The Sapling Cage, page 5
“Your sister was here before you,” he said as he approached. He wasn’t afraid of us, nor was he enthusiastic in his greeting. He was simply tired. “She has not returned from the woods.”
“One witch came alone?” Dam Alectoria asked. “When?”
“She came yesterday,” the man said. “Said her name was Dam Fia. Young, but strong and confident. Said she could help us with our troubles.”
“What troubles?”
“First came the blight. A month past, now, the trees between us and the mine, they’re …”
“As cold as snow,” Alectoria finished.
“Aye. And with the forest dead, game is scarce. We’re a mining town, though, so we didn’t worry too much about the forest. Until the monsters.”
“Tell us about the monsters,” Dam Lament said.
“As tall as two men, as white and bright as the moon. Too many arms. Too many eyes. Arms all around them, eyes all around them. As if you took a man and spun him like a top.”
The man had no emotion in his voice. He’d lost too much, I realized, to feel anything at all.
“And?” Dam Lament asked.
“And anyone who goes into those woods, through those woods, they don’t come back. Everyone young enough, they’ve gone away, mostly to The Gate. But we have debts, to the Baron and half the traders in Port Cek. If we don’t reopen the mine …”
“I understand,” Dam Alectoria said. “So Dam Fia went into the woods yesterday, and she hasn’t come back?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Dam Alectoria turned to the rest of the coven, her question unspoken. One by one, the witches nodded—we would investigate.
We strode through town. Faces appeared at doorways and windows, each more hungry and tired than the last, watching us as we went.
At the far end of town, wooden carts stood full of picks, augurs, lanterns, and other equipment for mining. Beyond lay the forest.
It wasn’t impressive, as far as forests went. Young birch, mostly, interspersed with older firs. But every tree bore gray leaves or needles, and frost glistened on bole and bough in the late evening sun.
“Like a man spun round like a top?” Dam Sorrel asked. She had drawn her sword and held it at her side, her shield tight in front of her body. Even ready for battle, she seemed so calm and friendly, like she was going to invite us for tea and pastries. Rose was at her side, alert as well. Whenever she wasn’t watching us whelps, Rose was at Sorrel’s side.
“Helgirden,” Dam Ilma said. “Children of the Nethers, in the old tongue.”
“No one has seen those since before there was an Order,” Dam Alectoria said.
“They might be drawn to the blight,” Dam Ilma said. “Or they might have been summoned to it.”
“That’s why Dam Fia came,” Dam Sorrel said. “And why she came alone.”
“Why’s that?” Araneigh asked. I thought the witches might be angry at her question, but Dam Sorrel answered her patiently.
“She’s a summoner more powerful than a witch her age has any right to be,” Dam Sorrel said. “She talks with demons and beasts, studies their languages. That kind of work is best done alone. You don’t want to startle something with fire for eyes and spells for skin.”
“Then why hasn’t she come back?” Araneigh asked.
“Maybe they didn’t feel like talking,” Dam Lament said. She took a long swallow from a vial of potion, set her crutch down against the nearest cart, and hefted her spear. She kept an eye on the nearby trees and she kept an eye on us, her charges.
“The three of us whelps should stay here in town,” Hex suggested.
“No,” Dam Lament said as she started into the woods. “That wouldn’t be safe.”
The sun cut through the thin trees and cast harsh shadows on the icy ground. The pattern of black stripes against the white was hypnotizing, and I spent most of my energy trying not to slip on the ice while still keeping up. Rose and Lament walked behind us, and I was glad for their protection.
“There’s not much ley here,” Dam Ilma said. She walked in front, a lantern held aloft in her heavy fist, with Alectoria just behind. “Dam Fia might have had the right idea. Talking might be our best bet.”
“Where there isn’t ley, there is always steel,” Dam Sorrel said, her voice still sweet.
“We’re close,” Dam Alectoria announced. A moment later, I saw how she knew. Bones hung suspended between trees, tied together with sinew in intricate three-dimensional patterns and geometric shapes. They were everywhere. They weren’t sun-bleached old bones, either. They were yellow and raw. Most bore the marks of teeth and claws.
“To rot with this,” Hex mumbled under her breath. “To rot with this.”
I didn’t blame her, though I didn’t quite share her fear. I was uneasy, but I wasn’t terrified. I was fascinated. Lane and I had spent the free hours of our childhood in the woods, and we’d stumbled upon dead animals and bones more times than I could count. This was different. This was art. Some of the bones, I surmised, had come from humans, and they’d been turned into something equal parts beautiful and horrifying.
It wasn’t that I was particularly brave. It’s that in the company of the witches, it was impossible to imagine myself hurt. It was impossible to imagine any threat that Alectoria, Ilma, Sorrel, Lament, and Rose couldn’t handle.
We skirted past the bone sculptures and soon walked along the edge of a steep embankment.
“There,” Ilma whispered to us.
I looked where she looked. Through the trees, through the bones, I saw it. Just a glimpse of moon-white flesh, bright as the aspen bark. Just a glimpse of too many arms and too many fingers. A helgirden. A creature so ancient and rare that I was now one of the few among the living who’d heard of its existence, let alone seen one.
It saw us, too, because it ran off into the trees.
The witches formed a line facing where we’d seen it last, with us whelps behind them.
Three of the creatures came running at us from the side and the front, breaking through the frozen limbs of trees but dodging around the sculptures of bone.
As they ran toward us, they grew smaller. No, that wasn’t right. As they ran toward us, they stayed the same size in my vision, not growing larger as they should have. They broke my depth perception, and it hurt to look at them.
I couldn’t tell how far away they were, or how large they were, or how many arms or how many eyes they had. Just that they were running toward us through the trees.
Fear didn’t come into my mind, not that I was aware of. I just shook.
Dam Ilma took a glass ball out of a pouch and threw it in the air.
“Halt!” she called, casting her hands above her head. The glass shattered in an explosion of pale green light, and the helgirden froze in place.
“Can you understand me?” Dam Ilma asked, her arms still raised.
One helgirden answered with what sounded like bird song.
“It says yes,” Dam Alectoria said. “In one of the languages of the Nethers.”
“Why have you come to this forest?” Dam Ilma asked.
The helgirden answered.
“They were summoned,” Alectoria interpreted.
“Where is our sister; where is Dam Fia?”
“They’ll show us.”
“Good,” Dam Ilma muttered. She dropped her hands and the green light dissipated. “I couldn’t have kept that up much longer anyway.”
We followed the three monsters deeper into the dead forest as the sun began to set. Now that they moved more slowly, I could see the helgirden more clearly. Each was the height of an adult human and walked on two legs. Instead of a chest and shoulders, their bodies were cylindrical, with a ring of arms just below their necks. Their heads were terrifying to look at, with two rings of eyes and endless rows of teeth that circled the mouths at the tops of their heads. They sang their birdlike song as we went, but Dam Alectoria didn’t translate for us.
We hadn’t gone far before we reached a tiny clearing. A witch in a black cloak stood in front of a circle charred into the frozen ground. A helgirden was buried up to its arms in the middle of the circle, and the witch and the monster were talking quickly and excitedly in the language of the Nethers.
“Dam Fia,” Dam Sorrel said.
The witch looked up at us and took off her hood. She couldn’t have been much older than Dam Lament, but crow’s feet ran deep by her eyes. Her red hair was thick and curly and was cut short like a sailor’s.
She told us that the helgirden had been summoned by whoever had killed the forest. That, based on tracks, she figured the summoners had just left a few days prior. She told us that the summoning was a slow, painful process, almost a week long. The helgirden in the circle was only two days into its ordeal. The creatures didn’t know why they were here, or where they were, but they were bound to the forest by the blight. They’d spared her life because she spoke their language and had promised to help them return home. Her voice was melodic and she spoke like a sailor, with the characteristic trilled consonants.
The entire clearing was ringed with the bones of the helgirden’s victims, but sympathy came over me regardless.
“Can you free them?” I asked.
Dam Fia looked at me for the first time. She smiled, just the tiniest bit. “I think so. I can’t do anything until this one is through the portal, though.”
“How long?” Dam Ilma asked.
“Dismissing them should be faster than summoning them was. Another week for all four?”
“We’ll tell the people of Umbrin to leave you and them alone and stay away from the woods.”
“They’ll … they’ll probably eat at least three more people between now and a week from now. Three more people each.”
“Can they eat livestock?” Dam Ilma asked.
“Three or four horses total would probably do,” Dam Fia answered.
“We’ll tell the townspeople.”
“We ate all the horses ourselves already,” the man with the sunken eyes informed us when we told him the news.
“Cows, then?” Dam Sorrel asked.
“You think we would have eaten the horses before the cows?”
“What about those horses?” Dam Lament asked, pointing.
We all turned and looked. Fifteen mounted knights in full plate armor approached at a walk.
The townsman collapsed to his knees in despair. “Great Mother, Great Mother, Great Mother,” he whispered. “Not yet, not yet.”
Each of the knights wore a silver tunic with a golden circle at its center. I’d heard of that sigil before, but I couldn’t place it.
“Tax knights,” Dam Alectoria called out to the newcomers in greeting, stepping out in front of the rest of us. Next to me, Dam Sorrel’s hand hovered near the hilt of her sheathed sword.
Tax knights. The newest knightly brotherhood, and, according to the knights and travelers I’d met while working the stables, the most arrogant among them. They weren’t a real brotherhood, not really. They weren’t real knights. The knightly brotherhoods were recognized across the whole of Cekon and were beholden to its people, not individual rulers. The Brotherhood of Helte’s Coin followed Duchess Helte and seemed to exist only to exert her authority. But we weren’t in the duchy.
“Out of the way, crone,” the closest man said once he closed the distance.
“If I recall,” Dam Alectoria said, unyielding, a slight thin figure in front of the armored, mounted men, “your Brotherhood only has authority in Duchess Helte’s lands. And, if I recall, Umbrin is ruled by Baron Keikan. So you’re armed strangers, come to a town we’re here to help, and I’m afraid I won’t step out of your way.”
“No,” the townsman said. His voice was a whisper, but it cut through the still air. “Baron Keikan has sworn allegiance.”
“The simpleton is right,” the knight said. “And we are here on a simple mission. To come for what’s ours.”
“The woods,” the townsman stammered. “The blight. There’s no food, no work. But the witches, they sorted it. Two weeks, that’s all. Two weeks and the mine will be running and we’ll pay you what we owe.”
“Witches don’t sort things,” the man said. “They destroy.
Your woods are blighted? It was witches.”
“No,” the man whispered.
“They lay curses then claim only they can lift them,” the knight said.
“It’s not so,” the man replied, but his voice dropped as he spoke.
“Fan out, search their homes,” the knight ordered his subordinates. “Take everything of value. If anyone tries to stop you, witch or peasant, strike them. If they try a second time, cut them down.”
“Please, Great Mother, please, mercy,” the man cried out.
“The Great Mother doesn’t rule these lands,” the knight said. “Duchess Helte does.”
“We’ll be on our way,” Dam Alectoria said, to my shock.
“See that you are.”
And with that, we started away from the village, back toward the main road. Behind us, we heard shouting, the slamming of doors, and a general frightful clamor.
“We can’t just leave!” Araneigh said.
“We have to,” Dam Alectoria answered.
“There are more of them, sure, but we have magic. We can stop them, then feed them or their horses to the monsters in the woods, and everyone wins!”
Dam Alectoria whirled in her tracks. Her eyes were wet and red from tears.
“If we interfere, we may as well kill every single man, woman, and child in Umbrin ourselves. We cannot start a war we won’t be around to fight. We cannot start a war we cannot win.”
Just then, a scream cut through the air. Somewhere behind us, a man was dying.
“Now, come on. We have to make it to the next town and find some horses.”
FIVE
We stayed that night in a roadside tavern nestled up against the cliff. The innkeeper sold us three horses. He didn’t understand why we chose the oldest and the lame, nor did he refuse our silver.
Dam Sorrel and her apprentice set off back the way we came, the three horses in tow, walking them through the darkness into a haunted, dead forest to feed them to demons from another plane of existence. They would be back before dawn.
The rest of us crowded into one large room full of bunk beds stacked three high. I slept atop one, with Araneigh underneath me and Hex below her. Our baskets sat in a line by the door, but Alectoria’s small casket was on the floor next to where she slept.
When I closed my eyes, I saw the helgirden. I imagined them at the window, and I scarcely slept at all. The first magical creatures I’d ever seen. Now I couldn’t unsee them.
Perhaps I’d been more frightened than I realized. Perhaps only part of fear is how you feel in the moment. Perhaps part of fear comes later, when you try to sleep.
“There’s a town up here, at the entrance to a valley between the hills,” Araneigh said the next morning as we hiked in the sun. “It’s called The Gate. I went there once with my father for business.”
I was feeling better with the sun on my face and the helgirden further and further behind us.
“I’ve heard of The Gate,” Hex said. “I heard it was built on the foundations of a giant’s castle, and that the giant used to keep humans as pets. I’ve heard that the ghosts of those people still haunt the place, at dusk and dawn.”
“You can’t believe everything that you hear,” Araneigh said. I saw no particular reason to doubt Hex’s story, and I wondered what Araneigh knew that we didn’t.
“You think we’re here to pick up another whelp?” I asked.
“No,” Araneigh said. “I heard Alectoria tell Ilma that they were only going to pick up the three of us before we reach the covenant.”
“Covenant?” Hex asked.
“You were promised to the witches and you didn’t bother learning the first thing about them?” I asked.
Whenever a witch or coven had passed through Ledston, I’d asked them every question I could think of. Sometimes they had even answered me.
“No,” Hex said, sighing. “Tell me what a covenant is.”
Araneigh beat me to it. “A group of witches is called a coven,” she said. “At least four, and no more than fifteen. Five and thirteen are the best numbers. A covenant is a group of covens. Usually between two and ten covens. Larger than that, there’s the Order itself, all the hundred or so covens that make up the Order of the Vine. Most of the Order meets up during the coldest months, in a gathering called Endsmeet. It’s in a different place every year.”
“Are there other orders?” Hex asked.
“There used to be more,” Araneigh answered. “Five orders. Vine, Wand, Vessel, Wheel, and Arrow.”
“What happened to them?” I asked. “I never figured that out.”
“The Order of the Vessel sold their fealty to the mortal kings. They served for a few generations before King Sallow stole their secrets, put every one of them to death, and founded the Brotherhood of the Cup.”
“The healer knights?”
“Everything they know, they stole from witches.”
“What about the other orders?” I asked.
“Old King Sallow the Undying got them too,” Araneigh said. “Supposedly they were all wiped out a hundred and ninety years ago. From the year 313 till the year 317. The worst hunt, my father calls it. The Order of the Wheel was hunted down and burned, one or a dozen witches at a time. All timed with the phases of the moon. The ritual of undoing, Sallow called it. The Order of the Wand was poisoned in their Endsmeet. The Order of the Arrow was defeated in open battle. My father says there are still a few dams of the old orders, living in the mountains or at sea or deep in the forest. Or there were, a hundred and fifty years ago when he last checked.”
“How did we survive?” I asked. “Why did they spare the Order of the Vine?”
“No one knows,” Araneigh said.
“Dark magic, I bet,” Hex said. “A deal with a Nether lord.”
“Couldn’t be,” I said. “We worship the Great Mother.” I looked to Araneigh for support, but she shrugged.
