A Fray of Furies, page 42
part #2 of The Waking Worlds Series
Chapter 15 – Dreams End
Snow fell, thick enough to suffocate. And still, he soldiered on.
His hands were lumps, buried in his armpits. His nose was numb and frostbitten. The snowdrift hid his feet. He suspected they were lost to the cold too. He’d force as many leagues as he could from them, before they either snapped off or rotted through.
It was a less painful prospect than the loss of Peat.
“Which way?” he’d yelled above the blizzard. There’d been no one to hear. Just a single set of prints, disappearing into the swirl.
“Peat!?!” he’d reversed direction.
Sign of his passage had petered out within a dozen paces. Men with shovels could not have done better. The shrieking wind had even smoothed-over the snow-top. The impulse to dig into it had railed at the reality: he’d lost her.
Helia keep you, Peat… he’d turned his back.
Shivering, the prayer for the dead had come in fits and starts. After that, he’d kept right on praying, every prayer he’d ever known. Right down to the one his mother had beaten into him as a child. When he’d run out, he’d turned to Temple hymns.
“…repent thou heathen sinners…” he wheezed, staggering on.
Without warning, the howling wind came to heel. The ground crackled beneath his step but did not crunch. Blearily, he tried to unstick his eyelids. Trees sheltered him from all sides, including an interwoven canopy and a carpet of leaves.
Continued survival seemed a crass and cruel joke.
He raised his hands for inspection. Not as bad as he’d feared. He would lose some fingernails and, if his pinky thawed black, he’d have to gnaw it off before it fevered him. Dreading what that presaged for his toes, he was surprised when they wiggled. He knew he’d wish for them to go back to being insensate soon. But, for now, he was able to keep going.
But go where? He knew Hedrick, nestled between the mountain’s fetid toes, couldn’t be far off. But mottled boles marched, identical, in all directions. Between the woods and the weather, it would be a long time before he saw sun or stars again.
He needed a road. A village. A Temple! He’d be safe in a Temple… And they’d have messenger birds he could use.
Helia, guide my wayward steps… he prayed, setting off.
Weak and winded, he progressed at a crawl. He saw it while pausing for breath: a crude arrow, scored into the bark of a tree.
He was no stranger to tree-marking. In the fall, his village had suffered from fog thick as porridge. A strip of cloth or daub of paint could mean the difference between life and death for a lost villager. But this was a hasty scrawl, still beading with spring sap.
There was someone out here. Someone else…
Hope cleared his head. Or, perhaps, distance was pulling him free of the witch’s influence. Or, maybe, absent dread was just clearing up space for higher thought.
Even his senses were sharper… Was that wood smoke? He trudged after the smell and soon heard the hiss and pop of flame. The forest spat him out into a small clearing.
“You made it!”
He returned the concussive hug by rote.
“I was so worried,” Peat gushed. “I looked up and you were just gone!” Her cheek was scalding hot against his skin. “You’re frozen through! And look at your hands! Come sit by the fire...”
She sat him down on a stump, fussing with his fingers. The fire held his attention, its wet logs foaming rabidly. Trees writhed beyond the heat haze. He was having trouble blinking. He dragged his eyes away. The beginnings of a rough lean-to lay strewn about.
Shelter, yes. Sleep. He looked at Peat. Had he slept with her? He... might have. How could he not be sure?
“Spring…”
“What?”
“It’s late spring,” he pressed, feeling his thoughts thicken. “Where did the blizzard come from?”
“We’re going to talk about the weather now?” she grinned.
No, he thought.
No, this was wrong. There was something important…
“Where’d you get the bandages, Peat?” it occurred to him, looking at the neat wraps she was making of his hands.
Something… something…
“Don’t be silly, I tore them from my–”
“How’d you light the fire?”
Yes. That. Think! So hard… What else?
“City-boy! Ever hear of a firebow–”
“The pot,” he remembered. “Where’d you get the pot?”
“What pot?”
He seized her hands, forcing her to look at him.
“The cooking pot,” he drove the words home, “in the snow shelter. The one brimming with stew. Where’d the stew come from, Peat?”
“I–” she began, confidence waning as memory failed. “I... must have found it...”
“Did you?” he demanded. “Did you eat any of it?”
“I must have–”
“Remember,” he insisted. “What’s the last thing you ate?”
Fright tried to draw her away but he held her fast.
“No? How about sleep?”
“No one remembers sleeping,” she countered, freeing her hands.
“Then how about the last time you woke up. When was that?”
Uncertainty eroded her shoulders.
“What are you saying?” she stared.
This was it, what his maligned mind had been trying to tell him.
“We’re not out.”
Yes!
“We’re still in the pit, still in the prison,” he realized. “And she’s in here with us…”
No, not exactly… Realization sent him surging to his feet.
“Witch!” he screamed to the sky.
“Shhh!” she hissed, hauling on his tattered shirt.
“Don’t you see?” he demanded of her. “Witches seek mastery over men’s minds. We’re not in her prison! She’s in our heads!”
“Quiet, idiot! She’ll hear you!”
“She’ll hear me anyway,” he turned back to the sky. “Won’t you? You evil, petty, spiteful creature?!”
“Shut-up! Are you trying to kill us?”
“Serpent of Perdition is the witch!” he harangued the heavens. “Stay not the hands of honest men, who see it slither in the fold!”
Beside him, Peat’s eyes had grown round, staring blindly.
He could feel it too. It carried on the breeze: an air of dread.
He forged ahead with his homily, fighting the burgeoning wind.
“He who keeps mum of the witch shares her sin in equal part!”
Peat backed away, uncertain of which way to flee. And with reason: the witch was a looming storm. She broiled across the sky, spitting with sheet lightning. Her arrival plunged them into instant night and set the earth groaning. The wind fled, shrieked madly.
“Beware the witch!” he screamed.
The sky answered in a warning rumble.
“Be thou true to Helia’s light! Be thou stout of heart and clear of purpose!”
Jagged arcs shook the dark, scoring his eyes.
Peat went sprawling. He should have gotten her to safety first, he regretted. But he had to strike now, while he was clear of purpose. Before he forgot again.
The scripture was helping.
“Suffer not the witch to live!” he sprayed spittle. “Ye who hath taken up the torch, march thy purifying light to the lip of evil!”
Arclight spat earthward, splitting a forest giant to its roots. Smoking boughs and embers rained down. Peat shrieked, rolling into a ball. He thrust out his chin, trusting in Helia to protect him.
“Lo! Though the pit is bottomless and brimful of sin, we shall fear no evil! For we bear the flame of Helia! And in her blessed light, we are mighty!”
Cold snapped down. Silence came with it. Around them, the trees broke out in a cold sweat, shedding mist. Flames sputtered, sinking to a smolder. The dead air sucked at his courage.
A presence pricked at his neck. He turned, drawing the sign of the circle over his heart as he did.
“Serpents in the fold?” she taunted. “Holy torches? Evil lips? Innuendo – perpetrated by some undersexed prophet.”
She stood taller than he, taller still for her spiked headdress. Her robes were scaffolded in gold, cruelly curved at the shoulders. The same metal masked her face, mocking him with a serene smile.
“You surprise me,” her voice rang, crystalline and cold. “I gave you ample opportunity to run.”
He rallied, “Be thou stout of–”
“Of heart, yes, yes. I heard. And wash-eth behind thine ears and betwixt thine toes. Blah, blah, blah...”
He stared, digging deep for righteous indignation.
“Defile not the holy scripture with thine profane tongue!”
Bells tinkled as the headdress titled on one side, “I’m not the one making up words. What does ‘thine’ even mean?”
“Lascivious temptress!”
She glanced down at her dress, “Seriously? You can’t even see my ankles...”
“Unclean creature! Foul denizen!”
“One of us is certainly a little whiffy.”
This was not how the confrontation between good and evil was supposed to go.
“Be– Begone degenerate soul and trouble this place no more! By the light of Helia, I command thee!”
“Now that’s just rude. And after I came all this way. At your invitation, no less. Make up your mind, would you?”
Floundering, he fell back on what he knew.
“By– By the power kindled in me by the Mother Temple, and by the might of the Order of the Inquisitori, I–”
“Did they, though?” she interrupted. “Bestow power, I mean?”
For a moment, he stared.
Then he shook the seeds of doubt from his mind. Perhaps his faith wasn’t up to overpowering this creature. How could it be? When such paragons as the senior inquisitor had fallen to it? But the Temple had armed him with more than strong convictions...
He snatched a burning bough from the ground.
The Temple had also given him a strong arm.
The log wasn’t ideal. But fire had gnawed it to a blackened point. He angled it up under the rim of her stole. Her body was alien and overlong but that’s where her sinful heart should be.
The bough bit deep.
“In the name of Helia,” he told her, “I cast thee down!”
Her mask regarded him with serene dispassion.
“Or,” she continued, “did they simply teach you to turn your self-hatred outward?”
The lick of flame, playing around the puncture, died. Cobalt energy displaced it, mocking fire’s dance as it dripped downward. He ripped his hand away, losing skin to the unholy cold that gnashed the stake to snowflakes.
There was neither wound nor wrinkle on her robes.
“Yours is a dead god,” she pronounced, drifting closer. “I should know. My reach grows by the day. I can feel the others, out there: stunted, starved, resentful. They are not the problem.”
He overbalanced, sitting down heavily.
“Your fervor is a poison, born of guilt. Rather than redeem it, you distil it, compound it, in that cracked crucible you call faith.”
“Suffer not...” he tried, desperately.
“Your scriptures are the remnants of gods, skinned and stitched by your own hand into a self-serving cassock.”
“Suffer–”
“You have no power beyond what you extort. Threat and fear are the only holy weapons in your arsenal.”
“Suf...”
“You vilify the strong, so uncertain of your own efficacy you will abide no voice but your own.”
“You are wrong...” he denied.
“Am I? Your child-self knew sin. He sought absolution. They spoon-fed him hate instead. You liked the taste so much, you drowned your shame in it.”
A smile crept into her voice, “Brother Nolan, once Nolo of Drywell, bearer of false witness, condemner of the innocent. Murderer of little old ladies.”
“How...?” he rasped, his throat dry.
“I didn’t mean nobody no harm...”
The quavering voice spanned the passage of decades.
Slow inevitability swiveled him around, “Peat?”
But where Peat had been hunched an old woman. Her lank, grey hair hid all but her threadbare smock and shawl.
“They was naught but picture books,” the figure moaned. “My Rezor got them in trade, from the old abbey, down Turf way.”
“Widow Chole...?” he breathed, disbelieving.
“I’d not have kept them,” the old woman trembled, “but that my Rezor died that winter, and his trade with him.”
“Widow Chole? It can’t–”
“Parchment was dear. Lots of space in them books – filled with stars and sky – for an old woman to scribble her recipes.”
“You’re dead...”
“You used to like my rhubarb pie...”
“It’s not you!”
He hadn’t realized he’d moved until he’d hefted her by the shoulders.
Greasy hair parted, “Will you kill me again, little Nolo?”
Her features paled and sagged, undercut by rot. Milky eyes shriveled and flesh bloated as maggots boiled through her skin.
“Please don’t put me back in the well...” the apparition begged. “I meant no one no harm…”
“No!” he staggered, falling away from the corpse.
“She was a witch!” he insisted, hands fisting in the duff.
“She was a poor old widowed woman.”
“She was a witch!”
“Easier to be blameless than repentant. Your new masters only required one thing: that you do it again. Not so? Inquisitor?”
“Witch!” he swore at her.
“Congratulations,” she nodded. “You finally got one right.”
Sobbing, he hung his head… Something peeked from the leaf mulch. Not knowing why it was important, he scrubbed it clear.
Looking for you, said the crude letters, carved in the bedrock.
“What,” he managed to whisper, “have you done with Peat?”
“I’ve put her nearby. Why do you care?”
He stood, face streaked and back bowed – but fists balled.
“You’re going to save her?” the golden face canted. “Why?”
“She is good and pure,” the words rang like gospel where his quotes had not. “If I do nothing else, I will see her free of you.”
“She has spent far longer in my company than you. Am I not the great corrupter? What makes you think she can be saved?”
He drew himself up, “I have faith.”
“Not enough,” bells tinkled, forlorn, as the witch turned away.
“I will save her,” he promised aloud.
“No,” she said over her shoulder. “You will abandon her.”
He glared.
“As Helia is my witness, I shall not.”
She stilled, golden visage regarding him without favor.
“Bring her back,” he pleaded.
“No.”
“Bring her back, now!” he demanded.
The woods held their breath.
“So be it,” the witch judged, turning back toward him.
He braced himself for some trick.
A hand, gauntleted in gold, shook itself free of her sleeve. Inhumanly long fingers fastened across her mask. It lifted away.
For a moment, she was a stranger – with her painted skin and artfully gathered hair.
“Peat...?” he gaped, feet drawing him forward.
Then he noticed her eyes.
Not the soft brown he’d come to know. A vivid purple, floating petals of bright gold, where burned a heart of scarlet.
“What... What have you…?”
Peat’s face, animated by a scornful will, spoke, “I was Peat.”
Confusion cascaded, like he’d not had a clear thought in weeks.
“Charlatan! You’re not her!”
“Hear me,” she commanded. “I was Peat. Past-tense.”
He stared.
“That!” she pointed, golden talon upraised. “That’s exactly the expression the mayor wore, before the flames took him. A child, staring betrayal at the pan-handle that dared sear him.”
“I don’t–?” he stammered.
“Poor little Peat,” the witch crooned, in a sing-song voice.
“Stubborn little girl – won’t do as she’s tole’;
stupid little girl – won’t come when she’s call’d;
see all the young men chasing up the wold;
hear all the old ones crutching in the cold.”
“What are you–?” he shook his head.
“She was too pretty, you see? Too pure. The degenerate cannot help but defile such things. It is a sickness – that urge to possess. Such obsession… must be proof of witchcraft. Not so, inquisitor?”
He quailed, “Temple law… The village priest–”
“Oh, he came,” the witch sneered through Peat’s lips. “Once he’d clawed himself from the mayor’s pocket. Last rites, he called them. His rights, he meant. His spoils.”
Words abandoned him.
She watched him, almost wistfully.
“It’s healthy for a forest to burn. The blaze cuts away the dead wood. And some things only thrive once laved by fire.”
She gave him a bitter smile, “There was never a witch in Hedrick. Not until they decided to burn one.”
“You turned the flames against them…” he gasped.
“Justice.”
“But– Children?”
“To the very lip of evil, remember?”
“My cadre, you took them in their sleep…”
“I was supposed to suffer more men?” she challenged. “Forcing their will upon me?”
The laughter of his dead comrades filled the glade, sounding depraved, as they never had in life.
He clutched his head, “This is a dream. Just a dream!”
“You say that as though it makes a difference.”
“Why are you playing this sick game!”
The woods went silent with expectation. She was nose-to-nose with him, bent at the waist.
“Redemption,” she told him, her eyes slowly fading to brown. “To see whether you would force the witches’ mark on yet another unwilling woman. To see,” she whispered, “if you can be saved...”
He stared at her stolen face.
“You are a monster,” he breathed.
