Chapter 64
Midland was infested.
There was no other way to describe it. Even from miles away, the smell of death had saturated the air, thickening until it became almost unbearable.
Every instinct in me screamed to turn around, to flee back toward the Barrows, back toward the rest of Elantis where the air was still clean, where the Infection had not yet reached.
I could feel Rìan watching me, but I refused to look at him. Whether he was taking some cruel satisfaction in my discomfort or offering sympathy I neither wanted nor believed, it made no difference. Every step carried me closer to the well, closer to the end of this bond, closer to freedom.
Eventually the stench became so overpowering that my gift was rendered useless. It smothered every other scent until I could no longer tell whether an Infected lurked a few yards ahead or a mile away. Thankfully, the Bone Women had other ways of finding out.
More than once, scouts slipped silently back from wherever they'd ranged ahead, moving silently through the trees like wraiths. A brief exchange of hand signs with Saskia was all it took before she altered our course without a word, leading us in a wide arc around whatever horror waited unseen.
Still, nothing prepared me for the sight of my old village when we finally reached the edge of the forest. Crouched in the shadows of the underbrush, I stared with wide eyes at the scene I'd been dreading to find.
Midland had indeed been breached—and violently so.
A section of the wall had collapsed entirely, leaving a gaping wound in the settlement's defenses, while the great gate bowed inward on its broken hinges. The sagging timber doors were gouged with deep claw marks and streaked with black blood that climbed higher and higher across the wood, as though the horde had been so large and so frenzied in its hunger to get inside, that the Infected had climbed over one another in heaps until they’d spilled over the walls themselves.
The Infected were everywhere.
They shuffled aimlessly outside the walls, while through the breaches I could see others roaming the streets within.
They moved like sleepwalkers. Some shuffled without purpose while others stood perfectly still, their bodies giving the occasional hard jerk, as though Tharnyx was tugging invisible strings from somewhere far away.
They wandered among the dead scattered across the new grass beyond Midland's walls.
Corpses lay where they'd fallen, many half-devoured, left to rot beneath the open sky. The humans who’d escaped the Bone-Wrought had escaped only through death.
Time and decay had stolen their faces, leaving most of them unrecognizable. Even so, I searched them one by one, then forced myself to study those of the Infected as they moved past.
Laurie wasn't among them.
“How do we get in?” Rìan’s deep rumble brought me back to the moment.
Saskia’s gaze remained fixed on the Infected. She studied them for a long moment before answering. “We must draw them away.”
“Draw them away?” Rìan rubbed his jaw. “How?”
A grim smile tugged at Saskia's mouth. She beckoned to the Bone Women, who gathered without a word, squatting in a half-circle around her.
Reaching into a pouch at her belt, she withdrew a bundle of sticks.
Turning her back to them, she snapped one cleanly in half before slipping the shortened piece back among the others and closing her fist around their bases so only the identical tops remained visible.
“No, Saskia,” Rìan hissed.
“I told you, Prince,” she said with quiet resolve. “We will accompany you to the end.”
Horror seized me. My hand flew to my mouth.
“This is madness!” Rìan snapped. “This was not part of the deal!”
She gave a small shrug, as though brushing aside a trivial disagreement. “It's our choice, not yours. This is the only way.”
“But—”
“Do you need to get in there or not?”
His jaw flexed, but no answer came.
“It’s the only way,” Saskia repeated.
She lowered the bundle, offering it out. One by one, the Bone Women reached forward and drew a stick.
The first woman smiled faintly and stepped back. Then the second. Then the third.
One after another, each revealed a long stick before retreating in silence until only Saskia remained, the last one clutched in her hand.
She drew a slow breath before opening her fist.
Rìan swore under his breath and strode away a few paces, scrubbing a hand down his face.
The shortest stick rested against her palm.
Saskia cast it aside. She rocked back on her heels and closed her eyes for a long moment, pinching the bridge of her nose.
The Bone Women rose as one. They turned first to Rìan and me, each pressing a palm to their foreheads in silent reverence, before facing Saskia. One by one they clasped her shoulder in farewell before melting away into the underbrush.
Saskia straightened, squaring her shoulders, and then began to check all her weapons.
“Saskia,” I whispered. “Please... don't do this.”
A sad smile touched her lips. “It’s already done.”
“You cannot sacrifice yourself for our cause!” I caught a glimpse of the Prince Rìan had once been. The command in his voice brooked no defiance as he pointed at Saskia. “I forbid it. You will not die here.”
Her eyes dropped.
“No,” she said quietly, shaking her head. “That honor is not mine, not today.”
The color drained from Rìan's face. Another curse slipped beneath his breath before he raked a hand through his hair.
Saskia stepped closer. “When they draw away the Infected, we run for Midland. I will stand guard and warn you if they start to return.”
A slow, sick realization settled over me.
“Saskia,” I said carefully. “The others…”
She gave me a knowing look. “One would never be enough to lead them away.”
Cold shock rippled through me. “No…”
“Your cause is our cause.”
Before I could protest again, she turned and cupped her hands around her mouth. One long, warbling cry drifted across the clearing. It sounded almost like a farewell.
Movement stirred to our left, as the Bone Women stepped from the shelter of the trees and into the open, revealing themselves to the Infected.
Dozens of heads snapped toward them.
As one, the Bone Women drew their knives. The hiss of steel sliding free of leather cut through the silence as, in perfect unison, they dragged the blades across their forearms. Deep crimson welled at once, brilliant as fresh rubies against the endless rot ahead of them.
Bodies convulsed. The first shriek split the air. Another answered it.
The stillness shattered as the Bone Women wheeled and sprinted for the forest.
The Infected exploded after them. Those already beyond Midland's walls lurched into motion, while inside the settlement, countless more poured through the breaches and front gate, scrambling over heaps of fallen stone in their frenzy to follow.
“Down,” Saskia hissed.
Rìan's hand caught my arm, dragging me into the dirt beside him.
The ground trembled beneath hundreds of pounding feet, the screams of the Infected so deafening I clapped my hands over my ears. The stench of decay rolled over us in suffocating waves as they rushed past, drawn ever deeper into the woods. Gradually, the din faded into the distance.
Saskia cautiously raised her head, scanning the old town.
“They're gone,” she breathed.
Rìan hauled me to my feet before the words had even left her mouth. “Run.”
We burst from the forest. My boots hammered across the trampled grass as I leaped over human corpses. The broken walls loomed larger with every stride.
Behind us, a bloodcurdling scream rang from the depths of the forest. It cut off abruptly.
Saskia didn't falter.
We flew through the battered gates and into Midland. I stumbled to a halt just beyond the walls, the sight before me stopping me cold.
The village had always been worn by hardship, but this… this was devastation.
Fire had gutted nearly every building, leaving behind little more than scorched shells. Roofs had collapsed inward amid piles of splintered beams and charred stone. Burned bodies still lay where the flames had claimed them, blackened and frozen in their final moments.
Elsewhere, corpses littered the streets. They'd been torn apart, half-devoured, and trampled so many times beneath the feet of the Infected that the dead had ceased to look like people at all, reduced instead to flattened heaps of flesh, splintered bone, and rotting cloth.
Great brown smears stained the paving stones and streaked the remaining walls. The streets had become rivers of blood the day Midland fell.
And then I felt it.
A crushing wrongness hung in the air, so tangible it seemed to push against my skin. Dark magic permeated the settlement, filling my lungs with every breath, sinking deep into my bones.
Rìan stepped to my side, his body tense as his gaze swept over the ruins.
He felt it too.
He'd been right. The third Gate of Othyr was here.
My mind reeled. Of all the places in all the realms, fate had brought me back to the beginning. The final well had been here all along, somewhere beneath the village where I'd grown up.
Saskia wiped the sweat from her brow, leaving a streak of dirt across her forehead. She barely spared the rubble a glance, her eyes traveling instead along the battlements before returning to us. She met my gaze, then clasped my shoulder, her grip firm.
"Hurry."
She didn't wait for a reply. She scrambled up the collapsed stone with the sure-footed confidence of a mountain goat, catching the narrow stair along the inner wall and taking the steps two at a time.
Her bow was in her hand before she reached the battlements, an arrow nocked as she turned toward the tree line.
Rìan swivelled to face me at once. "Where are the wells?"
Another scream tore through the air in the distance, making my hackles rise. Two of the Bone Women were gone.
"The... the..." I could barely force the words out.
His hands closed around my shoulders, shaking me hard.
"The town square," I gasped, the answer slamming into place. "In front of the old citadel."
"Take me there."