*

Orisian’s horse baulked at the steep, rocky slope plunging down into the huge gully. He did not blame it. The hillside fell away, swooping down into a wide band of trees that curved west like a broad, dark river. Looking on it from above, it was impossible to see the stream that had cut this valley, only the tangled, leafless canopy of the countless trees that clustered about its course. Orisian leapt to the ground and led his horse over to Ess’yr. The Kyrinin was crouched down, running a hand over the short, snow-speckled turf. “You’re certain?” he asked her. She nodded towards the wooded ravine. “She descended.” “And the others?” “Still follow, or pursue. Perhaps by sight, more likely by track. Six or seven. We are very close behind.” Orisian hissed in frustration and beckoned the nearest warrior. He pushed his reins into the man’s hands. “Two of you watch over the horses here. The rest of us’ll go down on foot.” He saw the briefest flicker of reluctance on one or two faces, but none of the nine men hesitated. Torcaill was gone, bearing Orisian’s hopes and fears for Anyara into the south. It left Orisian reliant upon the instinctive loyalty of these men and whatever leadership or authority he could muster himself. So far, those bonds had held firm. They dismounted and clustered about him. Eshenna and Yvane were slower, struggling stiffly down from the back of the horse they shared. Yvane glowered ominously at the animal as she walked away from it. “You’d best call your brother back,” Orisian said to Ess’yr. Varryn was some way along the lip of the gully. As they looked towards him, he stretched out his spear, pointing down towards the woodland. Ess’yr narrowed her eyes, and then closed them for a moment or two. “They are there,” she murmured as she rose. “Not far. They move quickly, make much noise.” “They might have seen us already,” said Orisian, imagining how starkly silhouetted his company must be against the dull white clouds. Ess’yr sniffed. “Perhaps. Most likely not. They hunt; look ahead, not behind.” “Let’s go, then,” Orisian said. They scrambled down, slipping and stumbling as they went, and the woods embraced them. The floor of the vale was flat, but the vegetation was so dense and tangled that it was impossible for any save Ess’yr and Varryn to move either quietly or easily. The two Kyrinin rushed ahead, one on either flank. Orisian led the rest through the thickets, trusting Ess’yr to give warning of any ambush. Had those pursuing K’rina been White Owls, he might have felt more caution, but both Ess’yr and Varryn were certain that the booted feet they tracked in the na’kyrim’s wake belonged to mere Huanin. Yvane was labouring along close by. “They might not harm her,” Orisian said to her as they ran. “They might only want to find her, as the White Owls did before.” “Maybe,” she gasped. “If they know her. But she’s empty—gone—so Aeglyss cannot sense her, cannot guide anyone to her. Chances are, they have no idea who she is. Just crossed her trail by accident. If they reach her first, it won’t go well.” The effort of speaking was too much for her, and she fell behind him. Orisian surged onwards, battering his way through trailing ivy and snagging, thorned stems. Panic clamoured within him, but he denied it. To lose K’rina now would be unthinkable. It would leave him—all of them—utterly lost. He would not surrender to that outcome yet. There was no snow down here beneath the woodland’s roof, but the ground was wet and studded with exposed rocks. A warrior coming up alongside Orisian, then moving ahead of him, went down with a gasp as his leading foot skidded away. A shrill scream came from up ahead, piercing through the rumble of running feet and panted breaths. Orisian stumbled at the sound of it, slowed and unbalanced by a crippling fear for Ess’yr. But even as the grating cry was cut off, he recognised that it had not been born of a Kyrinin throat. The ground shook. No, not the ground. The thin grass, the mat of dead leaves strewn through it, the low bare shrubs: they stirred. A spreading web of disturbance went across the woodland floor like the waves fleeing a stone dropped into water. The thinnest twigs in the canopy trembled, a palsy running through the outermost extremity of every tree. Orisian discovered the flavour of loam and leaf and wood in his mouth and nostrils, cloying, almost overpowering. He staggered from a run into a walk, looking this way and that. “What is it?” he shouted over his shoulder to Yvane, already guessing the answer. “Anain,” she rasped from some way behind him. There was a roaring in the branches overhead, as if storm winds blew through them, but the air was still, the clouds glimpsed beyond, flat and unmoving. Orisian looked to his left. His warriors were rushing on past him. As one darted by, and then another, Orisian glimpsed beyond them a subtler movement. Out in the dim depths of the woodland, there was change: a blunt, misshapen form that drew itself together for a moment out of trailing creepers and twisting briars, like a half-formed idea in clay beneath the hands of a potter. A knot of stems turned as he watched, and he had the potent, brief sense of being observed. Then a flashing, green blushing of fresh leaf burst forth, and the stems and branches fell apart, and with a rattle of wood something went racing away ahead of them, leaving a trail of impossible greenery breaking out from every bough in its wake.

*

“Wait.” Aeglyss lifted a single hooked finger. His cracked tongue flicked over his lips. “I… hear. Movement. Movement. I catch the scent of…” His head tipped back. A long sibilant hiss escaped him. “Ah. See? The great beasts come out to play. They don’t fear me enough yet, then. Not yet.” His eyes went glassy, their bloodshot grey overlaid with a wet film. A string of saliva ran from the corner of his mouth. There was the faintest whisper from his lips before they went slack: “We’ll see, then. We’ll see what I’ve become.” “What’s happening to him?” whispered the man crouching down beside Shraeve. Aeglyss swayed, and for a moment might have overbalanced and tumbled from the bench. He steadied, and sat there, sunken down onto his bones. His eyes closed. “He reaches out,” the Inkallim said flatly. There was a clearing of sorts, and at its furthest edge lay K’rina, curled into a little hollow between the roots of a great tree. One hand was clasped to her shoulder; blood spread across the skin. The spear that had wounded her lay by her side. There were bodies scattered across the grass: warriors of the Black Road. Some had Kyrinin arrows in them. One of Orisian’s own men was going from one to another, ensuring that they were dead. To one side, Ess’yr and Varryn stood motionless, staring at the scene before them. For once, their blue-lined faces betrayed powerful emotion: awestruck fear. All of this Orisian saw as soon as he stepped into the pool of cold light falling through the gap in the canopy. None of it held his attention, for he saw the same wonders as the Kyrinin, and was similarly awed by them. Beneath his feet, and spreading out in every direction, lush green grass covered the ground, and he could smell its newness and the earth it had broken in bursting forth. Every tree wore a verdant cloak of leaves, every fern had unfurled bright new, fragile fronds. The scattered clumps of moss all but glowed with the vigour of fresh spring growth. Life, in delirious, impossible abundance, had come to this place. And death, too. One of the men lying in the centre of the clearing was all but obscured by the mat of long, binding grass that had overgrown him, and by the coil of briars that had engulfed his head, tearing the skin away from his face, pushing down into his mouth, his throat, so violently that his jaw was forced unnaturally wide, his lips shredded. Looming over K’rina’s huddled form was a Black Road warrior, a woman, who stood erect not by the strength of her own legs but by the two lances of wood that impaled her, one through her stomach, another through her neck. Her dead eyes were wide with shock, her mouth gaping. The tree beneath which K’rina now lay had reached out those unnatural, spiralling spars from the mass of its trunk and punched them through the Black Roader. As it had done to another, a man, who lay on the other side of the na’kyrim. A spear of a branch—too smooth and formed to be a true branch—had come out from the tree’s bole, and arced down and punched into the notch between shoulder and neck, transfixing the man, collapsing him down into a broken heap, erupting from his groin and pinning him into the soft, damp soil. Orisian took a couple of stunned paces forward, fearing to tread upon the luxuriant growth that should not exist yet did. A similar unease afflicted his warriors, for they moved cautiously and hesitantly, afraid to disturb whatever fell power had worked this transformation. Orisian felt Yvane at his shoulder. She was breathing heavily. “Can you still feel it?” he asked her. “The Anain?” “Yes,” she said. “It came to save K’rina?” Orisian whispered, half-questioning, half-marvelling. “He’s here,” wailed Eshenna behind them. Yvane slumped against Orisian, one hand pressed to her temple, the other clawing at his shoulder for support. He dropped his sword and struggled to hold her up. The trees shook. They creaked and groaned. A painful beat throbbed in Orisian’s skull, each pulse tugging at the corner of his eye, sending a hot tingle through his scalp. “He’ll see us,” Eshenna moaned. “He’ll see us.” “Yvane…” Orisian murmured. Her legs had gone loose beneath her. She slipped down his flank onto her knees. “Aeglyss is here,” she whispered. “He’s here. Gods, he’s…” A spasm seized her, and she vomited across Orisian’s feet. He made to kneel down beside her, to put a protective arm about her hunched shoulders, but sudden sound distracted him. A harsh, fast rattle like breaking ice. A thousand splintering cracks rushed through the boughs; deeper ruptures rang in the bellies of the great trees; a mist of wood dust and fragments of bark filled the air. Rustling filled the undergrowth, as if an invisible army of mice was suddenly on the move. Before Orisian’s eyes, a wave of death swept through the woods. He watched the grass that had so recently flushed green now die and wither into countless brittle, brown curls. Leaves that had burst out, bright and fresh, only moments ago abruptly rusted and fell. Branches broke. Splits ran noisily up tree trunks. Saplings bowed and shrank. Out, out into the undergrowth ran tendrils of destruction, cutting grey pathways through the woodland. Every bush or tree they touched, every blade of grass or clump of fern, died in the blinking of an eye. Eshenna was groaning. Orisian turned to her, and saw her fall to her hands and knees, then roll onto her back. He breathed, and felt the dry grit of dead vegetation in his throat. It filled the air, like the frailest veil of smoke. He coughed, and spat to clear his mouth. Silence descended. A stillness, like the space between two heartbeats. Ess’yr was kneeling. She reached for the sear, dead grass before her, and it fell apart in her hand. Her brother stood beside her, his face now unreadable. But his chest, Orisian saw, rose and fell. Rapid, alarmed breaths fluttered in and out of the Kyrinin warrior. He stared, unblinking, at the great tree, now dead, beneath which K’rina lay. “He killed it,” Yvane said. “Impossible. Impossible. He’s killed one of the Anain.” “Is he gone?” Orisian bent and shook Yvane, made rough by his fear. “Is he still here, in you or Eshenna? Did he see you?” She was limp and unresisting in his grasp. “No, no. He’s gone. It wasn’t us… He didn’t… He came for the Anain. It… it rose too close to the surface. He felt its presence, and he hunted it. He wasn’t looking for anything else.” “He didn’t find K’rina?” Yvane shook her head. “Nothing to find. There’s nothing left of her. He cannot feel her any more than I can.” Orisian released her and straightened. Eshenna lay unconscious on the pale carpet of dead moss and grass. The blight stretched out in all directions. Beyond its bounds, Orisian could just see stands of trees that still lived. Closer to hand, there was only the skeleton of a forest: greys and sickly browns, everything withered, everything bare and angular and bleak. Where the bark had fallen away from tree trunks, it revealed dry, flaking wood that held not the faintest memory of life. Orisian walked towards K’rina. His feet crunched across dead stalks and fallen twigs. As he drew near, the two limbs that had impaled the Black Road woman cracked and crumbled, falling away into brittle fragments of dead wood. The corpse thumped to the ground.