The Ash Queen, page 25
The cardinal stood in the middle of the space, and Dunstan’s mouth dried as though his worst fears were realised. He released Nelda to take hold of his sword and pushed her around behind him.
The cardinal remained unmoving, but he wasn’t standing. He was kneeling, much as the sisters had been before the throne. And at the sight of him, they started to sing. It was a sweet, uplifting hymn that made Dunstan look towards the large, imposing figure of the God, who appeared to look towards them and smile, as though he had been waiting for them. Dunstan blinked and realised the statue had not moved at all.
The cardinal maintained his focus towards the face of the God. His too-bright red robes were fanned out around him as though he were on show, reminding the world of who he was and where he was meant to be.
The last time the king had seen him, he had appeared so strong and somewhat younger, but the grey hair had returned, possibly even lighter. Dunstan took a breath and stepped up closer to the man, then around him to look on him. He appeared much older than he ever had. Creases marked his face. His staring eyes, which had not moved away from the God, appeared paler, his beard finer. Was the magic taking its toll?
Dunstan looked back at the group looking at him. The sister sighed and stepped forward. He thought Frayne might try to stop her, but whatever fear he had of this man, whatever power he might have taken or had over them, was gone.
“Your Grace,” the sister said, kneeling beside him, looking up at the God. The king felt the need to step back. They sat right in the very centre of the open space before the altar and the God.
There was no response from the cardinal, although the singing from the sisters continued, and Dunstan recognised Nelda’s voice amongst them. Were they singing in praise of the God or just the Goddess? He could not tell, and it did not matter.
“You can let go of your hatred,” the sister whispered.
The cardinal glanced at her then, his hand moving to his heart and scrunching the material.
The sister nodded, but he shook his head.
“Your Grace, it is not for you to judge what the gods accept,” she said, her voice low and kind.
“I am the Voice of the God,” he said, although his voice was shaky. There was none of the confidence Dunstan had heard every other time the man had spoken.
“You are not,” a voice boomed through the cathedral.
The singing ceased, and a strange feeling of clamminess closed around them. A fog quickly filled the world, as though the walls and the God were blurry. Dunstan took a step closer to Nelda but lost her.
He looked up at the God then, looking down over them as he always had, unseeing with his stone eyes and yet seeing it all. It was not the voice of the God he had heard; he knew that.
“I am,” the cardinal said, his voice croaky and unsure, and Dunstan thought he was crying. He had climbed to his feet, somewhat unsteadily, and the sister was holding him by the arm as though helping to hold him up.
Chapter 35
The magic closed in around Heath, prickling his skin and thrumming at the back of his mind. In moments, he lost sight of the king, the cardinal, and the sister who had been standing in the middle of the cathedral. He knew they had not been taken, despite the growing darkness. He reached out and took Frayne’s arm as he went to step forward.
Whatever it was he had found or faced in the dark mist when he had gone after the general, it was here. He knew that voice. The voice that had shivered down his back and across his skin. It was not the voice of the God, although when it had spoken, he had looked up at the unseeing stone eyes and the statue had appeared to look directly at him.
Heath took a deep breath. Then Lia’s hand was on his arm, and he felt the connection to her, the magic growing within him due to his closeness with her. In the darkening space, he could feel Nelda and a weakened Pip, their magic thrumming along with his own.
A laugh echoed through the space, frightening him more than he wanted to admit. He shivered again. He should have his sword in his hand. But he had another weapon at his disposal, and he would have to find the strength to use it.
“Heath?” his father called through the mist, and Heath wondered if they should have left him behind. He understood that his father wanted to be sure that Heath was safe, but he was in more danger than he realised. The sound of footsteps and swords being drawn were faint in the growing darkness. The general gave some instruction, his voice familiar, and yet the words themselves were lost to the dark.
“I’m here,” Heath finally answered, keeping his voice low.
Another laugh echoed through the deepening mist. This man was something very different to the cardinal. He had learnt how to hold the magic. But then, maybe he was something else entirely.
Heath did not know if he was the same kind of man. Or had he become that when he had been accepted by Frances and Nelda as family?
He blew out a long breath, and a hand closed around his.
Let me take the child, Ymma whispered in his mind.
“You should not be here,” he said, holding tight as she tried to pull away.
Where would I go? I need to be near you, and Pip and West.”
Heath nodded but held tight. “Give Pip to Ymma,” he said quietly to Lia. “Do you need water?”
“I am stronger now,” she returned just as quietly, carefully moving Pip into Ymma’s hold. The child appeared to be sleeping, and he hoped that was true. That she would recover. He could still feel her. “I can pull what I need from the air around me.”
Heath nodded. He had been doing the same, in a way, with the earth around him, and he understood why Grace had gone barefoot so often. He longed to touch the stones or push his hands into the dirt. When this was all over, he would find a quiet place in the gardens, or even out in the forest, to lie down on the ground, close his eyes, and breathe in the wonder.
But he did not have the time for that now.
A flame glowed faintly through the mist, and he could feel Nelda’s magic flowing through the space around them. There was the silhouette of others in the mist, the king and the sister he assumed. Although, he could not make out the cardinal now. He wondered if the man had been a part of this all along, pulling them into a situation they couldn’t win. Pulling them into a battle for more than he was willing to lose.
He had already lost too much—Grace, his family. He glanced about to see if he could make his father out in the mist. When he couldn’t, he reached for Frayne again. He had already nearly died trying to ensure Nelda was safe, and despite his father’s anger at his calling her mother, there was something about the woman that connected them all. Made them family.
“Mother!” he called into the mist.
There was no response for too long, and then the flame appeared to grow closer.
“Mother!” he tried again as Frayne’s hand closed tighter around his. He wondered if they would not have been better remaining out in the open somewhere.
“Here,” she said, her voice a whisper through the mist. Heath wanted to step forward and meet her, but Frayne held him back. Was there a chance the creature in the mist was playing with him?
And then the flame broke through the mist, lighting up her face, and he reached forward and threw his arms around her.
The king was at her side, the sister at the other. The cardinal was nowhere to be seen.
“Where did he go?” Frayne asked, a low growl to his voice.
“He was pulled into the dark,” the sister said. She was shaking a little, looking about, and although Heath was sure she had not lost her faith, he wondered whether she realised just what they might be facing here.
“Sister?” Frayne asked, his voice soft and coaxing.
“The God,” she stammered.
“He is not the one speaking in the mist,” Frayne continued, as though reassuring her would reassure them all.
“I know that,” she said, sounding a little less frightened. “But he is here; he is watching over us.”
Heath realised then that the singing of the other sisters had dropped to a hum. There was something in the sound, something that called to more than was present.
“What do we do?” he asked, looking at Nelda, for she was the answer to this. She had always been, no matter what she thought she had or what she had held back for so long.
She shook her head, glancing over her shoulder as another sound echoed through the cathedral. Only Heath could not make out what it was. The sisters continued their humming, although the mist did not lift. He was sure the darkness had lifted when Nelda had sung. And the strange sound echoed through the growing darkness around them. It was the sound of stone moving, as though the world might be crumbling in around them, but slowly, painfully slowly.
Heath reached out, feeling the ground move closer to him. Magic was not causing it to happen. There was no thrum of magic, but there was the pull of the earth.
He realised then he was standing alone. Frayne’s hold had disappeared, as had Lia’s, and although he could see the flame of Nelda’s fire still burning in the mist, he was alone. Fear closed in around him. The laughter in the mist had gone, but he knew it was out there—the odd magic that had been stolen by the monk, turned into something else.
He closed his eyes and stepped forward. Silence surrounded him. The lack of the sisters’ humming worried him, and yet there wasn’t the same feel in the space as there had been in the throne room.
“Heath,” his father’s voice echoed through the darkness around him, but he was not certain it was his father. Not this time. The voice did not have the same desperation to find him, to wish he were far away and safe. They were all here, all those important to him—all the witches, the sisters, his family, the woman he had grown to care for in such a short amount of time.
“Lia,” he whispered, seeing her confident blue eyes in the image that formed in his mind.
He stepped forward at the sound of water running across the ground. It flowed across his boots, pushing at the barrier that had surrounded him, and lapped against the walls.
He stopped then, listening to the gentle flow of water. The cathedral was a large space. Would he hear it lapping against the walls like a lake against the shore? Could it be that it was moving against something else? He reached out, feeling for what was close and hoping with all he had that it was not the monster and those hideous eyes, the sharp claws.
He felt the stone as though it had reached out to meet him. Smooth and solid, it was a leg—no, an arm, the hand reaching past him. He raised his own hand above his head, and the face, large and overwhelming, was against his palm. He traced the line of the nose and mouth, the jaw line. Stone fingers closed around his. He was no longer afraid.
It was still too dark to see, and he held tight to the stone. He sensed the earth within it, but something more. Despite the movement and the energy in the air around him, Heath could not feel any magic in the stone. As though it were simply stone. And yet there was a pulse to it, a life within it that was more than stone, more than earth, and more than he had felt in any living thing.
The hand lifted him into the air, and he hung from the stone, knowing he could not fall. As he rose, he could see beyond the mist, above the mist, and the light streaming through the windows and their colour. He could see images he had not seen before in the windows then, of fire and water, the earth and a girl in white who could have been Grace.
He looked down and could see darker spots in the mist below, and a flame, a beacon that had to be Nelda.
“Sing,” he whispered.
He was sure his voice had not travelled any further than his lips, as though in this strange space he was too far removed from everyone below him. Perhaps he had died at the hand of the creature in the mist and then dreamt what had happened. His arm was growing tired, pulled as he hung from it.
Nelda’s voice lit up the world around her, the hymn to the Goddess clear and bright, and her flames shone brighter. The mist lightened around them, and then he was falling.
Heath landed on a soft bed of grass. His toes pressed softly into the cool blades, the power of the earth, the connection to the earth, reaching through him. He wondered at what point he had lost his boots.
He sighed, half expecting the Goddess herself or Grace to step out of the trees around him. Despite the dim light, it was familiar and safe. Although he could not have named where he was, it didn’t matter. Whether he had been here before or not, it was the earth, and that was all he needed. In the distance, he could make out Nelda’s light and the gentle singing of the sisters.
Or at least that was what it appeared to be—or did he just want it to be? It could have been the trees themselves that appeared to lean in towards him, that sang, a hum that moved through him as the magic thrummed at the back of his mind. He wondered if he had created the space around him rather than fallen into it.
The world was dark above him, but he could make out the stars. The world felt peaceful. He had felt that before, he realised, in the dark in the back of a cart.
The God was not looking down on him, or if he was, not as the solid stone statue that he was sure had picked him up and set him here.
He turned slowly, taking in the trees and the solid ground beneath him. The cool grass, the whisper of wind through the trees, and the twinkle of stars that almost seemed in time with the singing of the sisters. His heart stopped.
Before him, in the small clearing, stood the man that was no longer. The outline of a black tunic was clear. Too black, too bright, even in the dim light of the clearing. As though it were not natural. Heath wondered then at the men who had spent their lives in service to the God. Or had that been some ploy, some story to tell the people while they went about their own plans?
The creature before him was frightening. Yet in the stillness of the clearing, the dark eyes that could have been looking in any direction seemed so unnatural that Heath could not fear it as he knew he should.
It extended its arms as though in slow motion, and the dim light caught the long claws, the unnatural hunch of the shoulders, the too-wide mouth. It grinned, and Heath stepped back.
The singing increased around him. But he had taken this creature on before, and he did not have a sword this time. The glow of Nelda’s flame brightened the world and then greens of the trees and grass around him. It reached for him. As did the trees. Heath wondered for an instant if he should allow it to take him this time. Perhaps that was his purpose.
The damp grass touched at his feet, chilling him, and he realised that Lia had added her water to the world as well. She had given so much of it to save him the last time. As he smiled at the thought of her, the creature smiled in return.
Frayne knew that Heath was gone. In a heartbeat, he had been standing beside him and then vanished. Frayne worried for him, but he knew he had not been taken. Heath had chosen to go—he needed to go—and despite the heavy feel of the mist around him, it didn’t hold the same power that it had.
The tight feeling of fear that had seemed to stop him taking a full breath since they had entered the cathedral lifted a little, and the understanding that the world was as it should be seemed out of place given the danger they were in.
The singing of the sisters helped calm him, giving him the feeling that they were safer and that the Goddess they called to was listening. The darkness surrounding them appeared to grow darker, thicker perhaps, and then Frayne realised that was the movement of men within it.
Men were hiding in the magic that surrounded them, as they had before, being used by one man to help him gain the power he wanted. None of the figures that approached appeared any taller than the others, but Frayne knew that wherever Heath had gone, the creature had followed. Something more than fear tightened his chest.
He looked for the green glow, the indication that Grace was near and she had come to help them one last time. But it did not come, and as the darkening shadows grew closer, the reflection of Nelda’s flame appeared to lessen. Just how strong might these men be?
Frayne held his sword at the ready, the men beside him silent. He knew they were all the same, standing and waiting, for they did not know what would appear from the mist.
Frayne waited while the dark shadows moved closer. It was as though the whole world moved in slow motion. His heart beat slowly. The singing had slowed, almost becoming solid around him to form a barrier of its own. Water lapped around his boots and yet did not hinder him; it was a conduit. He was stronger for the surrounding magic and faith, and yet he could not place exactly why.
Nelda’s hand rested on his arm, and he breathed in the strength. No matter how much he missed Grace, he knew she would not return. The Goddess had sent others to support him, in a different way. He stepped forward, slicing his heavy sword through the mist.
He met no resistance, no sign of the men he was sure were there. He could sense more than see the general beside him as he worked his way into the mist. The water continued to lap against his boots, and he could hear it against the walls of the cathedral as well, and possibly others.
He glanced behind him, but there was no sign of the witch or any of the others. He had moved too deep into the darkness. And yet he knew they were there. He rolled his shoulders and stepped forward again, knowing that the general was just out of his reach, as was West, somewhere to his left. Other soldiers had moved into the dark as well, but not as deep. Frayne could almost taste their fear in the surrounding damp air.
He stood still. Allowing the world to settle around him. Then the water lapped against something before him, as though it were trying show him what might be there. He moved forward quickly, striking without holding back, using the full weight of the sword and his body behind it.
There was a groan, soft, subtle, and for a moment he wondered if he had heard it at all. It might have been the movement of the water, or another soldier in the mist with him. But then he was sure there was blood on his blade. He stepped forward. The mist appeared a little lighter, and he prodded at the darkness on the ground before him. The shadowy lump disappeared as his foot connected with it. He had no idea if he had managed to defeat something or if it was all part of the illusion.
