| |
By the time Aethren arrived back at the other end of the tunnel, everything was silent. They slid the passage door open a hair’s breadth, slowly, and found the house empty. Furniture had been upturned and smashed, and thrown blankets hung haphazardly off chairs or lay tangled on the floor. Dried herbs from Kristan’s store and splinters of wood crunched under their feet as they crept cautiously to the back door, fearing with every step that someone would crash back into the room.
Aethren slid from the house and into the side-alley without incident. A dreadful silence held Erdansten in its grasp, throttling every last feeling of home out of the place. Although their heart pounded madly in their chest, Aethren didn’t feel afraid; they felt unreal, like this couldn’t be happening to them. Not here.
A pile of crates at the side-alley’s mouth provided Aethren with cover as they considered their options. They had hoped to run across the mootplace, down the alley between their home and a storehouse, and get in through the back door. Even if Marken wasn’t there, they might be able to find some clue as to where he’d gone; or get some supplies, at the very least.
Unfortunately, the mootplace was abuzz with activity. Ornhild and Denan, the boy Aethren had made wet himself before that fateful wolf-hunt, were standing guard outside the moothall. Hunters and wardens swarmed all over the place, carrying crates, sacks and weapons to where Hrall stood by six covered travelling carts. Aethren leaned around the crates as far as they dared. The carts were sturdy, capable of traversing the uneven tundra, and could be hauled by either pony or person. Never had Aethren seen all six being used, and certainly not for the transport of so many weapons and supplies.
Ornhild and Denan were watching these preparations. Ornhild’s hand was on the younger’s arm, and she leaned in close in a comforting manner as she spoke. She won a smile from him, then straightened up and swept a casual glance around the rest of the mootplace.
Sluggish ice crept through Aethren’s veins as they saw Ornhild’s eyes turn on them. Her mouth opened into a perfect oval of surprise, and the spear she held twitched as if she couldn’t decide whether to hurl it or prepare to defend herself. Aethren couldn’t move. It was too late to hide now. Could they run through the alleyways? Lose any pursuers in the clustered houses?
“There!” Ornhild shouted so loudly that her voice echoed off the houses. Denan leapt and whirled around, holding his spear like a shovel instead of a weapon as he jabbed it in the direction Ornhild was pointing.
A direction that led away from where Aethren was hiding.
“It’s Aethren and that wolf!” Ornhild called out. Then, before any doubt could set it, she took off at a sprint towards the mootplace’s western exit. “Help me or they’ll get away!”
Faren burst out of the Dannaskeld’s home, followed by Urdven and Laethen. The two dozen or so people still in the mootplace rushed after Ornhild like the sea with Faren at their head. Urdven pulled Laethen back indoors and Hrall followed the group at a slower pace. Within minutes, there was nobody left to bear witness as Aethren dashed across the mootplace and slipped into the alleyway beside their home.
Still thrilling with gratitude and disbelief, Aethren walked across Marken’s herb garden. Their heart leapt at the sight of his staff leaning against the back door. Ignoring the throbbing in their already-tender leg, Aethren quickened their pace and burst inside.
Ethy was on the floor, her hands around Marken’s throat. Aethren couldn’t see everything – the table was in the way – but Marken was twitching, a stifled noise coming from his open mouth.
“Tell me where they’re hiding – Rostfar and Isha. Tell me how to find them.” Ethy released her grip slightly.
Marken coughed, but he didn’t speak. With a snarl, Ethy stood and drove her booted foot into the side of Marken’s face.
“Ethy—” Aethren said before they could stop their tongue. Ethy straightened up. Her face was grim, but cruel satisfaction burned in her eyes as she looked at Aethren.
“Good,” she said softly. “Maybe you can tell me what I need to know.”
Aethren swallowed and carefully, slowly, edged into the room. “I need to find them, Ethy – Isha and Rost both, so they can go get Arketh. That’s all I want to do here.”
“It’s a tragedy what happened to that little girl, but she doesn’t matter anymore.” Ethy shrugged. The careworn tenderness was gone from her face; she looked every bit like a seabird ready for the kill. Her lips twitched into a sneer. “I’ve got Erdansten under my thumb now, finally, and I won’t have you and your wolves threatening that.”
That gave Aethren pause. “My wolves?” they blinked at Ethy. “. . . Ethy, what’re you on about?”
“You’re as twisted as your mam.”
Her words leapt at Aethren like a slap to the face. They started forwards, but Ethy’s next words shoved them back.
“Lovely Ýgren. Sweet Ýgren. She was too smart, knew things nobody should about how the body works, ‘specially not someone who apparently came from a small place in Ysaïn.” Ethy’s face twisted with cold disdain. “But I knew better. She was a monster – snared your poor papa in her net, and Natta, whispering how I wasn’t trustworthy. I bet she and Rostfar were together in it.”
“She wasn’t – I’m not a—” The word “monster” stuck in Aethren’s throat. They clenched their fists and thought about Thrigg, calling plants to life beneath her patient hands; Flannað, floating cheese through the air towards them. “Magic isn’t monstrous.”
“The sick children! The diseased crops! My son!” Ethy’s voice rose. “All these things were twisted by magic.”
“Your son? But I thought wolves . . .”
“No,” Ethy said, her voice suddenly flat. “He was only a babe, but he crawled inside my dreams and whispered to me. The ravens brought him things, and small animals came to his cradle. How could I let that grow inside my town?”
Aethren opened their mouth, but there were no words for them to say. They had thought Ethy was just afraid, but there were bigger things at play – ambition, bitterness, hatred. The murder of her own child.
My town.
“I can only see one monster here. And it isn’t me or my magic.”
“I warned you,” Ethy said softly. “When you were a small child, I said you were a danger.”
Aethren nocked an arrow and raised their bow as Ethy took a step nearer, the arrow tip aimed at the hollow of Ethy’s throat. There were only a few strides between them; it would be a killing shot, and Ethy knew it.
“I thought you were against murder,” Ethy said.
Aethren fired.
They changed the angle of the shot at the last moment and sent the arrow through the deerhide of Ethy’s leggings. She let out an inhuman howl of pain and crumpled, clutching the shaft where it protruded from her knee.
Aethren ran past her and dropped at their pa’s side. There were bruises on his throat: perfect ovals from Ethy’s fingers, and garish crescent shapes where her fingernails had broken its skin.
A board creaked.
Aethren didn’t have time to turn around. Something struck the base of their skull and they hit the floorboards chin-first. White sparks exploded under their eyelids. Their jaw crunched. Before Aethren could get up again, Ethy kicked them in the back, just above their shoulder blade. A curious wet warmth spread down their back and they wondered fuzzily why Ethy was pouring water on them.
“Ethy?” Aethren reached up tentative fingers to feel the area. They came away stained in blood.
Blinding panic surged through them, carrying them up to their feet. They let their momentum spin them around, barely in time to catch Ethy’s quarterstaff with both hands. The pain of impact ran up their arms all the way to their chest. Ethy’s knife was discarded on the floor, stained with Aethren’s blood. Aethren stared into Ethy’s beetle-dark eyes as the world burst in and out of focus.
“You have to die,” Ethy said; a hard, simple fact.
Both of them moved.
Ethy tried to put weight on her wounded leg and went down. Aethren, who had been lunging for Ethy with their full bodyweight, went down with her.
There was no reason after that, just a scramble: nails in the wood, fingers in flesh. The two of them rolled like foxes in a fight for scraps. Aethren’s nails found purchase in the paper-dry skin of Ethy’s forehead and then down, hooking into bony sockets with all their remaining strength.
Their other hand closed around the knife and metal flashed in the firelight. Aethren felt the moment the blade punctured Ethy’s lung as if it were happening to them. Ethy went still beneath Aethren, her eyes wide and mouth slack. A deceptively soft bubble of blood appeared from her parted lips.
“I didn’t mean to,” Aethren whispered. “I didn’t – fuck, Pa . . . Pa? Wake up!” They crawled across the blood-slick floorboards. Ethy’s blood, yes – but not just hers.
Aethren’s vision flickered. They tried to grab Marken’s shirt, but their fingers wouldn’t work. Hundreds of tiny needles prickled across their skin.
“Aethren?” Someone else was there. Hands, mottled grey with too-slender fingers, closed around Aethren’s wrists. “Aethren, you need to stop.”
Aethren drew back, shaking. Their head was pounding and their heart hurt and there was so much blood.
Cool fingers touched their face. “Can you hear me?”
The floorboards beneath Aethren’s back were warm and sticky, and the air felt thick. Power built in their gut, scraping the lining of their stomach raw as it demanded to be let free. They were furious and angry and afraid, and their ribcage was surely going to crack under the sheer weight of it all. And the scream in their chest would not be quiet; wouldn’t let them breathe or think.
So Aethren opened their mouth, and—
Marken, oblivious to the wyrdness, felt it and
Grae, fallen as he was, felt it too.
(the sound of a tree falling; the roots screaming)
Isha was collecting water to wash Rostfar’s corpse. He fell to his knees, and
Yrsa was paralysed, unable to help him, her body hollowed by foreign agony.
(a river bursting its banks, water cascading outwards in a white foam of power and wrath)
Estene woke from her deep sleep, cloistered away in the depths of her pupping den. And she howled – howled like she hadn’t since she drew her first breath.
(the screech of a raven, full of grief and defiance.)
And the trees of Deothwicc shook.
And the waters of the Wyccmarshes seethed.
And the power that slumbered beneath the Speaking Tree’s roots began to stir.
(a sound so ancient and powerful that even the mountains knew to fear it)
And Rostfar heard it, although the dead do not have ears.
Rostfar heard it, and she rebelled against the flesh that bound her.
