees and the earth. Then he had stooped and picked up a lock of hair from the ground, kissing it as he made a final, binding promise to his brother.

The doe bolted, snapping Finavar back into the present.

He cursed as the animal disappeared from view. ‘I must stay focused,’ he said. The words fell from his cracked lips in a hoarse whisper. After weeks without food, his thoughts were vague and unruly. He knew that he must eat soon, or his promise would die with him, but it was so hard to keep his mind in one place.

He dropped from his perch, staggering as he landed.

The sound of his fall disturbed something behind him and Finavar’s instinct threw him around, his bow raised.

A long, sinuous shape darted through the grass.

Finavar loosed a shot, mouthing a charm as he did so.

To his surprise, the shot was true and a rat rolled across the ground with the arrow through its side, coming to a halt a few feet away.

Finavar closed his eyes in relief, then begged the rat’s forgiveness as he dropped to his knees and snapped its neck.

Along with the bow, Finavar had salvaged a sword from the battlefield and he used it now to skin the animal, talking to the rat as he did so. He explained that he would waste no part of its flesh. Then he ate the animal raw, grunting hungrily as the stringy, still-warm meat slipped down his throat. As he ate, he recalled the horror of the battlefield. He had returned looking for weapons so that he could defend his brother’s corpse from scavengers, but he fled almost immediately, overwhelmed by the sight of so many corpses. Between them, Orion and the outsiders had turned Drúne Fell into a slaughterhouse.

Once he had devoured everything he could, Finavar cleaned the rat’s skin with his knife and draped it over a branch to dry. Then he spread the sticky bones across the grass, knowing that others would find sustenance in them after he had gone.

Finavar could not remember the last time he had eaten and he felt a rush of energy as the rat’s spirit mingled with his. He could have found no greater way to break his fast. As the rodent’s energy flooded his limbs, he thought again of Jokleel’s charred corpse.

‘I will free us,’ he said, wiping the rat’s blood from his lips and pointing his sword to the north of Drúne Fell. ‘The Council Glade must fall,’ he said, as though speaking to a gathering. ‘Ariel’s reign must come to an end. All these years we have defended ourselves from outsiders when the true threat was here, at the heart of the forest. I will hold true to my word, brother. I will lift this vile curse. I will show the asrai the truth.’

His stomach turned and his throat filled with bile, but he swallowed hard and held the meat down. ‘I promise you Jokleel, I will survive. I will rid the asrai of this burden. I will rid us of Orion.’

Chapter Seven

Orion ran for a long time before he realised he was not alone. It was only as he reached the deepest haunts of the forest, where the tangle of brushwood and ferns slowed his pace to a painful jog, that he noticed three shadows, keeping pace with him through the night.

He paused at the crest of a bracken-filled hollow, panting and trembling as he eyed the shadows. The days had passed in a blur and he was finding it increasingly hard to distinguish spirit from flesh. The Otherworld loomed constantly at the edge of his vision and strange vistas bled through the earth, causing him to duck and weave around beings that could not exist. The ghosts of Orion rumbled constantly in his thoughts now – muttering obscure, gnomic phrases every time he paused. With so many intangibles, Orion had begun to disregard anything that did not bend and snap beneath his hooves. Most of the visions were vanquished by a shake of his head, but as he peered at the three shadows they remained solid and vivid, skulking through the trees as he tried to discern them.

Orion looked down and saw that his chest and forearms were streaked with fresh blood. He scoured his memory and found nothing but daemons and ghosts. ‘The hunt,’ he breathed, realising he had lost himself again. What had he killed as he ran? He looked closer and saw scraps of skin and fur beneath his talons. ‘The hunt,’ he repeated and the voices in his head rumbled in reply.

The shadows answered with three mournful howls.

Orion felt a rush of emotion as he realised that his hounds had followed him. They were as strange to him as anything else but, with the year dying around him and his strength falling from his limbs, living companions of any kind suddenly seemed wonderful.

‘Fuath,’ he cried, reaching out into the darkness.

One of the shadows rippled and broke away from its companions, skirting the edge of the hollow and padding to Orion’s side.

Orion hesitated as the creature approached, unnerved by its appearance.

The hound was twice the size of any normal dog and where its eyes should have been were a pair of furnaces, leaking ruddy flames around the animal’s head. Its jaws were huge and its slavering lips curled back as it approached, revealing a row of long, vicious teeth. The hound let out a low growl as it reached Orion and greasy, matted hair bristled along the length of its back.

Orion sensed the other two hounds emerging from the trees behind him but he kept his gaze locked on Fuath.

‘You are mine to command,’ he said, trying to reassure himself, but he sensed his mistake before the words had left his lips. Whatever manner of beings they were, the hounds served no one; not even a king. Seeing them now, away from the clamour of the hunt, he saw that they were as ethereal as the visions that had haunted his journey north. They were caged in flesh and bone; imprisoned in the bodies of hounds, but they were far from mortal. The flames licking from their eye sockets were just a glimpse of their true nature. They, more than anything, were the soul of the Wild Hunt.

Orion realised that he was barely their equal, never mind their master.

Fuath sat and the other two followed suit. The low growls continued, but the hounds seemed to relax.

‘I must find my queen,’ he said, looking at each of them in turn. ‘But my mind is…’ He frowned, unsure how to explain himself. ‘I am confused.’

Orion had the overwhelming impression that Fuath was about to speak. The dog had tilted its head to one side, as though considering his words.

‘We are one,’ said Orion, and this time he knew he was right. Whatever sorcery had bound his soul to the Wild Hunt, ruled the hounds too. They understood him in a way no mortal could. They, at least, should know that he would not have chosen to act as he did.

‘I must make amends,’ he muttered. ‘Will you lead me to Ariel?’

The hound narrowed its eyes at the word ‘amends’, as though in disapproval.

‘I must fulfil my destiny,’ said Orion, trying a different tack.

The hound continued staring at him for a moment, then it lowered its head in what seemed like mute agreement.

Orion was about to speak again, when all three of the hounds dashed away, heading north along the edge of the hollow and vanishing into the trees.

Orion smiled and raced after them, struggling to keep up as they leapt over branches and raced down mist-shrouded gulleys.

The act of chasing the hounds threw Orion back across the centuries and, as they raced north, he tumbled into the past. He saw countless, bloody hunts; trees filled with the bodies of those he had slain: animal, asrai and human. But there was something profoundly different about the hunts of the previous years. Every act of violence he perpetrated added to the untamed beauty of his people – it made them more perfect; more alive. When he raced with the hounds, he pushed the asrai a little further from the linear, crushing ugliness of civilisation. He knew it was right. He knew it was his purpose. Atolmis’s words came back to him as he ran, and suddenly they made sense: ‘You are everything that defines us’.

The thought of the priests filled Orion with grief, quickly followed by determination. The high priest had chosen him, all those months ago, to perform the ultimate duty. ‘I will not fail,’ snarled Orion, racing faster after the hounds. ‘I will prove you right, Atolmis. I will become the king.’

As the hours passed and Fuath led him back to more familiar glades, Orion found himself dwelling on his actions over the summer. He saw the stone guardian, smashing its ancient ward at his command; then he recalled the rotten oak, and the grub that devoured Sélva. A horrible doubt pressed over him. Was it too late? Had he already destroyed the kingdom he was sworn to protect?

A lazy, golden dawn was falling through the branches as Orion reached the glades of Ariel’s court. He recalled the distant, unearthly gaze of his queen and crushed his doubt. ‘I will become the king.’ He bared his teeth in a snarl as he broke through the trees. ‘Once Ariel has led me to Sativus, everything can be as it was. I will heal the wounds I have created. I will heal the forest. I will show Sativus he was right to trust me.’

A few minutes later, Orion staggered to a halt at the edge of the clearing, dumbfounded.

The royal dais had been destroyed. Where once there was a perfect disc of grass, there was now a patch of raw, churned earth and exposed roots. At the centre of this wasteland were the still-smouldering remains of a great fire. A column of smoke reached up to the clouds and filled the air with an acrid stink, adding to the autumn haze and forcing Orion to narrow his eyes as he picked his way across the upturned soil.

The hounds waited in the trees, leaving Orion to advance alone. As he approached the smouldering pyre, Orion saw scraps of flesh and armour scattered across the soil. His sense of disbelief grew. Violence in the sacred glades was unheard of. Not even the most determined outsiders had ever reached this deep into the forest and, even if they had, Ariel’s handmaidens would never allow them enter such places. Orion stooped to examine a tattered robe and frowned. It was of asrai design.

He peered through the smoke-filled air and sensed that it was full of rage. The whole glade was taut with pain. The Otherworld was even closer here. He could see the trees’ souls, shimmering in a maelstrom of colours.

Orion dragged his consciousness back to the present and saw that there were figures silhouetted by the remains of the fire, their heads bowed in prayer.

He gripped his spear as he advanced, furious that anyone would defile Ariel’s halls in such a way.

As he neared them, one of the figures cried out, her voice a mixture of pain and hope.

‘Orion!’ cried Ariel, gliding across the clearing towards him, trailing smoke from her tawny wings.

As his queen approached, Orion felt the strength go from his legs. The weight of their past crushed him. The hunger of the hunt fell away and he dropped to his knees.

Ariel landed on the grass and stared coldly at him. Then her eyes widened as she took in his scarred flesh and withered limbs. ‘You’re wounded.’ She bowed her head for a moment and when she looked up her expression had softened. ‘You gave them everything, again.’

Orion recoiled from the pity he saw in her eyes. He had abandoned her and she looked at him with compassion. No words of accusation could have cut him more deeply.

‘I failed you.’

Ariel’s gaze hardened again. ‘Is it true, then? Have you destroyed the Council of Beasts?’

Orion was about to answer, when he noticed handmaidens, gathering around them, bowing their heads in respect. Their robes were tattered and bloodstained.

Orion stood, and managed to meet Ariel’s gaze. ‘What happened here?’ he asked, looking at the churned trenches that surrounded them.

Ariel’s voice was unusually brittle. ‘We should talk.’ She signalled for one of her handmaidens to approach.

Orion backed away as he saw who it was. ‘Naieth!’ His pulse raced and the voices in his mind growled a warning.

The prophetess gave him a look as cool as Ariel’s. ‘My king.’

Rage and shame collided in Orion’s mind. At their last encounter Naieth had begged him not to enter the Vaults of Winter and he had dismissed her like a fool. He had been so sure of himself then; so powerful. To meet her in his current state, weakened and haunted by the knowledge of his mistake, was almost more than he could bear. He met her eye and, to his horror, he saw that even she pitied him.

‘Why don’t you gloat?’ He glared at the copper-haired sorceress. ‘You know what a fool I am. You know what I did.’

Naieth ignored his question and her expression remained unreadable. ‘My king,’ she said, waving her staff at the corpses, ‘the most unwelcome messenger is amongst us. We are beset by phantoms and apparitions.’ Her eyes widened and she spoke with uncharacteristic simplicity. ‘We have been attacked.’

Orion realised that, rather than being calm, her face was rigid with emotion. He could not tell if it was grief or rage.

‘What did you do?’ asked Naieth. She looked at the bodies in the mud and then back at Orion. ‘Why are you here now? Where are your priests? Where are the Wild Riders?’

Orion stared at her, mute with anger and shame.

‘Where is Atolmis?’ Ariel demanded.

Orion looked away, picturing the gruesome death of Sélva.

Naieth watched him closely, then looked at her queen.

‘Come,’ said Ariel, taking both of their arms but refusing to look at Orion. ‘We have much to discuss.’

Orion yielded and the three of them made their way through the crowd, stumbling across the brutalised clearing, and entering the enormous oak.

As they stepped through the vast antechambers of the tree, Orion recalled his glorious birth, just months earlier, with Ariel at his side. He remembered the proud roar he had unleashed as they stepped out onto the royal dais, on the first day of spring. How strong he had felt then; how potent.

The tree groaned and shifted around them as they walked, assuming a profusion of different shapes and leading them to places none of them had seen before. Blades of moonlight sliced through the gloom, alighting on roots the size of hills and bark as old as mountains, leading them deeper into the ancient, heavy blackness.

Ariel’s flesh shimmered as she moved through the dark, rippling across the roots until, after several minutes, she came to a halt. She muttered something and Orion gasped as silver veins pulsed across the walls, lighting up a large, circular chamber. The lights grew brighter and Orion saw that the room was lined with a ring of seats, each one a misshapen lump of knotted, polished root that resembled a different kind of animal. The roots were twisted around bones: gleaming, bleached ribcages and femurs, and as the light shifted, Orion realised that the roots were moving – expanding and contracting as though breathing. There were serpentine runes carved into the earth and it was clearly a meeting place of some kind – a room of governance or prayer, like the chapterhouses he had seen in the outsiders’ stone temples.

‘Where have you brought us?’ he asked, finding it suddenly hard to breathe. The air in the chamber was heavy, as though not intended for mortal lungs. The little he managed to gulp down left him feeling light-headed and, as he studied the creaking chairs, he felt the Otherworld pressing closer than ever before. Ariel’s silver light pulsed and undulated across the walls, throwing odd shadows. It seemed as though there were figures sat in the chairs, watching them.

Ariel’s eyes brightened as she looked around the room. ‘I have brought us nowhere. The Oak decides, as always.’ She looked at Naieth, who was staring at the empty chairs. ‘But I know where we are.’

Naieth nodded, matching Ariel’s half-smile. The lights were glinting across her rune-covered robes, and as she approached one of the chairs it looked as though she were wreathed in white flames. She placed one of her hands on the chair and Orion saw that her nails were several inches long, curling around her fingers like coils of yellow smoke. She stroked them across the chair and looked back at Ariel, her eyes gleaming.

Orion was finding it increasingly hard to breathe and did not notice their excitement. The shadows were closing in on him and taking shape; pawing at him with broken limbs and accusing him with mute, desperate screams. As Ariel and Naieth gently examined the circle of chairs, treating them like holy relics, Orion thudded across the chamber and sat heavily in the nearest one, feeling as though he were assailed by dozens of silent attackers.

Ariel was too busy studying the room to notice his distress. ‘Why would the tree bring us here?’ She turned to look at Orion and the suspicion came back into her eyes. ‘Why did you come back to me now? Why on this particular evening? What did you wish to discuss?’

Orion tried to reply, but his breath was coming in short gasps and all that emerged from his throat was a hoarse groan.

Ariel stepped to his side. ‘This is the very heart of the Oak.’ She placed a hand over Orion’s throat and he immediately felt his airways start to open. ‘The air here belongs to another time.’ As her fingers stroked his face, it seemed as though she was going to ask him something kinder. Then her expression became cool again. ‘You will grow accustomed to it in a moment.’

‘And what of the ghosts?’ He waved at the shadows. ‘Will I grow accustomed to them?’

Ariel and Naieth looked at each other in surprise, then Naieth nodded. ‘You see further than you did, my king. You see things we do not.’ There was a trace of humour in her voice. ‘Winter is approaching. Soon we will face the longest night.’

Ariel blanched at the mention of winter and glanced at Orion’s scarred limbs. Then she looked around the chamber and repeated her question. ‘What did you return for? There must be some reason the Oak has shown us to this particular chamber.’

Orion shuffled uncomfortably in the chair, looking at the dried blood that covered his body. Every inch of him was plastered with signs of the Wild Hunt. ‘Naieth was right. I should never have entered the Vaults. I created an imbalance. I disturbed the soul of the forest.’ His words were barely audible. ‘I destroyed the Torr-Ildána.’

Naieth lifted her hand to her mouth.

Ariel shook her head. ‘Destroyed?’ For a moment she was unable to meet her king’s eye. ‘That can’t be. The stones are protected.’ She gave Naieth a pleading glance. ‘Aren’t they?’

Orion let out a bitter laugh as he remembered the stone giant, crumbling before him. ‘They were protected.’

‘You killed the guardian?’ Ariel’s voice was hollow.

‘You cannot imagine what it’s like to be filled with this power!’ Orion clapped his hands against his head and closed his eyes, trying to drive the spirits from his mind. Visions of the forest replaced them, rolling across his thoughts, filled with the hunger of the hunt. He was a hawk, diving for its prey, hurtling towards the earth with wind screaming through its feathers. He was a fox, shivering in the snow, tearing at a frozen, week-old carcass. He was a wolf, howling in the darkness. He was hunger, rage and violence, all bound into one. His pulse began to race as reality fell away, revealing a parade of ghosts, calling him to abandon the physical world and let the hunger consume him – to abandon himself to the eternal hunt. He felt his resolve slipping. He would brave anything to escape the pity and hurt he saw in Ariel’s eyes.

‘Orion,’ said Ariel. ‘How did you manage to destroy the guardian?’

‘I used the power that binds all of us.’ He glanced at Naieth. ‘She knows what I mean, the web at the heart of the forest. It has no beginning and no end. We cannot escape it. The spirits weave it into our dreams. The one named the Wrach – the Blind Guide – he knows its source. He knows how to bend it to his will.’ Bitterness twisted Orion’s words into a snarl. ‘He claims to be a simple guide, but he is a liar.’

Naieth removed her hand from her mouth. ‘These are all guiles and feints, Orion, guiles and feints. Such maps and prophecies do not haunt the Great Weave. The Dark Paths have no true guide, whatever the Wrach may claim. Even to the Brúidd the Gyre is no more than a shadow.’

Ariel frowned. ‘You used this web to destroy the stones? Why? Why would you do such a thing?’

Orion was deaf to her question. At the mention of the Brúidd he turned his thunderous gaze on Naieth. ‘I am not the cause of all this!’ He began pacing around the chamber, lashing out at the shadows. ‘Something drove me to do things I would never have done. If not the Wrach, then someone else! By Kurnous, I never would have unleashed…’ His words faltered and he stumbled to a halt, staring at his bloody skin.

‘Unleashed what?’ Naieth strode after Orion and held her staff aloft. Light blazed from the knotted twigs, throwing harsh shadows across his face.

Orion continued staring at his hands and gave no reply.

‘My king,’ said Naieth. ‘You must speak openly now. The last stars of the asrai are fading. Morning is almost on us. Your lords are scattered and divided. While Prince Haldus was leading us to victory we fought as one. He forged your subjects into a weapon worthy of your name, but Haldus has returned to his mountain peaks, and your people are divided once more. Whatever dangers we face, we will face them with you alone to lead us. Your hunt has scattered anyone else who could have aided us – Lord Beldeas and his Lady Ordaana, and their captain, Eremon – they have all been scattered to the four winds by your rage, along with any of their subjects who survived the fall of Locrimere.’ She looked back the way they had come. ‘And now, after a night such as this, it seems that even the dead are weary of your rule. The sweet music of this dell has become a fractious din. We have been attacked tonight by the ghosts of our own children.’ Her voice faltered. ‘With all my memories and foresight even I have never heard of such a thing. None of us have. We are wilted and weeping, my king. We were attempting to preserve those sundered from the Oak, but we were attacked by the very souls we were trying to protect.’ She waved her staff at Ariel who was still watching Orion with a pained expression. ‘And your queen sensed…’ Her words faltered and she turned to Ariel.

Ariel looked confused and shook her head.

Orion frowned. ‘What?’

Ariel stared back at him. ‘Something has been born into the forest; something that should never have lived.’ She looked back at the entrance to the chamber. ‘I can’t place it, but it reeks of ruin. And it’s so hungry. It wants to grow.’

Naieth gripped Orion’s arm. ‘What did you unleash? What were those old stones protecting? You are in the evening of your year, Orion, you must speak quickly. What did you see?’

Orion pulled away from her and lashed out at one of the chairs, scattering roots and twigs across the chamber. His tone was bleak. ‘I saw nothing.’

‘Then why are you here?’ demanded Ariel.

He grabbed her arms. ‘To mend what I have broken! Whatever happened here and whatever happened at the Torr Ildána, I can mend it. We don’t need Prince Haldus or Captain Eremon or anyone else.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Take me to Sativus. Take me to the Spirit King.’

‘Orion,’ gasped Ariel, looking at his hand. His flesh had scraped away from the bone when he punched the chair, leaving the knuckles exposed. Blood was flowing quickly down his wrist. The wound was far too serious to be the result of one blow. There was panic in her voice. ‘What have you done?’

Orion glared at his hand in disgust. He recalled punching the stone giant and realised that his body was rebelling against him – recalling wounds it should have forgotten. ‘This is why I returned!’ he hissed. ‘Do you see? I’m fading. I have no time left, Ariel. I must find Sativus now. Soon I will be too weak.’

Ariel’s eyes widened at the pain in Orion’s voice, but she shook her head. ‘The Council of Beasts is not the enemy. There is something else.’ She grimaced. ‘It is rancid and eager, but it is newborn. The Brúidd are as old as the forest; older maybe. I do not claim to understand them, but I’m sure they mean us no harm. You have pitted yourself against our only friends.’

Orion tightened his grip on her arms. ‘Understand me – I do not mean to hurt Sativus. I mean to undo what I’ve done.’

Ariel looked shocked and Orion realised she had glimpsed the fear in his eyes. He loosed his grip and staggered back into the shadows, furious that he had shown such weakness in front of her. ‘I must find him,’ he muttered.

Ariel dropped into one of the chairs, looking baffled by Orion’s behaviour. The wood was formed into the shape of a raven and as Ariel slumped back, it reached forwards with a creaking sound, stretching its wooden wings around hers. ‘I cannot betray him,’ she whispered.

Orion peered at her through the shadows, unsure if she meant him or Sativus. He realised with a sudden, nauseating clarity that he depended entirely on her. If Ariel refused him, he was helpless. He was her protector no longer. The tables had been turned. Power lay in her hands, not his. The thought terrified him.

Ariel turned to Naieth, her face pale. ‘The tree brought us here for a reason. The message is clear.’

Naieth looked appalled. ‘My queen, you cannot do as he asks. Do not be dazzled by your past. It is a beautiful dream, nothing more. Think of what he has done. Think of how his divinity has taken flight. He has ordained nothing but death for us, Ariel. You must shake him free. You must loose his bloody grip, or he will sever every tie that binds us to the Great Weave. He destroyed one of the Brúidd. He would strip the boughs bare if we let him. When I speak to the spirits I hear nothing but rage. Their anger leaks from every shoot and bough. He is their blackest night. They despise him.’ Her voice rose in pitch. ‘How could you lead him to Sativus?’

Orion looked up from his fist, shocked by such open treason. Then he frowned. ‘What do you mean I destroyed one of them?’

Naieth saw his outrage but was unable to calm herself. ‘The stone guardian! It belonged to the oldest Council of the forest, the same as Sativus and the others.’ She clutched her staff in both hands and light flared again. ‘It was a soul from the morning of the world, a piece of the forest’s enduring heart, and you unfurled it to the cosmos.’

Orion’s sense of dread grew.

Ariel looked over at him and he saw, to his disgust, that the pity was back in her eyes. ‘Do you know where we are?’ She waved at the circle of chairs. ‘Do you recognise this place?’

He shook his head, barely listening, still wondering if Naieth’s accusation could be true.

‘It is called the House of Dominion. It is the meeting place of the Brúidd.’ Ariel looked at the misshapen chairs with undisguised wonder.

‘No,’ said Orion, ‘you’re wrong.’

Ariel and Naieth looked at him in surprise.

‘I saw their meeting place.’ He stared at the ground as he spoke. ‘They meet by a pool in a sacred grove – a grove of linden trees.’ He shivered at the memory of it. ‘They are surrounded by the changing seasons. Snow turns to sun in a moment and the leaves wither as they emerge.’ He looked up at Ariel. ‘This is not the place.’

Naieth gave Ariel a sideways glance and answered for her. ‘You heard a distant echo. You saw a ghost. The Council of Beasts is a withered relic of former greatness. The House of Dominion was once the centre of the forest, when the Brúidd were still united. I see them in my dreams. Few still live.’

She raised her staff of twigs, throwing shadows from the chairs and across the walls. Bestial shapes reached over the ceiling, as though preparing to pounce. ‘Even to me their movements are obscure.’ She narrowed her eyes and stepped towards Orion. ‘But I believe they gather in spring, to pass judgement.’ She reached Orion’s side and fixed her piercing eyes on his. ‘Is that what you recall? They are your measure, my king. Does that fill you with dread?’ She touched his arm with one of her long nails. ‘Does it needle you?’

Orion’s fingers suddenly itched to commit violence. Ariel’s witch had an unnerving way of peering into his soul. He sneered. ‘What does it matter when I saw them? Why are we in their chamber?’

The certainty faded from Naieth’s gaze and she looked back at her queen.

‘I understand why,’ said Ariel. ‘The message is clear. We need help.’ She looked up at the chamber’s knotted ceiling, and the feral silhouettes rippling across it. ‘As in all things, the Oak of Ages has shown us the answer.’ She glanced at Orion. ‘You have released an agent of change into that which must not be changed. If we wish to undo the harm you have caused, we will need the help of the spirits. The Brúidd will know what to do. Sativus will know what to do. It has always been the way. At times of great need I am led to this chamber. If the Oak is willing, its roots lead me to Sativus. The path is never the same twice, but it is always true.’ She kept her gaze locked on Orion, and her expression hardened. ‘Are you true, Orion? Will you beg him for forgiveness? Will you convince him that we are worth saving?’

Orion felt her words like a physical blow. Rage boiled in his veins and, despite himself, a refusal sprang to his lips, but he stifled his fury. Ariel’s expression was like steel: cold and implacable. He had only ever seen love, humour and deference in her eyes, but now he saw what lay behind them: bottomless, immortal power. The most he could manage was a slight nod of his head.

‘Orion,’ she said, her voice echoing around the chamber. ‘Whatever you have done, we are, as we always were, one with the forest.’

The words were laced with magic and Orion felt the shadows pressing in on him again, snatching his breath from his throat.

‘We are the forest,’ said Ariel, her voice throbbing from the wooden walls. ‘You must mend what you have broken.’

Naieth shook her head in disbelief. ‘You think the Oak would lead him to Sativus? That it would draw the hunter to his prey?’ She waved her staff at Orion’s scarred body. ‘Don’t be blinded by your love. He knows nothing but hunger.’

Ariel kept her fierce stare locked on Orion. ‘He knows more than that.’

Orion dropped heavily into one of the chairs. Suddenly, nothing made sense. He had seen Ariel as a prize to be protected, as a fragile burden, but now, as her fury pressed him back into the chair, he realised that he could barely meet her eye. All the power he had glimpsed in the Otherworld was pulsing from her irises. The visions he had being trying to evade were already here, blazing from her flesh.

‘I…’ He found it painful to drag the words out, but his queen’s implacable gaze forced him on. His fury swelled again as he pictured the white stag, but it quickly faded, leaving him looking at his own wasted flesh. The signs of his mortality were undeniable. His time had almost passed and he had achieved nothing but harm. His only chance was Ariel. ‘I have been wrong,’ he muttered, massaging his throat and snatching short breaths.

Naieth was furious. She rounded on Ariel and finally unleashed the bile she had been stifling since Orion’s return. ‘He’s not your sweet-tongued lover, he’s a monster.’ Her staff trembled in her grip. ‘Kurnous has hollowed out his soul. He is sinew and hate. Take him to Sativus and we will be lost. The seasons will be heavy with blood.’

‘You have forgotten your place, Naieth.’ Ariel’s voice was taut. ‘Does a handmaiden give instructions to the Mage Queen? Does she slander her queen’s consort?’

Naieth’s eyes were straining with emotion, but she lowered her staff and said no more.

‘We have faced such things before,’ said Ariel, allowing a little softness back into her voice as she turned to Orion, ‘but we faced them together. There is no hope unless we embrace the duality of our nature. As a king and queen, we are nothing; as an instrument of the forest’s will, we are everything.’

Orion looked dazed. His head was filled with images of violence and destruction, all perpetrated by him. ‘Perhaps she’s right,’ he muttered, waving at Naieth. ‘I feel as though someone has been acting through me. I feel,’ he hesitated, ‘out of control.’

The king’s shoulders drooped and the strength seemed to go out of him. For a moment, he was Sephian once more – a simple waywatcher, stained with the blood of his people.

Ariel looked at him in silence for a moment. Then she shook her head and took a deep breath. ‘Naieth is wise in many things, but in this matter she is blind.’ She glared at the handmaiden, warning her not to interrupt. ‘I have been with you through the centuries, Orion. I have watched you bind us to the wild, thorny heart of this forest.’ She frowned. ‘But this year I sensed a change. At our very first embrace, I tasted poison in your kiss.’

Orion stared at her. ‘Poison? What do you mean?’ He rose and staggered to her side. ‘I would never harm you.’

‘Not me,’ she said. ‘You have been poisoned. You have been changed. There is a madness in you I cannot recognise.’ She looked back at the entrance to the chamber. ‘When the ghosts of Drúne Fell began to scream, I felt it again – the same madness – the same hatred.’ She looked deep into Orion’s eyes. ‘The Old Enemy is in the forest and, somehow, it is in you. Someone, or something, has led you astray, I’m sure of it.’

Orion was about to defend himself but the words faltered in his mouth. He knew that the madness had left him, but why should she listen? Why should she believe him after all that he had done?

Naieth could contain herself no longer. ‘These are not the wiles of Chaos. There is Kurnous-kindled wrath burning in his breast, as it should, but his flame cannot be allowed to sever us from the forest. Even eternity cannot–’

Ariel silenced her with another glare. ‘Something else is at work.’

She looked back at Orion. ‘Will you meet Sativus in peace?’

A furious reply flew to Orion’s lips, but he clamped them shut and gave himself a moment to think. He took a deep steadying breath and reminded himself that Ariel was his only hope. He nodded.

Naieth was about to speak again but the tree was too fast.

The queen gasped as roots exploded from the ground, enveloping all of them and filling the chamber with noise and movement.

Naieth staggered backwards, clamping a hand over her mouth as soil pounded against her face.

The roots spiralled around Ariel and Orion, lifting them both from the ground.

‘My queen!’ cried Naieth.

‘Find the newborn,’ said Ariel, her voice slicing through the din. ‘Find out what has entered the forest.’

The ground began to judder and Naieth had to lean against a wall to steady herself. She squinted into the maelstrom, trying to make out Ariel’s face, but the king and queen were hidden by the tempest of roots.

‘We will return, with Sativus at our side,’ said Ariel. Her voice sounded as though it were coming from the earth itself.

‘Find out who has defiled our forest, Naieth. Find out who has poisoned my king.’

The roots thrashed wildly around the chamber and Naieth staggered backwards, shielding her eyes.

The thrashing and crumbling continued for several minutes, then, finally the movement ceased and the chamber fell quiet.

Naieth wiped the soil from her eyes and saw that Ariel and Orion were still standing in the centre of the room.

As the roots withdrew into the earth, Ariel looked around in confusion. ‘The Oak is not willing.’ She frowned at Naieth. ‘Why has the tree brought us to this chamber only to deny us passage? Is Sativus to be hidden from me?’

Naieth was too shocked to speak for a moment. Then she jabbed her staff at the king. ‘The forest will not permit it. The Great Weave bars Orion from joining you. It will not send him into the presence of a Spirit King. It is his bloodlust that prevents you.’

Orion backed away, shaking his head, but Ariel was resolute. ‘You do not see everything, Naieth. We must seek his aid together, I know it. If Sativus speaks to Orion, all will be made clear. He will see that we have not betrayed him – not in any true sense. We have all been tricked.’

As the ground continued heaving and groaning, Ariel stepped to Naieth’s side. ‘The Oak’s intent is clear. I must take Orion to Sativus.’ She took Naieth’s hand. ‘If my charms will not suffice, there must be another way.’

‘Sativus answers to no one. Nobody can see his movements. Nobody can see everything.’

Naieth was about to answer when the walls collapsed.

There was a deafening, grinding roar as the chamber tumbled and rolled over them. Soil, bark and roots slammed into them and for a while they were helpless, tumbling through a maelstrom of sound and movement.

None of them could say afterwards how long they fell, but when the turmoil ceased, they found themselves blinking and gasping under a cool, pewter-coloured sky. A network of dark branches framed the cloudless vaults, and as he looked up, Orion laughed.

‘Your blessed tree is playing games with us, Ariel.’ His head was still spinning as he staggered down a branch as wide as a road. He peered over its side. Far below were the churned remains of the Council Glade. They were so high that the funeral pyre was little more than a small, blackened smudge.

Ariel stepped lightly from the branch, beating her wings and lifting herself into the air. ‘Naieth?’ she asked, looking back towards the trunk of the tree.

Naieth saw something further down the branch and her eyes widened in shock. She was about to speak, then she clamped her mouth shut and looked away.

‘What?’ demanded Orion. ‘Speak up.’

Naieth’s face coloured and she ignored Orion, turning to look at Ariel. ‘Only the dead, my queen, are truly unblinkered. Only they see all routes.’ Her eyes were full of fear. ‘But we have seen enough necromancy for one night.’

Ariel shook her head. ‘What do you mean? I will not summon the dead.’

As they spoke of the dead, an image flashed into Orion’s mind – rows of harsh, bright lights, surrounded by ink-black shadows. ‘You cannot bring them here, but what if we go to them?’

Ariel looked aghast. ‘What do you mean?’

Naieth narrowed her eyes. ‘Would you risk your own, lingering span then, my king? Would you cross the pale threshold?’

‘What choice do I have?’ Orion waved at his wasted limbs. ‘I have no time left.’ His voice rattled with emotion. ‘I must act now or the whole forest dies with me.’

Ariel shook her head, looking from Naieth to Orion. ‘What do you mean? What risk?’

‘He speaks of the Endless Vale.’ Naieth kept her gaze locked on Orion. ‘He seeks those without roots. He seeks the timeless wit of the dead.’

Ariel recoiled. ‘The Endless Vale? What made you think of such a pitiful place?’

He massaged his temples and looked pained. ‘Sélva has fallen. Some kind of plague is eating through the south of the forest. It…’ His words faltered and he shook his head.

Ariel and Naieth turned to each other in horror, but Orion continued, oblivious to their shock.

‘The priests told me they must return his remains to the King’s Glade, or he would spend eternity wandering the Endless Vale.’ He looked at Naieth with desperate hope in his eyes. ‘You have seen something that put you in mind of the dead. You are keeping something from us. If the dead see all, lead me to them. I could cross this Endless Vale. I know I have seen the place before. My memories are vague, but I’m sure I have been and returned. And if I’ve been there once, I could go again. The dead could lead me to the Spirit King.’

Naieth glanced anxiously along the branch and gave no reply.

Ariel stared at Orion. ‘It is not possible. You are immortal. Such a fate is not set aside for you.’ She turned to her handmaiden. ‘Is it, Naieth?’

Naieth gave no answer and Ariel frowned, turning to look at her. ‘Is it?’

Naieth was too busy watching the branches to answer for a moment. They were coiling themselves into new shapes, like snakes preparing to strike. She noticed Ariel watching her and registered the question. She drummed her coiled nails on her staff. ‘There are ways. Death is only another season. Even the soul of a god can be cast to the wind.’

Ariel looked appalled. ‘What kind of power could send Orion to the realm of the damned?’

The prophetess was clutching her staff of twigs and blinking as she stepped out further into the light. The violence of the tree had left her hair and robes in disarray and, as she turned to face Ariel, she looked utterly wild. ‘The tree of life is also the tree of death.’ She spat a leaf from her mouth and wiped away the remnants with the back of her hand. ‘The king asked and it would appear that the tree has replied.’ She pointed her staff to a small hollow where the branch split into three. ‘Even a spirit as old as his can join the ranks of the dead.’ She turned to Orion. ‘If you are prepared to take leave of your senses.’

Ariel and Orion looked where she was pointing. There was nothing unusual about the fork in the branch. It was as mossy and decrepit as the rest of the Oak. The hollow was carpeted with dead leaves and a few tiny flowers – a little cloud of blue vervain, still clinging to life, despite the autumn chill.

Naieth walked past them and nodded at the flowers. ‘The Oak has led us to the Tears of Isha.’ She knelt and brushed the tiny petals with her staff. ‘A poison fit for a god.’

Orion stepped to her side and looked at the flowers. He knelt beside her and reached out to touch one.

‘Wait,’ snapped Naieth, grabbing his wrist and glaring at him. ‘The shadow of your life would be set free from its master. You would forego yourself, Orion. Are you sure? Would you really abandon life so carelessly?’

Ariel landed a few feet away with a nervous laugh. ‘He is immortal, Naieth. What harm can flowers do him?’

‘These are rare blooms, my queen. They have the power to unshackle even the mightiest of souls.’

Orion stared at the tiny flowers. ‘And what then?’

‘Yet again, you would create a terrible imbalance. The seasons are your measure and your guide. The twilight of the year is the twilight of your soul.’ She frowned. ‘But if you taste the Tears of Isha, you will fall free now, before midwinter comes. You will enter a Kingdom of the Soul. You will cross into that Endless Vale that you have seen in your dreams.’

There was doubt in Ariel’s eyes again. ‘Would you really do such a thing?’

He glared back at her. ‘If it will undo what I have done, yes. The dead could lead me to Sativus. You said yourself that we must seek his aid.’ There was desperation in his voice. ‘I have no time, Ariel. How else will I find him? The tree has brought me here. Its meaning is obvious.’ He looked up at the heavens, pain written across his face. ‘I have seen what you have only felt, Ariel. The forest is diseased, and it is because of me. And the rot is spreading. I must undo what I have done before it’s too late.’

Naieth looked at Ariel with a raised eyebrow. ‘The Oak of Ages does not dream idly, my queen.’

Orion looked at her with an expression of unusual calm. The tumult had vanished from his emerald eyes, replaced by a cool certainty. ‘I’m sure of it – my purpose was not my own. Until now, something has driven me to madness.’ He addressed Naieth without rancour. ‘You do not see it, but I am myself once more.’

Ariel knelt beside them and looked at the flowers. ‘And, if he did this, if he descended into shadow, how would he find his way back? How would he return?’

Naieth paled. ‘He would do business with the dead. They are trapped in a nightmare and they will seek wakefulness.’ She grimaced. ‘They are bound in a silken dark and they would feel his pull. They would be moths to a flame.’

She stared at the king. ‘You would need to conceal your true power. If your presence became known every soul that was ever damned would come looking for you. They would lie, beg and fight to leave that timeless hell. You would have to remain hidden, or…’ Her words trailed off and she looked back at the clump of vervain.

‘Or what?’ asked Orion.

Naieth laughed. It was a cheerless sound. ‘I cannot believe I would sanction this,’ she whispered, ‘but the Oak of Ages has wisdom far beyond mine.’ She shook her head and spoke louder. ‘If you did this, you would tread paths more meandering and beguiling than you can imagine. You would see nothing but lies and illusion. And if you forgot your purpose, even for a moment, you would forget yourself. You would become as lost as all the others. You would never return.’

She reached down and cut a flower with a coiled, yellow fingernail. Then she laid it on the head of her staff.

‘Be aware, my king, that this would not happen through doleful choice, or guileless chance. Nothing is unmarked by prophecy, nothing. There are no decisions. There are no mistakes. There is only fate. The wiles of the forest are behind all that we do, as sure and noiseless as the roots beneath our feet. If you go it will be for a reason. You will need to broker forgiveness if you are ever to return. You will have to earn your freedom. Somehow, you will need to become the succour of despair.’

Orion drew back from the flower, confused by Naieth’s warning.

Naieth studied him closely. She seemed oddly excited. ‘Any one of the dead could show you the way, but the price will be terrible and promises meaningless. You must be sure of your guide. You must find someone you can trust. Someone who does not simply wish to escape their doom. Someone who could offer you forgiveness.’ She held the flower towards him and glanced at Ariel. ‘It is an act of madness. And the Oak demands it.’

Orion stared at the flower for a moment, then snatched it and dropped it into his mouth.

Ariel shuddered and looked away.

For a second there was no effect.

Orion wondered if Naieth had played a joke on him.

Then his eyes widened as he realised he could not breathe. He tried to draw in air but it was as though he no longer had lungs to fill.

Panic gripped him, but he remembered that Ariel was watching and adopted a calm expression. He felt the strength starting to fall from his limbs, so he sat carefully on the branch.

Ariel and Naieth looked down at him, Ariel with horror and Naieth with intrigue.

He looked up at Ariel and realised that, in all his fury and guilt, he had forgotten something.

‘I’m sorry,’ he tried to say, but no sound emerged.

Ariel stooped to his side, her eyes full of pain.

The world turned white.

Chapter Eight

It was like rediscovering a long-forgotten flavour. As Finavar moved in for the kill, his taste for violence came flooding back.

His body was still painfully thin, but as he slipped through the branches cords of muscle snaked around his limbs, hurling him easily through the trees. He still wore no clothes, but his body was draped with relics of his recovery: scraps of bloody skin and necklaces of teeth that looped around his chest and neck. Even his greasy locks were plaited with the claws of his last meal – a wildcat that had led him a merry dance for almost a whole morning. After weeks of stealth and half-remembered skill, Finavar was growing stronger. His vitality was returning, along with his hate.

Today’s hunt was not for food. To his outrage, he had discovered that most rare of tracks: human footprints. A group of outsiders had somehow reached deep into the forest. These glades were the most sacred of all the asrai kingdoms. Kindreds of all kinds, whichever gods they worshipped, agreed on one inviolable rule: no one but asrai could see such places and survive. The thought thrilled Finavar. This would be his first true test.

He dropped onto a narrow path, bordered by towers of blackthorn and carpeted with the bloody pulp of fallen fruit. The sun was directly overhead and as it broke through the network of branches it transformed the path, turning it into a grid of gleaming gold bars and trembling silhouettes.

Finavar padded silently through the shadows and crouched near the foot of the hedge. The outsiders were close. In a few seconds they would turn a corner and appear before him. He could hear the clatter of metal armour and the strange, angular sound of their voices. Even their scent was unnatural: an acrid, sweaty stench that drifted ahead of them.

He stepped back into the hedge, knowing that even the slightest shadow would be enough to hide him. His filthy limbs would be invisible to such blinkered eyes. No species was as blind to its surroundings as man. Finavar felt a trace of pity for them as he imagined the world they inhabited: a flat, soulless mirror for their pride, and nothing more. Then he recalled the atrocities they were capable of: trees butchered for no reason and lashed to lifeless stone, creating vile tributes to their own egos. He shivered, picturing what might happen if such monsters were ever allowed to return home, carrying news of the forest’s most intimate treasures.

Thorns scraped against Finavar’s skin and he felt a shiver of sentience – a ghost of spring’s wrath. The branches tried to envelop him, creaking and snapping as they circled his arms, but he shrugged them easily away. The forest’s vigour was gone; lost with the last days of summer. The smell of winter was already on the breeze and there was nothing for the trees to do but quietly seethe.

The outsiders trudged into view. They were churning up the boggy path with their iron-shod boots and the man at the rear of the group was dragging a sack along the ground. Finavar felt brief disappointment as he saw that there were only five of them. Then he reminded himself that he was far from recovered. Only a few weeks ago he had been on the verge of starvation. Five would be enough. Besides, they were a determined-looking bunch. Leading them was a hulking youth in an iron breastplate. His skin seemed barely able to contain his massive frame. It looked to Finavar as though a bear had taken the flesh of a human and decided to wear it as a suit. The youth’s face was a furious mess of sunburn and broken blood vessels, and the smell of wine oozed from his pores. In one hand he held a battered broadsword and in the other he had a heavy cudgel.

A light breeze struck up, rippling through the leaves, and Finavar moved in time with it, lifting his sword in a fluid movement that went unnoticed by the outsiders, even as they passed directly in front of him. He drew a breath to begin his song and exploded from the hedge with a whooping cry, plunging his sword into the man with the sack.

The others whirled around, drawing swords and howling curses.

They saw the wounded man topple to the ground, clutching at his chest, but Finavar had already vanished from view, slipping back into the blackthorn before they had chance to see him.

The man in the breastplate yelled a command and the outsiders formed a defensive circle, standing back-to-back with their swords raised.

Finavar crouched in the shadows, surprised to find that his muscles were trembling. He felt a brief moment of doubt then quashed it, emerging further down the path with his bow raised, training an arrow on the men.

His slender frame was half submerged in shadow but they saw enough to recognise the face of their own death.

The men bolted. Two raced towards Finavar with their swords raised and the other two fled.

Finavar loosed three arrows so smoothly that he barely seemed to move.

Three of the men tumbled to the ground before they had taken more than a few steps. Each of them had an arrow slotted neatly through the centre of his neck.

The one in the breastplate was still charging towards Finavar as he drew a fourth arrow and prepared to shoot.

Finavar’s muscles trembled again and he stumbled, sending his arrow whirring off through the trees.

He cursed. The dizziness passed as quickly as it had come, but before he could draw another arrow the outsider smashed into him, sending them both tumbling back across the path.

Finavar rolled clear, but pain exploded in his jaw. The strength went from his legs and he crashed to the ground again.

As Finavar tried to rise he saw the outsider lift his sword. The hilt was bright with blood where it had connected with his face and he was about to bring it down again.

To Finavar’s horror, he realised he was too light-headed to dodge the blow.

A voice rang out through the trees and the man froze, mid-strike, to look back down the path.

The sack was wriggling and jolting across the ground.

The outsider shook his head in confusion, before turning back to finish what he had begun.

He cursed as he saw that Finavar was now standing several feet away.

Even such a brief hesitation was enough for Finavar. As the outsider lunged after him, Finavar rushed forwards and waltzed around him, brushing the man’s throat as he did so.

The outsider whirled around in confusion, bewildered by Finavar’s speed. As he did so, a flash of red fanned out from his neck.

He let out a gurgled cry as he realised his throat had been slit.

Without even pausing to watch his victim topple to the ground, Finavar kept his sword raised and strode down the path towards the trembling sack, determined not to be caught out a second time.

He shook his head in disbelief as a figure rose from the sack. It was one of his own kind – a young shadow-dancer, wearing nothing but a loincloth and a spiral of tattoos that looped around his wiry frame.

Finavar did not recognise the marks of kinship on the warrior’s skin, and his hair was plaited in a strange, complicated style, but wherever he came from, Finavar was amazed he had been caught by such unworthy foes. To be taken by outsiders was a transgression of the highest order. Finavar would have been shocked to find any of his kin caught in this way, but to see a wardancer – a servant of Loec – bundled into a sack filled him with shame.

‘How could you allow such a thing?’ he cried, grabbing the youth by the arm and glaring at him. ‘They could have tortured you.’ His fury grew as he noticed that the boy’s breath stank of wine. ‘They could have learned our most treasured secrets. How could you let such morons take you alive?’

‘I had them,’ said the youth, but his cheeks flushed red as he backed away from Finavar. He stared at him with reproach in his eyes. ‘Who are you?’

Finavar realised that the wardancer was little more than a child and his anger grew. If the boy was too young to perform the Dance of Blades he should have stayed at home with his mother. ‘You should be ashamed,’ he snapped, waving at the five corpses that surrounded them. ‘How could you fall into the hands of such simpletons?’

The youth looked at the bodies. ‘They were part of a much larger group,’ he said, with a note of petulance in his voice. He raised his chin defiantly and adopted a fighting stance. ‘I was allowing them to take me back to their fellows. Then I would have butchered them all.’

Finavar laughed bitterly. ‘You were going to kill them all by yourself?’

The youth kept his chin raised and glared back at Finavar. ‘I was merely waiting for the right time to strike. If you hadn’t blundered in, I would have found where the rest of them are camped out.’ He pointed at the gash along Finavar’s jaw. ‘And I wouldn’t have let them split my head open.’

Despite his rage, Finavar began to find the situation funny. The boy was defiant, foolhardy and more than a little drunk; but he was brave. Finavar lowered his sword. ‘What do you call yourself, young servant of Loec?’

The youth noticed the change in Finavar’s tone and relaxed. ‘It was kind of you to intervene. You weren’t to know my plans.’ He placed a hand across his tattooed chest and gave a slight bow. ‘I’m Sibaris, of the kindred of Fiùrann, from the Glade of Liath.’ The defiance dropped from his face, replaced by a tentative smile.

Finavar could not help warming to the boy. Had they met just a month or two earlier they might have even been friends. He could not bring himself to smile, however; in part because the youth reminded him so much of Jokleel. ‘I know Liath. I travelled through there once as a child, with my brother.’ He hesitated for a moment, then said: ‘I have no kin.’

The boy’s face lit up. ‘Then you must join us. The kindred of Fiùrann, I mean. We have need of friends at the moment, and you clearly have some skill.’

Finavar wondered what he meant by needing friends, but he decided a discussion would only delay him further. ‘We would not see eye to eye,’ he said, turning to leave. ‘Farewell, young Sibaris.’

The youth dashed after him and placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Wait. If you cannot lend us your help, you must at least join us for the feast.’ He patted Finavar’s hollow cheeks, uninhibited as only a drunk can be. ‘It looks like you could use one.’

Even as he shook his head, Finavar realised how much he craved some companionship and a friendly face. For as long as he could remember, his only conversation had been with a corpse, a lunatic and himself. ‘Feast?’

Sibaris frowned. ‘You really are a stranger. When the bright moon waxes full it will be the time for the Dance of the Whitebeam.’

Finavar shook his head, none the wiser.

‘The Feast of the Two Branches!’ Sibaris laughed at Finavar’s confusion. ‘That settles it. You really must attend. I would be a poor host indeed to let you pass through Liath without witnessing such an important night. I beg you to–’

Finavar’s moment of weakness passed and he held up a hand to silence him. ‘I travel alone.’ He nodded at the corpses. ‘But I will help you deal with this before I leave.’ Finavar was suddenly keen to move on, but he was reluctant to leave without ensuring the bodies were prepared in the correct way.

Sibaris’s expression hardened and he gave Finavar a stiff nod. ‘Very well.’ He grabbed the nearest corpse and began dragging it towards the trees.

Finavar’s worst suspicions were immediately confirmed. The youth was drunk and dangerously unprepared. ‘Wait!’ he growled. ‘Think where we are, boy. This close to the borders we must be sure to leave a clear warning.’

Sibaris blushed again. ‘Of course.’ He drew a knife.

‘I’ll do that. You gather the deadwood.’

Sibaris threw the corpse to the ground and stormed off into the trees, scowling at Finavar as he passed.

Finavar shook his head in disbelief and set to work. He unfastened the breastplate from the large human and laid it on the ground to use as a bowl. Then, as Sibaris grunted and sighed his way through the trees, Finavar dug up some clay from the path and placed it in the piece of armour. Once he had enough, he took his sword and used the tip to open a vein in his arm. As the blood drummed onto the metal, he pounded it with his other hand, making a paste with the clay. As he worked, Finavar sang a low, monotonous dirge.

‘You would have enjoyed the feast,’ muttered Sibaris, returning briefly to drop some branches on the path.

Finavar gave no answer, so Sibaris headed back into the trees. ‘Even with all our troubles, we will make sure it’s a night to remember.’ He grinned. ‘Liathian wine is without equal.’

Still ignoring him, Finavar traced his finger around one of his tattoos. It was the rune of Loec, his patron god. He prayed for the protection of his lord as he stemmed the blood flowing from his arm. Then he tied the wound with a tourniquet of leaves.

‘It’s the night on which the Lord of the Greenwood moves amongst us,’ said Sibaris, ‘to keep us safe.’ He frowned at Finavar. ‘Surely you have a similar festival in your own realm? We mark the fact that autumn is turning to winter, on the night when the dead are closer to us than at any other time. They come with the Lord of the Greenwood to reward the bravest of the Fiùrann for their courage. Many of us have needed bravery recently, so he should be very pleased.’

Finavar nodded vaguely and turned his attention to the corpses. He removed their clothes and armour, and piled them in the centre of the path. Then, once they were all naked, he took the crimson paste he had made and began to paint runes over their skin, still singing his mournful dirge.

Once they were all covered with intricate, spiralling designs, he put the paste down and drew his knife again.

‘That will suffice,’ he said as Sibaris returned with another bundle of sticks. Then he plunged his knife into the chest of the corpse he was cradling. Still-warm blood rushed over his arms and pooled on the ground.

Sibaris nodded, drew his sword and began working at another one of the corpses.

They sliced with quiet efficiency, peeling the dead in one piece, as if they were preparing fruit. Once they had done they spread the painted skins across the ground. Then they scooped up the bloody mess that remained and piled it on top of the clothes and armour.

Finavar grabbed a handful of the sticks Sibaris had gathered and wedged them inside one of the skins, wiggling and adjusting them until he had made a bloody, drooping mannequin with empty sockets for eyes. He took his gruesome creation and walked over to the trees, seeking a suitably prominent place to position his warning. Then he looked back at Sibaris with a frown. ‘What did you say?’

Sibaris was on the ground, jamming sticks inside another one of the skins. He looked up in surprise. ‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘Earlier, I mean. What did you say earlier?’

Sibaris shook his head. ‘I said you would have enjoyed the feast.’ He tried a tentative smile. ‘Are you thinking you might attend the rites?’

‘After that,’ snapped Finavar. ‘You said someone would reward you.’

‘Yes,’ Sibaris grinned. ‘The Lord of the Greenwood!’ The youth’s eyes were bright with religious ecstasy. ‘The Divine Consort. He comes every autumn to mark the passing of the season. He leaves the Wild Hunt and comes to solemnise the Dance of the Whitebeam. It is a site that many travel to see. Surely you have heard of it?’

Finavar dropped his bloody doll to the ground and his voice became a hesitant whisper. ‘The Lord of the Greenwood will be here?’

‘Exactly. Mälloch the Elder conducts the ceremony.’ Sibaris smirked as he mentioned Mälloch’s name. ‘He admits only the very bravest, but you have proved yourself worthy.’ Sibaris waved at the sacks of skin they had made. ‘You have helped me, stranger, so I will happily vouch for you.’ He grinned. ‘Mälloch’s soul is more ancient than any in the forest, even Naieth herself is young in comparison. He has little time for common folk but,’ Sibaris’s smirk became a grin, ‘he is my great-grandfather. I’m sure he will listen. Besides, there will be many other strangers at the ceremony.’

‘The Divine Consort?’ Finavar could hardly believe what he had heard. He had never expected to find the king so soon. He looked down at his skeletal limbs. He had struggled to overcome even a small group of outsiders, how would he find the strength to avenge his brother? ‘Am I ready?’ he wondered aloud. Then he shook his head. ‘Only fate could have brought me here.’

Sibaris frowned, unsure of his meaning.

‘I will come,’ said Finavar.

Sibaris looked stunned and delighted at the same time, but before he could ask for an explanation. Finavar nodded at the abattoir they had created. ‘Once we’ve finished with your “victims”.’

The evening began strange and grew stranger. The Fiùrann were a fiery collection of young wardancers and, as they sang slurred drunken elegies from a moonlit hilltop, Finavar tried to be carried along by the wildness of their tales. A moment of escape would have been a blessing, but it was not to be. He soon noticed an odd stiffness to their songs – a forced jollity that never quite rang true. The journey had taken a night and day, and Sibaris had talked the whole time, boasting of the delights that lay ahead – of the wild debauchery of his clan, but as soon as Finavar emerged from the trees and entered the crowd, he knew that something was wrong.

Most of the shadow-dancers barely acknowledged his presence as they leapt and twirled across the grass. The rite had drawn poets and songsmiths from throughout the region. There were even travellers from other realms of the forest, so Finavar hid himself in the crowd, just another pair of ears for their songs and jokes.

As he moved through the strangers his sense of unease grew. The celebrants eyed each other warily as they met and some of them wore masks. To hide one’s face in battle was normal, but in a gathering such as this it seemed odd. Finavar noticed that some of the masked figures also wore pouches of dried flowers around their necks, soaked with lavender oil, and after giving him the briefest of greetings they would press the pouches to their noses and take a deep, nervous breath.

Intrigued, Finavar made his way through the dancers to the top of the hill, where he found the lord of the Fiùrann – a tall, hawk-nosed noble named Mälloch the Elder. As his kindreds reeled around him, Mälloch remained sprawled languorously across the grass, his long limbs enveloped by an enormous bearskin. As the others recited poems and acted out battles he lay quietly in the dark, watching the proceedings with a troubled, distant expression.

Despite the cold, most of the wardancers wore little more than Finavar – loincloths and the odd animal skin – but beneath his bearskin, Mälloch wore a soft leather tunic, embroidered with an intricate, spiralling design, and where the others carried short, leaf-bladed swords, he carried a long, curved blade, with a swan’s neck handle made of carved ivory. It was clearly of foreign manufacture and a thing of great beauty. Even after all he had been through, Finavar found himself eying the exotic weapon jealously as he approached. He noticed that the noble wore two scabbards, both of the same curved shape, but one of them was empty. He wondered what had happened to the blade’s twin.

Mälloch looked as youthful and handsome as any other asrai noble, but when Finavar reached him he saw that Sibaris had not exaggerated – Mälloch’s great age was unmistakable. His skin shone with antiquity. As he moved he shimmered, like gossamer caught in the moonlight. The same light was visible in the surrounding trees – fine strands of silver that flashed and tinkled in the breeze.

Finavar briefly met Mälloch’s eye as he passed him. The noble studied him closely and Finavar felt his confidence wavering. He turned away and accepted the wine that was offered to him, seeking courage for what lay ahead. He quickly found that his emaciated body was no match for the heady drink. His head began to spin and, as the night wore on, he found it harder to follow the words of the songs. He decided that the Liathian food might be a safer option and began to wolf down every leaf-full of nourishment he could grasp. As the food hit his stomach a wonderful sense of wellbeing flooded his body. He realised he could not remember the last time he had eaten anything that could accurately be described as a meal.

As midnight approached, the mood of the gathering grew even tenser. There was a single dead tree at the summit of the hill. Its bark was the colour of the moon and it had only two branches – a pair of thick, gnarled limbs that reached out like arms from either side of the trunk. As the wardancers recounted tales of glory and heroism, they circled the rotten husk, addressing prayers to its leafless crown. As they whirled back and forth, Mälloch finally began to pay attention, leaning forwards and staring intently at the display. As he did so, the light of the moon began to blaze brighter, breaking through a gap in the clouds and surrounding the tree in a column of silver.

Finavar could not tell if it was the wine or Mälloch’s sorcery, but the light seemed unnaturally bright. The crowd gathered on the hilltop vanished into shadow until all that was left was the illuminated tree, the endless, circular dance, and Mälloch’s eyes, blazing in the twilight.

There was a lone drummer sat beside Mälloch, and as the moon grew brighter she played harder, driving the dancers into a frenzy of flailing limbs and howled verses. Periodically, Mälloch would raise his sword in a lacklustre gesture, waving it vaguely in the direction of one of the dancers. The dancer would then step away from the tree, shaking their head in disappointment as the darkness enveloped them.

The combination of light, noise and alcohol left Finavar feeling quite bewildered. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked, turning to Sibaris who was sitting beside him on the grass. ‘When does the Lord of the Greenwood appear?’

The youth’s face gleamed like ivory as he turned to Finavar. Unlike the others, he was grinning with genuine excitement. ‘Mälloch is choosing. He must decide which of the supplicants will be offered to the Dàrragh.’

Finavar shook his head, feeling as though he were speaking to Sibaris through a thick fog. ‘The Dàrragh?’

‘The tree!’ Sibaris waved at the dead whitebeam, silhouetted in the shaft of moonlight. ‘My great-grandfather must choose an offering for the Divine Consort. Two will be bound to the tree but only one will become the Child of the Whitebeam.’

‘And the other one?’

‘The other one will receive a lesser reward. He will travel with Mälloch to the Rites of Spring. He will enter the court of the Mage Queen and join the ranks of the highborn. He will become a great lord of the forest, like Mälloch himself.’

Finavar looked back at the dancers. Their bodies were painted red with vermillion and they wore circlets of dried roses. He nodded. The details of the rite were strange, but the ritual was essentially familiar. One of the dancers would be sacrificed to feed the soul of the tree, killed for no reason in the name of Orion and the Wild Hunt. The thought sickened him. It was another example of all that was wrong with their sovereign.

He took a deep breath and tried to steady his breathing. The drumming was building to a crescendo and he guessed that Orion would soon appear.

Mälloch finally rose to his feet, threw back his bearskin and sauntered into the column of light. He waved his sword again, leaving just two of the crimson dancers to circle the tree. Then he lifted his other hand and muttered a charm.

There was a chorus of gasps as the surrounding forest lit up. Hundreds of silver flames pierced the darkness, shimmering and sparkling with the same light that shone through Mälloch’s skin. As they drifted through the darkness, washing up the sides of the hill, they lit up the faces of the assembled asrai, and painted them all as ghosts. As the flames approached, Finavar saw that they contained faces – glimpses of fallen warriors.

Mälloch was half hidden in shadow but as Finavar heard him mutter another command, he saw that the noble still looked distracted and distant, as though his thoughts were far from the hilltop ritual.

The ghosts entered the column of moonlight and began to spiral around the two remaining dancers, trailing from their limbs like pennants as they rolled and tumbled across the grass.

‘He will be here soon,’ whispered Sibaris, leaning close to Finavar.

Finavar felt a rush of panic. What did he hope to achieve? He recalled the ferocity of the king’s hunt and realised it was absurd to think he could avenge his brother in his current state. He was still far too weak to consider such a thing. He shuffled back into the crowd and took another drink of wine. Tonight was not the time to strike. Orion would butcher him. He would just become another sacrifice. He must be patient.

As the spirits surrounded the two dancers, they began fastening them to the limbs of the tree, binding them with strands of creeper and moss. The eyes of the dancers were rolling drunkenly and Finavar doubted they understood what was happening.

Finavar found himself gripped by a potent mixture of tiredness, alcohol and grief. His face twisted into a sneer. The sight of such pathetic devotion made his stomach turn. He thought of how passionately Ordaana had spoken and he suddenly wished she were with him. All his life he considered her insane, but now he saw where the real madness lay.

He rose to leave, but Sibaris hissed in alarm and dragged him to the ground. Finavar felt too exhausted to resist, so he took another slug of wine and tried to relax, waiting for the inevitable bloodshed.

Mälloch remained silent for a long time, studying the two figures bound to the tree. Then he began to address the crowd in rich, rolling tones. ‘Summer must pass, but life remains. In the earth and in the sky, the gods will linger, through the frost and snow, waiting to be born again. Even in times of great trial…’ His voice faltered, and he looked down for a second, seeming to lose his way. When he spoke again his words were quieter and less sure. ‘Even in these dark times, we must remember that we are one with nature. What befalls the forest, befalls the children of the forest. We cannot forsake our duty, however onerous it may seem. If we are to overcome this evil we must bind ourselves closer than ever before to the heart of the Eternal Realms.’

Finavar frowned and turned to Sibaris. ‘Evil?’

Sibaris’s smile faltered but he gave no reply and held his finger to his lips.

Mälloch waved his sword at the two stranded figures who were staring back at him. ‘Would you be a Child of the Whitebeam? Would you join your soul to the forest?’

The two dancers nodded, but Finavar noticed that they were starting to sober up. Their religious fervour was starting to be replaced by expressions of fear.

‘Only one of you may pass beyond. Are you willing to offer your souls? Will you submit yourselves to the judgement of the Divine Consort?’

The dancers nodded again, but the fear in their eyes was now unmistakable, and Finavar noticed that one of them was testing the strength of his bonds to see if it was too late to change his mind.

Finavar shrugged off Sibaris’s grip and rose to his feet again, disgusted and unable to watch any more but, before he could leave, the lights failed, plunging the hill into darkness.

He stumbled to a halt and looked back at the tree.

The moonlight was still there, but it had dropped to a more natural level, and after the glare of the spirits, he was almost blind.

There was a hiss of indrawn breath and he realised someone was approaching from the far side of the tree: a tall, powerfully built figure with a crown of antlers. The newcomer towered over Mälloch, who dropped to one knee and handed over the ceremonial sword.

As Finavar watched the scene, his mind filled with images of Jokleel’s death. He recalled again how casually Orion had butchered his brother.

The horned shadow approached the tree with a horribly slow step.

One of the dancers began to whimper and sob, and the other cried out. ‘Mälloch! I’m not sure. Wait!’

Mälloch remained silent, and as the antlered figure raised the sword, the noble closed his eyes.

Finavar’s plans of escape evaporated as hate flooded his drunken thoughts. He was vaguely aware that Sibaris was howling at him in horror. Then he realised why. He was sprinting across the hilltop, sword raised, screaming a curse as he hurtled towards the tree.

Mälloch was still kneeling as Finavar reached him. He stood, with an amazed expression on his face, but was too slow to prevent Finavar from crashing into the Lord of the Greenwood.

Screams and howls erupted from the crowd as they realised what was happening.

Finavar lashed out wildly with his sword and felt it connect with something hard.

His prey tried to back away, but Finavar moved with preternatural speed.

He jabbed the sword again and forced it into something more yielding.

Before he could strike a third time, Mälloch grabbed him by the shoulders and wrenched him back, hurling him across the grass as the crowd raced towards him.

Finavar spun around and prepared to attack again, knowing he only had seconds before he was overwhelmed.

He froze in shock.

The Lord of the Greenwood was backing away from him. His hands were raised defensively. Even glimpsed in the half-light, Finavar knew it could not be Orion. He peered through the gloom as rough hands wrestled him to the ground, knocking his sword from his grip. He looked back and saw to his amazement that he had attacked someone dressed in a suit of carved wood: a collection of wooden plates, painted and scored to resemble the angular muscles of the king. The antlers were real enough, but they were fixed to a scored wooden mask.

Punches and kicks rained down on him but, for a moment, Finavar was too shocked to defend himself. The executioner was an imposter. He could see fear and shock looking back at him through the eyeholes of the mask, before the figure backed away into the darkness and vanished from view.

Then, realising he was in danger of being knocked unconscious, Finavar leapt to his feet and performed a graceful, vicious pirouette that scattered his attackers with a series of well-placed kicks.

Finavar grinned as he realised his skill had not entirely left him.

He landed briefly on the ground and then leapt on one of his attackers with a flurry of punches.

‘Wait!’ said Mälloch, in a deep, commanding voice.

Despite his excitement Finavar froze and looked back at the noble.

The crowd were incensed but they grudgingly obeyed Mälloch’s order. Most backed away but a few took hold of Finavar’s limbs, eyeing him nervously as they did so.

As his rage faded, Finavar registered the pain that covered his body and winced.

Mälloch loomed over him. ‘Do you realise what you’ve done?’ He had retrieved his sword from the grass and he rested the tip of it on Finavar’s throat. ‘Do you understand? You have done a great, great evil. This rite has gone uninterrupted since the days of your forefathers.’ His voice was calm, but his lips were quivering with rage. He waved at the moons. ‘The moment of giving has now passed. It’s gone, stranger. There will be no Child of the Whitebeam this year. You have undone a year’s worth of dutiful stewardship.’ He looked down the hill, where the silhouette of the fake Orion could still just be seen, hurrying back into the forest. The noble’s eyes were wide with shock. ‘The spirits of the forest will be furious at this betrayal,’ his voice cracked with emotion, ‘at the time when we are most in need of their help.’

‘He must pay with his blood,’ cried someone in the crowd. ‘There must be balance.’

‘There must be balance,’ agreed one of the red-skinned wardancers, still lashed to the tree. There was obvious relief on his face, but he acted aggrieved. ‘We have enough troubles as it is. The tree must be fed,’ he muttered, still straining against his bonds.

Mälloch pressed his blade further and Finavar whispered a prayer.

Then the noble closed his eyes and withdrew the blade. He shook his head and backed away. ‘The moment has passed. It would achieve nothing.’ He glared at Finavar. ‘Whoever you are, you will not make me a murderer. Times are dire enough.’

‘Wait!’ cried a shrill voice. ‘The tree!’

Finavar turned and saw Sibaris, pointing at the dead whitebeam.

There was a splash of red across the trunk where Finavar had cut the fake Orion, and the bark was bubbling and cracking beneath it like a blister.

Mälloch rushed to examine the stain. He was silent for a few seconds, then he nodded in relief. ‘You’re a fool, Sibaris, but an observant one.’ He waved at the two wardancers bound to the branches. ‘Cut them down. Quickly.’ Then he pressed his sword into a crack in the bark and whispered a series of hurried oaths.

Mälloch’s servants freed the wardancers from the tree and helped them away.

As the stain spread across the ashen bark, the tree began to grind and creak and the two arm-like branches snapped into shapes that would have crushed the dancers if they had not been removed. The movements grew in violence, until the tree seemed to be caught in a silent gale, lashing and thrashing as its bark turned from grey to crimson. Rather than diminishing, the blood grew in volume as it spread across the tree.

The crowd backed away, muttering to themselves, but Mälloch’s tall frame remained motionless, hunched over the blade he had pressed into the bark.

Then, after a few moments, the tree became still.

Mälloch shook his head and withdrew his blade from the trunk. ‘It’s hard to be sure.’ He eyed the branches suspiciously. ‘Something has happened, but I’m not sure exactly what. Perhaps it will be enough.’

He turned to Finavar and abandoned his formal tones, speaking in simple disbelief. ‘What in the name of Isha were you thinking?’

Finavar sensed that Mälloch might be reasoned with, but he shocked himself by saying: ‘If you had ever seen the real Orion you would not endorse this ridiculous lie.’

The asrai holding Finavar gasped at his unrepentant tone and forced him roughly to the ground, but Mälloch only raised an eyebrow.

‘Some of us here have been lucky enough to join the Wild Hunt.’ He waved his sword at the shadowy figures gathered around the tree. ‘But none of us feel the need to disrupt ceremonies older than we are.’

‘Then perhaps you should question your judgement.’ Finavar glared drunkenly at Mälloch.

‘This is an outrage, lord!’ cried someone in the crowd. ‘He must be punished!’

‘Judgement of what?’ asked Mälloch, looking genuinely intrigued.

‘Your king,’ answered Finavar flatly.

There was a hiss of indrawn breath and many of the asrai drew weapons, but Mälloch shook his head and waved for them to be lowered again. ‘I do not follow you, stranger. What right does a subject have to judge his king? By what standards could we measure the immortal Lord of the Wild Hunt? Besides, why do you refer to him as our king?’ He frowned. ‘What master do you serve?’

Finavar felt a sinking sensation in his stomach as he realised he was too proud to back down. ‘I serve no master but my own conscience. I would give my life for my kin, or to protect the forest; but I will never again kneel to a false king. Orion is a murderer. He cares nothing for any of us.’

Mälloch kept his tone even and tried a wry smile. ‘Liathian wine is potent. Perhaps you have drunk a little too deeply, friend. Why else would one of Orion’s own subjects speak against him with such fervour?’

‘I am not his subject,’ snapped Finavar. ‘And neither are you. You’re his slave.’ He sneered. ‘Until you become his prey, that is.’

There were more shocked gasps from around the hilltop, but Mälloch looked concerned. He looked again at Finavar’s horribly wasted body and shook his head. ‘What happened to you? What drove you to form these strange ideas?’

Part of Finavar’s mind screamed at him to take advantage of the noble’s pity and say no more, but grief and anger spoke through him. Before he knew quite what he was doing, he began telling Mälloch his whole shocking tale – the tale of a bloodthirsty king, and the murder of his deluded subjects. Without realising it, Finavar quoted Ordaana’s bitter claims almost verbatim, denouncing not just Orion, but the eternal queen and their entire court.

There was such rage in Finavar’s voice that no one dared to interrupt until he reached the bloody conclusion, describing the slaughter of his brother in graphic detail; then he finished his story and the crowd fell silent, staring at Finavar in shock and disgust.

A few lone travellers gathered their things and slipped away into the shadows, muttering their disapproval as they headed back into the trees, but most stayed to see what happened next, turning to their lord to see his reaction.

Mälloch remained calm as Finavar finished his story. Then he lowered his head and massaged his temples, looking weary rather than enraged.

‘Leave us,’ he said to his subjects, gesturing to the trees with his sword. ‘I wish to talk to the stranger alone.’

Most of the wardancers leapt to obey, slipping into the darkness like ghosts, but those holding Finavar hesitated.

‘My lord,’ said one of them. ‘He’s dangerous.’

Mälloch raised an eyebrow, and the wardancer blushed and backed away.

As the crowd dispersed Finavar and Mälloch were left alone in the pool of moonlight.

‘You too, child,’ said Mälloch, keeping his eyes locked on Finavar.

Sibaris was standing a few feet away, watching anxiously. ‘My lord,’ he said, clasping his hands together. ‘This is all my fault. The stranger was a great help to me. I invited him to join the feast. If you want to–’

‘Leave,’ said Mälloch. His voice was no less commanding for being quiet.

The young bard was about to protest, but then he nodded and vanished as gracefully as the others.

Mälloch stared at Finavar with an expression that was hard to read. ‘People have been banished to the Wildwood for less.’

This close up, Finavar noticed again how ancient the noble was. Mälloch’s eyes bore the brilliance of centuries. His irises were the silver of moonlight.

Finavar was annoyed to be so intrigued by the noble and snapped his reply. ‘Indeed,’ he said, his voice made coarse by drink. ‘And have you ever wondered at that? Banishment to the Wildwood is a death sentence. No one can survive in such a place. Did you ever wonder why questioning our rulers is such an unspeakable crime?’

He waved at the darkness that surrounded the hill, indicating the silvery ghosts of trees, just visible in the moonlight. ‘Does Orion make the grass grow? Does he make the stars shine? Does he do anything, in fact, other than keep his people locked in an endless cycle of bloodshed?’ Finavar’s words rose in pitch until he was almost shrieking in Mälloch’s face. ‘Why should we revere him? Why should we worship such a monster?’

Mälloch opened one of his palms and held it out to Finavar.

For a moment, Finavar stared at it in confusion. Then he noticed a network of fat, wormy scars, running from Mälloch’s palm, all the way up his arm, before disappearing beneath his bearskin.

‘I rode with the Wild Hunt,’ said Mälloch. ‘I was old, even then, and I can recall some of what I did, how I clawed and stabbed, how I killed.’ His words became more abrupt as he tried to hide his emotion. ‘I do not know what manner of beast clawed me. I only know that I survived and it did not.’

Finavar’s rage faltered in the face of such a confession. His shoulders dropped. ‘Then you know it as well as I do.’ His voice was trembling. ‘For all these centuries, we have been tricked. Orion may be immortal, but as he hunts, we die and the whole bloody mess goes on.’

Mälloch shook his head and his words grew softer. ‘There is no trick, stranger, and we do not die. I came to this forest before even Ariel had stepped beneath its boughs – and long before she found her immortal lover. I have seen the way of things. I have seen the seasons come and go. Remember the teachings of Naieth. We are haunted by the ghosts of our past.’ He turned his penetrating gaze back on Finavar. ‘In the forest, everything is immortal.’

Finavar sighed as he saw what a fool he was being. No one, not even a survivor of the Wild Hunt could ever understand him. It was pointless. He had attacked someone in a wooden suit and outraged a whole clan for no reason. ‘I should not have come,’ he muttered, looking at Mälloch with a pitiful expression. ‘Will you let me leave? I promise never to return.’

Mälloch narrowed his eyes. ‘What is your name?’

Finavar hesitated, then shrugged. If the noble intended to punish him in some way, they would have to resolve it with blades; withholding his name would make no difference. ‘Finavar,’ he said, ‘of the fallen realm of Locrimere.’

Mälloch stared at him in shock, then let out a short bark of laughter. ‘Of course!’ He kept his grip on Finavar’s shoulder as he repeated the name. Then he let go, stepped back and looked at Finavar in silence, rubbing his jaw as he considered him.

Finavar found both the laughter and the silence annoying. ‘What do you mean “Of course”? Have we met?’

Mälloch shook his head. ‘We have not, but the tales of the Darkling Prince are sung across the forest.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘But it seems the songs have lied to us about one thing. You live, Finavar.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘You live and you still fight like a daemon.’

He fell silent again for a few seconds, considering something, then nodded his head in a stiff bow. ‘I’ve gathered my captains nearby, Finavar – no more than hour’s run from here. Would you join us? If there is any truth at all to your legend, I would value your advice.’

Finavar’s words were slurred by alcohol and emotion. ‘I’m not fit to be in your company. Your captains do not want to hear my advice.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘I would not make a good impression.’

Mälloch smiled and, for a moment, it seemed as though constellations were spiralling deep in his eyes. ‘We should keep you away from the wine, certainly.’

Finavar was confused by the noble’s smile. ‘Why do you need my advice?’ He looked at Mälloch’s hand. ‘You have enough experience of your own.’

Mälloch shook his head. ‘I have need of warriors, Finavar, like never before. That was my purpose here tonight. I do not have the time to spend an evening in such idle pleasure. Others have been dying while I lay watching this dance. But I knew, as on every previous year, there would be a gathering of skilled warriors.’ He paused. ‘And you have skill like nothing I have seen before. The songs did not lie about that.’ His eyes glittered playfully, as though he were about to share a joke. ‘There’s another thing. There’s something I would like to show you. Something of yours that you might wish to retrieve. Something that might help ease your pain. A friend has kept it safe for you.’

Finavar clenched his jaw. ‘There is only one thing that will ease my pain, and it cannot be granted by Mälloch the Elder.’ He glanced at his sword, lying a few feet away. ‘If you knew the thoughts I harboured, I doubt you would have any desire to shelter me.’

Mälloch let out a low rumble of laughter. ‘My eyes are not that old, Finavar. Even a dotard like me could not be blind to your purpose. You just attacked someone because you believed he was the king. If espionage is your game you should try a little harder to hide your plans.’ He grasped Finavar’s shoulder again. ‘Join us, for one day. See how great our need is.’ He saw the refusal in Finavar’s eyes. ‘If you wish to leave the following morning I will set you on your way, without a word of censure.’ He lifted some of the bearskin to his lips and kissed it. ‘I swear it.’

Finavar considered the offer. A noble’s word was unbreakable, and if he was serious about hunting down Orion he would need to fully regain his strength. He had almost died at the hands of a few meat-headed outsiders but he had felt his old grace returning as he fought Mälloch’s guards. A day or two’s safety, with a ready supply of food and weaponry might be all he needed to recover. These were the logical reasons he gave himself for considering Mälloch’s offer but, much as he would deny it, it was the words ‘ease your pain’ that really enticed him. Was such a thing possible, even now?

‘What did you wish to show me?’ he asked, unable to hold the question back.

Mälloch gave no answer. He simply turned and started climbing down the side of the hill, waving for Finavar to follow him into the darkness.

Finavar grabbed his sword and skulked after him. After a few minutes he heard the noble laughing softly to himself. ‘The Darkling Prince, indeed. Perhaps Sibaris is not so stupid after all.’

Chapter Nine

A light rain fell across the forest, drumming against its fallen leaves and splintering the apple-green surface of its pools. It was late afternoon and as the shower turned into something more determined it broke through the trees and ran down the back of Clara’s neck. The old woman was crawling through a waterlogged glen, following the course of a small beck. A thick, clinging mist hung over everything and it was impossible to see more than a few feet in any direction. As the rain ran down her back, Clara looked up with a grimace. Wan light washed over her face, revealing a ghastly, corpse-like pallor, a snarling demeanour and a bloody scar on the side of her skull. As the eerie light shifted around her, the old woman scratched anxiously at her head. The wound was already covered with angry red weals and as she scratched more of her skin came away, revealing bright, bloody bone.

‘It has to be this way,’ she muttered, pulling her deerskin higher and continuing to crawl. The light at the far end of the glen was brighter and a little more wholesome, and Clara was sure it must mark the end of the forest. Perhaps it was even the lights of Garonne. She had no desire to encounter more peasants, but it would be a relief to see some good, honest bricks and mortar. Her encounter with the forest daemons was a blur but she knew that, even in her blind panic, she could not have fled that far beneath the trees. It was worrying that she had failed to find her way out already. Hours had passed since she ran into the forest and somehow she had failed to find her way back to the heath.

The Everwood was famously capricious.

Clara had the unnerving feeling that she had travelled farther than she intended.

‘I’m almost back,’ she said, a little louder, as though speaking the words out loud would make them reality. She lifted her snake-bone necklace to her mouth and gave it a fierce kiss. Then she waved her crook, trying to clear the mist, but it was useless; autumn had the forest firmly in its dank grip. Everything was muffled and vague. Clara’s confidence remained unshaken, though. Her memory of the event was sketchy, but she knew without a doubt that something wonderful had happened to her. The image of the white stag still lingered in her thoughts and her limbs still tingled with unnatural power. The sheer terror of her encounter with the daemons had confused her for a while, but now she remembered her purpose. She was destined to rule. She scratched at the wound again, unleashing another trickle of blood. If she could just master the peculiar energy coursing though her, she would return home a hero. She would have the Amber Brothers locked firmly in her grip

As she considered this, Clara felt the strange energy gathering in her palm. She looked down and let out a surprised curse. Her hand was no longer her own. It had been transformed into a powerful, leathery claw, complete with powerful-looking talons.

‘What’s this?’ gasped Clara.

Never, in all her years of arcane study had she been able to mould her flesh so easily. The merest thought had transformed her fist into a new shape. Her pulse raced as she considered the power she had been given.

Then she noticed that the transformation was not complete. Her excitement seemed to have fed the change and, as she watched in amazement, her forearm withered and blackened into the foreleg of a bird.

Clara’s elation began to be edged by fear.

‘Enough,’ she muttered, glaring at her mutating limb.

The dark scales continued to climb her arm.

Clara hissed the words of a spell, ordering her arm to regain its natural shape, but there was no response.

The change had now reached her shoulder and broad, tawny feathers began knifing through her skin and gathering beneath her robes, straining at the seams.

Panic gripped Clara as she realised the power was beyond her control. She raised her crook and screamed her most powerful oath, snatching amber flames out of the morning air and setting the staff alight.

Finally, the mutation slowed.

She barked out the words of the spell a second time, with even more vehemence, and, to her relief, the feathers began sliding back beneath her skin.

Clara shook her head and clamped her eyes shut. ‘What have you done, you old fool?’

Then she looked again at her arm and saw that it had almost returned to normal. Her breathing slowed and her panic subsided.

‘They have never seen power like this,’ she said. ‘My claim will be beyond reproach.’

She glanced nervously at the trees. ‘As long as I can leave soon.’ She felt sure that, once she was beyond the forest’s boundaries, she would be able to better harness the energy she had taken from the stag.

‘Let me leave,’ she gasped. She touched the scar on her head, realising that she had clawed at it again. ‘I appreciate your gift,’ she said, softening her voice, ‘but now you must let me go.’

She grabbed the crook and rose to her feet, abandoning any pretence of stealth and running through the sodden grass. Suddenly, nothing seemed as important as leaving the forest behind and returning to humanity.

As she ran, she failed to notice that one of the forest shadows had broken free and was following her through the gloom.

As Clara neared the end of the glen, she saw that she was right – the trees grew thinner as she reached the borders of the forest and shafts of pale light were visible through the rain and the mist.

Her heart raced and she realised just how afraid she had been. The forest air was stifling and oppressive, and as she reached the open hillside she gasped like a drowning man, rescued from the pull of the tide.

Strangely, despite all her hours of wandering, Clara had emerged at exactly the same point she entered the Everwood. She sighed with relief and collapsed on the wet grass. Then, as she sat up and looked down the valley, she frowned.

She was sure, from the shape of the valley, that she was in the same place, but there was no sign of the dead peasants. In fact, where their bodies should have been, there was now a smart cobbled path, snaking through the grass. ‘This must be a different valley,’ she muttered, shaking her head. But then, as she peered through the rain, she saw the squat outline of Garonne. Confused, Clara stumbled up a small incline, trying to get a better look at the keep. Her confusion grew. The shape of the fortified town was unmistakable, but something incredible had happened to it. During the few hours Clara had spent in the forest Garonne had aged so badly it had become a ruin. Its walls had slumped and tumbled, and in some places collapsed completely, and where the gates had once stood there was now a misshapen, lichen-covered maw. One of the towers had tumbled, spilling its stones across grass that had already risen up and enveloped them.

Clara groaned. ‘I’m bewitched!’ She whirled around and jabbed her crook at the trees. ‘What have you done to me?’ The trees watched her in silence but she knew the answer. Travelling south she had heard all the local folk tales. As she warmed himself by the hearths of friendly strangers, she heard stories of foolhardy travellers, entering the Everwood never to be seen again. And there were other legends. A gruff old farrier had cowered at the mention of the place and relayed a story of adventurers, thought long dead, staggering from the trees centuries after they were last seen, returning home with lunatic tales of forest daemons and attempting to reclaim estates from their stunned ancestors.

‘Where have you sent me?’ she demanded, looking down the valley at the oddly perfect road and the ruined keep.

Again, there was no reply, but as Clara looked down the road, she saw movement.

There was a shape on the horizon, a carriage, rattling over the cobbled road towards her. It was little more than a dot beneath the vast, lowering clouds, but it was travelling fast. Within a few seconds she began to make out four horses, hurling it through the rain.

‘I’m saved,’ she said, hobbling down the grassy hillside. The grass was slick with rain, but she used her crook to steady herself and reached the road with a triumphant laugh, sneering over her shoulder at the trees.

The coach raced through the dull, grey valley, shrouded in spray and growing larger every second. Clara began to make out a smart-looking carriage, painted deep, bottle green with a golden chalice emblazoned on the doors. The design was unlike anything she had seen before. The footboard was constructed to resemble the wings of a swooping eagle and the coachman’s seat was the bird’s back. The whole thing was constructed so ingeniously that, if not for the clatter of hooves and wheels, Clara might have believed an enormous bird was racing towards her.

As she reached the side of the road, Clara could already make out the coachman himself. His livery was as strange as his vehicle – he wore a simple, fitted jacket and a plumed cap – but the sight of a human face was enough to drag a yelp from Clara’s lips. She raised her crook and waved it frantically over her head.

‘Hey!’ she cried, stumbling out onto the road.

The coachman saw her and slowed the horses a little as she approached. He leant forwards on his seat and squinted through the drizzle.

As the coach slowed, Clara stepped out into a patch of pale sunlight, still waving her crook. The coachman was just a few feet away and he saw her clearly for the first time. ‘Ho there! What are you doing out here? The forest isn’t safe.’

‘Friend!’ cried Clara, stepping closer to him. ‘I’m lost. Take me to the nearest town, I beg you.’

As Clara approached him, the driver’s expression changed.

‘By the gods, what are you?’ he cried, drawing back in horror. Then he yanked the reins and drove the horses on with a howl.

The carriage jerked forwards and a shutter rolled down in the carriage door, revealing a furious woman’s face.

The face at the door looked just as horrified as the coachman’s and the shutter slammed back up again.

‘Stay where you are, daemon!’ yelled the coachman as the carriage pulled away.

‘Wait!’ cried Clara, waving her crook in panic.

The sound of hooves rang out through the valley.

As the carriage sped away, Clara saw the terror in the coachman’s eyes.

She stumbled after him, but in a few more minutes his face was hidden from view. The coach went thundering down the road, even faster than when Clara had first spied it on the horizon.

Despair and shock washed over her. The driver had been so shocked. Why had he been so afraid?

Clara dropped to her knees with a groan, letting her crook clatter onto the road. For a few seconds she was too shocked to think straight. Was her appearance so wild as to scare innocent people?

‘Why were they so afraid?’ she groaned, looking up into the whirling cords of rain.

‘What difference does it make?’ asked a piping, childish voice.

Clara flinched in shock. Then she clambered to her feet and stared up into the downpour. It seemed as though the rain had spoken to her. ‘Who’s there?’

The voice had come from just a few feet overhead, but Clara could see no sign of its owner.

‘Too many darknesses have passed, old woman,’ said the voice, quivering on the breeze. ‘You could never have returned anyway.’

‘Who is that?’ Clara peered into the rain. Then she staggered off the road and looked back at the trees. She suddenly had the horrible idea that the forest was speaking to her. ‘What do you mean, I could never have returned?’

The breeze picked up, snatching dead leaves from the forest floor and spinning them up into the rain, making a glinting, waist-high column of copper and gold.

‘You’re not one of them any more, old woman.’

Clara lurched back towards the trees, her eyes locked on the little tornado. ‘Who’s speaking?’

The spiral of rain and leaves vanished for a moment, then reappeared just a few feet away, fluttering in the downpour. As it moved briefly into the light, Clara glimpsed a vague shape in the tumult: the shimmering ghost of a child, smiling mischievously at her. The spectre was only visible for a second, but it was enough to terrify her.

She looked back at the road, wanting to flee, but something stayed her in her tracks. She touched her wound and wondered if it had unhinged her mind. She was talking to the rain. ‘Not one of them?’ she asked, with desperation in her voice.

The ghost child waltzed into view again with a tinkle of fluid laughter. His skin burned like an autumn sunset and as he spoke, his features shifted and rolled, as though even his bones were unable to stay still. ‘We’re playing games, old woman.’ He laughed, stepping fully out into the light, so close that Clara could have touched him. Then suddenly, his expression darkened. His face became a furious snarl. ‘You know what you’ve done! You’re a villain! You’ve stepped too often into skins that do not belong to you.’

He jabbed a trembling finger at Clara and crumpled leaves flew from the digit, flashing in the rain. As they tumbled around Clara they assumed the shapes of animals. ‘You’ve travelled further than you should, old woman, and it’s left a mark on your flesh.’ His rage grew and he slapped the side of his forehead. ‘The doors open both ways. What goes in comes out! I can see your soul, Clara.’

Clara’s stomach turned and she thought for a moment she might be sick. ‘I’m human,’ she said, slapping her sodden robes. ‘I’m human.’ A note of desperation entered her voice. ‘Why did they flee from me?’

The spirit’s expression changed again. The mirth and the rage had both vanished, replaced by a look of heart-rending grief. ‘He fears what he doesn’t understand, Clara, like all of them. His heart is hardened by the paucity of his learning.’ The spirit glanced at a puddle of water at the edge of the forest. ‘He fears your strangeness.’

An awful feeling of dread welled up through Clara. Why was the ghost looking at the pool with such a mournful expression? What was in there?

She trudged slowly through the mud, dreading what she might see, but unable to resist.

As Clara looked down into the puddle she was blinded for a moment by the moonlight. She could make out her silhouette and nothing else. She let out a sigh of relief. Her fear suddenly seemed ridiculous. What had alarmed her so?

Then as she grew more accustomed to the glare, Clara’s vision cleared and she saw her face in more detail. She winced as she saw the bloody wound where the peasant had clubbed her. Then she noticed something else and hissed. Her eyes had changed. They were no longer hers. They were glassy and inhuman – the eyes of an animal. They were obscenely wide and the pupils had become two tall, narrow slits.

‘What have you done to me?’ she screamed, whirling around and looking for the ghost child.

The glimmering column of leaves was now hovering by the edge of the road and Clara could just make out the strange little spirit, staring back at her. ‘What have I done?’ The innocent little face twisted into a hurt pout. ‘Why does the blame always fall at my door? Zephyr is always the guilty party.’ Tears glistened in the spirit’s eyes. ‘I know nothing of life and yet everyone accuses me. Zephyr did this. Zephyr did that.’

Clara shook her head, dazed by the ghost’s bizarre behaviour. As the column of dead leaves weaved back and forth across the heath, the spirit wailed disconsolately, clutching at its golden locks and shaking with dismay.

Despite the surreal situation, Clara began to feel oddly guilty. The ghost child had dropped to his knees and was sobbing violently. ‘What do I know of the world? How will I ever learn if people see me as the source of all ill? What do I know of vice?’

Clara stumbled through the heather and gorse, holding out a placating hand. ‘Forgive me,’ she muttered. ‘I am afraid, that’s all.’ There was a tremor in her voice. ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me.’

As she reached the spiral of leaves the child looked up at her. His expression was completely transformed. The tears had vanished, replaced by a disgusted, imperious sneer. ‘How dare you address me?’ The child looked down the length of his tiny, upturned nose. ‘You filthy little mortal. Do you think I care about your wretched existence?’

The leaves flurried and tumbled around Clara’s face, blinding her for a moment, and when she looked again, the ghost had vanished.

‘Wait,’ she gasped. With the spirit gone, it suddenly occurred to her that, left as she was, she could never return home. She would be dragged before a magistrate and handed over to witch hunters. Her heart pounded. ‘They’ll burn me alive,’ she muttered, spinning around and looking for the golden child.

‘Of course!’ came a reply from the rain. The voice was full of laughter again – verging on hysterics. ‘You’d be a bonfire before you’d gone two miles.’

‘Then help me!’ cried Clara, spinning around and looking up into the sparkling banks of rain. ‘Tell me what to do!’ She dropped her crook and clamped her palms over her hideous eyes. ‘How can I be normal again?’

The child was suddenly at her side, just inches from her face, and when it spoke its voice was devious and wheedling. ‘You’d like my help?’

‘Yes!’ cried Clara, howling with fear and rage. ‘Make me human again, for pity’s sake!’

The spirit’s lips were next to Clara’s ear. ‘I did not make this mess, old woman,’ it whispered, ‘but perhaps I can unmake it.’

‘Yes!’ gasped Clara, reaching out to grab the glittering shape. Her fingers clutched air and she saw that the spirit was back beneath the canopy of the trees.

‘What did you see?’ asked the youth, with the same scheming expression on his face. He held his hands over his head and spread out his fingers. ‘Was it, by any chance, a great, white stag?’

For a moment, Clara was too shocked to speak. Then she nodded. ‘How do you know? Was that you? Did you come to me in another guise? Are you the spirit of the forest?’

The golden youth looked suddenly demure, looking away with a coy expression. ‘In a sense.’

Clara grabbed her crook and raced back towards the forest. ‘Then you could make me human again!’

The spirit slipped away into the trees, with Clara staggering after.

‘There might be a way,’ said the voice, becoming a tumble of leaves again.

‘Wait! Show me!’ cried Clara as her frail shape was swallowed by the gloom of the forest.

Chapter Ten

Something was wrong. Drycha cursed as she waded through the mire, flexing her crooked claws; itching to lay them on the root of her pain. Flies gathered around her like mist, pluming in hollows and rolling over sunken paths. They looked like natural insects but Drycha was not so easily fooled. She knew the seasons too well. Autumn was turning to winter. Swarms of flies should not be whirring through the trees. As she squelched and popped through the mud, more of them erupted from the reeds, filling her eyes and gathering in her wooden mouth.

There was a loathsome stink on the breeze but she waded on, undeterred, struggling through another waste-deep bog and climbing a small knoll for a better view. The plague of flies continued for as far as she could see, hazing the air and giving the vale an odd, ghostly pallor.

‘What is it? What do you see?’ Liris creaked and groaned as she followed, dragging her knotted bark up the slope, moving with a series of spasmodic jerks and bounds. ‘Fawn? Calf?’

Drycha reached out, extending her wooden talons into the cloud of flies. She sent her mind coursing through roots and branches, feeling pain and confusion in every tendril she entered. ‘No.’ As she lowered her claw, her features cracked and folded into a grimace. ‘It is a bear.’

Liris looked appalled as she reached her side.

They both paused for a moment at the crest of the knoll, listening to the awful keening sound. It was a high-pitched, repetitive shriek, so loud that it sliced through even the din of the flies.

Liris folded and unfolded her brittle limbs as she circled Drycha, making a clicking clacking sound. ‘What could have dragged such a sound from her? What could hurt her so?’

Drycha shook her head. ‘The whole vale has become strange to me.’ Her voice was almost a whisper. ‘I can barely recognise it. There is growth where there should be decay and life where there should be death.’

Liris snapped and cracked her limbs again, clearly distressed. ‘How can the forest be strange to you?’

‘He has done this.’ Drycha’s voice was full of venom. She hurried down the far side of the knoll and re-entered the bog with a splash.

The sun was directly overhead by the time they found the bear and there were no shadows to spare them the horror of its plight.

The animal was sprawled at the basin of a small gulley, half submerged in the mud and screaming like a hungry infant.

Drycha and Liris paused a few feet away, too horrified to speak.

The creature’s left side was intact, although partly hidden in the mud, but the other side of the animal was hideously transformed. Its fur had fallen away to reveal a mound of buboes and pustules. The bear’s flank had swollen into a bloated, angry-looking sack and beneath its skin Drycha and Liris saw shapes, swimming through the pus.

The bear tried to rise as they approached, sensing danger, but it was too weak to move. The most it could do was glare at them and continue screaming.

Tears tumbled down the ridges of Drycha’s face. She clawed at her own features, scraping bark from her cheeks and whispering a curse.

Then she climbed down into the gulley and rushed to the bear’s side.

It made a pathetic attempt to lash out as she approached but she easily dodged the blow, placing her knotted claws on its chest.

As the animal struggled to raise its paw and lash out again, Drycha began to sing. Her voice was a dry, whispered drone, but the melody was gentle – a wordless lullaby, dragged from the nearby trees. The tune rustled from the copper-coloured leaves and caused the bear to slump back into the mud, finally ceasing its terrible screech.

The bear lowered its paw and as its body relaxed it turned towards Drycha.

She leant close to the creature’s ruined head and brushed her claws against the ragged wound. ‘Sleep, great spirit. Suffer no more.’

The bear’s breathing began to slow.

Liris was sobbing too, but she joined her voice to the rustling chorus and climbed down into the gulley.

Drycha extended one of her arms with a series of cracking pops and cradled the animal’s head. Then she raised her other arm and placed it against the bear’s skull.

‘Sleep, old friend,’ she whispered. ‘Your rest is well-earned.’ As the words left her mouth, the arm she had placed against the bear’s skull formed into a sharpened thorn and shot forwards. There was a crunch of breaking bone and the animal stiffened, then its head dropped back into Drycha’s arm.

The bear took one last, rattling breath and lay still.

Drycha stared at the lifeless creature for a few seconds in silence, watching its blood pool around her knees. Then she leant back and screamed. She screamed with such ferocity that her neck splintered and vines fell from her trembling lips.

Liris dropped to her knees to join her in her grief, and for a long time neither of them could do anything but weep.

Finally, as the sun drifted across the sky and shadows began to stretch across the waterlogged glade, Drycha ceased her cries and lowered the bear’s head to the ground.

‘Not even in my darkest visions…’ Drycha’s words faltered as she tried to comprehend what she had just seen. She clutched her head in her hands. ‘Look at what they’ve done to us.’ Her voice cracked as she rose to he feet. ‘Look at what he has done to us.’

Liris could not remove her eyes from the bear. ‘You think this is the work of Orion?’

Drycha’s voice was as brittle as her twitching claws. ‘Who else? The trespasser king is more of a halfwit than we ever dreamt.’ She pointed at the infected corpse. ‘This is what we have kept buried for all those centuries. This is what he has unleashed on us. This is the result of his arrogance.’ She clawed at her own face again and her words became a jumble of incoherent curses. Then she closed her eyes and spoke with quiet passion. ‘The pain of our sister will be nothing to the agonies I will inflict on him.’

She nodded at the bear’s corpse and raised her claws. With a thought, she formed them into razor-sharp blades. ‘We must remove this loathsome blight from her flesh. Her spirit is old and strong, and it will not rest for long. We must make sure she returns to us whole; free of this taint.’

Liris nodded. There was a creaking sound as she transformed her own limbs into the same shape. Then there was a wet tearing sound as they began their work.

They emerged from the gulley nearly an hour later, slick with blood and the remnants of burst pupae. Drycha pointed through the trees, to where the clouds of flies were at their most impenetrable. ‘The taint is strongest at the centre of the vale.’ She ran her tongue over her ridged lips, as though she could already taste violence. ‘It is one of the interlopers’ hovels. If the blight can overtake a spirit as noble as Ursa, think what it could do to the feeble souls of the outlanders.’

Liris was about to reply, but Drycha was already moving, filled with righteous indignation, wading through the mud and flies, her back stooped as she powered through the bog.

As they reached the centre of the glade the extent of the corruption became apparent. The trees were coated with yellow spores and several of them had buckled under the weight of enormous fungal growths – bloated, pungent discs jutting through branches and trunks. Drycha paused before a hunched sycamore tree. Its bark was rippling like the surface of a wind-lashed pool. She stepped closer, shaking her head in disbelief, gently scraping the bark with one of her claws. The tree burst open at her touch like a piece of overripe fruit.

Drycha flinched as slithering, slippery shapes tumbled from the hole. Hundreds of grubs tumbled into the mud and the tree began to convulse and shake.

Drycha had to shield her face as the trunk fell sideways and tore apart, spraying larvae and rotten pulp against her.

The clouds of flies thickened, making it almost impossible to see.

Drycha turned and fled, heading off down another path with Liris close behind.

They raced through the mire, splashing through puddles and the remains of decayed trees.

As she ran, Drycha sensed currents of magic zipping through the boughs. She immediately recognised the feeble sorcery of Ariel’s witches, intended to disguise the entrance to their grubby little den. She laughed at the clumsiness of their efforts. Only the blindest of travellers could fail to notice the canopied avenue and the well-worn seats of its guardians.

She nodded to Liris and they slipped into the cover of the trees, delighting in how much more effective their own disguises were. They became shadow and thorn, ghostlike and silent as they neared the sentries.

Drycha was bound by her master not to hunt the asrai, but she could not prevent her limbs bristling as she crept towards the first sentry’s perch. She had promised not to openly attack the halls of the asrai, but after her encounter with the bear it took all of her effort not to pounce on the watcher as she slipped through the lengthening shadows.

She had almost moved past the guard when Liris grabbed her wrist and halted her in her tracks.

Drycha glared at her.

Liris frowned and nodded to the fork of the tree that the sentry used as a perch.

The cloud of flies was particularly thick there, but as Drycha peered through the haze, she realised why Liris had paused.

The sentry was completely visible, even through the miasma of insects.

Drycha mirrored Liris’s frown. Ariel’s runts were fools but this was clumsy even by their standards. The sentry’s legs were hanging from the branch in full view of the path below.

She turned and crept back towards the tree, her body bristling with sharpened wood.

The smell grew worse as she approached. It was the same stink of putrefaction that had surrounded the bear. She knew, before she was anywhere near the tree, that the sentry was dead.

They emerged from the bracken and scoured the path for any living guards.

There were none, so Drycha climbed lightly up through the branches and lifted herself up beside the dangling sentry.

She hissed in disgust.

The guard was as bloated and pustulent as the bear. His limbs were swollen sacks of liquid and, like the bear, there were grubs swarming beneath his skin. His chest had collapsed into a wet mush and, where his lungs should have been, there was a mound of pale, wriggling shapes, rummaging blindly through his rotting skin. His face was grey, his cheeks were sunken and his eyes had been replaced with two ragged sockets.

There was a raven in the tree, cawing angrily at Drycha, and she had no doubt where the eyes had gone.

The smell was overpowering and Drycha dropped to the ground.

‘It is as we always thought,’ she said, turning to Liris. Her eyes were dead and her voice was flat. ‘Orion released no simple spirit. He has unleashed a fragment of the Plague God. He has unleashed the Old Blight.’

Liris shook her head, but before she could reply, Drycha raced down the path, making no effort to disguise her passing.

Liris rushed after her and they soon found more bodies sprawled in the undergrowth.

The scale of the disaster was obvious to Drycha. Ariel’s runts were obsessive about their funerary rites. They would never leave bodies to the elements like this, for all to see.

She pressed on without stopping to examine any more bodies. It was obvious from even a cursory glance that they had all died the same pitiful death. The path became a crevasse and eventually led to a seemingly featureless hillside.

Again, Drycha laughed at their pathetic illusion, but this time the sound was hollow and short-lived. She slipped through the hidden entrance to their home and found herself in a vast tunnel of roots. She rarely entered such places and her breath quickened as she saw the atrocity they had created. The roots of countless living trees had been plaited into a mile-long hall, lined with shimmering, fireless torches. It would have been a repulsive sight at the best of times, but now, filled with clouds of buzzing flies, it made her head spin. Many of the lights had failed, making it hard to see and as she made her way down the hall she slipped and realised that the ground was slick with blood. She continued, a little slower, and after a few minutes she began to make out corpses in the gloom – all of them mangled and bloated into bizarre, misshapen lumps of meat.

Drycha paused and crouched low to the ground. She had heard a sound, coming from somewhere up ahead. She signalled for Liris to hold still and then she strained to hear beyond the buzzing of the flies. The sound came again and she recognised asrai voices, screaming in pain and rage.

Liris rushed towards her, but she waved for her to stop again and continued listening. The cries rang out again, accompanied this time by the sound of blades clattering against stone.

It sounded like there were a few survivors somewhere up ahead, but who were they fighting?

Drycha pressed on through the gloom, peering down every archway she passed. The doorways were constructed of the same knotted root as the main passage and were lined with the same torches, but they had all been plunged into darkness. All of them bore some sign of the plague, but Drycha was sure that the survivors were still up ahead.

Finally, the hallway narrowed to a point, ending in a tall, thin doorway. It looked as though there had once been a door, but now there was just a mound of damp, shredded wood, teeming with grubs and beetles.

Drycha paused at the threshold, staring into the darkness beyond. Lights flickered on the far side of a vast chamber. It looked like blades, swinging through the gloom and catching the faint light of the few remaining torches.

Fury overwhelmed Drycha as she considered the ruin Ariel and Orion had wrought on her home. She turned to Liris and saw that they had shared the same idea. They nodded at each other and entered the room. A few lonely survivors would never be missed. Oaths could be forgotten.

The bodies were heaped in mounds. It was too dark to see the flies clearly but they were like a living wall, thick and unyielding as Drycha fought through the seething, humming air.

The survivors had been backed into a corner and they were loosing arrows and knives with wild abandon, howling and screaming as they tried to defend themselves. There were less than a dozen of them left and they were all horribly diseased. It was obvious that none of them would survive, even if they defeated their attackers.

Drycha became one of them as she reached the skirmish, dressing herself in soft skin and stiff, leather armour. There was a faint light from the passageway outside and she struggled at first to see exactly what they were fighting, but as she reached the fighting she stumbled to a halt, amazed by what she saw.

They were fighting themselves.

The asrai were so maddened and blinded by rot that they had turned on each other, hacking chunks out of their own kind and loosing arrows at their dying kin.

The scene was so pitiful that Drycha’s fury left her. One of the asrai spotted her in the gloom and called out for help, but he was immediately cut down by his brothers.

Drycha had arrived just in time to witness the end. Within a few more minutes, most of the combatants had collapsed, clutching at pulsing growths and open wounds.

As the last couple lunged and hacked each other to the ground, she abandoned her disguise and left the chamber, waving for Liris to follow.

They raced from the fly-filled charnel house, moving as quickly as they could. When they stumbled back out into the forest, Drycha was trembling with barely contained rage. ‘Orion’s blunder was at the start of the summer,’ she said, looking at the slumped, rotten groves that surrounded them. ‘It’s barely autumn.’ She shook her head. ‘What use are Ariel’s promises now? All those proud claims of guardianship! What will they guard as they butcher their own diseased brothers? Finally, they have abandoned their ridiculous pretence at servitude. They will spend the winter dying – murdered by their own king.’ She waved at the rotten trees. ‘And by spring there will be nothing left.’

Liris shook her head. ‘The forest is eternal.’

Drycha snarled. ‘We have been betrayed. When the new year comes we will be strangers in our own home. The false king has given us away. We are gifts to the Lord of Flies. We are his plaything.’ She closed her eyes, trying to see beyond the spores and diseased wood. ‘There must be some way we can make him pay for this. I will not die so easily, Liris.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘He will know what to do.’

There was fear and excitement in Liris’s voice. ‘The Ancient One?’

Drycha nodded, flexing her claws.

‘His mind is elsewhere,’ said Liris, clutching her own limbs again. ‘His thoughts wander paths we cannot follow.’

‘He will know me.’ Drycha felt her mood lift even at the idea of her master. ‘His dreams are long and full of import. He will have seen this day. He will know what to do.’

Liris looked doubtful, but Drycha grabbed her by the arm and hauled her off down the path, jumping lightly over the corpses. ‘I will see the false king die before me,’ whispered Drycha as she ran. ‘I will see him die.’

Summer lingered within the borders of the Wildwood, as though even the cold were afraid to enter. The leaves were still glossy and thick, cladding the trees’ interlinked arms in a thick, impenetrable coat. It was dusk by the time Drycha reached her supposed prison, but even at midday the Wildwood was a tenebrous pit; a realm of shadows and heavy, ominous silences.

Drycha paused before entering and sent Liris on her way. Liris might be willing to enter her home, but she would be unlikely to leave. Even in the half-light, it was possible to make out the slender stone columns that punctuated the edge of the Wildwood. Ariel’s witches had poured every ounce of their artifice into these crude, granite sentinels and few spirits could pass through their net, but Drycha was no ordinary soul. Her memory was longer than Ariel could ever imagine and she had deciphered the secret of the stones in a few short decades. She now travelled the forest as easily as she ever did. She had never fully abandoned her gloomy home though. It harboured magic far more interesting than the wards that contained it. There were beings hiding within its borders that straddled countless worlds and a hundred different pasts. One in particular was dearer to her heart than any other denizen of the forest. Despite her fury and pain, Drycha smiled as she passed the rune-carved stones, knowing she had returned to the true heart of the forest.

The gloom enveloped her and she allowed her physical self to dissipate, becoming one with the sluggish breeze and merging her voice with the petulant screech of eagles, drifting somewhere overhead.

Creatures of enormous size slithered through the dark. Ignorant to the passing of centuries, they pursued errands that could make sense only to themselves, never dreaming that they should have become extinct thousands of years earlier. Insects the size of hawks whirred past, drumming the air with flashing, tessellated wings and scattering coloured lights across the ground. The earth heaved and crumbled over the spines of subterranean behemoths, tunnelling to realms undreamt of by even the most learned minds.

Paths unfurled at Drycha’s feet but she ignored all of them. The Wildwood had a sentience of its own and its goals rarely coincided with those of its guests. Drycha knew that, if she allowed it to, her ancient host would lead her to wonders that would destroy her mind and leave her howling at her own shadow.

So she listened for the song of the forest: bewildering, labyrinthine rhymes, taught to her many years ago, during the first years of her incarceration. Each stanza suggested, in some oblique way, a different route to the one before, and Drycha circled and weaved as she listened, navigating the forest to the rhythm of the words, ignoring even the most tempting visions. For Drycha’s untamed soul, the Shadow-glades were a drug. If she indulged herself with even the smallest draught it would be enough to leave her intoxicated, so she followed the ancient tune like a rope, allowing it to haul her back to her master.

It took three days and four nights, all passed in darkness, before she found him. He was hunched in shadow at the bowl of a natural amphitheatre, surrounded by his dutiful handmaidens. They were wraiths of bark and thorn, like Drycha, and they were kneeling in the trees, twitching and shifting with excitement, as though watching him perform a grand soliloquy. Drycha wondered at the sight of them. She had never seen such a crowd gathered to worship him. Perhaps she was not the only one to have heard his call? The Ancient One, as ever, was motionless. Drycha stumbled to a halt as she saw him. For a while she was unable to approach. It had been many years since she had allowed herself the pleasure of his company and even now, surrounded by a whole crowd of supplicants, she could feel his calming presence speaking directly to her heart.

The centuries had gradually stripped him of form, leaving little more than a mountain of shadows and a vague rustle of leaves, but the song of the forest radiated from him, flooding the amphitheatre with its silent refrain, filling Drycha with courage.

While the Ancient One lived, there would always be hope.

She raced down the slope and allowed his tune to soak through her tired limbs.

Some of the other branchwraiths looked up as she knelt beside them, but they quickly lowered their heads again, lost in adoration of their lord. Drycha saw that their prayers must have been continued for years. Their legs had taken root, sinking into the ground and creepers had stretched over their backs, binding them to the earth.

Drycha assumed the same posture, taking physical form so that she could bend it in homage to her master. Her wooden knees cracked as she knelt and her wrists clicked as she extended her claws in prayer.

‘Coeddil,’ she whispered. ‘Ancient father. What must I do? Guide me.’

There was no audible reply, but the silent song grew in magnificence, soothing Drycha’s quivering limbs and dazzling her with visions. The images were a confused jumble of faces and colours, but Drycha understood the protocol. She relaxed her limbs and took slow, deep draughts of the cool forest air. As her heart slowed, Coeddil’s song began to make more sense.

Beyond the borders of the Wildwood, time hurried on; the impatient hours threw stars across the heavens and rolled the sun across the sky, but here, in the deepest watches of the Shadow-glades, the days went forgotten. Drycha gave herself to the slow, heaving rhythm of Coeddil’s song, and gradually, as the grass grew over her trembling limbs, the Ancient One’s meaning became clear.

First he sang of the endless web – the essence of the forest, binding the present to the past and weaving it into the future. As the melody washed over her, Drycha saw everything with perfect clarity: what they did to the forest, they did to themselves – a promise here, a betrayal there, all would be remembered, changing and directing their fate and shining back at them from the meres and springs of the forest. Then the tune grew darker in tone. The threads had been torn. The gossamer that bound them was hanging loose, sending the natural order into a chaotic whirl. She glimpsed, quite clearly, the false king, Orion, as he blundered through the Vaults of Winter, destroying the ancient keystone of the Sínann-Torr.

Drycha bristled with hate at the thought of her enemy, but the Ancient One soothed her with the glacial magnificence of his song. ‘The forest is forever,’ it seemed to say. ‘What is done will be undone. Everything has been foreseen. Every misdeed is simply another strand of the web.’

Drycha drifted free from the tyranny of time. She had been knelt in prayer for several weeks, but she was no more aware of the fact than she was aware of the birds that settled on her shoulders. Every portion of her soul was joined to her master’s song.

Her rage passed as she understood how insignificant Orion was in comparison to Coeddil’s fathomless wisdom. The outlanders were insects, barely registered by her master’s magnificent vision. The Ancient One’s song showed her, for the first time, exactly what Orion had done. His blunder had set off a chain of events that spread far wider than she could have ever imagined. As his song rolled silently around the amphitheatre, she pictured the crudely chiselled waystones surrounding the Wildwood. At first she struggled to grasp the details of Coeddil’s meaning, but as his rhymes tumbled over her, she realised that it was his old refrain: everything is linked; everything is part of the Great Weave. The strands of magic severed by the false king had lashed out through time and space, reaching even this far corner of the forest. The spirits of the Shadow-glades had been trapped for countless centuries, but now there was a crack forming in the dam.

Drycha’s heart began to race again as she pictured a new vision of the future – one in which the branches of the Wildwood stretched beyond their prison.

Coeddil allowed this idea to settle in her thoughts before changing his melody and throwing her mind down another avenue. She plummeted though a dream of rotten flesh and swollen growths. She swam through a black plague, watching in horror as it flooded the forest; twisting, corrupting and destroying everything she loved. The vision was dizzying and terrifying but Coeddil cast her even further – hurling her mind through clouds of flies and crows, to the borders of a revolting labyrinth. It was a spiralled garden, grown from towering mounds of fungi and bubbling lakes of larvae. Holding court at the centre of this garish scene was the being she caught all those centuries earlier. When at first she laid eyes on it she had failed to understand the full horror. She had been young then, and naive. How could she have dreamt its true nature? But now, as she looked at it through the bitter lens of old age she understood. It was far more than a monster; far more than a villain. It was the outstretched claw of a god.

Again, the melody changed. She watched in horror as the rotten garden grew, spreading its lurid, rubbery grasp across the trees; transforming everything it touched.

Drycha recoiled. Why was her master showing her this? Was there no hope?

Coeddil remained silent, but his inky mass billowed across the hollow, caressing her gnarled flesh and silencing her cries.

Drycha slipped back into the dream and saw her master’s reply to her question. As the rotten garden spread, the Wildwood rushed to meet it. With the borders weakened, it was free to extend its thorny grasp, spreading the Shadow-glades north, smothering the daemon’s power and plunging the whole forest into wild, blessed darkness.

Drycha gasped, awed by the thought of it. ‘The Wildwood unbound,’ she whispered, as the shadows caressed her. It was more than she could have dreamt of – a way to lock down the whole forest. A way to reclaim what had been lost. The scale of Coeddil’s vision was dizzying. If such dreams were made reality, the plague would not be the only threat to be driven back. Drycha sighed with pleasure as she imagined Ariel’s runts, cowering in their hovels, with the Wildwood scratching at their doors – a prison turned on its creators.

She lurched to her feet and cried out a wordless thank you.

As she opened her eyes, she saw that it was not only shadows that had gathered around her. The other branchwraiths had risen from their prayers and formed a circle around her. There were hundreds of them, she realised, looming out of the gloom and reaching out to her with knotted claws. Their jagged mouths were open wide, moving in time to the Ancient One’s silent song, and their presence was suddenly explained: Coeddil had summoned them for her.

He had built her an army.

The year was almost over. Each morning the trees gave up a few more of their leaves and shrank from the cold, hardening breeze, until there was nothing left but steel-cold bark. As Liris waited for Drycha’s return, she watched a succession of pale sunrises, each weaker than the last and, one by one, she sensed the forest spirits starting to slip away from the mortal realm. She kept her vigil in silence, unmoving and unmoved, invisible to even the keenest sighted of the animals that passed by. Frost crept over her limbs, hardening her joints and freezing her eyes, but still she did not shift position. Then, after the nineteenth darkness she cleared the ice from her eyes and creaked her body into motion.

Something was happening to the borders of the Wildwood.

The trees were moving against the breeze. As Liris watched in amazement, the wall of trunks bowed and juddered, then began to move. At first she thought the whole Wildwood had become mobile, but she quickly realised her mistake. With a hiss of delight, Liris realised she was watching hundreds of her sisters – branchwraiths – marching out to meet the frozen dawn. Cold sunlight flashed across a row of clenched talons and hunched, brittle backs, before retreating into silhouette as her sisters spread their reach, throwing the forest into shadow. It was an army of root and thorn and, leading them on, full of terrible pride and wrath, was Drycha.

Liris lurched and loped through the bracken to greet her.

Drycha’s face splintered into a merciless smile. She did not pause as she reached Liris, but hauled her along with the others, locking her fingers with Liris’s.

‘What does it mean?’ asked Liris.

‘The asrai have failed us,’ replied Drycha, smashing through the forest, spreading shadow as she went. ‘But the Ancient One has not.’ She gestured to the clatter of brittle limbs that surrounded them. ‘We must retrieve what was always ours.’

She stared at Liris, her eyes wild. ‘We have kneeled for too long. The Wildwood is rising.’

Liris shivered with joy. Then she frowned and looked up at the pale heavens. The clouds were pregnant with snow. She could taste it on the breeze. ‘The year is almost over,’ she said. ‘We will soon start to fade.’

Drycha nodded. ‘We must work fast. If the forest is to survive until we return, it must become as fierce as the Wildwood.’

She waved her army forwards.

‘It is time to spread our roots.’

Chapter Eleven

Orion opened his eyes. He was in a forest devoid of colour – a vale of ink-black and blinding white. There was nothing to soften the brutality. He sat up and heard the dry crunch of dead leaves. To his surprise he realised the sound was coming from his own skin. He looked down at his body and saw that it was as bleached, brittle and dusty as everything else.

‘I do remember,’ he said, surprised by how ragged his voice sounded. As his eyes became used to the harsh light he saw a plain of pale dust, divided into thousands of perfect squares, delineated by arrow-straight rows of white, barren trees that trailed into the distance and vanished over the horizon. ‘I have been here,’ he said, lowering his voice to a whisper. One of the trees was within arm’s reach and he reached out to tap it with his claw. He nodded. ‘Bone.’

Something moved beside him and Orion gasped as he saw that Ariel was sitting beside him, grimacing at the leafless wasteland. She gripped Orion’s arm. ‘We are fragments of Isha and Kurnous. We have travelled from our home to the Endless Vale, seeking an audience with Sativus, who is our friend.’ She stared at him. ‘Whatever else we forget, we must remember that.’

Orion shook his head in dismay. ‘What have you done?’ Like him, her flesh was a fragile white shell. Her wings had crumbled away and her robes were a funeral shroud. The sight of her face, so drained of life, so unrecognisable, was terrible to see. He turned away, feeling both pained and humbled as he realised she too must have eaten one of the flowers. She had chosen to follow him.

Ariel gently turned his face back towards hers and stroked his broken, dusty brow.

‘I’m still in here,’ she said, with a smile that sent a crack across her cheek.

He forced himself to meet her eye and, after a few seconds, he saw a shimmer of colour, somewhere deep in the centre of her bone-white pupil – a flash of deep-blue sky. It was only there for a second, but it was enough. ‘And so am I,’ he said, willing her to trust him again.

For a moment they did nothing but look at each other. Then Ariel leant forwards and let her lips scratch against his. ‘I know,’ she said.

Orion tried to sigh with pleasure, but he realised there was no air. They were in a vacuum. The place was not silent though; there was a constant murmuring sound at the edge of his hearing. It sounded like leaves rustling in a breeze, but there were no leaves to be seen. ‘What is that?’ he asked, turning to Ariel.

She looked around at the shadows. ‘Whispers,’ she said, after a few moments. ‘The whispers of the damned.’

Orion grimaced as he realised she was right. The sound was made up of thousands of voices, all whispering at once. The words were urgent and panicked, and they tumbled over each other in a desperate torrent.

‘We are immortal.’ Orion straightened his back and tried to block out the sound. It was impossible to ignore. The panic in the whispers was contagious. It tingled over his bleached shell and filled his mind with anguish. He looked down the featureless avenue of trees. ‘Whatever they are saying has no meaning for us. We’re only passing through. I will not allow you to endure this place for long.’

Taking hold of Ariel’s hand he strode off down the colonnade. ‘Let’s find our guide.’

They walked for a few minutes, but it was impossible to tell if they had covered any distance. Each dusty square was identical to the last and, despite the inky shadows, there was no sun to navigate by.

After a while they began to notice figures watching them from the shadows. Some were huddled in groups, and some were alone, but all of them peered suspiciously at them as they passed. The figures kept themselves well hidden in the darkness, and it was hard to see them in any detail, but the further Ariel and Orion walked the more eyes they noticed glinting beneath the trees.

Orion paused at the sight of one of the figures. For a second, it stepped out into the light and he glimpsed it more clearly. It was a young warrior, made of the same gleaming bone as the trees. Orion only saw him for the briefest moment, but there was an intensity about his stare that worried him.

Orion peered at the lost soul for a moment, then growled and hurried on, dragging Ariel after him.

She looked at him in confusion, but before she had time to question him another sound emerged from the trees, mingling with the torrent of whispers.

Ariel turned to the right as a burst of song rang out.

Orion nodded in reply and they changed direction, following the distant tune.

The song continued and they realised it was nearer than they first imagined. It was a soaring hymn – dozens of voices, joined together in a haunting, lachrymose union.

Ariel saw more figures gathered on the horizon. Then, noticing Orion’s wrapt expression, she gave him a warning glance. ‘Remember what Naieth told us. The rootless dead are not to be trusted.’ She waved her hand at the air, indicating the soothing melody. ‘They are not at peace – however beautiful they might sound. Do not reveal your power to them.’

Orion nodded in reply, ashamed that he had been so easily beguiled. His spirit self was not blessed with weapons, but he flexed his claws as they neared the source of the music.

They crossed a few more of the squares and found themselves face-to-face with the music makers.

Life in the forest was full of wonders, but even Ariel and Orion struggled to understand the scene that was waiting for them. A choir of corpses had gathered in the dust: seven bone statues, in various stages of collapse. Some might once have been asrai, others had clearly been animals, but now they were little more than crumbling relics. Some had almost disintegrated, leaving little more than legs and spinal column, or a powdery, broken face.

This close up, the sadness of the music was almost unbearable.

Orion turned to Ariel with a stunned expression.

Her face remained impassive as she approached a brittle white shard, singing with wild desperation.

‘Who are you?’ she asked, placing a hand on the singer’s arm.

The corpse’s face was still fairly intact and, at Ariel’s touch, its colourless eyes rolled in her direction, moving with a dry scraping sound. There was a look of horror written on its death mask but it continued singing, and after a couple of seconds it fixed its gaze back on the desolate landscape.

Orion’s lip curled at the sight of such disrespect. ‘Your queen is addressing you,’ he snapped, grabbing the corpse’s arm. ‘Dead or not, you will–’

There was a brittle crunch and the limb shattered, dropping to the ground in a cloud of dust.

The singer reeled away from Orion, clutching its ruined stump in horror.

The chorus faltered as the corpses saw the broken arm, but the tune was quickly re-established, even if the voices seemed less confident than before.

All the dead singers were now watching Ariel and Orion with panicked, sidelong glances but none of them stepped backwards.

The corpse with the shattered arm stared at Orion in disbelief, then stepped hesitantly back into position, joining its voice to the others.

‘What are you doing?’ Orion asked, attempting to raise his voice over the song.

There was no reply from the singers, but another voice answered, from the shadows behind the choir.

‘What could be more tragic than to die unnoticed?’

It was a low, rattling, female voice. It sounded as though a large animal were speaking to them. ‘Who deserves a death unmarked by tears?’

Ariel and Orion peered through the crumbling figures, trying to see who was speaking.

It was hard to tell if the speaker was mocking the singers or pitying them. ‘No eulogies were sung for them, you see, so they’ve written their own. They’re trying to sing themselves home. They’re trying to fly on the wings of a melody. They want to find a way back up into the forest; a way up from the bowels of this blessed oak. They think that if the song is beautiful enough, their families will hear, and pick up the tune. They want only to be remembered.’ The voice paused, and when it spoke again, there was a suspicious edge to it. ‘What do you want?’

Ariel and Orion edged carefully around the choir, looking for the source of the voice, but all they found was a glimmering curtain of mist, drifting through the shadows.

‘Who asks?’ demanded Orion.

There was no reply.

Ariel nodded down the avenue of bones and Orion saw that the mist was gathering a few dozen feet away from them, forming a pool of shifting vapour.

Orion frowned and headed down the avenue, forgetting the dead singers and focusing on the mist. ‘Tell me your name,’ he said.

There was still no answer and, as they neared the place where the mist had gathered, Ariel took his hand.

‘Tread carefully,’ she said, with a flash of warning in her eyes.

He nodded, then stepped forwards, allowing the fumes to completely envelop him.

The world of bone and ash vanished, replaced by an ocean of tumbling shadows.

There was a figure in there. It was as bleached and dusty as the choir, but far more intact.

‘Why speak and then hide yourself?’ Orion kept hold of Ariel’s hand as he stepped deeper into the mist, towards the figure.

As they approached the stranger, Orion muttered a curse. It was a young wardancer. The same gloomy-looking ghost he had seen earlier. The spirit had an earnest, worried look and he was staring intensely at Orion. He was slight, even by the standards of a wardancer, and his eyes were wide and full of doubt.

Orion stumbled to a halt as he noticed the corpse’s throat – it had been torn open, as though by a wild animal.

An inexplicable feeling of dread washed over Orion as he met the corpse’s stare.

‘Do you recognise him?’ The ground shook with the power of the voice.

Orion whirled around feeling inexplicably guilty. ‘Perhaps.’ He tried to hide his doubt by speaking in strong, confident tones. ‘What does it matter? I know what you want. Your soul has been plunged into this pit and you wish to find a way out. That is why you spoke. You are wondering if we might be able to help.’

He peered into the drifting haze, looking for a sign of the voice’s owner.

When he looked back, he saw that the youth with the torn throat had vanished.

‘No matter how many centuries pass,’ said the female voice, ‘none of you will grasp the truth.’ There was anger in the voice, and bitterness. ‘You will remain outlanders, doomed to live in ignorance, blind to the nature of the prize you have destroyed.’

Orion sneered. ‘Then you will be happy if we leave you here, caged in your own shadow?’

‘I am not “caged” in anything.’ The voice grew louder and more feral, shaking dust from the ground. ‘I banished myself from the world; the world did not banish me. I came here through choice, not happenstance.’

Ariel flinched as a shape moved through the mist, just a few feet from away from her. It was little more than a flicker of movement, but it implied something vast; something slithering.

Orion saw her alarm and peered into the shifting clouds, following the movement. ‘Why would anyone choose to sever their soul from the forest?’ He tried to keep his voice neutral, not wanting to give anything away, but his disbelief was obvious.

‘Perhaps you could tell me?’ The voice became low and venomous again. ‘Why are you not whispering the same pathetic pleas as all the others?’ A note of suspicion entered the voice. ‘Who are you?’

There was another movement behind them and Orion whirled around, trying to catch a glimpse. Again, he saw nothing more than a suggestion of great size.

‘The dead see everything,’ said Ariel, trying to follow the movement. ‘Surely there’s nothing we could tell you that–’

‘I am not dead,’ interrupted the voice, verging on a roar. ‘I did not die.’

For a brief second, they glimpsed eyes in the mist – two enormous slits of malice, glaring down at them from the height of a tall tree. They vanished almost as quickly as they appeared.

Ariel and Orion turned to each other in shock. Each pupil had been larger than one of the dead trees.

‘Then you do not wish to leave?’ Orion remembered Naieth’s advice: they could only trust a guide who did not seek escape from the Endless Vale.

The mist trailed away from them and pooled a few dozen feet away, in another square of trees.

Orion rushed after the pale tendrils but, before he had taken more than a few steps, Ariel paced a hand on his arm and brought him to a halt.

‘Look,’ she whispered.

Hundreds of the crumbling ghosts were gathering in the trees, muttering and whispering and edging towards them. The strident, confident tone of Orion’s voice had drawn them out. They were mostly still keeping to the shadows, but some were becoming bolder and edging out into the light, staring at Ariel and Orion with desperate hope in their eyes.

‘Have they guessed who we are, I wonder?’ she asked.

Orion was about to reply when the voice rang out again.

‘Guessed who you are?’

Orion stepped back into the mist and spoke in defiant, strident tones. ‘What do you want, stranger?’

The mist drew back again and, as it rolled across the dust, they caught a brief glimpse of a long, pitted talon. ‘I want peace – peace from the tyranny of my past. And I want to forget.’ The voice’s fury grew. ‘But even here, I cannot.’

Orion noticed that the talon had reappeared and this time it remained static. He nodded to Ariel, willing her to distract the stranger for a moment.

She nodded and stepped away from him. ‘Why do you wish to forget?’ she called out.

There was a pause but, as he stepped further into the mist, Orion saw that the talon was still visible.

‘I wish to forget my foolishness.’ The voice was close and Orion saw Ariel flinch. ‘I had a chance,’ it continued. ‘I could have kept your kind from my home. I could have preserved what we had,’ the voice faltered, ‘but I trusted the others. I believed the lies of the false king and queen and allowed their ruin into the forest.’

‘Lies?’ asked Orion, edging towards the shape.

‘The lies of that whore-queen, Ariel, and her goat-legged pet.’

Orion froze and clenched his fists. Rage flooded his whole body and he trembled with the effort of holding back a reply. He managed not to speak but it was no use – his actions betrayed him as clearly as any words. His fury had been seen.

A vast shape emerged from the mist and shadow. It was the head of a giant serpent, with ivory scales and eyes like oval stars. ‘You’re angry,’ it said, drooling mist from its jaws. ‘Why should you be angry? I think I can guess.’ Its voice was now filled with delight and, as a mountainous bulk rose up behind the creature’s head, it began to laugh.

‘I knew it,’ roared the great drake, sending Ariel and Orion staggering backwards with the force of its breath. Its mouth was lined with foot-high teeth. ‘The Mage Queen has come to free you all!’ It lifted its head higher and addressed the whispering ranks of the dead. ‘And she has brought her Idiot King with her!’

‘Orion,’ breathed Ariel in shocked tones, grabbing his shoulder.

He turned to face her and cursed in surprise. The crowd of pale figures had doubled in size and the dead were now hurrying though the mist towards them. As they registered the drake’s words their whispers became a roar.

Orion grabbed Ariel’s arm and led her down another featureless avenue but, before they had gone more than a few yards, a slab of white-scaled flesh slammed down in front of them, blocking the way. The impact caused them both to stagger and, once they had steadied themselves, they saw the drake’s head swing into view, its eyes blazing with mirth.

‘Surely you don’t wish to leave before your subjects have had chance to pay homage?’

Orion looked back and saw hundreds of desperate faces, charging out of the mist.

He turned back towards the dragon and kicked furiously at its serpentine loop of scales.

There was a loud crack and Orion was enveloped by dust.

The drake withdrew and Orion was about to summon Ariel on, when the creature’s head plunged through the mist towards him.

Fumes blasted from between its teeth, slammed into Orion’s chest and sent him tumbling backwards. The mist snaked around his limbs and chest, binding him like a net and pinning him to the floor.

Ariel raised her hands trying to summon help from the surrounding trees, but they remained motionless.

The dead were almost on them, now. As Orion rolled across the ground, trying to free himself, he caught a glimpse of their shattered faces. They were contorted by terrible hope. They thought he was going to save them. He howled in rage and shrugged off the tendrils of mist, clambering to his feet just seconds before the crowd reached them.

He and Ariel looked at each other in shock.

‘There are too many,’ he said, stepping in front of Ariel and preparing for the impact.

Just as the dead were about to reach them, a shape rushed by and caused them to falter.

The leaders of the crowd toppled to the ground, clutching at cracked shins and splintered spines. The rest of the crowd tried to plough on but lost their footing amongst their prone companions. There was a great smashing and clattering as they fell.

‘This way,’ said a soft voice.

Orion saw the doe-eyed young wardancer again, standing at the entrance to another avenue. The youth was pale and haunted, but his expression was nothing like those of the howling savages trying to clamber over each other to reach him. This spirit was mournful rather than crazed, and Orion felt sure he recognised him.

A strange sense of guilt made Orion falter, but Ariel had no such qualms. Seeing a chance to escape, she dragged Orion towards the youth.

Before they could reach him, the wardancer raced off down the avenue, and Ariel dragged Orion after him.

The dead were only momentarily stalled and as Orion glanced back over his shoulder he saw that the crowd had regained its momentum and was thundering after them.

‘Face your subjects!’ roared the drake, crashing down before them. As it landed it shattered dozens of the bone trees, revealing its coiled shape fully for the first time. The creature’s bulk was bewildering, but Orion only half registered it. Something about the youth’s expression needled him – it reminded him again of Naieth’s words. ‘You will need to broker forgiveness,’ she had said, and Orion sensed that the wardancer might be the soul he needed if they were to find Sativus. He raced towards the white serpent and threw his shoulder against one of its forelegs.

The drake screeched as its flesh shattered.

Orion gasped as his shoulder cracked open, dropping lumps of bone to the dusty ground.

He stayed upright, despite the pain, and drew back his fist to strike the drake’s other foreleg.

The dragon was faster, unleashing another blast of fumes. They coiled around Orion’s limbs and began eating into his brittle body.

Ariel reached his side and muttered an oath, placing her hands on his mist-shrouded body.

The tendrils withdrew, but before she could help Orion to his feet, the drake thrust its head towards them, clamping its jaws around Orion and wrenching him up into the air like a dog with a scrap of meat.

Ariel whirled around, looking for some kind of weapon. She found only tormented faces, pouring down the avenue towards her.

There was a horrible cracking sound as the drake threw back its head and crushed Orion between its rows of teeth.

Dust and bone tumbled from its jaws and Orion howled in pain, feeling his body collapse.

There was a flash of movement as the young wardancer reappeared.

He bounded up the coils of the serpent’s body and leapt at the monster’s head.

The drake was ecstatic, gurgling with pleasure as it ground Orion between its teeth, and it failed to notice the danger that was hurtling towards its face.

The wardancer jabbed a shard of rock into one of its colourless pupils.

The drake howled, keeping Orion locked between its jaws as it recoiled in pain.

As the creature lurched from view, the wardancer tumbled through the air.

Seeing that he would be shattered when he hit the ground, Ariel reached out to the tendrils of mist. Some vestige of life answered her call and, for a moment, she was able to weave the strands into a net.

The wardancer landed safely but, seconds later, the drake’s head smashed against the ground, destroying a square of bone trees and causing the crowds of dead to stumble and fall for a second time.

The drake had fallen in a square about forty feet away from where Ariel was standing and she raced through the trees towards it, followed by the wardancer.

As they reached the great drake they saw that it was lying on its back, shaking its coiled body across the broken trees and howling furiously. Orion was lying in a crumpled heap a few feet further on.

The wardancer leapt over the drake, hauled Orion from the ground and began dragging him away from the square. ‘This way,’ he called, glancing back at Ariel.

She hurried after him and it seemed that the drake was too lost in agony and rage to care.

They had not gone more than a few feet, however, when Orion wrenched himself free of the wardancer’s grip and lurched back towards the dragon.

Ariel howled a warning.

The crowds were pouring into the square from all sides.

Orion paid no heed, staggering and swaying towards the thrashing coils of the serpent’s body.

As he neared the dragon, a few of the bone-spirits attempted to lay hands on him, but he ploughed through them, grabbing something from the ground as he went.

For a moment he was lost from view, then the dragon’s head reared up from the crowd, letting out another deafening roar. Orion had picked up a shard of bone and jabbed it through the monster’s throat. As it reared and howled, the dragon’s neck splintered. For a moment it continued rising higher over the trees, trying to shake Orion loose. Then its neck gave way and its head came free.

There was a deafening crash as the drake fell, headless, to the ground, and the pale crowds scrambled back into the trees, desperate not lose their own fragile flesh.

Seconds later, Orion staggered out of the swirling clouds of dust, heading back towards Ariel and the wardancer. ‘I will not have you called a whore,’ he growled as he reached Ariel’s side.

The wardancer looked back at the square. As the dust settled, the dead were already massing again, looking around for a sign of their king.

‘You must follow me,’ he said.

Ariel and Orion saw him close up for the first time. Like everyone else, his spirit body was a brittle shell of bone, but his was more intact than most – as though he had only recently arrived in the Endless Vale.

‘Who are you?’ demanded Orion.

‘There’s no time.’ The stranger gave Orion an imploring look. ‘Follow me. We can talk later.’

Orion hesitated, sensing that there was unresolved business between them – some bond he could not place.

‘Orion,’ said Ariel, her voice sounding hollow. She was staring at his chest. ‘This is no time for false pride.’

He looked down and saw that the dragon’s teeth had torn him apart. There was a gaping hole between his ribs that created a window on the bleached landscape beyond. There was also the tip of a tooth, several inches thick, embedded deep below his right shoulder. There were several other places where his torso had been broken. It looked as though one bad fall would cause his whole body to collapse.

‘You must remain whole if you mean to return,’ said the wardancer.

‘I have to return!’ snapped Orion. ‘I must reach Sativus.’

The youth’s eyes widened, then he nodded. ‘Sativus. Of course.’ He turned to the crowds racing towards them. They were only seconds away. ‘If we do not move now, they will destroy you. You will never see Sativus again.’

Orion looked furious. ‘Then lead the way!’

The youth moved with incredible speed, racing along the avenues in a bewildering, convoluted dance of lefts and rights. As he led them through the Endless Vale, it became a blur of silver and grey and, over time, it began to change, as though the wardancer were moulding it somehow with his movements. As the wardancer weaved and looped around the featureless trunks, they glimpsed flashes of pale blue overhead and patches of dun brown underfoot.

The whispers began to fade as they left the dead behind. Orion was comforted to realise that only the voices in his head remained – the cryptic utterances that had haunted him since his birth in the Oak of Ages.

After a long time, the wardancer finally came to a halt and turned to face them. ‘The spirit you fought was Tamarix,’ he said. ‘One of the great drakes.’

Orion was momentarily distracted by his surroundings. Now that they were still, he could see that the desolate landscape had almost entirely vanished. Bone had been replaced by heather and stunted clumps of grass. It was dusk and open fields lay before them, glittering with frost.

He did not catch the youth’s comment about Tamarix and said, ‘Is it so easy for the rootless dead to escape their hell? Why do they beg and plead so pitifully if it is possible to simply race back to the forest?

The wardancer shook his head. ‘There is no escape, my lord.’ He stepped into a patch of moonlight and it passed through him. ‘I am shadow and mist, nothing more.’ He gave them a sad smile. ‘I could lead you to the world, if I chose, but I cannot join you in it.’ He held up one of his hands and Orion saw that it was growing fainter by the second.

‘You could lead us back to the world?’ Orion frowned and looked across the starlit fields. ‘Surely you already have?’

Ariel shook her head. ‘Look at yourself.’

Orion looked down and realised that his body was still a pale, dusty shell, crumbling in the places where the dragon had crushed him. He stepped further into the field and realised that, as he did so, his flesh, like the wardancer’s, was beginning to fade.

‘What do you want of me?’ he demanded, rounding on the wardancer. ‘You must know that I cannot grant you freedom. The manner of your death has severed your soul from the world. Only the gods could alter your fate.’

The youth stepped closer to Orion. ‘The gods have brought you to me, my king. I knew you would come.’

As he looked into the wardancer’s wide, haunted eyes, Orion felt another wave of inexplicable guilt.

‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Jokleel. You do not know me, but my blood is on your hands.’

Orion tensed, but before he could reply, Jokleel continued.

‘I am not here to accuse you, or to seek revenge. I am here to ask that you redress an imbalance.’

To Orion’s horror, he noticed that his flesh was fading faster and, as it did so, the blue of the sky was changing to a featureless white.

Jokleel nodded. ‘You do not have long to decide, my lord. Will you aid me or not?’

‘I cannot free you,’ snapped Orion. ‘Your soul has been sundered from the Eternal Realms. Not even I can–’

‘I do not seek freedom for myself,’ interrupted Jokleel. ‘I seek it for my brother.’

‘Your brother?’

‘His soul is as sundered as mine, but his flesh is still whole. The Wild Hunt destroyed him as effectively as it did me, but he still lingers in the mortal realm.’ The pain in Jokleel’s eyes grew. ‘I can bear my fate, my lord, but I cannot bear his. He is walking a dark, dark path, and he is doing it in my name.’ Jokleel’s voice trembled. ‘And it will not stop there. Others will join him. I have seen it. Other souls will be lost in my name.’ He grabbed Orion’s arm. ‘I beg you, my lord – save him from his fate. I cannot endure the pain of his fall. I cannot be the reason for it.’

Orion glanced at Ariel in confusion. He had expected a plea for freedom, but not this. He looked back at Jokleel. ‘And if I swear to save your brother?’

Jokleel’s eyes filled with hope. ‘If you swear to save Finavar from himself, I will lead you back to the Eternal Realms now, and direct you to Sativus.’

‘Finavar?’ Orion wrenched himself free of Jokleel’s grip and stared at him. ‘I know that name.’

‘The Darkling Prince?’ asked Ariel.

Jokleel nodded. ‘We called him that, yes.’ He laughed, but it was a pitiful sound. ‘It was a joke. There was never anything dark about my brother. He was light and life. But now the name is all too accurate.’ Jokleel looked at Ariel and Orion in turn. ‘He seeks to destroy you.’

They stared back at him.

Jokleel ran a brittle tongue over his dusty lips. ‘He believes he must avenge my death and end your rule.’

‘Then he is a fool.’ There was no rage in Orion’s voice, it was simply a statement of fact. ‘We are aspects of the gods.’

‘Will you swear to save him?’

Orion frowned. ‘You wish me to aid my would-be killer?’

‘I wish you to save him from himself. And to save those who will follow him. His ideas will destroy either him or you, and I cannot have such deeds performed in my name.’

Orion shook his head, but Ariel nodded. ‘The Oak of Ages wills this, my love. It was clearly meant to be. We do not need Naieth to see that. You must do as Jokleel asks. There is an imbalance here that must be redressed.’

Jokleel nodded eagerly. ‘If you swear to save him, I will lead you to Sativus.’ He waved at their surroundings. The colours of the forest were fading fast and the rows of arrow-straight trunks were starting to appear all around them.

Orion tried to recall Finavar’s face. His memory was a bloody canvas, splattered with the tormented faces of spirits and mortals but, after a while, he saw the wild grin of the Darkling Prince. There was a fierce bravery in the wardancer, he realised, remembering how Finavar had dared to address him at the rites of spring, while the other celebrants were squirming in the grass. Perhaps by saving a soul like Finavar’s he could atone for his deeds of the summer?

‘I cannot guarantee his salvation,’ he said eventually, turning back to Jokleel. ‘I can only swear to do my best – to do all that is in my power to save him. Our fates are in the hands of the gods, Jokleel, whether they be Loec or Kurnous. If they have decided that your brother will fall into ruin, then I cannot oppose their will.’

‘But you will do all that you can?’

Orion nodded. ‘It would be an appropriate penance. I will try to save one who means me ill.’ He placed a hand over the shattered porcelain of his chest, touching the place where his oak apple heart should have been. ‘I swear to do all I can. If I can rescue the Darkling Prince by any means within my power, I will.’

Jokleel’s face was rigid with emotion. ‘Tell him I bear him no ill will. Tell him my fate is my own. Tell him I love him.’

Orion nodded, then listened carefully as Jokleel directed him home.

They struggled on through the muddy grass, Orion leaning heavily on Ariel for support. The air was hazed with icy drizzle and the bandages Ariel had bound around Orion’s chest were dark with rain and blood. A wound made by a great drake was like no other. Ariel’s charms had proved powerless to stop the bleeding and, every time they stumbled, another gout poured from between his ribs. It was twilight when they finally reached the place Jokleel had described – a steep-sided hill, topped by a small wood and surrounded by miles of sodden fields.

Orion shivered under the sky’s frigid gaze. He felt naked and exposed. The forest was as diverse as it was vast and there were many open places contained within its waystone boundaries. Broad meadows and even regions of barren scrubland were not unknown, but Orion had never grown to trust them as he had the other corners of his kingdom. He loved the deep, creeping eventide of the forest – the gloomiest hollows, where shadows lurked within shadows; not these leafless spaces. His life was rushing from him in fast-flowing rivulets, but it was the expanse of rain-lashed field that troubled him more than anything else.

The sun was setting as they approached the summit and the trees threw spindly shadows out to meet them. The wood was no more than half a mile wide, but the trees were densely packed and, even with most of their leaves gone, they blocked out the sky. Orion relaxed a little as he entered their cool embrace.

They headed to the far side, as Jokleel had instructed, and soon found what they were looking for – a semicircle of raised earth that marked the remains of an ancient keep. There was no trace of stonework, the ruin was far too old for that, just a deep, muddy ditch and a raised path. The trees refrained from crossing the old boundary, as though respecting some immemorial promise, leaving a shallow bowl of grass and dead bracken.

They tramped down into the centre of the ruin and studied the surrounding trees.

‘What now?’ Orion dropped heavily to the ground, wincing at the pain. ‘Do we perform a rite? Must we summon him?’

Ariel did not reply for a moment. Her face was pale with worry and she was staring at Orion’s ruined body. His limbs were so frail and his muscles so withered, that he looked more like an old cripple than the Lord of the Wild Hunt. His eyes were clouded and his breath came in short gasps. She was sure Sativus could help cure his chest wounds, but she knew that would not save him. She held out her hand and felt how cold the rain was. The season of ice was nearly upon them.

‘Ariel,’ snapped Orion, enraged by the pity he saw in her face.

She took a deep breath and looked around, dragging her thoughts back to the present. ‘No, my love, there is no rite – no ritual. The forest directs us, by whatever means it chooses, and then we simply wait.’

Orion nodded. Cold was seeping into his bones – icy fingers from the sodden earth. He could sense the forest dying beneath him, but he felt excitement rather than elation. Ever since he escaped the madness of the hunt he had been craving this moment. A chance to see the noble face of the one who ordained him. A chance to atone. He now craved nothing more than to convince Sativus of his worth. If he could do this one thing right, if he could make peace with the Great Stag, the forest could unite once more. Whatever damage he had wrought, whatever foes he had unleashed, could be driven back by the ancient alliance of asrai and forest.

‘The forest directs us,’ said another voice. It came from the shadows beneath the trees and Orion recognised it immediately.

‘Sativus,’ said Ariel.

The grim expression dropped from her face and she smiled. It was an expression of such simple joy that Orion pictured her as she once was – his mortal lover, with no duty other than to him. He tried to rise, and go to her, but agony knifed through his wounds and he stumbled.

Ariel rushed to his side and managed to steady him before he fell.

‘And yet,’ continued the voice, ‘we so often lose our way.’ The words were unmistakably the deep, rattling bellow of a stag.

There was a deepening of the shadows as a large creature approached. Neither Ariel nor Orion could see it clearly, but it was broad in the chest and crowned by a nest of magnificent antlers.

‘I have come to explain my actions,’ gasped Orion, sensing that the words ‘lose our way’ were directed at him. He stepped towards the shadow, trying to stand tall, despite his pain. ‘My mind was not my own. I believe that whatever spirit is plaguing us now–’

‘There was a tower here, once,’ continued Sativus, as though Orion had not spoken. ‘Those who came from across the sea planted it here. They believed, in all their wisdom, that the forest was theirs to rule. They believed that it was a thing to be owned.’

Ariel’s smile faltered. ‘You speak of the distant past.’

‘I speak of nature.’ There was now an edge of emotion to Sativus’s voice. ‘It is the nature of your kind, Ariel, to bind, to prune and to hunt. It is in your blood. It is in your bones. You can never be rid of it.’

Orion closed his eyes. He had been expecting just this kind of accusation. He looked to Ariel for guidance.

She looked confused and shook her head. ‘Sativus, dearest friend, why are you saying this? Why do you speak to me like I am a stranger?’

‘No tree can grow on this spot.’ Sativus sounded more enraged with each word. ‘The ground is changed. It has been poisoned for all eternity – wounded by the greed of your forefathers. Thus have you marked your passage through history, Ariel – warping and caging the beauty of nature.’

Ariel looked appalled. ‘Why are you saying such things? Every act we perform is balanced by another. Every deed is matched by another. You know the care we take, Sativus. You know that the forest has our allegiance. Why are you speaking this way?’

‘I understand why. You believe I have failed you.’ Orion gasped with the effort of remaining upright. A pool of blood had formed at his feet and his face had taken on a ghastly hue. ‘But you must know that Ariel was never to blame. The plague that has entered the forest–’

‘Is a blessing!’ The stag’s voice trembled with passion. ‘It will drive your kind away from us.’

Ariel put a hand to her mouth, then narrowed her eyes. ‘You believe the forest will be better for this plague?’

‘If it rids us of you, yes.’ Sativus began stepping from side to side, so that they heard his hooves, thudding into the earth. ‘Whatever change it brings is nothing to the evil your children have wrought.’

Ariel caught Orion’s eye and signalled that he should move back from the trees.

He frowned, but she glared at him with such intensity that he nodded and limped back into the centre of the clearing.

‘And what would you have us do, Sativus?’ she asked.

Orion noticed that there were tears glinting in her eyes.

Sativus became calm once more. ‘Would you do my bidding, then, Queen of the Oak? Would you heed my advice, as you did before?’

‘What would you have us do?’ she repeated, staring into the shadows.

Sativus continued speaking softly, but with a new urgency. ‘You could, even now, undo the harm you have wrought. Leave the forest. Take your spells and your horses and your fires and leave us in peace. Atonement is in your grasp, Ariel, but only if you go now. Place your dead lover on his bier, bid goodbye to the old year and lead your people away. Within a season your mark would begin to fade. Nature would reclaim its own. Life would begin again.’

‘And what of the plague?’

‘Disease is part of the forest, Ariel; you are not.’

Ariel nodded. Tears were now flowing freely down her cheeks. ‘Sativus,’ she whispered, so quietly that only Orion could hear. ‘My oldest friend.’

Orion was about to speak, desperate to explain his actions more clearly to Sativus, but before he could Ariel flew past him, spreading her arms as her feet lifted from the ground.

There was another thud of hooves, then Ariel uttered a single power-charged syllable and clapped her palms together.

The clearing was plunged into darkness. It was as though a drape had been thrown over the evening sky, muffling even the sound of rain, pattering on the fallen leaves.

Orion stumbled blindly forwards, attempting to follow Ariel.

Then the darkness was replaced by a blinding flash and he howled, shielding his eyes from the glare. His cry was matched by a scream so horrible he could not tell whether it came from Ariel or an animal.

The glare faded and Orion opened his eyes.

A hole had been wrenched in the circle of trees. Several of them had been twisted aside, as though by a powerful storm, revealing the figure that had been standing beneath them.

Orion gasped as he saw Sativus. The huge stag was utterly transformed. Its antlers were all that remained of its former shape. Where once it had been white and noble, now it was a mound of black, glistening sinew. Its hunched back now sported a pair of spiny bat wings and its tail was the armour-plated barb of a scorpion. The clear, intelligent eyes that Orion recalled had been replaced by studs of malice, rolling feverishly as Ariel drifted closer.

The same magic she had used to draw back the trees had also wrenched roots from the ground, pinning the stag to the spot.

The monster that had once been Sativus thrashed and heaved at its bonds.

‘You should leave,’ screamed the creature, abandoning all pretence of reason. Its voice was shrill and wild. ‘You cannot survive this war. You will all die.’

Orion saw that Ariel was shaking violently as she dropped gently to the ground. He raced to her side, wondering if the creature had wounded her, but as he reached her he saw that it was only grief that was shaking her body.

As tears flowed from her eyes, power coiled around her fingertips, wrenching more roots from the ground, and each one that rose gripped Sativus a little tighter.

Orion staggered to a halt as he realised what she was doing.

She was crushing the life from the Spirit King.

‘Wait!’ he cried, grasping her arm. ‘Think what Naieth said! You cannot harm him. The seasons will be heavy with blood. We must win back his allegiance. We must cure him.’

As Sativus began to rupture and snap Ariel turned to face Orion. Her eyes were red with grief and her whole body was shivering but when she spoke, her voice was heavy with power.

‘Sativus is dead.’

She closed her eyes, threw back her head and lost herself in the magic that was tearing through her.

Orion shook his head and was about to plead with her again, when Sativus gave an almighty bellow and charged, snapping free of its bonds.

The massive beast was making straight for Ariel and Orion realised that she was too consumed by her spell to realise.

The stag lowered its antlers as it thundered through the mud.

Orion bared his teeth in a grim smile and threw himself directly in the stag’s path.

It was like stepping before a falling tree.

Sativus smashed into him and they both rolled across the clearing, spraying blood, mud and leaves as they went.

Ariel howled in rage, drawn out of her trance just in time to see Sativus regain its footing and rear up over Orion’s prone form, preparing to dash his brains out with its hooves.

She summoned more roots and hurled them like spears, piercing Sativus’s flesh with knotted staves.

Sativus collapsed, covering the ruins with a spray of bones and viscera. For a moment, the spirit tried to rise, but its body was so badly torn that it collapsed as it did so. The torrents of blood became wisps of crimson light, bleeding through Sativus’s hide and mingling with the rain. Then the stag began to dissipate, becoming a spiralling mist of red and green.

Ariel watched in horror, shaking her head. Then, when Sativus’s remains had completely evaporated, she remembered her husband and whirled around.

Orion was lying at the centre of the clearing facing the sky. His back was arched in pain and there was bloody foam on his lips. His body was quivering and his eyes had rolled back into their sockets.

Ariel wailed and rushed to his side, but when she reached him, she was unable to touch his body. It was so torn and buckled that she could find no place to hold him.

She dropped to her knees a few feet away, with one hand extended, and began to weep.

She was so lost in her grief that for a while she failed to notice that the weather had changed.

The air was busy with silent, drifting feathers of snow.

Chapter Twelve

Ordaana lay in the dark, half asleep in the roots of a tree, imagining that flies were speaking to her. The words were amiable, soporific and lisping. ‘Hookworm, of fifteen varieties, emerging from the flesh of the joint cavity. Roundworm, of twelve varieties, covering the mucus lining. Lesser infestations of cankerworm, tapeworm, zeaspora, black pox, hair tongue and lung fungus.’

She ignored the flies, holding her child tighter for warmth and trying to regain the blissful nothingness of sleep.

The droning words continued, listing every conceivable fungal infection and disease. The voice was so lethargic that Ordaana might have succeeded in staying asleep if not for the other sounds that accompanied it. Nearby she could hear a clicking sound – bone, tapping against wood; an irregular pattern that caused her to flinch with every click. She clamped her eyes tighter but the sound drummed on. It was like a fingernail, tapping against her skull. And, in the distance, she could hear something equally jarring – a dull, repetitive clang, like two pans being banged together. The sounds combined into such an infuriating din that she accepted defeat and opened her eyes to glare at the insects.

‘Why can’t you just let me sleep?’

The endless clouds of flies were there, of course, but they were not speaking. She was being addressed by one of Alkhor’s servants – one of his muttering, shuffling lackeys. When she had asked, in disgusted tones, what they were, Alkhor had given her the name humans applied to them, seeming to find it incredibly funny. Humans called them tallymen, he explained, if they lived long enough to call them anything. This particular one was standing over her, fiddling with a tally stick and an abacus of finger bones. Like all of Alkhor’s brood, it was vaguely humanoid, but with an impossibly bloated stomach, a pair of ridiculous spindly legs, a single tusk sprouting from its skull and one, large cyclopean eye embedded in its forehead.

‘Ganglion,’ she muttered.

Ordaana would rather not have been on first name terms with such a being, but Ganglion’s particular gift made it quite unmistakable. It had explained, quite proudly to Ordaana, that Alkhor had blessed it with the blood pox. Constant bleeding beneath its skin made its body the colour of raw meat. The dark red was in sharp contrast with its eye – a lurid sack of yellow, laced with swollen veins and oozing a constant stream of pus.

‘Infinitesimal particles of white nose, loose eye and liver mould,’ it said, leaning so close that she could see the weevils rushing across its blackened tongue.

Ordaana groaned and backed away, struggling with the nausea that dogged her every waking moment. The thing spoke a language so base it hurt her ears, but Alkhor had cursed her with the ability to understand every loathsome word.

‘The tendons have erupted in thirty-seven places, Proctor,’ said Ganglion, using its counting stick to prod a lump of meat near her feet.

She hissed a curse and stood up. The moist white lump in her arms stirred and Ordaana gently stroked its tentacles, ignoring the way they reddened her skin. ‘Why must you tell me every wretched detail?’ She glared at Ganglion. ‘Build him his rivers. Keep working. I don’t care about anything else.’

A pockmarked lid rolled halfway down Ganglion’s eye. ‘The master’s work is meaningless if we do not catalogue it, Proctor.’ The daemon jabbed its counting stick into the piece of meat again. ‘The number and complexity of his gifts cannot go unrecorded.’ Ganglion tapped a thick, mildewed ledger, hanging beneath its swaying gut and continued speaking in the same, moist lisp: ‘Records must be kept, Proctor. Tallies must be made. Power exists only in the detailing of things. The forest is dangerously unkempt. We must bring order. By listing our successes can we–’

‘Where did you get that?’ asked Ordaana, pointing at the diseased meat.

The daemon in her arms stirred again and she patted its head until it withdrew its tentacles.

Ganglion’s blood blister face creased into a smile. ‘Another one of Ariel’s lackeys.’

Ordaana stared at the dripping mess, contorted by guilt. Then she pictured Ariel’s face and replaced the feeling with hate. ‘A lone scout?’

Ganglion had already returned its attention to the piece of flesh. There were white, glistening shapes moving through it. The daemon was deaf to Ordaana’s question as it counted them, clicking the beads of its abacus as it calculated the extent of the infection. ‘Flatworms,’ it said cheerfully. ‘And snail fever.’

Ganglion seemed oblivious to the fact that the worms were crawling from its own skin. The longer the tallyman examined the meat, the more infected it became.

‘Ganglion,’ snapped Ordaana, ‘was he alone?’

Ganglion smiled. ‘Far from it, Proctor. He was just the first. There are many more – guards, I think. We have been blessing them with our grandfather’s gifts. And those that were strong enough have now joined us in the work of counting and organising. We are now so numerous that we should complete the river before–’

‘Guards?’ Ordaana felt a cold dread in her stomach. ‘Guards of what?’

Ganglion frowned. ‘One of their haunts, I think. We will learn more as the river progresses.’

Ordaana clutched the silver knife fixed to her belt, itching to plunge it into Ganglion’s moronic eye. ‘What have you done? Show me quickly.’

The tallymen never moved with any great speed and Ordaana seethed as Ganglion sauntered through fly-crowded groves, down to the moonlit bank of a river. As she emerged from the shadows she pulled her tatty hood down low until her face was completely hidden.

The river was no ordinary waterway. It was a glut of steaming, yellow acid, eating its way through the frozen earth and spreading disease as it bubbled through the hoarfrost. Coiled, pale shapes moved beneath the surface. Ordaana grimaced as she made out vast, ridged monsters, burrowing through the earth and driving the river on.

Ordaana felt sick at the sight of it but Alkhor had explained its importance: for the daemon’s garden to resemble a working stomach, it must be fed by rivers of bile, pouring down from the north, flooding the groves Alkhor had cultivated to resemble a lower intestine. It was utterly, utterly insane, of course, but Alkhor had promised her a reward on its completion. The daemon had promised to reveal how Ordaana would take her revenge. She was clinging to that hope.

Figures were moving through the acid – rank, bandy-legged monstrosities like Ganglion. They each had the same cyclopean eyes and tusks, but there the similarity ended. Each of them was contorted by a different affliction. Where Ganglion’s skin was crimson, the others wore a whole rainbow of sickening hues. Some glistened with a pale sheen of white pus, while others were coated with a thick, yellow, fungal crust. All of them were working tirelessly, either widening the course of the river with their bare hands, or cataloguing the diseases that sprang up in their wake. Animals lay dead or dying all around them and as the tallymen progressed, their muttering, monotonous voices joined the buzzing of the flies in a nauseating chorus, punctuated by the dull clanging sound Ordaana had heard earlier.

While Ordaana slept, dozens more of the daemons had lurched into existence, each one born of a victim’s tormented soul. Ordaana shook her head in disbelief as she realised the true nature of her task: she was commanding an army of horned, muttering dullards. As they lumbered slowly onwards, they spread a variety of diseases, causing the trees nearest to the river to slump and split, like a platter of rotting food.

Ordaana peered through the gloom, following the course of the river. Its lurid yellow was easy to follow, even through the clouds of flies, and she saw that, as she slept, they had moved it on another half a mile.

‘Down there?’ she asked, jabbing her knife at where the river ended.

Ganglion had stooped to investigate a tree trunk. It was covered in fungus and Ganglion was nodding sagely. ‘Root rot. Water mould. Legweed.’

Ordaana gave the daemon a fierce backhanded blow that sent it sprawling across the grass.

Ganglion stood slowly and lidded its eye again.

‘Where is this “haunt” you’ve found?’ she demanded. ‘I’m not interested in your lists.’

The daemon gave her a lethargic, moist-lipped smile and pointed at the end of the river.

Ordaana hauled the daemon to its feet and shoved it on through the trees. ‘You might have ruined everything. If you have, your master’s wrath will be nothing compared to mine.’

Ganglion’s mouth trembled as it failed to find a suitable reply. The thought that it had failed Alkhor was enough to finally drive it into a slow jog.

They followed the course of the yellow river, past the diseased figures steering it onwards and climbed a small incline, just a few hundred yards from the end of the river.

Ordaana waved for Ganglion to keep low as they crested the hill and looked down across the trees. ‘Where did you see–?’ she began, but her words came to an abrupt halt as she saw what was happening below.

The tallymen had steered the river of bile into a broad, treeless basin and, as the yellow liquid pooled and tumbled across silver-clad rocks, arrows were raining down from the far side of the valley. Clouds of them were whirring through the air and thudding into the daemons.

Ordaana looked over their heads and saw a tower rising out of the darkness. It was impossible to see clearly but the arrows seemed to be coming from its walls, mostly aimed at an enormous, hulking figure, smashing its sword against the base of the tower.

‘What are they doing?’ she hissed, turning to Ganglion. ‘Why aren’t they fighting back?’ The daemons wading through the bile were ignoring the arrows piercing their bodies. As Ordaana watched in disbelief they carried on working with the same, plodding deliberation.

Ganglion gave her a blank look. ‘They are making the river, Proctor. And recording its effect.’

Ordaana closed her eyes, biting back a scream. ‘But they have been discovered.’ She pointed at the larger daemon – the one pummelling the base of the tower. ‘And what is that?’

Ganglion swelled with pride. ‘Bule is the Herald. He is the greatest of us.’

Ordaana stared at the giant daemon. It was vaguely the same shape as the others, with a protruding gut and crooked, ridiculous legs, but it was built on quite a different scale. Its back and arms were lashed with diseased, skinless muscle and even from a distance she could tell that it must be twelve feet or more high. With every swing of its black sword it smashed a little more of the tower’s foundations and summoned another wave of arrows.

Bule bristled with arrows but was oblivious to the danger. Every time a piece of the rock came free the daemon paused to examine it. As it turned the rocks in its fingers it made notes in a drooping ledger, ignoring the arrows thudding into its flesh. Rather than a single horn, this daemon had three great tusks and, dangling from the tallest of them, was a battered, brass bell. Every time Bule struck the tower the bell shifted, letting out another harsh peal.

Ordaana groaned as the sound rattled around her head. ‘What do you think those archers will do now?’ she hissed, wincing as she turned back to Ganglion.

Ganglion shrugged. ‘The Plaguefather’s gifts will affect them in different ways. Until we can calculate the potency of his blights I am unable to say how the archers have reacted to the river.’

Ordaana grabbed the daemon’s blood-infused head and hauled it to hers. The smell of sickness was overwhelming, but she gripped it tightly.

‘They will send news to their lord.’ She spoke in sharp, quick bursts. ‘Maybe they already have. Their kindreds will be arming themselves. Do you understand? They will come here in vast numbers. They will kill Bule. Then they will butcher the rest of you.’

A look of recognition slowly dawned in the daemon’s eye and it smiled, loosing a string of black drool from its mouth. ‘Bule will not die.’ It waved at the figures working in the river. It was true that most of them were ignoring the arrows embedded in their flesh and working on, but a couple were already so pinned with wooden shafts that they were struggling to move. ‘We do not die, Proctor. Our grandfather did not make us that way.’

‘And what about when they have dismembered you all, Ganglion? Or cast you all into a fire? Will you still be able to do your master’s bidding?’

Ganglion wiped the drool from its lips and stared at the distant, towering shape of Bule. Doubt appeared in its single, oozing eye. After a moment it spoke in a quieter, more hesitant voice. ‘What shall we do, Proctor?’

‘Kill them, you idiot. Kill every one of them. And pray you’re not too late.’

She shoved Ganglion back down the slope. ‘Tell them to stop counting for a minute. Make for the source of the arrows. Help Bule. I’ll do the rest.’ She pulled her hood down even lower. ‘And gods protect you if I’ve been recognised.’

Ganglion shook its head but stumbled down the hill, drawing a pitted sword as it went. An arrow whistled through the darkness and sliced into the daemon’s neck but, after a brief hesitation, it stumbled on, letting out a lazy, droning command. ‘Cease the count. Draw your swords.’

The workers below looked up from the rocky basin.

‘Defend Bule,’ lisped Ganglion.

As the daemons shuffled slowly towards the giant, Ordaana climbed to her feet, lowered her head and lifted her palms to the stars. Her voice rang out through the darkness and the forest buckled in response. Naked boughs heaved into motion, wood screamed in protest and the rings on Ordaana’s fingers flashed in the moonlight. ‘You will not take this from me,’ she hissed, bringing her arms down.

There was a deafening crash as trees exploded into life, sending branches and roots flying down into the murky pit. Dozens of tendrils spiralled through the darkness, speeding towards the source of the arrows.

Ordaana nodded as they lashed around the base of the tower. As the spindly-legged tallymen drew their swords and shambled through the gorge, she took her knife and levelled it at the face of the second moon.

The runes on her blade shimmered with green fire and the Chaos moon pulsed brighter, throwing a wave of sickly light through her weapon and splashing it up against the stone spire. Ordaana frowned as the structure was revealed. It was a crooked, ridged spike of basalt. It was clearly a natural phenomenon but its dozens of circular cave mouths were too uniform to be the work of nature. Ordaana recognised the hand of a powerful sorcerer.

‘I’ve seen this place before,’ she muttered.

An arrow thudded into a tree trunk just behind her and she dropped to the ground, feeling a growing sense of alarm. ‘Where are we?’ she said, peering through the grass.

She felt a rush of satisfaction as her torrent of roots and leaves slammed against the black tower, lashing around its frosty, angular walls, but her pleasure was short-lived.

As the vines and shoots snaked in through the cave mouths the tower began to defend itself. For a split second it simply vanished, sending Ordaana’s vines tumbling through the air, clutching at shadows like grasping hands. The vines had no sooner fallen to the floor of the basin when the tower reappeared, a few feet closer to the tallymen and completely unencumbered.

Ordaana gasped. She sensed sorcery, drifting towards her through the darkness. She could taste it – cold and metallic on her tongue. She grimaced and dropped back down into the grass, clutching her daemon child protectively to her chest. Someone was watching her from the black rock – a fierce sentience, charged with power.

‘What’s this, Alhena?’ she whispered, looking down into the nest of tentacles that passed for the daemon’s face. ‘Where have we come, my child?’

Down below, Ganglion was shoving the tallymen on across the rocky basin, his sword pointed at the black spire. As the other daemons lumbered slowly after him, the waves of arrows continued slamming into them. There were piles of fallen tallymen now, slumped over the rocks; not dead, but unable to rise because they were bristling with so many arrows. Meanwhile, the torrent of bile continued pooling around them, filling the pit with lurid, bubbling effluence as Bule hacked endlessly at the base of the tower, shaking its bell and filling the valley with a tuneless din.

Ordaana felt a rush of panic as she saw what was happening. ‘Whoever you are, you won’t take this from me.’ She climbed to her feet and held her hands aloft for a second time.

More roots exploded from the forest but, to Ordaana’s horror, she felt a whole host of magic-charged minds arrayed against her. They wrested control of the trees and hurled them back.

Ordaana groaned as a tide of rotten branches thundered through the air towards her.

She tried to turn and flee but there was no time. The branches smashed into her slender body and sent her tumbling back down the incline.

As she fell, twigs pierced her skin and lashed around her throat, causing her to cry out in pain. Her cries grew more desperate as the branches prised the little daemon from her arms and hurled it into the shadows.

‘No!’ she screamed. ‘Alhena!’ Panic threw her body into a violent fit and flames exploded from her flesh, incinerating her wooden bonds. By the time she thudded to a stop at the bottom of the slope, she was able to stagger free of the crackling remnants and lurch to her feet.

‘Alhena!’ she howled, lashing out with the silver knife and splitting the darkness apart with fire.

The brightness was enough for her to see that the monstrous tumult of branches had doubled in size.

‘My child!’ she cried, looking around and attempting to sprint back up the hill. Before she had taken a few steps, the forest swept her up and sent her tumbling back into the trees. As she rolled and bounced through the darkness, Ordaana felt a whole conclave of spellweavers watching her from the tower, bending their will against hers.

‘Who is this?’ she cried, hurtling backwards through the air. Then she slammed into a tree and lost consciousness.

She woke a few seconds later, with twigs clawing at her face.

The enchantment was more powerful than anything she had faced before. Leaves and moss enveloped her, spinning her around like a fly ensnared by a spider.

‘Alhena!’ she wailed again and more flames erupted from her body. Her bonds collapsed for a second time and she thudded onto the grass. Air exploded from her lungs. She lurched back onto her feet, clutching her blackened chest and scouring the shadows for a glimpse of her daemon ward.

There was no sign of the creature and when she looked back down into the pit she saw that the situation was even worse.

Bule had punched a hole in the rock and asrai were pouring from the tower: lithe, armour-clad spearmen, their stern, implacable faces gleaming in the moonlight.

They reached the floundering daemons and sliced into them, retaining their imperious expressions as they jammed spears into the monsters’ diseased bodies.

Rather than parrying the blows, the tallymen welcomed the attacks – opening their arms to the enemy and even pulling the spears deeper into their own bodies.

Ordaana watched in disbelief as the tallymen slumped against the spearmen, making no effort to fight back.

Then she remembered her purpose and looked back up the incline. ‘Alhena!’ she cried ‘Where are you?’

The smouldering wreckage of branches lay all around her, lighting up the hillside with a repugnant green glow, but there was no sign of the squid-like being she had carved from Alkhor’s innards.

Ordaana clambered back up the hillside, peering into the darkness, but was unable to find the little daemon. A few minutes later she reached the top of the incline and saw that the tallymen were gathering around the base of the tower.

She gasped, looking back to where the river was pouring into the pit.

To her relief, she saw the asrai spearmen, heaped in mounds where the tallymen had left them. They had sustained no wounds, but their corpses were contorted beyond all recognition. Some of them were already lumbering back into life, with single, unblinking eyes.

‘Black plague,’ she said, recalling the pus that oozed from Alkhor’s blighted offspring. ‘Of course.’ She realised then why Ganglion and the others had made no attempt to defend themselves. All they had to do was bring the spearmen close enough for their contagions to take hold.

Ordaana flinched as another arrow sliced through the air, just inches from her face. She crouched low and shook her head. Alkhor’s plaguebearers had reached the tower, but there was no way for them to gain entry. The hole made by Bule was only a couple of feet wide and, as the daemons shuffled blithely around it, arrows flew out, slamming into their misshapen bodies. One-by-one they were being paralysed, tumbling in front of the hole and blocking the entryway as Bule pounded at another craggy buttress, seeming to have forgotten about the battle.

Ordaana’s fear was not for the daemons.

‘What have you done with my child?’ she snarled, glaring at the shadowy column. The tower glared back and Ordaana saw the mass of branches and roots tumble back across the rocky basin, before disappearing beneath the foot of the tower.

‘Alhena,’ she gasped, scrambling down into the treeless gulley. She clutched her knife tighter as she ran, filled with panic. ‘My child!’ she cried, scouring the shadows.

Blistered hands reached up to her as she sprinted across the floor of the valley. The asrai who were still able to see begged her for help, their voices thick with blood and phlegm. She batted their hands away, keeping her gaze locked on the black tower.

The tallymen were still thrashing uselessly against the unyielding foundations, unable to wade through the bodies and reach the hole made by Bule. They had grasped the rock with their pallid fingers, trying to weaken it with disease, but the basalt did not rot as easily as flesh. Arrows continued slamming into their grotesque bodies, but Ordaana no longer cared. She barged through them and grasped the rock, sure there must be an entrance somewhere in the base of the tower.

She charged through the tumult, attempting to find an entrance, but there was none.

Undeterred, she cast her mind into the darkness, seeking currents of magic to harness. The air was alive with sorcery. It was pouring from the forest and flooding through the walls of the tower.

‘What are you doing?’ she muttered, addressing the minds pitted against her. Vast waves of power were soaking through the walls. She could see the air rippling and bending under the weight of it. Whoever was defending the tower was blessed with more skill than sense. No structure could withhold such energy and remain standing.

‘Pull back,’ she muttered, but her words were lost beneath the noise of the tallymen.

Ordaana backed away from the tower, shaking her head. As she walked, her robes lashed around her, caught in the tempest of power whipping through the valley. ‘My child,’ she muttered, sure that the trees had dragged the little daemon inside the keep.

She thought desperately for a way to gain entry, but there was now so much magic rippling across the black stone that it was almost impossible to look at it.

She was about to call out a command when the darkness vanished. The whole valley blazed white. Then the gloom returned, accompanied by screams and the screech of splitting rock.

The ground shuddered and Ordaana dropped heavily to her knees.

For a moment she could see nothing but the after-image of the explosion, then, as her eyes recovered, she saw that a new, much larger hole had appeared in the side of the tower.

The ground was littered with body parts, both daemon and asrai, and a cloud of smoke and dust was billowing around the hole in the tower.

Ordaana’s ears filled with a screaming sound. At first she thought it was the sound of the tallymen, calling for help, but then she realised the sound was in her head.

‘Alhena!’ she gasped, recalling her ward. She sprinted back towards the tower, bounding over the crowds of bodies thrown by the blast.

The wall of the tower was several feet thick, but it had collapsed like rotten wood.

As she staggered through the wreckage, Ordaana saw the remains of a grand chamber, and arrayed against the far wall were the asrai who had pitted themselves against her. There were three of them, slumped in enormous thrones of knotted birchwood. They were dressed in long, black robes and furs and their heads were crowned with circlets of hawthorn. It was clear from their intricately tattooed faces that they were highborn but, as Ordaana approached them, she saw there was no need to bow.

All three of them were dead.

Their heads had been thrown back by the force of the blast and there were thick lines of blood rushing from their nostrils. Their eyes had rolled back in their sockets and their wooden staves lay at their feet.

The chamber was full of spearmen. Dozens of them had been slain by the explosion that killed their masters, but many were still alive and, at the sight of Ordaana, they lurched to their feet, hurrying towards her through the rubble.

Ordaana could easily have defended herself. The air was humming with untrammelled magic and she would have no problems turning it to her will. Her thoughts were not on the spearmen, however.

At the foot of the steps that led to the three wooden thrones was a pile of severed roots and broken branches, and nestling in the middle of it was a mound of white flesh.

‘Alhena,’ gasped Ordaana. Her mouth fell open as she realised her progeny was the centre of the storm. The power hurtling through the valley was emanating from its nest of tentacles.

One of the spearmen was about to reach Ordaana when the daemon glanced up from the floor. The nest of tentacles that made up its face was still pulsing with the light that had destroyed the wall.

The daemon’s gaze hit the spearmen like a hammer blow.

His head snapped back and his neck cracked.

He collapsed to the floor with a whistling sound.

As he lay on the ground, struggling to breathe through his ruined neck, the other spearmen stumbled to a halt, staring at the daemon in disbelief.

Ordaana saw her chance and reached her mind out to the pile of roots and branches.

Before the spearmen could defend themselves, she hurled the tree wreckage at them.

Screams rang out as roots and branches formed into rough-edged blades and tore into chests and limbs.

The spearmen staggered back, trying to fend off Ordaana’s attack, but as they neared the crumbling hole they came face-to-face with Bule, clambering over the fallen stones with its mouth hanging slack and an enormous iron sword in its fist.

The asrai fought desperately but it was hopeless. Bule was followed by countless smaller tallymen and, in a few minutes, the last of the asrai were either wrapped in bristling boughs or crippled by disease.

Ordaana left the tallymen to finish them off and hurried to the nest of tentacles. ‘My child,’ she sobbed, staring at the daemon in shock. It had tripled in size.

‘Did you do this?’ She looked around, taking in the dead spellweavers in their thrones and the wreckage that littered the hall. Her voice trembled with pride. ‘Did you summon all this power?’

The daemon adopted an oddly coy pose, as though embarrassed, then it reached out to her, entwining one of its tentacles around her arm.

As Ordaana shook her head in wonder, the daemon focused dozens of eyes on her face. They stared at each other, lost in their love.

‘I can barely recognise you,’ Ordaana whispered, stroking the rubbery flesh that had knotted around her arm.

Once the killing was over, the tallymen drew out their mildewed ledgers and counting tools. As the asrai gasped their last breaths, the tallymen crouched beside them, picking cheerfully at the scabs erupting all over their bodies.

Bule began punching the walls from the inside, causing the whole chamber to tremble.

Ordaana tore her gaze away from the daemon and noticed something on one of the dead sorcerers. She climbed the steps up to the thrones, still grasping one of the daemon’s tentacles, and approached the corpse in the centre.

The tallymen had yet to cross the chamber and the spellweavers were still free of the plague. Their skulls had been smashed when their heads jolted back against their thrones, but their bodies were intact, and their robes had yet to rot.

Ordaana stepped closer to the corpse and snapped a necklace of wooden beads from around its neck. There was an intricately carved oak disc attached to it and, as she held it up into the light, the smile fell from Ordaana’s face. It was a beautifully rendered cameo of a stern-faced noble.

Ordaana paled.

There was a wet slapping sound as Ganglion climbed the steps to her side. The tallyman saw how grey her face was and frowned. ‘Proctor?’

Ordaana looked at the cameo and let out a strained laugh. ‘Your Plaguefather might have chosen the wrong route for his river.’

Ganglion stared at her with a vacant expression in its single, lidded eye. ‘No, Proctor. The Plaguelord’s stomach is perfect. The bile passes this way.’

Ordaana held out the cameo so that Ganglion could see the face. ‘Have you heard of Prince Elatior?’ She looked for recognition in the daemon’s face, but there was none. ‘They call him the Enchanter,’ she explained.

Ganglion’s expression remained blank.

‘This is the eastern gate of the Silvam Dale.’ She looked at the corpses in the thrones. Ganglion was standing several feet away from them, but their flesh was already beginning to bubble and blister. ‘This must be the Ravenstone. Alkhor is driving his river into a nest of witches.’ She pointed to the butchered remains of tallymen, piled outside the tower. ‘This is just a gatehouse. Do you understand?’ She nodded at the quickly mutating bodies in the thrones. ‘These are the least of Elatior’s servants. The least of them.’

She struggled to hold back laughter. ‘We’ve murdered the lords of the Ravenstone.’

‘Surely my own queen doesn’t doubt me?’ said a wet, gurgling voice.

Ordaana whirled around, recognising Alkhor’s mocking tones.

At first she could not work out where it was coming from, then she noticed that one of the black-robed corpses had climbed from its throne. Its head was hanging oddly to one side, due to its broken neck, so as it addressed Ordaana it was unable to face her, looking instead at the distant ceiling of the chamber.

‘Do you think I am no match for this Elatior you speak so highly of?’ The corpse stepped down from the throne towards her, swaying drunkenly as it walked.

Ganglion and the other tallymen stopped counting, dropped to their knees and pressed their faces to the floor. Even Bule stopped its endless pummelling and knelt, filling the chamber with another clang as it did so.

The squid-like mass in the centre of the chamber hauled itself towards the corpse and caressed it with dozens of limbs, muffling its words.

‘I told you we might encounter the odd naysayer.’ The corpse began giggling as its daemon child wrapped countless limbs around it. ‘But when they see how glorious and varied my garden is, they will understand why the odd sacrifice had to be made.’

Ordaana shook her head. ‘Elatior has significant power at his command.’ She glared at the rows of kneeling tallymen. ‘And you have given me an army of dunces. Elatior is ancient and wise. He will not allow you to send your corruption across his borders.’ She shook her head. ‘His seers will have foreseen your every move and he will have prepared a defence. I have known him since I was a child. Believe me, if you march into his realm he will be ready for you. He will have a plan.’

The corpse shook with laughter and its head flopped forwards onto its chest, sending it off balance. It was about to stumble down the steps when the tentacles wrapped around its legs held it upright.

‘I’m sure he will have a plan,’ chuckled the corpse. ‘If only I had some kind of friend who could take him into her confidence so that he shared his plan with her. Then I could know what he was thinking and our garden could continue to blossom.’

Ordaana shook her head in disbelief. ‘You think I could appear before him now? Look at me!’ She dropped to her knees and stared at her reflection in a pool of blood. She expected to see a monster – something as grotesque as the horrors that surrounded her. But, to her surprise, she saw the same sharp, angular features and disdainful eyes. She still looked the image of a refined, asrai noble.

‘You look beautiful, my queen,’ said the corpse, shambling across the chamber and flopping a lifeless hand on her shoulder. ‘Your husband will be delighted to see you.’

‘Beldeas?’ She spat the word as she climbed to her feet. ‘You’re sending me to him?’

‘Your people are afraid of change, Ordaana. I am filling their world with colour but they can only think in green. They have fled to the Enchanter, thinking he can keep the world as it was.’ The corpse shook with laughter again and held its hand in the air. The fingers were teeming with mites and bubbling with disease. ‘Nothing ever remains as it was. Isn’t that a beautiful thought? Everything passes. Everything changes. Everything is fleeting, Ordaana; everything.’

‘Beldeas is in the Silvam Dale?’

‘Yes, along with your subjects – those that survived the battle of Drúne Fell.’

Ordaana looked around at the ranks of kneeling tallymen. Disease was pouring from their rotten flesh, eating into wood and bone and filling the air with a cloying stink.

‘Can I really walk amongst my own kind?’ she said quietly. Without realising she was doing it, she placed a hand over her shoulder. ‘Will they not see what I have become?’

The corpse tried to shake its head but only succeeded in swinging its shoulders. ‘I have deprived you of my grandfather’s gifts for a reason. You look as plain and unadorned as the rest of them. They will embrace you.’

Ordaana clutched one of the tentacles that was wrapped around them both. ‘What of my child? What of Alhena?’

‘Alhena?’ Alkhor sounded confused for a second, then began to laugh. ‘Oh, I see – our child.’

Ordaana blushed furiously but remained insistent. ‘What will happen to Alhena if I go to the Silvam Dale?’

The corpse stroked the pulsing sack at the heart of the tentacles. ‘I will keep our child safe, Ordaana.’

Ordaana lifted the corpse’s head on its broken neck, so its eyes were facing hers. ‘And when will I have my revenge? You promised me. When can I end the rule of those monsters?’

‘When spring comes, my queen, your chance will come. They will rise from their slumber to find a kingdom on its knees. The Silvam Dale will fall and the other realms will follow in its wake. By the time Ariel and Orion return, they will have no option but to ride out and face us in the heart of my garden. Orion will be forced to lead his hunt into my hands, just as all my seeds begin to bear fruit.’

Ordaana shivered at the mention of the Wild Hunt. ‘But how will I kill them?’

The corpse jerked one of its hands at the silver knife tucked into Ordaana’s belt. ‘There is more to that blade than you realise. Do as I ask, Ordaana. Find out what the Enchanter has planned and report back to me. Once he is destroyed, we will talk more of revenge.’

Ordaana shook her head and stepped closer to the corpse but, before she could speak, the world went dark.

She tried to cry out, but something cold was pressing against her face and she realised she could no longer breathe.

She started to struggle.

Chapter Thirteen

The Chains of Vaul. Finavar had sung the name in countless ballads – a series of enormous, interlinked roots, jutting out of the forest like the ribs of a long-forgotten giant. The tree they fed was long gone, but it must have been the size of a mountain – a gnarled goliath of a forgotten age. The step-like roots led down into a broad, gloomy valley and as Finavar’s gaze tumbled over them he grimaced. The day had barely dawned. The sun was pale and hesitant, hidden behind low, snow-laden clouds, but there was still enough light for Finavar to see that something dreadful had entered his home. He could not believe the scene that greeted him as he looked down from the root he was standing on. A broad expanse of lurid, yellow liquid had cut its way across the forest and flooded half of the valley. It was a revolting sight, accompanied by an equally disturbing sound: a chorus of shrill, screeching noises. It sounded to Finavar like thousands of eagles, screaming in pain.

He grimaced as he turned to the tall, brooding figure at his side.

Mälloch’s skin did not shimmer in the dull, morning light, but it retained an unworldly sheen, as though it were reflecting the rays of an older, braver sun than the one currently hiding in the clouds. Mälloch said nothing but pointed to some dark, bloated shapes criss-crossing the river.

Finavar peered through the early morning haze. ‘Are they making that noise?’ He frowned. ‘Are they insects?’

Mälloch shook his head. ‘Not like any I’ve seen before. They are as tall as I am. And they bleed an acid powerful enough to melt through flesh and bone.’

‘What is this, then, some kind of sorcery? What’s happening?’

Mälloch’s tone was grim. ‘It is a plague, Finavar, but a plague like nothing I have encountered before. No natural blight could cause such mutation. No natural infestation could create such a horror.’ He turned and waved at the pale horizon. ‘And it does not end here.’

Finavar stepped out onto the lip of the precipice and looked out across the valley to the wider forest. Sinister yellow lines were crossing the whole kingdom. They simmered and steamed in the morning light.

‘The rot will spread further if the Enchanter fails us,’ said Mälloch.

Finavar looked at him in confusion.

Mälloch pointed to a spire of black rock rearing out of the forest, several miles to the east of them. Then he turned his finger to an impossibly vast hawthorn tree, looming over the forest canopy. ‘The three guardians of the Silvam Dale,’ he explained. ‘The Chains of Vaul, the Wilding Tree and the Ravenstone. Each one impenetrable. Each one protected by the subtle arts of Elatior’s witches. They must not fall.’

Finavar looked back down into the valley, at the point where the river halted. There was some kind of mound where the yellow collided with the green. It was shimmering, as though with a heat haze.

‘Why does it stop there?’ he asked. ‘What prevents it moving on? Is that Elatior’s work?’

‘You will see soon enough. I called on my friends for aid, but their time is almost up. Winter is spreading its wings. You have arrived just in time to witness the final days of their great sacrifice.’ He turned to the ranks of asrai waiting behind him in the trees, cloaked in shadow, and raised his voice. ‘Tread carefully as we descend. Those of you who joined us at the feast, follow my lead. The Chains of Vaul must be treated with respect, especially now there is ice underfoot. One lapse of concentration will send you over the edge. And believe me, you do not want to find yourself on the wrong side of this river.’

He gave a subtle hand gesture and the asrai flooded from the trees, barely making a rustle as they raced down the crooked steps.

Finavar hurried after Mälloch down towards the valley floor. As they neared the river, a terrible stink filled his nostrils. It was like the sickly aroma of rotting fruit, mixed with something acrid that caught in the back of his throat. It seemed incongruous with the frozen landscape. At the same time, the screeching noise grew even more unbearable, causing his temples to pound. For a moment, Finavar forgot all about his dead brother and his desire for revenge as revulsion washed over him. The things he had mistaken for natural insects were enormous grubs, several feet wide and held aloft by spindly, whirring wings. The creatures were swooping back and forth across the garish yellow river, trailing strands of mucus from barbs that jutted from their abdomens. Some were clad in black, iron armour and others dangled long, twitching proboscises from their heads. Finavar shook his head in disbelief.

‘Watch your footing!’ growled Mälloch, steering Finavar down a different path, sheltered by a wall of leafless boughs. He saw where Finavar was looking and nodded, pointing at the banks of the river. ‘It’s not just the grubs you need to be wary of.’

Finavar paused and looked where the noble was pointing.

Shuffling through the dead bracken, shrouded in banks of lurid steam, were two-legged creatures – grotesque monsters with tusks sprouting from their heads and absurdly bloated stomachs. Each of them had a single yellow eye.

‘Daemons,’ whispered Finavar, appalled. Then he realised that Mälloch had not paused with him.

‘Keep moving!’ hissed Sibaris, leaping down the slope and nearly colliding with Finavar. ‘You don’t want to end up out here alone.’

Finavar let out a brittle laugh and pointed to the river. ‘I notice you didn’t mention this when you invited me to join your little clan.’

Sibaris’s jaw dropped as he realised who he was addressing. ‘You,’ he whispered, stumbling to a halt.

Finavar frowned, confused by the youth’s strange behaviour. His former cockiness was gone, replaced by a look of dazed awe.

‘You never told me your name.’ Sibaris’s eyes were wide and staring. ‘When we met, you said nothing of yourself. I didn’t know you were Finavar. The Darkling Prince. The hero of Drúne Fell.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘They said you were dead. They said you died fighting by Orion’s side, seizing victory with your final blow.’

Finavar cursed, wishing he had kept his name secret. Then he shook his head in disbelief. ‘Is that what they say of me? That I died fighting by Orion’s side?’

Sibaris nodded, staring at Finavar as though he were a holy vision. ‘You rescued his spear so that he could defeat the outsiders. Your injuries were too horrific for you to survive, but you gave Orion the chance he needed. The Darkling Prince. The hero of Drúne Fell.’ Sibaris placed a tentative hand on Finavar’s arm and his eyes glittered with excitement. ‘And now I will fight by your side.’

Finavar felt sick. ‘These are just the kinds of lies that keep us in chains.’ He shrugged off Sibaris’s grip. ‘We’re fed them as children, when we know nothing of the world. By the time you’ve grown any sense it will be too late. You’ll be just like the rest of us – too bound by ritual and magic to see what’s right before your eyes.’

Sibaris shook his head in confusion.

Finavar leant close, his skeletal features locked in a sneer. ‘I did not fall aiding Orion, Sibaris, I threw myself to the ground in despair when I realised what a vicious monster he is.’

The colour drained from Sibaris’s face. ‘He is the wild. He is our enduring soul.’

Finavar threw words like knives. ‘My brother was as young as you. He was brave. Like you. Orion ripped his throat out. Murdered him. He’s a killer. He’s the murderer of every–’

‘Stop!’ cried Sibaris, his eyes bulging ‘Don’t say such things!’ As he cried out, he grabbed Finavar by the shoulders.

Finavar staggered backwards.

There was a low cracking sound as the edge of the step gave way.

Finavar tried to steady himself, then felt his stomach turn as his left foot stepped back onto nothing.

For a moment they stared at each other in horror, their eyes just inches apart, then Finavar leant slowly back over the precipice.

Sibaris grasped desperately for him but slipped on the ice and ended up throwing his weight against Finavar.

In shocked silence, they tumbled out into the void.

Finavar came to the edge of a wide, grassy meadow – an ocean of glinting blades, silvered by the winter sun. Horses were racing by in their hundreds – as beautiful and swift as the breeze that followed them. Finavar watched them for a while, moved by their grace. Then he felt a presence behind him and turned around.

Jokleel was watching the horses with him. His wide, thoughtful eyes were full of pain.

‘Let me go,’ he said, without looking at Finavar.

Finavar was rocked by grief and tried to reply. His words emerged as a hacking cough and his mouth filled with blood. At the same moment, the sound of the breeze was replaced by a hideous, wailing screech.

He clamped his eyes shut and joined his voice to the scream. Then he opened his eyes.

The beautiful meadow had vanished. So had Jokleel. The scene that greeted him was altogether more shocking. He was sprawled awkwardly across the cold, jagged floor of the valley. The air was crackling and rippling – charged by the vast expanse of bile that was tumbling through the valley. The clouds had cleared a little and he saw, with hideous clarity, the row of figures that were lurching towards him across the rocks. Their bodies were vaguely humanoid but their skin was a shocking collection of sickly, pallid shades. A smell of pus and rotting flesh preceded them, filling Finavar’s nostrils and causing him to gag. Their limbs had a spongy, boneless quality but there was determination in their eyes and iron blades in their hands.

Finavar climbed painfully to his feet and hacked up another gobbet of blood. His bony limbs screamed in pain, but his legs managed to hold him and, as he flexed his arms, Finavar decided that they were unbroken.

The daemons were moving with calm deliberation, but they would be on him in a few minutes. Finavar saw, to his delight, that his blade was lying a few feet away. He clambered across the rocks and grabbed it, relieved to see that it was still intact. Then he staggered and gasped in pain. It was not his cuts and bruises that halted him in his tracks, it was the deafening screams. They had followed him from his dreams.

He looked around, trying to locate the source. A few hundred feet away, at the centre of the valley, he saw the dam that was barring the progress of the yellow acid. The barrier was shrouded in steam and heat haze, so Finavar was unable to make it out in any detail, but he was sure it was the source of the horrible sound.

As he tried to make it out more clearly, Finavar noticed another figure, spread-eagled across the rocks a few feet away from him.

‘Sibaris,’ he gasped, through another mouthful of blood. The youth appeared to be unconscious – at least he did not seem to be aware that several of the one-eyed daemons were ambling towards him.

‘Sibaris!’ cried Finavar, racing across the valley.

The boy showed no signs of hearing and Finavar cursed. He picked up his pace, surprised to find that he had almost recovered his old speed.

When he reached Sibaris, he saw that the boy’s eyes were open but his head was thrown back and he was staring blankly at the clouds.

Finavar felt a chill of recognition. The scene was horribly familiar. He dropped to his knees and lifted Sibaris’s head from the rocks. His hair was damp with blood but his eyes refocused, fixing onto Finavar’s.

‘The Darkling Prince,’ he gasped, with a faint smile.

‘Yes,’ replied Finavar through gritted teeth. ‘You need to stand.’

Sibaris continued smiling for a moment, then he looked around and took in his surroundings. The daemons were almost on them and his face drained of colour.

‘My leg,’ he gasped, wincing as Finavar helped him to his feet. There was a vivid red gash, just below his left knee. The bone was clearly visible through the torn skin.

‘Where are your people?’ asked Finavar looking at the shimmering dam. ‘Behind that?’

Sibaris was staring at the wound in disbelief and did not respond.

‘Where is Mälloch?’ snapped Finavar, turning the youth’s bloody face to his.

Sibaris swallowed hard and nodded. ‘Yes. They are gathered behind the dam. Mälloch is preparing for the next attack.’

Finavar nodded and threw Sibaris’s arm over his shoulders. ‘We need to move fast.’

Sibaris nodded, but Finavar hesitated, looking back at the daemons. They were less than twenty feet away. He could never outrun them and carry Sibaris at the same time.

‘Wretched child,’ he muttered, lowering Sibaris to the ground and turning to face the daemons.

As the monsters realised Finavar was not going to flee, their faces lit up with obscene grins. They began muttering an eager, droning litany.

Finavar struggled to hold his nerve as they approached. All of his senses screamed out at the wrongness of them. They were a tear in reality – a glimpse of the madness beyond. Their bodies were a mockery of real flesh. There were eight of them and, as they raised their swords, Finavar felt as though he were watching a painting spring to life. They were a garish fiction, clad in rotten flesh and belching heady, charnel fumes.

The first of them reached him and Finavar felt something else: elation. As he drew back his sword arm, vigour rushed through his muscles.

He sang a high, single note, fixing his gaze on the distant crowns of trees, looking down on him from the lip of the valley. He sang of life and the true, beating heart of the forest.

Then he leapt forwards, plunging his blade through the first daemon’s throat.

The daemon coughed and staggered backwards, reaching for its neck. With its other hand it brought down its iron sword.

The blade passed through air and clattered against the ground, sending the daemon off balance.

Finavar was nowhere to be seen.

The daemon whirled around, trying to spot its attacker and its head slipped sideways in an arc of thick, mustard-coloured blood.

Finavar dropped back into view. He had been clinging to the cliff face and landed behind the daemon with his sword held in both hands. The blade passed cleanly through the daemon’s reeling, headless body and sliced it from neck to groin.

The daemon collapsed into a steaming pile and Finavar dropped into a crouch, grinning as the rest of the daemons stumbled to a halt.

‘The Darkling Prince!’ howled Sibaris, clambering to his feet and pointing defiantly at them. ‘Know your killer, daemons! You fall to a hero!’

Finavar scowled, but had no time to refute Sibaris’s claims. The other daemons had overcome their shock and remembered that they were still seven against one. Now that they were closer he saw that they were covered in a strange assortment of objects – filthy, worm-ridden counting beads and rotten, sagging books that dripped grease and mites as they slapped back and forth around the daemons’ legs. Most worrying of all were the thousands of buboes and cysts that covered the daemons’ limbs. Finavar could smell the contagion pouring from their scabs. He knew intuitively that he could not let their glistening fingers touch his skin.

The daemons fixed their yellow eyes on him and formed a semicircle, keeping their blades held out before them.

Finavar could not help smiling. After weeks of exhaustion and despair, he finally had an enemy worthy of his hate, and the strength to fight.

He looked again at the distant trees and raised his sword to the sky.

As the daemons shuffled towards him, clogging his nostrils with their stink, his voice rang out over the chorus of screams. His song was pure and unadorned – a simple paean to nature and life.

The daemons hesitated for a moment and looked around, as though they expected some kind of response to Finavar’s call.

Seeing there was none, they rushed forwards with surprising speed.

Finavar dropped to the ground, wrapped himself into a ball and rolled forwards, passing between the legs of two of the daemons.

Before they had chance to turn around, he ran along the whole row of them, trailing his sword behind him so that the blade passed through the tendons of their legs.

As one, the daemons dropped to their knees.

As Sibaris looked on, wide-eyed with devotion, Finavar stepped lightly along the row of kneeling daemons and beheaded them.

The pus-covered remains struggled on, despite their lack of heads and Finavar spent the next few minutes dismembering them with quiet, graceful efficiency. Then he took a few steps back and dropped to one knee, resting his brow on his sword handle and closing his eyes in prayer.

‘Finavar,’ said Sibaris, staggering towards him.

Finavar looked up and glared at the youth, expecting more sycophancy.

Sibaris pointed towards the yellow river.

The fight had not gone unnoticed. Crowds of daemons were now shuffling across the rocks towards them. Finavar counted thirty at least in the first wave.

He nodded, climbed to his feet and began helping Sibaris towards the dam.

They covered half the distance in minutes and the screaming grew to such a volume that Finavar felt as though it might unhinge his mind. His teeth seemed to be pulsing in time with the dreadful sound and there was nothing he could do to block it out. They struggled on and, as they reached the dam, Finavar had to endure another assault on his senses.

When he saw the barrier from the precipice above he had assumed it was built of deadwood, or rocks, but now he realised it was alive. It was a living wall of bark and claws. Woodland spirits and wild animals had bound themselves into a dam, blocking the river at the valley’s narrowest point. Disparate beings of thorn and claw had crushed together to form an impassable barrier. And they were screaming in agony.

‘Look what allies my great-grandfather has at his side,’ said Sibaris proudly. ‘The spirits of the forest have answered his call for countless centuries. Few lords can boast such–’

‘They’re dying,’ said Finavar in desolate tones.

Sibaris stumbled over his words. ‘Well, you see, I think… My father has promised to oversee this. He has sworn to the Enchanter we will hold this spot, and we will.’ As he spoke he followed Finavar’s gaze and doubt crept into his voice. ‘Look at the progress we have made.’ He pointed out a vast mound of bodies at the foot of the green wall. Hundreds of the pot-bellied daemons had been hacked apart by Mälloch’s warriors, who were gathered behind and around the wall of thorns. Daemon flesh lay across the valley in broken, steaming heaps.

Finavar’s gaze remained locked on the dam. ‘The year is dying though, Sibaris. Look at them. Their power is spent. They’re in torment.’

The figures stemming the yellow tide were crooked with exhaustion and their gnarled, inhuman faces were elongated by agonised screams. This was the awful chorus Finavar had been hearing ever since they reached the valley.

Sibaris stared at the wailing spirits and his eyes filled with pain. Then he shook his head. ‘There was no other way. Elatior would not have requested this if there was. And he will be here any day. We will hold this valley until he arrives. We cannot fail.’ He looked at Finavar and the awe crept back into his voice. ‘Especially now.’

Another noise began cutting through the din – a whirring buzz from somewhere overhead.

Finavar stopped and looked up at the sky. ‘By Loec,’ he muttered. A group of the bloated, fly-like monsters were hurtling out of the yellow mist. They were the size of horses and clad in plates of jagged iron.

He bent down, threw Sibaris over his bony shoulders and sprinted towards the screaming dam.

Battle cries greeted them as they reached the wall. As he neared the enormous structure, Finavar stared at it in amazement. The whole thing was alive – a creaking mountain of agonised bark and tormented roots. Grim-faced archers peered out at them through slender gaps in the weave, shooting at the flying monsters.

As he reached the dying trees Finavar staggered to a halt, filled with horror. ‘Why don’t they flee?’ He could not believe what he was witnessing. Hundreds of ancient spirits were writhing in pain, grasping at trapped, howling animals as the acid washed against them. Jagged, mossy faces looked down at him, quivering in agony. ‘What holds them here?’

Sibaris nodded to the base of the wall. There was a flash of silver between the knotted roots – a long curved sword, identical to the one Mälloch wielded at the Feast of the Two Branches. Finavar could not mistake the beautiful swan’s neck handle.

‘My great-grandfather has bound them to this duty,’ said Sibaris proudly. Then he pulled Finavar on. ‘We must get through to the other side!’

‘How?’ exclaimed Finavar. The spirits and beasts were clawing at each other, deranged by their anguish. It looked as though they would shred anything that came within a few feet of them.

‘The spirits know their own,’ gasped Sibaris. ‘Keep going!’

Finavar glanced back over his shoulder and saw that the winged monsters were skimming low across the river, trailing flies and spores as they raced towards them. They were only seconds away.

He shook his head and raced on towards the mound of knotted, wooden limbs.

He grimaced as they neared the branches, expecting attack but, as Sibaris promised, the brittle mass snapped and jerked aside, forming a shuddering doorway for them to pass through.

He glimpsed faces, contorted by pain and exertion, as he passed through a tunnel of dead briars. The screams grew in volume and he thought he might lose his mind. Then they were through.

The scene behind the dam was little better. As the morning turned its sombre gaze towards them, it revealed the pitiful state of Mälloch’s army. Wardancers and other warriors were gathered behind the dying tree spirits, locked in combat with crowds of nightmarish beings. Some of the daemons had broken through the defence and there was a desperate struggle going on as the asrai attempted to repel them. Enormous, segmented grubs whirred overhead, carrying pot-bellied riders, while more of the daemons clambered slowly over the dam. Most were torn apart by sharpened, claw-like branches but, every now and then, one of the daemons would break through, with terrifying results.

Finavar collapsed to the ground, letting go of Sibaris and watching the scene in horror. One of the slow-moving daemons reached the lines of asrai and there was an eruption of screams and curses, followed by an explosion of growths and noxious gases.

The wardancers who were nearest cried out in horror, their bodies wrenched out of all recognition. The daemon was quickly hacked to the ground, but several of the wardancers were overcome by disease. They immediately began unfurling extra limbs and latching them onto those nearest to them, or birthing new heads from their chests and sinking elongated teeth into whoever was nearby.

There was a frantic hacking and jabbing until the corruption had been controlled.

Finavar looked around the battlefield. Many of the severed, mutated limbs he could see on the ground were clad in asrai robes and clutching asrai weapons.

‘What a pitiful mess,’ he said. The scale of the carnage threw his mind back to the battle of Drúne Fell, and the sight of his brother, sprawled on the mounds of dead with his throat torn open. I cannot die here, he thought. Jokleel cannot go unavenged. The screaming of the spirits combined with the howling of the fallen warriors and his head began to spin. He looked back up the wall of tree spirits and wondered how he could escape this hell.

‘You don’t mean to leave us?’ Sibaris was watching him closely. His face was ashen and he had clearly lost a lot of blood, but he was as defiant as ever. ‘This will pass. They attack in waves.’

Finavar grimaced at the sight of the youth’s leg wound. He leant across, tore away some of Sibaris’s cloak and knotted it around his leg. When he had stemmed the bleeding he looked back at the battle. ‘Where is Mälloch?’

Sibaris pointed to a limb of rock jutting across the valley floor, fifty feet or so behind the wall of screaming spirits. It created a natural second barrier and Mälloch’s tall figure was just visible talking to some other nobles. There were thirty or so warriors gathered around him, watching him intently as he pointed out vantage points with his curved sword.

Sibaris and Finavar made their way through the crowd and Finavar saw that his companion was right. The clamour was already dying down and as the asrai fell on the fallen daemons they stared at Finavar in shock.

The screaming sound was just as horrific on this side of the dam and as they climbed onto the limb of rock, Finavar stared at Mälloch with a furious expression on his face. ‘You can’t just leave them like that,’ he said, conscious that the crowd parted for him as though he were a highborn. The warriors were looking at him with the same wonder he had seen in Sibaris’s eyes. They were exhausted and most of them were injured, but his mere presence seemed to reinvigorate them. They threw back their shoulders and nodded proudly at him.

I must leave, he thought again. I will tell Mälloch I was mistaken. I won’t be their wretched mascot. I cannot die now. Not now.

Mälloch gave no sign he had heard Finavar and rushed to Sibaris, gripping his arm.

‘How badly are you hurt?’ he demanded, looking at the gruesome leg wound.

Sibaris’s face flushed with pride. ‘I am well. The Darkling Prince has tended to my wound.’

Mälloch looked unconvinced, but at the mention of Finavar he finally acknowledged the wardancer and summoned him to his side.

Before speaking to him he turned back to his captains. ‘Chloris,’ he cried, facing a grizzled-looking spearman in a cloak of white fur. Mälloch levelled his sword at the eastern side of the valley, where the Chains of Vaul climbed back up into the morning light. ‘We must ensure those archers are armed before the next attack. Tell your men to rest their spears and start fletching.’

The spearman nodded and hurried away, taking half of the assembled warriors with him.

‘Iol,’ said Mälloch, turning to a black-haired youth with crimson feathers in her hair. ‘Gods be praised that you made it.’ He gave her a grim smile. ‘Take your kindred to the western side of the dam. Ullin will be glad to see you again. He’s as brave as ever, but twice as foolish. He needs your help.’

She nodded and smiled proudly back at Mälloch. Then she dashed back towards the battle, taking the other half of the gathering with her.

With his captains dispersed, Mälloch turned to Finavar and his smile faded.

‘I’m not one for tall tales,’ he said, his voice a low growl.

Finavar stared at him, confused by the noble’s tone.

After a moment of awkward silence, Mälloch continued. ‘You may be the god-like hero of Drúne Fell or you may be a fortunate survivor with a silly name; it doesn’t matter to me.’ Mälloch waved at the crowds of warriors, hacking down the last of the daemons, executing their own kin and struggling to be heard over the screams of dying spirits. ‘But they believe you are something special.’ He stepped closer to Finavar and gripped his bicep. ‘Do you understand?’

Finavar was annoyed by the noble’s aggression, especially as he had just saved Sibaris’s life, but he nodded. ‘You want me to lead your subjects to a heroic death. The forest is about to fade away with the year and you want me to convince your warriors to hold their positions, until they are all…’ He looked around at the piles of limbs and shattered bones. ‘Until they are no more.’

Sibaris hobbled closer and was about to interrupt, but Mälloch glared at him and he kept his silence.

‘The Enchanter’s defences are almost prepared,’ said Mälloch, squeezing Finavar’s arm even tighter. ‘We cannot fail him now. We can’t lose everything when we’re so close to victory. We must hold this river back until he comes.’ Mälloch’s eyes were blazing. ‘I know you have your own story to tell, Finavar, but do you realise what will happen if I fail here? Whatever fate has in store for you, you cannot allow that, surely?’

The noble tried to keep his voice under control, but there was a faint tremor, hinting at his pain and loss.

Finavar looked back at the dying spirits and warriors and felt his resolve slipping. His heart sank as he realised he could not refuse. ‘I fared better with your food than your wine,’ he said. ‘My strength is starting to return. Perhaps I could help for a while.’ He looked at the hideous creatures massing at the far end of the valley. ‘But I cannot win this battle for you, Mälloch. They are too many and you are too few. I will stay until tomorrow.’

Mälloch closed his eyes and when he opened them again his expression was less stern. ‘Your heart is not as broken as you think.’

Finavar shook his head. He was unsure what Mälloch meant but he realised he had no stomach for that conversation. ‘I’ll see where I can be most use,’ he said, turning to leave.

‘Wait.’ Mälloch grasped his shoulder. ‘They won’t attack again now. Not until the sun starts to fall.’ His lip curled as he studied the bodies piled at the foot of the dam. ‘Whatever drives them has no sense of urgency. Our only blessing has been a chance to rest between each onslaught.’ He nodded to the figures dashing back and forth, gathering weapons and tending to the fallen. ‘My captains will see to the preparations. You have earned a rest.’

Finavar shrugged. He supposed it made sense for him to be as rested as he could be if Mälloch expected him to inspire his warriors.

He followed the highborn down from the natural wall into an enclosed area on the far side. Dozens of asrai were sprawled across the ground, either eating, sleeping or tending to wounds. Someone had gathered fallen wood and there were a few small fires to force back the winter chill.

Sibaris was still hobbling at Finavar’s side, glowing with pride, but as they approached a fire Mälloch shoved him in a different direction.

‘Get that leg tended to, boy. An open wound will be a death sentence when those daemons return.’

Sibaris looked crestfallen, but did as he was ordered.

Mälloch paused a few feet from the flames and waved Finavar on. ‘I told you there was something here that you would want to retrieve,’ he said, with a mysterious smile. ‘It has been kept safe for you.’ Then he turned away and began speaking to someone else.

Finavar frowned in confusion and turned back to the fire. There was a collection of pitiful-looking refugees gathered around the flames. They were all slumped wearily against each other for support and several were wrapped in bandages or poultices.

As Finavar’s gaze passed over the hooded strangers he saw nothing that could ease his pain. He felt a vague feeling of disappointment as he recalled Mälloch’s promise that he would find peace.

He laughed at himself. What kind of peace could he attain until he had slain his brother’s murderer? He found a space by the fire, sat down and allowed his muscles to relax, one by one. As he leant back onto his elbows, he let out an exhausted sigh.

One of the hooded figures on the other side of the fire glanced up at the sound and let out a bark of surprise.

‘So, even the dead cannot refuse Mälloch.’

The voice was dour and rattling, and Finavar recognised it immediately. ‘Thuralin,’ he said.

Despite the horror of his surroundings, Finavar could not help but smile as the old warrior threw back his hood. As always, most of Thuralin’s scowl was hidden behind a plain, wooden mask, and the other half was a rippling mess of scar tissue, but there was a glimmer of amusement in his eye.

‘It looks like you’ve finally grown into your name,’ he croaked, studying Finavar’s dark expression and his sunken, gloomy eyes. He shook the person sleeping next to him. ‘Alhena. Look who’s returned from the dead. It seems you were right after all.’

Alhena looked up in surprise and, as her hood fell away, Finavar felt as though he were dreaming. These were two faces he had never expected to see again. Thuralin, with his burned flesh and stooped, wasted body and Alhena, with her shaven head and wild stare. They were visions from another life; one that felt utterly lost to him.

He rose to his feet and stepped round the fire towards them.

They stood and looked at him in wonder.

For a moment he felt as though he could throw his arms around them – forget everything that had happened and embrace his past, but he could not. His past had died with Jokleel. These people had once been his family, but now they were as strange to him as anyone else hunkered by the fire. There was nothing but distance between them now. 

Alhena wore the same fierce expression she always did, but her eyes were glittering in the firelight.

‘We thought you had died,’ she said, taking his hand.

‘I thought the same of you,’ he said, squeezing her hand briefly before withdrawing his grip.

They looked him up and down and were clearly shocked. His recent meal might have renewed his energy, but it had done nothing to renew his flesh. He was still a jumble of limbs and gaunt, hollow features.

There was an awkward moment as they realised this was not going to be a gleeful reunion. Finavar wanted to tell them how pleased he was to see them alive, but it felt somehow inappropriate. It was as though he were talking to strangers who resembled people he once knew.

‘What happened to you?’ asked Alhena.

Finavar looked at the ground. ‘I survived. Jokleel did not.’

Alhena’s expression softened. ‘We thought you were both gone. To see one of you again is more than we expected.’

Finavar met her eye. ‘Caorann?’

She glanced at her father and then looked back at Finavar with a pained expression. ‘After the battle…’ Her words trailed off and she stared into the middle distance, clearly upset.

‘After the battle,’ continued Thuralin on her behalf, ‘we became one with the Wild Hunt.’

Finavar looked at Thuralin’s hunched, wizened body. The old warrior looked closer to death than ever. He was so crooked and withered that Finavar could not imagine him walking, never mind fighting. ‘You rode with Orion?’

‘We rode with him and hunted with him.’ Thuralin closed his eye as he pictured the scene. ‘We lost ourselves for a while. And then, when we found ourselves again, Caorann was gone.’

‘Then he died?’ said Finavar, his pulse racing.

Thuralin shook his head. ‘I think not. We have crossed half the forest looking for him and, everywhere we go there are rumours of him.’

Finavar smiled in relief. Strange as his old friends seemed to him, he could not help but be pleased at the thought of Caorann, still out there somewhere in the forest. For a second he almost imagined he could hear his friend’s booming laughter, coming from beneath the distant trees. ‘You’ll find him,’ he muttered.

Alhena mirrored his smile, but Thuralin maintained his habitual scowl.

‘They say Lord Beldeas survived the battle.’ His scowl grew more pronounced as he spat the name. ‘Apparently he and Captain Eremon are just a few miles from here, offering their swords to Prince Elatior.’

Finavar laughed. ‘Eremon’s sword may be of some use, but our glorious Lord Beldeas was never one for a fight. What of the hawk lord, Prince Haldus?’

Thuralin nodded. ‘They say he has returned too.’

The old warrior looked more closely at Finavar. ‘You are changed,’ he said, and it was clear he was not just referring to Finavar’s weight.

Finavar looked awkward. He knew they would not understand how he felt. His ideas about Orion would seem like an obscenity to them. How could they understand that the king must die if they were ever to be free? Seeing that an explanation would be meaningless, he settled for a half-truth. ‘Grief weighs heavily on me, Thuralin.’

Thuralin looked closely at him, clearly unconvinced by the answer. ‘Will you join us again, Finavar? If anyone could track down Caorann it is you.’

Finavar shook his head, looking even more uncomfortable. He was about to reply when Sibaris reappeared with an inane grin.

‘Friends of the Darkling Prince!’ he exclaimed, dropping into a low bow.

Finavar frowned, irritated by his jovial tone. Then he noticed how easily the youth was moving. He looked at Sibaris’s wounded leg and saw that Mälloch’s healers had treated it far more effectively than he had managed.

Finavar reluctantly introduced Sibaris and, to his annoyance, Sibaris and Alhena immediately struck up an enthusiastic conversation. They were both barely out of childhood and they were quite unaffected by the pall hanging over everyone else. Even the endless screaming could not fully dampen their spirits. Finavar watched in disbelief as they shared tales of the recent battle and compared scars, as though the situation were nothing more than a game. After a few minutes they stepped away from the fire to study each other’s weapons and discuss combat techniques.

He looked back at Thuralin and saw the same despairing expression in his eye.

They laughed. It was a short, grudging kind of laughter, but it was enough for Finavar to realise how much he shared with the scarred old veteran. He had always mocked Thuralin’s cynicism, but it no longer seemed so very different from his own worldview.

Finavar picked up a stick and jabbed it into the fire, attempting to banish the gloom with a shower of embers. It seemed as though the day were never going to dawn. He looked around at the dying and the dead. With the stench of disease hanging in the air and the endless screeching of the dam, the scene was even more pitiful than the aftermath of Drúne Fell.

Thuralin noticed his expression. ‘It’s strange,’ he said, ‘but it’s only at moments like these, moments of utter tragedy, that I feel I can catch my breath.’

Finavar gave him a puzzled glance.

‘Don’t you feel that, Finavar? Life is so frantic – such a headlong tumble. It flashes by. I can never quite seem to catch hold of it. But at times like this, times of horror, it seems to freeze. When things are this dire the world becomes still; only for the briefest moment, but long enough that I can almost glimpse its true face. Then reality returns and I stumble on, hurled back into life’s ridiculous dance.’

Finavar looked at Thuralin’s ruined face. He had never heard him speak in that way. There was a refined edge to his words that broke through his ragged throat. Finavar tried to imagine him as he was before he was scarred. It occurred to him that there was a nobility to Thuralin that he had never really considered before.

‘I never asked what happed to you,’ he said.

Thuralin shrugged. ‘My memory of the hunt is unclear. After Drúne Fell we headed south, I can remember that much.’ His eye widened. ‘Haldus and Eremon were both there, I think. Orion was so full of blood and rage, though. Such rage. I never dreamt–’

‘No,’ interrupted Finavar. ‘I mean before that. Before you and Alhena came out of the forest and asked to travel with me. What happened to you before that? How did you and your daughter end up travelling alone, without any kin?’

Thuralin stared at him in surprise.

Finavar thought he must have offended the old warrior and was about to apologise when Thuralin shrugged again.

‘It’s strange that you should ask that now – now that it is too late. Maybe it is time to talk, though. What do I have to lose?’ He looked at Finavar’s emaciated body. ‘My hopes for you have come to nothing, so what will I gain from keeping secrets?’ He patted a pouch of seeds at his belt. ‘These have kept me alive longer than I deserved, but I doubt I’ll survive another winter.’

Finavar shook his head. ‘Your hopes for me?’

Thuralin looked at the others who were gathered round the fire. They were all either asleep or engrossed in their own conversations. Alhena and Sibaris were a few feet away, demonstrating their favoured methods of attack. He lowered his voice anyway. ‘I’ve never told Alhena the truth of her past.’ He gave Finavar a meaningful glance.

Finavar nodded to show he understood.

Thuralin stared at the fire. ‘It would not do for her to know her history.’

The old warrior fell silent again and his gaze returned to the flames.

Finavar thought that maybe he had decided against talking after all, but then, finally, he began to speak.

‘My youth was not so different to yours.’ He waved at his burned, crooked limbs and laughed. ‘Believe it or not, I was once famed for my skill as a wardancer. I was highborn, far from here, in the northernmost of the Eternal Realms. I had power and safety but, like you, I heard the song of Loec. He called to me in my dreams. I became a shadow-dancer and travelled the forest – singing his most beautiful, ancient lays and learning the Dance of Blades. My skill grew and so did my reputation.’

As he spoke, Thuralin’s hand gripped an imaginary hilt. ‘Nobles from every realm called on me for my wisdom and for my blade. I thought that no foe was worthy of my fear.’ He laughed – a dry croaking sound that quickly turned into a cough. Once he had calmed himself, he continued. ‘There was one foe I couldn’t have armed myself against, though – the oldest of foes; the one that catches us all. Love caught me in a trap more brutal than anything a daemon could have devised.’

His gaze fell back onto the flames and his voice fell so low Finavar had to lean closer to hear him.

‘I was blinded by passion. She belonged to another but I refused to see my crime. Even when…’ His voice faltered and he seemed unable to continue.

‘Even when what?’ demanded Finavar.

Thuralin looked away from the flames to where Alhena was sparring with Sibaris. ‘Even when she gave me a daughter.’

‘So Alhena is…?’

Thuralin nodded. ‘Her mother was married to a great lord. When she fell pregnant with my child he learned of the infidelity and did not even care.’ He closed his eye and massaged his forehead. ‘I did not see it then, but I think that was the first step towards my lover’s madness. Other disasters befell her after that and her love gradually slipped away from me. Until then she had been one of the Mage Queen’s most trusted handmaidens, but bearing an illicit child brought her into disrepute. The shame of it was too much for her. Her mind became venomous. She grew strange. She grew to despise me, and then she forgot me. To be forsaken by Ariel was more than she could bear.’

Finavar stiffened in shock. He had heard this tale before, from another mouth.

‘As her mind grew dark, I realised Alhena was in danger,’ continued Thuralin. He gave another hacking laugh. ‘What did I know of parenting? But I knew I had to act. My lover’s husband saw the danger but he cared nothing for Alhena’s fate. Finally, as my lover’s rage and despair grew, there was–’

‘A fire,’ interrupted Finavar. ‘She set her halls alight. She left Alhena to die.’

Thuralin froze and stared at Finavar.

Finavar nodded, sure he was right. ‘Your lover was Lady Ordaana.’

Thuralin mouthed a reply but seemed unable to form words. He looked to see if Alhena had heard. ‘How can you know that?’

‘She told me herself, just four nights ago. She didn’t think I would survive, so she confided in me.’

Thuralin’s lipless mouth curled back into a grimace.

‘But she does not know Alhena lives,’ continued Finavar. ‘She thinks she murdered her.’

‘And that is how it must remain!’ Thuralin grabbed Finavar by the shoulders and pulled him close. ‘She must never know that her daughter lives. Never!’ He was trembling with emotion.

Finavar tried to free himself from Thuralin’s grip, but it was like iron. There was such desperation in his eye that Finavar thought for a moment that he might attack him.

‘I will say nothing,’ he said, trying to calm Thuralin, but, even as he spoke, he pictured Ordaana’s tortured face and wondered if he could really be party to such a cruel lie.

‘Listen to me,’ whispered Thuralin. ‘Alhena lives because I gave her a chance to live. I took her from that palace before the flames could.’ He touched his deformed face. ‘I shielded her as I ran. I endured pain that would have killed her. And since then I have kept her safe. Ordaana has no idea that either of us still live. And I have trained Alhena to be more brutal than any wardancer alive. I’ve made sure that even when I’m gone–’ He hesitated, clearly horrified by the thought. ‘Even when I’m gone she will survive. I have trained her to be fearless, Finavar. You’ve seen how she fights – how she kills. I’ve made her that way. I’ve made her strong.’ He dug his bony fingers into Finavar’s shoulders. ‘But she must never know where she came from. It would be the end of her. Ordaana is cursed, Finavar, but Alhena need not be – as long as neither of them know of the other’s existence.’

Finavar looked over at Alhena. She was talking to Sibaris and laughing. For a moment he could imagine her as an innocent child.

Finavar turned back to Thuralin and saw the abject terror in his eye.

‘Why did you bring her to me?’ he asked, keeping his voice low. ‘After all those years rearing her by yourself, why did you ask to join me, Jokleel and Caorann?’

‘Loec punished me for my digression, Finavar. I shamed him so he let me burn.’ Thuralin looked at the pouch of seeds at his belt. ‘I found ways to sustain myself, but I knew I was fading. I knew I would not be able to protect her for much longer. I made her tough, but I thought that even she could not live alone. And I dreaded the idea of her returning to Locrimere and discovering her past. So, when I heard of the Darkling Prince – the famous, rogue Darkling Prince, travelling apart from his kin, I thought maybe…’ His words trailed off and his rage was replaced by a strange, awkward expression.

‘You thought what?’

‘I thought that if you saw her worth, and her beauty, once I was gone you might…’

Finavar laughed. ‘You meant to give her to me?’

Thuralin grimaced. ‘Nothing so crude. I thought that if I threw you together, you might wish to keep her by your side. And then, once I had gone, you might see more in her.’

Finavar looked up at the colourless sky, stunned by the old warrior’s words.

‘You can think what you like of me,’ growled Thuralin. ‘It’s meaningless now, anyway. You’re broken.’ He released his grip and sat back. ‘Your body might recover, but the rest of you will not. The fire has gone from your eyes, Finavar. Even if you wanted her I would not let you have her. You could not keep her safe.’ He looked at Alhena again. ‘I have filled her with rage. That will have to suffice.’

Finavar’s mind reeled as he pictured the impact of Thuralin’s lie. Ordaana’s mind was unhinged, it was true, but only because she believed she had murdered Alhena. There was such fear in the old warrior’s eye, though. How could he betray him? Besides, what good would it do now? His heart sank as he considered all the lies and hate that made up a life.

‘Rage is worthless unless it’s aimed in the right direction,’ he muttered.

Thuralin looked surprised by the bile in Finavar’s voice. ‘And which direction is that?’

Finavar waved at the wounded asrai and the teetering wall of forest spirits that was protecting them. ‘Look at the horrors we face from outside the forest.’ His voice became a snarled whisper. ‘And what aid do we get from our lord?’

Thuralin shook his head. ‘Mälloch? He has followed the guidance of Prince Elatior. He has led the defence at every–’

‘Orion,’ hissed Finavar, glaring at his open hands as though itching to lock them around a throat. ‘The lord who binds us to bloody ritual and leads us to slaughter, but does nothing to aid our cause.’

Thuralin stared at him, amazed.

‘He kills more effectively than any plague,’ continued Finavar, ‘and only rides to war when it suits his appetite.’

Thuralin recoiled from Finavar’s blasphemy and edged away from the fire. ‘You’re speaking like a fool.’ He rose to his feet, clearly disturbed by such strange ideas. ‘You should rest.’

Finavar blushed and fell silent, regretting his outburst. Then he leant back against a broken shield and tried to rest his aching limbs.

Thuralin stared at him for a while longer, as though he were about to say something else. He reached into a bag slung at his side and was on the verge of drawing something out. Then he shook his head, mystified by Finavar’s outburst. He sat down a few feet away and closed his bag again.

Finavar seethed quietly in the shadows, wishing he had said nothing. He fixed his gaze on the fire, trying to calm his thoughts and prepare himself for the battle ahead.

However much he tried to banish the image from his thoughts, he could see nothing but his brother, crumbling in a funeral pyre.

Chapter Fourteen

Someone shook Finavar and he sat up, groggy and confused, realising that he must have fallen asleep. He was haunted by a dream of giant grubs that morphed into old friends, who were in turn devoured by even bigger grubs. Then, as his eyes cleared, he saw the smouldering remnants of the fire and shivered, remembering that the truth of his situation was little better than his dreams. The screaming of the spirits had risen to an even higher register. Finavar groaned at the sound, clamping his hands over his ears. It was like a spear tip, twisting slowly in his skull.

Night had fallen. Only the fading embers of the fire enabled him to see the young warrior who was helping him to his feet. The stranger was pale with fear and staring intently at him, and Finavar sensed that there were other figures racing past – other asrai, slipping noiselessly through the dark.

‘What’s happening?’ he demanded.

‘Make for the Wilding Tree,’ said the ashen-faced youth. ‘The battle is lost.’ Then he let go of Finavar and ran after the others.

The noises grew louder and Finavar felt a rising sense of panic. He grabbed another passer-by and demanded an explanation.

‘Winter has come,’ replied the stranger, straining to free himself from Finavar’s grip. ‘The spirits are failing.’ His eyes widened as he looked back into the darkness. ‘The dam is collapsing.’ He ran off into the darkness and waved for Finavar to follow. ‘We make for the Enchanter. Mälloch says he is our last hope.’

‘Move!’ hissed another stranger as he ran by. ‘The daemons are upon us.’

Finavar staggered after the others, heading west down the valley. A silent host surrounded him. Shadowy figures whirled around him as he ran. He peered at them, wondering if he could spot Thuralin, but he only saw the faces of strangers, twisted by fear.

There was another deafening crash behind them and the sound of liquid – great torrents of it, boiling and rolling across the frozen earth. At the same time, the screaming of the spirits doubled in volume again.

Finavar staggered to a halt. He could feel the agony of the forest, echoing through the night. ‘I cannot allow this,’ he groaned, grasping at his head again. ‘This cannot be right.’

As the rest of the asrai fled from the noise, Finavar turned to face it. His limbs shook with the effort, but he began to drag himself back down the valley towards the dam. After a few yards the terrible cries forced him to pick up his pace and, soon, he was racing back towards the source of the din.

The dam was collapsing as Finavar approached – fifty-foot columns were tumbling towards him through the darkness. Trunks and carcasses slammed onto the ground, filling the air with flying debris and forcing him to weave and duck as he ran.

Acid was spurting through the gaps, spitting and hissing as the mesh of branches gave way, but still the spirits and animals did not flee. They remained in place, howling, shuddering and screaming as the liquid ate into them.

Finavar steeled himself against the din and raced on, leaping over tumbling branches and flashing claws. He was as keen-sighted as any of his kind and, even in the dark he knew where to head.

A clicking, ridged face loomed out of the darkness, its eyes rolling with pain. At the sight of Finavar it lurched forwards, extending a branch-like limb.

He dodged out of reach and ran on, vaulting another howling shape.

As he reached the foot of the wall he glimpsed his goal – a glimmer of curved steel. ‘Tear it down,’ he muttered under his breath. He felt as though he would be happy to die right now if he could just stop the screams. ‘Tear it all down.’

He crawled through the twisted branches and reached for the sword but, just as his fingers were about to latch onto it, the branches wrapped around him, sinking thorns and twigs into his skin.

‘I’m going to free you!’ he cried, but the spirits were too lost in pain to understand.

Finavar struggled to free himself, but the branches wrapped around his neck, crushing his vocal cords and silencing his cries.

The mass of talons and bark crushed him to the ground, just inches from his prize and Finavar felt the air explode from his lungs as they circled his chest.

Rage filled him and he tried to shake himself free, but it was no use.

Then he noticed that the strands of vine around his legs were snapping free, as though cut with a knife.

He managed to stand and force all his weight against his captors, leaning towards the sword.

More strands snapped free and then some of the branches holding him broke away too. He glimpsed a pair of fleet, serpentine shapes, weaving through the dark and, as the cords around his neck came free, he let out a bark of laughter, recognising his saviours.

There was a crashing sound, like waves breaking against rocks. The wall quivered, the screaming grew louder and another dark mass bore down on Finavar, thrashing in pain and fear.

With his chance about to slip away from him, Finavar hurled himself forwards into the shifting branches.

Needles of pain exploded across his face as he crashed against the spirits and animals but, to his delight, he felt his hands lock around the hilt of the sword.

More vines shot up to greet him, lashing around his face and neck but, before they could drag him down again, he wrenched the blade free.

The screaming stopped.

For a moment, the vines and branches continued crushing against Finavar’s skin, then they froze, sensing a change.

There was deep, rumbling, splintering sound as the wall disintegrated.

Spirits and animals, bound to their pain for so long suddenly exploded into movement, tearing up the ground as they fled from the acid that had been devouring them.

Finavar fell onto his back, still clutching the sword in both hands as the world collapsed around him.

For a moment he simply lay there, showered in snapping branches and enjoying the absence of screaming. Then he noticed that a circle of shadows was forming in the darkness around him.

He leapt to his feet and raised his sword.

The shapes edged closer and he saw a baffling collection of forest spirits – towering, bark-clad goliaths, with gaping jaws and blazing emerald eyes. They whispered a strange, rustling song as they moved closer and the sound was filled with rage.

Fury poured from their splintered mouths.

‘Wait,’ gasped Finavar, keeping the blade held before him. ‘I was not party to this. I did not bind you to this–’

Finavar’s words froze in his mouth as he realised that the spirits were nodding whatever passed for their heads and performing a strange kind of wordless bow.

They stood in mute genuflection, then one of them broke ranks, popping and clicking towards him.

Finavar saw that it was a peculiar marriage of bark and feather. The spirit was like a hunched powerful giant, clad in the paper-like bark of a birch tree, but its back sported enormous swan wings and its wooden face had a beaked, avian quality to it.

The strange-looking thing extended one of its limbs and unfurled a nest of long, wooden claws.

As Finavar looked into its eyes, he felt suddenly calm.

The spirit placed one of the claws on his chest but Finavar felt no fear.

Even when it dragged the claw downwards, drawing a thin line of blood from his skin he did not flinch, seeing nothing but respect in the spirit’s alien eyes.

Then they turned and raced away from him, joining the bristling stampede that was charging away from the yellow river.

Finavar stood motionless, his sword still raised, watching them with mute wonder. He was incredibly moved – sensing that he had just come close to something more wild and strange than anything he had seen in Orion’s hunt.

Then he saw the result of his work – a wall of yellow acid, tumbling across the remnants of the dam and rolling towards him.

He looked around, scouring the broken branches at his feet. ‘Mormo? Mauro?’

There was no sign of his guides so he turned and fled, sprinting back across the valley with corruption pouring in his wake.

Soon he began to encounter stragglers from the main retreat – asrai that were too weak, or too injured to travel as lightly as the others. He helped those he passed but did not pause. With the screaming finally gone, his mind was his own once more; he had rid himself of a kind of mania and could now focus on his true purpose – surviving long enough to avenge Jokleel.

The elation he had felt at freeing the spirits faded as he recalled his brother, but then, as his mind slipped back into melancholy, a new sound filled the valley – a whirring, beating hum that rushed overhead.

Finavar and his fellow runners glanced up. The clouds were low and thick, allowing no trace of moonlight, but Finavar could sense shapes moving through the blackness.

The air shivered as the enemy bore down on them.

Finavar picked up his pace, thanking the gods that some of his strength had returned.

A chorus of screams exploded to his left.

Finavar stumbled to a halt and raced to investigate.

There was a snarling sound and the unmistakable voices of asrai, crying out for help.

Finavar rushed back and forth in the dark, trying to locate his fallen kin, but the cries seemed to come from several directions at once.

The whirring grew louder.

Finavar shook his head and turned to a young archer at his side. ‘It’s no use,’ he said. As he spoke he realised that they were alone. ‘We’re lagging behind!’ He grabbed the archer by the shoulder and was about to start running when a flash of light blinded them both.

They reeled backwards, shielding their eyes and, after a few seconds, Finavar managed to make out the source – a dazzling sphere of emerald roots. Standing beside the inferno was a tall, hawk-nosed figure, gesticulating wildly.

‘Mälloch,’ gasped Finavar, lurching towards him.

As he neared Mälloch, Finavar saw that the spellweaver’s skin was blazing with the same light as the roots, pulsing in time to his spasmodic movements. As Mälloch worked his spell, the sphere grew smaller, wrapping itself around a shape trapped at its core.

Finavar grimaced as he saw Mälloch’s catch. It was one of the enormous flying grubs. As the net of roots and light tightened, the daemonic creature jabbed wildly with its barbed tail, trying to break free.

As the light flashed, it revealed bodies scattered across the earth. One of them was still moving so Finavar rushed to help. As he neared the prone figure he saw that it was a rider from the north, wearing leather armour and a helmet topped with a horse’s mane. The rider was rolling from side to side, clutching his stomach and moaning in pain.

As Mälloch battled with the daemon, Finavar dropped to his knees beside the fallen rider and grabbed his shoulder, trying to calm him.

‘Let me carry you,’ he said.

The rider flinched at his touch, then turned to face him. ‘The daemon,’ he groaned. His eyes were rolling with panic and his face was glistening with sweat, despite the cold. ‘My stomach.’

Finavar saw that there was blood spilling from between the rider’s fingers, spreading out across his jerkin.

Another shape whirred overhead, so close that Finavar could smell the greasy musk of its flesh. ‘There’s no time to treat you,’ he said, placing his arm under the rider and preparing to lift him. ‘We must catch up with the others.’

The rider nodded, fixing his eyes on Finavar’s. ‘I think I can stand.’

As the rider climbed to his feet, the being caught in Mälloch’s net broke free and hurtled at its captor.

Finavar dropped the rider, lifted his bow from his back and loosed an arrow, all in one fluid movement.

Even in the dark, his aim was perfect.

The arrow sank deep into the daemon’s eye and caused it to miss Mälloch by several feet.

The spellweaver stepped back, raised his arms and hauled another blazing cage from the ground, enveloping the monster again.

A groan of pain reminded Finavar of the fallen rider and he stooped to lift him.

The rider turned to face him and, as he stood, Finavar saw that his eyes had clouded over, turning a sightless milky blue, like the eyes of a corpse.

‘My stomach,’ muttered the rider and his words sounded muffled, as though his mouth were full of food.

Finavar looked at the wound again and gasped in disgust.

What he had taken for blood leaking through the rider’s fingers, was actually something far more disturbing – writhing, crimson tentacles that were crawling from the wound, wrapping themselves around the rider’s torso and reaching out to entangle Finavar. To his horror, he realised that each of them ended in an open, tooth-lined mouth.

Finavar let go of the rider and backed away, drawing another arrow and levelling it at the shapes tumbling from his guts.

The rider hissed furiously as he hit the ground, but he was only down for a moment. Dozens of the bloody shapes poured from his belly and they fanned out around his legs like a glistening skirt of meat, lifting the rider back onto his feet.

Finavar forgot to shoot as he watched the transformation that was overtaking the rider’s body. As the tentacles burst through his skin, his head began to swell and ripple. In a few seconds it had doubled in size and changed from an unhealthy pallor to a dark crimson hue.

Finavar gagged as a rotten smell filled the air.

The rider’s skull cracked into a new shape, popping his eyes and spewing optical fluid down his cheeks. He was only sightless for a brief moment. As his head continued to change, a single yellow eye blinked into view, right in the centre of his forehead, followed quickly by a coiled tusk that sprouted, shoot-like from the top of his head.

‘Kill it,’ whispered a shocked voice at his side.

Finavar turned and saw the young archer who had originally accompanied him.

Before he could answer, the archer sent an arrow whistling past his ear.

The shot was true, slamming straight into the chest of the shuddering rider.

The rider opened his mouth wide to laugh and revealed why his words had sounded muffled – his mouth was swarming with pulpy, writhing maggots. They tumbled from his mouth as the skirt of tentacles hurled him forwards, acting like spider’s legs.

Mälloch’s magic suddenly failed, plunging them all into darkness.

Finavar loosed his arrow into the night, without any idea of whether he had hit anything. Then he felt movement near his face and rolled away to the left, tumbling over the frozen earth before leaping to his feet and sprinting away into the dark.

After a few seconds he stopped and whirled around nocking another arrow to his bow, pointing it back the way he had come.

Screams rang out from every direction and the air was alive with movement.

There was a flash of light and he glimpsed a tall figure, perhaps Mälloch, wrestling with an indeterminate shape. Then the light failed again.

Finavar began heading back towards where he had seen the noble but, before he had taken a few steps, he felt something washing against his feet.

He dropped into a crouch and saw that thick, viscous liquid was spilling across the rocks.

He gasped in pain as it washed over his toes, causing his skin to blister and burn.

He stepped backwards but the liquid followed, rising up to his ankles.

I cannot die, he thought – not with my brother unavenged.

His bones throbbed painfully as he turned and fled, sprinting from the valley, deaf to the cries that rang out around him.

Then the light flashed again, somewhere to his left.

He stumbled to a halt and saw Mälloch quite clearly, dragging another daemon to the ground with his magic.

Finavar hesitated. Visions of the rider filled his head, but, try as he might, he could not leave Mälloch to his fate. He changed direction again and raced towards the light, drawing another arrow as he did so.

Soon he was running through the hissing, yellow acid, and he felt it eating into his skin. He ignored the pain and locked his gaze on Mälloch. As he approached, he saw other figures, picked out of the darkness by Mälloch’s sorcery. There were half a dozen asrai surrounding their lord, loosing arrows at the shape caught in his net.

Mälloch looked exhausted and the light was failing as Finavar reached him.

The daemon began to struggle free from its bonds.

The thing was huge and vaguely resembled an armoured fly, covered in blisters and scales.

Finavar did not slow down as he approached, sensing intuitively what was about to happen. Time crawled as the scene played out before him.

Mälloch gasped in pain and collapsed backwards, letting the last strands of his magic slip from his fingers.

In the dying light, Finavar saw the daemon lurch forwards and beat its tattered wings.

Finavar drew his sword and leapt at the daemon, carried along by the momentum of his charge.

He rolled as he jumped and brought his blade down in a fierce, two-handed slash.

The sword passed cleanly through the daemon’s abdomen, near to the bottom of its head.

The head came free in a spray of toxic gore.

Finavar landed on the far side of the daemon and rolled clear, just before it slammed onto the ground.

The headless daemon began to rise, but before it could do so, the other asrai, led by Mälloch, attacked. The thing was blind and disorientated, and they hacked it apart in seconds, taking care not to step too close.

The final blow was delivered by Mälloch himself. His blade, the twin of Finavar’s, pulsed with cold fire as he sliced the daemon in two.

Finavar climbed to his feet and jogged back towards the fight. To his amazement, he saw that the lumps of blubber were crawling towards each other, and merging back into a single mass.

Before they could reassemble, Mälloch dropped into a crouch, closed his eyes, placed one of his palms on the ground and muttered a prayer.

Then he stood and backed away, waving at Finavar and the others to do the same.

As they moved back the earth opened up, cracking into a series of deep fissures that swallowed the lumps of daemon before they could join together.

As soon as the fragments had vanished from view the fissures slammed shut again.

Mälloch nodded once, then collapsed.

Finavar joined the others in rushing to his side.

The noble’s eyes were closed and his face was deathly pale. Finavar noticed that the strange glimmer had almost vanished from his flesh.

‘You saved his life,’ said a trembling voice.

Finavar looked up to see that one of the other asrai hunched over Mälloch was Sibaris. The youth was staring at him.

‘This is him,’ said Sibaris, raising his voice and turning to the other asrai. ‘The Darkling Prince.’

There was a chorus of indrawn breaths and Finavar shook his head in disbelief.

‘I’ve saved nobody yet.’ He waved at the acid that was pooling in the hollows all around them. ‘We have to move.’

Sibaris nodded eagerly, obviously delighted to be taking orders from his hero. The others did the same and, between them, they lifted Mälloch from the ground.

Then they stood and stared at Finavar, waiting for him to speak.

‘Move!’ he yelled, shoving them away from the oncoming tide. ‘Take him to the Silvam Dale!’

They leapt to obey and Finavar jogged after them, glancing from left to right as he ran, wondering how they would face another daemon without Mälloch’s magic.

Chapter Fifteen

Only the ghosts remained. One by one Orion’s senses failed him, leaving only his voluble past. There was nothing else to hear, nothing to see – nothing to smell even; just his forebears, telling him the glorious tales of their lives – singing to him as they led him through the darkness. They surrounded him and sustained him, noble and determined, ablaze with the heat of their divinity.

As they travelled together, Orion realised that his former selves were no longer just words. Their songs drew powerful images in his mind – straight-backed giants, with broad, angular muscles and tall, knotted antlers. He slowed his pace, ashamed to be in their presence. What right did he have to walk among such proud kings? Their tales were epic and profound. Each of them had drawn the forest deeper into wildness. Each of them had bound their subjects tighter to Ariel’s rule. While his own tale was a tragedy at best.

Orion stumbled to a halt and looked down at his hooves. He saw that, as on the day of his birth, he was stepping through the heavens. Below him there were only stars.

‘I have failed,’ he said, opening his hands and staring at his broad, scarred palms.

The voices fell silent and he looked up. The other Orions were no longer walking ahead, but gathered around him in a circle. Their faces were both brutal and serene. Each of them was distinct, carved in the shape of the noble who had spawned their flesh, but they were clearly one. They stepped closer with a single, silent movement and Orion cowered under their gaze, until he realised there was no judgement in their eyes, only determination.

‘We do not fail,’ said one of them, lifting his chin.

‘But look at me.’ Orion waved his arm and summoned the world into view. Ariel was staggering through an icy hollow with his bloody remains in her arms. Her robes were stained with his blood and her wings were beating weakly. The body in her arms might have been a corpse if not for a barely perceptible tremor in its chest. As she staggered across the frozen ground, Naieth and her handmaidens gathered around her, leading her towards an unlit bier at the far end of the hollow.

‘I have nothing left,’ said Orion’s spirit to his fellows. ‘My body is broken. Sativus is destroyed. The balance has been disturbed. My hunt has ended in shame.’ He glared at the ghosts. ‘How can I not fail?’ He waved at the mound of sticks. ‘All that is left for me now is my fire.’

Another of the Orions stepped through the heavens to his side. This one was taller and carried a broad, battered axe. ‘We are the soul of the forest. We do not fail.’ He pressed the axe against Orion’s chest and gave him a meaningful glance. ‘And we keep our word.’

Orion shook his head in confusion, then forgot the ghosts as he saw Ariel and Naieth lifting his body onto the bier. He noticed that Atolmis and the other Wild Riders were there too. One of them was standing at each corner of the bier, stock-still, their heads bowed and resting on the shafts of their spears. A small crowd of mourners was gathered at the edge of the grove. He glimpsed a face beneath a hood and realised they were the lords of the twelve high realms – the great kingdoms that contained each of the forest’s smaller realms. They wore voluminous black hoods, crowned with wreaths of ivy and mistletoe. Their hands were blackened with charcoal.

It was not the great lords who caught Orion’s eye though, as he watched the rite from his vantage point in the heavens, it was the three hounds sitting patiently at the foot of his bier beside the stern-faced Atolmis.

They were staring directly at him.

Their gaze unnerved Orion. It seemed at odds with the rest of the scene. None of the mourners could see his soul, suspended in the starlight, but the hounds had eyes for nothing else. As Orion tumbled back towards his own body, the hounds followed his fall.

Orion gasped as he found himself encased in flesh once more. Every inch of him burned with the pain of his wounds. His chest was a sunken mess where the great drake had sunk its teeth into him and his legs were pulverised – destroyed by the last charge of Sativus. He could feel straw and branches needling into his back and he could see his breath, misting in the air above his face.

He tried to rise, but it was useless. All he managed to do was lift his head and cough up some blood.

Ariel gasped as she saw his eyes open.

‘My love!’ Her eyes were red from crying and she grabbed his hand. ‘Do not be afraid. We are together. I am with you. I will keep our home safe until you return.’ Her words were strained. ‘Whatever has happened was not your fault. I know that now. There was a poison in you, and I will find its source. I will find a way to stop this plague. I will be waiting.’

As she clutched his hand to her chest, Orion noticed hooded priests stepping silently from the trees, led by Naieth. They were holding flaming brands.

‘I give you my word,’ she said.

Her words shone into his mind, clearer than the winter sun. ‘My word,’ he managed to say though the blood.

Ariel frowned in confusion, but Orion could barely see her any more. He had realised what he must do at the very moment it became midwinter. He felt his soul disperse, like seeds from a pod. Everything he knew; everything he loved; everything he had done shivered from his flesh, scattering on the breeze to the four corners of the forest. He did not see as Naieth and the hooded priests pressed their fires into the bier. He was already a thousand other things.

As the flames enveloped his body he looked away from the grove and turned to face the circle of ghosts.

‘Now I understand,’ he said calmly. ‘We must keep our word.’

They nodded and, to his delight, he saw something he had long dreamt of.

They were looking at him with pride.

‘Finavar is the cornerstone of the imbalance. To save him is to save everything.’

The ghosts nodded and placed their hands on his arms.

As the myriad fragments of Orion’s being spread through the trees, one of them looked out from a pair of canine eyes. ‘I will fulfil my promise to you, Jokleel,’ he said as he felt Fuath’s paws pounding across the frozen earth, racing away from the funeral pyre. ‘I will save the life I destroyed. I will save Finavar.’

He paused briefly at the edge of the grove and looked back at Ariel. Her head was bowed in grief as her lover thrashed uselessly in the flames, reaching out to her for help as the skin blistered from his bones.

‘We will not fail,’ said Orion, but the words emerged as a long, mournful howl.

Ariel looked up in surprise and turned to face him. He knew that she could only see a rangy, greasy hound, snarling at her from the shadows but, as their eyes met, he felt a spark of recognition.

Then he turned and raced into the trees.

The flames burned until the morning and Ariel maintained a motionless vigil until there was nothing but smoke and glowing ash. One by one, the mourners left, placing their wreaths of mistletoe on the smouldering mound until there was only Ariel, Naieth and Atolmis. As dawn broke, the horned rider left her alone, then returned after a few moments, carrying a large, two-handled oak bowl, carved with images of wild-eyed stags.

Ariel dried her eyes and climbed awkwardly to her feet, dusting ash and snow from her face and turning to face the priest. She looked into his jet-black eyes and gave him a sad smile.

‘He is everywhere now,’ she said, running a finger across Atolmis’s cruel features.

Atolmis nodded his head, clearly moved by her words.

Ariel began scraping Orion’s ashes into the wooden bowl. She had only moved a few handfuls, however, when she paused. Her fingers had struck something hard and she lifted the object from the bier, holding it up into the light.

Atolmis frowned in surprise. They had enacted this scene more times than he could remember. The course of events was always the same but this was something new.

Ariel rolled the object back and forth between her fingers then nodded in recognition. She knew exactly what the sharpened point was and she knew why it had been unaffected by the flames.

Naieth had been standing a few feet away and she stepped to the queen’s side. ‘What is it?’

Ariel narrowed her eyes. ‘The tip of a dragon’s tooth,’ she replied, looking at the prophetess.

‘I have not seen this,’ said Naieth. ‘You have wandered beyond my sight.’ She closed Ariel’s hand around the tooth. ‘Such things did not arrive by mere chance.’

Ariel nodded and secreted the tooth in her robes.

The three of them were at a loss for a moment. The rites had occurred the same way since the dawn of Ariel’s rule and for a moment they were unsure how to continue.

Eventually, Naieth regained her composure and took a step back from the pyre. She spread her palms to the pale sky and intoned a few quiet words.

The final rose has faded,

The eaves will sing no more;

The waxen ground will keep you bound,

Death-pale until the thaw.

The familiarity of the ritual calmed Ariel and she nodded her head as she replied.

The waxen ground will keep us bound,

Death-pale until the thaw.

Then she placed the rest of Orion’s ashes into the bowl and turned to face the Oak of Ages. Atolmis stepped back to allow her clear passage, but she hesitated.

‘I promised him I would be waiting,’ she said, keeping her gaze locked on the tree.

Naieth lowered her hands, surprised by this second departure from the ritual.

‘Did I lie?’

Naieth glanced at Atolmis but his gaze was fixed on the ground. She flexed her hands, extending her fingers so that her long nails gleamed in the morning light. Then she stepped nervously to Ariel’s side. She tried to look directly at her, but the power of the Oak was already coursing through the Mage Queen’s veins. It was like trying to stare at the sun.

‘I have seen the future, my queen,’ said Naieth, choosing her words carefully, ‘but it was a silver moth, caught in the moonlight. The harder I stared, the less I saw.’

Ariel’s physical self was fading, but her voice grew more determined. ‘Will we survive?’

Naieth looked back into the trees. ‘While the forest sleeps, the enemy will advance. The spirits will retreat and we will be alone in the cold – without you or Orion to lead us.’ She closed her eyes. ‘But hope has a name. I have spelled it out in my dreams. There is one amongst us who might keep us safe until Orion’s return.’

Ariel turned her dazzling gaze on Naieth. When she spoke, the words had no sound, they simply lanced into Naieth’s thoughts with the sun. ‘What name?’

‘Prince Haldus.’

Ariel frowned and the light in her eyes dimmed for a moment as she tried to place the name. ‘The hawk rider? The warrior with the scarred face?’

Naieth nodded. ‘He does not see it, but he could unite us. He did it at Drúne Fell and he could do it again.’

‘And you saw Prince Haldus putting an end to this plague?’

‘No, I did not. Only Orion could do that. And even he would not achieve it alone. Without Sativus – without the forest spirits, I cannot see his route to victory. His path is lost in shadow.’ A slight tremor entered Naieth’s voice. ‘But my dreams were clear on one thing – if Prince Haldus dies, Orion will have no kingdom to return to.’

Ariel’s eyes flickered around the clearing and eventually alighted on one of the figures beneath the trees.

‘Laelia,’ she called.

Her handmaiden glided through the air and dropped to the ground, kneeling a few feet away from Ariel.

‘Do whatever you must to keep this hawk lord alive. Swear to me.’

Laelia kept her gaze fixed on the ash-covered ground. ‘I swear it, my queen.’

Arial nodded, but her eyes remained full of doubt. She was about to speak again when her robes pulsed even brighter and she found herself drifting towards the Oak of Ages.

As her flesh faded into sunlight Ariel began to smile, fixing her gaze on something the others were unable to see.

Chapter Sixteen

Ordaana’s oxygen-starved brain filled with images. She saw her proud, straight-backed lover, Prince Thuralin, riding towards her through a blizzard of apple blossom, his handsome young face gleaming with hope and love. Then she saw Ariel averting her gaze as Naieth the Prophetess ushered her from the royal court. Then she saw her own beautiful halls at the heart of Locrimere, engulfed in flames. She was running back towards the inferno, realising, too late, what she had done. ‘Alhena!’ she heard herself cry, her voice twisted by panic and madness.

At the sound of her daughter’s name Ordaana’s limbs filled with vigour and she forced herself forwards, straining for air with her last vestiges of strength.

There was a soft tearing sound and crimson light flooded her eyes, blinding her for a second. She was still unable to breathe but she could see shapes moving by, far below.

She clawed at the red, yielding wall and, as her nails sliced through to the other side, she finally felt air flooding her lungs.

She took a deep breath and screamed in horror.

The forest was far below. She was hurtling through the clouds, hundreds of feet above the trees. Her ears were assailed by a loud droning sound and she felt herself sliding out of the hole she had carved.

She reached back into the darkness and grabbed onto something wet and soft. It shifted in her grip and whatever was carrying her juddered in pain.

The droning ceased and she found herself dropping towards the forest.

Her carriage of flesh whirled and tumbled, until Ordaana was completely disorientated.

She heard the snapping of breaking branches, mingled with another noise that sounded suspiciously like Alkhor, laughing.

Then there was a violent impact that knocked the breath from her lungs.

Ordaana lay still for a moment, unsure if she was alive or dead. She was lying on something that quivered as she moved. Then she realised that she could hear voices and the sound of horses thundering by. Her head was pounding and her back felt as though it were broken, but she found to her surprise that she was able to sit up. She had a moment of panic and reached for her belt. The silver knife was still there and she closed her eyes in relief. Then she looked around.

She was near a path that wound its way through barren, naked boughs. It was bordered by silver birch trees and canopied by empty white branches. She realised that she had seen this path before. She was at the borders of the Silvam Dale.

She climbed painfully to her feet and turned to see what she had been lying on.

‘By the gods,’ she muttered. Sprawled across the ground was an enormous dead fly, covered in plates of crudely wrought armour. She saw a gaping hole in its abdomen and realised that she had crawled from its innards.

As she shook her head in disgust, realising that her robes and skin were covered in the thing’s blood, she heard Alkhor’s laughter again.

Ordaana was about to cry out in rage, furious at being treated in such a way, when she heard more riders passing by, thundering down the avenue of trees.

She stepped away from the giant insect and ran through the trees, keen to put as much distance between her and the monster as she could. As she hurried through the snow-laden branches, her breath trailed behind her, describing her route through the forest.

She muttered in annoyance and, with a faint wave of her hand, drew a little magic from the branches, scattering her breath into the shadows. Power leapt easily to her fingers and she nodded in recognition. Most of Elatior’s subjects were spellweavers and, over the centuries, their rites had given his kingdom a strange, indefinable glamour. Nothing seemed to truly exist in the Silvam Dale – every bough and every face seemed to be the echo of something else. She allowed the magic to play across her palm, sparking and crackling in the folds of her skin. Even as winter drove the forest’s spirits into hibernation, there was immense power in the dale.

Intrigued, she hurried on and after a while she saw a pale arch that marked one of the entryways into Elatior’s kingdom. The sentries were hidden, but she had no doubt they were there and, after stepping out onto the path, she dropped to one knee and placed her palms on the frozen ground.

A guard slipped from the shadows. He was clad in thick leather armour and carried a spear that was taller than he was. ‘Are you injured?’

Ordaana frowned, then remembered the manner of her arrival. She stood and looked down at her bloodstained robes. ‘No,’ she said. ‘This is the blood of the enemy.’

The guard frowned and stepped closer, peering at her face.

Ordaana felt a chill of fear and let her hand move closer to the silver knife. Had she been seen, travelling with the daemons?

‘Lady Ordaana,’ said the guard, nodding his head in a bow. When he looked up, she saw that he was beaming. ‘Your people feared that you had died. Lord Beldeas has been tormented in your absence. They say he has not slept for weeks.’

‘Tormented?’ Ordaana muttered under her breath. ‘I somehow doubt that.’

She strode up to the guard. ‘Where can I find him?’

The guard stepped back and as he did so the wards that hid the dale fell away. A bustling scene sprang to life beyond the wooden arch. Countless hundreds of asrai were hurrying back and forth along avenues of lantern-lit trees. Many of them were wounded and they all wore glazed, horrified expressions on their faces. Ordaana’s breath caught in her throat as she saw the result of Alkhor’s work.

‘Your husband is at the council of war,’ said the guard and he pointed his spear over the heads of the crowds, singling out a mountainous shape, looming over the dale.

It was a tree – or, rather, a twisted hybrid of several trees – but it was the size of a small mountain, knotted together by sparking cords of magic. The air around it was liquid with sorcery, as though it were caught in a magnetic storm. Ordaana had the distinct impression that the tree was glaring at her. The colossal thing was lashed to the ground by dozens of ropes and Ordaana found herself wishing they were a little thicker. This brooding monster was clearly the source of the power she had felt.

‘He’s in the roots of the Wilding Tree, my lady,’ said the guard, looking as unnerved as Ordaana.

Ordaana had not entered the Tourmaline Hall for many decades and she quickly remembered why. She hurried between the columns of root, feeling as though she had entered the maw of a great beast. The cavernous hall creaked and strained around her, moaning like a trapped animal, and Elatior’s witches were huddled together in groups. The smoky air was charged with violence and there were figures bound into the walls, groaning in pain as they lashed the ancient tree to Elatior’s will.

After a while Ordaana began to see familiar faces in the crowd. In her time as Ariel’s handmaiden she had officiated at countless rites and festivals, meeting all the great families of the Eternal Realms. Dozens of lords and ladies recognised her as she slipped through the fug. Some of them stepped out into the shifting light to stare, clearly shocked that she was still alive.

She made for the brightest light, at the centre of the hall, where a circle of the most august nobles had gathered around their hosts, the Enchanter, Prince Elatior and his wife, Princess Asphalia. Ordaana hurried through the crowd but, as she approached the circle, she stumbled to a halt, seeing more faces that she recognised and feeling suddenly afraid. How could she speak to them knowing what she knew? She had betrayed them at Drúne Fell. She had given her soul to a monster. How could she hide that from them?

Her stomach turned as she saw her frail-looking husband, Lord Beldeas, as gaunt and rapacious-looking as ever, whispering to his advisor, the prim, bejewelled little popinjay Hauran Quillwort. Nearby, she saw other survivors from the battle of Drúne Fell. Prince Haldus the hawk rider was there, hiding behind his awkward scowl and his mask of circular scars, and he was accompanied by another hawk rider – the mysterious Lord Cyanos, still wearing the ornate, black cuirass that failed to disguise the stumps jutting out from his shoulder blades. Eremon was there too, the craggy faced captain of Locrimere’s armies. He was rigid with self-importance, just as she remembered him, and he was still proudly wearing the emblem of their fallen realm.

The nobles were all fixated on the luminous figures at the centre of the circle and none of them had noticed Ordaana, so she steeled herself and stepped forwards to address them.

She was just a few yards away when she noticed another face from the rites of Ariel’s court – a tall, hook-nosed highborn whose skin shimmered as he moved. She remembered that he was named Mälloch the Elder. Mälloch was wrapped in an enormous bearskin, but she could tell from his awkward stance that he, like many others present, had not reached the Silvam Dale uninjured. His eyes were rolling feverishly in their sockets and he was struggling to stay upright. He was leaning heavily on a wardancer who looked even worse than he did – a greasy haired wretch whose semi-naked body was little more than a pitiful sack of skin and bone.

As Ordaana stepped closer, the emaciated wardancer glanced in her direction and she almost screamed in shock.

It was the Darkling Prince – the doomed youth she had confided in on the slopes of Drúne Fell. How could he be alive?

Finavar stared at her in wonder and a smile trembled across his thin lips.

Ordaana’s stomach twisted as she recalled the things she had told him. He knew everything. He knew her plan to overthrow Ariel and Orion. He knew she meant to murder them. She was about to turn and flee when a horribly familiar voice called out.

‘Ordaana?’

Beldeas’s cloying, insincere tones managed to cut through the general hubbub and several of the nobles turned to face her.

Ordaana’s gaze was still locked on Finavar and, in desperation, she tapped into the tendrils of magic drifting through the chamber. She knew that performing magic in the Wilding Tree was like whispering an insult in Elatior’s ear, but she had no choice. She threaded two words onto a strand of consciousness and hurled them into Finavar’s mind.

‘Say nothing,’ she silently ordered him, leaning every ounce of her power into the command.

Before she could see Finavar’s response, her husband stepped between her and the wardancer.

‘I thought you were dead,’ he said, with a nauseating pretence of emotion. He caressed her cheek. ‘Are you injured, my love? What happened to you?’

Ordaana was about to call him a fawning, lying idiot when she remembered her purpose in the dale.

‘Beldeas,’ she said, nodding her head demurely and giving him her hand to kiss. ‘It was the thought of you that gave me the courage to survive.’

Ordaana was delighted by her husband’s confused expression. There was no irony in her voice but he had clearly sensed the lie; knowing all too well how much she despised him.

‘I have…’ His words trailed off as he stared into her eyes, trying to gauge her thoughts. He was about to ask something when he changed his mind and kissed the hand she had proffered.

Ordaana was about to confuse him with even more kind words when she remembered Finavar. She knew she had to kill him, but how? With so many eyes on her what could she possibly do? She stepped to one side and gave him a pleading look, hoping that he might see her as some kind of ally.

The wardancer’s eyes stared back at her from their sunken pits, but he gave her a barely perceptible nod and she relaxed slightly.

‘Say nothing?’ asked a voice in Ordaana’s head.

The circle of nobles turned and looked back at their blazing hosts and Ordaana realised that they had heard the question too. For the first time since she entered the Tourmaline Hall, she looked directly at the prince and princess.

Like Mälloch the Elder, their flesh had an odd, insubstantial quality. They glittered with the light of longevity and Ordaana was reminded of starlight, shining through a leaf. The princess also carried her age in the more prosaic manner of a human. Her back was stooped and her skin had sagged in a way that made her almost ugly. Such a thing was not usual for the asrai, and Ordaana assumed that Asphalia had withered herself as some kind of strange affectation. Her eccentricities were famed across the whole region. Prince Elatior, meanwhile, showed no signs of infirmity. In fact, Ordaana realised, he was a dreadful caricature of power and dignity. His face was quite grotesque in its magnificence – the features exaggerated and distorted, like those of an oversized statue. He towered over the other nobles and, as his eyes settled on hers, Ordaana felt all the dreadful weight of his arrogance.

‘Whom do you wish to silence?’ he asked, without moving his lips.

Ordaana sensed people moving away from her and she squirmed under his cold, expressionless stare. As the other nobles backed away, she realised that Elatior and his wife were drifting a few feet above the ground, levitated by thousands of tiny spirits woven into their robes. Clouds of glittering wings shimmered over their crumpled damask. Despite the season, there was a whole host of acorn-sized imps, flickering and whirring as they held their hosts aloft.

Ordaana bowed and shook her head. ‘My lord, I apologise for my rough manners.’ She waved at the crowds moving around them. ‘Such a large gathering quite overwhelmed me. Since the battle for Drúne Fell I have barely spoken to another soul. Hearing all these voices, talking at once, was a shock.’

The prince watched her with a bored expression, as though studying an insect that had crawled onto his sleeve.

Captain Eremon approached and gave her a stiff bow. ‘My lady.’

Prince Haldus and the others followed suit, but she noticed that Finavar had stepped back into the shadows. He was talking to a hunched old cripple, whose back was turned to her. Panic gripped her again. Who was he talking to? What was he saying?

‘The Goddess be praised,’ said Princess Asphalia, drifting towards her. ‘Your hair is quite beautiful. The second moon told me it was.’

Ordaana was about to laugh at the princess’s odd comment. Then she recalled the rumours she had heard about Asphalia. It was said that the centuries had claimed her reason, and that her husband refused to acknowledge the fact. The gossips said that those who questioned her state of mind did not survive for long. Elatior defended her honour with a ferocity that shredded skin from bones.

Ordaana tried to meet the princess’s eyes, but they seemed unable to settle on any one point.

‘How kind of you to notice,’ she replied, attempting to sound as though there were nothing odd in the exchange and simultaneously straining to see what Finavar was doing.

The princess leant closer and added, with an urgent expression. ‘All these twirling dances though, Ordaana, how can I forget?’

Ordaana nodded and smiled, then looked up at the Enchanter.

He was still watching her with lidded eyes. ‘I have heard of your skill.’ His tone was flat. ‘It is good that you came.’

Ordaana was about to reply, but Elatior turned back to the nobles and seemed to forget all about her.

Beldeas gave her a nauseating smile and took her arm, leading her into the circle.

She saw nobles from all twelve of the Eternal Realms, clad in a bewildering variety of furs, feathers and skins. Some, like Prince Haldus, wore little more than a few bands of hammered copper and a loincloth, but others wore the most incredibly flamboyant robes, woven from dried leaves and silver thread. There was a rustle of vines and silk as they huddled closer to Elatior.

Ordaana looked over at the centre of the hall. The chamber was designed in a series of spirals, coiled like fern leaves around a column of knotted root. It was over ten feet wide and reached high up into the vaults, where it fanned out in a series of looping, lichened arches that divided the hall. It was not the design of the thing that caught her eye, however, it was the ornaments at its centre. Three naked figures were hanging in the wood, their gleaming flesh painted with thousands of tiny, delicately rendered words. Even if the words were not so tiny they would still have been indecipherable. The skin they were painted on had been punctured by dozens of knotted tendrils so that it glistened with a sheen of fresh blood. The faces of these crucified figures were hidden behind wooden masks, carved to resemble cheerful, grinning faces, and it was hard to tell if they were dead or alive, but after a few seconds they nodded in reply and shifted slightly in their cruel nests.

As the crucified figures moved, Prince Elatior cast his gaze around the circle of nobles, his eyes blazing with triumph. ‘The wardens’ work is almost done. I will soon be able to harness the fury they have nurtured for so long.’

Ordaana stared at the figures, trying to decipher his meaning. She noticed that, as they writhed in agony, the walls of the vast chamber moved too. The whole, tormented mass of the Wilding Tree responded to their every pained breath. They are the anchor, she thought, sensing on a primal level that this was how Elatior controlled his living citadel.

She looked back at the prince and princess and saw that they were now blazing even brighter, causing their audience to shield their eyes.

Ordaana’s vision grew accustomed to the glare and she noticed that Elatior was painting a scene for them – images were drifting through the darkness towards her. Terror flooded her veins as she recognised the scene – Elatior was showing them the attack on the Ravenstone. As the lights rippled through the air they painted an image of Alkhor’s pot-bellied tallymen, wading through their river of luminous bile and smashing their way into the tower of black rock.

‘Such virtues,’ said Princess Asphalia, with a sad shake of her head. ‘Such pretty songs. If I had my time again I would drink twilight and nothing more.’

Ordaana ignored the ramblings of the princess and peered intently at the images, sure that they would reveal her at the head of the attack. She stiffened as she thought she saw her hooded self, dashing through the hole at the foot of the tower, but no one else seemed to notice. They were fixated on the asrai, battling desperately with the ranks of daemons.

‘The minions of the Plaguelord destroyed the tower and then they murdered its guardians,’ said Prince Elatior. ‘The river of acid is now approaching us from the north. It is days away, at most. We lost many of our kin in the battle. Even the slightest injury at the hands of the daemons is enough to corrupt bodies beyond all recognition. To fall is to become one of them.’

Some of the nobles nodded sagely, but those who had not heard of the battle gasped. The Ravenstone had stood watch over the Silvam Dale since before the coming of the asrai.

‘How did this happen?’ asked Prince Haldus. He looked uncomfortable as the other nobles turned his way, but he continued, despite his blushes. ‘The entrance to the valley is hidden. How did they find it?’

‘One of our own kin is leading them.’

There was a chorus of gasps but Haldus nodded grimly. ‘It was the same at Drúne Fell – the outsiders were led through the forest by a traitor. We never found out who it was.’

Ordaana’s face became a rigid, expressionless mask.

The Enchanter looked up at the walls of the chamber. ‘The Wilding Tree has prophesied this. I have known of this betrayal since the dawn of my rule.’ Pride flashed in his eyes and he took his wife’s hand. ‘We have been preparing for this day.’

Princess Asphalia smiled at her husband. The drama of the moment seemed to give her some lucidity and her eyes fixed on his. ‘The betrayal was prophesied, and so was the power of the tree.’

Ordaana felt her mouth beginning to twitch. Fear had given her a terrible urge to laugh, so she began massaging her jaw in attempt to hide her hysteria.

Elatior looked around the faces of his audience. ‘All the power of the dale has been poured into the Wilding Tree.’ He waved at the groaning shadows. ‘There is magic here beyond anything the Plaguelord has at his command.’

He glanced at the crucified spellweavers, straining to control his final weapon. Then he looked back at the nobles and changed the scene.

Mälloch the Elder winced as the Chains of Vaul sprang into view.

There were more shocked whispers as people saw the agony of the spirit dam.

Elatior waved his hand for silence. ‘Spare your pity. Mälloch and the Fiùrann sacrificed much so that we might prepare our defence. The forest had to play its part.’

As they watched the dam collapse, and the bile flooding into the valley, Ordaana noticed that Finavar had returned to the group. He caught her eye and she realised that he was oddly excited by her presence. The thought gave her hope. If she could convince him they were united against a common enemy, he would remain silent until she could remove him.

‘This river will reach us even sooner than we thought,’ continued Elatior. ‘We have been betrayed here, too.’

‘Then we should ride out,’ said Captain Eremon in a calm, stern voice, lifting his chin proudly as he spoke. ‘The warriors of Locrimere will be honoured to lead the defence.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Lord Beldeas, but his words did not carry the same conviction as his captain’s.

Elatior did not acknowledge either of them. ‘Winter is upon us. The daemons, and the traitor who guides them, will expect no reprisals from the forest. They will believe that the spirits are fading with the sun, as always, giving the daemons free rein to butcher and destroy, but…’ He glanced again at the three crucified figures, then up at the vaulted shadows of the Tourmaline Hall, where gods and stars were gazing down from the soil and bark. ‘But this year there is one spirit that will not sleep.’

‘The Wilding Tree is eight minutes older than anything else,’ said Princess Asphalia, nodding sagely.

Elatior smiled at her, as though her words were perfectly logical. ‘I have unlatched the Wilding Tree from the seasons.’ He looked around at the vast chamber. ‘It is no longer bound by nature. We will make our stand at the gates of the dale. And when the daemons come, I will let them think they are victorious.’

As Elatior spoke, the scenes drifting around his body illustrated his words. ‘We will draw them back into the very arms of the Wilding Tree, giving them the idea that we have abandoned hope – that we are penned in like rats. Then, on the dawn that follows the twelfth moon I will channel two thousand years of rage and turn it upon our foes.’

The ground shifted violently.

Several of the nobles stumbled and Elatior’s eyes flicked back towards the centre of the hall. Ordaana noticed a hint of emotion in his expression – an edge of fear, perhaps – but it was crushed immediately and replaced by his usual implacable mask.

As the prince stared at them, the crucified figures gasped in pain. Roots strained beneath their skin, sending more blood down their chests, but they remained in place, clenching their fists until the ground was still once more.

Elatior drew back his shoulders and addressed the entire gathering. ‘When the Wilding Tree’s rage pours through me it will be a force unlike anything you could conceive. The daemons might bring their rivers to our borders, but they will never emerge from the other side.’

Ordaana glanced nervously into the shadows. Was such a thing possible? What if Elatior really harnessed such power? The thought filled her with horror.

Elatior’s voice grew louder and the ground rolled again. The three agonised figures cried out from the column of root, speaking in time with Elatior and turning his voice into a deafening, tormented chorus.

‘Our sacrifice will be great,’ they cried, ‘but by the gods it will be glorious. Every life we give will be balanced by the destruction of this grotesque, unnatural spring. We will fight with furious determination and the daemons will never suspect a trap. We will only withdraw when dawn arrives. Then they will send their entire force into my remorseless embrace, charged with the power of the Wilding Tree.’

As the echoes faded, Elatior glared at the assembled crowds, awaiting their response.

Captain Eremon pounded his leather-clad chest and, after a moment’s delay, the other nobles did the same. They were too excited by Elatior’s words to pay Ordaana any heed so, as they pressed closer to the prince, drawing their weapons and pledging their lives, she glanced in Finavar’s direction and rolled her eyes towards an exit, slipping free of her husband’s grip and stepping away.

‘Are you leaving us so soon, traitor?’ boomed the chorus of voices.

Ordaana froze and her shoulders dropped. How could she have expected to go unnoticed? Elatior’s gaze was everywhere. She turned back to face the prince but, as she did so, she dropped her hand to her knife. She would not die easily.

To her surprise, no one was facing in her direction – least of all the prince. Elatior was pointing an accusing finger at the scrawny wardancer, Finavar.

‘Seize him,’ he cried.

Mälloch the Elder shook his head in dismay and none of the other nobles made a move to grab Finavar.

The Enchanter was not speaking to the nobles, however.

Finavar barely had chance to register his surprise before Elatior’s crucified witches obeyed their master’s command. They raised their wasted arms and, as they did so, strands of long grass speared up from the ground and spiralled around the Darkling Prince, binding his legs and waist and rooting him to the spot.

Finavar’s eyes widened in fear as the prince glided towards him, with his finger still extended. He was about to protest, but the grass rose higher and lashed itself around his head, gagging him.

‘You will betray us no more,’ said Elatior, glowering at Finavar.

Mälloch staggered between the furious prince and his prey, holding up his hand.

‘Finavar is no traitor,’ he gasped. ‘He saved my life. He fought as bravely as any of us.’

The Enchanter turned his furious gaze on Mälloch. ‘Old fool. Your mind is addled by pain. You are moments away from damnation.’

Mälloch’s cheeks flushed with outrage and he was about to hurl back an angry retort when Elatior continued, still speaking with the massed voices of his witches.

‘To omit a truth is to lie, Mälloch. How could you do that to me? For two thousand years I have been laying my plans. Two thousands years! All that time preparing the Wilding Tree for this victory. Do you think I have enjoyed it? Do you think I have enjoyed inflicting pain on this ancient spirit?’ His lips curled back from his perfect teeth as he waved at the sorcerers knotted into the column. ‘Do you think I have enjoyed torturing my own kin?’ He grabbed Finavar’s arm and shook him like a child. ‘I have worked tirelessly for this moment and when this treacherous rat almost undid everything you did not even tell me!’

Mälloch tried to approach the prince, but his injuries overcame him and he stumbled. If Prince Haldus had not stepped forwards to catch him, he would have fallen to the ground.

‘He ruined the Feast of the Two Branches, Mälloch,’ continued Elatior. ‘He ruined it! Every one of my auguries told me that the dam could hold for another night. All my plans revolved around that very fact. The spirits were not meant to flee, Mälloch – not yet!’ Elatior shook Finavar again. ‘He did this! If the rite had gone uninterrupted the spirits would have fulfilled their obligation to you. He saved your life from a threat he created.’

The last vestiges of colour drained from Mälloch’s face. ‘I thought the damage was only slight. I thought I had undone the harm.’

‘Really?’ Elatior’s voice was now trembling with rage. ‘Well, perhaps you did. With this worm in your midst it would have meant nothing anyway.’

Mälloch shook his head, leaning weakly against Prince Haldus. ‘He did nothing but help. He saved my life.’

Elatior managed to lower his voice, but that only served to make it more menacing.

‘So you keep saying, Mälloch, but tell me – what did he use to save your life?’

Mälloch frowned and looked at Finavar, trying to focus. ‘He used his sword.’ As Mälloch’s feverish gaze fell on the swan’s-neck handle at Finavar’s belt, his eyes widened in recognition.

Elatior nodded. ‘First, he disrupted the Feast of the Two Branches so that the spirits would no longer serve you. Then, when that failed, he used more direct methods. He undid your oath, Mälloch – he removed your blade and freed your servants from their duty. He betrayed us all.’

Mälloch looked dazed as he stared at the sword. ‘Why? Why would he do such a thing? Since midsummer, all I have heard are tales of his bravery at Drúne Fell. The forest rings with songs of his heroism. Why should he seek to undo us now?’

‘I know what drove him to this,’ said Ordaana, stepping back into the circle of nobles. Her voice was hesitant, but everyone turned to stare at her.

Elatior and the others had forgotten about her and they looked around in shock at the sound of her voice.

‘He told me himself that he desires nothing more than to see our kingdoms fall.’

Beldeas flushed with embarrassment at his wife’s outburst and clasped her by the shoulders. ‘My wife is confused,’ he said, smiling awkwardly and shepherding her away from Elatior. ‘She knows nothing of traitors, I assure you.’ He scowled at her. ‘She must be exhausted and confused after her adventures.’

Ordaana shoved Beldeas with such force that he lost his footing and ended up sitting on the floor. Then she strode towards Prince Elatior. ‘As I left the foothills of Drúne Fell I found this wardancer looting corpses, half mad from his injuries. I took pity on him and offered him my protection, but when he explained his plan, I was repulsed and left him to his bitterness.’

‘My love,’ said Beldeas, clambering to his feet. ‘Why have you never mentioned this before?’

Ordaana kept her gaze locked on Elatior. ‘He looked so wretched that I never dreamt he would survive. The vileness of his beliefs seemed unimportant when he was so close to death. I cannot understand how he still draws breath.’

Elatior dropped to the ground before Ordaana and grasped her arms. ‘What beliefs? What were his plans?’

Ordaana shook her head. ‘He spoke the most vile untruths, Prince Elatior, that I can barely bring myself to repeat them.’

Light shimmered across Elatior’s exaggerated features. ‘Repeat them.’

Ordaana nodded and looked at Finavar with an expression of pity. ‘I beg you to take pity on him, Prince Elatior. He has suffered greatly.’

Elatior lifted his chin and softened his voice. ‘Your noble sentiments do you credit, Lady Ordaana, and if his treachery were not so heinous, I might have acceded to them, but you must understand – thanks to him we are on the very edge of extinction. We cannot waver. Tell me what he said.’

Ordaana nodded. ‘During the battle for Drúne Fell, the Darkling Prince’s brother was slain. He fell as the Wild Hunt drove the enemy from the field and, as a result, he believes…’ Ordaana hesitated, doing everything she could to appear reluctant.

Elatior gave her a gentle nod.

‘Finavar told me that he considers our king to be a murderer. He believes that our only hope is to overthrow Orion and the Mage Queen.’

She paused for dramatic effect.

‘He intends to kill them.’

The voices in the hall fell silent and all eyes fell on Finavar.

Even Elatior looked shocked, but he quickly recovered his composure. ‘My suspicions were along those lines. I could see no other reason for him to disrupt the ceremony and destroy our defences.’

Ordaana gave him an anguished, pleading glance. ‘Please understand. My silence on the matter stemmed only from my belief that he would not survive. It seemed unnecessarily cruel to tarnish his name. When I heard the various tales of his bravery I saw no reason to gainsay them.’ She shook her head as she looked at Finavar. ‘I was sure he would be dead.’

Finavar strained desperately against his bonds, but they would not give. The magic of the Wilding Tree was too powerful.

An eerie silence hung over the hall as Elatior squeezed Ordaana’s shoulder. ‘I understand how much this has hurt you, Lady Ordaana, but rest assured that you have done your people a great service. We know, now, who has led the enemy to our most secret places. During the summer, when we were beset by outsiders, this rogue was seen at every battle. He was described as a hero and all along he was the cause of our pain. And now he has offered his assistance to an even greater foe. This plague that is destroying our lands is no natural blight. This is the work of Chaos and whatever daemon that is loose in the forest has been led at every turn by this wretch.’

Mälloch, Captain Eremon, Prince Haldus and all the other nobles stared at Finavar in shock. Some of them dropped their hands to their weapons, clearly itching to exact immediate revenge.

‘No,’ said Elatior, utilising his chorus of voices again, so that the word rang out through the hall. ‘To spill the traitor’s blood here would not redress the balance. There is only one punishment worthy of this crime.’ The tiny spirits in Elatior’s robes shimmered into life, lifting him up into the air, until he was beside Princess Asphalia once more.

They both looked out across the gathering and spoke as one, Elatior in a stern voice and Asphalia in wavering, musical tones. ‘He must be given to the forest. He must be given to the Wildwood.’

Ordaana closed her eyes and lowered her head, hiding her smile behind a pretence of sadness, but the other asrai in the hall nodded their assent.

Elatior glared at Mälloch the Elder. ‘Your negligence in this matter was bordering on betrayal, but I am not without mercy. You will take this so-called Darkling Prince to the Wildwood. You will perform the Rite of Banishment and see him torn from the world. Once I am sure you have performed this task, our friendship shall begin anew.’

Mälloch looked dazed as he considered the task he had been set. He glanced at Finavar, straining pitifully at his bonds, then he nodded and attempted an awkward bow.

‘The punishment is apt.’

Ordaana shivered as she emerged into the snow, but it was not only the cold that made her shake. She was teetering on the edge of hysteria. If Elatior’s claims were true, everything could be ruined. She had to speak to Alkhor. She had to warn the daemon.

She stared at the sky, waiting for her heart to stop racing. After a few moments, her hysteria lessened to a kind of heady giddiness as she considered her lucky escape.

The sky stared back. It was already a deep, sapphire blue that looked deep into her soul. She realised it would soon be dark. It had been midday when she entered the Wilding Tree and she felt like she had only spent a few minutes beneath its roots, but the day was already over. She pulled her robes tighter and hurried off through the falling snow, looking for a place that she could be alone and attempt to contact the daemon.

Crowds of asrai were moving beneath the snow-dusted trees, clutching hastily gathered belongings and carrying gruesome wounds. Ordaana watched them with pity in her eyes, then she remembered with a jolt that she was the cause of their pain – she was the enemy they were fleeing. For a moment she stared at the refugees in confusion, struggling to connect their suffering with her actions. As she discussed Finavar’s treachery with Elatior, she had almost believed her own lies. She had almost believed that it was Finavar who had brought Alkhor’s plague down on her people, rather than her.

She was jolted out of her reverie by someone waving at her from the root of a tree. The tree had an oddly morbid air. Figures were dashing back and forth through the dale, but none of them approached this particular yew. In fact, they seemed to give it a wide berth, averting their gaze as they passed by. It was crooked and stooped, as though battered by storms and, as with the Wilding Tree, there were openings between some of its roots leading down into the darkness. A small figure was signalling from one of these for her to approach.

Ordaana had lifted her hood when she stepped out into the snow and she could not imagine who would be able to recognise her, but she stepped closer anyway, intrigued. As she approached the tree, the other asrai paid her no heed. In fact, they seemed to go out of their way not to look in her direction.

She hurried on through the twilight and saw that the figure was moving in jerking, spasmodic fits, like a little marionette. She sighed with relief. ‘Death’s-head,’ she laughed, following the spirit down between the roots of the tree.

Steps spiralled down into the darkness and Ordaana had to summon a little magic to light her way. As she did so, she saw another cavernous chamber open out in front of her. Like the Tourmaline Hall, it was divided by tall columns of root that supported a distant, vaulted ceiling of knotted wood. That was the only similarity though. No fireflies were here to light her way and the slender thrones were all empty. There was another difference that made her pause and grimace halfway down the steps.

The air was thick with the smell of blood.

Death’s-head halted at the bottom of the steps and looked up at her, waving for her to continue.

As she approached, the light dripping from her fingers revealed how pitiful the spirit looked. Its limbs were pale and rotten and the light that usually leaked from its skull-like head had faded to a sickly glow.

‘The year is dead,’ said Ordaana, stepping closer. ‘It’s time for you to rest.’

The spirit clicked and clacked towards her, nodding weakly. Then it waved a twig-like bundle of fingers towards the centre of the hall.

Ordaana peered into the gloom. The darkness pooled at a certain point, becoming so impenetrable that even her sorcery could not throw it back.

‘Alkhor,’ she whispered, her words full of venom. She stepped forwards and glared at the shadow, sure of its meaning. ‘What do you intend to do with me now? Bury me inside a worm? Transform me into a bowel?’ She drew her knife and descended the remaining steps. ‘I am not your slave, daemon, I am a queen. You promised me revenge, not servitude.’

The shadow rippled, but gave no reply, so she frowned and began walking across the hall.

Ordaana paused again and lifted her skirts with a hiss of disgust. The ground was slick with blood and, as her light glinted across its surface, it revealed hundreds upon hundreds of pale shapes, piled in mounds.

She muttered a curse as she realised that they were corpses. Death’s-head had led her into a charnel house.

Many of the bodies were still bleeding, adding to the black lake around her feet. She realised that they must be the dead from the Chains of Vaul.

‘Why…?’ she began to ask, when she recalled how Alkhor’s tallymen utilised the asrai they killed – transforming them into willing, mutated servants. She nodded as she realised why Elatior was hiding his dead from the daemons – he was attempting to prevent the corpses of his own subjects turning against him.

She laughed softly, considering the shadowy presence at the centre of the hall. Clearly, he had failed. Alkhor was not so easily denied. ‘You have some nerve,’ she called out, ‘revealing yourself here.’

She walked across the chamber, pouring more light from her fingertips, but however she tried her magic could not penetrate the gloom. She could clearly sense an ancient malice though, glaring back at her from the corpses and, as she stepped closer, she heard the sound of low, ragged breathing, and something else – a crunching, thudding sound, like wood being splintered by an axe.

Ordaana had expected to hear a jovial, belched response – some kind of crude joke, perhaps, but not these ominous noises. She came to a halt, feeling the first twinges of doubt. She looked back and saw that Death’s-head was gone. There was nothing but her, the dead and the dark.

Despite all that she had done, something about the scene unnerved Ordaana. Then, annoyed by her own cowardice, she strode forwards and poured even more light onto the shadow, determined that it would not make a fool of her.

Her magic finally pierced the darkness and washed up against a mound of corpses even bigger than the ones she had already passed. Ashen, slack-jawed faces stared back at her with unseeing eyes, and grasping, lifeless fingers reached out towards her.

Ordaana barely noticed the corpses. Next to the bodies, the blood had gathered in a deep pool, and something was moving in the depths.

She stepped towards the pool and, with an overwhelming sense of dread, peered into it.

A nightmarish figure stared back at her. It was a hulking warrior, twice as tall as Ordaana and clad in serrated, brass armour. The brass was studded with spikes and scored with foul, crude-looking glyphs, and the warrior was holding a massive, two-handed axe. These details were lost on Ordaana, though. The thing that caught her attention was the warrior’s head. Its face was that of an enormous, feral dog, covered in matted, greasy hair with a long, canine snout. Its teeth were bared in a snarl and its eyes were a deep, furious red. Hanging around its neck was a thick brass chain, and at the end of the chain there was something quite incongruous – a delicate ivory bracelet, carved with roses and thorns.

Ordaana whispered some gibberish and held up her silver knife, but she found it impossible to tear her gaze away from the image in the blood.

Corpses surrounded the dog-headed giant. The same bodies that filled the chamber were also visible on the other side of the pool. They were massed in great heaps around the warrior’s feet and Ordaana realised that the crunching sound she had heard was coming from the monster’s axe, slicing though their necks. The warrior continued hacking as it stared out at her from the pool.

Ordaana looked back over shoulder, thinking that, to be reflected in the pool, the warrior must be standing behind her.

She saw nothing but shadows.

When she looked back at the pool of blood, Ordaana saw that the dog-headed warrior was clearly not in the cave with her. The landscape behind it was a psychedelic nightmare of colours and shapes. It was as though the monster were in the centre of an unfinished painting. She saw smeared, half-glimpsed vistas of fire and rock, bleeding into rows of screaming, tormented faces.

Her heart sank as she accepted the truth. She had drawn the gaze of another daemon.

‘What do you want with me?’ she gasped, taking some consolation from the fact that the daemon clearly did not belong to the same plane of existence as her. It was a ghost of some kind, watching her from its own hellish realm.

The monster carried on working – chopping methodically at the bodies, wrenching the heads free and slinging them into a pile.

Ordaana was hypnotised by the strange, gruesome scene, then she remembered where she was and looked around the cave in a panic. She could not be seen in the company of such a thing. There did not seem to be anyone else in the hall – anyone living, that is – but it occurred to her that more bodies could arrive at any time. She started to step back from the pool but, before she had gone very far, the daemon looked up at her.

Its eyes burned into her with shocking malevolence and she cried out in pain. She felt as though the force of its evil had scalded her and she found herself rooted to the spot.

The daemon carried on beheading the corpses as it addressed her.

‘The sluglord will fail.’ Its voice was a guttural bark and, as it spoke, flames drooled from its jaws.

Ordaana shook her head, terrified and confused. She realised that she had dropped her knife to the ground and was clutching at her hair.

The daemon waited for her to reply. When it realised she was not going to, its eyes blazed even brighter and it strode towards her. The surface of the pool strained and bulged like skin as the daemon tried to push its way into the real world.

Ordaana felt bile rising in her throat and she thought she might be sick, but still, she was unable to back away.

‘He is weak!’ roared the daemon, taking one of its claws from the axe’s haft and reaching towards her. ‘Only I can give you what you need!’

To Ordaana’s horror, the claw burst from the pool of blood.

As the daemon’s flesh entered the physical realm, it filled the chamber with a dreadful stink – a mixture of brimstone and toxic, metallic-tasting fumes.

Ordaana’s fear finally freed her from her paralysis.

She grasped her knife from the ground and fled through the hall, stumbling over the corpses and slipping in their blood.

Ordaana ran through the frozen dale, barging through hordes of refugees. She slid and scampered across the ice, broke through a wall of dead bracken and emerged into a broad, moonlit field, gleaming with a clean, white cover of snow.

She waded through the knee-deep drifts into the centre of the field and then dropped to her knees, clutching her head in her hands.

The cold seeped through her skin and into her bones and, after a few minutes, she sat up and began pacing across the field. The daemon’s appearance had terrified her. It was more disturbing than anything she had yet seen. The thing had radiated such malice that even the thought of its claw, bursting from the pool of blood, was too much for her to bear. She tried to drive it from her mind by staring at the expanse of glittering whiteness, but something kept drawing her thoughts back.

‘He is weak,’ she whispered through chattering teeth, remembering the daemon’s words and picturing the ridiculous, bloated form of her ally.

She looked up at the banks of snow whirling overhead, sparkling against the indigo heavens. ‘Perhaps he will fail me.’ The thought horrified her. She had done such terrible things. All she had to live for was the look on Ariel’s face as she took her life and the life of her king. Nothing else would matter, as long as she could end their reign – as long as she could see Ariel crawling at her feet, begging for mercy. But what use would Alkhor be when Elatior revealed the power of the Wilding Tree?

As the snow settled on her upturned face, Ordaana thought of the charge she had left in Alkhor’s care – their blessed offspring. She could not risk losing Alhena a second time. Besides, the idea of seeing the daemon in brass armour again horrified her.

‘Alkhor,’ she hissed, looking at black, sentinel-like trees. ‘Where are you?’

Her only answer was the breeze, whipping eddies of snow across the field.

‘I have news!’ she hissed.

She scoured the horizon for a sign of the daemon, but there was nothing.

She cursed under her breath and wondered what to do next. Finavar was certainly no longer a threat. Mälloch the Elder had sworn to take him that very night to the Wildwood – a fate that could only mean death. The Wildwood was the heart of the forest’s rage. The spirits contained within its borders were ever hungry for asrai blood. No one had ever survived such banishment. Elatior, meanwhile, was busy planning the impending battle with the other nobles. They believed that the only way to fool their enemy was to put up a determined defence; right until the moment they withdrew and sprang their trap. She had stood with them for a while, trying to garner more details of their tactics but, in the end, she had been forced to leave, for fear of revealing her treachery.

There was a rustling sound in the snow behind her and Ordaana flinched. She leapt to her feet and whirled around.

A raven was standing in the impression she had left, looking up at her. She was about to shoo it away, when she paused.

‘Alkhor?’ she asked, feeling vaguely ridiculous.

‘What is your news?’ replied the unmistakably amused tones of Alkhor.

Ordaana stepped towards the bird and was about to speak when it cawed at her in annoyance and launched itself into the air.

The bird vanished into the dusk and Ordaana shook her head in confusion.

‘Well?’ asked Alkhor again.

Ordaana looked around, trying to spot the source of the voice, but she had a horrible feeling she knew where it had come from.

She looked down at her shoulder and slipped her robe down her arm revealing the mark Alkhor had left on her flesh.

Then, for several moments, she could do nothing but scream.

Ordaana finally managed to calm herself by clamping her hand down over her shoulder but, after a while the movement against the palm of her hand became just as disturbing as the thing she was trying to hide so she took her hand away.

Alkhor’s sagging, beady-eyed face grinned back at her from her shoulder. One of the three marks had become the daemon’s mouth and the other two were now its glinting eyes.

‘You swore you would leave me intact,’ cried Ordaana, staring at the little face in horror. Her skin had puckered and darkened around Alkhor’s mouth and, as it replied, a miniature tongue flopped out of her flesh.

‘What harm is done?’ Alkhor struggled to speak for laughing. ‘I know how to be discreet. Who will even know I’m here? And think how close we will become. We can share everything.’

Ordaana stared at the face in disbelief, then dropped to her knees in the snow and began weeping.

Alkhor hooted along with her sobs, mimicking her desolated cries with a delighted grin.

After several minutes of this, the face started to look a little bored.

‘What have you learned?’ demanded Alkhor.

Ordaana managed to stifle her sobs. ‘Why am I doing this?’ she whispered, her voice full of horror.

‘You mean to destroy Ariel,’ said the daemon, ‘and I have promised to show you how.’

‘Then show me!’ Ordaana drew her silver knife pressing it against the face in her skin. ‘I know this blade can harm you! Tell me what I need to know or I’ll use it!’ Ordaana’s voice was a hysterical screech, but as soon as the words left her lips she blanched and looked at the surrounding trees, horrified by the thought she might draw attention to herself.

‘You might hurt yourself with that,’ said Alkhor, looking at the knife hovering an inch from its face. ‘It has more power than you think.’

Ordaana grew suddenly calm, noticing the mischievous tone that had entered the daemon’s voice. ‘What do you mean? What power? You told me that these symbols spell out your name. You said it can part your flesh. What else should I know?’

Alkhor smirked at her. ‘What is your news, Ordaana? What have you learned?’

She howled in frustration and hurled the knife into the snow.

‘Elatior is a proud fool. That is what I’ve learned.’

‘How so?’

Ordaana gave her shoulder a furious sideways glance. ‘He thinks Finavar is the architect of all this…’ She struggled to find words for Alkhor’s plague and simply waved in the vague direction of his army.

‘But what of his magic? Elatior is famed for his sorcery. How does he intend to use it against me?’

Ordaana’s eyes widened in fear. ‘All his magic has been bent on one purpose. He has used every ounce of it to torment the Wilding Tree.’

Alkhor laughed even harder. ‘What? Why would he use his magic to torture his home?’ The face puckered its lips as it tried to understand the noble’s reasoning.

Ordaana shook her head. ‘It explains the fury that pours out of that tree. The whole forest aches with it. I’ve never felt such pain.’

She remembered that Alkhor had been on the point of sharing something with her and continued with her explanation. ‘His plan is simple, but dangerous. He has tormented that tree for centuries in preparation for this event. His witches have long foreseen your arrival, and tomorrow, as our child leads the attack on the Silvam Dale, he plans to send the Wilding Tree into a paroxysm of rage and then harness that power – directing it at the shuffling morons that pass for your army.’

‘He is a fool.’

Ordaana gave Alkhor another sideways glance.

Alkhor attempted to look serious.

She shook her head, unable to understand the daemon’s indifference. ‘Can’t you feel how powerful that thing is? I can feel the strength of it from here. It could ruin everything.’ Ordaana’s voice rang out into a void and she realised that Alkhor’s breath had vanished from her ear.

She leapt to her feet and reached for her shoulder. The daemon’s face was gone, leaving just the triangle of three fingerprints that had always been there. She stared at the marks on her shoulder, but they were motionless.

Ordaana whirled around, scouring the snow for a sign of her master.

The raven had returned and was standing a few feet away. She knew immediately from the glint in its eyes that she was not mistaken this time. The bird was waiting next to a piece of metal jutting out of the snow. It was the handle of her knife.

‘I will savour Elatior’s death,’ said the bird, without moving its beak, ‘and then I will tell you a little more about this weapon that you fling around so carelessly.’

Chapter Seventeen

‘I will not believe it,’ said Sibaris as he helped Mälloch through the snow.

They had walked through the night and, with dawn just a couple of hours away, the snow was coming down thick and fast. It was hard to see more than a few feet ahead.

He looked back at the two figures behind them. One was their disgraced captive, Finavar. His legs had been freed so that he could walk, but the rest of his skeletal frame was tightly bound. Glossy green cords were lashed around his torso, pinning his arms to his sides and his head was bound so that he was completely gagged. Lady Ordaana had pointed out that if Finavar were allowed to speak he might attempt to influence his captors with more lies. Elatior had agreed and made Mälloch swear to keep him gagged until the rite was complete.

Walking behind Finavar, and prodding him with a staff every time he faltered, was one of Elatior’s witches. The spellweaver was called Varamus and, like the rest of the Enchanter’s inner circle, he wore a long, white, ermine coat and a wooden barn owl mask that made him almost invisible in the snow. Neither Mälloch nor Sibaris had seen his face and, on the few occasions he spoke, his voice sounded oddly distant, like an echo of a voice, rather than the voice itself.

They had the unnerving feeling that they were being accompanied by a ghost.

Mälloch winced as he stumbled through the drifts. ‘I heard it from his own lips.’ He looked sadly at his great-grandson. ‘Elatior was right. I am a fool. I was blinded by my need for his skill. I did not stop to consider the importance of what he said to me.’

‘But he was drunk!’

‘He told me that his brother was murdered by Orion and that he meant to avenge him. I should not have ignored such ravings. He was drunk and half-starved but he meant what he said. I thought he was just deluded by his grief. I did not dream that he was already leading an army against us.’

Sibaris shook his head wildly. ‘He wasn’t! Why would he then join us in fighting them if he was their leader? Why would he kill our enemies if he had led them to us?’

Mälloch gasped as another pain knifed through him. ‘How can we be expected to understand the reasoning of someone who intended to kill our king?’ He glared at Sibaris. ‘The details are irrelevant, child. He had my sword. Do you understand? He took it from the dam. He destroyed the one thing that was protecting us as we were trying to flee. He destroyed a defence that was already wavering due to his assault on the Feast of the Two Branches.’

Sibaris blushed and looked away, muttering to himself. ‘I will not believe it.’

‘It remains the truth, whether you believe it or not.’

Sibaris was about to reply when Mälloch stumbled to a halt.

They had reached the lip of a precipice, looking down over a small, steep-sided gulley, hunched over a frozen stream. The ice flashed in the moonlight, like diamonds, scattered across the snow. On the far side of the gulley there was a wall of densely packed fir trees, bristling and dark.

Their sinister companion prodded Finavar up onto the ledge and then turned to face Mälloch.

‘Do you need to rest?’ Varamus’s voice rang out oddly from the wooden mask.

Mälloch shook his head. ‘No.’ He frowned. ‘I was just…’ His words faltered as he stared at the trees opposite. ‘The forest is playing tricks on us,’ he said eventually, with a shrug. Then he nodded at Sibaris and the youth began helping him down the slope.

They crossed lightly over the frozen water and climbed the opposite bank but, as they passed beneath the branches of the fir trees, Mälloch’s frown deepened.

‘When would you expect to reach the borders of the Wildwood?’ he asked looking back over his shoulder.

Varamus shrugged. ‘Another five or six miles south of the stream, depending on the time of year – and the mood of the trees.’

Mälloch nodded, still frowning, but gave no reply.

They kept heading south for another hour. They had been travelling at a painfully slow pace, due to Mälloch’s wound but, as they headed further into the trees, they found the going even slower.

The trees pressed closer in on them with every step and the firs were replaced with knotted yews, oaks and holly that had formed a near impenetrable mesh.

The shadows grew darker rather than lighter and every branch seemed to bar their way. Some of them grasped out like hands, strangely sentient for the time of year, clawing at their skin and confusing their steps.

Eventually Sibaris cried out in frustration. ‘Where are we? And where is the wretched sun?’

Mälloch climbed down into a small hollow and stopped for a moment, leaning against a tree to catch his breath. Like Sibaris, his face and arms were covered in red weals and his hair was a tangled mess.

‘We should nearly have reached the stones by now.’ He tried to look up at the stars, but the branches overhead were too closely linked. He turned back to the spellweaver. ‘What do you say, Varamus?’

The spellweaver looked down at the shifting mass of trees. ‘The borders of the Wildwood should be very near here, but…’

Mälloch nodded. ‘But we should be stood in a patch of open meadow, not this unwelcoming scrub.’

Sibaris glared up at the white-robed sorcerer. Then he looked around the hollow and spotted a wych elm that was not quite as fierce-looking as the others. He climbed up its naked branches and peered through the darkness, trying to spot a landmark.

‘Finally,’ he exclaimed, pointing through the branches. ‘Look there. There’s a patch of white. It must be one of the waystones.’

Mälloch peered through the trees and shook his head as he glimpsed the stone. ‘This cannot be.’ He looked around at the knotted thicket.

Sibaris dropped to his side and took his arm. ‘What cannot be?’

Mälloch was about to reply when he noticed that one of his legs was bound by roots. They were coiling up from the tree he was leaning against – sliding towards his waist like snakes.

He cursed and wrenched them away, almost falling in the process.

Sibaris held him steady and led him back up the slope.

Varamus watched them struggling without making any offer of help.

Sibaris lowered Mälloch to the ground beside him for a moment’s rest and glared at the spellweaver.

Varamus ignored the youth and looked down at Mälloch. ‘My master’s prophecies warned of this time.’

Mälloch looked up at him in amazement. ‘You knew?’

‘We suspected.’

‘Knew what?’ Sibaris helped his great-grandfather into a sitting position. ‘What are you talking about?’

Mälloch waved at the hollow and the forest beyond. Even the shifting plain of snow could not entirely disguise the fact that the forest was moving. Roots and boughs were snatching at the darkness like cornered beasts. The whole region was alive, despite the season. ‘The Wildwood has come to us. That which was bound has been unbound.’

Sibaris recoiled, seeing the trees in a new light. His sense of dread now made sense.

‘Then we must leave!’ He looked at the others in shock. ‘The Wildwood is death. There is no escape.’

Varamus shook his head. ‘We’re safe for now. Whatever treachery freed the spirits has only recently occurred. He jabbed his staff at the hollow. ‘This is a minor tributary compared to the vast torrent that begins past the stones. Some mischief has weakened a portion of the ancient boundary, that is all.’ He shoved Finavar forwards towards the lip of the hollow. ‘Only one of us will glimpse the full horror of the Wildwood.’

Unable to see, Finavar stumbled and fell down the side of the hollow.

Sibaris raced after him and Mälloch lurched to his feet, drew his sword and rounded on the spellweaver. ‘His punishment is stern enough. Your cruelty is needless.’

The voice from behind the mask remained calm and distant. ‘Needless were the deaths of your kin, Mälloch the Elder, when this malcontent decided to betray you. It seems strange that you would defend their killer.’

Mälloch watched Sibaris helping Finavar to his feet and scowled. ‘His fate is pitiful enough. There is no need for us to behave like outsiders.’

Varamus shrugged and began climbing down into the hollow. As he did so, roots burst from the soil, attempting to fasten themselves around his legs. He simply tapped each one with his staff and they snaked back into the ground.

‘We should hurry,’ he said. ‘Until the waystones can reclaim their captives, this is no place to linger.’

The furious expression remained on Mälloch’s face, but he nodded. ‘He’s right, Sibaris. Help me down. Lead me to the stone. We must perform the ritual and leave, or we will share Finavar’s punishment.’

Orion kicked his legs against the branches and raced across the frozen ground. Thorns scraped his flanks and trees reached out for him, but he was already away, racing through the forest on Fuath’s powerful legs and reaching the bank of a broad river. As he padded closer he saw that there was no movement beneath the ice. It was just a hard, iron-coloured slab, brooding under a lacklustre dawn.

He paused at the edge of the river, sniffing the ice suspiciously but, almost immediately, the branches were back, clawing at his hackles and latching onto his paws.

He growled and bounded onto the ice.

It held firm and, after a few falls, he managed to remain upright.

He had reached the river at a wide bend and, once he had padded out into its centre, the branches and roots were unable to follow.

Orion turned and looked back at the forest, confounded by what he had seen. He had travelled this route a thousand times, for countless centuries, but now it was impassable. There was a time when he could have described the ancestry of every yew and alder, but now they were strangers. The branches bristled under his gaze, clicking and snapping as they formed into an impenetrable, thorny mesh.

He padded from side to side, swinging his head low to the ground. Something was badly wrong. He realised that, even if he had wanted to, he could not return the way he had come. With every second that passed, the trees crushed closer together, splitting the brittle winter air with their inhuman sighs. Until now, he had blamed this strangeness on the plague, but he began to wonder if it was something else. There was an ancient anger seeping from the dark – an old hurt that had been biding its time, waiting to strike. The trees had been poisoned against him.

Orion turned his back on the wall of trees and bounded across the ice, heading for the other side of the river. His ancestors were in his every thought now, speaking to him as he went. He heard their voices on the breeze and saw their faces in the skeletal remains of leaves. ‘Find the Darkling Prince,’ they said. ‘Mend what you have broken.’

He shook Fuath’s head as he ran on, breaking back into the forest with a defiant howl.

Anger smashed against him, along with a wave of brittle limbs, but he kept his eyes locked on the horizon. Light was slipping through the boughs. Dawn was approaching and the chorus of voices in his head grew more urgent.

Finavar’s time was almost up.

Chapter Eighteen

Elatior rode through the trees, trembling with anticipation. Behind him, he could hear the agony of the dale as the Wilding Tree readied itself for the dawn. The earth was groaning pitifully as mile-long roots coiled and heaved in the dark, straining to be free. When Elatior left the tree he spoke one last time to the three souls bound to its spine. They had looked to be on the point of collapse, but he knew they would survive a few more hours. He knew their power better than anyone. Their minds, so warped by the nature of their task, would never have recalled their past, but Elatior had not forgotten it. They were his older brothers and, like him, they carried the dangerously potent blood of their father, Ùrlar the Enchanter. Elatior knew that if any of his brothers had proven to be a little stronger, he would now be bound to the tree.

He had a silver-capped staff in one hand and a sword in the other and he was riding his beloved stag – a proud beast by the name of Criopus that twitched as he steered it forwards, sensing its master’s eagerness for the battle ahead.

Elatior looked along the riverbank that marked the boundary of the Silvam Dale. The army massing under his banner was a glorious vision of asrai power. As each kingdom fell, the shamefaced survivors were forced to join their strength to his, so that now, as he prepared for his day of all days, Elatior the Enchanter found himself with over three thousand warriors at his command. There were spearmen and archers from every corner of the forest, clad in bloodstained leather and muttering vengeful oaths. Moving between them were the lithe, bare-skinned devotees of Loec – the shadow-dancers, with their gaudy locks and tattooed skin.

On either flank, Elatior had positioned squadrons of horsemen, each one carrying a spear and longbow as lightly as if they were on foot, rather than crouched on the back of a restless, prancing stallion. And, waiting beneath the trees, out of sight, were Prince Haldus and his hawk riders, waiting for his call.

‘These are the longest stars,’ said Asphalia. She was sat beside him, on a beautiful dapple grey stallion that shimmered like polished steel. She had a bone-handled sword in her hand but, rather than looking at the battle lines, her eyes were fixed on the heavens.

Elatior followed her gaze, understanding her meaning instantly. The two of them had pictured this victory since their youth. Every night they had stood side-by-side, scouring the constellations, searching for guidance, but this would be the last time. This would be the last night they would ever spend waiting. In less than an hour the stars would be gone and the glorious day would begin.

‘Indeed,’ he said, his voice soft with love. Asphalia saw the world more clearly than anyone he had ever met. Her every utterance filled him with pride.

She turned to face him and he saw that she was afraid.

He leant over and placed his hand on hers. ‘We must only fight until dawn. We will not need some brutish, sweaty victory, my love. Prophecy shall be our sword; foresight our shield.’

He looked back at the Wilding Tree. Daylight was still an hour away, but the hulking goliath was already sensing the awful truth – already guessing the final insult that Elatior would use to break its sanity. When dawn came, Elatior and his brothers would hold the tree’s spirit in the mortal realm. As the forest’s last few spirits faded away, leaving nothing but frozen soil and leafless boughs, the soul of the Wilding Tree would remain, sundered from the Otherworld – bound to reality by the guiles of its wardens.

Elatior shook his head in wonder. Centuries of hate would be tipped over into unimaginable rage, just as he led the enemy within reach. Then, at the crucial moment, he and his brothers would wield the ancient tree like a holy blade – crushing the heart of the enemy.

He took a deep breath and held it, trying to calm his racing pulse but it was impossible. The wards that bound him to the tree were already filling him with power. Every time the Wilding Tree creaked in pain, a burst of energy rippled through him. It was intoxicating. The forest rippled away from him like an ocean. As the visions flooded Elatior’s brain, he turned his magisterial gaze on the other side of the river. Snow-capped trees bordered the bank opposite, glittering in the moonlight as one might expect at the onset of winter, but beyond the riverbank, things were not so normal.

Clouds were billowing from the forest like the petals of enormous, gaudy flowers. The fumes were a sickly mixture of grey steam, yellow spores and glinting banks of flies. Larger shapes were humming back and forth in the haze but as the tree’s power shone through Elatior’s eyes, he found it increasingly hard to see clearly.

He lifted a hand from the stag’s back and the silver tip of his staff blazed into life. It burned like a star, throwing back the darkness and causing his guards to gasp and shield their eyes.

Asphalia laughed as she saw the display. ‘You are uncounted.’ Her eyes glittered. ‘Uncounted.’

Elatior laughed along with her and raised the staff higher. Magic flashed across the frozen surface of the river and splashed up against the trees on the far side.

Beneath the branches, a nightmare was taking shape.

For a moment, Elatior could imagine it was just another vision, summoned into being by the power of the Wilding Tree but, as his guards gasped in disgust, he could not deny the truth of it.

Hundreds of beings were emerging from the trees and spreading out along the riverbank. Elatior saw countless shapes and sizes but realised that they were all uniformly grotesque. Most of the creatures were vaguely humanoid, but they were all clad in glistening, diseased flesh and draped in flies. The clouds of insects made it hard to discern the details of the creatures’ mutations, but this only served to make the scene even more disturbing. Elatior grimaced as his light rippled over half-glimpsed outlines of coiled tusks and oozing, rotten wounds. He moved the staff from side to side and the whole mess blurred into a lurching waltz.

Captain Eremon was standing by the river at the head of Elatior’s army, his expression as stern and unforgiving as ever. He was surrounded by the survivors of Locrimere and the banner of their fallen realm snapped above his head. He had begged to lead the defence and his eyes blazed as he turned towards Elatior with a silent question.

Elatior was drunk on the growing power of the Wilding Tree. His limbs were trembling with borrowed hate. He smiled at the captain, speaking so softly that only those nearby could hear.

‘Destroy them.’

Captain Eremon gave a stiff nod and lifted a long horn of carved bone to his lips.

A deep, single note rang out through the trees and the wardancers started to howl, clanging their leaf-blade swords and screaming like beasts. The feral cry spread down the lines and was picked up by the archers and spearmen, swelling into a roar so loud that it drowned out the sound of the horn. It was as though an ocean crashed through the forest.

Elatior’s smile grew as Criopus shifted beneath him, unnerved by the force of the sound.

Then he raised his staff higher, painting his warriors silver as they flooded across the ice.

Chapter Nineteen

Mälloch squeezed awkwardly through the branches, cursing as they pressed against him, tearing his bearskin cloak and scraping against his skin. With a final, angry grunt he wrenched himself free and staggered into a narrow clearing.

It was no natural space. As the Wildwood grew, it crushed the trees ever closer, obscuring any trace of the ground with a mesh of roots, creating an oppressive, airless gloom. The space Mälloch had entered was a grudging concession to the ancient power at its centre – a seven foot-tall pillar of white stone, carved with runes. In several places the runes were obscured by dark, ominous-looking stains.

The trees hunkered around it were like animals waiting to pounce, but the power of the runes kept them at bay, leaving a small circle of frozen ground – just enough to accommodate Mälloch’s party. Sibaris was the second to emerge, grimacing as he fought through the last few branches and tumbled free of their grasp. He was followed a few seconds later by Varamus, who hauled the still-gagged and blindfolded Finavar behind him and threw him onto the ground next to Sibaris.

‘There isn’t much time,’ said Varamus. The other three were panting with the effort of fighting through the trees, but Varamus’s voice retained an oddly distant quality and betrayed no sign of tiredness. ‘We must carry out the sentence.’

Mälloch glared at the spellweaver, outraged by his demanding tone, but he nodded all the same. ‘Fasten him to the stone,’ he said, turning to his great-grandson.

Sibaris looked up, his face streaked with blood, and did not move.

‘Fasten him,’ said Mälloch, his voice rumbling with power.

Sibaris paled and climbed to his feet.

He helped Finavar up from the ground and led him to the white pillar. Once there, he loosened the vines that held the prisoner’s arms, unravelled the tendrils and wrapped them around the stone, fixing Finavar firmly in place with a series of intricate knots and a whispered charm.

Once he was done he gave his great-grandfather a sullen, sideways glance and stepped away.

Mälloch glanced at the surrounding trees, noticing how they strained and clicked. They sensed he was about to offer them a victim. They could already taste blood. His lip curled in disgust, but he waved the figure in white to his side.

‘Speak the words,’ he said, drawing one of his curved swords. ‘I’ll make the mark.’

Varamus nodded and stepped closer to the stone.

Finavar tried to speak, but his words were muffled by his gag.

Mälloch sensed Sibaris’s gaze, burning into the side of his face, but refused to acknowledge it. He felt nothing but pity for Finavar, but he was determined not to be a fool a second time. The wardancer must be given to the Wildwood. There was no doubt in his mind.

Varamus drew a slender strip of carved birch from his robes and began to read from it, muttering a droning chant.

Finavar thrashed his head from side to side, trying to speak again. His words were still muffled and he strained at his bonds, trying to free himself from the stone.

Mälloch raised his sword and used the tip to start carving an image into the rock. He moved the blade in time to Varamus’s words, creating a spiralling trail of leaves on the surface of the waystone.

Sibaris muttered a curse as he saw the effect.

For every word Varamus read, and for every line Mälloch carved, there was a deep, cracking sound from the surrounding trees.

Mälloch sensed shadows looming over his head as he worked, reaching up over the struggling shape of Finavar. He noticed that even the prisoner’s bonds were writhing in time to the spell, drawing blood from Finavar’s skin as they moved.

Varamus’s voice droned on without any trace of emotion, but as his gaze neared the end of the strip of birch, the ground began to shake and the cracking sounds grew louder. A cage of sharpened, quivering branches had now formed around Finavar.

As the thicket pressed against him, Finavar let out a desperate, mute howl.

Mälloch grimaced as he carved the final piece of the rune and then stepped away from the stone.

‘Wait,’ he said, turning to Varamus.

Varamus paused his recitation and turned to the noble, his expression hidden by the wooden mask. ‘There is no time for your pity,’ he said, nodding at the shuddering trees. ‘You must give him to the forest. As you said you would. There are only a few words left.’

Mälloch looked around and saw the truth of his words. As the sky shifted from black to indigo, the forest was rising up around them, flexing thorns like claws and preparing to strike. In a few seconds the trees would take their prize.

Then something else caught Mälloch’s eye – something was watching them from the darkness. As he studied the shadows he caught a glimpse of movement that did not belong to the branches – something that shimmered with an inner fire. Doubt gripped him. Things were not as they should be. All Mälloch’s long years told him that he was missing something.

He turned back to the stone and saw that Finavar was now thrashing wildly against it, trying to free his gag.

Mälloch’s skin glimmered as he turned to Varamus. ‘I will not condemn him without giving him a chance to speak.’ He tapped the tip of his sword against the white stone. ‘I believe in his sentence as much as you, but to die like this – trussed up like a mute beast, is an affront to the gods. He is a servant of Loec. He is a bard! He cannot die without a final word.’ Mälloch glanced up at the growing light. ‘Will you answer to the shadow-dancer for this?’

Varamus shrugged and began to read out the last few words. Then he hesitated and glanced into the shifting darkness, catching the same glimpse of movement that had unnerved Mälloch.

As dawn approached, Mälloch realised that he could see the spellweaver’s eyes, glinting through the slits in his mask. There was fear in them.

‘What harm can it do?’ Varamus’s voice remained neutral. ‘Whatever pleas he makes, I will complete the rite. I will not let you free him.’

‘I have no intention of freeing him,’ said Mälloch, nodding at Sibaris.

Sibaris raced to the stone and removed the vines from Finavar’s eyes and mouth.

The wardancer could do nothing for a moment but gasp and blink.

Then he fixed his wild stare on Mälloch. ‘You’re banishing the wrong person!’ His voice was hoarse from days of not speaking.

Mälloch stared coldly at him and even Sibaris looked ashamed on Finavar’s behalf. They had expected a beautiful farewell, or an eloquent plea for forgiveness, but not this.

Varamus gave a disdainful laugh and then began reading out the final words of his spell.

Each syllable dragged more talon-like shapes from the forest. They creaked ominously as they arrayed themselves around Finavar.

He strained at his bonds and kept his gaze locked on Mälloch.

‘I’ve been a fool, but I see it now!’ cried Finavar. ‘I know what I said to you, but I am not the one bringing this plague down on our people.’ His voice became shrill with emotion. ‘Ordaana is the enemy. She is behind all of this!’

Varamus faltered. There was only one symbol left to read out from the stick, but the spellweaver was too shocked by Finavar’s words to finish.

‘Lady Ordaana?’ His voice was verging on laughter. ‘Of Locrimere? Why would she betray her own people?’

Finavar kept staring at Mälloch. ‘She believes Ariel drove her to madness. She thinks Ariel and Orion caused her to murder her own daughter. She wants revenge.’

Varamus shook his head and lifted the stick, preparing to read out the final word.

‘Wait,’ said Mälloch, holding up a warning hand. As he listened to Finavar’s impassioned plea, his feeling of doubt became overwhelming. ‘Perhaps we should–?’

Varamus shook his head and started to speak the final word of his spell.

The trees drew back, widening the clearing and flooding it with pale dawn light.

A shape exploded from the undergrowth and slammed into Varamus.

Mälloch and Sibaris cried out as they saw that an enormous black hound had latched its jaws around the spellweaver’s throat.

Varamus screamed and rolled, dropping the stick to punch the hound as his robes turned crimson.

The animal remained locked at his throat, snarling and growling as it tore into his flesh.

‘Finish the rite,’ he gasped, managing to push back the hound’s head for a moment.

Mälloch was horrified but shook his head. The sight of the hound had sent his mind tumbling back through the centuries to his time with the Wild Hunt. He knew without question whose beast he was looking at. He staggered around the clearing, looking from the slavering hound, to Finavar and then at Sibaris, who was looking equally stunned.

‘Orion,’ gasped Mälloch.

Sibaris stared at him in confusion.

Mälloch levelled his sword at the hound. ‘This is a herald of Orion. This is his very spirit.’ Mälloch’s voice trembled with awe. ‘Orion is amongst us.’

Sensing that its work was done, the hound loosed its hold on Varamus’s throat and backed away, crouching before Finavar and keeping its fierce gaze locked on the others.

Varamus rolled away, clutching at his throat and gasping for breath.

Sibaris rushed to his side and helped him into a sitting position.

Varamus stared at the hound in disbelief. His voice was a ragged cough. ‘It’s protecting him.’

Mälloch nodded in wonder. ‘Orion is amongst us,’ he repeated, his words little more than a whisper. He dropped to one knee and nodded his head in a bow, glaring at Sibaris until he did the same.

Finavar saw that he had been saved and slumped in his bonds, letting out a long, exhausted sigh.

Varamus crawled next to Mälloch and Sibaris and attempted to bow, keeping a hand at his throat to stifle the blood.

For a moment the only sound was heavy breathing and the creak of the trees, then the hound snarled and leapt straight for Mälloch and the others, letting out a rattling snarl.

They cowered, then realised, as the animal raced past, that they were not its prey.

Mälloch turned and saw, for the briefest second, the faint glimmer of light he had glimpsed earlier. It was a spirit of some kind – a jumble of stick-like limbs, no more than knee-high, shimmering with magic and topped with an elongated, skull-like head.

The hound smashed into the odd little figure, but not before the spirit had lifted Varamus’s stick from the ground and read out the final word of the spell.

The hound snarled again as it tore the stick figure apart.

Mälloch and the others could not hear the animal’s rage, however.

As soon as the spirit uttered the final word of the charm, the Wildwood took its prize.

The trees looming over the stone launched a tide of sharpened branches at the white rock.

Finavar’s eyes widened in fear but, before he could even scream, the trees sliced into him.

To Mälloch and the others, it looked as though a tornado had entered the clearing.

There was deafening explosion of roots, leaves and branches.

After a few moments the turmoil ceased and Mälloch tumbled across the hard earth, coming to a halt a few feet from the waystone.

Finavar was gone. The whole rock was red with his blood.

Mälloch groaned and staggered closer. Finavar’s bonds were hanging loosely from the stone, along with several large pieces of his skin.

Beyond the stone the forest was a boiling mass of movement. Mälloch stepped closer but fronds lashed out at him, slicing into his skin like razors.

‘Keep back!’ cried Sibaris, dragging the noble back from the tumult. ‘There is no return from the Wildwood!’

Mälloch allowed the youth to steer him away from the thrashing trees and then dropped to the ground, shaking his head. Then he looked around in confusion.

‘The hound!’ he exclaimed, but all he saw was Varamus, lying still in a pool of blood, obviously dead.

Sibaris was staring into the roiling mass of shadows beyond the stone. ‘It followed him.’ His voice sounded hollow. ‘The hound went into the Wildwood.’

Mälloch stared at Sibaris. Then he sat down heavily and pressed his palms into his eyes.

‘Then they both died.’

Sibaris helped him from the ground and they saw that dawn was breaking over the forest. The trees surged and rolled like waves but, rather than crushing Mälloch and Sibaris, they flooded around the stone, heading away from them.

Sibaris saw a chance and raced back the way they had come, half carrying his great-grandfather.

As they scrambled through the undergrowth, they heard a long, agonised scream.

Chapter Twenty

Captain Eremon reached the opposite bank of the river. Rage had driven him into a sprint and he was the first to see the enemy close up. He showed no trace of emotion as he met a wall of pockmarked flesh, coiled in rags of yellow cloud, but his soul was burning. He could hear Locrimere’s dead, howling for revenge at the back of his mind. He hesitated for a second, savouring the moment, then he let his sword arm fall, and fall again, hacking pallid limbs from hunched, fly-shrouded bodies.

The daemon host shuffled towards him, a grey-green tide of filth that would have quickly overwhelmed him, but, seconds later, the rest of the asrai crashed into them. There was a wet crunch as spears and swords struck home and Eremon grunted in satisfaction, hacking a head clean from its shoulders and kicking it back across the frozen river. The body toppled to the ground and Eremon turned to face the figure that was cowering in his wake. Lord Beldeas was wide-eyed with fear and his mean little features cringed beneath his pale expanse of forehead. He had replaced his emerald robes with thick plates of leather armour and the weight of it was clearly too much for him. He was struggling to move with the natural grace of his kind. It was only terror that had enabled him to match the speed of his captain.

‘We must hold the other side of the river!’ he gasped, clutching at Eremon’s shoulder and trying to drag him back the way they had come. ‘What madness drove you to charge? The Enchanter’s order was for the archers to fire – not that we advance.’

Eremon ignored his lord and gestured to the headless corpse at his feet. ‘They can be stopped!’ He lifted his voice over the din. ‘Behead them! Behead them and they will fall!’

The archers waiting on the dale side of the river chose that moment to loose their shots and the air grew dark.

Ranks of grotesque shapes stumbled and fell as the arrows found their mark and Eremon’s foot soldiers pressed forwards.

The Enchanter’s light pulsed through the gloom as more asrai joined the fight. The light flashed across lithe, tattooed flesh as the dancers of Loec waltzed into the battle, howling wild oaths as they advanced; tumbling through the other asrai like smoke and slicing into the enemy. They moved with such speed and grace that they seemed to fly, springing from head to head, whirling and singing as they carved the daemons apart. Eremon caught brief glimpses of their painted faces and gave another bark of satisfaction.

Eremon’s pride grew as whole lines of daemons fell to the ground, skewered by spears, bristling with arrows or hacked apart by the dancers’ blades. Then he glanced at the frail figure staggering after him. He sneered as he saw Beldeas trying to cower behind his own men, clutching his sword before him like a shield.

Eremon pressed on, chopping and lunging, dodging claws and battered iron. Flies and stench pressed against him and he thanked the gods for the strip of cloth wrapped around his face. For a while, his momentum carried him on a wave of blind fury but, as he started to slow down, stalled by the crush of rotten bodies, he saw more clearly what he was fighting. Bloated, pus-smeared faces leered at him from the carnage, studded with rolling, single eyes full of wry amusement. As he shouldered, stabbed and punched, he saw flies as big as dogs hurtling towards him, trailing cruel barbs and wielding serrated mandibles. The insects clicked and clacked as they attempted to latch onto him but he was too fast.

He kicked one fly to the ground, ducked beneath another and then plunged his sword, two-handed, into a third. Vivid, yellow blood spurted from the wound and he rolled aside before it could touch his flesh

Behind him, Lord Beldeas screeched, barely managing to dodge the spray.

Eremon faltered and the ranks of spearmen and wardancers caught up with him, crashing into the daemons, still singing as they came to a stop, halted by the mass of bodies.

Eremon was vaguely aware that he was no longer alone, but he was finding it hard to keep a grip on reality. The faces that surrounded him had become of a confusing blur of human, amphibian and insect. Some of the flies whirring overhead were enormous and, as Eremon struggled to press forwards, he saw that the whole army was protecting a core of enormous, blind grubs, digging up the forest floor and making a channel for the river. As the vast, slug-like monsters churned up the ground, hissing yellow liquid poured straight towards the Wilding Tree.

The daemons’ faces filled his thoughts and his head swam with images of bloated, diseased skin, puckered around mindless, yellow eyes. The thought of such creatures, oozing through his beloved forest was horrific. What had they destroyed to reach this far? What had they already ruined? As the river progressed it threw up teetering, fungal growths, clad in a sickening mixture of gaudy colours. The forest was ready to adopt its winter guise but the daemons were denying it – painting it instead in a revolting array of carnival colours.

Eremon clenched his jaw and plunged on, conscious that his soldiers’ eyes were upon him.

The other asrai swarmed after him and he began to make progress again, forcing the enemy back towards their precious grubs.

Then he stumbled to a halt and his sword dropped, forgotten against his leg.

Spearmen rushed to his side, defending him as he stared in shock.

At the head of the yellow river was a giant. The thing was similar in shape to the other daemons – skinny, ridiculous limbs, a vast gut and a single eye, but its head was crowned by three great tusks, one of which was topped by a swinging, brass bell. It was not the size of the thing that made Eremon pause, however, it was its stance. The giant daemon was standing stock-still with its scalloped, black sword pointing directly at Eremon. As the battle raged around it, the daemon had stopped to single Eremon out from the general carnage. Its eye was locked on him and its sagging mouth was quivering with laughter.

Beldeas followed Eremon’s gaze and saw the giant. He shook his head. ‘This is too much,’ he said, turning to leave. ‘We must return to the dale. This is madness.’

Eremon’s face drained of colour, but he latched a hand over Beldeas’s shoulder and dragged him back.

‘We must kill it,’ he said.

Daemons were pouring towards them from every direction but, as Eremon and Beldeas talked, a circle of kneeling spearmen had formed around them, protecting them from the gibbering mass.

‘We must stop that horror,’ said Eremon, glaring at Beldeas, ‘My lord.’

Beldeas scowled back at Eremon, but before he could reply, Eremon shoved him back into the fray and followed quickly after him.

Prince Elatior rode to the riverbank. Dawn had not yet arrived, but he could see Eremon quite clearly on the far side, lit up by the silver glow that was still pouring from his staff. The captain was hacking through the enemy lines, leading a spearhead of asrai up from the river and heading for the trees.

‘What is he doing?’ he asked in quiet, controlled tones.

He was surrounded by ranks of white-masked faces, but they gave no reply.

Princess Asphalia nodded. ‘His form is blurred by his pride. He has become your blade.’

Elatior nodded and replied in the same stiff voice. ‘But he is leading them away from me.’

One of the spellweavers spoke up. ‘Perhaps you should follow, my lord? You could destroy the enemy at Eremon’s side. Victory here, or victory there; what does it matter?’

Elatior turned his head very slowly, feeling as though a sudden movement would unleash something beyond his control. The rage of the tree was crashing through him. The others could see nothing unusual about his appearance, but he felt as though he were a sacred vessel, straining to hold a tempest. Even moving slowly gave him the odd sensation that the world was on the edge of collapse, like a cheaply made theatre set caught in a storm. It was wonderful. Beyond wonderful. He felt like a god. He wondered, actually, if he might not even be a god. And it was still not even dawn. When the Wilding Tree saw the true agony of its situation, the power and the fury would triple. He shivered with pleasure as he considered what it would feel like.

He glared at the masked spellweaver and started to speak. ‘My power is linked to the tree. If I stray from its roots–’

He stopped speaking as he saw the result of his stare – the spellweaver had gone into a spasm. As Elatior’s eyes passed over him, the mage’s bones cracked and popped out of their sockets, as though an invisible giant were rolling them between its finger and thumb.

It was dreadful to watch but Elatior could not tear his eyes away, and the more he stared, the more the spellweaver buckled and snapped.

The spellweaver tried to defend himself, grasping at the air and wrenching shoots from the earth, trying to launch them at Elatior, but it was no use. Crimson blossomed across his white robes as his body ruptured and split. A pitiful choking sound came from behind his mask.

The other spellweavers backed away in horror as he dropped, lifeless, to the ground.

Only Asphalia looked unconcerned. She nodded calmly. ‘Fate is gathering its own.’

Elatior closed his eyes and tried to steady himself. He had no desire to destroy his own witches. When he opened his eyes again, he kept his gaze neutral and did his best to suppress the currents surging through his mind. To his relief, he was able to look at the cowering mages without killing any more of them.

‘Make sure Eremon is not too successful,’ he said, regaining his soft voice. ‘The battle must end here, with me.’

The spellweavers nodded eagerly and hurried across the river.

Elatior stroked the neck of his stag and looked out at the battle. ‘I asked him to hold the river, not drive them away from me.’

Asphalia nodded to a lumbering, colossal shape, wading through the banks of flies towards Eremon. ‘The captain is approaching his final shore.’

Prince Haldus steered Nuin high above the clouds and the warhawk let out a piercing shriek. Far from the battle below they saw the edge of the dawn, simmering on the horizon. The light was already creeping through the leafless trees and flashing across frozen pools. Soon it would flood the groves of the Silvam Dale and banish the final shreds of autumn. Haldus muttered under his breath, annoyed that he had waited so long to launch his attack.

Nuin reached the zenith of her climb and rested on a thermal, allowing the air to hold her for a second, far from the frozen earth below. Haldus took a moment to look around. They were flanked by dozens of similar birds, all hovering as they waited to see his next move; all carrying riders of their own that could have been mistaken for the prince, with their tanned, weather-beaten skin and their trailing branch-like headgear, but Haldus’s grim scowl was unmistakable, made even more fierce by the spiralling designs he had gouged into his own face.

He hopped lightly onto his feet, feeling Nuin’s muscles shift beneath him as he crouched in readiness for her dive. He drew his bow and nocked an arrow into place, then turned to the other riders.

‘Whatever the Enchanter has planned, the forest will thank us for ending the lives of those winged monstrosities.’

Then he gave Nuin a gentle tap with his foot and clutched onto her feathers as she dived back down through the clouds. Wind screamed through his headgear and filled his eyes with tears, but as they plummeted towards the trees he saw the battle open up before him. Captain Eremon was turning a defence into an offence. He had already pushed the daemons back from the river and was now driving them back into the trees. The daemons had tried to spread their attack wider, but they had been met by squadrons of riders who were now thundering from the dale. Asrai had been pouring into the Silvam Dale for weeks and Eremon had a vast force behind him. The riders were one with their steeds, moving with seamless, fluid grace as they launched a volley of arrows into the huddled mass of the daemons.

Haldus felt a moment’s doubt as he recalled Elatior’s plan. He knew that the idea was to let the daemons reach the Wilding Tree and then turn its wrath against them and he could see quite clearly that Eremon was seeking his own glorious victory.

Haldus’s doubt was short-lived. As Nuin hurled him towards the earth, his limbs filled with vigour and his heart began to pound. This was what he lived for and everything else fell away.

As they neared the ground, Prince Haldus saw their target – enormous, armoured flies, carrying daemons through the air and attacking Eremon’s vanguard with cruel-looking barbs.

He gave Nuin a gentle nudge and she changed her direction, aiming her beak at one of the flying monsters.

Haldus was nearly thrown from his mount as it collided with its prey, but he managed to retain his balance and loose a few arrows into the creature’s thick hide before Nuin pounded her wings and launched them back up towards the clouds.

Haldus cursed as he looked back. The armoured fly showed no sign that it had registered the arrows.

He looked around and saw that the other hawk riders were having just the same problem. They were looping around the enemy mounts, launching arrows as they went, but the daemonic creatures were oblivious to their wounds.

Even worse, one of the flying creatures had latched onto a hawk with its mandibles and the two creatures, along with their grappling riders, were now plunging towards the battle below.

Haldus steered Nuin back into another dive.

She speared through the air, pursuing the wounded hawk and Haldus shot arrow after arrow as they fell.

Nuin’s speed was incredible and they were soon gaining on the falling bird, but the ground was hurtling up to meet them.

However many arrows Haldus fired, they seemed to have no effect so, at the last minute, just as they were about to hit the ground, he drew a sword and sliced the monster’s head from its abdomen.

The headless insect finally loosed its grip but it was too late. Haldus and Nuin screamed to safety, but the other hawk slammed into the forest floor, killing several combatants, as well as itself and its rider.

Haldus howled in frustration as Nuin flew him to safety, but the other riders redoubled their war cries as they saw the headless monster smash to the ground. They knew, now, what to do and they set about it with a wild fervour.

Hawks flew in from countless directions, slamming into the winged monsters and allowing hawk riders to hack away their heads.

For a while Haldus and Nuin lost themselves to the frenzy of killing. Then, after rising above the clouds and seeing the approaching dawn for a second time, Haldus recalled Elatior’s plan and saw that it was in danger of going disastrously wrong. The enemy was being driven away from the Enchanter and his tree, rather than towards them.

Prince Haldus quashed his bloodlust for a moment as Nuin flew back down through the clouds. Rather than seeking out another target, he looked for a sign of Eremon. He knew that the asrai would follow him without question. The captain needed to lead the others back.

For a moment he could not make Eremon out in the general scrum of monsters, then, when he finally spotted him, Prince Haldus cried out in shock.

The sky was turning grey as Eremon ducked and weaved through the enemy ranks. Dawn had almost come. Tusks, swords and claws lashed out at him as he ran, but he could not be stopped – not now he had seen his destiny. The giant daemon still had its sword levelled at him and a space had formed around it as the lesser daemons backed away, leaving a patch of exposed earth, hissing and steaming as the river of bile rolled closer.

Eremon glanced back and saw that the other children of Locrimere were following in his wake – pressing ahead of the other asrai and revelling in every head they took. He grunted to himself. This was it. If they saw him, now, defeating the most fearsome of the monsters, as Lord Beldeas cowered pathetically behind him, his claim would be secure. They would demand that he rule them.

Eremon’s dreams swirled around him as he hacked towards the giant. He would found a new Locrimere, greater than the first, and rule it in the way it was always meant to be ruled – with all the pride and vision of their ancestors. He would plant stands of silver birch, then bind them with ancient charms until they formed living, silver towers that reached for the clouds; glittering sceptres born of the earth’s–

Air exploded from Eremon’s lungs as something tripped him and sent him crashing to the ground.

‘What are you doing?’ howled Lord Beldeas, his eyes rolling. ‘We must return to the river!’ He paused to fend off a blow as daemons crowded around them.

Eremon clambered to his feet, cursing as his dreams scattered into the crush of bodies. He stepped to Beldeas’s side and parried a blow aimed at his head, before decapitating the attacker with a fierce backhanded swipe.

Eremon and Beldeas both staggered backwards, dodging more blows as they went.

As they reeled away from their attackers, their kinsmen arrived, meeting the enemy with a row of spear tips and giving Eremon a second chance to address his lord.

‘I will have its head!’ he barked, jabbing his sword at the giant. He lifted his voice above the clamour so that all could hear. ‘I will lead us to victory, Beldeas, if you will not.’

Beldeas’s face flushed with colour, but before he could reply, Eremon leapt back into the fray, shouldered his way through the enemy and burst into the clearing around the giant daemon.

He stumbled as he approached it, met by a wall of foetid stink and clouds of whirring flies. He waved his sword, trying to clear the air, but it was useless – the more he moved, the more he agitated the noisome atmosphere.

Behind him, the din of the battle rose to a new pitch, as the spearmen and dancers tried to break into the clearing. The tallymen held firm and Eremon realised he had been drawn into the heart of the daemons’ army. The ground beneath him was spitting and hissing and the whole scene lit up in a furious, yellow glare as the river advanced.

From out of this dazzling, swirling miasma, came the giant, drawing back its sword to strike and causing its brass bell to ring out again.

The sound of the bell hit Eremon with almost as much force as the sword blow that followed it. He was still reeling from the harsh sound when the daemon’s shard of black metal connected with his own sword.

He managed to parry the blow, but the force of it reverberated through his arms and sent him flying back through the air. He landed on the trembling earth with a howl.

The daemon loomed over him, still grinning, and drove its sword at Eremon’s face, hammering the weapon down towards him in a two-handed blow.

Eremon rolled aside, but he was too slow and the weapon caught his shoulder, slicing through muscle and pinning him to the ground.

Eremon’s blood flew across the earth, mingling with the yellow acid that was pooling around him.

He cried out again, and this time it was a wild, furious sound as he wrenched himself free, leaving behind a large hunk of flesh.

Eremon staggered drunkenly around the clearing, his left arm flapping uselessly at his side. As the daemon lurched after him, laughing, Eremon shook his head, trying to clear his head as pain, flies and fumes pressed in on him.

The other asrai redoubled their efforts to reach him, throwing themselves against the wall of rotting flesh, but it was no use – hundreds more of the monsters were flooding out to do battle, some still wearing shreds of asrai armour.

The giant daemon surprised Eremon by suddenly changing direction. It had been lurching with slow deliberation, but now it rocked back on its heel and brought its sword down towards him in a fast, backhanded swipe.

Eremon’s shoulder was a needlepoint of pain and he found, despite all the lunacy that surrounded him, that his dreams were suddenly more vivid than ever. As the blade whistled towards him, slicing through the yellow clouds of spores and flies, he pictured the white towers of his new Locrimere. He saw Beldeas and the others kneeling before him as a spiralling, ivory crown was placed on his brow. Visions and pain combined in his head, revealing the battle in vivid, blazing detail and ridding him of his doubt. He dodged the daemon’s blow with ease and the huge blade sliced uselessly into the ground, causing the monster to stagger past him and fall to its knees.

Eremon harnessed his momentum and rolled back towards his foe, plunging his blade into its throat.

The bell clanged again as the daemon tried to snap its head back to avoid Eremon’s sword.

Eremon was too fast.

His sword cut through Bule’s blue-grey skin and a nest of severed arteries flopped from the wound.

The daemon gurgled laughter as it climbed to its feet and rounded on him, spraying gore and profanities as it clutched its torn throat.

Eremon whirled around to face the asrai, holding his bloody sword aloft.

They roared in approval and pressed harder against the ranks of daemons, who began staggering backwards under their weight.

At the same moment, the river of bile began bubbling and steaming even more violently. Great geysers of acid arced up from its surface and scalding steam rolled over the combatants.

Eremon faltered for a moment and lowered his sword, peering into the tumult. The river was spreading quickly across the ground towards him and he could see the vast grubs that were driving it onwards, but there was something else – something was stirring in the depths.

He saw movement to his left and recalled his opponent just in time.

Bule’s wound was not enough to halt it. The daemon had one hand clasped around its throat, but the other was bringing its sword down towards Eremon’s face.

Buoyed by the cheers of the asrai, Eremon danced lightly out of harm’s way and drove his own blade deep into the daemon’s thigh.

Bule laughed again but, as Eremon yanked his blade to one side, splitting muscle and bone, the daemon’s leg folded beneath it and it crashed to the ground.

The bell rolled free, clattering across the ground and vanishing into the battle.

Bule’s drooping grin finally vanished and it moaned in fear as the bell tumbled away from its outstretched fingers.

As the daemon struggled to its knees Eremon appeared at its side. His expression was as severe as ever, but there was a strange light in his eyes as he glanced back at his kindred and brought his sword down through the daemon’s neck.

The asrai howled as Bule’s head came free and bounced across the ground towards them.

The giant body collapsed immediately, crashing to the ground at Eremon’s feet.

Eremon closed his eyes for a split second, savouring the moment, then wrenched his sword from the earth and staggered back towards his army.

To his dismay, he saw that he had misunderstood their cries. They were not howling victoriously, but in horror. They were staring past him at the river.

He turned around.

The bile had erupted, revealing a hulk of glistening, white, slug-like flesh.

Eremon shook his head in mute denial, unable to quite comprehend what he was looking at. Its flesh was translucent, rubbery and crawling with mites and, where its face should be, there was a mound of thrashing tentacles. As it rose from the bile, Eremon was reminded of something else – the monster moved with all the gleeful enthusiasm of a hound, bounding along to meet its master.

Eremon took a deep breath and clutched his sword tighter. He saw immediately that he could not defeat it, but he refused to back down – not with the eyes of Locrimere on him. He stepped boldly forwards, striding through the steam, smoke and screams; preparing to face death with all the dignity he could muster.

Shapes rushed by overhead, tearing open the clouds of flies and revealing a brief glimpse of the sky. Eremon stumbled, buffeted by the beating of powerful wings. Hope flooded his veins as he saw dozens of warhawk riders led by Prince Haldus, diving straight towards the monstrous being.

One by one they hurtled between the grasping tentacles, giving their riders the chance to launch arrows into the creature’s face.

The daemon showed no fear, or anger for that matter. Instead, it looked oddly excited by the newcomers and reached out to touch them.

One of the hawks was already carrying a wound and it lacked the speed of the others. The daemon’s limb brushed against its wing, sending the bird spinning off into the trees and Eremon saw it crash to the ground, crushing its rider as it did so.

The daemon rippled and surged onto the riverbank, panting and grasping at the airborne shapes.

Haldus and the others crossed the sky in a wide, graceful arc and then looped down through the clouds, making for the daemon’s face again.

They were intercepted by three of the armoured fly-like creatures that swooped into view and slammed into them.

Eremon shook his head as he took in the scene. It was like a fireside tale sprung to life. Monsters and daemons were everywhere, battling in the heavens and along the whole length of the dale. The asrai were surrounded on all sides. They had plunged deep into the enemy ranks but, as the casualties grew, so did the number of daemons, until the wardancers and spearmen became an island of sanity, stranded in an ocean of madness.

As flies and steam swirled around him, Eremon finally registered the true pain of his wound. His arm was almost completely severed and his armour was sodden with blood. His head grew light as the storm raged around him, but he staggered on towards the monster, dragging his sword behind him.

The lump of white flesh hurried eagerly towards him, but it was still thirty feet away when Eremon heard a thud to his left and paused.

Nuin’s gaze was unreadable but Haldus’s mask of scars could no longer hide his alarm.

‘You need to lead them back to the river!’ he cried, fending off attacks as he raced towards Eremon.

Eremon could not believe that victory had eluded him; that his dreams had been stolen from him.

‘You must!’ cried Haldus, dragging him back towards Nuin. ‘They’ll all die.’

Eremon looked back at his dying kinsmen and knew Haldus was right. He was about to accept defeat when Haldus gasped and loosed his grip.

‘Your shoulder!’ he cried, making the sign of Kurnous and backing away.

Eremon frowned and looked at his wound. Where the giant’s sword had cut him there was now a forest of pale, worm-like tentacles, sprouting from his exposed flesh. They were writhing like snakes and, where they had erupted from his skin, his limb was starting to change shape, twisting into a withered mockery of an arm. The skin was already dying and rolling back from his tendons.

Eremon’s head rocked back on his shoulders and he laughed. ‘And now I am damned!’

Prince Haldus stepped back and raised his bow, nocking an arrow into place.

Eremon looked back at him and the expression on his face was one of relief. He looked around at the battle with a strange glazed stare. ‘I have reaped my reward.’

Prince Haldus frowned, but kept his arrow trained on Eremon.

Eremon shook his head. ‘I’m not mad, Haldus. Perhaps I was, but now I see what a fool I’ve been.’ He was about to say more, but the fighting surged closer and he simply gave another laugh, waving Haldus back to his mount. ‘Take this,’ he said, unfastening his horn and throwing it to the prince. ‘Lead them back. They need you. They will follow you.’

Prince Haldus looked dazed and was about to speak again when Eremon wiped the gore from his face and strode away, heading towards the blazing yellow glare of the river and the mountain of white flesh.

Screams erupted from overhead as the monster caught another one of the hawks. It grasped it and turned it gleefully around in its tentacles. As the rider was crushed by the daemon’s writhing limbs, Prince Haldus leapt back onto Nuin and the bird launched back into the air.

Eremon picked up his pace as he neared the monster, breaking into a sprint as his feet broke the surface of the river. He could feel the acid eating into his flesh.

New visions filled his mind – a mindless, gaudy lunacy that threatened to overwhelm him, but he kept true to his purpose, raising his sword as he neared the towering beast.

He nodded as he heard his horn in the distance, blaring out across the battle, summoning the army back towards the river and the Wilding Tree, but he knew now that there was no return for him. His dreams had been proved lies. His pride had been misplaced. As his mind slipped into madness that one truth remained.

He reached the monster and it greeted him with grasping, coiling limbs.

Eremon found what he was seeking – the thing’s eyes. They were glinting, black beads, like the eyes of a crustacean, but he sensed delight in their featureless depths.

As he ran his head began to mutate, sprouting new growth from the centre of his forehead and flooding his mind with pain, but still he raced on, launching himself through the air with a final, bitter oath.

He collided with the monster like a stone hitting a pool.

Flesh rippled and burst around him and he vanished from view.

Dawn came, bringing the light of three suns. The first rose above the treetops, flooding the battlefield with cold, merciless light. It revealed a bright plain of mutated, twitching corpses and limbs. It made a silhouette of Eremon’s butchered army as they struggled back towards the Silvam Dale, trying desperately to regain the river as Prince Haldus swooped overhead, summoning them home with the lonely cry of Eremon’s war horn.

The other two suns were the eyes of Prince Elatior. White light was pouring from beneath his brow, lancing from his head with such power that his own guards had dropped to their knees and shielded their faces.

As Criopus bucked and pranced beneath him, Elatior leant back and extended his arms, shaking with the force of the power tearing through his body. Winter had come and the Wilding Tree had found its soul bound to the mortal realm. Its fury was beyond anything Elatior could have prayed for. And, thanks to the sacrifice of his brothers, every ounce of it was being channelled through him.

He looked down across the battle and could not distinguish asrai from daemon – they were mites, all of them, crawling in the shadow of his godhood. With a single thought he lifted Criopus from the ground, surrounding them both in a nimbus of blinding winter sunlight. As they passed over the corpse-crowded river he raised his staff and allowed a tiny portion of the Wilding Tree’s pain to leak from its silver cap. It threw back his arm and the whole valley shook with the power of this thought. Great fissures opened up along the length of the river and the same glare that was pouring from his flesh exploded from the earth. Daemons and asrai tumbled into chasms of blinding light and there was a grinding, rolling crash that sounded like thunder, trapped beneath the earth.

The world shifted and rolled. Trees were uprooted and vast shards of rock speared into the air as Elatior began to sing. It was the voice of death and ruin. It was the voice of the Wilding Tree, railing against its imprisonment and all the long years of torture Elatior had inflicted on it. Every rhyme drew more terrible light from the ground and sent more of the combatants tumbling from view. Asrai and daemons fell from the world and still Elatior sang, riding his blazing stag higher and singing ever louder until his voice drowned out the sound of the earthquakes, booming from the trees and sky and shaking the bones of the warriors below.

The three suns blazed brighter as the song grew louder and great swathes of the daemon army were destroyed. The white horror at its heart thrashed desperately around, clutching on to tumbling rocks and upturned roots.

Warhawks circled around the inferno that was Elatior, like heavenly bodies trapped in his pull. Some flew too close and erupted into flames, others were sent spinning to the ground by the force of his song.

Elatior steered Criopus towards the monster in the river. This lump of white flesh was the true enemy. All he needed to do was pour the tree’s malevolence against it and the battle would be over. He sensed it as clearly as he could hear the thoughts of every soul toiling below him. The pain of the Wilding Tree had given him sight beyond sight. He had rehearsed this moment a thousand times.

He drew back his staff and prepared to deliver the killing blow.

Then the light fell from his eyes and Criopus began to fall.

All along the length of the river, the grinding sound ceased and the earth became still.

For a moment, Elatior was unable to believe what he was feeling. His mind had grown as dim as his eyes. The visions and voices that had filled his thoughts were fading, like the echo of his song.

Panic gripped him as the stag plummeted towards the ground. He used every ounce of his failing power to steer his mount to the earth, landing behind the river on the borders of the dale.

The ground was a churned mess of troughs and craters, but he managed to guide Criopus down without harm. To his horror, he found that the tree’s fury had entirely left him. It had drained to a trickle and then ceased. He looked down at his limbs and shook his head in disbelief. He was mortal once more.

He howled and rode back through the trees, galloping over the corpses and splintered roots as the sun rose behind him.

The daemons climbed slowly to their feet and renewed their butchery as though nothing had happened, hacking and gouging their way through the remnants of the asrai army.

Criopus thundered through the trees, passing down avenues that had been twisted into strange, nightmarish angles by Elatior’s wrath. He continued howling as he neared the Wilding Tree, sensing that the bond between him and his prisoner had been irrevocably cut. The tree was thrashing and tearing at the ground, wrenching up huge tracts of soil, but he could feel no trace of its anger in his mind. After all his years of patient, painful sorcery, the tree was no longer his to wield.

‘What is this?’ he gasped as he rode towards the vast, writhing tree.

Rather than dismounting he simply drove Criopus on towards one of the pitch-dark openings between the tree’s roots and plunged them both into shadow.

Coiled, black violence enveloped him. The tree’s rage had made a whirling maelstrom beneath the forest floor. Criopus tumbled and rolled and eventually Elatior was pulled from the animal’s back and they were separated.

‘How can this be?’ he cried. The tree was completely beyond his control. It hurled him around like a rag doll, smashing him against soaring roots and knocking his staff from his grip.

Finally, after several terrifying moments, Elatior slammed down against cold, hard ground.

After the deafening chaos of the battle and his fall, he suddenly found himself lying, face-down, in silence. He watched an earthworm, writhing a few inches from his face and felt as though he had no more power than it did.

He realised there was a pale light coming from somewhere up ahead, so he climbed, painfully, to his feet.

Towering columns of root surrounded him. He was back in the Tourmaline Hall. It was empty, of course – his people were all busy elsewhere, dying.

The hall was not totally silent, though. The place was humming slightly; a low rumble, just within earshot. Little clods of soil were landing on the ground and the skin on his face was quivering, like the surface of a windswept pool.

A figure dashed by, moving through the shadows near the hall’s central column.

‘Wait!’ he growled.

There was no reply but the figure froze near one of the archways that led back up to the forest. Whoever it was, they were standing stock-still, but he could still see the faint, slender outline of an asrai.

He staggered towards the centre of the hall, wincing as he went. The fall had done him serious harm, but he ignored the pain and picked up his pace, determined to know who was watching him.

As he passed the column, Prince Elatior let out a strange whining sound, like an injured animal. He saw why the tree’s power had escaped him. His brothers were still hanging from the column of root where he had left them, but their throats had been slit. Their heads were hanging down and their chests were dark with quick-flowing blood.

He rushed forwards and clawed at their lifeless bodies, trying to wake them. He pounded their chests and howled. Then he reeled away, clutching his head in his hands. The binding had been undone. After all these centuries of sacrifice, his work had come to nothing. The Wilding Tree was free.

The figure in the doorway spoke up. ‘I never meant to pit myself against you,’ said a crisp, female voice.

Elatior’s eyes widened in disbelief. ‘Ordaana?’

The tree shifted more violently beneath his feet, but the prince did not care. He staggered towards Ordaana, seeing her more clearly as he did so.

She was standing at the foot of a staircase holding a long, silver knife. It was glittering with blood.

‘The river must reach its destination. Nothing can be allowed to stop it. I will have my revenge.’ She looked at him with a furious expression. ‘And I will not allow you to harm my child.’

Elatior’s rage exploded out of him in another incoherent roar. He tried to step towards her, but found he could not.

‘I’m afraid I’m not the only one seeking revenge.’ She glanced up into the vaulted darkness.

Elatior followed her gaze and saw that the hall was shifting and rolling, assuming a new shape. He looked down and saw that his feet and calves were tightly bound by roots.

Ordaana nodded and backed away from him. Then she turned and sprinted up the staircase, vanishing from view.

Elatior howled again, dropping into a crouch so that he could claw at the roots holding him in place.

The low rumble grew louder, turning into the same thunderous song that had previously spilled from Elatior’s lips. The words that had elated him then, now filled him with dread. They were laced with venom. As the melody swelled louder the walls of the chamber began closing in.

In the fading light Elatior saw a face, rising up towards him from the shadows.

His pride fell away and he began to plead.

Nuin swooped low over the river as Prince Haldus lowered his horn. ‘Abandon the dale!’ he howled. ‘We cannot hold them!’

From his vantage point in the clouds, the prince could see what the wardancers and archers could not. The daemons were pouring from the trees in unimaginable numbers. The battle was lost.

As he skimmed over the heads of the asrai, he snatched an archer up onto Nuin’s back, then waved at his fellow hawk riders, signalling for them to do the same.

‘Withdraw!’ he howled, then he blew the horn again.

Eremon was right. Haldus’s cries were lost in the tumult, but the sound of the horn cut through and, with every blast, more of the asrai abandoned the defence. The god-like power that had been leading them to victory had vanished. There was no sign of the Enchanter.

Once he was sure that the retreat had begun, Haldus steered his mount back into the Silvam Dale, scouring the frozen glades for a sign of Prince Elatior. ‘What happened?’ he snarled, furious at the loss of so many asrai.

As Nuin tore through the air, heading towards the hulking mass of the Wilding Tree, Haldus had his answer.

The tree had uprooted itself and was crashing through the forest towards him. Magic was crackling along its branches and a great, jagged maw had opened up in its trunk, lined with long, splinters of bark. It was not the mouth that shocked Prince Haldus, however, it was the strange mannequin bobbing in the uppermost branches.

A corpse had been torn into six parts – head, torso and limbs – and the Wilding Tree was waving the pieces of flesh around as it approached the battle, shaking the body in such a way that it appeared to be performing a ridiculous dance.

‘Elatior,’ gasped Haldus as Nuin flew him past the jiggling remains.

The prince’s magnificent face was unmistakable, even when drained of blood and separated from its body.

The tree lashed out at Nuin and the bird barely escaped capture, soaring up into the clouds and forcing its passengers to clutch desperately at its feathers.

As he flew back over the slaughter, Haldus took a knife from his belt and gouged another rune into his brow, cursing the arrogance of his kin. His eyes filled with blood and the world turned crimson. As the retreat became a rout, Haldus wondered what hope they had left.

Chapter Twenty-One

The rite had lasted for what seemed like an eternity when, finally, Atolmis stepped beneath the branches of the Sorrow Tree. It was midnight, as it always was, and the ancient oak was at peace. The rite had left the ground drenched with blood and as Atolmis approached the trunk his feet made a wet popping sound, pulling and releasing the sodden turf. He kept his gaze locked on the ground, terrified that he might glimpse one of his masters. Their judgement was made but he knew they were watching him patiently from the shadows – the Lords of the Wild Hunt, one for every year of Ariel’s reign. They were emanating so much power that he could feel it crackling through the air and tingling across his skin, like the precursor to a storm.

As he reached the trunk he saw the outline of a body, trapped in the glistening bark. It was quivering and muttering and its head bore no features – beyond the whorls and knots of the wood it had no face.

Atolmis dropped to the ground and intoned a slow prayer, feeling his knees sinking into the bloody ground. Then he reached into a leather bag that was slung around his neck. He withdrew a selection of dried flowers and pressed them, one by one into the bloody ground, forming a circle of eight points. Then, once he was sure they were in the correct position, he held out his hand to the tree.

The figure in the bark began muttering with more urgency and then, with a dry, cracking sound, it extended one of its arms and held something out to him.

Atolmis took the object and glanced briefly at it. As he expected, it was a hard, spherical canker – an oak apple. He rolled it in his hand for a moment and then placed it on top of one of the flowers. The meaning was simple – come spring, a portion of Kurnous’s soul would return to the forest, in the guise of that most glorious vessel, Orion. The oak apple meant simply this: the world remains unchanged.

Atolmis was sinking deeper into the blood but he did not feel afraid. The ritual was the same every year. There would be time.

He muttered another prayer and the faceless spirit held out another object. Atolmis glanced at it. It was a silver ring, decorated with a royal seal. He nodded. Again, the meaning was clear – the new king would be born of mortal flesh and, this year, that mortal would be some kind of prince.

Atolmis continued to pray and place the objects until he had the full name of his prey.

When he was done, he stared at the objects in shock.

By this point he had sunk to his thighs in the blood-soaked earth. He needed to take the oak apple and begin his search; he needed to leave, but he was too confused to move.

The tangible presence of the Orions remained and he felt the sudden urge to address them directly. It was madness, of course. Such a thing would mean his death.

He stared at the objects again, wondering if he could have misunderstood, but the meaning was clear. The next Orion was Finavar. The Darkling Prince was to become the Consort-King.

‘My lords,’ he muttered, breaking centuries of unbroken protocol.

As soon as his words left his mouth, Atolmis found himself blinking; blinded by morning light. He was standing beside an ancient waystone, surrounded by a circle of his fellow horned riders. The priests were all kneeling, with their faces pressed into the grass, but at the sound of his breathing, they looked up.

They were in a beautiful, sun-dappled hollow and the other riders looked at Atolmis with glinting black eyes, eager to hear his news.

‘Finavar,’ he muttered, staring at the bloody canker in his hand. ‘The Darkling Prince.’

One of the riders laughed. ‘Finavar? He is no more. Elatior fed him to the Wildwood. The trees have taken him. The spirits must have meant another Finavar.’

Atolmis shook his head. ‘I know who they meant.’

The riders stared at him as he sat down heavily on the grass, still clutching the oak apple. His face was grey. ‘The rite has failed. It has named someone who is no more.’

He looked at the sky.

‘There will be no new Orion.’

EPILOGUE

Clara flinched as she ran, clutching her bloody scalp with one hand and waving her crook before her with the other. She thought that several hours had passed since she had re-entered the forest but, as she stumbled out of the murk, she saw her mistake. Autumn was gone. She crossed a small clearing, crisscrossed by sunlit roots, and saw a beautiful midsummer’s day. The grey skies had been burned away; replaced by a blue, cloudless haze.

Clara muttered under her breath. While she staggered through the darkness, trying to keep up with the spirit, whole seasons had passed.

‘Wait!’ she gasped, reaching out to the golden shape that was vanishing back into the trees. ‘I can’t keep up!’

The spirit paused and grinned playfully back at her. ‘Of course you can. Just give yourself a little freedom.’

Clara shook her head in confusion and was about to reply, but the spirit spoke first.

‘Don’t deny it, old woman.’ The spirit waltzed on through the trees, vanishing from view, but leaving its taunting voice to hang in the golden light. ‘You can travel as fast as you like. You know what you have been given.’

Clara’s eyes widened as she realised what the spirit was suggesting. The further they went into the forest, the more vigour she felt coursing through her limbs. The power was growing stronger in her with every minute. ‘I cannot,’ she whispered, stumbling to a halt and looking down at her gangly limbs. ‘Not here. There would be no way back.’

‘Of course not,’ said the spirit, appearing at Clara’s side with a giggle. ‘You asked the forest for freedom and you have been offered it. Why refuse such a gift? Isn’t this everything you have always dreamt of?’ The golden youth nodded at Clara’s wrinkled, blemished arm. ‘What might you become if you were allowed to truly be, Clara?’

Before she could stop herself, Clara glanced at her arm, imagining something else. Without knowing why, she pictured a powerful, tawny wing, hurling her through the summer sky.

Almost as soon as the idea formed in her head, it began to form in her flesh. Her bones rippled and shifted beneath her skin, creating spiny protrusions all along her forearm.

‘No!’ she cried. ‘I cannot!’

She sighed with relief as her arm returned to its usual shape. ‘I won’t be forced to play your games.’ She spoke with more confidence than she felt. ‘I came here to gain power over my feckless brothers – not to lose myself in a dream.’

There was no reply and she realised that the spirit had vanished. ‘Wait!’ she cried again, sprinting across the clearing and back beneath the canopy of trees.

Darkness enveloped her and she glimpsed a flash of gold, slipping down into a gulley crowded with huge, lush ferns.

She raced after the spirit, smashing through the undergrowth with her crook.

The ferns pressed closer and Clara howled in frustration. She thrashed around in the leaves, batting them with her crook, but there was no sign of the spirit. She was alone once more, with no way of finding her way back to the borders of the forest. She trudged on through the trees, muttering curses under her breath, until something caught her eye. There was a flash of light from up ahead – a shifting, pallid flare that was clearly not sunlight.

Clara eyed the light suspiciously, sensing that this was the source of the power she could feel. ‘I need to leave this place,’ she muttered, but rather than moving away from the light, she set off towards it.

She heard the spirit’s laughter again, but this time she ignored it. ‘I will leave.’

She stumbled on, keeping her eyes locked on the distant glow. It pulsed and flickered through the gaps in the branches and, after a while, she began to wonder if, rather than open sky, she was heading towards a storm. With every flash, she heard a distant roar, like waves booming against a promontory.

‘The sea?’ She frowned and shook her head. ‘Ridiculous. Not even the Wildwood is that big.’

Escape seemed further away than ever, but curiosity drove her on and, as she neared the light, the spirit’s laughter faded, replaced by the roaring din of the lights. The sound grew more violent as she scrambled up a treeless incline. Clara was vaguely aware that summer had vanished again and that her feet were crunching over ice and frost, but by this point she could think of nothing but the light.

Clara reached the top of the incline and froze. For a moment she stood there, numbed by shock. Then she dropped to her knees and slumped against her crook.

Spread out beneath her was a valley, but it seemed to Clara as though she had reached the edge of the world; perhaps the edge of reason itself. She was looking down on a scene so strange and cataclysmic that it dragged a prayer from her lips. Rather than a sea, she was looking down on an ocean of nightmares. Daemons were pouring from the hills – thousands of them – lurching, one-eyed monsters, trailing flies and intestines as they plunged into a blazing yellow river. The colour of the river was so vivid that it hurt her eyes. The liquid sparked and blinked as it rolled over thousands of butchered warriors and the fallen were no less horrific than the daemons. They were the wild, willowy folk Clara had seen on the borders of the forest – pale, brutal wraiths with inhuman, leaf-shaped eyes. Some were still alive, howling as the river stripped flesh from their bones, and others lay heaped in mounds, decapitated and defiled by their necrotic foes.

It was a vision of such madness and ruin that Clara turned her gaze to the sky, unable to look upon such lunacy. The view overhead was just as shocking. Monsters were spiralling through the clouds, locked in furious battle – vast, screaming hawks swooped and dived through the fractured air, pursued by armoured insects clad in the same rotten flesh as the daemons in the river.

Clara felt her reason slipping and made a last, desperate attempt to understand what she was seeing. Beyond the nightmarish host she could still make out trees, sky and even mountains in the far distance. Perhaps this was not the end of the world, just a rupture in its surface? Clara realised that she was watching the end of a great, inhuman battle. The monsters with rotten bodies had defeated the feral, long-limbed warriors and now they were racing towards their prize.

She climbed to her feet and looked down the valley, beyond the battle, trying to see what they were heading for – to see what the spoils of such a war might be.

Further down the valley the vivid, yellow scar met another, more natural river. Where the two met there was a tower of swirling, gaudy fumes, framing a pair of shapes so monstrous that they dwarfed everything else. At the mouth of the valley a twisted goliath had risen up to assail the daemons. Clara giggled at the sight of it. It was a mountain of hate – a colossal hulk, carved from the carcasses of ancient trees, thrashing branches through the air and tearing up the ground with its roots. The air around it was crackling and shimmering, and Clara realised this was the source of the power she had been following. The soul of the forest had poured itself into a single, furious body and had pitted itself against the daemon host.

The second figure was almost as huge and far more disturbing. It was a sack of white, blubbery flesh that rippled as it lashed itself around the tree monster. Its face was a nest of tentacles and they were tearing at the tree spirit, filling the air with splinters and bark.

Clara could take no more. Beside these two goliaths even the lunacy of battle seemed tame. The white-fleshed creature was gradually tearing its opponent apart and, as it did so, gouts of magic poured from the splintered wounds, mutating the surrounding trees – twisting them into weird, otherworldly shapes. The whole landscape was losing its coherency and creating something new – something so absurd and revolting Clara knew that her mind must have finally given way.

She turned and fled.

She dropped her crook and scrambled back down the slope, turning her back on the pandemonium in the valley. As she ran, she picked up speed until the world became a seamless torrent of colours. Faster and faster she went, howling at the thought of all that she had seen.

As her speed grew, Clara realised that she could no longer feel the ground beneath her feet. It seemed impossible that she could travel so fast. She looked down, trying to understand, but her eyes were full of tears. The breeze had picked up and it was battering against her face and feathers.

Feathers? As the word formed in her consciousness her eyes cleared and she saw that she was hurtling through the clouds, way above the trees.

Her cries became a shrill, avian scream as she realised what had become of her.

Then she saw the forest more clearly and screamed again. The landscape was bubbling with disease. Huge tracts of land were boiling into new, grotesque shapes. Fingers of yellow acid had spread right across the forest, spewing fungus and blight as they burned through the trees. Clara’s screams grew wilder as she soared up through the clouds, seeing the full extent of the forest’s ruin. Tumours and cysts had torn through the earth, and vast armies of grubs were rising from the wounds, filling the world with noise and stink.

With the last shreds of her human consciousness, Clara realised she was witnessing a tragedy far greater than her own transformation. This was a disaster on a grand scale. The daemons had torn something ancient and beautiful from the world.

The Everwood was lost.

To be concluded in
Orion: The Council of Beasts

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Darius Hinks’s first novel, Warrior Priest, won the David Gemmell Morningstar award for best newcomer. Since then he has carved a bloody swathe through the Warhammer World in works such as Island of Blood, Sigvald and Razumov’s Tomb. Recently, he has ventured into the Warhammer 40,000 universe with the Space Marine Battles novella Sanctus. He plans to return to the grim darkness of the far future after he has finished telling the tale of the forest god Orion.

For Arthur. (La la la.)

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2013 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

© Games Workshop Limited 2013. All rights reserved.

Cover illustration by Slawomir Maniak

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A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-85787-872-4

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