16. The Old Wars
Chapter 16
The Old Wars
6 th Day of the Blood Moon
Níthianelle – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
The songs of the ethereal forest drifted on the wind as Ella marched through the undergrowth, wisps of white smoke rising with each footstep that pressed into the earth. The woodland was as alive here as it was in the waking world. And it was all so much clearer than it had ever been before. Now she felt as though she could truly see , and in seeing, she found herself enamoured with the trails of white mist that drifted in the wake of the birds that weaved through the trees. The same mist wafted from everything, but there was something about the way the birds moved that was singularly beautiful.
She had awoken from her slumber an hour or so previous. Though, slumber felt a strange word. She had been asleep, but no dreams had filled her mind, no nightmares had haunted her. It had simply been darkness and then light. And yet she was rejuvenated, as though she’d had the single best sleep of her life. She’d thought about waiting in that spot for Tamzin to return, but she’d never liked standing around twiddling her thumbs and waiting on others to give her direction. Besides, she had no idea how long she’d been asleep. Time was immeasurable in this place. How long did she wait for Tamzin? What if the druid never came back? What if this was Ella’s fate? To walk endlessly through the Sea of Spirits, never quite alive, never quite dead.
The thought sent a shiver through her.
No, she would not sit around and wait. She’d seen her father’s maps many times as a child. If she kept the Marin Mountains on her left, then moved north with the Argonan Marshes on her right, she would eventually reach the Darkwood. Tamzin had found her the first time. She would find her again. Besides, the woman had said it herself that it was best to keep moving.
As Ella walked, her mind wandered, sensing the souls that filled the world around her, hearing the multitude of tiny wingbeats, the scampering of small creatures through the undergrowth, the thumping of hundreds of hearts.
After a while, time slipped away, the ground ceding to her stride, the world blurring around her. But as soon as she noticed the shift, everything refocused and she doubled over, pulling ragged breaths into her lungs. Her head spun, and her stomach lurched. Fighting the urge to retch, Ella stood straight, clasping her hands at the back of her head and drawing long, deep breaths as her father had taught her when practicing with the sword all those years ago.
The memory twisted in her like a knife. She would never hear his voice again, never see his face, never feel the warmth of his embrace. If only she’d known what would happen, she would’ve said goodbye properly before she’d left. In fact, she never would have left at all and Rhett would still be alive…
Ella pushed the thoughts aside. They would do her no good here. She needed to focus. She needed to get back to Calen and Haem and Faenir – to those who needed her.
“Wait, that can’t be possible,” she muttered as she took in her surroundings. When she had started walking, the Marin Mountains had run like an endless wall to her left, their peaks shrouded in cloud. Now they were at her back, the sky clear. How long had she been walking? How far had she journeyed?
Just the thought alone summoned aches in her muscles and lethargy in her bones.
“I told you,” a familiar voice called. “Distances are different here. As is time. I do not understand it, not truly. And nor do I ever hope to. But some things are as they are, with or without our understanding.”
Tamzin walked past Ella, white mist trailing behind her. The woman’s eyes were once again a deep ocean blue, her pupils like those of a kat’s.
Ella kept her hands at the back of her head, slowly filling her lungs and exhaling controlled breaths. She met Tamzin’s gaze, unflinching. She still didn’t trust the woman. There was too much Tamzin wasn’t saying. But for now, she was the only thing that gave Ella any hope of getting back to the waking world – any hope of seeing her brothers and Faenir again. So she would play along.
“You covered an impressive distance. I’ve not seen one so untested move so quickly here. I thought I told you to wait for me?”
“Actually, all you told me was that you would return and that if anything came for me, I was to run. You never said anything about waiting.”
Tamzin rolled her eyes. “Spoken like a true wolfchild.”
“Well, first you told me how dangerous this place was, how many people or wraiths would come to kill me… and then you left me alone in this oh so dangerous place.”
“And you decided to wander into the unknown, with nothing but your head, your heart, and the wolf in your blood.” Tamzin shook her head and laughed. “Definitely a wolfchild. Come. As much ground as you made, there is still more to go. It’s best we don’t stay still any longer than we have to.”
The forest gave way to open plains as Tamzin marched Ella forward at a relentless pace, the Marin Mountains shrinking into the distance. They moved far quicker than they had the first day, the world seeming to shift and churn beneath Ella’s feet. It was the strangest sensation, as though time was moving faster than was natural. Whenever she lost focus, the feeling intensified, seconds and minutes slipping past her before she’d even noticed.
“How did you find me?” Ella asked when they stopped for a moment.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it. When we walk here, our bodies in the living world stay where they are. So when you left me, you would have returned there. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“Then how did you make it back to me so quickly? If we have to walk all the way to the Darkwood, surely you had to walk all the way to me.”
Tamzin stopped in her tracks and turned fully to look at Ella. Her bottom lip was upturned, her eyes back to a kat-like shimmering blue. “I had a feeling you were quick of mind. We’ll make a Blooddancer out of you yet.” The woman continued walking, talking over her shoulder as she went. “As I said before, this place holds many secrets. There are other ways to travel, paths known as Warrens that traverse this place. There are few left alive who know how to travel the Warrens. Which makes me a very lucky woman.”
“I’m going to assume there’s a reason we’re not using one right now then, and it’s not that you just like long walks.”
“Fragments can’t walk the Warrens.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. But they can’t. Don’t test the truth of that statement.” Something in Tamzin’s voice changed, the scent of her shifting with it. She was… sad, perhaps. No, melancholy was a better word. Ella decided not to press the matter.
“I have more questions.” Ella tried not to smile as she spoke, the pair of them carrying on walking. She knew when a memory hurt, and she could see that hurt in Tamzin now.
“I’m sure you do,” Tamzin said with a laugh, giving Ella the response she’d hoped for. “It’s a long walk, but if you have half the number of questions I had when Amatkai found me, it might not be long enough. Ask, and I will try to answer.”
“Before you left, you spoke of someone called Kerith. Who are they?”
“What Kerith is has many names amongst our people. My sentinel, my guardian, my reflection… But Amatkai refers to her as my keeper. All Aldruids create a tether to a keeper. We give them strength, intelligence, companionship, and in turn they watch over us. We are a pair. When Aldruids walk in Níthianelle, we are exposed in the mortal plane. There are some whose blood is strong enough that they can move in both worlds at the same time. I am gifted as such. But even then, our mind is never truly in one place. It is our keepers who guard our bodies while our souls wander. You will find your keeper one day…” Tamzin gave Ella a curious look. “If you haven’t already?”
A realisation struck Ella. “Faenir.”
“A wolf, I assume?”
“Wolfpine,” Ella corrected.
“Is there a difference?”
Ella let out a long, exasperated sigh. It was like walking with Farda. A smile curled her lips, but then her mood soured as her memories flooded back from before the battle. If this all worked and Ella found a way back to her body, she prayed Farda had survived the fighting, if only so she could kill him herself. “Yes. There’s a difference.”
Tamzin raised her open palms. “Well, I’m going to leave that one firmly alone. You’ve noticed changes in Faenir since your blood made itself known? Stronger, larger, quicker?”
Ella nodded, thinking back to when she’d first noticed the changes. “I can feel him, his heartbeat, his fear, his anger. I can tell when he’s hungry… He’s always hungry.”
“Well, Ella Bryer, it looks like you found your keeper.”
The thought warmed Ella’s heart. It was a fitting name for what Faenir was to Ella: her keeper. It was he who had been there when Rhett died, he who had saved her, and he who had never left her side from that day on. Even then, as she focused on that thought, she swore she could feel the wolfpine watching her, protecting her body in the waking world. She could feel his coarse fur brushing against her skin, feel the warmth of his touch.
“You say we are Blooddancers. Are there others? Or are all our kind like us?” Ella had heard stories of the old druids, but those were from a time even more ancient than The Order. They were more myth than legend.
“There are others. Many of the Gifts have been lost with time.” That same melancholy returned to Tamzin’s scent, her voice a requiem. “Once, long before we set foot in Epheria, our people could perform all sorts of wonders. There were some with the Gift to make crops grow at twice the usual rate, influence flowers to change their colours. They would sing, and the trees would bend their trunks so as to better hear. Others could walk the dreams of the sleeping, chasing nightmares from their heads. Moonwalkers could bend the light around them, vanishing from plain sight. Listeners could hear the vibrations of rare ore buried deep in rocks, find water wherever they roamed, tell the species of a bird by only the beating of its wings.” Both Tamzin’s voice and scent continued to change as she spoke, a warm joy seeping in. “Amatkai even tells of those who could heal wounds with the touch of their hands and those who had such a connection to the animals of the world they could create new life, new species…”
“And now?”
Tamzin scratched at the back of her neck, her clawed fingernails leaving bright red marks. Ella noticed she did that anytime she seemed uncomfortable. “There are but four druidic Gifts we know to have survived the purge of our kind. Those of the Blooddancers, the Stormcallers, the Pathfinders, and the Starchasers. Though, those are names from the time of the first landing. Alternate names were given by those who hunted us. The Blooddancers are Aldruids. The Stormcallers are Skydruids. The Pathfinders and Starchasers are Seerdruids and Aetherdruids. Far lesser titles if you ask me.”
After a while, when Tamzin stopped near a slow-moving stream and ran her hand over something on the ground, Ella built up the courage to ask the question that had been circling in her head. “Have you heard anything about the battle in the Darkwood? Who won? Who survived?”
Tamzin had said that if Ella were still alive, that meant there was someone tending to her body in the waking world. But that didn’t mean that someone was Calen or Haem. It didn’t mean the battle had been won.
When Tamzin didn’t answer, Ella repeated herself. But before she could finish the sentence, Tamzin was on her feet, her hand clapping around Ella’s mouth, blue kat-like eyes staring into hers. Tamzin’s face was so close Ella could feel the warmth of the woman’s breath.
Ella tried to push Tamzin back, but then a scent touched her nostrils, clean and fresh like wet grass and squashed berries. She’d smelled it for a while, but it had blended with the world around her, so she’d thought nothing of it. Now though, it was more prominent, more distinct. And with that scent came another that wafted from Tamzin: fear.
Tamzin slowly lifted her hand from Ella’s mouth, grabbing her forearm and leading her into the flowing stream. Ella didn’t say a word as Tamzin walked deeper into the rushing water until only their heads remained above the surface. Ella widened her stance, trying desperately to stay on her feet against the current, her heart racing.
Tamzin pressed her fingers to her lips as she pulled Ella around a large rock that jutted from the stream, the current breaking around it. She nodded upstream over Ella’s shoulder.
It was all Ella could do to hold in the gasp at the sight of a bear so large bards would have told stories of it. The creature must have stood at least ten feet tall on all fours, its shoulders broader than a wagon. Smoke as black as its fur drifted from its body, twirling and shifting with the breeze.
The bear moved strangely, with a careful grace, its steps slow and purposeful. It was looking for something, and it was drawing closer.
Tamzin pulled Ella back behind the rock. She once again pressed her finger to her lips and shook her head. The bear’s scent grew stronger in Ella’s nostrils, the deep, sonorous thump of its heart steadily rising.
Tamzin gestured down at the water, then mouthed: three , two , one .
Ella drew a deep breath on ‘one’ and submerged herself in the stream. The cold water rushed over her, and her pulse quickened even more, panic setting into her veins. She closed her eyes and tried to settle herself, one hand leveraging against the rock to keep her under. A slow burn ached in her lungs, her throat growing tighter and tighter. She’d never had a fear of water, but drowning was another story.
Tamzin’s fingers closed around hers, and the woman pressed Ella’s hand against her chest. In the chaos of the rushing current and the panic, it took Ella a moment to understand. Then she felt Tamzin’s heartbeat. Slow, controlled, calm.
Ella’s pulse settled, Tamzin’s heartbeat steadying her. She lost her sense of time. Seconds could have been minutes, minutes seconds. The burning in her chest turned to a searing pain, her lungs begging her for air. All the while, the cold water rushed around her, drowning out all sounds.
Tamzin pushed under Ella’s armpit, signalling her to rise, but kept Ella’s hand pressed over her heart.
When Ella broke the water, her body urged her to gasp and drag in a lungful of air. She resisted, drawing her breath in slowly through her nostrils, only allowing her head to emerge so as to check her surroundings.
The bear was gone. Or at least, she couldn’t see it.
Tamzin tapped her on the shoulder, and Ella turned to find the woman’s head and neck free of the water’s surface, one finger pressed to her lips, her other hand wrapped around the shaft of an axe. She mouthed the words ‘stay here’, then left the cover of the rock and moved out of Ella’s sight, white mist drifting up from the river’s surface.
Ella pressed her back up against the rock, savouring the sweet taste of air, the sense of panic slowly ebbing. She drew a long, burning breath, then turned about the rock, moving against the current. She wasn’t going to sit around like some lamb waiting to be slaughtered. If that bear was still there, Tamzin would be an idiot to face it alone.
She almost leapt from her skin when she found herself staring directly into Tamzin’s eyes.
“This time I definitely told you to stay where you were.”
“You did.”
The woman stared at her, the edges of her mouth giving the slightest of turns. “It’s gone. For now. We should follow the river east for a while. It will mask our scent.”
Tamzin turned and started off towards the far bank. She climbed from the river, then pulled Ella back to dry land.
“What was that thing?” Ella asked, kneeling on the bank, water dripping from her hair and nose.
“We need to keep moving. It won’t be far.” Tamzin helped Ella to her feet and started off east along the riverbank. She continued, “It was an Angan of Clan Bjorna.”
“The Angan can travel here?”
“The Angan can do many things. They are the first children of our gods, carved from pieces of their flesh. Níthianelle is how they communicate so quickly. They travel the Warrens, sending messages from one to another, spanning great distances in short times. More than that, we may have power here, power we can learn to wield and mould and shape, but the Angan are as much part of Níthianelle as they are of the waking world. They move between both like shadows. In this world, there is no greater predator.”
“It was hunting us.”
“It was.”
“But why?”
“The Angan are bound to our gods. They are as branches to a trunk or fingers to a hand. They do not question the will of the gods nor, I believe, do they have the capacity to. The children of Bjorna, those that are left, are zealots left over from a war that died out long before our time because there weren’t enough bodies to fight it. A war in which gods killed gods, a war in which the blood of our people fed the land in rivers. There were once many more gods than there are now and with them many more of our kind. They didn’t all get along. The Bjorna still live that war, still hunt the remnants of what is left. It is their purpose to kill all gods but their own.”
“But there are so few of us now…” Ella trailed off, her mind lingering on the word ‘us’. She had said it without thinking. Us . “How can they keep fighting a war with their own kind with so few of us still breathing? Or are the stories all wrong? Is there a nation of us hiding somewhere, just like the elves?”
“Oh, if only the world were that simple,” Tamzin said. “No, the stories are not wrong. Exaggerated, but not wrong. I would wager there are a few hundred of us across the continent in one form or another. Maybe fewer, but not more. Many stick to the old clans, following their gods. Others have formed more colourful groups, like ours. But the majority simply do not even know what they are and wander alone. But you see, Ella, if there was only one piece of shit in the world, people would kill each other to possess it. To live is to want, to want is to need, to need is to take. That is the unbreakable cycle this world finds itself in. By the time we all realise we’re just killing each other, most of us will likely be dead.”
“Well, that’s cheery.”
“It’s the truth. Take it or leave it.” Tamzin looked over her shoulder at Ella. Her eyes were a deep chestnut brown now, her pupils more human-like. “The only thing we can control is what we choose to do about it.”
“And what have you chosen to do? Besides finding helpless women who have somehow managed to what? Separate their soul from their body?”
Tamzin laughed at that. “You are far from helpless. Of that I am sure.”
Ella’s throat tightened. All she could see in her mind’s eyes were images of Rhett lying in the dirt, blood pooling, her own screams echoing. She knew what it was to be helpless. If Faenir hadn’t found her that day, her body would have lain next to Rhett’s – likely in a ditch somewhere.
“What I’ve chosen to do,” Tamzin said, noticing Ella’s silence, “is not lie down and die. I’ve chosen to fight. To live. To carry on with the hope that some day, all of this killing will mean something. When Amatkai found me, he promised me one thing – that I wouldn’t have to be scared of who I am for a moment longer. And since that day, I haven’t been.”
“Amatkai. You’ve said that name before. Who is he?”
“You will meet him. While we travel here, he makes his way to your body in the mortal plane. It is he who can help guide you through the veil.”
Ella started to answer but stopped herself when a cold breath brushed the hairs on the back of her neck. She snapped her head around and leaned back towards Tamzin. Her skin goosefleshed from head to toe, and a terror like nothing she had ever known wrapped around her heart as she stared at the face of a woman long dead.
The woman stood barely half a foot from her, dark, saturated hair clinging to her milk-pale skin. She stared at Ella with eyes of deathly grey ringed with black, the whites laced with veins of blood-red. Her dead, black lips were twisted into an unnatural grin, the corners of her mouth seemingly pinned in place.
A heartbeat passed, and Ella stood frozen like a deer, her limbs unresponsive as she stared into the woman’s eyes. She could hear Tamzin shouting something, but the woman tilted her head slowly to the right, those terrifying eyes holding Ella’s gaze, and then she let out a shrieking wail and lurched forwards.
Before Ella could think, fingers were wrapped around her throat, squeezing as she thrashed, the woman’s wail scratching at her mind. Ella’s feet went from under her, and she was falling, slipping from the riverbank. The icy water swallowed her whole, the woman’s fingers squeezing tighter, that horrific grin contorting cold flesh.
Ella screamed, air fleeing her lungs, water flooding in, the wolf howling inside her.
Memories flooded her mind, memories that were not her own. She was fleeing, her heart racing, sweat streaking her skin. Only fear held her as she sprinted through tall grass, moonlight overhead. Pain flared in her stomach. She looked down to see a barbed arrowhead protruding from just below her belly button, a little to the right. She staggered, her knee scraping the stones on the ground. Something slammed into her back and sent her sprawling, a snap signalling the breaking of the arrow shaft.
A man stood over her, his eyes orange as a sunset, lips black as coals, a dark bow in his hand. A massive hawk alighted on his shoulders, one taloned foot either side of his head.
“It’s always more fun when you try to run.” The man drew another arrow from the quiver at his hip and nocked it. “Goodnight, Wolfchild. Sleep well.”
The man drew back the bowstring, and Ella reached outwards with her mind, panic and terror consuming her entirely. The memories flitted through her, seconds becoming minutes, becoming hours, days, weeks, years, centuries…
And then Ella was back in her own mind and being hauled from the water. She coughed and spluttered, choking on every breath, grasping at her throat. It felt as though a noose had been wrapped around her neck and she’d been dragged behind a horse.
As she shivered, soaked to the bone, gasping for air, Tamzin appeared over her, out of breath and soaked.
“Look at me,” she snapped, the tone in her voice sharp and panicked. She placed her hands gently atop Ella’s. “Breathe. Breathe. Are you all right?”
“I… I don’t…” Ella continued to pull in panicked breaths, her hands clutching her aching throat.
She turned her head to the side to see a pale, wet, headless body lying in the dirt, white blood spilling. The woman’s head sat a foot away, those cold eyes still open, mouth ajar. Ella snapped her stare back to Tamzin. “What the fuck was that? What happened? What… I saw her. I felt her fear…” Without warning, a feeling of skin-crawling dread and terror overwhelmed her and Ella burst into tears. She stared into Tamzin’s eyes. “She fragmented… She was trapped here for centuries, Tamzin. Centuries. Alone. All she saw was darkness. I felt her lose her mind. I felt every piece of her break, sliver by sliver. I… I…”
“Breathe, Ella. You’re safe.” Tamzin took one last deep breath, then dropped to the ground beside Ella.
Ella stared into the cold dead eyes of the woman’s decapitated head. “Is that what I’ll become? A wraith? I can’t become that. I can’t.”
“You won’t. I won’t let you.” Tamzin pulled herself to her feet and reached a hand to Ella. “But we need to move. There’s not a soul in this place that didn’t hear that. The Bjorna won’t be the only thing hunting us.”
Ella took Tamzin’s hand and rose. And as she followed the woman, she stopped and looked back at the body and severed head that lay in a pool of white blood by the riverbank.
“Ella.” Tamzin tugged at Ella’s sleeve.
“Her name was Laurel Hardin.” Ella’s jaw twitched involuntarily. “She was seventeen when she fragmented. She was terrified.”
“We need to go.”
“I’ll remember you,” Ella whispered. “I promise.”