Darkburn Book 4: The Haunt of Ternss by Tayin Machrie - HTML preview

Chapter 2

Rothir’s hand went immediately to his sword hilt. “Animal or human?”

“I can’t tell yet.” Parthenal was already pushing his horse Alda between others, whose riders sat gazing at the bodies sprawled on the ground. “Human,” he announced.

Huldarion, stiff and upright in the saddle, glanced up, his scarred face expressionless as always. “Stonemen,” he said. “All four of them.”

“They’re a long time dead,” commented Parthenal; for the bodies seemed to be half-buried under a dull blanket of mossy growth. Veron had dismounted and was squatting by the corpses to inspect them. Rothir jumped down from Narba to join him.

Veron looked up. “No, these are recent,” he said curtly. “They died within the last two days, I’d guess. This green stuff must be an attempt by their killers to disguise the bodies.”

Rothir moved one corpse’s head from side to side before letting it drop. “They still have all their stones. So Kelvhan soldiers probably aren’t responsible, because they would have removed them. I can’t see any obvious wounds. What were they doing out here?”

“Spying on us,” Solon said.

“Well, this one was asleep. He’s lying on a bedroll, underneath the moss. His pack is here as well. Perhaps it was the stonemen themselves who were using moss for camouflage.” Rothir picked up the crude canvas pack and upended it. A crumbling slab of biscuit and a waterskin slithered out. He shook the gurgling waterskin. “Still full. Looks like they made camp here and then were killed in their sleep.”

“Who by?” asked Meya.

“Anyone who doesn’t care for stonemen, which means half the world,” retorted Parthenal. He wanted to move on. There was nothing special about dead stonemen; he’d seen hundreds on the battlefield. “Passing traders. Hunters.”

“Not hunters,” Veron said, as he tried to turn a second body over – with difficulty, for the vegetation seemed to have entangled it. “These men were neither stabbed nor shot. Throttled, maybe.”

“By somebody who did not care about the power of their stones, or perhaps was not aware of it,” commented Huldarion, “since they have not been harvested.”

“At least we have a superfluity of stones ourselves,” said Thoronal, with his old pomposity. “We don’t need these.”

“But we don’t know how many darkburns we may meet in days to come,” warned Uld, who was always cautious: always providing for unlikely contingencies, in Parthenal’s opinion. “We can never assume we have enough protection against them. And not all our allies may have stones. We should harvest any that we find, if only to prevent our enemies from doing so.”

“True,” said Huldarion. He nodded to Veron, who immediately pulled out a knife and set to work on the bloody task of prising stones from the dead man’s forehead.

“Only three on this one,” he remarked.

“Ah,” murmured Huldarion, in something almost like dismay.

Veron looked up at him. “Three not enough for you?”

“The man was low ranking,” said Huldarion.

“Then they all were,” said Veron, and he went back to work with his knife.

“Hurry up,” muttered Parthenal, too quietly for anyone except himself to hear. The stonemen’s rank was irrelevant. They were all reckless murderers – and all of them were drugged out of their heads. He wondered, not for the first time, whether he ought to try and feel some pity for them; and decided, as before, that it wasn’t worth the effort. Why feel pity for such a vicious and degraded foe?

“Only two stones on that one,” said Veron, straightening up; “so maybe he was a new recruit. Perhaps he – whoa! What? What the...?”

It was Yaret who shouted suddenly, “Step back! Step back! Veron, Rothir – step back!”

Rothir at once stepped back smartly. Veron tried to. But his feet seemed to be stuck although Parthenal could not tell how. Veron bent down and began to slash with his knife around his ankles.

“Cursed plant,” he said, “it’s got itself caught round my legs.”

“I think it’s wriggling,” said Rothir in sharp surprise. “What is it?”

“Damned moss. It won’t come away from my boots.”

“Take your boots off,” advised Huldarion.

Veron tried to wrench his left foot from its boot. “I can’t,” he said, through gritted teeth. “It won’t. The stuff’s drawn tight around the leather.”

“I’ll cut your boots off,” Rothir offered. Walking over to Veron he stooped and began to saw at the heel seam – or where it ought to be, for the leather was barely visible beneath grey moss.

“Rothir!” cried Yaret urgently. “Don’t stand still! Keep walking! Everyone, keep the horses moving!”

“What for?” demanded Thoronal; but Uld said sharply, “Do it. She’s right.”

“What?”

“It’s got my horse as well.” Uld’s horse was struggling to lift one of its hooves, which seemed fastened to the ground.

“What’s got it? What are you talking about?” said Thoronal. Parthenal thought that his cousin was being exceptionally stupid; for he himself had immediately begun to make Alda walk. His horse stamped imperiously beneath him, trampling the humble moss. Meya’s carriage started to trundle away briskly as its driver flicked the reins. Meya clutched at the seat, looking gratifyingly startled.

But a few of the other horses – perhaps those that had stood still for a little longer – were unable to move freely: one leg, or two, or all, were caught by twining tendrils that would not let them go.

Uld jumped down from his saddle and drew his knife to slash at the thin stems. Although they looked frail, it seemed to be no easy task. He cursed beneath his breath – most unusually for Uld – until Ikelder too dismounted to help him.

Rothir was walking around Veron, pausing for no more than a few seconds at a time to hack at the dull growth that coiled around the hunter’s ankles. Meanwhile other Riders were vainly trying to cut away the creeping fronds that snagged their horses’ legs.

“Don’t stand still!” commanded Huldarion, whose own horse was pacing up and down.

“I won’t. But I don’t know what this is. It looks so fragile; yet the stems just won’t cut through,” said Uld. His voice held a strained, anxious note which Parthenal had never heard before from the staid Rider.

“It’s as if they’re made of wire!” exclaimed Ikelder in frustration, tugging at a strand around the hock of Uld’s horse. His knife made no impression on it. The narrow stems sprang back at him so that he leapt up in alarm.

Parthenal seized the reins of Rothir’s horse to keep it moving as well as his own. While he walked Alda and Narba up and down on this directionless parade, he glanced round at the other Riders. He felt half ready to laugh. What could be so terrible about moss? It must give way at any minute, surely.

But on the other faces he saw tension – even fear. It was bizarre. Nothing but moss. Absurd to think that it could threaten them.

And then, as if he’d fallen without warning into a bad dream, the landscape changed, to seem a vast grey sea: a writhing ocean made of tiny snakes, determined to catch and cripple his companions. This dreadful transformation, he knew well, was only in his mind. Logic rejected it as an impossible nightmare. These were only tiny plants. Yet there Veron still stood, ensnared.

“We need to warn the rest,” Huldarion said sharply. “Delgeb. Landel.” At once the two Riders wheeled their horses round and hastened down the line.

“Huldarion – you yourself should move on with all speed,” said Parthenal, hearing his own voice equally sharp with apprehension. “Follow Lady Meya. Don’t risk getting trapped.”

Huldarion raised his chin. “You mean that I should leave my men trapped here instead?” Although his tone was level, Parthenal could tell that he was angry. Huldarion blames himself, he thought, for choosing this route rather than the causeway. Although who could have known?

“You should leave now,” he told Huldarion strongly. “You and everyone who can move on should do so.” He glanced down to check Alda’s shifting hooves. Were those tiny fronds he saw caressing them?

It was too ridiculous. No monster had caught the Vonn, no fearsome darkburn, no appalling cataclysm of fire and terror: yet caught they were, by this small creeping organism; and he felt a swiftly surging panic lest they should all be trapped and suffocated here – just as the four dead stonemen had been.

“This isn’t working,” Veron said tersely. He was tugging at the strands that were now knotted round his ankles, tight against the boots, and seemed to be creeping up his shins. “Wolf and bear and lion have I fought and killed, and then this – this damned lichen – is to pull me down!”

“It won’t,” said Rothir. “We won’t let it.”

“Veron,” said Yaret, her voice quiet, “I can call the huntress.”

Veron looked up at her with blazing eyes. “No.”

“But she would–”

“No. I shall not call her, and you must not either. This is not her realm. I will not have her endangered too.”

“These plants are something quite unnatural,” said Rothir, breathless with effort. Straightening up, he once more walked around Veron, and checked his own boots before stooping down again, this time taking out his flint and tinderbox. Parthenal saw the flame flicker and die as Rothir held it to the plant. It would not catch.

“We need Leor,” declared Huldarion. “Where is he? Leor!” he bellowed, with a fierceness shocking in someone who always showed restraint. The shout was repeated down the line, a diminishing set of echoes of “Leor! Leor! Leor!” growing fainter until they disappeared. But there was no sign of the wizard.

“I’ll go and find him,” offered Parthenal, already wheeling Alda round. Yet to his frustration he could not hurry. The pitted ground appeared designed to slow and trip his horse; so that what had been previously a mere annoyance now seemed actively malignant.

Nearly all the Riders in the line were now tramping on at Huldarion’s command. He rode past them, calling put for Leor.

“Show yourself!” he shouted. “Leor!” Could the wizard have concealed himself with magic? It would not be for the first time. He looked for the priest’s cart, where Durba had reported seeing him.

He couldn’t pick it out. But, to his relief, he glimpsed the familiar beacon of red hair, with its two long streaks of white, atop Leor’s lanky frame on his equally lanky horse. The wizard was being led by Tamu, the little Kelvhan archivist, who looked uncomfortable on a restless pony. Exactly why Tamu had left the dusty library of the castle to ride out with the Vonn was not clear to Parthenal; nor did it matter now.

“Tamu said somebody was calling me,” said Leor reluctantly.

“Everyone was calling you. Come, quickly!” Up the line they rode, with Tamu’s pony following, seemingly against its rider’s wishes. Rapidly Parthenal explained the situation.

Leor sighed. “Wizardry, you think? So therefore I must understand it? You expect me to counteract this plant?”

“If you cannot, then no-one can,” Parthenal answered grimly.

They arrived at the slowly shuffling circle of Riders that surrounded Veron and the four dead stonemen, moving round as if in some obscure religious ritual. Huldarion was still there, to Parthenal’s dismay, although his horse was moving freely. Five horses were rooted to the spot, their vainly twitching limbs and rolling eyes betraying their growing panic. One whinnied with a high anxious note and set the others neighing in distress.

Unlike the horses, Veron showed no panic, even though the grey stems were now wrapped tight around his lower legs. Parthenal thought he saw minute new tendrils uncurling as he watched. Rothir still worked to unprise them from the hunter’s feet.

Meanwhile Veron was slicing at his breeches with his knife; but the plants must have worked their way right through the fabric, for even where the cloth was ripped away, the clinging stalks were fastened leech-like to his skin.

There was a single twitch at the corner of Veron’s mouth when he looked up and said, “If you can’t free me from this, Leor, you’ll have to cut my legs off.”

For a second, Parthenal assumed that he was joking. But then he realised that Veron was deadly serious. Nausea rose in his throat.

“You wouldn’t survive that,” said Yaret, nudging Poda to make the horse keep moving.

“Why not? You did,” Veron retorted.

“Barely,” she said. “And that was one leg only.”

“Leor – what can we do?” demanded Solon, turning to the wizard. “Tell us now.” Everyone turned to Leor, gazing expectantly at his gaunt face.

“How should I know? I don’t even know what sort of plant this is,” said Leor. “I haven’t come this way for years. Everything has changed.”

“Surely you have more to say than that!”

“The Farwth could do the same as this strange plant,” said Rothir, without pausing in his work. “In Farwithiel we saw dead stonemen trapped by vines.”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t help me,” said Leor. “This is not the work of the Farwth.”

“Obviously.” Rothir, impatient, straightened up before walking round Veron and bending down again. “But it’s equally obviously done by some magic power.”

“Why is this the only plant that thrives here?” said Ikelder. “Has it strangled all the others? And has it captured human beings before?”

“How would I know?” said Leor irritably.

“You know who’s done this, Leor,” said Huldarion sternly. “Therefore you ought to understand how it was achieved; and how it can be undone.”

“I am not Adon,” said Leor.

“Stars alive!” exclaimed Rothir. He stood still for a moment to glower at the wizard. “Do you mean you’re not even prepared to try?”

“If that’s the case,” said Solon coldly, “we’ll see how immortal you really are, Leor. Will your head reattach itself to your shoulders, do you think?” He half-drew his sword with an angry hiss.

Was Solon play-acting? Parthenal, startled, couldn’t tell. The whole situation seemed unreal. He realised with another lurch of his stomach that Solon was looking truly murderous. Huldarion put out a restraining hand until his counsellor reluctantly let the sword slide with a metallic whisper back into its sheath.

“Don’t kill Leor until after you’ve killed me,” said Veron harshly. “Yaret’s right. I won’t survive losing both my legs, and I wouldn’t want to. You’ll have to kill me soon, if this stuff gets much higher. It’s not letting go. It’s digging in. You do it, Rothir.”

“Veron,” said Yaret.

He glared at her. “No. Call the huntress afterwards, once you’re well away from here. Tell her how it happened.”

“Veron,” said Yaret. There was a break in her voice.

“Leor,” said Huldarion, turning to the wizard, “to you our lives are fleeting and our deaths mean little, but by the long friendship between you and our people, I beg you to try what you can do.”

“Your deaths mean little?” said Leor, staring. “They don’t mean little.”

“Do something, man,” growled Rothir. “Not to try is worse than failure.”

“Just give me time to think…” Leor tapped his long hands against his temples. “I want to help, believe me. But I don’t even know what this plant is called. I have nothing to hang a spell on. I need a name.”

“Brienot,” said Tamu unexpectedly. The little archivist sat nervously on his twitchy mare, which was constantly in motion without his urging. He looked as if he would much prefer to be elsewhere.

“The plant’s called Brienot. I’ve seen it listed in an old botanical dictionary. Unique to eastern Kelvha. Related to clover but with a tiny greyish leaf. Doesn’t usually catch people. At least the dictionary didn’t mention that.” He spoke in a breathless rush and then stared at the ground.

“Brienot,” repeated Leor. “Like clover, did you say? Let me see.” He began to move his lips, trying out unspoken words.

“Be quick,” said Solon grimly.

“But I need to be careful!” objected Leor.

“Just do it,” Huldarion commanded.

Leor muttered gruffly into his beard. “No, no, that’s no good,” he mumbled.

“Try it anyway!”

“I will count to ten,” said Solon; and once more he drew his sword with a snarling rasp of steel. Although Solon was a man who more often showed his displeasure through sarcasm than open rage, he was implacable once angered. In battle he was strong and merciless. With another wave of nausea Parthenal thought that Solon might actually carry out his threat.

And what would that mean for the Riders? For them to kill the wizard, their long-standing ally? He felt that they stood on the brink of some unknown but terrible land.

“Wait,” commanded Huldarion levelly. Such iron authority. Solon, gripping his sword, sat rigid in the saddle as if held against his will. “That will not help. And Leor would throw you to the floor before your sword could touch him.”

“Indeed I would,” said Leor, although without conviction. He licked his lips and began to mutter again. “Anaga loth brienot, anada loeth halesrath–” No, that’s still not right.”

“You need to hurry,” warned Rothir, tugging at the creeping strands that now encircled Veron’s legs more than half way to his knees. Veron’s face was set like ice.

“Halesraka,” said Tamu unexpectedly. “It’s proto-Ondial, isn’t it? To wither.”

“Is it?” said Leor blankly. “I know it’s very ancient. I’m dredging this up from the depths of my memory. What’s blight?”

“The verb or the noun?”

“For stars’ sake,” said Solon. The sword twitched.

“Noun.”

“Oflega,” said Tamu.

“Of course is it.” Leor began to recite again, this time with more confidence. The strange words flowed from him with growing resonance as if they took on their own power. He turned to face Uld’s horse, which had begun to whinny desperately.

“Halesraka ne oflega brienot digana fror,” Leor intoned in a deep voice, stretching out his hand. His eyes were half closed. His hollow-cheeked face looked hungrily intent.

But Solon growled, “It’s not working. If Veron dies I really will take your head off your shoulders, Leor, regardless of whether it can fix itself back on.”

The wizard threw back his red hair and looked up at the sky. So did Parthenal, although he saw nothing there but low menacing clouds.

“Well?” said Solon. He raised his sword.

“Oh,” said Durba. “Listen. Listen.”

Then Parthenal became aware of a thin sound, directionless and faint: a crackling, a soft popping as if invisible rain were falling on dry leaves. But there was no rain.

“Ah,” said Veron, and now there was a change in his voice. “It’s tightening.”

Uld’s horse quivered as it tried and failed to rear up. Then it began to scream. It was a dreadful shuddering burst of agony and terror such as Parthenal had only heard amidst the clamour of the battlefield.

Solon swung his sword around his head. Parthenal did not know whether he meant to use it on Leor or Veron. What was happening? What was this nightmare? For a moment of paralytic horror he knew he was about to see one of his friends die at another’s hand.

“No,” said Ikelder firmly, striding in front of Leor. Parthenal knew he ought to join him. Yet he felt powerless.

Rothir, crouching by the hunter, said abruptly, “Wait. They’re breaking.”

For a dreadful moment Parthenal thought he meant Veron’s bones. But Rothir added, “The stems are breaking.” He tugged at a tendril that bound Veron’s foot. The hunter gasped. But the grey stems shuddered into fragments.

Veron reached down and with shaking hands began to strip the clutching stalks from his other leg, peeling them away in brittle sections like dead ivy from a tree. The remaining cloth of his breeches came away with them: beneath, the skin was streaked dark red.

Then the air was full of a thousand whispers. The very ground appeared to shiver, as the plants collapsed and gently withered, shrinking down almost to nothing. Uld’s horse finally succeeded in freeing itself: it reared up, its legs bleeding from long wounds. Landing heavily, it began to kick and screamed again before charging off across the plain.

“Come; you’re nearly free, Veron,” said Rothir encouragingly, pulling off more crumbling tendrils.

Veron was shuddering. As the last stems fell away, it seemed he would have fallen too, if Rothir had not held him up; and it took a very great deal, thought Parthenal, to make Veron fall.

“Bear him to the Lady Meya’s carriage,” said Huldarion. “And then let us depart from this cursed land without delay.”

Parthenal, no longer paralysed, and ashamed of his inaction, sprang down from Alda. He helped Rothir to lift the half-fainting man up into Narba’s saddle, and held him in place while Rothir mounted behind him.

“At least Narba’s used to this,” he said.

Veron made no sound. His face was taut and his eyes closed while the stolid horse began to walk. Beyond the thudding of the hooves whispered thousands of faint rustling voices, as the clinging stalks dried up and turned to dust. The ground no longer held even the smallest hint of green. It had turned dull brown as far as Parthenal could see.

No-one spoke as the horses trampled through a landscape that now appeared completely dead: a desert of dusty, sterile earth. The air smelt stale and ancient.

But there was green on the horizon – that low line of trees. Parthenal fixed his gaze on them, praying they would stay green until the Riders reached them.

Closer they crept, and closer, and still the line of trees stood tall, unchanging, thank the stars; so there was a boundary to this stricken land. Of course there was. Even though it seemed far wider than he had remembered, like all lands – and like all horrors – it must have an end at last.

Yet still no-one spoke. As if they feared to break some spell, they concentrated on keeping the unhappy horses moving steadily. Parthenal felt as he had stood on a precipice while it began to crumble underfoot. Why had he done nothing? He glanced across at Solon and at Leor, both glowering. How could so small a thing have threatened to alter all their lives so quickly?

But Huldarion is unscathed, he thought; for which I’m thankful. As for Veron, he’s as tough as boiled leather armour. He’ll soon recover.

When he looked back, the line of sombre Riders and their carriages was like a phantom train. It travelled through a ghostly cloud of dust that swirled languidly, aimlessly, around them, in great sweeping arcs of haze.

“Is that what you meant to do, Leor?” said Yaret at last.

The wizard frowned at her. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“It worked. I just hope it didn’t work everywhere as well as here. What if brienot is growing harmlessly elsewhere? Will it die? What about clover? Will that all wither too?” She did not sound accusing, merely thoughtful.

Leor did not reply for several seconds. Then he said heavily, “Magic always has consequences.”

“That is true of every type of power,” she said.

“But you had to do it,” said Rothir. “Regardless of the consequences.”

“Yes. Yes, I did.” Leor looked almost majestic, lifting his head as if he’d just discovered some new unguessed ascendancy within himself.

“It’s lucky Tamu knew the words you needed,” Yaret said, deflating him again.

Parthenal looked round once more: this time for Tamu, who was trying to stop his wayward horse from prancing sideways. Head down, shoulders hunched, as Parthenal gazed at him the archivist looked up straight into his eyes. Tamu’s lips parted for a second before he closed them and hurriedly stared down again.

It was the glance of an instant; but Parthenal recognised that fleeting look. He had seen it many times, on other faces. It made him feel – if not delight, for Tamu was not his type at all – then a certain reassurance. As if he was being nudged awake from a dark dream, he felt relief at this welcome signal of normality. Life was as it should be, after all. He was conscious even of a frisson of mild pleasure; for it was always pleasant to be wanted.

And never really a surprise. Aha, he thought, smiling inwardly as he rode on towards the trees: Tamu, our little nervous friend, I think I know your secret now.