reading

Dot, as the proprietor of the Dorian Literary Agency, endured many of my very first attempts at writing – giving a young, insecure, desperate author positive encouragement and advice whilst many shitty editors/agents replied with – quite frankly – embarrassingly bad photocopied “get stuffed” sheets of toilet paper (I still have the evidence, in a big stack under the bed).

Dot was different. Dot cared. Dot nurtured. Dot loved The Business. It was in her blood, and in the glitter of her mischievous eyes. She wasn’t in it for the money. She was in it for the love. In 1996 I wrote to Dot with Theme Planet (version 1.0), saying “I think you’re the right babe for the gig”. She replied, saying she’d enjoyed the book very much and would “love to represent me”. A few years later, we had a deal with Orbit and I was a published author. Wow! Bam! Dream achieved.

When I found out Dot didn’t have long left to live, I offered her the only thing I could think of that would really mean something: a dedication in my next novel. This one. This seemed to please her. And so, with great love, I raise a glass to Dorothy Lumley – and dedicate The White Towers to “the right babe for the gig”. Rest in peace, Dot.

On the battlements, a makeshift gallows had been erected. The platform stepped out beyond the primary Desekra wall, Sanderlek, giving those to be hung a generous and violently picturesque view. There were five of them. Five prisoners, each with a thick rope noose around their necks, each with a black silk hood hiding cold iron eyes and mouths set in grim lines of betrayal. Their hands had been bound behind their backs, and boots kicked against trapdoors connected to pulleys and a single brass lever.

“The Iron Wolves have been found guilty on twelve counts of treason against His Majesty, King Yoon of Vagandrak,” read a small, pompous fat man from a vellum scroll. “These counts amount to theft, extortion, the murder of General Dalgoran, the kidnapping and imprisonment of various members of the royal family…”

“I’ll fucking show him imprisonment,” murmured Narnok the Axeman, bristling.

“If you hadn’t had your pants round your ankles, we wouldn’t be in this mess,” snapped Dek.

“Thus proclaims Mr Two Kegs,” growled Narnok. “Maybe if you could hold your ale a little better, you might have heard the stampede to your door!”

“Silence amongst the prisoners!” squawked the bureaucrat.

“Or what?” bellowed Narnok. “You’ll fucking hang us?” His laughter roared across the walls of Desekra Fortress.

The list of misdemeanours continued, and King Yoon of Vagandrak observed these, his prisoners, the Iron Wolves of legend and a multitude of children’s stories; the Iron Wolves who – twenty years previous – had driven back thousands of invading mud-orcs and killed the sorcerer, Morkagoth; and in these past few days, reunited in anger, hate and loathing, older, wiser, more bitter and twisted and cynical, had repeated the act of defence and attack as Orlana the Changer, the Horse Lady; had brought yet more death and destruction to the borders of Vagandrak. Only this time, the carnage had been far more terrible, incredibly more destructive; for Kiki, the Captain of the Iron Wolves, had found inside herself the buried magick of the Shamathe, the magick of the Equiem, and had unleashed her fury across the Plains of Zakora. Desekra Fortress, the Pass of Splintered Bones, the Mountains of Skarandos, and the whole world, it seemed, had trembled as the mammoth earthquake smashed through the earth, sucking down tens of thousands of mud-orcs, back into the bowels of the world that had conjured them – and dragging down the kicking, screaming figure of Orlana with a million tonnes of collapsing granite.

Now, for risking their lives, for smashing the enemies of Vagandrak, King Yoon had chosen a simple reward.

“I have one thing to say,” came the demure, measured voice of Kiki. Yoon made a throat-cutting gesture, but it was too late. Kiki continued, “Orlana the Changer, the Horse Lady, is far from dead. She will be back, Yoon. Back real soon. And who will protect you from her Equiem magick then?”

“Now,” said King Yoon, dark eyes flashing dangerously at the hangman. “Do it now. Do it now!”

The hangman reached out and, with trembling, gloved fingers, took hold of a brass lever that operated the simple pulleys that, in turn, dropped the trapdoors beneath the hooded victims.

There came a crack as Narnok’s ropes snapped under the huge axeman’s writhing muscles, and he ripped off his hood, unhooked his noose, and, reaching forward, grabbed the pompous little bureaucrat, dragging him into a crushing bear-hug. “Help!” squeaked the little man, Narnok’s criss-cross scarred face up close and personal as Narnok pulled an ornate dagger from a sheath at the bureaucrat’s hip. His arm came back and snapped forward. The dagger appeared, stubby and black, in the hangman’s eye, and he gurgled as blood spattered the gallows. He slid from the trapdoor handle, sinking quietly into an embryonic heap.

“Bastards,” growled Narnok, bad breath filling the bureaucrat’s face, and, with grunt and a tug, he broke the man’s spine with an audible crack and back-handed him from the gallows where the body toppled, a broken doll, into the rocks and deep chasms yawning below the fortress wall…

Yoon, blinking, suddenly screamed, “Kill him!” and ten of his elite guards rushed forward, led by Captain Dokta. Narnok ducked a sword-sweep, front-kicked Dokta from the battlements, and grabbed a sword by the blade with a slap. He stared into the surprised soldier’s face, kicked him in the balls, slammed the sword left, where the hilt cut a groove across a soldier’s eyes making him drop his blade and scrabble at the blood and flaps of opened flesh. Narnok took the sword’s handle, weighed it thoughtfully, then launched a blistering attack: beheading one soldier; disembowelling a second so he fell to his knees clutching an armful of his own bloody bowels, cradled like some perverse abdominal abortion; then put the point of the blade through a third soldier’s throat, skewering his bobbing apple and severing his spine so he collapsed like a sack of horse shit.

Narnok leapt to his colleagues’ rescue, sword slashing down to cut the bonds of Dek, then Kiki, then Zastarte, and finally Trista. They removed silk hoods and loosened nooses, lifting them over their heads. Grim eyes met the soldiers of Vagandrak on the killing ground below.

Leaping down from the gallows, they grabbed weapons from the soldiers Narnok had slain. Bright steel gleamed under the storm clouds. The Iron Wolves formed a line on the battlements, weighing the odds, then suddenly charged at Yoon, at his remaining guards. Yoon screamed, high pitched and feral, and turned, slipping, then scrambling along on his hands and feet in what would have been a comical manner fit for the stage, if it hadn’t been for five very real deadly killers in pursuit.

Kiki blocked an overhead sword strike, sparks showered, she punched the man in the throat, back-handed her blade across a second soldier’s thigh, cutting the leg clean off and forcing him to collapse. Then the point of the blade skewered the eye of the man before her and she was over him even as he dropped, leaping, both boots landing atop Yoon and flattening him to the ground. When the King opened his eyes, Kiki was crouched beside him, a slender dagger to his throat. She jabbed it, just a little, and blood trickled free.

“Weapons down!” she bellowed, and gradually the fighting around stopped.

Kiki stood, dragging Yoon up with her.

“I’ll have you… you… you hung for this!” frothed the king, apoplectic with rage.

“Yeah? You already tried that,” said Kiki, smoothly, and tossed her sword to Dek who caught the weapon neatly from the air and rounded on the disabled soldiers. He grinned at them.

“Looks like you’re shit out of luck, boys,” he growled.

Kiki got a good handful of King Yoon’s shaggy black hair and, with the dagger still spiking his throat, drew him close to her lithe, powerful body. She said, quietly, in his ear, “This is the way it’s going to play out, Your Highness. We’re going to retreat. Slowly. You’re going to come with us. You’ve made it clear you want us dead, and us saving your damned country is not something which seems to bother you. A great shame. We’d give our lives for this realm, and you’d happily take them for no reason. The point is – our backs are against the wall. So don’t think I won’t slit your fucking throat. After all that’s happened, it’d be a damn pleasure. Understand?” She shook him. “You understand?”

“Yes, yes… it hurts, please, stop pressing the knife in…”

“You lot!” bellowed Narnok, and the soldiers gathered below stared up at him. Some looked at their boots in shame. “We fucking fought alongside you, like brothers, we held back the bloody mud-orcs together, shoulder to shoulder, our blood mixed on the battlements. And you stand there and watch your mad bastard of a king try to break our necks!”

Sergeant Dunda stepped forward, still clutching his axe, his bearded face lifted towards the Iron Wolves on the battlements. “Narnok, son, you can’t do it this way. You may think him mad – we may think him mad – but he’s the King, by all the gods! His word is Law!”

“Sometimes, you have to take a stand,” rumbled Narnok, his one good eye sweeping across the gathered men.

“Yoon will have the whole of Vagandrak hunt you down,” said Dunda, his voice level, neutral.

“Then so be it,” said Narnok.

“We need to move,” growled Kiki, pulling Yoon ever tighter.

“Follow me,” said Dek, and started edging down the stone stairwell, both swords before him, his dark eyes full of murder. “Lads, you there, we’re of the same land, and I don’t want to cut off your heads; but if you force me to it, I will.”

“Back off!” screeched Yoon. “Give them space, for the love of your king and country!”

The Iron Wolves reached the bottom of the steps at the same time the storm unleashed a fury of icy hail over Desekra Fortress. Ice rattled across the battlements, a great sweep slamming down and playing music on armour and helmets and shields. Thunder boomed in the mountains like the clash of titans; like the end of the world.

Kiki led the way now, with Zastarte and Trista, Dek and Narnok walking backwards, weapons bristling.

“We can take them,” hissed Captain Dokta, dragging himself alongside Sergeant Dunda. He’d only just recovered from being front-kicked from the battlements; a fall of some twenty feet. He was lucky not to have broken his spine. “Call for the crossbows!”

“No,” rumbled Dunda, his eyes fixed on the Iron Wolves. “Let them go. For now. Their blood rage is high. Last thing we want is a dead king’s blood and body on our hands.”

The Iron Wolves made their way to the tunnel beneath the second Desekra Wall, where Narnok pulled across a heavy iron gate and barred it, cutting off the majority of the remaining soldiers. From there, they moved to the nearest prison block, ducking inside, Kiki coming last with King Yoon as her living, breathing, royal-endorsed shield.

“Where now?” panted Dek, as gloom closed in. Outside, ice rattled on the cobbles and battlements, filling the world with a hushed white noise.

“Back underground,” said Kiki, crouching to touch the soil. Her eyes were gleaming. “We head down. Into the tunnels. And get as far away from this place as is humanly possible.”

“Human?” said Dek, raising an eyebrow.

Kiki chuckled, but there was no humour there. “You know what I mean.”

They moved to the back of the empty prison block, filled with an old lingering stench of urine and vomit, towards a narrow door with a winding set of stone steps that led down to the dungeons proper; far beneath the main Keep. Yoon fought for a moment at the narrow doorway, his eyes filled with dread, fingers scratching at the portal edges.

“I can strangle you unconscious and carry you down, if you like?” said Narnok amiably, looming close, his terribly scarred face and destroyed eye like the mask of some cut-up hell demon.

Yoon stared at him. “I’ll walk,” he said, mouth dry. “But my men – my army! – know this. They will hunt you down! They will slaughter you, like young squealing pigs in a tin shed filled with their own blood and shit!”

Narnok slapped the king across the back of the head, nearly pitching the man down the narrow spiral steps. “If you say so, lad. If you say so,” muttered the huge axeman.

The Iron Wolves descended… down, into the darkness.

Into a subterranean world of shadows.

For a long time, he truly believed he was condemned to Hell. Fire roared like a furnace. Flames burned high, scorching, searing, and all he could hear was a high-pitched female voice screaming; a tortured banshee; an eldritch sound. All he could see were glowing coals, as if they’d filled up the world before his eyes – had become his eyes. And then he slowly realised that the female screaming was his own, and the knowledge filled him with a chilled terror which dropped down through his bones to his very core. Feebly, he started to crawl, over fire and glowing stone, and sensed a massive movement around him. It was the huge, burning building shifting, groaning, growling, cracking, as if this structure and the fire were titanic monsters in some incredible, slow-paced battle. But he knew the fire would triumph. It always did.

Eventually the screaming stopped. His screaming stopped. Everything was dry, and hot, and blurred with hot mercury tears. Then the world fell away and tumbled down and darkness became his mistress.

He awoke to the sound of running water. It was beautiful. Perhaps the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard. Music. Pure music. A symphony of Nature. And then the pain hit him, like a sledgehammer in the back of the head, and he gasped as needles flooded every vein, every organ, every atom of his body and he opened his mouth to scream, and his skin made crackling noises, and only a croak vomited out. The pain pounded him in great pulsing waves and with a sigh, he lowered his face to the frozen soil and registered a little puddle of ice, before he passed into darkness again.

Water. The water was cool. He pushed his hands under his body, feebly lifting himself up and then forward to slump onto his chest. White. Everywhere was white. He could smell smoke. He could smell burned pork. He could taste ash. He lifted himself again, and jerked himself forward. There were bushes. They briefly registered as a flash of tangled green. He lifted himself, slumped forward. Lifted himself. Slumped forward. Every movement screamed through his muscles. Every breath tore through his lungs like hot knives. He panted, and tried to cry, but there were no tears. His tongue, a dry stalk, licked lips like ruptured bark.

Danger. There was great danger! Men with swords.

Forward. He pushed himself forward. It took a million years.

Stars were born. Flared. And died.

And still he pushed towards the flowing, musical stream, inching closer, and closer, and closer, and finally he reached a slope, and rolled down with a gasp through powdered snow to lie at the edge. The edges of the water were frozen, glittering like fine crystal. He could see his own breath smoking, now, and he brought his hand up to his gaze and almost wretched at the blackened, hooked claw, great cracks in the hard-cooked flesh weeping trickles of blood and pus…

That cannot be my hand.

How could this awful thing happen to me?

He removed the claw from before his eyes and struggled forward, every inch of flesh pulsing him with waves of pain as if in some sick competition to make him puke. He slid over ice, then splashed into the flowing water and it was like instant orgasm. He gasped, the freezing water shocking him, and felt himself carried away, drifting away from the life-threatening danger. The men. With swords.

The men. And a name.

He choked and spluttered a few times, flapping like a stranded fish in an ironic reversal, and gasped as he went down a low waterfall head-first, splashing into the pool, bobbing like an embalmed cadaver, limbs useless and trailing as the current picked him up once more and spun him around, drifting him downstream. It seemed to go on for some time, although he sensed he was drifting in and out of consciousness.

What happened? questioned his confused mind, over and over again.

How did I get here? But the answers would not come, and all he could remember were men, and swords, and talk of money, then burning wood, the roar of a terrible angry leviathan, bright flames all around and screaming, screaming as his clothes burned, his beard and hair caught fire, and he ran, then crawled on his knees, then squirmed like a snake on its belly to be free of the searing heat…

There came a gentle crunch as he came to rest on a crescent of pebbles. The stream bent here, and he had come to rest in a side-pool. He moved his arms slowly and tried to push himself up, but slumped back into the water, face first, spitting bubbles.

Maybe he was drowning? He did not care. At least the water was ice cold. Chilling him to the bone.

Anything but fire. Anything but the heat.

Dek. Dek, the bastard. It had been a trap. Lantern oil. Mother’s house. Trapped, with other members of the Red Thumb Gangs…

He fell swiftly down. Into darkness.

He knew he would die.

“Agathe! Agathe! Come quickly!” Hands on him, instant agony, and a muttering, a woman’s voice but gravelled and croaking. “Oh, by the Sweet Mother, oh my word, oh my God! What have we here? What’s happened to you, poor boy? Oh my word! AGATHE!”

“What is it, what is it?” The grumbling of an old crone.

“Come quickly, there’s a poor young man here!”

“Oh my, what happened?”

“I don’t know, here, help me lift him. Oh my poor back, I can’t do this, go and get the cart and be swift about it!”

Words whispered into his ear. “You hold on, you poor, poor man. Don’t you dare let go. We’ll look after you now. I’m Grace, that was my sister Agathe, she’ll bring the pony and cart. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

The clop of hooves. Every jolt made him scream and the pain returned in great pulsing waves as his hands clawed, nails scratching at the wooden boards. He felt an incisor snap as his teeth ground together. He tried to weep, but nothing came, and he panted in frustration, and wished with all his heart that he were dead.

A smell. Sweetness. Honey. And something else. Almost like… cream. And blackberries. Slowly, gradually, finally, coolness crept over him. He was aware of no movement, no sound, no vision, just that beautiful sweet smell, and that gradual enveloping coolness. Eventually, hearing seemed to return, with various cracks and pops, and a feeling of pressure released inside his head. He worked his jaw from side to side and his whole face felt odd, solid almost, like he wore a mask that had been glued to him. He lifted his hand to explore, but heard a tut, a “Hush, what’re you doing?”, and his hand was guided away.

His eyes flickered open.

Two old women stood, gazing down at him. One was holding a large tub in frail, wrinkled hands; the other a wooden spatula.

“Ahh, he’s awake. What’re you called, boy?”

“I…” But he could not speak.

“Ahh, lost for words. But don’t worry. We’ll look after you. We’ll take care of you. Been in a fire, you have. Oh, but I’m losing my manners, my name is Grace, and this is my sister, Agathe. But then, I think I already told you that. It’s been all hands on deck since we found you. Burned, you were. Lying in the stream. Brought you back here on our cart, we did. Boy, you’re a heavy young man! You were wearing chainmail that had almost become a part of you, thanks to the fire. We had to sedate you and use a blunt knife to prize each ring from your flesh.”

“Grace! He won’t be wanting to know that, now.”

“Yes, yes, sorry. How do you feel? You must feel terrible. We’ve made an unguent from various ingredients, it will cool your skin, and draw any bad pus from the open flesh. Oh look, Agathe, he’s trying to speak again.”

“He’ll need water, Grace. Give the poor boy some water.”

Grace took a small cup and held it to his lips. He drank. It was, in all truth, the most incredible thing he had ever tasted. No wine, or ale, or sweet fruit juice could ever compare to that first conscious drink of pure, cool, soothing water.

He spluttered, and Grace removed the cup.

“Thank you,” he croaked.

“What’s your name, boy?”

“I…” and he realised he could not remember. So he licked his cracked open lips, and instead, said, “Thank you. Agathe. Grace. For rescuing. Me.”

“Do you remember what happened?”

“There was a fire.”

“You don’t say, young man!” smiled Grace.

Agathe kicked her, and Grace scowled, bending to rub her ankle.

He drank more water, but still his tongue was made of old oak, still his mouth rinsed with ash. As he licked his lips, he wondered if the taste of fire would ever go away.

“Do you remember anything else?”

He remembered men with swords, firelight glimmering on polished blades. He remembered Dek, the large pit-fighter with iron-dark eyes, and talk of the money he owed to the Red Thumb Gang. But he said nothing. If these old ladies heard talk of warriors and gangs, they might not be so keen to nurse him back to health. If indeed, he could be nursed back to health.

“No,” he finally managed. “Need. To sleep.”

“Of course, dear. Of course.”

Again, his face felt tight, odd, and he tried to lift his hand. Grace stopped him, gently, and returned his clawed, blackened appendage to the white cotton sheets. “No, no, young man. We have placed linen gauze over most of your face. It keeps the cream in place, keeps your skin moist. We’re going to wrap you up pretty well. We’ve dealt with burns before. We know what we’re doing.”

“Agathe here used to be a nurse in the city hospital. In Vagan.”

“Oh. That’s… good. Sleep… now.”

Grace patted his hand. “Yes, you poor, poor man. You get some much needed rest.”

Salvond sat high in the tree. It was a fabulous tree, an ancient oak, gnarled and twisted and… Salvond closed his eyes for a few moments. Nigh on four hundred years old. A section was blackened from a previous lightning strike, maybe a hundred years previous, and once more, closing his eyes Salvond felt himself sink into the bark, through the cambium, through sapwood and finally into the heartwood. He felt the slow beat of the tree’s heart, its soul. And he relived the lightning strike, a series of feelings that linked to form a memory. And Salvond soothed the ancient oak. Sent his own pulses through heartwood, through sapwood, and he felt the oak respond to him, acknowledging him, accepting him.

Slowly, he opened his eyes. The two old women were pulling the blackened, tortured man from the pool and man-handling him, with curses and creaks, into a low wooden cart. Salvond remained perfectly still, his own skin – like bark – blending perfectly into the oak which had accepted him, made him its own. Slowly, Salvond’s outer cells shifted, mutated, more and more until he was perfectly invisible against the oak. Only his black eyes could be seen. And the red of his mouth when he licked bark-rough lips.

The two women pulled the cart to their cottage nearby. Salvond listened and, through the sap, through the run of water through the soil, through tiny vibrations bounced from singing birds and clicking insects, he heard their dialogue.

Finally, night fell: a gradual, settling cloak.

There came a crunch as Salvond leapt from the oak and landed in the snow, awkwardly, his twisted back, his different-length legs, one rigid and straight, one with two supple knee joints, all combining to make him crooked and disjointed. Salvond hobbled through the snow towards the cottage, slowly, his bark-like skin masking him in the darkness, his thick, wiry, grey-green hair like so much gorse and bramble.

He slowed by the window. Inside, the glow of an oil lantern illuminated the blackened man in a bed of white cotton sheets, his visible arms and face covered in cream and gauzes, the two old women chatting to him amiably.

Salvond sent out quests. They emerged from his toes, growing through the soil, easing through tiny cracks in the brickwork and the old, porous foundations of the cottage. It took hours. Like roots, questing for water. Only these roots required a different currency; they sought knowledge. They quested into joists, then through the wood of the wide, warped, woodworm-infested floorboards. Finally, they oozed into the very wooden legs of the bed, pushing upwards into the down mattress and finally, into the–

Crowe tossed and turned beneath the sheets.

Images flickered in Salvond’s mind as he moved backwards through this man’s life, witnessing the fights and the stabbings, the money extortion for the Red Thumb Gangs in Zanne; the beatings and murders and the rapes. Salvond came to Crowe’s initiation into the Red Thumbs, and experienced how the hard, mercenary, ambitious young man had turned on his best friend, stabbing him with a black-bladed dagger, quite literally, in the back. Blood on his hands. Again, back through time. Back. An alcoholic father. A weary, worn, beaten down mother who also, finally, turned to the cheap and nasty gin. Running free as a wild child. Wild, and wicked, and unchecked.

Perfect, thought Salvond.

And gradually, over the next three hours, his quests withdrew, back into himself, carrying information and understanding. Salvond knew this man. He had experienced this man’s life. He knew what made him tick. Just like the clockwork of the Engineers.

As dawn was breaking, Salvond turned and hobbled into the bushes. He moved back to the ancient oak and, awkwardly, with great pain, managed to climb up into its branches and regain his former position.

Give it time, thought Salvond, and emitted a sigh like a heavy, creaking branch shifted by the wind.

He needs to suffer. More. A lot more.

Only then, will he appreciate my gift.

Minutes flowed into hours flowed into days flowed into weeks. Slowly, with the passing of time, Crowe started to heal. He wasn’t aware of it at first, for his whole life had boiled down to a simple cycle of hot flesh, followed by applied cream and a soothing coolness. Within this cycle were also the herbs which Agathe and Grace crushed with pestle and mortar, and sprinkled into clear spring water. This, Crowe drank with increasing greed, as he realised the herbs’ painkilling qualities; and with the drug came a blissful floating on a river of warm honey… for a while. Then the pain would creep in at the edges again, and Crowe would find himself growing increasingly agitated as he waited for the old women to appear at his door, bearing soothing cream and that glass of water in trembling frail old hands. Every footstep became a torture, and he wanted to scream, “Give me the herbs, give me the fucking glass!”, but he did not, he lay there, suffering, grinding his teeth as bits of pain flared up and down his body and arms and legs and face and he felt like weeping, begging, dying.

Sometimes, the nights were the worst. He’d awake from some dream, in which he was still trapped in the burning house, with Dek and Ragorek outside, pointing at him, laughing as his hair caught fire and the flesh melted from his face. And once he had woken from such a torment, he’d lie in the cool stillness of the old cottage, listening to it, to the creak of its timbers, the occasional scamper of a mouse beneath floorboards, sometimes one of the old women would rise in the night and sit on their shared commode, and he’d listen to the tinkle of their piss in the wide stained ceramic pot.

Sometimes, he would strain against the bed as if straining against chains, for he was trapped by his injuries, shackled by his burns, and the pain would return and he knew he was hours from the magical, pain relieving herbs; and he knew it was going to be a long, torturous night.

Sometimes, he wished, truly wished, he had died in that fire.

Because at least, then, it would have been an instant release from this agony.

Crowe appreciated the simple pleasures in life. A lack of the intense and all-consuming pain. A cool glass of water. A bite of warm, soft, home-baked bread. Cold cream on his burns. A chilled flannel on his brow. Distant bird song in the hedgerows. A breeze from the open window. The taste of fresh milk. A soft egg melting on his tortured tongue. Soothing words from Agathe and Grace. Their confidence in his recovery.

Four weeks after Agathe and Grace had found him in the pool near their cottage, they helped him for the first time to the front door. His hands were wrapped in bandages and he held a hand-carved walking stick in each hand, sturdy ash, to help support his weakened legs. He hobbled forward, disjointed, hissing in pain, but then the daylight hit him, and the smells from the open woodland to the right, the river to the left. The ground was crisp with night frost, and a cool breeze wafted towards him.

Crowe stepped out, then almost fell, and Agathe caught his elbow. That contact made him gasp, but he ground his teeth and tottered out, like a babe taking steps for the first time. There was a rough sawn bench, about ten steps away, and Agathe helped him towards it. He slumped down, with a soaring sense of elation, of achievement, despite the ridiculousness of such a simple feat. Once, Crowe could run ten miles and fight a bare-knuckle boxing match at the end. Now, he was either a babe or an old man, depending on how you viewed his jerky, puppet movements.

“Well done,” said Agathe, sitting next to him.

“Thank you.” He looked at her then, looked at her for the first time since the two old women had struggled with his burned carcass from the pond. He looked into her grey eyes, which twinkled in their pouch of wrinkled skin. Her face was slightly jaundiced, wrinkled heavy across the forehead, flesh saggy under her chin. Her hair was white and gently curled, falling to her shoulders. Crowe placed her age at around late sixties. He smiled. The sunlight glittered from her white hair, turning it silver. She was beautiful.

“Thank you,” he said, simply. Then looked away, reddening. Or fancying he would redden, if his face hadn’t been burned pork and scorched kindling.

“My pleasure,” said Agathe, laying a hand on his shoulder. “We couldn’t let you die, young man. What kind of people would we be, then? What kind of evil would live in our hearts, to let a young innocent perish whilst we stood by and did naught?”

Crowe thought of the women he’d raped. He thought of the men he’d beaten, clubbing them to the ground with bloody fists. He thought of the men and women he’d held on the end of his dagger, hearing the delicate crunch as steel chewed through flesh, and tears filled eyes, and he felt the elation, the joy of killing somebody, of robbing their life. Shame filled him. Filled him deep.

“You are good women,” he said, eventually.

“Oh, nonsense. We just try to do what is right. Look!”

Crowe glanced up. A robin, soft, brown, with bright red breast, had landed on a branch. Its little head turned, watching them. Crowe realised it was the first time he had ever observed such a thing. Birds were not something that entered his lexicon, nor his consciousness. Whores, fighting, liquor. Yes. Red-breasted robins? Not a priority of observation. And yet here he sat, with an old woman resting her hand on his shoulder, filled with wonder at cool water and cooler air, watching the intelligent actions of a twitchy little robin.

You’ve gone fucking soft, he told himself.

And he grinned then, despite the way the motion cracked the blackened skin of his face. Suddenly, life felt good. Not amazing. But… do-able. He’d moved away from thoughts of suicide. A new hope filled him. It felt incredible.

“Come on, I’ll help you inside. I’ll make some tea, and Grace has baked soft scones. We have fresh blackberry jam. You’ll enjoy it. You’ll see.”

“Thank you,” he said again, and meant it from the bottom of his blackened, terrible heart.

Daylight was fading early, and sky-stacked clouds threatened snow. The back door to the cottage was half open, and a young deer had wandered in from the forest. It trusted Agathe and Grace, for they often left food out for the creature. A bowl was there, filled with fruit, wild flowers and nuts. The fawn’s nostrils twitched and it moved forward, checking around with care, before lowering its muzzle into the bowl and savouring the offering. No sound intruded on the scene, except the nearby stream running through its frozen channel. But the deer lifted its head and, suddenly, for no apparent reason, its ears pinned back against its skull and it bolted, zig-zagging as it disappeared through the trees.

Inside the kitchen, Agathe was standing, staring out of the window as tea brewed in a pot. She’d seen the deer arrive, but had not heard it depart. So when the cracking of a twig brought her from her day-dreaming, her reverie, she thought it was still the deer and a smile broadened her wrinkled face…

But the shadow that fell across the threshold to the kitchen was not the deer. It was a small, hunkered, twisted creature with skin like bark and dark eyes that glittered. It hobbled into the kitchen and stood, staring at Agathe. She gasped, hand coming to her mouth.

“You,” she hissed, in awe and terror.

“You know me, then?” said Salvond, voice a curious mixture of low and musical, and yet also cracked, degraded.

“I know what you are,” said Agathe, voice low and level, eyes fixed on the elf rat. “I know you are a scourge. Cast out. Filled with poison, with plague. Go on! Get out!”

“You are mistaken,” said Salvond, moving closer.

Agathe grabbed a bread knife from the table beside her, and slashed it in front of her. “I said stay back! You are diseased! Get out of my house! Grace! Grace!”

“I wouldn’t do that,” said Salvond, face cracking into a broken smile.

Agathe launched herself at the creature, knife plunging down. Despite his deformities, the elf rat side-stepped the attack, his own corrugated, twisted fingers lashing out and closing like powerful tree roots around Agathe’s throat. He squeezed. She gasped, and the knife clattered to the kitchen flags.

Salvond glanced left, down the corridor towards the front room where Crowe was sleeping. He squeezed harder, and Agathe’s legs went weak, collapsing at the knees – but still she remained in position as Salvond exerted pressure, held her there…

“Leave her be!” screamed Grace, hitting Salvond over the back of the head with a hefty log. But rather than collapse, or even shift, Salvond remained solid in place and turned slowly on Grace, who lifted the chunk of oak again, her intention to crack the elf rat’s skull clean open. His hand came up, and tendrils like tree roots flowed from a circular wound in his palm. They wrapped around Grace’s elderly face and she screamed, a scream which became quickly muffled. There were tiny crackling sounds as more strands snapped out, engulfing Grace’s whole head. They wrapped around her, quivering, questing, entombing her completely and then pushing into her mouth, into her ears, up her nose, pushing into her eye sockets past her writhing, rolling eyeballs; then with the slow, gentle, unbending pressure that can send tree roots through lime mortar, these invading strands eased forward into Grace’s skull. Her legs gave way suddenly, she sagged, held there, and then Salvond eased her to the floor and turned back to Agathe. She was purple, her own eyes rolling in disbelief and horror.

“I’m sorry, Old One,” soothed Salvond, almost in sorrow. “But it has to be this way.” Within the next minute Agathe, also, was dead.

Salvond straightened a little, his spine making crackling noises and the roots came back to him, wavering, quivering, and he closed his eyes for a moment as they were accepted back into his own body. Then he turned, and stared down the short corridor towards Crowe.

The elf rat limped across threadbare carpet. At the sound of his approach, Crowe’s eyes fluttered and opened, and his blackened, crisped, well-cooked face turned from frown to grimace…

“Who are you?” he said.

“My name is Salvond.”

“Where’s Agathe? And Grace?”

“They are… sleeping a while.”

Crowe started to struggle up, his movements weak and obviously causing him great pain. Reality came flooding over the dam of his security, and he realised, in a split second, how vulnerable he was. And as he looked into Salvond’s ancient dark eyes, a kind of understanding came to him. He stopped struggling and lay there, teeth bared, growling softly, burned fingers clenching and unclenching the blankets.

“You killed them?”

“Yes.” Salvond shuffled a little closer. He was within striking distance now. Crowe summoned up every ounce of strength and energy he had. This disgusting, terrible creature had murdered the two reasons Crowe was still alive; it had crushed their old beauty to shards. Something broke inside Crowe, and part of his old self came back. Part of his old bad self: distorted, crooked, cynical, hateful, merciless… something dead.

“You’ve come to kill me?” he snarled, finally, froth on his flecked lips, preparing to launch himself at the curiously disjointed monster.

“No, my dear boy,” said Salvond, bending over him, his hand reaching out. Tendrils started to squirm and spiral from the palm of his hand which caught Crowe’s attention and held him fascinated, hypnotised, in terror. “I’ve come to save you. And to learn from you. And to use you. You will become one of us. You will show me… how you humans work.”

The knocking came hard and fast, shaking the heavy door in its smooth teak frame. Grumbling, her wrinkled face squinting as she lit a lantern, Haleesa pulled a heavy robe around her ancient, stooped shoulders and padded barefoot across the hard soil floor.

The knocking came again, and mumbling, “Ha, it’s enough to wake the dead,” Haleesa threw open the portal to reveal the fury of the raging elements outside her thick-walled cabin. Rain slammed in diagonal sheets, and thunder rumbled distantly as the howl of the wind swept into the cabin, bringing the scent of the nearby forest.

“Is there no peace in the Palkran Settlement tonight?” scowled Haleesa.

“Come, come quickly.” A round white face peered up from the darkness, flickering and strangely demonic in the wildly whipping flame of the fish-oil lantern. Miraculously, the flame did not extinguish, and the rain-soaked woman was beckoned across the cabin’s threshold and into the dry warmth by Haleesa’s wrinkled claw.

“Sweyn sent me to fetch the Shamathe. Gwynneth is having difficulty with her child. She is ready to deliver the babe… but cannot. You understand?”

Nodding, Haleesa pulled another, heavier, hooded shawl about her delicate shoulders, and gestured for the girl to lead the way through the storm.

The long hall was well lit and filled with warmth from a large fire-pit after the wildness of the storm-raped forest, and the young girl led a dripping Haleesa past roaring flames which the old woman fixed with a look of lingering despondency. And then they were through, into a room with a low cot and a scene dragged screaming from nightmare…

A man, Sweyn, stood to one side, his face drawn tight with weariness, his fingers rubbing the palms of his sweating hands in an unconscious display of fear. Two women were kneeling beside the low cot upon which writhed a beautiful woman with long dark hair. She was naked, her hair a waterfall of velvet across her milk-gorged breasts. Her legs were open, labia and inner thighs smeared with blood and amniotic fluid which had soaked the rough wool blankets beneath her.

Haleesa dropped her shawl. “Your first child, Gwynneth?”

The woman met the Shamathe’s gaze and held it, face contorted in pain. She nodded, her darting tongue licking at sweat-smeared lips.

A brave woman, thought Haleesa. She must be in great pain.

Her hands slid over Gwynneth’s distended belly, squeezing gently, feeling the curves and bulges within; then she dropped to her knees and her fingers probed inside Gwynneth’s vagina with the expert touch of a practised midwife.

“You have a restrictive pelvis,” observed Haleesa. She met Gwynneth’s gaze once more, and smiled warmly, her wrinkled, dark-skinned face beaming from under thick grey curls. “Don’t worry, lass, it will be all right. I will look after you.”

“The babe is coming,” whispered Haleesa.

Gwynneth screamed, back arching as she pushed with all her might. Violent contractions forced her to squirm and buck, to twist and writhe, like a cat-torn rabbit with a broken spine. From between Gwynneth’s thighs Haleesa witnessed a sudden sprout of bristly dark hair, and instantly she knew something was wrong. Badly wrong. A chill whisper scythed through her soul like a razor slicing icy flesh. The feeling came not due to her skills as a midwife, but more her experience – her senses and her understanding – as a Shamathe. A woman in tune with the earth and rocks and trees and mountains; a child of Nature.

Her hands dropped swiftly as the crown of the babe’s head forced free and she applied pressure to stop Gwynneth ejecting the babe too quickly and thereby ripping herself apart – and damaging the child in the process. Gwynneth’s quim stretched wide as the head appeared in full, and instantly Haleesa muttered the bitter tasting sour hissing words of form illusion…

The delivery was over in minutes, but instead of giving the babe to its mother, Haleesa cut the cord and wrapped the tiny pink wailing toddler in her shawl, close to her own breast. The old woman’s eyes narrowed, her breathing coming in ragged pants, and she muttered a variety of minor charms. Only then did she look up, to meet the questioning gaze from the woman lying prostrate and exhausted. Gwynneth was wrapped in a blanket, her face ashen with weariness, her friend clasping her hand tightly so that pink skin turned white under clenching knuckles.

“Can…” a confused pause. “Can I hold her?”

Haleesa considered refusing, but gathering her remaining strength she muttered a strengthening of form illusion and handed over the babe. The little girl gurgled happily and Gwynneth smiled down at her child, her eyes bright with the joy of a new life, the happiness of birth, the awe of creation. She fumbled with her breast as if to suckle the child, but Haleesa stepped forward and lifted the babe from Gwynneth’s startled arms.

“This child is seriously ill. The laboured birth damaged her internally. I must take her for healing.”

Gwynneth’s face fell, and Haleesa forced the words from her unwilling mouth. “I will not play games with you, Gwynneth; the babe might die during the night. You must trust me, and let me do my work. I swear to you, I will give my life to save her.”

“Can… can I come with you?”

“Best I work alone.”

Sweyn, who had stepped back into the room to witness the birth, whispered, “Shusht,” and, kneeling, took his wife in his arms. “It is the right of Shamathe. She will not harm the child…” But it was there, in Gwynneth’s eyes – the mistrust, the suspicion, and her gaze followed Haleesa’s retreating shawl as the old woman left the room and the hall, with the heavily swaddled babe; and disappeared into the storm.

“If she harms my baby, I will kill her,” spat Gwynneth, and tears rolled down her chalk ashen cheeks.

As Haleesa bent her head against the hammering rain, she allowed the illusion to fall and felt the reality of the babe beneath her shawl. Swallowing back revulsion, she cut left down a narrow track and under the broad-shouldered shelter of vast, towering, swaying pine trees. The Lords of the Forest. The rain was less offensive here, less aggressive; Haleesa halted by a wide trunk which had fallen years earlier and had been stripped of bark. Rummaging in her robes she produced the babe and laid it against the roughness of the trunk. It did not cry – in fact it made no sound. Its birth cries and subsequent gurgles had been a simple word illusion cast by Haleesa.

She met this newborn babe’s gaze and was shocked to see cognition there in the dark, iron-coloured eyes. She swallowed and allowed her own gaze to travel the ruined shell of the girl – although the child resembled no girl Haleesa had ever seen. Her head was topped with a ragged sprouting of wiry black hair. Her skin was mottled yellow, appearing almost scaled, and slick with a thick, oily substance. The nose was twisted and the teeth – for this newborn already had teeth – were tiny and pointed and glinted nastily from within ill-fitting lips. Like a fish, thought Haleesa as her eyes moved down, examining the spindly body and the arms and legs. There were no hands or feet, instead the arms and legs tapered to splintered points where jagged protrusions of bone shone with blood and were barely coated by the greasy, yellow skin. The babe’s orifices shone under the delicate forest light below a bulging obscene belly, and were bright with pus weeping from urethra and anus. A tongue darted out, licking at white, brittle lips. The babe waved the jagged stumps of her arms in the air and Haleesa took another step back.

Leave her, screamed the words in her mind.

But she could feel it – could feel the calling, feel the energies, feel the mana within the child. This little girl, this tiny, disfigured, horribly malformed child had been born Shamathe.

Like me, realised Haleesa, with a gradual rising horror.

Before she changed her mind, and forcing down rising nausea, Haleesa gathered the stinking babe in her arms. She could feel pus leaking through her shawl, burning against her skin, and she swallowed back her revulsion with a prayer of calm. She hurried through the night, oblivious to the threat of wolves or bears, until she reached the opening and her beckoning cabin at the foot of the cliff which reared up into sheer, black mountains above; ominous and foreboding; threatening, and yet strangely protective.

The rain was relenting as Haleesa slammed shut the door and threw three bolts across the slightly warped timbers. She laid the child on a thick wolfskin rug on the floor, and fetched a jug of goat’s milk. She held the babe’s head – the skin felt strange, like burned and greasy parchment – and allowed the babe to gulp greedily at the milk.

The girl was eager, and milk spilled down her yellowed skin: glistening jewels against a portrait of obscenity.

I should have told Gwynneth, thought Haleesa, suddenly.

Should have told her the babe was dead…

And as she lay down on her bed, burrowing under the heavy furs and blankets, she heard the babe make a single sound, the first sound the child had uttered since its painful, horrible birth.

The child sighed in utter contentment.

She shuffled forward, opening the portal and staring stoically at the young face of Gwynneth. Haleesa did not smile – she forced her face into a look of neutrality. She took the girl by the hand and brought her inside, leaving a nervous Sweyn standing beside the two ponies.

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