Chapter 27 Hel Is Empty and All the Devils Are Here
Hel Is Empty and All the Devils Are Here
Aurienne
Tristane looked down at Aurienne and winked. “We meet again.”
Her blaecblade had parried the scythe. Then, taking a leaf out of Mordaunt’s playbook, she walked right through the Dreor.
The line of Wardens had broken. They were now each single-handedly combating five or six Dreor.
One of the Dreor spotted Tristane. “Another fucking Fyren?”
“Send her to Hel,” said another.
“No need.” Tristane pulled down her cowl. “I’m here.”
Silence fell over the gory battlefield that was Swanstone. The hellhound upon Tristane’s palm glowed its unholy red. Tristane laughed. Every hair at the back of Aurienne’s neck lifted.
Tristane stepped forward and ruptured Dreor after Dreor from within.
With every blink of an eye, she was somewhere else—the breach, the south wall where Verity limped, the door Haven still guarded, back to the breach where Ataraxia had fallen to her knees.
She moved impossibly fast, impossibly far.
She reached through Dreor as she went, tugging out hearts, brains, windpipes.
Her teeth gleamed; her Gorgon eyes were aglow with delight.
Red seith heaved and stained the air—or was it a mist of blood, or was it a terrible divinity?
Above the ramparts, over the beach still swarming with wightlings, a line of leycraft appeared.
The Farewell was among them. The Leyfarers had come, and they had brought the Ingenauts, and the Ingenauts had brought incendiary devices.
They carpeted the beach with bombs. Wightlings and Dreor burst where they stood.
Out of nowhere, tattooed arms wrapped around Dreor necks from behind. Silver billhooks gleamed.
Hedgewitches.
Hedgewitch and Dreor disappeared to who knew where. The Hedgewitches came back. The Dreor didn’t.
Tristane, cackling, ripped her way through the remaining Dreor in a whirl of black and offal. Aurienne’s last sight, as she lost consciousness, was the faint shape, above Tristane’s shoulders, of black wings stretching towards the sky.
When Aurienne regained consciousness, she found Prendergast’s concerned face above her. Familiar voices sounded around her—élodie’s and the other Haelan who had been stuck at Tintagel Castle. The metallic stomp of the boots of dozens of Wardens rang over blood-wet flagstones.
Prendergast pressed his tācn to Aurienne’s clavicle.
“Not me,” she said, pushing him away. “Him.”
Osric lay beside her. His face was drawn and grey. Was he dead?
Cath, groaning, propped herself onto an elbow, supported by a sobbing élodie. “You must help him. He saved us.”
Prendergast pushed his tācn to Osric’s collarbone. “Who is this? He’s alive. But his eyes—”
“Is that Aurienne?” came Xanthe’s voice, febrile and cracked with worry.
“She’s here,” called élodie.
Xanthe bustled past Prendergast. “Aurienne, you’re all right. Oh—your hands. Cath—look at you. Frīa, you’ve gone through it.”
“Mordaunt—heal him, Xanthe, please,” said Aurienne. “His eyes—his Cost—”
Xanthe knelt next to Osric. “Onion Boy, what have you done to yourself?”
She pressed her tācn to Osric’s temple. She called orders to passing Wardens freshly arrived from Tintagel Castle. “Get this one into the operating theatre. And get these two Haelan into beds. Ward them into place if you have to; neither of them gets up until I say so.”
Aurienne and Cath objected but hadn’t the strength to struggle as they were brought into Swanstone on stretchers, élodie sobbing between them, clutching their hands.
Aurienne awoke again in a ward in the small hours of the morning.
She was fuzzy-headed from whatever pain relief her colleagues had dosed her with.
The sheets were crisp. She was clean. Her hands were stiff and sore.
She raised them to her face. They were covered in fine silver scars. Haelan seith and skill had saved them.
To her left lay Cath, healed of the horrific wounds that had covered her a few hours prior. élodie was curled at the foot of her bed. Both were sound asleep.
And to her right—Aurienne concentrated upon the achy labour of turning her head—to her right—to her right, a shadow.
“Tristane?” whispered Aurienne through chapped lips.
How had she got in?
It was difficult to tell where Tristane ended and the shadows began. “Hello, little Haelan.”
“You saved us,” said Aurienne.
“The situation was dire,” said Tristane. “Bordering on pathetic.”
“Thank you for your help.”
“Help? Don’t be silly,” said Tristane. “It wasn’t charity. I was paid.”
“Paid?” repeated Aurienne. “By who?”
“Don’t tell me you’re too stupid to work it out. What I’d like to know”—here Tristane approached the bed, and Aurienne retreated into her pillow like a petrified rabbit—“is what witchery you cast upon my favourite Fyren.”
“I—I don’t know what you mean.”
“Mordaunt. Why did he bankrupt himself to have me come here? Why did he almost get himself killed for your Order?”
“I don’t know,” said Aurienne.
Tristane’s long nails rapped at the bed’s headboard.
“I found him as an ill-fed boy and taught him how to take, and, for three of your little human decades, it’s all he’s known.
He doesn’t give. It’s not a part of his character.
If you tell me you don’t know again, I will kill you. If you lie, you die.”
Aurienne swallowed. She ran through the truths and found them unsuitable for sharing; they would rope Mordaunt into several instances of overt treason against his Order.
Except perhaps one.
“We were lovers,” said Aurienne.
“Lovers?” repeated Tristane.
“We didn’t fully realise what the other was until—too late,” said Aurienne.
Tristane fell silent as she assessed this claim. Her hair was a black edge in the dark, her eyes a dangerous glimmer. Everything was a weapon.
“You were lovers. It’s over?”
“Yes.”
“And yet you threw yourself over his body as a Dreor’s scythe came for him.”
To this, Aurienne could make no answer.
Tristane studied Aurienne in the dark, if one could call this studying—her gaze punctured its way straight through to the back of Aurienne’s head.
“You thought it was over,” she said. “But, at the very last, your heart said otherwise.”
Aurienne nodded. To her surprise, her eyes had filled with tears.
“There’s truth in what you’re saying. But it’s not all the truth.” Tristane leaned over Aurienne. “I want to chisel the full truth from you. But I won’t. I owe you a favour for saving my eye. We will call things even.”
Tristane pushed the window open and swung a leg over the windowsill. “Goodbye, little Haelan. Serve Frīa well.”
“Wait,” called Aurienne. “What—what are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve never encountered a seith system like yours before, in many, many years of studying it. It’s in a league of its own.”
Dawn had broken. Footsteps were approaching the door.
“Don’t ask too many questions, ma petite,” said Tristane. “Pray we don’t meet again.”
“Praying works?”
“We listen on occasion,” said Tristane. Her too-bright eyes faded last.
The footsteps outside the door were Xanthe’s. She was so delighted to find Aurienne conscious that she strangled her immediately.
“Can’t—breathe,” gasped Aurienne from within the fierce hug.
Aurienne did not share Tristane’s visit—her threatening aura lingered and promised retribution for indiscretions.
She enquired about the man for whom her heart had said otherwise.
“Mordaunt,” said Aurienne. “How is he? Where is he?”
“In my ward,” said Xanthe. “Sound asleep, as he should be—as you should be.”
“His eyes…?”
“He will fully recover.”
“Are you sure? He overexerted himself so much, his Cost ate them up—”
“I’m the regeneration specialist. Don’t offend me by asking if I’m sure,” said Xanthe.
Aurienne settled back onto her pillow. She could rest easier now. “Thank you.”
“It’s him we need to thank,” came Cath’s voice.
Xanthe turned. “You’re awake, are you?”
“Aurienne’s distressed squeaks woke me up,” said Cath as élodie stretched herself awake, too.
“How are you feeling?” asked Xanthe.
“All right, considering how intimately acquainted with my Cost I got,” said Cath.
“Agreed,” said Aurienne, flexing her scarred, stiff hands.
“You have very pretty metacarpals, Aurienne,” said Cath. “I hope I never see them again.”
élodie burst into tears. “The guilt—the guilt of not being here—is going to haunt me for the rest of my days.”
Xanthe, looking a combination of grim and nauseated, nodded.
“What happened at Tintagel?” asked Aurienne.
“A clever delaying tactic by the Dumnonian queen. She knew that when the Dreor arrived at Swanstone, the Wardens would come en masse to defend it, so she made sure to lock their Order down. She was pleased to do so—she and Dinadan had a very public clash. The presence of so many Haelan at Tintagel, including the three Heads, was entirely accidental.”
“The Wardens didn’t take kindly to being besieged in their own chateau,” said élodie with a shudder. “I don’t think the queen understood what she had attempted to trap. Or what it means to pit those with tācn against regular soldiers, regardless of numbers.”
“Dinadan talked to the officers and gave them a chance to walk away,” said Xanthe.
“They didn’t. Queen’s orders. Of course, by that time our deofols had reported that the Dreor were attacking Swanstone and that there were only eight Wardens here, and we were acutely aware of how vital every passing minute was.
So Dinadan sent out her Wardens, no holds barred, into a battalion of soldiers without tācn. ”
Aurienne, who had witnessed the destruction that could be wrought by a mere handful of Wardens, said, “Frīa.”
élodie winced. “It was bad.”
“They decimated the battalion,” said Xanthe.
“Any injuries were healed immediately by us. The waystone at Merlin’s Last Drop—just outside Tintagel’s walls, if you remember—had been destroyed.
We had to go to the next village. It’s why we were so late.
” Xanthe sighed heavily. “We almost didn’t make it in time. All three Heads wish to resign.”
“You came as soon as you could,” said Cath.