Текст книги "A vow of blood and tears"

Автор книги: Cate Corvin

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Текущая страница: 33 (всего у книги 41 страниц)

Unseen, facing the darkness, I spat, letting Hakkon know what I thought of that. He laughed openly, unphased.

“You will be fresh blood, the mother of a new pack born on Veladari soil—lai Darran soil. We will raise them there in the safety of your family’s house, and grow strong on the fruitfulness of your land. He has told me of your research, your academics: you will learn the language of the blood-drinkers, and teach us. They will no longer control their own past or teachings. They will eventually die, as they should have done before.”

I stared down the passage, eyes gritty and sore, but the darkness pressed in on them like a solid thing. My hope was already guttering out, like the futile wish in my heart that this was all a nightmare, that I had even a sliver of a chance of escaping.

There was no hope. Miro had murdered my blood-kin, and put me in a position to be used by Wargyr’s high priest for unspeakable things, and as long as I prayed for Bane to stay away, to save himself… there was no hope left over for me.

So. Escape was no longer an option, then. All I could do was ruin myself, refuse to become a pawn for Hakkon’s plans.

I walked faster, trying to put him behind me, following twists and turns until I no longer knew which direction we faced.

It was hours later when Hakkon exhaled, tipping his head from side to side as sharp crackles and pops filled the silence.

“We are close,” he said quietly, as though speaking to himself. “Be good now, red one.”

Never.

Some time later, I heard Miro cry out.

“Stairs ahead, woman. Don’t stumble.”

I managed a sore, tired sort of trot, desperate to be away from Hakkon and the rancid smell of wargs emanating through the tunnel, and found a set of stone steps.

They led upwards in a spiral, and when I reached the top—an empty landing, with an ironbound door cracked open before me—I halted, unable to go any further.

Every fiber of my being screamed at me to turn and run, to flee the wargs that awaited me. The stink in the air… the scent of dirty and mossy stones gave way to their stench, a powerful animal reek of carrion and blood and fur.

“Oh, redling, don’t be afraid.” Hakkon touched a lock of my hair, examining it with a curiosity that was more speculative than lascivious, and it was more disturbing than if he’d felt any sexual urges at all. I could vaguely understand how to handle a man with desires; I had no idea what to do with a man who looked at me like livestock. “None shall harm you.”

It was only the need to get away from that touch that drove me through the door.

I pushed it open, stopping in the doorway at the sight before me.

We were in a tower, so much like the Tower of Winter that I felt an immediate, nauseating tug of homesickness, the taste of tears in my throat.

The curved stone walls were piled with crates and barrels, weapons and provisions. Lanterns, burning a dirty yellow with animal fat, had been hung from the ceiling, illuminating the scene.

Miro had been brought to his knees, kneeling before a man with a thick tangle of dark hair, clan tattoos on his cheeks, and bright white pinpricks in the vast pools of his pupils. Two wargs panted over either shoulder, their hungry eyes focused on Miro, slavering bright silver strings of drool.

“Stand down,” Hakkon said calmly, moving me aside with ease.

I was torn, the vengeance in me screaming for him to be eaten, the human in me praying he’d be released.

Miro’s breath came in short, sharp stutters. “I was told… I should marry Cirrien lai Darran. I will help you gain a foothold in Veladar, and bring more wargs in—”

“There’s been a change of plans, laddie,” Hakkon told him with a broad smile. “You see, you haven’t committed yourself to Wargyr yet.”

“I worship Wargyr, as my father did,” Miro protested, but Hakkon leaned down to stare at him in the eye, each word whispered, yet pelting Miro like stones.

“You’re not one of us.”

I didn’t think a human being could turn the color Miro turned then, a waxen white like a corpse, gray mottling his lips. “I…” He looked from Hakkon to the tattooed guard and back, his glassy eyes traveling over the wargs. “I…”

“You,” Hakkon agreed. “You will give yourself into Wargyr’s embrace tonight. Prove that you’re a wolf in the soul—” He pounded a fist to his own chest. “And not a lamb hiding in men’s clothing. You must hunt or be hunted. Until then…” He smiled at Miro, showing his sharp teeth. “You’re only meat.”

Please, no, I signed. Please.

The same numb terror had come over me again; I was no more than a dreamwalker trapped in a nightmare, unable to wake up.

Hakkon gazed at me impassively; he picked Miro up by the collar, bringing him to his feet, then plucked my pen from Miro’s pocket and held it out to me with another winning smile. “This is yours, I believe.”

I took it, because there was nothing else I could do. My fingers wrapped around the cold metal; I thought about the pointed tip, how sharp it might be.

It was not a weapon, and I could only count on one strike.

“Cirri…” Miro breathed, his breath catching in his throat.

I shook my head. What did he want me to do? He had brought himself to this, and all of my thoughts had to go into how to kill Hakkon, to take down the leader of the pack, with a pen and the strength of a single blow.

I would be torn apart afterwards, no doubt, probably so fast I would be dead before I knew what had happened… but without Hakkon leading them, the wargs in chaos, Bane might stand a chance at taking most of them down.

So I tucked my pen safely in my bag, holding it close. It was all I had.

“But my father was Forian,” Miro cried, his voice cracking. “I’m one of you!”

Hakkon tilted his head, all tolerance gone from his brown eyes. “What makes you believe I give a damn, boy? Half my men are from Nordrin, Serissa… does that make them less in the eyes of Wargyr? My own mother was a Veladari merchant. That blood means nothing. It is only the blood blessed by the Great Wolf that matters.”

Suddenly and inappropriately, silent and hysterical laughter bubbled in my throat. I leaned over, letting out the breathy sounds, not even bothering to hide my mouth as I laughed and laughed and laughed.

“What amuses, redling?”

All that time, I said to Miro, my composure fracturing further by the second. All that time you whined and complained about your Forian father, thinking you were mistreated and abused for it. You had everything. Bane gave you a home and asked for the same work ethic he asks of all of us. You could have been a true artist, loved by all. But you had to imagine some terrible injustice, you had to sell every soul in the Rift, my own family, Lady rest them, for your own ego. You had it all and you killed them for nothing. 

Hakkon translated my words to Miro, and the fracture inside me gaped wide open, spilling hate as the artist’s eyes widened and became liquid-soft, like the ashamed eyes of a little boy caught stealing.

You little bastard, I signed, and backhanded him across that pale, waxen face.

The sharp crack of my hand across his cheekbone filled the air. The pain in my hand, and the sight of the shock in Miro’s eyes, was so satisfying that I hit him again and again, until Miro was crying for them to stop me, and a hand took mine before I could rain more blows on him.

Hakkon raised his brows. “Ah ah ah, red one. Contain yourself. He is for Wargyr’s judgment, not yours.”

Miro sniveled, blood spilling from his nostril to coat his upper lip.

I gulped down air, swallowing the bubbles of laughter. I even clamped a hand over my mouth, clenching my stinging hand, because I wanted to drag Miro out of here by his hair and rub his nose in the corpses he’d helped make.

All of it for nothing.

“The moon is still full and ripe.” Hakkon stepped to the tower’s outer door, and the wargs slunk around Miro on all fours, not so subtly herding him. “So you will make the sacrifices tonight under his watchful eye. We will see if you are worthy of running with the pack and joining in our hunt.”

Miro glanced over his shoulder, giving me one last, desperate look. As though I could save him.

As though I would save him.

But I was not to sit inside, safe from the wargs without.

“Bring her, Daniil,” Hakkon ordered. “Let her see the change. Her own time will come when her human purpose has been served.”

The tattooed guard held a poniard loosely at his side; on Hakkon’s order, he brought it up, the sharp tip pricking me through my corset. I took a shuddering breath as I followed Hakkon and Miro, driven along like… like a sheep.

And into a far worse nightmare than I’d imagined.

The clouds had tattered and parted, revealing the bright white moon, and its light bathed a sea of wargs.

My lungs crumpled, breathless, as thousands of eyes, all pinpricked with white, stared back at us. Hundreds of restless shaggy bodies milled back and forth, trampling the deadened lands of Foria into mud.

I had thought a hundred wargs too great for Bane to take alone.

But this was an ocean of them. An army vast enough to overrun all the fiends together, by sheer dint of numbers.

Hot tears pricked the backs of my eyes as Hakkon elbowed Miro down the stairs onto packed earth.

The wargs parted, and the poniard jabbed, and I followed. Down into the sea of spindly limbs, snouts stretched too long, high-pitched jeers and cackles emerging from the tooth-lined gullets.

They crowded in around us, only thinning out as Hakkon led Miro to a sort of cage sunk into the mud. Built of timbers and scrap iron, reinforced with plates of wood and metal, it was a hideous eyesore, but its contents were worse.

A woman, filthy from head to toe, hardly more than skin and bones, wrapped her thin fingers around a plank of wood. “I know you,” she whispered. “You’re one of Lord Bane’s men. Help us.”

Miro stared at her blankly.

Her eyes were too big in that skeletal face. “Please help us.” Her voice cracked. The others in the cage didn’t move, slumped over like corpses, but their eyes gleamed in the moonlight.

Hakkon extended an arm. “Here is your sacrifice, Miro Kyril. Your father’s blood does not matter. Your mother’s blood does not matter. All that matters is that you hold rage in your heart, and give Wargyr the proper offering.”

Miro’s fingers twitched as he stared at the woman and her fellow prisoners, five in total. He reached for the knife at his belt, and Hakkon shook his head. “No steel. Only tooth and claw, boy. You have to mean it, or you’re meat for the pack.”

Miro was hyperventilating, tears running down his cheeks, but I was watching the cage, wondering if there was a way to free them… but even if, by some mad chance of fate, I could break away some of the boards, they would have to run through a sea of hungry wargs. There was a poniard drawing a slow trickle of blood at my ribs, and a warg panting at my heels.

There was no escape for any of us.

“Release the first one,” Hakkon called, and one of the guards in a human skin unlatched a door in the cage, grabbing the woman who’d called out, and dragged her into the open air. She was forced to her knees before Miro.

I closed my eyes, hands shaking, and heard Miro whisper, “Please.”

“Get to it,” Hakkon murmured, his brogue thicker than ever, almost perverse in how melodical it became as the bloodlust drew nearer. “Give Wargyr his due, or you will take her place and feed the hungry young.”

Miro sobbed, just once, a dry and dusty sound.

I forced myself to open my eyes. She was Rift-kin, one of my people, and someone had to bear witness. Even if I couldn’t save her.

The traitor, that bastard, closed his eyes, taking several deep breaths. He opened them again, staring wildly at the wargs surrounding us, the unending ranks of misshapen bodies.

Without another word, still breathing rapidly, Miro began unbuttoning his waistcoat and shirt. His hands trembled at first, moving more quickly with each button until he was ripping them off, peeling away his clothes to reveal a smooth, bronzed back and shoulders.

His lips drew back, showing flat white teeth, a snarl emerging with every breath as he built up a head of rage, a vein pulsing in his temple.

He fell on the woman.

She screamed, a high, reedy sound that made the wargs howl, and I closed my eyes. I couldn’t stop myself. Miro’s fingers dug into the woman’s arms, the tendons in his arms and throat standing out like cords as fingertips punctured skin. He sank his teeth into her cheek, ripping his head sideways with a sharp jerk and tearing flesh away.

Acrid bile rose in my throat at the sounds, and all I could do was swallow it back down, twitching with every ripping tear and snarl.

“Bring another,” Hakkon said, and I opened my eyes to see him smiling faintly. “One is not enough for this little lamb.”

Miro crouched over the woman’s body, that sleek bronze skin shining wet and visceral, panting through a mouth painted with gore.

The muscles under his skin wriggled and shifted, slug-like and nauseating. His nails looked sharper, longer.

This time he didn’t wait when the wargs dragged another prisoner before him. He dug his hands into the man’s stomach, ripping through soft skin to draw his guts out amidst the shrieks.

I bent in half, swallowing hard, my mouth full of saliva and my nose filled with the sharp, hot reek of fresh blood, Miro’s snarls becoming deeper, more sonorous, with every second that passed.

Hakkon touched my hair. “You’ll have to grow a stronger stomach to run with the hunt, red one. Your husband did this; should you not look upon it with pride in his ferocity?”

I slapped at his hand, straightening myself, and saw Miro plunge his face into the prisoner’s torn-open chest. There was a sharp crack, but it wasn’t the breaking of the victim’s bones.

Miro screamed, rearing back, and I saw that his skull had split, cleaving wide open from the crown of his head to his nose, his jaw jutting forward and distending his face…

I put a hand over my mouth, screaming silently, nothing but a thin hiss of air emerging. Miro’s screams were raw and guttural, tearing from a throat as broken as mine.

His skin was splitting, his human face stretched flat and warped, eyes bulging wildly as something, glistening slick and wet, began to emerge from the terrible gash in his skull.

Hakkon’s hands caught me as I threw myself back from the emerging warg, clamping around my arms like bands of iron even as I clawed at him with my nails.

“She’s seen enough of the birth. Take her up, Daniil, and guard the door. He’ll want more to eat.”

He forced me into another set of harsh hands, and there was no fighting the inexorable tide drawing me away from the awful sight of Miro and the things on the ground before him.

Those hands picked me up, and I was flung over a hard shoulder. It drove into my guts, punching the breath from my lungs.

With black blooming before my eyes once more, I didn’t remember the trip to the top of the tower. I sucked in desperate breaths, clinging to consciousness with sheer willpower even as Daniil dumped me onto a cold stone floor.

For a while I laid there, twisting in pain around my bruised stomach, pulling air into pummeled lungs. The screaming was still audible, cutting like a knife through the howling of a thousand wargs.

I didn’t move until much later, when the sun crept through a narrow window to paint the walls red. It was a small room, with a tiny cot on the far wall from the door, and a small table and chairs under the window. All of it simple, crude; a tower for a prisoner.

I got to my feet, clutching my sore stomach, and tested the door as quietly as I could. It was locked, of course. I crept to the window next and looked down.

A long, long way down. The fields of Foria were muddy and churned, the wargs gone beneath the surface into their burrows.

There, in that slick and blackened patch of earth…

I hiccuped, choked, and closed my eyes. Miro was one of them now.

And with all those burrows, those thousand wargs lying in wait… there was no escape.

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Chapter 44 Bane

The others caught up, their horses drooping and tired, and no one said anything as they looked out over the ruins of Rose and Thorn, the smoldering ashes of the cabin set in the great deadened plain.

The golems and I had traversed the mine shaft with relative ease. The trail was clear, undisturbed by wind or water, the ground flat; only once had I smelled something other, something still living, but whatever it was, it hid itself away, vanishing deep beneath the mountain.

Beneath my determination pulsed the killing rage that Miro had brought Cirri through these tunnels, so close to Fae, but they had made it through to the other side, as I did.

Here and there were hints of her: where her hand brushed a wall, the soft salt scent of a tear that had splashed in the dirt.

On the other side, the trail led down the mountain, and a good distance into the Forian plain. Even now, a decade after the war had ended, I still smelled the blood soaked deep into the earth.

Their camp was an obvious blight on the vast expanse of nothing, sitting near a small muddy creek. Miro’s firepit was small and pathetic; I smelled where Cirri had been sitting, her fear-scent permeating the grass around it. The stripped, gnawed skeleton of one of the Ravenscry horses lay in the grass under a tree, its bones scattered.

Well beyond the creek, there was the cabin. Rose and Thorn had led me directly to it, an unerring path to the northeast, straight into the trap Hakkon had left behind.

I felt the vibrations in the ground well before it happened. Before I could call to the golems, ordering them to retreat. Before they reached the burned-out remains of the cabin, where Cirri’s scent clearly led.

The wargs had come boiling up from the earth itself, snapping jaws rising from loose holes, latching onto the golems’ legs with rabid vigor and tearing them apart.

I fell upon them, watering this thirsty ground with yet more blood, but the damage was done.

My compasses were down, torn into pieces. The cabin’s ruins continued to crumble, smoking in the twilight, embers flaring and winking out in the depths of its charred shell.

Cirri’s scent had been overwhelmed by ash and blood, and even as I left the golems and traversed the cabin, it ended there.

I waited until they came, staring at my failure and debating what to do next.

I would traverse all of Foria, but every moment I wasted was another moment Cirri could be tortured, traumatized, kept prisoner. If I erred in my search by one degree, it could be weeks, even months, before I saw her again.

Without the golems, I would have to continue northeast, into the unpopulated wilds of Foria. If Hakkon were underground in Fae tunnels…

He had burned the cabin only to destroy the trail. They were not aboveground; aside from the camp, the plains stank only of grass, blood, and wargs.

I would go Below if I must. There was no question of it.

Wyn dismounted first, striding through the grass and leaning over the ruins of Thorn. Vines straggled from his caved-in chest to his shredded arm, looking too much like human veins; the fingers twitched minutely.

“I will have to go Below,” I said hoarsely. The thirst had crept up on me, every cell in my body parched; I had used much of the blood in the fight to destroy the wargs left behind. Holding onto this form was becoming more difficult. Another fight like that, and I would need to hunt. “Her scent is gone from here. Without them, I can’t track her across the plains.”

Wyn probed at Thorn’s disembodied arm, frowning. “I can fix them.”

I stared up at her. “Gods, Wyn, please tell me you mean it.”

She gave me her most piercing look, pulling out a handkerchief to daintily scoop Thorn’s bloody arm from the grass. “I wouldn’t claim it if I didn’t mean it. Now help me put their pieces back together—as much as we can, anyway. They won’t be perfect, but they’ll hold together long enough to find her.”

The exhalation that tore from my lungs was painful, the relief almost agonizing. I would have gone Below without looking back, without a second thought… but finding Cirri in the warrens below the earth might have taken years.

I praised Wyn’s name to the ancestors as I gathered Thorn’s body, arranging it in the grass where she pointed. Visca set about making Miro and Cirri’s fire into a proper camp while I applied myself to laying the golems out.

Rose flaked away in my hands, petal by petal. It was a delicate operation, gathering as many as I could find, stuffing them into the general heap of her body, but when I was done and they looked like effigies of burials, Wyn hadn’t made a move to fix anything.

“What are you waiting for?” I looked up at her, my claws digging into the soil. “Fix them.”

She exchanged a glance with Visca; my commander stepped forward, taking her wife’s side.

“Bane. You will not want to hear this, lad, but it’s time to make contact with your brothers.”

My teeth ached; I could strike her down, force Wyn to fix the golems, my precious compasses; the only things that could find Cirri now.

But she was my creator, the closest thing I’d had to a mother in my second life, and I could not stand to raise a hand to her.

“Every second that passes is another second that she could die,” I snarled, and Wyn shook her head.

“She’s valuable, Bane,” the bloodwitch said. “Do try to remember that Hakkon would be overjoyed to bring you into his territory, and now we’re all here. As long as there’s a chance you’ll run after her, he won’t harm a hair on her precious head.”

I bared my fangs at her, rising to my full height, and Visca put her hands on her hips. “Think clearly,” she said, her voice low. “He wants you to come after her. How many wargs do you think he’s made in the meantime? We’ll be overrun, and Cirri will be just as dead in the end. There’s only one way to make this work.”

Horrible images flashed through my mind: Cirri broken, bleeding, sobbing. Waiting for help that never came, because her heroes were rotting in the bellies of wolves.

“Fine.” I tried to clear the snarl from my voice. “Call upon them. Tell them we’ve broken the treaty, and that I don’t give a damn. You have tonight to fix them, and then I’m going alone.”

But Wyn wasted no time. The second she had my blessing, she left the golems, digging in one of the packs on the horses.

She brought out a gilded hand-mirror and a small box, carrying them to the fire and settling before its flames. I crouched behind her, watching as she withdrew a leaf-shaped blade from the box and scored it across her wrists without preamble.

The firelight flickered across her face as she worked, holding her wrist above the mirror and letting the blood drip onto the polished silver, tipping the mirror and whispering under her breath until the blood coated the silver in a thin, even sheen of red.

Her reflection was scarlet, eyes gleaming with an animal’s shine, and as she muttered the final words the face reflected in the mirror melted, becoming an anonymous amalgam of facial features.

It took some time for her words to reach the other sanguimancers, but eventually Wyn’s reflection began to warp: her face melted into another, and another, and another. Four bloodwitches reflected at once, merging into a single visage, neither male nor female, the features constantly shifting depending on the speaker.

“Magus Olwyn,” a woman’s voice said, and the face in the mirror rippled, taking on darker hair, a higher forehead, a blockier nose.

The nose thinned, the lips grew fuller: “Ancestors, don’t tell me that’s Foria I see behind you. What about the treaty?”

“We’re in rather dire straits,” Wyn sniffed, and the face in the mirror took on her features once more. “To put it very simply, the Lady of the Rift is in Forian territory, likely captured by Thurn Hakkon. He’s made quite a few wargs since last year, my friends. We need your help.”

The face shifted, becoming more masculine, and a man’s deep voice boomed out. “Is there a reason Lord Bane couldn’t just… find a new one?”

There was a long silence.

One of the more effeminate faces winced. “Not everyone despises their wives as much as Wroth despises his, Bram. But Olwyn, the treaty… did she cross the border of her own accord?”

“No,” Wyn said softly. “No, she was abducted from our territory and brought by force. We have the ways and means to track her, and find Hakkon into the bargain, but we’re not enough. The legions are several days’ march behind us. But… he has made many new wargs, brothers and sisters. I don’t know how many. But Bane is going to retrieve her or die trying, I can tell you that.”

The bloodwitches went silent in our mirror, the face becoming anonymous again; long minutes passed as they informed the Lords they served that we were using our last, most desperate hope, relaying the situation.

The face in the mirror jittered, warping strangely; Wroth’s voice came through.

“Bane?”

“I’m here.” I leaned over Wyn’s shoulder, and between the bloodwitches and two fiends, the reflection took on proportions that were almost sickening.

“I’m coming, brother,” he said. “Wait for me.”

The leonine features of the face disappeared. He was loyal, my first brother; I owed him in ways I would never be able to repay.

I closed my eyes, even as Bram’s voice echoed out onto the plains. “Well, he’ll be there soon, Wyn. He’s not going to listen to anything I say, anyway.”

Bram vanished, and the reflection became entirely feminine.

The one with the dark hair took over, sniffing with disapproval, but her words gave me unexpected hope. “Lord Voryan wishes me to express his desire for Lord Bane to wait for his arrival, and to save him some blood.”

Two of my brothers, ready and willing to break the treaty.

Pebble by pebble, the mountain of despair crushing me down began to dislodge, sliding away.

Voryan’s bloodwitch vanished, and the reflection was soon only a mix of Wyn and Andrus’s bloodwitch.

“Andrus is…” The bloodwitch paused. “He’s already calling for prisoners. I daresay he’ll be leaving soon.”

“Thank the ancestors,” Wyn said, slumping with relief. “Thank you, Cyrene.”

Indeed. I silently wished my brothers a safe journey and a thousand blessings upon their heads.

Cyrene watched her evenly. “This is very bad,” she murmured. “If Radomil chooses to retaliate… it’s been ten years, and we’ve hardly made a dent in repairing the damage of the war…”

“If Radomil retaliates, I’ll be pleased to remind him that he allowed Hakkon to go free,” Wyn snapped. “He allowed the wargs a foothold in his country. We’re merely cleaning up his mess.”

Cyrene sighed. “True, and yet politics and borders are not a question of truth, are they? Andrus will no doubt be there by daybreak. I would come, but the girl here… requires careful tending.”

“Ah. Good luck to you, then.”

Cyrene snorted, her face beginning to fade from the mirror and leaving Wyn’s reflection clear. “You need better luck than me. All I do is keep her asleep. Ancestors guide you, Lord Bane.”

She vanished entirely, and Wyn lowered the mirror, staring into the flames.

Visca draped her arm over her shoulders. “Two days, then, at the most. Our legions will be with us, and all the fiends.”

I shook my head, ready to refute the idea of waiting, but my bloodwitch did exactly what I paid her to do and scowled at me. “Kindly keep your mouth shut, Bane. I still need to repair these damn golems, and you’re better off with the other fiends at your back.”

It was difficult to hold still, but I looked at my most trusted advisors, really looked at them: despite the blood she’d drunk, her fresh youth, Wyn’s eyes were bloodshot, and Visca was lacking her usual energy.

They were tired. Nobody had slept in days; nobody had truly stopped to feed and replenish themselves. I had already burned up a severe amount of the blood I’d glutted in my headlong flight towards Foria, and there were no prisoners to feed from here.

And Wyn’s work wasn’t over, nor was mine. I would not be able to close my eyes until Cirri was safe at home, but if I wanted all my people to come home alive, I needed them to be functional.

“Very well.” I settled into the grass where Cirri’s scent was thickest, trying to shove aside the voice screaming in my mind that she was dying right now, she was bleeding, she was hurt…

She was valuable, and I needed every weapon at my disposal to find and retrieve her.

Wyn handed the mirror to Visca and stood, blade and box in hand. She returned to the golems, frowning down at their mutilated forms, and began rummaging through vials of ingredients in the box.

“Powdered bone of a virgin goat… tears of a dry river,” she muttered, selecting vials as she knelt. “A thorn plucked from the paw of a lion, and the sole of a wanderer’s shoe.”

She sprinkled dust and thorns into their bodies, and finally set aside her box, opening her wrist again with a soft hiss.

“Come here, Bane,” she gritted out. “Your blood is required for this, too.”

I offered my wrist, hardly feeling the cut of the blade, and watched as my blood dripped black into their forms.

“Lovely. Now go away,” she said, leaning over her work.

Her mutterings followed me back to the fire; I watched sleeplessly, taking the first watch as Visca curled up for a nap and Wyn whispered to the golems deep into the night.

I didn’t move a muscle until dawn rose. The fire was burned out to cinders; Wyn was curled in the grass beside the golems, sleeping soundly, her head resting on her pack as Visca circled the camp, her eyes fixed on the empty plains to the north.

When the first rays of light pierced the sky, I crept to the golems, lying in repose like corpses, the only sign of life the faint stirring of their component parts. Rose’s petals ruffled, shifted; Thorn’s body was like a nest of black snakes, the vines slowly creeping as they grew, splitting into newer, thinner vines that braided themselves back into the main body.

They were almost skeletal in appearance, their arms long and thin, their torsos withered. Rose’s petals were bruised so intensely that most of her was a purplish-black color. Only a few tattered petals retained their bright crimson edges.