Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Cerise stalked the boundary, blinking snowflakes from her eyelashes and scouring the posts for signs of Azkanix’s curse. During the walk, the prince’s words plagued her mind. True, she felt something for the poor souls of Tyrnoraen. Something bitter, yet tender. Pity, perhaps.
She tapped the wooden posts, a solid thud absorbed by the dense snow that layered higher and higher around them, freezing each in place.
It was the prince’s duty to confront Vraethik, not hers.
The lives of Tyrnoraen’s citizens were not her responsibility.
She’d given enough of her life to the protection of not just Tyrnoraen, but Sylvenath itself.
Yet, she received nothing in return. Now that her life was finally her own, as simple as it was, she refused to give it up.
The thought of leaving her home, of Eirwen, filled her with anxious dread.
Finally, she had a place of comfort. A space to call home.
Neither Azkanix nor the royal family would take it, or anything else, from her again.
It wasn’t her problem. Her life and Eirwen’s were all that mattered.
Cerise flicked her gaze up, leaning on Beloved as she assessed the woods beyond the boundary, considering how to implement rune hunting into her daily routine.
The sun arched high overhead, much of the day wasted, once again, thanks to the prince.
She could perform a quick check of the trees and bones closest to the house, see if she missed an immediate threat.
Tomorrow, she could check in full circles around her home.
The following day, she’d look for runes while searching for firewood, and the day after she’d scour along the route to the Evriel River.
Cerise meandered to the back of their property, to the shed that housed chickens.
It remained reasonably warm, thanks to the temperature absorbers Cerise and Eirwen received while in Zyrdriel’s Order.
During the winters in the Undead Wars, it saved her from freezing many nights over while stuck in flimsy tents, the fabrics flapping in an icy, bitter wind.
Now, it kept their livestock and vegetables alive, absorbing the cold from the air just as Eirwen did to Cerise’s body, until nothing but the warmth remained.
The creatures clucked at her excitedly, but Cerise ignored them, instead focusing on the absorber.
A pale white, iridescent stone, carved into a teardrop shape, dangled from the shed’s center, emitting a soft glow, pulsing with magic.
She placed a hand near it, assessing its aura.
Sharp cold radiated from the object. Eirwen would need to expunge it when she came out to feed them.
Stepping back into the storm, wind buffeted Cerise’s body, cherry red hair whipping across her face as it came loose from her hood.
The quickly piling snow would slow her traversal through the woods.
She should’ve put on her snowshoes, but she’d been too rushed to leave.
She needed to move quicker if she was to circle the first ring of the forest around her home before nightfall.
She stopped inside the vegetable enclosure on her way to the back gate, ensuring that the winter gusts didn’t damage the structure.
The shed held the second absorber, the one Eirwen received as a Zyrdriel cleric.
A window in the ceiling was crafted from dwarf-forged glass, allowing sunlight to shine through.
It was one of the few items Cerise carried with them when they escaped Tyrnoraen, knowing they’d need use of it.
The absorber’s dim blue light shone on the root vegetables’ pitiful stalks and leaves, more limp than normal. Cerise crouched by the rows of plants, ignoring the complaint in her knee at the awkward bending, and squinted in the faint light.
Black, necrotic marks speckled the dead leaves of their carrots.
“No. No, no, no,” Cerise moaned, bright hot panic roaring through her body. Hands shaking, she shoved her gloved fingers into the stiff soil, digging away the dirt until she uncovered the vegetable.
The entire carrot was oily black, rotting into the ground.
Cerise grabbed a spade that hung from the shed’s wall, and drove it down, digging up all the carrots.
Every single one was cursed. As soon as they were unearthed, their corrupted fibers crumbled.
Cerise’s gaze flickered back and forth, back and forth, over each row of precious crops.
They couldn’t all be dead.
They couldn’t.
Cerise leapt to her feet, knee cracking with a loud, painful pop as she stumbled out of the shed into the snow. “Eirwen!” she shouted even though she knew her sister couldn’t hear her over the blizzard.
“Eirwen!” The front door nearly splintered to pieces as Cerise barreled inside. Eirwen yelped in surprise, hand flying to her heart, and eyes widening as she took in Cerise’s feral, quivering form.
“What is it?”
“The vegetables—come quick,” Cerise panted, leading her sister back to the shed, the prince’s heavy footsteps lumbering behind them.
Eirwen gasped and fell to her knees before the carrots she’d so tenderly sown. “How could this happen?”
“Vraethik,” the prince replied, voice thick with contempt.
“But how?” Eirwen asked again. She looked up at Cerise and the prince, bright tears gleaming on her cheeks. “The fence was meant to catch it. To give us warning.”
“Maybe the posts are too dead to entrap it. Or maybe the amplifiers are simply that potent,” the prince replied.
“We need to see if all the plants are corrupted,” Cerise said. “Perhaps some are salvageable.”
Eirwen sniffled and nodded, rising to her feet. She grabbed a pair of gloves and spade, perching beside the ginger while Cerise strode to the leeks. The prince sat on his knees next to her, forcing thick gloves over his burly hands, the leather stretching at the seams.
“What are you doing?” Cerise asked, shoving the spade into the dirt.
“Helping.” He cleaved through the soil with another shovel, carefully circling the area around the plant.
“Not very princely work.”
“Who ever said I wanted that?”
Cerise grunted. As much as she wanted him to stay away, to get out of her space and let them deal with the misfortunes of their own lives, they needed the help. Perhaps there would still be time for Cerise to do a quick perimeter check before nightfall, to find the rune that caused this.
As Cerise and the prince worked side by side but never touching, the warmth emanated off him and breached into her space.
It followed the sway of his movement, the shove and uplift of his burly arms. As they moved away from the near-full absorber, his body heat prevented the chill from creeping too deep into Cerise’s skin.
And, to her surprise, the prince was an efficient gardener.
Precise yet quick, he dug out vegetables without destroying them or disturbing the soil too greatly, careful to avoid touching the curse.
Even with gloves, with the added strength of the corruption, Cerise was uncertain if the clothing would be barrier enough to truly protect them.
The prince wasn’t entirely useless, after all.
If she let her thoughts stray too far from the calamity of their lost food, Cerise thought his presence beside her was rather comforting.
She was used to doing tasks alone, cold pressing in on all sides.
Yet his warm, easy demeanor somehow enriched the silence in which they worked, rather than detract from it.
Over half of their crops were destroyed.
Their radishes, leeks, and onions were untouched, but their potatoes, ginger, parsnips, and turnips were slick with decay.
Setting aside the uncursed vegetables, they piled the others in a wicker basket to burn.
Once all plants were unearthed, Eirwen froze the ground where the curse grew, creating an ice wall that wove through the dirt as deep as she could make it, hoping it would quarantine the blight.
They needed to assess the soil, see if it was somehow plagued too, before deciding what to do with it.
It wasn’t safe to leave on their property, yet if the curse could now travel somehow through the ground rather than only living tissues, dispensing of it outside Zyrdriel’s Boundary was equally irresponsible.
The sky was a deep bruise color by the time they were done in the garden, the heavy snow fading to a light dance of flakes.
Cerise hefted the wicker basket, also enchanted with a layer of ice to prevent the slick, blighted vegetables from leaking out, outside of Zyrdriel’s Boundary.
Eirwen and the prince followed her, the prince’s arms full of wood and her sister’s eyes full of woe.
Eirwen pulled as much cold out of the air around them as she could, creating a dry, warm bubble for the pile of plants and wood to burn.
The flame still struggled to catch around the mucus-like plants.
A feeble, flickering orange finally ignited, melting away the snow.
A sickly-sweet stench rose from the vegetables, not too dissimilar to a bloated, rotting corpse.
The curse ruined all it touched. And it was no longer contained.
If it was allowed to spread at this rate and intensity, the entire kingdom would blacken and decay like these plants.
For what purpose, Cerise could only guess.
Perhaps Azkanix was trying to raise a new, undead army.
Or perhaps he simply wanted revenge on those who beat him.
Yet, the why didn’t matter. All that mattered was Cerise and Eirwen were no longer safe.
She huffed a sigh as a pitiful flame disintegrated the last dead carrot.
“You win, prince. I’ll help you find and kill Vraethik.”
“I think he’s going here,” the prince said, pointing to the southwest corner of Cerise’s faded map of Sylvenath, where she’d drawn in known locations of Azkanix’s bones.
“I spent many years working with our brightest scholars to estimate where the bones of Azkanix may have fallen around the kingdom, and we are fairly certain there’s a large fragment of rib out there.
I figure, if I were a necromancer trying to amplify my dead God’s curse, wouldn’t the best place to start be finding the largest, most powerful piece of him? ”
The area lie past the forest and in Evriel’s Plains, far outside the distance Cerise had traveled from this cabin since the curse fell.
Cerise shook her head as she stared at the map, wondering what she’d gotten herself into. “That’s at least a four-day trek in good weather.”
“Then we best get going,” the prince responded. “Vraethik will be slowed by rune carving, so if we move quickly, we should be able to catch up.”
Cerise’s knee ached at the words.
“You two should take the absorber from the chicken shed,” Eirwen said. “I’ll bring them in here with me so they stay warm.”
Cerise grimaced and Eirwen added, “We’ll be fine, I promise.”
Cerise was more concerned about the persistent stink and mess they’d bring into their home rather than their comfort, but Eirwen was right, they’d need the absorber to survive. And come summer, if they were all still alive, perhaps they could bundle up and air out the cabin.
“You two get some rest,” Eirwen said. “I’ll pack everything you need.”
Cerise opened her mouth to argue, but Eirwen already flitted away. Again, she was right—they needed to rest as much as possible before traveling the cursed forest. Cerise could double-check their packs in the morning before departure.
The prince settled beside the fire and Cerise lay in Eirwen’s bed while her sister rummaged through Cerise’s clothes. The flop of clothes on the floor sounded through the walls, and she cringed at the chaos. She’d need to reorganize her room when she returned.
If she returned.
Cerise loved Eirwen more than anyone in the world, but the woman struggled to adhere to her organizational system. Cerise’s fists clenched into the blankets and she squeezed her eyes, trying to ignore the sound of Eirwen’s chaotic pattering and convince herself to fall asleep.
Yet, she fought with herself for a long time, uncertain if she’d survive the trek. If she’d find Vraethik and kill him. If she could even manage walking that distance in the thick snow with her damaged knee.
Of course she could. She’d survived much, much worse.