THE POTENT SNARL
Grandmother gazed in satisfaction at the dead bodies
lined up before her, eight of the loyal band of groundmites that
had escorted her to Castle Argenthyne’s grove, plus her own Griz.
She’d plucked the white arrows from them all, the wooden shafts
stinging her fingers. She’d also sensed that Eletian blood had been
spilled in the grove and she believed it would only make her
working stronger.
She had tied knots
feverishly, using much of what was left of her yarn, holding in
reserve a ball of the indigo should they survive this and need it
for finding their way out of Blackveil. Lala had intently watched
the tying of knots, helping and fetching as needed. Meanwhile,
Grandmother had gotten Gubba to oversee the butchering of corpses,
cold, still hearts placed into Min’s largest pot.
Even as Grandmother
worked at invoking the power of the art, she felt the darkness of
the forest press in on her, the intensity of its attention. The
trees of the grove had gone rigid, and she heard the sound of
cracking like the winter forest, moisture freezing within the
wood.
After she tied the
last knot, a complex weaving of command, she slumped exhausted and
gazed at the snarl of yarn in her hands. The potent
snarl.
Lala nudged her
shoulder and handed her a cup of tea. Her people had started a fire
while she worked. She was never so grateful.
“My good girl,”
Grandmother said wearily. She hugged Lala’s shoulders. “Now would
you fetch me my special bowl?”
Lala nodded and
skipped away to where their packs lay. Gubba came over and chirped
in admiration at the knots. Meanwhile, Grandmother sipped her tea,
letting it warm her. Lala brought over the earthenware bowl and set
it at Grandmother’s feet.
Grandmother did not
move, she just rested, enjoying the tea and the respite, and
knowing that everything came down to this. She knew everyone
watched her to see what would come next. God had not spoken to her
of late, had not given her any indication of what was supposed to
be done, except that she was to awaken the Sleepers.
So she’d constructed
a spell the best way she knew how. The Sleepers, she assumed, were
in a state akin to death, or at least as close to death as many of
that immortal race would ever get. Therefore, she’d devised a spell
similar to—though definitely not the same as—one that would raise
the dead. This was a major undertaking considering the size of the
grove, and she thought of how proud her own grandmother would be
that she had used the art on a scale that had not been seen for
centuries. How proud all of those along her maternal line would be;
all their knowledge passed down the generations for this one moment
in the service of Second Empire and God.
The spell required
one more element before she could summon the awakening. She drained
the last of her tea, looked mournfully at the leaves settled on the
cup’s bottom, and sighed. Lala took it from her and helped her
rise.
“Gubba,” Grandmother
said, placing her hand on the old groundmite’s furry shoulder. “I
need another favor.”
Gubba chirped a
query, and Grandmother gazed into that rheumy eye. Grandmother
smiled in reassurance, then slashed her knife into Gubba’s throat.
She sawed through the groundmite’s tough flesh until she hit the
vital vein.
Gubba fell with
shock in her eye, arms flailing. Grandmother grabbed her bowl to
catch as much of the spurting blood as possible.
The remaining
groundmites, those not still fruitlessly pounding on the castle
doors, did not retaliate at Gubba’s sacrifice. Their eyes filled
with horror, but they recognized Grandmother’s strength in the art
and understood Gubba had become part of a larger working. No,
instead of retaliating, they fled yipping and barking into the
woods and out of her ken.
The earthenware bowl
looked ordinary enough, but it contained the power to preserve
blood, even keeping it warm, and Gubba’s blood was special, for
she’d an innate ability to use the art. That made it a strong
additive to the spell Grandmother was weaving.
Gubba’s heart had
been added to the pot with the others. Grandmother cut it out
herself.
“Won’t be using that
pot again,” Min muttered. “No, by God. Not for soup or
anything.”
Grandmother’s
knotted yarn stewed among the hearts in the pot. Not that the pot
had been placed over a fire, but the words of power she invoked,
drawn from the ancient language of the art, boiled among the organs
making them sizzle and pop with magical heat. She paced. The grove
filled not only with the scent of cooking meat, but with potential.
Her people, even Lala, stood well away. She’d used some clippings
of yarn to create wards to protect them, if such a meager spell
could do so against the larger.
When she deemed the
knots had spent enough time among the hearts, she lifted them from
the pot with a spoon, which Min also declared no longer suitable
for cooking, and transferred them into the bowl filled with Gubba’s
blood. Blood overflowed the brim, dribbling down the sides of the
bowl.
Grandmother spoke
softly and slowly as she swished the yarn in the blood with her
fingers, making sure it absorbed as much as possible. Soon the
blood started to boil.
She stepped back,
her fingertips dripping crimson. The spell was not as malevolent as
one for waking the dead, but she felt the shadows eating at her
soul. It was, after all, blood magic. The entire forest seemed to
lean in on her, eager for the spell to be loosed.
She licked her lips.
“Rise!” she commanded. A sphere arose from the bowl, dull and mud
colored, and hovered in the air. No blood dripped from it for it
had absorbed all of it.
“Awaken the
Sleepers,” she said, repeating the words in the ancient
tongue.
The sphere pulsed,
then darted through the grove, circling the trunks of the great
trees, trailing a subtle glow that settled into the bark. A keening
arose among the branches as they swayed in an unnatural wind, wood
splintering, shattering, cracking so loudly that Grandmother
thought it was her own mind that was breaking. She covered her
ears. Even the corpses nearby jerked and trembled with the force
she had unleashed.
Bark exploded,
peeled back. Ocher sap oozed in runnels. Enormous limbs fell around
her. Trees struck the earth like thunder, shuddering the
ground.
Then she saw them,
the figures pushing out of the rotten hearts of the vast trees,
wailing, hungry, angry, dark.
Grandmother smiled. The light that had once been the natural
essence of these Eletians had been extinguished by centuries
immersed in the evil of Blackveil.
They resembled
Eletians except for the dark that shone through them. They were
like wraiths, thin and feral, rags that had once been the finery of
Argenthyne flowing from their limbs.
She felt their
hunger and their interest in her and her people. She pointed at the
corpses and pot of hearts. “Feed,” she commanded in the ancient
tongue.
The Eletians swarmed
the meat, but there would never be enough. She could not count how
many she’d awakened—a hundred? Two hundred? Three?
They stripped the
corpses to the bone and she knew she had to redirect them before
they turned to her and her people for more
nourishment.
“Go to the castle,”
she ordered them. “There are more you may feed on
there.”
They would, she
knew, find the last of Gubba’s band stubbornly trying to knock down
the castle doors. Where the groundmites could not gain entry, the
Sleepers would. Dark or not, they knew the castle and its workings.
The Sleepers would take care of the problem of the others. The rest
was up to God. Grandmother had accomplished what she set out to do:
the Sleepers were awake.
She took in the
devastation around her, the roiling fog where once great trees
stood. She could not believe she had survived that, but when she
reached her people, she discovered that Sarat and Deglin had not.
They’d been crushed by a tree limb that narrowly missed the
others.
God’s work required
sacrifices, she thought, and He had received them.