40. In the Blood
Chapter 40
In the Blood
15 th Day of the Blood Moon
Níthianelle – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
The world around Ella drifted in clouds of white, ever-shifting. Shapes appeared before her in shades of grey: a fence, a door, a house. But every time she reached out and touched them, they dissipated as though made of smoke.
This place was not Níthianelle. It was a world of dreams, one she had visited a number of times since finding herself in the Sea of Spirits. Not every night, but some. It was different to dreaming in the waking world, a dream within a dream, both real and ethereal. And just as she had each time she had walked this place, she heard her mother’s voice calling to her.
“Ella.” Freis’s voice echoed as though she called through a long tunnel. “Could you fetch me a wooden spoon?”
The world swirled and spun, smoke twisting and filling with colour. Within seconds, Ella stood in a room composed of stout logs, the fireplace roaring behind her. It was her home. She knew it like she knew the lines of Rhett’s face, like she knew the amber flecks of Faenir’s eyes. This was her home as sure as the grass was green and the sky was blue.
“A wooden spoon?” The words left Ella’s mouth without her consent, her lips moving of their own volition. They were the words she’d spoken that night, some five years ago. The night her dad had come back from The Gilded Dragon with a wound in his side. It was a memory she’d long forgotten, one she’d pushed to the back of her mind, one with more questions than answers.
“To beat your father around the head with,” Freis answered. Ella could hear her mam’s voice but couldn’t see her. She was alone in the home that no longer was.
The house around her evaporated into plumes of smoke, spiralling then reforming.
“Can you tell us the story of Cassian Tal?” A young Calen ladled stew into a bowl and rushed past her. He was so innocent then, so pure. He’d needed her.
Ella’s heart stopped as the smoky figure of her dad took shape, his arm tucked tight to his side, his breaths far steadier than they should have been, as though he were trying too hard to keep them that way.
That night flooded back. Vars had said he’d slipped on the way back from The Gilded Dragon, but he’d lied. She’d always known when he’d been lying.
Once more the world shifted, smoke twisting around her as though blowing in a storm. When the smoke resettled, she was once again in her home, but not the kitchen. She stood outside her parents’ room, candlelight glowing from within, the door open just a crack.
Her mam and dad both sat on the bed, but Vars wore no shirt and a vicious gash adorned his side, blood trickling down his ribs. The wound was not anything that could have been sustained by a fall, and it had been sewn with all the skill of a five-year-old donkey. The sharp scent of Brimlock sap clung to the air. She’d smelled it the moment her dad had walked in the door and kissed her on the head, she’d just not pieced it together at first.
She watched as her mam removed the catgut and re-sewed the wound with a delicate hand, applying a thick salve. The entire time, her dad didn’t so much as flinch. He just watched Freis, his hand resting on her knee, his breathing steady. Even when the needle pierced the skin, he gave not so much as a hiss or a twitch. She had always seen her dad as a tough man, a man hardened by work in the forge, a man of iron and steel. But that night, as she watched from behind the door, as her mam sewed the wound in his side, she saw a man she barely knew. He was still her dad, still had that same caring look in his eyes, but he was also someone else entirely, someone colder. She knew there was more they weren’t telling her and her brothers. She just never knew what it was.
“Ella!” Freis’s voice thundered, shaking the air, and the world blurred and warped.
Ella’s skin goosefleshed, and she snapped her gaze to her mam. Freis no longer sat on the bed. Now she stood before Ella, her eyes pure white from edge to edge. Her body was no longer smoke. It was solid, real, but her eyes glowed with a white light.
Freis extended her hand and opened her fingers. “My girl.”
Ella reached out, her hand shaking, every hair on her body on end. Her jaw trembled, teeth chattering. And then her hand touched her mother’s, warmth spreading from fingertips to fingertips, and the air fled Ella’s lungs. “It’s… it’s you… you’re not…”
Freis leaned forwards and brushed Ella’s cheek, and Ella all but melted into her.
“I thought I’d lost you,” she said between sobs.
“My girl,” her mam said again, running her hand through Ella’s hair. “I’m so sorry.”
Ella leaned back, tears blurring her eyes. “For what?”
“For keeping everything from you.” Freis brushed the tears from Ella’s cheek. “For not telling you who you are. We were trying to protect you, to keep you from the darkness. We thought we had more time.” Her voice caught in her throat and she repeated herself, whispering and pulling Ella close. “We thought we had more time. She saved me, but?—”
A third voice erupted from all around, so loud the world shook and broke into smoke once more. “Ella!”
Ella panicked, grabbing her mam’s wrist with all her strength. “Don’t you dare leave me.”
The voice boomed again. “Ella!”
“Trust in the blood.” Freis rested her free hand atop Ella’s. “Blood is all you can trust.”
“What?” Ella felt hands gripping her shoulders, shaking her, fingers pressing in so hard it hurt. “Mam, what do you mean?”
Freis simply smiled. “Trust in the blood, Ella. I was wrong. Find me again. I will listen for your voice.”
“Ella!” the voice roared, and the world of smoke swirled around her like a tempest, then smashed.
Ella lurched upright, her eyes opening. Tamzin stood over her, hands grasping Ella’s shoulders.
“What did you do?” Ella roared and shoved Tamzin off her, then leapt to her feet. She extended a clawed hand, visibly shaking. “What. Did. You. Do?”
Tamzin stepped backwards, white mist rising from beneath her feet. She raised both hands in the air. “Ella, I need you to breathe.”
“What did you do to me?” The wolf prowled in the back of Ella’s mind, teeth bared. “Why did you make me see that?”
“See what? Ella, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Then why did you wake me?” Ella made no attempt to hold back her fury. “ Why ?”
“Because we needed to keep moving.” Tamzin’s fingernails grew, curling and sharpening, her fingers growing thicker, fangs protruding below her upper lip. “If you don’t back down now, I’ll put you down. That is your only warning.”
Ella clenched her jaw but held herself in place. She drew a long breath through her nose, letting it out slowly.
“I woke you because we are less than a day from the Darkwood and we need to move. When I tried, you were limp as a doll. I panicked. People can lose themselves in this place.”
Ella recoiled as the woman made to rest a hand on her shoulder, but Tamzin moved closer, placing both her palms flat on Ella’s forearms and meeting her gaze. “What did you see?”
“My mam. I think she’s alive.”
Tanner Fjorn stood on the edge of the plateau that overlooked Alura, a warm mug of Arlen Root tea cupped in his hands. The tea was one of the worst things he’d ever tasted, but Elia Havel had brewed a batch every day since she’d begun to recover. After a while, Yana had started to do the same. That meant a lot of tea was going to waste. He didn’t like waste. And most tastes could be acquired with a little perseverance.
His breath misted and rose into the morning sky, glinting in the pale red light of the Blood Moon. That damn moon had sat there, carved into the sky, for just over two weeks now, making every day too dark and every night too bright.
In a sense, he had been a little underwhelmed. The last time the Blood Moon had risen, the entire continent had run red – or so the legends told. And now there he was, sipping a mug of tea to the sound of birdsong. The tea tasted like shit, but the sentiment remained. He was under no illusions though. There in Aravell – surrounded by walls and mountains and a forest that had a nasty tendency to kill anything that moved – he was sheltered from the chaos. The reports from elsewhere in Epheria were very different. Entire cities had been wiped from existence, burned to ash, tens of thousands slaughtered – hundreds of thousands.
The world was on fire. The idea of Tanner sitting around sipping tea while so many fought and died clawed at him. He had never been a man to sit back and wait. It was not his way. A glass of brandy by the fire after a long day, that was something that warmed his heart, but this was different. Farwen and Coren and the others, they were still there, still in the heart of the war. He had made the choice to leave, to go with Ella, but that didn’t mean he was free of the guilt at leaving the others behind.
He took a sip of the tea, grimacing as the aftertaste of dirt hit his tongue.
Once Ella woke – and she would – the sitting around would be over. They would join the fight once again. That girl was a fighter, a warrior in her heart. She had a will of wrought iron. She would come back to them. She had to. If she didn’t, Tanner wasn’t entirely sure that it wouldn’t break Yana forever.
Women were strange creatures. He’d found that they were slow to love, slow to trust, but when they did, they bound themselves to that love with all their strength. And that was the way it should be as far as he was concerned. Love should be hard won and defended with every shred of a person’s soul.
Tanner sipped at the tea again, watching as Alura started to awaken and the soft sound of chatter drifted through the basin. Without Ella’s brother and the others, the place felt empty, quiet. Thousands had become a handful. Most of the Rakina remained, along with the sick and injured, a number of guards left behind from the Draleid’s army, and the elves who tended the dragons – Drac?rdare, he believed they were called. At that time, only a handful of souls wandered the paths and tended the plateaus, mostly elves who had been assigned to keep everything in order.
Tanner turned and ambled across the plateau, nodding to two men in half-plate with the white dragon emblazoned across their chests. He stepped through the doorway to the familiar, earthy scent of Arlen Root and Elia Havel in the same place he’d left her: stirring a pot of steeping tea, her neck tilted to the side, her eyes fixed on something that wasn’t there.
The woman may have recovered physically from her time in the Beronan dungeons, but the horrors she’d experienced there were very much still with her. At times he thought two minds lived within her skull. One a woman so sweet and chirpy as to almost cause him a headache, the other a crippled soul who saw demons lurking in every shadow.
“Elia.” Tanner approached slowly, holding his empty mug in his left hand. She didn’t answer. “Elia.”
Elia continued stirring the large pot, her head twitching.
“Elia, are you all right?”
Tanner rested his hand on Elia’s shoulder, and she jerked away, catching the pot with her arm and knocking it, the scalding tea pouring over the floor.
“No!” Elia snatched up the pot and set it on the counter. She grabbed a pile of neatly folded cloths and dumped them on the steaming tea that was slowly spreading across the stone. “No, no, no.” With every passing second, she grew more frantic, eventually wrapping her arms around herself and clutching her shoulders as she sat on her haunches. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please,” she pleaded, terror in her eyes. “Please don’t hurt me, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll tell you anything you want. He always reads, he… he…”
“Elia.” Tanner lowered himself to meet Elia’s gaze, sitting back on his heels. He didn’t touch her – he’d learned from that mistake – but moved his head until she looked into his eyes. “Elia, it’s only tea.”
She stared back at him blankly, her shoulders trembling, her fingers pressing creases into her tunic.
“You’re safe now,” he repeated. He touched his hand to his chest, resting it over his heart. “You’re safe. Nobody will hurt you here.”
Her stare softened at those words, and she nodded softly, her teeth chattering.
“Come on, let’s get you to your feet.” Tanner gestured for her to stand, trying his best to give her a warm smile. He rose slowly and offered his hand, not forcing it. She would take it if she wanted.
It took a moment, but Elia eventually grasped his outstretched hand and stood upright but kept her gaze fixed on the mess of cloths and the liquid creeping across the ground. She was tiny, at least a foot shorter than he was, her frame dainty, fragile. The woman had been through the void.
“Are you all right? You didn’t hurt yourself?” Tanner asked.
She shook her head, still not lifting her gaze from the ground.
“Why don’t you go and see if Lasch needs any help with the bees? It’s getting warmer outside. Earlywinter is creeping in. The fresh air might be nice.”
Elia glanced at him without speaking, then looked back to the pot on the counter and the mess on the floor.
“I’ll clean it up and get a new pot started. You go.”
Elia nodded. That seemed to be her preferred method of communication whenever these episodes struck. She made to walk past him and stopped, opening her mouth as though to speak, then closing it. She lifted a hand and held it up tentatively before resting it on his arm. “Thank… thank you.” Her eyes softened. “I’m sorry for…” She looked back at the mess. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t ever be sorry.” Tanner shook his head. “Not for this. Not ever. Go. I’ll look after everything here.”
As Elia grabbed a coat and stepped from the house, Tanner mopped up the spilt tea with the cloths, then tossed them into a bucket beside the counter.
Once he was sure the place was in a tidy enough state that Elia wouldn’t start cleaning when she came back, he climbed the stairs and walked the corridor down to Ella’s room.
The sweet scent of lavender touched his nose as he opened the door, released by a fresh whorl of the purple flowers set in the vase beside the door. A soft whimper sounded to his right, a wet nose pressing into his hand.
“Food?” Tanner asked rhetorically, running his hand along Faenir’s snout and scratching the side of the wolfpine’s head. The wolfpine always needed food.
The crest of Faenir’s head reached Tanner’s chest, golden eyes looking at him with a keen sense of understanding. Faenir nuzzled Tanner’s hand, letting out a low grumble in response to his question.
“All right. I’ll fetch something for you soon. Where’s she gone?” Tanner gestured over to the corner of the room where the Angan, Aneera, usually sat cross-legged. From the day Ella had collapsed, the Angan had barely eaten or slept. She’d spent almost every waking hour with her legs folded and her eyes closed, doing whatever it was that Angan did. Aeson had explained to Tanner about the creatures’ ability to communicate across long distances, but he still didn’t quite understand it.
“Actually.” Tanner frowned, looking from the empty spot where Aneera usually sat, then back to the door. “Where’ve they all gone?”
It was only then Tanner realised not only was Aneera not in the room, he’d seen none of the Angan on the plateau either. There were usually three or four of them prowling about, never moving too far from the house. At first, it had only been Diango, who’d arrived just before the battle almost two weeks past, but the others had dripped in as the days had passed.
The wolfpine gave a low growl, his hackles rising, lips pulling back in a momentary snarl before he padded across the room to where Yana was slumped in a chair. The wolfpine dropped himself to the ground with a sigh, nuzzling his head against Yana’s leg. The creature was so massive that even lying down, his back came up as high as the flat of the chair.
A smile broke out across Tanner’s face at the sight of Yana passed out in the chair, her hand resting atop Ella’s. He moved behind the chair and leaned over, resting his chin on Yana’s shoulder and cupping his hands across her stomach. “I think a bed might be a good idea.”
Yana grumbled, shifting slightly but not opening her eyes.
“Mmph… Get off me, you big oaf.” She pressed her cheek into Tanner’s arm, planting a kiss just below the elbow, then wrapped an arm around his. “Carry me.”
“Carry you?”
“Carry me. If you really loved?—”
Tanner swung around the chair, tucked one arm under Yana’s legs and the other around her back, then scooped her into his arms. He bent his knees slightly in a mock bow, staring down at the woman who looked back up at him groggily, a smile on her lips. “At once, my queen.”
“You’re such an idiot,” she said, laughing as she nuzzled into his chest.
“And you need to lay off those elven cakes.” Tanner lurched forwards, dropping his arms and pretending to struggle before pulling Yana back up.
Yana slapped Tanner’s arm, her expression turning sharp and serious. “Careful, boy.”
Tanner just laughed, carrying her from the room and down the hall before laying her atop the bed they shared.
“Get some rest.” Tanner placed a kiss on Yana’s forehead as she pulled back the sheets and crawled into the bed. “I’ll watch over her. Did you see where Aneera went?”
Yana nodded, her eyelids already drooping.
Tanner laughed to himself, then made his way back to Ella’s room. Faenir had repositioned himself at the foot of Ella’s bed. The wolfpine looked like a mound of fur coats, the bed frame straining under his weight.
Faenir lifted his head at the sound of Tanner’s entry, promptly resetting it back atop his paws.
Tanner moved about the room, scratching Faenir on the neck, picking up Yana’s half-empty mug of cold Arlen Root tea, and pulling the ruffled bed sheet up over Ella’s collarbone.
He rested the back of his free hand against Ella’s forehead, checking her temperature. She was far warmer than she should have been, but that was the way she had been from the first night.
The young woman’s eyes moved back and forth behind her lids as though she were roaming through a whole other world in her mind.
He thought back to the night he and Yana had helped the woman escape from Berona, how she had barged into his office wearing nothing but a night dress covered in blood, a sword gripped in her fist and the wolfpine at her side. “It’s not my blood.” Tanner shook his head, holding back a laugh. The situation had been anything but funny, but there were not many young women who would find themselves in that position and think so little of it. She was a fighter at her core, and Tanner understood completely how his nephew had been so madly in love with her.
Leaving Faenir to watch over Ella, Tanner brought Yana’s empty mug back down the stairs, set another pot of water over the fire to boil, and cut himself a slice of bread with a wedge of cheese. With a second thought, he cut another slice of cheese for Faenir and slipped it into his pocket. That wolfpine loved cheese.
When the water had boiled, he poured it over the tea-soaked rags he’d left in the bucket, steam pluming upwards. He’d leave them to soak a while, then wash them out with some soap. Tanner refilled the pot and set it back over the fire, tossing in chunks of Arlen Root. Elia tended to chop the root into small pieces, but he had neither the inclination nor the energy.
He splashed some water on his face, then fetched a whetstone, a small jar of oil, and his sword from where it sat by the door. It was a routine he had grown accustomed to over the last week or so. He wasn’t the kind of man who took easily to sitting in the same place for hours on end with nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs. So instead, he sharpened his sword and his knives, preparing for the inevitable moment he would once again need to use them. Of course, sharpening the same weapons day after day was as pointless as lips on a chicken. Which was why every sword within walking distance now had a blade sharp enough to cut leather like cheese.
Tanner ascended the stairs, pushing open the door to Ella’s chambers with his shoulder. He had barely set a foot across the threshold when he realised he hadn’t left it ajar.
A man stood by Ella’s bed, grey-streaked hair falling short of his shoulders, brown robes tumbling to his ankles.
Tanner dropped the whetstone and oil, the jar smashing as it hit the floor. In the same motion he pulled his sword from his scabbard, turning so he stood across the doorway. “Step away from her.”
The man raised a bony finger. “I would rather like not to kill you this time.”
This time?
Tanner moved further into the room, never lowering his sword. Something about the man wasn’t right. “I feel the same way. Step away from her, sit in that chair, and we can talk.”
“My bones are sore anyway.” The man dropped himself into the chair in which Tanner had spent many a night watching over Ella. It was only as he did that Tanner noticed Faenir still lying at the foot of Ella’s bed. The wolfpine was awake, his eyes open. But he simply lay there, his chin resting on his paws, his gaze fixed on the man.
“What did you do to him?” Tanner tightened his grip on the sword’s hilt, setting his feet. The man looked as though he had seen twice Tanner’s summers, his skin wrinkled and pulling tight around his bones, but he sat straight and held his chin high, the smile on his face that of a much younger man.
“I simply told him to obey.” The man crossed one leg over the other, resting his hands in his lap, his blue-grey eyes shifting from Tanner to Faenir. “Isn’t that right?”
Faenir didn’t move, but his pupils sharpened. Something else was happening here. Something of which Tanner had no understanding – which seemed to be a common occurrence of late.
“Who are you, and why are you here?” Tanner shifted his sword into his left hand, skirting the man in the chair and brushing his free hand through the coarse fur on Faenir’s crown. The wolfpine didn’t so much as flinch or grumble.
The man stared at Ella, his expression unshifting. “You may call me Amatkai. I am a… friend, come to check on our dear Ella – and also to wait on another friend, as fate may have it. Many friends for you. He should be here soon, though I wouldn’t serve him that tea.”
“Tea? You’re mad.” Tanner gestured towards the door with his sword. “Stand up. Get out. I’ve changed my mind. We can talk about why you’re here outside.”
Unperturbed, Amatkai tilted his head to the side and gave Tanner a toothy grin.
Tanner stumbled backwards a step at the sight of two long fangs protruding from both Amatkai’s upper and lower jaws. The old man ran his tongue along one of the sharp teeth, his smile widening. He waved a hand, and Tanner howled in pain, his fingers peeling from the handle of his sword against his will, the bone in his pinky snapping as he tried to hold it in place.
“Apologies.” The man opened his hands out. “I see a path where that was not necessary – but on this path it was. The finger will heal.”
Amatkai rose from the chair, sweeping back his robes as he did.
Tanner lunged, aiming to smash the man to the floor. But before he could reach his target, his entire body froze, suspended in time as though caught in a web unseen. Panic slithered through him, his limbs refusing to respond to his commands.
Amatkai leaned over Ella and brushed a strand of hair from her face. “The paths we walk,” he said absently, “they are ever winding, ever twisting, ever turning. It can often be so difficult to see which path is the one I need, which path is the one that leads to…” He tilted his head to the side, listening. “Ahhh, finally.” He stood upright, and the invisible bonds holding Tanner dissipated.
Tanner crashed to the ground, pain burning in his finger.
Amatkai hunkered beside him, resting his elbows on his knees with the spryness of a teenager. “Don’t worry, you live on all variations of this path. As does she, but she will have a headache. I tried to avoid this.”
Tanner lifted his head to see Yana storming into the room, a knife gripped in each fist. She howled and launched herself at Amatkai. The man just flicked his wrist, and Yana flew across the room and crashed into the wall, steel clattering, her body twisting into a heap.
“Yana!” Tanner tried to haul himself up, but those same invisible bonds held him in place. He looked from Yana to Amatkai. “Release me! Now!”
Amatkai wagged a finger. “Sometimes it’s like herding children. Stay down. This will all be over soon. I promise you, this was the only path without bloodshed.”
Another voice sounded from the hallway, one Tanner didn’t recognise. Deep and calm. “Why am I not surprised to find you here?”
“Because you’re smarter than you look.” Amatkai stood, leaving Tanner pinned to the floor by whatever magic the man possessed.
Tanner stared across the room at Yana. She grunted, her chest rising and falling slowly. He tried to twist so he could look at the newcomer’s face, but it was as though a collar bound him in place.
“I brought your child home,” Amatkai said. “She will be here shortly.”
“Am I to thank you?” Irritation slipped into the stranger’s voice.
“It would be a welcome change.”
The stranger laughed, a harsh, insincere laugh. “Your blood killed three of mine to bring her here. Do you think me so blind I cannot see the work of your hand? You did not bring her here for me. You simply couldn’t find the path to keep me from her.”
“I did what I needed to do. Do you blame me?”
“You wouldn’t have made these mistakes in past lives.” A pair of dark leather boots came into Tanner’s view, travel-worn, a mix of dry and wet dirt on the soles.
“I simply play the game differently than I used to.”
“That is your problem. You’ve always seen this as a game.”
“And your problem is that you have not.” Amatkai’s voice grew sharper, more deliberate. “You have never seen the pieces, never understood the board. Heart over mind.”
“Loyalty over all.”
More footsteps sounded. Tanner recognised these. He could hear claws clicking against the stone – Aneera and the other Angan. He continued to try and lift his head, to push himself from the floor, but the unseen bonds around him had not weakened in the slightest.
“What will it be then?” Amatkai asked. “Blood or patience?”
“You already know the answer, or you wouldn’t be here,” the stranger said, his boots marking the floor as he moved around Amatkai, closer to Ella. “Now remove your hold on the Blessed One, and leave before I change my mind.”
Claws tapped against the stone, and Tanner could see three pairs of fur-covered feet moving through the room, low growls rumbling.
“Ah, a Blessed One… That explains it. I thought I was losing my touch. Of course.”
Almost instantly, Faenir howled and lunged from where he sat on Ella’s bed, his weight sending a vibration through the stone. The wolfpine’s head dropped so low his chin scraped the ground, and Tanner could see his lips pull back, exposing vicious white teeth. The guttural sound that came from the wolfpine’s throat set even Tanner’s hairs on end. It was a thing of fury and death.
And yet, Faenir didn’t attack. The wolfpine stayed low to the ground, snarling and snapping, but drew no closer to Amatkai.
“You’ve earned an enemy today,” the stranger said, moving closer to Faenir.
“A fang in the light is easier to see than a fang in the dark.” Amatkai walked towards the door. “That is something I’d hoped you’d learned by now. Your Fragment should be here shortly. Her blood is strong. But she is lucky Tamzin found her when she did. I would remind you of that. Our time is coming again. Thanks to my hand, the pieces in this game you so despise are coming together. If we walk the right path, the shadows will be our home no longer.”
The towering trees of the Darkwood loomed over Ella, white mist blowing as the wind swept through their branches. The woodland stretched into the distance on either side, no end in sight. Within its depths, Ella could feel the thumping of innumerable hearts, the beat almost deafening.
In the twilight of Níthianelle, the woodland didn’t seem as ominous, and yet there was something in the air that set her off-kilter, a heaviness, a pain.
“What is that?” Ella stared into the woodland as she asked the question, her gaze searching its depths as though the answer lay just out of reach.
“This place is… it holds memories.” Tamzin moved so she stood beside Ella. “There are creatures here older than the trees and rivers and rocks, creatures that exist both in this world and the mortal plane but belong in neither.”
“The Aldithmar.”
“I do not know that name, but if you have seen these creatures, you will know them. I have only ever encountered them in this world, never in the mortal plane.” After a moment of silence, Tamzin spoke again. “This is as far as I take you.”
Ella pulled her gaze from the woodland and stared at Tamzin. The woman’s eyes were brown again, her pupils human. “What do you mean this as far as you take me? I have no idea what to do once I find my body.” A flash of panic set into Ella. “I don’t even know how to find my body. I don’t know… I don’t know anything. What’s the point in bringing me this far and then leaving me?”
“It’s not really a choice.” Tamzin gestured towards five figures emerging from the woodland. Two took the shapes of enormous stags, white and gold smoke swirling around them as they moved, their antlers black as jet. Two more were the largest wolves Ella had ever seen – larger even than Faenir – golden eyes swirling and sparkling as though filled with the molten metal.
The last walked on two feet, its body covered in dark grey fur, its limbs moving in long, willowy sweeps.
“Aneera…” Relief filled every fibre of Ella’s being, her legs shaking beneath her, chest fluttering. The Angan’s face, her golden eyes. For the first time since finding herself in this place, Ella felt the tiniest sliver of safety brighten in the depths of her mind. She truly had made it back – they had made it back.
“I am not welcome here.” Tamzin folded her arms, looking from the approaching Angan to Ella. “That was made clear while you were sleeping.”
“While I was sleeping?”
“Amatkai will no longer be the one guiding you through the veil.” The half-smile that touched Tamzin’s lips was one born of frustration. “There is another now.” Tamzin drew a heavy breath, then pulled Ella into a hug she wasn’t expecting. “This will not be the last time we meet. I promise you that. Our kind are at the edge of a precipice, Ella. Fall, and we will become extinct. Fly, and we may yet be born anew.” The woman stepped back and inclined her head. “It has been a pleasure, sister. I hope you are standing at our side when it comes time to fly.”
Tamzin made to leave, but Ella grabbed her wrist. “I never thanked you for saving my life… for saving me.”
“No, you didn’t.” Tamzin gave Ella a wry smile.
“Thank you. I would never have made it here without you.”
“No,” Tamzin said again. “You wouldn’t. I will see you soon, Ella Bryer. Take care of yourself, and hold your keeper close. There are many hands at work here, many wars raging, many egos. And when it comes down to it, those who move the pieces on the board care little about whether you survive to see the new dawn. Remember that, and remember our journey. We are not enemies, I swear this to you.”
Tamzin turned and set off in the direction they had come. Ella watched her for a moment, then turned back to the approaching Angan. As the creatures reached her, the two stags, whom she knew to be Angan of the Clan Dvalin, circled around her while Aneera and the other Fenryr Angan stopped before her.
“Daughter of the Chainbreaker.” Aneera dropped to one knee, turning her gaze downward. “We never ceased searching.”
The two enormous wolves moved one paw forward and bowed their heads.
“Aneera.” Ella lifted Aneera from her kneeling position and wrapped her arms around the Angan, unable to keep her hands from trembling. It was all Ella could do to stop her knees from buckling and the tears from flowing. She hadn’t known Aneera long, but there was a part of her that had believed she would never make it back, that she would wander Níthianelle until her body withered and her soul was left to wander the Sea of Spirits. That she would become a wraith.
The Angan staggered back a step, caught off guard. But after a moment, Aneera returned Ella’s embrace. “It lightens my heart to see your soul safe.”
Ella pulled steadying breaths into her lungs as she released Aneera. “I would very much like to return to my body now.”
“Of course. He waits for you. Please follow us.”
The journey through the Darkwood was the longest walk of Ella’s life. Where earlier she had felt relief at the sight of Aneera, doubt had crept in with each step. What if it didn’t work? What if she couldn’t ‘retether’ herself? What if this was it – this was the end?
She pushed the thoughts down, instead focusing on the world around her. It wasn’t a hard thing to do. In this world, the Darkwood was a living, breathing thing. It was almost overwhelming. A thousand scents clung to the air, and a wall of sound washed over her: heartbeats, rustling leaves, snapping branches, flapping wings. She did as Tamzin had been teaching her, honing in on her own racing heart, her own breaths, so as to filter out the chaos around her.
Slowly, she let more in, allowing the thumping hearts of the five Angan around her to hammer in her ears, allowing their scents to flow through her.
The exercise calmed her. That was, until she felt something else in the air, something that raised her hackles, something that caused the wolf to rise in her blood.
She stopped in her tracks, the Angan following suit. No more than twenty feet to her right, a number of tall figures had taken shape. They weren’t the seven-foot monstrosities wrought from shattered bark that Ella knew as the Aldithmar from the battle, but it was them; she could feel it. They looked almost human, their eyes sharper, more angled, with pupils of vibrant orange. Their skin was a pale grey, ridges of bone adorning their brows and cheeks, flowing backwards into something that looked part hair, part horns. Their hands held only four fingers, long and slender, with pointed claws at the end. Black smoke shrouded them, drifting in all directions. The Aldithmar had no heartbeats, no smell. They were both hollow and yet full of pain and suffering. It wasn’t the look on their alien faces or something in their eyes that told her this, it was something more visceral, something more primal. These creatures weren’t just in pain, they were pain.
“They will not approach,” Aneera said, following Ella’s gaze.
“What are they?”
At Ella’s question, one of the Dvalin Angan burst into a spiralling cloud of smoke, tendrils twisting around each other, and reshaped into its more human form, hooved feet pressing into the soft earth. She bowed her head, as though greeting Ella for the first time. “They have existed in this form since long before your people, and ours, reached these shores. The story of their own telling is that they were once a race of people that inhabited these lands before even the Blodvar of old, when the elves and Jotnar crossed blades on dragonback. A great catastrophe struck their people, one of which they will not speak. They are bound to this place, bound between worlds, unable to rest, unable to live, unable to die. Millenia ago, Blessed Dvalin struck a deal with their kind. We would protect this woodland, their home, and in turn they would grant us refuge from those who hunted us. Many of our Gifted perished before the oath could be made, but today more Dvalin Angan survive than any other clan. We owe them much.”
“Why would they grant you such a deal?” Ella could still feel the wolf prowling in the back of her mind, wary under the Aldithmars’ gaze.
“It is postulated amongst my clan that if Aravell is destroyed, the ‘Aldithmar’, as you call them, will be severed from both this world and the mortal plane, left to drift in the void. Given how fiercely they protect the land, I believe this to be true, for I cannot see another consequence.”
“Daughter of the Chainbreaker,” Aneera said before Ella could respond, “we must keep moving. Time is always of the essence when a mind has been fragmented.”
“You’ve seen this before?”
The Angan nodded.
“Many times?”
“Yes.”
“How often do they survive?” The question was one that had floated in Ella’s mind for quite a while, but until then she had refused to put it into words.
Aneera stared back at her for a moment, then spoke. “Time is of the essence.”