SWNOVELS Den of Blades and Briars: Chapter 44
We rested whenever we guessed two clock tolls had passed. We’d taken three rests, and I was not certain if I’d make it to another before begging the others to curl up in our underground trail and sleep.
Trolls had a talent of fashioning burrows that cut lengths off paths on foot. It was a steep decline. My legs ached from walking, like I might fall over at any moment, but Hodag was skilled at her craft.
When she burrowed, her claws extended, and her palms flattened like spades. The bulk of her arms tilled the earth without end, and a fine cloud of dust hovered in the air. Hodag stayed a fair distance ahead of us, while I sang to pale stones we’d found before we entered the tunnel. The song brightened them to a faint glow, like a dying candle.
Still, it gave us a bit of light.
We fashioned a sled from tree boughs and shredded scraps of Bo’s cloak. I took his tunic that hit me at my thighs, and Stieg found a pair of oversized trousers in one of the guards’ travel satchels.
I looked ridiculous, but it would have to do. We loaded the four sleeping warriors and dragged them behind us through Hodag’s tunnel. I ought to leave them, but guilt dug into my heart. I knew Bo and Rune. They were honorable and steady in their loyalty to the crown.
When I wanted to be cold and hardened, guilt was irritating.
“Pity, isn’t it?” Ari said when I confessed emotions were bothersome when there was a desire to be cruel and vengeful. “Those pesky feelings making us have compassion on others.”
He was talking a great deal now, laughing, poking fun, and I watched him with a touch of suspicion. I’d learned enough about the man to know he hid a great deal under wit and laughter. The occasional wince, the way he rubbed a hand across the space over one hip bone, left me curious if the fountain water was still a bother.
I reached a hand for him. “Ari—”
“We’re out.” Hodag appeared, face coated in a layer of dust.
My shoulders fell in a touch of relief.
Ari held out a hand and helped me out of the tunnel, then went to aid Stieg and Frey with the sleeping guards.
Night had long ago fallen. A few lanterns cast haunting light on the dark tents, and there were a dozen guards marching in pairs in front of Bracken’s tent, but there was another who spoke with a fae girl in a white cap and a tray with a horn and black seed bread on top.
“Sofia!” I tried to whisper, but her name crackled out in a rough shout.
Sofia lifted her gaze after sending the servant girl inside the tent. A sly grin spread over her face and she hurried our way. She was dressed in her guard fatigues, a dagger on one hip, a seax on the other, then on her wrist were guarders where she had pinned two small knives.
“You’re here.” Sofia looked a little astonished at the sled with an unconscious Bo and Rune, but returned her smile to us. “A messenger from the Court of Blood sent word to Bracken of his treasonous mother, and that she’d taken you from this place. What a fool to go against her king. Where is Ast—”
“We must speak with Bracken,” I interrupted and gripped her upper arms.
Sofia’s eyes dropped to the glimmer of silver peeking out of the sleeve of the tunic. The blood feather had spread up my veins from my wrist to the crook of my elbow. The shape was in a constant motion, swirling in brilliant shapes and waves, like wings in the breeze. “Of course, follow me.”
Sofia gave orders to one of the guards to care for the sled and those sleeping atop it, then ushered the rest of us into Bracken’s tent.
Astrid did her son a disservice calling him weak. When Bracken’s glamour was not at its strongest, he was like the rest of his warriors, a layer of silver mail over his shoulders, blades sheathed to his waist, and the look of battle in his eyes.
He lifted his pale gaze the instant the flap pulled away.
“Ari.” With quick steps. the king crossed the tent and clasped Ari’s forearm. “I heard of my mother’s attempt to undermine my rule and sought you out immediately. Truth told, we ought to thank Sof.” He beamed at Sofia. “She was the one who heard the missive and insisted we come to your aid. You look terrible. There is something strange happening, my friends. Sit. Eat. Tell me your tale.”
Bracken gestured to the small table. There wasn’t much to eat, just the tray of bread and a small ewer of ale.
The king tipped a horn to his lips. “Tell me, where is my mother now?”
“Dead.” Ari didn’t hesitate. “I will mourn the fact that you lost a mother, King Bracken, but I cannot deny it was necessary.”
Bracken’s eyes were impossible to read. Shock, thrilled, I could not tell. He returned the horn to the table. “May she find the power she was seeking in the Otherworld.”
“The queen is truly dead?” Sofia asked.
“Yes.” I looked to her. “She attacked us, and we had no choice.”
Sofia dragged a long breath through her nose, eyes closed, then released it through her lips. She cracked her neck to one side and sighed, “Finally.”
Huldrafolk were lithe and swift, but Sofia moved with a new skill tonight. My mind tracked each one as if time were hardly moving at all. Sofia crossed the tent as she took out one of the knives from her wrist guarder. She reached the king’s table, and with a swift, downward strike, she rammed the point of the blade into Bracken’s neck.
The king wore a look of horror as he reached for his throat. Betrayal, fear. He staggered back, choking on his blood.
Ari had a sword pulled from his belt in an instant, aimed at Sofia. I screamed Bracken’s name and rushed for the king. Stieg and Frey surrounded me.
Bracken shuddered and fell back. I caught his head and lowered him to the ground. My palms covered the fountain of blood on his neck, but it was too much. A tear dripped from his eye. I tried to smile, I tried to comfort him.
He died with a look of terror still in his eyes.
“Do you know how long I’ve waited for that bitch to die and take her fire ropes to the hells?” Sofia chuckled, but it was rough and rocky. “Now, the whole imposter line is gone.”
“Drop the blade, Sofia,” Ari said, still stunned at the dead king.
She only sneered at him. “I must have words with you, Awakener.”
Sofia’s head jerked back. She screamed at the top of the tent, arms outstretched. From what seemed every pore on her body, ashen shadows billowed like fire smoke. A storm of darkness swirled around her until Sofia’s body dropped to the ground.
She writhed, blood on her lips, eyes wild in her skull. She gasped and spluttered cries for help. I could not think of her now, my eyes were on the fading shadows. In the center of the tent, darkness draped over broad shoulders, a trim waist, and long legs that could outpace me if I ran. His eyes were the shade of blue when the skin had been dead for a day or two, and his face was still frighteningly sharp.
Across the side of his neck and lower jaw were the angry, red scars left behind as a sign of his betrayal.
He dragged his fingers down his face. The length of his black fingernails had grown to sharp points.
With a long draw of air, Davorin grinned. “Hello, little raven. The moment is finally right to meet again.”
No thought. Only action. I leapt to my feet, Bracken’s blood still on my hands, but Davorin was swift. He had a hand curled around my throat the instant I tried to plead with the land to shield us.
Davorin dragged his nose along my throat and inhaled. “How I’ve missed you. The way you taste, the way you cried my name.” With a twisted grin, he looked to Ari. “I miss the way you break.”
Ari’s blade came down. Davorin released me to meet it.
“Ari, no!” I cried out, scooping earth. Frey and Stieg had joined in the battle, but even with only Sofia’s dagger, Davorin fought as he always did. With a skill unmatched. He was my brother’s battle lord for a purpose.
My voice croaked as I sang to the handful of weeds and petals and soil in my hands. Every imagining I could envision went into each word, each melody. I spread my hands and dropped the soil. From it, thorned vines sprouted and slithered between the footwork of Ari and his men, but coiled around Davorin’s legs.
He grunted, glaring at me.
Ari swung a controlled strike. The edge of the blade hit wrong on Davorin’s dagger, but drew blood on his shoulder.
He laughed. The bastard laughed, even as more vines sprouted from the ground, aimed at his wrists.
“Did you truly think it’d be so simple, my love? Still a brainless woman.” Davorin curled his fingers around one of the vines.
Ashy black veins flowed through the skin of the weeds under Frey’s feet. A moment later, Davorin was gone, but Frey’s eyes were not his own.
Frey lifted a blade to strike at Stieg.
“No!” Ari shoved Frey in the chest, knocking him back.
It was strange to hear such a cruel laugh coming from Frey’s throat. He was fierce, but enjoyed revelry as much as folk in the Court of Serpents. This was not him.
“Riot thought he could keep me bound. What a fool. You have grown stronger, little raven. But so have I, and there are no hearts I cannot take now. Give me the feather,” Frey said in a voice all wrong. He lifted a knife to his own throat. “And I will not kill your little guard.”
“Frey, fight!” Ari shouted. “He’s in there, right? He’s in there.”
“He’s in there,” I said, low and rough. “You have no claim to this land, Davorin.”
“Says a dead king.” Frey’s face pulled into a wretched grin. “You never wanted the burdens of a kingdom. I will see it rise.”
“I am not the same girl you knew long ago.” I opened my palms. The place where the feather glowed in my skin burned. Around Frey’s feet, the ground sprouted new blossoms with petals of shimmering gold.
The opposite of Davorin’s violence.
The open blooms pressed to Frey’s legs. He tried to stomp them down, but they grew again. They grew taller. They coiled around his shins, his knees.
Davorin roared his frustration. The gilded light left the blooms and faded into Frey’s arms, igniting his skin like molten gold. Frey’s head tilted back the same as Sofia’s, and Davorin was ejected from his heart.
Frey collapsed, breathless, but awake. He scrambled back, sweat on his brow. He tried to clutch the hilt of his sword, but it slipped from his trembling grip.
Davorin was on his knees, blood dripped from his nose. He dabbed it and glared at me. “Well, look at your tricks.”
Ari rushed to my side, his seax outstretched and stepped in front of me.
Davorin chuckled. “Ah, my raven’s great defender. You hesitate to strike me down.”
Ari narrowed his eyes. “I’m deciding where it will cause the most pain.”
“I think you are afraid.”
“I think you are a dead man walking.”
“What will it be, little raven,” Davorin said, turning his gaze to me. “What will it take for you to give up the claim?”
“You think I’d hand over the power of this land and watch you destroy it?”
“Destroy it? I will make our folk indestructible.” Davorin smiled viciously. “You think my sights are only on the isles? As I thought, you still see nothing. No vision. No strategy.”
“Fate has claimed the thrones in other lands. You are too late.”
“Fate? Fate has nothing to do with it. Who do you suppose was behind the blood and hatred in other lands? Who do you think brought violence and death to the ice peaks of the North? The pain and suffering in the East?”
My tongue felt heavy in my mouth. No. It couldn’t be possible.
“I have fought my way to this moment, little raven,” Davorin hissed. “For every war, I gained clarity, strength. Through war, I found you. I plan to finish what was started. Our power deserves to reign. Not these lesser folk.” He glared at Ari. “We were the people of fate. We were chosen to lead the realms. We will again.”
“Riot and Anneli were chosen. Not you,” I shouted. “Never you.”
“Does war not alter fate? I will have this land, and I will have the others.” Davorin stood, eyes black with hate. “Give me the feather! I shall take it if I must.”
“You could try.” I opened my palms. Ari held his sword, one of his hands open, no doubt a dozen illusions ran through his head.
“I think I will.” Davorin tilted his head, his expression locked in an unnerving calm when he looked to Ari. “Does she realize how weak the queen made you for my benefit? She might be dead, but her curse fades too slowly.”
“Keep talking, it will allow me a better aim at your tongue,” Ari said in a growl.
I looked to him. There was a sweat beading his brow, he hunched slightly, and he seemed to clutch his elbow against his side. I wrenched up his tunic. From his hip to his lower ribs was a festering wound.
“It is nothing.” He gently shoved my hands away.
“Oh is it?” Davorin bared his teeth. “She will never love you fully, never trust you in earnest. I have seen to that. And you are no longer needed.”
It happened swiftly. Too swiftly for anyone to stop it. Davorin slid his jagged fingernails into the wound on Ari’s side. A burst of darkness, like a thick mist mingled with Ari’s blood.
I screamed and caught Ari as Davorin pulled his bloody fingers away, licking them clean.
He chuckled. “It’s empowering to use old spells again. To poison hearts was always my most favored. It may very well be too late for him, I suppose we’ll find out with your next choice, my love.”
Ari’s wound sprouted dark veins, as if something was polluting the blood. Ari leaned over his knees, paler than before.
“Will you still want him when he cannot think for himself? Will you want him when he does nothing but search for the next body in which to sink his blade? His heart will stir with hatred, with the need to battle. I wonder if it will be you who meets an end at your lover’s hand?” Davorin opened his palm. “Give me the feather. I will blood vow with you now, that I will save him. Give me the feather.”
Ari stumbled to his knees. He lifted his eyes to me. Those amber eyes like honey and a touch of spring grass. Soon they’d be deadened like Bo’s had been. Soon he’d be a mindless servant to war and death.
“Go,” he whispered. “Go, Saga.”
I blinked through the tears and shook my head. I faced Davorin. “To give the feather, gives you the power of this land.”
Davorin sneered. “The power he needs to be healed.”
“To give the feather means I give you my heart.”
“You did once before.”
My throat tightened as Eryka’s voice filled my head, a memory of one of her moments of random prophecy: give the heart to the one deserving. Think twice, then greed and hate will soon drown the songs once lost.
“I did give you the feather once,” I whispered, “but you never deserved it.” My gaze drifted to Ari. He was pleading with me in those eyes, begging me not to do this. “It is a good thing I am not as stupid as I once was.”
I slammed one palm onto the soil and begged for time. All I needed was time.
From the soil, briar shrubs tangled like a spool of jagged yarn across the entire length of the tent. A thorny barrier between me and Davorin. He raged and chopped at the briars with the dagger. He tried to take hold of the soil as he’d done when he took Frey, but my glamour held firmly against it.
I laid Ari back. He winced. “Frey, Stieg. Hold him down.”
They didn’t hesitate. Ari cried out when I brushed my fingertips over the wound on his side.
“This will give us time, Ari.”
“Wh-What are you doing?”
“Giving you my heart.”
I covered the place where his long scar ran down his chest and a sharp burn filled my arm. Silver danced down my wrist, my fingertips. It shimmered and crawled over my knuckles and into Ari’s chest.
He cried out in pain and tried to sit up. I kept urging my power through my veins, kept urging it into him.
Ari gritted his teeth as a shape dug into his flesh; a silver print of feathers, and wings, and a raven’s head. As the tattoo formed, I pulled back my hand, and Stieg helped me slide Ari’s tunic over his head to offer relief to the skin. From his shoulder, across his chest, up the side of his neck, in the same scarred shape on Davorin’s neck, a raven in flight dug into his flesh.
Once the silver shimmer faded, black ink remained. A sprawling line tattoo of a raven, of the one who carried the heart of the raven heir, the one with equal claim to the power in the isles.
Beneath Ari’s body, the soil turned to plush grass with a few new blooms spreading over his arms, his wrists, as if the land embraced him. I looked to the infection Davorin caused. For now, the veins were slowing to a hardly noticeable crawl.
It wouldn’t last. We would need to reverse the spread of it somehow. The feather had power, but so did the corrupted battle lord.
Davorin had too much power restored to him. If he spoke true, if he’d fed off the battles across the sea, then he was feeding on the hate and lust for battle in the fae of the isles. He’d caused it. He’d stirred their hearts.
He’d been there at the longhouse when hatred latched onto the people. All this damn time, Davorin had been close, infecting our lives.
I gasped; my strength waned from the exertion of splitting my power as Davorin’s blade, at last, cut through the briars.
His eyes flashed in violence when he stared at the raven mark on Ari’s chest. “What have you done!”
His countenance shifted. Not like a man. His eyes were too dark, his face too sunken. Only a moment, but hatred revealed the monster within. He’d hack into Ari’s chest and dig the feather out.
With energy restored, Ari hurried to his feet. He opened his palm and filled the tent in what looked like a thousand mirrors. They surrounded Davorin. He roared and shattered glass plane after glass plane, searching for us, but lost to an illusion.
“Go,” Ari said, tugging on my arm.
“Sofia,” I said. “We can’t leave her.”
Sofia was still but breathing. She’d stopped writhing and slept. Perhaps she would not want to wake. My heart wrenched, and I offered a final look to the lifeless eyes of Bracken.
Sofia loved him.
She never told him.
Stieg scooped her slender body off the ground and hurried out of the tent. Hodag was still standing watch over her burrow when we bolted out.
“Hodag, take us to the Court of Blood. Make haste, our lives will depend on it!” Stieg shouted.
“Sweetling?” Hodag stared at Sofia in his arms.
“Hurry, woman,” Frey said. “And close off the damn end.”
Davorin roared from the tent. All around, the small unit of warriors from the Court of Hearts stirred. Their stun didn’t last long. Darkness spilled from the tent like poisonous ink. It took over the thick roots of the trees, it spoiled the plush blades of grass. It rolled through the soil like shadowy fingers, chasing us.
Guards stumbled. Once they touched the darkness, their eyes rolled back in their heads. Some convulsed, others screamed.
Davorin was coming, and he was poisoning everything.
We slid into the open mouth of Hodag’s tunnel and waited as she promptly sealed off her entrance with a cantrip spell. Troll folk were not incredibly mighty in stature, but underground their glamour was nearly impenetrable.
I closed my eyes when the murky spread of Davorin’s power slammed into the entrance of the tunnel. Hodag’s seal held, and a cloud of glamour gathered like a pool of dark syrup, then slid up the invisible shield until the shadows shaped into a man.
Once darkness faded, Davorin stood an arm’s length away, but was unable to touch us. His eyes narrowed, but his full mouth tugged into a wretched smile. “See you soon, little raven.”
“Gods, go,” Frey said, tugging on my elbow, leading us deeper into the tunnel.
Hodag spat at the mouth of her burrow, hissing at Davorin that only welcome folk would be granted entrance, then with the same speed as before, she dug us forward.
The distance was not as far to Hells Pass. Fear seemed to spur Hodag’s movements. She brought us to the surface at the mouth of the canyon that would lead us through to the Court of Blood. It was steep and concealed, and it would take us from Davorin’s reach the swiftest.
The further we went, the more my strength returned. I sang barriers into shape, ones that would know to guard against the dark glamour of Davorin. Tall walls of fallen stones, heavy logs toppling from the cliffsides, mazes of vines and thick roots.
By the time the sun peaked over the ridge, my body ached, my glamour was nearly spent again, and Ari had started to lean against me.
“Look!” Stieg said, voice hoarse. He pointed ahead.
A heap of wings and dark clothing lay gasping in the middle of two boulders.
Rune held up a trembling hand and tried to stand. Frey, with caution, reached under his arm to help him, then leveled a sword at Rune’s throat.
“Did you bring him after us?” I said, tightening my hold around Ari’s waist.
“No.” Rune swallowed like he had not had a drink for days. “I . . . my mind is clearer. I am not disloyal, Saga, but there is a power that clung to us.”
“Where is Bo?”
Rune’s face pinched in pain. “He is still lost.” One of his iridescent wings twitched, and Rune revealed a deep gash over his hip. “I tried to get him to see the truth.”
“How were you taken?” Frey said, voice low. “How did it infect you and not us?”
“He poisoned our loyalty to our kingdom. Those who bleed fiercest for the isles were impacted by the death of Signe, mostly warriors, or those in the Court of Hearts. It opened our hearts to the wild plague.”
“We all value the isles, try again,” Stieg grumbled.
“But your true loyalty is with Etta.”
“Saga was bound to serve the isles,” Ari said, voice weak. “She was untouched.”
Rune cleared his throat. “But was her heart loyal to the isles . . . or you, Ambassador?”
Ari had the audacity to grin even if he was slowly dying.
“Ah, I like that.” He beamed at me. “I like that a great deal. I filled your heart so fiercely an ancient power of your former lover could not steal you away.”
“I’m going to bind your mouth,” I grumbled.
His hand brushed along the back of my neck, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “How are you here, Rune? Has your loyalty shifted?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “The more you spoke to me in the peaks, the more my mind seemed to crack. The more I feared for the isles. Then, seeing Bracken . . . dead, it broke entirely.”
Stieg narrowed his eyes. “Why should we trust you?”
“Bind me.” Rune held out his hands. “I swear to you . . . Bracken was more than my king, he was my friend. I am not loyal to the monster who slaughtered him. You know, Saga, you know I was not loyal to Astrid, not even when she was High Queen. I stood with Bracken. I would’ve stood with him if my mind had been my own.”
There were times I hated having a heart. I was bitter and angry and frightened the man I loved would die because we’d been left to battle a dark creature alone.
“I believe him,” Ari whispered before I could admit it myself. He glanced down to the soil. A glimmer of starlight seemed to brighten beneath his feet. “I must tell you, it is rather strange how it speaks to me.”
I smiled. The language of the land was his as much as it was mine.
We agreed Rune would join us, bound for now, and under the watch of Stieg and Frey. He didn’t protest.
“All I ask,” he said as we trudged forward, “is to try to save Bo without killing him.”
“We will unless he tries to kill us,” I said with a touch of darkness. “Then, I make no promises.”
Fifty paces away, a line of darkly clad warriors stood in a line. They wore masks over their faces, long spears made of bone were in their grip, and their bodies were covered in leathers and guarders as if they readied to defend against a mighty enemy.
Between them all was Gorm and Gunnar Strom.
The Court of Blood had found us.