The vines on the burial mound began to stir.
“Thorun!” Skragdal scrabbled at the flask with his free hand, tugging and grunting. This was not a thing that could be happening. His talons broke and bled as he wedged them beneath the flask’s smooth surface. “Blågen, lads … help me!”
They came, all of them; obedient to his order, crowding round, struggling to shift the flask from his palm, struggling to lift him. Fjel faces, familiar and worried. And around them the vines crawled like a nest of green serpents. Tendrils grew at an impossible rate; entwining an ankle here, snaring a wrist there. Fjel drew their axes, cursing and slashing. Skragdal, forced to crouch, felt vines encircle his broad torso and begin to squeeze, until the air was tight in his lungs. Snaking lines of green threatened to obscure his vision. No matter how swiftly his comrades hacked, the vines were faster.
He turned his head with difficulty. There was the smallfolk boy, the stricken look in his eyes giving way to fierce determination. His lips continued to move, shaping words, and he held both hands before him, cupped and open. Odd lines in his palms met to form a radiant star where they met.
It seemed the Bearer was not so harmless as he looked after all.
“Forget me.” Unable to catch his voice, Skragdal hissed the words through his constricted throat. “Kill the boy!”
They tried.
They were Fjel; they obeyed his orders. But there were the vines. The entire burial mound seethed with them, creeping and entangling. And there was the older of the smallfolk, finding his courage. He had caught up a cudgel one of the Nåltannen had dropped, and he laid about him, shouting. If not for the vines, Skragdal’s lads would have dropped him where he stood; but there were the vines, surging all about them in green waves.
It wasn’t right, not right at all. This place marked the Fjel dead. It was a terrible and sacred place. But the Water of Life was older than the Battle of Neherinach. That which was drawn from the Well of the World held no loyalties.
Skragdal, pinned and entwined, watched it happen.
There was Thorun, who had never forgiven himself his error on the plains of Curonan where he had slain his companion Bogvar. Green vines stopped his mouth, engulfing him, until he was gone. No more guilt for him. There were the Nåltannen, casting aside their axes to slash with steel talons, filled with the fury of instinctive terror, the rising reek of their fear warring with the Water’s scent. But for every severed vine that dropped, two more took its place, bearing the Nåltannen down, taking them into the earth and stilling their struggles. The largest burial mound on the field of Neherinach grew larger, and its vines fed upon the dead.
There were the Kaldjager, disbelieving. Nothing could stand against the Cold Hunters. Yellow-eyed and disdainful, they glanced sidelong at the creeping tide of vines and shook their hands and kicked their feet, contemptuous of the green shackles, certain they would wrest themselves free.
They were wrong.
It claimed them, as it had claimed the others.
Skragdal wished the vines had taken him first. It should have been so. Instead, they left him for the end. Neherinach grew quiet. He was crouching, enshrouded; a statue in green, one hand pinned to the earth. It ached under the terrible weight. He panted for air, his breath whistled in his constricted lungs. A wreath of vine encircled his head. The loose end of it continued to grow, wavering sinuously before his eyes. Pale tendrils deepened to green, putting out leaves. Flowers blossomed, delicate and blue. It would kill him soon.
A hand penetrated the foliage, thin and dark. Skragdal, rolling his eyes beneath the heavy ridge of his brow, met the smallfolk’s gaze. He wished, now, he had answered the boy’s question.
“I’m sorry,” the boy whispered. “You shouldn’t have killed my people.”
His hand, quick and darting, seized the flask, plucking it from Skragdal’s palm. He lifted it effortlessly and shook it. A little Water was left, very little. He found the cork and stoppered it.
Then he was gone and there was only the vine.
It struck hard and fast, penetrating Skragdal’s panting jaws. He gnashed and spat at the foliage, clawing at it with his freed hand, but vines wound around his arm, rendering it immobile as the rest of his limbs. In his mouth, vine proliferated, still growing, clogging his jaws. A tendril snaked down his throat, then another. There was no more air to breathe, not even to choke. Everything was green, and the green was fading to blackness. The entangling vines drew him down toward the burial mound.
In his last moments, Skragdal thought about Lord Satoris, who had given the Fjel the gift of pride. Did Neheris-of-the-Leaping-Waters not Shape her Children well? This I tell you, for I know: One day Men will covet your gifts.
He wondered if the boy would have understood. Dying, Skragdal lived in the moment of his death and wondered what the day would be like when Men came to covet the gifts of the Fjel. He wondered if there would be Fjel left in the world to see it.
With his dying pulse thudding in his ears, he hoped his Lordship would know how deeply it grieved Skragdal to fail him. He wondered what he had done wrong, where he had gone astray. He smelled the reek of fear seeping from his vine-cocooned hide and thought of the words of a Fjel prayer, counting them like coins in his mind. Words, precious and valued.
Mother of us all, wash away my fear.
Dying, he wondered if it was true that Neheris-of-the-Leaping-Waters would forgive the Fjel for taking Lord Satoris’ part in the Shapers’ War, if she would understand that Satoris alone upon the face of Urulat had loved her Children, whom she had Shaped with such care, tuning them to this place where she was born; to stone and river and tree, the fierce, combative joy of the hunt. The clean slash of talons, the quick kill and hot blood spilling. The warm comfort of a well-worn den with a tender, cunning mate and sprawling pups upon the floor, playing at carving rhios. All those things that he had been Shaped to be, all those things that were no longer his to know.
As the slow throb of his strong heart ceased, he hoped so.
Skragdal of the Tungskulder Fjel was no more.
TEN
Tanaros checked the Vesdarlig Passage last. Of all the tunnels, it concerned him the most. There were others, farther south, that would be more accessible to Haomane’s Allies, but they were well-kept secrets. The Vesdarlig Passage was an old route, and the Staccians had known of it for many years. Once, that would not have worried him.
No longer.
Patient Gulnagel held torches aloft for him. He had sent Vorax and his Staccians home, keeping only the Fjel to aid him. This deep below the earth, the torches cast wide pools of light, flickeringly only slightly as the draft from the ventilation shafts stirred the dense air. Tanaros examined the pile of rocks and boulders that sealed the tunnel.
It appeared sound. There were boulders there that only a Fjel could move unaided. If he was certain of nothing else, he was certain of their loyalty. With the butt-end of a borrowed spear, he poked at the mound, wedging it in various crevices and shoving hard. A few pebbles skittered to the cavern floor, but he met nothing behind the rock save more rock.
“How deep is it piled?” he asked Krolgun.
The torchlight wavered at the answering shrug. “Fifty paces?” The Gulnagel grinned. “Real paces, boss, not smallfolk strides like yours.”
Tanaros smiled, gauging the distance in his head. It should be well over fifty yards; farther, if Krolgun meant a Gulnagel’s bounding stride. If Haomane’s Allies wanted to cart fifty yards’ worth of stone out of the tunnels, they were welcome to try. Without Fjel aid, it would take weeks, perhaps months. He would enjoy sending out sorties to pick them off meanwhile.