Heartwood (Tricksters Game) (33 page)

The wolf’s haunches were splayed over the pebbled stream bank. Small patches of snow, fallen from the branches of a crack willow, coated the silver-tipped shoulders. Its muzzle lay in the water, a skin of ice around it.

Arrow drawn, he approached with caution, uncertain whether Morgath’s spirit might still linger inside the body. When he reached the bank, he realized it was impossible. Ice encased the whiskers. The once-fierce eyes were glazed and unseeing. He nudged the wolf with his foot, then slung his bow and knelt beside it, searching for a wound. Finally, he heaved the animal over, grunting with the effort.

No blood. No broken bones. No cracks in the skull. The wolf was dead, but only because Morgath had chosen another host.

Cursing, Darak stumbled to his feet and ran.

Turning his face to the watery sun, Struath breathed a prayer of thanks for Yeorna’s recovery. The effects of the blow to her head seemed to be diminishing. She could feed herself now and her speech was less halting. She had even managed a rueful smile when she explained how she slipped on the slick pebbles at the top of the embankment. She was still so weak, though. And too often, she would lapse into silence, staring at her outstretched fingers or touching her face and her hair as if they belonged to a stranger—almost like the Holly-Lord when he had awakened in Tinnean’s body.

Struath’s breath hissed in. On trembling legs, he tottered along the embankment. The branches of the sunberry drooped under their heavy coat of snow. He got down on his knees, rooting among the dead leaves, heedless of the snow that tumbled onto his neck and shoulders. His shaking fingers closed around the tiny, frozen body. He dragged it out from beneath the branches. His braids brushed the wren’s feathers, just as they had during his vision of the robin. He was still struggling to rise when he heard the Holly-Lord call his name.

They were standing together at the cave’s entrance. The Holly-Lord grinned and waved. “Look, Struath,” he called. “Yeorna is walking.”

She looked heartbreakingly frail, clinging to the Holly-Lord, but after a moment, she shrugged off his arm and took a small, tentative step, like a child learning to walk. She flung back her braid and took another step, more confident now.

The wren slipped from his fingers. On his knees, Struath’s eyes met hers. Yeorna smiled.

The Holly-Lord raced toward him, laughing. “See how much better she is?”

“Go into the cave.”

“Are you hurt? Shall I fetch Griane’s magic—?”

“Go into the cave and stay there.”

“But—”

“Go. Now!”

Frowning, he obeyed. Yeorna ignored the Holly-Lord’s curious glance, her glittering eyes fixed on him as he struggled to rise. Moving carefully, she walked forward until only a few paces separated them.

Although he knew the truth, he heard himself asking in a weak, pathetic voice, “Yeorna?” When Yeorna pursed her lips in that familiar look of fond reproof, Struath moaned.

“It’s been a long time. Hasn’t it, little rook?”

Struath’s heart slammed against his ribs. Belatedly, he threw up wards, weaving the thin strands of blue, green, red, and silver into a web of protection. Morgath did the same, his smile fading as the wards trembled. With a frown of concentration, he reinforced them.

Struath murmured a prayer. Morgath had stolen the wren’s body and Yeorna’s the same day and still had enough power to erect wards.

“Did you ever think about me?”

Struath shook his head.

“Did you care what I suffered?”

Again, Struath shook his head, unwilling to reveal all those sleepless nights.

Morgath wet his lips. “It was like living inside …” He hesitated, searching for the word. “… a nightmare. Knowing you will never wake.” The sweet smile made the words even more horrifying.

“Magic is tricky in … that place. Because everything keeps shifting.” Struath nodded dumbly, the apprentice soaking up his mentor’s wisdom. “You can hear the others. Howling. And you know that soon … you will be howling with them.”

Panting, Morgath paused to reinforce the wards. Struath must keep him talking, force him to expend more of his energy. Perhaps then the wards would fail.

“What is it like? Taking a … a human?”

“Delicious.” Morgath stroked Yeorna’s long, golden braid almost shyly. “She was my first. I’m glad she is so pretty.” The tip of the braid stroked Yeorna’s cheek. “Did you ever lie with her?” Morgath dismissed the idea with a quick shake of the head. “The boy … he would be more to your taste.”

The sly glance brought heat to Struath’s cheeks. Against his will, he found himself staring at Yeorna’s long fingers, so like his mentor’s.

“The Hunter’s brother, isn’t he? He has the look of him.”

Thank the gods, he had not called the Holly-Lord by his title. Whatever happened, he must keep the truth from Morgath.

“I might enjoy being a woman.” Releasing the braid, the fingers traced the line of Yeorna’s jaw. “Their bodies have so many contrasts. Soft in some places.” His hands moved lower, cupping Yeorna’s breasts. “Hard in others.” He thumbed Yeorna’s nipples until Struath could see them jutting against the wool of her robe. “Curves.” Hands cradling her belly. “And hollows.” Hands cupping her sex, fingers stroking through the wool. “If she had fought, it would have been sweeter.”

Struath shook as the destroying power surged inside of him. He controlled it with an effort. He must try and shake the Destroyer’s confidence, to force him to make a mistake.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“To watch you die.”

“Then kill me.”

“I’ve waited half a lifetime. I will not be rushed.”

“I understand that you’d want revenge against me. But why destroy the whole world?”

“There are other worlds. Did you know that? The Trickster told me. He helps me.”

“You, too?”

The smile faded, then reasserted itself. “He didn’t tell you I had returned, did he?”

“He didn’t have to. I’ve known since the beginning.”

“You lie.”

“Think that if it pleases you. You always loved believing you were the most powerful being in the world.”

“What other man has ever escaped … that place?”

“You think you did that on your own?” Struath laughed. Although it sounded more like a frightened wheeze, the laughter made Morgath’s wards tremble. “Has your time in the body of animals blinded you to the truth?” Frantically, he searched for a truth to offer, hoping Morgath would believe his pause to be merely dramatic. He seized on Morgath’s last words. “Do you really think you ‘escaped?’ You poor fool, the Lord of Chaos let you go.”

Morgath was breathing hard now, but still in control. “Perhaps. He has always been generous to those who do his work. That is why he has permitted you to live so long.”

“If you mean the wren—”

“I mean the One Tree.”

Struath tried to school his features to immobility and knew he had failed when Morgath smiled. “I felt you that night.”

It was what he had always feared, what he had refused to admit.

“The Unmaker might have opened the portal, but you drew me to the grove. So if anyone is responsible for destroying the world, it is you, little rook.”

“Maker, forgive me,” he whispered.

“I doubt it. But when I cast out your spirit, the Unmaker will welcome you.”

“You are a monster.”

“You made me that way.”

“Nay.”

“I sought knowledge. Truth.”

“You sought power. You subverted nature.”

Morgath laughed, a harsh, ugly sound utterly unlike Yeorna’s. “You drove my spirit out of my body. Was that not a subversion of nature?”

“You had transgressed. You were an abomination in the sight of man and gods alike.”

“And you loved me.”

Struath opened his mouth, then closed it.

“When you took the wren, the power made you tremble.”

“Because it was wrong.”

“Because you lusted after it. Even more than you lusted after me.”

Struath gathered the power, holding it close.

“You still lust after power. You love the respect you see in men’s eyes. And you love the fear even more.”

Struath pulled the energy from the ground, from the air, from the river below, from the feeble sunlight straining through the clouds.

“I could have sealed your fate that day. Only my silence saved you. Did you ever think of that as you drank in the respect and the fear of lesser men?”

Struath’s wards trembled as the energy raged, forging him into a weapon of destruction.

Morgath’s lips curled in a sneer. “You pretend to despise me, but you envy me. Because I am strong. Because I have the will to pursue power, while you only dream of it. Because, deep inside, you know we are the same. Only I have the courage to admit it.”

He had only this one chance. He could not fail.

Maker, give me strength.

Darak was racing along the riverbank when the blue light erupted. He needed both hands to scramble up the embankment, but when he neared the top, he paused long enough to unsling his bow and nock an arrow. Everything seemed to move very slowly after that, but later he realized it all happened in the space of a few heartbeats.

The spiderwebs of color glittering around Struath and Yeorna, stained blue by the spectral light. The same crackle of energy he had felt in the clearing. Cuillon, crawling out of the cave. His own shout, echoing loudly in his ears, as he urged him to get back, get back now. Yeorna whirling toward him. The stench of brimstone. Blue light spilling over Struath like a waterfall, coalescing into a single stream that hurtled toward Yeorna and shattered into brilliant white shards. A second blue stream racing toward Struath. Energy exploding all around. The bow falling from his grasp. Yeorna’s body hurtling into his. Yeorna’s hands clutching his arms. Yeorna’s eyes, wild with fear, as they rolled toward the edge of the embankment.

A perfect black rectangle opened in the middle of the leaf-strewn slope. Something flickered in the darkness. Tiny points of white light. Stars.

He heard a familiar, high-pitched yip. “Welcome to Chaos, children.”

The Trickster’s foot nudged them over the edge. He heard Cuillon shouting, Yeorna screaming. Then there was only the darkness and the stars and the two of them, falling up and up and up.

In the beginning,

Before gods or men existed,

Before there was sun or moon, earth or sea,

In the beginning,

There was Chaos.

—The Creation of the World