44. Bane
Chapter 44
Bane
T he others caught up, their horses drooping and tired, and no one said anything as they looked out over the ruins of Rose and Thorn, the smoldering ashes of the cabin set in the great deadened plain.
The golems and I had traversed the mine shaft with relative ease. The trail was clear, undisturbed by wind or water, the ground flat; only once had I smelled something other , something still living, but whatever it was, it hid itself away, vanishing deep beneath the mountain.
Beneath my determination pulsed the killing rage that Miro had brought Cirri through these tunnels, so close to Fae, but they had made it through to the other side, as I did.
Here and there were hints of her: where her hand brushed a wall, the soft salt scent of a tear that had splashed in the dirt.
On the other side, the trail led down the mountain, and a good distance into the Forian plain. Even now, a decade after the war had ended, I still smelled the blood soaked deep into the earth.
Their camp was an obvious blight on the vast expanse of nothing, sitting near a small muddy creek. Miro’s firepit was small and pathetic; I smelled where Cirri had been sitting, her fear-scent permeating the grass around it. The stripped, gnawed skeleton of one of the Ravenscry horses lay in the grass under a tree, its bones scattered.
Well beyond the creek, there was the cabin. Rose and Thorn had led me directly to it, an unerring path to the northeast, straight into the trap Hakkon had left behind.
I felt the vibrations in the ground well before it happened. Before I could call to the golems, ordering them to retreat. Before they reached the burned-out remains of the cabin, where Cirri’s scent clearly led.
The wargs had come boiling up from the earth itself, snapping jaws rising from loose holes, latching onto the golems’ legs with rabid vigor and tearing them apart.
I fell upon them, watering this thirsty ground with yet more blood, but the damage was done.
My compasses were down, torn into pieces. The cabin’s ruins continued to crumble, smoking in the twilight, embers flaring and winking out in the depths of its charred shell.
Cirri’s scent had been overwhelmed by ash and blood, and even as I left the golems and traversed the cabin, it ended there.
I waited until they came, staring at my failure and debating what to do next.
I would traverse all of Foria, but every moment I wasted was another moment Cirri could be tortured, traumatized, kept prisoner. If I erred in my search by one degree, it could be weeks, even months, before I saw her again.
Without the golems, I would have to continue northeast, into the unpopulated wilds of Foria. If Hakkon were underground in Fae tunnels…
He had burned the cabin only to destroy the trail. They were not aboveground; aside from the camp, the plains stank only of grass, blood, and wargs.
I would go Below if I must. There was no question of it.
Wyn dismounted first, striding through the grass and leaning over the ruins of Thorn. Vines straggled from his caved-in chest to his shredded arm, looking too much like human veins; the fingers twitched minutely.
“I will have to go Below,” I said hoarsely. The thirst had crept up on me, every cell in my body parched; I had used much of the blood in the fight to destroy the wargs left behind. Holding onto this form was becoming more difficult. Another fight like that, and I would need to hunt. “Her scent is gone from here. Without them, I can’t track her across the plains.”
Wyn probed at Thorn’s disembodied arm, frowning. “I can fix them.”
I stared up at her. “Gods, Wyn, please tell me you mean it.”
She gave me her most piercing look, pulling out a handkerchief to daintily scoop Thorn’s bloody arm from the grass. “I wouldn’t claim it if I didn’t mean it. Now help me put their pieces back together—as much as we can, anyway. They won’t be perfect, but they’ll hold together long enough to find her.”
The exhalation that tore from my lungs was painful, the relief almost agonizing. I would have gone Below without looking back, without a second thought… but finding Cirri in the warrens below the earth might have taken years.
I praised Wyn’s name to the ancestors as I gathered Thorn’s body, arranging it in the grass where she pointed. Visca set about making Miro and Cirri’s fire into a proper camp while I applied myself to laying the golems out.
Rose flaked away in my hands, petal by petal. It was a delicate operation, gathering as many as I could find, stuffing them into the general heap of her body, but when I was done and they looked like effigies of burials, Wyn hadn’t made a move to fix anything.
“What are you waiting for?” I looked up at her, my claws digging into the soil. “Fix them.”
She exchanged a glance with Visca; my commander stepped forward, taking her wife’s side.
“Bane. You will not want to hear this, lad, but it’s time to make contact with your brothers.”
My teeth ached; I could strike her down, force Wyn to fix the golems, my precious compasses; the only things that could find Cirri now.
But she was my creator, the closest thing I’d had to a mother in my second life, and I could not stand to raise a hand to her.
“Every second that passes is another second that she could die,” I snarled, and Wyn shook her head.
“She’s valuable, Bane,” the bloodwitch said. “Do try to remember that Hakkon would be overjoyed to bring you into his territory, and now we’re all here. As long as there’s a chance you’ll run after her, he won’t harm a hair on her precious head.”
I bared my fangs at her, rising to my full height, and Visca put her hands on her hips. “Think clearly,” she said, her voice low. “He wants you to come after her. How many wargs do you think he’s made in the meantime? We’ll be overrun, and Cirri will be just as dead in the end. There’s only one way to make this work.”
Horrible images flashed through my mind: Cirri broken, bleeding, sobbing. Waiting for help that never came, because her heroes were rotting in the bellies of wolves.
“Fine.” I tried to clear the snarl from my voice. “Call upon them. Tell them we’ve broken the treaty, and that I don’t give a damn. You have tonight to fix them, and then I’m going alone.”
But Wyn wasted no time. The second she had my blessing, she left the golems, digging in one of the packs on the horses.
She brought out a gilded hand-mirror and a small box, carrying them to the fire and settling before its flames. I crouched behind her, watching as she withdrew a leaf-shaped blade from the box and scored it across her wrists without preamble.
The firelight flickered across her face as she worked, holding her wrist above the mirror and letting the blood drip onto the polished silver, tipping the mirror and whispering under her breath until the blood coated the silver in a thin, even sheen of red.
Her reflection was scarlet, eyes gleaming with an animal’s shine, and as she muttered the final words the face reflected in the mirror melted, becoming an anonymous amalgam of facial features.
It took some time for her words to reach the other sanguimancers, but eventually Wyn’s reflection began to warp: her face melted into another, and another, and another. Four bloodwitches reflected at once, merging into a single visage, neither male nor female, the features constantly shifting depending on the speaker.
“Magus Olwyn,” a woman’s voice said, and the face in the mirror rippled, taking on darker hair, a higher forehead, a blockier nose.
The nose thinned, the lips grew fuller: “Ancestors, don’t tell me that’s Foria I see behind you. What about the treaty?”
“We’re in rather dire straits,” Wyn sniffed, and the face in the mirror took on her features once more. “To put it very simply, the Lady of the Rift is in Forian territory, likely captured by Thurn Hakkon. He’s made quite a few wargs since last year, my friends. We need your help.”
The face shifted, becoming more masculine, and a man’s deep voice boomed out. “Is there a reason Lord Bane couldn’t just… find a new one?”
There was a long silence.
One of the more effeminate faces winced. “Not everyone despises their wives as much as Wroth despises his, Bram. But Olwyn, the treaty… did she cross the border of her own accord?”
“No,” Wyn said softly. “No, she was abducted from our territory and brought by force. We have the ways and means to track her, and find Hakkon into the bargain, but we’re not enough. The legions are several days’ march behind us. But… he has made many new wargs, brothers and sisters. I don’t know how many. But Bane is going to retrieve her or die trying, I can tell you that.”
The bloodwitches went silent in our mirror, the face becoming anonymous again; long minutes passed as they informed the Lords they served that we were using our last, most desperate hope, relaying the situation.
The face in the mirror jittered, warping strangely; Wroth’s voice came through.
“Bane?”
“I’m here.” I leaned over Wyn’s shoulder, and between the bloodwitches and two fiends, the reflection took on proportions that were almost sickening.
“I’m coming, brother,” he said. “Wait for me.”
The leonine features of the face disappeared. He was loyal, my first brother; I owed him in ways I would never be able to repay.
I closed my eyes, even as Bram’s voice echoed out onto the plains. “Well, he’ll be there soon, Wyn. He’s not going to listen to anything I say, anyway.”
Bram vanished, and the reflection became entirely feminine.
The one with the dark hair took over, sniffing with disapproval, but her words gave me unexpected hope. “Lord Voryan wishes me to express his desire for Lord Bane to wait for his arrival, and to save him some blood.”
Two of my brothers, ready and willing to break the treaty.
Pebble by pebble, the mountain of despair crushing me down began to dislodge, sliding away.
Voryan’s bloodwitch vanished, and the reflection was soon only a mix of Wyn and Andrus’s bloodwitch.
“Andrus is…” The bloodwitch paused. “He’s already calling for prisoners. I daresay he’ll be leaving soon.”
“Thank the ancestors,” Wyn said, slumping with relief. “Thank you, Cyrene.”
Indeed. I silently wished my brothers a safe journey and a thousand blessings upon their heads.
Cyrene watched her evenly. “This is very bad,” she murmured. “If Radomil chooses to retaliate… it’s been ten years, and we’ve hardly made a dent in repairing the damage of the war…”
“If Radomil retaliates, I’ll be pleased to remind him that he allowed Hakkon to go free,” Wyn snapped. “He allowed the wargs a foothold in his country. We’re merely cleaning up his mess.”
Cyrene sighed. “True, and yet politics and borders are not a question of truth, are they? Andrus will no doubt be there by daybreak. I would come, but the girl here… requires careful tending.”
“Ah. Good luck to you, then.”
Cyrene snorted, her face beginning to fade from the mirror and leaving Wyn’s reflection clear. “You need better luck than me. All I do is keep her asleep. Ancestors guide you, Lord Bane.”
She vanished entirely, and Wyn lowered the mirror, staring into the flames.
Visca draped her arm over her shoulders. “Two days, then, at the most. Our legions will be with us, and all the fiends.”
I shook my head, ready to refute the idea of waiting, but my bloodwitch did exactly what I paid her to do and scowled at me. “Kindly keep your mouth shut, Bane. I still need to repair these damn golems, and you’re better off with the other fiends at your back.”
It was difficult to hold still, but I looked at my most trusted advisors, really looked at them: despite the blood she’d drunk, her fresh youth, Wyn’s eyes were bloodshot, and Visca was lacking her usual energy.
They were tired. Nobody had slept in days; nobody had truly stopped to feed and replenish themselves. I had already burned up a severe amount of the blood I’d glutted in my headlong flight towards Foria, and there were no prisoners to feed from here.
And Wyn’s work wasn’t over, nor was mine. I would not be able to close my eyes until Cirri was safe at home, but if I wanted all my people to come home alive, I needed them to be functional.
“Very well.” I settled into the grass where Cirri’s scent was thickest, trying to shove aside the voice screaming in my mind that she was dying right now, she was bleeding, she was hurt…
She was valuable, and I needed every weapon at my disposal to find and retrieve her.
Wyn handed the mirror to Visca and stood, blade and box in hand. She returned to the golems, frowning down at their mutilated forms, and began rummaging through vials of ingredients in the box.
“Powdered bone of a virgin goat… tears of a dry river,” she muttered, selecting vials as she knelt. “A thorn plucked from the paw of a lion, and the sole of a wanderer’s shoe.”
She sprinkled dust and thorns into their bodies, and finally set aside her box, opening her wrist again with a soft hiss.
“Come here, Bane,” she gritted out. “Your blood is required for this, too.”
I offered my wrist, hardly feeling the cut of the blade, and watched as my blood dripped black into their forms.
“Lovely. Now go away,” she said, leaning over her work.
Her mutterings followed me back to the fire; I watched sleeplessly, taking the first watch as Visca curled up for a nap and Wyn whispered to the golems deep into the night.
I didn’t move a muscle until dawn rose. The fire was burned out to cinders; Wyn was curled in the grass beside the golems, sleeping soundly, her head resting on her pack as Visca circled the camp, her eyes fixed on the empty plains to the north.
When the first rays of light pierced the sky, I crept to the golems, lying in repose like corpses, the only sign of life the faint stirring of their component parts. Rose’s petals ruffled, shifted; Thorn’s body was like a nest of black snakes, the vines slowly creeping as they grew, splitting into newer, thinner vines that braided themselves back into the main body.
They were almost skeletal in appearance, their arms long and thin, their torsos withered. Rose’s petals were bruised so intensely that most of her was a purplish-black color. Only a few tattered petals retained their bright crimson edges.
In this state, they were a risk to hang all my hopes on, but they were all I had. Months might pass before I caught Cirri’s scent again in the vast, unpopulated expanse of northern Foria.
Patience , I told myself, watching as Rose’s body cannibalized itself to fill in the most necessary parts, moving so slow it was impossible to actually pick out any signs of progress.
I knew I would go mad with the waiting, so I turned to watch the mountains instead.
The sun was creeping over the mountains when the first two figures came into view. They descended the mountain path, each moving at the rapid pace of a fully-fed fiend; both ran on all fours, bolstered on blood into the same forms they wore the last time we were here on these plains, ten years ago.
Bone spurs rose from Wroth’s spine and shoulders, his limbs thickened into powerful pistons, carrying him yards with a single leap; Andrus, his rack of antlers spreading six feet on either side of him into a forest of sharp points, still hiding his deadier attributes.
They had always been the fastest of us; no horse or carriage could hope to compete. Either of them could cover the span of Veladar in a night when gorged with blood.
I waited patiently until I heard the soft tread of footsteps.
“It’s been too long.” Andrus rose from the grass; one might think he took the qualities of a stag, but his long, skull-like face had a disquieting seam from forehead to throat, cutting directly down his snout and chin and under his cheekbones to his ears; the tips of his fangs were needle-like, thin. The rest of his body was nearly that of a muscular human, but for the legs that bent backwards, and the feet ending in two sharp claws that resembled cloven hooves. “I regret only that I came in your time of need, and not earlier.”
“I’m grateful you’re here at all,” I said, and Wroth wordlessly clapped a paw to my shoulder.
Of my brothers, I had always been closest to Wroth, just as Voryan and Andrus seemed to be twins from different mothers. But we were all four entwined, from long years in the Below, of fighting in the Forian War before parting to our separate thrones, and I was glad they had answered the call.
The three of us looked down at the golems, slightly less skeletal than they had been at dawn, and Wroth frowned.
“These Fae things are unnatural,” he said, and as though his disapproval had penetrated her dreams, Wyn rolled over, blinking at the pale blue sky.
“Not a single warg?” she asked, frowning even as Visca paused in her incessant strolling to plant a kiss on her forehead. She gripped her wife’s hand hard for a moment.
“Nary a one.” My commander continued on her path, a trail already worn in the grass.
Wyn exhaled, then got to her feet, dusted off her robes, and knelt right back in the dirt by Thorn’s head. “Progress is slower than I’d anticipated. These are not ideal laboratory conditions by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d hoped for a little more vigor.”
“But when will they be able to track?” I interrupted. My skin itched all over, my muscles quivering with the need to move, to run and hunt.
The bloodwitch bared her teeth in a snarl, pulling one of her many blood-letting blades from her sleeve, and exposed a wrist. She spoke as she cut, letting her blood drip into their bodies.
“I’ve given them strict instructions to rise as soon as they’re able, so they’ll get up when they can. We won’t have time for any field tests, but I’m concerned they may develop some of the more common afflictions of Fae constructs. Basically, we’ll have to hope for the best. Give your prayers to the ancestors now.”
Wroth growled low in his throat as he eyed the golems, but Andrus looked them over without any signs of discomfort. “We should have Voryan here to put them down,” he said mildly. “He has the most experience of us with dismantling the Fae’s leftovers.”
Voryan, before enthusiastically flinging himself into my idea of becoming fiends, had spent some two hundred years in the Below, walking alone in those darkened halls and killing anything he came across. I thought that perhaps two centuries of wandering alone in pitch darkness had contributed to his murderous tendencies in the world above, but the fact remained, a serial killer turned monster made a very effective deterrent to anyone who wanted to invade Veladar while it was recovering.
“Speak of the demon…” Wroth had turned his back on the golems, his arms crossed over his chest as he glared at the mountains.
Visca’s legions were just now descending the switchback trails, burdened by horses, supply wagons, and their own hefty armor. The creature that bypassed them moved with supreme surety, climbing over the rock face with all six limbs.
Once he met flat earth, it took Voryan a mere half hour to join us. He rose from the grass, a tall, jackal-headed monstrosity. Four arms, each ending in a human hand covered with gold rings, extended from a lean, muscled torso. He possessed a sheen of short, soft black fur all over his body, carved with shadowy whorls, but the most salient and off-putting aspect of his being was the wide, bloodred eye in the center of his forehead, rolling wildly as it searched for enemies.
“Brothers.” Voryan grinned, exposing shark-like teeth as his lips split to his pointed ears. “Shall we find blood?”
His voice was a howl and a roar mixed into one.
“As soon as the abominations rise.” Wroth glared at the golems, and Voryan hesitated for a split second as his triple-eyes landed on them. For him, it might as well have been an eternity.
“Are they his? Do we kill them?”
“No, they’re mine. They contain my wife’s blood; they’ll lead us to her.”
At the mention of blood, Voryan’s tongue, as black as his fur, slicked over his teeth with anticipation.
“Soon,” Wyn said. She had just awoken, but she looked exhausted, pale; new lines had carved themselves into the corners of her eyes with every drop of blood and iota of energy she expended. From past experience, I knew she would be a crone come nightfall. “I think they’ll rise soon.”
I swallowed my impatience, grateful for the energy, the youth, the vitality of her own she was sinking into my compasses.
Voryan gave the golems another narrow look, then shrugged. “So long as I get to bleed something today.”
Though I was grateful for my brothers’ presence, I wondered if they had come not to give aid, but because they missed the freedom of the fight, the hot pulse of blood, the pure and simple ambition of the battlefield—to kill or be killed.
And I could not fault them if that was the case. I, too, felt constrained by the life I’d taken, the everyday trappings that belonged to a nobleman, a human, not a creature that lived on blood. And they were trapped in far worse situations, pretending to be things they were not, with women who loathed the things they were.
From our fearsome faces to our warped bodies, this is what we were: creatures designed for slaughter, not sitting on thrones. This was their true home, forever and always, where the earth was red and the nights were long, and there were no guarantees of living to see the next dawn.
Let them fight here and die here, if they chose; so long as they helped me fight for her .