Hadvarian Heist, page 23
The daimon’s urgings continued on as though Nova hadn’t heard her. “Purge the evil from within the tree, and send the corruption back to the darkness from thence it came.” The wolf narrowed her gaze. Her tongue darted out of her mouth to catch the scents that drifted nearer. “When a single corruption takes root, others follow. A darkness moves behind the war that shadows your homeland. Uproot the evil that grows thick nearby, and you will save your home from the darkness of war.”
Questions whirled through Iellieth’s mind, their shapes blending together in a flurry of waving branches. A few leafy outlines remained distinct. “Can you show me how to find the black oak?”
A soft growl of assent rumbled in the back of the daimon’s throat.
“And you suspect that we’ll run into this . . . corruption, this enemy, on our way back to Red’s Cross either way?”
Nova’s lips curled back. Her sharp white teeth shone in the dappled sunlight. “Even now he hunts for you, little druid. He knows not that your heart is strong enough to have found me or that you know of the tree.”
Iellieth’s pulse quickened as her internal breeze flickered through the trees nearest them, increasing to a howl that leapt deeper into the forest.
The daimon dug her feet uneasily into the earth. “It is time for you to return, little druid.” She lowered to her belly and bid Iellieth to climb onto her back.
With Iellieth’s fingers locked into the daimon’s twilight fur, the wolf darted back through the trees, hurtling Iellieth toward their campsite. “The tree will find you—she is drawn to those who carry the light such as you.”
“But, Nova—”
The wolf silenced her with a growl. “It is in your blood, like the first Shepherd, little druid. She sought out more than the souls of the lost champions. The Shepherd guided spirits of water and earth and those of the trees. Greater powers than you yet understand dwell within you. Trust that they will show you the way.”
Nova skidded into their camp, and Marcon and Quindythias rushed over. “That was fast,” Quindythias said with a smile.
Iellieth’s lips pursed as she examined the camp. Though she and Nova had been gone for over an hour, very little had changed at their site. The coals still gleamed in the fire.
The daimon continued to shift her weight from paw to paw. When she didn’t lower down, Marcon reached up for Iellieth and slid her from the wolf’s back. Nova’s starlit coat shimmered brighter, but the outline of her fur began to fade.
Iellieth gasped and reached out for the daimon. “Nova, your fur—” She glided her hand across the wolf’s coat. It turned to mist beneath her fingers.
A wolf-shaped cloud of smoke glimmered before them a moment longer. “I am the forest spirit of darkness, little druid. Only you can set me free.”
Chapter 33
For two days, the seal piece guided them through the forest, casting its glowing orbs into the trunks ahead until they reached a shadowed ring of towering oaks. The stone stilled in her hand. Its internal glow remained, the same deep violet as the trees’ impossibly dark leaves. They were unlike any oak Iellieth had ever seen. Their lobes’ bristle-tipped teeth were sharp, as though the leaves could draw the blood of any who walked past.
Soft pulses of energy lit the runes of the seal piece. They matched the beat of her heart. “This is the grove Nova spoke of,” Iellieth whispered. She took a step forward and shivered at the sudden cold that stood sentry among the trees.
Over her shoulder, Marcon’s hand tightened around his sword. “And what are we to do now that we’ve reached it?”
“We need to find the black oak at the center.” She had asked the forest for its help as they traveled, for any sign of Nova, but the trees remained silent. Was the daimon’s spirit trapped within this circle of trees? Bound in some way to the black oak she spoke of?
Carefully, Iellieth led them forward. No wind moved through the indigo leaves.
“It’s creepy in here,” Quindythias muttered. He tiptoed through the forest with blades drawn, eyes darting side to side.
Iellieth held the stone out in front of her. To Marcon and Quindythias, it would look like she was following the pull of its energy just as she had to guide them here. She wouldn’t tell them that it was a force from within the trees that pulled her and the stone nearer. It hooked a tendrilled finger through her magic and tugged, reeling her and the seal piece in on the tide.
“I still don’t understand why we’re going to see this tree instead of traveling to Red’s Cross.” Quindythias frowned when she didn’t answer. He addressed Marcon instead. “We could have avoided whatever it was the wolf was worried about catching us.”
“Perhaps. But I trust her, and we follow where she leads.” Marcon’s gravelly whisper lodged in Iellieth’s stomach, glowing warm against the cold that gripped the grove.
The pulse of the seal piece beat faster. Iellieth picked up her pace, jogging ahead. She ignored the shouts of protest her companions sent darting after her.
Iellieth broke through the press of the ring of trees. A towering black oak, unseasonably bare, stretched to embrace the gray sky at the top of a small rise.
They’d found it.
The branches shifted, angling toward her. The seal piece turned to ice in her hands. Iellieth winced and dropped it on the ground.
“Only you,” an airy alto sighed within her mind. The tug against her increased, and she stumbled forward.
Shing. A sword swept from its sheath behind her. “Lady!” Marcon’s arm wrapped around her waist and tugged her back.
She cried out as the force intensified. It dragged her and Marcon toward the base of the oak. Branches whipped at his face, trying to force him to release her from his grasp. Quindythias’s muffled shouts rang out from the edge of the surrounding trees.
Marcon groaned after a sharp thwack, and his grip around her loosened. The voice in her mind squealed in delight, and the branches attacked him with renewed vigor.
“Stop!” Iellieth leapt at the trunk, hand extended. It had said it wanted her to come forward. Her fingertips pressed against the bark, its rough, dark surface scraping, till her palm was flush with its skin.
The branches throttling Marcon stilled.
The tree hummed in response to her touch, a satisfied exhale that rustled through branches and roots. “More,” the voice wheezed. A pulse of stagnant, twisted energy burst from its bark and struck her palm.
Iellieth yelped and jumped back, clutching her hand to her chest. Marcon limped closer, his jaw set.
Her hand quivered. Green-black mold rippled across the surface of her palm and fingers. The champion swore and grabbed her wrist. Her arm seized as a bolt of pain flared to life from the tips of her fingers up to her shoulder. She screamed.
The mold burbled thicker, obscuring her skin. Black spots prickled at the edge of her vision.
“Iellieth, we need to get away.” A familiar, low voice urged from her side.
The black oak grew larger, expanding to block out the thin light, stretching its limbs to consume the forest around it. The screams and cries of the surrounding trees shook the earth. Iellieth’s legs trembled, and she fell to her knees.
The low voice called out to someone else for aid. Warm hands tugged at her, but they weren’t strong enough.
Her blackened arm stretched out in front of her, the dark tree drawing her closer. It would consume her too.
The world turned to shadow as the oak whisked her into its embrace.
Two golden eyes, twin flames, parted the darkness. “Why have you come here, Iellieth Amastacia?” The alto voice rang clearer here, drifting nearer on a breeze.
Cold lumps of dirt crumbled beneath her hands. Iellieth crawled back away from the eyes. Her shoulders struck a rounded wooden wall. “Where are we?” she whispered. Where were Marcon and Quindythias?
The glowing eyes followed her movements. In a slither of vines, a twisted form took shape before her, lit by flickering purple light. The shape was feminine, a gnarled body made of decaying bark and held together with ivy binds.
Iellieth gasped. A dryad.
“Take my hand.” The dryad extended a twisted branch toward the earthen floor.
“Are we inside your tree?” Iellieth huddled away from her. Her arms shook at the effort of resisting the dryad’s command.
“Take it.” Another shock of burning energy struck Iellieth’s back where it rested against the inside of the tree’s trunk. Her arm—covered in the same decaying bark as the dryad—shot forward, and the dryad caught her moldering hand in her branch.
Images flashed before Iellieth’s eyes. A young woman with flowing dark hair smiling at a strong oak tree. The shy skip of the dryad’s heart as she revealed herself to her admirer for the first time, drawing the woman with her into the embrace of the tree. A perfect acorn pressed from delicate twig fingers into a soft mauve palm. Her sorrow caught on the wind as the woman left her behind to float away across thick gray clouds. Sobs turned to screeches as a cloaked figure severed the frail bond between the woman and the dryad. Silver-brown bark decayed to a rotting green and then foul black mold as the dryad walked through her grove, utterly alone.
A hot tear trailed down Iellieth’s cheek. “What happened to her? The woman?”
The dryad took a shuddering breath. “A blood sickness took her away from the sun.” Golden eyes crinkled at the tear. She caught it on a tiny leaf at the end of her finger-twig.
The leaf turned from black to green. The dryad stared at it in wonder.
“Nova sent me to help you.”
She shook her head. “I am beyond helping.”
Iellieth braced against the inner trunk with her free hand and pushed herself up to standing. “She said there’s a corruption in the forest that keeps you in this state . . . or that prevents you from healing from your loss.” The dryad studied her with an ancient gaze but didn’t speak. Iellieth took a deep breath and clung to Nova’s words. She could almost see the smile of the daimon’s teal eyes in the darkness around her. “Some wounds, some losses, will never entirely heal, but we can still move forward.” Iellieth tightened the grasp of her decayed hand around the dryad’s. “We can still live.”
A new set of visions flickered through Iellieth’s mind. As the dryad’s arms turned from silver to black, as the sadness strangled the life from her leaves, her very touch befouled the world around her. Streams dried up, rocks turned to dust, burbles of acid struck the trees of her grove, turning them to tall black husks. Nova bounded into a clearing, her fur covered almost entirely with stars. The daimon whimpered at the dryad’s touch, and shadows rippled over her fur, blotting out her glow. “I see why Nova sent you, druid with hair of fire and eyes of earth, but it is too late. No power you possess is great enough to defeat the darkness that grows inside my heart. The creature who stalks my lands—” The dryad sighed. “My roots grow too deep, they stretch into lands of shadow, and I cannot free myself.”
Iellieth cast her eyes around the trunk. Marcon and Quindythias’s voices couldn’t reach her here. Did time pass the same outside the tree, or would it be like her conversation with Nova, where only a short time had passed for them but several hours for her? Iellieth shuddered. What if it were the opposite? Her breath caught. Marcon would never leave her inside a tree, but what would happen to him when he tried to pull her out? Could they be pulled into another plane? They’d be turned back into statues if they were separated too far from her . . . or if she died inside this tree.
Nova’s warning about the creature hunting for her through the forest flared in the back of her mind. The daimon had said she should remind the tree of what it was to love and be loved. Would getting rid of the other corruption be enough to do that?
“Nova told me about the other creature lurking in the woods, the one whose corruption grips you.”
The dryad’s eyes flashed. “And . . .”
“What if I got rid of it for you?”
She released Iellieth’s hand and crossed her arm-branches over one another. A cruel laugh burst from her lips. “You. How would you manage such a feat?”
“I, umm, I don’t know yet. But would you allow me to try?”
Golden eyes narrowed further. “Why would you do such a thing for me?”
Iellieth took a step closer. The dryad’s leafy hair shuddered in surprise, but she did not otherwise react. “I waited many years for a freedom that never came, at least not in the way I’d first envisioned it.” Iellieth’s heart warmed, and the pungent odor of decay lifted from the space around her. Somewhere beneath all of this rot, a black rose bloomed. She inhaled deeply, clinging to the whiff of hope—she might be breaking through the thick bark walls after all. “There were others who had been waiting for me, and I for them.” The words came faster. Warmth flooded her body as she thought of Marcon and Quindythias, wherever they were, trying to find her. “I thought freedom would mean traveling on my own, going wherever I chose.”
Her pulse pounded in her ears. Yes. Yes. Yes.
“But that wouldn’t have been anything more than a different sort of cage.” A second rose blossomed as the dryad’s lips parted. A light flared behind her golden eyes. “You already knew this, before you lost the one you cared for . . . and after too. But I think you need to allow yourself that freedom again, the one that comes when we attach our fate to the ones we love, no matter what.” The dryad stared back at her, as though seeing her face clearly for the first time. “If you’ll give us a chance to free you from the creature’s corruption, to . . . to send it back to where it came from, then you could once again care for this forest the way you used to.” A final deep breath. “You could find a way to love again.”
The dryad bowed her head, and wind rippled through her hair. “May the cycle of darkness and light guide you, Iellieth Amastacia.” The wind howled louder. Thick bark scratched against her skin, and light exploded all around her.
Iellieth squinted against the sudden change. A tongue of pale green flame splashed onto her hand. She shouted in surprise.
Damp grass, lavender flowers, and thyme swept through her senses. The scents pulled at her, dragging her to the earth.
No. The dryad had let her go. She wasn’t returning inside the tree. Iellieth struggled. She kicked against the earth’s tug. Her foot made contact with a thump, answered by a sharp cry and an Elvish curse.
“Stop fighting me, lady.” The low voice growled from beside her ear, burning coals and soothing fire. “Iellieth, open your eyes.”
Their faces blocked out the weak rays of the sun. Anxious eyes, pale gray and scowling, darkest blue, peered at her. Her breath rose and fell, wheezing in her chest. “Where are we? We have to go before—” Iellieth surged forward again, but Marcon’s arms refused to release her. Oh. “You pulled me away from the tree,” she said softly.
He nodded.
“And you kicked me!” Quindythias stuck his hands on his hips and thrust his chest forward. The lower half of a boot print stained the shoulder of his leather coat. The runes along his dark skin had intensified, almost to solid black. Marcon’s, too, were a deep brown against his olive skin.
Iellieth crumpled forward. Marcon seated her gently in the grass and knelt in front of her, clutching her hand.
The burning along her arm had cooled. A thin green liquid dripped off her fingers and onto the earth. The source of the herbs. “Mara’s tincture,” she whispered.
Marcon’s eyes smiled.
“Thank you.” His thumb trailed across her palm, rubbing the last of the clinging droplets into her skin. “There was a dryad in the tree. She . . . spoke to me and showed me what happened to her. The creature Nova warned us about, it’s hurting the dryad too.” But how were they to find out what it was?
“I thought I heard someone in the forest.” A tenor voice pierced the air. Marcon and Quindythias whirled around, blades drawn. Lord Victoro Nassarq, one of the nobles from Linolynn who she’d known almost all her life, stood tall and pale beneath the sunless sky. “Lady Amastacia, what a surprise.”
Chapter 34
Briseras’s footsteps stole softly over the narrow mountain trail leading south as Lavinia guided them to her family’s homestead, positioned above the Nocturne village. Through their travels, the forest was unnaturally still. Vera’s uneasiness rippled over to Briseras, but neither she nor the wolf could trace the source of their disquiet.
At Everett’s careful prodding, the witch spoke about her family and what they could expect at the Nocturne estate. “We grew up just outside the village, and Saige and I would go there often to trade, especially after our father disappeared. It’s a place afflicted with many tragedies—other disappearances, illnesses, misfortune. But despite all of this, we’ve rarely seen Lord Nassarq, the master of the estate. He’s reclusive and leaves the village to mind itself.”
“Sounds vampiric to me,” Everett muttered.
“Don’t jump to conclusions on a hunt.” Briseras narrowed her eyes. “It swiftly becomes too convenient to twist evidence and fit it around the story you’ve written in your mind than to follow the actual trail.”
“I’m a folklorist, Briseras. I’m meant to uncover and recreate the story.”
Briseras suppressed a sigh. “Not when you’re hunting with me.” They’d gone over this before they found evidence of a vampire, but all of that effort would still be wasted if they pursued one nobleman who was guilty only of aloofness and not of consuming his populace.
Everett frowned and fell silent.
“What stories have you heard about vampires, Everett?” Lavinia asked. He stood up straighter, and the two exchanged the tales they’d heard growing up in the mountains, debating some of the nuances they attributed to differences between villages or regions.
Briseras and Vera walked ahead of them, ears perked for sounds of danger.
