Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
For there are things in the dark and the trees older than we.
Beware with a care, and remember that flesh bleeds
far readier than spirit.
The Red Book,
translated by Idwal gan Hywel
FOURTEEN
Another crack. Another. More and more branch and root ruptured out of Lord Leighton’s still-living flesh. Through his shoulders, his spine, his throat, twisting back to smother what was left.
Horror ripped through the company.
Horses shied, men cried out in terror, even the hounds screamed. Meilyr’s mare bolted, stumbling on the damp, uneven ground. The world tipped violently, and he came out of the saddle.
He slammed into the earth, body ricocheting with white-hot pain.
But he had to look. Even as his blood roared, even as his head pounded from the fall and from this, he had to look.
The mangled, crumpled red mess that had been Lord Leighton slumped from his bolting, blood-flecked horse.
Already, the cries rang out. The air was thick with the word, with what they believed they had witnessed.
But Meilyr knew. Only he knew what had happened.
With a final, sickening crack, Lord Leighton’s body stilled: a wet, twisted heap of crimson and bark and branches, clumped in the leaflitter. Dotted with tiny red berries.
The blood beat so fiercely through Meilyr’s skull he could barely hear. He could not look away. Not until Prince Osian eased his horse closer, the poor creature’s nostrils flaring, eyes rolled back. The prince came out of the saddle to reach and heaved Meilyr up behind him.
‘Knights,’ the prince barked. ‘Hunt the woods, search for anyone fleeing. The rest of you, stay together!’
The words cleaved through the distress. Everyone obeyed, even the young crownsblood who retched before gathering their reins and cantering off.
‘That was…’ A courtier shook violently, just barely keeping their saddle. They looked at Meilyr. ‘That was—’
‘Quiet,’ Prince Osian ordered.
Meilyr only realised how much he too was shaking because of how steadily the prince sat, even as his horse paced. He could not stop staring at the body. At the rowan tree growing from it. How? How could this have happened?
Could Meilyr have…? No – no, there was no way he could have done this. Which meant…
Cold took root in his flesh, and finally tore his gaze away. Someone else had done this.
He swivelled to look but found only grim, tortured expressions. Outright horror or devastated shock. Some glanced at the prince, or perhaps at him. Aldreda sat drained and staring, her seat on her horse reflexively perfect.
‘Cover the body,’ Prince Osian ordered. ‘Bring it with us. Everyone, ride together back to camp. Now.’
The taciturn trees were awash with bodies, the baying and whining of dogs and the guttural wheezing of horses. The shouts of men, so loud they made Meilyr’s roiling stomach clench.
The stories were in their eyes, their mouths filled with words they dared not speak.
Meilyr leaned his head against Prince Osian’s back. The world still lurched. The thrashing of his blood pulsed darkness across his vision.
That sound—
The prince reached back and took his hand, firming it around his own waist. ‘Hold on to me.’
Meilyr did. The sudden jolt of the horse almost emptied his stomach, but Prince Osian’s hand was firm, his presence sounder than the earth beneath hooves.
Meilyr clung to him as though he might drown without him, his steadfastness through their bond and the scent of him and leather and horse pushing back the nausea and the dark of memory.
Word had spilled through the camp before Lord Leighton’s blood ever
had the chance to.
A Cyngaleg sorcerer had killed a nobleman of Khaim.
Some of the eyes that found Meilyr now were fearful and hateful. He shrank from them, sparks in his vision.
Prince Osian dismounted outside the main tent and helped him down. Meilyr slipped liquidly against him, to the ground. ‘Pedr,’ the prince said, ‘take him to our tent. Keep at least four of our crownsworn outside, two in front, two in back. Do not let anyone inside save myself.’
‘Majesty.’
Meilyr wanted to stay with him. To know what happened now. But as the prince marched to the main tent, he followed Ser Pedr, focused on placing one boot in front of the other.
Inside, Prince Osian’s scent and the small but sweltering fire swallowed him. He stumbled, barely hearing as Ser Pedr asked, ‘Highness, are you all right?’
‘I am,’ he lied. His collar was so tight. His hands struggled with it, and he was bewildered by how much they shook. ‘Might I… be alone, please?’
A high-pitched note deafened all else. He flexed his hands until he could no longer feel them, trying to steady the thumping of his heart. There was no air.
Flesh becoming root. Life becoming death.
Gods, please, no—
The new unfurled into the old. Memories of another forest pried open his ribs from the inside and bent the last of his nerves until they broke, shards of glass and thorns.
It was all death. All of it was death.
He fell to the bed. Unconsciousness would have been a release, but he was not so lucky.
Someone with Cyngaleg blood had killed Lord Leighton. Someone with…
His heart beat too fast. His chest hurt, and he shivered violently.
They would think he had done it.
He tried to grasp at the sounds beyond the tent, beyond the camp. The sensation of the wind and the forest. But the trees were knotted with darkness and blood, echoing with voices long dead.
He curled into himself and trembled, and trembled, and trembled.
‘Osian,’ Aldreda began, in the hurriedly clawed privacy of her tent.
‘He is not involved.’
‘Osian.’
‘He is not involved.’
There was no other reason she had separated him to talk. The main tent had clamoured with accusations from nobility, from the Marches in particular, the sound still ringing in his ears. They had – together – halted the call for Meilyr’s immediate arrest, but that would not last.
‘Is that your heart telling you,’ Aldreda asked, ‘or do you have proof?’
‘I saw his eyes, his fear. He is not involved.’
She sighed, allowing herself to show a fraction of weakness. ‘I almost wish you were wrong. I sided with you in there, but they want blood, and this doesn’t look good. You pluck a nobody from the valleys and suddenly a Marcher Lord is murdered by gods-forsaken Denelander sorcery?’
‘Then we find the culprit.’
‘I gods damn hope so, and fast.’
They stood brimming with shared frustration, shared horror.
‘He will have to be investigated,’ his sister said. ‘You know that.’
Osian squared his shoulders. ‘For tonight, I will take my knights and—’
‘Absolutely not. I’m not having you careening around the forest in the dead of night with – this happening. I forbid it.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Blasted why? Because I said so, and—’ She bit it back. Regrouped. ‘Because we don’t know what this is, Osian. We don’t know how they did this, and we need to be ready here, to ride back to Eascild when the knights return with nothing.’
‘It is not like you to fall back.’
‘I’m not falling back. I want to tear whoever has done this apart with the hooves of my horse and my bare hands.
But this is sorcery, and the sorcerer will certainly be long gone, assuming…
well. I’ll stay the chaos here and try to buy you some time.
’ Weariness. Resolution. ‘Go be with him. Save the rest for morning, and be ready.’
It was a sorry way to leave things. Even days ago, he would have fought more to be out there amongst the trees with his knights and the crownsworn.
He had never been one to assign them duties he would not take up himself, and sending them to search for a sorcerer who had already killed once that day was not something he wished to abandon them to.
But there was an urgency tugging at his flesh, pulling him to a singular fixed point. He could no sooner deny it than he could deny breathing.
He needed to get to Meilyr.
As he left the tent, he almost stepped into Pedr. ‘Forgive me, Majesty,’ the knight said urgently, quietly, glancing inside at Aldreda. ‘I believe His Highness may be going into shock.’
It was very dark when a cool hand brushed across Meilyr’s forehead.
‘You have a fever.’
Osian.
‘I… am all right…’
‘Please do not lie to me.’
Meilyr leaned into his hand. In the ache, it was absolution.
‘You need fresh clothes. You will make yourself sick otherwise.’
It did not matter. That hand glided through the hammering behind his eyes. He did not ever want to move again.
‘May I…?’ Osian asked.
The hand slipped away.
Meilyr’s mind caught on the words before he nodded, which was a terrible idea. ‘Yes,’ he managed, voice cracking like a wet twig.
Osian disappeared, then returned with fresh clothes. With care and palpable hesitance, he began to unbutton Meilyr’s hunting tunic, gently brushing aside the feeble attempt to help.
Something about the prince brought clarity, the clear ringing of water through the haze. Meilyr studied his profile: his sharp jaw and the angle of his cheeks, taut in concentration. His strong nose, and the storm of his eyes, broiled to dark waves in the shadows and firelight.
Meilyr should stay quiet. He should remain silent, and hidden.
He touched Osian’s fingers, where they had reached the buttons towards Meilyr’s thigh. ‘They believe I killed him,’ he said.
Osian met his gaze. ‘They believe someone of Cyngaleg blood killed him. You are an obvious choice, but that will be put right.’
Slowly, the prince continued with the buttons.
Realisation crept in. ‘You do not believe I did it…’
Those eyes returned. ‘Am I wrong?’ It was almost coy.
Meilyr did not answer.
The prince unfastened the final button. ‘Can you sit up?’
He needed help. They tugged the wretchedly heavy tunic off together, and Meilyr’s mind chose that moment to connect with the situation. To recognise how it looked and felt: the confoundingly handsome man with his hands on him, undressing him, leaving him in only his thin under-tunic and breeches.