Nightborn, page 29
The beasts of the Forest followed.
Blood.
Hot.
Pounding in her head.
Her skull felt as though it had been split open. Maybe it had been. Maybe she had died and gone to Heaven. Or Hell. Either one would be fine by her right now. Anywhere other than where she was.
For a moment she just lay motionless on the ground, unwilling to open her eyes and resume the nightmare. But her head was on fire and her chest was growing tighter with every breath, and she knew that she had to start moving again if she was to have any hope of survival.
With a groan she lifted her face from the slime-covered ground, blinking as she tried to get her bearings. The moon was still bright overhead, so not much time had passed. That was a good thing, wasn’t it? There was a throbbing pain in her arm where the wolf had managed to bite her, but the limb responded as it should, so no bones were broken. Nor was there any sign of blood trickling out from under her bracer.
Why was she still alive?
She looked around for her sword. It was lying on the ground a few yards away from her. The lead wolf must have fled when she’d wounded it, dragging the sword that far before it fell free of him. If the rest of the pack followed him, that would explain why she was still alive. All that was left of the torch was a charred stick with bits of ash clinging to it. Useless.
She crawled over to the sword, and used it to steady herself while she regained her feet. As she stood upright she swayed slightly, and for a moment her eyes refused to focus. She had lost enough blood in other battles to recognize the cause of her lightheadedness; somewhere inside her body her lifeblood must slowly be leaking out. If she did not find a healer soon to repair her internal injuries, she was not going to make it.
She forced herself to begin walking again. Her feet were numb and she stumbled often, but staying here wasn’t an option. She had to keep moving. As fast as she could, as far as she could. Every minute counted now.
God of Earth and Erna, help me stay on my feet. Just for another few hours.
But she had only managed to go a short distance when suddenly her foot slipped out from under her. She hit the ground with bone-jarring force, her left knee slamming into solid rock. Ice-cold liquid splashed across her face, shocking against the feverish heat of her skin.
For a moment it was all she could do to catch her breath and make sure that no new bones were broken. Only then did the significance of what had just happened to her hit home.
Water.
As her eyes adjusted to the moonlight, she saw that she had fallen in a shallow pool, from which streamers of water stretched out like glistening tendrils along the ground. Thirst welled up inside her at the sight of it, but the thought of drinking anything from the ground here made her stomach turn. God alone knew what manner of noxious parasites it might contain. But the droplets of water trickling down her sweat-streaked face reminded her of just how long it had been since she had last tasted food or drink, and how long it might be before she had another opportunity to do so.
If you don’t have the strength to make it to a healer, she told herself, you’re doomed anyway.
Leaning down, she cupped her hand to bring some of the water to her lips. It tasted odd but not overtly foul, and after a moment’s hesitation she began to drink in earnest. The chill water soothed the parched membranes of her throat, and eased the fever in her flesh. Finally, feeling the weight of the ice-cold fluid building in her stomach, she forced herself to stop.
The water had cleared her head somewhat, and she studied the pool surrounding her. Its surface had been disturbed by her motion, so it was hard to see if it had any sort of natural current. After a moment she picked up a fallen leaf from the ground nearby and placed it on the water’s surface. It bobbed about randomly for a few seconds, and then slowly but surely began to move away from her. Watching it, she felt the shadow of despair lift ever so slightly from her soul. A current implied gravity and direction, therefore hope. Assuming this tiny stream did not disappear into the earth, it might eventually lead her out of here.
A wolf howled in the distance.
Panicked, she jerked her head around to look for the source of the sound, but nothing was visible behind her save moonlight and shadows. She struggled to her feet as quickly as she could, but her bruised knee was loath to support her. If the wolf wasn’t aware of her presence yet she might still have a chance, but only if she moved quickly.
But then another wolf howled. And another. Their cries were eerie, ghostly sounds that made her skin crawl. Were these the same animals she had fought before? Or something worse, that the Forest had conjured? She began to move along the side of the stream as quickly as she could, but she was limping badly now, and each time her left foot hit the ground it sent red-hot knives of pain shooting through her knee. She struggled to think past it, to keep focused on her objective. Keep your eye on the water. Don’t lose sight of it! Keep moving.
Suddenly she heard an animal moving through the Forest to her right, crashing noisily through the underbrush. A few seconds later she heard one on her left as well. Apparently they had picked up her trail, and intended to surround her. At her current pace she didn’t stand a chance of escaping them.
Gritting her teeth, she started to run. A stumbling trot was the best she could manage, but it was better than walking. Once or twice her foot caught on a low-hanging branch or vine, and she had the crazy delusion that the Forest was trying to trip her up. But she managed to break free from most of them, and stumble over the rest, so she kept going.
Such an effort was not good enough, however; she could hear that the wolves were slowly but surely closing in on her. Their ghastly howls reverberated through the woods, urging her to run as an animal would run, drawing on those final reserves of strength which are stored on the threshold of death.
As prey would run.
Suddenly she realized that all the movement she was hearing was now coming from her left; to her right there was only silence. Evidently the pack had abandoned its attempt to surround her and was closing ranks. Which meant that now she had a chance—albeit a slim one—to escape them.
Channeling all her energy into one last desperate burst of speed, she turned away from her pursuers and sprinted in the direction they had abandoned—
And stopped.
Breathless, heart pounding, she knew with visceral certainty that something was wrong, but for a moment she could not give it a name. When the revelation finally came, it chilled her to the bone.
She glanced down at the water beside her, still barely more than a trickle of moisture among the rocks, and then at the empty blackness of the Forest that flanked the stream bed. The water was her lifeline; if she left it she would have no hope of finding her way out of this place. The wolves had given her a way to escape them, but it would require her leaving the stream behind.
They were herding her.
She realized that she had only two choices left: she could leave the moonlight and the water behind and flee like helpless prey through the darkness—the outcome they clearly desired—or she could make her stand here, dying as a knight of the Church was meant to die, and deny them their final triumph.
Not a real choice at all.
A strange calm came over her as she looked around for the most defensible position. The longer she could hold out, she told herself, the more of the beasts she would be able to dispatch to Hell on her way out. But the trees weren’t as densely packed here as they had been at the site of her last battle, and there was no convenient cluster of them to use for cover. At last she found a place where thick black vines had established a webwork between two trunks. It wasn’t a solid barrier by any means, but she knew from tripping over such vines just how strong they could be. At least they would slow down anything coming at her from that direction.
It was the best she was going to be able to do.
Facing in the direction of her pursuers, her back to the tenuous barrier of vines, she flexed her hand around the grip of her sword, drew in as deep a breath as her bruised lungs would allow, and prepared to face her final battle. God, grant that I may serve Your holy purpose to the end.
Then, suddenly, the howling stopped. She held her breath, listening for any other sounds of pursuit, but all was silent now. Whatever had been crashing through the Forest in pursuit of her was no longer moving.
Shifting her weight uneasily from one foot to the other, she caught her ankle on one of the vines and had to shake it loose. Or she tried to, anyway. But the thing was caught on her greave and would not come off. With a last wary glance at the shadowy tree line head of her, she reached down with her sword to cut herself loose—
But her arm would not move freely. Then something took hold of her other ankle. And her left arm. And her chest. By the time she realized what was happening there were vines all over her, gripping her body like steel bands. She knew that she could not pull free of so many at once, and that her only hope was to cut her way out, but her sword arm was so entangled that she could not get it loose. Panic flared in her gut as she felt one of the vines wrap itself around her head, but try as she might she could not shake it off. She was trapped like a fly in a web, impotent and immobile.
And then something stepped out of the Forest’s shadows that was not a wolf, and it stood in the moonlight before her.
A man.
He was tall and slender, with delicate features, and skin so pale that in the moonlight he seemed to be carved from alabaster. His shoulder-length hair would probably have glowed a warm golden-brown beneath the sun, but in Domina’s cold light it was an eerie, ashen hue, and the halo of moonlight that crowned it lent his entire face an unnatural luminescence. And he was clean. So clean. His midnight blue surcote did not have so much as a speck of dirt on it. Even his boots looked spotless, though the ground beneath his feet was a muddy mess, and the hilt of his sword gleamed brightly in the moonlight, looking as if it had just been polished. Suddenly she felt acutely aware of her own degraded state, mud-splattered and sweat-stained and probably reeking from all the vile slime she had been crawling through. It made his fastidiousness seem doubly unnatural.
His pale eyes fixed on her with an intensity that transfixed her, much as the gaze of a snake might transfix its prey. It was impossible for her to look away.
“Who are you?” she whispered hoarsely.
Those eyes were cold—so cold!—human in form, but without a trace of humanity in their depths. She saw him glance down at her sword, and a strange expression crossed his face. Was he a creature of fae, sensitive to the aura of faith that clung to the blessed steel? She tried to raise the weapon up so that she could protect herself with it, but the effort was hopeless. A fly in a spider’s web had more freedom of movement than she did right now.
He began to walk toward her. A knot of fear twisted in her gut as she tried to draw back from him; inwardly she cursed herself for her weakness. What was it about him that unnerved her, more than all the monsters she had fought? Was it because the darkness she sensed within him had left no mark upon his physical person? With his delicately beautiful features and the halo of moonlight glowing about his head, he looked almost angelic. Was it easier to deal with monsters when they looked like monsters?
Then he was in front of her. It took all her strength of will not to flinch before the power of his gaze.
“So very brave,” he said softly. There was a faint inflection to his voice that she could not identify: an echo of lost lands and forgotten times. “You would fight me if you could, wouldn’t you? Even though the battle would be lost before it began.”
He reached down for her sword. She tightened her hand around its grip—but then he touched her and her fingers froze, and he lifted the weapon from her hand easily as if he were taking it from a child. For a moment he just looked at it, studying the Church insignia that adorned its grip. Whatever hope she might have had that the religious symbol would repel him faded as he ran his finger slowly over the design. A hint of dark amusement flickered in his eyes.
“What are you?” she whispered.
“A servant of the One God, in ways that you will never understand.” He put the sword off to one side, sliding its point into the ground so that it would stand upright just beyond her reach. Then he reached out to touch her face. She tried to pull away from him, but the vines were wrapped too tightly around her to allow for it. His pale fingers stroked her cheek gently, a mockery of a lover’s caress; his touch was like ice. “Helplessness,” he murmured. “That’s your greatest fear, is it not? Better to suffer a thousand wounds in battle than to surrender control of your fate to another.” He smiled coldly as he brushed a lock of sweat-soaked hair back from her face. The grip of the vines was so tight that she could not even turn her head away from him. “How very sad, that in the end fate betrayed you.”
Anger welled up inside her, driving out all the fear and the despair; suddenly her entire soul was alight with white-hot indignation. I will not be your plaything! her soul screamed. She stared into his visage—so beautiful, so clean, so perfect in its vanity—and realized that she did have one weapon left. Perhaps it would not be enough to win her freedom in this life, but she could claim her freedom in the next.
I know your weakness too, she thought.
She hawked up phlegm from deep within her lungs. It wasn’t hard to do; her chest was full of the stuff.
“Fuck you,” she growled.
And she spat in his face.
He was clearly unprepared for such a move, and for a moment he did not react at all, as the glob of blood-flecked spittle on his cheek began to slide down his face. Then the human façade seemed to give way, and with a cry of fury he grabbed her by her hair, jerking her head to one side, baring her neck above the edge of her gorget. Her spittle shattered into a thousand frozen fragments and fell from his face, but she knew he could still feel it there, like a slow-burning brand. Imperfection. Filth. Denial of his dominion. She could sense a black rage burning inside him now, more intense than any emotion a mortal soul was meant to contain, and bloodlust stirred in its wake. Better than she could have hoped for. If he was maddened enough to kill her on the spot, she could at least go to God with a clean soul.
Shutting her eyes, she muttered a prayer under her breath as she braced herself for death. Receive my soul, God of Earth and Erna, that I may serve you in the next world forever.
But seconds passed, and nothing happened. She could feel his hand tremble where he held her, fingers digging deeply into her flesh, but otherwise there was no movement. His face could have been carved from marble for all the emotion it displayed. Then he shut his eyes for a moment, and she saw a tremor pass through him. So subtle a motion, but contrasted with his previous stillness, it suggested some internal struggle, powerful enough to shake him to his core.
Please, God. Let the rage overwhelm him, so that I can be freed from this place.
Finally he lowered his face to her throat, and she braced herself to have it torn open, or sliced through, or whatever other form death might take. But death did not come. She could feel his cold mouth hovering above the edge of her gorget, and then—unexpectedly—the touch of his lips upon her skin. Disarmingly gentle, perversely intimate. She felt more violated by that kiss than she had by all the rest of what had happened to her, and she shivered as his cold breath raised goosebumps along her neck. “Tell your masters that the Forest is spoken for.” He whispered the words softly in her ear, like a lover’s intimacy. “Tell them that trespassers will not be received well.”
Then he let go of her and stepped back. The vines that had been binding her twitched, stiffened, and then shattered like glass. Frozen black crystals showered down around her as she was suddenly freed from her bondage. The unexpected absence of support left her unprepared, and she stumbled to her knees. For a moment it was all she could do to catch her breath. Then she looked up at him. The storm of emotion that had briefly possessed him was gone now; his gaze was as steady as a frozen lake, and equally unreadable.
When he saw that she was looking at him he pointed to the depths of the Forest, in the direction she had been about to run. “South is that way,” he said. And he added, “Nothing that answers to me will stop you.”
Then he turned and slipped into the shadows of the Forest, and a moment later was gone from sight.
She shut her eyes and trembled, struggling to absorb all that had just happened to her. Trying to decide what to do next. Her chest and her injured knee felt cold and slightly numb; had he worked some kind of spell on her? If so, it was dulling the pain enough for her to think about moving again. Perhaps even moving quickly. But in which direction? The water might eventually lead her to the river, but its path was unlikely to be direct, and there was always the chance it would sink down into the earth and leave her stranded again. And the direction he had indicated led away from the water, into the black depths of the Forest, where she would have no landmark to guide her. Only faith.
Every survival instinct in her soul warned her that that advice of such a creature was not to be trusted. The wolves had wanted to drive her into that very same darkness, for reasons of their own. How could she be certain his motives were any different? But logic, too, had its voice. There was no point in his giving her a message for the Church if he did not expect her to deliver it, was there? If he sent her to her death, he would be defeating his own purpose.
Tell your masters the Forest is spoken for.
With a sigh she took one last look at the glimmering stream of water, then turned away from it and limped into the shadows of the deep woods, in the direction she prayed was south.
“She won’t make it out.”
Startled, Tarrant turned to find the albino standing only a few yards behind him. Had the man been following him? If so, he might prove more dangerous than Tarrant had anticipated. “It will be a test of her faith.”
