Painted Devils, page 39
“As do I.” Kirkling stops the horses on the side of the road. “Meister Ros, thank you for the ride, but we’ll be carrying on from here on foot. Conrad, get down. Sch—Miss Ros, bag up enough food for you and Conrad. Miss Ragne, I assume you can handle your own provisions.”
Ragne’s tail switches. “What is this plan?”
“Lady Ambroszia will create a distraction while you three make a break for it,” Kirkling says shortly. “I will slip by the guards on foot, carrying the doll so her material anchor remains protected, and follow you to Hagendorn as quickly as I can. No—Conrad, don’t argue, just do as I say.”
“If anything happens to you…” Emeric shakes his head. “Hubert would never—”
“Hubert Klemens wouldn’t have blinked at letting me handle that clown prince,” Kirkling says. “Certainly not to stop a monster like the Scarlet Maiden, and … certainly not to save you. Now get ready, we don’t have time to lose.”
Ragne leaps out of the wagon, shifting into a sturdy black mare as she does and landing in the mud with a splatter. She kneels to let Emeric and me climb onto her back, though Emeric looks wholly baffled, arms tightening around my waist as Ragne pushes to her feet. “I thought you said you’d fly us over.”
“She will,” I tell him. “You’re going to hate it.”
Dieter coughs from the driver’s bench, then tosses something to me: the wreath of roses. “Don’t die. I’ll take Luisa’s dress back. Bye.” He flicks the reins and jolts the ponies into motion before I can reply.
“Definitely your brother,” Emeric murmurs, and I jab him with an elbow.
“Ambroszia.” It’s a bit weird for me to address her while Kirkling’s holding her, but we make do. “What should we expect?”
“Something quite monstrous,” she answers, with a wicked flicker in her broken eye. “I am, after all, still part of the world transcendent. And that means I can become what they believe me to be. Now be a dear and, in about three seconds, scream.”
Ephemeral mist starts radiating from the doll. Ragne melodramatically tosses her head and shies away. Then the acting gets less necessary as the haze carves itself into ragged hems, skeletal arms, a face contorted in torment—almost like Saint Willehalm’s warped form when the goblet was missing. Suddenly I understand.
I draw an enormous breath and scream, at the top of my lungs, “POLTERGEIST!”
Shouts rise from the soldiers. They’re buying it, and that makes it true: Ambroszia’s appearance grows more twisted and nightmarish by the moment. Ragne dances down the road, seemingly no more than a skittish horse, but I know she’s getting room for a running start.
Kirkling gives us a nod and steps back, off the road, vanishing into the red shrubbery.
“Hold on,” Ragne warns as feathers spurt from her shoulders once more. I slip the rose wreath over my wrist, then gather fistfuls of mane and hope that’ll be enough.
“Wh—no, absolutely not—” Emeric’s grip on me tightens, but it’s too late.
Ragne’s wings unfurl, and she takes off at a canter, then a gallop. Ambroszia is cackling madly before her as rain whips my face. I hear screams of “Poltergeist, demon!” and see spears and arrows readied.
Ragne sweeps her wings once, twice, and we’re airborne. Emeric is making a sound behind me like a ceramic lung being punctured by a fork. Steel glints below—a soldier looses a shot—
And in a blast of dust and cobweb, the ghoulish poltergeist of Lady Ambroszia catches it. And a spear. And the next dozen arrows that follow as we soar over the blockade. Ragne flies even higher through the rain, rising with the forest as the shallow hills bubble up. There’s a strange tint on the horizon, as if red is seeping into the cloudy sky itself, bleeding from Hagendorn. As I take one final look back at Ambroszia, I see the stain spilling all through the thick forests of the lowlands.
Emeric clutches even tighter when I turn to face forward. “Can—can we just—hold very still?” he gasps.
“You should try this when there’s a saddle, it’s a lot better,” I say apologetically.
“Is it?”
“It is much faster to travel this way,” Ragne calls to us, tilting to head for the heart of the stain, “but I will get tired very quickly. If we can make it to this Glockenberg, then I can rest, and tonight—”
“My little prodigal returns,” the Scarlet Maiden hisses in my ear. Red blooms at the edge of my vision. Emeric’s fingers dig painfully into my sides.
I scream for real this time, trying to jerk away, and spit out, “Villanelle!”
Then, as his grip slackens, I realize what I’ve done.
Emeric slumps over. I grab for him with one hand—the other is still hanging on to Ragne’s mane—but only catch his upper arm. His weight drags me sideways as Ragne whinnies and beats her wings, trying to recover her own balance.
Then it’s as if she slams into a wall of slush. It’s not an impact so much as a brief absorption—then repulsion. We’re thrown from her back. The world inverts, spins—I’m falling—I see Ragne as a raven but from behind a wall that shimmers like heat waves, unyielding no matter how she claws—I’ve lost my hold on Emeric, but we’re both plummeting to the treetops—
A shockingly green gout of willowy branches bursts from the forest, slowing our fall, reinforced with thick springy vines. The wind is still knocked out of me when we land on a bed of spongy moss, but that’s all.
I gaze up, dizzy, blinking away rain as a shadow falls over me. I make out snarls of white hair, a rust-streaked stone face, uncannily emerald eyes, Ragne wheeling in the sky above.
“God Daughter,” the Briar Hag, queen of the Mossfolk, grates out, “you had better be here to fix this.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE WAY OF BRIARS
“That’s the idea,” I wheeze to the Briar Hag. Her nostrils flare, and she yanks on my collar until I’m sitting up, then stamps her crooked staff as if to say, There better be more. “We brought the blood the Scarlet Maiden asked for—”
“Not a good start,” the Hag grunts in my face, her breath earthy and cool like moldy soil.
“—and are going to use the ties to bind her.”
The Briar Hag’s eyes narrow. “Bind her to what?”
“The material anchor, the thing she’s using to be more powerful than a normal Rye Mother. It’s somewhere in Hagendorn. We’re going to find it, trap her, and destroy it with her inside.” Looking around, I find a jarring sight: Not only are we in an island of rich green foliage among the burnished red, but dozens, maybe hundreds, of eyes are blinking from tree knots and budding on branches.
“Hrmph.” The Briar Hag waddles over to the unconscious Emeric and starts poking him in the side with her staff. “Ought to work. She’s no Rye Mother, though. Get up, boy.”
“Not a—what is she, then?” I demand.
The Hag shrugs. “Don’t know. Doesn’t matter. I want my forest back.” She pokes Emeric again. “Is he dead?”
“He’ll come around in a few minutes.” I crane my head to look for Ragne. She’s still clawing at the barrier above. “Are we trapped in here?”
“No ‘we.’” The Briar Hag crooks a finger, and a long vine, just like the ones that caught us, climbs into the air. When the vine reaches Ragne, a flower blooms at its tip. An identical bloom sprouts at the base near us. “Eiswald’s daughter, be still.”
“Give me back the Vanja and the Emeric!” Ragne’s raven-voice croaks through the quaking petals.
The Hag rumbles, “It’s not my doing. The Scarlet Maiden is pushing all the Low Gods out, and you’re close enough to count. You’ll go no further. But I’m no god, and she can’t budge me from my roots, so your friends are safe as I can keep them. Understand?”
“I do not like this,” Ragne huffs.
“Me either,” I say. “But we’ll be all right. Can you help Kirkling?”
Ragne’s disgruntled answer makes the flower shake even more. “I will. But then I will find a way in!”
There’s a groan from Emeric as Ragne swoops away. He pushes himself up on an elbow. “What … happened?”
“We learned a very important lesson about gravity.” I help him the rest of the way. “I think we have to continue on foot. Brunne owes me a favor still, but I don’t know if she’ll make it through.”
The Briar Hag’s staff thuds into the ground. “The closer you are to the gorge, the better odds Brunne will have, as that is where her legend was born and her strength is greatest. Save her favor until you face the Scarlet Maiden.” The ground beneath us contorts, somewhere between a wave and the breath of a buried titan. “I will take you as close to Hagendorn as I can.”
The moss carpet around us buckles and folds, forming the sides of a little cart, lifting us up on wheels made of gnarled root still mired in earth. It half rolls, half swims through the ground, gaining speed. Shrubs scurry out of the way; trees creak into bows and curtsies as we pass. We’re moving fast, faster even than in the wagon.
“How will we repay you?” I ask, because Low God or no, I know the Hag’s help must come with a price.
The Briar Hag is stirring the air with her staff as if it’s a stew, and the trees churning past are no more than parsnip chunks, but she snaps her fingers, and a pure-gold comb appears in her stony grasp. “You will comb and braid my hair.”
I gulp. A Briar Hag’s hair is notoriously unpleasant to dress. But if that’s the cost to save Emeric, to save my family, it’s a small price to pay. I rise to my knees, take the comb in one hand, then find the end of her long knotted hair and begin. The hairs are fine and smooth like flax, though helplessly tangled. It’s just like combing flax, I tell myself. I did that easily enough when I was four.
Then a spider crawls onto my hand.
I yelp and shake it off. Emeric’s at my side instantly, reaching for the comb. “Let me.”
“The God Daughter has to do it,” growls the Briar Hag.
“It’s fine,” I tell him. “Just … handle the bugs.”
“Start at the ends,” the Briar Hag orders, “and work your way up.”
I set the comb’s golden teeth to a tangle and begin to work the hairs through. For a moment, as strands slip and unweave, I see a flicker of—
A girl stumbling over a bridge on a cold winter’s night, clutching a fistful of rubies. Me.
I blink, and it’s gone. In my hand sits a lock of sleek combed hair.
“Keep going,” says the Briar Hag.
I pick up another knot as Emeric discreetly extracts a beetle. As the comb passes, I see a princess arguing with her father, red-eyed and hollow with grief. I see her standing on the edge of a cliff before Broken Peak, looking down into a dark pool, where a subtle golden star winks from the depths. The Red Maid of the River.
On the third pass, I see a bride riding through the night sky on a cloudy road. Her veil catches in the stars, pulling her shining bridal crown from her head.
Brunne.
As I comb and comb, I see the strands of our lives: Brunne, before she was a god, promised to a giant just to keep the peace. The Red Maid of the River, a god who will never be satisfied, who’s watched life after life lost trying to bring her a golden crown. Me, spinning a lie because it was easy, staying in Hagendorn because I was wanted, raising not the ghost of a god but a monster in her image.
“Now make the braid,” says the Hag.
The strands slip through my fingers and beyond. I see threads binding me to my siblings, to the bloodstained cambric at my side, to Emeric. I see crimson ties stretching from both him and me to Hagendorn: the chains of the Scarlet Maiden. She has claimed him as her sacrifice, but even before then, she claimed me as her prophet.
The strands weave, one linking and leading to another and another: A liar, a broken god, a bride. A crown, a river, a spindle. Heartbreak, hunger, freedom.
Just as Brunne led to the Red Maid, the Red Maid led to me. Even without blood or bond between us, our threads are woven together.
And the true Red Maid, just as Brunne said, still lingers.
In my hands sits a long, perfect, bone-white braid.
“She is no longer the Red Maid of the River,” says the Hag. “Nor will she answer to ‘Maid Painted Red.’ But if you can call her by name, she will come. I think you, God Daughter, Daughter Ros, understand the power of that.”
“I think you’ve helped me more than I’ve helped you here,” I say slowly.
The Briar Hag’s moss-covered shoulders stiffen. “The woodwives were soft for Gerke’s dumplings,” she says tersely, after a pause. “See to it that Helga sticks to the recipe.”
She doesn’t speak much for the rest of our strange ride, her scowl alleviated only by the occasional birdcall or flick of a squirrel’s tail. They grow increasingly rarer, and the woods grow redder and redder the farther we get, as if even beasts know better than to be here. Finally, as slanting sunset light spears through the leaves, we come to a halt. I open my mouth, and the Hag holds a finger to her lips, shaking her head. She points with her other hand, and I take it to indicate Hagendorn’s direction.
When I turn back to mouth thank you, the Briar Hag is already melting away, into the brush.
Emeric and I are on our own.
He catches my sleeve. His voice is barely above a whisper. “I need to borrow the awl. It’s linked to the Scarlet Maiden, so I can use a tracking spell to locate any physical objects in the area with a similar link. That should lead us to the material anchor.”
“How long will it take?” I pass him the bone awl and start picking my way forward.
“It depends on how far it is. My guess is it’s somewhere near the bridge where she first manifested, though.”
I begin to see a familiar shape emerge through the woods: Jakob and Udo’s house. No smoke curls from the chimney now. “That’s close.”
“Then it should take only a minute or two.” Emeric pauses, closing his eyes, and I wait too. He holds the awl in one hand and hovers his other over it. A wheel of silvery runes spins to life between his palms, rotating in mechanical increments before vanishing in tendrils of smoke. “Done. It’s looking now.”
“Udo and Jakob’s house is up ahead,” I tell him, settling my rose wreath on my head to free up my hands and taking the awl back. We resume our trudge through the underbrush. “We can probably hide there until dark—”
I step around a thick elm trunk and find myself staring into the rotting eyes of a lamb’s head mounted on a pike.
Emeric’s hand claps over my mouth, muffling my shriek. It’s too late. Blistering red light kindles in the head’s exposed sockets, maggots spilling as its jaw drops to let out a shattering scream.
“HERESY,” it mewls in a horrible babylike pitch, “HERESY!”
The ground heaves again, but this time it has nothing to do with the Briar Hag. Cries of “Heresy, heresy!” rise in our ears, and then, suddenly, with a nauseating jolt—
We’re out of the woods, standing in the main square of Hagendorn. All the old buildings remain, but they’ve been marked with crude red spindles over every window. The sweet reek of fresh-sawn wood radiates from new longhouses crammed into the gaps, repulsive against the stench of old blood coming from the iron statue beside Leni.
The roar of “Heresy!” pours from hundreds of throats in the crowd surrounding us. We’ve been afforded a wide berth, a ring of empty dirt between us and the seething masses, as if our very presence might taint them.
We have not been afforded an exit.
Leni surveys us from her scaffold, sunset light flashing off her tawdry brass halo, her spindle hoisted in the rain like a mace. She’s dyed her blond hair a rusty red and stands framed between two more burning-eyed lamb heads that chant, “Heresy, heresy, heresy.” She holds up her empty hand—the red diamond on her palm is stark even in the ubiquitous crimson haze—and silence falls.
“So,” Leni sings, “the false prophet has returned. Have you defiled our sacrifice? Are you here to sow more ruin?”
The throng of strangers takes its cue, jeering, “DEFILER! RUIN! FALSE!”
Leni crows, “It is just as I promised! The Scarlet Maiden works through me and me alone! I will lead you into the age of plenty, I will lead you against our enemies, and though the unfaithful are in our midst, you need not fear!”
“How’s that tracking spell?” I grit to Emeric through my teeth.
His brow is furrowed. “Nothing yet—but the anchor has to be here somewhere, she wouldn’t have been strong enough to manifest from a distance—”
A familiar jangling murmur sweeps around the square, rising above the taunts and the fall of rain.
“REJOICE!”
Leni falters. “What?”
“Rejoice!” The Scarlet Maiden’s command cracks through Hagendorn. Mist gathers in the open space before Emeric and me, spooling higher, higher, wisps twisting into definition like fibers spun from a distaff. With an eye-watering flash, she towers over us, smiling blissfully beneath her crown of burning roses. “My prophet has returned to the flock.”
Leni’s face pales. “But—I—I’m your proph—”
The Scarlet Maiden carries on over her: “We feared you would stray, but we welcome you back with open arms, for you have done as I asked! You have delivered unto Hagendorn its salvation: two sacrifices, both worthy of me. And now, tell me: Which will you give, and which shall you keep?”
It’s my turn to go cold. “You said I had until the eve of the May-Saint Feast.”
“You are here now,” the Scarlet Maiden clangs, “and I desire my sacrifice. I will have it by midnight tonight, one way or another.”
Of course. I’m so stupid, I should have expected, I should have known she’d just move the cutoff up again.
I shoot Emeric a look. He shakes his head slightly, wide-eyed. We still don’t know where the material anchor is.
The Scarlet Maiden is here, we have the tools to bind her, and we have nothing to bind her to.
“Don’t we need to arrange for—for a feast?” I try to stall. “That’s why—”
