Winter Heart, page 40
She gagged, fighting Niamh with all of her strength. Her body arched unnaturally, lifting itself off the bed. Her once pristine white chemise was now stained with blood and tears and sweat. Maewyn shook violently as she cried, but her magic bonds held steady.
In response to her hand sliding further down her throat, Maire's jaw unhinged as a snake's, opening wider. "Oh, no, you don't." Niamh heard her own voice, hard and steadfast, above the roaring of adrenaline in her head.
Niamh held fast, her magic searching for the darkness.
SOMETHING IN HIM CALLED him to the Dark Tree. Whether it be the eerie familiarity to the Golden Tree, the Relic he’d spent his childhood laying under; or the dreams of its dark parallel looming over him and whispering his name.
Fane approached the kirk without hesitation. It looked even more dilapidated than when he and Niamh had been there only a few weeks prior. The snow around the kirk was thick with black sludge. The Dark Tree appeared as he stepped over the cracked threshold, larger and more twisted than it had been before. It loomed above him ominously, mocking him with memories of touching the Golden Tree and feeling its warmth seep into his skin.
Prince Fane.
As he approached the Tree, a slithering, dark voice oozed into his mind. It was unearthly. Ancient, and guttural. Alvyss hesitated, halting his steps and backing up in a panic. Fane placed a steadying hand on his neck as he dismounted, making sure Niamh's horse was far enough away as to not be disturbed by whatever evil would emerge.
A low buzz filled the air. A black phantom hand creeping around his neck, sending chills down his spine.
Prince Fane Stagrunner. The Lost Prince.
Thumbing free one of Rohyr's axes from its sheath, Fane gripped it firmly. A step closer to the Dark Tree only intensified the buzzing in the air and the pounding in his head. The closer he came, faces flashed across his memories. His Father's hard eyes. A hand decorated with rings. Pain in his right temple. His father's face that was so similar to his brother's. He shook his head.
Fane shoved down any dark memory that tried to push itself in. The Tree seemed to tremble in fear as the dark memories it showed him only caused him to stalk toward it faster and closer. It trembled and instead of a dark past, visions of a bright future appeared in his mind.
Fane then saw himself on the throne of wood and antlers in his own palace. Friedhelm's crown on his head, and the world beneath his feet.
Look at all that you can be. What you can have. Women flocked to his side, Men swore their undying allegiance to him. His brother lay dead on his sword, his blood mingling with that of the kingdoms he had conquered. Eira, Corseils, even the great kingdom to the South was his to command.
I don’t want that... Fane thought to himself, before the darkness made his head ache. He clutched a handful of his golden hair.
What do I want, then? He asked himself. Those same dark thorns, the ones he’d seen at the Fade meeting, sprung into his vision. They wrapped their ghostly tendrils around the Tree, and then came closer to wrap themselves around him.
How did my life come to this?
His head ached worse and worse as the seconds ticked by. His arms felt a tingle, as if they were going numb. Fane could no longer feel the warm wood of the axe in his hand.
Like a sunbeam shining through the clouds, Fane remembered that day in Hael’s personal study. That phrase he’d taught him. How could he have known Fane would need it so soon after?
With great effort, Fane steeled his mind, as Hael had taught him. “I stand under the authority of the Father of Lights.” He said aloud, emphasizing every word, in as steady of a voice as he could muster. At that Name, the darkness recoiled. Deep in the darkest parts of his mind, he could hear it hissing. It paced at the edges, glaring at him. The temptation he felt, the internal crisis, was gone.
"That's right." Fane said aloud, bringing Rohyr's other axe to his left hand. The oppressive weight of the air lifted from his chest, and he strode forward. Rohyr’s axes glowed with a green light at the feel of the blackness humming against their blades.
With a deep breath, Fane plunged a blade into the black bark. Small pieces of wood shattered in all directions on impact, and the darkness screamed and hissed. Smiling triumphantly, he struck another blow with his other hand. Black sap spewed from where his blade sunk itself deep into its side. He continued chopping at it, little by little. Hacking away at the darkness. Its demonic shrieks filling the night air.
Airem
HIS SWORD WAS WHERE he’d left it: leaning on the side of the throne. In his haste to take care of his wife, Airem had left it unattended. A stupid mistake he would never make again.
The throne room was eerily quiet. The cold light of the winter sun filtered through the ice of the walls, making a kaleidoscope of colors that bounced from the columns to the throne and back again.
It was too quiet.
The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, even as he strapped his scabbard to his belt.
The double doors slammed behind him.
Airem slowly closed his eyes for a moment, as the scuffling of boots could be heard from all directions.
Members of the Fade, all dressed in black leather armor, stepped from behind the ten columns of ice leading from the throne to the doors at the other end of the room.
Airem turned to meet them, standing alone on the dais. There were nearly fifty in all. He was keenly aware of the fact that he was not dressed for battle. The only protection his clothing afforded him today was the leather of his embroidered jerkin. He cursed inwardly for the poor timing of this particular invasion. At the very least, he had left his heavy cloak in Maire's room, so his arms were unencumbered. He gripped the hilt of his sword.
A man stepped from the crowd, dressed in finer leathers than the rest. His light hair was cropped short, and his chest was adorned with a fine gold insignia. His ears sported delicately wrought gold cuffs. Airem had fought enough battles to know a leader when he saw one.
The leader smirked, looking up at him.
"Who knew that the infamously secure castle of Eira would be so easy to bring to its knees. And by the one person its king loves." The leader jeered, nearly crowing triumphantly.
"Apparently you did." Airem replied, keeping his face neutral.
"We couldn't have done it if we hadn't had the help of your dear wife." The leader said, as if Airem didn't understand his reference the first time. "But I guess this is the first you're hearing about it."
"It's not."
"She told us everything. Every detail, down to the last name of each of the guards. And it was all under your nose. How does it feel to know that you married the person that would betray you?" The man was clearly hoping to get some kind of a reaction from Airem. Something Airem refused to indulge.
Airem smiled. "I've known all along."
The leader fell silent.
"And I've known..." Airem continued, stepping down from the dais. "That it was you and your ilk that forced her to do it against her will." To finally say it out loud, something he had been working on for months, was enough satisfaction to bolster the righteous anger in his veins.
"I know the woman I fell in love with. And I haven't seen her in months." I will avenge all that you have stolen from me.
Airem unsheathed his sword. The blade sung to him in greeting. The sword of his fathers. The inheritance of every Eiran king spanning back generations. The blade, a silvery blue steel shimmered in the cold light of the throne room. Its hilt was as familiar to him as breathing. Though he didn't have magic running through his blood, the sword was imbued with magic of its own. He felt its power course through his arms, and up into his chest, filling his body with an icy blood lust.
The eyes of the leader that glared up at him, full of seething hatred and malice, were the same eyes that had been watching him from the green of his wife's own, in the shadows of all those late nights. He never slept. She hadn't either. He had known all along that it was never his queen that glowered at him, but the man behind all of this.
He didn't know who yet, but he would find out.
And he would kill him.
Before any of the men moved toward him, Airem brought his sword up over his head and sent it swinging down in one long arc. The summoning. Two huge wolves, made entirely of ice, stalked snarling in to view. He smiled grimly as several of the men stepped back in alarm. The wolves, which were twice the size of their flesh-and-blood counterparts, took their places on each side of him.
Airem's eyes glowed. His golden eyes, inherited from his father and his father before him, held flecks of ice. They responded to the connection to his sword. The cold light of winter filters through the walls of the throne room, intensifying the glow of his eyes, striking fear into the heart of every man present.
Airem paused for one tense moment.
Then he struck.
All of the anger, rage, despair, every pent up emotion that he had restrained the last four months; he let flow through his sword. Airem struck down three men at once with one swing. Their blood sprayed across the columns, staining the ice red.
He remembered the moment he saw her for the first time. He was fourteen years old. She stood barefoot, her white hair tangled and dirty, on the side of the road with the rest of the crowd. He looked down at her from the carriage, her green eyes locking with his. She didn't smile. Everyone always smiled when he was around. He waved at her, and her alone. It was almost as if she didn't know what to do. Airem watched her every move, not caring for any others that shouted at him in greeting.
Airem's ice wolves lunged toward the intruders, killing them with one efficient bite to their necks. The room erupted into chaos, as the floors ran red with blood.
The sand was white, soft, and cool in the night air. The lights of the party, the laughter and music, streamed down over the hill to the silent beach. Waves gently lapped at the shore. There wasn't anyone else there but for one young woman standing where the water met the shore.
Her hair glimmered the color of swan feathers in the moonlight.
Airem conceded most of the killing to his ice wolves, stepping through the chaos to the center of the throne room, where that leader awaited him. The man drew his own sword- a long, black-bladed, wicked looking thing. It didn't even look as if it was forged anywhere in Eira, much less in any civilized parts of the world. The blade dripped with poison. The floor steamed wherever the droplets hit the ice.
The two men stood facing each other, the chaos of battle surrounding them as they stood still.
"Your little country is not going to last much longer." The leader said, his eyes glittering with dark hostility. "How many of your young people have we claimed? How many were so willing to turn their backs on their king?"
Airem didn't answer, merely swinging for the man's head. The leader caught Airem's sword with his own, the poison hissing as it met the magic of Airem's blade. They continued like this – steel ringing against steel, parrying the other's moves perfectly, locked in a dance as they circled each other. It had been a long time since Airem fought someone so skilled as himself.
He was so acutely aware of his lack of armor, and of the fact that he was alone. No one was coming for him, because no one knew he was here. Airem also noticed with dismay that some of his own castle guards were among the Fade in the room. The leader lurched for him again, bringing his poisoned blade so close to Airem's face that he could almost feel it scratching his cheek.
"You're not even curious as to what we want, king?" The leader taunted, smiling as if he had won. As if he was hanging some grand mystery over Airem's head. The tone in which he used Airem's title was dripping with sarcasm. "I should think you might want to know something of those that have infected your kingdom."
Airem didn't know what the Fade wanted, and he didn't particularly care. Especially not then.
The king of Eira met the man's eyes straight on, something which seemed to set the leader uneasy. "I don't know who leads you- I intend to find out. I don't know what you want, but that changes nothing." Airem's voice grew deadly quiet, "I will hunt every single one of you down and kill you for what you've done to my kingdom, and to my wife."
With a quick strike, Airem sliced the man's blade in two, in the same movement shoving the leader away from himself. The broken blade clattered to the ground between them.
Airem stood tall, pointing the tip of his silvery-blue sword directly to the leader's slender nose. Airem had learned that the Fade communicated by some form of telepathy to whoever was at the head.
"Tell whoever leads you that the wolves of Eira shall find him, wherever he's hiding. And let the last thing he feels be my sword through his heart as he dies."
Before the leader could do a thing about it, Airem crossed the small distance between them in a flash, thrusting his sword through the enemy's chest.
The leader gasped as he fell to the ground, his blood spilling over Airem's boots, apparently without any last mocking words.
59
WITH EVERY STRIKE AGAINST the darkness, the Dark Tree, or rather the dark magic within it, fought Fane in every way it knew how. Each time a glowing blade embedded itself into the wood of the Tree, Fane saw his memories laid before him in his mind.
His mother's face, gentle and warm, her elegant cheekbones hidden behind long golden hair as she leaned over to kiss his forehead.
I stand under the authority of the Father of Lights.
This brought another moment of clarity. Enough to land another heavy blow. The Tree only continued shrieking into the night air. Globs of the black, sticky Sap flew at his face. Ebony vines shot at him from the darkness, barely missing his limbs.
He struck again.
This time, the face of his father. The face that regularly haunted his dreams. Dark, and brooding. Threatening. Fane's eyes fell to the multiple rings on his father's hands. They matched the marks that so often fell not on Fane's shoulders, but on his brother's. The marks that were always meant for him.
I stand...
His father appeared again, this time laying dead on the carpet, something dark gushing from his neck in the light of the fire.
Fane's mother next to him.
I- I stand....
His adult hands fell to his sides, still grasping the axe handles. The smooth wood against his skin faded and gave way to the feeling of soft carpet under his hands, and the warmth of fire on his face. The smell of blood in his nose.
Another figure stood above his slain parents.
A figure whose golden hair shone in the firelight. Whose ruined shoulder flexed as he sheathed his bloodied sword.
Whose gray eyes, the eyes of the House of Stagrunner, turned toward him where Fane, in all his smallness and weakness, hid behind the armchair.
Fane closed his eyes.
Took one deep, long breath.
And remembered.
He remembered the green of the leaves that choked the glass of his home. The way the light shone through them in the mornings.
Fane thought then of the same light that filtered through the trees above him as he felt his strong horse carry him through the forest. He remembered looking over to see his best friend, a bow strapped to his back as they rode together on Fane's first hunting trip. That day so many months ago.
Rune. No. Nythaniel.
Fane felt a roughness slither around his neck, though he could not move to stop it.
Nythaniel's face, with his auburn hair plastered with sweat and blood, as he lay dying in Fane's lap that day. An arrow protruding from his chest.
Nythaniel's hand, dropping the rings into Fane's.
Fane grit his teeth.
No.
I stand under the authority...
The auburn hair stayed the same, but it was a feminine face that hid behind it. Blue eyes that shyly looked up at him, her face lit by firelight. Her cheeks red from dancing with him. Her soft hand in his.
I stand under the authority of the Father of Lights. I will not be afraid.
A black tendril of a vine texture leapt at him from the shadows. He sliced it in half with one stroke of his ax. It writhed in the snow before going still.
He moved his one free hand to cut the other vines from around his neck. They, too, fell to the ground wriggling.
Fane struck the tree again, feeling the wood of the axes against his hands and the strength return to his limbs. Despite the battering of the wind against his body, and the battering of the Tree against his mind, he kept swinging.
Her hands folded demurely over her skirts as she sat on the wood floor of the cabin by the lake. His chest warmed from laying by the fire she had made all night. The way her soft voice sang to herself as he woke.
The blue of the ice giving way to her eyes. Those eyes gazing toward a far-off future, as birds chirped in the bell tower of the square one bright morning.
I am not afraid.
Fane smiled again.
And struck hard and fast and true.
This time, his blade went all the way through. What was left of the bulk of the middle of the tree splintered and twisted, finally giving way.
It crashed to the ground with a mighty roar.
And all was silent.
Fane dropped the axes, falling to the ground between them, completely spent.
The world faded to darkness.
Rohyr
ROHYR WHITESTAR FOUND himself rudely awakened and standing in the center of a freezing courtyard. Despite feeling like he’d just been mauled by some creature, Rohyr had arisen from his spare bed to see what all the commotion was about. Unfortunately, his axes were missing. And he didn’t have to think too long about where they’d gone.
"I’m going to kill him." He said aloud to himself, as anger rippled through his muscles. There were only a few common farming tools laying about against the walls. It looked like all of the interlopers had taken every proper weapon to be found.
Rohyr watched every corner of the courtyard. Waiting. Night had begun to fall, filling the sky with all the soft colors of twilight. Making it hard to see, of course. He grumbled to himself.
