The Pagan Night (55 page)

The demon paused, head tilted like a curious dog as it regarded the vow knight at its feet. When it spoke, its voice—a grim parody of Allaister’s voice—was as dull and hard as a tombstone.

“Precious Elsa. Far from home, aren’t you? What will you say to the high inquisitor when he finds you defending a pagan hallow?”

“What will you say when he finds you summoning gheists and binding them to your flesh?” she asked. “It seems to me you have sufficient heresy to answer for!”

“Oh, Sacombre and I have an understanding. A deep understanding, in fact. And you’re right not to worry about answering to Lord Cinder,” the shadow priest said. “I am all the judge you’ll be given.” He stepped forward and almost lazily brought his fist down on Elsa’s head.

She sidestepped and deflected the strike so that it buried itself deep into the unyielding earth. Though it appeared to be water, the gheist’s form was solid enough. Mist sprang up from the hijacked god’s wounded arm, a tiny storm that resolved into a vortex of lightning. Sparks arced from the damage, stitching the earth in ash.

“Great gods, but you’re a heavy blow,” Elsa muttered.

“The river has its own storms, daughter of suns. You will feel their wrath.”

The gheist withdrew the limb and swung again, scything through the air like a reaper. Elsa blocked again, and again, each blow shivering through her bones, pushing her back, her feet sliding on stone and mud as though it was ice. She was forced to draw more and more from her vows, pulling Strife’s power out of the sun and through her blood, just to keep moving, just to keep fighting, but the pain of the invocation was taking its own toll. The heat from her body crisped the fallen leaves at her feet and withered the living trees behind her. Even the body of the god began to boil. Light the color of molten gold pulsed from her eyes and veins.

“How long can you burn, child?” the gheist taunted.

“Long enough to end you!” Elsa answered, even as she coughed blood and ash. She tried to press the attack, but the demon’s defenses were too much. She fell against a tree. The bark sizzled beneath her shoulder.

“You would break yourself to save the gods you curse? How have you fallen so far, daughter of suns? Is this what they taught you at the Lightfort?”

“They taught me to kill mad gods, and you qualify,” Elsa said. She slid to the side, whipping her sword beneath the demon’s arcing attack and into the writhing flesh of its arm. The wound was closing even before the steel had left it. Elsa spat and crawled back. “Though you’re a little more conversational than most.”

“I would never claim to be a god, Sir LaFey. Though I am a binder of gods, certainly. A master of the fallen. The first in a new priesthood.” Though his eyes were closed and his body seemingly unresponsive, Allaister smiled. “I like the sound of that.”

“The first in a new heresy,” Elsa said. She was grateful for the rest, but at the same time the divinity burning through her blood wouldn’t last much longer. “The last, as well, if Strife has a say.”

“We are in a pagan place, among pagan gods,” he replied. “The bright lady is far away. She cannot save you, Elsa.”

“I don’t need saving,” she spat, drawing herself up to her full height, the radiant power of the goddess washing off her armor.

“We will see,” the demon answered, then he took up the attack once again. His pummeling fists tore through trees and earth like wet rags. “Pray you live long enough to see the error of your faith. Pray you survive to see the wonders we have wrought. Pray you are blessed with our wisdom, and our knowledge, and our power.”

“Pray you shut the fuck up,” Elsa said, then threw herself at her opponent. Faster than the hulking god, she was able to gain momentary ground, blade flashing like lightning forged from the sun, her face twisted in a rictus of effort and concentration. The spirit that held Allaister at its heart reacted with a mortal’s defense, fighting like a priest, trying to keep fists against blade, careful of its body, falling back as Sir LaFey pressed the attack.

And then the god seemed to remember that it was a god, and Elsa only a fool with a death wish. It slammed its whole form into her, cascading like a waterfall, surrendering the pretense of human form, becoming an arc of thunderous water. The blow knocked her sword from her grip, blistering the flesh along her palms. She fell to the ground, breath torn from her lungs and blood full of fire.

The gheist loomed over her and laughed, a sound like hail on stone. When Elsa looked up, her mouth gaping like a fish out of water, she could see the slightest sliver of Allaister’s eyes, barely open.

“There will be little left of your prayers soon enough, Sir LaFey,” the gheist chuckled. “It’s been a good game.”

* * *

“How do you know her name?” Frair Lucas asked. He appeared at the edge of the trees. The gheist turned to him.

“A daughter of suns, and elder son of moons,” Allaister said. “The old war can begin, can it? Will you finish her while I watch, or do we have a debt to settle?”

“You
don’t
know her name,” Lucas said. “Frair Allaister does, but you don’t. Which means there’s more of him than you.”

“Not for long,” the gheist said, then it turned back to Elsa. “If you won’t help, then you must watch her end.” It raised its fists in the air, ready to strike the life from the vow knight’s flesh.

“No,” Lucas said, shaking his head. There was a glimmer of darkness in Elsa’s eyes, the glowing veins of her face twisting into shadow, and then her body came undone like a knot, blood and bone turning into mist, a skein of darkness that snapped toward Lucas’s upturned hand like a falcon called to roost.

The shadows dripped and reformed like wax from a candle, and then Elsa was standing beside the frair, moved by shadow magic and Lucas’s will. She bent forward and vomited bile and sparks.

“I fucking hate that,” she said.

“You would hate dying more,” Lucas said softly. “Go find the child. I will deal with this one.”

“It doesn’t cut proper,” Elsa warned.

“I am not the cutting kind,” Lucas said. He gestured toward the depths of the forest. “Fly. Gwen will need you before this is done.”

“My place is with you.”

“Your vow is to the goddess, and Lady Strife needs you alive. There are more important things to do than die bravely. Now go, before I get angry and force the issue.”

Elsa grimaced. Her sword still lay by the gheist’s feet, and there was no retrieving it now. She limped into the forest, then stumbled, then broke into a run, bolstered by the glowing remnants of Strife’s blessing. The trees trembled at her passing, holiness stinging the air, her falling sun damaging the sanctity of the pagan night.

When she was gone, Lucas turned back to the gheist. The creature started lumbering toward him.

“You do not show your fear, son of moons,” the demon rumbled.

“Neither do you, gheist.”

“What do I fear from mortal blood, no matter how tainted it is by the ashen god?” the gheist asked. “Do you know the god you face? The futility of winter standing against spring?”

“No,” Lucas said. “Do you?”

The two fell together, and the world bent around them.

E
LSA FOUND THE
girl among the wreckage of her hidden hallow, crouching between the cairns of the dead wardens. As she approached, the huntress made as if to bolt, but settled when she saw the vow knight.

The sky was turning into thin pewter, a precursor to dawn.

The night can’t be done already
, Elsa thought.

“I thought you were dead,” Gwen said as she approached.

“Disappointed?”

“No. Just surprised.” She twisted herself around into a seated position and looked at Elsa. “Allaister still lives—I can feel his corruption in the air—and you’re here. I thought you would fight until he was dead, or you were.”

“Frair Lucas stepped in. He sent me to find you.”

“Where’s your sword?”

“Lost. What are you doing?”

“Preparing,” Gwen said, then turned back to the nearest cairn. Elsa came around the edge to watch. With a pin dipped in her own blood, Gwen was scrawling a rune across the stone. The knight looked around and saw that each cairn had a similar rune hidden somewhere on its surface.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Saying goodbye,” Gwen answered, “and giving them a quicker path into the everealm. If Allaister gets past your frair, I hesitate to think what he might do to these dead.” She leaned back to examine her work, then stood. “I would spare them that horror.”

“We should be gathering our strength,” Elsa said grimly. “Frair Lucas is paying a heavy price. If we have the ability to save him, we should be about it.”

“There is no further defense,” Gwen said quietly. “Allaister has crushed the last of the wards, and our only hope of survival is an old inquisitor and a vow knight without a sword. Even if we win,” she added, “the best I can hope for is a trial for heresy.”

“It’s better than dying,” Elsa said quietly.

“If you insist.”

They fell silent, and the sounds of battle wrenched the air below like thunder in a gorge. Gwen went to the last cairn, drew a line of blood from her palm, then set to work on one of the stones. When she was finished, she stood. Elsa took her by the shoulder and looked her in the eye.

“So you’re going to give up?” Elsa asked.

“No,” Gwen answered. “I just have a peculiar way of fighting.”

“Peculiar indeed. What are you waiting for?”

Again Gwen didn’t answer, so Elsa stared up at the sky.

“How is the sun already rising?” she asked.

“Be glad for it,” Gwen answered. “Perhaps Strife’s ascent will give you the power you need to die with glory.”

“That chance has passed,” Elsa said. “Besides, I think I’m—”

Gwen grabbed her by the shoulder and dragged her down so that the grass closed over them. Elsa struggled, but Gwen put her lips to the vow knight’s ear.

“Quiet,” she hissed. “There is something among the trees.”

They lay still and listened. Something shuffled past, twenty yards distant, voices speaking in hushed tones. When they were gone, Gwen crouched in the grass and looked around.

Four priests of the winter court were working their way onto the top of the hill in the center of the hallow. They were chanting now, some sort of incantation, the shadows of naetheric icons floating around their heads.

“They’re looking for the entrance to the shrine,” Gwen whispered.

“I still marvel that Allaister was able to corrupt so many of the faithful with his heresy,” Elsa whispered.

“You’re lying next to a pagan, sir knight. So you may not be in a position to judge.” Gwen eased herself into a kneeling position, staring intently in the direction the priests had gone. When they didn’t reappear, she motioned with one hand. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“If they mean to find the entrance, I mean to beat them to it.”

Gwen scampered down into the woods as quietly as she could manage. Elsa cast a glance up the hill at the trio of priests, then followed suit. When they reached the trees, Gwen slipped off at a run, circling around and climbing the hill to the east until she came to a stone pillar, nestled into the slope as though the earth had washed up to bury its base. Elsa clambered up a few minutes later.

The sounds of the battle could still be heard, even at this distance.

The pillar was gray and soft, the edges worn smooth by erosion. The base was ringed by inscriptions in some forgotten or forbidden language, the letters disappearing when they came to the loam. Elsa knelt beside it, running fingers over the carvings. Gwen stood beside her, staring first at the pillar and then to the east, squinting into the rising sun.

“This is the entrance?” Elsa asked.

“One of them, yes. The one the priests are looking for,” Gwen said. Then she crouched down. “They’ll find it, eventually.”

“Then we’ll defend it,” Elsa said. “You have a knife. I have the sun.”

“And what of Frair Allaister? If he’s strong enough to bind the Glimmerglen, he’s certainly strong enough to destroy us.”

“Leave Allaister to Frair Lucas,” Elsa said, grimacing at the distant sounds of battle. She turned sharply to where Gwen knelt. “What now?”

Gwen didn’t answer. She tore some grass from the ground and rubbed it between her fingers, greening her skin. This she rubbed on her temples. Then she bent down and tore more grass, smearing more stain over her face.

“Why are you doing that?” Elsa asked.

“Because there’s one thing I
can
do, and it will help to have as much of this place on me as I can when I do it.”

Elsa plucked a strand of grass and held it up to the sun.

“It looks like grass to me. Do you mean to smear the everealm all over yourself?”

“No, the real world,” Gwen said. “Tener. Suhdra. All of Tenumbra. It would be better if I’d brought some soil from outside the hallow, but that’s not practical.”

“What do you intend to do?” Elsa asked.

Gwen hushed her and knelt. There was a rustling at the top of the hill—the priests had arrived. Concealed behind the pillar, they talked angrily among themselves, then one broke away and hurried down the hill toward them. Then he stopped.

Something else filled the air.

Silence.

There was one sharp, tearing shriek, and then nothing. All of them waited, Elsa and Gwen straining for the sound of Lucas’s voice. Nothing happened. The battle was over.

The closer priest laughed, a rolling, bitter sound that carried down the hill and into the trees. He shouted something back to his fellows, then continued toward the pillar.

Elsa gripped Gwen’s shoulders.

“What can you do?” she hissed.

“No time to explain. Watch,” Gwen whispered. “Stay here, and watch.” Then she turned to the pillar and pressed her cheek against the stone. The gritty rock pressed back, then it slid aside like sand. Gwen’s face, and then head and shoulders, and finally her entire body disappeared into the smooth, worn surface of the pillar.

Elsa watched, until the stone was smooth and quiet again, and there was nothing to be seen of the huntress of Adair.