Chapter Twenty-Two
You belong to this suffering, Woodrow. You created it and your blood deserves the penance that comes your way .
The memory of those words struck me like a blow. So sharp I could taste blood. Master Daunton’s words.
A ravenous heat bubbled through me. I wrenched myself free of the darkness of sleep, waking in a cold sweat, tangled in the bed sheets, unable to catch my breath. I buried my head in my hands, a breathless sob leaving my lips.
He deserved it, I knew he did, and yet it didn’t stop it hurting. That death was on my soul, no matter how valid the act was.
Silent tears escaped my eyes, a trembling in my hands as I tried to catch my breath. I couldn’t stay here. Couldn’t suffer the silence of the night. Alma was curled up next to me. Still fully dressed as if unable to leave my side.
A tapping came against the window, drawing me towards it, just where it was cracked slightly to let the breeze in. Sharp and relentless as it whistled through the gap.
There was a tiny bird pecking at the glass. Only this bird was made of paper, its pecks becoming more insistent with the streaks of rain that began to appear on the window.
I let it in, the bird hopping onto the ledge. Flapping its wings in annoyance where a few raindrops had made it soggy.
An enchanted message.
I held out my hand, letting it hop into my palm, and just as expected, it unfurled into a note.
Kat, forgive me. Emrys
The burns on my wrist ached at the words. At just how foolish I’d been in trusting anyone. I let the message curl and turn itself into ash in my palm. Montagor was a game I didn’t have the strength to play, and Emrys seemed to be a mystery I couldn’t trust. No matter the horrid gnawing pain that consumed my chest at the thought.
I let the ash slip through my fingertips, refusing to let it distract me as I pulled on one of my simpler dresses, grabbed my bag and headed to the study, intending to work through my frustrations. I would finally go through the ledger on pox that Emrys had given me, ignoring the kindness of the favor.
I entered the study, hearing the room creak as if in concern. I pressed my hand against the doorframe. Feeling the ancient hum of the magic within.
I brought my forehead to rest against it, taking a deep breath as a sad smile came to my lips.
‘Thank you,’ I whispered, knowing the house had helped me. That it had hurt with me. It groaned in answer as I released it and moved soundlessly to my desk. Rage guiding me as I pulled a piece of paper free, writing Master Hale’s name at the top. Suddenly overcome with the need to demand the truth from him. Why he’d lied. Why he’d kept these hideous things from me. Of dark fiends and fey deaths.
I tried but I only managed to write one word on the page.
Liar.
I tore the letter up, letting it scatter across my papers.
Dark things hide in the darkest wood. The story echoed in the back of my mind. Of course they did. That’s why they couldn’t be found. My focus shifted to my notes, flipping through them to see the map again, to see how close the woods of Paxton Fields were to Fairfax Manor. A natural barrier between his lands and the villages. The perfect cover for the dark to hide. Where nobody was allowed to venture unless by the lord’s command.
I remembered the strangeness of the tree bark beneath my palm, the small weight of that dead folk against my skin. The damp press of the foggy air as if weighted with secrets.
Make the bastards pay, Katherine , Master Hale’s parting words came back to me. Those painful burns on my wrist almost mocked me as they ached. How powerless I’d been. How powerless Master Hale had allowed me to become.
Liar, that dark voice inside of me hissed. My eyes burned with childish tears. He would have known. Hale would have known about these fey, about the horrors still happening to them on these lands. He’d kept me blind to it all this time and I hated him for it.
Hated more that I’d allowed myself to be blinded. Blinded by a childish desire to be wanted, to be helpful and cared for.
Rage simmered through me and I found myself at the Portium door, not having a moment to hesitate about my foolishness or how the house creaked in protest. Knowing the door reacted to incantations – Emrys used stones to amplify his requests, but pure magic on its own should suffice.
‘Please.’ I summoned a single flame, pressing it into the space where the crystal was supposed to go. I willed the ancient metal to listen to me. The cogs began to turn and rattle. Light flared beneath the crack of the door before it fell silent.
I turned the knob gently, opening it to see nothing beyond the threshold but the blackness of night, gloomy as mist curled around the base of pale dying trees, and the cries from creatures of the nocturnal wood. Paxton Field, where the missing fey had last been seen.
The portal had formed in the archway of what used to be a stone storage house with only its frame remaining, held together with thick vines and brambles. Breath misted from my lips as I walked further into the wood, leaving the warmth of the portal behind. Trees swayed in the night wind, branches creaking like old bones.
I was cautious of every step. Every crack of a twig beneath my boot, the smell of rot thick in the air, lingering too long. The creatures here were subdued, the bushes not even rustling, so as not to attract beasts on the hunt. The dark almost endless, as moonlight seemed unable to reach down through the thick entanglement of branches above. Seeing a thicket, I knelt down to take a sample of the earth, only to see the stems corrupted and covered in dark spots of infection.
Cursed earth.
My fingers trailed over the dark moss clinging to the tree trunks, finding old carvings into the wood. Familiar fey markers. Prayers to the ancestors to ward off evil.
This was the right place, but I felt no comfort in that.
A cracking of wood made me glance up. There, in the distance, was a pale figure partially obscured by the trees. Her hair was unbound and swept across her face, yet undisturbed by the wind - fear in her pale eyes. The translucent quality of her as if formed from moonlight.
A spirit.
There was a sharpness to her features, and a striking point to her ears. She was an aurrak. An ancient being, one of the many descended from Kysillians.
I rose slowly, trying to seem unthreatening, but she still ran. A flare of white in the night, like starlight streaking through the dark of the wood.
‘Wait !’ I called, hurrying after her, tripping on brambles and rotting wood as I charged headlong into the dark. I’d seen spirits before, but not like her. No so clear, or so distressed.
I ran until my lungs burned with the night air, lonely puffs of breath before me as I twisted around, only to find myself alone in the vastness of the wood.
She’d been going somewhere, and not back to the village. No. I was too deep in the wood. On the edge of a steep embankment of rocks and roots. The screeching cry of a nocturnal beast made my heart leap into my throat, panic settling in my gut. I didn’t know the way back.
The earthy scent of rotting wood weighted every breath.
The cracking of a twig spun me around, magic flaring into my palms with brutal heat as I turned, lavender flames illuminating the startled face of William, a lantern almost slipping from his hand where he stood in the overgrowth, breaths panted, and hair mused.
‘What are you doing? !’ I snapped, clenching my fists to extinguish my defensive spell. ‘I could have hurt you !’
‘Emrys said you’d been hurt,’ he protested, eyes wide with confusion. ‘He went half bloody mad ! Almost put a hole through the study wall !’
I frowned. ‘Really?’ Kat, forgive me . The memory of his note flashed to the forefront of my mind before I shook it away. ‘You shouldn’t be out here, William.’
‘I’m so sorry about Montagor, Kat. I left the portal door unlocked after a delivery. Emrys said—’
I held up my hand, unable to bear any of it right now. ‘Please, William, it’s dangerous out here.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ came the dry, annoyed tone of Alma, making us both jump.
We turned, finding her in a dark cloak, her hair tightly braided. I was even shocked to see she was wearing her sparring attire, arms folded tightly across her chest, cat-like eyes filled with disapproval.
‘What are you doing here?’ I threw my hands up in annoyance, not only at being caught by William, but Alma too. Both now also in the middle of my foolish mess.
‘You’re really not as light-footed as you think you are.’ She sighed, moving towards us soundlessly. ‘What did you do to the doorway?’
‘I gave it a new location.’ I sighed.
‘Can you do that?’ William frowned.
‘It appears so,’ I considered the thick, dark forest surrounding us. ‘How did you even find me?’
‘You mean the mad woman shouting and running through a wood in the middle of the night?’ Alma was still looking like she was about to batter me and was considering using William’s lantern to do it. ‘Besides, William isn’t exactly discreet about sneaking off.’
‘The bloody house was working against me,’ he offered weakly in his defence, cheeks flushed as he turned back to me. ‘You’re looking into something, aren’t you?’
‘I saw something in the woods.’ I decided to leave it at that.
‘A spirit?’ Alma asked, her eyes suddenly mortal with concern.
‘She was different. She didn’t expect me to see her.’ Spirits also didn’t run.
‘Maybe she hasn’t accepted it yet,’ William reasoned. Only I couldn’t shake the feeling it was because her passing was recent.
‘If someone is out here, we should go back. Last I checked lords like to make examples of trespassers,’ Alma interrupted, stepping between us in warning.
‘I’d be more curious as to what a lord was doing wandering the wood to see us?’ I smiled, watching annoyance turn her eyes reptilian as they narrowed.
‘She has a point. We’re already here,’ William interrupted, clearly not sensing my impending doom.
Before Alma could turn her rage on the unsuspecting boy, the crack of a branch echoed back to us. I grabbed their arms, dragging them both down behind a thicket. William’s lantern tumbling free of his grasp and was extinguished instantly by the damp earth.
‘What is it?’ he asked, pressing himself closer to my side.
‘You really couldn’t just go to sleep?’ Alma snapped in a whisper, one side of her face covered in dark panther fur.
‘Shh,’ I breathed, turning to peek over the brambles, and saw a tall, hunched form coming up through the earth. Its snout was long like a dog’s, its limbs covered in matted, filthy fur. Its body was skeletally thin, bent over so its long-clawed arms could drag across the damp earth.
‘A skelmor,’ I whispered.
Skelmor were earth scavengers. The myths said they’d once been fey who refused to join the Old Gods, fight against the ancient Queen Kysillia as she brought chaos to the earth.
The Old Gods had cursed the creatures for their cowardice to be eternally hungry, left to feast on the pain and anguish of the dead.
‘A skelmor shouldn’t be here,’ Alma hissed back.
The creature sniffed desperately at the earth, before a sharp owl’s cry caused it to vanish into the dark trees. They were large and powerful creatures, but violence wasn’t in their nature.
Yet they also weren’t known to waste time on places they didn’t need to be. Seeing that girl’s spirit suddenly didn’t seem to be a coincidence. She’d led me here after all.
I moved out of the undergrowth, hearing Alma snap my name before she followed, William trying to keep up close behind. I crossed to where the creature had been inspecting the ground. Raking my fingers through the dry, dusty soil, feeling the odd gritty texture.
‘Something is here.’ I followed my instincts, searching through the roots and brambles on my knees until my hands brushed against something hard and cold.
My magic flared, my caution quickly forgotten as bright flames of blue and lavender illuminated the earth and a dark shiny stone that I had uncovered. The stone was carved with intricate warnings for beings like me.
‘A Verr stone.’ I felt the bitter coldness of the rock, and the sharpness of the carvings on it. A marking stone to lead beings to places of worship. An impossibility, and yet here it stood, struggling to survive amongst the thicket and not be swallowed by the earth.
Verr worship was forbidden. It had been ever since the uprising. The King had indulged and become lost in the darkness of that worship. Yet here stood a marker.
Which meant a Verr temple was close by, or at least what remained of one.
‘Verr?’ Alma frowned, and I could sense her revulsion. Having been kept in a menagerie, she was well acquainted with mortals that found reverence in the tales of the Verr. The cruelty of such men, with their duelling hatred of and sinister lust for fey.
Despite the Council’s instance of peace, I wasn’t foolish enough to believe worship of Verr could be eradicated. Greed was an impossible monster to kill, and it infected faster than any plague.
Every fibre in my being told me to stop. To forget and run. Yet, I moved further into the woods, seeing shards of the strange black, glass-like stone that led the way to a large crack in the muddy earth.
The plants that had grown either side had crumbled to nothing but ash. Strange cold air came up from its depths, an odd sweetness to it that didn’t fit in the damp wet forest.
I grabbed a rock from the mud and tossed it into the hole, waiting a moment until it struck hard ground beneath.
‘William, what can you sense?’ I asked, watching as he dropped to his knee, letting the dark strange soil rest in his palms, fingers glowing faintly green.
A shudder of revulsion rolled through him, eyes almost des-perate as they found mine again. ‘Something is very wrong, Kat.’
It was here. Whatever it was, it was here. I moved closer to that hole, grabbing the sides to try and see how deep it was.
‘Kat !’ Alma seized hold of my arm. ‘Are you really going to crawl into a hole a dark fiend just came out of?’
‘A lesser fiend,’ I corrected, ‘and I want to know what it was doing.’
‘Something it shouldn’t have been, which is exactly what we’re doing,’ she hissed sharply, William nodding enthusiastically in the dark behind her. ‘We should tell Emrys, he’ll know what to do.’
A relieved sigh left William’s lips as if we’d unanimously decided that was indeed the best next step.
Cold emotion pierced my chest at the mention of Emrys. The secrets he kept, the duality of his character, and why he would allow Montagor inside his house. The iron burns on my wrist stung in agreement with my annoyance.
It didn’t matter. Emrys’s secrets weren’t important now and I wasn’t foolish enough not to accept I was out my depth.
‘I’ll get him.’ William rushed off into the dark night.
No. He shouldn’t be on his own. Not here.
I opened my mouth, stepping forward to follow, but before I could utter a word the damp earth of the embankment gave way beneath William. His cry of alarm pierced the night as he twisted and tumbled over himself.
‘William !’ Alma shrieked, the pair of us throwing ourselves over the edge too, stumbling and skidding after him. Rocks tumbled free and bushes cracked as the loose earth gave way.
William lay in a heap at the bottom of the steep drop. Filthy, with brambles tangled in his curls and his horns. He held onto his arm as he laid awkwardly on the wet earth.
‘Stay still !’ I commanded, using the roots protruding from the dry, dead earth to lower myself down to him, landing in a heap of now-ruined skirts.
‘Show me where it hurts.’ I knelt at his side. Horrid guilt clawing at my insides as I waited for him to gather his breath, finding little relief as Alma landed soundlessly next to me.
‘Let me check your head.’ Her hand pressed against the boy’s forehead, rubbing the dirt from his skin as her other hand went gently to the side of his neck. Fingers already turning into claws with her worry.
‘William? Where does it hurt?’ I asked, starting my examination with the arm he clutched to his chest, but his lip trembled slightly in response, eyes still straight ahead and his complexion deathly pale.
‘K-Kat,’ he stuttered.
‘I’m sorry. It isn’t your—’ I shook my head in annoyance.
‘Is that a body?’ Alma’s words were higher in pitch than normal. William nodded his head incessantly, forcing me to follow his gaze, and there, right at his feet, was a body. Milky dead eyes staring right at us, its soil-filled mouth hanging open in an eternal scream.
I recoiled from it, landing next to William, hands buried in the wet earth either side of me.
Here , a voice called in the back of my mind. Ice filled my veins as I felt the strange thickness of the air, the bitterness of the cold, but still my breath didn’t mist.
Unnatural. I took hold of William’s good hand, feeling it shake, grip brutally tight with fear.
Only it wasn’t fear that seared through me, that twisted like molten liquid in my gut. No, it was rage as I took in another deep breath. Tasting the death and desperation on the damp air. What I’d missed in my panic. The sourness of it coating my lips as the veins in my hands began to glow lilac. The pain of those burns on my wrists not enough to temper it as I finally saw what lay before us.
Dark stone covered in strange grey moss, as if all colour had been drained from it. An arched opening that led to nothing but darkness. Ominous ancient ruins that even the wind didn’t dare howl through. Just a deadly silence, that darkness staring back in challenge, watching us. The clouds shifted above, drenching the cursed place in a pale column of moonlight, turning the Verr stone silver.
Beware of the Old Gods who wield silver, demon fire, as bright and endless as moonlight above .
Verr stone was used to contain fey, to limit their power so they could be killed easily. Sacrificed for bad bargains.
A foul place like this was what they saw in their last moments on earth, nothing but darkness and hate. It lingered here still, pressed into the wet mud, leaving a biting cold sensation against my skin.
I felt a single tear roll down my cheek, overwhelmed by the cruelty of this place.
‘Kat?’ William whispered as he tried to scramble back from the body, only to wince in pain again.
I didn’t bother with a summoning charm, knowing the Verr stone would weaken anything I conjured. So, I let my Kysillian flames free, licking across my palm and twining between my fingers. Magic no stone or darkness could snuff out. Something it would remember. I let it twist into a sphere of fiery light, as I released it into the darkness.
Alma called my name in caution, but I was done with warnings as I watched those purple and blue flames illuminate the entrance to that foul place. Looming before us like a giant beast. We stood in its jagged maw made of nothing but cursed stone.
A screeching flurry pierced the night as a swarm of bats fled from that cave and shot into the sky.
Please , seemed to echo in the back of my mind, distant cries lost in time, beings still trapped and wandering the dark in spirit form. Fey.
The fear in that ghost’s face moulded my anger into something lethal. The magic in my veins almost humming in satisfaction at the freedom. My hurt at Emrys, anger at Master Hale’s lies and the disgusting cruelty of Montagor. My fire glowed brighter with the wildness of my emotions. Flames leapt from the sphere and began to devour the dead leaves around it.
Come and see , the darkness before me seemed to mock.
‘ Norac ,’ I hissed in response, wrath corrupting my reasoning.
Coward . A language spoken by its blood enemy. The reason for its Old Gods’ demise and upon hearing the taunt, it revealed itself.
The earth began to shift, shaking as dirt rained down from the edges of the opening.
‘What is that !?’ Alma called, pushing herself in front of William’s prone form.
The earth before us rose and fell, twisting with the cursed roots beneath. Shards of the dark stone and bleached white bones mixing with it. Scraps of chain and moss-covered rope. Fragments of weapons and the telling curve of jawbones. Formed of nothing but hate and the remains of what had died here. What they’d taken.
That inferno inside of me rose, my hands curling into fists as I bared my teeth, allowing the warrior blood in my veins to sing true.
A waft of dead air and the tartness of old magic carried towards me, as the thing rose, its rock-and-earth body tangled with bones, impossibly tall. Face all sharp angles with stone and thorns, its mouth wide and made with the rusted fragments of forgotten blades – a humanoid form, but the limbs were too long, too jagged as thorny claws scraped at the ground.
A caymor. A creature of nightmares formed to protect cursed earth from those who would wish to take it back. To cleanse it.
The earth shook as the beast roared. William let out a cry of alarm and Alma swore, reminding me I wasn’t alone.
I brought my hands together, feeling the fire crackle and build between my palms. The chaos of my magic seeped from my skin as I forced my rage outwards, sending a large ball of sacred flame flying towards the creature. The light almost blinding me with its brightness as it took the caymor off its feet, smashing it against the damp wall of the chamber from which it had escaped. Large chunks of soil and rock rained down on top of it.
There was a flash of movement from my right, a ripping and snapping of bone. Alma’s clothes fluttered in pieces across the barren ground. In her place before me, blocking the caymor’s path, was the silver-scaled wrywing. Its tail was lethally thumping into the wet earth as it considered the darkness. A roar pealing from its razor-sharp jaws.
Alma.
In a moment of clarity, I watched the sharp points on her back as the rumbling from the caymor getting back to its feet echoed through that cavern. I could hear William panting for breath, his pain still restricting his movements.
‘Alma !’ I called, watching that sharp maw turn in my direction, green eyes gleaming with threat. ‘Go and get Emrys,’ I commanded, watching her eyes narrow with annoyance. ‘William needs help !’ I might have been filled with fury, but I wasn’t a fool.
She growled in complaint, those beast eyes looking to the boy before she shot skyward with a strong pull of her wings.
Relief eased the tightness of my chest. Emrys would come. All I needed to do now was keep the beast distracted.
While the nightmare still reformed in that darkness, I turned, grabbed the lapel of William’s coat and I used my Kysillian strength to toss him back up the steep embankment onto a small outcropping of stone, out of the demon’s path. He cried out, tumbling out of view and back into the safety of the wood.
The earth cracked and crumbled, another scream coming from the creature’s mouth. Whatever dry leaves had survived the damp were alight. Illuminating the remains of the temple.
Magic erupted from my hands, wrapping around my wrists and licking up my arms. I didn’t know much about the workings of a caymor, but I’d kill it. Needed to. Some ancient and feral part of me demanded it.
I withdrew my father’s sword from my bag, the blade long and lethal as I remembered who I should be.
Steady is the heart. Swift is the flame. The memory of his voice calmed my breathing just as the monster lurched from the dark in a mess of sharp stone and gleaming metal.
I darted past its attack, one fluid turn, slicing down its rocky back with the glowing blade. It roared, its form shifting as it shed rock and bone. It threw out a clawed hand but I managed to lurch back, only for a rock to detach from its form, colliding with me.
The impact threw me back against the stone ruins, head making painful contact as I dropped to my side, gasping for breath.
‘Kat !’ William cried as the thing howled, dropping and reshaping into a form closer to a large spider as it scuttled towards me.
Before pouncing to pin me, I rolled away just as those blade teeth sank into the wet earth. Rocks cracking under the power of its bite.
I pressed my free palm to the earth, drawing on my flames, still devouring the leaves around us. Those flames roared across the earth, charring and striking the thing like a molten snake, wrapping around the darkness and trying to restrict it from another change.
It thrashed wildly, almost breaking my hold as I panted.
‘I think you’ve annoyed it,’ William called, half leaning over the ledge with a pale face of worry.
‘I gathered that, William,’ I hissed back, ducking as a newly formed long dark tail swiped close to my head, as it continued to struggle under the power of my flame. Snapping and screaming.
I charged into my own fire, feeling its reassuring heat lick across my exposed skin. Burying the blade in the centre of the creature’s chest as it reared back on its hind legs, making my blade slip free.
Then I saw the remnants of the chain in the soil beneath it, tangled completely within its form.
Forsaken iron chain.
Do you know what happens when forsaken iron enters the blood? Montagor’s words came back to mock me.
Beg, little troll. That taunting whetted my fear into something else, something deadly.
I let my fire pour from my palms, wrapping around the metal that had trapped my kind long ago. Metal that would burn me just as those rings had. Only, instead of fear, fury ignited my magic, turning the chain molten.
The red-and-orange glow streaked with my lavender flame, made the beast roar in agony as the thick liquid dribbled onto the cursed earth. Hissing as it made contact echoing through the chamber like its own battle cry. The beast screamed as it was slowly unmade, the molten liquid seeping between the rocks and bones that formed it. Killing the spell from the inside, just as its master had unmade those fey. Turning them into nothing but bones.
The thing roared and twisted, crumbling in on itself, seeking any way to escape.
I walked slowly towards it, my sword a lethal weight in my hand. Its stone jaws snapped wildly with desperation. It’s head swiveled looking for any mercy from the darkness around it. From its Old Gods.
Mercy it hadn’t given those fey it feasted on.
Mercy I wouldn’t give it now.
One deadly arch and my blade seared through what was left. Rocks and metal tumbling across the cursed earth. A hiss at the bitterness of the spell being broken filled the air, and what remained of the beast was reduced to nothing but ash that fell to the damp earth, extinguishing most of the fire I’d created.
Kyvor Mor. Curse Killer.
My knees shook as my arm dropped, the blade reducing itself to nothing but a hilt once more.
‘Bloody saints!’ William practically whooped from somewhere in the thicket. ‘You didn’t say anything about being able to do that!’
‘Bragging isn’t an attractive trait, William,’ I cautioned, as I pushed the sword into the safety of my bag.
Wiping the sweat from my brow, I sucked in a deeper breath of dead air, trying to calm my rapidly beating heart. Looking at the walls of that cavern, seeing the marks deeply gouged there. I felt a chill. Runes twisted and inverted with cruel intent.
‘Neither is trespassing,’ came a strange male voice from above and a distant cry from William.
‘William !’ I called out, running for the embankment. My legs were too weak and clumsy, only for something to come whistling through the air. There was nothing but white smoke, a horrid sweetness on my tongue as I tried to cough the spell from my lungs.
A subduing draught.
Panicked, I struggled to hold my breath, stumbling and turning to find a way out. But in the end, all I found was myself in a heap in the cold mud as darkness consumed my senses.