DREM
It’s Fritha! Tears burned his eyes, the sense of betrayal hot as bile in his throat.
Not abducted by them, or experimented upon and mutilated by them. She is one of them! Has been one of them all along.
I am the world’s greatest fool.
‘It is Fritha,’ he whispered, more in control, now, at least enough to not hurl himself from the roof in an attempt to kill the deceitful, lying witch.
What part did she play in my da’s death? Was it her that hit me? Took the sword? She certainly has it now.
He felt his body tense again, but controlled himself. He was not about to commit suicide when the chance of justice or vengeance was so slim.
Wait, bide my time. Be the hunter Da taught me to be. But know this, Fritha – for what you’ve done, I will kill you.
She raised the black sword.
‘Fuil agus cnámh, rud éigin nua a dhéanamh,’ Gulla cried, voice filling the clearing.
‘Blood and bone, to make something new,’ Sig whispered beside him.
A silence in the clearing.
‘Do it,’ Gulla snarled.
And Fritha cut Gulla’s throat, his two half-breed children stepping forwards and helping her catch the slumping body, heaving it limp onto the table, on top of the still-twitching bat. Fritha sheathed her black sword and reached into some kind of bag at her feet.
‘This cannot be?’ Sig muttered besides Drem. ‘What are they doing?’
Fritha held something aloft, what looked like a severed hand, fingers bunched into a fist, although it was dark and gleaming, and clearly heavy. She brandished it for all to see, a ripple of muttered awe escaping those gathered before her.
‘Fola agus cnámh an Asroth,’ Fritha cried out, and cast whatever it was onto the entwined corpses of Gulla and the bat.
‘Dear Elyon above, no,’ Sig whispered.
‘What?’ Drem hissed.
‘Blood and bone of Asroth,’ she breathed. ‘It’s Asroth’s hand.’
‘Bheith ar cheann, a bheith rud éigin nua,’ Fritha cried out, the crowd before her joining their voices to hers, ringing out in the winter’s night. The two corpses on the table convulsed and heaved, limbs and wings entangling, spasming, merging, flesh softening as if they were melting together, their mixed blood bubbling and seething.
‘Become one, become something new,’ Sig intoned.
Steam spread out from the entwined bodies on the table, a great cloud boiling out and settling upon the clearing. There was a squelching sound, a series of violent cracks ringing out, and then, slowly, the mist evaporated and a silence fell.
We should get out of here, now, Drem thought. While all are focused on this dread act.
But he couldn’t tear his eyes from the scene before him, his body just as unresponsive.
Upon the blackened timber a body lay, curled like an unborn bairn still in the womb.
‘Behold,’ Fritha cried out in a voice that did not sound like her own. ‘The first Revenant!’
Slowly, as all watched in hushed silence, the body moved, a twitching that became a ripple of limbs and wings, and it stood. Gulla, but different. He seemed bigger, for one, more muscular, a strength barely contained within his frame. And his veins pulsed with a dark light. His head twitched, raptor-like, as he looked about, long fangs curling from desiccated lips.
‘Who shall be my first-born, the first disciple?’ Gulla said, even his voice changed, deeper, more resonant, though more bestial, too.
‘You?’ He pointed at Fritha.
She stared back at him.
‘I am promised to another,’ she said and, bowing her head, stepped back.
A man leaped forwards from amongst the acolytes that had followed him into the clearing, shrugging off his cloak. Drem recognized him immediately: scar-faced Burg, Wispy’s leader.
‘Choose me, Lord, I beg you for the honour,’ he cried out, voice laced with hysteria and wonder.
Gulla’s wings unfurled with a powerful snap, spreading wide and then curling inwards, wrapping around Burg, pulling him closer to Gulla, whose head dipped down, and then Gulla opened his mouth wide, long canines glinting red in the firelight, and he was biting into Burg’s neck.
Burg screamed, a terror-filled shriek that gradually subsided into a weak mewling, slowly overcome by a new sound, a hideous, child-like suckling that echoed around the clearing, making Drem’s skin crawl as if a thousand spiders were scuttling over him.
Burg’s legs buckled and he slumped, Gulla taking his weight as easily as a corn doll, though Burg was still conscious, his eyes bulging and rapturous.
With a shudder Gulla disengaged from Burg’s neck and lifted his head. He raised Burg up and placed him upon the table, the shaven-haired acolyte twitching and shivering as if he were caught in the grips of a fever. A single drop of blood ran from the puncture wounds in his neck.
‘Drem,’ Sig whispered. ‘We must get back to Dun Seren. Byrne must hear of this, the Order must be warned,’ she said. ‘We cannot search for your friend Ulf, this is too important, too dangerous. The fate of the Banished Lands rests upon others knowing of this.’
Drem nodded, but a new hush had fallen over the clearing as Gulla beckoned another acolyte forwards.
We need some noise to cover our departure.
‘Is he here?’ Gulla called out to this new acolyte.
The figure pulled his hood back, another shaven-haired zealot, though this one was older.
It was Ulf the tanner.
‘Yes, my Lord,’ Ulf said.
‘He’s here, somewhere,’ another voice called out from the crowd, stepping forwards. A woman this time, shaven-haired as well. It took a moment for Drem to recognize her.
Tyna, Ulf’s wife, whom Drem had seen that morning, terrified for her husband’s safety.
‘Show him,’ Gulla said to the acolytes spread about the clearing, bloodied lips spread in a sanguine smile.
More and more acolytes started to push their hoods back, more shaven heads, but they were faces that Drem recognized. Fear seized him, then, a paralysis that threatened to incapacitate him, for they were mostly faces he’d known for the last five years, neighbours, townsfolk, some he’d even considered friends.
Is everything and everyone a lie?
‘It seems that half the town of Kergard is here,’ Drem wheezed, finding it hard to breathe.