He broke into a stealthy run, letting the pulse in the air guide him to its source. He could feel his head clearing, his arcane senses returning, filling him with power once again. But with that power came other things, voices that whispered at the edge of his hearing, icy things that writhed like smoke, seeking human warmth. As he paused to comprehend these vagaries, he could sense them reaching for him and quickly shut them out with a shiver.
Whatever power he had inherited, Cade knew it was polluted. This was how he and Abi had summoned that horned monster into their world, believing it to be their salvation. He cursed himself for the peasant fool he was, knowing it would take more than bare hands and courage to save them now.
Distant gunfire thundered at his back and braying laughter rolled about the trees.
If he was to save Abi, as she had saved him, he would need to do it alone. The Sisters of Silence would not hesitate to kill her should they realise she was the source of the beast’s vigour. She was just beyond those trees, closer than he had realised.
He banged his shin on solid stone and tumbled over, cursing in pain. He sprawled across rubble carpeted with dead leaves. Walls of stacked rock stood nearby, furred with grass. The ruins of stone cottages, roofless and ancient were visible too, impaled by generations of sprouting trees.
‘Abi?’
There came no reply. He limped on, passing yet more crumbling walls sinking into greenery. She was here, he could feel her somewhere among these stones. Things moved nearby. Animals, he thought, though he could see none. The derelict village was empty, populated only by trees. The clouds brooded over the gauzy light of dawn. Something rolled beneath his foot. A torch, reduced to a nub of charcoal, discarded less than a season ago. He found more nearby, lots more, along with footprints and tracks from a heavy wagon. Folk had gathered here on more than one occasion, but for what purpose? He thought he felt someone glaring down at him from above. He turned to look and saw nothing up there but a length of frayed rope.
He could see a well up ahead, its roof and pail long disappeared. Its stones had been cleared of vegetation, as if the thing were still in use, though it must surely have run dry centuries ago.
Cade called for Abi again, reaching out with his consciousness into the ruins, surprised at the ease with which he could do so. He turned to see an empty doorway. He was sure he had seen someone standing there, gazing at him askance as if their head lolled unnaturally to one side.
His senses bristled. He could feel something ringing in the air, echoes of a grim drama that had played upon this remote stage season after season. Men had gathered here from miles around. He felt their excitement, a thrilling fear that tickled his innards, bitter with a hatred that could be quenched only with violence.
Figures watched him from empty windows, from behind trees. Though he dared not turn to look at them, he could tell their hair was long, their dresses tattered, each standing somehow on legs horribly crooked. They gazed at him, resigned to his late arrival, every one of their heads resting oddly on one shoulder, those that had heads at all.
They were directing him towards the well, from which arose the miserable stench of rot upon rot that spoke of heaps of discarded meat and bones. Despair, thick as tar, boiled up from that throat of stone, soaking everything around it, softening reality until Cade felt the ground might fall away beneath him.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Abi.
She stood beside him, alone and with a dreamy smile.
‘This day’s reckoning shall be beautiful.’ She sounded wistful. ‘Such wonders shall be born here. The truth. Finally. The answers we’ve been looking for.’
Cade was so relieved by the sight of her that he couldn’t help but hug her before trying to shake her from her stupor. He could feel her body pulsating with energy, writhing about her like an invisible fire.
‘The Horned King,’ she said. ‘He shall save us from the Nothings.’
‘That is not the Horned King.’ Cade steadied himself against the insanity of what he was suggesting. ‘And the Nothings are not monsters. They’re not spirits. They’re women. Flesh and blood. Warriors. I know not from where, but they’re our protectors, Abi. And they will die, as will we, unless you wake up. Now. And that’s the truth. Whatever that monster has told you, it’s a lie.’
Abi stiffened and Cade shrank back, his hands stung by the livid energy now pouring from her. She drifted up off her feet, her toes lifting from the ground. The beast crouched in the ruins nearby, its body a wreck of dripping wounds, its broken arm outstretched as it channelled restorative energy through Abi.
Abi was sobbing. ‘I’m sorry, my Lord. I should never have doubted you.’
Cade shivered when he heard a growl invade his head, promising Abi that absolution would soon be hers. Its words felt like spiders scurrying in his skull.
‘My thanks, my king,’ Abi wailed. ‘Oh, my thanks.’
The voice promised to forgive her sins, excuse her of the sorrows she had visited upon her fellow orphans.
Tears streamed down Abi’s face. ‘Forgive, forgive.’
Cade stared in horror as the beast’s wounds slowly contracted. He caught her hands, trying to pull her back to earth, driving his consciousness through his grip, trying to intersect the nourishing flow of energy.
‘It’s feeding on your guilt, Abi. But none of this is your fault. You said yourself.’
The beast brayed in frustration as it took a halting step towards them, another of its wounds sealing to a puckered scar.
The voice assured Abi that she was a witch, that power untold was who she was. If she would but aid him, love him beyond all others, it would help her achieve that power, power to protect those weaker than herself, to learn answers to questions beyond imagining.
‘You know a lie when you hear one, Abi.’ Cade’s voice trembled, knowing he spoke in defiance of something like a god. ‘You swore you would be a slave to guilt no longer, remember? Your only crime is knowing the truth.’
‘Cade?’ Abi’s eyes fluttered as if awakening from a dream and she dropped to the ground. Cade felt his mind seized by invisible claws as the beast rose with a growl and swaggered towards him. Freezing terror held him in its grip as he felt something open inside him. A freezing flood of roiling, whispering energy coursed through him and into the creature that held him. He watched helplessly as the last of its wounds disappeared, its body whole and beautiful once more. He listened, transfixed, his panic melting as it spoke inside his head. Its voice was silvery, hypnotic. It made him think of wildflowers nodding in the glades of the Cradle, the smell of mead and sun-warmed hayfields, rich and drowsy.
I am no monster, Cade. I am everything you ever wanted. I am mother. I am father. I am happiness, contentment.The truth? The truth is myriad, merely paths waiting to be chosen. So choose yours wisely, Cade. You are blessed with a strength most will never know, but you must be taught to wield that strength. Or else others shall wield it for you. Why do you think they are here? Those armoured harpies? They seek to harness your power, my son.
Cade knew it was a lie, though the question haunted him: Why were the Sisters of Silence here? Why had they come to the Cradle?
The beast laughed.
Indeed. And they would deign to call me ‘monster’.
Cade’s gift was his speed. He was thin and wiry, supple as a cat. The beast reached for him, poised to drain the last of his will, as Cade hurled his axe. The weapon lodged deep in the beast’s left eye.
There was no bellow of pain, merely a flinch of displeasure. Then the ground shook as the beast charged through the ruins towards him, snatching Cade off his feet, squeezing him like fruit. He thrashed in the beast’s grip, arms pinned awkwardly at his sides, struggling for breath as his ribs constricted and cracked. He saw the well several feet below, a dead black eye staring up at his flailing legs. He could sense the dead things heaped at the bottom of that pit, bones enriched with rage and sorrow. This is why the beast had chosen these ruins, this arena of misery – its psychic pollution would ease the ingress of its brethren. Cade could feel them, other monsters waiting beyond the veil, allied spirits eager to be drawn hither and clothed in flesh, hungry for the ruin of man.
The beast peered at him, as if curious to see the gradations of terror cross Cade’s face as he slowly crushed the boy’s body in his fist. Abi lay sprawled nearby. Cade’s frustration boiled inside him. He had endured a lifetime of horror in a single night, only to die like this, mashed like dung in a monster’s paw. His fury swelled as he glared deep into the beast’s gleaming eye.
He saw flashes and thought for a second that he was dying. But then he realised branches of lightning were springing about him, churning up from his insides. Free of the Sisters’ malignant presence, he was drawing power from the world beyond, channelling it into lances of destruction and hurling them into the beast. He felt rather than heard the creature roar in pain as it released him. He tumbled to the ground, feeling his leg strike something hard, tendons cracking in his knee. He felt his body’s anguish as a distant thing, anesthetised as he was by the cascade of lightning flowing from him. But this twitch in his concentration was enough; it had opened the floodgates to that vast sea of energy from which he drew. It filled him in an instant, flooding his being.
He tried to contain it, channel it like a river, but already it was a deluge, and he was but a leaf, shrinking, somersaulting as he plunged into its depths. But still he could feel the beast, and still he refused to let go. Cade let the creature’s agonies anchor him as he continued to reach out, lashing it with lightning, flails of white-hot fire tearing its body, restoring it to ruin.
But it was not enough. He kept losing focus. His attacks grew weaker. His attention kept branching here and there. He had become a storm, striking everything around him, each flash blinding him with images of another world, another time, another horror. He gripped his head, too stunned to breathe, deafened by a tidal roar fit to crack his skull. His eyes bulged and saw nothing but a frenzy of lightning streaking around him, sketching predatory faces, hands that reached, clawed, caressed, bodies that coiled and spasmed in the chaos. He was melting, drowning in the maelstrom of energy overwhelming his body, prickling his every pore, crushing him, strangling him to admit a drowning breath.
