Silver in the Bone, page 14
“We need to drop the bags!” Cabell shouted.
“No!” The creatures’ claws kept snagging the leather, but I would be dead and damned before I lost the last of our supplies.
Pulling out the small pocketknife, I slashed blindly through the air as creatures leapt down from the trees, trying to trap one of us beneath the cage of their bodies.
“Tamsin, duck!” Emrys shouted. As I did, he swung his axe over my head, lodging it in the side of one of their soft skulls. Cabell led us through the diseased trees, deeper into the heart of the isle.
It was a moment more before I realized the screaming from the other Hollowers had stopped.
They’re all dead, my mind taunted.
All that was left now was us. The creatures, strings of saliva seeping between their teeth, turned toward us in unison, realizing the same.
I glanced at the sorceress, and the plea must have been etched into my expression.
“I can’t cast while running,” Neve said between gasping breaths. “I need to carve the sigils—”
One creature dove for her, grasping with two front claws, and I ripped her away. Emrys followed up with his axe, bringing it down and severing one of the limbs.
The other clawed his arm, tearing through the layers of fabric and into his flesh. He stumbled with a curse, nearly dropping the axe. I lunged and jammed my knife into one of the creature’s lidless eyes.
“Come on!” I told Emrys, taking his arm.
“My hero,” he managed to get out.
“I don’t have time to think of an annoyed comeback!” I panted. “Just—”
As they had before with Neve, the creatures swung their hungering faces toward Emrys—toward the wound weeping blood on his arm.
The hag’s words came back to me like a nightmare. They, too, delight in blood and burn in light.
The old, fetid, rotting hag. She knew exactly what awaited us in Avalon.
God’s teeth, I thought. It didn’t matter how far we ran or if we managed to find a place to hide. They’d be able to track us.
“The tower!” Neve shouted to me. She didn’t need to finish the thought for me to understand what she meant.
“We won’t make it!” I told her. The creatures would overrun us long before we found it in the disorienting maze of the dead forest.
We broke into a clearing, one littered with the same jagged boulders we’d seen in the water. The dead grass was waist-high, snapping underfoot and catching on my flannel coat as I pushed through it.
Ahead of me, Cabell tried to navigate us through the rocks, but there were too many of the creatures now. I fell back as they swarmed like ants, crawling up the trees and over the stones. Within the span of a gasp, I was cut off from the rest of the group.
Emrys spun around, searching for something—me. The moment his eyes met mine through the chaos, raw panic seized his expression. “Tamsin!”
He tried to run forward, but the spidery creatures slid into the gap between us.
“They hate light!” I shouted to the others.
Neve scooped up a stone from the mud and set to work trying to carve a sigil into it. Cabell stood in front of her, warding off the creatures to buy her more time.
The creatures snarled, turning toward the entrance to the clearing where Septimus and two of the Hollowers were stumbling out of the forest, their backs to us.
Septimus was drenched in the creatures’ dark blood, screaming back at them as he smashed his axe into any limb that reached for him. One of the Hollowers with him was overrun and tackled to the ground. The creatures descended on him with claws and teeth, tearing out his throat, giving the others the opportunity to advance deeper into the clearing.
Where do I go? The thought twisted my stomach. I slashed at the creatures that leapt toward me, but each strike only seemed to renew their bloodlust.
“Tamsin!” Emrys called again. I pivoted, using his voice to reorient myself toward the others. When a path opened in that direction, I seized the chance and ran. Rancid clouds of breath bloomed with each step. Crackling bones and joints, chittering teeth—I didn’t need to look to know that the creatures were right behind me.
Something caught the collar of my coat and wrenched me back. I screamed until my throat turned raw. The scent of death was inescapable as I thrashed, fighting to free myself. My foot slipped, and then I was falling, but not into the gaping maws of the monsters.
“Where do you think you’re scampering off to, kitten?” The voice was right beside my ear.
Septimus.
He banded an arm around my chest and held me up in front of him. And somehow, the fact that it was him, and not one of the monsters, was even more terrifying.
He swung me to the right, one last flesh-and-blood shield to save himself. A blistering fury overtook me, and I heard the fire of it echoed in Cabell’s and Emrys’s pleas.
“Don’t! Septimus!”
“Let her go!”
I tried to slip my coat off, to slash back at him with my knife, but Septimus pinned the hand with the knife to my side and used his other hand to grip the back of my neck. A creature chittered with excitement as I was presented to it as its latest dinner course.
“Nothing personal,” Septimus sneered from behind me. “But it’s time for you to actually be useful—”
The stench of blood was smothering, but a sudden calm came over my mind, like the moment you surrender to a powerful current and use its force to carry you toward whatever fate awaits.
I wasn’t going to die for him, and I wasn’t going to save him, either.
My palm was slick with sweat, forcing me to grip my knife tighter as I adjusted the angle of its blade. His grip had slackened just long enough to do what I had to.
“Purr, kitten,” I snarled, then slammed the knife into his leg, just above the knee.
Septimus screamed, the sound wrenching from his chest. It was pure animal. He knew—he knew as he fell to the ground, unable to run, as he lost his grip on me, what would happen next.
The axe fell from his hand as one of the monsters slammed into him, claws tearing into his chest.
I grabbed for the blood-soaked weapon, my mind barely registering that its handle was still warm from his skin as I hacked at the monsters around me. I turned, crashing into Emrys. His eyes were wild as he gripped my arms, his face stricken.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice breaking. “Are you all right?”
The only thing I could gasp out in response was “Run!”
We did. A creature impaled itself on my blade; another bit at my hair, as if to drag me to the edge of the trees, where more of them waited.
Neve’s scream exploded through the clearing. I whirled around, my heart rioting in my chest, searching for her and Cabell in the darkness. I took a running step forward, only to stop as the clouds parted overhead like curtains and a pillar of blue-white light poured down over the sorceress.
The creatures screeched in protest, falling back—but not far enough to be saved as the light fractured, slicing through the air like shards of glass. The air whistled and I ducked down, covering my head as the creatures were torn to shreds of viscera. The light’s heat burned them from within, creating a ring of smoldering fires.
“Tamsin!”
I looked up to find Cabell rushing toward me, his face stricken with terror as he slid the last bit of distance between us.
“I’m okay, I’m okay!” I told him.
He hauled us both up and dragged me toward the others. The pillar of light expanded to reach us before we reached it, incinerating the creatures but passing over my skin like a warm stream. I felt a tug at my core, as if it were pulling me into its protective depths.
Wiping the mud from my face, I shielded my eyes.
Neve stood behind a shocked Cabell, her arms outstretched in front of them. Magic blazed around her like a wild flame, nearly blinding in its intensity. Her braids had fallen out of their buns as we’d fled, and now lifted at her shoulders, rising with the incandescent swell of power. The intensity of her expression, her face glittering with sweat, was as breathtaking as the way her power electrified the air and turned the clearing into the heart of a star.
Neve’s eyes flicked to us, her face set with the kind of determination that made you ache to see it. The raw potential of her power was stunning. I looked around, trying to find the sigil she had used. A large stone was at her feet, but the sigil for a protective spell was only half finished. But that was impossible—this power had to be drawn and channeled through the marking.
“Neve…,” I began.
“I can’t hold this much longer,” she warned, her voice crackling with magic. “It’s too much—”
“How are you doing this?” I asked her.
She shook her head, clenching her fists. “I don’t know—I thought we would die and it just—it just happened—”
The magic flared brighter, hotter. The monsters retreated into the shadows of the trees.
“I don’t suppose anyone has a half-decent idea for how we could survive this,” Emrys said faintly, a hand pressed to the wound on his arm.
“I’ll take a bad idea at this point,” Cabell said, his expression dark. He was still panting, but it was the hair growing thicker and darker on the back of his hands that had me terrified.
“Are you all right?” I asked him.
Cabell, for once, didn’t lie about it. “Need a second. Need to slow my heart.”
Emrys’s eyes shifted off where Cabell crouched, face pressed to his filthy hands, breathing deeply. I gave a small shake of the head at his questioning look.
“What are the chances they’ll get bored of being obliterated and go away?” I asked.
The barrier flickered. Briefly, I wondered if I had pissed off a god of luck in a past life.
“Guys,” Neve said, her voice cracking. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing left—”
I moved close to her side, holding the axe out in front of me. Emrys’s back was pressed to my side as he faced the other way, burning hot in the freezing air. Cabell staggered to his feet again, his face flickering with shadows as he fought to keep his grip on his mind and body.
We are going to die. That strange, deep calm returned, cold and accepting. We’re going to die.
“We’ll try to get to the tower Neve thinks is at the isle’s center,” I said. “If we can find some sort of shelter—”
A blazing light tore through the air in front of us, soaring past the devastated trees to slam into the nearest creature’s shriveled skin. I jumped as it went up like a match, screeching until I thought my eardrums would burst. Spinning, I searched for the source, but there was no need.
A volley of flaming arrows flashed through the dark, streaking over our heads. Neve’s magic was a shield against the heat of the burning world around us, and I knew the second she released it, we would be consumed, too.
“Is that…?” Cabell began, spinning around.
The horses and their riders charged at a full gallop, sending the remaining monsters scattering like rats back the way they’d come, seeking the cold relief of the dank water.
The flames illuminated the knights’ silver armor as they circled the barrier, bows at the ready. Their horses stomped and pawed at the ground, shuddering with the unspent exertion. Five in total.
“Release your magic, sorceress!” one of them shouted.
Neve startled at the vehemence of the words and didn’t do as she was told. If anything, her magic burned brighter than it had before.
The same knight sheathed his sword with a sound of quiet fury. The others waited, slashing and shooting at any mindless creature that dared to approach us again. When Neve still didn’t drop the shield, the first knight reached up, ripping his helmet off.
A long silver braid, shining bright as the sword in her hand, spilled from beneath it. The face that stared down at us from her black horse was pale and freckled and young—not the grizzled, scarred man I’d been expecting.
“I said,” the young woman ground out, “release your magic, sorceress.”
Emrys was the first to shake off his shock. “Not to be an ungrateful wretch, but won’t that roast us alive?”
“Our fire will not harm you,” said another, removing her own helmet. She was dark-haired and dark-eyed, her tight curls fluttering around her head with the foul breeze. Her skin was a rich brown, save for the place where a raised pink scar ran down one cheek, and her expression was coolly reassuring.
The others followed. All young.
All women, it seemed.
“Unless you want to die here with the rest of the travelers, I suggest that you come with us now,” she continued. “We will take you to safety.”
“Not the sorceress,” the silver-haired one snapped. “They can devour her.”
“Cait,” another admonished.
“Who are you?” I managed to get out.
“I’m Caitriona of the Nine,” the girl with the strange silver hair said. “These are my sisters. I do not know how you’ve come here, but I can tell you that this is no place to die.”
“And where is this place, exactly?” Emrys asked politely.
Some part of me—some small, hated corner of my heart—had held on to a dying ember of belief that Neve might have made a terrible mistake. That she had somehow brought us to another realm, another place far from the one where Nash was trapped with the ring.
That same ember was crushed beneath the heel of the girl staring down at us, suspicion creasing her brow. Neve’s magic faded like a hurricane easing to a gentle fall of rain.
“Do you not know it by sight?” she asked sardonically, pulling her helmet back on. “You have found the blessed isle of Avalon.”
We rode across the misty isle in a ferocious storm of galloping hooves and clattering armor. No one had said a word since leaving the clearing, and none of the others had bothered to give us their name. I could practically feel their eyes shifting to Neve again and again, the outright hatred that radiated from them like our breath fogging the air white.
We had all accepted having our hands bound yet again as the condition for riding with them—accepted being the only option aside from being left there to be eaten.
Neve had been placed behind Caitriona of the Nine. All the priestesses rode stiff-backed because of their metal cuirass—a chest plate that extended around their backs—but with Caitriona, the armor seemed to conform to her body instead of the other way around.
We passed through a maze of dark wilderness and mist. My inner thighs were soaked through with the horse’s foaming sweat and from the strain of having to squeeze them tight to keep from being bucked off.
“You can hold on to me,” my knight said quietly. “I’d rather not have to stop and pick you up if you fall and crack your skull, if it’s all the same to you?”
I snorted. “Fine by me.”
My hands were only loosely bound, which made it easier to grip the bottom edge of the armor around her back.
“Do you have a name, or are you just of the Nine?” I asked.
Now it was her turn to snort. “Betrys. Of the Nine.”
“All right, Betrys,” I said, some of my frustration falling away. “Thanks, by the way.”
“No thanks are needed,” she said, her voice quiet and dignified. “It is our responsibility to protect the isle and those living within it.”
“That”—I tried to think of a delicate way to put it—“seems complicated. Is all of Avalon like this?”
Betrys fell back into that tightly held silence, gently kicking the horse to drive it faster.
I glanced over to where Cabell—naturally—seemed perfectly at ease riding behind another of the knights, a girl with pale skin and close-cropped hair the color of bark. They spoke quietly. He caught my eye and gave me a smile that was too grim to be reassuring.
The Nine. The order of priestesses who conducted the rituals of Avalon and directed the worship of the creator Goddess they believed in.
Apparently, they’d undergone a bit of rebranding in the last several hundred years, because I had no memories of reading about them barreling through the shadows of the isle on horseback to battle monsters. And Nash, a loyal servant to hyperbole and lover of exaggeration, wouldn’t have left such a dramatic detail out of his campfire tales.
The name slid through my heart like a blade. Nash.
Until now, I’d been so consumed with survival that I hadn’t been able to think of anything else, including the reason we’d come in the first place.
I cast my gaze around the shadowed land, wondering how Nash could possibly have survived this place. The rotting trees, the barren streambed that had become a trail for the horses, swarms of insects stripping the rotting flesh from the bones of one of the monsters, stone cottages with no lights inside…What could survive here beyond scavengers and creatures who lived only to sate their hunger?
The mist was inescapable, hovering above the land like a chilling manifestation of resentment—of lost love, of lost beauty, of whatever this place had once been. Its damp fingers traced icy patterns into my skin.
The tower Neve had described took its time in revealing itself, as if needing to watch us from a distance to decide whether to allow us to approach. As we came closer, my eyes couldn’t devour the sight of it quickly enough. The sheer size of the tower and the imposing walls that surrounded it left me light-headed.
And that was before I realized it had been built into the trunk of a colossal tree.
Stark branches fanned out over the walls, sheltering the courtyard below from the black, starless sky. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. The tree primitive and ancient, the tower medieval, speaking to the last contact this Otherland had with our mortal world.
The Immortalities I’d read were created long after the last sorceresses had been exiled from Avalon. None had seen this very sight with their own eyes.
“What’s that tree?” I asked Betrys.
