EQUINOX
It was, by Grandmother’s calculations, the morning of
the spring equinox. The equinox brought change, not merely the
change of season, but a perceptible alteration in the demeanor of
the forest. She cocked her head, gazing into the murk of Blackveil
at nothing, sensing the forest had turned its attention elsewhere.
It was a subtle feeling, like a ripple on a still lake. What had
caught its interest?
Something unrelated
nagged at her, too, like an itch. It emanated from the north, near
the wall, and she wondered what the Sacoridians were up to. The
disturbance in the etherea came to her like an inaudible whisper
and she could not name it.
Grandmother was
concerned. Ripples could turn to storm waves, and whispers—well,
whispers were insidious, dangerous.
It was Sarat’s
inconsolable crying that brought her back to the present. They’d
found yet another pile of fresh entrails that had been dumped in
their path. Min rubbed Sarat’s back in an effort to calm her. The
men looked on unsure and uneasy. Lala, as always, was unafraid. She
squatted beside the entrails and probed them with a
stick.
“It’s ... it’s a
curse,” Sarat said between sobs. “Someone is cursing
us.”
Grandmother did not
think so. The first pile had been left outside their cave, a great
heap of innards that must have come from more than one creature.
Days later they’d found another fresh pile in the center of the
road they followed, Way of the Moon. This was the third they’d
encountered, pink and bloody and glossy in the damp of the forest
environs.
“I think,”
Grandmother said, “these are offerings.”
“Offerings?” Cole
asked in surprise.
“Yes. We have been
watched since not long after we entered Way of the
Moon.”
Her people darted
anxious looks into the forest around them and huddled a little
closer together. Lala, though, remained unconcerned, winding a
length of intestine around her stick.
“Thought so,” Deglin
said with a darkening expression. “I thought we were being
followed.”
“It’ll be our guts
on the road next!” Sarat wailed.
“I do not think we
need to fear the Watchers,” Grandmother replied, hoping her calm,
steady voice would prevent Sarat from lapsing into outright
hysterics. Her people were correct to fear the forest, but she
could not allow that fear to overcome them. “I believe the
offerings to be a sign of respect from those who watch. They are
primitive creatures with a certain amount of intelligence, and they
find power in such things. They are honoring us.”
“Or warning us,”
Deglin rumbled.
“I think not,”
Grandmother said, “but it may be we have been rude, not
acknowledging the gifts as we should. Even primitive creatures
expect some acknowledgment in return.”
She thought it over
for some moments, ignoring Sarat’s sobbing and the terrible damp
that made her old bones ache. She still wasn’t entirely recovered
from the spider bite and every day they trudged along Way of the
Moon was torture to her body. The men carried her pack, and Lala
took up the basket of yarn to relieve her of even that minor
burden. Every step confirmed Grandmother’s growing conviction that
she would never again walk in the world outside. Only her love of
the empire and her people kept her setting one foot in front of the
other, as well as her desire to please God, who commanded her to
awaken the Sleepers. She would not rest until she accomplished her
task.
As she gazed at the
entrails at her feet, she realized they presented an opportunity,
an opportunity to not only impress the Watchers, but to use the
innate potency of their gift for her own purposes. Using the blood
and organs of what once had been living creatures always enhanced
the art. Necromancy, some called it, as
if it were a bad thing. When cast appropriately, necromantic art
proved particularly powerful.
Human remains and
blood worked best, but the gift from the Watchers should serve well
enough. She wondered how the infusion of the forest’s etherea on
these remains would affect the outcome of her spell. It could prove
risky, but this whole endeavor was full of risks. What was one
more? The possible benefits outweighed the danger.
“I need a good hot
fire,” she announced.
Her retainers
glanced uncertainly at one another.
“We gonna eat that?”
Griz asked, pointing at the entrails.
Grandmother smiled
at his expression of distaste. “No, my son. We’re going to burn it.
That is why I need a hot fire. Hot and big.” She then knelt down
beside Lala. “Child, I would like you to help me.”
Lala had picked out
a carrion beetle from the pile, a nasty, large thing with pincers,
and dropped it to pay close attention to her grandmother.
Grandmother knew that if they did not do something with the
entrails soon, larger and nastier creatures would arrive, attracted
by the scent of an easy meal.
“Would you like to
make the fire pretty?” Grandmother asked.
Lala
nodded.
“Good. You know the
knots. You will make the fire pretty to impress the
Watchers.”
Lala nodded again
looking very serious and determined. The pair of them picked
through the yarn basket for the skeins they wanted.
It was not easy
building a bonfire in that wet place. Much of the dead and fallen
wood they tried to collect crumbled in their hands from decay, and
it harbored stinging insects. Eventually they assembled enough wood
to create a good-sized mound and the men took on the unpleasant
task of placing the entrails atop it.
Deglin was an adept
fire maker, but the wet stuff allowed only a few pitiful smoldering
flames. Grandmother needed something far more impressive and hot,
so after warning the others to stand clear in case the forest
warped her spell, she cast a clump of knotted yarn into the
flames.
The fire surged up
the mound of wood in an inferno so intense that she had to retreat
several steps. The forest seemed to bend away from the blaze in
dismay, and there was much scurrying and rattling of branches and
underbrush as creatures fled the area. The entrails snapped and
popped as they burned in the fire.
Grandmother laughed.
She’d wanted a hot fire and she got one. It would certainly make an
impression on the Watchers, and they would not doubt her power. She
gestured to Lala to add her knots.
“Go carefully,
child, do not burn yourself.”
Lala approached the
fire without fear and tossed her knots into it. Immediately color
saturated the flames—cool blues and purples, verdant green, angry
red. Shapes formed among the individual flames, people and animals.
Grandmother saw a pony and she thought Lala must miss the one she
had to abandon on the other side of the wall. Sparks turned to
birds that flew into the canopy. A butterfly flittered over
Grandmother’s head.
Grandmother was in
awe for it was beyond her expectations. “My dear little child,” she
murmured. “You are a true artist.” She hugged Lala and received a
rare smile in return. When she called Lala a “true artist,” she did
not mean one who was a master of aesthetics, though that element
was certainly present in her granddaughter’s creations, but rather
one who was gifted with the ability to shape etherea. Grandmother
would have to carefully watch over the girl’s
development.
Now, however, she
must take advantage of the fire herself. She needed to check on
Birch. She cast one of his fingernail clippings, wrapped in knotted
yarn, into the flames. A vision blossomed in the roiling blaze of a
small settlement in a clearing of the forest—not Blackveil, but the
living green forest of the north. The rank smoke of the bonfire was
replaced by the more pleasant scent of smoke that issued from
chimneys. Birds awakened to the new spring chattered and called in
the trees. Through Birch’s eyes, she peered from the concealment of
the woods at the quiet settlement. A man chopped wood, while
another harnessed a pair of oxen for the day’s work. A young girl
helped a woman scrub laundry in a washbasin.
Birch’s gaze swept
away from the settlement to his side and behind him. Other men,
with weapons drawn, waited, hidden just as he was. The etherea
allowed Grandmother to delve deeper into Birch’s mind and she
learned that this was a training mission for his soldiers, that
they were to take no prisoners. The point was to teach them not to
pity the enemy, without regard for age or gender.
The settlement was
located on Sacoridia’s northern boundary and was therefore largely
unprotected and certainly no threat to Second Empire. Birch,
however, wanted his soldiers to taste blood, to become initiated in
the kill of battle before they had to face stronger, more seasoned
opponents.
It was a good
strategy, she thought, so long as it did not bring the wrath of
King Zachary upon them prematurely, but she sensed Birch’s
confidence that he and his soldiers would slip away into hiding
long before the king even learned of the attack.
Birch gestured to
his soldiers and they moved forward, ghosting between the trees,
over patches of snow that clung to forest shadows, and they surged
into the clearing with blades ready to strike down the unsuspecting
settlers.
The battle cry of
the soldiers was greeted by the screams and shouts of the enemy.
The man chopping wood was the first to die, and a torch was set to
his cottage. Grandmother observed the action as Birch did. He held
back, allowing his subordinate officers to lead the attack. Some
soldiers did to the women and girls as soldiers had always done
while their menfolk were forced to watch. Birch did not stop them.
When they finished, the women and men were
slaughtered.
Grandmother watched
dispassionately. Ravaging the enemy’s women was a way to further
defeat those who would take up arms, and she sensed from Birch that
he planned to somehow make this obvious by leaving a “message” for
the king.
When she saw that
the settlers had been slain to the smallest child and all their
buildings set afire, she felt comfortable that Birch had everything
well in hand. She decided to leave him and gaze elsewhere. She
tossed another length of yarn into the fire, and the image of the
settlement burned away from her vision.
A new vision did not
come to her. She saw only the dance of fire, but she heard a thread
of music, beautiful music, just above the roar of
flames.
What’s this? she wondered.
She closed her eyes
and the music flowed through her, joyful, serene, led by a
crystalline voice. A haunting chorus echoed the singer, accompanied
by the distant rhythm of hammers on stone, a sound of endurance and
strength ...
It was, she
realized, the whisper she’d sensed in the etherea at the wall.
Grandmother snapped her eyes open before she could be sucked in any
farther. “No,” she murmured.
Min touched her arm.
“Grandmother? What is it? Are you well?”
Grandmother took
Min’s hand, welcoming that human touch, the support.
“I am well,” she
said, “but things at the wall trouble me.”
The wall was
strengthening. Someone’s voice, a voice that could cultivate the
art, shape etherea, was leading the wall guardians in song. Who
could it be? Who still walked the Earth that could do such a
thing?
The who did not
matter. The result did. If the Sacoridians repaired the wall before
the Sleepers were awakened and the forest arose, then all her
efforts and hopes for Second Empire would fail. She would fail God
Himself.
She’d made a
critical mistake. She should not have entered the forest without
the book of Theanduris Silverwood in her hands. Was it possible her
people had failed to acquire it and the Sacoridians were now using
it to mend the wall? She could not tell by observing through
Birch’s eyes—he was busy with his own mission.
She should have
waited for the book, but God had clearly told her to awaken the
Sleepers. Perhaps He had His own plan, but if He did, it was not
obvious to her.
Grandmother sighed
and clung to Min. Her body shook with the effort she’d already
expended seeking visions. To her surprise, the fire had burned down
considerably, but Lala’s art still colored the flames.
“I must rest now,”
Grandmother told the others.
As Min helped her to
a blanket spread on the ground, she realized what was done was
done. If the Sacoridians had obtained the Silverwood book and
someone gifted with the art was singing the wall to strength, then
there was only one thing she could do to prevent the mending of the
wall: destroy the singer.
She eased down onto
the blanket with Min’s assistance, already planning on how she
might accomplish the task.