After what seemed an eternity, the violence of the storm abated, and the darkness began to give way to an eerie grey world of mist and shadow. As yet, however, the light was too faint to be any of practical use for travelling, but Kelon could see that the forest floor was a quagmire covered with broken foliage and fallen boughs: the debris of the savage gale’s destruction. Water dripped from the trees overhead, and he shivered in the dismal damp. Though the wind and rain had faded away, there was not the slightest hope of lighting a fire, so he finally succumbed to his hunger and wolfed some bread, meat and cheese from the saddlebags, in the hope that the food might give him more energy to stay warm.
When he looked up again from his meal, Kelon was sure he must have dozed, and dreamed. A globe of crimson radiance hung before his face, dazzling him after the dismal gloom of dawn. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes, but the strange vision remained. He stretched out a hand to it and felt a gentle heat, but it glided away from his touch, remaining tantalisingly just out of reach. Drawn by the cheerful glow and the hope of some much-needed warmth, he took a step or two after it, but it slipped away from him again, retreating whenever he moved towards it, yet remaining motionless, just as if it were waiting, whenever he stood still.
This was not Phaerie magic - but it was some sort of enchantment, of that he was certain. It did not feel evil. Glowing there so bright and warm and cheerful, it felt beneficent to Kelon. Half-dazed from cold and lack of sleep, craving the comfort that it brought, he followed it along a narrow track that was no more than a game trail, as though he were in a trance.
So when he stumbled across the body of the horse, the shock hit him like a lightning bolt. Kelon recoiled with a cry as his own mount shied into the bushes, dragging the packhorse behind. Calming the snorting, trembling Alil, he dismounted and tethered his own animals, then went forward reluctantly to examine the dead creature.
It was the most appalling thing he had ever seen, its limbs broken and twisted in unnatural places, its hide split and leaking and its skull smashed open. Only the bloodied scraps of white hide and a glazed blue eye that the ravens had not yet found betrayed the poor creature’s identity. Vikal. Ferimon’s horse.
The poor creature must have fallen from a tremendous height. All around the body lay splintered branches, some even impaling the flesh, obviously broken off when the animal came crashing down through the trees. Kelon turned away and vomited into the undergrowth, but even as his stomach wrenched and heaved he could feel a chill of fear crawling between his shoulder blades.
What had happened to Ferimon? Where was he? Had he survived?
No, surely not. Who could live through such a fall? But Tiolani was bound to be searching for her lover, and the more distance Kelon could put between himself and this place, the safer he would be. Besides, it was more urgent than ever that he find Aelwen. Anxious to put his gruesome discovery behind him, he skirted as far around Vikal’s body as the undergrowth would allow and hurried on his way. The burning globe had hung in the air all the time he had been preoccupied, and there could be no doubt that it was waiting for him. Now, as if sensing his urgency, it moved ahead of him faster than before, leading him through the shadowy ranks of the trees.
With all his attention focused on the light, Kelon was careless of other dangers. He never even realised that he was being watched until a tremendous weight crashed down on his head and shoulders, knocking him out of the saddle.
He hit the wet ground with a stunning impact. Dazed and shocked, the breath knocked out of him, his vision smeary with mud and his nose and mouth filled with cloying filth, he was in no condition to fight for his life, but there was no choice. The assailant was also on his feet.
Ferimon.
Kelon barely recognised the Phaerie as the handsome, charismatic young man who had won Tiolani’s heart. He had come off badly in the fall. His blond hair was matted with dirt and leaves and clotted blood. His face was scratched, bruised and swollen, and his tattered clothes were stained crimson where he had been hurt. A gory socket was all that remained of his right eye, and the left held a searing glare of hatred and red wrath. There was madness in that look, and Kelon was pierced by a fire-ice bolt of fear. Though he had been taught the basics of combat with bow and blade, by nature he was no fighter.
Vile epithets spewed from Ferimon’s twisted mouth, then a snarl. ‘Would have ruled. Should have ruled.’ His voice rose to a scream, then that one eye fixed on Kelon with a terrible intensity, and the slurred tones fell to a whisper. ‘Stupid Tiolani. Had her fooled, everyone fooled. All my plan. Give bows to filthy ferals, bring down Hellorin.’ He spat blood. ‘Should have killed him, like her brother. Wed Tiolani. Rule. Rule!’ His face was contorted with rage. ‘Accursed horse demon,’ he spat. ‘You made it kill Tiolani. Aelwen bitch did. How? Why?’ The voice rose again to a howling crescendo. ‘Kill you now. You. I should have ruled.’
Pulling his knife from its sheath, he took a lurching step forward, and Kelon knew a split second’s disbelief. Surely he can’t really mean to fight me? Wounded as he is? His head cleared rapidly of extraneous thoughts, his instincts working at lightning speed as he backed away to give himself a little more room to react. Almost without his knowing it, his own knife was already in his hand, memories of a hundred stable brawls filling his head. Apprenticeships in the stables were a test of toughness, and the youngsters perforce learned to fight if they wanted to survive.
Then Ferimon, as if he had realised that in his condition he could never hope to win a physical combat, had a change of heart - either that, or the knife had been a ruse all along. Without warning, he launched a spelclass="underline" a magical call that shot like a bolt of silver into the shroud of blackness that lay beneath the trees.
From the secret heart of the forest, something answered.
Fast, fast, fast: shreds of shadow streamed from beneath the bushes to pool at Ferimon’s feet. They gathered, entwined, clotted together to form a shape like the terrible heart of the night: a creature like a wolverine, black as nightmare with eyes like searing embers burning in a narrow face. Eyes of hatred. Eyes of savagery.
Eyes of death.
They fastened on Kelon, affixing him as though he was held in a vice, while within him, his soul cried out in despair. Legends of this hypnotic stare were manifold - but he had never heard of anyone escaping it. The creature was a Culat: rare and lethal, and possessed of its own magic. Despite its size, it was numbered among the most deadly magical beasts and was one of the most feared.
Ferimon laughed: a sound like a knife blade scraping an exposed nerve. ‘Like my pet, Kelon? Took a long time to find one, longer to tame. Now it comes to my summons. Kills for me.’
The creature opened its mouth to reveal needle-tipped teeth that glittered white as bone. It gave a low hiss, and scores of shadows sprang up around it, ghostly images of itself replicated over and over again. Concealed by the undergrowth, they spread out and clustered around the periphery of the clearing, the claws on their thronging feet making not a single sound, even among the rustling dry leaves.
Ferimon raised a hand, holding the monstrosities in place with his will, enjoying the sight of his enemy’s horror and fear. The Culat’s power lay in the shadowy army of facsimiles that surrounded it. They housed the souls of every living being it had slaughtered, subsumed and enslaved; all given animation by its will. Each one of them was as capable of dealing death as the entity itself. And as each victim they slaughtered was absorbed into the Culat’s sinister power, its army of doomed and captive souls increased. The only way to destroy this threat was to find and finish the original, the leader, the progenitor. It was the only one that truly lived; the only one that could die. And if it could be killed, the rest of the soul army would be freed at last from their ghastly imprisonment. But how to kill it? It would be too fast for blade or bow.