Chapter Twenty-Three The Burning Grove #3
He rose to his feet. Threw my hammer down upon the dais. “I’ll be sure to give Rory your final regards. Come, Samuel.” He gestured for his knight to take the wool from his ears. “Lead us out.”
Samuel didn’t move. He was peering over his shoulder, wool still in his ears, nostrils wide as he sucked idleweed into his lungs. Only now his gaze was not pointed inward, but outward.
To Tory. She lay on the ground behind the dais, still clutching her spear, eyes wide and unseeing, an arrow in her neck and a puddle of blood beneath her.
Slowly, Samuel plucked the wool from his ears. “Sire?”
“I’ll explain after.” Benji rolled his eyes, muttering, “Superstitious nob,” under his breath. “Now, which way out of here?”
Samuel balked. “What about the Diviner?”
“Leave her.”
“You said your intention was to stop the Diviner from competing in the hunt. There are birke about.”
“That’s the point, I’m afraid.” Benji pushed past his knight.
“Benedict—”
“For the love of gods, Eichel—do as you’re fucking told or I’ll rip that chime out of your hand and give it to someone who will.”
Samuel did not move. He held the Faithful Forester’s chime to his breast. “This chime belonged to my mother, and yet you gave it to me like a gift, as if you had not been the one who took it from her when she perished. But it was not a gift, was it? I see that now.”
He began to shake, and when he did, the chime whispered in tune.
“There have been so many signs, so much strangeness, starting all those weeks ago when we came to Aisling Cathedral for your Divination, King Castor. Five ill portents you garnered.” His brow lowered.
“Just like your grandfather, the heretic.”
Benji’s eyes widened and his lips thinned.
How disgusted he looked to find out just how flimsy loyalty, even when bought for a hefty sum, truly was.
The king shoved Samuel, who fell backward, crashing into one of the pyres and knocking it asunder.
Sparks flew and flames jumped, and in no time at all, birch leaves upon the earth lit in flames.
A fire began in the sacred grove.
I didn’t think. I just rolled off the dais, tumbling down the hill toward the edge of the blooming fire.
Tory lay there, half of her face hidden by a pool of blood, her hand still gripping her weapon.
I wiggled next to her, then rolled, pressing the net tethering my hands against the jagged blade at the end of Tory’s spear.
Meanwhile the king and his knight were still on the dais, flinging words.
“The wind tells us how to feel what we cannot see,” Samuel shouted, “and I’ve felt it for a while.
It is not simply sprites or earthquakes that raze the Stonewater Kingdom, Benedict, but you.
Everywhere you go, death and destruction follow.
” He gestured to the spreading fire. “You cannot even move through this sacred space without harming it. You are as my grandmother and the other nobles suspect: ill-fitted to rule. When we return to Eichel House, I shall tell everyone what you’ve done to Tory and the Diviner. ”
Benji pulled an arrow from his quiver. Fit it to his bow—
Samuel struck the chime.
My thoughts jumped away. But even as memories of the tor and Diviners and gargoyles juddered through my mind, a pain lingered in the corporeal world—a blistering agony along my wrists.
When my mind righted, I jerked up. The fire was spreading rapidly, engulfing the sacred grove.
It had singed my clothes, my hair. My wrists were still pressed up against the blade of Tory’s spear, the net around them smoldering.
I shut my eyes. Clenched my teeth. Harnessed all the strength I had and yanked.
The net ripped. I was free.
Benji had thrown down his bow and drawn his sword, and so had Samuel.
They were fighting now with stone objects and blades, struggling to handle both.
But then Benji managed a decent throw. He catapulted through the air, flickering, then appearing behind Samuel.
Just as he had to Dedrick, to Rory, he lifted his blade at his knight’s side. Swung—
My hammer collided with his sword, its raucous clang louder even than the chime had been. Benji dropped his weapon. Looked over my head.
And let out a shriek. “Birke!”
A great creature with limbs like boughs, with sagging, pallid flesh and dozens of black eyes, moved through the grove, its roots wriggling as it came toward us with alarming speed.
Benji levied his coin.
“No!” When I swung, hitting him over the breastplate, the king was thrown back. He fell into dirt. Looked up at the birke and the fire raging around us. Lifted his coin once more—
And flickered away.
I coughed, gasping, and so did Samuel. He took my arm, then raised his sword. “Stay behind me, Diviner. I will kill this wretched thing.”
I tried to shout after him, but smoke clogged my throat.
Samuel Eichel rushed forward. He believed in portents, and it must have taken a deal of bravery to throw himself into flames when there was not a single sign that he might make it out unscathed.
But he was a man of the Chiming Wood—he had learned since boyhood to keep hitting the tree until it fell.
He struck the birke on its lowest bough, and the creature let out a creaking, crying sound. When it swung its limbs, catching Samuel around the waist, the impact was so great that Samuel was catapulted ten feet back, crashing into the blazing inferno that had once been the dais.
He began to scream.
I rushed forward. Got as close as the fire would let me. It wasn’t close enough. “Give me your hand, Samuel!”
Distant calls clashed against the cracking sound of burning wood, voices echoing in the distance. They were saying my name.
“Sybil! Where are you, Sybil?”
“Sybil!”
Maude, and Rory.
But I was still reaching for Samuel, and he was still caught in the flames. He fell to his knees, writhed, then collapsed upon the ground.
I got on my hands and knees. Threw my arm into the flames, my hammer extended. “Grab hold. I’ll pull you out.”
But he didn’t. He couldn’t. The last thing Samuel Eichel did before his screams stopped and his body went still was toss free the Faithful Forester’s chime. It fell in a heap at my feet, its last notes mournful. I lifted my hammer. Swung once more.
And shattered the chime into a thousand pieces.
“Sybil!”
They were calling me. Desperate.
I turned away from Samuel’s body. But for every direction I turned, there was no path, only flame. The birke was gone, and the air was so dark with smoke I couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe.
“Rory.” I gasped. “Rory—I’m here—I’m—”
A gust of wind cut through the scalding air. I winced against smoke, tears burning in my eyes.
And saw the gargoyle, hobbling through the fire.
His right wing was raised, and though flames licked up and down his body, destroying his robe, he did not flinch, for fire is nothing to stone. He caught me around the middle and wrapped his arms around me. “Come, Bartholomew. I shall spirit us away like I did last time.”
He sprang into the air, beating his wing.
He did not make it far off the ground—hardly five or so feet. Still, laboring, he brought us out of smoke and into clean air, daylight washing over the both of us.
Maybe it wasn’t always such a bad thing that history repeated itself—that we all got a second chance.
Hadn’t this happened before, just like this?
We’d flown from danger, destroyed the Omens, and we would destroy the stone objects and a wicked king, too.
Perhaps things could be better than they’d been—
The wind picked up, catching in all the fissures in the gargoyle’s body.
He faltered, new cracks spreading through his shoulder and back, climbing like veins into his remaining wing until it, like the entirety of his abdomen, was littered with chasms. He let out a cry, limestone dust filling the air, and between birch trees, like I once had in dreams—
We fell.